朴告：科学界最有名的非洲灰鹦鹉

Alex the African Grey

Sep 20th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Science's best known parrot died on September 6th, aged 31

科学界最有名的鹦鹉于九月六日悄然离去，阅尽31岁韶华。

THE last time Irene Pepperberg saw Alex she said goodnight as usual. “You be good,” said Alex. “I love you.” “I love you, too.” “You'll be in tomorrow?” “Yes, I'll be in tomorrow.” But Alex (his name supposedly an acronym of Avian Learning Experiment) died in his cage that night, bringing to an end a life spent learning complex tasks that, it had been originally thought, only primates could master.

艾琳·佩珀伯格博士最后一次看到亚历克斯时，同往常一样向它道了晚安。

“你真好，” 亚历克斯说，“我爱你。”

“我也爱你！”

“你明天能来么？”

“当然，我明天会来的。”

但是就在那天晚上，亚历克斯在它的笼子里悄然而去，为他忙于复杂的学习任务的一生划上了休止符。人们原本认为，只有灵长类动物才能熟练掌握复杂的学习任务。

In science as in most fields of endeavour, it is important to have the right tool for the job. Early studies of linguistic ability in apes concluded it was virtually non-existent. But researchers had made the elementary error of trying to teach their anthropoid subjects to speak. Chimpanzee vocal cords are simply not up to this—and it was not until someone had the idea of teaching chimps sign language that any progress was made.

自 然科学领域如同大多数需要全力以赴的领域一样，拥有合适的工具非常重要。早期有关猿类语言能力的研究得出的结论是猿类几乎不存在语言能力。但是研究人员在 尝试教授类人猿说话时，却犯了最基本的错误。因为黑猩猩的声带几乎无法自如发声——直到有人主张教大猩猩用手语说话才取得了一定成绩。

Even then, the researchers remained human-centric. Their assumption was that chimps might be able to understand and use human sign language because they are humanity's nearest living relatives. It took a brilliant insight to turn this human-centricity on its head and look at the capabilities of a species only distantly related to humanity, but which can, nevertheless, speak the words people speak: a parrot.

即使如此，研究人员仍然是以人类自我为中心的。他们想当然认为黑猩猩之所以能理解与运用人类语言，是因为他们和人类有着最近的亲缘关系。要将这一以人类为中心的观念颠覆、转而研究一种与人类没有多大关系但却可以讲人类语言的的物种鹦鹉，没有非凡的洞察力不可能实现。

The insight in question came to Dr Pepperberg, then a 28-year-old theoretical chemist, in 1977. To follow it up, she bought a one-year-old African Grey parrot at random from a pet shop. Thus began one of the best-known double acts in the field of animal-behaviour science.

佩珀伯格博士具有这种洞察力，1977年的她还是个28岁的理论化学家。怀着探究到底的心理，她随意从一家宠物店买回来一只一岁的非洲灰鹦鹉。从此，动物行为学领域最著名的一对搭档出现了。

Dr Pepperberg and Alex last shared a common ancestor more than 300m years ago. But Alex , unlike any chimpanzee (with whom Dr Pepperberg's most recent common ancestor lived a mere 4m years ago), learned to speak words easily. The question was, was Alex merely parroting Dr Pepperberg? Or would that pejorative term have to be redefined? Do parrots actually understand what they are saying? 佩珀伯格博士和亚历克斯最近的共同祖先可以追溯到3亿年以前。但是，和黑猩猩(它和佩珀伯格博士共同的最近的祖先共同生活在4百万年前)不同的是，亚历克斯很轻松就学会了说话。问题在于，亚历克斯是否仅仅是模仿佩珀伯格博士？或者那些贬义词汇是否被重新定义？鹦鹉真的理解它所说的话么？

Bird brained禽鸟的思维

Dr Pepperberg's reason for suspecting that they might—and thus her second reason for picking a parrot—was that in the mid-1970s evolutionary explanations for behaviour were coming back into vogue. A British researcher called Nicholas Humphrey had proposed that intelligence evolves in response to the social environment rather than the natural one. The more complex the society an animal lives in, the more wits it needs to prosper.

1970年代中期，用演化轮来解释行为的做法重新流行起来，佩珀伯格博士因此怀疑鹦鹉能理解它所说的话，这也是她挑选鹦鹉的第二原因。一位名叫Nicholas Humphrey英国研究人员声称智力的发展更多地来源于对社会环境的回应，而非自然界。生物所生存的社会环境越复杂，其繁衍需要的智慧就会越多。

The reason why primates are intelligent, according to Dr Humphrey, is that they generally live in groups. And, just as group living promotes intelligence, so intelligence allows larger groups to function, providing a spur for the evolution of yet more intelligence. If Dr Humphrey is right, only social animals can be intelligent—and so far he has been borne out.

依照Humphrey博士的说法，灵长目动物聪明的原因在于它们通常群居生活。并且，正如群居生活能提高智力一样，智力允许更大的种群保持正常运转，并为更大的智力进化提供推动力。如果Humphrey博士是正确的，就只有社会性动物才会有智慧——现在已证明他是正确的。

Flocks of, say, starlings or herds of wildebeest do not count as real societies. They are just protective agglomerations in which individuals do not have complex social relations with each other. But parrots such as Alex live in societies in the wild, in the way that monkeys and apes do, and thus Dr Pepperberg reasoned, Alex might have evolved advanced cognitive abilities. Also like primates, parrots live long enough to make the time-consuming process of learning worthwhile. Combined with his ability to speak (or at least “vocalise”) words, Alex looked a promising experimental subject.

成 群居住的星椋鸟或者角马不能认为具有真正的社会性。它们只是出于保护的目的聚集在一起，个体与个体之间没有复杂的社会关系。但是，鹦鹉在野外住居于社群 中，类似于猴子或者猿，因而佩珀伯格颇有道理地得出结论，诸如亚历克斯这样的生物可能已经演化出先进的认知能力。象别的灵长目动物一样，鹦鹉的寿命很长， 值得去做那些耗费时间的学习进程。结合她说话的能力(或者至少是“发音”)，亚历克斯看起来是一个很有希望的实验课题。

And so it proved. Using a training technique now employed on children with learning difficulties, in which two adults handle and discuss an object, sometimes making deliberate mistakes, Dr Pepperberg and her collaborators at the University of Arizona began teaching Alex how to describe things, how to make his desires known and even how to ask questions.

结果证明它不负重望。通过使用一项现在应用于有学习障碍的儿童身上的培训技术，让两个成年人操纵并讨论某个对象，有时故意制造错误，佩珀伯格博士和她的合作者在亚利桑那州大学开始教授亚历克斯如何辨认物体，如何表达他的欲求甚至如何发问。

By the end, said Dr Pepperberg, Alex had the intelligence of a five-year-old child and had not reached his full potential. He had a vocabulary of 150 words. He knew the names of 50 objects and could, in addition, describe their colours, shapes and the materials they were made from. He could answer questions about objects' properties, even when he had not seen that particular combination of properties before. He could ask for things—and would reject a proffered item and ask again if it was not what he wanted. He understood, and could discuss, the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same” and “different”. And he could count up to six, including the number zero (and was grappling with the concept of “seven” when he died). He even knew when and how to apologise if he annoyed Dr Pepperberg or her collaborators.

最后，佩珀伯格博士说，亚历克斯最终拥有了相当于5岁儿童的智力，并还有可能进一步提高。他拥有150个单词的词汇量。他知道50种 物体的名字，除此之外他还能描述它们的颜色、形状以及其构成材料。他能回答有关物体性质的问题，甚至那些他从来没有见过的结合性能。他知道要求一些东西 ——如果提供的物品不是他想要的，他会拒绝并再次要求。他能理解并讨论“稍大”“稍小”“不同”等概念。包括零在内，他能一直数到6(当他离去的时候正在设法学会7的概念)。如果他把佩珀伯格博士和他的合作者惹烦了，他甚至知道该在什么时候以及如何道歉。

And the fact that there were a lot of collaborators, even strangers, involved in the project was crucial. Researchers in this area live in perpetual fear of the “Clever Hans” effect. This is named after a horse that seemed to count, but was actually reacting to unconscious cues from his trainer. Alex would talk to and perform for anyone, not just Dr Pepperberg.

有大量的合作者，甚至陌生人参与了这项实验，这个因素至关重要。此领域的研究人员处于“聪明汉斯”效应的永久恐惧之下。这个效应得名于一匹似乎刚学会数数的马，但是实际上它对训练者的提示毫无意识。亚历克斯可以和任何人交谈、表演，而非仅仅佩珀伯格博士。

There are still a few researchers who think Alex's skills were the result of rote learning rather than abstract thought. Alex, though, convinced most in the field that birds as well as mammals can evolve complex and sophisticated cognition, and communicate the results to others. A shame, then, that he is now, in the words of Monty Python, an ex-parrot.

仍然有少数研究者认为亚历克斯的技能只是机械记忆的结果而非抽象思维。但是，亚历克斯的例子在很大程度上使人们确信，鸟类同哺乳动物一样能产生复杂成熟的认知，和别的生物进行沟通。可惜的是，用Monty Python的话来讲，他现在已经是——前鹦鹉了。

欧盟与微软：一场苦乐参半的胜利

The EU vs Microsoft欧盟vs微软

A bittersweet win over Microsoft一场苦乐参半的胜利

Sep 17th 2007
From Economist.com

But Microsoft’s dominance remains微软的优势仍存

THE verdicts of Europe’s second-highest court in antitrust cases are not generally reckoned to make for gripping live television. But when the European Union (EU) lined up against Microsoft, the decision of 13 begowned judges of the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg was of interest. The judges’ ruling on Monday September 17th, which amounted to a trouncing for the software giant, even provided some drama. Microsoft’s appeal against an antitrust punishment imposed by the European Commission in 2004 was rejected almost entirely.

欧盟第二最高法庭针对反托拉斯案件作出的裁决通常轮不到引起电视转播的注意力。但是当欧洲联盟站在同一行列共同对抗微软时，13位begowned卢森堡初审法院法官所作出的裁定就变得有趣了。卢森堡法庭九月十七日周一的裁决，实际意味着对这个软件业巨头的一记痛击，甚至还有点戏剧性的味道。欧盟委员会曾于2004年对微软强行征收反托拉斯处罚，微软针对此项处罚进行上诉，但是几乎被完全驳回。

Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, did not betray the delight of Europe’s regulators. She called it a “bittersweet” victory and added that “Microsoft must now comply fully with its legal obligations”. Those obligations refer to demands made by the commission in 2004 after it decided against Microsoft in a case begun nine years ago. Then Sun Microsystems charged that Microsoft was refusing to share information that would allow “interoperability” between its servers and equipment produced by the software giant.

欧盟竞争力委员Neelie Kroes并没有流漏出欧洲管理员的喜悦之情。她称之为“苦乐参半的”胜利，并补充说“微软现在必须充分遵守其法律义务。” 2004年欧盟委员会在一宗九年前开始调查的案例中曾裁定微软败诉，随后微软被要求承担那些义务。Sun微系统公司接着控告微软拒绝共享某些信息，以使它的服务器和这个软件巨头生产的设备之间保持“协通性”。

Along the way another complaint over “bundling” was added to Microsoft’s charge sheet. As with a similar antitrust action brought in America, Microsoft was accused of abusing its market dominance, and thus damaging excluded rivals, by tying its own media software to its Windows operating system. An American judge ordered Microsoft to be broken up, a punishment overturned on appeal in 2001 when a toothless remedy was imposed instead. Microsoft’s model of expanding into new markets by adding products to its dominant operating system endured.

与 此同时，另一项针对“捆绑方式”的起诉也加入到了微软被起诉的案件记录上。同样，一项类似的反托拉斯诉讼也在美国卷入其中，微软被指控滥用其市场支配地 位，通过把自身的媒体软件捆绑到操作系统上的方式，从而损害并排挤竞争对手。美国一个法官曾命令微软公司分拆，但是随后此项处罚被上诉所推翻，最后被以一 项软性征税方案取代。把产品添加到拥有支配地位的操作系统上，再拓展新市场的微软模式被容忍了下来。

In Europe Microsoft fought a hard legal battle while simultaneously mounting a charm offensive (a tricky proposition for Steve Ballmer, the firm’s pugnacious boss). The firm hoped that the EU would also settle rather than pursue its decisions to force Microsoft to disclose or license its server protocols, supply Windows without a media player and impose a fine of €497m ($612m).在欧洲，微软在打一场艰苦的法律战的同时还展开了魅力攻势(对公司好斗的老板Steve Ballmer来讲是个棘手的命题。)。该公司希望欧盟能同样解决其裁决，而不是继续执行裁决，强迫微软披漏或者许可其服务协议、提供未捆绑媒体播放器的视窗以及处以4.97亿欧元的罚款。

Although keen to reach a settlement, Microsoft also argued that it had done nothing wrong. It used Apple’s iTunes software as an example of competition in the media-software market. Microsoft also argued that consumers were indifferent, noting that only a handful of copies of Windows had been sold without a media-player compared with millions including it. And the firm insisted that it should not be forced to give up server data which amounts to valuable intellectual property. The EU, for its part, was keen to pursue the legal case against Microsoft. Mario Monti, a previous competition commissioner, made it clear that he wanted a court to set a precedent and act as a caution to other tech firms in dominant positions.

虽然渴望达成和解，但是微软也辩称，他并没有作错事。它采用苹果公司的iTunes软 件作为媒体市场上竞争的一则实例。微软还争辩说，消费者对此无动于衷，并指出相对于售出的数百万份包含媒体播放器的视窗系统来讲，只有极少数不包含媒体播 放器。另外微软还坚持认为，它不应该被迫放弃实际等同于有价知识产权的服务器数据。从欧盟的方面来看，热衷于推动法律案去对抗微软。前竞争力委员Mario Monti清楚地表明说，他希望法院树立一个先例，以此作为对那些拥有优势地位的高科技公司的一个警告。

At the weekend Microsoft gave warning to rivals which had lined up to support the European case that a newly emboldened Commission could have them in its sights too. The decision will certainly provide fresh impetus for outstanding cases against Intel, Rambus and others. And other big tech firms like Apple and Google may yet feel the Commission’s breath on their necks. There could also be more action against Microsoft.

上周末，微软警告那些列队支持欧盟案例的竞争对手说，一个新的有持无恐的委员会可以随时骑到他们头上。这个裁决将必然为INTEL，rambus和其他一些公司的悬案提供新的推动力。还有其他一些大型高科技公司比如苹果和谷歌估计已经感到委员会的鼻孔已经嗅到了他们的脖子上。和对抗微软相比较，也许那会有更多的行动。

But Microsoft’s greater concern may well be the advance of open-source software and open standards. Linux, an open-source operating system, is widely used in servers and among the technically minded but—for now—constitutes no threat to Windows. Firefox, an open-source browser, is used by at least one in ten instead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Windows and Office, the firm’s word-processing and other applications, are the backbone of Microsoft. But increasingly the rise of online applications will lessen the importance of operating systems and may eventually chip away at Microsoft’s dominance.

不过微软更关注的也许恰恰是开放源代码软件和公开标准的进程。开放源代码操作系统Linux被广泛地应用在服务器和技术服务上，但是现在，对微软构不成威胁。公开源代码浏览器Firefox至少已被微软网络浏览器用户数的十分之一所应用。视窗和该公司的字处理软件office以及其他应用程序是微软的支撑。但是，不断崛起的在线应用程序的增长将减轻操作系统的重要性，并可能最终削弱微软的统治地位。

The Commission’s tough line may at least offer some succour to Microsoft’s rivals. But Ms Kroes’s desire to see Microsoft suffer a “significant drop in [market] share” that Windows enjoys (95% of the world’s one billion or so computers use the system) looks fanciful in the short term. Microsoft’s pride may have been hurt by the court, but its dominance is hardly under immediate threat.
最终，委员会的强硬立场可能会给微软的竞争对手提供一些补偿。但是，由于视窗深受喜爱 (世界上十亿台左右的电脑中有95%使用了此系统)，Kroes’s所希望看到的微软遭受“严重市场份额下滑”的梦想在短期内看起来仍然是幻想。法院可能伤害了微软的自尊，但是，很难对其支配地位立即产生威胁。

日本：一党独大的问题

Japan

The trouble with one-party rule

一党独大的问题

Sep 13th 2007
From The Economist print edition

After Shinzo Abe's resignation, Japan needs more than just a new prime minister
安培晋三辞职之后，日本需要的不止是一个新首相。

NOTHING in Shinzo Abe's occupation of the Japanese prime minister's office became him like the leaving of it: he made a mess of that too. But his departure on September 12th should be an occasion for more than lamenting his hapless year in office. The trouble is not one lousy prime minister but a political system that no longer works. The reign of Mr Abe's starry predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, helped disguise this failure. But he, not Mr Abe, was the aberration.

日本首相府第中安培晋三的办公室里没有任何东西和他的离去相象，因为他 把那里搞得太糟糕了。不过，他于九月十二日的离任，应该给了他更多时机去做一些事，而非哀叹在办公室里度过的那倒霉的一整年。问题不在于稀松的首相，而在 于一个不再起作用的政治制度。安培的星光耀眼的前任，小泉纯一郎在任时协助掩饰了这个失败的政治制度。小泉才是出现那个差错的原因，而非安培。

Ill health may have precipitated the present crisis by forcing Mr Abe's final blunder: the poor timing of his resignation. But thanks to a sorry saga of his cabinet's incompetence, corruption and ill-fortune (see article) his poll ratings have been plumbing new depths for most of the year. At the end of July voters delivered the most damning of verdicts on his tenure, with a crushing defeat for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the upper house of the Diet, or parliament, where, for the first time since 1955, it is no longer the biggest party. In the past Japanese prime ministers have fallen on their metaphorical swords for much less. Yet he refused to resign. He then bought himself a little time by shuffling his cabinet, bringing in some LDP heavy-hitters who recalled the party's history of corrupt faction-ridden politicking, but at least, in the public eye, went some way to filling the government's competence deficit. He opened parliament, attended a regional summit in Sydney and then made a big policy speech on September 10th.

健 康欠佳也许给了当前的危机以毁灭性一击，最终迫使安培窘迫犯错：不明智地选择了辞职时机。不过由于其内阁的可悲的无能传奇、腐败以及非正当收入等问题，他 的民意支持率在一年以来的大多数时间里已经垂落至新低。七月底，选民给了他一个任期内最无法逃避的裁决，他所领导的自由民主党在上议院议会和国会选举中一 败涂地。这是自从1955年以来，自民党首次在国会中不再是第一大党。以前的日本首相都栽在他们自己称做“鞭长莫及”的 比喻中。然而他仍然拒绝辞职。随后，他通过改组内阁给自己争取了一点时间，召回一些已退出政坛的大人物，让他们回顾自民党受腐败内讧折磨的竞选历史。但是 至少在公众眼中，某种程度上他在弥补政府的权力空白。他先召开了国会，然后参加了在悉尼举行的区域高峰会议，随后在九月十日发表了一个框架政策演讲。

Two days later he stood down on the flimsiest of excuses: that Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), had refused to meet him to discuss a compromise over extending important anti-terrorism legislation. If Mr Ozawa did indeed refuse a meeting, it should surely have been taken merely as one skirmish in a campaign—for extension of the law—that Mr Abe regards as vitally important for Japan, rather than as a pretext for surrender.

两天之后，他就利用那个最不足信的借口辞职了：主要反对党日本民主党的领袖 小泽 拒绝就延长重要的反恐怖主义立法案和他进行磋商。如果小泽先生确实拒绝了会谈，那应该肯定是仅采取它作手段，把它当作法案延长战役的前哨站。而此法案安培视之对日本极其重要，他不会以此为借口缴械投降。

Mr Abe is right that the lapsing of the law, which would entail Japan's calling off its operations refuelling ships in the Indian Ocean for the American-led campaign in Afghanistan, would damage Japan's international standing. But his staking his position on the issue highlights four big problems facing the Japanese electorate. The first is that too many LDP leaders, including Mr Abe and his most likely successor, Taro Aso, are obsessed with Japan's international stature and have lost touch with voters. They want to amend the pacifist constitution so that Japan can play a role in the world commensurate with its economic might. Voters are more interested in the economic might itself, and what it could do for them.

安培的所做是正确的，因为日本所陷入的法案要求其撤走在印度洋海域经营的加油船，转而为美国主导的阿富汗战役服务，而这将影响日本的国际地位。但是他以其首相职位在此议题上的冒险一搏，凸现出日本选民面临四大问题。首当其冲的是，太多的自民党领袖，包括安倍晋三和安培最有可能的继任者麻生太郎，都痴迷于日本的国际地位而失去了和选民的接触。他们都想要修改和平宪法，以便日本可以在世界上扮演同其经济实力相当的角色。然而选民更感兴趣的是经济实力本身，以及那对他们将意味着什么。

That is the second problem. Mr Koizumi's flair and common touch enabled him to sell voters a bill of goods which, on closer inspection, they do not like. His liberalising, market-friendly reforms will, if followed through, do much to sustain Japan's recent economic revival. But in the short term they are bringing pain to many areas. Unlike Mr Abe, Mr Koizumi timed his departure well.

接 着是第二个问题。小泉的敏锐的洞察力和广泛的接触使得他能够向选民出售一揽子法案，虽然选民在仔细审视时并不喜欢它。如果他的自由化政策、利于市场的改革 都被全盘继承下来的话，会在维持日本最近的经济复苏中起很大作用。但是在短期内，他们会给诸多领域带来疼痛。与安培不同的是，小泉的离任时机选择的恰到火 候。

Third, the DPJ's ability to stall and ultimately thwart the anti-terror legislation is not a temporary phenomenon. The next upper-house elections are six years away; it may be 12 before the LDP wins its majority back. After a Koizumi-inspired landslide in the 2005 lower-house elections, the LDP can carry on governing. But Mr Ozawa has a stranglehold. Enough shuffling: time for a new deck

第三，日本民主党阻挠和最终的反对反恐怖法案不是一个暂时现象。离下一次的上院选举还有六年时间。也许还要等12年自民党才能在议会中赢回多数。2005年在小泉的灵感失灵之后，自民党尚能继续掌控全局。但是小泽有个遏制手段。足够的推委：等待新的环境

That would not matter so much if he led a party that might form a credible government. He does not: indeed, he himself does not want to be prime minister and is in poor health. The fourth big problem is the lack of a serious opposition. The DPJ is less a coherent party than a job lot of competing factions: rather like the LDP, in fact, but without the experience of more than 50 years of nearly uninterrupted power.如 果小泽领导的是一个能塑造值得信赖的政府形象的政党，这点对他并非十分要紧。他并不在乎：实际上，他自己并不想成为首相，并且健康状况不佳。第四个大问题 是缺乏一个有分量的反对党。日本民主党不太象一个有内聚力的党派，倒更象是一份带有许多派系纷争的工作：实际上，感觉很象自民党，只是它没有超过50年控制几乎从不间断的权力的经验。

That one party has held sway for so long is of course itself a symptom of the sickness affecting Japanese politics. That is why many in Japan are hoping that the present mess does not, as usual, produce merely a factional compromise around an uninspiring new prime minister. Mr Koizumi is gone. But some of his followers are still around, frustrated by the return to the bad old days. They are mirrored by young Turks in the DPJ. For years idealists have dreamed of a realignment in Japanese politics, away from factional wheeler-dealing and towards true policy-based competition. In the present climate, hostile to Mr Koizumi's legacy if not the man himself, such a reformist grouping would have its work cut out. But the disarray of the big parties is such that it is surely worth a try.

一 个统治如此之久的政党，当然自身就是影响日本政治的疾病的缩影。这就是为什么在日本，许多人希望当前的乱麻不会象往常那样，只是围绕派系妥协而选出一个并 不鼓舞人心的新首相的原因。小泉走了。但是他的一些追随者仍然留在左右，对重返糟糕的老日子满怀沮丧。他们同日本民主党的年轻土耳其人形成鲜明的对照。多年以来，理想主义者梦想着日本政治体系的结盟重组，远离派系轮回交易，朝着真正基于政策的竞争迈进。在当前的氛围中，敌视小泉遗产的若不是小泉本人，那么这样一个改革组合会使其工作被取代掉。但是，涣散的大政党就是这样的，结盟重组确实值得一试。

朴告：男高音歌唱家卢西亚诺·帕瓦罗蒂

Luciano Pavarotti

Sep 13th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Luciano Pavarotti, the world's favourite tenor, died on September 6th, aged 71
世界最受欢迎的男高音歌唱家卢西亚诺·帕瓦罗蒂于九月六日去世，享年71岁

HE REMEMBERED the moment it began, at four years old: jumping on the kitchen table, setting the lamp swinging, singing “La donna è mobile” to an audience of adoring women. His father sang, beautifully, as a tenor in the church in Modena; the soaring voices of Gigli and Caruso filled the house from the crackling gramophone; at the cinema Mario Lanza sang and young Luciano Pavarotti copied him, warbling and gesturing into the mirror. To sing was to be loved.

他还记得四岁时开始唱歌的那一幕：跳到厨房的桌子上，一边把灯光弄得摇曳不定，一边向他敬慕的女士听众们唱“La donna è mobile”。他父亲是摩德纳市教堂里的一名男高音歌手，唱得非常棒；他的家里常充满了从噼啪乱响的留声机里发出的Gigli 和Caruso的清亮的歌声；Mario Lanza在电影院里唱歌，小卢西亚诺·帕瓦罗蒂则模仿他柔和的颤音并把他的一举一动复制进了镜子里。唱歌是为了爱！

Football was still his chief obsession. Yet as his musical career unfolded, it crossed paths with the Beautiful Game. He performed in stadiums, in front of thousands. The final of the 1990 World Cup in Rome was marked by a concert with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, “The Three Tenors”, who then sang together for 13 years. Pavarotti's version of “Nessun dorma” from Puccini's “Turandot”, the anthem of that World Cup, came to epitomise all the drama, glory and pain of football, with his three climactic “vinceros” at the end of the aria like a perfect free kick, rising, arching, landing sweetly on the very note, safe in the corner of the net.

足球更是他最迷恋的东西。但是当他的音乐生涯展开了后，就和这项美妙的游戏交织在一起。他常在露天体育场为数以千计的观众进行演出。1990年罗马世界杯闭幕式标志性特征就是他和普拉希多·多明戈、José·卡雷拉斯的音乐会。他们被称为“三大男高音”，其后他们三人一起合唱了十三年之久。世界杯的主题曲，帕瓦罗蒂演唱的“Nessun dorma”，来源于普奇尼的“图兰朵”，被认为浓缩了足球运动全部的戏剧性、荣耀和痛苦。在那个咏叹调的结尾处他连唱了三个“vinceros”，就象踢了一个完美的任意球，先是升空，然后弧线飞出，美秒地落在那个恰当的音符之上，安全地躺在网的一角。

Pavarotti made it seem so easy. “Natural” and “effortless” were the words most often applied to that smooth, honeyed, gorgeous voice, which made skin break out in goose-bumps and raised the hairs on the back of the neck. Lasciare andare, pouring it forth. No matter that the singer was huge and almost immobile, his beard blackened with burnt cork and his face running with sweat mopped away with an enormous white handkerchief; the smile was ecstatic, and the voice was from heaven. His biggest break had come, in 1972, when he hit nine high Cs in Donizetti's “La Fille du Régiment”; he was dressed then like a fat toy soldier, patently unable to act, but the crowd adored him. He took 17 curtain calls and, by his death, held the world record for them.

帕瓦罗蒂唱得似乎太容易了。“自然而然”和“毫不费力”是用在他那些圆润甜美、富丽堂皇的嗓音上最经常的词语，而那些音调既能使人浑身起鸡皮疙瘩又让人寒毛直竖。Lasciare andare, pouring it forth.尽管这位歌唱家身材高大得简直难以撼动，胡须乌黑象烧毁的软木，流满了汗泽的脸总是被一块庞大的白手绢抹来抹去，但是那笑容令人心醉，那嗓音简直就是天籁。1972年他取得了职业生涯中的最大突破，在多尼采蒂的“La Fille du Régiment”中连唱了九个高音c调；随后他穿得象个肥胖的玩具军曹，显然不能再演戏了，但是人们依然崇拜他。他曾赢得过连续17次的谢幕掌声，直到他去世，仍然无人超越。

The easiness and naturalness were deceptive. He was terrified of the high notes, full of the usual performer's superstitions: a bent nail kept in his pocket, and a quick cry of “Malocchio!” if anyone mentioned bad luck. Though his voice showed no strain, he could be seen rising on the balls of his feet in recital, using every sinew and nerve to produce the sound. Wherever he went, he made sure to surround himself with home comforts: espresso machines, prosciutto-slicers, bottles of Lambrusco, his blotter and pens laid out exactly as they would be on his desk in Modena, and a secretary—nubile, pretty, obliging—who would hold up cue cards for him in the wings and who, when needed, would warm his extra-marital bed.

那些从容与自然并不是真的。他对高音音调感到恐惧，所以总是保持着演艺人常有的迷信：在口袋里装曲别针，如果有人提到不吉利的事他会迅速喊一声“Malocchio!”。虽然他的声音并未显得紧张，但是能看到他在演唱会上rising on the balls of his feet, 用尽体力和精力去唱出声音。无论他到那里，都要确认周围环境会象在家里一样舒适：浓咖啡机器，意大利熏火腿薄片，bottles of Lambrusco，吸墨纸和钢笔要精确地按照在摩德纳家中桌子上的位置摆放，还必须有一个未婚漂亮的亲切的女秘书，她要为他在飞机上准备提示卡，并且在必要的时候，还要为他暖一下专为婚外恋准备的床。

Critics and other singers often called him lazy. He seemed as undisciplined in singing as he was about food, abandoning diet after diet in favour of porterhouse steaks or caviar scooped up with a tablespoon. Certainly he was unintellectual, without conservatory training and barely able to read music. Learning from a score, he once said, was “like making love by mail”. Words—even those of “O sole mio”, every tenor's meal-ticket—were hard to drum in; in opera or recital he almost never ventured out of his crisp, supple Italian. Narrow as his repertoire was, he was choosy in it: “Tosca”, “Rigoletto”, “Un Ballo in Maschera”. His tendency to cancel got him banned from several houses and soured his farewell at the New York Met.其他歌手和批评家常称他懒惰。他在胃口上的表现似乎和演唱上的毫无作为有相似性，钟情于餐馆的肉排或者大汤勺挖出来的鱼子酱，大吃一顿后却节食。他未接受过音乐学院地系统教育，勉强能够阅读曲谱，毫无疑问不是个知识分子。学习一个乐谱的时候，他曾经说：那“象制作爱情邮件”。词令很难给强行灌输给他，即使那些每个男高音赖以吃饭的行话“澳唯一绪”；在歌剧或者独奏会上他几乎从不冒险说清脆柔软的意大利语以外的语言。以至于谨慎到他保留节目全在“Tosca”, “Rigoletto”, “Un Ballo in Maschera”中慎重挑选。他倾向于取消演出的个性使他在好几个剧场吃到了闭门羹，以及使他不愉快地告别了New York Met 。

Macaroni for the masses大众的通心粉

Yet Pavarotti knew what he was doing. He took things easy, hid throat lozenges in his handkerchief, and looked after his instrument. His voice was “gifted from God”; he sang purely by instinct, aware of “how it should go”, and trusting that a good conductor could follow after him. The sheer beauty of his sound, without acting and without musicianship, could bring the audience to its feet, and he would earn the hard-negotiated money that made him the highest-paid singer in opera.然而帕瓦罗蒂清楚自己的行为。他小心翼翼把润喉糖藏 在手帕里面，照顾着他的发音器官。他的嗓音是“上帝赐予的”；他完全依赖本能唱歌，了解“应该如何去做”，并相信好的合唱也能仿效他。他的嗓音美得纯粹， 没有丝毫的矫揉造作和音乐技巧，能让他的听众乖乖就范，而他则会赚取通过艰苦谈判换来的酬金，使他在歌剧界一直是出价最高的歌唱家。

He was also a natural populist in a field that was sniffy and exclusive, bringing to the Met and Covent Garden a sense of opera as Italian peasant fare, “macaroni” for the masses. Larry King once asked him about singing for the elite. “Why should be elite, music?” came the reply. Pavarotti went on “The Tonight Show” and “Saturday Night Live”; in his charity concerts he performed with Elton John and the Spice Girls. When critics sniffed about “popera”, he fought back stoutly: “If you call pop singer, you can sell the ticket.” The numbers backed him up: live audiences in the hundreds of thousands, TV audiences in the millions, more than 50m albums sold, five Grammys. “The word ‘commercial’ is exactly what we want,” said the maestro, who also starred in TV ads for American Express. “If you want to use...something more derogatory, we don't care.”在自命不凡与孤芳自赏的领域，他还是一个自然的民粹主义者。他给 Met and Covent Garden带 去的歌剧的印象，就象意大利大众的“通心面”。拉里·金曾经向他探询过为精英阶层唱歌的意愿。“为什么音乐应该属于精英阶层？”他回了一句。帕瓦罗蒂继续 参加“娱乐今夜”和“周六夜现场”节目；在他的慈善音乐会上和埃尔顿·约翰与辣妹一起表演节目。当批评家轻蔑地称之为“popera”时，他猛烈地回击说，“如果你请歌星，你就能卖出去票”。他背后的数字包括：成百上千的现场听众，上百万的电视听众，售出去的超过5千万张的签名册，5项格来美奖。这位艺术大师说道：“商业化这个词就是我们想要的”，他还在美国快递公司的电视广告中担任主角。“如果你想要用….某些更加次的，我们不会关心的。”

To the frustration of his rivals, though they were gentlemanly about it, Pavarotti became the world's favourite tenor. He was the first opera star to be imitated, drunkenly, by legions of joyful or heartbroken football fans. Still crazy for football himself, he never minded. For all his frustrations, sulks and cancellations, a life spent bringing music to mankind was the greatest joy imaginable: singing, and then the crowd's adoration for his singing, as he jumped from the kitchen table and the cheese, the wine, the pasta and the sausages were lavishly spread before him.

就 他的竞争对手的沮丧来讲，虽然他们能很绅士风度地处之泰然，但是帕瓦罗蒂却成了世界上最受欢迎的男高音。他是首位被醉醺醺的高兴或者心碎的足球球迷军团模 仿的歌剧明星。他从不介意于自己一直以来对足球的狂热。他在挫折、不合作或者解约上消耗了一生，所能想象到的最大的快乐是把音乐带给人类：歌唱，然后是一 大群对他崇拜的人，当他从餐桌上跳下来时，奶酪，葡萄酒，意大利面和香肠等一大堆丰盛的食品在他面前展现开来。

信贷：当心奇迹疗法

Credit

Beware miracle cures当心奇迹疗法

Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Trust in the markets, not the politics依赖市场，而非政治

WHERE there is crisis, there is opportunity. That is something politicians surveying the wreckage of the subprime-mortgage crash know only too well. With America's Congress now back from its summer break, Democrats are scrambling to do something, anything, about the mess.

那里有危机，那里就有机会。这是那些审视次级债券风波的政客们清楚得不能再清楚的东西了。随着美国国会暑期休假的结束，民主党人又开始忙乎着为那一团乱麻做点什么，或者做任何能想象到的事。

Ideas are already piling up on the doormat like so many bailiff's letters: a rescue fund for borrowers, fines for unscrupulous lenders, federal regulation for state-supervised mortgage brokers and greater liability for buyers of mortgage-backed bonds. Wary of being outflanked, George Bush may extend mortgage insurance for some cash-strapped borrowers. Hearings starting this week are likely to lead to reams of further suggestions (see article). Some will be helpful, but most will probably do more harm than good.各种类似于行政许可证一样的建议已经在国会山的门槛前堆积如山：为借款人建立拯救基金，对不良放贷者罚款，对州调控的抵押经纪人实行联邦调控还有加大按揭抵押债券中买方责任等。乔治·布什谨慎地饶开各种阻碍，可能会延长部分现金借款的按揭保险。本周举行的听证会可能会导致进一步的建议书象雪花一样飞来。其中有些建议确有帮助，但是，大多数建议只会使事情变得更糟糕。

Nobody doubts things are bad out there. More than 2m homeowners face higher interest charges thanks to resets on adjustable-rate mortgages. Perhaps a quarter of them could lose their homes. Mortgage delinquencies have shaken global credit markets because yield-hungry investors piled into illiquid paper backed by risky loans. Banks far and wide are showing enduring signs of distress (see article). 没人会否认摆在眼前的状况很糟糕。超过200万屋主需要支付更高的房贷利息，原因在于抵押贷款的可调利率回升。他们中的四分之一可能会无家可归。由于渴求收益的投资者从风险投资领域撤回并进入不能立即兑现的证券领域，按揭贷款拖欠问题已经动摇了全球信贷市场。银行业广泛地显现出了持久的窘迫迹象。

So it is easy to see why the call for more regulation is tempting. But it is also easy to descend into caricature, portraying borrowers as victims of villainous banks, brokers, rating agencies and hedge funds. By one estimate, half of all subprime borrowers lied about their income. Many chose to ignore the risk that house prices might fall. Heaping all the blame on Wall Street and its clients ignores the role of broader forces. Ultra-low interest rates and Asia's savings glut provided much of the liquidity that inflated the bubble.

这就很容易明白，为什么呼吁更严格的调控显得那么有吸引力。但是这也很容易陷入漫画式的讽刺，即把借款人描述为道德败坏的银行、经纪人、评级机构和对冲基金的受害者。据估计，有多达一半的优等借款人在收入问题上撒谎。许多人宁可忽略房产价格可能下降的风险。却把谴责的矛头对准了华尔街和它那些忽略广泛影响力作用的客户。超低利率和亚洲的储蓄过剩提供了大量的流动资金，而这些流动资金又助长了通胀泡沫的形成。

Of course, nobody could suppose that today's regulation is fine just as it is. The failures in mortgages and the credit markets have revealed flaws. But two thoughts should stay the hands of over-eager reformers. Across the markets, self-correction is under way. Shares of the most egregious mortgage lenders have plunged and dozens have gone bust. Loan-underwriting standards are tighter. The riskiest subprime securities have almost no takers. These spasms are how the market cleans up its mistakes and learns not to repeat them. That sounds cold-hearted, but pain is a necessary part of this correction.

当 然，没人能料定现在的调控就是恰倒好处。按揭贷款市场和信贷市场上的失败刚好显示出其缺点。但是有两点想法应该能让过分热切的改革家踩一下刹车。整个市场 的自我调整正在进行。最惊人的抵押贷款贷方股票已经下降，还有数十家已经破产。贷款承保标准更加严格了。风险最高的次级证券几乎没有人持有。这些震荡是市 场修正其错误并学习不重复它们的手段。这听起来有点铁石心肠，但是疼痛是调整所必须的一部分。

When politicians seek to deaden that pain and supplant those lessons with hasty fixes of their own, they almost always blunder. Look at the Sarbanes-Oxley act, pushed through Congress in the turbulent aftermath of Enron's collapse. Although it was not all bad, the law placed a straitjacket on companies and their auditors which was so tight that it has since had to be loosened. And consider the proposal today, backed by Senator Charles Schumer, that a “suitability” standard be applied when a subprime loan is made. This may cut the risk of default, but it would also make it difficult for anyone with a blemish on his record to get a mortgage. Surely the legislators do not mean to heap still more pain on to the poor?

当政客们用自己草率的补丁，尝试着去寻找缓和这种疼痛和替代这个教训的方法时，他们几乎总是在犯错误。看看萨班斯-奥克斯利法案吧，安然公司轰动性的倒闭之后，法案才在国会获得通过。虽然这并不全是坏事，但是法律给企业和审计师穿了一个太紧的紧身衣，以至于现在不得不放松一点。再看看由参议员查尔斯·舒默现在支持的法案吧，当申请次级贷款，需要应用一个“合适性”标准。这可能会降低违约风险，但是对那些抵押贷款信用记录上有瑕疵的人来说，这使他们获取贷款变得困难了。立法机构确实无意再给穷人身上施加更多的痛苦么？

Slowly does it渐缓渐行

Rather than rushing into a bail-out of housing, politicians should give the financial authorities time to lean on the market. The government has a lousy record of doling out money in crises (think of the mess it has made in New Orleans). State-led rescues are fraught with moral hazard: what investor wouldn't take on that “liar loan”, knowing that the taxpayer is ready to jump in and help when it all goes wrong? Money should go first, and perhaps only, to those who can show they were defrauded or deceived. Encouragingly, American banking regulators this week issued guidance that should coax lenders to restructure bad debts, in part by offering to take a sympathetic view of the accounting hits that follow. Time, too, is the essential ingredient in reforming the capital markets, especially the conduct of the rating agencies, the whipping boys of the crisis right now (see article).

政客们应该给予金融界权威人士时间对市场充分了解，这比匆忙分发房产“优先股”要好的多。政府在发放救济物资方面有个声名狼藉的记录(想想它在新奥尔良州搞的那一团糟就知道了)。州引导的救援却充满了道德上的风险：投资者会不会使用“欺骗贷款”手段，当所有一切都不对头的时候，明知纳税人准备跳进陷阱，却还要推他们一把？也许仅对能够证明确实被欺诈或欺骗的放贷者来说，现金应该是首要手段。令人欣慰的是，美国银行监管机构本周发布指导意见，通过随后附录的统计采样数据，向贷款机构表达了一些同情的意见，并劝说贷款机构重组坏帐。在重整资本市场，特别是联邦证券评级机构的调控和危机的替罪羊的诸多因素中，时机也是非常重要的因素。

Above all, if legislators want to avoid unintended consequences, they should prefer information to regulation. Brokers who are getting three times the normal commission rate for selling an exotic subprime product should have to disclose that. They should also be made to spell out the terms of interest-rate resets more clearly to borrowers. And other financial markets might be less prone to catching mortgage flu if the off-balance-sheet “conduits” that buy wads of asset-backed securities had to reveal more about their exposures.

首 先，如果立法者想要避免意想不到的后果，他们应该宁可信任信息而非监管。经纪人以三倍予正常委托率出售额外最优产品，就应该把这个信息公布出来。他们还应 该向借款人讲清楚利率调节的因果关系。如果资产负债表显示购买了大量资产支持型证券，那么这个“渠道”就已经展现了更多有关其风险的信息，这样其他金融市 场估计会有更少机会去赶按揭贷款的潮流了。

Politicians say they want to help. What the financial system needs just now is the rarest of political virtues: self-restraint.

政客们说他们想要提供帮助。但是金融系统缺少的恰恰是政治上最缺乏的优点：自制。

两性与心理学：教育之反戈

Psychology and the sexes

两性与心理学

Nurture strikes back 教育之反戈

Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Some sex differences that look biological are really cultural

部分看起来属于生物学领域的性别差异实际上属于文化领域。

ONCE upon a time, the only ideologically acceptable explanations of mental differences between men and women were cultural. Any biologist who dared to suggest in public that perhaps evolution might work differently on the sexes, and that this might perhaps result in some underlying neurological inequalities, was likely to get tarred and feathered.

曾经有一段时期，男女两性之间思维上的差异在思想上唯一可接受的解释是文化影响。任何敢公开宣称进化历程可能以不同的方式作用于男女两性，并进而可能产生神经学上的不平等的生物学家，都有可能受到公开的嘲笑和奚落。

Today, by contrast, biology tends to be an explanation of first resort in matters sexual. So it is salutary to come across an experiment which shows that a newly discovered difference which fits easily, at first sight, into the biological-determinism camp, actually does not belong there at all.

现在，与此形成对比的是，生物学通常是解释性别问题的首要手段。无意中发现的一个实验表明，初次发现的差异性乍看起来或许能和生物决定论非常完美地吻合在一起，但是实际上根本就不是那回事儿。此举有益无害。

Writing in Psychological Science, a team led by Ian Spence of the University of Toronto describes a test performed on people's ability to spot unusual objects that appear in their field of vision. Success at spatial tasks like this often differs between the sexes (men are better at remembering and locating general landmarks; women are better at remembering and locating food), so the researchers were not surprised to discover a discrepancy between the two. The test asked people to identify an “odd man out” object in a briefly displayed field of two dozen otherwise identical objects. Men had a 68% success rate. Women had a 55% success rate.

《心理学》杂志报道说，由加拿大多伦多大学伊恩·思朋斯领导的一个小组进行了一个测试，展示人们辨认出现在他们视野中的不同寻常的物体的能力。类似的空间测试成绩通常因性别不同而成绩军迥异。(在记忆和寻找普通标志方面男性做的更优秀；而女性则在记忆和寻找食品上更有优势。)因而研究人员对在两者之间发现的差异性并不感到奇怪。测验要求人们从二十多个同类其他事物的简短展示中标记出一个“怪人出局”的目标。结果是男性成功率为68%。女性为55%。

Had they left it at that, Dr Spence and his colleagues might have concluded that they had uncovered yet another evolved difference between the sexes, come up with a “Just So” story to explain it in terms of division of labour on the African savannah, and moved on. However, they did not leave it at that. Instead, they asked some of their volunteers to spend ten hours playing an action-packed, shoot-'em-up video game, called “Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault”. As a control, other volunteers were asked to play a decidedly non-action-packed puzzle game, called “Ballance”, for a similar time. Both sets were then asked to do the odd-man-out test again.

要是他们就此而止，思朋斯博士和他的同事可能会得出结论，他们已经发现了两性之间在进化上的另一个的差异，紧接着以“仅止如此”的口气，用非洲热带草原上的劳动分工术语来解释这一现象，然后继续其他研究。然而，他们没有就此搁置不理。反倒是，他们要求一些志愿者花十个小时玩激烈的枪战光盘游戏，《荣誉勋章——太平洋袭击》。作为对照，其他志愿者被要求玩结果清晰明了的猜谜游戏，《Ballance》，两者所花时间相同。随后两组人都被要求重做“怪人出局”的测试。

Among the Ballancers, there was no change in the ability to pick out the unusual. Among those who had played “Medal of Honour”, both sexes improved their performances.

玩猜谜游戏的那组人，指出不同之处的能力没有变化。但是玩《荣誉勋章》的那组人，两性都提高了测验成绩。

That is not surprising, given the different natures of the games. However, the improvement in the women was greater than the improvement in the men—so much so that there was no longer a significant difference between the two. Moreover, that absence of difference was long-lived. When the volunteers were tested again after five months, both the improvement and the lack of difference between the sexes remained. Though it is too early to be sure, it looks likely that the change in spatial acuity—and the abolition of any sex difference in that acuity—induced by playing “Medal of Honour” is permanent.

给予两种性质不同的游戏并没有多少奇特之处。然而女性成绩提高的分数要远大于男性——大得以至于在两性之间不再有明显的区别。除此之外，差异的消失还是长期性的。5个月之后，当志愿者再次接受测试时，两性之间的成绩改善和缺乏差异性的现象仍然存在。这简直让人难以难以置信，似乎由《荣誉勋章》所激发的空间上的敏锐性——那种敏锐性状态下的任何性别差异的消失——是永久性的。

That has several implications. One is that playing violent computer games can have beneficial effects. Another is that the games might provide a way of rapidly improving spatial ability in people such as drivers and soldiers. And a third is that although genes are important, upbringing matters, too.

这有几种隐含的可能性。一个是玩暴力游戏能获得有益收获。另一个可能性是游戏提供了一个快速提高空间辨认能力的方法，例如司机和士兵。第三可能性是，虽然基因很重要，但是，教育同样重要。

In this instance, exactly which bit of upbringing remains unclear. Perhaps it has to do with the different games that boys and girls play. But without further research, that suggestion is as much of a “Just So” story as those tales from the savannah.

在这个事例中，到底有多少教育因素仍然不是很清楚。或许需要研究男性和女性玩的不同的游戏才知道。但是，如果没有更进一步的研究，这个结论就只能和许许多多的热带草原上“仅止如此”的故事面临同样结局。

朴告：飞行器的设计人保罗·麦克格雷迪

Paul MacCready

Sep 6th 2007

From The Economist print edition

Paul MacCready, designer of flying machines, died on August 28th, aged 81

飞行器的设计人保罗·麦克格雷迪于八月二十八日去世，享年81岁

ICARUS did it with feathers glued together with wax; he flew too near the sun and plummetted into the sea. Giovanni Battista Danti tried it with pinions of iron and feathers in 15th-century Perugia, hurtling over the piazza and crash-landing on the church. Charles Bernouin in 1672 in Regensburg strapped a rocket to himself, as well as calico wings. His novel jet propulsion merely meant that he broke his neck, rather than his legs.

希腊神话中的伊卡罗斯曾经把蜂蜡和羽毛粘到一起进行飞行，的但是他飞得离太阳太近坠海而亡。15世纪意大利佩鲁贾的乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯·但丁用铁翼和羽毛尝试飞行，他掠过广场摔落在教堂顶上。1672年查尔斯·贝尔努安在雷根斯堡把火箭炮和布质的翅膀绑在自己身尝试飞行。他新奇的喷射推动力只能意味着折断脖子而非双腿。

Paul MacCready's Gossamer Condor, which made the first successful human-powered flight as recently as 1977, was some improvement on these. It was made of aluminium tubing, Mylar and piano wire, with a weird horizontal stabiliser poking from the front like the head of a stork. It weighed 70lb (32kg), with a wingspan of 96 feet (29 metres), and the engine inside it was a lean, determined cyclist called Bryan Allen, pedalling for all he was worth. Sheer perseverance got him five feet off the ground for about a mile (1.6km) round a figure-of-eight course, and won Mr MacCready the first of many prizes.

保罗·麦克格雷迪的“幻影神鹰号”却在飞行领域取得突破，它完成了自1977年以来首例成功的人力驱动飞行。这个飞行器由铝质管材、聚酯薄膜和钢琴丝制成，前端伸出来一个活象鹳的脑袋的怪异的水平稳定器。它重701磅(32kg)，翼展96英尺(29米)，内部引擎是踩脚踏车的布赖恩·艾伦，他身材削瘦，被固定在里面，竭尽全力地踩脚踏板。超人的毅力使他离开地面绕了一个八字形的路径，并为麦克格雷迪赢得了首笔大额奖金。

Money was his only motivation, he said later. Because the prize offered for this feat by Henry Kremer, a British industrialist, exactly matched a debt Mr MacCready had to discharge, he had started to think about flying machines and how to make them more efficient. But this offhand explanation was not strictly true. He had been fascinated by wings, and by flying, all his life.

他后来说，奖金是他唯一的动机。麦克格雷迪当时正好有一份债务已到清偿期，而这个由英国实业家亨利·克莱默提供奖金的技艺表演恰好能使他摆脱困境。于是他开始着手研究飞行器并考虑如何使之更有效率。不过这个搪塞的解释并不完全正确。他的一生都为翅膀和飞翔而神魂颠倒。

It began with moths and butterflies. As a boy, he collected them on the Connecticut shore and pored over the exquisite studies of John Henry and Anna Botsford Comstock, two 19th-century naturalists, to explore the evolution and the vein-structure of the wings of lepidoptera. Nerdy already, small and unsporty, he then buried himself in making and flying model aircraft: fixed-wing and flapping-wing, out of a kit or out of his head, propelled with rubber bands or with tiny petrol engines. Again, he won prizes. The boy who posed proudly for the camera with a balsa-wood glider and a silver cup grew naturally into the inventor whose chief joy was to make wings ever lighter and ever larger.

这 个爱好是从对蛾子和蝴蝶的兴趣开始的。孩童时代，他在康涅狄格州的海滨收集这些昆虫，钻研十九世纪博物学家约翰·亨利和安娜·博茨福得·康斯托克精美绝伦 的研究，尝试去探寻鳞翅类生物的翅膀演化规律及其纹理构造。早期形成的书呆子气、矮小的身材，再加上不喜欢运动，这诸多原因使他索性沉浸于制造和试飞定翼 或扑翼飞行模型。这些模型用机械或者手工制造，推动力有橡皮筋也有微型汽油发动机。他又一次赢得了奖励。那个带着轻木滑翔机手拿银杯得意地为照相机摆姿势 的男孩自然而然地长成了一个发明家，他最大的兴趣是制造越来越轻巧、越来越巨大的机翼。

Birds were always his chief instructors. Daydreaming in summer, looking upwards, he noticed that the larger birds, hawks and eagles, could stay aloft for longer, riding thermals with supreme elegance without flapping their wings. When they needed to turn, they would tilt their wings to bank higher, preserving the lift and using almost no energy. Mr MacCready applied the same principles to his human-powered machines. The wider the wingspan, he calculated, the less power would be needed to fly; with wings of 100 feet or so, the 0.3 of horsepower produced by a cyclist would get him airborne and keep him there as long as his legs could last. Another such craft, the Gossamer Albatross, all carbon fibre and polystyrene wrapped in polyester film, flew 22 miles across the English Channel in 1979, barely clearing the waves while Mr MacCready urged it on from a boat.

禽 鸟是他的主要灵感来源。在消夏的时候，仰望天空，他注意到大一点的鸟儿，例如鹰和隼，能乘着热气流在高空中不拍打翅膀极其优雅地逗留很久。当它们需要转向 的时候，它们会向一边略高地倾斜翅膀，这几乎不花费能量却能保持高度不变。麦克格雷迪把这个机理运用到了他的人力驱动飞行器上。他通过计算得出结论：翼展 越宽，飞行所需要的动力就越小；在翼展到达100英尺左右的时候，一个踩脚踏车的人产生0.3马力的功率就可以使他飞起来，并在空中呆到他的腿无法再继续支撑的时候。另一个同类飞行器“幻影信天翁”于1979年穿越英吉利海峡飞行了22英里，它由带聚酯膜涂层的碳纤维和聚苯乙烯材料构成。当麦克格雷迪从小船上督促“幻影信天翁”起飞的时候，乎没有激起水面上的任何波纹。

Banking on sunbeams 收集太阳的光芒

There were other ways, too, to fly. Mr MacCready fitted one of his aircraft with an umbrella-panel of leftover photovoltaic cells; they provided 400 watts of extra power. He then produced with DuPont the first plane powered entirely by the sun, the Solar Challenger, which in 1981 flew the 163 miles from Paris to Canterbury at a height of 11,000 feet. “Flying on sunbeams”, he liked to call it. The folk at NASA got interested, and for them he produced giant unmanned solar wings, 200 feet across, which could stay above 50,000 feet for six months at a time to track environmental changes or to spy. Spying could be done, too, with the tiny “drones” he invented, based on bumble bees, with a six-inch (15cm) wingspan and video cameras inside them.

其他的方法同样能进行飞行。麦克格雷迪曾把一个飞行器进行改进，把它和废弃的光电电池伞状配电板装备在一起；那些电池能提供高达400瓦的电源。后来他和杜邦制造了第一架完全由太阳光提供动力的飞机——“日光挑战者”，1981年这架飞行器从巴黎起飞，在11000英尺高空飞行了163英里，最后到达坎特伯雷。他喜欢称那为“日光飞翔”。美国航空航天局的家伙们对此颇有兴趣，对他们来讲，他制造了巨大的无人太阳能机翼。它有200英尺长，能在50000英尺的高空中停留一段时间，对环境变化进行跟踪调查，或者进行高空监视。他还以翁翁叫的蜜蜂为原型发明了微型“雄峰”飞行器，它同样能实施监视任务。这个飞行器只有六英寸翼展(15cm)，还内置了一个摄象机。

Realistic, businesslike and, according to friends, with a bit of a Scottish streak, Mr MacCready knew that most of his inventions were impractical. In his mind his company, AeroVironment, which he ran for more than 30 years, was dealing mostly in ideas. People were not going to pedal their planes themselves. Nor were they going to want solar-powered cars, even though Mr MacCready's version, the Sunraycer, won a race of almost 2,000 miles across the Australian desert. The point was to set people thinking about energy efficiency, to inspire the young to take up science, and to experiment for the joy of it.

按照他朋友们的看法，麦克格雷迪是个实事求是的、就事论事的人，有时候还带点苏格兰人的味道。他明白他的大部分发明都不切实际。他自认为，他运营了30多年的公司AeroVironment主要依赖于信念。人们不会去亲自踩动他们的飞机。也不会想要太阳能汽车，即使麦克格雷迪的太阳能汽车“太阳射线”能在穿越澳大利亚沙漠接近2000英里的比赛中获得冠军。他认为关键在于让人们去思考能源效率问题，去激励年轻人从事科学研究，并从中感受到快乐。

At the end of his life, still fascinated by the potential of everything, Mr MacCready began to dream about kites: big kites, kept aloft indefinitely about 1,000 feet up, to extract the “huge energy” from high-altitude winds, to monitor acoustic signals and perhaps even to provide thrust to vehicles on the ground.

在他晚年，仍然迷恋于各式各样的潜能。麦克格雷迪开始对风筝着了魔：使大风筝长期保持在1000英尺的高空，抽取出高空空气中的“巨大能量”，用这些能量控制声波信号，甚至也许能为陆地上的车辆提供推进力。

For him, it was a return to an old delight, soaring and sailing among the clouds. As a student, he had studied the turbulence inside them; as a champion glider in the 1940s and 1950s he had learned to ride on ridges, waves and thermals and had invented a gadget, the MacCready Ring, which showed the optimum speed to fly to avoid losing height between them. After a time, he had found the sport too risky. But at the age of 79 he spryly announced that he would take it up again: still the nearest thing humans have to the carefree flight of birds.穿梭于云间自由的翱翔，对他来讲是重新找回久违的欢乐。学生时代他就研究过内置的涡轮机；1940到1950年代，他得过滑翔冠军，知道怎样在山脊上空滑翔，懂得如何在波浪与暖流中穿梭，那时候他发明了MacCready圈，这个小装置指示出飞行的最佳速度，以免失去对海拔高度的把握。过了一段时间，他感到这项运动太过冒险。但是在他79岁的时候，他精神抖擞地宣布将要重归这项运动：象鸟一样自由自在的飞翔仍然是人们最希望做的事。