【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障19系列】【19-05】文史哲

kudoucliff

本帖精华送给Kudoucliff对其推荐文章的中英文注释，以及热心回答队友们的阅读疑难。详见“回帖推荐”。 by Iamyingjie~

Dear all,

罗同学杀T归来，继续为小分队服务！
今天的Time 1、2、3是同一篇文章；第4、5是同一篇文章。
看不懂的同学请看第33、34楼有楼主的中文说明，第31楼有英文说明……建议大家遇到读不懂的文章还是一定要精读到懂为止呀……虽然很辛苦但是收获很大的啊～～

Speed


【Time 1】

WEEKEND READING: INTERNET CRIME SLEUTHS, CELEBRITY PSYCHICS, EUROVISION’S HOPE

The Internet is supposedly the great leveler—a universal space without regard for physical boundaries or strata. This claim is half-illustrated by Kevin Morris at The Daily Dot in his story about Zhu Ling, a Chinese student who was poisoned in 1995 in an unsolved case that recently resurfaced as a popular cause among activists and truth-seekers on the Chinese Web. Morris writes that Zhu’s story “has straddled and defined two ends of the Internet revolution, connecting two decades, two continents, and two generations.” On one end of the bridge we are in 1995, Zhu is a promising young university student who falls gravely ill for mysterious reasons. Through the nascent avenues of the young Internet, one of Zhu’s friends posts a call for help on a message board and physicians from around the world help to reach a correct diagnosis—an early triumph of crowdsourcing. On the other end of the bridge, we are in the present, where online sleuths swarm social media, search tools, and databases to find Zhu’s college roommate, whom many believe was guilty of the poisoning, but got off unpunished because her family was well-connected. Morris’s story traverses the span into the free-for-all of the modern web, with all its advantages and its liabilities. Evan Osnos recently wrote about the Zhu case on our News Desk blog, where he discusses the “unwritten rules” that often set Chinese protocol and which so infuriate activists. But, as Morris’s story illustrates, it remains to be seen whether the rule-less Web can achieve enough accuracy and power to change subverted rules into new realities.
(265)



【Time 2】

Off-the-books investigation was a theme this week, although the vigilante impulse took on some very different, and darker, casts. The New York Times had a story on a retired N.Y.P.D. detective named Louis Scarcella whose cases are coming under review after accusations that he made free use of bad witnesses and falsified evidence throughout his career. Through detailed reporting, the authors pull together a portrait of a real-life Dirty Harry who made his own rules and set his own bars of justice. (The piece also brought to mind Pauline Kael’s scathing 1974 review of “Magnum Force,” in which she calls Clint Eastwood “a tall, cold cod” and skewers Dirty Harry for its “fascist medievalism.” A hatchet job worth revisiting for its own sake.)

Another loose-cannon crime solver appears in Jon Ronson’s 2007 piece in the Guardian on celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne, which resurfaced after the escape of the Cleveland kidnapping victims. When the piece first appeared, Browne had recently come under fire for telling a kidnapped boy’s parents that their son was dead, only to have him turn up, alive and well, four years later. Similarly, Browne told Amanda Berry’s family that Berry was dead in 2004. Browne wasn’t talking to the media after the 2007 embarrassment, so Ronson signed up for a cruise for Browne fans where she appeared as a guest speaker. As you can imagine, Ronson’s piece is dryly hilarious, but it also handles delicately the deep damage that can be done by fraudulent prognostications—as Ronson tweeted last week, “It’s not about psychics. It’s about cruelty.”
(260)

【Time 3】

For something slightly less dispiriting, or at least something with fewer homicides, check out “The Paradox of the Proof,” by Caroline Chen, which starts with a historic breakthrough in mathematics, and ends with a lot of head-scratching and resentment. The A.B.C. Conjecture is a famous unproved theory about the relationship between the multiplicative and additive properties of numbers. (If you want to know more, read the piece, where Chen lucidly explains the problem for those of us who haven’t touched an exponent since high school.) The conjecture deals with the basic nature of numbers and if it’s proved, says one Princeton mathematician, “it will be the most powerful thing we have.” Enter Shinichi Mochizuki: a math genius who quietly authors a series of papers that he says prove the conjecture. He posts them on the Internet and, for all intents and purposes, disappears. The problem is that none of his peers and colleagues can understand what he’s written; it’s so dense and referential that nobody yet knows whether it proves anything at all. (The piece appears on a new site, Project Wordsworth, where, Radiohead-like, a group of young journalists is experimenting with the notion that people will pay fair prices for high-quality journalism. You can find the rest of their inaugural stories—which look similarly interesting and intelligent—on their home page.)

Finally, I loved James Meek’s report from Cyprus for the London Review of Books, in which he lays out the series of historical and structural problems that led to the country’s financial implosion. Along with this wide-angle view of the situation, he explains the cultural and logistical realities that left ordinary citizens vulnerable in the crisis, and he tells the stories of people who have absorbed the impact of the collapse. It’s an important piece, told thoroughly and humanely, although it gives a bleak view for the foreseeable future of the European continent.
(315)

Extension

But that’s why there’s the Eurovision Song Contest, which takes place this weekend. Although the pan-European singing competition usually attracts more viewers than the Super Bowl, it’s not always easy to find a place to watch it in the U.S. Luckily, Anthony Lane wrote about the contest for this magazine in 2010. I don’t remember that last time a magazine piece made me giggle as much as Lane’s descriptions of the “perspiring ambition and dewy innocence” of this institution of old-world camp, where fresh-faced artists perform songs with titles like “Diggi-loo Diggi-ley” as a matter of national honor. Here is an assertion, Lane observes, of European diversity and unity that has lasted half a century. Banks may fail and currencies crumble, but while there is a Turkish back-up dancer sawing herself out of a robot costume, or a troupe of Finnish gargoyles gesturing mildly and singing in stilted English, or a Belarusian choir sprouting butterfly wings on an out-of-key key-change, there is hope.
(163)

【Time 4 】

Argument of Slavery
SINCE no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.
If an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king? There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now, a man who becomes the slave of another does not give himself; he sells himself, at the least for his subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his own only from them; and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to see what they have left to preserve.
It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity, and the vexations conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting their turn to be devoured.
(280)


【Time 5】

To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right.
Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning?
Grotius and the rest find in war another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back his life at the price of his liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both parties.
(329)


Obstacle

Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite

In 2008, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote an inspired rant about restaurant waiters pouring your wine for you. Five years later, we appear to be no closer to eradicating this bizarre, impractical custom. With that in mind, we've reprinted the essay below, one of many from Slate included in Hitchens' compilation, Arguably.
The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened. A waiter appeared from nowhere, leaned right over my shoulder and into the middle of the conversation, seized my knife and fork, and started to cut up my food for me. Not content with this bizarre behavior, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he proceeded to distribute pieces of my entree onto the plates of the other diners.
No, he didn't, actually. What he did instead was to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul that was our chat, lean across me, pick up the bottle of wine that was in the middle of the table, and pour it into everyone's glass. And what I want to know is this: How did such a barbaric custom get itself established, and why on earth do we put up with it?
There are two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer. The first is to keep you hanging about and make it hard to catch the eye of the staff. ("Why are they called waiters?" inquired my son when he was about 5. "It's we who are doing all the waiting.") The second way is to be too intrusive, with overlong recitations of the "specials" and too many oversolicitous inquiries. A cartoon in The New Yorker once showed a couple getting ready for bed, with the husband taking a call and keeping his hand over the receiver. "It's the maitred' from the place we had dinner. He wants to know if everything is still all right."
The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Indeed, so dulled have we become to the shame and disgrace of all this that I have actually seen waiters, having broken into the private conversation and emptied the flagon, ask insolently whether they should now bring another one. Again, imagine this same tactic being applied to the food.
Not everybody likes wine as much as I do. Many females, for example, confine themselves to one glass per meal or even half a glass. It pains me to see good wine being sloshed into the glasses of those who have not asked for it and may not want it and then be left standing there barely tasted when the dinner is over. Mr. Coleman, it was said, made his fortune not from the mustard that was consumed but from the mustard that was left on the plate. Restaurants ought not to inflict waste and extravagance on their patrons for the sake of padding out the bill. This, too, is a very extreme form of rudeness.
The expense of the thing, in other words, is only an aspect of the presumption of it. It completely usurps my prerogative if I am a host. ("Can I refill your glass? Try this wine—I think you may care for it.") It also tends to undermine me as a guest, since at any moment when I try to sing for my supper, I may find an unwanted person lunging carelessly into the middle of my sentence. If this person fills glasses unasked, he is a boor as described above. If he asks permission of each guest in turn—as he really ought to do, when you think about it—then he might as well pull up a chair and join the party. The nerve of it!
To return to the question of why we endure this: I think it must have something to do with the snobbery and insecurity that frequently accompany the wine business. A wine waiter is or can be a bit of a grandee, putting on considerable airs that may intimidate those who know little of the subject. If you go into a liquor store in a poor part of town, you will quite often notice that the wine is surprisingly expensive, because it is vaguely assumed that somehow it ought to cost more. And then there is simple force of custom and habit—people somehow grant restaurants the right to push their customers around in this outrageous way.
Well, all it takes is a bit of resistance. Until relatively recently in Washington, it was the custom at diplomatic and Georgetown dinners for the hostess to invite the ladies to withdraw, leaving the men to port and cigars and high matters of state. And then one evening in the 1970s, at the British Embassy, the late Katharine Graham refused to get up and go. There was nobody who felt like making her, and within a day, the news was all over town. Within a very short time, everybody had abandoned the silly practice. I am perfectly well aware that there are many graver problems facing civilization, and many grosser violations of human rights being perpetrated as we speak. But this is something that we can all change at a stroke. Next time anyone offers to interrupt your conversation and assist in the digestion of your meal and the inflation of your check, be very polite but very firm and say that you would really rather not.
(976)

kudoucliff

（1）1:35
（2）1:50
（3）2:12
The primary purpose of the passage is to solidify the claim that Internet is equal to everyone, without regards for physical boundaries or social strata. The author cites several examples: the first one is Zhu Ling's case in which Zhu suffered from mysterious disease and was gravely damaged. One of her friends used the nascent avenue of Internet to ask for the reason and finally got the answer. Recently, Internet sleuths warm the topic with search tools to find Zhu's roommate, who was suspicious for the poisoning but got off unpunished because of her well-connected family; the second one is about a detective using falsified evidence and bad witness through his career; the third one is about an embarrassment, during which Browne told a kidnapped boy's family that the boy had been dead; the third one is a non-crime one that a professor used his method to prove ABC conjecture, putting his article on the Internet, but nobody could understand him.
（4）1:24，The primary purpose of the passage is to illustrate the author's point that men who alienate himself to be slave for others cannot be said to own rights; actually people living under the sovereign of a king get nothing.
（5）2:10，The primary purpose of the passage is to substantiate that a person has no rights after being sold; thus treating the person as a people and the person bought the people as the government, we know that we cannot tolerate an arbitrary government and that people should have position to accept or reject the government.
（6）5:45，The primary purpose of the passage is to discuss the wine culture which the author once thought barbaric and then explored why it was tolerated. The author used metaphors to illustrate how rude the behavior of the waiter was. Also, he analyzed how the customers and hosts would feel being treated by so. Moreover, he listed several reasons led to such problems, including the price of wine. Finally, he believed the behavior could be stopped, citing an example of a lady refusing to attend an invitation.

kudoucliff

adamzjw 发表于 2013-5-20 19:40
1:58
2:14
2:50

Dear,

用中文讲解一下啊……time1、2、3综合起来讲的就是Internet是一个great leveler，就是对大家都很平等……然后引用了朱令案，说很久以前她的同学用Internet搞清楚了她的病情，很久以后（现在）网络侦探（sleuths）开始查她的室友……然后举了两个其它的例子，一个说有个侦探一生都在用伪证来工作，另一个说有一个人告诉那些孩子被强奸的家庭他们的孩子死掉了。这些事儿都被曝光了，成为丑闻……然后又说了一个非犯罪的，有个教授把自己对ABC conjecture的证明放在网上，大家都看不懂……每个点都在紧扣主旨——网络很平等，很open，大家都可以参与。

kudoucliff

abc791201064 发表于 2013-5-20 10:53
1.39 The ineternet now creats a place in which there is no stratefy and bound. As for the Zhuling Ca ...

Dear，

第四篇就是讲嘛：权利是生下来就有的，一个人把自己卖了（alienate）就没有权利啦，把一个人扩大到一群人，这一群人把自己卖给king，那么是不是也没有权利啦？但是有人说king给了他的臣民们很多东西啊，但是作者认为king是要靠着这些东西活才把他们给臣民们的……然后又讲暴君也给臣民tranquility啊，但是有tranquility就一定好吗？希腊人住在独眼巨人的洞里面也很tranquil啊，但是他们只是在tranquil中等着被吃掉而已……
第五篇就接着讲：一个人不可以卖掉自己，卖自己的契约是无效的而且荒唐的；如果一个人非要把自己卖了，那他不能卖他的孩子吧？因为这种权利属于他孩子自己……但是政府呢，不仅可以鱼肉臣民，还可以鱼肉以未来为代价满足现有的需求，这是不可以的，所以civilians一定要有一个position去接受或拒绝政府的行为……放弃自由就是放弃权利，这是跟人类的本性相违背的，放弃权利也就放弃了义务，一个没有义务的人也不对其行为负责……如果我的奴隶属于我，那他有什么权利是我不可以侵犯的呢？所以有的人探讨的奴隶的rights是不存在的……

irvan

难道是沙发~

Speed
01:37
The Internet plays an important role, in the past and present, in the story about Zhu Ling.
01:16
Two examples of loose-cannon crime solver
01:33
The Paradox of the Proof
01:42
The origin of the convention of "Slavery"
02:04
Specific aspects of slavery

Obstacle
05:43
Main idea: The author's ideas about today's wine service
Attitude: Positive
Structure:
               1) The author's experience of wine service
               2) Two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer
               3) The wine service is a kind of the second.
               4) What the author thinks about wine service.
               5) Why people endure this service.
               6) Solution to this problem

鱼缸上空

beckybei11

谢谢LZ，辛苦了
                       

413(1,2&3)-221-233

713

Waiterpour wine for the customer is barbaric?

Thereare two ways of bad service:1, Ignore the customer. 2, Too intrusive

Pourwine for the customer belong to the second way of the bad servicebehavior. Pour wine for the customer conveys a message to thecustomer that is hurry up and order a bottle

Badinfluence: 1. waste of wine is extreme form of rudeness

2.The restaurant push customer around by doing so

Thecustomer should say what they want.

kimwang53

每次都是前排 kudoucliff辛苦啦
2.33
2.30
2.43
1.50

time45和obstacle明天补，今天太晚了先睡了
真是文史哲。。速度明显慢下来。。生词也多了

2.44
3.26

13.35

CH wrote inspiringly about waiters pouring wine for people. Later, the custom became no more acceptable.
Give an example to prove how the waiter's behavor disturb the author.
Two main ways the restaurant can offer bad service
-->keep you hanging about and make it hard to catch the eye of the staff
-->be too intrusive
explain how the author feels about pouring wine
why we endur this
sb wrote sth then everyone follow it
give an example of experiencing it
his feeling about it
another bad manner
what shoud people do
conclusion.
--people is easy to follow the celebrities' behaviors

昨天读了两遍写的回忆，本来想再多读几遍搞清楚，但是觉得总不能在一个地方止步不前了，所以还是决定果断放弃线继续往后做吧。只期望以后有机会再来完善了。
ps：毫无逻辑链可言。。。sigh

yyjfantasy

话说第一篇看到朱令的案子小激动了一下下~~越障向@枣糕兔 学习，列出问题，填空回答来强迫自己总结总结，继续加油！
速度：
1.2'41''Zhu's story reflects the power of Internet and the weakness of law.
2.2'20''LS's case and JR's case shows us the cruelty of rules.
3.2'45''Normal citizens are vulnerable because of the law's loophone.
4.2'11''
5.2'26''
越障：6'89''
      1.Main idea:we should risist the wine waiter keeping pouring for us.
      2.Attitudebject
      3.Structure:examples---discussion---encouragement.
      4.purpose of each paragraph:
1.a complain about the waiter for pouring wine.
2.the writer went to a restaurant and observed the waiter's behavior.
3.the writer's thought about why this bad service keep on earth.
4.further analysis the reason of the bad manners.
5.another rudeness service and it leads to waste.
6.the excessive service usurps the client's right.
7.the reason why people endure the wine waiter.
8.the writer encourages us to protect our rights and say 'no'.

sally20130106

Could you set the letters bigger? It is difficult to read.

myisabella

啊？我怎么有两篇作业啊？我难道昨天拉下了？哦NO，要补4和5。。。MY GOD！先占座，晚上贴！

spencerX

谢谢分享~~

1‘11
1’12
1‘26
41’‘
1’25
1‘44

4’22

huizhuo0309

占座！！！！！！

1'18
1'22
1'21
1'30第二段没懂 主谓宾没一个认识的单词。。。
2'09
5'35
the writer encountered a very impolite waiter in a restaurant: the waiter poured the wine in everyone's glass without permission.
There are two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer and the waiter's behavior belongs to the second type.
the waiter does this to force you to buy another one and undermines you as a host or a customer.
the reason why people allow him to do is about the insecurity.
next time if you encounter this situation, tell him politely and firmly that it will be rather to do so.