Week01_20240101PDF.pdf

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1、 周二 Make a Resolution Bigger Than Yourself.2 周三 Is it time to curb English language power?.5 周四 Global temperature may pass threshold in 2024.10 周五 Generative AI will go mainstream in 2024.13 周六 Science book never have been more important.16 周日 What Good Is a 5-Minute Workout,Really?.19 新英文外刊公众号 新英文

2、外刊 新英文外刊 20240101 每周精选 Week01 ontents目录 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 2/22 This Year,Make a Resolution About Something Bigger Than Yourself What if,instead of focusing on improving ourselves,we focused on improving the world?New Years resolutions are penny-ante prayers.You are this way,but you hope to be that w

3、ay.You used to want this,but now you want that.The assumption behind resolutions is that something must be corrected and improved.One vows to be better than one was the year before.Part of the nature of resolutions,particularly for those of us north of 60,has to do not only with the new year before

4、us,but also with time already spent,or misspent.新英文课堂 扫码听音频 December 26,2023|898 words|Opinion 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 3/22 We reflect on the years weve lived,on the past resolutions made and broken.Another New Years Eve come and gone.Every time the ball drops,the heart sinks.You are running out of time,a

5、nd time is what we value most.The historian-philosopher Lewis Mumford believed that the clock,not the steam engine,was the principal machine of the industrial age because time has a commanding relationship to the expenditure of human energy,and thus to any product itself.From the start,the essence o

6、f industry has been that things run on time.Time touches everything in life,even love.The fundamental things apply.Thus there is always a melancholic desperation and urgency when we shout,“Happy New Year!”Will this new year,in fact,be any better than the last?We resolve that it will.We resolve to be

7、 fitter,healthier,cleverer,richer,more successful,more popular,more productive,better dressed,happier.And so restarts the whole vain,foolish,inevitably disappointing cycle.The trouble with all such self-oriented promises is that they deal in chicken feed.What does the great wide world care if you lo

8、se weight,or work out,or work harder,or quit drinking or smoking?Quit smoking or smoke three packs a day.Work out daily or let yourself go.Its your choice,your life.Your little life.Meanwhile,the world the whole tortured,self-destructive,polarized,endangered,extraordinary world spins on.What if,inst

9、ead of planning our exercise regimens,we focused our intentions on all that is undesirable in human activity wars,bigotry,brutality,the despoiling of the earth and sought to address it?What if instead of making a milquetoast resolution,we made airtight commitments?新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 4/22 In“Leaves of

10、 Grass,”Walt Whitman writes:“This is what you shall do:Love the earth and sun and the animals,despise riches,give alms to everyone who asks,stand up for the stupid and crazy.”He continues,“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,dismiss whatever insults your own soul,and

11、 your very flesh shall be a great poem.So there.If youre looking for a worthwhile resolution,Whitman is not a bad place to start.The task of improving the world may seem impossible,but it isnt.All it takes is the proper sequence of correct discrete decisions.Decisions are just resolutions with teeth

12、.An editor of mine told me a story from his childhood on his grandparents farm in Iowa.The little boy,looking out over acres and acres of corn,asked his grandfather,“How are we going to shuck all that corn?”His grandfather said,“One row at a time.”This,too,is how to improve the world.And we can star

13、t small.Personally,I vow that I will frequently visit a childrens hospital and try to distract kids with stories,the funnier the better.I vow that I will phone every lonely person I know and there are plenty at least twice a week,just to chat and make them feel part of the living world.I vow to give

14、 alms to everyone who asks,and to those who dont,and to stand up for the stupid and crazy,the stupider and crazier,the better.I promise to keep an eye out for strays(cats,dogs and people)and bring them safety and comfort.I vow to see every wrong as a menace,every wound an opportunity.What will you d

15、o right now,this week,this month to make a better world?Stage a protest.Send a letter to right a wrong,or to proffer friendship.(A thoughtful,sympathetic letter to a friend in sorrow or distress is a powerful thing.)Lend a hand.Offer a word of comfort or inspiration or support or love.Donate money o

16、r,most valuable of all,time.There are so many ways to move this world,right within reach.新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 5/22 The great beautiful irony of all this,of course,is that selflessness is not the opposite of self-improvement.Selflessness is self-improvement the most meaningful and lasting kind.Practice

17、it,and you may just find that the new year is,in fact,a step up from the last.You may find that,all at once,you look and feel better than you would have after any amount of dieting or exercise.Unburdened of ego.Lighter on your feet.Say,havent you lost weight?Practice it,and suddenly you will find th

18、at your little life has gotten big.Big life,grand life is like art.It is not done well unless the artist dreams expansively,ridiculously,by making a glorious Whitman-size fool of herself in seeking to enhance everything,cure every ill.Nothing less.At an event a couple of months ago,someone asked me

19、why I wrote something the way I did,and I found myself blurting out,“To save the world.”It was laughable,preposterous and true.新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 6/22 English still rules the world,but thats not necessarily OK.Is it time to curb its power?For fluent speakers,there are clear benefits for others,there

20、are huge costs.Here are some ways to boost linguistic justice.Anyone spending their Christmas holidays on the European mainland will likely have observed that it is quite common to meet staff in shops and hotels who can hold a conversation in English,and to read signs and menus in the language.This

21、fact should come as no surprise,and it is no accident:the spread of English skills in Europe is largely the result of educational policies that have intensively promoted its teaching in public schools over the past decades.The reasons are diverse and well known.English is a major language of culture

22、,and it is the third most spoken language in the world as a native language,after Chinese and 新英文课堂 扫码听音频 December 27,2023|1002 words|Opinion 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 7/22 Spanish.Native speakers of English number about 373m(roughly 5%of the world population),mostly concentrated in six advanced industriali

23、sed democracies(Australia,Canada,Ireland,New Zealand,the UK and the US),which together produce 33%of the worlds gross domestic product in nominal terms.As a result of the colonial legacy,English is an official or co-official language in many countries of the world,mainly in Africa.The communication

24、value of English is therefore high,and so is the interest in learning it.Many people use English as a second or foreign language.Precise estimates are risky but taken together,native and non-native speakers in the world total between 1 billion and 1.5 billion,depending on the definition of“speaker”.

25、This amounts to 12-19%of the global population.Proficiency levels,however,are very uneven.The emergence of English as the predominant(though not exclusive)international language is seen by many as a positive phenomenon with several practical advantages and no downside.However,it also raises problems

26、 that are slowly beginning to be understood and studied.The most important challenge is that of fairness or“linguistic justice”.A common language is a bit like a telephone network:the more people know a language,the more useful it becomes to communicate.The question of fairness arises because indivi

27、duals face very different costs to access the network and are on an unequal footing when using it.Those who learn English as a second language incur learning costs,while native speakers can communicate with all network members without incurring such costs.Its like getting the latest smartphone model

28、 and sim card with unlimited data for free.Franois Grin,of the University of Geneva,estimates that western European countries spend between 5%and 15%of their education budget on foreign language teaching.In the EU,most of these resources go to the teaching of a single language,English.With the obvio

29、us exception of Ireland,English as a foreign language is taught in schools in all EU member states,usually as a compulsory subject.About 84%of pupils in primary schools,新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 8/22 98%in lower secondary education and 88%in upper secondary education learn it,according to figures published

30、by the European Commission.The percentage studying other languages(typically French,German or Spanish)in secondary education is much lower,averaging 20%to 30%.In English-speaking countries,by contrast,foreign language teaching has long been in decline because younger generations feel less need to le

31、arn other peoples languages,turning to other subjects instead.This trend translates into considerable savings for the education systems of English-speaking countries,which can then be allocated to other productive public investments.A second type of inequality relates to the use of a common language

32、.In most professional contexts,a person is more effective and persuasive when using their native language.This inequality is difficult,but not impossible,to quantify.In scientific research,English is often required for publishing in international journals and obtaining research funding.A team led by

33、 Tatsuya Amano at the University of Queensland recently published a study of 900 researchers in environmental sciences revealing that non-native English-speaking researchers require as much as twice the time needed by native speakers to read,write or review publications in English.When submitting pa

34、pers for publication,non-native speakers are about 2.5 times more likely to have their work rejected for linguistic reasons and they are 12.5 times more likely to have to make language-related revisions.So,even with equal or greater technical competence,they may have fewer career opportunities.It is

35、 certainly easier to identify a problem than to find solutions,particularly when it comes to global issues.However,some compensatory measures may help reduce global linguistic injustice.Philippe Van Parijs,of the University of Louvain,has,somewhat provocatively,proposed a linguistic tax on English-s

36、peaking countries to compensate for the costs of teaching English in other countries.This would involve establishing a global tax on countries where the majority of the population speaks English as a native language 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 9/22 and distributing the revenue to countries where English is ta

37、ught in schools as a foreign language.Yet other forms of indirect compensation could be considered;for example,a partial weakening of industrial property rights,such as patents.The maximum duration of the legal protection of patents is 20 years.This duration could be shortened by a few years when bu

38、sinesses based in an English-speaking country register a patent in a non-English-speaking country.This would mean that these patents could be commercially exploited without a license more quickly than patents belonging to inventors based in other countries.The World Intellectual Property Organizatio

39、n could promote a reform of rules in this direction.Other proposals include more intensive use of machine translation and artificial intelligence in scientific publications,with the costs borne by the publisher.Criteria rewarding multilingual researchers in applications for funding for international

40、 projects could be designed,following the example of policies to promote gender equality in academia.Of course,the problem of linguistic justice is not confined to English.The very same problem would arise if the dominant language of global communication were another,such as Spanish or French(but no

41、t a neutral language such as Esperanto).But right now,English is the predominant international language.For many this is a blessing,but should we not also think of those for whom it is a cause for concern?新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 10/22 Global average temperatures may pass a threshold in 2024 El Nio wont he

42、lp.When will the annual global average temperature rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time?There have been individual days when the global average temperature has exceeded that threshold,but so far no single year has,on average,been that hot overall.This may change in 2

43、024,when the steady,century-long rise in temperatures driven by greenhouse-gas emissions syncs with a natural cyclical warming pattern for the first time in nearly a decade.新英文课堂 扫码听音频 November 13,2023|604 words|Science 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 11/22 Meteorological agencies collect temperature data from ac

44、ross the globe and throughout the year to determine the annual average global surface temperature.That number,published each January,has been rising since early in the 20th century,but not systematically.The line zigzags(see chart).This is because global warming,driven by greenhouse gases,is happeni

45、ng at the same time as natural variations in the global climate system,which cause some years to be hotter or colder than others.The largest such hot-and-cold cycle is the El Nio Southern Oscillation(ENSO),a pattern that begins in and above the waters of the equatorial Pacific and affects the weathe

46、r in the tropics and beyond.ENSO alternates between three states:La Nia,neutral and El Nio.The two extremes are typically cooler(La Nia)and hotter(El Nio)than average;both bring enhanced probabilities of wild weather extremes.From mid-2020 to early 2023,ENSO was in a La Nia pattern.As well as exacer

47、bating some remarkable weather events,including record-breaking floods in Pakistan in 2022,this unusually long La Nia temporarily depressed global average temperatures,masking 新英文外刊公众号 2024-1-1 12/22 some of the warming caused by industrial emissions.There will be no such reprieve in 2024.In June 20

48、23,ENSO flipped into a much-anticipated El Nio state,which will add to global warming.And this El Nio is forecast to be a strong one,bringing a greater likelihood of extremes.The last such event was in 2015-16.It brought record-breaking global temperatures in 2016,an annual record that still stands.

49、There are two possibilities.El Nio is an end-of year phenomenon that starts in the later days of the boreal summer and peaks at Christmas and the new year(it was named after Baby Jesus by Peruvian fishermen who noticed the way its warmer Pacific temperatures chased anchovies into deeper,cooler water

50、s).Typically,the year after an El Nio is the record-breaker.But the boreal summer of 2023 brought serious climate fevers in both the oceans and the atmosphere.Starting in July,daily temperatures rose to new heights.As a result,when all the data are in and published in January,it may turn out that 20