1997 Passage 1 It was 3 45 in the morning when the vote was finally taken After six months of arguing and final 16 hours of hot parliamentary debates Australia s Northern Territory became the first legal authority in the world to allow doctors to take the lives of incurably ill patients who wish to die The measure passed by the convincing vote of 15 to 10 Almost immediately word flashed on the Internet and was picked up half a world away by John Hofsess executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada He sent it on via the group s on line service Death NET Says Hofsess We posted bulletins all day long because of course this isn t just something that happened in Australia It s world history The full import may take a while to sink in The NT Rights of the Terminally Ill law has left physicians and citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and practical implications Some have breathed sighs of relief others including churches right to life groups and the Australian Medical Association bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage But the tide is unlikely to turn back In Australia where an aging population life extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia In the US and Canada where the right to die movement is gathering strength observers are waiting for the dominoes to start falling Under the new Northern Territory law an adult patient can request death probably by a deadly injection or pill to put an end to suffering The patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill by two doctors After a cooling off period of seven days the patient can sign a certificate of request After 48 hours the wish for death can be met For Lloyd Nickson a 54 year old Darwin resident suffering from lung cancer the NT Rights of Terminally Ill law means he can get on with living without the haunting fear of his suffering a terrifying death from his breathing condition I m not afraid of dying from a spiritual point of view but what I was afraid of was how I d go because I ve watched people die in the hospital fighting for oxygen and clawing at their masks he says 凌晨3 45進行了最終表決 經過6個月爭論和最后16個小時的國會激烈辯論 澳大利亞北部 地區 澳北州 成為世界上第一個允許醫生根據絕癥病人個人意愿來結束其生命的合法當局 這一法案是以令人信服的15票對10票通過 幾乎同時 該消息就出現在互聯網上 身處地 球另一端的加拿大死亡權利執行主席約翰 霍夫塞斯在收到該消息后便通過協會的在線服務 死亡之網 發了公告 他說 我們整天都在發布公告 因為這件事的意義不在于它是在澳大 利亞發生的事情 而是因為這是世界歷史的一件大事 要充分理解這一法案的深刻意義可能需要一段時間 澳北州晚期病人權利法使得無論是內科 醫生還是普通市民都同樣地力圖從道義和實際意義兩方面來對待這一問題 一些人如釋重 負 另一些人 包括教會 生命權利組織以及澳大利亞醫學會成員都對這一決議及其倉促的 通過進行了猛烈的抨擊 但這一潮流已無法逆轉 在澳大利亞 人口老齡化 延長壽命技術 和公眾態度的變化都發揮著各自的作用 其他州也將考慮制定類似的法律來處理安樂死問 題 在美國和加拿大 死亡權利運動正在積蓄力量 觀察家們正在等待多米諾骨牌產生的效 應 根據澳北州所通過的這項新法案 成年病人可以要求安樂死 可能是通過注射致死藥 劑或服用致死藥片 來結束痛苦 但此前病人必須由兩名醫生診斷其確實已病入膏肓 然 后再經過7天的冷靜思考期 方可簽署一份申請證明 48小時后 才可以滿足其安樂死的愿 望 對于居住于達爾文現年54歲的肺癌患者利奧德 尼克森來說 這個法律意味著他可以平 靜地生活下去而無須整天懼怕即將來臨的苦難 因呼吸困難而在煎熬中痛苦地死去 從思 想上說 我并不害怕死 但我怕的是怎樣死 因為我在醫院看到過病人在缺氧時苦苦掙扎 用手抓他們的面罩時的情景 他說 1997 Passage 2 A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly courteous and helpful most Americans were to them To be fair this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians and should best be considered North American There are of course exceptions Small minded officials rude waiters and ill mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment For a long period of time and in many parts of the country a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion and brought news of the outside world The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality Someone traveling alone if hungry injured or ill often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers It reflected the harshness of daily life if you didn t take in the stranger and take care of him there was no one else who would And someday remember you might be in the same situation Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the weary traveler Yet the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails I was just traveling through got talking with this American and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner amazing Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon but are not always understood properly The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition As is true of any developed society in America a complex set of cultural signals assumptions and conventions underlies all social interrelationships And of course speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns Visitors who fail to translate cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions For example when an American uses the word friend the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor s language and culture It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest Yet being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers 去美國訪問的人經常帶回報告說 大多數美國人對他們友善 好客 樂于助人 公正的說 人們對加拿大人也有這樣的評論 因而 應當認為這是北美普遍的現象 當然也有例外 在 美國 心胸狹隘的官員 舉止粗魯的招待和毫無禮貌的出租車司機也并非罕見 盡管有不如 意的地方 但因為人們常常得出美國人好客的觀察意見 因而也就值得議論一番了 過去很長一段時間 在美國很多地方 旅行者的到來因暫時打破原本的單調生活而受人歡迎 無聊 孤獨是居住相對遙遠的家庭的普遍問題 陌生人和旅行者很受歡迎 他們帶來了娛樂 消遣 還帶來了外面世界的消息 開拓者的嚴酷生活現實也促成了這一好客的傳統 單獨旅行時 如果挨餓 受傷或生病 通 常只能向最近的小屋或村落求助 對旅行者來說 這不是一個選擇的問題 而對當地居民來 說 這也并非是行善的一時沖動 它反映了日常生活的嚴酷 如果你不收留他 那他便無處 求助了 請記住 有一天你也可能處于相同的境遇 如今 有了很多的慈善組織專門幫助疲憊的旅行者 不過 熱情接待陌生人的傳統在美國仍 然很盛行 尤其是在遠離旅游熱線的小城鎮 我只是路過 和這個美國人聊了聊 很快 他就請我到他家吃飯 這真令人驚奇 來美國的旅客談論此類事件很普遍 但并非總能 得到正確理解 很多美國人不經意表現的友好不應被看做是表面或虛假的應酬 而應該看成 是文化傳統的歷史發展結果 同任何發達國家一樣 一系列復雜的文化特征 信念和習俗構成了美國所有社會交往的 基礎 當然 會講一種語言并不意味著就理解該語言的社會和文化模式 不能正確 詮釋 文 化含義的旅行者往往得出錯誤的結論 例如 美國人所說的 朋友 一詞 其文化含義可能與 旅行者語言和文化中的 朋友 大相徑庭 要想正確區分禮貌是出于文化習俗還是個人興趣 單憑一次公共汽車上的偶遇是不夠的 不過 友好是很多美國人推崇的美德 同時希望鄰居 和陌生人也能如此 1997 Passage 3 Technically any substance other than food that alters our bodily or mental functioning is a drug Many people mistakenly believe the term drug refers only to some sort of medicine or an illegal chemical taken by drug addicts They don t realize that familiar substances such as alcohol and tobacco are also drugs This is why the more neutral term substance is now used by many physicians and psychologists The phrase substance abuse is often used instead of drug abuse to make clear that substances such as alcohol and tobacco can be just as harmfully misused as heroin and cocaine We live in a society in which the medicinal and social use of substances drugs is pervasive an aspirin to quiet a headache some wine to be sociable coffee to get going in the morning a cigarette for the nerves When do these socially acceptable and apparently constructive uses of a substance become misuses First of all most substances taken in excess will produce negative effects such as poisoning or intense perceptual distortions Repeated use of a substance can also lead to physical addiction or substance dependence Dependence is marked first by an increased tolerance with more and more of the substance required to produce the desired effect and then by the appearance of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when the substance is discontinued Drugs substances that affect the central nervous system and alter perception mood and behavior are known as psychoactive substances Psychoactive substances are commonly grouped according to whether they are stimulants depressants or hallucinogens Stimulants initially speed up or activate the central nervous system whereas depressants slow it down Hallucinogens have their primary effect on perception distorting and altering it in a variety of ways including producing hallucinations These are the substances often called psychedelic from the Greek word meaning mind manifestation because they seemed to radically alter one s state of consciousness 從專業角度說 除食品外 任何能改變我們生理和心理機能的物質都是藥物 很多人錯誤地 認為 藥物 這個詞僅僅指某些藥品或是吸毒者服用的違禁化學品 他們沒有意識到諸如酒 精 煙草這些我們熟悉的物質也是藥物 這也是現在許多內科醫生和心理學家使用 物質 這 個更加中性的詞的原因 他們常用 物質濫用 而不用 藥物濫用 來清楚表明濫用酒精 煙草 這樣的物質如同濫用海洛因和可卡因一樣有害 我們生活在一個物質 藥物 在醫療和社交方面的使用都很廣泛的社會里 用來緩解頭痛的 阿斯匹林 用來應酬的酒 早晨用來提神的咖啡 還有定神用的香煙 使用這些物質得到了 社會認可 且顯然具有積極的作用 但什么時候就變成濫用了呢 首先 大多數物質的過量 使用都會產生負面影響 如中毒或嚴重的感知錯亂 反復使用一種物質可以導致成癮或對該 物質的依賴 依賴的最初表現是不斷增長的耐藥量 要產生預期的效果需要的藥劑量越來越 大 而一旦中斷使用就會出現難受的停藥癥狀 影響中樞神經系統 改變感知覺和行為的藥物 物質 屬于對神經起顯著作用的物質 它們通常分為興奮劑 鎮靜劑和幻覺劑 興奮劑主要起到加速或激活中樞神經系統的作用 而鎮靜劑則相反 減緩它的活動 幻覺劑主要影響人的感知 通過多種方式對感知加以扭曲 或改變 其中包括產生幻覺 這些物質常被認為能 引起幻覺 psychedelic一詞源于希臘語 意為 心靈顯現 因為它們似乎能改變人的意識狀態 1997 Passage 4 No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers Senator Robert Dole asked Time Warner executives last week You have sold your souls but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well At Time Warner however such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soul searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990 It s a self examination that has at various times involved issues of responsibility creative freedom and the corporate bottom line At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin 56 who took over for the late Steve Ross in 1992 On the financial front Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company s mountainous debt which 1998 Passage 1 Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams Perhaps it is humankind s long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the ideal of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating But to be fascinated is also sometimes to be blind Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful It doesn t help that building a big powerful dam has become a symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves Egypt s leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam Turkey s bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam But big dams tend not to work as intended The Aswan Dam for example stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity And yet the myth of controlling the waters persists This week in the heart of civilized Europe Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs and now needs a dam to prove itself Meanwhile in India the World Bank has given the go ahead to the even more wrong headed Narmada Dam And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction The benefits are for the powerful but they are far from guaranteed Proper scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the cost and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams But when you are dealing with myths it is hard to be either proper or scientific It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan You don t need a dam to be saved 在重大技術所創造的東西中很少能像大型水壩這樣讓人癡迷的 可能正是因為人類長期遭受 旱澇災害的擺布才使得人們治理江河 供我驅策的理想如此令人癡迷 但讓人著迷有時也就 使人盲目 有幾個巨型大壩項目就有弊大于利的危險 建造大壩的教訓是 大的未必總是美的 但這個教訓也無法阻止修建高大雄偉的大壩已成為 那些力爭得到自我肯定的國家和人民的偉大成就的象征 埃及由于建造了阿斯旺大壩而鞏固 了在阿拉伯世界的領導地位 土耳其在力圖躋身第一世界的努力中也包括修建阿塔特克大 壩 但大壩不會像預期的那樣產生效果 以阿斯旺大壩為例 它阻止了尼羅河洪水泛濫 但也使 埃及失去了洪水沖擊過后留下的肥沃土壤 換回來的是這么一個疾病滋生的水庫 現在這個 水庫積滿了淤泥 幾乎不能發電了 不過 控制水的神話還在繼續 本周 在文明的歐洲腹地 斯洛伐克人和匈牙利人就為了多 瑙河上的一處水壩引起爭端 差點動用了軍隊 這個大型工程可能會出現大壩上所有的常見 問題 但斯洛伐克正在要求脫離捷克而獨立 現在他們需要建一個大壩來證明自己的實力 與此同時 世界銀行已經貸款給印度來建造問題很多的納爾馬達大壩 盡管世界銀行的顧問 說 該大壩將給平民帶來苦難 而且也會破壞那里的環境 但世界銀行已經這樣做了 大壩 會給有權有勢者帶來利益 但這種利益卻沒有保障 對于水壩的影響作用 水壩控制水流的成本和收益進行恰當而科學的研究能夠有助于解 決這些沖突 水利發電 治理洪水以及灌溉即使不建大型水壩也是可能的 不一定非要建大 壩 但當你相信神話時就很難做到合理或科學 現在是世界吸取阿斯旺大壩教訓的時候了 我們未必要通過大壩來拯救自己 dekuan68注 此句應譯為 我們不需要建一座將被拯救的 大壩 1998 Passage 2 Well no gain without pain they say But what about pain without gain Everywhere you go in America you hear tales of corporate revival What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real The official statistics are mildly discouraging They show that if you lump manufacturing and services together productivity has grown on average by 1 2 since 1987 That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade And since 1991 productivity has increased by about 2 a year which is more than twice the 1978 1987 average The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend There is as Robert Rubin the treasury secretary says a disjunction between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics Some of this can be easily explained New ways of organizing the workplace all that re engineering and downsizing are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery new technology and investment in education and training Moreover most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable and this need not always mean increasing productivity switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much Two other explanations are more speculative First some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done Second even if it was well done it may have spread much less widely than people suppose Leonard Schlesinger a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes says that much re engineering has been crude In many cases he believes the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost His colleague Michael Beer says that far too many companies have applied re engineering in a mechanistic fashion chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long term profitability BBDO s Al Rosenshine is blunter He dismisses a lot of the work of re engineering consultants as mere rubbish the worst sort of ambulance chasing 人們說 不勞就無獲 但是 如果有勞卻無獲又會怎樣呢 在美國 無論你走到哪里都會聽 到企業復蘇的故事 商人們自認為的他們所領導的生產力革命是否確有其事 這一點更加難 以確定 官方的統計數字卻有點不讓人樂觀 這些數據表明 如果把制造業和服務業合起來算 1987 年以來生產力平均增長1 2 這比前10年的平均增長速度略快 自1991年來 生產力每年 約增長2 這比1978年 1987年的平均增長速度高兩倍以上 問題在于 近年發生的生產 力快速增長部分是由于商業周期通常到了這時候就會出現的反彈造成的 因而它不是經濟復 蘇已經是潛在趨勢的結論性證據 正如財政部長羅伯特 魯賓所說的 生產力發生飛躍的商 業傳奇與統計數字所反映的情況之間存在著一種 脫節 這其中的一些原因很容易解釋 企業重組的新方法 所有那些重新設計和縮小規模的做法 只是對一個經濟的整體生產力做出了一方面的貢獻 而這種經濟的發展還收到許多其他 因素的驅動 如設備 機械上的聯合投資 新技術 以及教育和培訓上的投資 另外 公司 的大部分改革是為了贏利 而達到贏利的目的不一定非要提高生產力 轉入新的市場或改善 產品質量也會有同樣的功效 其他兩種解釋帶有很大的猜測性 一種解釋是近年來所進行的公司重組也許并未奏效 另一 種則說 即使有所成效 效果也不像人們所設想的那樣廣泛 哈佛學者 快速增長的面包連鎖店Au Bon Pain的前任總裁萊昂納多 施萊辛格說 許多 重組 是粗糙的 他認為很多情況下 企業收益的損失超出了成本的降低 他的同事邁克 比 爾說 太多的公司已用機械的方式進行重組 在沒有充分考慮到長期贏利能力的情況下降低 了成本 BBDO的艾爾 羅森夏恩更加直率 他把許多重組咨詢專家所做的工作視為垃圾 典型的勞而無獲 1998 Passage 3 Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture Think of Galileo s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton The schism between science and the humanities has if anything deepened in this century Until recently the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics but no longer As funding for science has declined scientists have attacked anti science in several books notably Higher Superstition by Paul R Gross a biologist at the University of Virginia and Norman Levitt a mathematician at Rutgers University and The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan of Cornell University Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as The Flight from Science and Reason held in New York City in 1995 and Science in the Age of Mis information which assembled last June near Buffalo Anti science clearly means different things to different people Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists philosophers and other academics who have questioned science s objectivity Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti science tag has been attached to many other groups as well from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber whose manifesto published in 1995 scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti science as an essay in US News on the contrary many of them lie deep in the interior of a plate Most of the hot spots move only slowly and in some cases the movement of the plates past them has left trails of dead volcanoes The hot spots and their volcanic trails are milestones that mark the passage of the plates That the plates are moving is now beyond dispute Africa and South America for example are moving away from each other as new material is injected into the sea floor between them The complementary coastlines and certain geologica