1、12006Text 1In spite of “endless talk of difference”，American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse，and the casualness and absence of deference” characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into “a culture of con
2、sumption” launched by the 19thcentury department stores that offered “vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite,” these were stores “anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democrat
3、ic act.” The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization. 不管我们如何喋喋不休地谈论差别，美国社会实际上是一台同化人们的神奇的机器。这就是民主化的着装和言谈，并且还有种随意和缺乏尊重感，这些构成了通俗文化的特性。人们被一种消费文化所吸引了，这种文化是由十九世纪在高雅的氛围中陈列着琳琅满目的商品的百货商店所开始的。 他们不是为了迎合有知识的精英们而开设的专门商店，而是创建了“不分阶层和背景人人都可以进入”的大众商店。这使得购物成为一种大众的、民主的行为。大众传媒、广告和体育也是协助人们
4、均质化的推动力。Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that todays immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immi
5、grants were 9.8 percent of population; in 1900, 13.6 percent .In the 10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1，000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1, 000. Now, consider three indices of assimilationlanguage, home ownership and intermarriage.尽管这种文化并不算高雅，但也算不上有
6、害，移民们很快就融入了这种共同文化。Gregory Rodriguez 为美国移民研讨会撰文指出，今天的移民既不是处于空前的水平，也不抵制同化。在 1998 年，移民占全国人口的 9.8%；在 1900 年为13.6%。在 1990 年以前的十年之中，在每千位居民当中，有千分之 3.1 的新来的移民；而在 1890 年以前的十年之中，每千位居民当中就有千分之 9.2 的移民。现在，让我们来看一下三个同化指标语言、拥有产权住房和异族结婚情况。The 1990 Census revealed that “a majority of immigrants from each of the fifte
7、en most common countries of origin spoke English “well” or “very well” after ten years of residence.” The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. “By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families.” Hence the description of Am
8、erica as a “graveyard” for languages. By 1996 foreignborn immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a homeownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans.1990 年的人口普查透露：“来自十五个移民数量最多的国家的移民在到美国十年后英语说得好或很好 。 ”移民的子女几乎都说两种语言，且精通英语。2“到了第三代，在大多数移民家庭，他们的母语就消失了。
9、”因此，有人就把美国描述成了“语言的坟场” 。到了 1996 年，出生于国外的、在 1970 年以前到达美国的移民有 75.6%购置了自己的住房，这个数字高出土生土长的美国人的拥有自己所有权住房的百分比69.8%。Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics “have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.Sborn whites and blacks.” By the third generation, one third of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics, and
10、41 percent of AsianAmerican women are married to non-Asians.在国外出生的亚裔和西班牙裔移民“与美国本土白人和黑人相比，与异族通婚的比率要高。 ”到了第三代，有三分之一的西班牙裔女性与非西班牙裔男性结婚，而有 41%亚裔美国妇女与非亚裔男性结婚。Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet “some Amer
11、icans fear that immigrant living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nations assimilative power.” 罗得里格斯写道，即使那些住在世界各地偏僻村庄的孩子们都是诸如阿诺.施瓦辛格和加思.布鲁克斯等明星的星迷，然而“一些美国人却害怕住在美国的移民不知为何能不受这个国家的同化力量的影响” 。Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough
12、 to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against Americas turbulent past, todays social induces hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.在美国是否存在不和以及潜在的不安？答案是肯定的，因为这个国家足够大以至于什么现象都存在。但是与美国动荡狂暴的过去相比，如今的社会基本不能说明美国的社会环境正变得黑暗，且正在恶化。Text 2Stratford-on-Avon, as we all kno
13、w, has only one industry-William Shakespeare-but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company （ RSC）, which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely
14、 live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaways Cottage, Shakespeares birthplace and the other sights.众所周知 Stratford-on-Avon 只有一个特色,那就是威廉莎士比亚,但这儿却有两个相互独立的部门,他们随着时间的变化而日益变得敌对。这儿有皇家莎士比亚公司（RSC） ， 它在 Avon 的莎士比亚纪念剧院里将很多优秀的戏剧作品呈现给大家 。这儿的居民大部分是靠挣来游玩的游客的钱来维持生计，这些游客并不是来看戏
15、剧的，而是来看 Anne Hathaway 的庄园，莎士比亚的出生地和其他的景色。The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSCs actors, them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. Its all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who ea
16、rns their living, was himself an actor （with a beard） and did his share of noise - making.3Stratford 的当地乡绅们都质疑剧院有没有为当地的税收收入做一点贡献。他们直言讨厌 RSC 的演员，这些演员留着长头发，长胡须，拖着凉鞋，吵吵嚷嚷。这真是一种绝妙的讽刺，当你想到作为他们摇钱树的莎士比亚,自己也是个演员，留着胡子，一起大吵大闹。The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus- and o
17、ften take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side dont usually see the plays, and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight - seeing along with their play- going. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much
18、of the towns revenue because they spend the night （some of them four or five nights） pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall.游客群并不是完全分开的。游览者乘公车来,，经常会去游览 Warwick 城堡和Blenheim 宫殿，通常不会去看戏，并且他们中的一些人甚至会对在 Stratford 能找到剧院感到惊讶。然而，看
19、戏者只花少量的时间在观光上，也就是在戏剧演出时顺便看看。RSC 主张，是看戏者给城镇带来大量的税收，因为他们通常花整晚上时间（有些是四到五个晚上）在旅馆或饭店里大量消费。然而游览者在当天的黄昏前就能把所有事情做完了，然后离开小镇。The townsfolk dont see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every
20、 hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there， which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive.当地居民并不这么认为，地方政府也直接没有给予 RSC 补贴。Stratford 一
21、向都会哭穷。然而城镇上每一家旅馆似乎都增加了新的部门或是鸡尾酒酒吧。希尔顿也在这儿建了一座自己的酒店，这里肯定可以能看到被装饰一新的哈姆雷特汉堡酒吧，Lear 休息室，宴会厅等等。进一步说，这里消费将很贵。Anyway, the townsfolk cant understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. （The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 per c
22、ent occupied all year long and this year theyll do better.） The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low.总之，居民不明白为什么 RSC 需要补贴。 （剧院已经打破了连续三年以来的就座率纪录。去年整年的 1431 个座位的就坐率达到了 94%，今年将会更高。 ）当然，原因是，演戏的花费高了，然而票价仍然很低。It would be a shame to raise prices too much because
23、it would drive away the young people who are Stratfords most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike （though they come from all over）lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and 4bedding down for the nigh
24、t on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a.m.大幅增加票价是一件很为难的事情，因为这样会把 Stratford 的最有魅力的顾客年轻人赶走。他们完全是为了戏而来，不是为风景。他们看起来都一个样（虽然他们从各个地方而来）消瘦、率直、专注的脸庞，穿着牛仔裤和便鞋，吃着小圆面包，在剧场外的石板上过夜，以便能买得到 2
25、0 张座票和 80 张站票，这些票都是为那些睡觉的人准备的，并且在票房第二天上午 10 点半开始售票时就卖给他们。Text 3When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals. they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to e
26、xtinction.Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.当史前的人到达世界的一个新的地方时，那里的大部分动物就会发生奇怪的事情。它们突然灭绝了。小部分动物种族存活了下来，但大部分的，成长缓慢的动物则成了狩猎的目标，并且很快被狩猎到灭绝。现在相类似的事情发生在大海中.That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is ju
27、st how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass （the amount of living biological matter） of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over
28、time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators （animals that kill and eat other animals） in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.这些年在海中的捕捞活动太过频繁，就像
29、 Ransom Myers 和 Boris Worm 这些年所研究的，事物在迅速地变化着。他们研究了半个世纪以来世界上所有的鱼场。他们的方法不是为了试图估算特定区域的海洋中实际动物总数（活着生物的总数） ，而是研究单位面积中海洋生物数量的变化。根据他们最近在自然杂志上发表的文章，大型食肉的海洋生物（一种杀死和吃其它动物的生物）的总量在 15 年的时间里已经减少了平均 80%。在一些大型的捕鱼场，这个数量已经减半。Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. One reason for this is that fishi
30、ng technology has improved.Todays vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by change
31、s in catch sizes. In the early days, too, lonelines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of
32、 longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after 5they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.Worm 博士承认这些数字还只是保守数字 ，一个原因是今天的捕鱼技术已经大大改善，可以通过卫星和声波这些在 50 年前不可能有的东西来发现猎物，这同50 年前相比意味着可以捕获更多的海洋生物，所以现在和过去的真正差距可能会比之前在捕获区记录的数据所体现出的更糟糕。在早期的时候，多勾的鱼杆线已经
33、对鱼不起作用了。因此有一些鱼种没被抓到，往后没有鱼饵的鱼钩根本捕不到鱼，导致过去的捕鱼业受到轻视。而且，早期用鱼钩捕鱼的日子，有许多鱼在它们上钩后被鲨鱼给吃了。那不再是个问题，因为现在鲨鱼已经很少了。Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the date support an idea current among marine biologists, th
34、at of the “shifting baseline”. The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be crop
35、ped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that， which is a bad way to be business.Dr. Myers 和 Dr. worm 声称说，他们的工作已经确定了一个正确的基本方针，这个方针是未来管理中必须要使用的。他们认为数据恰恰体现了一个海洋生物学家都支持的观点。这个观点就是“改变基线” 。这个概念就是说人们已经很难观察得到大范围海洋中发生的变化，
36、因为他们只是回顾从过去以来相对短的时间。这确有其事，因为理论告诉我们如果一个渔场的总储量如果连起初的最大可承受的捕鱼量的 50都不到，就应该降低捕鱼数量了。大多数渔场远远低于这个数，这是对以后的捕鱼业非常不利的。 Text 4Many things make people think artists are weird.But the weirdest may be this: artists only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.许多事情让人们觉得艺术家很
37、古怪。最古怪可能是：艺术家的唯一工作就是寻找情感，然而他们所关注的对象大多是那些不幸的人。This wasnt always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere from the 19th century onward,more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, phony or, worst of all, boring ,as we went f
38、rom Wordsworths daffodils to Baudelaires flowers of evil.当然不总是那样。艺术的最早形式，像绘画和音乐，都是最适合表达快乐的。但在 19 世纪的某个时期，更多的艺术家开始把快乐看成无意义的，假冒的，甚至是最糟的。我们可以从 Wordsworth 的黄水仙到 Baudelaire 的罪恶之花看出这种变化。You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery. But its not a
39、s if earlier times didnt know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason,in fact,may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.6你可能会争论艺术变得对幸福如此怀疑是因为在现代看到了这样的苦难。但这并不是因为在早期不了解持久的战争,灾难和大规模的屠杀无辜。事实上，原因可能与之相反：现在世界上有太多快乐要去谴责。After all, what is the one
40、 modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness？ Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.归根结底，几乎完全致力于描写快乐的那种现代表现方式是什么呢？广告。反快乐艺术的兴
41、起几乎完全与大众传媒同步出现，而随之兴起了一种商业文化，在这种文化中，快乐不仅是一个抽象概念，而是一种意识形态。People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which remi
42、nded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.早期的人们被悲痛之使者所萦绕。他们工作到筋疲力尽，生活几无保障，年纪轻轻就命丧黄泉。在西方，在大众传媒和文学普及之前，最有效的大众媒体是教堂，它提醒信徒们，他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们总有一天会成为蛆虫的食物。在这种信仰下，他们对此已十分了然，无须其艺术再表现这种失
43、落感。Today the messages the average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial and forever happy .Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an ag
44、endato lure us to open our walletsthey make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. “Celebrate！” Commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.今天，你们普通西方人面对的围绕我们四周的信息不是宗教的，而是商业的，而且一直让人快乐。 快餐食客、新闻主播、发短信的人，都在笑啊笑啊。我们的杂志突出刊登满面春风的名人和
45、美满幸福的家庭。这样的消息都有一项任务即引诱我们打开钱包去使这些看起来并不可靠的快乐变得真实起来。 “欢庆吧！”宣传关节炎良药西乐葆的广告这样号召道，随后我们却发现它能增加心脏病的发病率。But what we forgetwhat our economy depends on us forgettingis that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointme
46、nt. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. Its a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.但是我们所忘记的是我们的经济依赖着我们的遗忘经过痛苦得来的快乐比没有经过痛苦得来的快乐好得多。带给我们最大快乐的事件，同时也暗含着巨大的损失和失望。现在，在耳边充斥着能轻易得到快乐的承诺时，我们需要有人告诉我们，正如宗教曾经所做，死亡警示：记住你会死，一切将会终结，7快乐虽然到来，但是它不能消除苦难，而是与其共存。这可能比抽烟更加毒害人的健康，然而，不知为何，也许会带来一股清新的气息。
