ms and cosy and inviting places to eat and drink*and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe.
8这次欧洲之旅带给我很多惊奇的小事，其中一个就是我发现世界竟能如此多样化，对于本质上相同的事物处理起来却方式各异，比如说吃喝或是买电影票。有趣的是，欧洲人有时可以突然变得如此相似——他们普遍好学而理性，开着小车，住在古镇的小房子里，喜欢足球，不怎么注重物质生活，遵纪守法，而且他们住寒冷的宾馆房间，去温暖舒适的地方吃喝——然而却同时拥有着如此琢磨不透、永无止尽的差异。在欧洲没有什么是百分之百肯定的，对此我十分赞同。
9.I still enjoy that sense of never knowing quite what's going on.In my hotel in Oslo where I spent four days after returning from Hammerfest, the chambermaid each morning left me a packet of something called Bio Tex Bla, a \el og weekend\ experimenting with it, uncertain whether it was for washing out clothes or gargling or cleaning the toilet bowl. In the end I decided it was for washing out clothes- it worked a treat*but for all I know for the rest of the week everywhere I went in Oslo people were saying to each other, \
9我仍然享受着对事情进展的未知感。从哈默菲斯特返回后，我在奥斯陆的宾馆呆了四天，女服务员每天早上都留给我一盒叫做Bio Tex Bla的东西，说明上说是一种 “minipakke for ferie，hybel og weekend”。我不清楚它到底是用来洗衣服的，还是漱口的， 或是用来淸洗抽水马桶的，我通过闻它的气味，并试验它各种可能的用法，度过了好几个快乐的小时。最后我判定它是甩来洗衣服的——它的确有效——然而就我所知，在奥斯陆度过的剩下几周中，无论我去哪儿，都听见有人互相议论：“你知道吗?那个人身上有马桶清洁剂的味道。”
10.When I told my friends in London that I was going to travel around Europe and write a book about it, they said, \
10当我告诉伦敦的朋友，我将周游欧洲并写成书时，他们说：“喔，你肯定会说很多语言吧。”?
11.\look at me as if I were crazy. But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
11 “为什么，我不会，”我会带着一点傲气回答，“我只会英语。”然后他们就看着我，好像我疯了。(此文来自袁勇兵博客)但是就我而言，那正是国外旅游的美妙之处。我并不想知道人们在说些什 么。置身于一个对你而言完全陌生的国家，能激发一种孩子般的好奇心。除此之外，我想不出还有什么更好的办法。突然之间你又回到了五岁。你无法读懂任何东西，你对事物运行方式只有最基本的感知，你甚至无法安全地穿过马路。你的整个存在变成了一系列有趣的猜想。
12.I get great pleasure from watching foreign TV and trying to imagine what on earth is gonging on.On my first evening in Oslo,I watched a science program in which
two men in a studio stood at a lab table discussing a variety of sleek, rodent-like animals that were crawling over the surface and occasionally up the host's jacket. \ have sex with all these creatures, do you?\
12 看国外电视节目，试着想象到底发生了什么事，这让我乐此不疲。比如说，在奥斯陆 的第一个晚上，我收看一个科学节目，演播室里的两个男子站在一张实验桌旁，讨论着一种有着光滑皮毛的貌似啮齿目的动物，它们在桌面上爬行，偶尔爬上主持人的外套。主持人正在说：“那么你与所有这些动物做爱，是吗？13.\se and the lemmings can get very neurotic and hurl themselves off cliffs if they feel you don't love them as you once did,but basically these animals make very affectionate companions, and the sex is simply out of this world.\
13 “当然，”嘉宾回答道，“你必须对豪猪十分小心，当然，旅鼠若是感觉你不再像以前 那样爱它们，会变得焦躁不安并跳下悬崖，但总的来说，这些动物是非常亲切的伴侣， 并且性也是十分美妙的。
14.\ke hallucinogenic drugs with simple household chemicals from your own medicine cabinet, but now it's time for the screen to go blank for a minute and then for the blights to come up suddenly on the host of the day looking as if he was just about to pick his nose. See you next week.\
14 “哎呀，我觉得那很棒。下周让大家见识一下你是怎么用药柜中的简单家庭用药制造出致幻药的。(此文来自袁勇兵博客)该让荧幕空白几分光突然亮起，然后让灯光突然亮起，照在主持人身；让他看起来似乎就像正要抠鼻子。下周见。”
15.After Hammerfest, Oslo was simly wonderful. It was still cold and dusted with greyish snow, but it seemed positively tropical Hammerfest, and I abandoned all thought of buying a furry hat. I went to the museums and for a day-long way out around the Bygdoy' peninsula, where the city's finest houses stand on the wooded hillsides, with fetching views across the icy water of the harbour to the downtown. But mostly I hung around the city center, wandering back and forth between the railway station and the royal palace, peering in the store windows along Karl Johans Gate2, the long and handsome main pedestrian street, cheered by the bright lights, mingling with the happy, healthy, relentlessly youthful Norwegians, very pleased to be alive and out of Hanunerfest and in a world of daylight. When I grew cold, I sat in caf e s and bars and eavesdropped on conversations that I could not understand or brought out my Thomas Cook European Timetable and studied it with a kind of humble reverence,planning the rest of my trip.
15 去过哈默菲斯特后，就货得奥斯陆简直妙不可言。天气依然很冷，到处还撒着灰蒙蒙 的雪花，但是比起哈默菲斯特来那可要暖和多了，这也让我彻底放弃了想要买毛皮帽的想法。我参观了博物馆，并花了一天时间游览巴度半岛，那里丛林茂密的山坡上矗立着该城市最美的房子，其视野可跨越海港冰面一直延伸到市区，十分迷人。但是大多数时间我就在市中心闲逛，在火车站和皇宫之间来回溜达，在卡尔约翰街向街旁的商店橱窗里张望。在路边明亮的灯光的照耀下,长长的卡尔约翰步行街富丽堂皇， 与健康快乐、不屈不挠又充满朝气的挪威人
融合在一起。我很高兴能离开哈莫斯菲特并来到这个充满活力、犹如白昼的世界。当我觉得寒意逼人时，我便进入咖啡馆或酒吧坐下，偷听那些我无法明白的对话，抑或拿出我的《托马斯库克欧洲时刻表》，满怀敬意地加以研究，做接下来的旅行安排。
Thomas Cook European Timetable is possibly the finest book ever produced. It is impossible to leaf through its 500 pages of densely printed timetables without wanting to dump a double armload of clothes into an old Gladstone4 and just take off. Every page whispers romance:
\lano\Who could recite these names without experiencing a tug of excitement, without seeing in his mind's eye a steamy platform full of expectant travelers and piles of luggage standing beside a sleek, quarter*mile- long train with;a list of exotic locations slotted into every carriage? Who could read the names \neve\nd journey across*storied continent?Who could glance at such an itinerary and not want to climb aboard? Well, Sunny von Biilow for a start. But as for me, I could spend hours just poring over the tables, each one a magical thicket of times, numbers, distances, mysterious little pictograms showing crossed knives and forks, wine glasses, daggers, miner's pickaxes (whatever could they be for?), ferry boats and buses, and bewilderingly abstruse footnotes.
16《托马斯库克欧洲时刻表》可能是已出版的最优秀的书籍。当你迅速翻阅了其500页 密密印刷的时间表后，你必然有冲动想要往旅行包内塞进两抱衣服，然后立刻出发。 每一页都低声诉说着浪漫：蒙特勒—兹怀斯门—施皮茨—因特拉肯，贝尔格莱 德—的里雅斯特——威尼斯—维罗纳—米兰，哥德堡—拉赫斯河—(哈尔 斯贝里）—斯德哥尔摩，文堤米利亚—马赛—里昂—巴黎。无论是谁吟诵这 些地名，都会感受到一股强烈的兴奋，想象着雾气蒙蒙的月台，以及在400多 米长的流线型车厢旁，站满了期待的旅客，堆满了行李，每个车厢里都放着一张写着外国地名的列表。当读到莫斯科—华沙—柏林—巴塞尔—日内瓦这一系列地名时，又有谁不会伤感地羡慕那些能够横跨这个历史悠久的大陆的幸运儿呢?看过这樣的旅行安排，谁不想踏上行程呢？(此文来自袁勇兵博客)那么，桑尼.冯.比洛就是这样一个例子。但是对我来说，我可以花大量时间就这样凝视着这些列表，每一份都不可思议地包含了时刻、数量、距离、画着交叉刀叉、酒杯、匕首、矿工镐（不管做何用途）、渡轮和巴士的神奇小图，以及令人困惑的深奥脚注。
Unit4 Is Google Making Us Stupid
1.Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something,has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprograming the memory. My mind isn't going*so far as I can tell* but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I?m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I?d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something
else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
1在过去的几年里，我老有一种不祥之感，觉得有什么人，或什么东西，一直在我脑袋里捣鼓不停，重绘我的脑电图，重写我的脑内存。我的思想倒没跑掉—到目前为止我还能这么说，但它正在改变。我的思维方式在变。这种感觉在我阅读的时候尤为强烈。过去总是不费劲就能让自己沉浸在一本书或一篇长文章中，被其中的叙述或不同的论点深深吸引。我还会花数小时徜徉在长篇散文中。可如今这都不灵了。现在，我翻上两三页书，注意力就开始不集中了。我会变得烦躁，抓不住重点，开始想找点其他的事情做。我感觉我似乎要硬拖着我任性的大脑才能回到文章中。原本轻松自然的深度阅读，已成了痛苦挣扎。
2.I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I'm not working, I'm as likely as not to be foraging in the Web's info*thickets*readingand writing emails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they're sometimes likened, hyperlinks don't merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)
2我想我知道到底是怎么一回事了。十多年来，我在网上花了好多时间，在因特网的信息汪洋中冲浪、搜寻、添加。对作家而言，网络就像个天上掉下来的聚宝盆。过去要在书堆里或图书馆的期刊阅览室中花上好几天做的研究，现在几分钟就齐活。“谷歌”几下，快速点开几个链接，就可以找到我所需要的事实或者精炼的引证。即使在工作之余，我也很有可能在信息丰富的网络里遨游—收发电子邮件、浏览头条新闻、点击博客、看视频、听播客或者只是从一个链接跳转到一个又一个链接。(超链接常被比作脚注，但是和脚注不一样，超链接不仅仅链接到相关作品;它们还驱使你去点击创门。)
3.For me, as for others , the Net is becoming a universa*medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they've been widely described and duly applauded. \of silicon memory,\ to thinking.\ pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
3对我来说，像对其他人也一样，网络已经成为了一种通用的媒介，大部分信息都通过这个渠道进人我们的眼、耳，最后进人我们的大脑。能从这样一个异常丰富的信息库中直接获取信息，其优点是很多的，而且也得到了广泛的描述和适当的赞誉。“硅存储器的完美记忆性，”《连线》杂志的克莱夫?汤普森写道，“对
于思想来说是一个大实惠。”但是这个实惠是要付出代价的。(此文来自袁勇兵博客)就像媒体理论家马歇尔?麦克卢恩在上世纪60年代所指出的那样，媒体可不只是被动的信息渠道。它们不但提供了思想的源泉，也塑造了思想的进程。网络似乎粉碎了我专注与沉思的能力。现如今，我的脑袋就盼着以网络提供信息的方式来获取信息:飞快的微粒运动。曾经我是文字海洋中的潜水者，现在我则像是摩托艇骑手在海面上风驰电掣。
4.I?m not the only one.When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and Acquaintances*literary types, most of them*many say they're having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. \racious book reader,\at if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I'm just seeking convenience, but because the way I think has changed?\
4我并不是唯一一个有此感觉的人。当我向文学界的朋友和熟人提到我在阅读方面的困扰，许多人说他们也有同样的感受。他们上网越多，在阅读长文章时，就越难集中精力。我所关注的一些博主也提到了类似的现象。斯科特?卡普开了一个有关在线媒体的博客，最近他承认自己已经完全不读书了。 “我大学读的是文学专业，曾经是一个嗜书如命的人，”他写道。“到底发生了什么事呢?”他推测出了一个答案:“如果对我来说，通过网络来阅读的真正理由与其说是我的阅读方式发生了改变，比如，我只是图个方便，不如说是我的思维方式在发生变化，那么我该怎么办呢?”
5.Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. \otally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,\ote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a \he way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. \ War and Peace anymore,\ of more than three or four paragraph is too much to absorb. I skim it.\
5布鲁斯?弗里德曼经常撰写有关电脑在医学领域应用的文章。他在早些时候同样提到因特网如何改变了他的思维习惯。“稍长些的文章，不管是网上的还是已经出版的，我现在几乎已经完全丧失了阅读它们的能力。”在密歇根大学医学院长期任教的病理学家布鲁斯，弗里德曼在电话里告诉我，由于上网快速浏览文章的习惯，他的思维呈现出一种“碎读”特性。“我再也读不了《战争与和平》了。”弗里德曼承认，“我失去了这个本事。即便是一篇长达三四段的博客也难以消化。我只能略微浏览一下。”
6.Anecdotes alone don't prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how the Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five*year resea