历年考研英语一阅读真题翻译(2004-2014年)

2014年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1

In order to “change lives for the better” and reduce “dependency,” George Osbome,Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the “upfront work search” scheme. Only if the jobless arrive at the job centre with a register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit-and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly. What could be more reasonable?

为了“让生活变得更美好”以及减少“依赖”，英国财政大臣乔治?奥斯本引入了“求职预付金”计划。只有当失业者带着简历到就业中心，注册在线求职并开始找工作，才有资格获得补助金——然后他们应该每周而非每两周报告一次。有什么比这更合理呢？

More apparent reasonableness followed. There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker’s allowance. “Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on.”he claimed. “We’re doing these things because we know they help people say off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster” Help? Really? On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with “reforms” to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsides laziness. What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for “fundamental fairness”-protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits.

更加明显的合理性如下。现在领取求职者补贴要等待七天。“这前几天应该用来找工作，而不是办理失业登记（以获得救济金）。”他说，“我们这样做是因为我们知道，这样会帮助人们摆脱补助并让依赖补助的人尽快就业。”帮助？真的吗？乍一听，这是位关心社会的大臣，他努力改善人们的生活，包括对一个明显放纵的体系的“改革”，这个体系不要求新失业者付出多少努力去找工作，为其懒惰埋单。我们将会知道，激励他的是他对“基本的公正”的热诚——保护纳税人，控制花费以及确保只有最值得帮助的申请者才能得到补助金。

Losing a job is hurting: you don’t skip down to the job centre with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state. It is financially terrifying psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you are now excluded from the work environment that offers purpose and structure in your life. Worse, the crucial income to feed yourself and your family and pay the bills has disappeared. Ask anyone newly unemployed what they want and the answer is always: a job.

失业是痛苦的：你不会内心歌唱并跳跃着到就业中心去，为从这个慷慨国度得到加倍收入的前景而欣喜。在经济上它令人生畏，在心理感到难堪，并且你还知道那种扶持的微薄和非常难以得到。现在没人需要你；你现在被排除在工作环境之外，那里会给予你人生的目标和体制。更糟糕的是，失去了用以养家糊口和支付账单的至关重要的收入。问任何新失业者他们想要什么，答案永远是：一份工作。

But in Osborne land, your first instinct is to fall into dependency- permanent dependency if you can get it-supported by a state only too ready to indulge your falsehood. It is as though 20 years of ever- tougher reforms of the job search and benefit administration system never happened. The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unemployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens. Even the very phrase ‘jobseeker’s allowance’invented in 1996- is about redefining the unemployed as a “jobseeker” who had no mandatory right to a benefit he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions. Instead, the claimant receives a time-limited “allowance,”conditional on actively seeking a job; no entitlement and no insurance, at ￡71.70 a week, one of the least generous in the EU.

但是在奥斯本之国，你的第一反应就是坠入依赖——永远的依赖，如果你能得到的话——它由一个非常乐意放任你弄虚作假的国家所支持。好像这二十年一直严厉的求职和补助金管理系统的改革从未发生过。英国福利的原则不再是如果发生灾难，你能为自己投保失业险和得到无条件赔付。甚至正是“求职者补贴”这个词语，在将失业者重新定义为“求职者”，他人通过缴纳国民保险金可享有补助，而求职者则没有这个基本权利。作为替代，申请者得到的是一周71.70 英镑的限时“补贴”，条件是积极地找工作：没有津贴也没有保险，在欧盟这也是最小气之一了。

Text 2

All around the world, lawyers generate more hostility than the members of any other profession---with the possible exception of journalism. But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than America.

Dur-ing the decade before the economic crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation. The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort system a costly nightmare.

There are many reasons for this. One is the excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam. This leaves today’s average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work fearsomely hard.

Reform-ing the system would help both lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time, but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too conservative to imple-ment them. One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar exam is truly a stern enough test for a would-be lawy-er, those who can sit it earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training could cut their debt mountain by a third.

The other reason why costs are so high is the restrictive guild-like ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia, non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but oppo-nents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve clients ethically.

In fact, allowing non-lawyers to own shares in law firms would reduce costs and improve services to customers, by encouraging law firms to use technology and to employ professional managers to focus on improving firms’efficiency. After all, other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have started liberalizing their legal professions. America should follow.

在全世界，律师比任何其他职业的人都更招憎恨——新闻业可能是个例外。但是没有多少地方能比美国更让客户有更多的理由抱怨。在经济危机之前的十年间，美国法律服务费用的增长速度是通货膨胀的两倍。最好的律师赚得盆满钵满，吸引着更多的学生争相进入法学院。但是大部分法学毕业生从未获得一份大律所的工作。他们中的许多人转而成为那种妨害行为诉讼的提交者，这使得侵权制度成了一场昂贵的噩梦。这里面有很多原因。其一是法律教育的费用过高。在美国大部分州只有一条成为律师的途径；在某个无关的专业读四年取得本科学位，然后在美国律师协会授权的200 所法学院之一读三年取得法律学位，并为准备律师资格考试花费不菲。这给现在这些普通的法学院毕业生留下在本科债务之外10 万美元的债务。法学院债务意味着他们不得不拼命地努力工作。改革这一体系会对律师和他们的客户都有所帮助。明智的想法已经存在了好长时间，但是管理该职业的州级机构对实施它们太保守了。一个想法是准许人们读本科学位时学习法律。另外一个是，让学生在法学院只读两年之后就参加律师资格考试。如果这一考试对于一名准律师来说确实是足够严格的测试，那么就应该准许那些有能力提早参加的学生们参加。不需要额外培训的学生就可以削减他们债务大山的三分之一。费用如此之高的另外一个原因是该行业限制性的同业公会式的所有权结构。除哥伦比亚特区外，非律师人员不得持有律所的任何股份。这使得费用居高不下而创新脚步缓慢。在行业内部存在要求变革的压力，但是监管部门中的反对变革者坚称，将局外人排除在律所之外，可以让律师与赚钱的压力隔离而合乎职业道德标准地为客户服务。实际上，准许非律师人员参股，通过鼓励律所采用新技术和聘请职业经理人来致力于提高律所效率，可以降低成本并改善对顾客的服务。毕竟，其它国家如澳大利亚和英国都已开始使其法律行业自由化。美国应该效仿。

Text 3

The US$3-million Fundamental physics prize is indeed an interesting experiment, as Alexander Polya-kov said when he accepted this year’s award in March. And it is far from the only one of its type. As a News Feature article in Nature discusses, a string of lucrative awards for researchers have joined the Nobel Prizes in recent years. Many, like the Fundamental Physics Prize, are funded from the telephone-number-sized bank accounts of Internet entrepreneurs. These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.

What’s not to like? Quite a lot, according to a handful of scientists quoted in the News Feature. You cannot buy class, as the old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs cannot buy their prizes the prestige of the Nobels. The new awards are an exercise in self-promotion for those behind them, say scientists. They could distort the achievement-based system of peer-review-led research. They could cement the status quo of peer-reviewed research. They do not fund peer-reviewed research. They perpetuate the myth of the lone genius.

The goals of the prize-givers seem as scattered as the criticism. Some want to shock, others to draw people into science, or to better reward those who have made their careers in research.

As Nature has pointed out before, there are some legitimate concerns about how science prizes—both new and old—are distributed. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, launched this year, takes an unrepresentative view of what the life sciences include. But the Nobel Foundation’s limit of three recipients per prize, each of whom must still be living, has long been outgrown by the collabora-tive nature of modern research—as will be demonstrated by the inevitable row over who is ignored when it comes to acknowledging the discovery of the Higgs boson. The Nobels were, of course, themselves set up by a very rich individual who had decided what he wanted to do with his own money. Time, rather than intention, has given them legitimacy.

As much as some scientists may complain about the new awards, two things seem clear. First, most researchers would accept such a prize if they were offered one. Second, it is surely a good thing that the money and attention come to science rather than go elsewhere, It is fair to criticize and ques-tion the mechanism—that is the culture of research, after all—but it is the prize-givers’money to do with as they please. It is wise to take such gifts with gratitude and grace.

300 万美元的基础物理学奖的确是一个有趣的尝试，正如亚历山大?帕里雅科夫三月份领取今年奖项时所

言。而且该类奖项远非仅此一例。按照《自然》杂志新闻特写栏目一篇文章所讨论的，近年来一系列奖金丰厚的研究奖项已经加入诺贝尔奖的行列。许多奖项（如基础物理学奖）来自于互联网企业家的资助，其银行账户是电话号码数量级的。据称，这些慈善家在各自从事的领域已经获得成功，想用自己的财富去让那些有科学成就的人士受到关注。

这有什么让人不喜欢的呢？据新闻特写栏目中援引一小部分科学家所言，非常之多。古语云，有钱买不到社会地位，这些暴富的企业家并不能为他们的奖金买来诺贝尔奖的声望。科学家称，新设奖项是那些幕后人自抬身价的一种举动。它们会扭曲基于成就并由同行评议引导的研究体系。它们会巩固同行评议研究的现状。它们并不资助同行评议研究。它们延续了孤独天才的神话。

正如《自然》杂志以前已经指出的那样，对于科学奖项——新设的和原有的——如何分配，存在某些忧虑是合理的。今年推出的“生命科学突破奖”，对生命科学的范畴所持观点并不具代表性。但是诺贝尔基金会对每一奖项只能由三名仍在世者获得的限制，由于现代科学研究的协作特性而早已不再适宜——这将由当论及确认希格斯波色子的发现时，对于谁可忽略而引起不可避免的争论这一情况来证实。当然，诺贝尔奖本身就是由一位富豪个人设立的，他决定了用自己的金钱去做他想要做的事。赋予诺贝尔奖合理性的是时间，而非设立的初衷。

有些科学家常常会抱怨新的奖项，有两件事却是显而易见。第一，如果被授予这样的奖项，大部分研究人员会接受它。第二，金钱和

关注度投向科学而不是其它地方，这无疑是好事。批评和质疑这种机制是公平合理的——毕竟这是做研究的文化——但它是奖金提供者按

照自己的意愿处置的金钱。以感谢的心情和优雅的风度接受这样的礼物是明智的。

Text 4

“The Heart of the Matter,”the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America. Regrettably, however, the report's failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good.

In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identi-fy actions that could be taken by "federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educa-tors, individual benefactors and others" to "maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientif-ic scholarship and education."In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the commission's 51 members are top-tier-university presi-dents, scholars,lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism.

The goals identified in the report are generally admirable. Because representative government presuppos-es an informed citizenry, the report supports full literacy; stresses the study of history and government, particularly American history and American government; and encourages the use of new digit-al technologies. To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students' ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day. The report also advo-cates greater study of foreign languages, international affairs and the expansion of study abroad programs.

Unfortunate-ly, despite 2? years in the making, "The Heart of the Matter" never gets to the heart of the matter: the illiberal nature of liberal education at our leading colleges and universities. The commission ig-nores that for several decades America's colleges and universities have produced graduates who don't know the content and character of liberal education and are thus deprived of its benefits. Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for publicizing "progressive," or left-liberal propaganda. Today, professors routinely treat the progressive interpretation of history and progressive public policy as the proper subject of study while portraying conservative or classical liberal ideas—such as free markets or self-reliance —as falling outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes legitimate, intellectual investigation. The AAAS displays great enthu-siasm for liberal education. Yet its report may well set back reform by obscuring the depth and breadth of the challenge that Congress asked it to illuminate.

美国艺术与科学院刚发布的报告《问题的核心》，因肯定了人文和社会科学对美国自由民主的繁荣和安全的重要性而值得赞扬。然而，遗憾的是该报告没有论及通才教育所面临危机的真正本质，这可能造成弊大于利的结果。2010 年，首要的国会民主党人和共和党人致函美国艺术与科学院，要求其确定可由“联邦、州和地方政府、大学、基金会、教育工作者、个人捐助者和其他人”采取的措施，以“保持国家在人文和社会科学学术和教育方面的优势”。作为回应，美国艺术与科学院成立了人文和社会科学委员会。该委员会51 名成员中有顶级大学的校长、学者、律师、法官和公司执行总裁，也有来自外交、电影、音乐和新闻界的杰出人物。这份报告中确立的目标大体上是值得称赞的。因为代议制政府的前提是公民知情，该报告支持全面的文化素养；强调学习历史和政治，特别是美国历史和美国政治；以及鼓励使用新的数字技术。为了鼓励创新和竞争，报告呼吁增加研究投资，对紧密结合的课程要精益求精（它们会提高学生在21 世纪有效地解决问题和交流沟通的能力），增加对教师的资助和鼓励学者转化所学知识以面对当今的巨大挑战。报告还主张

加强对外语、国际事务的学习和扩展留学计划。不幸的是，尽管撰写报告用了两年半的时间，《问题的核心》却从未触及到问题的核心：我们一流院校的通才教育本质上是狭隘的。委员会忽视了几十年来美国各院校输送的毕业生不明白通才教育的内容和特点，因而丧失了它的益处。令人痛心的是，国内校园内曾有的探索精神，已经被利用人文和社会科学作为宣扬“进步的”或左翼民主的宣传工具所代替。如今，教授们通常将进步的历史观和公共政策视为正统的学习科目，而将保守的或古典自由主义的观点——例如：自由市场和自力更生——描述为逾越了常规、合理事物和理性调研的界限。

2013年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1

In the 2006 film version of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep, scold her unattractive assistant for imagining that high fashion doesn’t affect her. Priestly explains how the deep blue color of the assistant’s sweater descended over the years from fashion shows to department stores and to the bargain bin in which the poor girl doubtless found her garment.

This top-down conception of the fashion business couldn’t be more out of date or at odds with feverish world described in Overdressed, Elizabeth Cline’s three-year

indictment of “fast fashion”. In the last decades or so, advances in technology have allowed mass-market labels such as Zara, H&M, and Unable to react to trends more quickly and anticipate demand more precisely. Quicker turnarounds mean less wasted inventory, more frequent releases, and more profit. Those labels encourage style-conscious consumers to see clothes as disposable——meant to last only a wash or two, although they don’t advertise that——and to renew their wardrobe every few weeks. By offering on-trend items at dirt-cheap prices, Cline argues, these brands have hijacked fashion cycles, shaking an industry long accustomed to a seasonal pace. The victims of this revolution, of course, are not limited to designers. For H&M to offer a $5.95 knit miniskirt in all its 2,300-plus stores around the world, it must rely on low-wage, overseas labor, order in volumes that strain natural resources, and use massive amounts of harmful chemicals. Overdressed is the fashion world’s answer to consumer-activist bestsellers like Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “Mass-produced clothing, like fast food, fills a hunger and need, yet is non-durable, and wasteful,”Cline argues. Americans, she finds, buy roughly 20 billion garments a year——about 64 items per person –and no matter how much they give away, this excess leads to waste. To-wards the end of Overdressed, Cline introduced her ideal, a Brooklyn woman named Sarah Kate Beau-mont, who since 2008 has made all of her own clothes——and beautifully. But as Cline is the first to note, it took Beaumont decades to perfect her craft; her example can’t be knocked off.

Though several fast-fashion companies have made efforts to curb their impact on labor and the environ-ment——including H&M, with its green Conscious Collection Line——Cline believes lasting change can only be effected by the customer. She exhibits the idealism common to many advocates of sustainabili-ty, be it in food or in energy. Vanity is a constant; people will only start shopping more sustainably when they can’t afford not to.

Text 1 在2006年电影版的《时尚女魔头》中，梅丽尔?斯特里普扮演的米兰达?普雷斯丽责备她其貌不扬的女助手，因为她认为高端时尚并不能影响到自己。普雷斯丽说明了她助手的深蓝色毛衣如何在数年间从时尚秀场降到百货商店，又沦为便宜货。毫无疑问，这个贫穷的女孩肯定就是从便宜货里淘的衣服。这种自上而下的时尚商业观早已过时了，也和伊丽莎白?克莱因在《过度穿着》中描写的狂热世界不一致。《过度穿着》是伊丽莎白?克莱因花了三年时间写成的对“快时尚”的控诉作品。在过去十年左右的时间，技术的进步已经使得诸如Zara、H&M、优衣库之类的大众市场品牌能够对流行趋势反应得更快，并能更准确的预料到消费者的需求。更快的转变意味着更少的存货浪费、更频繁的发布新品、更高的利润。这些品牌鼓励对时尚敏感的消费者把衣服当成是一次性用品——洗过一两次后就不再穿了，尽管他们没在广告上明说——然后每几周就更新衣橱。克莱因说，这些品牌通过以极其低廉的价格销售时髦的商品，已经把持了时尚的周期，动摇了一个习惯以季节为周期的产业。当然，这场变革的受害者，不仅仅是设计师们。为了能在其全世界2300多家商店里以5.95美元的价格出售超短裙，H&M必须依赖低工资的海外劳动力、大批量采购原材料导致严重危害自然资源、并大量使用有害的化学物质。《过度穿着》就仿佛是时尚界交给像迈克尔?波伦的《杂食者的困境》一样的消费者维权畅销书的答案。“大批量生产的服装，就好像快餐一样，充满着渴望和需求，却既不耐用也不经济”，克莱因说到。她发现，美国人每年要买大约200亿件服装——平均每人64件——无论他们捐赠多少，这种无节制的购买行为都导致浪费。在《过度穿着》的结尾，克莱因介绍了她的理想典范，一个叫萨拉?凯特?博蒙特的布鲁克林女人，她从2008年起就自己做所有的衣服，而且做得相当漂亮。不过正如克莱因是第一个注意到的那样，博蒙特花了几十年完善自己的手艺，她的事例不能轻易复制。尽管包括H&M在内的几家快时尚公司已经努力控制其对劳动力和环境的影响，引入了绿色环保自觉生产线，克莱因相信只有消费者才能促成持久的变革。她展示了对于无论在食物还是在能源方面都提倡可持续

性的人而言共同的理想主义。虚荣是常态，人们只有在付不起钱的时候才会开始以更加可持续的方式购物。 Text 2

An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted—the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim “behavioural” ads at those most likely to buy.

In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grained informa-tion: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?

In December 2010 America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed adding a “do not track”(DNT) option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be fol-lowed. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari both offer DNT; Google’s Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests.

On May 31st Microsoft set off the row. It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear with windows 8, would have DNT as a default.

Advertis-ers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the

Associa-tion of National Advertisers, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect informa-tion about their preferences. People will not get fewer ads, he says. “They’ll get less meaningful, less targeted ads.”

It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone real-ly objects to behavioural ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft’s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway.

Al-so unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comp-ly with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies al-most wholly on advertising, it has chosen an indirect method: There is no guarantee that DNT by de-fault will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8—though the firm has compared some of its other products favourably with Google’s on that count be-fore. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, blogged: “We believe consumers should have more control.” Could it really be that simple?

有句老话说的好，一半的广告预算都浪费了——麻烦的是，没人知道哪一半浪费了。在互联网时代，至少在理论上，可以大大减少这种浪费。通过观察人们搜索什么、点击什么、在网上说些什么，公司可以锁定目标，将“行为”广告（即，“有作为的”或“有用的”广告）投放给最有可能的购买产品的人。

在过去几周，三次交易和一次争论已经向广告商（以及他们的软件提供商）展示了这种经过精细处理的信息的价值：广告商应该假设人们喜欢被跟踪，并发送行为广告吗？还是他们应该先得到明确的许可才行？

在2010年12月，美国联邦贸易委员会提出，应该在网络浏览器上添加“拒绝跟踪”（DNT）选项，这样一来，用户就可以告诉广告商他们不想被追踪。微软公司的IE浏览器和苹果公司的Safari浏览器都提供拒绝跟踪；谷歌公司的Chrome浏览器今年也即将要提供类似功能。在二月份，联邦贸易委员会和数字广告联盟达成一致，浏览器开发业要继续努力，以应对拒绝跟踪的要求。

5月31日，微软公司率先采取行动：该公司发布公告称，在该公司的新操作系统windows8中的IE10浏览器上，将会默认附带拒绝跟踪选项。

广告商们诚惶诚恐。人性使然，人们总是习惯保持默认的设置。现在几乎没人打开“拒绝跟踪”按钮，可如果跟踪处于关闭状态，就会一直是关闭状态。鲍勃?利奥狄斯是数字广告联盟的成员组织之一——全国广告协会——的首席执行官。他说如果软件业无法收集到关于消费者喜好的信息，那消费者只能境况更糟。人们不会少收到广告，他说，“他们会收到更没意义更没针对性的广告。”

现在还不清楚广告商们会怎样采取行动。拒绝跟踪信号并不会强制任何人停止跟踪，尽管有些公司（包括推特公司在内）已经承诺收到拒绝跟踪信号就会停止跟踪。由于无法辨认人们是真正反对行为广告，还是他们只是没有改动微软的默认设置，有些公司可能会忽视拒绝跟踪信号，依然强行跟踪。

同样不清楚的是，微软为什么要孤军奋战。毕竟，微软自己也有广告业务，却声称自己的广告业务也要遵守拒绝跟踪要求，不过它也还在寻求解决办法。如果微软试图激怒几乎完全依赖广告业务的谷歌，那么它就已经选择了一个间接的方法：并不能保证默认拒绝跟踪模式会成为标准范例。虽然公司以前还拿自己的其他几个产品同谷歌的产品在这方面做过比较，但拒绝跟踪也不像是windows8的巨大卖点。微软首席隐私官布兰登?林奇在博客中写到：“我们相信用户应该有更多的操控权限。”真是那么简单吗？

Text 3

Up until a few decades ago, our visions of the future were largely — though by no means uniformly — glowingly positive. Science and technology would cure all the ills of humanity, leading to lives of fulfillment and opportunity for all.

Now utopia has grown unfashionable, as we have gained a deeper appreciation of the range of threats facing us, from asteroid strike to epidemic flu to climate change. You might even be tempted to assume that humanity has little future to look forward to.

But such gloominess is misplaced. The fossil record shows that many species have endured for millions of years — so why shouldn’t we? Take a broader look at our species’ place in the universe, and it becomes clear that we have an excellent chance of surviving for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Look up Homo sapiens in the “Red List”of threatened species of the International Union for the Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and you will read: “Listed as Least

Con-cern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline.”

So what does our deep future hold? A growing number of researchers and organisations are now think-ing seriously about that question. For example, the Long Now Foundation has as its flagship project a mechanical clock that is designed to still be marking time thousands of years hence.

Per-haps willfully, it may be easier to think about such lengthy timescales than about the more immediate future. The potential evolution of today’s technology, and its social consequences, is dazzlingly complicated, and it’s perhaps best left to science fiction writers and futurologists to explore the many possibilities we can envisage. That’s one reason why we have launched Arc, a new publication dedicated to the near future.

But take a longer view and there is a surprising amount that we can say with considerable assurance. As so often, the past holds the key to the future: we have now identified enough of the long-term patterns shaping the history of the planet, and our species, to make evidence-based forecasts about the situations in which our descendants will find themselves.

This long perspective makes the pessimistic view of our prospects seem more likely to be a passing fad. To be sure, the future is not all rosy. But we are now knowledgeable enough to re-duce many of the risks that threatened the existence of earlier humans, and to improve the lot of those to come.

Text 3

直到几十年前，我们对未来的想象虽千奇百怪，却大都很积极乐观。科学和技术可以治愈人类所有的疾病，让人们过上满足的生活，让人人都有机会。现如今这种空想的美好社会已经过时了，我们对面临的威胁范围有了更深刻的认识，从行星撞击到流行感冒到气候变化。你可能忍不住会想，人类都没有什么未来值得盼望了。但是这种沮丧的情绪也不应该。化石资料表明很多物种存活了几百万年——那么我们怎么就不能活那么久呢？眼光放宽一点，想想我们这个物种在宇宙中的位置，就很容易发现，哪怕不能活上几十万年，我们也很可能活上几万年。查阅一下国际自然保护联盟发布的濒危物种红名单上对我们人类（智人）的描述，你会读到：非危物种，因为该物种分布很广，适应性强，目前数量呈上升趋势，且没有造成其总体数量下降的主要威胁。那么，我们的未来究竟承载着什么呢？越来越多的研究者和机构现在正在仔细思考这个问题。比如，今日永存基金会的首要项目就是设计一个今后几千年仍然可以度量时间的医疗时钟。思考这么大跨度的时间概念可能本来就比琢磨眼下的将来更容易许多。今日的技术如何演变，以及由此带来的社会影响，实在纷繁复杂，让人炫目。最好还是让科幻作家和未来学家去设想那些诸多可能发生的事情吧。这也是我们为什么发行Arc的原因之一。Arc是致力于研究近期未来的全新出版物。但是眼光放长远些，我们能确信的事情就数量惊人了。过去是未来的关键：我们现在已经知道星球以及我们人类的历史怎样经历长时间的变化，那么我们就能以此为依据，预知后世子孙未来身处的境地。这种长远角度使得悲观的前景预期看似更为过时。的确，未来不都那么美好。但是我们现在有足够的知识可以减少曾威胁人类早期生存的同类威胁，并改善未

Text 4

On a five to three vote, the Supreme Court knocked out much of Arizona’s immigration law Monday—a modest policy victory for the Obama Administration. But on the more important matter of the Constitution, the decision was an 8-0 defeat for the Administration’s effort to upset the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

In Arizona v. United States, the majority overturned three of the four contested provisions of Arizona’s controversial plan to have state and local police enforce federal immigration law. The Constitution-al principles that Washington alone has the power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization” and that federal laws precede state laws are noncontroversial. Arizona had attempted to fashion state policies that ran parallel to the existing federal ones.

Jus-tice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s liberals, ruled that the state flew too close to the federal sun. On the overturned provisions the majority held that Congress had deliberately “occupied the field,” and Arizona had thus intruded on the federal’s privileged powers.

Howev-er, the Justices said that Arizona police would be allowed to verify the legal status of people who come in contact with law enforcement. That’s because Congress has always envisioned joint federal-state immigration enforcement and explicitly encourages state officers to share information and cooperate with federal colleagues. Two of the three objecting Justice—Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—agreed with this Constitution-al logic but disagreed about which Arizona rules conflicted with the federal statute. The only major objection came from Justice Antonin Scalia, who offered an even more robust defense of state privileges going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The 8-0 objection to President Obama turns on what Justice Samuel Alito describes in his objection as “a shocking assertion of federal executive power”. The White House argued that Arizona’s laws conflicted with its enforcement priorities, even if state laws complied with federal statutes to the letter. In effect, the WhiteHouse claimed that it could invalidate any otherwise legitimate state law that it disagrees with.

Some powers do belong exclusively to the federal government, and control of citizenship and the bor-ders is among them. But if Congress wanted to prevent states from using their own resources to check immigration status, it could. It never did so. The administration was in essence asserting that because it didn’t want to carry out Congress’s immigration wishes, no state should be allowed to do so either. Every Justice rightly rejected this remarkable claim. Text 4

周一，最高法院以5比3的投票结果否决了亚利桑那州移民法的大部分内容——这是奥巴马政府所采取政策的一次不大不小的胜利。但是在更重要的（事关国之根本这个）国家宪法的大问题上，投票结果却是8比0。这个决定意味着联邦政府打破联邦政府和各州政府权力平衡的努力彻底失败了。在这场亚利桑那州政府和美国政府的对峙中，最高法院以多数票通过推翻了亚利桑那州饱受争议的计划中四项有争议条款中的三项。亚利桑那州本计划让州警察和地方警察实施联邦移民法。宪法规定华盛顿自身有权力“制定统一的移民规则”，这和联邦法律优先于州法律的规定并不矛盾。亚利桑那州企图改变该州现行的与联邦法律一致的政策。安东尼?肯尼迪大法官同约翰?罗伯特首席大法官和法庭的自由派们一起裁定州政府的做法不对。关于被推翻的条款，大多数人的观点是，州议会已经故意“占领地盘”了，也就是说亚利桑那州侵犯了联邦的特权。然而，大法官们说，亚利桑那州警察有权力在执法过程中核实人们的法律身份。因为国会一直期待能联合联邦和各州的力量处理移民问题，并公开鼓励州警官和联邦警官共享信息，相互合作。三名持反对意见的大法官中，有两人——塞缪尔?阿利托和克拉伦斯?托马斯赞同宪法的逻辑思路，却不同意亚利桑那州的规定违反联邦法规的说法。唯一主要的反对意见来自安东宁?斯卡利亚大法官，他强烈维护州的权益不受联邦干预，甚至提到了客籍法和镇压叛乱法。用大法官塞缪尔?阿利托在他的反对意见中的话说，以8比0否决奥巴马的判决源自“一项惊人的维护联邦行政权的主张”。白宫声称，亚利桑那州的法律与其执法优先权相冲突，即使州法律严格遵守了联邦法律。实际上，白宫就是在声明，它将作废任何联邦不赞成的合法的州级法律。有些权力确实归联邦政府独有，控制国籍和国界就是如此。但是如果国会想阻止各州使用自己的资源查看移民身份的话，国会是可以这么做的。可国会从没有这么做过。美国政府事实上就是在宣称，因为它不想实现国会的移民主张，哪一个州也不可以这么做。每一位大法官都端正的反对了这样的主张。

2012年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1

Come on –Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and offi-cials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word.

Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of

exam-ple of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.

The idea seems promising，and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a serious-ly flawed understanding of psychology.” Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the soci-al cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the LoveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.

There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imi-tate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

赶快，每个人都在做!当我们听到“来自同辈的压力”这个短语时，大部分人都会想到这个广为流传的，半是邀请、半是强迫的信息。一般来讲指的都不是好事—酗酒，吸毒，随意的性行为。但是Tina Rosenberg在

新书JointheClub中辩护到，通过社会治疗这一方式，来自同辈的压力也可以成为正面积极的力量。在这个社会治疗中，各个机构和行政人员利用团队力量帮助个人改善他们的生活，这样还有可能改善整个世界。普利策奖获得者Rosenberg提供了大量正在进行中的社会治疗的例子：在南卡罗来纳，州资助的反对吸烟活动名叫RageAgainsttheHaze，它打算让吸烟不再流行。在南非，名为Love Life的预防HIV感染的活动招募年轻人在他们的同龄人中提倡安全性行为。这一想法似乎充满希望，Rosenberg是个有洞察力的观察着。她准确地批评了很多公共卫生活动的不完善：这些活动没有动员同龄人形成健康的习惯，对青少年心理的理解有严重误区。其中一个广告牌活动致力于在青少年中减少抽烟量，上面写着：“勇于特立独行，请不要抽烟!”—而青少年，渴望的就是和他人保持一致。Rosenberg争论到，公共卫生提倡者应该向广告商学习，他们能如此熟练地运用来自同辈的压力。这一论点很具说服力。但是在社会治疗的整体效力上，Rosenberg并不太具说服力。JointheClub里面有太多毫不相关的细节，促使来自同辈的压力如此强大的社会、生物因素却剖析地不够。正如现在所呈现的，社会治疗最引人注目的缺陷是：如果持续时间很久，它的效果并不好。一旦州砍掉资金，RageAgainsttheHaze就失败了。证据显示，Love Life项目所产生的长远变化是有限的，而且混杂其他因素。同龄人给我们的行为带来了巨大的影响，这是毫无疑问的。大量刚刚出炉的研究表明，正面积极的健康习惯——还有负面消极的——通过社会交流在朋友网中流传。这是来自同辈的压力更为微妙的形式：我们无意识地模仿每天看到的行为。专家和政府人员该如何成功地选择同龄人团队并引导他们的行为朝着有德行的方向发展，这远远不能确定。这就像老师把后排制造麻烦的学生和表现良好的学生放在一起，以此来解散麻烦制造者团队，这样的技巧从不真正起作用。从外部因素出发策划的社会治疗也有这一问题：在真实世界中，就像在学校，我们坚持选择自己的朋友。

Text2

Text 2

A deal is a deal-except, apparently, when Entergy is involved. The company, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to abide by the strict nuclear regulations.

In-stead, the company has done precisely what it had long promised it would not challenge the constitutionali-ty of Vermont’s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuc-lear power plant running. It’s a stunning move. The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont’s only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in Vernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant’s license be subject to Vermont legislature’s approval. Then, too, the company went along.

Either Entergy never really intended to live by those

commit-ments, or it simply didn’t foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 207 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage,raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee’s safety and Entergy’s management– especial-ly after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy’s behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension.

Now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legisla-tion, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulato-ry authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regula-tions that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point.

The company seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a poblic trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, includ-ing Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the company’s application, it should keep it mind what promises from Entergy are worth.

承诺就是承诺—很明显，当Entergy公司牵涉在内的话就除外。这个公司是新英格兰主要的能源供应商，它曾承诺要一直遵守严格的核能源规范条例，但上周它宣布要违背这个承诺，理所当然地，它激起了佛蒙特州的义愤。这个公司确实已做了它曾承诺的永远不会做的事情：在联邦法庭上挑战佛蒙特州条例的合宪性，拼命努力来保证佛蒙特州美国核能源工厂的正常运行。这一举动令人震惊。2002年公司购买了佛蒙特州唯一的核能源工厂，即位于弗农古老的核反应堆。自此，冲突开始浮出水面。公司同意2012年之后都会寻求本州调整者的许可，作为接受本州同意销售的条件。2006年，佛蒙特更进一步，要求延长这一核工厂的许可证必须得到佛蒙特州立法机关的许可。公司也同意了。Entergy可能不想真正地遵守这些承诺，或者简单来说它并没有预见将要发生的事情。一系列事故，如207冷却塔部分坍塌，发现地下管道系统漏泄，这些都引发了关于佛蒙特州美国人的安全及Entergy公司经营等方面的严重问题—尤其在公司关于管道问题做了令人误解的声明之后。因Entergy的所作所为而震怒，去年佛蒙特州参议院以26:4的选票结果，反对允许延长它的许可证。现在公司突然宣布，因2006法规2002协议无效，只有联邦政府才有权调控核事件。这一案

例中的法律问题模糊不清：最高法院曾宣布各州确实对核能源有调控权力，但法律学者认为佛蒙特案件将验证这些权力到底有多大。当然，如果每一个州都设定自己的法律条例，由此而导致的混乱确实能引起合理的关注。但是如果Entergy信守诺言，那这场争论就偏离主题了。公司似乎下了这样的论断：它在佛蒙特的声望已被损害，即使与佛蒙特州作战也没什么好失去的。但是这有一定的后果。允许经营核工厂体现了公众的信任。在美国Entergy还经营了其他11个反应堆，包括普利茅斯的Pilgrim核电站。公司承诺安全经营Pilgrim，已向联邦提出申请，要求再经营20年。但是当核管理委员会审查了公司的申请时，应该记住Entergy的承诺能有什么样的价值。

Text3

In the idealized version of how science is done, facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work. But in the everyday practice of science, discovery frequently follows an ambiguous and complicated route. We aim to be objective, but we cannot escape the context of our unique life experience. Prior knowledge and interest influence what we experience, what we think our experiences mean, and the subsequent actions we take. Opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and self-deception abound.

Consequently, discovery claims should be thought of as

protos-cience. Similar to newly staked mining claims, they are full of potential. But it takes collective scruti-ny and acceptance to transform a discovery claim into a mature discovery. This is the credibility pro-cess, through which the individual researcher’s me, here, now becomes the community’s anyone, anywhere, anytime. Objective knowledge is the goal, not the starting point.

Once a discovery claim becomes public, the discoverer receives intellectual credit. But, unlike with mining claims, the community takes control of what happens next. Within the complex social struc-ture of the scientific community, researchers make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as gatekee-pers by controlling the publication process; other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purpos-es; and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompany-ing technology. As a discovery claim works it through the community, the interaction and confronta-tion between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involved transforms an individual’s discovery claim into the community’s credible discovery.

Two paradoxes exist throughout this credibility process. First, scientific work tends to focus on some aspect of prevailing Knowledge that is viewed as incomplete or incorrect. Little reward accompa-nies duplication and confirmation of what is already known and believed. The goal is new-search, not re-search. Not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincing will always be open to challenge and potential modification or refutation by future researchers. Second, novelty itself frequently provokes disbelief. Nobel Laureate and physiologist Albert Azent-Gyorgyi once described discovery as “seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” But thinking what nobody else has thought and telling others what they have missed may not change their views. Sometimes years are required for truly novel discovery claims to be accepted and appreciated.

In the end, credibility “happens” to a discovery claim – a process that corresponds to what philosopher Annette Baier has described as the commons of the mind. “We reason together, challenge, revise, and complete each other’s reasoning and each other’s conceptions of reason.”

在科学研究的理想状态下，关于世界的事实正在等待着那些客观的研究者来观察和搜集，研究者们会用科学的方法来进行他们的工作。但是在每天的科学实践中，发现通常遵循一条模糊和复杂的路径。我们的目标是做到客观，但是我们却不能逃离我们所处的独特的生活经验的环境。之前的知识和兴趣会影响我们所经历的，会影响我们对于经验意义的思考，以及我们会采取的随后的行动。这里充满着误读，错误和自我欺骗的机会。所以，对于发现的申明应该被当做是科学的原型。这与新近开发的采矿资源比较类似，他们都充满着可能性。但是将发现的申明变为一个成熟的发现是需要集体的审查和集体的接受。这个过程就配称之为“信用的过程”，通过这个过程一个单个研究者的“我”在这里就变成了这个社区中的任何人，任何地方和任何时间。客观的知识不应该是起点而是目标。一旦一个科学发现变成公开的，那么发现者就获得了知识的认可。但是和采矿权不一样的是，科学协会将控制接下来会发生的事情。在复杂的科研机构的社会结构中，研究者去做出发现；编辑和审稿者通过控制出版过程扮演着看门人的角色；其他的科学家使用新的发现来满足他们自己的目标；最后，公众（也包括其他科学家）接受到新的发现和可能相伴随的技术。当一个发现的声明最终通过了机构的审查，在有关所涉及到的共享的和抵触的信念之间的互动和冲突将把一个人的发现变为一个机构的可信的发现在整个信任的过程中存在着两个悖论，第一：科学工作倾向于关注一些流行科学的某些方面，而这些方面又是被认为是不完全和不正确的。去复制和确认已经被人所知和所信的东西不会有多少回报。科学要做的是去探究新的东西而不是再次探究。不足为奇的是，新发表的重要的，有说服力发现和可信的发现将会被后来的研究者质疑，并带来潜在的修改甚至驳斥。第二个悖论是：新颖的东西本身就经常会招致怀疑。诺贝尔奖获得者，生理学家AlbertAzent-Gyorgyi曾经将发现描述为：“观察每个人观察的，思考没有人想到的。”但是思考其他人没有想到的并且告诉其他人他们所遗漏的可能并不会改变这些人的观点。有时候，真正新颖的科学发现被人们所接受和认可将会花好多年的时间。最后，一个科学的发现获得了信

任，这个过程是与哲学家AnnetteBaier所描述的心灵的共性的观点是一致的。“我们共同去推理，去质疑，其修改并且完善各自的推理以及各自的推理概念。

Text4

Text 4

If the trade unionist Jimmy Hoffa were alive today, he would probably represent civil servant. When Hoffa’s Teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in ten American government workers belonged to a union; now 36% do. In 2009 the number of unionists in America’s public sector passed that of their fellow members in the private sector. In Britain, more than half of public-sector workers but only about 15% of private-sector ones are unionized.

There are three reasons for the public-sector unions’ thriving. First, they can shut things down without suffering much in the way of consequences. Second, they are mostly bright and well-educated. A quarter of America’s public-sector workers have a university degree. Third, they now dominate left-of-centre politics. Some of their ties go back a long way. Britain’s Labor Party, as its name implies, has long been associated with trade unionism. Its current leader, Ed Miliband,owes his position to votes from public-sector unions.

At the state level their influence can be even more fearsome. Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Insti-tute of California points out that much of the state’s budget is patrolled by unions. The teachers’ unions keep an eye on schools, the CCPOA on prisons and a variety of labor groups on health care.

In many rich countries average wages in the state sector are higher than in the private one. But the real gains come in benefits and work practices. Politicians have repeatedly “backloaded” public-sec-tor pay deals, keeping the pay increases modest but adding to holidays and especially pensions that are already generous.

Reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps most egregiously in education, where charter schools, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-out battles. Even though there is plenty of evidence that the quality of the teachers is the most important variable, teachers’ unions have fought against getting rid of bad ones and promoting good ones.

As the cost to everyone else has become clearer, politicians have begun to clamp down. In Wisconsin the unions have rallied thousands of supporters against Scott Walker, the hardline Republican governor. But many within the public sector suffer under the current system, too.

John Donahue at Harvard’s Kennedy School points out that the norms of culture in Western civ-il services suit those who want to stay put but is bad for high achievers. The only American public-sector workers who earn well above $250,000 a year are university sports coaches and the president of the United States. Bankers’ fat pay packets have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector system that does not reward high achievers may be a much bigger problem for America.

如果工会会员Jimmy Hoffa今天还活着，他也许会是公务员的代表。1960年Hoffa的组织Teamsters处于全盛时期，美国政府工作人员中只有十分之一的人属于某一个公会;现在这个比率是36%。2009年任职于美国公共部门的工会会员人数超过了任职于私营部门的工会会员人数。在英国，在公共部门的工作人员中半数以上参加了工会;而私营部门的工作人员只有大约15%的人参加了工会组织。公共部门工会如此盛行的原因有三个。第一，他们能够脱身，而不用承担太多后果。第二，他们中间大部分人聪明，受过良好教育。美国公共部门的工作人员中四分之一的人有大学学位。第三，他们现在在政治中的左翼力量中占主导地位。其中有些关系有很长的历史。正如其名，英国工党和工会组织的关系由来已久。其现任领导Miliband把自己得到的位置归功于来自公共部门工会组织的投票。从州范围来看，他们的影响更为吓人。加利福尼亚州公共政策研究院的MarkBaldassare指出，本州大部分预算都由工会来检查。教师工会关注学校，加利福尼亚感化治安官协会关心监狱，各型各色的劳工团体关注卫生保健。在很多富裕国家，公共部门的平均工资要高于私营部门的平均工资。但是真正的收入来源于利润和工作表现。政客已不停地加强公共部门的工资待遇，工资涨幅不大，但却加长本来就不少的假期，特别是增加本来就很多的养老保险金。对于变革的反对一直都很强烈，在教育方面最为惊人。在教育方面，契约学校、专科学校、绩效奖都面临着持久战。尽管有大量证据表明教师的质量是最重要的变量，但教师工会反对解雇不好的教师，提升好教师。

对其他每个人的支出变得更为清晰，政客开始强制执行。在威斯康辛州，工会集结了成千上万的支持者，反对走强硬路线的州长，即共和党人ScottWalker。但很多任职于公共部门的工作人员也在目前的体制下受罪。哈佛肯尼迪学院的John Donahue指出，西方公务员系统的文化准则适合这些想留在原地过安逸生活的人们，但并不适合那些表现好的人们。任职于美国公共部门的工作人员中，只有大学体育教练和美国总统每年的收入远远高于250,000美元。银行的高收入招致了很多批评，但对于美国来讲，在公共部门体制中，没有给表现好的工作人员足够的回报可能会成为更为严重的问题。

2011 年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1

The decision of the New York Philharmonic to hire Alan Gilbert as its next music director has been the talk of the classical-music world ever since the sudden announcement of his appointment in 2009. For the most part, the response has been favorable, to say the least. ―Hooray! At last! wrote Anthony Tommasini, a sober-sided classical-music critic.

One of the reasons why the appointment came as such a surprise, however, is that Gilbert is comparative-ly little known. Even Tommasini, who had advocated Gilbert‘s appointment in the Times, calls him ―an unpretentious musician with no air of the formidable conductor about him. As a description of the next music director of an

orchestra that has hitherto been led by musicians like Gustav Mahler and Pierre Boulez, that seems likely to have struck at least some Times readers as faint praise.

For my part, I have no idea whether Gilbert is a great conductor or even a good one. To be sure, he performs an impressive variety of interesting compositions, but it is not necessary for me to visit Avery Fisher Hall, or anywhere else, to hear interesting orchestral music. All I have to do is to go to my CD shelf, or boot up my computer and download still more recorded music from iTunes.

De-voted concertgoers who reply that recordings are no substitute for live performance are missing the point. For the time, attention, and money of the art-loving public, classical instrumentalists must compete not only with opera houses, dance troupes, theater companies, and museums, but also with the recorded performances of the great classical musicians of the 20th century. There record-ings are cheap, available everywhere, and very often much higher in artistic quality than today‘s live performances; moreover, they can be ―consumed at a time and place of the listener‘s choosing. The widespread availability of such recordings has thus brought about a crisis in the institution of the traditional classical concert.

One possible response is for classical performers to program attractive new music that is not yet available on record. Gilbert‘s own interest in new music has been widely noted: Alex Ross, a classical-music critic, has described him as a man who is capable of turning the Philharmonic into ―a markedly different, more vibrant organization. But what will be the nature of that difference? Merely expanding the orchestra‘s repertoire will not be enough. If Gilbert and the Philharmonic are to succeed, they must first change the relationship between America‘s oldest orchestra and the new audience it hops to attract. 译文：

纽约爱乐乐团决定聘请Alan Gilbert作为下一任的音乐总监，这从2009年任命被宣布之日起就在古典音乐界引起了热议.别的不说，大部分人的反应是积极的.―好啊，终于好了！ Anthony Thomasine写道，他可是一个以严肃著称的古典音乐评论家.

但是，这个任命之所以一起人们惊讶的原因却是Gilbert相对而言并不是很有名.甚至在时代杂志上发文支持Gilbert任命的Thomasine都称其为：低调的音乐家，在他身上找不到那种飞扬跋扈的指挥家的气质.纽约爱乐乐团迄今为止都是由像Gustav Mahler(古斯塔夫?马勒)和Pierre Boulez布列兹那样的音乐家领导的.这样去描述这个乐团的下一位指挥，至少对于时代的读者而言，这是一种苍白的表扬.

就我看来，我不知道Gilbert是否是一个伟大的指挥家或者是一个好的指挥.但是我能确定的是，他能表现出很多有趣的乐章，但是我却应该不会去Avery Fisher Hall或者其他地方去听一场有趣的交响乐演出.我要做的事情就是去我的CD架上，或者打开的我的电脑从ITUNES上下载更多的唱片.

Text 2 When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving ―to pursue my goal of running a company. Broadcasting his ambition was ―very much my decision, McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn‘t alone. In recent weeks the No.2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don‘t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn Ferry， senior partner Dennis Carey :―I can‘t think of a single search I‘ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first. Those who jumped without a job haven‘t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana when the business became part of Pep-siCo (PEP) a decade ago, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambi-tions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. ―The traditional rule was it‘s safer to stay where you are, but that‘s been fundamentally inverted, says one headhunter. ―The people who‘ve been hurt the worst are those who‘ve stayed too long.

译文：当八月份，Liam McGee以总裁的身份从美国银行离职的时候，他的解释出人意料的直白.他没有忸怩的用平常的模糊的理由来遮掩他的离开，他很坦诚的讲他离开就是为了去追求他经营一家公司的目标.McGee说宣扬自己的目标就是自己的决定.两周后，他第一次和Hartford Financial Services Group的董事会第一次会谈，这家公司在9月29日提名他为董事会主席和CEO.

他说在离开的时候并没有找好后面的职位(下家)，使他有时间去反思他到底想去经营一家什么样的公司.这同时也就他的激情和决心，给了外界一个清晰的信号.这样做的并不只是McGee一个人.最近几周，Avon and American Express的一些高级经理离职并解释说想需找一个CEO的职位.当董事会迫于股东的压力对一系列的计划进行审查的时候，那些计划被否定掉的经理们也会想离开.激烈的商业环境同样使得高级经理很小心，

模糊的表态可能会破坏他们的声誉.

当经济复苏的标志开始确定的时候，二把手们可能更愿意在没有网(新的工作)情况下换工作.第三季度，根据Liberum的调查，CEO的更迭和一年前相比减少了23%，这是由于紧张的董事会紧盯着他们的CEO们.随着经济的复苏和好转，对有理想的头儿们，机会是很多的. 离开高管的职位去寻找一个更好的职位，并不是传统的做法.多年以来，经理们和猎头们都认同这样一个原则：最有吸引力的CEO的竞争是那些需要去挖来的人.Korn Ferry，senior partner Dennis Carey说道：我所做的每一次的招聘中，董事会都要求我从那些在任的CEO中寻找人选.

那些没有找到工作就离开的人并不是很快就能找到顶级的职位.10年前，Tropicana被PepsiCo (PEP)收购了，她以经理的身份离职了，她说他想当CEO.但是花了一年的时间她才成为一家小型互联网交换公司的头.2005年Robert Willumstad带着想成为CEO的梦想离开了Citigroup.可是三年后他才成为了一家主要的金融机构的CEO. 很多招聘的人都说对于高管而言，过去认为的丢脸的感觉(没有工作)已经慢慢消失了.金融危机已经使得跳槽，离开一个不好的工作变得更加可以接受了.一个猎头就说到：―传统的规则是待在你原来的地方会更加安全，但是现在已经彻底改变了. 那些受伤最厉害的就是那里在一个地方待太久的人.‖

Text 3

The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional ―paid‖ media – such as television commercials and print advertisements – still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Con-sumers passionate about a product may create "earned" media by willingly promoting it to friends, and a company may leverage ―owned‖media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. In fact，the way consumers now approach the process of making purchase decisions means that marketing's impact stems from a broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media. Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media , such marketers act as the initiator for users‘ responses. But in some cases, one marketer‘s owned media become another marketer‘s paid media –for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend ,which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies‘marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned. The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them. If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company‘s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

沪江考研

译文：

过去，市场营销的成功诀窍简而言之就是一分钱一分货.然而时过境迁.虽然传统的―付费‖(paid)媒介，比如电视和广播广告、平面广告和路边广告牌等，仍然扮演着重要角色，但企业如今还可以利用许多其他形式的媒介.比如，痴迷于某种产品的消费者，可能会乐意将之推荐给朋友，从而为企业创造因产品的优良品质带来的―无偿‖(earned)媒介.企业还可以利用―自有‖(owned)媒介，通过邮件向其网站的注册用户发送产品和销售提示.事实上，如今消费者作出购买决定的方式，意味着市场营销的影响力来自于传统付费媒介之外的广泛因素.

营销人员通过付费和自有媒介推销其产品，而在―无偿‖媒介方面，营销人员就像是触发用户响应的初始催化剂.在某些情况下，某营销者的自有媒介会成为另一个营销者的付费媒介.比如，当某电子商务零售商出售其网站的广告空间时，我们就将这种―售出‖媒介定义为拥有巨大流量、以致其他机构纷纷前来投放内容或电子商务引擎的自有媒介.我们认为，这种趋势已蓬勃发端于零售商和航空、酒店等旅游供应商，虽然还处于初始阶段，但无疑可以走得更远.比如，强生公司创建了著名网站BabyCenter，借以推广互补性乃至竞争性产品，而其他营销者的出现不仅带来了收入，还令该网站看起来公正客观，并且使企业有机会从其他公司

的营销活动中获得可贵的信息，最后还有助于扩大所有相关企业的用户流量.

剧烈的技术变革使营销人员获得了数量更多、种类更广的沟通选择，但同时也带来了更高的风险，因为激动的消费者能够以更迅速、更明显、更有害的方式来表达他们的意见.这就是与―无偿‖媒介相对的―劫持‖媒介：某项资产或活动变成了对某个品牌或产品不满的消费者、其他股东或积极分子的劫持物.比如，社交网络用户正领悟到，他们可以通过―劫持‖媒介来对最初创建该媒介的企业施加压力.

如果那种事情发生，激动的消费者试图劝服其他人共同抵制两家公司的产品，从而危及企业声誉.当这种事情发生的时候，如果企业的回应不够快或不够好，那么就可能酿成悲剧.比如，在今年较早前发生的召回危机中，丰田汽车公司采取了较快且较有序的社交媒体回应行动，包括在Twitter和社会新闻网站Digg等网站上与客户进行直接交流，从而挽回了部分损失.

Text 4

It‘s no surprise that Jennifer Senior‘s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, ―I love My Children, I Hate My Life,‖ is arousing much chatter – nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that ―the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.‖

The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive – and new-ly single – mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual ―Jennifer Aniston is pregnant‖news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.

In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn‘t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn‘t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.

Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that 译文：

毫无疑问，Jennifer Senior在有煸动意味的的杂志封面故事中表达了她的独到见解，―我爱我的孩子们，我讨厌我的生活‖——这唤起了人们的谈兴.人们一谈到养孩子就会觉得这是一件完全令人愉悦、生活充实的事情.Jennifer Senior没有指出养孩子到底是使得父母快乐呢还是痛苦呢，她倒是认为，我们需要重新定义幸福：幸福不应该是一个个瞬间的快乐组合的可以被衡量的东西；我们应该把幸福视为一种过去式的状态.尽管抚养孩子的日子漫长难熬，令人筋疲力尽，但是Jennifer Senior认为，正是那些心绪沉重的时刻，日后却成为我们欢乐的源泉.

杂志封面上一位给力的母亲抱着一个可爱的婴儿，这种圣母与圣子(麦当娜和孩子)的图画这周在杂志上多次出现.例如杂志上讲到最近刚收养孩子的母亲——有时是刚变成单身母亲——桑德拉布鲁克，以及那种很常见的―詹尼弗阿尼斯顿怀孕了‖的新闻.实际上，每周都有至少一位名人母亲、或者准母亲在杂志上笑迎读者.

在一个不断地庆祝生育的社会中，承认自己后悔生育孩子就相当于承认自己支持杀小猫，这难道不值得反思吗？把父母的后悔与孩子的后悔相比较，这显然并不合理.没有人会去让不情愿养孩子的父母去反思自己是否不该养孩子，但是那不幸福的没有孩子的人却为类似这样的信息所困扰：―孩子是世上唯一最可珍惜的东西‖，显然，你们的不幸必须通过生儿育女才能得以消除.

当然，像美国周刊与人物这样的杂志提供的名人父母的形象是非常不切实际的.特别是像Bullock这样的单身母亲时更是如此.多项研究表明，有孩子的父母很少比没有孩子的夫妇更快乐，而单亲家庭是最不快乐的.这并不奇怪，因为一个人养一个孩子实在太麻烦了，没有人可以依靠.然而，你听听Sandra和Britney说的话：自己―一个人‖养孩子，其实非常简单.(她们当然觉得简单了，因为她们是在周围有一帮人全天侯的侯着啊.) 很难想象有的人生孩子就只是很傻很天真因为Reese和Angelina这种名流使这种行为变的很光鲜，——多数成年人其实理解：养孩子可不是剪头发那样简单.但这确实有趣：反思一下我们每周看到的无忧无虑，幸福诱人的为人父母的生活会不会从一种微小的，无意识的方面加剧我们对于现实生活的不满.这种方式就好像：我们有那种想成为― the Rachel‖(老友记中的单身妈妈)的心理，这种心理，使得我们看上去有点像詹尼弗安尼斯顿(Rachel 的扮演者).

2010年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1 阅读1

Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quar-ter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and se-riousness of their arts coverage. 在过去的25年英语报纸所发生的变化中，影响最深远的可能就是它们对艺术方面的报道在范围上毫无疑问的缩小了，而且这些报道的严肃程度也绝对降低了。

It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. 对于年龄低于 40岁的普通读者来讲，让他们想象一下当年可以在许多大城市报纸上读到精品的文艺评论简直几乎是天方夜谭。

Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. 然而，在20世纪出版的最重要的文艺评论集中，人们读到的大部分评论文章都是从报纸上收集而来。

To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies. 现在，如果读到这些集子，人们肯定会惊诧，当年这般渊博深奥的内容竟然被认为适合发表在大众日报中。

We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England be-tween the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to the publications in which it appeared. 从 20世纪早期到二战以前，当时的英国报纸上的评论主题广泛，包罗万象，我们现在离此类报纸评论越来越远。当时的报纸极其便宜，人们把高雅时尚的文艺批评当作是所刊登报纸的一个亮点。

In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in de-tail and at length about the events they covered. 在那些遥远的年代，各大报刊的评论家们都会不遗余力地详尽报道他们所报道的事情，这在当时被视为是理所当然的事情。

Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. 他们的写作是件严肃的事情，人们相信：甚至那些博学低调不喜欢炫耀的评论家，比如George Bernard Shaw 和Ernest Newman也知道自己在做什么。

These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. 这些批评家们相信报刊评论是一项职业，并且对于他们的文章能够在报纸上发表感到很自豪。

“So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in jour-nalism, ” Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to define 'journalism' as 'a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are. '” Newman 曾写道，"鉴于几乎没有作家能拥有足够的智慧或文学天赋以保证他们在新闻报纸写作中站稳脚跟，我倾向于把'新闻写作'定义为不受读者欢迎的作家用来嘲讽受读者欢迎的作家的一个'轻蔑之词' "

Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. 不幸的是，这些批评家们现在实际上已被人们遗忘。

Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. 从 1917 年开始一直到 1975 年去世不久前还在为曼彻斯特《卫报》写文章的 Neville Cardus，如今仅仅作为一个撰写关于板球比赛文章的作家被人们所知。

During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England's foremost classical-music critics, and a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography (1947) became a best-seller. 但是，在他的一生当中，他也是英国首屈一指的古典音乐评论家之一。他也是一位深受读者青睐的文体家，所以 1947 年他的《自传》一书就成为热销读物。 He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. 1967年他被授予爵士称号，也是第一位获此殊荣的音乐评论家。

Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists. 然而，他的书现在只有一本可以在市面上买到。他大量的音乐批评，除了专门研究音乐评论的人以外，已鲜为人知。

Is there any chance that Cardus's criticism will enjoy a revival? Cardus 的评论有没有机会重新流行？

The prospect seems remote. 前景似乎渺茫。

Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. 在他去世之前，新闻业的品味早已改变很长时间了，而且他所擅长的措词华丽的维多利亚爱德华时期的散文风格对后现代的读者没有什么用处。

Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat. 何况，由业余爱好者作音乐批评的传统早已经成为昨日黄花了。

Text 2 阅读2

Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. 在过去的十年中，成千上万的商业方法被授予了专利权。

Amazon. com received one for its "one-click" online payment system. 亚马逊网站获得的专利是在线"单击"付费系统。

Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. 美林公司的资产分配方案得到了法律保护。

One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box. 某位发明者的提箱技巧也获得了专利。

Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. 现在，该国最高专利法院似乎完全准备好要缩减商业方法专利，因为商业方法专利自从十年前第一次批准授予以来一直有争议。

In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U. S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. 在一项使得知识产权律师们议论纷纷

的提议中，美国联邦巡回上诉法院声称它将利用某个具体案件来对商业方法专利进行广泛的复审。

In re Bilski, as the case is known , is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. 密苏里大学法学院 Dennis D. Crouch 说，"正如人们所知道的那样，Bilski案例是一件非常大的事情"

It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents. " 它"可能将消除整个专利类别"。

Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with is 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. 对于商业方法诉求的限制是个戏剧性的彻底变化，因为正是联邦巡回法院自己引进了这种专利。那是在1998 年，对于所谓的美国道富银行的案件中，联邦巡回法院做出了判决，批准了筹集共同基金资产的方法具有专利权。

That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging in-ternet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. 这一裁决使得商业方法专利文件以几何数级增加，起初只是一些新兴的网络公司对于某些特定类型的在线交易系统试图争取独家专有权。

Later, more established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. 后来，更多的知名公司竞相添加这样的专利权，希望这样的防御性的行为可以先下手为强。

In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method pa-tents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. 2005 年，IBM公司在一份法院报告中声称：尽管怀疑这种专利授权的法律基础，但它已经申请了300 多份商业方法专利。

Similarly, some Wall Street investment firms armed themselves with patents for financial prod-ucts, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice. 同样，当一些华尔街投资公司出席某些反对其金融产品的法庭案件时，他们会给其各类金融产品申请专利来作为自己的维权武器。

The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. 前面提到的 Bilski 案例牵扯到一份已申请的方法专利，即关于能源市场的风险规避方法（注：也可译为"套期保值或对冲风险"）。 The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, 美国联邦巡回上诉法院罕见地裁定，该案件将不由三位法官听审，而是由全部十二名法官共同进行。

and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its State Street Bank ruling. 另外，上诉法院还宣布，它想探讨的另一件事情是是否应该"重审"道富银行的裁决。

The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. 联邦巡回法院的这一裁决效仿了最高法院。最高法院最近做出了一系列的判决，缩小了专利持有者的受保范围。

Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "in-ventions" that are obvious. 例如，去年四月，法官们认定太多的专利授予了一些显而易见的"发明"。

The judges on the Federal circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School. 乔治华盛顿大学法律学院的专利法律师Harold C. Wegner 教授表示，"联邦巡回法院的法官们正在对最高法院的反专利动态做出反应"。

Text 3 阅读3

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social epidemics are driven in large part by the action of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are un-usually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. 在《引爆流行》这本书中，作者Malcolm Gladwell 认为社会流行潮流在很大程度上是由一小部分特殊个体的行为引起的。这些人就是人们常说的影响者。他们异乎寻常的博闻多识，能言善辩，人脉广泛。 The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread. 从直觉上讲Malcolm Gladwell 的理论似乎很有说服力，但是它没有解释流行观念的实际传播过程。

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible sounding but largely untested theory called the "two step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. 人们之所以认为影响者很重要，是源于"两级传播"理论。即信息先从媒体流向影响者，然后再从影响者流向其他人。这一理论看似合理，但未经验证。

Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. 营销人员接受两级传播理论是因为该理论认为如果能够找到影响者，并对他们施加影响。这些精英们就会替他们完成大部分的营销传播工作。

The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. 这一理论似乎还可以解释某些装扮、品牌或社区为何会突然受到出乎意料的追捧。

In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. 对于许多诸如此类的情况，如果只是走马观花地寻找原因，你会发现总是有一小群人开风气之先，率先穿上、宣传和开发人们此前从未留意的东西。

Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends 这种事实证据与该观点正好一拍即合--只有一些特别的人才能引领潮流。

In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. 但是在最近的研究中，一些研究人员发现，影响者对社会流行

潮流的影响力远比人们认为的要小。

In fact, they don't seem to be required of all. 事实上，他们似乎根本就是无关紧要。

The researchers' argument stems from a simple observing about social influence, with the ex-ception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey-whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence-even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. 研究者的观点源于对社会影响力的简单观察：除了少数像Oprah Winfrey这样的名人之外（她强大的人气影响力主要来自媒体影响力，而非她与观众互动的人际影响力），即使人群中最有影响力的人也无法与那么多的"其他人"互动，从而引领潮流。

Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. 然而根据两级传播理论，正是这些非名人影响者直接影响了他们的朋友和同事，从而推动了社会流行潮流。

For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected, must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; 但是，要让一种社会流行潮流真正发生，每个受影响的人还必须影响他的熟人，而他的熟人又必须影响其他熟人，

and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. 依此类推；但是会有多少人去关注这些熟人中的每个人，与最初的影响者几乎没有关系。

If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people. 举个例子来说，在这个人际影响的网络中，如果第一个影响者受到两次抵制，那么他的连锁影响范围就不会继续扩大，或者说影响的人不会很多。

Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of social influence by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. 基于这一人际影响力的基本事实，研究者们研究了社会影响的动力机制。我们对不同人群进行了成千上万次计算机模拟，不断调整人们影响他人和受他人影响的各种变量。

They found that the principal requirement for what we call "global cascades"- the widespread propagation of influence through networks - is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people. 他们发现，人们所说的"全球连锁反应" -- 影响力通过（人际）网络进行广泛传播 -- 发生的主要前提，并不取决于是否存在着那么几个影响者，而主要取决于易受影响的人们是否达到了临界数量。Text 4 阅读4

Bankers have been blaming themselves for their troubles in public. 台面上，银行家们将他们的麻烦归咎于己身，

Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone else: the accounting standard-setters. 台面下，他们一直把目标对准他人：会计准则制定者。

Their rules, moan the banks, have forced them to report enormous losses, and it's just not fair. 银行业抱怨会计规则迫使他们报告巨大损失，认为这不公平。

These rules say they must value some assets at the price a third party would pay, not the price managers and regulators would like them to fetch. 规则规定他们必须以第三方付出价格来评估部分资产的价值，而非按照管理者和监管者期望该资产能够获得的价格。

Unfortunately, banks' lobbying now seems to be working. 不幸的是，银行的游说活动看来已显成效。

The details may be unknowable, but the independence of standard-setters, essential to the proper functioning of capital markets, is being compromised. 其中细节可能无法获知，但是准则制定者在独立性方面--这正是资产市场正常运行的关键--已经做出妥协了。

And, unless banks carry toxic assets at prices that attract buyers, reviving the banking system will be difficult. 银行如果不以能够吸引买家的价格计量不良资产，银行系统的复苏将会非常困难。

After a bruising encounter with Congress, America's Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rushed through rule changes. 美国财务会计准则委员会（FASB）在与国会激烈摩擦之后，匆匆通过了规则修改。

These gave banks more freedom to use models to value illiquid assets and more flexibility in recognizing losses on long-term assets in their income statement. 这些修改使得银行在使用模型评估非流动资产方面用有更大的自由，同时使得它们确认收益表中长期资产损失时更为灵活。

Bob Herz, the FASB's chairman, cried out against those who "question our motives. FASB 主席 Bob Herz 大声反对那些"怀疑我们的动机"的人们。

" Yet bank shares rose and the changes enhance what one lobby group politely calls "the use of judgment by management. " 然而银行股票上涨了，修改进一步加强了"管理层使用理性判断"的说法。该说法是某游说团的客气之言。

European ministers instantly demanded that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) do likewise. 欧洲的部长们立刻要求国际会计准则委员会(IASB)也这么做。

The IASB says it does not want to act without overall planning, but the pressure to fold when it completes it reconstruction of rules later this year is strong. IASB 表示没有完整计划不想就冒然行动。但其在今年下半年完成规则修订时，承受的压力十分巨大。

Charlie McCreevy, a European commissioner, warned the IASB that it did "not live in a political vacuum" but "in the real word" and that Europe could yet develop different rules. 欧洲委员会委员 Charlie McCreevy 警告 IASB 说：它不是"处在政治真空中"而是"在现实世界里"，并表示欧洲最终可能会发展出不同的会计规则。

It was banks that were on the wrong planet, with accounts that vastly overvalued assets. 正是这些银行呆错了星球，它们的账目上充斥着估值过高的资产。

Today they argue that market prices overstate losses, because they largely reflect the temporary illiquidity of markets, not the likely extent of bad debts. 现在他们争论道市价高估了损失，因为市价主要反映了市场的暂时性流动性不足，而非坏账的可能范围。

The truth will not be known for years. 几年中，没人会知道真相。

But bank's shares trade below their book value, suggesting that investors are skeptical. 但是，银行股票以低于账面价值的价格交易，这一点反应了投资者的怀疑。

And dead markets partly reflect the paralysis of banks which will not sell assets for fear of booking losses, yet are reluctant to buy all those supposed bargains. 沉寂的市场一定程度上反应了瘫痪的银行的问题：由于怕账面损失既不愿出售资产，也不愿意去购买那些看似不错的廉价资产。

To get the system working again, losses must be recognized and dealt with. 为了让银行系统重新运转起来，损失必须被确认和处理。

America's new plan to buy up toxic assets will not work unless banks mark assets to levels which buyers find attractive. 只有在银行将资产定价在足够吸引买家的水平上，美国收购不良资产的新计划才会有效。

Successful markets require independent and even combative standard-setters. 成熟的市场需要独立的，甚至是好斗的准则制定者。

The FASB and IASB have been exactly that, cleaning up rules on stock options and pensions, for example, against hostility from special interests. FASB和 IASB 以往正是这样对抗特殊利益集团的敌意的，例如改进股权和退休金的相关规则。

But by giving in to critics now they are inviting pressure to make more concessions. 但是现在向批评者妥协是自寻压力，他们会进一步做出让步，面临更多的压力。

One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. 一个完全基于经济动机的环境保护制度的基本缺陷是，土地群落的绝大多数成员都没有经济价值。

Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community and, if its stability depends on its in-tegrity, they are entitled to continuance. 然而这些生物都是生物群落中的成员，如果这个群落的稳定依赖于它自身的完整的话，那么这些动物就有权继续生存下去。

When one of these non-economic categories is threatened and, if we happen to love it, we invert excuses to give it economic importance. 当某一类没有经济价值的物种受到威胁时，如果我们恰巧喜爱他，就会编一些借口来赋予它经济重要性。

At the beginning of century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing. 本世纪初，人们普遍认为百灵鸟正在逐渐消失。

Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. 科学家们急忙介入，但提出的证据显然站不住脚，其大意是，如果鸟类不能控制昆虫的数量，昆虫便会吞噬我们人类。

The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. 证据必须是有经济价值，才能站得住脚。

It is painful to read these round about accounts today. 现在要理解这些拐弯抹角的陈述是痛苦的。

We have no land ethic yet, but we have at least drawn near the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of intrinsic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us. 虽然我们还没有土地伦理，但是我们至少都承认，无论鸟类是否来给我们经济价值，他们都有生存下去的权利。

A parallel situation exists in respect of predatory mammals and fish-eating birds. 关于肉食哺乳动物和食鱼鸟类，也存在类似的情形。

Time was when biologists somewhat over worded the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by killing the physically weak, or that they prey only on "worthless" species. 有证据表明：这些食物捕食体弱者，保持种群的健康。或者说它们仅仅捕食"没有价值"的物种。

Here again, the evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. 这再次证明，证据必须是经济价值，才能站得住脚。

It is only in recent years that we hear the more honest argument that predators are members of the community, and that no special interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of benefit, real or fancied, to itself. 直到最近几年，我们才听到一种比较诚实的论点：肉食动物是土地群落的成员，任何群体都不能因为特殊利益，有权消灭它们。无论该利益是真的还是虚构的。

Some species of tree have been read out of the party by economics-minded foresters because they grow too slowly, or have too low a sale vale to pay as timber crops. 某些树种已被重视经济利益的林务官“驱逐出境”了。因为它们生长速度过慢，或作为木材收入价值太低。

In Europe, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the non-commercial tree species are recognized as

members of native forest community, to be preserved as such, within reason. 在林业生态更为发达的欧洲，没有商业价值的树种被合理地看成是当地森林群落的成员，并得到相应的保护。

Moreover some have been found to have a valuable function in building up soil fertility. 此外，有些树种在增强土壤肥沃性方面具有重要作用。

That interdependence of the forest and its constituent tree species, ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted. 森林、树种、地面植物、动物这些组成森林的因素之间相互依赖，是理所当然。

To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. 总而言之：一个只基于经济利己主义的环境保护制度是百分之百不公平的。

It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are essential to its healthy functioning. 这种保护体系往往忽视群落中诸多缺乏商业价值但对其健康运作至关重要的物种，从而最终导致他们的灭绝。

It assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts. 我认为他错误地假定，即使没有非经济的部分，生物中的经济部分也一样可以正常运行。

2009年考研英语阅读真题

Text 1 阅读1

Habits are a funny thing. 习惯是一种有趣的现象。

We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. 我们无意识地养成了习惯，任由大脑自动操作，且不知不觉在熟悉的常规中感到轻松舒适。 "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd, " William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. 19 世纪时，威廉?华兹华斯说，"并非选择，而是习惯会控制那些没有思想的人。"

In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative implication. 在千变万化的 21 世纪，甚至"习惯"这个词本身也带有负面涵义。

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. 因此，在创造和革新的背景下来谈论习惯，似乎显得有点矛盾。

But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks. 但大脑研究人员发现，当我们有意识地培养新的习惯，就创建了平行路径，甚至是全新的脑细胞，可以让我们思绪的列车跳转到新的创新轨道上来。

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consiciously developing new habits. 与其否定自己是受习惯影响的一成不变的生物，不如通过有意识的培养新习惯来改变自己。

In fact, the more new things we try-the more we step outside our comfort zone - the more in-herently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives. 事实上，我们对新事物尝试得越多，就会走出自己的舒适地带越远。在职场和个人生活中变得越有创造性。

But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; 但是，不要麻烦地去试图戒掉旧习惯;

once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they're there to stay. 一旦这些惯有程序融进脑部，它们就会留在那里。

Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads. 相反，我们有意使之根深蒂固的新习惯会创建平行路径，它们可以绕过原来那些路径。

"The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder, " says Dawna Markova, au-thor of "The Open Mind" 《开放思想》一书的作者达瓦纳?马克瓦说："革新所需要的第一样东西就是对好奇的着迷。

"But we are taught instead to 'decide, ' just as our president calls himself 'the Decider.' " 然而我们被教导去做'决定'，就像我们的总裁称呼自己为'决策者'那样。

She adds, however, that "to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. 她接着说，"但是，决定意味着除了一种可能性外，其他的都被扼杀了。

A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities." 优秀的具有革新精神的思想家总是在探寻着许多其他的可能性。"

All of us work through problems in ways of which we're unaware, she says. 她说，我们都是通过一些自己没有意识到的方法解决问题的。

Researchers in the late 1960 covered that humans are born with the capacity to approach chal-lenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innova-tively. 研究人员在 20 世纪 60 年代末发现人类天生主要用四种方法应对挑战：分析法，程序法，相关法(或合作法)和创新法。

At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life. 但是在青春期结束，大脑关闭一半的能力，仅仅保留了那些大约在生命最开始的十几年时间里似乎是最为宝贵的思维方式。

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. 标准化测试目前主要强调分析法和程序法这两种方式。也就是说，我们中很少有人会本能地使用创新和合作的思维方式。

"This breaks the major rule in the American belief system - that anyone can do anything, " ex-plains M. J. Ryan,

author of the 2006 book "This Year I Will. . . " and Ms. Markova's business partner. M.J.瑞恩是 2006 年出版的著作《今年我将……》一书的作者以及马克瓦女士的商业合作伙伴，她解释说："这打破了美国信念体系里的主要规则-任何人都可以做任何事。"

"That's a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence. " This is where developing new habits comes in. "这是一个我们已经使之永久化的谎言，这会造成平庸。了解你擅长什么，再多做一些就会成就卓越。"这正是培养新习惯的用武之地。

Text 2 阅读2

It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom - or at least confirm that he's the kid's dad. 俗话说，贤父知己子，但是如今男人可以提升自己做父亲的智慧，或者至少可以确认自己是孩子的父亲了。

All he needs to do is shell our $30 for paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore - and another $120 to get the results. 他所要做的就是在住所附近的药店里付30美元买一个父子关系测试包(PTK)，然后另支付120美元以获得结果。

More than 60, 000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last years, according to Doug Fog, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. 道格?福格是 Identigene(生产在药店可以出售的测试包的公司)的首席运营官，他指出自从去年 PTK 无需处方就可以买到以来，购买者已经超过 6万人。

More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests Directly to the public , ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2500. 超过24家公司直接向公众出售 DNA 检测工具，价格从几百美元到 2500多美元不等。

Among the most popular: paternity and kinship testing , which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption. 最受欢迎的 DNA 测试是父子和血缘关系检测，被收养的孩子可以利用它找到自己的血缘亲属，家庭也可以用它追踪到被收养的孩子。

DNA testing is also the latest rage among passionate genealogists-and supports businesses that offer to search for a family's geographic roots . 最近DNA 检测受到许多热情的族谱学家追捧，同时还为那些家族寻根服务公司提供了支持。

Most tests require collecting cells by webbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. 大多数的测试需要从唾液中提取细胞，将其送至公司进行检测。

All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA. 所有的测试都需要另外一个相关人员的 DNA 进行比对。

But some observers are skeptical. 但是观察家们持怀疑态度。

"There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing, " says Trey Duster, a New York University sociologist. 纽约州立大学的社会学家特洛伊?达斯特说，“那些声称可以进行血统检测的人，他们兜售的测试有一定的不准确性。”

He notes that each individual has many ancestors-numbering in the hundreds just a few centu-ries back. 他注意到每个人都有许多祖先，仅几个世纪以前就有几百个之多。

Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome inherited through men in a father's line or mitochondrial DNA, which a passed down only from mothers. 但是多数血统检测只考虑某个单一系统，或者是遗传自父亲的 Y 染色体，或者是只由母亲遗传的线粒体 DNA。

This DNA can reveal genetic information about only one or two ancestors, 这个 DNA 只揭示了一两个祖先的基因信息。

even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents. 但是例如：仅仅3代之前除了曾祖父母，他们还有 6个外曾祖父母，或者 4 代以前除了曾曾祖父母，他们还有 14个外曾曾祖父母。

Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. 批评家们还争论说商业性基因检测的好坏取决于参照基因数据库的好坏。参照基因数据库是用来同样本进行对比的。

Databases used by some companies don't rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. 一些公司数据库里的数据并非系统性的采集取得的，而是将不同研究项目的信息胡乱搜集在一起。

This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person's test result may differ depending on the company that processes the results. 这意味某个DNA数据库可能包含某些地区很多的信息，却没有别的地区的信息。所以一个人的测试结果会随着测试公司的不同而不同。

In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation. 此外，公司评估血缘关系的电脑程序可能申请了专利，不能对该程序进行同行审查、外界评估。

Text 3 阅读3

The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politicians alike. 经济学家、政治家们普遍误解贫穷国家中正规教育与经济发展之间的关系。 Progress in both area is undoubtedly necessary for the social, political and intellectual devel-opment of these and

all other societies; 毫无疑问，在这两个方面的进步对本国和其他国家的社会、政治、学术发展是非常必要的；

however, the conventional view that education should be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic development in poor countries is wrong. 但是，教育是促进贫穷国家经济快速发展的重中之重的传统观点是错误的。

We are fortunate that is it, because new educational systems there and putting enough people through them to improve economic performance would require two or three generations. 我们庆幸这个观念不对。因为创立新的教育体制，让足够多的人接受教育，从来推动经济发展。这个过程是需要两代或三代人来完成。

The findings of a research institution have consistently shown that workers in all countries can be trained on the job to achieve radical higher productivity and, as a result, radically higher stan-dards of living. 一家研究机构的研究成果一再表明：全世界的工人都可以通过在职培训，大幅度提高生产率，从而提高生活水平。

Ironically, the first evidence for this idea appeared in the United States. 具有讽刺意味的是，这一观点的首个证据出现在美国。

Not long ago, with the country entering a recessing and Japan at its pre-bubble peak, the U. S. workforce was derided as poorly educated and one of primary cause of the poor U. S. economic performance. 不久前，随着美国经济陷入衰退，日本正处于泡沫破灭前的高峰期，美国工人被嘲讽没有受过良好教育。这被认为这是美国经济不景气的主要原因之一。

Japan was, and remains, the global leader in automotive-assembly productivity. 在全球，不管过去还是现在，日本一直是汽车组装生产力的领袖。

Yet the research revealed that the U. S. factories of Honda Nissan, and Toyota achieved about 95 percent of the productivity of their Japanese counterparts -- a result of the training that U. S. workers received on the job. 然而，研究表明丰田、尼桑和本田位于美国工厂的生产率大约是日本同行的95%，这是美国工人接受在职培训的结果。

More recently, while examining housing construction, the researchers discovered that illiterate, non-English- speaking Mexican workers in Houston, Texas, consistently met best-practice labor productivity standards despite the complexity of the building industry's work. 最近在进行住户建设检查时，研究人员发现：尽管房地产行业的工作非常复杂，但是在德克萨斯州的休斯顿，未受过教育，英语非母语的墨西哥工人总是能够达到最佳的劳动生产率标准。

What is the real relationship between education and economic development? 教育与经济发展之间的关系到底如何?

We have to suspect that continuing economic growth promotes the development of education even when governments don't force it. 我们不得不怀疑，即使政府不强迫发展教育，经济持续增长也会促进教育事业的发展。

After all, that's how education got started. 毕竟，教育就是那样开始的。

When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers 10, 000 years ago, they didn't have time to wonder much about anything besides finding food. 一万年前当我们的祖先还在狩猎和采集野果时，除了寻找食物他们没有时间想更多其它的东西。

Only when humanity began to get its food in a more productive way was there time for other things. 只有当人类能够更高效地获取食物时，才有时间做其它的事情。

As education improved, humanity's productivity potential increased as well. 随着教育的进步，人类的生产潜力也增加了。

When the competitive environment pushed our ancestors to achieve that potential, they could in turn afford more education. 当竞争的环境推动我们的祖先实现这一潜力，他们又可以获得更多的教育机会。

This increasingly high level of education is probably a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the complex political systems required by advanced economic performance. 先进的经济水平要求复杂的政治制度。越来越高的教育水平可能是复杂政治制度的必要的条件，但不是充分的条件。

Thus poor countries might not be able to escape their poverty traps without political changes that may be possible only with broader formal education. 因此如果没有政治改革，贫穷国家可能无法摆脱其贫困陷阱，而政治改革则只能靠更广泛的正规教育实现。

A lack of formal education, however, doesn't constrain the ability of the developing world's workforce to substantially improve productivity for the forested future. 但是，正规教育的匮乏并未阻碍发展中国家劳动力在可预见的未来持续提高生产力。

On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn't developing more quickly there than it is. 相反，生产力提高受限解释了为什么发展中国家的教育发展速度没有生产力快。

Text 4 阅读4

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According to the standard history of American philosophy, nowhere else in colonial America was "So much

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