【每日阅读训练——速度4系列】【越障修改——速度4-16 & 越障4-16】

fox0923

今天是我的班吗？抓跑到哪里去了？昨天没有看到有人post，今天我来补一下吧~~

速度

Water, Water, Everywhere, but Not a Drop of Bourbon
In Brooklyn, it's the booze people are hoarding.
By Jessica GrosePosted Saturday, Aug.27, 2011, at 6:11 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2302635/

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Yesterday a friend told me she heard that ourlocal Brooklyn supermarket—about a block from Zone C,which could experience flooding from a Category 3 or 4 storm—was out of bottled water. (Irene is a Category 1storm but a really nasty one.) I went there today to verify this third-handinformation, and it turned out to be false: The shelves were teeming with allmanner of Poland Spring, SmartWater, and Evian. Even though people mere blocksaway had already been evacuated because of Hurricane Irene, the place was notmuch more crowded than on a normal Saturday. My Twitter feed was littered withreports of panic in the Whole Foods over in Manhattan, so I was surprised to find theouter boroughs less dedicated to hurricane preparedness.

Hoarding of liquor, however, was another matter."Short lines in the grocery store and long lines in the wine store,"reported a friend in an adjacent neighborhood. So I visited a few local liquorstores to see what kind of business they've been doing.
"It's Christmas in August," says SherryRader, manager of Smith & Vine. She says thathurricane hoarders are gravitating toward lower prices than average, but at amuch higher volume. One Smith & Vine customer named Suzanne says she isplanning to buy four bottles. "That's for three adults, if you want to dothe math," she says. (The math: 1.33 bottles per adult.) She expects thatcache to last her for two days.

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At Henry Street Wines & Liquors, ownerDominick Tutrone says he's also been selling a great deal of wine, but he'salso been nearly cleaned out of high-end bourbon, too, and he has an emptyshelf to prove it. "I heard some woman comment that you don't need ice forbourbon, and it's strong and powerful, and people want to be, I guess,mellow," Tutrone says.

And locals are mellow: Walking down Smith Street,the retail center of the neighborhood, at around 4 p.m. on Saturday, you wouldhave no idea a hurricane was coming except for the occasional duct tape crossstuck to a plate-glass window. The wine barJakeWalk was nearly full, and guys in matching T-shirtsand goofy hats were spilling out of the sportier Angry Wade's. "It lookslike Irene's going to be a dud," said Suzanne. The rest of theneighborhood appears to agree.

August 28, 2011
HURRICANE IRENE AND GLOBAL WARMING: AGLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE?Posted by Elizabeth Kolbert
Nowadays, whenever there’s an Irene-like event—ahuge storm, a terrible flood, a killer heat wave—the question is raised: wasthis caused by global warming? Thevery frequency with which this question is being asked these days should makepeople take notice, but the answer that comes back is usually squishy enough toallow them to forget about the issue until the next disaster occurs, at whichpoint the process starts all over again. The problem here, as severalcommentators have pointedout this weekend, is that thequestion being posed is not the question we should be asking.

The standard answer to the question “Was Irene(or the recent flooding along the Missouri River, or the currentrecord-breaking Texas drought, or [choose your own favorite example]) caused byglobal warming?” is: No one event can be definitively attributed to climatechange (though in somecases, you can get pretty close). Hurricanes fall into thecategory of “weather,” which is driven partly by large and predictable forcesand partly by those that are stochastic, or random.


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How about posing the question this way: Are moreevents like Irene what you would expect in a warming world? Here the answer isa straightforward “yes.” In fact, experts have been warning for years that NewYork will become increasingly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding as theplanet heats up. In 2009, the New York City Panel on Climate Change, appointedby Mayor Bloomberg, concluded that, as a result of global warming, “morefrequent and enhanced coastal flooding” was “very likely” and that “shortened100-year flood recurrence period” was also “very likely.” Much of the problemsimply has to do with sea levels—as these rise, any storm or storm surge becomesmore dangerous. Marcus Bowman, an oceanography professor at Stony BrookUniversity, has warned that the city could one day have “flooddays,” the way it now has snow days.

Meanwhile, rising temperatures make other risksworse as well. Warm air holds more moisture, so as temperatures rise there ismore water available to the system. And warmer ocean temperatures mean there ismore energy available to fuel severe storms like Irene. As Kevin Trenberth, asenior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder,explained recently on the blogClimate Progress,“Owing to higher SSTs [sea surface temperatures] from human activities, theincreased water vapor in the atmosphere leads to 5 to 10% more rainfall andincreases the risk of flooding.” Also, “because water vapor and higher oceantemperatures help fuel the storm, it is likely to be more intense and bigger aswell.”

When we add all of these risk factors together,we can say with a great deal of confidence that in the future, there will bemore and more events like Irene. We can comfort ourselves by saying that thisparticular storm was not necessarily caused by global warming. Or we canacknowledge the truth, which is that we are making the world a more dangerousplace and, what’s more, that we know it.


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Indonesia's 'Technopreneurs' Help FuelEconomic Growth

Photo: VOA Photo S. Schonhardt
Entrepreneur Nadiem Makarim started Go-Jek, amotorcycle taxi service, which recently won a United States StateDepartment-supported competition and has already received commitments frominvestors.
This is the VOA Special English EconomicsReport.
Indonesia has one of the world's fastestgrowing economies, expanding at a rate of six percent this year. Technology ishelping fuel that growth, and producing a new generation of youngentrepreneurs.
One of these "technopreneurs" isNadiem Makarim. He graduated from the Harvard Business School in Boston,Massachusetts. He returned home and launched Go-Jek. This service connectsmotorcycle taxis, called ojeks, with people who need a ride or a delivery.
Go-Jek uses online maps, mobile phones and acall center. The aim is to improve Jakarta's disorganized motorcycle taxisystem. Nadiem Makarim says everything depends on a business plan.
NADIEM MAKARIM: "If you want to do good,there needs to be a business model behind it. If you want sustainable impact,then you need a market incentive to do that. I firmly believe that business andjust straight up rational business growth, profitable business growth andsocial impact are not mutually exclusive."
Go-Jek recently won ten thousand dollars in acompetition through the American State Department's Global EntrepreneurshipProgram. Indonesia is one of five countries in this program which links startupbusinesses with investors.
Many startups are Internet-based services.Indonesia already has more than seven hundred startups online, and new ones arelaunched every week. Half of Indonesians still live on less than two dollars aday. But Indonesia has a young population interested in trying new technology.
Right now, about forty-five millionIndonesians, or only about one in five, use the Internet. But about half ofthose people use mobile devices to go online, and those numbers are onlygrowing.
Some experts say the conditions for localentrepreneurs are the best in the world. Still, the World Bank currently ranksIndonesia one hundred twenty-first out of one hundred eighty-three economies inease of doing business.


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The biggest barrier to entrepreneurs is a lackof financing. Also, economists say Indonesia needs more entrepreneurs. They nowmake up less than one percent of the workforce. The rate is over seven percentin nearby Singapore, and almost twelve percent in the United States.
Indonesia's biggest bank, Bank Mandiri, expectsto increase loans by as much as twenty-five percent this year. Demand isgrowing for credit for small businesses and for consumers.
Leonard Theosabrata helped start WhiteboardJournal. This online publication offers a place for young designers to showtheir products. He says Indonesia has a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurswho take a risk.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. I'mMario Ritter.

A Credit Downgrade for Japan, but Some Signs of Hope
This week, Moody's Investors Service loweredits credit rating for Japanese government debt. The credit rating agencydowngraded Japan one step from Aa2 to Aa3.
(SOUND)
Finance Minster Yoshihiko Noda said trust inthe economy "will not be shaken" by Wednesday's action.
Moody's said it acted because of Japan's largebudget deficits and buildup in government debt since the two thousand nineglobal recession. Japan's public debt is twice the size of its economy. Japanhas the world's third-largest economy.
Moody's said another reason was Japan'spolitical situation. Japan has had five prime ministers since two thousand six.The current prime minister, Naoto Kan, is expected to resign soon.
Japan struggled more than many other countriesafter the worldwide financial crisis. This month, Japan said its economy shrankat an annual rate of 1.3 percent from April through June. It was the thirdquarter of shrinkage in a row.
The earthquake and tsunami in March hurtmanufacturing. Shortages of parts led to a big drop in sales and profit forToyota, the world's top selling carmaker.
Yet the report on the economy was good news.Economists had expected a bigger decrease following the disasters and thenuclear crisis that followed.

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But there is concern that a rise in the yencould hurt growth. A high exchange value makes Japanese exports costlier andless competitive. This week, Japan announced a program of one hundred billiondollars in loans to support business spending. The goal is to help weaken theyen and lift economic growth.
Bond traders said Moody's downgrade of Japanwas not a surprise. The action had the expected effect of raising borrowingcosts for the Japanese government. Still, at about one percent, Japan enjoysthe lowest borrowing costs of any major developed nation.
Earlier this month, another credit ratingagency downgraded United States government debt for the first time. Standardand Poor's blamed the political fight over the nation's debt.
Foreigners hold much of the public debt of theUnited States and some other countries. But ninety-five percent of Japan's debtsecurities are held by Japanese, mostly banks and retirement funds.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Kan met withAmerican Vice President Joe Biden. Mr. Biden visited Japan at the end of a tripto Asia.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. I'mMario Ritter.


越障

Japan and sex          Waltzing into bedrooms and brothels
     A new book on love and the law in Japan        
     
Jun 2nd 2011                    | from the print edition          
   Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law.

By Mark West. Cornell University Press; 259 pages; $29.95 and £19.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
ON FEBRUARY 19th 2006 Kimiko and her married lover Tetsuo checked into an Osaka love-hotel, swallowed sedatives and slit their wrists. When they awoke at midnight and realised their suicides had failed, Tetsuo strangled Kimiko at her request, then tried to hang himself and cut his wrists again. Unsuccessful, he called the police. At the trial, where an American court would consider questions of intent, the Japanese court based its ruling on whether Kimiko was in love. If she was, the court reasoned, she may have consented to her murder and Tetsuo would receive a lighter sentence.
Many facets of Japan seem mysterious to outsiders. Courts are sometimes obliged to seek answers to questions about love that may well be unanswerable. Yet in cases where love might indeed have a bearing, such as divorce, judges usually ignore the emotion entirely. Teasing out the mysteries of Japanese society by way of its statutes is the speciality of Mark West, a professor at Michigan Law School.
       In “Lovesick Japan” he trolls through 2,700 court opinions to paint a picture of a country that treats marriage more as an economic contract than an emotional bond. As seen by the judiciary, a little adultery should not trump marriage as an institution. “Japanese courts have no problem waltzing into bedrooms and brothels in ways that are not essential to deciding the case at hand,” he writes. “What they find there rarely seems to please them.”
According to surveys, there seems to be less sex going on in Japan than in any other big country. A Health Ministry study in 2006 reported that as many as one-third of all married couples under the age of 50 had sex, or even kissed or held hands, less than once a month. Indeed, kissing itself was long considered unhygienic. It was encouraged during the American occupation in the belief that such Western ways might promote democracy and erode the patriarchal household system.
Still, the Japanese are not shy about their fetishes and the law takes a permissive attitude to commercial sex. It is not illegal to pay for sex; a 1997 study showed that more than half of all men over 25 had done just that (and that for many of them it had been their first sexual experience). Though statutes prohibit everything from pimping to providing the venue, prostitution itself carries no penalty. And prostitution is defined exclusively as intercourse: other acts don’t count. As a result, “soaplands” (bathhouses where men are serviced by women) and “delivery health” (women dispatched to homes or hotels) are legitimate businesses.
Mr West presents a judiciary that is sometimes out of step with the “sense of society” on which it regularly bases its rulings. In divorce proceedings judges make it a virtue for wives to forgive adultery or overlook domestic violence.
Judges may also go far beyond their brief to comment on social mores, In one instance, in 1991, a judge decided that modern appliances are partly responsible for failed marriages because they “give women time to contemplate”. In that particular case the judge rejected a wife’s request for divorce after years of physical abuse, living separately and even a suicide attempt because her husband did not cheat or gamble, and looked so forlorn in court. “They should search together for the bluebird they were unable to find before,” the judge ruled. The reference to a “bluebird” is as jarring in Japanese as it is in English.
Judges use a multi-part test, that does not include love, to approve a contested divorce. Yet love plays a part in cases where it is perhaps less relevant. For instance, sexual relations with a minor is sometimes excused if the court rules there is love. Judges set out to decide whether the defendant is “earnest”, which means either in love or contemplating marriage.
In the case of rape, Japanese courts consider factors that American and European ones would not. Being drunk is a valid defence. One 1992 ruling suspended the sentences of two men out of compassion for what they “must have faced when the victim told them no”. A 1994 trial led to an acquittal in part because the victim’s “chastity is questionable”: she had slept with her boyfriend after a second date.
An Osaka District Court ruling in 2008 acknowledged a victim’s lack of consent, but felt her resistance was insufficient. The 24-year-old man was simply told by the court to “reflect deeply” on his “inappropriate” act of having sex in a parked car on a public road with a 14-year-old he had met the day before. Japan’s penal code does not apply statutory rape to a person over 13.
A problem with Mr West’s book is that he tends to generalise on contemporary life from what are clearly extreme cases, or from rulings that are 30 or so years old. He might, with advantage, have lifted his head from the law books and carried out more of the on-the-ground research that made the book he wrote in 2005, “Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide and Statutes”, so good. In that book he examined Japanese society through the lens of law. Here, he takes the law and tries to make larger points about Japan. It is not quite as satisfying, nor is it such fun.
“Lovesick Japan” reveals more about the judiciary than it does about society. But that is still a tale worth telling. As for the late Kimiko and Tetsuo? “The court found love,” reports Mr West. Tetsuo was guilty only of aiding suicide and sentenced to a mere six and a half years in prison.



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嘎嘎嘎，错了错了，那一篇我也读过~~昨天由于太赶题目也没看就贴上来了，马上补贴一篇比较吸引大众眼球的，哈哈~~作研究而已，作研究而已~~

MarsTOF

ding ge  
 jia you    haha

mahaofei001

基本都在55~59秒内完成。越障的话，5’45 额~~

superbat28

我就说抓会忘吧= =，果然人不见了~mark~晚上读~

balapupu

1.1‘13’
2.1‘10’
3.1‘03’
4.1‘10’
5.1‘10’
什么情况啊。。。我是替抓的逻辑，阅读还是她把~~那么今天晚上是fox继续贴还是我替Daisy 贴阅读呢？？

superbat28

我这个速度要闹哪样= =

83s
104s
读了三行才点的计时器还82s
103s
100s

superbat28

1.1‘13’
2.1‘10’
3.1‘03’
4.1‘10’
5.1‘10’
什么情况啊。。。我是替抓的逻辑，阅读还是她把~~那么今天晚上是fox继续贴还是我替Daisy 贴阅读呢？？

-- by 会员 balapupu (2011/8/30 16:59:40)

我觉得得把老大抓回来- -
吼哈哈~
要是到11点左右还没有看到老大贴阅读的话，那balapupu就先贴咯~

superbat28

6分21.  这篇读过啊~fox~~~~

1. THe moon has a spilt personality. The hemisphere, which always faces the earth, has maria and highland. The dark of maria and brightness of highland show a configuration, depending on the cultures of places, commonly called a rabbit on the moon..............................
2. But the other side of the moon is totally different, it is devoid of maria and is mountainous. Cited as evidence is an astronomer, who asserts: "It is just like an sandbar that my child play with."
3. How does it formed? Several explainations have been raised: Eneven underground heat.....XXXX None is sactisfactory. A new theory then has come up.
4. The moon was formed at the young age of universe, and it is believed the formation of moon is a result of collision between the earth and another planet, which is the same size of Jupiter. Such a collision casued many new asteroid, some massed up together and some are simply rejected. The moon is said to be initially formed in the mass up process.
5. Then another collision happened, a second moon collapsed with the former one. The researchers used the computer and got their desired model to show the process.    (一堆，没有读懂啊TT) But they know, computer can only tell them what could have happened, not what must have happened.
6. Concrete evidence do exist. First, the farther site have more dense(还是什么？) rocks. Second, if it was true that a smaller moon collided with another, there should be some difference among rocks. Analysis shows that some rocks on the earth have time gaps up to 200M, which was puzzling but fits well with the new model. Third, the impact would cause a redistribution of maria, and the current pattern does show such a allocation.
7. More evidence can be expeceted when the space shuttle reaches the Moon six month later. But the best way is to let researchers to analyze the rocks on the farther side of the moon. This, however, seems to be unviable. Russia and US do not have plan to go back to moon. ALthough China have (2017), they want to land on the near side for safe. So, researchers have to wait.

抓抓sandra

肥来了~昨天写心得写忘了~~><喵~~我错了~今天我来补上~

抓抓sandra

速度。。读的一点都不像速度该有的样纸。。现在回到学校安定好了，一切都要回到正轨了~每天继续来读~

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