【每日阅读训练——速度越障5系列】【5-2】

fox0923

ExpertsMeet in Rome to Discuss Cleaner and Greener Information and CommunicationTechnologies
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Technology experts, government officials, policy makers and engineers aremeeting this week in Italy. They have gathered in Rome for the first GreenStandards Week conference.
Italy's Ministry of Economic Development and the InternationalTelecommunications Union organized the conference. The event calls attention tothe need for information and communication technologies to fight climate changeand to build greener, more environmentally-friendly economies.
In recent years, the world has changed because so many people now usecomputers, mobile phones and other kinds of electronic devices. But theincreasing use of information and communication technologies, also known asICTs, also has led to more pollution, especially greenhouse gas emissions. Thisis mostly because of the energy used to manufacture, transport and operate suchequipment. Still, many experts say ICTs offer the best chance for reducinggreenhouse gases.
The Global Information Society Watch reported last year that ICTs could helpto cut total production of greenhouse gases by as much as fifteen percent bytwenty twenty.
Alan Finlay is with the Association for Progressive Communications. He alsohelped to prepare the GISWatch report. He says the effect of using ICTs tobuild cleaner environments is far more powerful than their harmful effects.
ALAN FINLAY: "When you're look at greening with ITs, you're looking atthe impact of ICTs on the environment but also what ICTs can be used in orderto improve the impact of other industries on the environment. And I think theoverwhelming consensus is that you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And ICTs can do more good in a sort of macro context."
Mr. Finlay says the GISWatch report and events like the ITU's GreenStandards Week are meant to look at the ICT industry as a whole.
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ALAN FINLAY: "To our mind you can't really divorce issues like e-waste--- which you see the massive negative consequences in Asia for instance, anddirect impact on poor people's lives and well being --- from the equation. So,both need to be looked at the same time.
The ITU says a main goal of the conference is to set clear policies formeasuring and improving the ICT industry's effect on the environment. Anothergoal is to note the importance of green ICT standards and values.
The Rome meeting is taking place less than three months before the UnitedNations Climate Change Conference opens in Durban, South Africa.
And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report,written by June Simms. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at51voa.com. I'm Steve Ember.
ATragedy in Norway Raises Questions for Europe
By VOA
2011-7-29

Norwegian Prime Minister and leader of the LabourParty Jens Stoltenberg speaks to Muslims gathered at Central Jamaat Ahle Sunnatmosque in Oslo, July 29, 2011
This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
Conservative extremists in Europe are facing new attention after the attackslast week that killed almost eighty people in Norway.
On Friday the country held the first funerals for victims of the attacks.
(SOUND)
Eighteen-year-old Bano Rashid was the first to be buried. She was Muslim butthe ceremony also included Christian prayers. Ms. Rashid was a Kurdishimmigrant from Iraq with an interest in politics. She was one of the peopleshot to death at a summer youth camp organized by Norway's governing Labor Party.
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A sixty-ninth victim of that shooting died Friday.
Also Friday, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg led a national memorial servicein Oslo, the capital. Mr. Stoltenberg said Norway had been hit by evil, and hecalled on the nation to unite around its values of democracy and peace.
The violence was Norway's deadliest since World War Two.
Thirty-two-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik has admittedresponsibility. But he has pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges. He says hewas part of a wider "crusade" against Muslim immigration andmulticulturalism in Europe. Investigators say they believe he acted alone. Theyquestioned him Friday for a second time.
Mr. Breivik exploded a car bomb in Oslo shortly before going to Utoeyaisland where the shootings took place last Friday. The deadly explosion wreckedthe prime minister's office building.
Mr. Breivik's lawyer says his actions suggest he is out of his mind.Far-right groups across Europe have denounced his attacks.
European Union officials say they will form a team of experts to investigatenon-Islamist threats in Scandinavian countries. The criminal intelligenceagency Europol says the team may look at other European nations in the future.
A report this year from Europol said extreme left-wing groups carried outforty-five attacks in Europe last year. It said there were no terrorist attacksby right-wing groups, but extremists were increasingly active on the Internet.
K. Biswas from the New Internationalist magazine says far-right groups havebecome more influential in Europe in recent years.
K. BISWAS: "You've seen parties in Italy, in Denmark, in Holland havegrown outside the mainstream conservative electoral vehicles in theircountries, and they have had an effect. They have had an effect on immigration.They have had an effect on the language used by mainstream politicians."
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In the Norwegian parliament, the right-wing Progress Party is the secondlargest party. In Sweden, Democrats joined parliament last year declaring"Keep Sweden Swedish."
Nigel Inkster is a director at the International Institute for StrategicStudies in Britain. He says Islamic terrorism is the most serious threat toEuropean security. And, he says, it is much more difficult to investigate thanright-wing extremism.
He says in Britain the threat from the extreme right normally does not comein the form of a major terrorist attack.
NIGEL INKSTER: "I think most of the violence that we have seen fromextreme right-wing groups has been of a more, if you will, casual, streetvariety targeted against demonstrations by immigrant groups or simple attackson immigrants."
AfricanFilm Shows Tensions Between Banana Growers, Villagers
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
A movie from Cameroon called "The Big Banana" has come to theUnited States. It looks at issues with the banana industry like disputed landrights, food insecurity and pollution.
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This woman in Cameroon says the land belongs to local villagers and they areasking operators of banana plantations to give it back.
Franck Hameni Bieleu directed the documentary film. He says officialsprevented a showing in Yaounde, the capital. He says making the movie wasdifficult, and even led to his brief detention.
FRANCK BIELEU: "I got arrested because the chief of that part of thevillage did not want me to film because he is being paid by the banana company.You understand, the thing is, everything around that area is controlled by thecompany. If you look at the congressman of the region, he is also the directorof public relations of the company. The minister of trade of Cameroon is alsopresident of the board of directors of the company."
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The company, Plantations du Haut Penja, is French and American owned. Representativeswould not talk to the filmmakers. The company and Cameroonian officials did notanswer a request for a VOA interview.
Mr. Bieleu says large parts of fertile land in Cameroon are being used forbanana exports. As a result, local residents have more and more difficultygrowing their own food or finding food to buy.
Also, the use of pesticide chemicals is blamed for polluting water andcausing health problems. Villagers accuse the company of destroying theirfields to expand the banana plantations after getting land leases from thegovernment.
Mr. Bieleu says the problem exists across Africa as foreigners increasinglyinvest in agricultural land. He says government corruption is stronger than thepeople's traditional rights to the land.
FRANCK BIELEU: "When a company arrives and just shows the money, thebig cash, what happens is the government just gives them the land that theywant, and these people cannot defend themselves because they do not have anyrights on that land."
Emira Woods with the American-based Institute for Policy Studies helpedorganize showing the film in the United States. In her opinion the biggestissue facing Africa this century is what many activists call the "landgrab."
EMIRA WOODS: "The structure of the problem has to be changed so thatmore and particularly small- and medium-sized farmers have the opportunities toremain on their land. And at the moment, because of threats from multinationalcorporations, from sovereign wealth funds, whether it is Saudi Arabia or Iran, thelist is actually growing of countries that are looking to Africa as a source ofaccess to land when arable land is becoming much more scarce on thisplanet."
The organizers said they hoped Washington policy makers would watch the filmto better understand the need to protect local food production around theworld.
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.You can watch scenes from "The Big Banana" at 51voa.com. I'm KarenLeggett.


越障 （941 words）
Schumpeter
Angst for the educated
A university degree no longer confers financialsecurity
Sep 3rd 2011 | from the printedition
MILLIONS of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearfulgoodbye to their parents and start a new life at university. Some are inspiredby a pure love of learning. But most also believe that spending three or fouryears at university—and accumulating huge debts in the process—will boost theirchances of landing a well-paid and secure job.
Their elders have always told them that education is the best way to equipthemselves to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see theirjobs offshored and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts willhave to cope with a life of cash-strapped insecurity. But the graduate elitewill have the world at its feet. There is some evidence to support this view. Arecent study from Georgetown University’s Centre on Education and the Workforceargues that “obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it.”Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings: an Americanwith a professional degree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one withmerely a high-school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- andless-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone witha bachelor’s degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than someonewith only a high-school diploma. Today the premium is even higher.
But is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginningof a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are goodreasons for thinking that old patterns are about to change—and that the currentrecession-driven downturn in the demand for Western graduates will morph intosomething structural. The gale of creative destruction that has shaken so manyblue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake thecognitive elite as well.
The supply of university graduates is increasing rapidly. The Chronicleof Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number ofstudents going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe,144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In 2007 150m people attended universityaround the world, including 70m in Asia. Emerging economies—especiallyChina—are pouring resources into building universities that can compete withthe elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional-servicesfirms such as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduatesand turn them into world-class computer programmers and consultants. The bestand the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best andthe brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for lessmoney.
At the same time, the demand for educated labour is being reconfigured bytechnology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labour wasreconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labour in the 20th. Computerscan not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings.They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire aflesh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (asoftware package) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety ofjobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to dealwith tone and linguistic ambiguity.
Several economists, including Paul Krugman, have begun to argue thatpost-industrial societies will be characterised not by a relentless rise indemand for the educated but by a great “hollowing out”, as mid-level jobs aredestroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, ofthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that the maineffect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collarjobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine. AlanBlinder, of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionallyperformed are if anything more “offshorable” than low-wage ones. A plumber orlorry-driver’s job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmer’s can.
A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of thegreat guilds, such as medicine, law and academia, that provide secure andwell-paying jobs. Over the 20th century these guilds did a wonderful job ofraising barriers to entry—sometimes for good reasons (nobody wants to beoperated on by a barber) and sometimes for self-interested ones. But theseguilds are beginning to buckle. Newspapers are fighting a losing battle withthe blogosphere. Universities are replacing tenure-track professors withnon-tenured staff. Law firms are contracting out routine work such as “discovery”(digging up documents relevant to a lawsuit) to computerised-search specialistssuch as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened, as patients findadvice online and treatment in Walmart’s new health centres.
Dreaming spires, meet pin factory
Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes—automation, globalisation andderegulation—may be part of a bigger change: the application of the division oflabour to brain-work. Just as Adam Smith’s factory managers broke theproduction of pins into 18 components, so companies are increasingly breakingthe production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up ITprojects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwideworkforce of freelance coders.
These changes will undoubtedly improve the productivity of brain-workers.They will allow consumers to sidestep the professional guilds that haveextracted high rents for their services. And they will empower manybrain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedioustasks to others. But the reconfiguration of brain-work will also make life farless cosy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.
http://www.economist.com/node/21528226

jxgzcly

今天,是发重了吗?两篇每日训练.

jxgzcly

1:23
1:10
1:31
1:27
1:46

fox0923

错了，改了日期了！

抓抓sandra

昨儿休息了一下,今天两篇补上~嘿嘿~

抓抓sandra

1 01:03
2 00:50
3 01:05
4 00:55
5 01:28

宿舍读好多干扰哇..努力为了T训练抗干扰能力ing..><跑步去,晚上继续补上另一份~

superbat28

1‘44
1’12
1’44
1‘37
1’50

囧~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

superbat28

7分18，读到最后读不动了= =

1. Many students go to universities, partly because they love learning, partly because people tell them that learning is the ladder to success.
2. Elder people always tell them learning is the only access, yet there are also evidence to support such a assertion: Blue-collar worker earns 1.3m while white-collared earns 3.6m... Also, evidence shows that the gap may still widening
3. However, does this trend will continue in the future? Something is damaging the structure as it did when damaging the sturcture of blue-collared workers. Many people go to universities nowadays, half of them are in Asia. And China is building lots of universities to compete with US, and also building good firms. This means elite from rich countires have to compete with elites from poorer countries, who are willing to get lower salaries.
4. Also, tech is changing the nature of work. Why hire a person when computer could help you to compute the tax.
5. There are some occupations that did well to be free from such a replacement, partly because some good reasons and partly because self-interests. Yet, these occupations also face challenge too. Doctors, lawyers, so on.
6. All these changes may be explained by a big change- the division of ........ As Adam Smith ... changed factory, such a change is changing industires nowadays........

DREAMNENGNENG

今天有点犯困，不过选得文章真得不错，每个方面都有涉及。
越障：
大意：
原来教育对人的工作的影响时多么的大
但是，慢慢就没那么大了——
原因一：扩招，对教育的重视。。。
原因二：科技的发展

balapupu

我来不作业了~~哎哎哎~~~愁死了~~老是木有时间静下来好好读，，，
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