Nice work if you can get out 谁都不愿摊上这种好事

Free exchange自由交流
Why the rich now have less leisure than the poor
为什么当今富人的休闲时间比穷人还少
Apr 19th 2014 | From the print edition
1 FOR most of human history rich people had the most leisure. In “Downton Abbey”, a drama about the British upper classes of the early 20th century, one aloof aristocrat has never heard of the term “weekend”: for her, every day is filled with leisure. On the flip side, the poor have typically slogged. Hans-Joachim Voth, an economic historian at the University of Zurich, shows that in 1800 the average English worker laboured for 64 hours a week. “In the 19th century you could tell how poor somebody was by how long they worked,” says Mr Voth.
”2 In today's advanced economies things are different. Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be richer, had a bit more leisure time than men who had only completed high school. But by 2005 the college-educated had eight hours less of it a week than the high-school grads. Figures from the American Time Use Survey, released last year, show that Americans with a bachelor's degree or above work two hours more each day than those without a high-school diploma. Other research shows that the share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts. The rich, it seems, are no longer the class of leisure.
3 There are a number of explanations. One has to do with what economists call the “substitution effect”. Higher wages make leisure more expensive: if people take time off they give up more money. Since the 1980s the salaries of those at the top have risen strongly, while those below the median have stagnated or fallen. Thus rising inequality encourages the rich to work more and the poor to work less.
，4 The “winner-takes-all” nature of modern economies may amplify the substitution effect. The scale of the global market means businesses that innovate tend to reap huge gains (think of YouTube, Apple and Goldman Sachs). The returns for beating your competitors can be enormous. Research from Peter Kuhn of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fernando Lozano of Pomona College shows that the same is true for highly skilled workers. Although they do not immediately get overtime pay for “extra” hours, the most successful workers, often the ones putting in the most hours, may reap gains from winner-takes-all markets. Whereas in the early 1980s a man working 55 hours a week earned 11% more than a man putting in 40 hours in the same type of occupation, that gap had increased to 25% by the turn of the 5 Economists tend to assume that the substitution effect must at some stage be countered by an “income effect”: as higher wages allow people to satisfy more of their material needs, they forgo extra work and instead choose more leisure. A billionaire who can afford his own island has little incentive to work that extra hour. But new social mores may have flipped the income effect on its head.
6 The status of work and leisure in the rich world has changed since the days of “Downton Abbey”. Back in 1899 Thorstein Veblen, an American economist who dabbled in sociology, offered his take on things. He argued that leisure was a “badge of honour”. Rich people could get others to do the dirty, repetitive work—what Veblen called “industry”. Yet Veblen's leisure class was not idle. Rather they engaged in “exploit”: challenging and creative activities such as writing, philanthropy and debating.
7 Veblen's theory needs updating, according to a recent paper from researchers at Oxford University*. Work in advanced economies has become more knowledge-intensive and intellectual. There are fewer really dull jobs, like lift-operating, and more glamorous ones, like fashion design. That means more people than ever can enjoy “exploit” at the office. Work has come to offer the sort of pleasures that rich people used to seek in their time off. On the flip side, leisure is no longer a sign of social power. Instead it symbolises uselessness and unemployment.
8 The evidence backs up the sociological theory. The occupations in which people are least happy are manual and service jobs requiring little skill. Job satisfaction tends to increase with the prestige of the occupation. Research by Arlie Russell Hochschild of the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that as work becomes more intellectually stimulating, people start to enjoy it more than home life. “I come to work to relax,” one interviewee tells Ms Hochschild. And wealthy people often feel that lingering at home is a waste of time. A study in 2006 revealed that Americans with a household income of more than $100,000 indulged in 40% less “passive leisure” (such as watching TV) than those earning less than $20,000.
Condemned to relax
休闲是无奈之举
9 What about less educated workers? Increasing leisure time probably reflects a deterioration in their employment prospects as low-skill and manual jobs have withered. Since the 1980s, high-school dropouts have fared badly in the labour market. In 1965 the unemployment rate of American high-school graduates was 2.9 percentage points higher than for those with a bachelor's degree or more. Today it is 8.4 points higher. “Less educated people are not necessarily buying their way into leisure,” explains Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago. “Some of that time off work may be involuntary.” There may also be change in the income effect for those on low wages. Information technology, by opening a vast world of high-quality and cheap home entertainment, means that low-earners do not need to work as long to enjoy a reasonably satisfying leisure.

从历史上来看，但凡富人都是最闲的。在讲述20世纪初期英国上层社会的电视剧《唐顿庄园》中，一位冷漠的贵族从未听说过“周末”一词：对她来说，每天都有大把的闲暇时间。相比之下，穷人则是典型地终日劳作。苏黎世大学的经济史专家汉斯-约阿希姆•沃斯说，在1800年时，英国工人每周的平均工作时间为64个时。“判断一个人是有钱还是没钱，只要看他的工作时间就可以了。

在当今的发达经济体中，情况依然发生了变化。在过去的一个世纪中，整体的工作时间一直在减少。但是，富人的工作时间已经开始超过穷人。在1965年时，拥有大学学位的人——他们往往容易成为比较富有的人——还能比仅仅上完高中的人多享受一点闲暇时间。但是，到2005年时，他们每周的闲暇时间反而比后者减少了8个小时。据去年发布的《美国时间利用调查报告》显示，在美国，相比没有高中文凭的人，拥有学士学位及学士学位以上的人，每天要多工作2个小时。其他的调查显示，在每周工作时间通常超过50个小时的美国人中，拥有大学文凭的比例已经从1979年的24%上升到2006年的28%。相比之下，没有读完高中的人在其中所占的比例一直处于下降的趋势。由此看来，富人已经不再是有闲一族了。
这种变化可以从多个方面来解释。其中之一同经济学家所说的“替代效应”有关。工资越高，闲暇的代价就越大；想休班，就得牺牲挣钱的机会。自上世纪80年代以来，顶层的收入迅猛增长，而低于中位数的人群的收入要么处于裹足不前

要么有所下降。于是，日趋严重的不平等就会鼓励富人多工作，穷人少工作。
millennium.
当代经济“赢者通吃”的特点可能会放大替代效应。市场的大小决定了挣钱的多少。在全球化时代，创新往往能带来巨额的利润。（在这方面，YouTube、苹果和高盛都是绝好的例子。）打败竞争对手的回报可能是巨大的。研究显示，对于高技能工人来说，情况同样如此。尽管他们不会因为“额外”工作时间比别人多而立即得到超额的报酬，但是最为成功的工人——通常是那些将大部分时间投入到工作中的人——可能会从赢者通吃的市场获得高额的回报。上世纪80年代初期，在从事同一种职业的人中，每周工作55个小时的人的工资比每周工作40个小时的多11%；到2000年时，这一差距已经拉大到25%。
在经济学家看来，替代效应必然会在某个阶段遭遇“收入效应”的阻击：工资的提高允许人们去满足更多的物质需求。为此，他们会放弃加班，更多地选择休闲。买得起私人岛屿的百万富翁是没有加班的动力的。但是，新的社会风尚可能会令收入效应产生逆转。

自“唐顿庄园”时代以来，在富国中，工作与休闲的位置就已经发生了逆转。回到1899年，亦涉足社会学的美国经济学家托斯丁·韦布伦曾给出过自己的解释。他说，闲暇是一种“荣誉勋章”。富人可以让别人去干脏活和重复性的劳动——这就是韦布伦所谓的“工业”。然而，有闲一族是不能无所事事的。相反，他们应当致力于“开拓”，从事类似于写作、慈善和辩论等具有挑战性和创新性的工作。
根据牛津大学研究者的最新论文，韦布伦的理论需要更新了。在发达经济体中，工作已经变得更加依赖于知识和智力。像开电梯这样的真正无聊的工作已经越来越少，而像时装设计这样的有吸引力的工作却越来越多。也就是说，能够在办公室中享受“开拓”的人正在日益增加。工作已经开始提供富人常常在闲暇的时候去追求的那种休闲。反过来说，闲暇已经不再是社会地位的象征。相反，它所代表的是毫无用处和失业。
这些证据是有社会学理论来支撑的。人们最不乐意从事的职业是体力劳动和对技能要求不高的服务性工作。工作满意度会随着职业的优越性而增加。加州大学伯克利分校的霍奇柴尔德指出，随着工作更多地由知识来推动，人们开始享受工作甚于享受休闲。一位受访者告诉霍奇柴尔德：“我工作的目的，就是为了放松”。与此同时，富人也经常会产生一种“在家闲着就是浪费时间”的认识。2006年的一份研究表明，家庭收入超过1000000美元的美国人沉湎于“被动休闲”（如看电视）的时间比家庭收入不足20000美元的少40%。

那么受教育程度较低的工人又是什么情况呢？随着低技能工作和体力劳动的逐渐萎缩，闲暇时间的增加可能反映了就业前景的恶化。自上世纪80年代以来，高中辍学者在劳动力市场上的待遇一直不好。1965年时，拥有高中文凭的美国人的失业率比拥有学士学位或学士学位以上的高出2.9个百分点。如今，这一数字上升到8.4个百分点。芝加哥大学的埃里克·赫斯特解释说：“受教育程度低的人是不必花钱买闲暇的，有些闲暇时间可能是非自愿性的。”收入效应对低收入者的影响也可能发生了变化。信息技术在为我们打开了一个高质量低收费的家庭娱乐之广阔世界的同时，也意味着低收入者不必为了享受合理的称心如意的闲暇而去长时间地工作

The once and future currency 美元—曾经的和未来的货币

Free exchange自由交流
The once and future currency
曾经的和未来的货币
A new book examines the world's love-hate relationship with the dollar
新书探讨了全世界与美元之间的爱恨情仇
Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition
1 “LUMPY, unpredictable, potentially large”: that was how Tim Geithner, then head of the New York Federal Reserve, described the need for dollars in emerging economies in the dark days of October 2008, according to transcripts of a Fed meeting released last month. To help smooth out those lumps, the Fed offered to “swap” currencies with four favoured central banks, as far off as South Korea and Singapore. They could exchange their own money for dollars at the prevailing exchange rate (on condition that they later swap them back again at the same rate). Why did the Fed decide to reach so far beyond its shores? It worried that stress in a financially connected emerging economy could eventually hurt America. But Mr Geithner also hinted at another motive. “The privilege of being the reserve currency of the world comes with some burdens,” he said.
2 That privilege is the subject of a new book, “The Dollar Trap”, by Eswar Prasad of Cornell University, who shares the world's ambivalence towards the currency. The 2008 financial crisis might have been expected to erode the dollar's global prominence. Instead, he argues, it cemented it. America's fragility was, paradoxically, a source of strength for its currency.
3 In the last four months of 2008 America attracted net capital inflows of half a trillion dollars. The dollar was a haven in tumultuous times, even when the tumult originated in America itself. The crisis also “shattered conventional views” about the adequate level of foreign-exchange reserves, prompting emerging economies with large dollar hoards to hoard even more. Finally, America's slump forced the Fed to ease monetary policy dramatically. In response, central banks in emerging economies bought dollars to stop their own currencies rising too fast.
4 Could Fed swap lines serve as a less costly alternative to rampant reserve accumulation? If central banks could obtain dollars from the Fed whenever the need arose, they would not need to husband their own supplies. The demand is there: India, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic and Peru have all made inquiries. The swap lines are good business: the Fed keeps the interest from the foreign central bank's loans to banks, even though the other central bank bears the credit risk. The Fed earned 6.84% from South Korea's first swap, for example. But it is not a business the Fed wants to be in. As one official said, “We're not advertising.”
5 Swap lines would help emerging economies endure the dollar's reign. But will that reign endure? Mr Prasad thinks so. The dollar's position is “suboptimal but stable and self-reinforcing,” he writes. Much as Mr Prasad finds America's privileges distasteful, his book points to the country's qualifications for the job.
6 America is not only the world's biggest economy, but also among the most sophisticated. Size and sophistication do not always go together. In the 1900s the pound was the global reserve currency and Britain's financial system had the widest reach. But America was the bigger economy. In the 2020s China will probably be the world's biggest economy, but not the most advanced.
7 America's sophistication is reflected in the depth of its financial markets. It is unusually good at creating tradeable claims on the profits and revenues that its economy generates. In a more primitive system, these spoils would mostly accrue to the state or tycoons; in America, they back a vast range of financial assets.
8 Mr Prasad draws the obvious contrast with China and its currency, the yuan, a “widely hyped” alternative to the dollar. China's GDP is now over half the size of America's. But its debt markets are one-eighth as big, and foreigners are permitted to own only a tiny fraction of them. China's low central-government debt should be a source of strength for its currency. But it also limits the volume of financial instruments on offer.
9 America has a big external balance-sheet, if not an obviously strong one. Its foreign liabilities exceed its overseas assets. But this worrying fact conceals a saving grace: its foreign assets are unusually adventurous and lucrative. Its liabilities, on the other hand, are largely liquid, safe and low-yielding. America therefore earns more on its foreign assets than it pays on its foreign liabilities.
10 Alongside its economic maturity, America also has a greying population. This ageing is a source of economic weakness. But, Mr Prasad argues, it may be another reason for the dollar's global appeal. America's pensioners hold a big chunk of the government debt that is not held by foreigners. A formidable political constituency, they will not allow the government to inflate away the value of these claims. Thus America's powerful pensioners serve to protect the interests of its generous foreign creditors.
11 America's sophistication has one final implication: the dollar has no long-term tendency to strengthen. That again contrasts with its principal long-run rival. China is still a catch-up economy. As it narrows the productivity gap with America, its exchange rate, adjusted for inflation, will tend to rise. The yuan has appreciated by about 35% against the dollar since mid-2005.
A self-deprecating currency一种自我贬值的货币
12 The dollar's depreciation over that period is, of course, bad for anyone holding American assets. But the dollar is not merely a store of value. It has also become a popular “funding” currency. Banks and multinational firms borrow in dollars, even as they accumulate assets in other denominations. Since no one wants to borrow in a currency that only goes up, this is not a role that China's currency could easily play. Moreover, because of its role as a funding currency, the dollar tends to strengthen in times of crisis. That explains why emerging economies feel a “lumpy”, “unpredictable” need for dollars. America's currency may not hold its value against others. But in times of stress, the appeal of a dollar asset is that it always holds its value against a dollar debt. The dollar is a global hegemon partly because it is also a global hedge.

“成批的、不可预测的、可能会非常大的，”据上个月公布的美联储会议记录，这是时任纽约联邦储备银行行长蒂姆·盖特纳在描述新兴经济体在2008年10月最黑暗的那几天中对于美元的需要时曾经说过的一句话。为了帮助消除那些成批的需求，美联储提出，可以为包括远在韩国央行和新加坡央行在内的四家关系较好的央行提供货币“交换”。这四家央行可以用它们自己的货币以现行汇率换成美元（其前提条件是，它们在以后还要用相同的汇率将美元换回自己的货币）美联储为何要决定将其影响力扩展到离美国这么远的国家呢？[原因在于，]它担心金融联系密切相关的新兴世界的压力可能最终会伤害美国。不过，盖特纳还暗示了美联储的另一个动机。“成为世界储备货币后，在享有特权的同时也得承担某些责任，”他说道。

这种特权就是康奈尔大学的埃斯瓦尔·普拉萨德在其新著《美元陷阱》中要与读者分享的主题。他在书中指出，世界对美元存在着一种矛盾心态。人们原本希望2008年的金融危机能够消除这种货币在全世界的主宰地位。但令人不解的是，那场危机反而强化了美元的主宰，她的脆弱反倒成为了美元力量的来源。

在2008年的最后4个月中，美国吸引的资本净流入达到5000亿美元。美元是乱世的天堂，甚至就在造就乱世的是美国自己时也是如此。危机还“打破了”外汇储备应当保持在一个适当水平的“传统观点”，促使具有大量美元的新兴经济体储备了更多的美元。最后，美国的迅速衰落还迫使美联储戏剧性地放松了货币政策。作为回应，新兴经济体的央行买入美元以阻止自己的货币过快升值。
美联储的货币互换能够作为一种代价较低的替代方式以取代泛滥的储备累计吗？如果各国央行能在需求上升的时候从美联储获得美元，他们可能就不必在吝惜本国货币的供应了。因为，需求是明摆着的。印度，印度尼西亚，多尼米加和秘鲁都曾提出过这种请求。货币互换是一桩好买卖：美联储获得了外国央行将货币放贷给银行的利息，即便是在外国央行要为此而承担信贷风险时也是如此。例如，美联储从与韩国进行的第一次货币互换中获得了6.84%的利息。但这不是美联储想参与其中的那种买卖。正如某官员所说：“我们不想推而广之。”

货币互换可能会有助于新兴经济体容忍美元的主宰。但是，这种主宰会长久吗？对此，普阿萨德持肯定的观点。他在书中写道，美元的地位“虽未达到最佳状态，但却是稳定和自我增强的”。也就是说，尽管这种特权非常不受待见，但美国还是能够胜任这份工作的。
美国不仅是世界上最大的经济体，还是最成熟的经济体之一。经济的规模和成熟程度不是能都同时达到的。在20世纪初的时候，英镑是全球储备货币，而且英国的金融体系也是覆盖面最广的。但是，当时的最大经济体却是美国。到2020年时，中国有可能会成为世界最大经济体，但未必会成为最发达的经济体。
美国的成熟反映在金融市场的深度上。在把由经济体产生的利润和收入变成可供交易的债权方面，该国有着常人不及的创造力。如果是在一个更加原始的体系中，这些战利品可能大都会被国家或者寡头所占有。但是，在美国，它们会以品种众多的金融资产的形式回馈给市场。

普拉萨德在书中，对中国与其被“广泛炒作的”可以取代美元的货币——元之间的关系进行了明显的对比。中国当前的GDP是美国的一半还多。但是，中国债务市场的规模只有美国的八分之一，允许外国人拥有的债务只其中的一小部分。该国中央政府的债务水平较低应当是其货币力量的一个来源。但是，中国可以提供的金融工具的总量是有限的。
美国有一个庞大但显不出强大的外部资产负债表。她在外国负债超过了海外资产。但是，这种令人担忧的事实却掩盖了一个可取之处：她的外国资产具有与众不同的冒险性和逐利性。另一方面，她的负债还具有流动性强，安全性高和收益率低的特点。因此，美国从其外国资产上的所得大于为外国负债付出的支出。

除了经济成熟度高之外，美国的人口也在趋于老龄化。一般认为，老龄化是经济趋弱的一个根源。但是，普拉萨德指出，老龄化或许是美元在全球受捧的另一个原因。在美国政府的债务中，领养老金的人持有一大块，而这一块是不由外国人所持有的。作为一个政治力量强大的选民群体，令养老金的人是不会允许政府通过通胀消化掉这些债权的。因此，美国强有力的领养老金群体充当了保护慷慨的外国债权人利益的角色。
最后，美国的成熟还有一层含义：美元不存在长期走强的趋势。这一点又同其主要的长期对手形成了对比。中国的经济仍然是一种追赶型的经济。随着她逐渐缩小与美国在生产力方面的差距，其按照通胀调整后的汇率也会趋向于上升。自2005年年中以来，人民币对美元已经升值了35%左右。

美元在那段时间内的贬值当然不利于持有美元资产的人。但是，美元的作用不仅仅在于保值。她已经成为一种广受欢迎的“融资型”货币。银行和跨国公司甚至在用其他货币累积资产时也会借入美元。由于没有人想借入一种只会升值的货币，因此，这个角色不是人民币可以轻松地扮演的了的。更为重要的是，由于其融资型货币的特点，美元往往在危机时走强。这解释了为什么新兴经济体会对美元的需求存在着“成批的”和“不可预测”的原因。美元或许不会保持住其相对于其他货币的价值。但是，在非常时期，美元资产的吸引力就在于她总能保持住相对于美元债务的价值。这种防御性也是美元成为全球霸主的一个原因。

Class in America 美国的阶层

Class in America美国的阶层
Mobility, measured社会流动性，固化的
America is no less socially mobile than it was a generation ago
固化的美国社会与三十年前相差无几
1 AMERICANS are deeply divided as to whether widening inequality is a problem, let alone what the government should do about it. Some are appalled that Bill Gates has so much money; others say good luck to him. But nearly everyone agrees that declining social mobility is a bad thing. Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech on January 28th dwelt on how America’s “ladders of opportunity” were failing. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, two leading Republicans, recently gave speeches decrying social immobility and demanding more effort to ensure poor people who work hard can better their lot.
2 Just as the two sides have found something to agree on, however, a new study suggests the conventional wisdom may be wrong. Despite huge increases in inequality, America may be no less mobile a society than it was 40 years ago.
3 The study, by a clutch of economists at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, is far bigger than any previous effort to measure social mobility. The economists crunch numbers from over 40m tax returns of people born between 1971 and 1993 (with all identifying information removed). They focus on mobility between generations and use several ways to measure it, including the correlation of parents’ and children’s income, and the odds that a child born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution will climb all the way up to the top fifth.
4 They find that none of these measures has changed much (see chart). In 1971 a child from the poorest fifth had an 8.4% chance of making it to the top quintile. For a child born in 1986 the odds were 9%. The study confirms previous findings that America’s social mobility is low compared with many European countries. (In Denmark, a poor child has twice as much chance of making it to the top quintile as in America.) But it challenges several smaller recent studies that concluded that America had become less socially mobile.
5 This result has caused a huge stir, not least because it runs counter to public perceptions. A recent Gallup poll found that only 52% of Americans think there is plenty of opportunity for the average Joe to get ahead, down from 81% in 1998. It also jars with other circumstantial evidence. Several studies point to widening gaps between rich and poor in the kinds of factors you would expect to influence mobility, such as the quality of schools or parents’ investment of time and money in their children. Cross-country analyses also suggest there is an inverse relationship between income inequality and social mobility—a phenomenon that has become known as the “Great Gatsby” curve.
6 What is going on? One possibility is that social stratification takes time to become entrenched. In a new book, Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, who tracks mobility over hundreds of years by following surnames, reaches far more pessimistic conclusions. Another, sunnier, explanation is that even as income gaps have widened over the past 30 years, other barriers to mobility, such as discrimination against women and blacks, have fallen.
7 Most likely, the answer lies in the nature of America’s inequality, whose main characteristic is the soaring share of overall income going to the top 1% (from 10% in 1980 to 22% in 2012). The correlation between vast wealth accruing to a tiny elite and the ability of people to move between the rest of the rungs of the income ladder may be small—at least for now.
8 Whatever the explanation, it would be unwise to take much comfort from this study. For a start, since the gap between top and bottom has widened, the consequences of an accident of birth have become bigger. Second, if the gains of growth are going mostly to those at the top, that bodes ill for those whose skills are less in demand. Many economists worry that living standards for the non-elite will stagnate for a long time.
Is your town a launchpad or a swamp?
你的家乡是一架发射台还是一片沼泽？
9 Third, although social mobility has not changed much over time, it varies widely from place to place. In a second paper, the economists crunch their tax statistics by region. They find that the probability of a child born into the poorest fifth of the population in San Jose, California making it to the top is 12.9%, not much lower than in Denmark. In Charlotte, North Carolina it is 4.4%, far lower than anywhere else in the rich world.
10 This geographic prism also offers some pointers on what influences mobility. The economists found five factors that were correlated with differences in social mobility in different parts of America: residential segregation (whether by income or race); the quality of schooling; family structure (eg, how many children live with only one parent); “social capital” (such as taking part in community groups); and inequality (particularly income gaps among those outside the top 1%). Social mobility is higher in integrated places with good schools, strong families, lots of community spirit and smaller income gaps within the broad middle class. Not a bad agenda for politicians to push, if only they knew how.
美国不平等逐渐扩大，严重分化，已经成为问题。美国政府也为此头痛不已。比尔•盖茨很有钱，有些人对此惊骇，有些人祝他好运。但社会愈发固化却是件坏事，对此几乎人人同意。1月28日，奥巴马发表了国情咨文演说，详细说明了美国 “成功阶梯”的渐衰（见文章）。近期，保罗•莱恩和马克罗•鲁比奥两位主要的共和党人发表演说，谴责了美国社会的固化，呼吁社会做出更多努力，保证那些进取的穷人能有一个较好的未来。
民主党和共和党在这个问题上达到了一致。然而，与此同时，一份新研究表明，传统思维可能有误。不平等差距在加剧，但当今的美国社会依然固化，与40年前相差无几。

此份新研究的作者是一群经济学家，来自哈佛大学和加州大学伯克利分校。为研究社会的流动性，研究付出了更大的努力，比以往任何一次都要大得多。他们从四千多万张纳税申报单（去除了所有的识别信息）中得出数据，并对这些数据进行计算。这些申报单的主人都是在1971 年至1993年间出生。他们关注代际之间的流动性，使用多种方法进行测量，其中包括父母与子女收入的关联性。同时，那些处于收入分配底部第五层家庭的孩子，他们有可能一路直上，达到五分层的顶层。
他们发现，这些数据结果并未改变很多（见图表）。1971年，最贫穷家庭位于第五层的孩子有8.4%的机会成功，能到达顶层。1986年出生的孩子有9%的机会。研究证实了先前的发现结果：与多数欧洲国家（在丹麦，贫穷家庭的孩子获得成功到达顶层的机会是美国贫穷家庭孩子的两倍）相比，美国社会的流动性是低的。这就挑战了近期的一些小型研究，这些研究得出如此论断：美国社会已经变得更加固化。
新研究结果引起极大反响，不仅是因为研究结果与公众的观念背道而弛。近期，盖洛普民意测验发现，只有52%的美国人认为，普通人获得成功的机会有很多，低于1998年的81%。同时，研究结果也与其它证据不协调。多数研究显示，穷人和富人之间的差距正在扩大，以可以想象得到的方式影响着社会的流动性，比如受教育的质量、父母对子女时间金钱的投入。对多个国家的分析也表明，收入差距和社会流动性之间出现了一种相反的关系——这种现象已经为人所知，叫作“伟大的盖茨比”曲线。
接下来如何？一种可能是，社会阶层要变得根深蒂固需要一定时间。格雷戈里•克拉克是加州大学戴维斯分校的经济历史学家。他通过研究姓氏的方法，对上百年的社会流动性进行了追踪。在一本新书中，他得出了非常悲观的结论（见文章）。还有一种解释比较乐观，认为即使过去三十年中，收入差距有所扩大，对流动性的其它障碍，比如对妇女和黑人的歧视，已经削减。

问题的答案极有可能根植于美国社会不平等的本质之中。美国社会不平等的主要特点就是，整体收入中，流入高层1%（1980年是10%，2012年为22%）人群的份额极速上升。一方面，巨大的财富流向少数精英人的手中。另一方面，有些人有能力在收入级梯之间流动。这两方面之间的关联性可能是小的——至少现在如此。

无论解释如何，无关痛痒地对待这份研究是不明智的。首先，因为顶层和底层之间的差距已经扩大，意外出生的后果会变得更大。第二，假如增长收益还是继续主要地流向顶层人群，那些掌握技能较少的人是凶多吉少的。多数经济学家担心，非精英人群的生活标准会在很长一段时间内不得提高。
第三，虽然社会流动性并未随着时间改变很多，但不同地域还是不同。在第二份研究中，经济学家按照地域对赋税统计数据。他们发现，在加州圣何塞人口中，位于最贫穷家庭第五层的孩子获得成功、达到顶层的概率为12.9%，并不比丹麦的低出很多。在北卡罗莱纳的夏洛特市，这个概率为4.4%，远远低于富裕国家中的其它任何一个区域。这种由区域因素产生的“棱镜”也给人们提供了一些线索，知道了影响社会流动性的因素。经济学家发现了五点，这些因素与美国不同地区社会流动性的差别有关：居住隔离（收入或种族因素造成）；教育质量；家庭结构（比如，与单亲父母同住的子女数量）；“社会资本”（比如参加社区组团）以及不平等因素（尤其是高层1%以外人群的收入差距）。有些地区非常协调，教育优质，家族坚固，集体精神强大，广大中产阶级中收入差距较小。这些地区的社会流动性会更高。对于政府工作人员来说，把这些纳入工作日程加以实施不算是坏主意，假如他们知道如何实施就更好了。

社会流动性（Social Mobility）实际上是一个社会学术语，包含两个意思，一是指民众在地域上的迁徙情况，因此，也称之为水平流动性，另一层的意思是指人们在社会阶层结构上的升迁，是指纵向的流动性。按照学究式的定义，社会流动性是指个人或群体由社会的某一阶层到另一阶层的活动。例如，直白点的意思是，即一个人由打工者爬升到具有名望、权利及财富的社会位置。而进一步严格区分，社会流动性又分为代内流动（Intra-generational mobility）和代间流动（Inter-generational mobility），前者是指个人在自己一身中的社会地位的变迁，例如，从一个蓝领阶层成为白领阶层，而后者是指下一代相对于父母社会地位的变迁，像奥巴马从一个普通的黑人移民的后代成为美国的总统。而对于一个开放的社会来讲，对于不同阶层的人来讲，都应具有大致较为公平的机会，都鼓励社会成员通过努力和竞争改变自己的命运。而与此相反，对封闭的社会体系而言，底层向上爬的机会甚少，个人的命运难以改变。封闭的社会体系的弊端显而易见，会导致各个社会阶层的仇视、腐败的滋生、社会的不稳定和创新精神的减少。

Metaphysicians玄学家

Combating bad science打击坏科学
Metaphysicians形而上学家
Sloppy researchers beware. A new institute has you in its sights
粗心大意的研究者们注意了！你正被一种新的机构所关注。
1 “WHY most published research findings are false” is not, as the title of an academic paper, likely to win friends in the ivory tower. But it has certainly influenced people (including journalists at The Economist). The paper it introduced was published in 2005 by John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist who was then at the University of Ioannina, in Greece, and is now at Stanford. It exposed the ways, most notably the overinterpreting of statistical significance in studies with small sample sizes, that scientific findings can end up being irreproducible—or, as a layman might put it, wrong.
2 Dr Ioannidis has been waging war on sloppy science ever since, helping to develop a discipline called meta-research (ie, research about research). Later this month that battle will be institutionalised, with the launch of the Meta-Research Innovation Centre at Stanford.
3 METRICS, as the new laboratory is to be known for short, will connect enthusiasts of the nascent field in such corners of academia as medicine, statistics and epidemiology, with the aim of solidifying the young discipline. Dr Ioannidis and the lab’s co-founder, Steven Goodman, will (for this is, after all, science) organise conferences at which acolytes can meet in the world of atoms, rather than just online. They will create a “journal watch” to monitor scientific publishers’ work and to shame laggards into better behaviour. And they will spread the message to policymakers, governments and other interested parties, in an effort to stop them making decisions on the basis of flaky studies. All this in the name of the centre’s nerdishly valiant mission statement: “Identifying and minimising persistent threats to medical-research quality.”
The METRICS systemMETRICS系统
4 Irreproducibility is one such threat—so much so that there is an (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) publication called theJournal of Irreproducible Results. Some fields are making progress, though. In psychology, the Many Labs Replication Project, supported by the Centre for Open Science, an institute of the University of Virginia, has re-run 13 experiments about widely accepted theories. Only ten were validated. The centre has also launched what it calls the Cancer Biology Reproducibility Project, to look at 50 recent oncology studies.
5 Until now, however, according to Dr Ioannidis, no one has tried to find out whether such attempts at revalidation have actually had any impact on the credibility of research. METRICS will try to do this, and will make recommendations about how future work might be improved and better co-ordinated—for the study of reproducibility should, like any branch of science, be based on evidence of what works and what does not.
6 Wasted effort is another scourge of science that the lab will look into. A recent series of articles in the Lancet noted that, in 2010, about $200 billion (an astonishing 85% of the world’s spending on medical research) was squandered on studies that were flawed in their design, redundant, never published or poorly reported. METRICS will support efforts to tackle this extraordinary inefficiency, and will itself update research about the extent to which randomised-controlled trials acknowledge the existence of previous investigations of the same subject. If the situation has not improved, METRICS and its collaborators will try to design new publishing practices that discourage bad behaviour among scientists.
7 There is also Dr Ioannidis’s pet offender: publication bias. Not all studies that are conducted get published, and the ones which do tend to be those that have significant results. That leaves a skewed impression of the evidence.
8 Researchers have been studying publication bias for years, using various statistical tests. Again, though, there has been little reflection on these methods and their comparative effectiveness. They may, according to Dr Ioannidis, be giving both false negatives and false positives about whether or not publication bias exists in a particular body of studies.
9 Dr Ioannidis plans to run tests on the methods of meta-research itself, to make sure he and his colleagues do not fall foul of the very criticisms they make of others. “I don’t want”, he says, “to take for granted any type of meta-research is ideal and efficient and nice. I don’t want to promise that we can change the world, although this is probably what everybody has to promise to get funded nowadays.”

作为一篇学术文章，如果拥有这样一个标题--“为什么大多数研究发现都是假的？”，是无法在科学研究这个象牙塔里获得认可的。但是，它确实对人们产生了影响（包括本报记者在内）。这篇文章是由约翰-约阿尼迪斯于2005年发表的，当时他是希腊约阿尼纳大学的流行病学家，现在任职于斯坦福大学。它揭露了科学发现有时最终无法重现的原因，或者，就像外行人说的那样，是错的，尤其以过分诠释小样本事件之统计意义现象突出。
一直以来，约阿尼迪斯博士就站在马虎科学研究的对立面，帮助开发了一种新的学科，称之为元研究（即对研究进行研究）。随着本月晚些时候斯坦福大学的元研究创新中心的成立，这种没有硝烟的战争将制度化。

人们把这个实验室称之为“METRICS”—会把研究一些学科比如医学，统计学和流行病学等被忽视方面，这个新领域的爱好者聚集起来，目的就是为了让这个新生的学科稳定地发展下去。约阿尼迪斯博士和这个实验室的另一名创建者，史蒂文-古德曼将会召开一些会议（毕竟，这也是科学），以此让追随者们不仅仅在网上相互联系，而且还能在原子的世界里互相交流。他们将会创建一个“观察日记”，用来监控科学出版者的工作及以更适合的方式让那些做事拖拉的人感学到羞愧。他们还会把信息反馈给决策者们，政府和其它有关方面，希望能够让这些人不要为了一些古怪研究做出什么决策。所有这些都反应了这个中心有些让人讨厌，但却勇敢的使命陈述，“识别出，并尽量减少那些对医疗研究质量的持续性威胁。”
不可再现性就是这样一种威胁—这种威胁的程度之大，以至于现在有一个称为“不可重现杂志”的出版物（当然这暗含着嘲讽意味）。但是，有些领域取得些进展了。在心理学领域，许多实验室项目的复制—得到了弗吉尼亚大学开放科学中心的支持—已经重现了13项被广泛接受理论的实验。只有10项进行了验证。这个中心也发起了称之为癌症生物学重复性项目的研究，旨在对最近的50项肿瘤研究进行研究。
然而，根据约阿尼迪斯博士的研究，直到现在还是没有人试图去发现，类似这些重新验证的企图是不是真的对研究的可信程度有影响。METRICS将会在这方面进行尝试，而且会就基于现在的研究和不可行的基础上，对如何在未来进行提高，如何更好地调节—这是可重复性应该研究的方向，就像其它科学机构一样，做出一些建议.

无用功会是这个实验室监控的另一个科学危害。柳叶刀最近的一系列文章指出了，在2010年，约有二千亿美元（在世界医学研究的开支就达到了让人惊讶的85%）被浪费在了那些设计有缺陷，多余的，而且从未发表或者报道甚少的研究上。METRICS会努力支持解决这个异常的效率低下，并且会及时更新它自身的研究进展—即以随机对照试验来确认同一项目以前调查的证据。如果这个情况还没有改善，METRICS和它合作者会尝试设计新的出版方式，以抑制科学之间的不良行为。还有一个约阿尼迪斯博士不能容忍的：出版偏倚。不是所有进行的实验都能出版。那些希望可以出版的往往就是些研究取得显著成果的。这让那些成果往往被人误解。
多年以来，研究者们一直通过不同的统计试验研究出版偏倚。但是，他们的研究方式和相对有效性几乎没什么实质性的结果。约阿尼迪斯博士表示，在研究特例是否存在出版偏倚现象时，这些研究可能同时给出了错误否定和错误肯定的结论。
约阿尼迪斯博士计划对元研究本身的方式进行测试，以确定他和他的同事们没有做出与他们批评别人错误做法相同的行为。他表示，“我不会想当然地认为，元研究是一种理想的，有效的和完美的研究。我不想承诺我们可以改变世界—尽管这是现在每个研究者希望取得资金帮助的理由。”
Obamacare 奥巴马医改
Uphill all the way长路漫漫
As the deadline for signing up nears, Obamacare looks precarious
随着报名截止日期临近，奥巴马医改似乎充满了不确定性
Mar 29th 2014 | PHILADELPHIA | From the print edition
BARACK OBAMA signed the Affordable Care Act on March 23rd, 2010. Exactly four years later J. Louis Felton, a pastor in Philadelphia, led his flock in an unusual procession: out of church and onto a sales bus owned by a local insurer. “We need to sign up,” Mr Felton says. “People in our communities have never had the opportunity to get health coverage before.” On the bus he prayed for Obamacare’s success.
It could use some help. The fight over the law makes mud-wrestling look decorous. This year Obamacare is, yet again, Republicans’ favourite weapon on the campaign trail. On March 25th it was, yet again, debated in the Supreme Court (see article). Meanwhile, Mr Obama continues to undermine his own law by delaying parts of it: this month officials said Americans could keep old plans that don’t comply with Obamacare for another two years.
America is the world’s only rich country not to have universal health care. Obamacare was meant to address that. In the past insurers charged the sick higher rates than the healthy. Since January this has been banned. To keep insurers from going bust, the law requires all Americans to have insurance or pay a fine. The premiums from cheap, healthy people are supposed to offset the costs of the sick. New online health exchanges allow people to shop for coverage. For the hard-up, Obamacare does two things. It expands Medicaid (public health care for the poor) to individuals earning up to about $16,000. And it offers subsidies to those who make more than $11,700 but less than $46,700.
In 2011 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would lower the number of uninsured by 21m in 2014 and 34m in 2021. Now the CBO is gloomier: it says the law will shrink the ranks of the uninsured by 13m in 2014 and 25m in 2021. More than 30m Americans will still lack coverage after Obamacare is fully implemented.
The gap that makes no sense
毫无意义的差距
The law’s drafters assumed that the states would all expand Medicaid, so the subsidies only kick in above that $11,700 threshold. But after the Supreme Court said the states could refuse to expand Medicaid, half of them (mostly Republican-led) did just that. In those states, millions of people will not qualify for Medicaid but are too poor to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.
The results are perverse. In Pennsylvania, which has not expanded Medicaid, childless adults are ineligible, no matter how poor. Paul Johnson, a 51-year-old repairman, boarded that bus in Philadelphia on March 24th, hoping to find coverage. “I’ve never had a check-up,” he said. He will have to wait a bit longer. Earning less than $10,000 a year, Mr Johnson is too poor to qualify for an Obamacare subsidy. But he does not qualify for Medicaid, either. He left the bus as he had entered it, without insurance, hoping not to fall ill.
Pennsylvania and 33 other states also declined to create their own insurance exchanges. The federal government did so on their behalf, setting a new record for bureaucratic ineptitude. The launch of Healthcare.gov in October went so badly that the CBO cut its estimate for the number of enrollees this year from 7m to 6m.
The website is working better now. The deadline for individuals to have coverage in 2014 or pay a penalty was supposed to be March 31st. Under new rules, many who claim to have begun the process will have more time to sign up. By mid-March more than 5m Americans had done so. Mr Obama and his allies hope enrolment will jump by April, especially among the young and healthy. People aged 18-34 were a quarter of those who had enrolled by the end of February, though they are 40% of those eligible to sign up.
The worry is that too few healthy people will enroll, prompting insurers to raise prices next year. That would make fit folk even less likely to buy coverage. To avoid this “death spiral”, the health department spent $52m on adverts from January through March. Mr Obama has hawked the law to young Americans at meetings, online and on television chat shows.
He has also tweaked his reform in ways that may appease angry voters in the short run, but make it less likely to work in the long run. For example, he has made it easier to dodge the requirement to buy insurance, by adding to the law’s long list of exemptions for “hardship”. The weaker the mandate, the less likely healthy people are to sign up: they know they can wait until they fall sick to buy insurance. Paul Starr of Princeton University has argued that the mandate should be made stronger: refuseniks should have to opt out on their tax returns, and should not then be allowed to buy an Obamacare policy for five years.
Mr Obama has also done things likely to make insurance more expensive. For example, his health department will require insurers to cover a broader network of doctors in 2015. That will raise prices—this year, plans with a wide network were 26% more expensive than plans with a narrow one, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. Higher prices will deter enrolment.
A death spiral is unlikely, but by March only 15% of those who could enroll through the exchanges had actually done so, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a think-tank. According to a new Kaiser survey, six in ten were still unaware of the enrolment deadline.
Just 19% of Americans said the law has helped them. More continue to oppose Obamacare than support it, though only three in ten favour scrapping it. So long as power in Washington is divided and the parties are polarised, the law can neither be amended nor repealed. It is up to Mr Obama to fix it using his administrative powers; he does not have much time.

巴拉克奥巴马在2010年3月23日签署了评价医疗法案，在四年后的同一天，宾夕法尼亚的一位牧师J.路易斯菲尔顿（J.Louis Felton）带领其信众进行了一次不同寻常的游行：在教堂外举行也在当地保险公司的销售大巴上举行。“我们需要报名，”菲尔顿先生说。“我们社区的人以前从没有过享受健康保险的机会。”他在大巴上祈祷奥巴马医改获得成功。
这可能会有些帮助。关于这项法案的斗争之激烈让泥巴摔跤运动都显得得体了。今年奥巴马医改再次成为共和党人竞选游说过程中最喜欢的武器。3月25日，再一次在最高法院中讨论这项法案。与此同时，奥巴马通过延迟实行法案中某些部分，不断弱化他自己的这项法案：本月官员表示美国人可以继续使用不遵从奥巴马医改的旧保险方案的时间再延长两年。
美国是世界上唯一一个没有统一医疗保险的发达国家。奥巴马医改就是为了解决这一问题。过去保险公司对病人征收的费用要高于对健康人征收的费用。一月以来这种做法被禁止。为避免保险公司破产，法律要求所有的美国人必须持有保险否则要交罚款。对小气的健康人士征收的保险费理应抵消掉不健康人士的花费。新型在线保健交换系统允许人们可以购买保险。对于手头拮据的人，奥巴马医改做出了两点改变。将医疗补助计划（是针对穷人的医疗保险）的范围扩展至最高收入约为16,000美元的人。并且给那些收入在11,700—46,700美元间的人提供补助金。

2011年美国国会预算办公室估计奥巴马医改将使没有保险的公民人数2014年时减少2100万，2021年时减少3400万。但是现在国会预算委员会的估计就没有这么乐观了：它表示这项法案将使没有保险的公民人数2014年时减少1300万人，2021年时减少2500万人。奥巴马医改完全实行后，超过3000万美国人将仍旧没有保险。

这项法案的起草者想当然地认为医疗补助计划会覆盖全联邦，这样一来补助金只在超过11,700美元的临界值时有效。但在最高法院声明各州可以拒绝使用医疗补助法案之后，一半数量的州政府（大多是共和党领导的）就拒绝使用这项法案。在这些州中，成百上千万的人没有使用医疗补助计划的资格，但同时因为收入太低也没有享受奥巴马医改补助金的资格。

这种结果是不通情理的。宾夕法尼亚州没有实行医疗补助计划，没有孩子的成年人无论收入何其少，都没有资格享受奥巴马医改补助金。保罗约翰逊是一个51岁的修理工，在3月24日登上了那辆宣传巴士希望能有份保险。“我从来没体检过，”他说。他将不得不再等些时间。由于年均收入少于1万美元，约翰逊先生没有享受奥巴马医改补助金的资格，但是他也没有享受医疗补助计划的资格。他登上了那辆巴士随即又下来了，因为没有他的保险，他希望不要生病。
宾夕法尼亚州以及其它33个州也拒绝创立自己的保险交易所。联邦政府代表他们做了这件事情，这简直是创立了官僚无能的新纪录。十月份发起的官方医疗网站运行很差，以至于国会预算办公室对今年申请者的人数估计值从700万降低到600万。

现在网站运行状况好多了。2014年个人申请保险的或支付罚款的截止日期本来是3月31日。根据新规定，那些声称开始这一程序的人会有更多的时间进行报名。截至3月中旬，超过500万美国人报名了。奥巴马及其同僚希望四月份报名人数会增加，特别是那些健康的年轻人。年龄在18到34之间的人占二月低之前报名者总数的四分之一，虽然这些人占有资格报名人的总数的40%。

有人担心很少有健康的人会报名，这会致使保险公司明年会提高价格。这就更不可能会让那些健康的人买保险。为避免这种“死亡漩涡”，1月到3月期间卫生部门在广告上投入了5200万美元。奥巴马也在各种会议上、网络上以及电视脱口秀上向美国的年轻人兜售这项法案。
奥巴马对他的改革进行了修改，短期内可能会抚恤那些愤怒的投票者，但是长期内很难奏效。比如，他通过向法案中添加“困苦”豁免长单使得规避保险的购买需求变得更加容易。强制性月若，健康人报名的可能性就越小：因为他们知道他们可以再生病的时候再买保险。普林斯顿大学的保罗斯塔尔称应该嘉庆强制性：那些拒绝者应该退出纳税申报，五年内不允许购买奥巴马医改保险。
奥巴马采取的行动很可能会使保险价格更高。比如，其卫生部门要求保险公司在2015年建立一个覆盖面更广的医生网络。这就会提高保险价格——根据麦肯锡咨询公司，今年覆盖面更广的保险计划的费用比起覆盖面小的要高出26%。高额费用会让报名者望而却步。
出现死亡漩涡的几率很小，但是根据智库凯撒家庭基金会的统计，截至三月，有资格通过交易平台报名的人中只有15%真正报了名。其一项新调查显示还有60%的人不知道报名截至日期。
仅仅有19%的美国人表示这项法案对其有帮助，更多的是继续反对这项法案而非支持，虽然只有30%的人支持废除这项法案。只要华盛顿继续实行三权分立、两党继续对立，那么这项法案既不会被修改也不会被废除。法案的修改取决于奥巴马使用其行政权力；但是他没有太多时间。

Who pressed the pause button? 谁按了暂停键？

Global warming全球变暖
Who pressed the pause button?谁按了暂停键？
The slowdown in rising temperatures over the past 15 years goes from being unexplained to overexplained
过去十五年气温升高减缓或没有解释，或过度解读
BETWEEN 1998 and 2013, the Earth’s surface temperature rose at a rate of 0.04°C a decade, far slower than the 0.18°C increase in the 1990s. Meanwhile, emissions of carbon dioxide (which would be expected to push temperatures up) rose uninterruptedly. This pause in warming has raised doubts in the public mind about climate change. A few sceptics say flatly that global warming has stopped. Others argue that scientists’ understanding of the climate is so flawed that their judgments about it cannot be accepted with any confidence. A convincing explanation of the pause therefore matters both to a proper understanding of the climate and to the credibility of climate science—and papers published over the past few weeks do their best to provide one. Indeed, they do almost too good a job. If all were correct, the pause would now be explained twice over.
This is the opposite of what happened at first. As evidence piled up that temperatures were not rising much, some scientists dismissed it as a blip. The temperature, they pointed out, had fallen for much longer periods twice in the past century or so, in 1880-1910 and again in 1945-75 (see chart), even though the general trend was up. Variability is part of the climate system and a 15-year hiatus, they suggested, was not worth getting excited about.
An alternative way of looking at the pause’s significance was to say that there had been a slowdown but not a big one. Most records, including one of the best known (kept by Britain’s Meteorological Office), do not include measurements from the Arctic, which has been warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Using satellite data to fill in the missing Arctic numbers, Kevin Cowtan of the University of York, in Britain, and Robert Way of the University of Ottawa, in Canada, put the overall rate of global warming at 0.12°C a decade between 1998 and 2012—not far from the 1990s rate. A study by NASA puts the “Arctic effect” over the same period somewhat lower, at 0.07°C a decade, but that is still not negligible.
It is also worth remembering that average warming is not the only measure of climate change. According to a study just published by Sonia Seneviratne of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, in Zurich, the number of hot days, the number of extremely hot days and the length of warm periods all increased during the pause (1998-2012). A more stable average temperature hides wider extremes.
Still, attempts to explain away that stable average have not been convincing, partly because of the conflict between flat temperatures and rising CO2 emissions, and partly because observed temperatures are now falling outside the range climate models predict. The models embody the state of climate knowledge. If they are wrong, the knowledge is probably faulty, too. Hence attempts to explain the pause.
Chilling news寒冷的新闻
In September 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did so in terms of fluctuating solar output, atmospheric pollution and volcanoes. All three, it thought, were unusually influential.
The sun’s power output fluctuates slightly over a cycle that lasts about 11 years. The current cycle seems to have gone on longer than normal and may have started from a lower base, so for the past decade less heat has been reaching Earth than usual. Pollution throws aerosols (particles such as soot, and suspended droplets of things like sulphuric acid) into the air, where they reflect sunlight back into space. The more there are, the greater their cooling effect—and pollution from Chinese coal-fired power plants, in particular, has been rising. Volcanoes do the same thing, so increased volcanic activity tends to reduce temperatures.
Gavin Schmidt and two colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Institute quantify the effects of these trends in Nature Geoscience. They argue that climate models underplay the delayed and subdued solar cycle. They think the models do not fully account for the effects of pollution (specifically, nitrate pollution and indirect effects like interactions between aerosols and clouds). And they claim that the impact of volcanic activity since 2000 has been greater than previously thought. Adjusting for all this, they find that the difference between actual temperature readings and computer-generated ones largely disappears. The implication is that the solar cycle and aerosols explain much of the pause.
There is, however, another type of explanation. Much of the incoming heat is absorbed by oceans, especially the largest, the Pacific. Several new studies link the pause with changes in the Pacific and in the trade winds that influence the circulation of water within it.
Trade winds blow east-west at tropical latitudes. In so doing they push warm surface water towards Asia and draw cooler, deep water to the surface in the central and eastern Pacific, which chills the atmosphere. Water movement at the surface also speeds up a giant churn in the ocean. This pulls some warm water downwards, sequestering heat at greater depth. In a study published in Nature in 2013, Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego, argued that much of the difference between climate models and actual temperatures could be accounted for by cooling in the eastern Pacific.
Every few years, as Dr Kosaka and Dr Xie observe, the trade winds slacken and the warm water in the western Pacific sloshes back to replace the cool surface layer of the central and eastern parts of the ocean. This weather pattern is called El Niño and it warms the whole atmosphere. There was an exceptionally strong Niño in 1997-98, an unusually hot year. The opposite pattern, with cooler temperatures and stronger trade winds, is called La Niña. The 1997-98 Niño was followed by a series of Niñas, explaining part of the pause.
Switches between El Niño and La Niña are frequent. But there is also a long-term cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which switches from a warm (or positive) phase to a cool (negative) one every 20 or 30 years. The positive phase encourages more frequent, powerful Niños. According to Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research, the PDO was positive in 1976-98—a period of rising temperatures—and negative in 1943-76 and since 2000, producing a series of cooling Niñas.
But that is not the end of it. Laid on top of these cyclical patterns is what looks like a one-off increase in the strength of trade winds during the past 20 years. According to a study in Nature Climate Change, by Matthew England of the University of New South Wales and others, record trade winds have produced a sort of super-Niña. On average, sea levels have risen by about 3mm a year in the past 30 years. But those in the eastern Pacific have barely budged, whereas those near the Philippines have risen by 20cm since the late 1990s. A wall of warm water, in other words, is being held in place by powerful winds, with cool water rising behind it. According to Dr England, the effect of the trade winds explains most of the temperature pause.
If so, the pause has gone from being not explained to explained twice over—once by aerosols and the solar cycle, and again by ocean winds and currents. These two accounts are not contradictory. The processes at work are understood, but their relative contributions are not.
Nor is the answer to what is, from the human point of view, the biggest question of all, namely what these explanations imply about how long the pause might continue. On the face of it, if some heat is being sucked into the deep ocean, the process could simply carry on: the ocean has a huge capacity to absorb heat as long as the pump sending it to the bottom remains in working order. But that is not all there is to it. Gravity wants the western-Pacific water wall to slosh back; it is held in place only by exceptionally strong trade winds. If those winds slacken, temperatures will start to rise again.
The solar cycle is already turning. And aerosol cooling is likely to be reined in by China’s anti-pollution laws. Most of the circumstances that have put the planet’s temperature rise on “pause” look temporary. Like the Terminator, global warming will be back.

从1998年到2013年，地球表面的温度以每十年0.04℃的速率升高，远低于九十年代的0.18摄氏度。同时二氧化碳排放（预计会提升温度的）不间断的上升。变暖暂停了，公众心中对气候变化产生了疑问。一些怀疑论者直截了当的说全球变暖停止了。另一些人说，科学家们对气候的理解有误，他们关于气候的判断不能够自信地接受。因此一个对此暂停令人信服的解释对关于气候的合理的理解和气候科学的公信力都很重要—最近几周发表的论文尽力的提供一个解释。的确，他们基本上完成得很好。如果他们都是正确的，暂停可以得到强力的解释。

这和最初所发生的的事情完全相反。当证据开始聚集，显示温度没有升高太多，某些科学家把此当成暂时现象不予考虑。他们指出，在过去的大约一个世纪里，温度下降了两次，时间更长，从1880到1910然后再一次从1945到1975（看图表），即使如此，大趋势还是上升的。变化是气候系统的一部分，而且，他们说，15年的间隙并不值得激动。
看待这个暂停的另一个方法是说减缓了但是规模不大。绝大多数的记录，包括一个最出名的（由英国气象办公室保管），并没有来自北极的测量，北极比世界上其他地方都要快。来自英国约克大学的凯文•高碳（Kevin Cowtan）和加拿大渥太华大学罗伯特•魏（Robert Way）使用了卫星数据来弥补确实的北极数据，把1998年到2012年的全球变暖总体速度定为0.12℃—和90年代的速度差别不大。美国国家航空航天局（NASA）把同一时期的“北极效应”定的略低，在十年中0.07℃，但是这也不是可以忽视的。
同样值得记住的是，平均变暖并不是气候变化的唯一标准。根据苏黎世的大气和气候科学机构（Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science）的索尼娅•斯尼维纳（Sonia Seneviratne）刚刚发表一篇研究，在暂停期间（1998到2012），热天的天数，极端热天的天数和暖天气的持续时间都增加了。更稳定的平均气温掩盖了更多的极端气候。
把稳定的平均数解释过去的尝试仍然不能令人信服，部分原因是平直的温度和上升的二氧化碳排放之间的矛盾，部分原因是观测到的温度现在降至气候模型预测的范围之外。如果它们错了，这些知识也许也是错的。所以要尝试解释此暂停。
2013年9月，政府间气候变化专家委员会（Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change）在太阳能输出、大气污染和火山活动方面解释它。委员会认为全部这三个原因都通常是有影响的。
太阳的能量输出以一个11年的周期略微波动。目前的周期貌似比正常要长，可能从一个较低的水平开始，所以在上一个十年到地球的能量比通常情况少。污染把浮质（颗粒，如煤灰，悬浮的微滴状物，像硫酸）抛入大气，它们在此处把阳光反射会太空。它们越多，它们的冷却效应就越大—特别是中国的煤火电站的污染正在上升。火山做相同的事情，所以增加的火山活动倾向于降温。
葛文•施密特（Gavin Schmidt）和两位美国航空航天局古德达德中心（NASA Goddard Institute）的同事证明了这些趋势的影响，发表在《自然地理科学》（Nature Geoscience）上。他们辩称气候模型对延迟的和减弱的太阳周期重视不足。他们认为对污染（特别是硝酸盐的污染和间接影响，比如浮质和云的互动）的影响作出完全的解释。同时他们宣称自2000年以来，火山活动的影响比目前想的要大。为着所有因素作出调整后，他们发现确切的温度读数和电脑产生的那些的区别大略都消失了。言下之意是太阳周期和浮质大略解释这暂停。
Blowing hot and cold吹冷风，吹热风
然而，这有另外一种解释。大部分输入的热量被海洋，特别是最大的太平洋，吸收了。一些新研究把暂停和太平洋的变化以及影响到所及范围内的水循环的信风的变化联系起来。

信风在低纬度地区自东向西吹。通过如此动作，它们把温暖的表面海水推向亚洲，把凉的深层海水引向太平洋中部和东部，给大气降温。表面的水流运动同时在大洋里加速搅动。这让一些暖海水下移，使热量收入更深处。在2013年一篇发表在《自然》（Nature）的文章中，圣迭戈的斯克利普斯海洋学中心（Scripps Institution of Oceanography）小板鱼（Yu Kosaka）和谢尚平（Shang-Ping Xie）辩称大多数大气模型和实际温度之间的差别可以用东太平洋的变冷来解释。
小板博士和谢博士观察发现，每过几年，信风变得缓慢，西太平洋的暖海水搅回来替代大洋中部和东部的表层冷水。这个天气现象叫做厄尔尼诺（El Nino），它让整个大气升温。在97年到98年间有个尤其强烈的厄尔尼诺，那也是不同寻常的热的一年。相反的模式，更低的温度，更强的信风，叫做拉尼娜现象（La Nina），部分解释了此暂停。
厄尔尼诺现象和拉尼娜现象之间的变化很频繁。但是也有一个长期的周期叫做太平洋十年涛动（Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO），没20到30年从温暖（或正的）阶段到一个寒冷（负的）的阶段。正阶段支持了更频繁更强大的厄尔尼诺现象。据美国国家大气研究中心（America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research）的凯文•纯贝斯（Kevin Trenberth）和约翰•法索罗（John Fasullo），在1976年到98年PDO是正的—气温上升的一段时期—在1943年到76年是负的，而且自2000年以来，制造了一连串的寒冷的拉尼娜现象。
但这不是结束。在这些周期模式之上，是看起来像一个信风在过去20年中一次性的增强。根据新南威尔士大学的马修•英格兰（Matthew England）和其他人的一项发表在《自然气候变化》（Nature Climate Change）上的研究，记录下来的信风已然制造了一种超级拉尼娜现象。在过去的30年中，海平面平均每年上升3毫米。但是东太平洋的海水很少改变态度，然而在菲律宾的附近的海平面从1990年代后期以来上升了20厘米。换句话说，一堵暖水墙被强风把持在位，冷水在后面泛起。根据英格兰博士，信风的影响大略解释了温度暂停。

如果如此，这暂停就从没解释到两次解释—一次用浮质和太阳周期，再来一次用海洋风和洋流。这两个解释并不矛盾。他们作用的过程已然理解，但是他们的相对贡献还没有理解。
从人类的角度来讲最大的问题，也就是这些解释所显示的此暂停会持续多久，还没有答案。在表面上，如果一些热量被吸入深海，此过程就会继续： 海洋对吸收热源的容量巨大，只要推送到海底的水泵正常运转。但这并不是事情的全部。重力君想要把西太平洋的水墙泼回来；它仅仅被尤其强大的信风把持在位。如果信风开始减弱，温度又会上升。
太阳周期已经开始转向了。浮质冷却作用很可能被中国的反污染法律勒住。大部分的让这个星球的升温“暂停”的情况看起来是暂时的。就像终结者，全球变暖会回来的。

Law enforcement in the United States 美国执法部门

【导读】美军踹开一扇门扔进一个闪光弹再喊声“Fire in the hole!”，并不只是电影上才有，而是天天有。
Law enforcement in the United States美国执法部门
Armed and dangerous有武器，很危险
No-knock raids, assault weapons and armoured cars: America’s police use paramilitary tactics too often
直接破门、攻击型武器和装甲车：美国警方使用准军事战术过于频繁了
1 EARLY one morning a team of heavily armed police officers burst into the home of Eugene Mallory, an 80-year-old retired engineer in Los Angeles county. What happened next is unclear. The officer who shot Mr Mallory six times with a submachine gun says he was acting in self-defence—Mr Mallory also had a gun, though he was in bed and never fired it. Armed raids can be confusing: according to an investigation, the policeman initially believed that he had ordered Mr Mallory to “Drop the gun” before opening fire. However, an audio recording revealed that he said these words immediately after shooting him. Mr Mallory died. His family are suing the police.
2 Such tragedies are too common in America. One reason is that the police have become more militarised. Raids by Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units used to be rare: according to Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University there were only about 3,000 a year in the early 1980s. Now they are routine: perhaps 50,000 a year.
3 These teams, whose members wear body armour and are equipped with military-style weapons, were originally intended to tackle only the most dangerous criminals, such as murderers or hostage-takers. Now they are most commonly used to serve search warrants in drug-related cases. The police raided Mr Mallory’s home, for example, because they thought they would find a methamphetamine factory there. Instead they found two marijuana plants, belonging to a stepson who had a California medical-marijuana licence.
4 Some of the uses to which SWAT teams are put defy belief. In Maryland paramilitary police have been sent to break up illegal poker games; in Iowa, to arrest people suspected of petty fraud; in Arizona, to crack down on cockfighting.
5 America’s courts tend to smile on SWAT tactics. They have ruled that police may enter a home without knocking if announcing their presence might give a criminal a chance to destroy evidence, for example by flushing drugs down the toilet. Such “no-knock” raids carry the advantages of surprise—and the disadvantages.
6 Having armed men burst into one’s home is terrifying. Startled citizens may assume they are being burgled—the “flash-bang” grenades that SWAT teams toss in to (temporarily) blind and deafen their targets tend to add to the confusion. Some people shoot back, with tragic consequences. Radley Balko, a campaigning journalist, has identified more than 50 innocent civilians who have been killed in SWAT raids.
7 Two factors have pushed the American police to militarise. First, thanks to the “war on terror”, there is plenty of money available for big weapons. Between 2002 and 2011 the Department of Homeland Security handed out a whopping $35 billion in grants to state and local police. In addition, the Pentagon supplies surplus military hardware to police forces at virtually no cost. That is why the quiet little town of Keene, New Hampshire has an armoured personnel carrier called a BearCat, which the local police chief said might be used to protect its pumpkin festival.
8 Second, the war on drugs creates perverse incentives. When the police find assets that they suspect are the proceeds of crime, they can seize them. Under civil asset-forfeiture rules, they do not have to prove that a crime was committed—they can grab first and let the owners sue to get their stuff back. The police can meanwhile use the money to beef up their own budgets, buying faster patrol cars or computers. All this gives them a powerful incentive to focus on drug crimes, which generate lots of cash, rather than, say, rape, which does not. This is outrageous. Citizens should not forfeit their property unless convicted of a crime; and the proceeds should fund the state as a whole, not the arm that does the grabbing.
Bang! Knock, knock...er, sorry, wrong house轰！笃，笃……呃，不好意思，砸错门了
9 The police do a difficult and dangerous job, and it is completely understandable that they do not wish to be outgunned by bad guys. A big show of force can sometimes deter criminals from starting a fight. And police departments are right to spend generously on defensive equipment such as body armour, which increases the chance that officers will come home alive.
10 Nonetheless, the militarisation of American law enforcement is alarming. The police are not soldiers. Armies are trained to kill the enemy; the police are supposed to uphold the law and protect citizens. They should use the minimum force necessary to accomplish those goals.
11 That does not mean getting rid of SWAT teams entirely. But it does mean restricting their use to situations where there are solid grounds to believe that the suspect involved is armed and dangerous. They should not be used to serve search warrants on non-violent offenders, or to make sure that strip joints are code-compliant, or in any circumstance where a knock on the door from a regular cop would suffice. The “war on drugs” is supposed to be a metaphor, not a real war.

一天清晨，一队装备重型武器的警察冲进了尤金•马洛里的家里，他是一个80岁的退休工程师，住在洛杉矶县。警察进去之后到底发生了什么事情还不清楚。用冲锋枪打了马洛里先生六枪的那个警官说他是正当防卫——马洛里先生也有枪，但他没有起床也没有开枪。武装突袭让事情令人困惑：根据一项调查，该警官起初认为他在开枪前命令马洛里先生“放下武器”。但一条录音则表明，他是在开枪之后立即说的这句话。马洛里先生死了，他的家人正在起诉警方。
这样的悲剧在美国屡见不鲜。原因之一是警察已经越来越军队化。SWAT（特种武器与战术）特警突袭在过去还很少见：东肯塔基大学的彼得•克兰斯卡研究发现，在1980年代初，每年仅约3000起，如今则是家常便饭：可能达到每年5万起。
这些穿着防弹衣，装备军用武器的特警队，起初仅用于对付最危险的罪犯，比如谋杀犯和绑架犯。如今他们最主要的行动是缉毒，取得搜查许可后便突袭。比如警察突袭马洛里先生的家，是因为他们认为里面有一个冰毒工厂。结果他们找到的是两株大麻，属于马洛里先生的一个继子，而这个人有加州的医用大麻执照。

有一些动用特警队的场合简直令人难以置信。在马里兰州，有用准军事化的警察突袭非法扑克游戏的；在艾奥瓦州，有用来逮捕轻微诈骗嫌疑人的；在亚利桑那州还有突袭斗鸡比赛的。
美国法院倾向于认同特警战术。他们已经裁定，如果警方事先亮明身份可能让罪犯有机会毁灭证据——比如把毒品冲进马桶里，就可以无需声明，直接破门。这种做法有出奇不意的有利一面，也有不利一面

带着武器的人冲进家里，是很骇人的。吓傻了的公民们可能以为是入室抢劫的来了——特警扔进来的闪光弹可（暂时性）致盲和致聋，更是加剧了错误判断。有些人会回击，就导致了悲剧性后果。莱德利•巴尔科是一位关注竞选的记者，他调查发现的在特警突袭中被杀的无辜平民超过50人。

导致美国警察军队化的因素有二。第一得感谢“反恐战争”，用于购买重型武器的资金充足。在2002-2011年间，国土安全部大笔开出了350亿美元给州和地方警察。另外，五角大楼把多余的军用装备转给了警方，还几乎是免费。这就解释了为什么像新罕布什尔州的宁静小镇基恩也会有一辆熊狸式装甲运兵车，当地警长说可以用它来保卫南瓜节。
第二，缉毒战争引起了错误的激励机制。当警方找到他们怀疑的赃款赃物时，可以先行占有。根据民事资产罚没原则，他们不需要证明其中有犯罪行为——他们可以先没收，再让所有者起诉去要回来。与此同时，警方可以利用这笔钱来增加自己的预算，买快速巡逻车或是电脑。所有这些，使得他们有强烈的动机去关注涉及大量现金的毒品犯罪，而不是，比如说强奸案。这太过分了，公民除非犯罪，他的的资产就不应被罚没；罚没所得应当归州所有，而不是没收它的那只“手”。

警察的工作困难又危险，他们不想在面对坏蛋时火力不足，这当然是完全可以理解的。展示出强大武力，有时可以吓倒罪犯，从而避免交火。警方在防弹衣这样的防御型装备上毫不吝啬是对的，有了它，警官们活着回家的机会才会增加。

但尽管如此，美国执法部门的军队化仍令人担忧。警察不是军人。训练军队是用来消灭敌人的；而警察的职责是维护法制和保护公民，他们应当使用最少的必要武力来实现这两个目标。
这并不是说完全不用特警队。而是说使用确实要加以限制，只有证据确凿，相信涉案嫌犯有武器且很危险时才用。搜查非暴力违法者，或是确认脱衣舞俱乐部是否守法时就不应动用。而如果普通警察本来敲敲门就能解决问题的情况下，就更不应动用。“缉毒战争”应该是个象征性说法，并非真正的战争。

Rise of the robots 机器人的崛起

New roles for technology技术的新角色
Rise of the robots机器人的崛起
Prepare for a robot invasion. It will change the way people think about technology请为机器人的入侵做好准备。这场入侵将改变人类看待技术的方式。
Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition
1 ROBOTS came into the world as a literary device whereby the writers and film-makers of the early 20th century could explore their hopes and fears about technology, as the era of the automobile, telephone and aeroplane picked up its reckless jazz-age speed. From Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” and Isaac Asimov's “I, Robot” to “WALL-E” and the “Terminator” films, and in countless iterations in between, they have succeeded admirably in their task.
2 Since moving from the page and screen to real life, robots have been a mild disappointment. They do some things that humans cannot do themselves, like exploring Mars, and a host of things people do not much want to do, like dealing with unexploded bombs or vacuuming floors (there are around 10m robot vacuum cleaners wandering the carpets of the world). And they are very useful in bits of manufacturing. But reliable robots—especially ones required to work beyond the safety cages of a factory floor—have proved hard to make, and robots are still pretty stupid. So although they fascinate people, they have not yet made much of a mark on the world.
3 That seems about to change. The exponential growth in the power of silicon chips, digital sensors and high-bandwidth communications improves robots just as it improves all sorts of other products. And, as our special report this week explains, three other factors are at play.
4 One is that robotics R&D is getting easier. New shared standards make good ideas easily portable from one robot platform to another. And accumulated know-how means that building such platforms is getting a lot cheaper. A robot like Rethink Robotics's Baxter, with two arms and a remarkably easy, intuitive programming interface, would have been barely conceivable ten years ago. Now you can buy one for $25,000.
5 A second factor is investment. The biggest robot news of 2013 was that Google bought eight promising robot startups. Rich and well led (by Andy Rubin, who masterminded the Android operating system) and with access to world-beating expertise in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, both highly relevant, Google's robot programme promises the possibility of something spectacular—though no one outside the company knows what that might be. Amazon, too, is betting on robots, both to automate its warehouses and, more speculatively, to make deliveries by drone. In South Korea and elsewhere companies are moving robot technology to new areas of manufacturing, and eyeing services. Venture capitalists see a much better chance of a profitable exit from a robotics startup than they used to.
6 The third factor is imagination. In the past few years, clever companies have seen ways to make robots work as grips and gaffers on film sets (“Gravity” could not have been shot without robots moving the cameras and lights) and panel installers at solar-power plants. More people will grasp how a robotic attribute such as high precision or fast reactions or independent locomotion can be integrated into a profitable business; eventually some of them will build mass markets. Aerial robots—drones—may be in the vanguard here. They will let farmers tend their crops in new ways, give citizens, journalists and broadcasters new perspectives on events big and small (see article), monitor traffic and fires, look for infrastructure in need of repair and much more besides.
7 As consumers and citizens, people will benefit greatly from the rise of the robots. Whether they will as workers is less clear, for the robots’ growing competence may make some human labour redundant. Aetheon's Tugs, for instance, which take hospital trolleys where they are needed, are ready to take over much of the work that porters do today. Kiva's warehouse robots make it possible for Amazon to send out more parcels with fewer workers. Driverless cars could displace the millions of people employed behind the wheel today. Just as employment in agriculture, which used to provide almost all the jobs in the pre-modern era, now accounts for only 2% of rich-world employment so jobs in today's manufacturing and services industries may be forced to retreat before the march of the robots. Whether humanity will find new ways of using its labour, or the future will be given over to forced leisure, is a matter of much worried debate among economists. Either way, robots will probably get the credit or blame.
Invisible and otherwise除了看不见的，还有……
8 Robotic prowess will to some extent be taken for granted. It will be in the nature of cars to drive themselves, of floors to be clean and of supplies to move around hospitals and offices; the robotic underpinning of such things will be invisible. But robots will not just animate the inanimate environment. They will inhabit it alongside their masters, fulfilling all sorts of needs. Some, like Baxter, will help make and move things, some will provide care, some just comfort or companionship. A Japanese robot resembling a baby seal, which responds amiably to stroking and can distinguish voices, seems to help elderly patients with dementia.
9 The more visible robots are, the better they can help humanity discuss questions like those first posed in fiction. Is it necessary that wars always be fought by people who can feel pity and offer clemency, and yet who can also be cruel beyond all tactical requirements? (Already America is arguing about whether drone pilots deserve medals—see article.) Does it matter if the last kindnesses a person feels are from a machine? What dignifies human endeavour if the labour of most, or all, humans becomes surplus to requirements?
10 People, companies and governments find it hard to discuss the ultimate goals of technological change in the abstract. The great insight of Asimov et al was that it is easier to ask such questions when the technology is personified: when you can look it in the face. Like spacefarers gazing back at the home planet, robots can serve not just as workers and partners, but as purveyors of new perspectives—not least when the people looking at them see the robots looking back, as they one day will, with something approaching understanding.
机器人是被20世纪初期的作家和电影制片人当做一种文学工具而来到这个世界的。那时正是汽车、电话和飞机的发展进入到一种不计后果的疯狂时代，这些作家和电影制片人就是借着机器人来表达他们对于技术的希望和担忧的。之后，机器人开始大量地出现在文学和影视作品中，从弗里茨·朗的《大都市》和艾萨克·阿西莫夫的《我，机器人》，再到《机器人总动员》和《终结者》，它们每次都能非常出色地完成任务。
但是，自从它们走出影视作品成为一种真实的存在后，机器人始终给人们一种淡淡的失望感。它们能从事一些人类不能亲力亲为的工作，如探索火星；也在一些人类不太想去做的事情中挑起了大梁，如处理尚未爆炸的炸弹，或者是清洁地板（目前大约有1000万个吸尘机器人在全世界各地的地板上游荡），而且还在某些制造行业中发挥着作用。但事实证明，制造可以信赖的机器人，特别是那种需要它们能够走出车间的安全笼来工作的机器人，不是一件容易的事情；而且它们看上去仍然非常笨拙。因此，尽管它们能够使人类为之着迷，却一直没能在这个世界上留下太多的印记。
这种情况似乎很快就会改变。正如硅晶片、数字传感器和高速宽带通信能力的爆发式增长提高了所有其他产品的性能一样，它们也使机器人的性能出现了提升。同时，正如我们在本期的专题报道中所言，还有另外三个因素也正在促进着机器人的发展。
第一个因素是：机器人的研发正在变得容易起来。新的共同标准可以让好的想法轻易从一种机器人平台移植到另一种机器人平台；关键技术的累计也让建造此类平台的成本大幅降低。放在10年前，一个像Rethink Robotics公司的Baxter那样的机器人可能是几乎无法想象的，但如今你只要花25000美元，就能买到一个拥有双手的，而且其程序界面非常简单直观的机器人。
第二个因素是投资。作为2013年最轰动的机器人新闻，谷歌曾在去年购买了8家前景被看好的机器人创业公司。由于资金充足，加之有一位好的领导人在领导（负责谷歌机器人项目的是曾主持开发安卓操作系统的安迪·罗宾），以及能在与机器人制造高度相关的云计算和人工作技能方面获得顶尖专家的支持，谷歌的机器人项目前景远大，值得期待——尽管外部人士对此项目可能会发展成什么样还没有一个具体的了解。亚马逊也在押注机器人，他们正在研究可以自动分拣仓库的机器人，更值得期待的是，他们还准备利用无人机来投送货物。位于韩国和其他一些国家的公司也正在将机器人技术转移到制造业的新领域，并且还把目标瞄准了服务业。在风投资本家看来，如今正是想过去那样，带着盈利撤出机器人创业公司的大好时机。
第三个因素是想象力。在过去的几年中，头脑灵活的公司曾见证过许多把机器人应用在实际工作中的例子。例如，在电影摄影棚中，它们被当做是场记和灯光师来使用（如果没有机器人去移动摄影机和灯光，《地心引力》是拍不出来的）；又比如，在一些太阳能电站中，它们被当做是太阳能电池板安装工来使用。机器人的特点是准确度高、反应迅速并且还可以独立行动，如果将这些特点结合在一起，就可以打造出一种可以盈利的商业模式。预计今后会有更多的人从中有所领悟，并且最终会有一些人打造出一个巨大的市场。空中机器人，也就是通常所说的无人机，或许就是在这方面出于领先地位的一个行业。今后，它们能让农民以新的方式来照看庄稼，能让市民、记者和播音员以全新的视角来看待大大小小的事件，它们可被用于监控交通和火情，并且还可用于对需要进行修理的公共设施进行检查，以及许许多多诸如此类的工作。
人类将以消费者和市民的身份从机器人的崛起中收获巨大的好处。但是否能以工人的身份从中获益，目前还是一个未知数。因为机器人日渐增强的竞争力可能会让某些需要人力来完成的工作显得多余。比如说，Aetheon公司的Tug机器人可以把医用手推车带到任何需要用到它的地方，这些机器人已经准备好接过目前大部分由由搬运工来完成的工作。Kiva公司的仓储机器人可以让亚马逊用较少的工人发出更多包裹的想法成为可能。无人驾驶汽车可能会取代数百万当前被部署在车轮后面的人。在工业时代之前，几乎所有的工作机会都是由农业来提供的；而进入工业时代之后，在富裕国家中，只有2%的人口是在为农业而工作。因此，在面对机器人大军的进攻时，制造业和服务业的工作机会也许会出现缩减。是人类今后为劳动力的使用找到新的出路，还是被迫把自己的未来交给强制性的休息？这个问题正在深深地困扰着经济学家。但是。对于机器人来说，它们的未来无非是两种情况：要么荣誉加身，要么背上骂名。
拥有超凡技能的机器人将在一定程度上被认为是必然的。今后，所谓的汽车就是指实现了自动驾驶功能的交通工具；所谓的地板就是指可以自动清洁的东西；所谓的供应品就是指可以在医院和办公室之间自动地转来转去的物品；为这些东西提供支持的机器人是看不到的。但是，机器人除了可以让无生命的环境变成有生命的之外，它们将来还能同人类一起生活，满足人类的所有需要。有的能帮助人类制造和移动物品，如Baxter；有的能够提供看护服务；有的甚至能给人类提供安慰，或是充当人类的伙伴。日本有一种外形像小海豹的机器人，它不仅能对拍打它的行为做出和蔼可亲的反应，而且还能分辨声音，似乎可被用于帮助患有痴呆症的老年病人。
随着机器人越来越多地出现在各种场合，它们对于人类探讨那些首先出现在文学作品中的问题的帮助作用也会越来越大。作为一种既拥有怜悯和仁慈之心，同时又能够残酷到超越所有必需的动物，人类还有必要在战争中亲自上阵吗（美国已开始讨论是否无人机驾驶员也值得获得奖章）？还有必要在乎你所感知到的最后的仁慈是不是来自于一台机器吗？如果人类的大部分或者全部劳动力变得相对于需求而言是多余的的话，那么，使人类显得高贵的奋斗又将如何呢？
民众、企业和政府是难以单纯地从理论上来探讨技术变化的终极目标的。阿西莫夫等人的真知灼见的伟大就在于，他们认为，只有在技术实现了拟人化，即你可以在对方的脸上发现技术时，那才是比较容易提出此类问题的时候。就像宇航员在太空中回望地球家园一样，机器人既能够充当扮演工人和伙伴的角色，也能够充当为人类的新前景提供观测角度的角色——尤其是在注意着机器人的人类，看到机器人终于在某一天也在用一种渐渐可以理解的神情回望人类的时候。

Labour and Europe：Europhile and proud亲欧且自豪

The science of love at first sight一见钟情之科学论

TCalifornia The recovery复苏中的加州

【导读】众所周知，加州政府近年来深陷巨额债务之中，然而新州长布朗执政后，近期事情发生了一些积极的变化。
California The recovery复苏中的加州
California has won breathing space under Jerry Brown. Now he should tackle taxes, debt and red tape
加州在杰瑞布朗的领导下赢得了喘息之机。现在他将着手处理税收、债务和官僚作风
WHEN Jerry Brown took office as California’s governor in January 2011, the Golden State was a laughing stock. Its credit was poor, its politics venomous and its fiscal deficits larger than most states’ budgets. Campaigning in 2012, Mitt Romney compared California to European basket-cases like Greece. He would not do so today.
Earlier this month Mr Brown unveiled a budget with a surplus for 2013-14 forecast at $4.2 billion. In his state-of-the-state speech on January 22nd he spoke of “California’s comeback”. The state’s job-creation rate is among America’s best (though unemployment is still high at 8.5%), and in much of the state the housing market is reviving. Politically, Mr Brown is unrivalled; some excitable Democrats have even urged him to make a fourth run for president (although the first three, in 1976, 1980 and 1992, did not go well). Assuming that he seeks re-election in November, he should sail to victory.
The tight-fisted Mr Brown—he is not above eating food from other people’s plates—has imposed a measure of fiscal discipline on his state. In 2012, to many observers’ surprise, he persuaded Californians to pass Proposition 30, a temporary income- and sales-tax rise. He has strong-armed California’s Democratic legislators twice: first to accept deep cuts to cherished programmes such as child care, and then, once the deficit was plugged, to curb their spendthrift impulses. Even California’s nearly extinct Republicans express grudging admiration.
Yet California is not cured; it has swapped acute problems for chronic ones. Three stand out; and worryingly, Mr Brown seems little inclined to tackle any of them. First is the state’s precarious tax structure. More than perhaps any other state, California relies on a small number of very wealthy people to pay for its public services. This year income taxes from the richest 1% (including capital gains) may account for one-third of the state’s general fund. When the stockmarket is booming, as it is now, the state’s coffers spill over. But when things turn nasty capital-gains tax revenues plummet and the treasury is starved. Mr Brown understands the harm that such volatility causes, but resists serious tax reform; instead he has proposed a rainy-day fund. This is, at best, a palliative.
California’s second problem is a mountain of liabilities: some $355 billion, mostly in the form of unfunded promises to provide pensions and health care to retired public servants. Mr Brown’s budget chips away at this debt mountain, but mainly at the short-term bit. CalSTRS, the teachers’ pension fund, is a particular worry; by one estimate it has enough money to last only until the mid-2020s. Yet Mr Brown proposes merely to begin discussing the problem this year. Meanwhile, the CalSTRS unfunded liabilities grow by $22m a day.
The third problem is perhaps the most serious: a crisis of poverty and social immobility, particularly among Latinos (who will soon be the state’s biggest ethnic group). Under the Census Bureau’s “supplemental poverty measure”, which includes cost-of-living adjustments and non-cash benefits, California has America’s highest poverty rate: almost a quarter of its 38m residents cannot pay for basic necessities. California has always drawn in poor immigrants, but upward mobility seems to be stalling. In some inland regions unemployment is in double digits and schoolchildren struggle to read. Hardly anyone in Sacramento is even thinking about these issues.
Out of the emergency room, into rehab
离开急诊室，进入恢复区
Now that California’s short-term crisis is over, Mr Brown should tackle its long-term problems. The tax base should be broadened: top rates should fall and sales taxes should be extended to some services. Some of the fresh revenues should be directed to measures that help the poor, such as pre-kindergarten education. The state should meet its obligations to CalSTRS in full, while finding ways to cut its long-term pension costs. And California should make it easier to start firms and create jobs. That means loosening the regulations that throttle businesses. It can take two years to win permission to open a burger joint in California, compared with a few weeks in Texas. The California Environmental Quality Act allows almost anyone to sue to block almost any project; unions use the threat of an environmental lawsuit to blackmail employers into hiring unionised workers.
Fixing these problems will be hard—Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t do it, for all his tough talk. Still, Mr Brown is popular and faces no serious rivals, so it is a good time to start.
布朗先生是吝啬的，他可不会允许从别人盘子里拿东西--在他执政的州内强制施行了一套评估财政纪律的措施。在2012年，让很多观察家惊讶的是，他说服了加州人通过30号议案，临时上调了收入及销售税。他还两次强力推动加州的民主党籍议员：一次是接受大幅削减议员们非常珍视的儿童保健项目，于是赤字被控制住了，然后制止了议员们挥霍无度的冲动。甚至连加州甚少的共和党人也表达了些许的赞赏。
当杰瑞布朗在2011年1月就任加州州长时，黄金之州已经沦为笑柄。它的信用破产，政治糟糕透顶，财政赤字问题超过大多数州的预算。在2012年的大选中，米特罗姆尼曾经将加州比作欧洲的希腊。但今天他不会在这么做了。
本月早些时候，布朗先生公布13至14年度预算将剩余42亿美元。在1月22日的州情演讲中，他谈及“加州的复原”。本州创造的新岗位率为美国最好（尽管失业率仍高达8.5%），州内的住房市场也出现复兴。政治上，布朗先生也是无敌的。一些激动的民主党人甚至怂恿他第四次精选总统（尽管前三次，1976年、1980年和1992年都不顺利）。
然而加州仍然没有治愈：它仍然有很多慢性病。有三件事情非常紧迫，第一是州内危险的税收结构。也许比任何州都严重，加州依赖数量很少的富人纳税来支撑起州内的公务服务。这些年所得税从最富的1%（包括资本收益）的账户收取，占了州内基金的三分之一。当股市兴旺时，例如现在，州府的财源充实四溢。但当事情变坏时，资本收益税垂直下降，从导致国库空虚。布朗先生懂得这样剧烈波动的危害，但对严肃的税务改革持抵制态度；取而代之的是，他提议建立雨天基金。这是最好的缓和措施了。
加州的第二大问题是堆积如山的债务：高达3550亿美元，多半都是没有基金做支撑的养老金和公务员们的医疗保险费。布朗先生的预算方案在一点点的搬掉这座债务高山，但主要是短期行为。CalSTRS，属于教师群体的退休基金，让人特别担心。一个评估表明，充足的钱只能维持到2020年的中期。布朗先生提议，今年开始讨论这个问题。在此期间，CalSTRS无资金准备的负债每天增加2200万美元。
第三大问题可能最严重：贫困和社会固化，特别是对拉丁裔来说（拉丁裔将很快成为州内最大的种族群体）。根据人口调查局的“补充贫困测量”，包括生活成本和非现金福利，加州有着美国最高的贫困率：几乎是3800万居民中的四分之一无法负担基本的必需品。加州还在吸引贫困的移民，但是向上的流动性看起来已经停顿。一些内陆地区的失业率高达两位数。小学生没有阅读能力。然而首府萨克拉门托的人甚至没人在考虑这些议题。
现在加州的短期危机结束了，布朗先生应该处理长期问题了。税收基础应该扩大：最高税率应该降低，销售税应该扩展至一般性服务领域。一些新的税收应该针对贫困问题采取措施，比如幼儿园学前教育。政府应该履行对CalSTRS的义务，同时应该找到削减长期退休金成本的方法。加州应该应更容易创建公司和创造就业机会。这意味着放松那些压制商业的法规。在加州要开一个汉堡店需要两年的时间赢得许可，与之相对应的是得州仅需几周时间。加州环保法允许任何人起诉任何项目；工会则威胁使用环保法规来胁迫雇主使用工会成员。
解决这些问题将是非常困难的--阿诺德施瓦辛格在经过艰苦谈判后最终失败，布朗先生则是受欢迎的，并且面对的是不那么认真的对手，所以这是开始行动的最好时机。
Teaching mathematics:Time for a ceasefire 数学之战，暂时停火

【导读】你数学好吗？世界银行等数据显示，数学更好可以提高GDP和收入。国际学生评估项目（PISA）对多国的中学生的数学素养进行比较，排名结果引人深思。中国上海位居榜首，排名前三的全部来自亚洲国家。在排名表上落后的国家部分也在进行改革。新技术下，保守派和改革派的数学之战，又陷入怎样的境地？
Technology and fresh ideas are replacing classroom drill—and helping pupils to learn科技和新鲜的想法正代替课堂训练，帮助学生们去学习
1 IF THE world’s education systems have a common focus, it is to turn out school-leavers who are proficient in mathematics. Governments are impressed by evidence from the World Bank and others that better maths results raises GDP and incomes. That, together with the soul-searching provoked by the cross-country PISA comparisons of 15-year-olds’ mathematical attainment produced by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, is prompting educators in many places to look afresh at what maths to teach, and how to teach it.
2 Those countries languishing in the league tables fret about how to catch up without turning students off the subject with boring drill. Top performers, most of them Asian (see chart), fear that their focus on technical proficiency does not translate into an enthusiasm for maths after leaving school. And everyone worries about how to prepare pupils for a jobs market that will reward creative thinking ever more highly.

3 Maths education has been a battlefield before: the American “math wars” of the 1980s pitted traditionalists, who emphasised fluency in pen-and-paper calculations, against reformers led by the country’s biggest teaching lobby, who put real-world problem-solving, often with the help of calculators, at the centre of the curriculum. A backlash followed as parents and academics worried that the “new math” left pupils ill-prepared for university courses in mathematics and the sciences. But as many countries have since found, training pupils to ace exams is not the same as equipping them to use their hard-won knowledge in work and life.
4 Today’s reformers think new technology renders this old argument redundant. They include Conrad Wolfram, who worked on Mathematica, a program which allows users to solve equations, visualise mathematical functions and much more. He argues that computers make rote procedures, such as long division, obsolete. “If it is high-level problem-solving and critical thinking we’re after, there’s not much in evidence in a lot of curriculums,” he says.
5 Estonia’s government has commissioned Mr Wolfram’s consultancy in Oxfordshire to modernise maths courses for secondary-school pupils. Starting this month, it will pilot lessons built around open-ended problems which have no single solution. One example: “What’s the best algorithm for picking a romantic date?” (Possible answer: go on more dates with a lower quality threshold to maximise the chance of success.) Another: “Am I drunk?”, which leads into quantitative analysis involving body masses, rates of alcohol absorption and other variables.
6 Some PISA stars are also seeking a new approach. Singapore’s government commissioned David Hogan, an Australian maths educator, to assess its syllabus. It wants pupils to be able to explain what they know to their classmates, and to apply it in unfamiliar situations.
7 Israel is also experimenting, aware of the imminent end of the windfall provided by the arrival of many mathematicians from the former Soviet Union. Some Israeli maths lessons from primary school onwards will soon be taught using inexpensive tablets, an approach inspired by Shimon Schocken. An academic at Herzliya University, from 2005 he has created a large online group of “self-learners” who build computers and programs from scratch. Pupils are encouraged to visualise their calculations, not just to get the right answers. (Your correspondent, raised on algebra worksheets, found an iPad exercise that involved grouping sheep in holding pens embarrassingly hard.)
8 Andreas Schleicher, the statistician in charge of the PISA studies, agrees that many of the algorithms—rote procedures for solving familiar problems—that children have traditionally spent years mastering are now easy to “digitise, automate and outsource”. But he cautions against concluding that they are therefore no longer worth teaching. A third of pupils tested in Shanghai, which tops the PISA maths tables—and where pupils drill in mental arithmetic, start algebra young and learn formulae by heart—can apply their knowledge to novel and difficult problems, compared with 2-3% in America and Europe.
9 Youngsters, in China and elsewhere, need to have the grounding to assess whether a computer-generated answer is close to right before they start to rely on whizzy technology. Then they can happily abandon the drill in long division and quadratic equations. For the majority of maths moderates, the good news is that both sides in the fruitless trench warfare between progressives and traditionalists look ready for a ceasefire.
如果说全球的教育系统都有一个共同焦点的话，那就是培养出精通数学的毕业生。世界银行和其他的数据表明，数学更好可以提高GDP和收入，这给政府留下了深刻印象。国际学生评估项目（PISA）对多国15岁学生的数学素养进行了比较，引人深思。这些因素促进了很多地方的教育者重新思考数学教什么，怎么教数学。国际学生评估项目（PISA）由经济合作与发展组织（OECD）制作发起，该组织的成员国大多是富裕国家。
在排名表上日渐衰弱的国家担忧如何才能让学生赶上其他国家，而又不需要用枯燥的训练让学生对课程失去兴趣。表现最优者大多数是亚洲人（见图表），他们担心在离开学校后，对技术熟练能力的关注并不能转化为对数学的热爱。而且人人都在担心怎样让学生们为就业市场做准备。就业市场奖励创造性思维的程度将会越来越大。
数学教育曾是一片战场：20世纪80年代美国的“数学之战”使传统主义者和改革者对立。改革派由全国最大的教学游说团体领导。传统主义者强调纸笔计算的熟练。改革者主张课程的中心是常在计算器的帮助下，来解决实际问题。强烈的抵制随之而来，家长和学者担心这个“新数学”会让学生在大学课程中的数学和其他科学准备不足。但是正如很多国家已经发现的那样，训练学生考试考得好，并不等于训练他们在工作和生活中，运用来之不易的知识。
如今的改革者认为新技术使得这个旧争论变得多余。改革者包括康拉德•沃尔夫拉姆（Conrad Wolfram），他在Mathematica工作。Mathematica是一款数学软件，能帮用户解方程，使数学函数可视化以及其他功能。他认为电脑使机械过程过时了， 比如长除法。他说：“如果我们追求的是高水准的解决问题和批判性思维，然而在大多数课程中关于这方面的证据真的不多。”
爱沙尼亚政府委任沃尔夫拉姆（Mr Wolfram）在牛津郡做顾问，为中学生改革数学课程。本月开始，它将会试开课程。这些课程设立开放式问题，没有唯一的答案。举一个例子：“选到一个浪漫的约会对象的最佳算法是什么？”（可能的答案：降低门槛、增加约会次数，使成功几率最大化。）另一个例子：“我喝醉了吗？”，这就会引向定量分析包括身体质量，酒精摄入率以及其他可变因素。
一些国际学生评估项目（PISA）之星也在寻求新的方法。新加坡政府委任澳大利亚数学教育家大卫•霍根（David Hogan）来评估他们的教学大纲。他们想要学生能够向他们的同学解释他们所知道的的东西，并且能在不熟悉的情况中运用这些知识。
以色列的数学也在进行改革实验。他们意识到，很多前苏联数学家带来的额外收益即将结束。一些以色列数学课程，从小学开始将很快使用便宜的平板电脑教学。这个方法受到了希蒙• 肖肯（Shimon Schocken）的启发。他是荷兹利亚大学的一位学者，2005年他创立了一个大型在线自学者组织，这些自学者从零开始学习组建计算机和编写程序。学生被鼓励使他们的计算可视化，而不仅仅就是得到正确答案。（本文作者当年靠做习题学代数，发现一个在临时圈养圈分羊的iPad练习令人尴尬的难。）
安德烈斯•施莱歇（Andreas Schleicher）是一位统计学家，负责国际学生评估项目（PISA）的研究。他认同过去很多算法（解决相似问题的机械过程）孩子传统上要花数年掌握，现在这些算法很容易实现“数字化、自动化和外包化”。但是他反对那种认为这些算法不再值得教的结论。在上海被测试的学生中，有1/3的人能够把他们的知识运用到新颖、困难的问题中。而在美国和欧洲这一比例为2-3%。上海在国际学生评估项目（PISA）数学排名第一。上海的学生训练掌握心算，年幼开始学代数、背诵学习数学方程。
中国或者其他地方的青少年，在他们开始依赖高新技术之前，需要基础训练来评估一个计算机产生的答案是否接近正确。然后他们才会高兴地摆脱长除法和二次方程的练习。对于大多的数学改良派来说有个好消息，那就是数学改革者和传统主义者之间毫无结果的壕沟战，使得双方考虑暂时停火。
From the print edition: International

Bitcoin's future 比特币的未来

Hidden flipside隐藏的另一面
How the crypto-currency could become the internet of money
这种加密货币怎么会成为连接货币的网络呢
Bitcoin: the original比特币：原型
THE father has been found in time for his child’s funeral. That would appear to be the sorry state of affairs in the land of Bitcoin, a crypto-currency, if recent press coverage is to be believed. On March 6th Newsweek reported that it had tracked down Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s elusive creator. And on March 11th Mt Gox, the Japanese online exchange that had long dominated the trade in the currency before losing $490m of customers’ Bitcoins at today’s prices, once more filed for bankruptcy protection, this time in America.
In reality, things are rather different. Evidence is mounting that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, whom Newsweek identified as Bitcoin’s father, is not the relevant Satoshi. More importantly, Bitcoin’s best days may still be ahead of it—if not as a fully fledged currency, then as a platform for financial innovation. Much as the internet is a foundation for digital services, the technology behind Bitcoin could support a revolution in the way people own and pay for things. Geeks of all sorts are getting excited—including a growing number of venture capitalists, who know a new platform when they see one.
To understand the enthusiasm in this modern currency, it helps to think about a very old one. Until the early 20th century the people on Yap, an island in the Pacific Ocean, used large stone disks (pictured) as money for big expenses, such as a daughter’s dowry. Being very heavy, they were rarely moved when spent. Instead, they simply changed owners. Every transaction became part of an oral history of ownership, which allowed islanders to know the proprietor of each stone and made it difficult to spend the same stone twice.
Bitcoins also don’t move around when they are transferred. They are best understood as entries in a giant ledger, the “blockchain”, which contains the transaction history for every Bitcoin in circulation. It is kept up to date with the help of cryptography and copious computing power, provided by a global network of tens of thousands of computers. Again, openness helps the system remain secure: the blockchain is public so every participant can check whether a transfer comes from the rightful owner.
This set-up is the first workable solution to one of the more nagging problems of the digital realm: how to transfer something of value from one person to another without middlemen having to make sure that the item is not copied or, in the case of money, spent more than once? And Bitcoin does the trick while being open (unlike conventional payment mechanisms, which aim for security by shielding themselves from outsiders). This means that third parties can make use of Bitcoin’s features without having to ask anyone for permission—as is the case with the internet.
Such “permissionless innovation”, in the jargon, should in time result in a cornucopia of applications. Bitcoin’s technology could be used to transfer ownership both in other currencies and of any kind of financial asset. This, in turn, would allow the creation of decentralised exchanges which let asset holders trade directly. And money could be “programmed” to come with conditions: for instance, it might be released only if a third person agrees.
Some want ownership of devices—a car, say—to be represented by a Bitcoin, or a tiny fraction of it. The car would work only when turned on with a key that includes the Bitcoin token. This would make managing ownership of and access to physical assets much easier: the token could be sold or rented out temporarily, enabling flexible peer-to-peer car-rental schemes. Such “smart property” would turn the blockchain into a global registry of ownership in physical assets.
All that may sound like science fiction, but a growing number of startups are working on bringing such applications to market. Coloured Coins and Mastercoin will soon release software that enables trade in other financial assets, including stocks and bonds. The most ambitious project is Ethereum: it will launch a new blockchain, similar but unrelated to Bitcoin, with a programming language to encode financial instruments and other contracts.
Although banks have mostly steered clear of Bitcoin as a currency, they too have started exploring how they could use the technology in other ways. They are unlikely to move fast, but there are plenty of possibilities. Global banks could, for instance, use Bitcoin-like systems to move money between subsidiaries. They could even issue their own crypto-currencies.
But turning Bitcoin into a platform comes with risks. Some geeks fret that the network will reach its maximum capacity of 300,000 transactions per day as new applications come online. Another worry is that as the blockchain, which has already trebled in size to 15 gigabytes over the past year (see chart), continues to grow, fewer of the network’s participants will store it.
Yet if history is any guide, the blockchain will be fine. Two decades ago, when millions went online after the invention of the web browser, pundits predicted the internet’s collapse. Technical fixes repeatedly saved the day. And even if Bitcoin were to break down, another similar system would most likely take its place.

孩子在离开人世的时候发现了生父。如果最近的报道属实，那么这句话似乎就印证了密码货币比特币的悲惨现状。3月6日《新闻周刊》报道称已经追踪到比特币鲜为人知的发明者中本聪。3月11日，日本线上交易所门头沟再一次申请破产保护，这一次地点选在美国。在损失掉其用户价值4.9亿美元（以目前价格计算）的比特币之前，该交易所在货币交易领域一直处于支配地位。
实际上事情并非如此。越来越多的证据表明《新闻周刊》发现的多利安中本聪并不是比特币之父。更重要的是，比特币的全盛时代还未到来——即使不会发展为成熟的货币，也会成为金融创新的一个平台。正如因特网是数字服务的根基一样，比特币背后的技术手段也会通过革新人们购买和支付的方式来发起一场革命。各路极客们都非常兴奋——包括很多风险投资家，这些人只需一眼就可以了解一种新平台究竟如何。
想要弄清楚现代货币的火热情况，回想下一种旧式货币会有帮助。直到20世纪早期，太平洋上的雅浦岛居民在花销大的时候，比如买女儿的嫁妆，还在使用一种巨石盘（见图）。因为这种巨石盘很重，在当货币用的时候很少移动过，而只是改变所有者即可。每一次的交易活动都变成了所有者口述历史的一部分，这使得岛民们知道每块石头的主人，并且很难两次用同一块石头当货币。
比特币在交易时也不会转移地点。比特币可以理解为大型分类账簿——“块环链”的条目，这种“块环链”中包含有流通中的每一个比特币的交易历史记录。在由成千上万的电脑构成的全球网络系统提供的强大的计算机技术以及密码术的帮助下，这种“块环链”总是保持实时数据更新。开放性使得这种体系得以维持安全：块环链的开放性使得每一个参与者可以检查交易是否来自于合法所有者。
这种体制是可以应对数字领域越发烦人的问题之一的第一种可行性方案：这个问题是怎样将有价值的物品从一个人转移到另一个人手中，而不需中间人来确保这种物品是否为仿品或者钱的使用次数是否超过一次。比特币解决这个问题的同时还能保持开放（这点与传统的支付方式不同，后者通过不对外开放来保证安全）。这就意味着第三方无需请求任何人的同意就可以利用比特币的特点——正如因特网的原理一样。
这种在行话里称为“无需许可的创新”的机制会带来大批应用的诞生。 比特币技术可以用于转移任意类型金融资产的所有权，不管它是以何种货币来计价的。这转而会促进分权交易所的诞生，以允许资产所有人直接进行交易。货币也可以“规定”附加条件：比如只有在有第三人同意的情况下才有可能发放钱款。
有人希望能用一个(或一些)比特币来代表某种装置，比如一辆如汽车的所有权，这辆汽车只能用存有特定比特币的钥匙启动。这样的设计将简化实体资产所有权及使用权的管理：代币可以出售或者短期出租，这就让灵活的人人汽车出租方案成为可能。这种”智能资产“会将块环链转变成实物资产所有权的全球登记处。
这一切听起来仿佛像是科幻小说的情节，但是越来越多的新兴企业在致力于向市场推出这种应用。Coloured Coins和Mastercoin很快会发布能够进行其它金融资产（包括股票和债券）交易的软件。其中最有前景的方案是以太坊：它将会建立一个新的块环链，类似于比特币但与之并无关系，使用一种程序语言加密金融工具和其它合同。
虽然大多数银行都不承认比特币为货币，但是它们自己也开始探索科技应用的其它方式。它们的探索进程不会很快，但是却存在很大的可能性。比如说跨国银行可以利用类似比特币的系统在分支机构间实现金钱转移。它们甚至可以发行自己的密码货币。
但是借鉴以往历史经验，块环链的发展不会出什么意外。20年前网络浏览器发明以后数以百万的人开始上网，当时有专家预测因特网会因此而崩溃。但是技术手段一次又一次地解决了问题。即使比特币会崩溃，也很可能会有其它相似的系统取代它。

但是将比特币变成一种平台存在众多风险。某些极客担心随着众多应用上线，网络很容易达到一天最大交易量300，000。因为过去一年来块环链的体积扩大两倍变成15千兆字节（见表），因此他们还担心随着块环链不断发展，会有越来越少的网络用户能进行存储。
Heads and hearts “晓之以理”与“动之以情“

Lexington莱克星顿
What victorious gay-marriage campaigners can teach others
我们能从胜利方的同性婚姻造势者那里学些什么
1 RIGHTS are losing their power in American politics. Arguments rooted in abstract principle are increasingly trumped by fuzzier appeals to empathy and fairness. Campaigners for and against gay marriage, immigration reform and legal abortion are among the first to detect the shift. If it proves durable, politics will feel very different for partisans of Left and Right.
2 Start with gay marriage. For years conservatives cried that the traditional family was under attack. Fierce warnings that radicals were seeking to upend a biblical institution helped lure Christian conservatives to the polls to back Republican candidates, and secured gay-marriage bans in dozens of states.
3 Then in 2012 gay-marriage supporters suddenly began winning. Three states, Maine, Maryland and Washington, voted to legalise gay marriage, while a fourth, Minnesota, voted down a marriage ban. Other victories followed in state legislatures and courts, including the Supreme Court. Nationwide, solid majorities now back such unions. Partly this is because more gays live openly: it is hard to be afraid of the same-sex couple next door, or of Ellen DeGeneres. But gay-marriage campaigners have also been doing some hard thinking. For years groups seeking equality for gays drew inspiration from the civil-rights era. They talked of same-sex couples unable to enjoy the same tax breaks as married couples and other such legal disparities. During a 2008 referendum in California, a gay-rights group ran TV ads comparing same-sex couples to Japanese-Americans interned during the second world war. Californians voted to ban gay marriage anyway. Many African-Americans, urged on by conservative pastors, bridled at gay couples comparing their struggles to the fire hoses and night sticks that blacks once endured.
4 Gay campaigners concluded that their approach had been wrong. With their talk of discrimination, they had been appealing to voters' heads. Their opponents (who ran TV ads about children coming home from school, baffled by talk of princesses wedding princesses) were speaking to hearts. Focus groups showed voters unmoved by the dry reasons offered to explain why gay couples wanted to marry. Even much-divorced Americans thought of marriage as an aspirational act of love, it turned out. So gay-marriage campaigns began stressing human stories about salt-of-the-earth couples who yearn to show the world their commitment. National outfits such as Freedom to Marry issued strategy papers urging state campaigns to avoid “inartful” comparisons with civil rights, and to emphasise “fairness” over equality (precisely to woo swing voters not ready to think of gay couples as equals). The closest such campaigns come to overt moralising is the odd reference to the “Golden Rule”, a homely dictum—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—taught in American schools for more than a century. There is no nagging straight Americans to agree that gay couples are just the same as them. The strategy, says Thalia Zepatos of Freedom to Marry, involves persuading voters that their existing values allow them to accept gay marriage—because they are fair-minded enough to give others a shot at happiness, and because same-sex couples are asking to join the institution, rather than to change it.
5 Buoyed by their victories, gay-marriage strategists have been comparing notes with campaigners in another field of politics long deadlocked by absolutism: immigration. Instead of stressing the fine print of policy, campaigners are being urged to emphasise the pain caused when harsh immigration rules divide loving families. The immigration movement has enjoyed early success by stressing the stories of “Dreamers”—young migrants brought illegally to America as children, through no fault of their own, who now want a shot at the American dream. Many Republicans and Democrats in Congress support a path to citizenship for Dreamers, and with House Republican leaders pondering a 2014 push on immigration, the odds look good. Adult migrants are more divisive; a path to citizenship for them all is a stretch. Some conservatives want to shelve the subject till after November's mid-term elections, or at least the end of the primary season, for fear of splitting the Republican core vote.
6 Immigration is harder than gay marriage because it involves race and class, says the head of a pro-reform group. But it is encouraging that conservative opponents spend so much time arguing about numbers and legal status, he says: “They're the ones trying to win a brain argument, we're trying to win hearts.”
Heads you lose; hearts you win放弃大道理就能赢得人心
7 In the field of abortion, it is the conservative camp that dreams of capturing the centre ground. For decades pro-life activists have braved the January cold to march in Washington, DC, on the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion everywhere. Compared with the past, graphic images of dismembered foetuses were rare this year. Organisers had urged marchers to leave them at home and heed the day's themes of adoption and empathy for mothers, after years of stressing a right to life starting at conception. Putting to one side its ultimate dream of outlawing abortion completely (a minority position in America) the movement is pushing bans on terminations after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Ultrasound has transformed the public's views of 20-week-old foetuses, says an anti-abortion leader: expectant parents proudly display their scans on their computer screens at work. Pro-choice campaigners would retort that abortions after 20 weeks are vanishingly rare, and that the real intent is to chip away at a woman's reproductive freedom. Retort away, says the pro-life leader: the argument will make pro-abortion groups sound extreme.
8 In an era of scepticism and division, standing on rigid principle can be a blunder, it turns out: a tool for firing up partisans, useless for swaying voters in the middle. Though injustice still exists, today's voters want to be wooed, not hectored.
“权利”正在失去其在美国政治中的影响力。基于抽象原则的说教正在日渐式微，要求“推己及人”和“待人如己”的呼声正在一天天地壮大起来。虽说后一种做法比起前一种做法，显得缺乏逻辑的基础，但它毕竟给美国政治带来了一种变化，而最先感受到这种变化的则是在同性婚姻、移民改革和合法堕胎等问题上各持一词的造势者。倘若如此发展下去，必然会让“左”“右”双方对政治产生截然不同的认识。
先说说同性婚姻问题。多年来，保守派一直在这个问题上占据着主动。他们通过大声疾呼“传统家庭正在受到冲击”、“激进派正在想法设法地颠覆这个神圣的殿堂”等措辞激烈的警告，赢得了基督教保守人士的支持，使得他们走进投票站，把选票投给共和党候选人，并且还成功在十几个州中通过了禁止同性婚姻法律。
不过，这种情况却在2012年突然发生了改变。从那以后，同性婚姻的支持者开始节节胜利：在这一年中，共有三个州——缅因州、马里兰州和华盛顿州——通过了同性婚姻合法化的法律，并且明尼苏达州还成为了第四个取消同性婚姻禁令的州。之后，他们又相继在另外一些州的州议会以及包括联邦最高法院在内的法庭上取得了胜利。如今，支持他们的美国人已经占到全美总人口的绝大多数。[那么，他们是如何做到这一点的呢？]究其原因，[我个人认为]主要有以下两点：第一，随着公开在一起生活的同性夫妇的增多，现在的人们已经不再把身边的同性夫妇看作是洪水猛兽或者是艾伦·狄珍妮了。第二，这是同性婚姻的造势者进行认真的反思的结果。此前，他们一直试图从公民权方面为同性夫妇争取平等的权利。为此，他们曾经把“同性夫妇无法像已婚夫妇和其他得到法律认可的残疾人那样享受税收减免”作为他们宣传的出发点。加州曾在2008年就是否承认同性婚姻合法化举行过一次全民公投。在公投前的电视广告大战中，一个支持同性婚姻的团体曾将同性夫妇比作是二战中被拘禁的日裔美国人。虽然那次公投最终否决了同性婚姻合法化的提案，但是仍有许多非洲裔美国人因受到保守派牧师的鼓动而看不起同性夫妇，并把他们与同性婚姻支持者之间的斗争，比作是黑人与曾经用来镇压他们的高压水枪和警棍之间的斗争。

上述情况让同性婚姻造势者认识到，他们的宣传方式是不对的。也就是说，虽然他们也提到了同性夫妇所遭受的不平等的待遇，但是他们一直都在试图让选民从理论上接受他们的观点。相比之下，他们的对手（即经常在电视上打广告说“孩子们会因为谈论同性婚姻而变坏”的那些人）却在努力从心灵上打动选民。根据对代表性人群的民调显示，选民是不会被类似于“为什么说同性恋者想结婚”之类的枯燥理论所打动的，甚至大多数已经离婚的美国人也把婚姻当成是示爱的行为。于是，从此之后，同性婚姻造势者就把重点转移到了那些渴望向世界展示他们承诺的社会中坚人士的故事上面。在像“婚姻自由”这样的全国性团体发布的行动指南中，他们要求各州的造势者应当避免“词不达意”地将同性婚姻与公民权利牵扯到一起，而是应当在平等的基础上强调“待人如己”的思想（准确地说，就是要争取还那些尚未准备接受同性恋者的摇摆选民）。最能体现此类转变的当属那条已被美国学校拿来教育学生达百年之久，且具有明显道德教化意味的“金科玉律”——“己所欲，施于人”。因为，即便是对同性婚姻没有任何不满的美国人，也不会把同性夫妇看成是与他们自己一样的人。“婚姻自由”的塔利亚·泽帕托斯说，这样做的目的在于让选民相信，现有的价值观允许他们接受同性婚姻。这是因为，一则，但凡信奉“爱人如己”的人，也会允许别人去追求幸福；再者，同性婚姻者只是在请求加入他们的“神圣殿堂”，而不是想改变这个“组织”。
受上述这些胜利的提振，支持同性婚姻阵营中的谋士开始给另一个长期陷于僵局的政治领域——移民改革——的造势者的出谋划策。从此之后，支持移民改革的造势者不再把政策的详细条文当做他们的重点，他们开始突出严厉的移民法给骨肉分离的家庭所带来的痛苦。移民运动已经因把重点放在“梦想者”（即那些在童年时代就被非法移民带到美国来的年轻人）的故事上而取得了开始阶段的胜利。两党中已经有许多议员都对让“梦想者”获得公民身份的设想表示了支持，众议院的民主党领导人正在考虑在今年推动这项改革，并且很有可能在国会中获得通过。相比之下，成年移民的情况要更加复杂一些，要想让他们都能获得公民身份尚需两党之间的进一步拉锯战。为此，一部分保守派人士想把这个问题搁置到11月份的中期选举之后，或者至少也得推迟到党内初选之后，因为他们担心，如果现在就为此消耗精力，可能会造成共和党核心选民的分裂。
支持移民改革团体的负责人表示，由于移民改革涉及到种族和社会中的各个阶层。因此，与同性婚姻相比，移民改革要更困难一些。不过，令人感到欣慰的是，作为他们的对手，保守派把太多的时间都花在了争论移民的人数和法律地位上面。他说，这意味着“他们现在反而成了试图明之以理的一方，而我们则成了动之以情的一方”。
在有关堕胎的问题上，一直梦想着占据中心地带的是保守派阵营。多年来，每到最高法院在罗伊诉韦德案中判决堕胎合法化的周年纪念日，主张保护胎儿生命权的活动人士都会冒着一月份的严寒在华盛顿进行游行示威。但是，同往年相比，在今年游行队伍中，人们几乎看不到上面印着被肢解的胎儿画面的标语牌。 这是因为，组织者已经放弃了以往将重点放在“生存权始于怀孕”的做法，要求参加游行的人把这些标语牌都留在家中，以突出“对母亲选择权的认可和感同身受”这个主题。为此，他们已经放弃了只有少数美国人才会支持的“把堕胎定位完全不合法行为”的最终梦想，转而把目标定在了力图通过一部法律，禁止在怀孕超过20周时终止妊娠的行为。一位反堕胎运动的组织者说，超声波检查已经改变了公众对于存活超过20周的胎儿的看法，同时，准父母们也会自豪地把超声波检查结果放到电脑屏幕上，给周围的同事看。对此，支持母亲具有选择自由的造势者会反驳说，在怀孕超过20周后再选择堕胎的妇女已经越来越少了，反堕胎团体的真实目的在于剥夺妇女自由生育的权力；而主张保护胎儿权利的造势者会反驳说，这种论调会让支持堕胎的团体的论调听起来极端化。
以上这些例子告诉我们：在当下这个充满着怀疑的分裂时代，一味地坚持既定原则可能会成为输家。这是因为，一种工具可能会在激发支持者时发挥作用，但在面对摇摆选民时却一无用处。尽管“爱人如己”是很难做到的，但是，对于今天的选民来说，他们需要的是“被取悦”，而不是“被利用”。
From the print edition: United States

Measuring the arms merchants 评估军火商

The countries that buy and sell the most weapons买卖武器最多的国家

FIVE countries—America, Russia, Germany, China and France—accounted for three-quarters of international arms exports over the past five years. China tripled its share in that time, overtaking France. It is on track to surpass Germany to become the third-largest arms dealer. Business is brisk. Overall, sales between 2009 and 2013 were 14% higher than the previous five-year period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks the arms trade. China sells to 35 mainly low- and middle-income countries, but is also a big importer (two-thirds of its weapons come from Russia). America exports to over 90 nations, with aircraft making up most of its sales. Russia exports more ships than any other country. Its weapons exports have significantly increased, thanks in part to being India's biggest supplier, accounting for three-quarters of its arms purchases. As for Ukraine, it exports more weapons than Italy or Israel. But with regional tensions flaring, it may choose to keep some of those arms for itself.
过去五年，美国、俄罗斯、德国、中国和法国出口的武器占了国际军火出口市场的四分之三。在这个阶段，中国的份额涨了三倍，取代了法国的位置。中国有望超过德国成为世界第三大军火商。生意很火。总的来说，2009年至2013年的销售额比之前五年增长了14%，这是跟踪军火贸易的斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所得出的结论。中国的军火主要销往35个中低收入国家，她本身也是武器进口大国（该国三分之二的武器来着俄罗斯）。美国的武器出口到90个国家，卖飞机的钱在军火出口中占的销售额最大。俄罗斯卖的军舰最多。俄罗斯的军火出口有显著增长，部分要归功于他成了印度最大的供货商，印度四分之三的武器都是买俄罗斯的。乌克兰军火出口超过意大利或以色列。但是由于地区局势骤然紧张，她可能选一些武器留着自己用。

Credit where credit’s due 实至名归

Rating agencies 评级机构

The ratings industry has bounced back from the financial crisis
信用评级行业已经从金融危机中恢复

AT FIRST glance, the past few years have not been good to the ratings agencies. During the financial crisis, a collapse in bond markets cut the industry’s revenues by a third. Worse, they were blamed for helping to precipitate the crisis, by giving unduly high ratings to mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that later turned sour. Worse still, last February America’s Department of Justice sued Standard & Poor’s (S&P), a big ratings agency, for $5 billion, claiming that it knowingly issued overgenerous ratings. S&P says the case is retaliation for lowering of America’s credit rating.
Yet in spite of these problems the “big three” agencies—Moody’s, S&P and Fitch—are now thriving again. Revenues from ratings services at all three outfits surpassed pre-crisis levels last year. Profits at Moody’s are at a record high; S&P’s are not far off. With margins at an enviable 52% and 44% of ratings revenues respectively, Moody’s and S&P now look more attractive as businesses than most other financial firms do.
The ratings agencies’ swelling profits derive in part from increased activity in the bond markets, according to Flavio Campos at Credit Suisse, a bank. Last year companies issued a record amount of bonds by value. There was even increased demand for ratings of structured bonds—the sort sliced into different tranches with varying exposure to default, which featured prominently in the crisis

The fact that issuers still pay for ratings, rather than investors, has also helped maintain demand. Companies issuing bonds benefit from getting them rated by the agencies. The return in lower borrowing costs can be up to ten times as much as the fees paid for the rating. Regulations that still make it virtually impossible to sell unrated bonds in America are also a boon

All this would have seemed improbable only a couple of years ago, when talk abounded of reforming ratings agencies and diminishing their role. Some critics complained that allowing issuers to pay for ratings gave agencies an incentive to inflate them, to please their clients. Others questioned the huge role that the private, profit-making firms had in the regulation of public markets.
The European Union set up a whole new regulator, the European Securities and Markets Authority, in part to keep a closer eye on rating agencies’ conduct. (Among those it looks at is the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, which conducts sovereign credit ratings.) In America, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which instituted a host of financial reforms, required the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street’s main regulator, to tighten regulation of the agencies and to reduce references to ratings in their rules for banks.
The SEC was meant to issue new regulations about ratings agencies by May 2011, but three years later they are still yet to be finalised. Critics, such as the Consumer Federation of America, a lobby group, complain that they fail to reduce the ratings agencies’ influence as much as Congress wanted. In part, that is because it has proven much “easier said than done” to replace ratings with other indicators in risk models, according to Sam Theodore at Scope Ratings, a boutique agency.
A new NBER paper by Harold Cole at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Cooley of the Stern School of Business also challenges the notion that it would be better to get the investors who are buying bonds to pay for ratings. They might choose not to release the ratings they pay for, it points out. Patchy information, in turn, could increase the likelihood that the market would misprice securities.
All told, the ratings agencies’ business “has not been threatened much by extra regulation or competition”, says Douglas Arthur at Evercore Partners, an investment bank. Although outfits like Scope have tried to challenge the big three’s dominance, the trio still control around 95% of the global ratings market: the same as before the crisis. With bond markets booming again, ratings agencies are back to their profitable and controversial old selves
咋一看，评级机构在过去几年里都不怎么好过。在金融危机期间，债卷市场崩溃使金融业的收益下降了三分之一。更糟糕的是，人们指责评级机构助长了危机的发生，由于它们给予抵押支持证劵过高的信用评级，而这些证劵最后都变成了问题资产。更严重的是，美国司法部在去年二月份将一个大型评级机构，标普，告上了法庭，控告其有意发行过高的信用评级，索赔50亿美元。标普则表示这个案子是一个报复手段，因为之前它下调了美国的信用等级。

尽管存在这些问题，“三巨头” — 穆迪，标普和惠誉国际 — 如今又开始兴旺发达了。这三家机构去年的评级服务收入超出了危机前的水平。穆迪的盈利达到了历史新高；标普则紧随其后。二者的毛利润率分别为52%和44%，令人羡慕，作为企业来说，穆迪和标普比其它金融企业看起来更具吸引力。

瑞士信贷集团的Flavio Campos表示，评级机构利润不断增长一部分是由于债卷市场变得更加活跃。去年企业发行的债劵价值总量达到了历史最高水平。结构债劵 （被分割为不同风险等级的债卷，它是造成金融危机的一大因素 ）的评级服务需求甚至也有所增加 。

发行商而非投资商仍然在支付信用评级费用这样一个事实也帮助维持了需求。让评级机构评价自身债券的信用等级有利于债券发行公司。公司因此而节省的贷款成本高达他们为评级服务支付的费用的十倍之多。另外一个对评级机构非常有利的事情就是美国一些管理条例使得未经评级的债券几乎无法出售。

所有这些在几年前看起来都是不可能的事情，那个时候人们都在谈论改革评级机构和消减其职责。一些批评人士抱怨，让发行商出钱购买评级服务会鼓励评级机构抬高信用评级，从而取悦他们的客户。另外一些人质疑私人营利企业在管理公共市场方面起到的巨大作用。

欧盟建立了一个全新的管理机构，欧洲证劵与市场管理局，这在一定程度上是为了更加紧密的监视评级机构的行为。（被监视的机构包括经济学人智库，它的业务是主权信贷评级。）美国2010年的《多德-弗兰克法案》提出了一系列的金融改革，法案要求美联储和证劵交易委员会（华尔街的主要管理机构）加强对评级机构的管理并在银行管理工作中减少对信用评级的参考。

证劵交易委员会本应该在2011年5月前就发布新的评级机构管理条例的，但三年后这些条例仍然没有敲定。一些批评者，例如作为游说群体的美国消费者联盟，抱怨他们未能在国会希望的程度上降低评级机构的影响力。一家广告代理公司Scope Ratings 的Sam Theodoe表示，这一定程度上是因为用其它风险模型中的其它指标代替信用评级说起来容易做起来难。

滨州大学的Harold Cole和斯特恩商学院的Thomas Cooley共同发表的美国国家经济研究局报告也质疑这样一种观点，即让购买债卷的投资者为评级服务买单更好。报告指出，投资者可能会选择不发布自己购买的评级。这种信息的不完整会增加债卷定价错位的可能性。

来自投资银行Evercore Partners的Doughlas Arthur 说，总的来看，评级机构的业务并没有因为监管或者竞争加剧而受到威胁。尽管像Scope这种机构试图挑战“三巨头”的统治地位，但“三巨头”仍然控制着全球评级市场的95%：同危机发生之前一样。随着债卷市场再一次繁荣，评级机构又回到了他们既赚钱又具争议性的老样子

The Skinny on kin colour 肤色的内幕
Human evolution人类进化
Homo sapiens became black to beat cancer现代人变黑来抵抗癌症
Protect and surviveSHAVE a chimpanzee and you will find that beneath its hairy coat its skin is white. Human skin, though, was almost always black—at least it was until a few thousand years ago when the species began settling in parts of the world so far north that the sunshine was too weak to allow dark skin to synthesise enough vitamin D. This means that, sometime after chimps and people parted ways, the colour of human skin changed. And that, in turn, must have required an evolutionary pressure.

One suggestion often proferred is that the melanin in black skin, by absorbing ultraviolet light which might otherwise damage DNA and cause mutations, protects against skin cancer. Certainly, white-skinned people who move to the tropics are more at risk of such cancers than they would have been had they stayed at home. But critics of this hypothesis point out that most types of skin cancer, specifically the basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinomas that are the commonest varieties of the disease, tend to affect older people (who have already reproduced and are thus, in Darwinian terms, expendable) and are often not lethal anyway. Malignant melanoma, the one variety which is both lethal and affects all age groups, is rare.
However, a study by Mel Greaves, of the Institute of Cancer Research, in Britain, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, settles the question in favour of cancer being the driving force. Dr Greaves does so by reviewing the clinical data about those Africans who do not have black skin because they are albino.
Albinism has a variety of genetic causes, but they all have the same consequence—a restricted or non-existent ability to synthesise melanin. The phenomenon is not well studied in Africa, not least because of widespread prejudice against albinos, who are ostracised in many parts of the continent. Dr Greaves nevertheless managed to assemble 25 relevant studies, and they do not make pretty reading.
One, conducted in Nigeria and published in 1980, found that half of the 512 albinos whom the researchers followed had developed skin cancer of some sort by the time they were 26. Another, carried out a few years later in Tanzania, showed that half of 125 participants were afflicted by the age of 20. A third, from Soweto in South Africa, suggested that that an albino African has a thousandfold greater risk of developing skin cancer than does his normally pigmented neighbour. And a fourth estimated that fewer than 10% of albinos in equatorial Africa survive into their thirties—with the strong inference that what is killing them is skin cancer.
Nor is the cancer in question always malignant melanoma. Basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinomas are not, for African albinos, the relatively harmless diseases of old age which data collected in the rich world suggest. In Africa, they kill—quickly. Presumably they would have done the same to any human forebear who had had the evolutionary temerity to shed his hairy coat without replacing it with a suitably dark undercoat of melanin-laden skin.
Why humans became naked apes is still a mystery. Explanations range from ease of heat loss to the selection of mates by the quality of their (now visible) skin. Dr Greaves’s study, though, removes any doubt about why, having done so, a change of skin colour was essential.
剃掉一只黑猩猩的毛，你就会发现在它毛衣之下的皮肤是白色的。人类的皮肤虽然一直都是黑色—至少直到几千年前，当人类开始迁入如此远的北部，阳光太弱，不足以让黑色皮肤合成足够的维他命D。这意味着，在猿类和人类分开后的一段时间，人类皮肤的颜色变了。而这反过来一定需要进化的压力。
一个时常首选的建议是黑皮肤中的黑色素，通过吸收紫外线来防范皮肤癌，否则紫外线可能损坏DNA，导致变异。的确，白皮肤的人，搬去热带，患这类癌症的风险会比他们如果呆在家里时更大。但是这个假设的批评者指出，大部分类型的皮肤癌，特别皮肤癌中最常见的类型基底细胞和鳞状细胞癌，倾向于感染老年人（他们已经繁殖了，达尔文的话来说叫可牺牲的）而且无论如何通常也不致命。既致命又感染所有年龄群体的恶性黑色素瘤很少见。
然而由英国的癌症研究所（Institute of Cancer Research）的麦尔•格利福斯（Mel Greaves）所做的并且刚刚发表在皇家学会报告（Proceedings of the royal society）的一项研究，解决了这个问题，赞同癌症是推动力。格利福斯博士通过审阅那些患白化病所以没有黑色皮肤的非洲人的临床数据来达到这个结果。
白化病有多种基因上的原因，但是他们都有同一个后果—不能或合成黑色素的能力受限。这个现象在非洲没有得到很好的研究，尤其是因为广泛的对白化病人的歧视，他们在这个大陆的很多地方遭到驱逐。虽然如此，格利福斯博士成功收集了25个相关的研究，它们看上去并不好。
一个在1980年在尼日利亚实施并发表的研究发现在研究者们跟踪的512名白化病人中，一半在他们26岁时换上了某种皮肤癌。另一个几年后在坦桑尼亚开着的研究表示125名参与者中的一半在20岁时患病。来自南非的索委托（Soweto）的第三个研究表示患白化病的非洲人患皮肤癌的风险要比他颜色正常的邻居大1000倍。第四个研究估计在非洲赤道地区不到10%的白化病患者活到三十岁—强烈的推论道皮肤癌弄死了他们。
所讨论的癌症也不总是恶性黑色素瘤。对于非洲的白化病患者来说，基底细胞癌和鳞状细胞癌不是像在发达国家收集的数据显示的那样是老年人患的相对无害的疾病。在非洲，他们迅速致死。大概本来可能对任何一个进化得冒冒失失，褪去毛发时没有用合适的满载黑色素的皮肤深色外衣来代替它的人类祖先做同样的事情。
没什么人类变成裸猴子仍然是个谜。解释的范围，从容易热损耗到根据他们的（看不见的）皮肤质量来择偶。尽管格利福斯博士的研究行事如此，移除了任何关于对为什么肤色的变化很关键的疑虑。
From the print edition: Science and technology

The new age of crony capitalism 裙带资本主义的新时代Business and government商业和政府
Political connections have made many people hugely rich in recent years. But crony capitalism may be waning
AS THE regime of Viktor Yanukovych collapsed in Ukraine, protesters against it could be found outside One Hyde Park, a luxury development in west London. Their target was Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a backer of the old regime. “Discipline your pet”, they chanted.
Ukraine’s troubled state has long been dominated by its oligarchs. But across the emerging world the relationship between politics and business has become fraught. India’s election in April and May will in part be a plebiscite on a decade of crony capitalism. Turkey’s prime minister is engulfed by scandals involving construction firms—millions of Turks have clicked on YouTube recordings that purport to incriminate him. On March 5th China’s president, Xi Jinping, vowed to act “without mercy” against corruption in an effort to placate public anger. Last year 182,000 officials were punished for disciplinary violations, an increase of 40,000 over 2011.
As in America at the turn of the 20th century, a new middle class is flexing its muscles, this time on a global scale. People want politicians who don’t line their pockets, and tycoons who compete without favours. A revolution to save capitalism from the capitalists is under way.
The kind of rents estate agents can only dream of
“Rent-seeking” is what economists call a special type of money-making: the sort made possible by political connections. This can range from outright graft to a lack of competition, poor regulation and the transfer of public assets to firms at bargain prices. Well-placed people have made their fortunes this way ever since rulers had enough power to issue profitable licences, permits and contracts to their cronies. In America, this system reached its apogee in the late 19th century, and a long and partially successful struggle against robber barons ensued. Antitrust rules broke monopolies such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The flow of bribes to senators shrank.
In the emerging world, the past quarter-century has been great for rent-seekers. Soaring property prices have enriched developers who rely on approvals for projects. The commodities boom has inflated the value of oilfields and mines, which are invariably intertwined with the state. Some privatisations have let tycoons milk monopolies or get assets cheaply. The links between politics and wealth are plainly visible in China, where a third of billionaires are party members.
Capitalism based on rent-seeking is not just unfair, but also bad for long-term growth. As our briefing on India explains, resources are misallocated: crummy roads are often the work of crony firms. Competition is repressed: Mexicans pay too much for their phones. Dynamic new firms are stifled by better-connected incumbents. And if linked to the financing of politics, rent-heavy capitalism sets a tone at the top that can let petty graft flourish. When ministers are on the take, why shouldn’t underpaid junior officials be?
The Economist has built an index to gauge the extent of crony capitalism across countries and over time. It identifies sectors which are particularly dependent on government—such as mining, oil and gas, banking and casinos—and tracks the wealth of billionaires (based on a ranking by Forbes) in those sectors relative to the size of the economy. It does not purport to establish that particular countries are particularly corrupt, but shows the scale of fortunes being created in economic sectors that are most susceptible to cronyism.
Rich countries score comparatively well, but that is no reason for complacency. The bailing out of banks has involved the transfer of a great deal of wealth to financiers; lobbyists have too much influence, especially in America; today’s internet entrepreneurs could yet become tomorrow’s monopolists. The larger problem, though, lies in the emerging world, where billionaires’ wealth in rent-heavy sectors relative to GDP is more than twice as high as in the rich world. Ukraine and Russia score particularly badly—many privatisations favoured insiders. Asia’s boom has enriched tycoons in rent-seeking sectors.
Wanted: emerging-market Roosevelts
Yet this may be a high-water mark for rent-seekers, for three reasons. First, rules are ignored less freely than they used to be. Governments seeking to make their countries rich and keep people happy know they need to make markets work better and bolster the institutions that regulate them. Brazil, Hong Kong and India have beefed up their antitrust regulators. Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, wants to break its telecoms and media cartels. China is keen to tackle its state-owned fiefs.
Second, the financial incentives for businesses may be changing. The share of billionaire wealth from rent-rich industries in emerging markets is now falling, from a peak of 76% in 2008 to 58% today. This is partly a natural progression. As economies get richer, infrastructure and commodities become less dominant. Between 1900 and 1930 new fortunes in America were built not in railways and oil but in retailing and cars. In China today the big money is made from the internet, not building heavy industrial plants with subsidised loans on land secured through party connections. But this also reflects the wariness of investors: in India, after a decade of epic corruption, industrialists in open and innovative sectors such as technology and pharmaceuticals are back in the ascendant.
The last reason for optimism is that the incentives for politicians have changed, too. Growth has slowed sharply, making reforms that open the economy vital. Countries with governments that are reforming and trying to tackle vested interests, such as Mexico, have been better insulated from the jitters in the financial markets.
There is much more to be done. Governments need to be more assiduous in regulating monopolies, in promoting competition, in ensuring that public tenders and asset sales are transparent and in prosecuting bribe-takers. The boom that created a new class of tycoon has also created its nemesis, a new, educated, urban, taxpaying middle class that is pushing for change. That is something autocrats and elected leaders ignore at their peril.
近年，许多人凭借裙带关系赚得盆满钵满。然而，这样的日子可能因裙带关系风光不再而一去不返。
随着乌克兰前总统维克托•亚努科维奇政权垮台，抗议者也将其战场扩大到伦敦西部奢华商业区——伦敦海德公园一号（One Hyde Park），矛头直指乌克兰首富和亚努科维奇政权的拥护者——雷纳托•阿克梅托夫（Rinat Akhmetov），并反复喊叫：“管好你的狗！”
长期以来，乌克兰动荡局势一直由寡头政治集团控制。然而，整个新兴世界的政商关系可谓堪忧。在印度，全民公投将在今年四月和五月举行，从一定程度上向困扰印度长达十年之久的裙带资本主义宣战。最近，土耳其总理雷杰普•塔伊普•埃尔多安也因与房地产公司的纠葛而丑闻不断——数百万土耳其人在YouTube（美国一家视频网站）上听到的一段认定土耳其总理涉嫌犯罪的录音。三月五日，中国国家主席习近平发誓要与腐败行为抗争到底，绝不姑息，意图借此平息民怨。去年，因纪律问题被处罚的官员数量达到182,000人，比2011年增加了40,000人。
十九世纪和二十世纪之交，美国的新中产阶级开始摩拳擦掌，准备大干一番，这次中产阶级的范围从美国扩大到全世界。人们希望政治家不要利用权力中饱私囊，也希望商界巨鳄能摆好阵势公平竞争。如今，资本主义被资本家搞得濒临灭亡，救赎式革命正在上演。
寻租？想想就算了
“寻租”是经济学家所谓的一种的特殊的生财之道，即利用政治关系来赚钱，方式也是五花八门：贪污受贿失察、竞争失活、规管失范、公共资产折价转移。一旦统治者可以利用手中的权利为其商界伙伴们大开方便之门，财源自然滚滚而来。十九世纪，该体制曾在美国一度迎来高潮后的较长时间内，美国一直在打压强盗资本家，并取得一定成效。反托拉斯法的实施令垄断企业分崩离析，如约翰•D•洛克菲勒所创立的标准石油，参议员收受的贿赂也大幅缩水。
在新兴世界中，过去二十五年可谓寻租者的蜜月期。房价一路飙升，依靠项目审批的开发商们赚得金玉满钵。大宗商品价格暴涨，与国家密切相关的油田和矿井的价值也水涨船高。通过一些私有化行为，商界巨鳄或瓜分垄断行业，或以低价购入资产。在中国，亿万富翁中的三分之一为中共党员，彰显了政治和财富之间的关系。
以寻租体制为基础建立的资本主义不仅会加重社会不公平，也为经济长远增长埋下祸根。正如我们在有关印度的简报中所述，资源配置存在错误：豆腐渣公路通常与“裙带”公司脱不开关系。打压市场竞争：墨西哥人为高额电话费黯然神伤。充满活力的新公司经常被有关系的老牌公司的扼杀在襁褓中。一旦与政治融资有了瓜葛，寻租资本主义便自上而下设定了基调，令行贿受贿大行其道。既然部长级大佬都在吃肉喝酒，为什么中层官员就不能喝口汤呢？
为衡量裙带资本主义对不同国家和时代的影响程度，经济学人杂志建立了一个指标。该指标指出了特别依靠政府的行业——如采矿、石油和天然气、银行和博彩业，并对亿万富翁（根据福布斯排名）在与经济规模相关的上述行业中的资产进行追踪。此举并非是为证明哪个国家的腐败现象最严重，而是表示与裙带关系密切相关的经济领域中所创造的财富总量。
发达国家表现相对良好，但不可就此沾沾自喜。原因如下：金融家在银行纾困过程中转移了大笔资产；院外活动集团成员有很强的影响力，尤其是在美国（见文章）；今日的互联网企业家可能就是明日的垄断资本家。在新兴国家中，亿万富翁在寻租行业中所掌握的的财富占GDP比重是发达国家的两倍甚至更多，意味着新兴国家面临更大的问题。乌克兰和俄罗斯表现却极为糟糕——许多私有化行业支持对象为裙带关系者。亚洲繁荣的背后，是寻租者在大肆敛财。
让罗斯福来领导新兴市场走出困境
然而，这可能是寻租者最后的狂欢。原因有三。第一：人们更加注重规则。政府部门需要明白，只有市场运行良好，机构监管规范，国家才会更富有，人民才会更幸福。巴西、中国香港和印度加强了反托拉斯监管。墨西哥总统恩里克•佩尼亚•涅托欲分解其电信和媒体联盟。中国则将注意力放在国有企业领域。
第二，针对商业的金融政策变革正在酝酿中。新兴市场中，寻租现象频繁的行业中的亿万富翁的财富比重从2008年的最高值76%跌至如今的58%。部分原因归咎于自然发展。随着经济体日益富裕，其基础设施和商品期货的支配地位日益下降。在1900年到1930年间的美国，零售业和汽车业比铁路业和石油业更赚钱。在如今的中国，利用政治关系，获得保障性贷款，再建造厂房的致富途径已被互联网金融取而代之。然而，这也折射出投资客在谨慎行事：在经历了十年腐败侵蚀的印度，处在开放和创新领域（如科技和制药业）的实业家重掌市场支配权。
第三，针对政治家的机制也已经改变，这一点值得庆祝。经济增长速度急剧下降，迫使改革释放经济活力。部分国家（如墨西哥）的政府正通过改革和试点来处理既得利益，面对金融市场的跌宕起伏，这些国家不再惊慌失措。
任重而道远。在治理垄断行业方面，在促进竞争方面，在保证公开竞标和资产出售透明方面，以及在检举收受贿赂官员方面，政府部门还需要付出更多的汗水。繁荣昌盛的经济虽然成就了一批新的商界大亨，但也造就了一个与之对立的阶级——一个崭新的、受过良好教育的城市纳税中产阶级。后者正在推动变革。而这正是独裁者和选举出的领导者在冒险时所忽略的。
From the print edition: Leaders

Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech 美国国情咨文Deal or no deal?承诺能否兑现？
American politics may be becoming a bit less dysfunctional
美国政治制度或许会开始回到正轨
1 IN HIS big annual speech to Congress, Barack Obama made several promises. He pledged to raise the minimum wage for those contracted to the federal government, to create a new tax-free savings bond to encourage Americans to save, to work for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison, to push immigration reforms and to veto any sanctions that Congress might pass designed to derail his deal with Iran over its nuclear programme. But for anybody listening from abroad, his most startling promise to America’s legislature was to bypass it. “Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do,” he vowed. This year, he said, will be “a year of action”.
2 That in America this pledge was not regarded as the most remarkable element of the speech shows how inured the country has become to dysfunctional government. After years of gridlock, Americans have got used to the idea that the gerrymandering of the electoral system and the polarisation of their two political parties have set the branches of government against each other, and that the checks and balances originally intended to keep the country’s polity healthy have condemned it to sclerosis. Government shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and presidents who promise to do their best to ignore the legislature are no longer much of a surprise. Yet Americans may have become too gloomy: Mr Obama’s speech could be the latest in a series of small signs that things are getting better.
3 Last year’s shutdown was such a public-relations disaster for politicians in general and the Republicans in particular that it is unlikely to happen again. The Tea Party’s kamikaze tactics have been discredited; that is why, without much fuss, Congress recently managed to pass a budget. Mr Obama knows that he can do nothing of interest without co-operation: when parsed, the promises of unilateral action in his speech amounted to not much more than a few low-level government workers getting paid a sliver more. No one expects 2014 to be a year of bipartisan chumminess, but several deals are possible.
4 Take inequality, Mr Obama’s new theme. Higher minimum wages are a less effective way to help poorer Americans than expanding the earned income tax credit ( a negative income tax for workers on low pay). Several Republicans are open to this idea. Senator Marco Rubio, a rising star, recently said so; a fact Mr Obama alluded to in a speech that was uncharacteristically—and encouragingly—short of partisan sniping.
5 On immigration, too, a deal is doable. House Republicans are about to release a list of principles for reforming a system everyone agrees is broken. Mr Obama said he wants to sign a bill this year; if he handles Congress delicately, he may get his wish. The same goes for his request for lawmakers to give him “fast track” authority to negotiate trade deals. This is an essential tool for promoting free trade: if Asians and Europeans think Congress will rewrite trade pacts after the haggling is over, they will not take Mr Obama seriously as a dealmaker.
Trade, tax, immigration—and no shutdown
6 It is still sad that this is the best that can be said of the world’s most powerful democracy. It is hard to imagine the citizens of emerging economies looking at these compromises and finding them inspiring. But they are a start—and the political winds may be changing. If Mr Obama is to be remembered for anything at home but the botched roll-out of his health reform, he needs to get some measures through Congress. The Republicans need to be seen as something other than obstructionist if they want to win the White House. For once, they both have something in common: they need government to work.
在年度的国会演说中,巴拉克`奥巴马(Barack Obama)作出数个承诺，包括提高联邦政府员工的最低工资，发行一种新的免税储蓄债券，鼓励美国人多储蓄，关闭关塔那摩湾（Guantánamo Bay）监狱，推进移民政策改革，以及制止任何国会可能会通过的阻碍与伊朗核问题解决方案的命令。但是，对于听了这次演讲的外国人来说，他一开始就避而不谈改革美国立法机构的承诺。“无论何时何地，就算法律未立，我都会努力为美国更多家庭增加机会，”他郑重宣告。他说，今年将会是“行动之年”。
在美国，这个承诺算不上整篇演讲中最突出的因素，也没有体现出这个国家是有多习惯给无能政府领导。经历数年的政治僵局后，美国人民终于认识到，只为一己之利的选举制度和两极分化的两党制，已经造成政府内部出现严重分歧，互相桎梏；为确保美国政治得以健康发展的三权分立制度已经变得僵化，举步维艰。联邦政府关门、财政悬崖以及一位振振有词地说要不遗余力地将立法机关束之高阁的总统等不值得大惊小怪。然而，美国人或许会太过悲观：奥巴马这次演讲不是什么事情会变好的信号。
去年的政府关门事件虽说不会重演，但却是政客们公众形象上的灾难，特别是共和党。茶党（The Tea Party）的“敢死队”战术臭名远扬——这也是为什么最近国会非常顺利地就通过一个预算案。奥巴马知道，如果不和国会合作，他将无法施展拳脚。经过分析，他演讲中所提到的单方面行动最多只能稍微提高一些低级的政府职员的薪水。2014年，两党关系不会亲密无间，但是落实一些工作还是有可能的。
不平等是奥巴马的新话题。要帮助低收入者，提高最低工资其实作用不大，不如扩大所得税减免范围（一种适用于低收入者的消极所得税）。一些共和党人也对此表示赞同。政治新星、参议员马克罗•鲁比奥（Marco Rubio）最近表示，有件事奥巴马在演说中没有明说，这时非比寻常而又鼓舞人心——除了放了共和党一记冷枪以外。
改革移民政策也是可以做到的。白宫的共和党人准备公布一个清单，内容有关改革一个没有人认可的制度。奥巴马表示他计划在今年签署一个法案，但前提是他能与国会达成一致。同样，他也打算让立法者为他开通“快速通道”，促成贸易谈判。这是促进自由贸易的关键手段。如果亚洲人和欧洲人认为国会会在争论结束后重新修改贸易协定，他们将不会将奥巴马这个贸易伙伴太当回事。
贸易，税收，移民——而且政府不关门

对于世界上最强大的民主国家来说，能做到这样已经是最好的结果，让人伤感。很难想象新兴国家的民众看到这个折中方案会觉得高兴。但他们是一个开始，而且政治风向随时会转变。如果奥巴马记得国内施行过的政策（除了一塌糊涂的医疗改革），他需要通过议会制定措施。如果共和党人想要入主白宫，他们必须做出行动，而非表现出一副阻挠者的面孔。这一次，双方找到了共同点：他们需要政府正常运转

Never walk alone不要独自前行

The industrial north工业化的北方
Northern solidarity could give Britain a big economic boost北方工业的团结可以大幅度提升英国经济
Apr 19th 2014 | MANCHESTER | From the print edition
1 THE rivalry between Manchester United and Liverpool Football Club is among the oldest and fiercest in football. The teams first met in 1894, when competition between the two cities—30 miles apart—reached fever pitch. That year marked the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal, an effort to bypass Liverpool’s bustling port with a direct water route from the Mersey to central Manchester. Over a century later, old enmities continue to divide many of England’s northern cities. Such localism is taken for granted in Britain. But it is sapping the competitiveness of the country’s industrial heartland.
2 Trace a rectangle 110 miles long and 90 miles wide, with Blackpool at its north-west corner and Birmingham to the south. The region contained in it has most of the ingredients for a global metropolis. In area and population it is comparable to Greater Chicago—home of corporate headquarters, world-class cultural amenities and soaring towers. Both Chicago and Britain’s metropolitan north are former industrial centres that grew rich in the 19th century but fell on hard times in the 20th. Yet their paths have diverged. Real incomes in Chicago are roughly 80% higher than in Britain’s ex-industrial core (see chart), according to figures gathered by the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank. And though the fortunes of Britain’s cities are improving, the gap in productivity and dynamism between its biggest industrial corridor and those of foreign peers is striking.
3 Cities thrive or wither on how well they foster connections between people and between firms. In the 19th century, when the cost of moving bulky goods was high, cities were a means to shrink supply chains. Firms crowded around coalfields and each other to cuts costs and boost productivity. But transport costs fell steadily into the 20th century, reducing the need to crowd factories cheek by jowl. Manufacturers instead sought cheap labour, leaving some industrial towns to rot. A new dynamo began to drive urban growth: the speedy flow of knowledge within cities.
4 The shift has wrong-footed many an industrial city. Those which have managed the transition best have been able to call on a critical mass of skilled workers. Chicago’s advantage is obvious; the metropolitan area circles a dense central city. Much of the region is linked by a single transport system and city government. Britain’s old manufacturing belt is not so geographically coherent. Yet it lags more sprawling peers as well. The German industrial conurbation that stretches from Dortmund to Cologne is also more productive, despite lacking a defined heart.
5 Several factors keep what might be called Britain’s collective second city underperforming. Poor transport links amplify the distance between the region’s hubs. Fewer than 40 miles divide Manchester from Leeds—less than the length of the Piccadilly line on the London Underground. But the rail journey between the two cities takes more than twice as long as that between Reading and London, which covers a similar distance. (The rolling Pennines are not a great obstacle; a canal joined the cities nearly two centuries ago.) A 2009 study by economists at the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC) reckoned there was 40% less commuting between Manchester and Leeds than one would expect, given the cities’ characteristics.
6 Divided government is another handicap. Local officials are scattered between myriad town councils, and are more interested in beating neighbouring districts than deepening links with them. The national government periodically tries to solve this—mostly unsuccessfully. The last Labour government introduced agencies tasked with organising development on a regional level but they did little to encourage proper regional governance. The coalition has replaced them with local enterprise partnerships but they are poorly funded and mostly impotent.
7 Antipathy to regional partnerships, rooted in twists of economic history, is a third obstacle. When the Manchester Ship Canal opened, growth in the region—centred on booming Manchester—threatened to merge swathes of the area into a single economic unit. In 1915 Patrick Geddes, a Scottish polymath, reckoned that Liverpool and Manchester were “fast becoming little more than historic expressions”. Yet by the early 1920s population growth in the region had nearly halted. Britain’s precocious industrial cities were also the first to stagnate and deindustrialise, as technological leadership swung to America. Decline set in before urban growth submerged strong city identities, and before the north could develop governing institutions with a regional focus. Its cities instead became trapped in an outmoded, Victorian economic geography.
Patchy up north正在迎头赶上的北方工业
8 Parts of the north-west are reviving. Populations are growing again in places. Manchester in particular appears to be thriving. According to the Manchester Independent Economic Review, a mammoth report about the future of the city published in 2009, productivity there is among the highest in Britain outside London. Other research suggests that Manchester is the only area outside the south-east to function as a “human-capital escalator”: sucking in young people and boosting their careers. The city’s governance is also improving. A new Greater Manchester Combined Authority was formed in 2011, to ensure proper co-operation between ten different local authorities.
9 Yet to narrow the gap with London, Greater Manchester will have to grow greater still. Better integration with neighbouring hubs could stem the southward leak of talent. Mancunian imperialism is happening—slowly. The economic boundary between Manchester and Liverpool looks increasingly porous. A big new port development along the Manchester Ship Canal will deepen links between them—provided local politicians stay the course.
10 More ambition would help, as would sensible public investment. According to the SERC report, a 20-minute reduction in travel time between Manchester and Leeds could add £6.7 billion to the economy of the north of England. Faster travel times to London could add half as much again to both cities’ economies, while boosting the fortunes of cities along the route. The best hope for Britain’s industrial heartland might be integration within a single metropolitan corridor stretching from the south-east to Preston.
11 Off the football pitch, that will mean co-operating. But if deepened ties raised productivity across all northern cities to Mancunian levels, British output could rise nearly £50 billion a year. That is a derby from which everyone would win.

众多的政治野心也会有所帮助，就像明智的公共投资一样。根据国家电监会的报告，如果曼彻斯特和利兹之间的旅行时间减少20分钟，那么英格兰的北方经济收入会增加67亿英镑。到伦敦的旅程时间越短，这两个城市的经济收入都会增加一半，同时还会促进沿线城市的经济收入。英国工业地带的最大希望可能是，在从东南地区到普雷斯顿这个大城市地带之间进行整合。
关闭足球场，可能意味着合作。但是如果加深城市之间的合作可以让所有北部城市的生产力达到曼彻斯特的水平，那么英国经济将会年增加近500亿英镑。这是一场共赢的德比战

然而，要想减小与伦敦的差距，大曼彻斯特城还需要加大发展步伐。与周边枢纽更好地整合可以阻止人才的向南流动。曼彻斯特帝国正在慢慢地起步。曼彻斯特和利物浦之间的经济边界似乎越来越模糊。延着曼彻斯特大运河的，那个新的大港口的发展将会加深它们之间有经济合作—这也会让地方政客们坚持到底的。
部分西北地区正在恢复过程中。这里的人口又开始增长。特别是曼彻斯特似乎又开始繁荣起来。根据曼彻斯特独立经济评论2009年出版的，一份关于城市未来的长篇报告显示，曼彻斯特的生产力是全英国除伦敦之外最高的。其它的研究显示，曼彻斯特是，除东南区域外的，唯一一个被认为是“人力资本快速增长”的地区：这里吸引着年轻人，并能促进他们事业的发展。这个城市的治理水平也成提高。一个联合政府当局建立的，新的大曼彻斯特城于2011年建成，以确保十个不同地方政府之间以合适的方式进行合作。
第三个障碍是对区域关系的反感，其来源于经济历史的曲折过程，当曼彻斯特大运河开通时，区域的发展—以蓬勃发展的曼彻斯特为中心—曾经扬言要把这一区域合并成一个单一的经济部位。1915年，苏格兰博学者帕特里克-格迪斯曾经预测，曼彻斯特和利物浦会“很快地成为历史所预示的那样”。然而，到二十世纪二十年代早期，该地区的人口增长几乎停滞。当美国的技术处于领先地位时，英国那些工业发展较早的城市也是第一批发展停滞和生产力消减的地区。在这些城市蓬勃的发展可以加速融合城市，北方地区可以以区域为重点进行发展衫，城市的衰落开始了。英国的北方城市反而被困在了一个过时的，维多利亚式的经济地理圈中。
分治的政府是另一个障碍。地方官员被分散在各个镇议会中间，而且他们对于加深与邻镇的联系没什么兴趣，更觉得打败它们反而更有趣。国家政府时不时地试图解决这个问题—但是大多数时候者是徒劳无功。最后一届工党政府引进了一种机构，以从地区层面上组织其发展，但是，在鼓励适当的区域治理上几乎没什么措施。这些机构已经被与当地企业联合的分立政府所取代，但是取代者却由于资金不足而几乎无所作为。
英国第二类城市群为什么会如此表现不佳，原因可能有几方面。不发达的交通增加了同一区域城市中心之间的距离。曼彻斯特与利兹的距离虽然不到40英里，还不如伦敦地铁线上皮卡迪利线的长度，但是两座城市之间的铁路车程超过了雷丁到伦敦的两倍还多，而它们之间的距离是差不多的。（山峰起伏的奔宁山脉并不算是一个很大的障碍，同时，通往这些城市的运河在两个世纪前就开通了）空间经济学研究中心（SERC）的经济学家在2009年的研究显示，由于它们的“各自特点”，曼彻斯特与利兹之间的公交车往返，比人们预期的还少40%。
这种转变让一个工业化城市无法适应。那些以最好状态过度的城市已经对技术工人产生吸引力，随时能达到它人口数的临界点。芝加哥的优势非常明显：一个人口密集的中心城市四周围绕着城域网。这个区域的大部分都是由一个唯一的运输系统和市政府联系在一起。英国的老制造业地带并没有这种地理上的贯通。然而，它还是远远落后于那些无计划发展的同类城市。德国的工业集合城市，区域从多特蒙德扩展到科隆，虽然也缺乏准确的定位，但是这里的生产率也比英国的制造业带高很多。
一座城市城繁荣和衰落取决于它是否能正确促进人与人之间，企业与企业之间的联系。在19世纪，当时搬运大件货物的成本奇高不下，城市便成为了缩小供应链的工具。紧密关注煤矿和彼此的企业都在消减成本，提高生产率。但是运输的成本一直到20世纪才开始稳步下降。减少了对一哄而上的工厂的需求。制造商们并没有寻找廉价劳动力，而是让一些工业小镇慢慢衰落。后来，一种新的力量开始推动城市的发展：即城市内知识的迅速流动。
沿着一个110英里长，90英里宽的矩形，在它的西北角是布莱克浦，南部是伯明翰。包含在这个矩形的区域里，拥有成为一个国际大都市必须的大部分条件。从面积和人口方面，它可以与更大些的芝加哥相比—是众多企业总部，世界级文化设施和高耸塔楼的汇集地。芝加哥和英国的北部大部市以前都是19世纪高度发展的工业中心，但是在20世纪却没落了。然而，它们以后的发展之路却各不相同。根据美国一家咨询机构—布鲁克林研究中心的数据，芝加哥的实际收入比英国的前工业中心高出了约80%（见图）。尽管英国城市的财富正在提升，但是，英国最大工业区域与外国同类城市之间在生产力和活力上的差距，却让人惊心。
曼联和利物浦之间的相互较劲可说是足球世界中最古老，也是最激烈的了。这两支球队在1894年初次相遇，当时这两个城市（相距30英里）之间的竞争已经达到了白热化的地步。这一年也是曼彻斯特大运河开通的时间，开通的目的是绕过利物浦的，可与默西直接水路相连的繁华港口， 直达曼彻斯特中心。一个多世纪以来，这对老对手仍旧继续分化着英格兰的北部城市。这种地方主义在英国被认为是理所当然的。但是，它却消弱了这个国家工业中心的竞争力。
Because men are not angels 因为人非天使点击右上角，选择Lexington莱克星顿
Why James Madison really matters詹姆士·麦迪逊的精髓所在

JAMES MADISON, most cerebral of the Founding Fathers, would have been hopeless on Twitter. As a rising political star, seeking to understand why the infant American republic was so fragile, he took to the library of his Virginia plantation, Montpelier, for several months. He emerged having written a 39-page study of previous attempts at political union, from the Achaean League to the Belgic Confederacy, as well as a memorandum on “Vices of the Political System of the United States”. Amid all that scholarship lurked ideas about government that he would champion throughout his career, as drafter of the constitution, a leader in Congress, his country’s chief diplomat and its fourth president.
Sound-bites were few and far between, reducing his modern-day fame. He was small in stature, soft-spoken and reserved to the point of rudeness, at least among strangers; so his influence often lay in things that did not happen (he was a good dealmaker) or remained unsaid (he repeatedly reined in the fieriest impulses of his friend Thomas Jefferson). Montpelier, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, works hard to explain the importance of its former owner. One stately room features a reconstructed dinner party, hosted by a cut-out of Madison in old age. He is dwarfed by his younger guests: politicians seeking advice from the last living founder. School parties may be told, “He’s kind of like Yoda, the last of the Jedi,” says Christian Cotz, a museum official.
Belatedly, the America of catchphrases has caught up with Madison, notably on the right. He is claimed as a conservative prophet, warning of the dangers should America stray from its 18th-century origins as a lightly-taxed, self-reliant, debt-averse union of states. Bumper-stickers may be bought, carrying quotes in which Madison praises America for trusting its citizens to bear arms, or warns that civil liberties are imperilled in times of war. Most startlingly, he is the darling of “Madison Rising”, a rock group that calls itself America’s “most patriotic”, performing songs about such stirring subjects as soldiers, guns, pick-up trucks and Ronald Reagan (sample lyrics: “He was the Gipper, he had the knack. He took a bullet and he still came back”).
Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican senator and putative White House contender, cites Madison when accusing Barack Obama of trampling the law, especially when setting spy agencies on Americans. “Madison wrote that we would not need a constitution to protect us if government were comprised of angels,” Mr Paul says, adding that in this world, alas, “Government unrestrained by law becomes nothing short of tyranny.”
A rival Republican, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, is less exercised than Mr Paul about privacy, and more focused on accusing the Feds of itching to grab Americans’ guns, meddle in their health care or bully the religious. But he too reveres the constitution’s architect. Mr Cruz wrote a college thesis about Madison’s Bill of Rights, entitled “Clipping the Wings of Angels”. As a senator, he scoffs: “There’s not a whole lot of angels in Washington.”
Yet sneaky editing is required to recruit Madison as an anti-government firebrand. His views on government changed. Early on, he worried about the selfishness and parochialism of state governments, seeking a strong central executive. Later, he fretted about over-mighty federal authorities. But his concern was always to craft a stable, effective popular government, says Lynn Uzzell, scholar-in-residence at Montpelier. He did write in the Federalist Papers, a series of essays urging the ratification of the constitution, that “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” His preceding thought was that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” For him, properly-regulated government was a vital bulwark against human wickedness. That is not the same as seeing the federal government as a tyranny-in-waiting, straining constantly against chains fixed by the Founding Fathers.
Into this live political argument drops a weighty new work, “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered”, by Lynne Cheney, a conservative scholar and wife of the former vice-president, Dick Cheney. The book is a lovingly researched tribute to an often-underestimated man. It does not explicitly refer to modern controversies. But present-day politics intrudes.
A conservative case for getting government right
一个使政府步入正轨的保守派案例
At a time when anti-government voices are loud on the right, the book is a reminder that many Republicans believe in making government work. Mrs Cheney recruits Madison to that cause. She cites Virginia’s governor, thundering in 1792 that the federal government’s wisdom and care played no part in the country’s prosperity, which he linked to peace and the people’s “native vigour”. Madison replied “rather sharply”, she writes, pointing to such constitutional boons to economic growth as property rights, contract laws and uniform commercial regulations.
Her book is shrewd in its handling of the fruitless quest for ideological purity, and the temptation for individual states to rebel against federal laws they disliked, or secede from the union. Madison’s great insight—“brilliant and prophetic”, writes Mrs Cheney—was that stability can never be achieved by a retreat to smaller and smaller units, peopled by citizens of common views and virtues. No society can be truly homogeneous, nor any group wholly avoid factions, he saw. Madison’s solution was a large, diverse republic, in which parties and interests check one another, lessening the risk that a majority will find common cause to gang up on others.
Madison rewards study for many reasons. As the first wartime president he defended civil liberties. He had a passion for religious liberty. Montpelier is admirably frank about his ownership of about 100 slaves while despising slavery in theory: the skeletal frames of their rebuilt cabins fill one lawn beside his mansion. Modern Republicans have most to learn from him about the necessary work of governing. Sound-bites are no substitute.
From the print edition: United States

就算是众国父之中最具智慧的詹姆士·麦迪逊【注释1】在推特上也会显得孤立无援。当时的他，作为一个冉冉上升的政坛明星，一直在寻找新生的美利坚共和国之所以脆弱的症结所在。为此，他在弗吉尼亚种植园之上的蒙彼利埃【注释2】耕读苦学了数月之久。当他重新出现在人们视野中的时候，他已经写好了39页的研究报告。这个研究报告涉及包括亚该亚同盟【注释3】、贝尔盖同盟【注释4】在内的诸多早前政治同盟的尝试构想，以及一篇名为《美国政治体系的罪恶》的便笺。他在如此纷繁的学识当中勾画出了一个自己所捍卫的政府形象，这个形象一直贯穿于他作为宪法起草人、国会领袖、国家首席外交官以及美国第四任总统的一生。
由于他的演讲精辟语句不多，麦迪逊现在的名气正在消退。至少在外人看来，麦迪逊是个身材矮小，说话轻声细语而且冷淡得近乎倨傲无礼的家伙。因此，他的影响力往往在一些空头承诺（有人说他“精于达成协议”）或是无从考证（还有人说是他一直在抑制友人托马斯·杰斐逊【注释5】的火爆脾气）的事情上。不过，坐落于蓝基山脉山脚的蒙彼利埃一直努力地向世人诉说他的伟大。一个以再现当年麦迪逊设宴款待年轻政客情形的宽敞展厅很有名气：在这里，麦迪逊的剪影比起那些个慕名前来向这位在世国父请教的政客有些相形见绌。前来参观的学校团体也许会被告知，“他有点像尤达大师【注释6】——最后的绝地武士，”一位博物馆官员克里斯蒂安·科兹如是说。
去世之后，麦迪逊就一直被美国的名言警句盯着不放，尤其是他那些保守的言论。他被称作是保守派预言家。他警醒人们，美国不应背离其18世纪的建国初衷——亦即成为一个轻徭薄役、自给自足而不举债的合众国。有些人可能会买保险杠贴纸，这些贴纸上印有麦迪逊赞扬美国信任其民众持有枪支的标语，或是麦迪逊认为若非如此美国将在战时遭殃的话语。最令人诧异的是， 麦迪逊还是“麦迪逊起义”这个自诩为全美“最爱国”摇滚乐队的最爱。“麦迪逊起义”的歌曲涉及诸如士兵、皮卡以及罗纳德里根等主题，他们的演出也相当振奋人心（有歌词为证：“他就是基佩尔（里根总统的昵称），他天赋异禀。他挨过枪子不过他又挺过来了”）。

有望参选总统、来自肯塔基的共和党人兰德·保尔就曾引用过麦迪逊的话，来指谪奥巴马僭越法律的行为（尤其是后者对美国民众使用间谍的行径）：“麦迪逊写过，如果政府是由天使执掌的话，那就不需要宪法来保护我们了。”他还补充道在这个世界上，“倘若政府脱缰于法律约束，就无异于暴政专治”。

相比保尔先生，来自德州的国会参议员、共和党人泰德·科鲁兹对隐私权就没那么恐慌了。他的指谪重心放在联邦政府处心积虑地想去收缴美国人手中的枪支、搅乱医疗服务或是恫吓宗教上。不过他也对宪法的工程师致以敬意。科鲁兹先生就写过一篇关于麦迪逊权利法案的大学论文，并以《为天使折翼》作为论文标题。而在他成为一名参议员后，他嘲讽道：“华盛顿根本就没有天使。”

虽然暗中的谋划必须要把麦迪逊召至帐下引以为反对政府的火把，但是麦迪逊对政府的看法却不是一成不变的。早先，他为州政府自顾自的偏狭观念而担忧过，因此志在寻找一个强健的中央行政机构；后来，他又担心起过于强大的联邦政府了。“但不论如何，他始终致力于建立一个稳定、行之有效且受民爱戴的政府”，蒙彼利埃的驻校学者林恩·乌泽尔如是说。在一系列敦促修改宪法的论文中，麦迪逊的确在《联邦党人文集》里写道：“如果能让天使来统治人类的话，那么不论是对政府外在的和内在的制衡都不重要了。”他之前的想法则是“如果人们都是天使的话，那就不需要政府了”。对于他来说，一个被管制得恰如其分的政府是抵抗人类弱点的重要保障。这跟把联邦政府看做是尚待形成的暴政的看法（而这种暴政也在持续地打破国父们为其打造的枷锁）完全不同。

在很多方面，对麦迪逊的研究是有价值的。作为第一个战时总统，他捍卫着公民自由；他也有宗教自由的热情；令人赞赏的是，尽管在理论上他蔑视奴隶制度，这个蒙彼利埃人却依然对自己拥有100名奴隶的事实直言不讳——在他宅邸旁的草地上还有一个当时奴隶们居住小屋的重建骨架。现代的共和党人必须要从他身上了解到政府工作的必要性。这点是演讲录音所不能替代的。

在右派反政府呼声不绝于耳的时代，此书可谓提醒了我们还有不少共和党人相信政府的运作。切尼女士对此就援引了麦迪逊的说法：在1792年，这位弗吉尼亚的州长就曾炮轰联邦政府的智慧与护理并未使得国家繁荣。他认为和睦以及人民“自在的活力”才是国运昌盛的动力。她写道：麦迪逊的回应十分尖刻，剑锋直指为经济增长所作出的宪法红利（如财产权益、合同法案以及统一的商业法规）。

无论是在处理诸如无果而终的纯意识形态要求、以及各州为了反对那些个它们所嗤之以鼻的联邦法案的诱惑，抑或是从联邦当中抽身而出的问题上，这本书都显得精明娴熟。麦迪逊卓越的远见——“既精彩绝伦又寓意十足”，切尼女士如此写道——国家稳定的目标永远不会通过以联邦越分越小、成员观点愈加趋同的方式来达到。他同时认为，没有一个社会能够达到完全的趋同，也没有一个政治组织能够避免内部派别的出现。麦迪逊的解决之道在于建立一个更加庞大、更加多样的共和国，在这个共和国之内，政党与纷繁的利益彼此制衡，以此来减轻多数人为着共同的目标而拉帮结派、恃强凌弱的风险。

这场鲜活的政治论战也孕育了一部重量级新作——《詹姆士·麦迪逊：一个值得重新审视的人物》（保守派学者、前副总统迪克·切尼的夫人林恩·切尼著）。令人欣喜的是，这本书向一个经常为人所小觑的人物致以敬意，而且它没有谈及现代的矛盾。不过当下的政治却自己找上了门来。
【译者注】
1、James·Madison： 詹姆士·麦迪逊（1751—1836年），美国第四任总统。他担任总统期间曾领导进行第二次美英战争，保卫了美国的共和制度，为美国赢得彻底独立建立了功绩。他在1776年参加弗吉尼亚宪法的制定，在大陆的国会提供，并且是弗吉尼亚会议的一位领导人。他还是出席大陆会议的代表，是制宪会议的主要人物、北部联邦党人文件的起草人之一、众议院议员、民主共和党（即现美国民主党前身）的组织者。
2、Montpelier 蒙彼利埃：美国佛蒙特州首府。位于柏林顿东南60公里威努斯基河畔。人口0.8万（1980）。1780年建村落。1805年成为州首府。
3、Achaean League 古代希腊城邦联盟。又译亚该亚同盟。在伯罗奔尼撒半岛北部阿哈伊亚地区，公元前4世纪有一个由12个城邦组成的同盟，至公元前4世纪晚期，同盟在马其顿打击下解体。公元前 280年一些城邦乘马其顿内乱之机又重新结盟。公元前251年西居昂参加同盟。以后同盟的领域逐渐扩大，至公元前3世纪下半叶最盛时，已经包括伯罗奔尼撒半岛和中部希腊的许多城邦。同盟内部各邦一律平等，内政自主，仅在外交和军事上要求一致行动。同盟最高权力机构是全同盟公民大会，每年召开两次。同盟的最高官员是一位将军，战时领兵出征，平时也拥有很大权力。将军一年一选，卸任后隔一年可重新当选。 西居昂的亚拉图从公元前245年起的30年内，每隔一年当选一次将军。在他当政时期，阿哈伊亚同盟与马其顿进行了多年的斗争。公元前239～前229年曾与埃托利亚同盟联合起来抗击马其顿。公元前221年亚拉图又勾结马其顿人反对斯巴达。公元前198年，同盟协助罗马反对马其顿。公元前146年，同盟在与罗马的战争中失败，遂被解散。
4、Belgic Confederacy 贝尔盖人，属高卢人，公元前2世纪居住在莱茵河下游，曾多次反抗罗马；公元1世纪侵入不列颠，占据从怀特岛到布里斯托尔湾的地区。罗马帝国的比利时高卢行省及当今的比利时国家，其名称乃源自“贝尔盖”。
5、Thomas Jefferson： 托马斯·杰斐逊（1743－1826），美国政治家、思想家、哲学家、科学家、教育家，第三任美国总统。他是美国独立战争期间的主要领导人之一，1776年，作为一个包括约翰·亚当斯和本杰明·富兰克林在内的起草委员会的成员，起草了美国《独立宣言》。此后，他先后担任了美国第一任国务卿，第二任副总统和第三任总统。他在任期间保护农业，发展民族资本主义工业。从法国手中购买路易斯安那州，使美国领土近乎增加了一倍。他被普遍视为美国历史上最杰出的总统之一，同华盛顿、林肯和罗斯福齐名。最新版美元5分的头像就是：托马斯·杰斐逊。
6、Yoda 尤达大师，好莱坞大片《星球大战》系列中的人物

Asteroid impacts on Earth 小行星撞地球

Skyfalls从天而降
This map shows the location of every asteroid impact since 2000 with an energy higher than 1 kiloton of TNT (the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima packed around 15 kilotons). The data are from the B612 Foundation, which tries to raise awareness of the dangers posed by asteroids, using information from a worldwide network of low-frequency microphones, designed to detect nuclear explosions and run by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation. Such rocks almost always detonate high in the atmosphere, which limits the effects on the ground. But big ones can cause damage anyway: 1,500 people were injured in Chelyabinsk, in Russia, in 2013, after a 500 kiloton explosion 30km up. In 1908, 2,000 square kilometres of Siberian forest were flattened by a 10-15 megaton impact. Since Earth is mostly ocean and countryside, the odds of a strike on a city are fairly low. But the consequences could be disastrous
这幅地图展示了自2000年以来，撞击能量超过1千吨TNT的所有小行星陨落的位置（摧毁广岛的原子弹大概相当于一万五千吨TNT）。图上的数据源于B612基金会，它致力于使人们意识到小行星带来的危险，全面禁止核试验条约组织用低频传声器组成覆盖全球的网络，用于探测核爆炸，B612基金会使用的信息就是来自这个网络。这种石块大都是在高空爆炸，这样它对地面的影响就有限了。但是大石头也能造成破坏：在俄罗斯的车里雅宾斯克， 2013年有一颗能力相当于五十万吨TNT的陨石在距地面30公里的高空爆炸，一千五百人受伤。1908年，两千平方公里的西伯利亚森林被能量相当于一千万至一千五百万吨TNT的陨星夷为平地。因为地球上大部分是海洋和村庄，陨星撞到城市还罕见。但是如果出现了这种事情，结果将是灾难性的。

A billion shades of grey 十亿银发族

Global ageing全球老龄化
An ageing economy will be a slower and more unequal one—unless policy starts changing now
WARREN BUFFETT, who on May 3rd hosts the folksy extravaganza that is Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders' meeting, is an icon of American capitalism (see article). At 83, he also epitomises a striking demographic trend: for highly skilled people to go on working well into what was once thought to be old age. Across the rich world, well-educated people increasingly work longer than the less-skilled. Some 65% of American men aged 62-74 with a professional degree are in the workforce, compared with 32% of men with only a high-school certificate. In the European Union the pattern is similar.
This gap is part of a deepening divide between the well-educated well-off and the unskilled poor that is slicing through all age groups. Rapid innovation has raised the incomes of the highly skilled while squeezing those of the unskilled. Those at the top are working longer hours each year than those at the bottom. And the well-qualified are extending their working lives, compared with those of less-educated people (see article). The consequences, for individuals and society, are profound.
Older, wiser and a lot of them越老越聪明的大有人在
The world is on the cusp of a staggering rise in the number of old people, and they will live longer than ever before. Over the next 20 years the global population of those aged 65 or more will almost double, from 600m to 1.1 billion. The experience of the 20th century, when greater longevity translated into more years in retirement rather than more years at work, has persuaded many observers that this shift will lead to slower economic growth and “secular stagnation”, while the swelling ranks of pensioners will bust government budgets.
But the notion of a sharp division between the working young and the idle old misses a new trend, the growing gap between the skilled and the unskilled. Employment rates are falling among younger unskilled people, whereas older skilled folk are working longer. The divide is most extreme in America, where well-educated baby-boomers are putting off retirement while many less-skilled younger people have dropped out of the workforce.
Policy is partly responsible. Many European governments have abandoned policies that used to encourage people to retire early. Rising life expectancy, combined with the replacement of generous defined-benefit pension plans with stingier defined-contribution ones, means that even the better-off must work longer to have a comfortable retirement. But the changing nature of work also plays a big role. Pay has risen sharply for the highly educated, and those people continue to reap rich rewards into old age because these days the educated elderly are more productive than their predecessors. Technological change may well reinforce that shift: the skills that complement computers, from management expertise to creativity, do not necessarily decline with age.
This trend will benefit not just fortunate oldies but also, in some ways, society as a whole. Growth will slow less dramatically than expected; government budgets will be in better shape, as high earners pay taxes for longer. Rich countries with lots of well-educated older people will find the burden of ageing easier to bear than places like China, where half of all 50-to-64-year-olds did not complete primary-school education.
At the other end of the social scale, however, things look grim. Manual work gets harder as people get older, and public pensions look more attractive to those on low wages and the unemployed. In the lexicon of popular hate-figures, work-shirking welfare queens breeding at the taxpayer's expense may be replaced by deadbeat grandads collecting taxpayer handouts while their hard-working contemporaries strive on.
Nor are all the effects on the economy beneficial. Wealthy old people will accumulate more savings, which will weaken demand. Inequality will increase and a growing share of wealth will eventually be transferred to the next generation via inheritance, entrenching the division between winners and losers still further.
One likely response is to impose higher inheritance taxes. So long as they replaced less-fair taxes, that might make sense. They would probably encourage old people to spend their cash rather than salt it away. But governments should focus not on redistributing income but on generating more of it by reforming retirement and education.
Age should no longer determine the appropriate end of a working life. Mandatory retirement ages and pension rules that discourage people from working longer should go. Welfare should reflect the greater opportunities open to the higher-skilled. Pensions should become more progressive (ie, less generous to the rich). At the same time, this trend underlines the importance of increasing public investment in education at all stages of life, so that more people acquire the skills they need to thrive in the modern labour market. Today, many governments are understandably loth to spend money retraining older folk who are likely to retire soon. But if people can work for longer, that investment makes much more sense. Deadbeat 60-year-olds are unlikely to become computer scientists, but they could learn useful vocational skills, such as caring for the growing number of very old people.
Old power老年人的实力
How likely are governments to make these changes? Look around the rich world today, and it is hard to be optimistic. The swelling ranks of older voters, and their disproportionate propensity to vote, have left politicians keener to pander to them than to implement disruptive reforms. Germany, despite being the fastest-ageing country in Europe, plans to cut the statutory retirement age for some people (see article). In America both Social Security (the public pension scheme) and the fast-growing system of disability benefits remain untouched by reform. Politicians need to convince less-skilled older voters that it is in their interests to go on working. Doing so will not be easy. But the alternative—economic stagnation and even greater inequality—is worse.
社会进入老龄化后，增长会放慢，不平等将加剧——除非政策从现在开始转变
每年5月3日都会把伯克希尔·哈撒韦年度股东大会开成乡村盛会的沃伦·巴菲特是美国资本主义的一个象征，除此之外，83岁的他还是一种非常明显的人口趋势的缩影：对于拥有高技能的人来说，在进入之前被认为是老年人的年龄后，还能继续工作下去。纵观富裕国家，受过良好教育之人与技能较差之人的工作寿命正在日渐拉大，前者已经远远超过了后者。在美国62岁-74岁这个年龄段的人中，具有专业学位且仍在工作的人占65%。相比之下，仅有高中文凭的占32%。欧盟的情况大致也是如此。
这种差距是存在于所有年龄段的受过良好教育的富裕阶层与无技能的穷人阶层之间日渐加深的分化的一部分。快速的创新在增加了高技能之人的收入的同时，也在挤压着无技能之辈的收入。顶层之人的工作寿命每年都要比底层之人延长一些。同受教育程度较低的人相比，已经能够很好地胜任工作的人正在延长他们的工作寿命。其影响，对于个人和社会来说，都是深远的。
在老年人人数方面，世界正处于一种蹒跚增长的末端；在老年人寿命方面，他们会活得比往都长。在今后的20年中，全球65岁以上（包括65岁）的人口几乎会翻一番，从6亿达到11亿。20世纪的经历——寿命的延长转化成了退休中的耕读时间而不是工作中的更多时间——已经让许多观察家相信，这种转变将会带来经济增速的放慢和“长期性的经济衰退”。与此同时，领养老金队伍的日渐膨胀也会让政府预算难以为续。
但是，这种有关正值工作年龄的年轻人与无所事事的老年之间存在着尖锐分裂的观点会错过一种新的趋势——有技能之人和无技能之人之间的差距正在逐渐拉大。较为年轻又没有技能之人的就业率正在下降；而那些年纪较大且具备技能的家伙工作寿命正在延长。这种分裂在美国表现的最为突出。在那里，受过良好教育的婴儿潮一代正在推迟退休，而许多年纪比他们小而技能又较差的人已经退出了劳动力大军。
政策应当负有部分责任。许多欧洲政府已经放弃了那些以前常被用来鼓励民众尽早退休的政策。随着预期寿命的增加，加之慷慨的固定收益养老金计划已被吝啬的固定缴费养老金计划所取代，这使得即便是较富裕的人也必须多工作几年，才能在退休后过上舒适的生活。但是，工作之本质的变化也在扮演着一个重要的角色。对于受过高等教育的人来说，工资已经大幅提高了，他们之所以能在迈入老年人行列后仍能继续积累财富，是因为当今受过教育的老年人的生产力已经高于他们的前辈。技术的改变很可能会巩固这种转变：作为计算机的补充，像管理特长和创新这些技能并不必然会随着年龄而衰退。
这种趋势不仅会惠及那些幸运的老家伙，从某种程度上来说，还会让作为一个整体的社会从中受益。增长会放慢，但还至于超于预期；政府预算也会随着高收入者纳税时间的延长而变得更好看。相比像中国那样的，在50岁-64岁这个年龄段的人群中有半数之人没有完成小学教育的国家来说，具有大量的受过良好教育的老年人的富裕国家会发现，老龄化负担更容易承受一些。
然而，换个角度看问题，情况就没有那么乐观了。随着年纪的增大，体力劳动会变得越来越艰难。同时，对于那些低收入和没有工作的人来说，公共养老金看上去更具吸引力。在广受欢迎的恶人榜上，不工作而靠纳税人的钱来养活自己的福利女皇可能会被同辈们都在辛苦工作而自己却在收集纳税人施舍的赖账不还的老爹所取代。

不是所有的经济方面的影响都是有益的。富有的老年人会积累更多的储备，这会消弱需求。不平等会更加严重，财富份额的日渐增加最终会通过继承而被传给下一代，这会更进一步强化赢家和输家之间的分化。
一种可能的应对是提高遗产税。只要遗产税还在代替较不公平税收，这种做法或许还管用。它们可能会鼓励老年人花掉他们的现金，而不是将其储存起来。但是，政府不仅应当把精力集中在收入再分配上面，还应当通过改革退休和教育给人们带来更多的收入。

年龄不应当再成为工作寿命适时终结的决定性因素。不鼓励人们多干几年的强制退休年龄和养老金规定应当被废除。福利应当反映开放给高技能者的更大的机会。养老金应当更具累进性（也就是说，不应当再对富人那么慷慨）。与此同时，这种趋势还突显了为人生各个阶段的教育领域增加公共投资的重要性，因为只有这样才能让更多的人获得在当代劳动力市场上生存下去所必需的技能。如今，许多政府都不愿意把钱花在为将要退休的老年人进行再陪训上面，这是可以理解的。但是，如果人们能够多干几年的话，这种投资就显得非常值得了。无所事事的60岁老人的不可能变成计算机专家的，但是他们能够学会一些有用的职业技能，如照顾人数日渐增多的比他们年龄还大的老人。

政府会如何完成这些转变呢？环顾当今的富裕国家，乐观是困难的。日渐庞大老年选民队伍，以及他们投票倾向不成比例的影响，已经使得政客更家热衷于迎合他们，而不是实施彻底的改革。尽管是欧洲老龄化最快的国家，但是德国仍计划降低某些人的法定退休年龄。在美国，作为公共养老金计划的社会保障制度和快速增长的残疾福利体系仍未被改革所触及。政客需要让技能较差的老年选民相信，继续工作符合他们的利益。这不是一件轻松的工作。但是，不会这样做，情况会更糟，选择另一种方案会造成经济的停滞和更严重的不平等。

Life after Warren 没有沃伦的伯克希尔

Berkshire Hathaway 伯克希尔.哈撒韦
For all his success in building a great corporation, Warren Buffett should now contemplate dismantling it
沃伦.巴菲特（Warren Buffett）成功建立了大公司，但他现在应该考虑拆分公司
1 AN INVESTOR who bought one Berkshire Hathaway share at just over $11 when Warren Buffett took control of the firm 50 years ago, and kept it, would have seen its value hit an all-time peak above $190,000 in recent days, an annual return of 21%. As shareholders count their blessings and head to Omaha, Nebraska, for Berkshire’s annual jamboree on May 3rd, it is only right to pay tribute to Mr Buffett’s outstanding success.
2 Berkshire is into all manner of business, from insurance to ice-cream parlours. Normally, such diverse groups suffer a “conglomerate discount”; but Berkshire’s shares trade at a 40% premium to the book value of its holdings. Mr Buffett’s proven formula has been to seek solid firms with good defences against competitors, leave their managers to run them as before, and hang on to them for the long term. His success over the past half-century makes him living disproof of the “efficient-markets hypothesis ”, which argues that even the shrewdest investor cannot, over the long term, buck the collective wisdom of the market and consistently outperform it.
3 It would seem logical to conclude that the last thing Berkshire needs is to change. But Mr Buffett is 83 and, pace our cover leader this week, even this exceptionally skilled older worker must start thinking about what happens when he can no longer carry on. And the truth is that a business built on its boss’s knack of picking winners, his unquestioned authority within the company and his unrivalled reputation beyond it is unlikely to do anything like as well without him.
4 It was only Mr Buffett’s status as an investment god that let Berkshire resist pressure, in the late 1990s, to chase after surging dotcoms and thus avoid losing heavily in the ensuing bust. It was the same reputation that prompted GE and Goldman Sachs to turn to Berkshire as an investor when they were strapped for cash in the financial crisis, investments that struck gold. Mr Buffett’s good name will not be available to rent out so lucratively when he is gone. In any case, the best of Berkshire’s gains came in earlier decades, when it was easier to find small, nimble “gazelles” to satisfy its hunger for growth. Now to expand significantly it must hunt lumbering “elephants”, giant deals that are likely to require it to take an unfamiliar, hands-on approach to fix the target company’s problems.
The sale of the century世纪交易
4 Mr Buffett says he has a succession plan, but Berkshire’s board may turn into a battlefield once he steps down (see article), with his replacement as chief executive torn between his son Howard, who will be the chairman, and strong-willed directors such as Bill Gates. It is all too common for a long-serving star boss to hand over to an apparently well-chosen successor only for him to fall flat—ask supporters of Manchester United (see article). Even diehard Buffett fans acknowledge that shares in Berkshire may plummet when he says goodbye.
5 So, given his irreplaceability and the unrepeatability of his past dealmaking success, Mr Buffett should remind shareholders at the annual meeting of the examples of James Hanson of Hanson Trust and Henry Singleton of Teledyne. These two conglomerate-builders of the 1960s to 1980s ended their stellar careers by breaking up the empires they had created, having recognised that an orderly sale would realise more value than a long, sad decline. Many of Berkshire Hathaway’s businesses are big enough to survive on their own. Others could be bulked up before being floated, or auctioned off to rivals or private-equity firms. There is no need for Mr Buffett to start this sale of the century now. But he should tell shareholders that a gradual break-up will be his main recommendation to his successor.
From the print edition: Leader

50年前在沃伦.巴菲特掌管伯克希尔.哈撒韦时，投资者仅用11多美元即可买下一股公司股票，要是至今仍未售出，就能看到股价在近日达到史上最高值——19万多美元，也就是年收益达到了21%。当股东们心满意足地前往内布拉斯加州的奥马哈参加3月3日的伯克希尔年度股东大会时，他们应该向巴菲特的杰出成就致以敬意。
伯克希尔涉足从保险到冰淇淋店的各个行业。一般来说，这样的多元化集团会遭受“多元化折让”，但伯克希尔的股票收益却达到了其面值的40%。屡试不爽的巴菲特秘诀就是寻找实力雄厚、无惧对手的公司，任其经理延续其过去运营模式，并与之长期合作。巴菲特过去半个世纪的成功使他成为“有效市场假说”活生生的反证——假说认为即使是最精明的投资者也不可能长期地超越市场集体智慧，持续地胜过市场。
伯克希尔最不需要做的就是改变，这样的结论似乎合乎逻辑。但是巴菲特今年已经83岁高龄（请见本周社论封面），即使是他这样杰出的老人也应该开始考虑他离开后的公司局面了。总裁巴菲特挑选杰出公司的才能、在公司内毋庸置疑的权威和他无与伦比的威名是伯克希尔的建立基础，事实上对这样一个公司来说，如果没有巴菲特，所有事情都不太可能会一样。
上世纪90年代后期，伯克希尔完全是依靠巴菲特投资教父的地位挡住了压力，没有投资飞速发展的网络行业，从而避免了在随后的公司破产中损失惨重。同样是巴菲特的盛誉，促使通用电气（GE）和高盛（Goldman Sachs）在金融危机期间资金短缺之时寻求伯克希尔的投资，这些投资使伯克希尔赚得盆满钵满。巴菲特一旦离开，他的盛名就无法为伯克希尔带来如此巨大的收益了。无论如何，伯克希尔在最先几十年的收益最大，那时候更容易找到娇小敏捷的“瞪羚”来满足其发展欲望。现在公司想要大力发展，就必须寻找笨重的“大象”，签署重大的协议。这些协议可能需要伯克希尔采取其并不熟悉、亲力亲为的方法来解决目标公司的问题。
巴菲特说对于继承人他自有打算，但他一旦离开，伯克希尔的董事会可能会硝烟四起。巴菲特之子霍华德将会成为公司总裁，他和比尔盖茨等意志坚定的董事将争夺巴菲特的首席执行官一职。长期任职的杰出老板把权利移交给精心挑选的继承人，结果继承人表现平平的事例非常常见，问问曼切斯特联足球俱乐部（Manchester United）的支持者们就知道了（另见文）。忠心耿耿的巴菲特粉丝也承认，巴菲特一旦告别，伯克希尔的股价就将大跌。
鉴于自身过去交易成功的无可替代和不可重复，巴菲特应该在年度大会上提醒股东们汉森信托（Hanson Trust）的James Hanson和特利丹（Teledyne）的Henry Singleton的例子。这两位60年代和80年代的集团创始人意识到有序地出售公司股份比长期的股票跌价更能创造价值，因而拆分了他们创造的商业帝国，结束了自己卓越的职业生涯。伯克希尔.哈撒韦的很多生意都十分庞大，能够依靠自主经营继续生存。其他生意可以在上市之前扩大规模，或者拍卖给对手公司或私募股权公司。巴菲特不需要现在就开始这场世纪交易，但他应该告诉股东，慢慢拆分公司是他给继任者的主要推荐方案。

译者注：
1 伯克希尔•哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway Cooperation）由沃伦•巴菲特创建于1956年，是美国一家世界著名的保险和多元化投资集团，总部在美国。该公司主要通过国民保障公司和GEICO以及再保险巨头通用科隆再保险公司等附属机构从事财产/伤亡保险、再保险业务。伯克希尔哈撒韦公司在珠宝经销连锁店Helzberb Diamonds、糖果公司See's Candies,Inc.、从事飞行培训业务的飞安国际公司、鞋业公司（H.H.Brown and Dexter）等拥有股份。
2 有效市场假说：
尤金•法玛(Eugene Fama)在Financial Analysts Journal上发表文章Random Walks in Stock Market Prices. 在这篇文章中第一次提到了Efficient Market 的概念：有效市场是这样一个市场，在这个市场中，存在着大量理性的、追求利益最大化的投资者，他们积极参与竞争，每一个人都试图预测单个股票未来的市场价格，每一个人都能轻易获得当前的重要信息。在一个有效市场上，众多精明投资者之间的竞争导致这样一种状况：在任何时候，单个股票的市场价格都反映了已经发生的和尚未发生、但市场预期会发生的事情。
1970年，法玛提出了有效市场假说(efficient markets hypothesis)，其对有效市场的定义是：如果在一个证券市场中，价格完全反映了所有可以获得的信息，那么就称这样的市场为有效市场。
衡量证券市场是否具有外在效率有两个标志：一是价格是否能自由地根据有关信息而变动；二是证券的有关信息能否充分地披露和均匀地分布，使每个投资者在同一时间内得到等量等质的信息。
根据这一假设，投资者在买卖股票时会迅速有效地利用可能的信息，所有已知的影响一种股票价格的因素都已经反映在股票的价格中，因此根据这一理论，股票的技术分析是无效的。

Planetology comes of age 成年的行星学

Astronomy天文学

planets orbiting otherstars now have plenty of data to play with
如今研究绕行其他恒星的行星的人们有了大量数据可供分析
LORD RUTHERFORD, who discovered the atomic nucleus, once said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting.” He had a point, but was being a bit unfair to stamp collecting. To come up with a theory that brings meaning to a pile of observations—whether of Galapagos finches, planetary orbits or pea plants—you have to do the hard graft of collecting those observations in the first place.
Take planetary science. For almost all its history, it could study only the eight planets that make up the local solar system. But the boom in exoplanet research over the past decade or so has furnished the field with a wealth of data from elsewhere in the galaxy. Much of this has come from a specially designed space telescope called Kepler, some of the discoveries of which are illustrated in the artist’s impression above, along with objects from the local solar system, for comparison. Kepler’s discoveries, and others, have done plenty of exciting violence to old theories of what planets are and how they form. Several papers discussing what is happening were presented at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society which took place this week in Washington, DC.
Astronomers are particularly interested in planets intermediate in size between rocky Earth and gassy Neptune, which along with Uranus is one of the solar system’s two “ice giants”, and which has a radius 3.8 times that of Earth and is around 17 times as massive. Planets of this intermediate size are common, but because the local solar system does not host one, they are also mysterious. Are they scaled-up Earths, scaled-down Neptunes or a mixture of the two? And, if they are a mixture, where is the boundary between the rocky ones, known as super-Earths, and the gaseous ones, known as mini-Neptunes?
Testing the boundaries验证边界
Several recent studies have tried to answer these questions. One, presented to the meeting by Yoram Lithwick, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Chicago, analysed 64 worlds. A second, described by Geoff Marcy, a veteran exoplanet hunter at the University of California, Berkeley, considered 42. The tentative consensus is that there is, indeed, a mixture—and that the boundary between the two lies at around twice the diameter of Earth. Planets smaller than that are likely to be rocky, with thin or non-existent atmospheres. Larger worlds are gassy, with their solid surfaces buried beneath deep blankets of hydrogen and helium.
But nature is full of surprises, and no sooner had this rule been suggested than it was flouted. Kepler 314c, described by David Kipping, an exoplanetologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, has a mass somewhere between 0.7 and 1.4 times that of Earth, making it one of the lightest planets so far discovered. But its modest mass belies its impressive size: it has 1.6 times the diameter of Earth. This means it is only slightly denser than water, and that suggests it possesses the kind of deep, puffy atmosphere Drs Marcy and Lithwick would reserve for much larger planets.
One clue as to how this happened might lie in the fact that Kepler 314c orbits close to its parent star—its “year” is 23 terrestrial days long. This suggests to Dr Kipping that it formed as a standard mini-Neptune, then moved into a closer orbit and had much of its atmosphere boiled off by the radiation of its parent.
For now, that is just a hypothesis, inferred from a handful of measurements of mass and radius. But Dr Kipping says it might be possible to confirm it by taking pictures of the planet directly, using a big space telescope like the Hubble, or the soon-to-be-launched James Webb.
Such “direct imaging” is on the edge of what is presently possible, and a few especially suitable planets have already had their pictures snapped. But the conference also heard from those running the Gemini Planet Imager, a camera bolted to one of the twin Gemini telescopes, in Chile (the other is in Hawaii), explicitly to take pictures of exoplanets and the discs of gas and dust from which they condense. The instrument—which uses a computer-controlled deformable mirror to counteract the atmospheric disturbances that normally muddy pictures taken from the ground—saw its first light in November.
Anti-diluvian天地之初
Astrobiologists are particularly interested in super-Earths since, unlike mini-Neptunes, their thin atmospheres, and consequently low atmospheric pressures, mean they could be habitable—assuming, that is, that they have any dry land. For though life can certainly evolve in oceans, as it did on Earth, it probably needs the chemical and climate-regulating contributions of continents to do so.
Unfortunately, many exoplanetologists think super-Earths will be covered entirely by oceans, since their high gravity will make it hard for areas of light rocks (such as those which form continents on Earth) to rise above sea level. However, work described by Nicolas Cowan and Dorian Abbot, of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago respectively, suggests that such “waterworlds” may be less common than feared. They argued that, as on Earth, a great deal of water will be locked up within such planets’ mantles, forced there by the very gravity that others worry will drown their surfaces.
For now, like Dr Kipping’s theory of evaporating atmospheres, that remains conjecture. But a sufficiently powerful telescope could help check it by collecting enough light to build a crude map of an alien planet: not enough, perhaps, to see the outlines of continents, but sufficient to determine how much of its surface was solid and how much liquid. In 2009 this idea was tested by a group of scientists including Dr Cowan, who used a space probe called Deep Impact to take blurry pictures of Earth, of a sort that a future telescope might snap of alien worlds. From that, they were able to tell the dry bits of the planet from the wet ones.
When (or if) such a telescope might be built is, alas, a sore subject among planet-hunters. A decade ago NASA laid out plans to construct a colossal instrument called the Terrestrial Planet Finder. But the $5 billion project foundered amid budget cuts and protests from other parts of astronomy. A European equivalent, calledDarwin, is similarly moribund. In fact, amid all the excitement and new discoveries, the rate of stamp collecting has suddenly slowed right down. In May 2013 Kepler stopped working properly. Soon after, another instrument, called CoRoT, failed as well. Fortunately, there are still a lot of data from these machines waiting to be analysed. But, as every philatelist knows, more stamps will always be welcome.
发现原子核的卢瑟福勋爵曾经曰过：“科学要嘛是物理学要嘛是集邮。”他这话有理，只是对集邮有失公允。为了相处一个理论，让大量的观察有意义 – 不管是加拉帕戈斯群岛上的云雀、行星轨道或者豌豆种植 – 你必须首先努力得观察，收集结果。
那行星学来说。基本上在它所有的历史上，只能研究组成这个太阳系的八个行星。然而差不多上一个十年兴起的系外行星的研究给这个领域带来了银河系别处的丰富的数据。很多数据来自于一台特别设计的太空望远镜开普勒，它的某些发现如上图艺术家的印象所示，和本太阳系的某些物件放在一起，以兹比较。开普勒和其他望远镜的发现已经令人兴奋向旧的关于什么是行星和它们如何形成的理论猛烈开火。一些讨论正在发生的事情的论文呈在了美国天文学会这周在华盛顿特区的会议上。
天文学家们对那些体积在岩石行星地球和气体行星海王星之间的行星很感兴趣。与天王星一道，海王星是太阳系内的两个“冰巨星”之一，半径是地球的3.8倍，质量大概是地球的17倍。这种中间体积的行星很常见，但是因为本太阳系内没有，所以他们同样很神秘。他们是放大版的地球，缩小版的海王星还是两者的混合体？而且，如果他们真是混合体，那么成为巨型地球的岩石行星和迷你海王星的气体行星之间的界限在哪？

目前有几个研究试着回答这些问题。由芝加哥的东北大学的天文学家幽蓝•里斯维克(Yoram Lithwick)呈给会议的一个研究，分析了64个行星。由加州伯克利的退役系外行星猎人乔夫•马西（Geoff Marcy）讲述的另一个研究，考虑了42个。暂时的一致意见是的确存在混合体，两者的边界在大概两倍地球直径处。比那小的行星很可能是岩石行星，带有稀薄的或者没有大气层。大一点的是气体行星，它们的硬质表面深埋在氢氦层低。

但是自然界充满了惊喜。这条定律一被提出，就遭到嘲讽。哈佛-斯密森天体物理中心（Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics）的系外行星学家大卫•克平(David Kipping)描述的开普勒314c星的质量是0.7倍到1.4倍地球质量之间，这使它成为目前发现的最轻的行星之一。但是它谦虚的质量掩盖了它令人震惊的体积：1.6倍地球直径。这意味着它的密度只是比水略大，这说明它有深邃膨大的大气层，马西博士和里斯维克为大点的行星准备的大气层。
一条解释为什么会是这样的线索也许在于开普勒314c星的轨道靠近她的母恒星这个事实 – 它的“一年”只有地球上23天。这人克平博士产生一个想法：它形成时是一个标准的迷你海王星，然后移动到了一个更近的轨道，它大部分的大气层都被它母恒星的辐射蒸发掉。

目前，那只是一个假设，从不多的对质量和半径的测量推出。但是克平博士说这个理论可以用对行星直接拍照的方法来证明。用巨型太空望远镜来照相，比如哈勃，或者马上就要发射的詹姆士•韦伯（James Webb）.

这种“直接摄影”现在基本上是有可能的，一小撮特别合适的行星已然被拍。但是会议同时收到那些操纵着双子星行星成像器的人的信息。这是一个固定在一架位于智利双子星望远镜（另一架在夏威夷）上的照相机，它显而易见就是为了给系外行星或者行星得以收缩形成的气体灰尘的圆盘照相。这台装置十一月初见光，它使用一个电脑控制的可以变形的镜子来对抗通常会导致地面拍摄影像模糊的大气扰动。

天体生物学家们对巨型地球尤其感兴趣，因为不像迷你海王星，它们薄薄的大气层，和导致的气压偏低，意味着它们可能适合生存 – 假设，就是说，它们可能有干燥的陆地。虽然生命的确可以在海洋中进化，就像在地球上那样，它也许需要大陆贡献的化学和气候变化来促进之。

不幸的是，很多系外行星学者们认为巨型地球们会被海洋完全覆盖，因为他们的强重力会让成片的轻质岩石（就像是地球大陆上的那些）升出海平面变得很困难。但是，分别是西北大学和芝加哥大学的尼古拉斯•科万（Nicolas Cowan）和多利安•阿伯特（Dorian Abbot）所描述的研究成果认为，这样的“水世界”也许并不像所担心的那么多。他们争辩道，就像在地球上，大量的谁会被锁在行星的地幔中，由重力所导致，而其他人担心同样是这个重力会导致水淹地表。

目前，像克平博士的大气层蒸发理论，这还只是推测。但是一个足够给力的望远镜能够对验证它有所帮助，通过手机足够多的影像来打造一幅外星行星的粗略地图：也许不够用来开到大陆的轮廓，但是足够用来判定多少是陆地多少是水。2009年，这个想法受到一组科学家，包括科万博士的测试，他们用一台名叫深度撞击号（Deep Impact）的宇宙探测器来拍摄模糊的地球影像。未来，望远镜也许会对外星拍同样的照片。从此照片上，他们能够把星球上干的部分从湿的部分中区别开来。

这样的望远镜合适（或者，会不会）修建，天啊，在行星猎手中这是一个沉重的话题。十年前，NASA展示了要建造一个名叫类地行星发现者（Terrestrial Planet Finder）的巨型设备的计划。但是这个五十亿美金的计划在预算减少和其他天文学家的抗议声中搁浅。欧洲的装置，称为达尔文，同样的在垂死挣扎。事实上，环绕着所有这些惊觉天人和新发型，集邮的速度突然锐减。3013年三月，开普勒不能正常运转了。不久之后，另一个叫克罗特（CoRot）的设备，同样跪了。幸运的是，仍然有来自这些设备的很多数据等待分析。但是，正如每位集邮者所知，邮票者，多多益善耳。

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