11月 14 2008
《时代》杂志记者 Platon 向 Leo Benedictus 回忆他在2007年底前往莫斯科拍摄俄罗斯总统普京肖像的过程。Platon 说普京肖像是他最好的作品。
Platon’s best shot
‘There were snipers everywhere. Putin saw my tears and said: I’ll do it’
* Leo Benedictus
* The Guardian, Thursday November 13 2008
Vladimir Putin hates having his portrait taken. But when Time magazine made him its Man of the Year for 2007 he said he would grant an interview. So then there was this big question: would he pose for a photograph?
11月 13 2008
英国作家 JK Rowling 在《生日图册》(The Birthday Book)中介绍她最喜欢的生日故事，选择她自己的作品《哈利·波特与致命圣灵》(Harry Potter and Deathly Hollows)中的一段：哈利·波特即将独自面对伏地魔(Voldemort)。
JK Rowling on Harry Potter’s last, long walk
The author introduces her favourite scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this extract from The Birthday Book, a treasury of children’s stories and poems
* JK Rowling
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 13 2008 11.19 GMT
Harry Potter by Quentin Blake Harry Potter in the Dark Forest. Illustration by Quentin Blake, copyright © JK Rowling 2008
I admit that, at first glance, the extract I’ve chosen for The Birthday Book might not seem particularly celebratory, given that it has for its subject my hero walking to what he believes will be certain death. But when Harry takes his last, long walk into the heart of the Dark Forest, he is choosing to accept a burden that fell on him when still a tiny child, in spite of the fact that he never sought the role for which he has been cast, never wanted the scar with which he has been marked. As his mentor, Albus Dumbledore, has tried to make clear to Harry, he could have refused to follow the path marked out for him. In spite of the weight of opinion and expectation that singles him out as the “Chosen One”, it is Harry’s own will that takes him into the Forest to meet Voldemort, prepared to suffer the fate that he escaped sixteen years before.
11月 11 2008
Harriet Swain 教大学生如何与人交际。这是她 How to be a student 系列中的一篇。
The art of networking
* Harriet Swain
* The Guardian, Tuesday November 11 2008
Networking is easy if you’re beautiful, rich or the prime minister. Fulfil any of those criteria and you can leave the active bit to other people while you sit back and net whoever takes your fancy. If, on the other hand, you’re none of these things, you’ll need to work at it.
11月 10 2008
《卫报》作者 Laura Barton 介绍一幅在奥巴马竞选过程采用最多，由街头艺术家 Shepard Fairey 创作的海报招贴(组图)。
Hope – the image that is already an American classic
o Laura Barton
o guardian.co.uk, Monday November 10 2008 00.01 GMT
The iconic image of the US presidential election is a screenprint measuring 85x55cm on woven paper showing Barack Obama above the word “HOPE”. Created by street artist Shepard Fairey, it has cropped up across America and, though not officially commissioned by the Obama campaign, on November 5 it hung around Chicago accompanied by the message “Congratulations Chicago’s Own Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States of America.”
11月 07 2008
今天 Alexander Chancellor 的专栏文章把布什比作一个小孩把自己的玩具全部砸烂后，让另一个小孩接着玩。
Bush is like a child who has smashed up his toys inviting another to come and play in his nursery
Alexander Chancellor
“Go enjoy yourself,” said President Bush in his congratulatory telephone call to Barack Obama on election night. It was like a child who has just smashed up all his toys inviting another to come and play in his nursery. To inherit two wars and a broken economy would not be most people’s idea of fun. But that’s pig-headed Bush for you.
11月 06 2008
《卫报》驻美国专栏作家 Gary Younge 在奥巴马获胜时回顾美国黑人的艰辛历史。
Journey of generations that passed in a moment
* Gary Younge in Chicago
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 6 2008 00.01 GMT
There are times when the usually glacial pace of social progress accelerates to such a degree that you feel you are experiencing it in real time. Stand in the present and history comes rushing towards you, making you feel lightheaded.
The second that Ohio fell to Barack Obama on Tuesday evening, effectively handing him the keys to the White House, was one of those dizzying moments. A man born three years before African-Americans had secured their right to vote had risen by popular acclaim to the highest office in the land before he reached 50.
A political journey that should take generations felt as though it had occurred in a moment.
11月 04 2008
Marc Abrahams 是双月刊《不可思议的研究》(Annals of Improbable Research)主编和 “搞笑诺贝尔奖”Ig Nobel Prize组织者。他为《卫报》写的专栏就叫”不可思议的研究”(Improbable Research)。今天的专栏介绍了三位英国巴斯大学的研究者对啄木鸟身体结构的研究。
How Woody the living hammer hit the spot
Improbable research into how to make a better, lighter hammer involved two mechanical engineering students carrying out a post-mortem on a dead woodpecker
* Marc Abrahams
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday November 4 2008
While others tried to build a better computer or teapot or mousetrap, Julian FV Vincent, Mehmet Necip Sahinkaya and W O’Shea of the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Bath tried to build a better hammer. Unlike most previous hammer smiths, they studied woodpeckers. Why? Because to mechanical engineers, when they are in a certain frame of mind, a woodpecker is nature’s finest version of a hammer.
11月 04 2008
今天《卫报》邀请了几位美国作家以”大选之后的早晨”为主题写一篇短篇小说。这里是最短的一篇，也是想像最狂野的一篇，作者是 Harry Shearer, 小说 Not Enough Indians 的作者，还是电视剧Simpsons 中 Mr Burns 等角色的配音。有兴趣的可以阅读和翻译所有五篇小说。
Harry Shearer
November 5, 2008, was the best of times and the worst of times for Senator John McCain. Eking out a surprise electoral-college victory in the presidential election he was favoured to lose, McCain was taking a victory lap around his Sedona, Arizona, compound when, complaining of chest pains, he texted his wife Cindy. What turned out to be his final message was: “Sell Budweiser stock.”
10月 31 2008
《卫报》邀请了一批美国作家、艺术家谈谈布什的8年对他们创作生活的影响。以下这段是美国小说家 Paul Auster 的文章。
I’m hard-pressed to think of a single thing the Bush administration has done to promote the arts. Things have gone on as before: novelists are writing books, people read them or don’t read them, movies are being made and people go or don’t go, artists are painting pictures, people are making music. I don’t see that the Bush people have affected the cultural landscape that much.
10月 30 2008
Keith Stuart 在这里谈的是电脑游戏中人工智能(AI)控制的角色之间的对话。
Turning dumb dialogue into intelligent conversation
o Keith Stuart
o The Guardian,
o Thursday October 30 2008
In 1950, when the mathematician Alan Turing set out to tackle the question “Can machines think?” the intellectual litmus paper he settled on was conversation. The Turing test – in which an AI program attempts to fool judges into believing they are conversing with a human – has never been passed, though two weeks ago, a program named Elbot came close.
