标题未加黑的文章小编或者在前面的文章中分享过，或者还没有来的及分享，只要大家继续关注，相信一定能够集齐当月所有文章。
一、文章目录.
[2013.03.30] Online media 网络媒体
[2013.03.30] Know your own strength 实力究竟如何，当有自知之明
Dark matter 寻寻觅觅暗物质
[2013.02.02] If in doubt, innovate 若质疑，则创新
[2013.04.06]Inside the cult of Kim 平壤一如往常
[2013.04.07] Law of the lend 借贷的法则——LIBOR丑闻后续报道
[2013.04.08]The lady who changed the world 改变世界的女人 撒切尔夫人
[2013.04.13] Sex, drugs and hope 性、药物与希望
[2013.04.13]The death of inflation 通货膨胀的终结
[2013.04.13] Abs-olutely fabulous 男性魅力|腹肌，绝对是极好的
[2013.04.13] Smoking: Weight watchers 抽烟=减肥
[2013.04.19] Clean, safe and it drives itself 清洁，安全并且自动驾驶
[2013.04.20] You’re not welcome 这里不欢迎你们
[2013.04.20] Horn of scarcity 犀角难再得
[2013.04.20] Paris, c’est fini 巴黎我们缘尽了
[2013.04.20] China’s economy: Speed isn’t everything速度并非一切
[2013.04.27] A continued infrastructure boom: Going underground 大修地铁
[2013.04.27] Apple: Tim Cook's cash card 库克先生打出现金牌
[2013.04.27] America and the 2nd world war 美国参加二战为何犹豫不决
[2013.04.27] Butterflies in America: To marvel at all things 美国的蝴蝶
二、文章内容
[2013.04.19] Clean, safe and it drives itself 清洁，安全并且自动驾驶
The future of the car
汽车之未来
Clean, safe and it drives itself
清洁，安全并且自动驾驶
Cars have already changed the way we live. They are likely to do so again
汽车已经改变了我们的生活方式，很可能再改变一次
Apr 20th 2013 |From the print edition
SOME inventions, like some species, seem to make periodic leaps in progress. The car is one of them. Twenty-five years elapsed between Karl Benz beginning small-scale production of his original Motorwagen and the breakthrough, by Henry Ford and his engineers in 1913, that turned the car into the ubiquitous, mass-market item that has defined the modern urban landscape. By putting production of the Model T on moving assembly lines set into the floor of his factory in Detroit, Ford drastically cut the time needed to build it, and hence its cost. Thus began a revolution in personal mobility. Almost a billion cars now roll along the world’s highways.
有些发明，就像有些物种一样，似乎周期性地会发生飞跃。汽车就是其中之一。从卡尔•本茨开始小规模制造他发明的“机械车”起，25年之后，亨利•福特和他的工程师们在1913年实现了突破，将汽车变成了一种无所不在，销量巨大，并且界定了现代城市景观的商品。在底特律的福特工厂，通过将T型汽车在流水线上进行生产，汽车组装时间大幅减少，成本随之降低，个人移动能力的革命也从此开始。如今，全世界的公路上奔驰着约10亿辆汽车。
Today the car seems poised for another burst of evolution. One way in which it is changing relates to its emissions. As emerging markets grow richer, legions of new consumers are clamouring for their first set of wheels. For the whole world to catch up with American levels of car ownership, the global fleet would have to quadruple. Even a fraction of that growth would present fearsome challenges, from congestion and the price of fuel to pollution and global warming.
今天，汽车似乎已经在为下一波进化的到来做准备。改变之一与汽车排放有关。随着新兴市场越来越富有，新的消费大军嚷嚷着要买他们的第一辆车。在汽车保有量上如果全球都达到美国的水平，总量上还要翻两番。哪怕是这一增加的零头，都意味着可怕的挑战，从拥堵和油价，到污染和全球变暖。
Yet, as our special report this week argues, stricter regulations and smarter technology are making cars cleaner, more fuel-efficient and safer than ever before. China, its cities choked in smog, is following Europe in imposing curbs on emissions of noxious nitrogen oxides and fine soot particles. Regulators in most big car markets are demanding deep cuts in the carbon dioxide emitted from car exhausts. And carmakers are being remarkably inventive in finding ways to comply.
然而正如本周特别报道所述，更加严格的法规和更智能的技术，使得汽车前所未有地更加清洁、省油和安全。饱受烟雾困扰的中国，正效仿欧洲对有害的氮氧化物与微小颗粒排放进行控制。在主要的汽车销售大国里，立法者要求大幅削减汽车尾气中的二氧化碳，而汽车制造商们在设法满足法规要求方面，也相当具有创造性。
Granted, battery-powered cars have disappointed. They remain expensive, lack range and are sometimes dirtier than they look—for example, if they run on electricity from coal-fired power stations. But car companies are investing heavily in other clean technologies. Future motorists will have a widening choice of super-efficient petrol and diesel cars, hybrids (which switch between batteries and an internal-combustion engine) and models that run on natural gas or hydrogen. As for the purely electric car, its time will doubtless come.
的确，电池驱动汽车令人不甚满意，昂贵，续航短，有时还比看起来要脏――比如说它运行所用的电力来自于燃煤电厂的话。但汽车厂商正投入巨资用于开发其它清洁技术。未来轮上一族有更大的选择余地：超能效汽油与柴油车，混动车(可在电池和内燃机之间切换)，还有使用天然气或氢气的车型。至于纯电动汽车，它的时代无疑终将到来。
Towards the driverless, near-crashless car
目标无人驾驶，不会撞车
Meanwhile, a variety of “driver assistance” technologies are appearing on new cars, which will not only take a lot of the stress out of driving in traffic but also prevent many accidents. More and more new cars can reverse-park, read traffic signs, maintain a safe distance in steady traffic and brake automatically to avoid crashes. Some carmakers are promising technology that detects pedestrians and cyclists, again overruling the driver and stopping the vehicle before it hits them. A number of firms, including Google, are busy trying to take driver assistance to its logical conclusion by creating cars that drive themselves to a chosen destination without a human at the controls. This is where it gets exciting.
与此同时，在新车上正涌现出各种“辅助驾驶”技术，它们既可减轻堵车时的许多压力，也可以避免许多事故。越来越多的新车可以自动泊车，读取路牌，在稳定的车流中保持安全距离，还可以自动刹车以避免事故。有些车商承诺开发一项技术可以探测行人与骑车人，在碰撞发生前否定驾车人的意图并将车停住。包括Google在内的许多公司，正努力使辅助驾驶顺理成章地转变为无人驾驶，让车辆自动行驶到指定地点而无需人工控制。这很令人激动。
Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, predicts that driverless cars will be ready for sale to customers within five years. That may be optimistic, but the prototypes that Google already uses to ferry its staff (and a recent visitor from The Economist) along Californian freeways are impressive. Google is seeking to offer the world a driverless car built from scratch, but it is more likely to evolve, and be accepted by drivers, in stages.
Google的联合创始人谢尔盖•布林预言五年内消费者将可以购买无人驾驶汽车。这也许乐观了一点，但Google已经用于在加州高速公路上接送员工(最近还有一位来自《经济学人》的客人)的原型车让人印象深刻。Google想为世界直接提供一辆无人驾驶汽车，但更可能是逐步发展，慢慢为驾车人所接受。
As sensors and assisted-driving software demonstrate their ability to cut accidents, regulators will move to make them compulsory for all new cars. Insurers are already pressing motorists to accept black boxes that measure how carefully they drive: these will provide a mass of data which is likely to show that putting the car on autopilot is often safer than driving it. Computers never drive drunk or while texting.
传感器和辅助驾驶软件已经证明它们有助于减少事故，立法者也会让所有新车强制安装这些设备。保险商已经在施压让驾车人接受黑匣子--可以测量驾驶的谨慎程度：这将提供大量数据用于证明汽车自动巡航常常比有人驾驶更安全。电脑绝不会酒后驾驶，或是一边开车一边发短信。
If and when cars go completely driverless—for those who want this—the benefits will be enormous. Google gave a taste by putting a blind man in a prototype and filming him being driven off to buy takeaway tacos. Huge numbers of elderly and disabled people could regain their personal mobility. The young will not have to pay crippling motor insurance, because their reckless hands and feet will no longer touch the wheel or the accelerator. The colossal toll of deaths and injuries from road accidents—1.2m killed a year worldwide, and 2m hospital visits a year in America alone—should tumble down, along with the costs to health systems and insurers.
如果汽车最终无人驾驶――对于乐见其成的人来说――好处将是巨大的。Google尝试过让盲人乘坐它的原型车，并拍摄他如何把车“开走”去买外带玉米饼的。无数的老年人和残疾人士可以从此重新获得个人移动能力。年轻人也不用再买要命的车险，因为他们冒失的手脚不会再碰方向盘或是油门。道路事故伤亡的巨大数字――全球每年死亡120万，单是美国每年就有200万就医――将不复存在，还有医疗和保险的支出。
Driverless cars should also ease congestion and save fuel. Computers brake faster than humans. And they can sense when cars ahead of them are braking. So driverless cars will be able to drive much closer to each other than humans safely can. On motorways they could form fuel-efficient “road trains”, gliding along in the slipstream of the vehicle in front. People who commute by car will gain hours each day to work, rest or read a newspaper.
无人驾驶也将缓解拥堵和节省燃油。电脑刹车比人更快，还能感知前方的车正在刹车。因此无人驾驶汽车在保证安全的前提下可以比有人驾驶的车开得更近。在高速上，它们可以组成省油的“公路火车”，沿着前方车辆的气流滑行。开车上下班的人们将每天节省数小时来工作，休息或看报。
Roadblocks ahead
前方的困难
Some carmakers think this vision of the future is (as Henry Ford once said of history) bunk. People will be too terrified to hurtle down the motorway in a vehicle they do not control: computers crash, don’t they? Carmakers whose self-driving technology is implicated in accidents might face ruinously expensive lawsuits, and be put off continuing to develop it.
有些车商认为这种对未来的憧憬是(正如亨利•福特以前曾说过)不切实际的。人们会害怕，不敢坐着他们所不能控制的汽车开上高速公路：电脑会死机，对不?如果车商的自动驾驶软件跟事故有牵连，那它将可能面临贵到破产的诉讼费用，也就没有能力继续开发。
Yet many people already travel, unwittingly, on planes and trains that no longer need human drivers. As with those technologies, the shift towards driverless cars is taking place gradually. The cars’ software will learn the tricks that humans use to avoid hazards: for example, braking when a ball bounces into the road, because a child may be chasing it. Google’s self-driving cars have already clocked up over 700,000km, more than many humans ever drive; and everything they learn will become available to every other car using the software. As for the liability issue, the law should be changed to make sure that when cases arise, the courts take into account the overall safety benefits of self-driving technology.
然而许多人已经在毫不知情的情况下乘坐无需人工操纵的飞机和火车旅行了。在这些技术的帮助下，向无人驾驶的转变正在逐步实现。汽车软件将学会人避免危险的技巧：比如，路上飞来一只球时人会刹车，因为可能会有孩子追过来。Google的自动驾驶汽车已经累计行驶超过70万公里，许多人永远都不可能开这么远。Google汽车所学到的一切都将运用到使用此软件的其它汽车上。对于无人驾驶的可靠性问题，应当修改法律，使得发生事故时法庭会对自动驾驶技术在总体上更安全加以考虑。
If the notion that the driverless car is round the corner sounds far-fetched, remember that TV and heavier-than-air flying machines once did, too. One day people may wonder why earlier generations ever entrusted machines as dangerous as cars to operators as fallible as humans.
如果说无人驾驶汽车时代即将到来的说法还不靠谱，那想想电视和比空气重的飞行器也曾经不靠谱。也许有一天人们会思考，为什么先人们会把像汽车一样危险的机器交给像人一样不可靠的操作员来操作。
[2013.04.20] You’re not welcome 这里不欢迎你们
Immigration into Britain
移民英国
You’re not welcome
这里不欢迎你们
An anti-immigration polemic fails by being too well researched
一本反移民书籍败下阵来，原因在于其画蛇添足的研究
Apr 20th 2013 |From the print edition
Some ride the wave to success
一些人受益于移民浪潮取得成功
The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration. By David Goodhart. Atlantic; 381 pages; £20.Buy from Amazon.co.uk
书名：《英国梦：战后移民的成就与挫败》
作者：大卫•古德哈特
详情：大西洋出版社;共381页;售价20英镑;点此购买Amazon.co.uk
DAVID GOODHART dislikes immigration. He thinks Britain has made a colossal mistake by being so open to foreigners over the years. The efforts of the current Conservative-led coalition government to drastically reduce net immigration do not, in his view, go far enough. He not only disapproves of ghettoes, where immigrants subsist on welfare and fail to integrate into British society. He also dislikes places like London’s financial district and Silicon Valley, with their highly productive, English-speaking immigrants. He can just about tolerate foreign players in the English Premier League, but that is about it.
大卫•古德哈特不喜欢那些“外来户”。在他看来，英国犯了一个天大的错误，这么些年来太过开放;而且当今英国保守党领导的联合政府虽然努力去大幅削减了净移民数量，但是大卫看来这还远远不够。没能融入英国社会的“外来户”只要来聚居区就可以拿到政府救济金勉强度日，大卫并不愿看到这种社区的存在。同样，他也看不惯诸如伦敦金融区或者硅谷这样的高产地区——遍布讲着英文的“外来户”。大卫的底线只限于在英超联赛上看看外籍球员，仅此而已。
He has many reasons. New arrivals make life harder for native workers, asserts Mr Goodhart, who runs Demos, a centre-left think-tank. They compete for public services. Their ghettoes are an affront to common decency. By making Britain more diverse, they have reduced fellow feeling. When a country has lots of immigrants, its residents turn against the welfare state: people are less inclined to contribute money to a system that seems to benefit people who do not look like them. The churn of new arrivals also makes it harder to integrate previous generations of immigrants.
他的理由有一大筐。大卫经营着一个中左翼的智囊团迪莫斯。他斩钉截铁地认为“外来户”的到来使得当地工人生活更加艰难：外来户和本地人争抢公共服务资源，他们的聚居区严重影响了市容市貌。为英国多样化做出贡献的同时，外来户也开始关闭自身的“同乡情谊”。一个国家移民过多，当地人就会转而反对福利国家，因为他们不愿意去供养这种福利制度来惠及外人。还有，新来的移民想融入老移民的生活圈也变得越来越困难。
So runs Mr Goodhart’s argument. His position is not original, although he has made the argument about immigration undermining the welfare state his own. Nearly all British people agree with him that there is far too much immigration. But “The British Dream” is not consistently polemical. Wrapped in an insistent, occasionally intemperate argument about the malign effects of immigration is something much more interesting: an analysis of how immigrants have fared in Britain, and how they have changed the country. This bit of the book (roughly the middle 250 pages) is fairly unbiased, well-researched and shrewd—so much so that it makes Mr Goodhart’s conclusions seem rather odd.
这就是本书作者大卫•古德哈特。他的思想不过是把以前的争论翻新了一遍，尽管确实是他提出了移民有损福利国家的理论。几乎所有的英国本地人都同意他持有关于英国外来户已经泛滥了的说法。不过，《英国梦》这本书可不是始终如一抱着一个观点。由于种种弊端,大卫反对移民的面具下面，还有一些有趣的成分在其中：分析移民在英国取得怎样的成就，以及他们为英国做出了怎样的贡献。这一部分在书中(差不多中间多达250页的部分)还称得上是公平公正的，并且拥有十分准确的理论根据。而结果就是，聪明反被聪明误，古德哈特的结论显得不伦不类。
The immigrant Britain described in this book is hugely diverse—almost as much so as British society itself. There are, the author explains, enormous differences between west African and east African immigrants, between Pakistanis from the Mirpur Valley and Pakistanis from Lahore. Afro-Caribbean women fare much better than Afro-Caribbean men. Some groups, like the Indians kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin, have succeeded spectacularly. Others, like Somalis, are in desperate shape. Some, like Indians, are economically integrated but still tend to marry among themselves; for others, like Afro-Caribbeans, the reverse is true. And everybody is becoming more mixed.
大卫笔下的的英国移民形形色色——就好像英国社会一样。他这样解释道：西非和东非的移民，或者分别来自米尔布尔谷和拉哈尔的巴基斯坦人，他们之间就有相当多的不同之处。非裔加勒比的女性较之于男性所取成就大得多。其他族人所得成就也十分卓著，比如被伊迪•阿明赶出乌干达的亚裔乌干达人。不过索马里人却在苦海中挣扎。印度虽然经济与世界接轨，但是文化上仍倾向于同本族人结婚。非裔加勒比人情况则相反。不过当下来看，所有人的生活都更多地融合在一起。
Mr Goodhart tries to focus on immigrant groups that have not integrated much, and on places where segregation is sharpest. He returns again and again to the Mirpuris who have settled in Bradford—an exceptionally isolated and troubled bunch. But his gaze often wanders, to places with happier and more interesting stories. Even when he focuses on the trouble-spots, he is honest enough to admit that towns like Bradford are becoming less segregated (at least in mathematical terms); that imams are more likely to speak English these days; and that young British Pakistanis are much more likely to be in education than are whites.
大卫尝试去关注没有充分融入当地社会的移民群体，关注不得不孤立生存的移民群体。他一次一次的拜访定居在布拉德福德的米尔哈尔人——在困境中独自挣扎的一群人。但是，大卫的视线经常停留在幸福和有趣的故事之间。甚至当他看到当地人艰难困苦的生活窘境时，他也只会如实地说道像布拉德福德这样的城镇已经开始变得更加融合、融洽(至少数据显示是这么回事);他会说伊玛目如今也更多地开始说英文;还会说年轻的英籍巴基斯坦人比白人拥有更多接受教育的机会。
Honest admissions of tricky evidence repeatedly undermine the argument. In a long attack on obsessives who see racism everywhere, for example, Mr Goodhart mentions a startling statistic. Send out CVs with ethnic-minority-sounding names, and the response from employers is barely half as good as the response to CVs with white-sounding names.
老老实实地引入看似合理的证据会削弱说服力，这种事已屡见不鲜了。同无处不在的高举着种族主义强迫症患者的长期作战，比如大卫就提到这样一组令人震惊的数据。同样是递送简历，如果你的名字听起来像少数民族，那么与名字听起来像白人的求职者相比，你得到理想回复的可能性恐怕连他们的一半都没有。
The result is a book that does not really accomplish what it sets out to achieve. Mr Goodhart does not convince the reader—at times he does not even appear to convince himself—that immigration is such a terrible thing. He has even moderated his theory that immigration must be bad for the welfare state, which caused a stir in Britain a decade ago: he now thinks welfare can persist even in an immigrant society if it is made more contributory. The book is good sociology, and, as a result, poor polemic. “The British Dream” fails. But it would have been a much worse book if it had succeeded.
这本书出版之前，作者信心满满，但是之后并没有达到预期效果。大卫没能让读者相信他所说的移民是一件糟糕的事情，甚至大卫连自己都没能说服。“移民百分之百有损于福利国家”——即使是他自己提出这样一个强硬的理论，如今，大卫的态度也变柔和许多。他的理论十年前在英国社会掀起一场争论浪潮，而今天他却认为只要外来户贡献到位，那么福利制度依旧可行。这本书秉行了社会学，可结果却在辩论学上面跌了跟头。《英国梦》破碎了。话说回来，如果“英国梦”的争辩理论坚若磐石，那么它差得可就不止一点半点了。
[2013.04.20] Horn of scarcity 犀角难再得
Banyan
Horn of scarcity
犀角难再得
It is the profit motive, not Asian tradition, that endangers rhinos, elephants, tigers and sharks
威胁犀牛、大象、老虎和鲨鱼的不是亚洲传统，而是利益动机
Apr 20th 2013 |From the print edition
WRITING in 1917, R.B. Smart, deputy commissioner and settlement officer in Akyab district of British-ruled Burma (now Rakhine state in Myanmar), was worried about local rhinoceroses. His volume of the “Burma Gazetteer” notes that their blood and horns were much prized as medicines and aphrodisiacs. As a result “these animals are ruthlessly hunted down and shot.” The state was already one of the few parts of Burma where rhinos were still fairly plentiful, but “they will become extinct in the near future if not preserved.”
1917年.英属缅甸若开区(今缅甸若开邦)副专员兼殖民官员R•B•斯马特撰文表达了对当地犀牛的担忧。他在编撰《缅甸公报》时写道，犀牛血和犀牛角因为具有医药和催情作用而饱受人们推崇。因此“这些动物被残忍地捕猎射杀。”缅甸境内犀牛数量较多的地方已经寥寥无几，若开正是其中之一，但“如果不进行保护，它们将在不久的将来灭绝。”
Smart’s concern seemed more for the loss of big game for the “European sportsman” to kill than for biodiversity. But he was right. It is a long time since a rhino was seen in the wild in Myanmar. Now Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, once scattered across South-East Asia up to the foothills of the Himalayas, is confined to a few isolated pockets of Indonesia and Malaysia. A 2011 estimate put the global population as low as 216.
斯马特担忧的似乎是“欧洲狩猎家”会失去他们的大猎物，而非生物多样性。但他并没说错。犀牛已经很久没有在缅甸的大自然中出现了。苏门答腊犀牛曾经遍布东南亚，在喜马拉雅山脚下都能看到它们的身影，而如今它们仅仅生存于印度尼西亚和马来西亚几处偏远的小片地带。2011年全球估算数量仅为216头。
They are still threatened by poachers, as are other rhino species in India and Africa. In the Kaziranga reserve in India’s north-eastern state of Assam, 16 rhinos have been shot so far this year, and the authorities have started using drones—unmanned aircraft—in an effort to curb poaching. A rhino’s being dead or in a cage affords little protection to its precious horn. In the past two years there have been at least 20 thefts in Britain alone from zoos, museums and private collections.
它们仍然受到偷猎者的威胁，印度和非洲的其它犀科动物亦是如此。在位于印度东北部阿萨姆邦的卡齐兰加自然保护区内，今年已有16头犀牛被射杀，当局开始使用无人驾驶飞机来遏制偷猎行为。已经失去生命或关在笼中的犀牛则很容易失去其珍贵的角。在过去两年间，光是英国就发生了至少20桩针对动物园、博物馆和私人收藏的犀角盗窃。
In traditional Chinese medicine, powdered rhino horn was—wrongly—believed to be effective against fevers, rheumatism, gout and much else. It was also used in pre-modern medicine in India, Korea, Malaysia and elsewhere. Asia’s population and wealth have both grown spectacularly. Tens of millions of people have become able to afford expensive cures. Small wonder the rhino and other endangered species are feeling the pressure.
在传统中医看来，犀牛角磨的粉能够有效治疗发热、风湿、痛风及其它多种疾病——尽管这种说法并不正确。它在印度、韩国、马来西亚等国家也曾被当作前现代药物。亚洲人口和财富都增长迅猛。以千万计的人都变得有能力负担价格不菲的治疗手段。无怪乎犀牛和其它濒危物种都面临着压力。
The same, after all, is true of many other species whose products are much sought-after in Asia for their culinary, curative or decorative properties. Just this week it emerged that a Chinese vessel that ran aground in a protected coral atoll in the Philippines on April 8th was carrying 400 boxes—ten tonnes—of meat from the pangolin, the endangered scaly anteater. Better-known prey is the tiger, a living pharmacopoeia: nearly every part of it has medicinal value, or some other lucrative commercial use, such as in a rug. That is why tigers may disappear from the wild. Elephant populations are also in crisis. On March 14th and 15th, just as a ten-day meeting of the parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was winding up in Bangkok, at least 86 elephants, including 33 pregnant females, were killed by poachers in south-western Chad for the ivory from their tusks.
而诸多其它物种也有着同样命运：由于具有烹调、治疗或装饰功用，它们在亚洲大受追捧。就在这个星期的4月18日，一艘中国船只在菲律宾珊瑚环礁保护区域触礁，船上运载了400箱——相当于10吨——穿山甲肉(穿山甲是一种身披鳞甲的濒危食蚁兽)。更广为人知的猎物则是全身都是宝的老虎：几乎它身上每一部分都具有药用价值或其它能牟利的商业用途，比如虎皮地毯。虎类因此有可能从大自然中消失。大象的数量也身处危机。3月14日和15日，为期十天的濒危野生动植物种国际贸易公约(CITES)缔约国大会即将在曼谷落下帷幕，却有至少86头大象(包括33头怀孕母象)在乍得西南部被掠夺象牙的偷猎者猎杀。
The CITES meeting also had to respond to the crises facing creatures endangered by Chinese fine-dining habits, such as abalone, sea cucumbers and sharks. Shark’s-fin soup is an important part of the Chinese banquet served at weddings and other celebrations. So every year between 100m and 275m sharks are killed for their fins. The CITES meeting added five shark species to the convention’s Appendix II, meaning trade in them will be regulated. The manta ray, threatened by the popularity of its feathery gill-rakers as an ingredient in a health tonic, was also added.
CITES大会还必须对高级中餐习惯所造成的濒危物种危机作出反应，例如鲍鱼、海胆和鲨鱼。鱼翅汤是中国人婚宴及其它庆典的重要组成部分，因此每一年都有1亿至2.75亿条鲨鱼为了鱼翅而遭捕杀。CITES大会将五种鲨鱼列入了公约附录二，这意味着它们的贸易将会得到管控。蝠鲼犹如羽毛般的鳃耙可用于制作人气滋补品，从而受到威胁，它也被列入了同一附录。
The economics of extinction are ruthless. The fewer specimens of a creature there are, the greater the value of its products. Those holding stocks thus have a big financial interest in the creature’s disappearance. The CITES regime—controlling cross-border trade—seems not to be working. So some argue that what is needed is an expansion of trade, using existing stockpiles, farmed animals and the by-products of “trophy hunts”, to bring down the price and cut incentives for poaching.
物种灭绝的经济学是残忍无情的。某种生物的种类越少，它的产品就越具价值。因此，某种生物灭绝将给那些拥有存货的人带来巨大的经济利益。CITES的制度——控制跨国界贸易——似乎并没有作用。所以有些人认为应该扩大贸易，利用现有的储备、人工养殖动物和“战利品式捕猎”的副产品来拉低价格和减少偷猎动机。
This approach has two big problems. The wild product is always likely to have a certain cachet (European foodies can be known to turn up their noses at farmed salmon). Banyan still remembers the indignation of a vendor in Ho Chi Minh City when he asked in 1997 whether the piece of tiger bone given pride of place in his shop, on plush red velvet, was from a farmed tiger. Second, the bigger the legal market, the easier it is to launder poached goods. So conservation groups are appalled at recent agreements South Africa reached with China and Vietnam, though they are supposed to curb poaching. The groups fear they herald an expansion of the ivory and rhino-horn trade.
这一做法有两大问题。天然野产品可能总会具有一定的尊贵地位(据说欧洲美食家对人工养殖的三文鱼是不屑一顾的)。1997年Banyan在胡志明市看见一家店铺的显要位置上以豪华红丝绒陈列着一块虎骨，便问店主它是否来自人工养殖的老虎，他至今还记得那位店主是多么愤怒呢。第二，合法市场越大，就越容易洗白偷猎品。因此自然保护团体对南非和中越两国最近达成的协议表示震惊，尽管它们的目的是为了抑制偷猎行为。这些团队担心它们会造成象牙及犀牛角贸易的膨胀。
血汗与眼泪
Blood, sweat and tears
The conventional view is almost despairing: as the inexorable rise of demand, rooted in centuries-old tradition, meets a dwindling number of wild animals, the future for these species is bleak. But in fact much of the demand is manufactured. Take rhinos. Demand for rhino horn—and poaching to meet it—fell sharply after China banned its use (along with tiger bone) in 1993. The poaching boom had arisen first from a craze for rhino-horn dagger-handles in Yemen, then from China’s high-end market for ivory and rhino-horn carvings. The final blow to the rhino has been soaring demand from Vietnam in recent years. This stems from nothing more substantial than a rumour that rhino horn had cured an (unidentified) former government minister from (unspecified) cancer.
传统观点几乎是令人绝望的：千年传统所造成的需求增长不可避免，再加上不断下降的野生动物数量，令这些物种的前景惨淡。但实际上有很多需求是被人为制造的。以犀牛为例。对犀牛角的需求——以及为满足需求而进行的偷猎——在1993年它(和虎骨一起)被中国禁用之后大幅度下降了。疯狂捕猎最早是由也门流行犀牛角匕首柄而引起的，后来则要归因于中国高端市场对象牙和犀牛角雕刻品的渴求。对犀牛的最后一击来自近年来越南迅猛增长的需求。而这仅仅源自一个传闻：犀牛角治好了某位前政府部长(身份不详)的癌症(病症不详)。
Consumer demand is not immutable. Mainstream practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have long abandoned the banned derivatives of endangered species. In Chinese-majority Singapore a number of big supermarkets and restaurants have stopped stocking sharks’ fins. In Smart’s day, rhino blood was as prized as the horn and “worth its weight in silver”. It is rarely prescribed these days, even in Vietnam. Criminals, and the officials they buy, make a fortune out of the market in endangered species. They are creating the “traditional demand”, not the other way round.
消费者需求并非不可改变。主流传统中医从业者早已放弃使用被禁的濒危动物衍生品。在以华人为主的新加坡，许多大型超市和餐厅已经停止采购鱼翅。在斯马特的时期，犀牛血被认为和犀牛角一样珍贵，“价值相当于同等重量的白银”。如今它极少会被当作药方，哪怕是在越南。犯罪分子及被其收买的官员在濒危物种市场上大发横财。是他们在制造“传统需求”，而不是相反。
注：文章标题Horn of scarcity化自古希腊神话中的horn of abundance，即丰饶之角。
[2013.04.20] Paris, c’est fini 巴黎我们缘尽了
Mobile apps
移动设备应用程序
Paris, c’est fini
巴黎，我们缘尽了
A spat between Apple and a popular French start-up causes a furore
苹果和法国新兴企业之间的磨擦引起舆论热潮
Apr 20th 2013 | PARIS |From the print edition
THE French have always loved Apple. Its elegant products and nimble operating systems, and its underdog struggles against IBM and Microsoft in the 1980s, are especially appealing in a country that prides itself on being chic, clever and revolutionary. Apple’s two stores in central Paris nestle in locations that are dear to French hearts—under the Louvre and directly opposite the Opéra.
法国人一向钟爱苹果产品。法国以其自身的时髦、机智、创新为荣，但苹果外观优雅、操作灵活以及1980年代虽处弱势，还与IBM和微软竞争，这些都赢得法国人的青睐。苹果在巴黎中心的两个专卖店就设在法国人最爱的地方：卢浮宫下以及歌剧院的正对面。
But the love affair is fading—in official circles at any rate—as concern grows that the technology giant’s market grip threatens to suffocate a business in which French entrepreneurs have been successful: designing applications for mobile devices. The government has made a fuss over Apple’s eviction from its app store of a popular product developed by a French start-up firm. AppGratis offers its users one free app a day, charging developers for making their products known to a wider audience.
但是这种爱恋情绪正在消散，至少官方上是如此。因为越来越多的人担心该技术巨头对市场的掌控会扼杀一个已经让法国企业家获得成功的行业：为移动设备设计应用程序。在苹果将一款由法国新型企业开发的热销产品从苹果应用商店下架后，法国政府对此大肆吵闹。AppGratis是一款每天向苹果用户推出一种免费应用软件的限时免费推荐服务平台，它靠的是把产品推到大市场上去以此向该产品的开发商收费。
Simon Dawlat, the boss of AppGratis and creator of its eponymous product, thinks the app performs a valuable service in providing “a continuous stream of editorial picks” of the highest quality from the complex world of apps. Around 12m people have downloaded AppGratis, he says, and perhaps a quarter of them at least consider the chosen app each day. First marketed outside France in 2012, AppGratis has at times been the most popular free entertainment download for devices running Apple’s iOS operating system in 78 countries including the United States, according to App Annie, a market-research firm. In early 2013 AppGratis had raised more than €10m ($13m) for an expansion that has now been put on hold.
AppGratis的老总同时也是与其同名商品的创始人西蒙多拉特认为，这种应用软件起到的一点非常重要的作用是能在复杂的应用软件世界里提供高质量的一系列精品推荐。他声称，大约有1200万用户下载了限时免费推荐平台，并且大约有四分之一的用户每天都会至少会考虑所推荐的应用软件。根据一个市场研究公司安妮应用软件的调查，包括美国在内的78个国家中，AppGratis某些时候是运用苹果iOS操纵系统的设备用户最热门的免费娱乐软件下载选择。在2013年早期AppGratis因其推广盈利超过1000万欧元(1300万美元)，而现在，该软件的推广运营却被搁置。
Apple says AppGratis flouted its bans on promoting other publishers’ products and on using “push” notifications for paid marketing. Apple dislikes apps that serve as shopfronts for other ones. It worries that “app-discovery” products can help developers with deep pockets move their apps up the league tables and distort the market. So it is rather puzzling that a version of AppGratis for iPads was approved less than a week before the mobile-phone version was evicted from the app store, and that other app-discovery applications are still available there. Perhaps AppGratis was growing too popular too quickly and that was its real fault.
苹果公司声称，AppGratis对于其禁止平台推广其他发行商的产品以及禁止凭借推送消息盈利的规则表示讽刺。苹果不喜欢那些作为其他商品门面的应用软件。他们担心应用发现这种软件会帮助那些资金雄厚的开发者将他们的应用软件排名前移，同时造成的市场秩序歪曲。因此，手机版AppGratis从应用商店下架前ipad版的AppGratis上架还不到一星期，而其他应用发现的软件确仍能在架上这一现象非常令人困惑。也许AppGratis真正的错误是他发展得太迅速太受人欢迎了。
Fleur Pellerin, France’s digital-economy minister, castigated Apple on April 11th for its “brutal” treatment of AppGratis and spoke of tightening the regulation of giant internet firms, in France and at European Union level. The country’s competition authority is looking into the relationship between app stores—Google’s no less than Apple’s—and developers. The French have a lengthening list of grievances against the internet giants, including their failure to pay serious taxes, the refusal of Microsoft’s Skype to register as a telecoms operator and Twitter’s reluctance to name those behind an outburst of racist tweets. Ms Pellerin may not manage to whittle them down to size; others have tried and failed. But for Apple and France, at least, it is looking increasingly like the end of the affair
法国数字经济部长芙蓉皮勒辛在4月11日在法国以及欧盟层中严词谴责了苹果对AppGratis的野蛮行径，并且谈到要加强对巨头公司的管理规划。法国的竞争主管机构已经开始着手调查应用商店与开发商的关系，谷歌和苹果在这上面是五十步笑百步。法国对国际巨头产业的抱怨详单是越写越长，其中就包括了他们无法征收大量的税费，还有微软公司拒绝将其开发的网络语音沟通工具Skype注册为电信运营商，以及微博客不愿指认那些大量的种族主义微博的幕后人。曾今有人尝试过去削弱他们的势力却都无疾而终了。皮勒辛女士也许同样无法做到，但似乎苹果与法国的这段韵事却在逐渐走向终点。
[2013.04.20] China’s economy: Speed isn’t everything速度并非一切
China’s economy
中国经济
Speed isn’t everything
速度并非一切
The hidden consolation of disappointing Chinese growth is a more modern economy
中国经济增长放缓的背后：一个更现代的经济体系
Apr 20th 2013 | From the print edition
FOR years, critics of China have complained that it prizes speed over balance. The economy’s expansion has been heedless as well as relentless, breakneck as well as headlong. Rapid development has turned fishing villages into factory towns and factory towns into financial hubs, but it has also taken a toll. Heavy investment has crowded out consumption, and heavy industry has muscled out services, as if making stuff mattered more than serving people.
最近几年，中国的批评者指责其发展过于追求速度导致失衡。经济一路狂奔，势头不减，可惜的急不择路，不计危险。高速的发展令曾经的渔村摇身一变成为工业城市，再建设成为金融中心，但是也付出了代价。巨额投资极大地压缩了消费，重工业的发展又使服务业步履维艰——似乎生产商品比服务人民更重要。
This week, however, China faced a less familiar complaint: it is not growing fast enough. New figures showed the economy expanding by 7.7% in the year to the first quarter, marginally slower than the previous quarter’s pace and notably slower than expected. The loss of momentum was a puzzle, given the spectacular surge in credit in January and March (see article). The fact it came at the same time as a lull in the American economy (see article) and a relatively gloomy set of forecasts for most big economies from the IMF did not help the mood. China’s stockmarket reacted unhappily.
但是，这个礼拜却有人抱怨中国增长速度不够快——非常少有。最新数据显示第一季度为止的这一年里经济增长率为7.7%，这个数据表示这个增长速度稍微低于上个季度为止的那一年，却明显是低于预期。增长势头荡然无存使人迷惑不解，毕竟一月和三月的信贷量简直扶摇直上。如今恰逢美国经济增长停滞不前，IMF对主要经济体前景的预期相对悲观更是雪上加霜。中国的股票市场表现疲软。
However, just as fast growth masked underlying strains, so China’s disappointing growth has obscured two encouraging trends that may matter hugely for China’s future. Consumption, although still low, made a bigger contribution than investment to China’s growth in the first quarter. That sustains a break with investment-led growth that dates back to 2011. Even more notable, services have trumped industry’s contribution to GDP in the past three quarters and have almost matched it over the past four—which has not happened since the 1960s.
然而，高速增长掩盖着背后的经济负担，因此中国目前不容乐观的经济状况或许隐隐传达出两个足以振奋人心的增长趋势，它们在未来会发挥着举足轻重的作用。内需，尽管占有比重仍然较低，却在第一季度已经为其发展做出巨大贡献，超过了投资。这表明自2011年以来由投资带动的增长局面已经被打破。更值得注意的是，服务业在过去三个季度对GDP的贡献超过了工业，并在过去的四个季度的贡献几乎能与之并驾齐驱——自60年代以来，可谓闻所未闻。
In short China is modernising, becoming more like a Western economy, with consumers and services to the fore. And these two promising trends reinforce each other. Because services are more labour-intensive than industry, their growth boosts wages and household income. Fatter pay-packets then encourage consumption, and consumer spending, in turn, favours services. In economic life, as one economist has put it, “Result becomes cause and cause becomes result.”
总之，中国正在现代化，变得更像一个西方世界里的经济体，内需和服务业成为发展主要动力，彼此之间又相辅相成，互利相生。因为比起工业，服务业属于劳动密集型产业，同时服务业的发展又能促进工资和家庭收入的增加。工资上涨，鼓励消费，而消费者的消费转过来还是对服务业有利。在经济生活中，一位经济学家曾言“因果相生，循环往复。”
Some of the results reflect political causes. By passing stronger labour laws in 2008, China’s government bolstered workers’ bargaining power and thus their consumer power. By allowing its exchange rate to appreciate, it has directed China’s energies inward, away from exports and towards services, which are often consumed at the point of production. The regime is also busy easing the fiscal burden on the sector, replacing a clumsy turnover tax with a lighter value-added tax.
一些现象则反应了政治因素的作用。2008年，中国通过一个强有力的劳动法，使得政府支持工人享受更多的权利和拥有更高的购买力。人民币汇率的上升，使中国能源市场直接对内，不是用于出口贸易或者国内服务业上——这些能源通常在生产线上就已经被消耗掉。这种体制同时也在减轻这方面的财政负担，把繁重的营业税转化为较轻的增值税
Slower can be better
慢慢来别着急
If China’s growth slows too sharply, throwing lots of people out of work, such structural improvements will count for little. Better balance is scant consolation to an economy on its knees. But the slowdown has not yet hurt employment. According to Nomura, a bank, the number of job vacancies per applicant in the first quarter was 1.1, the highest since records began in 2001. Urban employment grew by 3m.
如果中国的经济增长速度急剧下降将导致很多人失业，即使实施结构性的改革也无济于事。虽然经济奔溃时再好的平衡只有杯水车薪的作用，但是这种放缓仍然没有影响到就业率。根据野村证券的数据显示，空缺职位与求职者的比率是1.1:1，是2001年有数据记录以来的最高值。城市增加了三百万个就业岗位。
This tightness in the labour market suggests that China’s economy is operating close to its limits. “Ultra high-speed growth” is no longer feasible, let alone desirable, as Xi Jinping, China’s new president, points out. Rather than chasing growth at any cost, his government has imposed regulations on shadow banking, persevered with curbs on property speculation, and clamped down on government extravagance, such as the schmoozing and boozing, kowtowing and Maotai-ing that accompanies so much official business.
劳动力市场的紧张状况预示着中国经济正在走向极限。新上任的中国主席习近平指出，“超高速增长方式”已经不再可行，更不可取。其政府制定一系列措施，意在针对“影子银行”，坚决打击房地产投机，以及减少三公消费，比如送礼和应酬，以及在政务接待中的拍马宴和茅台宴，而不是不惜一切代价获得经济增长。
As China’s economy matures, its pace will slow. Fighting this economic law will only invite inflation, excess and harder reckonings. Growing fast is a poor alternative to growing up.
随着中国的经济日益成熟，她的发展步伐就会减慢。违背经济规律只会带来通货膨胀以及产能过剩以及浪费。速度不是发展的代名词。
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