技术的发展趋势有可能把硅谷重新推向未来。卡弗.米德 -- 集成电路的一位先驱，加州理工学院的计算机教授 -- 注意到，现在有些计算机工作站使工程技术人员可以在他们的办公桌上设计、试验和生产芯片，就像一位编辑在苹果机上编出一份时事通讯一样。由于制造一块芯片的时间已缩短至几天，费用也只有几百美元，因此，工程技术人员可能很块就可充分发挥他们的想像力，而不会因失败而造成经济上的损失。米德预言发明者可以在办公室用一个周末的时间生产了完美的、功能很强的、按客户需求设计的芯片 -- 造就新一代从汽车间起家的技术人员，在把产品推向市场方面使美国把它的外国对手们打个措手不及。 ??我们有更多的汽车间，那里有许多聪明人，??米德说。??我们确实是靠这种无政府状态发展起来的。?? 靠的是亚洲人。硅谷许多公司中工程技术人员的大多数是东方人和亚裔美国人。中国、韩国、菲律宾和印度的工程师一批批地从加州的大学毕业。作为新掘起一代的带头人，亚裔发明家可以凭借他们在习惯和语言上的优势，与关键的太平洋沿岸市场建立起更加牢固的联系。比如说，亚历克斯.奥，一位来自香港的斯坦福大学博士，已经在台湾建厂，对日本在内存条市场上近似垄断的局面提出了挑战。印度出生的N.达莫达.雷迪经营的小小的加州公司在堪萨斯城重新启用了美国电话电报公司的一家芯片工厂，并从密苏里州获取了财政上的支持。在硅谷变成一个退休村之前，它很可能成为建立全球商业的一个教学场地。 有什么我可以帮你做的？
在你将要离去的时刻。。。
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帖子21 精华0 寄托币30 声望0 注册时间2002-6-9 12楼 发表于 2003-2-5 07:32 | 只看该作者 Spare that spider 不要伤害蜘蛛
How much of each year do spiders spend killing insects?
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance, for a spider always has eight legs and insect never more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work no our behalf? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre; that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.
T. H. GILLESPLE Spare that spider from The Listener
New words and expressions
beast
n. 野兽
census
n. 统计数字
acre
n. 英亩
content
adj. 满足的
参考译文
你可能会觉得奇怪， 蜘蛛怎么会是我们的朋友呢？因为它们能消灭那么多的昆虫，其中包括一些人类的大敌，要不是人类受一些食虫动物的保护，昆虫就会使我们无法在地球上生活下去，昆虫会吞食我们的全部庄稼，杀死我们的成群的牛羊。我们要十分感谢那些吃昆虫的鸟和兽，然而把它们所杀死的昆虫全部加在一起也只相当于蜘蛛所消灭的一小部分。此外，蜘蛛不同于其他食虫动物，它们丝毫不危害我们和我们的财物。
许多人认为蜘蛛是昆虫，但它们不是昆虫，甚至与昆虫毫无关系。人们几乎一眼就能看出二者的差异，因为蜘蛛都是8条腿，而昆虫的腿从不超过6条。
有多少蜘蛛在为我们效力呢？一位研究蜘蛛的权威对英国南部一块草坪上的蜘蛛作了一次调查。他估计每英亩草坪里有225万多只蜘蛛。这就是说，在一个足球场上约有600万只不同种类的蜘蛛。蜘蛛至少有半年在忙于吃昆虫。它们一年中消灭了多少昆虫，我们简直无法猜测，它们是吃不饱的动物，不满意一日三餐。据估计，在英国蜘蛛一年里所消灭昆虫的重量超过这个国家人口的总重量。
Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do; living in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code to live by.
生活在20世纪20年代的观众认为，逃到一个即使艰苦但比较简朴的时代中去是件愉快的事，我们今天仍有 这种感觉。如今，不宣而战的侵略、战争、虚伪、诈骗、无政府状态以及即将临头的毁灭成了我们日常生活的 一部分，我们都希望有一个赖以生存的行为准则。 有什么我可以帮你做的？
在你将要离去的时刻。。。
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帖子21 精华0 寄托币30 声望0 注册时间2002-6-9 13楼 发表于 2003-2-5 07:33 | 只看该作者 The cost of government 政府的开支
What is the most important factor, both in government or business, for keeping running costs low?
If a nation is essentially disunited, it is left to the government to hold it together. This increases the expense of government, and reduces correspondingly the amount of economic resources that could be used for developing the country. And it should not be forgotten how small those resources are in a poor and backward country. Where the cost of government is high, resources for development are correspondingly low.
This may be illustrated by comparing the position of a nation with that of a private business enterprise. An enterprise has to incur certain costs and expenses in order to stay in business. For our purposes, we are concerned only with one kind of cost -- the cost of managing and administering the business. Such administrative overheads in a business are analogous to the cost of government in a nation. The administrative overheads of a business are low to the extent that everyone working in the business can be trusted to behave in a way that best promotes the interests of the firm. If they can each be trusted to take such responsibilities. and to exercise such initiative as falls within their sphere, then administrative overheads will be low. It will be low because it will be necessary to have only one man looking after each job, then the business will require armies of administrators, checkers, and foremen and administrative overheads will rise correspondingly. As administrative overheads rise, so the earnings of the business after meeting he expense of administration, will fall; and the business will have less money to distribute as dividends or invest directly in its future progress and development.
It is precisely the same with a nation. To the extent that the people can be relied upon to behave in a loyal and responsible manner, the government does not require armies of police and civil servants to keep them in order. But if a nation is disunited, the government cannot be sure that the actions of the people will be in the interests of the nation; and it will have to watch, check,
and control the people accordingly. A disunited nation therefore has to incur unduly high costs of government.
RAYMOND FROST The Backward Society
New words and expressions 生词和短语
disunited
adj. 分裂的
correspondingly
adv. 相应地
backward
adj. 落后的
incur
v. 承担
administer
v. 管理
adminstrative
adj. 行政管理的
analogous
adj. 类似的
overheads
n. 一般费用
initiative