英语学习笔记 2015Q1

来源：https://mp.weixin.qq.com

约吗? 不过谁来买单?

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206592579&idx=1&sn=c11f03be18f4f9a32c8a91800cecff4c&chksm=160583ba21720aacdf7f3f794c3fd3f0001d3d395f5abea70cdf8c41f1fb6adcf347cf1b77be#rd

男女约会的时候，尤其是第一次约会，该谁来买单?

据一份调查显示，68%的男士会在第一次约会时买单。也就是说有32%的情况下是女士买单。以下是eharmony(世纪佳缘之类)的一位婚恋专家(女士)给出的解释和意见。

不愿意读的话直接拖到最下面看视频好咯。

A Man Only Has Two Gifts

When it comes down to understanding the Laws of Polarity, masculine energy only has two gifts to offer the feminine. Simply put, it’s his job to protect and provide. In order for feminine energy to relax into a relationship and let her guard down, she absolutely must feel “safe” and if she doesn’t, it’s game over.

In order to feel safe, she probably has to be in the company of a man who is confident, relaxed and grounded. He has to not only take care of himself, but also take care of her. This means she has to feel protected and safe in his company—both from outside forces—and from him. She also needs to feel like he can provide for her needs and look after her. Obviously, the easiest and most symbolic way to demonstrate that is by providing the meal you are sharing.

So, what is the woan's responsibility here?

If a man’s responsibility is to protect and provide, the gift of the woman is her ability to nurture and have her man’s back. Simply put, a man is looking for a woman who will gratefully receive his gifts and appreciate his generosity. The fact is, a man can be with anyone else at any given time and when he invests his time, talent and treasure with a woman, he simply wants it to be acknowledged. Those who seem less than grateful or have an attitude of entitlement should realize how distasteful that is and not be surprised when a good man finds it to be a deal-breaker.

Here’s How You Both Benefit

By understanding the underlying energetic laws that are in play whenever two people meet for a date, you must understand that polarity is everything. Ideally, that means the man is in his masculine energy as the pursuer or hunter while the feminine is pursued and feels desired. People decide within minutes of meeting if there are “sparks” of attraction and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

If a man is uncertain or lacks confidence and a woman is pursuing him or picking up the tab, the best you can hope for is reverse polarity—and over time, when you’re living in anything other than your core essence, eventually it adds up to pain and disconnection.

How do you get a man to pick up the tab?

As I’ve explained, it really serves both men and women to start out a prospective romance by putting their best foot forward. So with that in mind, here’s how you can handle it the next time you have that awkward moment when the check is sitting on the table and no one is grabbing for it…yet. Ladies, I want you to simply say something to the effect of this:

“Hey, listen…about the bill. I’m happy to split that with you or even pick up the tab myself, but I read this article once (the one you’re reading right now, by the way) where it said that men actually take a great deal of pride in protecting and providing for a woman. It also said that it’s demeaning and disrespectful to a man to not give him that opportunity or accept his gift gratefully…so how would you like to handle that? I would never disrespect you…”

In most cases, it will be his idea to do that for you and you will have educated him gently in case no one has ever shared with him why a man should be a provider. However, if Romeo still doesn’t take the hint or at least have an authentic and vulnerable conversation on why he can’t, you’ve probably still found out everything you need to know about him on the first date.

And guys, if my suggestion is a problem for you, just make it a “policy” to make all your first dates a quick coffee or tea to see if there’s chemistry. You don’t need to provide a $100 dinner to decide if you want to continue getting to know someone when a $3 coffee will do the job. Good luck to both of you!

最后来看个视频, 好玩之余也带给我们一些思考

欢迎分享

@英语学习笔记

How Old Is She?

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206563534&idx=1&sn=bf493c84bf45ba6e6f6499df087a1502&chksm=161a3137216db821d3afa191029230b42e750d8d7d726b5f884dd1dfcdd397925f992fb83426#rd

更正: 上一期把教授的名字写错了，应该是Brooks Landon (我写成了Brook Landons), 在此表示歉意。

我们都知道在西方国家(或者是无论哪里),直接问女孩子年龄多大了是很不礼貌的。怎么知道How old is she呢？ Wongfu Production 给我们带来了一个好玩的视频。

视频中的语速稍快，和实际生活中差不多;而且涉及很多我们不熟悉的文化。Be aware and enjoy!

一些简单实用你想脱口而出的句子

It's make-up. My sister wears it everyday. 使用化妆品，用wear这个词

I'm going to talk to her to prove you guys how delusional you are.

Do you mind if I sit here? 自然大方的询问

Be my guest

I am the same way / smae here 除了Me too 我们还可以这么说.

... on three 数到3，用"on three"

片子中提到的adopted baby, 其实是汪星人，Pomeranian -- 就是我们说的“博美”. 我家里就养了一只:)

@英语学习笔记

阅读原文，查看上期发放的福利－如何写好句子的视频和文本.

福利下载 | 句子的高阶赏析和写作

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206563534&idx=2&sn=5b8e9f33697ab66e2622d7c39c544858&chksm=161a3137216db821560ad60745e77b89ac00378f681b1bf6ff01e89adb5c653fa36de4239b70#rd

以前和你说过Brooks Landon的 Buiding Great Sentences－他在The Great Courses上一门关于写作的网课.

我们已经听惯了"Less is more" "There is beauty in simplicity" 这样告诫. 然而Brook Landons的课是教我们 "How to make sentences longer". 他认为"Longer sentences -- when carefully crafted and tightly controlled, are essential keys to great writing. 简而言之就是：如何写出既有趣又有干货的句子.

这本书对英文赏析和写作都有很大的帮助；我也从中受益匪浅。于是：

我把完整的课程视频(24个半小时的视频), 课堂大纲, 书籍(pdf,epub,mobi格式) 都放在了网盘里，供你下载收藏。

Question 1:
这个课程适不适合我?我能不能看得懂?

下面这个视频是Chapter 1, 你可以看一下然后决定要不要接着看下去:) 不过对应的书也可以当作是script了 -- 主要是看一下你是否对这样的课程感兴趣: 一个老头的滔滔不绝。

Question 2:
我该做什么才能获取下载链接?

Here's the catch

1. 分享这个帖子到你的朋友圈

2. 附上一段你喜欢的句子

3. 截图后发到这个公众号

(如果你有我的个人微信，可以直接发给我), 我会很快就回复给你下载地址.

例如：

@英语学习笔记

提取码: 6f0f

福利 | 写好一个句子

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206559325&idx=1&sn=08184f7b35535cab7990f879ea0c1a57&chksm=161a01a4216d88b2ed845746712d9ccd960443fbf57ec7a9a969743ad850c177e9c39ec54b1c#rd

以前和你说过Brook Landons的 Buiding Great Sentences－他在The Great Courses上一门关于写作的网课.

我们已经听惯了"Less is more" "There is beauty in simplicity" 这样告诫. 然而Brook Landons的课是教我们 "How to make sentences longer". 他认为"Longer sentences -- when carefully crafted and tightly controlled, are essential keys to great writing. 简而言之就是：如何写出既有趣又有干货的句子.

这本书对英文赏析和写作都有很大的帮助；我也从中受益匪浅。于是：

我把完整的课程视频(24个半小时的视频), 课堂大纲, 书籍(pdf,epub,mobi格式) 都放在了网盘里，供你下载收藏。

Question 1 : 这个课程适合什么样的英文水平来看？

下面这个视频是Chapter 1, 你可以看一下然后决定要不要接着看下去:) 不过对应的书也可以当作是script了 -- 主要是看一下你是否对这样的课程感兴趣: 一个老头的滔滔不绝。

Question 2 : 我该到哪里去下载?

分享这个帖子到你的朋友圈, 附上一段你喜欢的句子, 截图后发到这个公众号(如果你有我的个人微信，可以直接发给我), 我会很快就回复给你下载地址.

@英语学习笔记

提取码: 6f0f

讣文 | "亚洲英雄" 李光耀

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206430080&idx=1&sn=12cef84b1b5700bee00a1e3c1747d22c&chksm=16180679216f8f6f26443b4fc6a4a2556a63bac59128dd537b9f68805acb0c6fe8712b48b102#rd

Lee Kuan Yew, Asian statesman - obituary

Founder of modern Singapore whose austere rule turned the island state from a colonial trading post into an 'Asian tiger'

新加坡前总理李光耀因病去世享年91岁. 这也引发了中外媒体对其的“盖棺定论”，相信你也对过不少的报道了。在此和你分享这篇英文obituary. 如果你不愿意读的话，看看图片好了:)

Throughout his premiership — and afterwards, as “senior minister” then “minister mentor” — he imposed his austere, incorruptible and often prickly persona on Singapore life. Stability and economic progress were, for him, unequivocally higher priorities than western notions of freedom. Those who criticised him from abroad often found themselves sued for defamation; those who dared to oppose him domestically were overpowered by every legalistic means at his government’s disposal.

The result was the transformation of Singapore from a mosquito-ridden colonial trading post and military base to a proud and prosperous — if somewhat antiseptic — “Asian tiger”, with the ninth highest per capita income in the world.

Lee Kuan Yew was born in Singapore on September 16 1923, into a family of Hakka Chinese descent — the Hakka are a tough northern tribe, and despite being a fourth-generation Singaporean, Lee believed himself physiologically better suited to cold climates than tropical ones. His great-grandfather left Guangdong province in China for Singapore at the age of 16, made money as a trader and returned to his homeland, leaving behind a son who became a pharmacist . Lee Kuan Yew’s father was a storekeeper for the Shell oil company, and later worked in a jewellery shop.

The given name Kuan Yew means “light that shines far and wide”, but to his family and friends Lee was known as Harry. As a child he spoke English, Malay and Cantonese, and was educated almost entirely in English; while prime minister he applied himself to learning Mandarin and Hokkien as well.

He was educated at Raffles Institution, Singapore’s most exclusive school, where he was the top scholar of his year. His ambition to go straight to university in England was interrupted by the outbreak of war in Europe, so he took up a scholarship to Raffles College, the forerunner of the University of Singapore. He was a student there at the time of the British capitulation to the Japanese in 1942.

The brutality of the Japanese was seminal in the formation of Lee’s political views. He narrowly avoided the fate of other Chinese youths who were rounded up on lorries by Japanese troops to be taken to the beach, forced to dig their own graves, then shot. On one occasion as he tried to cross a bridge, a Japanese sentry thrust the bayonet of his rifle through the brim of Lee’s hat, slapped him, made him kneel, then sent him sprawling with a kick. This and many other humiliations to which he was witness made him “determined to work for freedom from servitude and foreign domination”.

Black market trader

Nevertheless he set to learning Japanese, and in due course found work as a translator of news bulletins for the Hodubo, or propaganda department. In the later stages of the war he also operated as a black market trader and ran a venture making stationery gum, under the brand name “Stikfas”.

In September 1945, Lee was among the crowds who watched the Japanese surrender ceremony from the padang outside Singapore’s City Hall, and a year later he was at last able to leave for England to take up a place at the London School of Economics. He sailed on the troop ship Britannic — and was shocked by the promiscuity of returning British servicemen and women, whom he observed in large numbers “unashamedly making love on the lifeboat deck”.

In his single term at the LSE Lee fell briefly under the Left-wing influence of Harold Laski — but he hated his cold, lonely bedsit in Swiss Cottage, and swiftly arranged to move to Fitzwilliam House at Cambridge. There he was much happier, all the more so because he was able to arrange a place at Girton for his fiancée Kwa Geok Choo — who had been the only pupil at Raffles Institution to out-score him, to his horror, in English and economics exams.

The couple married secretly at Stratford-upon-Avon registry office in December 1947. Lee took up golf, pipe-smoking and motorcycling, joined the university’s Labour Club, and built up a network of contacts among Malay student activists, including the future prime minister of Malaysia, Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman.

Lee and Choo both took Firsts in Law . The couple then took off to Tintagel in Cornwall, in preference to a winter in London, to read for their Bar exams, and Lee had time off to campaign for a friend, David Widdicombe (later a High Court judge) as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Totnes.

In June 1950, Lee and Choo were called to the bar by Middle Temple and in September, after returning to Singapore, they were officially married. Both joined a local law practice, Laycock & Ong, before in due course setting up their own firm, Lee & Lee, of which Choo was to be a senior partner (with Lee’s brother Dennis) throughout her husband’s political career.

Lee made a name for himself not at the criminal bar but as a legal adviser to many of Singapore’s trade unions, notably during a strike by postal workers. In 1953 he also successfully defended a student journal against charges of sedition. By now he was at the heart of ferment against continuing British rule, and in 1954 — with Tunku Abdul Rahman’s support — he and his cohorts announced the formation of the People’s Action Party, which was to be Lee’s power base for the rest of his life.

Campaigns against corruption

Although the British governor, Sir William Goode, retained control of Singapore’s defence and foreign policies, Lee immediately established the tone of the domestic policies which were to prevail from then on. Ministers were ordered to be at their desks in shirt sleeves by 8am and civil servants were ordered to be more civil. Campaigns were launched against corruption and immorality, and newspapers were warned not to be subversive.

Lee’s long-term strategic goal was always independence for Singapore: any union with Malaya was bound to be dominated by what Lee saw as an indolent, feudal-minded Malay elite, determined to keep the more industrious Straits Chinese in a subordinate role. Nevertheless he saw partnership with Malaya, or “freedom through merger”, as the path to his goal, and signed a pact to that effect with Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1961.

The move provoked a split of the PAP, whose Left-wing elements broke away to campaign for a separate, socialist Singapore: Lee responded by putting more than a hundred of them in jail.

Malaysia, incorporating the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo as well as Singapore, came into being in September 1963, provoking armed hostility from Indonesia’s President Sukarno and rioting in the streets of Singapore. From the start it was an uncomfortable marriage of interests. Lee — whose fluency and dynamism as a leader had already made him a celebrity on the world stage — spoke out abroad against the anti-progressive policies of the federal government in Kuala Lumpur, while expressing tenuous loyalty at home.

Jekyll and Hyde

One fellow minister compared him to Jekyll and Hyde, while Tunku Abdul Rahman observed that “there cannot be two prime ministers in one nation”. Within less than two years, the Tunku decided it was time to ask Singapore to withdraw from the federation, having “ceased to give even a measure of loyalty to the central government”.

At a press conference after the announcement of the split, proceedings were held up for 15 minutes while Lee wept openly, declaring that he had spent all his adult life working for the unity of Singapore and Malaya. Singapore became a republic in its own right on August 9 1965.

Another upheaval came three years later, when Harold Wilson announced — contrary to earlier pledges — his cabinet’s intention to abandon Britain’s remaining military presence “east of Suez” and to close (in 1971) the Singapore base which employed 50,000 local civilians and contributed a fifth of the island’s national income. Lee was furious, threatening to invite the Japanese to take over the dockyard and to withdraw Singapore’s sterling balances from London.

But having accepted the inevitability of the decision, he made the British departure the catalyst for a massive redevelopment which was the foundation of the modern Singapore economy. A state-owned shipbuilding and repair company took over the naval base; British, American and Japanese manufacturers — attracted by low wage rates and ruthless repression of union militancy — were encouraged to build high-tech factories; a crop of foreign banks and new hotels followed. Soulless but spotlessly hygienic public housing projects replaced barrack blocks, shophouses and shanty towns. In the consumer boom of the 1980s, glittering (and largely tax-free) shopping malls attracted the millions of tourists who passed through the island’s vast, immaculate airport at Changi, once the site of the notorious Japanese prison camp. The economy grew at a phenomenal rate, with full employment year after year.

Enforced obedience

Prosperity, and relative harmony in a melting pot of Chinese, Malay and Tamil racial groups, came at a price which Singaporeans were on the whole content to pay. The price was an absence of anything resembling free political debate, and enforced obedience to Lee Kuan Yew’s all-encompassing diktats on personal behaviour. Singaporeans were subject to fines for spitting, swearing, not flushing public lavatories, or allowing standing water in their gardens to attract mosquitoes.

To discourage the western hippy culture which Lee despised, neither Singaporeans not visiting tourists were allowed to wear their hair over their collars. Drug traffickers and armed robbers were regularly hanged, but in general crime (other than stock market shenanigans, which were endemic) was almost non-existent. Reflecting Lee’s belief in elitism, and in social engineering verging on eugenics, the brightest Singaporean students were sent on “love cruises” to find partners of similar IQ with whom to breed.

As for political opposition, Lee permitted it to exist but made it as difficult as possible. One agitator, Chia Thye Poh, was imprisoned under the Internal Security Act for 32 years. J B Jeyaratnam, the leader of the Workers’ Party and for some years the sole opposition MP, was subjected to a barrage of legal ploys which included fraud charges, a defamation suit forced bankruptcy and finally disbarment from parliament.

When Devan Nair — a Leftist co-founder of the PAP who became president of Singapore in 1981 — fell out of favour, he was hounded from office by allegations of alcoholism and womanising, and left to live in Canada — where Lee later sued the Globe & Mail for suggesting he had conducted a character assassination of Nair.

Singapore’s student associations were banned not only from political activity but even from staging rag weeks. Academics were dismissed from their university posts if they spoke out of turn, and one visiting professor was charged with contempt for making reference to “a compliant judiciary”.

Lawyers who defended oppositionists in court were themselves at risk of prosecution — as were Jehovah’s Witnesses and Roman Catholic activists suspected of being “Marxist conspirators”.

Uncritical press

In the latter case, Lee sued the Far Eastern Economic Review for implying that he had been intolerant. On another occasion he sued the International Herald Tribune for saying that he planned a dynastic succession for his son.

Yet Lee was never a tyrant. He believed in the rule of law, though he used it as a blunt instrument in merciless pursuit of his suspected enemies. His authoritarian instincts were mitigated by intellectual rigour, patent incorruptibility and a modest personal lifestyle.

At the end of the working day in the Istana, his official quarters, he returned to his plain family home nearby; he ate sparingly, rarely drank anything stronger than tea, and allowed himself no distractions except golf. Lee often expressed contempt for the decline of western moral fibre, yet he retained an admiration for the colonialists of earlier generations, including Singapore’s founder, Sir Stamford Raffles. After one diatribe by Lee on the rotten state of modern England at a garden party in honour of the visiting foreign secretary, George Brown, in the late 1960s, Brown replied, “Harry, you’re the finest Englishman east of Suez”, leaving Lee momentarily lost for words. He was made an honorary Companion of Honour by the Queen in 1970, and was appointed honorary GCMG in 1972.

Relations with Thatcher

During the 1980s, Lee and Margaret Thatcher developed a mutual respect which overcame the gaps between their philosophies. Thatcher sought Lee’s advice at Commonwealth conferences and on her dealings with Beijing's communist leadership over Hong Kong: it was Lee’s view that although authoritarianism was engrained in the Chinese character, communism was not, and would not endure. Lee finally stood down as prime minister in November 1990, handing over to his loyal deputy, Goh Chok Tong. As senior minister without portfolio, the semi-retired Lee ranked second in cabinet seniority. He remained in the cabinet until 2011, for the last seven years with the new title of “minister mentor”.

He said that he wanted to “spend the rest of my life making sure that what I have done is not a waste of time”. He also applied himself — mostly at night, until three or four in the morning — to writing two weighty volumes of memoirs, The Singapore Story.

Old age

World leaders continued to pay homage to him in old age. He in turn did not hold back either from criticising his own successors or expressing himself trenchantly on the great issues of the day. In 1992, addressing a gathering of worthies at Hong Kong University, he subjected the new Governor, Chris Patten, to a withering attack on his proposals for democratic reform. “I have never believed that democracy brings progress,” he said. “I know it to have brought regression. I watch it year by year, and it need not have been thus.”

A vigorous and uncompromising presence on the world stage for half a century, Lee Kuan Yew commanded universal respect; in Singapore itself, respect turned in later years to genuine affection for a stern but dedicated father of his nation.

Lee’s wife Choo died in 2010. They had two sons and a daughter. Their elder son, Lee Hsien Loong, a Cambridge scholar and a former brigadier general in the Singapore Armed Forces, succeeded Goh Chok Tong as Singapore’s prime minister in August 2004.

@英语学习笔记

对英文［高级写作］有兴趣的同学，我推荐你了解一下Justin孟庆伟的［写作工作坊］.具体内容请阅读原文。

美丽中国

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206327359&idx=1&sn=3b118e502e59b4e4bdcffce7662a469b&chksm=161997c6216e1ed0cb022d9a84cba28d1574e6a7df57a1474c1b05cb075406fbeead6cfe66b0#rd

一个月前在经济学人上读到一篇有关教育的文章: High-fliers in the classroom(阅读原文), 因此了解到了Teach for America这样的组织。我们国内也有这样的项目，叫做Teach for China.

我本人是学教育专业的,Teaching English for Speakers of Other laLnagues. 在了解了Teach for China这个项目之后, 我决定报名参加为期两年的支教项目。在申请通过后，通过Skype进行了长达两个小时的面试。上个星期收到了offer成了一名准项目老师。

如果你对教育有兴趣的话, 不妨也了解一下。在这里和你分享几个美丽中国的宣传视频。

昨天发的文章[用中文说爱], 很多人回复说“看哭了”. 如果你还没有读，推荐你来读一下，邂逅一下久违的感动。

回复关键字: 折纸

再之前发的塞林格的［想触碰又收回手], 我们的翻译志愿者@Vega 给出了译文. 我放在了我们的笔记里, 有兴趣的话请查看

https://www.evernote.com/l/AirEevreU7NK3oQFb0EJ52RUDzvmM1IKWAE

@英语学习笔记

放条死路吧

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206221412&idx=1&sn=f6accc26f18e35f59c8c393df70ccbce&chksm=161f699d2168e08b615a5a3c249b686d4f8198c97243618f5caa4855483ccfda11d7f749326d#rd

经济学人这篇文章讨论了器官捐献的话题－这样的话题听上去就觉得“很吓人”对不对? 让我想起了考取美国驾照的时候。

申请驾照笔试的时候要填一个表格，个人的一些基本信息，还有"要不要捐器官". 如果你选择了Yes, 你的驾照上会有颗红心♥️.

DMV(Department of Motor Vehicles) 网站上也有详细的信息。在DMV大厅也会循环播放呼吁捐赠的宣传片。

今天这篇文章来自经济学人，你来读一下。阅读原文可以看到关于这篇文章的翻译的讨论, 来自我们的经济学人翻译志愿者们。

Organ transplants: Spare the bullet | The Economist

Officials try to curb the use of organs from executed prisoners

TRANSPLANT operations in China have long relied on organs taken from executed prisoners, a practice that has led to such abuses as the timing of executions to meet organ demand, with no notification of relatives. As by far the world’s biggest user of the death penalty, China could count on an abundant—if still far from adequate—supply. But in recent years, stung by international criticism, it has been trying both to reduce executions and to end the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners without their, or their families’, consent. Since January 1st the government has insisted that no such organs be used for transplants. Ensuring compliance, however, will be difficult.

The number of executions is almost certainly falling, even if it remains far higher than in the rest of the world. The government does not release data, but the Dui Hua Foundation, an American NGO, reckons there were around 2,400 executions in 2013, down from 6,500 in 2007. In spite of the impact this has had on organ supply, the government still seems keen to sever the grim link between hospitals and courts that allows wealthy (or well-connected) patients to use organs from condemned prisoners. In theory, the rules mean that hospitals will be able to obtain only organs donated by volunteers to a national organ-bank.

The bank was set up in 2010, partly to fight corruption in the organ-allocation system by making it less haphazard. It was slow to get going: by the end of 2014 it had received only about 8,000 organs from deceased volunteer-donors (it is not clear if this includes organs from executed prisoners; there is little incentive for court officials to force death-row inmates to give assent if the organs are given to a bank rather than to somebody willing to pay). But in January and February alone nearly 1,000 were donated, thanks to the linking of more provinces to the bank’s network. The head of the government’s organ-donation committee, Huang Jiefu, believes the bank will receive more than 10,000 organs this year. That is about as many as the number of transplants carried out annually, but a fraction of the 300,000 needed.

Persuading the public to donate remains a problem. Many Chinese adhere to a traditional belief that the body has to be kept intact to show respect for ancestors. A senior official at a provincial branch of the Red Cross Society of China, the agency responsible for the donor scheme, says that a lucrative backdoor trade in executed prisoners’ organs will be hard to stop. He says hospitals, middlemen and court officials all benefit from it. They have often ignored a regulation passed in 2007 that requires consent from a deceased donor’s family.

有个网站叫stop organ harvesting, 声讨什么功的迫害。估计是这个组织搞出来的, 话题太敏感,在这里提一下，不讨论。

The government now appears to be suggesting it will get serious about a rule issued in 2013 which threatens hospitals with cancellation of their licences if they use organs other than those from the bank. One doctor says a small number of transplants performed at his hospital last year still involved prisoners’ organs from outside the network. Mr Huang of the organ-donation committee admits that much work remains to be done.

@英语学习笔记

阅读原文可以看到关于这篇文章的翻译的讨论, 来自我们的经济学人翻译志愿者们。

数字游戏

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206130413&idx=1&sn=40e4d6ab2f246d5fbf699a930192ab47&chksm=161c9514216b1c02d37175755b2de80db89c4b33ba7483eafe81a99dd57e635f934d528e1ab7#rd

经济学人以Comprehensive education讨论了主席的"Four Comprehensive". 文章很有趣，我为每一段配上了图, 推荐给你读.

Xi Jinping’s new big idea is not quite as vacuous as it first appears

REMEMBER the “Scientific Outlook on Development”? Not many people do. Yet in 2003 when Hu Jintao, then head of the Chinese Communist Party, launched the idea, it seemed a big deal. Four years later the party even amended its constitution to enshrine the principle in its guiding ideology. Mr Hu’s successor, Xi Jinping, will hope his own new contribution to the party’s canon lingers longer in the public’s mind. But his newly unveiled theory—the “Four Comprehensives”—faces similar difficulties. Like Mr Hu’s bright idea, Mr Xi’s is not exactly a crowd-pleaser—more a vague and prosaic formulation of propositions with which it is hard to argue. Yet it starts life with some advantages, and those mean China may be studying it for years to come.

It may be beneficial that Mr Xi has rejected his predecessor’s outlandish precedent of not attaching a number to his doctrine. Before Mr Hu, Jiang Zemin went for the “Three Represents”, an opaque theory that seemed to boil down to the idea that it was possible to be both a successful entrepreneur and a good party member. Before Mr Jiang, Deng Xiaoping’s thinking was distilled in the phrase: “One centre and two basic points” (or, for audiences in Hong Kong and Taiwan, “One country, two systems”).

Chinese Communist slogans do not count if you cannot count by them. The number four, though shunned in many Chinese contexts because the word sounds like “death”, has a particularly good party pedigree. Mr Xi grew up under Chairman Mao, learning to smash the “Four Olds” (customs, culture, habits and ideas); he will have cheered when Mao’s successor, Hua Guofeng, revived the “Four Modernisations” (agriculture, industry, defence and technology); and he will have been able in his sleep to recite Deng’s “Four Basic Principles” (don’t ask). Mr Xi is right to add his own offering to the abacus of party thought that proceeds on through the five principles of peaceful coexistence, the six evils (such as gambling)—or these days the six bans—and the seven don’t mentions (such as, of course, “freedom of speech”).

Another boost for Mr Xi’s theory is that, just 2½ years into his tenure, he is already the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng. The “collective” leadership that marked Mr Hu’s years has been replaced by one in which Mr Xi is in sole charge. He has broken with precedent by arresting a former member of the party’s highest body, the Politburo Standing Committee, on suspicion of corruption. His predecessors could also rely on the slavish admiration of the party press. But Mr Xi is now the object of hero-worship. The party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, ran five front-page editorials last month extolling the Four Comprehensives in gushing terms. It has even set up a special webpage for the theory’s devotees. The idea is an “unprecedented and strategic leap forward”, it says, and a “major breakthrough in political theories”.

Such hyperventilating boosterism is both a reflection of Mr Xi’s stature and a way of enhancing it further, putting him in a line of great thinkers who have mastered and elaborated Marx’s “dialectical materialism” (the arcane topic of a Politburo “study session” that Mr Xi presided over in January). The Four Comprehensives may sound like an off-the-cuff (信手拈来)slogan, but Mr Xi’s spin doctors want people to believe it has deep philosophical roots.

A further reason why the theory may have staying power is that it is actually recognisable as the platform Mr Xi has tried to implement. Zheng Yongnian, a Chinese scholar who is director of the East Asia Institute, a think-tank in Singapore, says that the most important of the comprehensives is the first: “Comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society.” (The Chinese is considerably less clunky.) This, says Mr Zheng, is the “Chinese dream” Mr Xi has been advertising since he took office. The “dream” actually seems to encompass more than material well-being. But without it, it will be hard to achieve other ambitions: fully shaking off the legacy of a century of humiliation and enabling China to take its place as one of the world’s great powers—perhaps even the greatest, as the most ambitious dreamers hope.

The other “comprehensives” are means to this end: deepening economic reform; governing “according to the law”; and “applying strictness in governing the party”. No one will be surprised by the mention of economic reform, which has been a mantra of every Chinese leader from Deng onwards. Enforcing the rule of law sounds on the face of it revolutionary, since it implies that the party itself is subject to external authority. It is not clear that is Mr Xi’s intention, however. He has disappointed liberal reformers by not repeating a suggestion he made in 2012, that no organisation can “overstep” China’s constitution. At present, the law is seen as one of the tools Mr Xi can use to clean up the system, not a way of placing checks on party power. The final “comprehensive”, enforcing party discipline, refers to his anti-corruption drive—the fiercest modern China has seen. But the party still polices itself.

Although they are naturally being interpreted as yet another sign of Mr Xi’s all-pervasive sway, it is also possible to see the “Four Comprehensives” campaign as evidence of his anxieties. Since coming to power, he has made many promises to the public that he has yet to redeem. Doing this will be harder as China’s economy slows down. Already the fast-growing urban middle classes are grumbling about pollution, food-safety scares and traffic congestion. Even the anti-corruption drive, though broadly popular, has drawbacks: Mr Xi is attacking his own power base of party cadres and government officials.

He has responded to such worries by reaching back in the party’s playbook to the timeworn tactic of a mind-numbing ideological campaign. Many of China’s young will shrug it off and look at something more interesting on their smartphones. Even those who pay attention may wonder when the party is going to stop trying to reduce complex issues and policy debates to slogans you can count on the fingers of both hands.

@英语学习笔记

熟悉“谷大白话”的朋友可以在他的微信公众号(sensualguru)中回复Z9查看一些他对英语学习方面的文章，既有趣励志也涨姿势,推荐给你.

重男重女

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206109182&idx=1&sn=6599b7509b182943ab403dbada6c27b1&chksm=161d2007216aa911aaec679e3be541839e87fefb1ac25f92937f58635a3297021e5d0a46f6fe#rd

Nature plus nurture

Girls do better than boys in school and university. But both can still improve—sometimes for surprising reasons

这篇文章用司汤达说过的一句话来起承转合, 你感受一下。

STENDHAL once wrote that all geniuses who were born women were lost to the public good. At least in the rich world, that wasteful truth has been triumphantly overcome. More than half of new graduates in the OECD club of mostly rich countries are now female. In several the share is around 60%. Former male redoubts such as medicine and law have increasingly been captured by women. Indeed, elite American colleges are widely suspected of admitting male applicants with lower grades, to even up the numbers. Yet despite this monumental advance, prejudices continue to hamper girls—and boys, too. Happily, neutralising them, at least within schools, should be much easier than reversing centuries of patriarchy.

Stendhal, 写「红与黑」的法国作家. "Former male redoubts have been captured by women"很形象的描写.

Educational results still seem to support the old idea that male and female intellectual capabilities differ. An analysis by the OECD of PISA tests for 15-year-olds in 60-odd countries turns up some eerily similar patterns. Girls trounce boys in literacy, but boys do better in mathematics. Boys do less homework and are more likely to fail in all subjects. The courses that both sexes choose at university mirror their earlier strengths at school. Women dominate in education, health, arts and humanities; men lead in computing, engineering and physics.

All this might suggest that intellectual differences are hard-wired, with women abler and more assiduous, but men better at the exact sciences. A closer look at the data reveals a new version of Stendhal’s lament: that much ability, both male and female, is wasted because of tenacious stereotypes.

One startling fact uncovered by the OECD number-crunchers is that, when teachers mark a reading test without knowing who took it, the gender gap shrinks by a third. Most of the world’s teachers are now women, who find it easier to spot ability when it appears in their own likeness. They give better marks, perhaps unconsciously, to the punctual, orderly and neat: fine qualities that society associates with girls, but which are not the same as reading and understanding a text. Poor grades damage motivation and mean that pupils are put in lower ability groups, so that biased assessments turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. Falling behind in literacy, as boys disproportionately do, is particularly worrying, since reading is needed to learn anything else. The solution is simple: whenever possible, school tests should be made anonymous.

Sometimes it makes sense to go with the grain. Young boys are more likely to read when the topic is zombies or superheroes; older ones prefer newspapers or comic books. So make them all available. More often stereotypes get in the way: if girls believe they cannot do sums and boys think that books are sissy, neither will do as well as they could. Pupils live down to low expectations or pick up subtle cues about gender differences. In maths, for instance, when female teenagers are asked how confident they feel about solving an abstract equation, they rate their chances almost as highly as boys. But when the question involves calculating a car’s fuel efficiency, many balk.

The most encouraging finding is that gender gaps can be narrowed as attainment rises across the board. Even more important than rooting out hidden bias is improving education for all. Boys in countries with the best schools read better than girls elsewhere. In Shanghai hardly any youngsters, of either sex, fail in everything, and girls are almost as good at maths as their male classmates—and far ahead of boys elsewhere. Had there been a Mrs Stendhal, she would have smiled.

阅读原文 The weaker sex

@英语学习笔记

两分钟搞清楚 That / Which

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=206061624&idx=1&sn=745a8cf6da0b428177963806a699b5cc&chksm=161d99c1216a10d7bb04a7484570854cbd5ff448a0ac15c37da1db3d9f8136052eeb5c73c2e2#rd

“任何试图在一小时之内讲清楚that 和 which用法的人都是在自找苦吃。” Zinsser在这里用两分钟的时间，快刀斩乱麻, 给我们一些that, which实际写作中的启示。如果你对 “从句” “限定性” 这种语法jargon不感冒，或许这两分钟会让你找到你的Aha moment.

Anyone who tries to explain “that” and “which” in less than an hour is asking for trouble. Fowler, in his Modern English Usage, takes 25 columns of type. I’m going for two minutes, perhaps the world record. Here (I hope) is much of what you need to bear in mind:

Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. Notice that in carefully edited magazines, such as The New Yorker, “that” is by far the predominant usage. I mention this because it is still widely believed—a residue from school and college—that “which” is more correct, more acceptable, more literary. It’s not. In most situations, “that” is what you would naturally say and therefore what you should write.

Here's the deal: You use that before a restrictive clause and which before everything else.

If your sentence needs a comma to achieve its precise meaning, it probably needs “which.”“Which” serves a particular identifying function, different from “that.”

(A) “Take the shoes that are in the closet.”

This means: take the shoes that are in the closet, not the ones under the bed.

(B) “Take the shoes, which are in the closet.”

Only one pair of shoes is under discussion; the “which” usage tells you where they are. Note that the comma is necessary in B, but not in A.

简单来说, here’s the rule of thumb: Use which (surrounded by commas) if a group of words adds information. Use that if it limits the set of things you're talking about.

A high proportion of “which” usages narrowly describe, or identify, or locate, or explain, or otherwise qualify the phrase that preceded the comma:

The house, which has a red roof,

The store, which is called Bob’s Hardware,

The Rhine, which is in Germany,

The monsoon, which is a seasonal wind,

The moon, which I saw from the porch,

That’s all I’m going to say that I think you initially need to know to write good nonfiction, which is a form that requires exact marshaling of information.

***

Is this difference worth bothering with?

Let's face it, most people are unaware of the guideline set out above. Thus, we can confidently say that most people probably use that and which interchangeably. In most instances, this doesn't cause undue confusion.

In formal business or technical communications (for example, contracts, tenders or technical specifications), though, such ambiguities can give rise to serious legal and financial problems. For example, consider this story from npr.org:

A contract dispute in Canada centers on what's being called a million-dollar comma. Canada's telecommunications regulator has decided that a misplaced comma in a contract concerning telephone poles will allow a company to save an estimated $2 million (Canadian).

In summary, a pedantic attitude to the difference between that and which may be very necessary for business or technical communications.

Subscribe ERICZENGLISH, which is a reliable source of learning English.

@英语学习笔记

阅读原文: When to leave out "that"

看片利器 Popcorn Time

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205995650&idx=1&sn=d3151c881cf13387bc44a7a84c1590fa&chksm=1612e77b21656e6da54b5b48c2a76e487cc0b944c04e3405febbbbe00fadf1fb0be37f6590f1#rd

Bloomberg以 Too Good to Be Legal为题讨论了新生BT网站(Popcorn Time)对流媒体市场的冲击，及其合法化问题。

Popcorn Time实际上是 BT 链接的聚合，并为它们配上插图和美观的界面，为用户提供方便的电影一键点播服务。我平时看美剧和电影都是下载之后再看，并不喜欢点播的方式。不过刚才下载了Popcorn Time, 实在是非常棒, hassle-free!

用Popcorn Time看了集TBBT,速度很好,不卡顿，支持多种字幕，没有任何广告

Popcorn 将这些零散的内容包装成了统一的体验，而且能够做到简便、友好，这是整个电影产业一直以来都不能做到的事情。现有的电影点播服务都非常的复杂和曲折。电影要经过各个生产商、分销商，还有各种技术和付款入口才能到达用户手中。而且也没有一种统一的收费方案，让用户可以自由地观看自己喜欢的电影。如果你想租赁一部电影，你还需要在苹果、Netflix、Amazon 等服务商中拥有两到三个账户，这样你才能够保证自己可以随时看到想看的电影。

Clean and simple, Popcorn Time has made illegal downloads easier than ever

For more than a decade, pirating a movie or TV show using BitTorrent, the Internet’s notorious file-sharing protocol, required a modicum(small quantity) of work and technical ability. You had to use a clunky program specially designed to seek out and decode pirated files, then learn to refine its search tools to find the videos you wanted. Annoying banner ads within the search program were part of the deal, as was occasional malware. Pirating wasn’t just a pain for the Hollywood studios whose products were being passed freely around the Web; it was a pain for unscrupulous seekers of free video, too.

In the past year, a program called Popcorn Time has become the kinder, gentler face of piracy online, taming BitTorrent to make it far more user-friendly and less obviously sketchy. Free incarnations for PCs, phones, and tablets look pretty much like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Instant Video, except with vastly deeper catalogs that include theatrical releases such as Oscar winner Birdman and with little to no advertising. Those benefits have raised fresh concern in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Although it’s difficult to estimate total viewership of a pirate service, in Netflix’s latest annual report to shareholders Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells named Popcorn Time a major worry. The sharp rise of Google searches for Popcorn Time, Hastings and Wells wrote, is “sobering.”

Netflix’s Jan. 20 report included a chart showing that about as many people in the Netherlands search Google for Popcorn Time, which made its debut in March 2014, as for Netflix or HBO. As of Feb. 25, Google data show similar results for Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In the U.S., Popcorn Time grew by 336 percent from July to January and now accounts for one-ninth of the country’s torrent traffic, estimates Ceg Tek International, a company that movie studios contract to find and stop copyright infringement. Netflix declined to comment for this story.

Popcorn Time’s crisp grids of TV shows and movies, including the most recent episodes and blockbusters, use art straight from marketing posters. The service looks so professional that many viewers think it’s legal, says Kyle Reed, chief operating officer of Ceg Tek. “Some people don’t even seem to know that it’s BitTorrent,” he says. “We send out copyright infringement notices, and they question why they received them. It just looks like Netflix to some people.”

“Some people don’t even seem to know that it’s BitTorrent. We send out copyright infringement notices, and they question why they received them.” —Kyle Reed

Creating a less cumbersome wrapper for BitTorrent was the primary objective of Popcorn Time’s anonymous developers, a group of friends in Argentina, says a Dutch blogger who goes by Ernesto van der Sar and runs TorrentFreak, a news site that covers file sharing. The creators abandoned Popcorn Time just a few weeks after its launch, writing on their website that they needed to “move on with our lives.” In an e-mail later revealed by the hack of Sony’s computer systems, the Motion Picture Association of America bragged at the time to Sony and other movie studios that it had “scored a major victory in shutting down the key developers of Popcorn Time” by coordinating with law enforcement on three continents. The MPAA declined to comment.

Nonetheless, Popcorn Time survived. Its code is open-source, so several other groups of coders quickly released versions after the site shut down. (Would-be viewers need to choose carefully; some of the knockoffs contain malware.) “We were users of the original and were sad to watch it go,” wrote a developer of one of the spinoff versions, who answered an e-mail sent through his group’s website and insisted on communicating through anonymous Internet chat software to protect his identity. “The amount of attention this project has been receiving is HUGE, ground breaking and way above anything we expected when we first picked it up.”

The developers don’t call themselves pirates. Asked about the consequences of making illicit file sharing easier, the anonymous developer claims Popcorn Time doesn’t break any laws because it’s just an index of other BitTorrent sites and doesn’t host any pirated material. “The torrent world was here with millions of users way before us and will be here with BILLIONS of users way after us,” he wrote.

Robert Red English, a developer of a separate Popcorn Time spinoff who communicated over Skype Instant Messenger from Ontario, also said the responsibility for obeying copyright laws should fall to users. “I’m not going to justify it,” he wrote. “If it’s stealing or not varies by country and each user is given the choice to use the program, and warned we use torrents. It’s up to them to choose if they wish to continue.”

That’s a common defense among people who collect links to pirated videos, but judicial precedent doesn’t back it up. The founders of Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent hub, made similar arguments in a Swedish court and received prison sentences. Older file-sharing networks such as Napster and Grokster shut down, because U.S. courts ruled that they were emboldening users to break laws. “If you are seen as encouraging people to infringe, then you have a copyright problem,” says Corynne McSherry, the acting legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for consumer rights online. Users are also vulnerable to suits, she says, though most studios and other major rights holders no longer target individual viewers for redress.

Instead, the MPAA has for the past few months demanded that organizations such as EURid, the nonprofit that distributes .eu domain names, withdraw URLs from popular versions of Popcorn Time and that hosting company LeaseWeb withdraw the servers running them. The lobbying group has also sent takedown requests to sites such as GitHub, where programmers store the open-source code they’re working on. GitHub declined to comment. The anonymous Popcorn Time developer says the added pressure is motivating him and his colleagues to finish a version of the software that operates entirely by connecting viewers’ computers and doesn’t rely at all on central servers. “When we release this, there will be nothing to be taken down again,” he says.

Even if Popcorn Time’s coders succeed in that effort, studios and legitimate streaming services will have at least one other way to answer its growing popularity: making sure legal alternatives are widely available, affordable, and desirable. In the U.S. and U.K., where Netflix and other legal streaming services are well established, Popcorn Time’s Google search numbers are still way behind.

The bottom line: In a year, Popcorn Time has become the Internet’s pirate service of choice, despite the MPAA’s best efforts.

popcorn time是开源(Open-source), 所以一个倒下了，许多个要站起来了。这也迫使着很多流媒体服务提供更好的服务，更低的订阅费用。

给你来个福利，一个超好用的电子书下载网站. 我虽然并不支持盗版书，不过如果能让更多人的开始读书，或许这算是一个好写的借口吧。

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

@英语学习笔记

你根本不需要这个「副词」

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205995650&idx=2&sn=9066c47e0020046317f768a2c9f9086e&chksm=1612e77b21656e6d1c498b396f9bb9c6a44af5768a77cd7463b557d66d839727577533a50187#rd

「改了标题重发版」

今天和你分享的是有关「副词」的使用和赏析. Stephen King 说"The road to hell is paved with adverbs, I will shout it from the rooftops”. 副词何以如此"臭名昭著?” 读这篇On Writing Well上节选, 再加上我的笔记总结, 相信你会有收获的。

Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning.

No one likes feeling useless, but adverbs might justifiably feel that way. Adverbs find themselves much maligned because they’re often redundant or awkwardly placed.When they are good they areincredibly useful.

在On Wrting中, Stephen King 说 : The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the the timid writer in mind.

The Elements of Style 中说: Adverbs are easy to build. Take an adjective or a participle, add -ly, and behold! you have an adverb. But you’d probably be better off without it.

Don’t tell us that the radio blared loudly; “blare” connotes loudness. Don’t write that someone clenched his teeth tightly; there’s no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs. So are adjectives and other parts of speech: “effortlessly easy,” “slightly spartan,” “totally flabbergasted.” The beauty of “flabbergasted” is that it implies an astonishment that is total; I can’t picture someone being partly flabbergasted. If an action is so easy as to be effortless, use “effortless.” And what is “slightly spartan”? Perhaps a monk’s cell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely.

以上提到的这些副词的使用过于重复和多余(repetitive and redundant)，从而减弱了动词的力量也使句子失去了活力(most of the time, a descriptive verb will suffice) — 如果你不是故意而为之的话. 例如上一段中用到了 “justifiably”这个副词，就是故意用了来调侃副词的多余。

我们平时或许会写出 “She smiled happily” 这样的句子 — no one would smile happily while reading your (un)carefully crafted sentence. The norm is to smile when you're happy. Only an unusual smile needs the highlighting of an adverb–a crafty smile or a resigned smile may merit a descriptor.

在写作的时候要尽量避免用 “extremely” “definitely” “very” “really” — the ones often used carelessly as intensifiers. 解决的方法是去找到更恰当的动词或者形容词来让你的表达有力量, 有感情。

例如刚看到一句话 “When you peruse your close-to-final draft, critique your adverbs on a usefulness scale.” 这里的peruse就是一个很好的词, 它的意思是 “read thoroughly and carefully” — 找到那个更有效的动词。

如果你夸一个女孩子漂亮, 你可以说她beautiful. 但是你的女神不是very/really/more beautiful — 试试用gorgeous, stunning, elegent,charming,angelic,marvelous… 或者你可以说 “Your smile is so dazzling” “I like your eyes. They look like water in the sunshine”… 总之不要像个小孩子一样: 你非常非常非常非常漂亮 — 找到那个更有效的形容词。

And while we’re at it, let’s retire “decidedly” and all its slippery cousins. Every day I see in the paper that some situations are decidedly better and others are decidedly worse, but I never know how decided the improvement is, or who did the deciding, just as I never know how eminent a result is that’s eminently fair, or whether to believe a fact that’s arguably true. “He’s arguably the best pitcher on the Mets,” the preening sportswriter writes, aspiring to Parnassus, which Red Smith reached by never using words like “arguably.” Is the pitcher—it can be proved by argument—the best pitcher on the team? If so, please omit “arguably.” Or is he perhaps—the opinion is open to argument—the best pitcher? Admittedly I don’t know. It’s virtually a toss-up.

副词如同蒲公英。

你或许会写，或者读过这样的句子: “Shut up!” Eric said angrily.

Angrily在这里是多余的: Let the substance of the dialogue get across the way it’s being said. 在这方面, Stephen King深恶痛绝:

“I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions… and not even then, if you can avoid it.”

他举了以下的例子:

接着他控诉说:

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately. “Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,” Utterson said contemptuously is the best of the lot; it is only a cliché, while the other two are actively ludicrous.

读过这篇文章，你会发现你读过的许多文章中都或多或少的有“明知故犯” -- Do as I say, not I do! Stephen King也承认自己 “I’m just another ordinary sinner”. 他的理由是:

When I do it, it’s usually for the same reason any writer does it: because I am afraid the reader won’t understand me if I don’t”.

无论是The Element of Style, On Writing Well, 还是Stephen King的 On Writing, 大概都有一个共识: timidity is at the root of most bad writing. 我们怕别人读不懂，于是就啰啰嗦嗦；我们不想让别人看出来其实我们自己都没有想清楚，于是就大量的使用被动语态。 除此之外，但凡试图给语言定个规矩的都免不了被一些人批斗。我们膜拜“风格的要素”为写作圣经，可也有许多人对之嗤之以鼻。EB White在修订恩师的写作圣经的时候坦白说: “我了解恩师受不了the fact that这个表达，可是我很多时候也会滥用”。尽管如此还是有像William Zinsser, Stephen King这样的优秀作家苦口婆心的来写这种“写作圣经”, “There is core simplicity to the English language and its American variant, but it’s a slippery core.”

对我们来讲，用不着“锱铢必较”,“副词洁癖”.我们去了解学习, 阅读琢磨, 争取在写作中找到我们的思考和声音, find our humanity! 如同Stephen所说: All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine. 总结来说就是学会:learn, unlearn, and relearn(感受一下)

回到标题的图片:

毁掉一句名言的方法之一就是给它加上副词:

强烈推荐你读一下Stephen King对副词的讨论, 还有一个对副词的讲解pdf, 非常的精彩. 我把它放在了Evernote里, 点击阅读原文即可查看。

愿你转发这篇文章，让更多人和我们一起赏析英文.

回复oww 查看其他On Writing Well文章. 如有任何问题，欢迎讨论。

@英语学习笔记

你或许并不需要这个「副词」

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205970033&idx=1&sn=bf938deaf2c7ba2b763d9f48030167c7&chksm=1613038821648a9ee55fd2057f856b5e5a7d9f0fa64bac023f5aac201daba2918ef6fd1a529b#rd

今天和你分享的是有关「副词」的使用和赏析. Stephen King 说"The road to hell is paved with adverbs, I will shout it from the rooftops”. 副词何以如此"臭名昭著?” 读这篇On Writing Well上节选, 再加上我的笔记总结, 相信你会有收获的。

Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning.

No one likes feeling useless, but adverbs might justifiably feel that way. Adverbs find themselves much maligned because they’re often redundant or awkwardly placed.When they are good they are incredibly useful.

在On Wrting中, Stephen King 说 : The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the the timid writer in mind.

The Elements of Style 中说: Adverbs are easy to build. Take an adjective or a participle, add -ly, and behold! you have an adverb. But you’d probably be better off without it.

Don’t tell us that the radio blared loudly; “blare” connotes loudness. Don’t write that someone clenched his teeth tightly; there’s no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs. So are adjectives and other parts of speech: “effortlessly easy,” “slightly spartan,” “totally flabbergasted.” The beauty of “flabbergasted” is that it implies an astonishment that is total; I can’t picture someone being partly flabbergasted. If an action is so easy as to be effortless, use “effortless.” And what is “slightly spartan”? Perhaps a monk’s cell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely.

以上提到的这些副词的使用过于重复和多余(repetitive and redundant)，从而减弱了动词的力量也使句子失去了活力(most of the time, a descriptive verb will suffice) — 如果你不是故意而为之的话. 例如上一段中用到了 “justifiably”这个副词，就是故意用了来调侃副词的多余。

我们平时或许会写出 “She smiled happily” 这样的句子 — no one would smile happily while reading your (un)carefully crafted sentence. The norm is to smile when you're happy. Only an unusual smile needs the highlighting of an adverb–a crafty smile or a resigned smile may merit a descriptor.

在写作的时候要尽量避免用 “extremely” “definitely” “very” “really” — the ones often used carelessly as intensifiers. 解决的方法是去找到更恰当的动词或者形容词来让你的表达有力量, 有感情。

例如刚看到一句话 “When you peruse your close-to-final draft, critique your adverbs on a usefulness scale.” 这里的peruse就是一个很好的词, 它的意思是 “read thoroughly and carefully” — 找到那个更有效的动词。

如果你夸一个女孩子漂亮, 你可以说她beautiful. 但是你的女神不是very/really/more beautiful — 试试用gorgeous, stunning, elegent,charming,angelic,marvelous… 或者你可以说 “Your smile is so dazzling” “I like your eyes. They look like water in the sunshine”… 总之不要像个小孩子一样: 你非常非常非常非常漂亮 — 找到那个更有效的形容词。

And while we’re at it, let’s retire “decidedly” and all its slippery cousins. Every day I see in the paper that some situations are decidedly better and others are decidedly worse, but I never know how decided the improvement is, or who did the deciding, just as I never know how eminent a result is that’s eminently fair, or whether to believe a fact that’s arguably true. “He’s arguably the best pitcher on the Mets,” the preening sportswriter writes, aspiring to Parnassus, which Red Smith reached by never using words like “arguably.” Is the pitcher—it can be proved by argument—the best pitcher on the team? If so, please omit “arguably.” Or is he perhaps—the opinion is open to argument—the best pitcher? Admittedly I don’t know. It’s virtually a toss-up.

你或许会写，或者读过这样的句子: “Shut up!” Eric said angrily.

Angrily在这里是多余的: Let the substance of the dialogue get across the way it’s being said. 在这方面, Stephen King深恶痛绝:

I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions… and not even then, if you can avoid it.

他举了以下的例子:

接着他控诉说:

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately. “Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,” Utterson said contemptuously is the best of the lot; it is only a cliché, while the other two are actively ludicrous.

读过这篇文章，你会发现你读过的许多文章中都或多或少的有“明知故犯” -- Do as I say, not I do! Stephen King也承认自己 “I’m just another ordinary sinner”. 他的理由是:

When I do it, it’s usually for the same reason any writer does it: because I am afraid the reader won’t understand me if I don’t”.

无论是The Element of Style, On Writing Well, 还是Stephen King的 On Writing, 大概都有一个共识: timidity is at the root of most bad writing. 我们怕别人读不懂，于是就啰啰嗦嗦；我们不想让别人看出来其实我们自己都没有想清楚，于是就大量的使用被动语态。 除此之外，但凡试图给语言定个规矩的都免不了被一些人批斗。我们膜拜“风格的要素”为写作圣经，可也有许多人对之嗤之以鼻。EB White在修订恩师的写作圣经的时候坦白说: “我了解恩师受不了the fact that这个表达，可是我很多时候也会滥用”。尽管如此还是有像William Zinsser, Stephen King这样的优秀作家苦口婆心的来写这种“写作圣经”, “There is core simplicity to the English language and its American variant, but it’s a slippery core.”

对我们来讲，我们去了解学习, 阅读琢磨, 我们也用不着“锱铢必较” 争取在写作中找到我们的思考和声音, find our humanity! 如同Stephen所说: All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine. 总结来说就是学会:learn, unlearn, and relearn(感受一下)

回到标题的图片:

毁掉一句名言的方法之一就是给它加上副词:

强烈推荐你读一下Stephen King对副词的讨论, 还有一个对副词的讲解pdf, 非常的精彩. 我把它放在了Evernote里, 点击阅读原文即可查看。

愿你转发这篇文章，让更多人和我们一起赏析英文.

回复oww 查看其他On Writing Well文章. 如有任何问题，欢迎讨论。

@英语学习笔记

女神教你卖萌讲英音

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205911655&idx=1&sn=a9287d32a73ee3e2670ebdddcd79008e&chksm=16102f9e2167a6888e1f2dbb196518843f6a0edeb043b53124601bad74b0f903bfe2e51d731f#rd

女孩子们的英文指南. Please check!

关键的不只是漂亮可爱，有气质，英文好听，更要有一颗善良，公益的心

On Writing Well | 英文中的动词

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205884322&idx=1&sn=897c78fe91f0d1c257d03569b3a5bdae&chksm=1610525b2167db4dc0e9b3ef37737c52e6ada89c20a2647354c9586efb059b8c4da6df9142c0#rd

On Writing Well 这本书已经和大家推荐过许多次了, 不过我相信会去看的人一定还是不多的 －"能写清楚就不错了, 不指望写的多well". 这本书本身的写作风格和语言都是范文之作, 举的例子和一些心得也对我们的英文写作&赏析有很大的帮助.

因此我打算重读一遍这本书, 把一些实用的，有启发性的文章段落分享给你.我们不可能读完这本书一下子就醍醐灌顶,妙笔生花.但是至少我们会对英文语言和写作有更深的认识.

这本书在国内亚马逊售价70左右, 你也可以通过其他渠道购买. 买一本好书随手翻翻是值得了. 当然了你也可以去在网上搜到电子版(别告诉我你搜不到). 顺便说一下搜索资料的一个小技巧, 无论是google 还是baidu，在搜索的时候加上扩展名例如“On writing well.mobi" "here is new york.pdf"这样会更容易搜到. 要善用搜索,善待资源. 换换关键字,了解一下搜索技巧 -- 别在百度上没搜到就理直气壮的说网上没有.

或者留言给我你的邮箱地址, 我发给你好咯. (不推荐)

Bits and Pieces |

Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.

“Joe saw him” is strong. “He was seen by Joe” is weak. The first is short and precise; it leaves no doubt about who did what. The second is necessarily longer and it has an insipid quality: something was done by somebody to someone else. It’s also ambiguous. How often was he seen by Joe? Once? Every day? Once a week? A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy. Nobody ever quite knows what is being perpetrated by whom and on whom.

I use “perpetrated” because it’s the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words—which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is better than long. Of the 701 words in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a marvel of economy in itself, 505 are words of one syllable and 122 are words of two syllables.

作者William Zinsser 有一篇对哥伦比亚新闻学院国际学生的一次讲话,叫 “Writing English as a Second Language” (阅读原文查看). 最后他说:

“Repeat after me:
Short is better than long.
Simple is good. (Louder)
Long Latin nouns are the enemy.
Anglo-Saxon active verbs are your best friend.
One thought per sentence."

Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun (“he”), or a noun (“the boy”), or a person (“Mrs. Scott”) to put them in motion. Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean: glitter, dazzle, twirl, beguile, scatter, swagger, poke, pamper,vex. Probably no other language has such a vast supply of verbs so bright with color. Don’t choose one that is dull or merely serviceable. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work.Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs.

If you want to see how active verbs give vitality to the written word, don’t just go back to Hemingway or Thurber or Thoreau. I commend the King James Bible and William Shakespeare.

George Orwell在 Politics and the English Language中,以 “翻译” 圣经传道书中的一段话(Ecclesiastes 9:11)来展示英文“糟糕英文”.

King James Bible:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

我又转念，见日光之下，快跑的未必能赢，力战的未必得胜，智慧的未必得粮食，明哲的未必得资财，灵巧的未必得喜悦，所临到众人的，是在乎当时的机会.

Modern English of the worst sort:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

第二种英文尽管被Orwell称之为“最差劲的那种”，但其实是我们经常会读到的“学术性”文章－高大上的GRE之流. 学术研究之类的讲究客观和事实, 但是这不意味着所有的写作就应该如此。好的写作是让你觉得有人情味,在和你讲话一样。 这样的例子可以翻一翻Amazon上的买家评论, Goodreads上的“读后感”.

***

这篇文章中的动词使用就是一个很好的例子：

A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy.

Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully.

随手翻一下这期的经济学人:

Its committes on campuses vet the apponitment of teaching staff.

Hardliners have long been waiting for an excuse to pounce.

有没有体会到 "Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean"?

你有没有读到过其他精彩的例子，请分享给我。

下期和你分享「形容词和副词」，敬请关注.

@Ericzenglish | On Writing Well (1)

Under the Dome

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205860047&idx=1&sn=e24e4436b99ee905719a5d9437a399c8&chksm=1610f53621677c205e9ae1817db58066415a6a6aa163b795161132ca4cd011ea5bf57e69d813#rd

Documentary on Air Pollution Grips China

Chai Jing said she was prompted to make her documentary, “Under the Dome,” by concern over the threats pollution posed to her daughter’s health.

Over the weekend, many millions of Chinese watched, gripped and outraged, a 104-minute video that begins with a slight (thin and delicate) woman in jeans and a white blouse walking onto a stage dimly lit in blue. The woman, Chai Jing, shows the somber-looking audience a graph of brown-red peaks with occasional troughs.

“This was the PM 2.5 curve for Beijing in January 2013, when there were 25 days of smog in that one month,” explains Ms. Chai, a former Chinese television reporter, referring to a widely used gauge of air pollution.

At that time, she continues, she did not pay much attention to the smog engulfing much of China and affecting 600 million people, even as she traveled for work from place to place where the air was acrid with fumes and dust.

“But,” Ms. Chai says with a pause, “when I returned to Beijing, I learned that I was pregnant.”

Since its online debut on Saturday, Ms. Chai’s documentary, “Under the Dome,” has inspired an unusually passionate eruption of public and mass media discussion. In it she recounts her journey of discovery, hunting for the sources of China’s bad air and inquiring why repeated government promises have done so little to clear it up, while coping with a daughter born with a tumor. Many messages were from Chinese parents identifying with Ms. Chai’s fears that pollution has imperiled their children’s health.

“When I heard her heart beating, the only thing I wished for her was good health,” Ms. Chai explains of her then-unborn daughter in the documentary.

“But she was diagnosed with a benign(注意发音) tumor and had to have surgery after birth,” she adds. “I’d never felt afraid of pollution before, and never wore a mask no matter where. But when you carry a life in you, what she breathes, eats and drinks are all your responsibility, and then you feel the fear.”

On Youku, a popular Chinese video-sharing site, “Under the Dome” had been played more than 14 million times by Sunday afternoon. The Paper, a Chinese news website, estimated that by Saturday night, the documentary had been opened more than 35 million times across various websites.

Many Chinese viewers praised Ms. Chai for forthrightly condemning the skein(下图) of industrial interests, energy conglomerates and bureaucratic hurdles that she says have obstructed stronger action against pollution. Despite online censorship, others took aim at China’s state media, lamenting that Ms. Chai was able to make her outcry against pollution only after leaving her job with the state-run China Central Television.

“Support Chai Jing or those like her who stand up like this to speak the truth,” said one of the comments — which exceeded 25,000 by Sunday afternoon — on Youku. “In this messed-up country that’s devoid(entirlying lacking) of law, cold-hearted, numb and arrogant, they’re like an eye-grabbing sign that shocks the soul.”

The documentary is part science lecture, part investigative exposé and part memoir, and Ms. Chai’s own story has become a focus of praise and criticism. Ms. Chai and her husband were wealthy and privileged enough for her to have given birth in the United States, according to a flurry of news reports last year, and some comments accused her of hypocrisy. Newspapers have quoted scientists who have challenged Ms. Chai’s suggestion that her daughter’s tumor was caused by smog.

But online, most of the reaction welcomed her initiative in making the documentary with her own funding and putting it online. Indeed, some have wondered how Ms. Chai got away with it. “Under the Dome” is critical of the government’s inability to make big inroads in cutting pollution. And under President Xi Jinping, restrictions on the news media and Internet in China have become tighter than ever. In years past, Ms. Chai notes, the government insisted in public that the pollution was just natural fog.

So far at least, the government has not shut off the documentary, and some officials may welcome the chance to build greater support for cutting pollution. The website of People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s main newspaper, was one of the first to post “Under the Dome.” And the recently appointed minister of environmental protection, Chen Jining, praised the video. He told Sina.com, a Chinese website, that he had watched it and sent a message to Ms. Chai.

“Chai Jing’s documentary calls for public environmental consciousness from the standpoint of public health,” Mr. Chen said. “It deserves admiration.”

Ms. Chai, 39, was born in Shanxi Province, a part of China abundant in coal, and bathed in noxious pollution. She told the website of People’s Daily that she decided to set aside worries about making her daughter the subject of a video.

“If I had not had this kind of emotional impetus,” she told the website, “I would have found it very difficult to spend such a long time completing this.”

雾霾的英文经常被用到的是haze, smog(smoke+fog)

@ericzenglish

从Here is New York看翻译

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205817354&idx=1&sn=f747feac0a387223434c45475a6f12c0&chksm=16115ff32166d6e530c69caa99162c0702aa8f3ebce33149f2de4a1b7f8dc1388b51ed68968c#rd

拖了一年多,刚刚才把Here is New York这篇短文(只有7500字)读完, 实在是精彩至极. 有人说它是White写给纽约的情书；911之后重读此文，有人惊呼：White不是先知，胜似先知. 其开篇和结尾尤为精彩，耐人寻味.

文章网上很容易就找到，一小时的时间就可以读完。推荐你读一下。

在网上看到以下这篇文章，转载分享给你看. 我个人是不懂什么翻译的,也没有相关的训练。我觉得此文这种学习态度和积极的探讨对我们的英文学习还是有帮助的。

英语文学翻译现在对我们谁来说都不容易

张庆路

　　 由上海翻译家协会等单位合作举办的“2006年第三届CASIO杯翻译竞赛”采用了美国作家E.B.White的一篇散文Here Is New York作为原文。竞赛结束后由复旦大学陆谷孙教授提供了参考译文，也即译文范文。尽管笔者才疏学浅，本不该对权威的作品说三道四，但鉴于学术问题上人人平等的原则，还是想畅所欲言，指出笔者认为其有瑕疵或翻译不到位之处，希望能得到原作者及同行的批评指正。

　　鉴于篇幅有限，也鉴于此系全文精华及主要翻译陷阱之所在，笔者选用了文章的最后一段。下面是原文及陆教授的范文。

　　原文：Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city’s tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation —a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless. I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit (which caused them to break away from their small town), some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution.

　　范文：纽约虽说时常给人一种沉重的失落感或被遗弃感，城市却难得显出死气沉沉或一筹莫展的样子，反倒是你总拥有一种希望：越过10条马路搬次家，或是花去5美元，就能重新焕发青春。许多缺乏独立精神的人依赖城市巨大的多样性和兴奋源，来求得精神上的耐久力并保持振奋。在乡下，青春得以突然重新焕发的偶然机会不是没有———也许是天气的骤变，要不收到一封让你惊喜的邮件。可是在纽约，这样的机会无穷无尽。在我看来，尽管有不少人是由于精神追求过度到这儿来的（这使他们逼着自己离开小城），也有些人是因为精神贫乏到纽约来的，并在此找到了保护或是轻而易举得到了易地取代的报偿。

　　综观这段译文，笔者认为下面这几处可算是范文较大的瑕疵。

　　（一）Unresourceful可有两种不同的解释，但根据上下文分析，文中的unresourceful不是“一筹莫展”，而是“没有或缺少生活资源”。因为这一句是用居民的眼光在看纽约是怎么样一个城市，而不是说纽约想干什么而无能为力、一筹莫展。请问纽约为什么要一筹莫展？纽约为什么而一筹莫展？解释为“一筹莫展”无论从上下语气还是前后逻辑上都说不通。下面接下去的半句是说纽约怎么为居民提供无穷无尽的生活兴奋源和机会（也即在精神上和物质上支持一个人生活下去的“生活资源”很丰富），正好用来补充说明上面所说的纽约“很少缺乏生活资源”（seldom seems unresourceful）这个结论。分号后的半句and you always feel that……和上半句的语气是顺的或一致的，所以范文中“反倒是你总拥有一种希望……”的转折语气似乎是译者错加的。

　　（二）文中的rejuvenation指走过十个街区、花掉五个美元、遇到天气骤变、收到一封邮件所产生的惊喜或快感，是小刺激引起的反应，把它译为“重新焕发青春”是否有点太过量？说这种多得不计其数的（endless）区区日常小事（其中能成为大事的其实很少）动不动就使人“重新焕发青春”恐怕没有一个中国人接受得了。（一天要焕发几次青春？）笔者认为文中的rejuvenation是英语中的“大词小用”现象，是英美文学作者常用的一种修辞手段。看到这样的用法，英语本族语读者会在自己的大脑中做出自动调整，将这个大词弱化，调到其适当的位置。但在汉译时如不做调整仅按字面意思硬译成中文则会让中国读者难以接受，甚至感到古怪荒唐。笔者认为，文中的两个rejuvenation的中译文是否可考虑弱化为“精神重振的感觉”、“精神的重新焕发”、“令人振奋的新体验”，甚至“惊喜”。

　　（三）文中对称并相对应的excess of spirit和deficiency of spirit被分别译为不对称不对应的“精神追求过度”和“精神贫乏”，对此笔者也不太认同。“精神追求过度”的说法首先就比较模糊，其次它给人一种印象，好像这种在精神上过度追求的人不会有什么物质追求。事实恐怕恰恰相反，文中那些具有excess of spirit的人往往是那些物质财富追求意识特强的人。至于“精神贫乏”的说法同样让人难以理解。“精神贫乏”究竟是什么意思？汉语中一般只有“精神生活贫乏”的说法，而无“精神贫乏”的说法。（你听说过“他精神贫乏”、“她精神丰富”这样的说法吗？）笔者认为这前后两个spirit意思应该基本相同且互有联系，只是侧重面略有不同。前者似更偏重energy，strength，vigor，liveliness的意思，而后者似更偏重courage，bravery，enthusiasm，passion的意思。换言之，前者指那些精力充沛、充满活力、雄心勃勃、敢于挑战的乐观的强者，这些人当然同时也更有生活的热情和勇气。而后者指那些生活上遭受过挫折和失败，丧失了生活的热情和勇气的悲观的弱者，这些人当然同时也缺少精力与活力。所以笔者建议将excess of spirit译为“精力过剩（盛）”，而将deficiency of spirit 译为“缺乏勇气”。（spirit译成中文不一定是“精神”）这样译似比较符合文章的总体把握，即纽约并非只是勇敢强悍者的天堂，弱者也能在纽约得到庇护和快乐。（请注意，只有缺乏勇气的弱者才更需要保护，这样译才能更好对应文中出现的a protection）

　　（四）文中最后的an easy substitution译为“轻而易举得到了易地取代的报偿”似更显得不知所云。其实该substitution既非“易地取代”，也非“报偿”，更非“易地取代的报偿”，而是substitution for spirit（勇气的替代）。我们知道，缺乏勇气的人始终胆小，但纽约可以让他们精神放松不紧张（easy），从而让弱者也能在此得到庇护，可以在这个城市生活下去。在读懂了原文的前提下，笔者将上述an easy substitution直接译为“一种弥补勇气缺失的精神放松”。

　　除上文提到的几处外，拙文与教授的范文尚有多处不同，比如文中的spiritual sustenance教授译为“精神上的耐久力”，笔者译为“精神支柱”，其中正误得失请大家批评指教。下面是笔者的这段译文。

　　张译：尽管纽约经常给人一种沉重的孤独感或被遗弃感，但它似乎很少缺乏生气，也不缺少生活资源；在这里即使走过十个街区或花去五个美元，你也总能重新变得精神振奋。许多没有真正独立精神的人正是依赖纽约丰富多彩的变化和兴奋源作为他们的精神支柱和勇气来源。在乡村也有机会体验一些突发的惊喜——也许是天气的骤变，也许是邮件的到来。但在纽约这样的机会则多得不计其数。我想尽管许多人是因为精力过盛而来此生活（也正是因为精力过剩、胆识过人，他们离弃了自己原来居住的小镇），有些人却是因为缺乏勇气而生活在这里，他们能在纽约找到一种保护，或一种弥补勇气缺失的精神放松。

　　附带提一笔，另一位上海外贸学院的资深英语教授在一篇对竞赛译文点评的文章中批评参赛者随意性太强，在翻译时不顾原文随意增删，加油添醋，无中生有。他特别强调了这么一个例子（该例子后来被一些报刊广为引用），说在New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance，……的翻译中有位译者平白无故地在“纽约”之前添加了原文中没有的修饰语“弹丸之地”，变成了“一个弹丸之地的纽约……”。对此笔者倒要为该参赛者鸣不平了。因为原文finance，之后教授写的省略号实际上代表了后面未完的半句话bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader, and the merchant。请看我划线的这个compact arena不就是“弹丸之地”吗？这是文字上的根据。从理论上讲，尽管作为城市，纽约的规模是大的，但和整个美国的国土相比，纽约不就是一块“弹丸之地”吗？作者之所以称之为compact arena就是为了强调它的小，就是讲本该分散在全国各地的各色人才现在都集中到纽约这块小小的土地上了。把它译为“弹丸之地”不但很恰当，而且似乎能比陆教授译的“紧凑的舞台”更直接地传达作者的意图。参赛者把它移到前面去当修饰语用并无不可，并不是加油添醋，更不是无中生有。之所以批评别人“平白无故”地添加“弹丸之地”，也许是因为该教授自己没有把句子看完整。

　　该教授认为，这次选作翻译材料的散文难度中等，无论从文字，还是从内容来看对参赛者来说都是“可译的”，关于这一点笔者完全赞同。可问题是，英语文学翻译在当今这个高速时代的中国早已成为一种奢侈的活动，对我们谁来说都不容易，不仅是对青年参赛者而言，不是吗？

如果你有兴趣的话,同样可以试着把上面提到的那段翻译一下

另外有一个「何以笙箫默经典台词翻译比赛」, 还是有奖品的. 你可以玩一下! 具体请戳阅读原文

以狼🐺之名

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205744182&idx=1&sn=ae5bae627a6add0a8e7f4ed1d114ee03&chksm=1616b1cf216138d9f2be783087c2dd02d33f7e0b8489cebdd23f257f7d8bb89122f8a96991fa#rd

In wolves’ clothing

A new state-sponsored film is the product of unusual talent

标题也值得玩味. 今年是羊年, 英文中的表达有Wolves in sheep’s clothing. 本末倒置,羊冠狼戴. 再加上电影讲的就是狼，自然法则. 我想这也寓意着作者和导演(羔羊两只)以狼之名终于披上了广电总局的 “狼皮”.

ON FEBRUARY 19th cinemas in China will begin showing “Wolf Totem”, a film based on a Chinese novel critiquing man’s impulse to tame nature, in which a young man from Beijing attempts to domesticate a wolf. The release itself marks a change in the natural order of things: for the author of the novel, the director of the film and the state system that produced it.

The author, Lu Jiamin, was jailed for more than a year for his role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Worried his subsequent writings would be banned, he wrote the novel under a pen name, Jiang Rong. The French director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, had been banned from China for making “Seven Years in Tibet”, a film released in 1997 that depicts the Chinese army invading Tibet and portrays the Dalai Lama sympathetically. But China Film Group, a state-owned giant, and others made Mr Annaud a rare foreign director of a Chinese feature film, with a budget of more than $40m.

The Communist Party has sensible reasons to embrace both men. The novel, Mr Lu’s first, is a literary phenomenon: it has sold more than 5m copies in China, in addition to many more pirated ones. In 2007 an English-language translation won the inaugural Man Asia Literary Prize. The acclaim was so great, and so swift to spread, that back-footed censors decided to turn a blind eye to the author’s background and refrained from banning the book.

Mr Annaud says he was surprised when, in 2007, representatives of the Beijing Forbidden City Film Corporation visited him in Paris to ask him to make the film. Chinese producers wanted a foreign director for the project. Mr Annaud was an Academy Award winner with successful experience of working with animals (in his film “The Bear”). What about his Tibet film, he asked? They said the past was the past, he says. No apology would be necessary.

In late December 2009, however, months after his hiring had been announced, Mr Annaud did apologise. In an open letter circulated in Chinese online (a liberal but generally fair translation, he says), Mr Annaud declared he had “never supported Tibet’s independence” and had no “personal relationship” with the Dalai Lama.

There were some domestic critics online who did not care for the novel or its author, and who would have liked to derail the film project.Mr Annaud’s self-criticism helped protect against that, and the Chinese system in turn protected him. The new natural order of things, perhaps.

@英语学习笔记

阅读原文读一篇路透社的报道

阅读 | 穷啥不能穷教育

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205744182&idx=2&sn=31f27b517885fee0bc63ecd8f670b23b&chksm=1616b1cf216138d967cf7f7435e58952e21b84143f178959fea255d772459068a2fd3df0d19f#rd

Programmes that place bright and ambitious graduates in poor schools are spreading around the world—and show what it takes to make a difference

“IT’S not enough to have a dream”, reads a banner over the whiteboard in Nancy Sarmiento’s Baltimore classroom. Most of her 12-year-old pupils qualify for a free or cheap lunch. About 70% of the school’s new arrivals last September had reading and mathematical skills below the minimum expected for their grade. Americans call such schools “disadvantaged”. Whatever the label, most countries have schools where most children are from poor families, expectations are low, and teachers are hard to recruit. And in most, the falling prestige of the teaching profession makes matters worse.

But Ms Sarmiento, who graduated from a four-year biology degree course a year early, had to see off fierce competition to win her teaching spot. Teach for America (TfA), the scheme that placed her, accepts just one in six applicants. It looks for a stellar academic record and evidence of traits that distinguish the best teachers in tough schools, including leadership, resilience and motivation to help the poor. Recruits get five weeks’ training and pledge to work for two years in a disadvantaged school.

When TfA’s founder, Wendy Kopp, came up with the idea while an undergraduate, her adviser told her she was “deranged”. She proved him wrong. After two decades of growth, the number of applicants is falling slightly as the graduate jobs market strengthens. But it is still popular: with five weeks remaining till this year’s deadline, it has received 36,000 applicants—twice as many as a decade ago. And thanks to its 25-year history and 40,000 alumni, Americans are no longer surprised that bright, ambitious graduates want the most demanding teaching posts.

Now schemes modelled on TfA are spreading around the world. A quarter of European and Latin American countries, as well as Australia, China and India, have something similar. Many of the schemes are new, with just two or three cohorts placed in schools. Teach for Haiti, launched in January, became the 35th. Ambitious youngsters are attracted by the lack of a requirement for a teaching qualification, the chance to make a difference—and the high-energy approach. Lithuania’s programme is called “I Choose to Teach!”; Latvia’s, “Mission Possible”. Many applicants have degrees in mathematics and science, subjects where teachers are scarce. Typically just one in ten is accepted.

Teach for China的项目叫做美丽中国，你可以去搜一下，挺不错的. 如果有兴趣的话可以申请一下(我目前正在申请)

Results seem positive, though so far there have been few rigorous evaluations. Pupils of TfA recruits do just as well in reading as those of other teachers; in maths, their test scores are better. Britain’s Teach First has been credited with helping to improve standards in London. It now provides nearly a quarter of new teachers in the country’s most difficult schools.

Critics, including teachers’ unions, fret that a few weeks of training is too little for a novice teacher, no matter how gung-ho. But Teach First’s training has been rated “outstanding” in all 44 categories reviewed by Britain’s schools inspectorate. Like its counterparts elsewhere, Teach First provides the graduates it places in schools with support. Experienced colleagues help them with lesson planning and mentors visit their classrooms. Most enroll in a teacher-certification course (some countries insist on this), meaning that university tutors are on tap, too. Few new teachers anywhere else get so much hand-holding.

That help is essential. New teachers, whatever their route into the classroom, struggle most in their first two years, even in the easiest schools. Tomas Recart, who co-founded Chile’s programme in 2009, learned that the hard way: after three months, a fifth of the first cohort had dropped out. Now 90% return for a second year—a higher share than for all novice teachers, in all types of schools. The early retention rate is similar for TfA itself.

Some countries add weekend gatherings and seminars for participants to swap ideas and commiserate. Recruits may even be “overloaded with support”, says Dzameer Dzulkifli, who runs Malaysia’s scheme—which could be a waste of more than their time, since such support is expensive in the rural areas where many are based. Indeed, the cost of the TfA model is what may prevent it going mainstream. Australia’s programme is best thought of as a demonstration project, says Bill Louden of the University of Western Australia: “excellent and tiny” and showing what can be done with three times the usual spending per trainee.

But such pilot programmes matter because they can drag standards up across the board. Several schemes, including those in Bulgaria, India, Malaysia and Mexico, are doing better than the state at tracking teaching quality and student outcomes. Local and national governments are starting to take note. And most countries’ programmes aim to turn out alumni who will lead more than a single classroom. Some, they hope, will become head teachers. Several help participants find private-sector jobs after their two-year stint. Ideally, leaders in any sector who have seen the battlefield will become powerful allies in the quest to improve the worst schools.

Around 50-70% of those who have been through the established programmes stay in education for the long haul. Many take senior positions in public administration. Fifteen of the 115 who have completed Peru’s programme now work in its education ministry. A team of alumni from Lithuania’s scheme recently helped draft its ten-year education strategy. A fifth of school principals in Washington, DC, are TfA alumni, as are its schools chancellor, Kaya Henderson, and several of her senior staff.

Many of those who leave teaching move to social programmes or start-up ventures. Chaitra Murlidhar, an engineer and alumna of Teach for India, now works for a non-profit foundation set up by Thermax, a large manufacturer. A teacher-re-training scheme she designed is being used in Pune, an industrial city in west India. Alumni in Australia and Spain have created online teaching resources for teachers and pupils, such as digital and video lessons that can be personalised.

One of the most useful things TfA and its many offshoots can do is what Brett Wigdortz, the founder of Teach First, describes as “detoxifying the brand of teaching”. Last year Teach First was runner-up in a national poll to find Britain’s most prestigious employer of graduates. Just as important, says Evgenia Peeva of Teach for Bulgaria, is to demonstrate that poor children from barely literate families can learn—if they have excellent teachers. Back in Baltimore, Ms Sarmiento says her main task is to ensure her pupils believe that, too.

好老师去哪了

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205727927&idx=1&sn=45511ddaa3ad813dded0756167e07268&chksm=1616f14e2161785883aa639d5d596c2f4d142acced025e84a368dd7f64f817e9f918f6d5ed43#rd

有没有听过晏才宏老师? 备受学生爱戴, 课讲的也非常棒,兢兢业业，却因为没有论文发表而一辈子都只是个讲师。还有四川大学周鼎写「自白书」抨击高等教育的问题.

今天和你分享的这篇经济学人的文章讨论了“老师的问题”

How to turn teaching into a job that attracts high-flyers

IMAGINE a job where excellence does nothing to improve your pay or chances of promotion, and failure carries little risk of being sacked. Your pay is low for your qualifications—but at least the holidays are long, and the pension is gold-plated.

“金饭碗”可以用gold-plated来解释。

Teaching ought to be a profession for hard-working altruists who want to improve children’s life prospects. But all too often school systems seem designed to attract mediocre timeservers. Many Mexican teachers have inherited their jobs; Brazilian ones earn less than other public servants, and retire much earlier. Each school-day a quarter of Indian teachers play truant. In New York it is so hard to sack teachers that even those accused of theft or assault may be parked away from pupils, doing “administrative tasks” on full pay, sometimes for years.

hard-working altruists VS. mediocre timeservers

You can find outstanding individuals in the worst school systems. But, as lazy and incompetent teachers get away with slacking, the committed ones often lose motivation. In America and Britain surveys find plummeting morale. Jaded British teachers on online forums remind each other that it is just a few months till the long summer break—and just a few years till retirement. No wonder so many children struggle to learn: no school can be better than those who work in it.

outstanding/jaded/committed VS. lazy/incompetent

Yet it is possible to persuade the hardworking and ambitious to teach. Finland pays teachers modestly but manages them well; ten graduates apply for each training place. South Korea recruits teachers from the top 5% of school-leavers and promises them fat pay cheques. In both countries teachers are revered—and results are among the world’s best.

Even where the profession is in disrepute, high-flyers can be lured into the classroom. Teach for America, which sends star graduates from elite universities for two-year stints in rough schools, is being copied around the globe. Private employers snap up its alumni—but many stay in teaching. Teach First, Britain’s version, has helped raise standards in London and is one of the country’s most prestigious graduate employers. Such schemes are small, but show that when teaching is recast as tough and rewarding, the right sort clamour to join.

Spreading the revolution to the entire profession will mean dumping the perks cherished by slackers and setting terms that appeal to the hardworking. That may well mean higher pay—but also less generous pensions and holidays. Why not encourage teachers to use the long vacation for catch-up classes for pupils who have fallen behind? Stiffer entry requirements would raise the job’s status and attract better applicants. Pay rises should reward excellence, not long service. Underperformers should be shown the door.

the hardworking VS. slackers

Standing in the way, almost everywhere, are the unions. Their willingness to back shirkers over strivers should not be underestimated: in Washington, DC, when the schools boss (a Teach for America alumna) offered teachers much higher pay in return for less job security, their union balked.

Shirkers VS. Strivers

Class action

But against the unions is a growing coalition: the leaders in public administration and private enterprise who have been through Teach for America and its ilk. They know what it takes to succeed in difficult schools, and what it would take for success to become the norm. They know that what good teachers want most of all is good colleagues. As they become more numerous and influential, they need to argue for a new deal for teachers. The good ones deserve it—and pupils do, too.

@英语学习笔记

一个词 | petty

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205727927&idx=2&sn=273abadd89c67199cfbe039a4f618b41&chksm=1616f14e2161785874789ae825a4339c4b19ee273b37668a49be260ce04100007450bab42a28#rd

Petty 指“微不足道的” “无关紧要的” ; 放在人身上大概就是“小人”的意思 — 为人小气, 抓住点琐事小事磨磨唧唧,没完没了小题大做.

记住这句: (做不耐烦状)

You’re being petty

注意念起来像是 pedi

找了一些图片，你来感受一下.

共建和谐社会, Stop being petty😡

@英语学习笔记

TIME | Google涂鸦和羊羊羊🐑

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205682132&idx=1&sn=8a9da016f9b05032e12c3b56399f75c1&chksm=1617ac2d2160253bfa2f474ce64b9dcac8ceb044b97e3ed824f371663dbe3add3a4e2fe3cb65#rd

A new Google Doodle is ringing in the Lunar New Year — in Chinese astrology, the Year of the Goat — with an animated graphic that looks more like a sheep. Or it could be a ram. But the confusion is understandable, since the Chinese word (羊) for all three animals is the same.

Google Doodle

For people across East Asia, this is an important time for family reunions. In China, what is often called the largest annual human migration on earth takes place as millions of migrant workers leave the cities and board trains to return to their native villages for what is also called the Spring Festival.

The largest annual human migration

It’s tempting to draw an analogy between packed train carriages and flocks of sheep, but, as anyone who has traveled in China during peak periods knows, you need to be much more of a ram if you’re going to stand any hope of getting aboard.

sheep or ram?

Gong xi fa cai! Good luck and prosperity in 2015

Lunar New Year 2015 (Vietnam)

A folklore expert from the Beijing Institute of Culture and History told the New York Times, “Goat and sheep are different in French and English, but what’s that got to do with Chinese traditional culture?” He said the debate was silly.

Either way, this new lunar year represented by the sheep (or goat) will be one of peace, harmony and tranquility according to the Chinese Zodiac calendar, and will bring luck to anyone born during previous years of the sheep.

有关“羊”的一些idioms

black sheep of the family: 最不争气的那个

Separate the sheep from the goats: 分清良莠

由于《圣经》的影响,sheep和goat在英语中的形象截然不同,前者比喻好人,后者比喻坏人。英语中有关goat的成语,大多贬义。如:to play/act the goat=play the fool（瞎胡闹,哗众取宠）；to get someone's goat（触动肝火); 等等。《圣经》说牧羊人要分辨绵羊和山羊,“把绵羊安置右边,山羊左边”。据说野山羊常混进羊群里,引诱绵羊,故牧养人必须把它们区分开来,以免混淆。

play/act the goat

Wolf in sheep's clothing: 披着羊皮的🐺

ram做动词表示“强迫”的意思，有一个常用的短语是

ram/shove something down sb's throat: 强行的向他人一遍遍的灌输你的想法意见

来几个中文的idioms

资料来源http://www.cctv-america.com/2015/02/05/five-chinese-idioms-about-sheep

羊毛出在羊身上

Wool comes from the sheep's back

挂羊头卖狗肉

To Hang a Sheep’s Head While Selling Dog Meat

羊质虎皮

A Sheep in a Tiger’s Skin

亡羊补牢

Mend the Fold After a Sheep is Lost

阅读原文查看更多。

Google & Love

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205568198&idx=1&sn=bbee02ed305c4e2648f1549216290e02&chksm=1615613f2162e829595a2af029c505f3a3cf472fb2206dd1d6522c745d2b53ad6999c3f10239#rd

According to Google, the five different variations of today’s logo highlight all the ways we use technology to display our appreciation for loved ones.

“The gesture may be as subtle as charging someone else’s laptop or as bold as sending an affectionate text, but technology is fully engrained in the ways we express appreciation for one another,” reads the post by doodlers Jennifer Hom and Olivia Huynh who helped design today’s logos.

Here are Google’s five animated Valentine’s Day doodles highlighting how technology helps us connect:

时差再久，也躲不了情人劫

祝你明年情人节更快乐~

英文教育 | 哑巴英语之痛

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205547998&idx=1&sn=80c581e1d5d77864994dc3e2f9ec1af5&chksm=1615b02721623931d53c9f592500578e41a0530c773fdc945251dcaf2d093136e34baa4919c0#rd

The Mute Leading the Mute

Why are countries failing so badly at teaching English?

AGUSTÍN has spent 29 years teaching English in Mexico City. It has often been a thankless task; many pupils yawn their way through class. But their lack of interest may be compounded by his lack of English. Ask him where his next lesson is, and he replies, “nine o’clock”.

标题中, 俚语[The blind leading the blind]在这里被改成了[the mute leading the mute] - 哑巴英语之痛。

He is not unusual in Mexico, despite its proximity to America. A recent survey by Mexicanos Primero, an education NGO, found that four-fifths of secondary-school graduates had “absolutely no knowledge” of English, despite having spent at least 360 hours learning it in secondary school. English teachers were not much better: one in seven had no English whatsoever.

近水楼台也完蛋。

Comparable global data are scarce, but experts say the situation is similar in much of the non-Anglophone(non-English speaking) world. Common problems include bad teachers hired via written tests rather than oral ones, and an outmoded(outdated) approach that sees English as a foreign language to be taught about, rather than a lingua franca to be taught in. Teachers’ lack of fluency means too little English conversation in the classroom, says John Knagg of the British Council, so pupils do not get used to using the language. It is as if they were being taught to swim without ever getting into the water.

哑巴英语就这么形容吧.

China has made English compulsory in school from a young age, but teachers are overstretched and mostly underqualified, says Jing Zhao, a visiting researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Just over 1m English-language staff teach over 200m Chinese pupils, a heroic, if mind-boggling, teacher-pupil ratio. In Guangdong, an affluent province that Ms Jing has studied, just 257 of 53,500 English-language teachers had master’s degrees. Many speak a scripted English in class and prefer to focus on the pen-and-ink grammatical work on which their pupils are examined. “They’ve been teaching for the tests all their career,” she says.

师资不够,方法不对.

The problem is compounded by education systems that are out of touch with parents’ demands for more English instruction. “There’s a huge and increasing demand for English, but the supply of teachers and ability to teach English have not kept up,” says Mr Knagg. In Japan, for instance, the government has said it will bolster the mandatory English requirement for children in primary school—but only from 2020 when the country hosts the Olympic games.

In Latin America “there is a huge gap between what the system provides and what the students actually need,” says Rosangela Bando of the Inter-American Development Bank. The gap widens the farther from cities one goes, she notes. Better-off city-dwelling children are more likely to have private language lessons, internet access or the chance to travel abroad.

But even in state systems where instruction has long been poor, there are signs of change. Agustín’s colleague, Armando Velázquez, a mid-career English teacher, refuses to speak a word of Spanish in the classroom and makes the whole of his lessons conversational. At the start of one of his first classes, a pupil mimes vomiting when asked whether he likes English. By the end, the youngster is merrily using it to describe Lionel Messi, an Argentine footballer, as fast, rich and famous.

好老师会出现的,例如我😄

A year ago Mr Velázquez benefited from an English-language course that he says changed not only his teaching, but his life. Provided by the Inter-American Partnership for Education, it taught him conversational and theatrical methods that he now passes on to his colleagues. Such on-the-job training has also produced results in Chile and Malaysia, says Mr Knagg.

希望我们那么多的“在职培训” “科研”有点实质性的改变

Uruguay takes a different, and more novel, approach. It makes up for its dearth of English-speaking teachers by contracting Filipinos who teach via videoconferencing from Manila to pupils’ laptops or tablets in Montevideo. In China, says Yuko Goto Butler of the University of Pennsylvania, good teachers are rotated among schools, and young teachers offer free weekend classes to pupils while earning credits that advance their careers. Interactive technology can help make lessons more lively, as South Korea has discovered.

Ultimately, the goal should be to teach other subjects in English, as Canada is helping China to do, rather than just teaching English. But no one should expect miracles. Even if the most promising innovations are widely copied, fluency will come only gradually; today’s pupils must first learn enough English to become tomorrow’s competent teachers.

科技再发达, 语言这东西还是得勤学苦练, 循序渐进。边学边用才是目的, 有很多的MOOCs课程, 选择你有兴趣的去学一学. 如果你掌握了方法,善于利用各种资源, 学习的效果和出国基本没差的。

如果你要做一名英文教师的话, 靠谱点儿.

@ericzenglish

Reading | Happiness is love

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205547998&idx=2&sn=7128d53b35c8e32a49fb4a4806ee0155&chksm=1615b02721623931b7349190b8efdc8ca0beeed941e5ac4c13b8b33c729a14f97b4a2fbc66ff#rd

75 Years In The Making: Harvard Just Released Its Epic Study On What Men Need To Live A Happy Life

In 1938 Harvard University began following 268 male undergraduate students and kicked off the longest-running longitudinal studies of human development in history. The study’s goal was to determine as best as possible what factors contribute most strongly to human flourishing. The astonishing range of psychological, anthropological, and physical traits — ranging from personality type to IQ to drinking habits to family relationships to “hanging length of his scrotum” — indicates just how exhaustive and quantifiable the research data has become. Recently, George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than three decades, published the study’s findings in the 2012 book Triumphs of Experience (Amazon) and the following is the book’s synopsis:

“At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news for the new old age: our lives continue to evolve in our later years, and often become more fulfilling than before. Begun in 1938, the Grant Study of Adult Development charted the physical and emotional health of over 200 men, starting with their undergraduate days. The now-classic ‘Adaptation to Life’ reported on the men’s lives up to age 55 and helped us understand adult maturation. Now George Vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the first time what it is like to flourish far beyond conventional retirement. Reporting on all aspects of male life, including relationships, politics and religion, coping strategies, and alcohol use (its abuse being by far the greatest disruptor of health and happiness for the study’s subjects), ‘Triumphs of Experience’ shares a number of surprising findings. For example, the people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife, and vice versa. While the study confirms that recovery from a lousy childhood is possible, memories of a happy childhood are a lifelong source of strength. Marriages bring much more contentment after age 70, and physical aging after 80 is determined less by heredity than by habits formed prior to age 50. The credit for growing old with grace and vitality, it seems, goes more to ourselves than to our stellar genetic makeup.”

As you can imagine, the study’s discoveries are bountiful, but the most significant finding of all is that “Alcoholism is a disorder of great destructive power.” In fact, alcoholism is the single strongest cause of divorce between the Grant Study men and their wives. Alcoholism was also found to be strongly coupled with neurosis and depression (which most often follows alcohol abuse, rather than preceding it). Together with cigarette smoking, alcoholism proves to be the #1 greatest cause of morbidity and death. And above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t prevent the damage.

With regards to income, there was no noticeable difference in maximum income earned by men with IQs in the 110-115 range vs. men with IQs above 150. With regards to sex lives, one of the most fascinating discoveries is that aging liberals have way more sex. Political ideology had no bearing on overall life satisfaction, but the most conservative men on average shut down their sex lives around age 68, while the most liberal men had healthy sex lives well into their 80s. Vaillant writes, “I have consulted urologists about this, they have no idea why it might be so.”

In Triumphs of Experience, Vaillant raises a number of factors more often than others, but the one he refers to most often is the powerful correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your health and happiness in your later years. In 2009, Vaillant’s insistance on the importance of this part of the data was challenged, so Vaillant returned to the data to be sure the finding merited such important focus. Not only did Vaillant discover that his focus on warm relationships was warranted, he placed even more importance on this factor than he had previously. Vallant notes that the 58 men who scored highest on the measurements of “warm relationships” (WR) earned an average of $141,000 a year more during their peak salaries (between ages 55-60) than the 31 men who scored the lowest in WR. The high WR scorers were also 3-times more likely to have professional success worthy of inclusion in Who’s Who.

One of the most intriguing discoveries of the Grant Study was how significant men’s relationships with their mothers are in determining their well-being in life. For instance, Business Insider writes: “Men who had ‘warm’ childhood relationships with their mothers took home $87,000 more per year than men whose mothers were uncaring. Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old. Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers — but not their fathers — were associated with effectiveness at work. On the other hand, warm childhood relations with fathers correlated with lower rates of adult anxiety, greater enjoyment on vacations, and increased ‘life satisfaction’ at age 75 — whereas the warmth of childhood relationships with mothers had no significant bearing on life satisfaction at 75.”

In Vallant’s own words, the #1 most important finding from the Grant Study is this: “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points to a straightforward five-word conclusion: Happiness is love. Full stop.”

干货 | 物以群分

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205484677&idx=1&sn=b25a5734ccc43ff92c28669417da735c&chksm=166aab7c211d226a86ba5ef848fc3dfeafcc7033adbaff79d2202641da20731bc3a225066518#rd

狮子的英文是lion

一群狮子叫什么?

乌鸦是crow

一群乌鸦叫什么?

一群🐟又叫什么?

今天在看语法书, 读到了collective nouns: are words used to define a group of objects, such as team, pride (of lions), jury.

顺便搜了一下英文中的集合名词,分享给你. 别认真, 稍微了解一下就好: 有一些你熟悉的词原来还有这个意思!

Many species of animals, particularly those domesticated, have been given specific names for the male, the female, and the young of the species. There are a few generic terms, "bull-cow-calf", for instance, that are found across species, but many species have been granted unique names for these gender/age characteristics.

It is thought that many of the bizarre words used for collective groupings of animals were first published in 1486 in the Book of St. Albans, in an essay on hunting attributed to a Dame Juliana Barnes. Many of the words are thought to be chosen simply for the humorous or poetic images they conjured up in her lively imagination.

Alligators come in groups called a congregation

Alpaca (草泥马)come in groups called a herd

Ants come in groups called a colony, army, swarm or nest

Armadillo(犰qiu狳you) come in groups called a roll

这货可以变成球的

Baboons(狒狒) come in groups called a troop or flange

Bacteria come in groups called a culture

Badgers come in groups called a cete, colony, set or company

badger做动词有“依依不饶的再三请求”的意思, 生活大爆炸中有一集中，有人问Lenard是如何追到Penny的，Sheldon插嘴说: “implacable,relentless badgering."

Bats come in groups called a colony or cloud

Bass (鲈鱼)come in groups called a shoal

Bears come in groups called a sloth, sleuth or litter

Bees come in groups called a grist, hive, swarm or nest

Birds come in groups called a brood, clutch, flight, flock or dissimulation

Buffalo come in groups called a herd, troop, gang, or obstinacy

Butterflies come in groups called a flight, or flutter

Camels come in groups called a caravan, train, or flock

Cats come in groups called a clowder, clutter, pounce, dout, nuisance, glorying, or glare

Cattle come in groups called a drove, herd, or team

Chickens come in groups called a brood, or peep

Chinchilla 龙猫 come in groups called a colony

Clams come in groups called a bed

Crocodiles come in groups called a bask, or float

Crows come in groups called a murder, horde, parcel, or storytelling

Deer come in groups called a herd, leash, or gang

Dogs come in groups called a kennel

Dolphins come in groups called a pod

Doves come in groups called a arc, dule, bevy, cote, dole, or paddling

Ducks come in groups called a floc, brace, or badling

Elephants come in groups called a herd, or parade

Elk come in groups called a gang, or herd

Ferrets 貂 come in groups called a business, cast

Fish come in groups called a draft, nest, shoal, school, catch, drought, or haul

Flamingoes come in groups called a stand, or flamboyance

Frogs come in groups called a army, colony, or knot

Fox come in groups called a leash, skulk, earth, lead, or troop

Geese come in groups called a flock, skein, gaggle, herd, or corps

Giraffes come in groups called a herd, corps or tower

Goldfish come in groups called a glint, or troubling

Grasshoppers come in groups called a cloud

Hare come in groups called a warren, down or husk

Hippopotamuses come in groups called a bloat

Hornets come in groups called a nest, or bike

Hound Dogs come in groups called a cry, mute, or pack

Jellyfish come in groups called a smack, or brood

Kangaroos come in groups called a troop, mob, or herd

Kittens come in groups called a kindle, litter, or intrigue

Ladybirds come in groups called a loveliness

Leopards come in groups called a leap

Lice come in groups called a flock

Magpies come in groups called a tiding, gulp, murder, or charm

Mice come in groups called a mischief or nest

Monkeys come in groups called a troop, barrel, carload, cartload, or tribe

Nightingales come in groups called a watch

Owls come in groups called a parliament

Pandas come in groups called a bamboo

Parrots come in groups called a company, or pandemonium

Peacocks come in groups called a muster, ostentation, or pride

Penguins come in groups called a colony, rookery, huddle, crèche,

Pheasants come in groups called a nest, nye, nide, or bouquet

Pigs come in groups called a drift, drove, singular, sounder, team, passel, drift, or parcel

Puppies come in groups called a litter; piddle

Quail come in groups called a Bevy, covey

Raccoons come in groups called a gaze

Ravens come in groups called a unkindness, or storytelling

Rhinoceroses come in groups called a crash, or stubbornness

Sharks come in groups called a shiver, school, or shoal

Tigers come in groups called a streak, or ambush

Turtles come in groups called a bale, nest, turn, or dole

Unicorns come in groups called a blessing

Vultures come in groups called a venue or kettle

Whales come in groups called a pod, gam, herd, school, or mob

Wolves come in groups called a pack, route, or rout

Woodpeckers come in groups called a descent

Zebras come in groups called a Crossing, Zeal, Cohorts, or Herd

Eagles come in groups called a convocation

找图好累, 如果你觉得对你有帮助, 请分享给更多的人吧

关注:ericzenglish

微博:比尔盖茨比

杂想｜从双重否定看英文语法

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205423966&idx=1&sn=7765944279b70eab750de353ca43cc37&chksm=166b5ca7211cd5b193e2b7ba8de4e1014a69e2f36ed3fa3ab92fcf71f188c8ebbe0eae1d7384#rd

如果你有对语法学习的困惑, 推荐你把这篇文章读一下.

Double negatives occur when two forms of negation are present in the same clause. They are acceptable in many standard and non-standard dialects and foreign languages. When this occurs, the second negation intensifies the negativity of the sentence as a whole.

“双重否定”在口语中常被用为强调，而不是“双重否定表示肯定” -- 这种用法被很多人认为是unacceptable, non-standard，应该避免使用。正如我们之前讨论的关于ain't的用法一样, 地道的不一定是标准的，不标准的不意味着就是错的. 作为语言学习者的我们要“海纳百川", 知其所以然，然后选择性的使用, 以免“弄巧成拙”。

从语法的角度来看这个问题. 语法可以分为prescriptive 和 descriptive. Prescriptive grammar 就是语言专家们总结的一套语法系统, 就是"死语法",也正是我们在学校学的那种. 而descritipive grammar 是语言是如何真正的被使用的.

Specialists in descriptive grammar (called linguists) study the rules or patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. On the other hand, prescriptive grammarians (such as most editors and teachers) lay out rules about what they believe to be the “correct” or “incorrect” use of language.

这也许就是英文学习者经常吐槽的原因吧 -- "书本上学的东西不实用" “过度强调对错". 我们一直接触的都是prescriptive gammar: 要记住什么时候用which/that, where/ in which 这种。

阅读原文, 查看旧文: 放英文一条生路

在语言的学习过程中, 我们要注意这种语言的"对/错" 还有"存在即合理" "适当/不适当". 有一些问题本身就是很有争议的, 所以我们语言学习者要多观察总结，听听不同意见, 少一杆子打死. 每个人都有自己的pet-peeves(不认识的话自己去查), 例如我的大学外教就很不喜欢我们说"that's all" -- 但这不说明用“that's all"就是烂英文.

学习语法的目的不只是去学习语言的条条框框，而是学习如何分析一门语言, 从不同的角度去解读语言现象。

我们看一下「双重否定」在英文中的使用.

例如在美剧Gotham第13集中:

例如大家都熟悉的一首歌, 潘玮柏和苏芮的那首「我想更懂你」, 在歌曲之前有一个母子对白, 你会听到潘玮柏说:

Stop acting like you care about me
Stop acting like you wanna know something about me
You don’t know nothing! you don’t care! Stop asking!

In Standard English, however, double negatives in a single clause cancel each other out and transform the meaning into a positive.

当然了有时候双重否定是故意的，例如She is not unattractive 不全等于 She is attractive. 例如我们经常说的"I couldn't care less".

找了一些图片, 你感受一下.

看懂了吗, 今后如果你碰到double negative的“被部分人认为是错误的”用法, 你知道就好了. 自己要慎用。

问题来了

How about a triple negative?

欢迎回复我分享你在英文学习中碰到的问题

我也在新浪微博上经常分享英文,

搜索: 比尔盖茨比

小词 | 英文中的牙齿

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205404248&idx=1&sn=579e73dca692c6827e2ec642071209cc&chksm=166be1a1211c68b737fde2d9cb1f0201062eb80d75a654d6d67dcfd0615000acc74b07a861f6#rd

一小段, 几个词.

阅读原文查看全文,附笔记.

[The Economist - Out brothers, out!]

奔跑吧，兄弟👬

Independent unions are banned in China, Labour organizations have to be affiliated with the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, whose constitution describes the working class as “the leading class of China” but which usually sides with management. In recent years, officials have stepped up efforts to unionize workforces, especially in privately run factories where they fear a lack of unions might encourage independent ones to grow. But official unions have largely refrained from baring any teeth.

[side] 做动词, to support or argue against person or group in a quarrel, fight etc.

[step up] to increase the amount of an activity or the speed of a process in order to improve a situation.

文章后面又重复使用了这个词组:

He believes workers are likely to step up pressure on the official unions to represent them better

[step up to the plate] to agree to help someone or to be responsible for doing something.

[tooth] 这个词的用法

1. Something has teeth: used in order to say that an organization or law has enough power to make people obey it.

2. show your teeth: to let someone see your anger or strength, in order to warn them not to start an argument or fight.

3. grit your teeth: to deal with a difficult or unpleasant situation in a determined way

4. gnash your teeth: to be very angry and upset (注意g不发音)

5. be armed to the teeth - 武装到牙齿

6. cut your teeth (on something): if a young person cuts his or her teeth on a particular piece or type of work, that is the first work that they do, from which they learn to do their job.

长新牙就是cut teeth. 例如 Billy is cranky because he’s cutting teeth. 这里的cut指的是 “To have a new tooth grow through the gums”.

7. Like pulling teeth: something that is like pulling teeth is extremely difficult to obtain, especially if trying to extract information from someone.

8. by the skin of my teeth: If you do something "by the skin of your teeth" it means that you did it by a narrow margin – so you just managed to do it, or almost failed.

“By the skin of my teeth”就是出自《圣经》中的《约伯记》。犹太人约伯在受到上帝的百般非难之后说道: “My bone cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth”（直译：我的皮肉贴着骨头，我同牙齿的皮肤一起逃了出来。）

例如:

I woke up late and had to run to the train station. There's only one train an hour. I ran all the way there and made it by the skin of my teeth, just as the doors were closing.

牙齿怎么会有皮肤呢？古人的用意我们已经无从查考，今天的一种理解是：“the skin of the teeth”指的是牙齿表层的牙釉质。可怜的约伯用了一个形象的比喻：他的逃生空间就像是牙釉质那样薄薄的一层. 自此以后，“by the skin of one's teeth”就被用来表示涉险逃生的意思。类似的英文还有 a narrow escape; a near miss; close call; close shave; Thornton Wilder有部作品The Skin of Our Teeth，被翻译成「九死一生」

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

↓↓

英文学习杂想 | 小词

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205380588&idx=1&sn=c7978abfa83318086f66cecfca84aed5&chksm=16680215211f8b03a548065f67b15964365ae0f5d24a16354d6e30e376d62e32f6f88a1b5fde#rd

[The Economist] A regulator in China criticized Alibaba for allowing fake goods to be sold on its websites. Alibaba’s response broke with the usual tradition in China for kowtowing to the state, when it said the report contained “selective omissions and malicious actions”.

选词"kowtow"与报道内容(有关中国)非常”应景”.

The superlatives came fast to describe Apple’s earnings for the last three months of 2014.

“赞誉纷沓而至”的一种表达: 形容词的最高级

[The Economist] McDonald’s announced that its chief executive was stepping down after less than three years in the job. Sales have slumped during Don Thompson’s tenure, with net profit down last year by 15%, as fast food rivals such as Chipotle Mexican Grill eat into business by offering fresher menus.

eat into: to use or take away a large part of something valuable, such as money or time; “蚕食”“逐渐消耗““慢慢的弄死你的节奏”

例如:

The river had eaten into the bridge, and part of it had collapsed.

The high cost of living in NYC is eating into my savings.

简单总结下eat的用法.

eat out: 下馆子

eat something up: 都吃掉

这个用法很灵活, 使用其比喻义

例如:

These mosquitoes are eating me up!

The guy is a devil! He just eats people up!

eat up也可以指: to consume something rapidly

例如: The car really eats up gas.

eat away at somebody 也有差不多的用法. If a memory or bad feeling eats away at someone, it makes them feel more and more unhappy.

例如:

You could see that jealousy was eathing away at her.

eat away at something: to gradually damage or destroy something.

例如: The sun and wind eat away at the ice.

be eaten up with/by jealousy/anger/curiosity etc: to be very jealous, angry etc, so that you cannot think about anything else.

"被消耗”“被控制”“被干扰”

Men are either eaten up with arrogance or stupidity. -Pride & Prejudice

eat one's gun: 🔫 👄

eat one’s hat: 如果… 我就“把帽子吃了", 表示“信誓旦旦的预测".

从这个例句感受一下:

He said he would eat his hat if more than ten people came. He'd better fetch a knife and fork!

eat one’s words: 食言

记得生活大爆炸第一季Sheldon说过"renege on your promise”也是差不多的意思。

eat one’s heart out: to have sorrow or longing dominate one’s emotions; grieve inconsolably;

悲伤逆流成河的感觉.

The children are eating their hearts out over their lost dog.

这个俚语还可以用来看玩笑,或者故意得瑟

“哈哈你嫉妒去吧!”

“你自个偷着哭去吧!"

和你分享这个不是想告诉你怎么用 “eat”这个词, 而是 “在从平时的阅读学习中要注意这些小词”. 小词往往有大用, small is beautiful. 随着不断的积累, 我们在使用英文的时候才能 “不拘一格” — 语言就是这样的灵活，琐碎，有趣，莫名其妙，没完没了－愿我们天天学习，管它向不向上。

@关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

陈奕迅

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205354029&idx=1&sn=6f52d678e9ea3494c27b59239c35c16f&chksm=1668add4211f24c257d15a5439fd6ad733b7cd0d1240a1f5da6664f78d1284f2044dd350efa7#rd

最近在忙，给你看视频.

第一个拖到后面(2'25左右)看Eason秀英音

第二个是adidas的一个采访(近10分钟),推荐看一看

个人非常羡慕会唱歌的人。如果你是那种唱歌很好的人, 不要浪费你的才华:)

碰巧看了一篇果壳的文章"学外语，为什么你总是发不好音"，阅读原文查看。

@关注:ericzenglish

天下乌鸦一般黑? 美国保健品

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205327230&idx=1&sn=c91a411dd8b58944aeeacc94e5709901&chksm=1668d287211f5b915b62bce2ef63ce786edb0bd61661d884a52d779ff38eeaef46c1d9de85a0#rd

美国纽约州检察总长办公室二日指控美国四大零售商贩售标示不实且可能有害健康的保健食品，已要求下架。这是美国司法单位首度以法律行动勒令大零售商不得贩售蓄意欺骗消费者的保健食品。

纽约时报报导，纽约州司法当局表示，已针对健安喜（GNC）保健食品连锁店、塔吉特（Target）百货公司、沃尔格林（Walgreens）药妆连锁店和沃尔玛（Walmart）百货公司的热销保健食品进行检验，发现五种产品中就有四种完全未含标示上的药草，通常只含有一些便宜的填充物，像是粉状的米、芦笋或室内盆栽植物，有时含有对过敏体质者危险的成分。

以下是纽约时报的原文报道.

New York Attorney General Targets Supplements at Major Retailers

The New York State attorney general’s office accused four major retailers on Monday of selling fraudulent and potentially dangerous herbal supplements and demanded that they remove the products from their shelves.

The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies.

The investigation came as a welcome surprise to health experts who have long complained about the quality and safety of dietary supplements, which are exempt from the strict regulatory oversight applied to prescription drugs.

在美国，健康食品与处方药不同，不需要接受严格检验，卫生专家早就质疑健康食品的品质和安全，对司法单位的调查行动表示欢迎。

The Food and Drug Administration has targeted individual supplements found to contain dangerous ingredients. But the announcement Monday was the first time that a law enforcement agency had threatened the biggest retail and drugstore chains with legal action for selling what it said were deliberately misleading herbal products.

Among the attorney general’s findings was a popular store brand of ginseng pills at Walgreens, promoted for “physical endurance and vitality,” that contained only powdered garlic and rice. At Walmart, the authorities found that its ginkgo biloba(银杏,白果), a Chinese plant promoted as a memory enhancer, contained little more than powdered radish, houseplants and wheat — despite a claim on the label that the product was wheat- and gluten-free.

调查人员发现沃尔格林贩售的一种人气品牌的人参丸，标榜「能增强体力和活力」，但裡面只含有粉状的大蒜和米。沃尔玛百货贩售号称能增强记忆力的银杏，实际上只含有粉状的萝卜、小麦和盆栽植物，但标示上却强调不含麦类和麸质。

Three out of six herbal products at Target — ginkgo biloba, St. John’s wort and valerian root, a sleep aid — tested negative for the herbs on their labels. But they did contain powdered rice, beans, peas and wild carrots. And at GNC, the agency said, it found pills with unlisted ingredients used as fillers, like powdered legumes, the class of plants that includes peanuts and soybeans, a hazard for people with allergies.

健安喜卖的保健食品丸裡含有未标示出来的荚果类填充物，包括花生和大豆，对过敏者有危险。

The attorney general sent the four retailers cease-and-desist letters on Monday and demanded that they explain what procedures they use to verify the ingredients in their supplements.

[cease-and-desist]:终止(cease)此项行为,并且再也不从事(desist)

“Mislabeling, contamination and false advertising are illegal,” said Eric T. Schneiderman, the state attorney general. “They also pose unacceptable risks to New York families — especially those with allergies to hidden ingredients.”

The attorney general’s investigation was prompted by an article in the New York Times in 2013 that raised questions about widespread labeling fraud in the supplement industry. The article referred to research at the University of Guelph in Canada that found that as many as a third of herbal supplements tested did not contain the plants listed on their labels — only cheap fillers instead.

Industry representatives have argued that any problems are caused by a handful of companies on the fringe of the industry. But New York’s investigation specifically targeted store brands at the nation’s drugstore and retail giants, which suggests that the problems are widespread.

“If this data is accurate, then it is an unbelievably devastating indictment of the industry,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an expert on supplement safety. “We’re talking about products at mainstream retailers like Walmart and Walgreens that are expected to be the absolute highest quality.”

In response to the findings, Walgreens said it would remove the products from its shelves nationwide, even though only New York State had demanded it. Walmart said it would reach out to the suppliers of its supplements “and take appropriate action.”

A spokeswoman for GNC said that the company would cooperate with the attorney general “in all appropriate ways,” but that it stood behind the quality and purity of its store brand supplements. The company said it tested all of its products “using validated and widely used testing methods.”

Target did not respond to requests for comment.

The F.D.A. requires that companies verify that every supplement they manufacture is safe and accurately labeled. But the system essentially operates on the honor code.

Under a 1994 federal law, supplements are exempt from the F.D.A.’s strict approval process for prescription drugs, which requires reviews of a product’s safety and effectiveness before it goes to market.

The law’s sponsor and chief architect, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, is a steadfast supporter of supplements. He has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industry and repeatedly intervened in Washington to quash proposed legislation that would toughen the rules.

Mr. Hatch led a successful fight against a proposed amendment in 2012 that would have required supplement makers to register their products with the F.D.A. and provide details about their ingredients. Speaking on the floor of the Senate at the time, Mr. Hatch said the amendment was based on “a misguided presumption that the current regulatory framework for dietary supplements is flawed.”

Critics say it is all too easy for dangerous supplements to reach the market because they are not subject to a review or approval process. Under current law, supplements are assumed to be safe until the authorities can prove otherwise. And in general, they are pulled from shelves only after serious injuries occur — which is not uncommon.

保健品原则: 不出事就行。

In 2013, for example, an outbreak of hepatitis that struck at least 72 people in 16 states was traced to a tainted supplement. Three people required liver transplants, and one woman died.

It is not only consumers. Hospitals have been affected, too. In December, an infant at a Connecticut hospital died when doctors gave the child a popular probiotic supplement that was later found to be contaminated with yeast. After the child’s death, the F.D.A. issued a warning to the public that reiterated its limited control over supplements.

“These products are not subject to F.D.A.’s premarket review or approval requirements for safety and effectiveness,” the F.D.A. stated, “nor to the agency’s rigorous manufacturing and testing standards for drugs.”

As part of its investigation, the attorney general’s office bought 78 bottles of the leading brands of herbal supplements from a dozen Walmart, Target, Walgreens and GNC locations across New York State. Then the agency analyzed the products using DNA bar coding, a type of genetic fingerprinting that the agency has used to root out labeling fraud in the seafood industry.

The technology allows scientists to identify plants and animals by looking for short sequences of DNA unique to each organism, which can then be quickly analyzed — much like the bar codes on grocery items — and compared with others in an electronic database. The technology can single out(上段的root out换词) which plants a supplement contains by identifying its unique DNA.

Dr. Cohen at Harvard said that the attorney general’s test results were so extreme that he found them hard to accept. He said it was possible that the tests had failed to detect some plants even when they were present because the manufacturing process had destroyed their DNA.

But that does not explain why the tests found so many supplements with no DNA from the herbs on their labels but plenty of DNA from unlisted ingredients, said Marty Mack, an executive deputy attorney general in New York. “The absence of DNA does not explain the high percentage of contaminants found in these products,” he said. “The burden is now with the industry to prove what is in these supplements.”

告白与告别

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205327230&idx=2&sn=81a08dcd22fb66cf40134770363a298c&chksm=1668d287211f5b914254d7ed0668d02ebb46a3ccdb94df2d36495ccdcb5c7077a0d1cfda16f6#rd

John Micklethwait, 自2006年以来担任经济学人的主编. 如今他卸任, 去Bloomberg News当主编去了. 这篇文章是他的valedictory — a speech expressing farewell.

THIS newspaper churlishly deprives its editors of the egocentric adornments of our trade. Tragically, these pages include no weekly “editor’s letter” to readers, underneath a beaming, air-brushed picture. Online, there is a weekly e-mail, but that comes from your “desk”, not you. As editor, you spend your time in deplorable obscurity, consoled merely by the fact you have the nicest job in journalism. But there are two indulgent exceptions: a brief mention when you are appointed; and this valedictory leader, which attempts to sum up the world that has hurtled across your desk.

默默无闻, 离别之际吐zi槽hei一下.在一则报道中同事给他评价是"friendly" "affable" "self-deprecating" and "gregarious"

It starts on the first day, and never lets up. There are elections, coups, wars, bankruptcies and tsunamis. Science throws up discoveries and ideas. A pantomime of Putinesque villains and Berlusconi-style clowns force themselves onto the cover. But for the things this newspaper cares about, the past nine years have been a battle, one that has left me in a state of paranoid optimism. Paranoia because so much remains under threat; optimism because, for the most part, the creed this newspaper lives by is strong enough to survive.

关键字: paranoid & optimism

That applies first to The Economist itself. One of my earliest covers asked “Who killed the newspaper?” (August 24th 2006), and this newspaper has arguably faced more change in the past nine years than it did in the previous century. On April Fool’s Day 2006, when, appropriately, I began this job, Twitter was ten days old, our print advertising was growing and social media was something to do with a very good lunch.

So any modern editor who is not paranoid is a fool. But my optimism remains greater, both about The Economist and the future of independent journalism. That is partly because technology gives us ever more ways to reach our audience. In 2006 our circulation was 1.1m, all in print. Now it is 1.6m in print, digital and audio. Already half a million of you have downloaded our new Espresso app; we are adding over 70,000 Twitter followers each week. Media is not the race to the bottom that pessimists forecast. People want to read about the Kurds, Keynes and kokumi as well as the Kardashians. Ever more go to university, travel abroad and need ideas to stay employable—and will pay for an impartial view of the world, one where the editor, whatever his faults (or from now on, her virtues), is in nobody’s pocket.

杂志本身的与时俱进+independent journalism(the editor is in nobody’s pocket)

The same guarded hopefulness applies to an Economist editor’s only true master: the liberal credo of open markets and individual freedom. That liberalism, which stretches back to our founding by James Wilson in 1843, has been attacked from all sides over the past nine years. In 2006 it was still easy to convince yourself that history was ending—that the “Washington consensus” of democracy and capitalism would liberate the world. But freedom’s momentum has sadly stalled.

立刊之本: liberalism.The Economist Explains中, 经济学人对自己是left 还是 right wing，作出了以下解释:

The Economist was founded in 1843 by James Wilson, a British businessman who objected to heavy import duties on foreign corn. Mr Wilson and his friends in the Anti-Corn Law League were classical liberals in the tradition of Adam Smith and, later, the likes of John Stuart Mill and William Ewart Gladstone. This intellectual ancestry has guided the newspaper's instincts ever since: it opposes all undue curtailment of an individual’s economic or personal freedom. But like its founders, it is not dogmatic. Where there is a liberal case for government to do something, The Economist will air it. Early in its life, its writers were keen supporters of the income tax, for example. Since then it has backed causes like universal health care and gun control. But its starting point is that government should only remove power and wealth from individuals when it has an excellent reason to do so.

Democracy is no longer the presumed destination. Countries that looked mildly hopeful nine years ago, such as Russia and Turkey, have acquired tsars and sultans. The Arab spring has turned to winter. Above all, authoritarians have found a new model in China—in which power revolves at the top every decade and economic growth is organised at the bottom. China’s income per person has risen at twice the rate of democratic India’s since 2006.

经济学家黄亚生在TED做过一个演讲: Does democracy stifle economic growth? 他那中国和民主的印度作了比较。http://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang?language=en

还有李世默(Eric X. Li)的 A tale of two political system (阅读原文查看)

Western democracy, too, looks ever less exemplary. Barack Obama may have stopped his predecessor’s waterboarding of American values, but Washington remains synonymous with gridlock. In every year of my editorship a clear majority of Americans have told Gallup that they are dissatisfied with the way they are governed. America’s money politics, the target of another editor’s valedictory in 1993, looks ever grubbier and more feudal, with a Bush v Clinton contest beckoning in 2016.

西方民主捉襟见肘

The only way to feel good about American democracy is to set it beside Brussels. Woefully unaccountable and ineffective, the European Union is often held together only by the woman who has somehow managed to be both the West’s most impressive politician and its greatest ditherer, Angela Merkel. But to what end? The near-permanent euro crisis has proved a classic exercise in shambolic decision-making, consisting mostly of agreeing to kick the can down the road.

民主只能在欧洲找自信了.看看这些形容词就知道多惨了。

kick the can down the road: delay a decision in hopes that the problem or issue will go away.

If liberal politics are rightly attacked, the blows that have rained down on liberal economics have perhaps been even more painful. It is now a commonplace to blame the dominant event of this editorship, the 2007-08 financial crisis, on unfettered capitalism. This is mostly a calumny: the epicentre was the American mortgage market, one of the most regulated industries on Earth, and Leviathan’s hand was all over much of the mess that followed. But part of the charge against capitalism was true, and it hurts. No liberal can justify a system in which huge banks’ balance-sheets teetered on tiny amounts of capital. In 2006 too much of finance was gambling, pure and simple; and too much of the bill ended up with taxpayers.

说完政治说经济. Captalism, liberilism.

This helps explain why a feeling of unfairness lingers across the West—visible in the streets of Athens, but also in the pages of Thomas Piketty. People blame liberalism for much of what they fear: whether large-scale immigration, technological change, or just what the French call mondialisation.

Such a reaction is not unreasonable. Globalisation has indeed brought problems in its wake. But it has also done an incredible job in reducing want. Since 1990, nearly 1 billion people have been hauled out of extreme poverty; and the 75m people who bought an iPhone in the last quarter of 2014 were not all plutocrats. Moreover, open markets could do more, not least in the West. Free-trade pacts across the Atlantic and the Pacific would spur growth, while Mrs Merkel could open up Europe’s single market in services. The magic still works, and liberals should be far bolder in making that optimistic case.

But that is not enough. Two great debates are forming that will redefine liberalism. The first is to do with inequality. A more open society, where global markets increase the rewards for the talented, is fast becoming a less equal one. As this newspaper pointed out last week, the clever are marrying the clever and manically educating their children, making it ever harder for the poor to catch up. Liberals should resist the left’s inclination to punish the talented and somehow to mandate equality. But in the name of equal opportunity, progressives need to hack away at unnecessary privileges (like university places for children of alumni) and wage war on crony capitalism. Private equity and Exxon are both clever enough not to need special tax breaks. Four times as much public money goes to the wealthiest 20% of Americans in mortgage-interest deductions than is spent on social housing for the poorest fifth.

liberalism的两个问题: 社会公平和政府职责

These were causes that motivated Wilson, John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone and the great liberals of the 19th century, who waged war on “the old corruption” of aristocratic patronage and protection for the rich, such as the corn laws this newspaper was set up to oppose. But they were progressives who also believed in a smaller state. This is the second debate forming around liberalism, and a dilemma: for although this newspaper wants government’s role to be limited, some of the remedies for inequality involve the state doing more, not less. Early education is one example. Only 28% of American four-year-olds attend state-funded pre-school; China is hoping to put 70% of its children through pre-school by 2020.

Planting liberalism’s standard

答案?

The answer is to scale down government, but to direct it more narrowly and intensely. In Europe, America and Japan the state still tries to do too much, and therefore does it badly. Leviathan has sprawled, invading our privacy, dictating the curve of a banana and producing tax codes of biblical length. With each tax break for the already rich and with each subsidy to this business or that pressure group, another lobby is formed, and democracy suffers.

Lessons lie in the private sector. It is often several decades ahead of the public sector in the West. Some of the answer is just good management: if Singapore can pay good teachers more and fire bad ones, so can Stuttgart and Seattle. Other answers lie in experiments at lower levels of government, as among America’s states, and outside the West—in India’s giant heart hospitals and Brazil’s conditional-cash-transfer system.

The battle for the future of the state is an area where modern liberalism should plant its standard and fight, just as the founders of the creed did. Because, in the end, free markets and free minds will win. Liberalism has economic logic and technology on its side—as well as this wonderful newspaper, which I now hand over into excellent hands. And that is my last, best reason for optimism.

一生不羁放纵爱自由,祝君好运。

章子怡

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205300788&idx=1&sn=d5bc0c1163bfd5651781659804b361ac&chksm=16697dcd211ef4db047ea0b46346a3b9685cd5b67147b44e800a67f8898724cb1492ea1e20bb#rd

最近在忙,给你看视频吧:)

看看国际章的英文怎么样

同/一首歌

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205241245&idx=1&sn=c32669d445c0d3ea3fa0749fc1cfee8a&chksm=166e62642119eb7215aaff326545918dcca5481e15bfa03ba7168cebbb086a27604599a4d95c#rd

有没有听过Sam Smith的 “Stay with me”? 这首热单涉嫌抄袭老牌歌手Tom Petty的 “I won’t back down”. 在Tom Petty团队与Sam Smith经纪人取得沟通后, Sam 把 Petty 列为歌曲创作者之一, 并且对其支付版税(royalties)。

Of the four phrases, three are virtually identical. The pitches are the same; the rhythms are the same; the chords are pretty much the same, with Petty’s D subbed out for Smith’s C (a change that doesn’t really affect the harmony). Even the structure of the lyrics is similar — the songs’ titles both arrive on the same notes in the first full bar and are repeated in the last phrase.

和你分享的是双方的statements, 学点儿英文。双方都很爽快, 和气为贵才是啊。

Petty’s full statement:

“About the Sam Smith thing. Let me say I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam. All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam's people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement. The word lawsuit was never even said and was never my intention. And no more was to be said about it. How it got out to the press is beyond Sam or myself. Sam did the right thing and I have thought no more about this. A musical accident no more no less. In these times we live in this is hardly news. I wish Sam all the best for his ongoing career. Peace and love to all.”

Sam Smith’s representative:

“Not previously familiar with the 1989 Petty/Lynne song, the writers of 'Stay With Me' listened to 'I Won't Back Down' and acknowledged the similarity. Although the likeness was a complete coincidence, all involved came to an immediate and amicable agreement in which Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne are now credited as co-writers of 'Stay With Me' along with Sam Smith, James Napier and William Phillips.”

******

Youtube上有一个对比视频, 有兴趣你可以看一下。

In this video, the Tom Petty song is slightly rearranged to go along the Sam Smith song. There are actualy pieces missing from the Petty song. They do not exactly line up like this. However aside from the tempo and pitch, no alterations have been made to what you hear.

↓↓阅读原文: Did Sam Smith steal Stay With Me from Tom Petty?

Dialogue | 王自如和Moto总裁

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205219551&idx=1&sn=5a90e162fe0d4dfb213132f870066162&chksm=166ebf26211936304304e7120b1bc61301effa47f2c751001200ac27d28f0628b1bbea7cfbbc#rd

王自如的英文很棒, 点个赞.

刚开始他说了句:You guys are in MIA, missing in action, for the past a couple of years. - 我觉得这就是一个有趣的会聊天的人。

***

分享三篇The Economist的文章给你读

复制以下链接到浏览器, 或者阅读原文

1. 滑雪与中国梦

https://www.evernote.com/l/AEaLVqb_nGNLLLz1MMDhQfVN-JoBgl_P-OY

2. 电子书: 订阅和阅读

https://www.evernote.com/l/AEb6rdf6lrJEDKVjpt-RlCi2G5o_s5JpO7I

3. 讣文: 万宝路的本色男神

https://www.evernote.com/l/AEb6AL8vUydJ4KZzYoVW9LI_uPlKwRsdtJkw

郎朗的英文

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205167708&idx=1&sn=9ecd68c4d3817e1a496d659d31e9888e&chksm=166f45a52118ccb3a1e5f654786df78debaa2c1b1ba7517c3b1b1d8fcbcec80319037f3f7c79#rd

“If one word applies to Lang Lang, to the musician, to the man, to his worldview, to those who come into contact with him, it is "inspiration". It resounds like a musical motif through his life and career.”

和你分享两个郎朗的英文访谈, 从中我们学点儿英文.

What is the one thing in the world that you would rather be?

I (would) like to become, like, a talk show host, if I’m not a concert pianist.

我觉得If I were Lang Lang, 我或许会说If I were/was not a concert pianist, 表示虚拟. 这种情态动词在口语中很有用, 也是我们不习惯使用的。举"would"为例,来自电影Boyhood.

视频2

🈲记住: 不要说" what was happened"🚫

An intransitive verb expresses an action that happens by itself. The verb is not used with an object (does not take an object); therefore, no passive form can be used.

明星讲英文投票

直接回复选项中的人名, 就可以查看相关视频

回复我,你还想听哪位明星讲英文?

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

佳期如梦

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=205072865&idx=1&sn=570ad3c0bfec5b27ff7c1fdfe6f598fe&chksm=166cf018211b790e8fb63a26f802364df1b42e4c50e0eb1199a2818c28557e88d0e26c2c9a89#rd

「佳期如梦」是我刚上大一的时候看过的一本小说. 那时候喜欢一个女孩, 或许是她随口一说, 便从网上下到txt, 放在诺基亚手机里, 猜是不是有她的心思暗语在这书的哪一行里. 我喜欢阮正东, 一副摆酷耍帅, 实际上比谁都在乎和小心翼翼.

几年前听说这本书要拍成电视剧 -- 把美好的念想变成狗血. 我心里想孟和平要找刘烨来演, 东子要找邓超(那时候他还没疯). 至于不够漂亮又惹人喜欢的佳期我还真没有主意(陈乔恩不错:). 刚才突然想到这个剧,顺手在youtube上搜了下, 居然有英文配音版的trailer. 分享给你.

"路远N年,佳期如梦"

我爱你心就特别软，平淡也浪漫，无语也温暖

ericzenglish
英语学习笔记

让我为你唱首歌

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204943635&idx=1&sn=4d479940750b0690ef314bfcff2c8422&chksm=1662e8ea211561fc579025cfee41c74b088f20895f3636e24faffb54f401fae5290bf26b216e#rd

如果你的婚礼进行到一半突然闯入一群陌生人大概会吓坏所有在场来宾，但若这群人其实是前来为新人表演的当红摇滚天团Maroon 5呢？

等了半年终于推出新MV Sugar 的Maroon 5这次一样要带给大家全新的创意。「We’re going to drive across L.A. and hit every wedding we possibly can」主唱Adam Levine与团员们身着正式西装，在这一天共闯入了7场婚礼，看见帘幕卸下时，新人们脸上不可置信却又兴奋无比的表情，让他们这次的行动更显得别具意义，也为婚礼带来终生难忘的回忆！

尽管有的报道说这次💒 “砸场子”是安排好的 -- 有很多演员参与其中. 不过" Don't lose heart,though -- at least one of the weddings in the video appears to be real!"

"It's the coolest thing ever ever ever!"

Several couples who tied the knot in Los Angeles in December were treated to a surprise performance from the band Maroon 5, which filmed and featured them in the group’s newly released music video “Sugar.”

“It’s Dec. 16, 2014. We’re going to drive across L.A. and hit every wedding we possibly can,” frontman Adam Levine said at the start of the video that wasposted to the band’s YouTube channel Wednesday. “It’s going to be awesome.”

Maroon 5 团员混入婚礼乐队之中悄入会场

At each wedding reception Maroon 5 visited, the group’s members hid behind a curtain on a stage that was already set up for the wedding band hired to perform,CNN reported.

Adam Levine就在宾客后面走过，无人注意

But as the curtain dropped during the big reveal, unsuspecting wedding attendees learned that one of the most popular bands in the country was playing instead.

一切准备就绪

Cameras captured the surprised and delighted expressions of the bride, groom and guests the moment they realized it was Maroon 5 on stage. Many walked or ran up to the dance floor, the video showed.

帘幕突然卸下

“It was an out of body experience,” Levine told People Magazine, according to CNN. “I had no idea I would be affected by the overwhelming reactions we received from the couples and guests. Being able to create an unforgettable experience for several people was the highlight of it all.”

The video was directed by David Dobkin, the man who was behind the camera in the 2005 blockbuster hit “Wedding Crashers.”

By late Thursday morning, it had received more than 4.6 million views since its YouTube release.

阅读原文看一篇有关的有趣的文章:

I Don't Want Maroon 5 at My Little Girl's Wedding

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李冰冰

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204887407&idx=1&sn=97c2c10ff08a6840ed78c191080f1538&chksm=16638c96211405806a1f0406c3bea3953eaecb87eecf2ea519798d5caaa4f015fddb4c76193b#rd

李冰冰很招人喜欢啊. 自己单枪匹马上美国电视节目接受采访也真是够难为她了. 不过主持人们很照顾她, 她也很放松.我觉得她的英文还不错, 看的出有在认真的学。

我们从这个视频中可以学到什么?

1. 英美差异
mobile phone / cell phone?

英国人常用mobile, 美国人常用cell(cellular) phone. 不过这个没什么关系都能听的懂. 但是如果你在麦当劳点薯条🍟的时候说 “chips” 我觉得对方不一定能立刻反应过来, 因为在美国一般说French fries.

别管你坚持的是所谓的美音还是英音,或者说你有自己的偏好, 多知道一种说法总归是好的。

2. 错误意识
I never think about I’m gonna be…

用过去式要好一些。(第二段Charlie Rose采访中她就改成了thought)

她开始说my parents even don’t know (I would become a true actress), 然后她随后就改成了”didn’t know”. 她已经意识到了由时态容易产生的误读。

讲英文的时候要注意这点. 例如,如果我们说"she love me", 这句话虽然是语法不正确但是大家是都能听懂的,也不会造成什么误会. 但是如果把这句话说成了"she loved me", 意思就完全不一样,对方大概就会眉头一皱了. 所以，最起码你要有这种意识去使信息更加清楚的传达。也别强迫自己每句话都说的“无懈可击", 别给自己压力, don't be self-conscious.

3. 傻傻分不清楚
used to / be used to

I used to something 和 I am used to something 在英语课上老师强调过很多遍 — 越是强调越容易记差. 举个例子, I used to like xiaosi 是说我曾经喜欢郭敬明.

冰冰想说的是“我已经习惯了明星的生活”, 所以应该是 “but I am/get/got used to it”.

像这种"傻傻分不清楚"的一些词语,自己多较真，下点功夫查一查总结一下就没问题了。

关注: ericzenglish

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冯唐

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204867110&idx=1&sn=94c4cfdddc10dbd07984b441c6efe316&chksm=1663dfdf211456c92282dfd3f8dabe2b96cd511045279d541b5a50aa242ecf6197821760a9f9#rd

本科的时候读冯唐, 非常喜欢 — 直到到读「不二」, you know what I mean! 那时候我刚开始学英文, 视他为超神: 是个医生念了MBA做过麦肯锡的合伙人；年轻的时候就开始读各种禁书,例如洛丽塔，查特莱夫人的情人,然后随随便便就混个托福满分.这样的人生实在是有趣 。

他的口语如何呢? 我一直在想.

近日他在微博上po出了在cntv上录的节目China Insight: Reading matters，讨论阅读，文学有关的话题，全程英文.终于有机会瞻仰.

点击这个链接查看视频： http://t.cn/RZoDP3c

他自嘲自己是“操正宗垂杨柳味儿英文”。看过之后我觉得他的英文还不错 －－尽管比我想象中的差很多. 发音没什么硬伤, 反应很快, 而且很聪明。

两个小地方显示了一些我们学习英文的共性问题: 我们看的懂听得懂, 一说出来就多了许多的瑕疵.

例如他说 “…they go to some guru for advices” 例如他在解释的诗经中的「蒹葭」的时候说: “ you think about a lady you really want, you know she’s somewhere around the river, but you don’t know exactly where he is.(he/she实在是很难).

这些pet-peeves，只有靠大量的听力输入才能 “洗脑”，再加上一次次的错了改,改了再犯,犯了再改的折磨去提高. 简言之, 多较真, 多反思, 多练习. 做个三多青年.

我觉得这和个人对语言敏感度也有关系, 也就是所谓的语言天赋：你99%的努力还不如人家那”随随便便”的1%的天赋. 如果你认为你不属于那幸运的1%, 你就需要加倍的努力来后天补给 — 有一天你会发现, 你可以与那1%并驾齐驱, 然后“随随便便”的就也成了人生赢家。

人家英语多好,或者多差跟我们都没多大关系,重要的是我们可以从每一个身上学到点东西, 他的问题或许也是我们自己也有或者将要出现的问题, 大家一起进步才是最理想的学习方法. 我觉得现在谁要是让我上电视采访我, 我肯定是脑袋一片空白,然后开始胡诌八扯. 这也算是我这个"明星讲英文”系列视频的初衷吧。

再附上一个冯唐的外媒采访.感受一下我们可以从他那里学到些什么?

关注: ericzenglish
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干货 | 金球奖中的实用英文

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204807270&idx=1&sn=c271a234d1fc82d4aa1f9113f7026323&chksm=1660c59f21174c8985954daa2876170e8682173ebfae33e54e9b4f7c0bc62c9d20e25e274690#rd

盘点几个金球奖中的acceptance speeches. 看热闹之余,跟明星们学点英文. 如果有一天你站在领奖台上用英文发表获奖感言,你ok吗？

最短的

Billy Bob Thornton

These days, you get in a lot of trouble no matter what you say. Do you know what I mean? You can say anything in the world and get in trouble. I know this for a fact. So I’m just going to say thank you.

[模仿练习]

想象一下如果「武媚娘传奇」获奖了, 范冰冰登台领奖说:

These days, you get in a lot of trouble no matter what you show. Do you know what I mean? You can show anything in China and get in trouble. No models draped over cars, no cleavage on TV. So I’m just going to say thank you.

最狠的

Kevin Spacey

It’s been the 8th time I’ve been nominated, I can’t fxxxxxx believe I won.

之后Kevin在推特上晒出了🏆，可见他是多么的高兴。

最有准备

Common(歌手)

歌手Common和John Legend(唱all of me的那个) 共同为电影Selma创作了主题曲「Glory」, 获得了最佳音乐创作奖。

Selma这个电影取材于1965年的历史事件“Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches”.民权领袖马丁路德金号召塞尔玛全市黑人对公共法进行抵制，以迫使法院取消地方公共运输工具上座位隔离的真实故事。

I realize I am the hopeful black woman who was denied her right to vote.

I am the caring white supporter killed on the front lines of freedom.

I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand but instead was given a bullet.

I am the two fallen police officers murdered in the line of duty.

人生赢家

George Clooney

这次乔治克鲁尼获得的是终身成就奖。lifetime achievement award当然是“终身成就奖”的意思。 但是这可不是奖项的名字。

金球奖的这个奖项叫做「The Cecil B. DeMille Award」是颁发给 “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”,因为导演Cecil B. Demille是第一个获此殊荣的人，因此以他命名;

奥斯卡的终身成就奖叫「Academy Honorary Awards」; 格莱美的叫「Grammy for lifetime achievement」

钻石王老五克鲁尼终于结婚了。刚开场的时候主持人就开始拿克鲁尼开涮: 你能获奖,全都是凭你老婆的杰出贡献！

George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an adviser to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected for a three-person UN commission investigating rules-of-war violations in the Gaza Strip. So tonight her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.

[视频]

以下是Clooney的获奖感言视频, 男生有兴趣的话多看几遍, 模仿一下.

[分析]

为便于学习,以下文本有所删减。

“Thank you. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be up here. I thought they were going to roast me.

roast 在这里指的是“开涮”, to humorously mock; to poke fun at or ridicule another.

Now it is always fun to come here and catch up with old friends and now that we’ve seen that everybody has been hacked it’s also a good chance for us to meet face to face and apologize for all the snarky things we said about each other. I’m sorry, Don.

snarky指的就是"冷嘲热讽" "毒舌". 用scathing也是一个很好的词.

For the record: If you are in this room, you’ve caught the brass ring. You get to do what you’ve always dreamed to do and be celebrated for it, and that just, it ain’t losing.

I don’t remember what awards Lauren Bacall won. I just remember her saying “You know how to whistle Steve, just put your lips together and blow.” And I have no idea what kind of hardware Robin Williams took home but I sure remember carpe diem and “Seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.” I’ll never forget that.

2014年去世的Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall.

for the record = so that the facts are clear

the brass ring: success or a reward that you try to achieve, often by competing against other people. (Urban Dictionary上有更详细的解释)

ain’t 这个词你会经常听到也看到, 觉得这个词才能显示出 “用词地道”。 但是这个词要慎用(use it with discretion)：about the only times “ain't” is acceptable are in dialogue or when you want to convey a colloquial/vernacular tone.

Treat “ain't” like spicy mustard; don’t make a whole sandwich from it.

So congratulations to all of you for having a very good year. I’ve had a pretty good year myself. Listen, it’s a humbling thing when you find someone to love. Even better if you’ve been waiting your whole life and when your whole life is 53 years. Amy, start the jokes. Amal, whatever alchemy it is that brought us together I couldn’t be more proud to be your husband.

把红色部分背下来:

用来求婚了, 简单直白真情流露: It’s a humbling thing when you find some one to love.Even better if you’ve been waiting your whole life (大龄青年请加上这句and when your whole life is XX years)

用来周年纪念日的时候: XX, whatever alchemy it is that brought us together, I couldn’t be more proud to be your husband/boyfriend.

问题来了:

It is a humbling when you find someone to love. 怎么翻译这句中的humbling? 为什么不用"it is humble"?

参考这个链接,还有问题的话欢迎讨论。http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/01/humble.html

总结几个典礼中的词:

1. A fading actor/actress: 过气的明星, 也可以用 washed-up. 电影Birdman讲的就是一个过气明星想东山再起的故事。

2. “…the importance of freedom of artistic expression as not only an integral part of the American fabric, but a beacon that is reflected across the globe”

试模仿写作: … the impotence of freedom of civil expression as not only an integral part of the Party’s fabric, but a beacon that is reflected across North Korea.

3. Father：可以作为动词使用，例如This man (Alan Turning) fathered computer science.

4. 英国老牌帅哥Colin Firth在介绍 “The Imitation Game”的时候，简述了Alan Turing的悲惨遭遇. 他引用了Oscar Wilder的一句话: No good deed goes unpunished — 好人难当, 好心没好报。

当你看到新闻报道中有人做好事，例如扶起摔倒的老人，却被反诬讹钱的时候，你就可以说(无奈状): no good deed goes unpunished.

好吧就到这里了, 希望你和我一样有所收获. 如果你觉得这篇文章有用, please share / spread the good deed.

关注:ericzenglish
微博: 比尔盖茨比

↓↓阅读原文查看: 「如何利用美剧练英文」

杂想 | 如何利用电影提高口语

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204780291&idx=1&sn=47155c2d225a7704c5f806f2d46d75e4&chksm=16616afa2116e3ec1ec3db6ed9485aab6ecd96de2bea0e30596475409171f8b3f1025c3eee44#rd

昨天看了部很棒的电影,「Big Hero 6」, 如果你喜欢看动画片的话推荐观看. 以下是电影中出现的一些英文, 我简单的做了下笔记，分享给你。

看电影学英文是很好的一种方法, 不过如果想通过这种方式提高听力和口语能力的话，是很耗时费力，却会内力大增的一种。首先要清楚的一点是: 我们是以看影视作品作为学习英语的一种方式; 而不是看美剧顺便学点儿英文(当然,随着我们的不断进步,我们会做到的).

看美剧学英文是痛苦的: 想象一下, 除了碰到什么历史事件时间轴要去百度搜一下谁是谁,历史上是怎么一回事; 你要把听到的每句话都听懂把高频出现的句子一字不差的写下来, 然后反复跟读练习,模仿各个小主们的拿腔捏调, 用“甄嬛体”发朋友圈...

如果你决定不再“打着学英文的旗号看美剧以此来提高自己中文字幕阅读水平"的话, 我在此愿意和你分享一下我多么痛的领悟。

「听力」把实在听不出来的地方坐上标记, 然后找到字幕，看看自己是因为什么原因没有听出来: 是人名地名? 还是你不认识那个单词? 还是你笨? 一定跟自己较真，否则的话你听不懂的东西还是一直都听不懂。找到自己的问题，加上针对的练习，才能有所突破。

「口语」翻看我下列的笔记你就会发现几乎全是超级简单的英文，你完全可以hold的住。问题是，我们轻而易举的看的懂听的懂，可是我们能熟练的使用吗？看电影学英文的一个好处就是：如同模拟世界一样身临其境，你把自己放在电影的那个场景之中，扮演着各个角色，把每个人的台词都听或者讲一遍。然后在现实的场景中，你就能很快的“找到那个模拟过的场景”，几乎就是脱口而出了。因此，把影视中出现的英文评成难易三六九等的意义不大，而是想“这段话我自己能不能在生活中的某个场景中用到？”

因此看美剧也好电影也好(对用影视剧学英文而言), 选择生活化一点的，自己感兴趣的题材。你想在现实生活中说话像甄嬛那个样子，还是爱情公寓那种？所以你觉得权力的游戏和老友记,摩登家庭之类的哪个会更“实用”？ 我个人就不喜欢看纸牌屋,Scandal. Blacklist看到有关中国特工的那集觉得实在是太狗血了,不敢再直视。

「举一反三」 注意要把新知识和已经掌握的知识联系起来, 这样才能逐渐的有效的“积累起来”。例如笔记中用[补充]标示的部分。

注意，很多词句在不同的场景中会有不同的意思，我给出的中文翻译只是根据电影中的场景(自己做笔记的话不附上中文解释效果或许更好)。 笔记是按照时间顺序纪录的。因此如果你想更好的理解这些［口语笔记］，推荐你把片子看一遍。

希望你不只是学会了几个新词，而是学会了一种学习方法。

电影英文笔记 | Big Hero 6

1. Give him a lesson 好好收拾他

[补充］I hope you have learned your lesson 希望你吃一堑长一智

2. Good timing 来得正是时候
3. Should I pick up a book on parenting? (书的内容on比about 要更加具体一些)
4. bonehead （大笨蛋）

5. Sweet! (效果等同于cool)
6. We'll be in and out（我们进去就出来）
7. heads up (小心!)
8. don't be alarmed (不用怕)
9. That's a bummer (这太扫兴了 )

10. burning the midnight oil?(要熬夜的节奏？)

［补充］pull an allnighter

11. cut corners （偷工减料）
12. push the boundaries of XX (重新广泛定义；突破限制)

[补充] push the envelope (和上一个意思差不多,挑战极限)

13. washed-up at 14 (14岁就江郎才尽／“过气”了…) 可以把 washed-up理解为“曾经风光无限，现在已经过气了”。 也可以用fading, 例如 A fading actor.
14. How ya feeling (非常常用的一句，你觉得咋样)

15. It takes a lot more than this to rattle me: 这句话里的rattle指的是 lose confidence / become nervous，使紧张，心神不宁。因此这句话大概是说：这点场面还吓不到我.

16. stop whining （别唉声叹气了）
17. woman up (女汉子起来，man up 就可以当成是爷们起来)

18. Don't mess/screw/blow it up (别搞砸了)
19. break a leg (祝你好运)
20. dinner is on me （我请客哦）
21. Your fly was down (你裤拉链没拉)

22. nail it (搞定了)
23. A dash/ smidge / hint / 都是表示“一丁点” a touch
24. It always cracks me up (这经常能把我逗乐) crack someone up, 就是“引人发笑”

[补充] crack a joke (讲个笑话；搞笑) 例如：他这人很搞笑，有他在绝对不会无聊: You'll never be bored with him around. He's always cracking jokes.
[补充] cracked up to be something = supposed to be something. 常用的一句话: It's not all its cracked up to be. 这不如传说中的好。
造个句子帮大家记忆: I alway crack jokes to crack her up; though sometimes it's not all its cracked up to be. (只是方便记忆，正常这么说话真的很奇怪)

25. If I could have only one super power right now, it would be the ability to crawl through this camera and give you a big hug. (很有爱的虚拟语气)
26. What seems to be the trouble？（哪里看起来不对劲？）
27. pubescent mood swings (青春期的躁动)

28. All right, let me get this straight (好吧，我就直说了)
29. The thing is, since I registered so late. I've got a lot of school stuff to catch up on. (catch up on: to do something thatyou could have done earlier)
30. They are on a vacay. (vacay=vacation)
31. Rules don't apply to a man like Krei. (Keri是个不择手段的人／ 不按常理出牌)

32. You can be way more. (你远不只如此)
33. Anybody else whose suit riding up on them? （ride up: If a garment rides up, it moves upwards, out of its proper position.）
34. fire up that super sensor (使出那个超级传感功能) fire up: to cause something to start working
35. What you just did, we never signed up for. ( 你刚才的所作所为跟我们之前商量的可不一样)

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

↓↓阅读原文查看: 「金球奖中的实用英文」

干货 | 浅谈字典和“英文思维”

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204752433&idx=1&sn=f4505e91f8dd9d2dcbad5ece22d71e17&chksm=16619fc8211616de6ce923a563e3f1c49282fe7fff4ac01c2168bffcebc6fcd166036a6536cc#rd

这是一篇旧文章，增添了一点新内容, 希望对你的英文学习有点帮助。

上大学的时候听过许多老师对“非纸制”字典的批评，其实在科技如此发达的几天，“纸质字典”除了买来摆设之外几乎没有什么作用了. 随着各大字典都已经转型成“网络字典”也开发了自己的应用程序，字典app绝对是学英语的最佳利器. 当然，查字典的目的绝不是简单的“背单词” 或者是 “知道一个词对应的中文释义”，而是通过字典提高“英文描述的能力”， 进一步说就是“口语交流能力”. 考过托福，雅思的朋友都知道description是必备的基础技能. 如果你在国外留学，你也会发现description的重要性和实用性. 而大多数的中国英语学习者除了需要“翻墙才能接触一些信息”的“大山”之外，很多人从小就被“中式英语”所带的"走火入魔"了.

例如，很多人看到"走火入魔”这四个字，或许第一个想法就是, 翻译！ －"walk into the fire and then get possessed by the demon" 这样的翻译固然是没有错的，但是很多时候都是说不通的： 好好的干嘛往火里走. 所以换到英语语言环境之中，我们就要去－－描述. 在这个例子里就是去“描述，还原走火入魔的感觉". 例如，这孩子玩游戏🎮玩的走火入魔了. 英文就可以简单的说The kid gets addicted / obsessed to / with videogames"; "videogames take over the kid"

The first rule of learning English: 用熟悉的，简单的语言把一件事情说清楚. “英文思维” 是一个很唬人的概念 -- 且不争论语言和思维方式的关系 -- 我们学英文不就是想更好的理解他们的文化，介绍我们自己的文化吗? 到头来我们争取扩展视野,减少偏见,"两脚踏中西文化,一心读宇宙文章"! 参看本期最后一篇文章"玩死人的中式英语", 有太多的不知所云，胡说八道都是因为作者的想当然和不认真.

如果你除了教科书，四六级以外还没有读过一本英文原版短篇小说，还没有仔细的看过一个影视作品，就别指望什么英文思维. 睡前读点儿童话故事，例如王尔德的 The Happy Prince, 看几个动画片, 狮子王这种。 或者看sitcom这种, 老友记全看下来琢磨透,做好笔记反复练习, 你会有种“终于开窍了”的感觉。另外The Big Bang Theory 没你想的那么难, 也是一个很好的学习材料 -- 争取可以听的懂Raj的口音。再进阶一点看看脱口秀节目, 网上都可以下载的到(eztv.it), 例如妇女之友Ellen show; 才华横溢的Jimmy Falon; 没节操的Jimmy Kimmel，Conan O'brien 言辞犀利毒舌幽默的Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert-- 这些谷大白话在很早之前就开始听，翻译了 -- 学学大神用什么学英文，别光嘻嘻哈哈的图个热闹。

我也一直试着从Youtube上下载视频然后分享给你, 例如明星学英文系列, Wongfu Production, 神曲搞笑系列, 有兴趣的话你可以翻一下历史消息(我还没有系统的整理). 当然了，看视频这种方式很容易“浪费时间”。除此之外的“捷径”就是看看一些针对性的书籍，例如“中式英语之鉴” “On Writing Well”。

抛开“英文思维”这个骇(害)人话题, 我们把这个问题简化到: 怎么尽量的在跨文化交际中减少错误，减低误会?

通过各种方式去了解文化的异同-- 知乎, Quora, 中英文的有关图书, 影视作品都是很好的信息资源. 用你的知识和智商判断一下这些unfettered/filtered info。这一点Wisconsin大学的几个女孩做的"Channel C"就非常不错, 我之前已经推荐过很多次了, 你可以去百度, 优酷上搜一搜她们的文章和视频.

基本功。如果我问你你英文为什么不够好? 你或许会说是语法,单词, 发音, 口语... 事实是你哪都不行，基本功不扎实/没有. 我曾经有学生问我要“古英语版的莎士比亚著作”，理由是"原汁原味的才是好作品", 先不说古英语和莎士比亚英文的时间轴问题-- 有这功夫你还不如看看赖世雄呢! 想办法把基本功做到位先.

语法推荐: 旋元佑文法(英文魔法师之文法俱乐部)，这样的名字也是醉了。 网上可以下得到. 语法的基本知识是要了解的, 这本书通读一遍, 你会少了很多纠结的 — 很实用, 说的通, 很“聪明”的一本书， 比张道真薄冰之类的好读的多. 或者读一些剑桥牛津之类出版的语法书, 我个人没有还没有看过此类的书籍，无法推荐。 再或者，利用网络资源, 很多学校都有Online Writing Lab, 在此推荐普渡大学的, 网站是: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

口语推荐: 回复关键字 " 学英文 ", 有两篇以前写过的文章, 主要针对“发音方面”。 口语流利度提升方面, 新浪微博上的" 管鑫Sam” 有很棒的指导文章，你可以去翻翻。知乎和Quora上面也有很多这样的文章和资源。

如果你能成功翻墙的话，推荐你一个免费的语言练习网站: https://www.verbling.com/ 这个网站是基于Google的hangout聊天平台, 刚来美国的时候我就是拿它来“练胆”。

顺带提一下, 有native speaker陪你练英文肯定是件好事, 但是也别强求。更多的时候你需要自娱自乐，自言自语 －幻想一下你是奥巴马，米歇尔，或者奥斯卡影帝影后, fake it till you make it!

最重要的一点是: 别怕犯错, 也别总知错不改。例如我今天才知道dig的过去式和过去分词是dug而不是digged; crooked的发音是krook-id 而不是我以为的krook-t; -- 虽然很沮丧，自己总犯这种错误，不过lesson learned! 下次争取说对就好了!

扯远了, 我们回到字典的话题上来.

先举个真实的例子🌰.

有一天我和朋友在学校无意看到操场上有比赛，如上图. 这是我第一次见有人玩这种东西，totally no idea what the heck is it，身边也没有其他的人可以问. 于是 google 关键字- “a sport played with a stick with net on the end”, 网页上立刻弹出来的就是 “Lacrosse”- 兜网球(应该还有别的名字，这个名字实在太蠢）. 另外学习到别克有款叫做“君越”的车的英文就是LaCrosse. ⬇️

反过来，字典的作用就是“用其他的常见词来还原一个你不认识或者你忘记了的词”。 再举一个 “马路鸭子” (貌似还叫做路鸭子）的例子, 如下图⬇️

对很多人来说，必须承认的一点是“你的中文没有那么好” . 例如我一个土生土长的中国人，我说不出👆上面的图片的“学名”应该叫什么－－我是东北人，我只知道身边的人都叫它“马路崖子” 。

刚来美国上学，指着“马路崖子”连说带比划的问一个美国同学 “what would you call it”， 结果她也不知道. 后来用搜“lacrosse”的方法搜"road section"找到了英文 “curb”, 放入字典：“the raised edge of a road, between where people can walk and cars can drive.” －－see！下次你“忘记”了curb的时候，可以就直接说 “the raised edge of a road, between where people can walk and cars can drive” ，我相信对方会知道你想报答的是"curb"

总之，英语中的词是一个life-long work. 所谓口语，就是去描述，用最简单的语言说清楚. 而字典就起到了很重要的作用. 这也正是为什么“不要依赖有道字典”的原因 -- 当然有道字典也有英英的释义，但是,个人认为，有道的侧重点还是“你输英文，它给你中文”这样的模式. 很容易就“记死了”. －－ 既然都查了，就查个底朝天吧. - dic and dig!

最后推荐几个我每天都会用的三个靠谱，实用的字典app. 还有这期第二篇文章推荐的"vocabulary".

附加一个 dictionary, http://dictionary.reference.com/

这个网站提供了两种音标: IPA 和 spell. 如果你的音标读不准的话，试试spell的参考发音方式.

如果你觉得文章对你有用的话， 请分享给更多的人.

关注:ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

如何靠谱的“学单词”？

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204752433&idx=2&sn=94ab8a93035fae966b2c941b3e504c3a&chksm=16619fc8211616de1ec609b3be638a3ea9e4e1dbbb8bc7b81d3d777499865898f2af6279afe4#rd

Vocabulary.com - 背单词软件，app收费，网站免费.

（强烈推荐）

我本人是很反对“背单词”这样一个无聊，低效的英语学习模式。然而这个网站，vocabulary.com，会让你觉得是在“学单词，真正的掌握一个单词”，相比国内的许多“百词斩”，“扇贝”之类的软件，这一款要“有效靠谱”

1，真正的学会一个词。 单词的解释不只是传统的A is B， 而是首先给出一个情景，然后在情境之中解释这个词。例如 ramshackle, gorgeous

Good-looking is one thing. Beautiful is another. But reserve gorgeous for the kinds of looks that take your breath away.😄（给出情景，例子，词源）

（大量的，地道的，靠谱的例句）

2，你可以导入自己的词库，然后spend your downtime playing your own list, or others' lists. 拿我个人举例，我平时用evernote做笔记，现在笔记里面有几千个积累下的词，却一直都没有时间去复习。通过这个软件，我可以把以前记下来，却没有掌握的词输进去（很方便），然后睡前翻一翻，对我的帮助很大。 例如下图是我自己创建的"Eric Notes"

我们自己创建的list 也可以分享给别人一起使用； 我们也可以使用别人创建的list，例如GRE词库，文学作品的单词.

总而言之，如果你是英文初学者：在早期就接触、使用英英字典是对之后的英语学习大有帮助的。 如果你是英语高手，我相信你也会时不时的，或者经常的，对某个词的使用不够确定，或者找不到一个你觉得“准确的”词 －－ 词汇的积累和准确的使用是必不可少的。

记住，vocabulary.com网站是免费使用的；手机app是收费的 －it's worthwhile! 最后附一张我常用的几个对学习有帮助的软件，希望对你也有帮助.

ericzenglish

实用英文手册

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204752433&idx=3&sn=75cddb843fb027204057262b8fad009e&chksm=16619fc8211616de1b72c01e11d379a06b06ccfe0e5c3da9d4f5501d9b0dc8d9fa6d9bd1e93a#rd

在学习英文的过程中，有没有感觉到“不知道自己说的写的正不正确”，“不知道这个词到底该怎么用”－－然后你去百度搜索，很高兴的得到一个 “权威”答案，结果若干年后发现原来他也在胡说. －－I bet you are not alone.

有很多网站在致力于提升语言使用的能力和准确性。例如美国知乎－－Quora, 很多国人发现这是一个非常好的学习工具：很多人想了解中国，我们想学习英语。 例如wordreference, 有很多的grammarian, linguistists参与讨论，给出一个靠谱的答案。网站etymology提供了“这个词是怎么来的”； conu再例如Grammar Girl,－－ 在网站Quick and Dirty Tips上可以阅读，有对应的podcast 和相关的出版。

总之：想把语言用的准确很难；对我们不是母语的学习者来说是特别难。除了上述资源之外，今天和以后不定期的会和大家分享下面这本书上提到的一些常见错误－或者说是－我们自己都不知道我们正在犯着的错误❌. Pratical English Usage. 这本书网上就有下载，当然这也是一本值得购买的英文学习工具书. 今天我们一起看一下介绍. － 尤其是看“How important is correctness"

Level

适用人群

The book is intended for higher level students of English and for teachers.Being a reference book, it contains information at various levels, ranging from relatively simple points to quite advanced problems.

Correctness

对的不一定是错的

If people say that a form is not 'correct', they can mean several different things. They may for instance be referring to a sentence like *I have seen hsr yesterday, which normally only occurs in the English of foreigners. They may be thinking of a usage like less people (instead of fewer people), which is common in standard English but regarded as wrong by some people. Or they may be talking about forms like *ain't or 'double negatives', which are used in speech by many British and American people, but which do not occur in the standard dialects and are not usually written. This book is mainly concerned with the first kind of 'correctness': the differences between British or American English and 'foreign' English. However, there is also information about cases of divided usage in standard English, and about a few important dialect forms.

How important is correctness?

放心犯错，少犯大错

If someone makes too many mistakes in a foreign language, he or she can be difficult to understand, so a reasonable level of correctness is important. However, it is quite unnecessary to speak or write a language perfectly in order to communicate effectively (very few adults in fact achieve a perfect command of another language). Learners should aim to avoid serious mistakes (and a book like Practical English Usage will help considerably with this) ; but they should not become obsessed with correctness, or worry every time they make a mistake. Grammar is not the most important thing in the world!

说白了就是，这就是我们为什么说“要勇敢犯错”，事实是-- “几乎没有人不错"。因此这本书的意义就是－－枕边书

[举个例子］Can 和 [be] able 不一样的地方

Can is preffed in the sense of "know how to", and in expressions like can see, can hear etc. 也就是说"I can see the ship" 要比I am able to see the ship 要更自然. 个人觉得I am able to see the ship貌似是在强调“我不瞎”一样.

在被动语态下，can也要比be able to 更自然.

Be able 厉害在可以搭配更多的时态来使用. 例如我们不会说：One day I will canfind ture love. 因此我们说 One day I will be able to find true love. 或者，你想说“我或许能帮你” －我们不会说I might can help you. 因此我们说I might be able to help you.

注意下面“speak French"的例句

总之，这些东西很烦，很无聊. 不过多知道一点，慢慢的就知道多了，慢慢的就有大进步了－－厚积薄发. 如果你是英文老师的话，我觉得这更是一本值得多看看的书。

如果你觉得文章对你有用的话， 请帮忙分享

ericzenglish

谢谢

咆哮于光之消散

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204722375&idx=1&sn=2a04008031b5e7aae45b9a2402a7c924&chksm=1666093e211180282ccb57bfc06d3b000ac59c79878120a23aca99ab2d9e7f499c0cb11de16c#rd

你不够漂亮, 不够聪明

被揶揄挤兑,被不在乎，被无视

你说世态炎凉, 人情冷暖

你难过委屈, 你说活着真他妈憋屈。

等待阳光静静看着它的脸
总有一天你有属于你的天 。

↑ 把这个图片存下来, 坚持不下去的时候读上十遍，满血复活

时不我予, 咆哮於光之消散

Stop whining,

Man / woman up!

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

英文学习杂想 | Serendipity

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204683367&idx=1&sn=7c4d4f28a087f5772df701ab35cd5005&chksm=1666e19e211168887a9bf24b4179bd8fd4c456e9fe49b329be83a3ace705b5be64f7bc0eb178#rd

今天和你分享一下我的有关英文学习的一点儿想法。

1. Information & Understanding

语言的学习是为了更好的交流, 那么我们交流什么? 简单来说: 信息和理解. 我们通过阅读, 朋友圈, 头条新闻来获取信息; 通过评论吐槽来“换一个角度看问题”, “如何去偷师学艺"

Information:「知乎」和「Quora」就是非常好的交流平台：看看人家怎么说的, 借鉴一下 — 别人提到的书, 网站, 软件,字典自己全去试一遍，然后找到你自己觉得最适合的方式。你的迷茫和不懂也是别人有过的, 你并不聪明过人也不是天赋太差，世界上有太多和你一样的人在努力着, 失败着, 怀揣卑微的理想. "怕什么真理无穷，进一寸有一寸的欢喜."

Understanding: 多想一想 “为什么他知道而我不知道?” 做个聪明的，主动的语言学习者。

乔布斯的一段话与你共勉:

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

2. 做个会聊天的人

如果你的发音基本没有问题，那么你一定有这样的苦恼: 不知道从何开口，怎么保持一个话题, 该怎么做能不吃哑巴亏也不得罪人? 很多时候你要相信这不是你英文的问题。现在有很多bite-sized news App, 每天读点八卦, 关注点你喜欢的东西，做个有低级趣味高尚情怀的人吧。

The Economist 这种杂志是非常好的英文阅读材料, 训练阅读技巧, 了解英文写作模式，以及英文综合赏析能力的提高。但是针对「口语」单项而言，这绝对是一种费力不讨好，甚至是自讨苦吃的方式。

口语的提高除了多说多练习嘴部肌肉外(真的会练到疼)，读点简单实用的东西可以让你的表达更自然。别费力的去记什么idiom, slang — 好不容易记住了你也想不起来用；想起来用了也不一定用的准确反而让人糊涂。idiom听到一个记一个，然后确定真的可以用的自然清楚,有效果的时候再用。

语言使用的评判标准大概都是一致的: 清楚，得体。“说清楚” 不一定是说要“慢”，和开车一样, 你得掌握好速度, 该快就快该慢就慢，该停顿就停顿。“说得体”不一定是说每次讲话都像演讲一样，逢什么人讲什么话, 察言观色, 听懂了再回答。

3. 给你推荐一个好玩的app, “全世界的百科指南” — WikiHow

2005年1月，eHow的所有者Jack Herrick和Josh Hannah创建了wikiHow——一个以创建世界上最大的“怎么做”指南为目标的协作式写作项目。eHow已经包含了数千种指南，而wikiHow可以让自愿供稿者们做得更大更好。

涨知识 — 实用的“如何”口语题库

如何学英文，如何抢别人的男朋友, 怎么点星巴克, 怎么摆台球(摆球怎么说?)...

练口语 — 简单,清楚自然

你能用英文来描述一下怎么做仰卧起坐吗?

认真读一遍, 体会一下简单，自然的表达。

再看这条, 宿醉的感觉如同"a sneaker in a washing machine" －把它用到你的口语上。

4. 学会分享

学会整理分享你所学到的东西, 你会收获更多.

勿忘初心, 给你自己点个赞。

The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard

个人微信: 77147792

新浪微博: 比尔盖茨比

公众号「经济学人赏析」发了一篇文章「当我们在谈英文学习时我们在谈什么」, 点击原文可阅读.

那些年美帝做的Propaganda

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204612477&idx=1&sn=94fcce40eea4dfee3c8a88fc2b731b57&chksm=1667fa8421107392d52d5e4b19104e09080bf371f560a76940d75bf73503c3b0f5bc575864ec#rd

今天去图书馆看到了一个展览, 分享给你。2014年是第一次世界大战100周年, 纽约公共图书馆举行了主题展览.

OVER HERE

WWI and the FIGHT for the AMERICAN MIND

一战的爆发使得美国国内引发了激烈的讨论: Should United States involved in the war? If so, then to what extent and in what capacity?

各媒体都不遗余力的参与到讨论之中，开始使用刚发明的留声机和电影来宣传— all in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the nation.

此次展览展现了: How public relations, propaganda, and mass media in its many forms were used to shape and control public opinion about the war while also noting social and political issues that continue to resonate, such as freedom of speech and the press, xenophobia, and domestic espionage.

在此时期，海报成为了主要的宣传力量:不看书不看电影，抬头一看全知道。

你可以把它简单的/不恰当的理解为:

美国一战时期的大字报和样板戏。

⬆️政府的宣传手段: (详情请自行搜索)

丑化敌人: Demonizing the enemy

火上浇油: Whipping up fear & hysteria

拉开仇恨: Instilling guilt

您说了算: Asserting authority

你幸福吗: Appealing to patriotic obligation

COMPETING VOCIES

中立还是宣战?

随着战争的爆发，美国首先采取的是中立态度(adopted a policy of strict neutrality). 伍德罗·威尔逊总统说: the country should remain "neutral in fact, as well as in name".

1915年, 一战爆发后的不久. 英国皇家游轮Lusitania号被击沉, 死亡人数逾千人，其中128名美国人丧生。此事件使得美国开始"turn the tide of public opinion against Germany and her allies. 在此阶段, neutrality是宣传的主旋律.

100% AMERICAN

我是美帝主义的接班人

1917年美国向德国宣战。一夜之间,"patriotic loyalty suddenly pervaded the country". 政府开始利用各媒体发动群众,制造舆论(drum up enthusiam for the war and also vilify those who were less than wholly committed to the cause).

爱国主义空前

"100% Americanism"

Never in its history had Americans been so widely, and energetically, courted. And never in its history had the concept of Americanism —of what it means to be an American—been so hotly contested.

逃避服役(draft-dodgers)被称为"slackers",

会被社会鄙视, 批斗。

German-Americans, socialists, and pacifists, in particular, were singled out in this regard, as were perceived draft-dodgers, popularly referred to at the time as "slackers." The suspicion and intolerance directed at these groups, as well as incidents of mob violence agaist them.

Don't be a slacker

Join ericzenglish

如果你想"每天都要学点英语,至少背个单词什么的", 推荐你关注我的新浪微博, 账号是: 比尔盖茨比

N19 | 饥饿游戏: 从迪士尼看经济

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204588867&idx=1&sn=b3e194a012fa0c69928946f46e11e183&chksm=16641eba211397ac50cbf5953ea2a760e0574205aca4441efc1b8b0ebad9fd51ee0dcff6f34d#rd

这一期我写了四篇经济学人的文章赏析(选自The World in 2015),文章都很简单. 我们可以从中可以了解信息涨姿势，也可以针对的学习一下写作.如果你有时间, 希望你可以把这四篇都读完.定会有所受益.

上海正在修建斥资400亿, 占地973英亩的迪士尼乐园, 预计将于2015年末开始营业. 这标志着中国第三产业消费的需要和发展 — 从以前“穷怕了”的攒钱，到现在的“有钱任性”。

A hunger for better services

The Middle Kingdom meets the Magic Kingdom

别忘了中国的一个英文翻译是Middle Kingdom.我猜想这里的middle也一语双关，指"middle class"

The most ambitious Disney theme park to be built outside Florida is due to open in China by the end of 2015. The park, which is likely to cost over $5 billion to construct and which will sprawl over a million square metres, will boast the biggest and most princess-filled Storybook Castle in the world. However, when Shanghai Disneyland throws open its gates, it will mark more than the mere arrival of the world’s best-marketed rodent to the Middle Kingdom.It will also herald the dramatic rise of the country’s long-suffering middle class.

China’s state-led model of economic development has favoured investment over consumption. Officials have practised “financial repression”, with banks offering working folk meagre or even negative real rates of interest on their deposits. The gains are then used to direct subsidised capital to favoured state-run firms and national champions in industry. In this and other ways, the system has repressed consumption.

Investmnt-for-export economy — 中国的三驾马车: 投资，消费，出口。三者如何驾驭也是政府宏观调控的难题。随着经济结构的优化升级，第三产业需求逐步成为主体.(是不是觉得我很厉害! 我瞎掰的)

Happily for punters, the country’s leaders have changed tack of late. They are now keen to boost consumption in their effort to shift the economy to a more sustainable path. That promises to lead to a surge in services catering to the needs of consumers. These range from retail and tourism to finance and health care, areas that have historically been dwarfed by China’s formidable manufacturing industry.

consumption-and-welfare economy

In developed nations, perhaps two-thirds of GDP is composed of services; in America, the figure is closer to four-fifths. Services still lag in China compared with advanced economies, but the sector has more than doubled in size since 1980. Its growth now outpaces that of manufacturing, and the day is coming soon when services will account for more than half of China’s total output. In increasingly post-industrial Shanghai, services already make up 60% of output.

Over the past three years, calculates Andy Rothman of Matthews Asia, an investment firm, average annual consumption growth in China has been around 9%. By contrast, it was 1% or less in Japan, America, Germany and Britain. Nominal incomes have been rising at some 14% a year even in the bottom tenth of urban households. Now the next wave of consumption is on the horizon.

The coming services surge could be a bonanza for private firms—and, just possibly, for foreign ones too. Stephen Roach of Yale University forecasts that growth in services by 2025 could amount to $12 trillion. Depending on assumptions of how the country opens up and how many of those services are tradable, he reckons foreign firms could expect a new market worth $4 trillion-$6 trillion in China.

Recent liberalisation in the health sector, for example, means that 2015 could bring a flood of private capital into posh hospitals for the well-off. At the moment, such people often travel to Hong Kong or Singapore for medical care. Even faraway Cleveland Clinic in America has seen Chinese medical tourism double in recent years.

But, in a sign of the times, the clinic is now collaborating on improving brain health with a hospital in Beijing. Foreign investment in health care will accelerate in 2015, especially in higher-end services such as retirement homes for the agile elderly. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, Shanghai and Beijing will head the list of global cities with the highest number of wealthy oldies in future: five of the top ten cities will be in China.

China’s middle classes are becoming increasingly fed up with shoddy services. Their pent-up demand for better ones points to a coming innovation boom in everything, from dry-cleaning to gourmet-food delivery to entertainment. Mickey would surely approve.

「有奖问答」

⬆️这张图片是原文的唯一配图, 标题是"Gourmet enough?"

根据文章内容，你如何解读这张图片?

奖品:

我个人最喜欢的答案将获得The World in 2015 app的兑换码(价值8.99美元), 支持Apple Store 和 Google Play(这个就算了). 有兴趣的你快回复我吧. 我只有一个access code.

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

兵临城下 —小米

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204588867&idx=3&sn=ca4e434df8988d0ce9f2363c26fa3db8&chksm=16641eba211397ac5c5e2390ccecf42f288297d0dc7ad952ea63d8f4e4ba514cff9e38724b85#rd

Meet Steve Jobs—sorry, Lei Jun

小米来了

An attention-grabbing Chinese superbrand goes global

中国智能手机品牌小米是消费技术行业的后起之秀，该公司董事长说，去年小米的销售额增长一倍有余，达122亿美元，该公司计划进一步在全球市场上扩张。

At an investor pitch in Hong Kong, a Shanghai startup compares its technology to the Apple store’s handheld point-of-sale terminals, which liberate sales assistants from the traditional till. It uses another reference, however, for its growth targets: “We want to be the Xiaomi of the retail-software world,” declares a co-founder. The ambition is grand. Beijing-based Xiaomi expects to sell 100m smartphones in 2015, four years after launching its first model—beating Apple to the milestone by a year.

小米公司诞生于五年前，去年它售出6110万部手机，比2013年增长227%。小米董事长雷军在公司博客上表示，公司营收743亿元人民币，同比增长135%。

Comparisons between these two technology companies will become more common as Xiaomi steps up its international expansion. It already sells across South-East Asia and India. The next stops are Brazil, birthplace of Hugo Barra, the firm’s head of international expansion who was poached from Google in 2013, and Mexico, right on America’s doorstep.

Mr Barra is shaping Xiaomi for its Western debut, starting with rebranding it Mi (pronounced “me”). This is partly because non-Chinese speakers struggle to pronounce “x” correctly. Plus, xiao means “little” in Chinese, which is hardly appropriate any more. The company has considered an American launch in 2015, but has avoided making any firm commitments. Doubts surround the viability of its online sales-and-marketing model in developed markets. Yet the decision is to some extent out of its hands.

小米来了, 如苹果当初

Such is the clamour for its products that it had to close an online store set up in Australia by unaffiliated enthusiasts. Third-party vendors currently sell its latest smartphone, the Mi4, through Amazon’s marketplaces in Europe’s five largest economies, creating the type of grey market in the rich world that the iPhone had in China before it officially went on sale. In Britain the unofficial price for the phone is around £350 ($560), almost twice the Chinese price.

小米在全球引发抢购。会不会一天，美国人排队求爷爷告奶奶的买小米...

Xiaomi is riding a growing trend for “good enough” phones at a reasonable price. Its innovation—certainly not lifted from Apple—is in branding this as desirable to the young, tech-fanatic consumers previously drawn into the Apple cult. But it won’t enjoy this first-mover advantage for long. OnePlus, founded in Shenzhen in 2013, started selling its first smartphone in 2014 by invitation only, creating a Xiaomi-like buzz.

以手机销售数量而言，去年第二季度，小米超越三星电子(Samsung Electronics)，成为中国最畅销的智能手机品牌。这家民营公司总部设在北京，最近从投资者处完成了一轮融资。雷军说，据此小米估值为450亿美元，这让它成为了世界上最具价值的科技品牌之一。

物美价廉亲民路线。

先发制人造势,后有OnePlus赶追.

Talk of Xiaomi going public will persist in 2015 despite denials made by the firm’s boss, Lei Jun. Xiaomi has already secured an American-dollar credit facility, a typical pre-IPO step aimed at spreading familiarity among international investors. Besides, Apple went public in 1980, within four years of launching its first product. It surely won’t be long before everybody gets the chance to buy into the cult of Mi.

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走吧走吧,为自己的心找一个家

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204588867&idx=4&sn=9f66ecb4f2f40dbcea28584c581599cf&chksm=16641eba211397ac09011f70c4b3e57b8f676e317da1698ad6040f264d9bb8eaebe8f91534f7#rd

The Economist

Time to fly the nest

是什么让更多的年轻人开始啃老?

又是什么使他们决定自立门户?

文章内容清楚, 可以学习一下用到的论据。

In the film “Tiny Furniture”, the heroine, played by Lena Dunham (slumped on the floor in the picture below), moves back in with her mother because, having earned “a useless film-theory degree”, she has no job and no choice. Mother and daughter argue constantly. Ms Dunham’s character drinks all the wine in her mother’s neatly organised cabinets and gets a prison-style tattoo “out of sheer boredom”

和父母合住有啥不好?

In real life, too, it is hard for young adults to live with their parents. It is humiliating, and repels potential romantic partners. For the parents, it is disappointing that junior has failed to launch and annoying that he never empties the dishwasher.

为啥回家啃老？

But cheer up: in 2015 the unshaven slacker in your basement will at last move out. To understand why, it helps to know why he got stuck there in the first place. First, the job market has been dire for several years, so many young people have not been able to rent or buy their own homes. Second, even graduates with useless degrees in film theory have often racked up vast student debts. Living rent-free with their parents has made it easier to service those debts and still have a bit left over for beer, iTunes and tattoos.

In 2012 a whopping 36% of Americans aged 18-31 were living in their parents’ homes, up from 32% in 2007. Several things will prompt them to pack their bags in 2015.

飞吧，少年

First, the job market will improve. Unemployment has tumbled from around 10% after the financial crisis to 6% in 2014, and it will fall further in 2015. Youngsters with jobs are far more likely to find a place of their own.

Second, the cost of housing will remain reasonable in America, except in crazy places like New York and San Francisco. The ratio of house prices to average incomes has crept up recently, but is far below its peak in 2006. Whether you are buying or renting, space is far cheaper in America than in Europe.

Third, many young Americans who live with their parents will no longer be able to stand it any more. They love them, of course. But Dad’s stories about Woodstock and Mom’s enquiries as to when they will meet someone nice and get married are driving them insane.

时不我予

Because of tough economic times, many members of the millennial generation have put their lives on hold. They have spent longer than they planned in college. They have delayed getting married and having children, hoping that if they wait they will be able to afford it. But they cannot wait for ever: for women, the biological clock is unforgiving. If they don’t do it now, they may never be able to.

找到ta,在一起！

Property-developers expect an explosion of pent-up demand for new houses, as the young adults who have put off forming families for so long at last decide that the time is ripe. Several years’ worth of nest-fleeing could be crammed into a much shorter period. Some of the nest-fugitives will shack up with a lover; others will actually tie the knot. Either way, they will be off your sofa and out of your hair.

想的美, 呵呵

Parents in Europe may not be so lucky, alas. Nearly half of European 18- to 30-year-olds still live with their parents, thanks to sky-high youth unemployment in some countries. In Italy four-fifths of young adults live at home. Many young Italian men like having mamma cooking and cleaning for them but cannot persuade a wife to sign up for the same arrangement. Funny, that.

写完这篇文章,读到了一篇相关的新闻,如下图:

↓↓阅读原文查看如何说"啃老族"?

关注: ericzenglish

微博: 比尔盖茨比

Yellow Fever

原文：http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4MDYyMTcxOA==&mid=204456481&idx=1&sn=e0548e792eabdc0de272c07249c3ca7a&chksm=167a1bd8210d92cea6189a56aae5ec477224907b385b496c37d5f22106eec5da02680dcbdf20#rd

这次和你分享的还是Yellow fever — 老外为什么喜欢亚洲姑娘? 以下有5个视频, 分别从五个方面回答了这个问题.

What is yellow fever? (上期我们已经谈到)

Do you have to be white to have yellow fever?

What do Asian men think of yellow fever?

Do Aisan women have white fever?

Dating, relationships... interracial marrage?

@英语学习笔记 ｜ SAF