Another Thoreau Lesson 梭羅的另一課

Robert Lee Hotz/The Wall Street Journal
June 13, 2008; Page A10
英翻中: Me
Posted: Oct. 6, 2008
===============

CONCORD, Mass. -- Following in the footsteps of Thoreau, Richard Primack stalked the wildflowers of Walden Pond, seeking in the first blooms of spring the signature of a changing climate.
Taking inventory while he walked, the Boston University biologist recorded in his water-stained field journal the appearance of pink mayflowers and lavender azaleas that brightened the pond-bank path. He plucked a sprig of wild greenbrier and ate it. Then he strode off the path through a shaded stand of pitch pine and oak, in pursuit of the yellow-eyed grass, golden ragwort and dwarf dogwood still on his checklist of first flowers.

麻州，康可 (Concord)—理查．普利馬克（Richard Primack) 追隨著梭羅 (Henry David Thoreau) 的腳步，一步一步的跟蹤著華登湖 (Walden Pond) 畔的野花，找尋各種花在春天的初現﹣那是氣候改變的象徵。粉紅色的山楂和淡紫色的杜鵑明媚了湖畔的景色；這位波士頓大學 (Boston University) 的生物學家一面走一面把所觀察到的仔細的登錄在他水漬斑斑的野外日誌上。他順手摘下一片野生的綠薔薇放入口裡吃，離開小徑，穿越一片蔭幽的多脂松樹與橡樹，去尋找黃眼草，金色的劉寄奴，和侏儒種的山茱庾﹣這些都是初春最早開花的種類，都是他計劃要一一拜訪的。

At the end of this day in late May, Dr. Primack added these notes to a unique archive he has assembled of botanical and wildlife observations that so far encompass 155 years of seasonal changes in Concord, Mass. In an effort to trace the influence of global warming, he has added his own records of the first spring blooms of common plant species around Walden Pond since 2004 to flowering times that date back to 1852.

在五月的這一天結束時， 普利馬克博士把當日所見記入他那本獨特的檔案簿裡。在這個檔案裡，他收集了麻州康可過去 155 年來在換季時節，野生動植物的觀察記錄。他從 2004 年開始記錄華登湖常見的植物在早春開花的時間。希望藉由比較自 1852 年以來春季開花的時間，能夠對全球暖化的影嚮有進一步的瞭解。

The archive is based on the voluminous notes about 700 plant species at Walden kept by 19th-century naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who made this dark azure kettle-hole pond famous through his books and essays. Thoreau died, however, before he could publish his detailed observations of local wildflowers and wildfowl.

這個檔案起始於十九世紀的博物學家梭羅。他仔細的觀察華登湖附近大約 700 種植物並留下大量的記錄。他所寫的書和許多散文使得這個蔚藍的湖聞名世界。可惜他未能在死前將他對當地野花和野禽的觀察公諸於世。

In his own way, Thoreau was an instinctive climatologist. Subtle changes in animal and plant behavior documented today in the microcosm of Walden Pond, Dr. Primack and his colleagues believe, offer a preview of seasonal shifts expected in warming urban areas across North America in the century to come.

以某個角度看來，梭羅也是氣象學家。據推測在下個世紀，橫貫北美洲，逐漸暖化的都市區將有季節上的變遷。 普利馬克等人相信目前在華登湖這個具體而微的小世界裡所觀察到的各種動植物行為上微妙的變化可以讓我們預窺那些變遷。

These changes are revealed in the earlier blooming of the wild geranium, the Pink Lady's Slipper and black cherry, among others. All told, Dr. Primack and his colleagues are monitoring the behavior of 43 plant species and 22 bird species first singled out by Thoreau. "It is the spring species that are most sensitive to climate change," he said.

野生的天竺葵，貴婦的紅拖鞋，和黑櫻的提早開花是這些變遷其中幾個例子。普利馬克等人密切的觀察梭羅當初所特別列出的 43 種植物和 22 種鳥類。他說：「春天出現的動植物對氣候變遷特別敏感。」

New England weather records suggest that the average temperature of a Concord spring has increased by approximately 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since Thoreau's day, due to global climate change and urbanization. In response, spring flowers in Concord today are blooming on average seven days earlier than in the 1850s.

美國新英格蘭區（New England）的氣候記錄顯示，由於全球性的暖化和都市化，從梭羅的時代至今，平均氣溫已增高了華氏 4.5 度 （譯者註：約攝氏 2.5 度）。因此，現在康可的花比 1850 年代平均早了七天開花。

Yet in any one year, seasonal variations mask longer-term trends. In the spring of 2007, Concord was unusually warm; this spring it was unusually cool. In 2006, the golden ragwort first bloomed on May 26, Dr. Primack observed; this year it flowered three days earlier. "For reasons we don't understand, black cherries this year are late," he said.

但是年年的季節都不完全一樣，這些差異讓我們很難看出長期的趨勢。2007 年康可的春天出奇的暖和；今春卻出奇的涼爽。據普利馬克的觀察，金色的劉寄奴（ golden ragwort ）在2006年開花於五月26日；今年比它早了三天。他說：「不知什麼原因，今年的黑櫻花開倒是遲了。」

As diplomats and regulators debate the economics of limiting greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, many researchers have been assessing how plants and animals adapted to the 20th century's rising global average temperatures.

外交家與政府當局立法家還在辯論是否該限制造成全球暖化的溫室氣體，還在辯論其優缺點。科學家卻早已動手評估各種動植物如何適應 20 世紀全球的暖化。

For the first time last month, an international team led by NASA researchers formally linked physical and biological differences on a continental scale to human-induced climate change. In research published in Nature, the scientists pulled together findings about changes since 1970 in the behavior of 28,800 plant and animal species. "The warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable on a global scale," reported lead researcher Cynthia Rosenzweig at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University.

以美國國家太空總署 （ NASA ）為首，成員包括各國科學家的一個團隊，於上個月首次將整個大陸生物行為和實質上的改變正式的歸疚於因人類的所作所為而產生的氣候之變化。他們在 “自然“ （Nature“) 上發表的論文中，詳列了自 1970 年來，28,800 種動植物行為上的改變。研究團隊的首席，太空總署的加德太空研究所 （ Goddard Institute for Space Studies）的 Cynthia Rosenzweig 在哥倫比亞大學 （ Columbia University）宣稱：「世界性的暖化對全球的生物造成實質上的衝擊。」

In England, plants now flower up to a month earlier than 50 years ago. Across Europe, leaves emerge an average of six days earlier than they did 30 years ago, records show.

在英格蘭，植物比 50 年前早了一個月開花。證據顯示，全歐洲皆然，樹葉比 30 年前平均早了六天萌芽。

Even so, studies based on a few decades of observations are too short to capture the cause and effect of climate change. Seeking the long view, Dr. Primack and his colleagues thought of Concord, easily the most intensively studied habitat in North America, thanks to Thoreau and the legions of amateur naturalists he inspired.

但是幾十年蒐集的證據實不足以捕捉氣候變遷的因果關係。 普利馬克團隊因此想到了康可。多虧梭羅和受他鼓舞的許多業餘博物學家，康可毫無疑問是北美洲被研究的最透徹的自然棲息地。

Long-term written records suitable for climate studies are rare in North America, but in Concord, botanists had completely catalogued the plants around Walden several times in the past century. The challenge was to find modern bird records that could be linked reliably to those kept by Thoreau.

在北美洲很難找到長期的記錄來研究氣候的變遷。但是過去這百年來，植物學家已經把華登湖附近的所有植物一遍又一遍，完完整整的科學歸類了。問題在能不能把現在的鳥類記錄連上梭羅的記錄。

Word of mouth in Concord eventually led them to Rosie Corey, a reticent, 77-year-old former grade-school teacher. She has kept unusually accurate records of local wildfowl behavior for 58 years. Elated by their find, they adopted her birding journals as a baseline for the timing of bird migrations during the past half-century.

他們在康可到處打聽，找到了 Rosie Corey 女士。她沉默寡言，芳齡77歲，原是小學老師，今已退休。過去 58 年來，她不孜不倦的記錄當地的野禽的行為；她的記錄出奇的正確。整個團隊驚喜慶幸，並採用她的觀鳥日誌做基準﹣﹣過去半個世紀候鳥遷徙的時間從此有了基準。

Seated at her dining room table, Ms. Corey opened one volume for a visitor. "It is a very dull account of my daily life, that I did laundry or that someone called me up or that I went downtown shopping -- or that I went walking and what I saw," she said. "If you have a sense of history and a sense of order, you like to keep a list."

Corey 女士坐在飯桌前，翻開一本記錄簿給訪客看。她說：「只是平鋪直述我不足為奇的日常生活，洗了衣服，有客來訪，去城裡買東西等等﹣或是出去散步看到些什麼。如果你喜歡歷史，喜歡生活中有點規律，你總會把這些事寫下來。」

She had written each entry in small letters, so that her day could fit on one page of her birder's book of hours. She supplemented entries with formal lists of bird sightings. The result aptly documented a New England life defined by borders and boundaries. As poet Robert Frost once ruminated, good fences make good neighbors. She turned down most invitations for company on her bird-walks, she said. She'd rather hike alone. "A flaw in my character, I suppose," she said.

為了要保持一天一頁的觀鳥記錄，她用小小的字體寫下她的觀察，並且每一次看到鳥的時間都正式列表而讓她的觀鳥記錄更為完整。結果呢，新英格蘭的生活由此有了恰當的定界。詩人佛洛斯特 （Robert Frost）深刻的反省說，不多管閒事的是好鄰居。有人要陪她散步觀鳥時，她總是婉拒；她寧可獨來獨往。她說：「大概是我性格上的缺陷吧。」

Outside her window, an indigo bunting was singing. An entry from Thoreau's journal came to mind: "I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home," he wrote in January 1857. "I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful."

窗外一隻靛青鳥唱著歌。我不禁想起梭羅日誌上，在1857 年一月的某天所寫的一句話：「就像思鄉的人歸鄉一般，我回到我孤獨自處的林中散步。我就此屏棄了膚淺的表象而看到了美麗壯觀的自然。」

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How Did Life on Earth Get Started? 地球上的生命是如何開始的呢？

By Brian Vastag
Posted July 24, 2008
US News and World Report Tuesday, August 12, 2008

翻譯：Me; Sep. 16/2008

On an arid outcropping of basalt in northwestern Australia, some of the oldest rocks on Earth lie exposed to the fierce sun. Formed at the bottom of an ancient ocean, this volcanic material shelters what one scientist calls the "oldest robust evidence" of life. At a scientific meeting at Rockefeller University in May, Roger Buick of the University of Washington said that the 3.5 billion-year-old rocks hold traces of carbon that once made up living organisms.

澳洲西北部，一脈玄武岩礦裸露在嚴厲的日晒下；這是地球上最老的岩石之一。它是遠古時海底火山爆發所形成的。一位科學家說它覆蓋著生命最古老及可靠的證據。今年五月在洛克菲洛大學 (Rockefeller University) 舉行的科學會議裡，華勝頓大學 (University of Washington) 的 Roger Buick 說，那片35 億年老的岩石中所含微量的碳曾是遠古生物的一部份。

Even before Buick's discovery, ample evidence indicated that life on Earth began while our 4.5 billion-year-old planet was very young. Simple organisms certainly flourished between 2 billion and 3 billion years ago, and claims of older evidence of life have periodically surfaced. But none have been universally embraced, and Buick's claim is so new that other scientists haven't fully reviewed it.

甚至在 Buick 發現這一點以前，就有充份的證據顯示生命起源時，地球還很年輕。地球如今年屆 45 億年。科學家肯定，二，三十億年前簡單的生命已經很興旺。不時還有人宣稱有更老的證據，但沒有一個被普遍的接受。Buick 的論點仍然太新，科學界尚未對它有詳細的評論。

Yet even if the geologist is right about his rocks, his discovery would leave unanswered one of life's biggest mysteries: how life actually arose. While creationists attribute that spark of life to the hand of God, scientists are convinced there's a natural explanation. Yet as close as they've come to pinning it down, some admit the particulars may never be fully resolved. Others are convinced that we're edging closer to an answer and to settling one of the oldest and most contentious questions in science and religion.

就算地質學家肯定了這片岩脈，Buick 的發現仍然無法解釋生命最大的謎題：生命到底是如何開始的。創造論者 (Creationists) 把它歸因於上帝之手點燃了生命的火花；科學界卻認定必有大自然的解釋。雖然眼見謎底就要揭曉了，有些科學家承認，其中細節可能永遠無法解決。另些些科學家則確信，一滴一點的，宗教與科學之間最古老的，最激烈的爭論，就快有結論了。

To solve the riddle of genesis, biologists, astronomers, geologists, and chemists are attacking the problem from all angles even trying to re-create life from scratch. In recent years, institutions, including Harvard University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and McMaster University in Canada, have formed "origins" institutes to probe the deepest history of life on Earth and to search for life in the heavens. "The field is going through a mini renaissance," says chemical biologist Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

地球上的生命是如何開始的呢？生物學家，天文學家，地質學家，和化學家各從不同的角度在探討；有些甚至嘗試要用無生命的物質去創出生命來。近年來許多研究機構， 包括哈佛大學 (Harvard University)，喬治亞理工學院 (Georgia Institute of Technology)，和加拿大的 McMaster 大學，都已成立研究 “物種起源”的研究所來探討生命最原始的歷史並搜尋地球外的生命。位於加州 La Jolla 的 “Scripps 研究所 “ 的化學生物學家 Gerald Joyce 說：「這一行，目前正經歷著一個小型的文藝復興。」

According to scientists, life began when chemistry begat biology that is, when simple molecules assembled into more complex molecules that then began to self-replicate. But rocks that might harbor traces of such genesis events simply don't exist, says Buick. During Earth's opening act, space debris and cataclysmic volcanic upheavals destroyed the evidence, like an arsonist torching his tracks. The oldest known rocks are about 4 billion years old, yet even they formed roughly half a million millenniums after our planet's surface cooled and water first pooled into shallow seas. Scientists widely suspect that life began during that long, undocumented interval.

Theories about where and how life began range from the sublime to the bizarre. One camp says that deep-sea vents known as black smokers nurtured the first life. In the late 1970s, a team of researchers from Oregon State University unexpectedly discovered whole ecosystems thriving around a hot vent on the Pacific seafloor. Such vents, where molten rock from inside the Earth's mantle heats seawater to as much as 660 degrees Fahrenheit, could have provided the energy and basic organic molecules needed to spark life.

以科學的眼光看來，當化學反應導至生物行為時﹣也就是簡單的分子聚在一起形成複雜的分子並開始自我複製之時﹣也就是生命起源之時。 Buick 說 ，可惜，可能帶有創始生命蛛絲螞跡的岩石硬是不存在。地球早期，劇烈的火山爆發和隕石的撞擊，有如縱火者放火滅跡一樣，把所有的證據都已摧毀殆盡。我們所知最古老的岩石約是 40 億年老。在這之前約五億年，地球表面已經冷化，地表的水也已聚成淺海。科學界普遍相信，生命的形成正是在這段缺乏記錄的時期。

關於生命起源的理論形形種種，有些卓越超群，有些光怪離奇。有一派說，深海裡，俗稱黑煙囪的開孔養育出了第一個生命。1970 年代後期，奧勒岡州立大學 (Oregon State University) 的一組研究人員意外的在太平洋底一個高溫的開孔發現了幾個完整而生氣勃勃的生態系統。開孔附近，地殼下的熔岩把海水加熱到幾近華氏 660 度 (譯者註：約攝氏 350 度)；由此提供了點燃生命所需的有機分子和能量。

Another camp believes that ice, not boiling water, served as the cradle of life. Even the coldest ice contains seams of liquid. These watery pockets could have acted as test tubes for the earliest organic reactions. Experiments show that units of RNA, the genetic material that was probably the forerunner to better-known DNA, spontaneously string themselves together in ice, supporting this theory.

另一派認為冰，而不是滾水，才是生命的搖籃。即使是最冷的冰也含有薄層的液態水。他們猜測最初的有機反應可能是發生在這些薄層的水中。支持這派理論的證據：實驗顯示 ＲＮＡ 的確在冰中自然的結和在一起；ＲＮＡ 這種遺傳物質可能是ＤＮＡ的前身。

Still other scientists point to the skies. They argue that meteorites carrying amino acids and other important molecules seeded Earth with the necessary ingredient for life. Supporting the idea: high concentrations of amino acids inside meteorites found on Earth and in gas clouds in space. A wilder offshoot of this theory, called panspermia, suggests that whole bacteria life itself first evolved on Mars and then hitched a ride to Earth via small pieces of the Red Planet blasted here by asteroid or comet impacts. But no life has been found on Mars, and the one claim of fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite, made by NASA scientists in 1996, has been almost universally rejected.

還有其他科學家則把箭頭指向天空。含有胺基酸及其他重要分子的隕石把生命所需的成份下種在地球上。 支持這種觀念的證據：落在地球上的隕石及太空中的氣雲都含有高濃度的胺基酸。 Panspermia 是這派之想像力特別豐富的，他們的意見：細菌根本是發源於火星；小行星或大隕石的撞擊把火星的碎片帶到了地球。但是火星上尚未發現有生命。1996 年，美國國家太空總署 (NASA) 科學家聲稱在火星上的隕石發現細菌的化石；當今科學界普遍的不接授這個證據。

Perhaps the leading theory focuses on a much more prosaic realm: the slimy interface where the sea laps against land. If early oceans carried organic molecules and they most likely did the porous surfaces of shoreline minerals could have helped organize such building blocks into primitive structures. Eventually, these units could have replicated, forming thin films on the seashore rocks, says Robert Hazen, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

目前站上風的理論把注意力集中在比較平凡的地方：海水舔舐路地的那片泥濘。如果早期的海洋含帶有機分子，這個可能性很大，那麼海岸邊多孔的礦物質很可能促成那些建材形成原始的結構。到後來這些結構終於自我複製，並薄薄的覆蓋著岸上的岩石。這是 Robert Hazen 的意見；他在卡內基研究所 （ Carnegie Institution in Washington ）做研究。

Scientists favoring one or another theory have tried to boost their case by attempting to re-create the elements of life—and even life itself—from the bottom up. Such work sparked to life in 1953, when two researchers cooked up a "primordial soup" of amino acids. In their University of Chicago lab, they applied simulated lightning to a pair of flasks that contained, respectively, an oceanlike solution and an atmosphere rich in methane, water vapor, ammonia, and hydrogen. That experiment and subsequent ones showed that simple chemistry can transform nonorganic molecules into the building blocks of life.

地球上的生命是如何開始的呢？科學界有各式各樣的理論。科學家們各有偏好；為了替自己的理論提供更有力的證據，有些人嘗試從底層做起，從新創造生命的成份﹣甚至生命本身。這些嘗試在 1953 年暴出了火花：芝加哥大學 (University of Chicago) 的兩位研究人員把各種胺基酸摻在一起煮成 「原始湯」放入兩個 燒瓶；瓶中含有海水般的溶液並充滿了甲烷，水蒸氣，氨，和氫氣。然後用人造閃電去打擊它。這個實驗和往後追加的更多的實驗證明了簡單的化學反應就能把無機的分子轉變為生命的基本建材。

"The classic experiments done over a period of 50 years give us confidence that the building blocks would have been present," says Andrew Knoll, a paleontologist at Harvard University. "The big question is how do you go from there to something that can replicate itself." A pile of lumber, after all, is not a house.

哈佛大學古生物學家 Andrew Knoll 說：「過去 50 年來許多傑出的實驗確認了當初的確存在有生命的基本建材。問題在那些建材如何開始能自我複製。」必竟一堆木材離一棟房子還有一大段距離。

To understand how the transition might have occurred, a handful of scientists are striving to re-enact it in the lab. Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School is at the forefront of this work. In his lab, researchers fill test tubes with the barest ingredients of life, then watch the elements self-assemble into what look like primitive cells, hoping that they will begin replicating. "Sooner or later, life will be made in the lab," says Joyce, who performs similar experiments.

這個轉變是如何開始的呢？有那些可能性呢？一小撮科學家正在實驗室中努力的嘗試重演這個轉變的過程。 哈佛大學醫學院的 Jack Szostak 是其中先驅。在他的實驗室裡，研究人員把生命所必需，最原始的素材放進試管中，然後看著它們自己裝配成看來像是原始細胞的東西；並期待它們能自我複製。Joyce 是另一位做類似研究的科學家。他說：「遲早人類會有能力在實驗室中造出生命來。」

While none of these primitive cells have yet "gone critical" and started to copy themselves, the research has already paid real-world dividends, including one blockbuster pharmaceutical and perhaps more to come. The drug Macugen treats macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with a tiny snippet of the genetic molecule RNA. Since scientists like Szostak think RNA preceded DNA, they've invented ways of pushing RNA to evolve in test tubes.

雖然還無人能使這些原始細胞的雛形突破瓶頸而自我複製，但是這類的研究已經有了實質上的收獲﹣一個無比成功的新藥因之而產生，還有更多的新藥會接踵而來。 Macugen 這個藥利用一小段遺傳 RNA 來治療 macular degeneration，這種萎縮是造成老年人瞎眼主要的原因。 Szostak 及同行的科學家相信 RNA 是 DNA 的前軀，他們發明了各種辦法來迫使 或誘導RNA 在試管中演化。

Under the right conditions, that process can produce an RNA molecule that's evolutionarily "fit" for a task like treating the biological cause of macular degeneration.
Hazen says that origins-of-life experiments may also help create synthetic cells that can churn out biofuels, which would be a boon in these days of energy crunches and concerns about climate change. "Life takes things like carbon dioxide and water and makes useful compounds, including fuels," he says. "If we understand in a basic way how that's done," he adds, then scientists might be able to build a primitive, fuel-producing protocell.”

在恰當的情況下，如此的程序能造出一種 RNA分子；這種分子能演化而用來治療 macular degeneration 生物學上的病因。 Hazen 說，從事探討生命起源的各種實驗可能還會幫助我們人工合成各種細胞；從而源源不絕的造出種種的生物燃料 (biofuels)，這對當前的能源短缺和氣候改變將大有助益。 他說：「生命利用二氧化碳和水等東西製造各種複合物，燃料是其中一例。」他接著又加一句：「如果我們瞭解這種程序基本上是怎麼進行的，科學家也許就可以製造出某種原始的光細胞來製造燃料。」

Such a self-replicating system, Joyce and Szostak contend, would constitute life. And while such a feat may not exactly recapitulate how biology began, it would be example No. 2—the first being the entire panoply of plants, animals, and other organisms that now dominate our planet.

Joyce 和 Szostak 極力主張，如此的自我複製的系統就可以說是生命了。就算當初生物不見得是這樣源起的，這樣的技術也應該算是生命起源的第二個例子吧。所謂的第一個例子指的是當今遍蓋著我們這個星球的所有動植物以及所有其他的生物。

Large amount of blood can be "grown" [血液可以量造]

2008/09/08
譯自: Seattle Times; Aug. 20, 2008
作者：Karen Kaplan
譯者：陳龍夫

科學家在 星期二說他們已發明出一種方法，利用人類的胚胎幹細胞在實驗室中造出大量的血。這可能使人們往後不再需要捐血。但是專家們提醒說，雖然這是科技上顯著的進步，但是實際上要用它來代替人捐的血，還先得在幾項重要的地方有所改進。

紅血球是血液重要的成份，因為它帶氧。研究人員在科學期刊「血液」（註１）的網頁上發表了一個四步的程序，略述如何將胚胎幹細胞轉變為紅血球，而且其帶氧量不亞於正常的紅血球。

一旦能在實驗室中造血，血庫及醫院就能保證隨時都有足夠的血可用；不論所需的是少見的 AB-陰性，或是可以輸給任何人的 O--陰性的血。同時這還確保病人不致於從人捐的血中感染 Ｃ型肝炎或 HIV等疾病；美國明州大學幹細胞研究所（註２）副所長 Dan Kaufman 博士如是說。 Kaufman 本人沒有參與這種研究。

Kaufman 說：「因輸血而感染的病例越來越多，捐血的限制也越來越嚴。 一般談論胚胎幹細胞治療時，常不包括人造血。 我們應該重視它。」

專家們說，在自然環境下負責造血的是所謂的「成人幹細胞」；迄今科學家仍未能有效的控制 成人幹細胞，因此還不能派上實際用場。

這項新的研究能從單一的培養皿的胚胎幹細胞造出一兆個 (1011) 紅血球細胞—足夠裝滿兩三個收集管。

先讓幹細胞自然的進行其早期的發育，然後把它們暴露在各種蛋白質之下，由此促使一些幹細胞轉變為 紅血球細胞。

Advanced Cell Technology 的 Robert Lanza 是這項研究的主要作者。他說如此處理過的幹細胞大約有 65% 成熟到失去細胞核，因此其形狀變成像甜甜圈一樣--正如血管中流動的天然的紅血球。此研究的團隊包括在芝加哥的伊利諾大學 (University of Illinois, Chicago) 和在洛契斯特的梅約診所 (Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota) 的研究人員。他們造出了 A﹣陽性，Ａ﹣陰性， B﹣陽性，Ｂ﹣陰性，和 O﹣陽性的血。

紐約愛因斯坦醫學院 (Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York) 幹細胞生物學及再生醫學 （ stem-cell biology and regenerative medicine ）的教授 Eric Bouhassira 說這個方法的效率比起以往的要好上幾百倍。可惜大多數這樣的紅血球其血球蛋白 (globin) 是胚胎的或是胎兒的血球蛋白。血球蛋白是紅血球中攜帶氧的複合物。輸血病人所需的是成人的血球蛋白。Bouhassira 說，這樣的血是否能用來輸血仍不清楚。 Bouhassira 本人沒有參與這項研究。

Lanza 說科學家正在做進一步的實驗探討如果讓幹細胞在實驗室中有較長的時間去成熟，是否會造出更多成人的血球蛋白。

不過，即使這個方法有了顯著的改進，前途還有一個大難關。

Roger Dodd—美國紅十字會，馬理蘭州 Rockville 市， Holland 實驗室，研發部副總裁--說，在實驗室中造一個單位的血大概要花數千元美金。要用它來取代每年所輸 1400 萬品脫 （譯者注：約 658 萬公升）的血著實太貴了。他接著說：「這是一個艱巨的目標。」

----------------------------------------------------

註 1: The journal “Blood”.
註 2: 美國明州大學幹細胞研究所 University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute

====================================================

Scientists: Large amount of blood can be "grown"
By Karen Kaplan (Los Angeles Times)

Scientists said Tuesday they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.

Red blood cells are a key component of blood because they carry oxygen.
The researchers outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online by the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.

It also would ensure that patients who get blood are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.

"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic-stem-cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."

Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells responsible for making blood, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.

In the new study, researchers made up to 100 billion red blood cells — enough to fill two or three collection tubes — from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.

Up to 65 percent of the resulting cells matured to where they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive.

The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem-cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the researchers are conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.

Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.

Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars a unit, far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," he said.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
Seattle Times; Aug. 20, 2008

Thoreau; Walden, Economy [節約]

Source: "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau

翻譯：Me;Sep. 4, 2008

WHEN I WROTE the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. <1> At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

寫以下大部份的章節時，我已離群索居兩年又兩個月了。我獨居在麻州的Concord, 在Walden 湖畔的樹林中我親手蓋的屋子裡，僅靠勞力為生。周圍一哩之內沒有任何鄰居。如今我又回到文明世界寄居。

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.
<2> Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

要不是鎮裡的人關心我的生活方式並詢問種種問題，我實在不應該將個人的瑣瑣碎碎強加在讀者身上。有人說我的生活方式不得當。我考屢當時的情況，卻覺其自然合宜毫無不當。有些人問我吃什麼，是否寂寞，是否害怕等等；另些人問我奉獻多少錢給慈善事業。更有那些有家累的人問我，有多少可憐的孩子靠我溫飽。因此我決定用這本書來回答這纇的問題。讀者諸君中對我不特別感興趣的就請包涵了。大多數的書常省略「我」這個第一人稱的字。我這本書卻要用第一人稱來寫；以自我為本位是這本書的特點。畢竟，一般說來，說話的人永遠是第一人稱的「我」。倘若我瞭解他人像我瞭解我自己，我當不應喋喋不休的談論自己。可惜我歷練不足，只能局限在這個話題。

此外，最重要的是，每個作家總該把他自己的生活簡單而誠摯的寫下來而不僅是敘述別人的生活；我當然也不例外。他所寫的應是他想要寄給家人描述他的生活中家人所不熟悉的種種。因為每一個誠摯的過日子的人總有某些觀點別人是不得而知的。也許我所寫的比較適合那些窮苦的學生。至於其他的讀者呢？我希望他們能擷取對他們有用的就好。希望沒有人會削足適履的照單全收。
========================================
Translation Notes:
- This is the first two paragraphs of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

<1> “At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. “E.B.White "borrowed" this from Thoreau, writing "At present I am a sojourner in the city again," in his “A Report in Spring" essay.
I hope my translation reflects Thoreau’s sentiment that his heart belongs to living in the woods and that his coming back to civilization was temporary.

<2> I have tremendous difficulty understanding this sentence. After much struggle, I paraphrased it into the following:

Every writer should write down his own life, instead of just writing about other people’s lives.
A writer should write his own life in a simple and sincere manner.
I am a writer; I should do the aforementioned as well. The reason of writing my own life is the following:

- The information I have about other people’s lives is second hand information. That person sent letters, from a distance place, to his relatives here. That’s how I got the information about him.
- I have no idea whether that person lives a sincere life or not.

I sent my paraphrasing to a good friend, jeffy, asking for his advice. Here’s jeffy’s paraphrasing and comments:

All writers should write an account of their own lives. They shouldn't just tell us about other people. Their account should be the sort of story you would send home to your family to describe your life in a land unknown to them. Because in a way, each person lives in a land foreign to all the rest of us.
The implication is that with such an account we can better understand the writer's viewpoint and hence understand what their writing means to us.
Does that make sense? Do you see how that is what he was saying? 19th century literature has such a different approach from what we use now!

I actually misunderstood the reason why one should write about one’s own life. I also took the words “distant land” too literally.
I actually did not capture the implication either.
I also do not quite grasp the word “sincere”.
I think I'd better leave the translation of literature to language professors. It's too difficult for me.

聯合國及其運作；前言

Title: The United Nations and How It Works; Foreword
Author: David Cushman Coyle
Library of Congress Catalog Card #55-7776

Sep. 2, 2008

聯合國及其運作
前言

In the spring of 1945 World War II was plainly drawing to a close. Millions of people had died in that war; millions more were homeless, hungry, and cold. The people of the whole world longed for a lasting peace. The victims of war devastation, and hundreds of millions who suffered grinding poverty even in peacetime, longed also for an escape from poverty, hunger, and disease. All over the world, too, wherever people lived under foreign domination or homegrown oppression, there was a growing demand for freedom and justice.

These deep desires for peace and for better conditions of life were joined in the great conference at San Francisco in the spring of 1945, when the nations combined their efforts in the organization of the United Nations.

第二次世界大戰死了數百萬人，並讓更多的人失去家園，挨餓受凍。到了１９４５年春戰事已明顯地接進尾聲，人人都引頸期待著長久的和平。那些戰爭的受害者和原本就捉襟見肘的人如今更是一貧如洗，他們都企盼著能脫離飢寒交迫和疾病纏身的煎熬。全世界不論是受異族統治或本國暴政迫害的人都呼喊著爭求自由與公義。
這些渴望與訴求於是匯成一股洪流促成各國在舊金山集會，共同籌劃創立聯合國，時為１９４５年春。

The UN was organized to deal with the quarrels between nations that might lead to war. At the same time, the UN and its many working agencies have been helping the member nations in the age long fight against human misery, injustice, and oppression.

聯和國成立的初衷在於調解國際糾紛免其演變成戰爭，並幫助其會員國對付悲慘的生活，不公正的待遇，以及暴政的迫害。

The main purposes of the United Nations are not in conflict. It is clear that peace is necessary, if the people of the world are to be free and prosperous. But peace does not come by accident; it has to be built by many kinds of action working together to provide for collective security and to remove the causes of war. United efforts to build a more prosperous world by cooperation among people of different nations and races may also help to lay the foundations for a lasting peace. People who work together against the hostile forces of nature often become friends. And finally, the united pressure of world opinion in support of human rights will in time help to reduce some of the causes of war among the peoples of the world.

如今它的主旨已不只是消極的避免爭端，更在積極的為長久的和平奠基。人人都清楚，要有自由與繁榮必先得有和平。但是和平無法不勞而獲，必得大家共同努力來解除戰端，建立共同的安全，從而才有和平。人們往往因為同舟共濟的對付自然災害而成為朋友。因此，各國家各族裔的人聯合起來，群策群力的為共同的繁榮努力也應該能促進長久的和平。此外，聯合世界輿論來呼籲人權定可及時減緩一些戰端。

The material works of the UN agencies—helping to build dams, to kill mosquitoes, to teach people to read—and its spiritual works, such as framing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, may be fully as important for peace as the great conferences and the search for a way to control the atom.

聯和國各機構做了一些實質上的工作﹣例如興水壩，滅蚊虫，以及教人閱讀。它在精神上也成積斐然；編制國際人權宣言的重要性實不亞於召開各式各樣的會議或研究如何駕馭原子。

World-wide struggles against the hostile forces of nature are easily understood by millions of people who feel baffled by the harder problems of quarreling human nature. These material works of the UN therefore serve as a background for the UN efforts to hold the conflicts of human nature below the explosion point. The UN does not pretend that it can surely persuade or force all men to work together in harmony all the time. But it can help to bring world opinion to bear on many kinds of disputes that if left to fester between enemies might break out into deadly war.

我們都了解應該團結起來對付自然災害，卻對人性的好戰束手無策。那些實質工作恰能為聯和國背書，讓它在排解糾紛時比教更有說服力。聯和國無法保證大家永遠和睦相處，但是它能鼓勵世界輿論，促進協商，以免爭端孳養擴大而導至戰爭。

The United Nations can talk about the rights of man, and by such talk can put moral pressure on nations where people are treated in ways that the world regards as wrong. The United Nations can take an interest in colonial peoples and in their progress toward independence or self-government—an interest that the governing powers cannot lightly brush aside.

當世界輿論認為某國政府對人民不人道時，聯和國可以經由討論人權而對暴政施加道德壓力。它可以關注被殖民統治的的人的福祇，它可以觀察這些人邁向自治及獨立的進展。它可以使統治者無法對這些關注置之不理。

The United Nations has been able to stop or to prevent several wars since 1945, notably in Palestine and Kashmir. In Korea the UN forces beat back the aggression. There can be, of course, no absolute guarantee that any organization on earth could surely prevent a third great war and the possible suicide of the human race. But much can be done to make that doom less likely; and much of it is being done in the United Nations.

自１９４５年來，聯合國已成功的阻遏了幾次戰爭，其中最顯著的是在巴基斯坦和克什米亞。在朝鮮半島它也打退了北韓的侵略。當然世上沒有任何機構能預防第三次大戰或人纇的另一次自殺行為，但是聯合國正從事著許多工作來降低人纇走向絕路的可能性。

In the United Nations, the human race is brought together, with all its virtues and faults, its wisdom and folly, and its good and ill will. This is not a world government. This is a world meeting to talk over the pressing dangers of our times and to hunt for the way to prosperity and world peace. It cannot rule the world by making and enforcing a world law with planes and atom bombs. But it can bring to bear the moral weight of world opinion. The recommendations of the Assembly of the United Nations may be all the more effective because they do not demand obedience but only ask a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.

在聯合國裡，各種族相處一堂；人性與生俱來的美德與惡行，智慧與愚昧，好的意圖与壞的意圖也跟著摻雜在一起。聯合國不是一個世界政府，而只是一個世界性的集會。在此大家就當前的危機進行協商並共同尋求和平與繁榮。它不能立法；它不能用武力強制執法；它不能統治世界。但是它能藉由世界輿論造成一股道德力量。聯合國大會的建議只是敦促大家適當的尊重全人纇的意見，它不強制服從。正因如此，它的建議因而更為有效。
….

Do you know?

• Only 10% of the cells in our body are human; the rest are bacteria and parasites. (Ref. "Human Wildlife by Dr. Robert Buckman)
• Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born within a few hours of each other--on Feb. 12, 1809.
• Isaac Newton (1624-1727) was born the year Galileo died.
• Albert Einstein was born the year James Maxwell (1831-1879) died.

Lost in Translation

Translate the article "語意迷失的洄瀾" by Snowbird. The article can be found at http://chensnowbird.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post_20.html

介紹“Lost In Translation” by Eva Hoffman
一個流浪者的自傳：一位13歲波蘭少女跟隨父母移居加拿大，後定居美國，回顧鄉音，外語在成長中給她情境上困擾的解剖。

"Lost in Translation" by Eva Hoffman. It's an autobiography of a wanderer: a 13-year old Polish girl emigrated to Canada with her parents, then to America. Recalling her native language, comparing it to the new language, she reflected on the turmoils in her heart.

Eva 從小受到父母的呵護，不知道憂愁是什麼。1957年波蘭政府，准許波蘭境內的猶太人移居以色列。但Eva的父親夢想加拿大，花錢買通官員，全家移居加拿大。全書分成三部，第一部人間樂園： 作者回憶童年家居生活，小市鎮的人情文化，描寫流暢用字文雅，點點滴滴平凡自在，生活的樂園應該就是這樣。離別的日子近了，離情有誰能紓解呢？當她向心愛的鋼琴老師告別時，老師不捨的說：妳是一位心思細膩的少女，就像一棵精緻的植物需要呵護，不容易適應新的環境，妳將會遭受到被連根拔起的痛苦，適應的徬徨， 妳要學會保護自己。 這一席話拆穿了她偽裝的堅強，讓她淚流滿面， 她感受到從人間天堂被驅逐出去。故事進入第二部曲：放逐。

Brought up by doting parents, Eva had a carefree childhood. In 1957 Poland started to allow Polish Jews to emigrate to Israel. Eva's father bribed the authority to let them go to his dreamland, Canada, instead. The book has three sections. Section one is "The Paradise", where the author reminiscent her childhood and the friendly neighborhood of the little town. The little this and that of mundane everyday life flew smoothly in her graceful sentences. It made me wonder perhaps this was what happy life was made of. As the departure drew near her apprehension grew. She went to see her beloved piano teacher, who told her: "You are a sensitive girl. Like a delicate plant, you'll have a tough time adjusting to the new environment. You'll suffer the pain of being uprooted. You'll be lost in the dilemma of having to choose between your new and old worlds. You'll need to learn how to protect yourself." The parting words tore apart the facade of her poise and she broke down in tears--she felt she was being chased out of paradise. The story now goes to section two, "The Exodus."

Eva 認定她到了一個文化沙漠的國家：看到加拿大的曠野壯山大河，只感到眼睛刺痛心靈空虛；學英語，只是在記憶空洞的聲音，心裡懷念的是母語親切的含意，懊惱找不到一個達意的英語新字去描述她的感受。從小Eva對語言有特別的喜愛，波蘭語音調的起伏，除了親暱又有悠閒的空間讓她暇想；小時候，她時常沉浸在父母與朋友的夜談，在熱鬧氣氛中進入夢鄉：夢中，鄉音讓她微笑。為了不被同學排斥，模仿她們的穿著，臉上掛滿著笑容，應對著客套的寒暄，和同學嘻笑打成一片，卻時常警覺到她們憐憫的眼神，她失去了自在，處處是拘謹。另一方面，父親失去奮鬥的勇氣，憧憬的西方世界，並不是黃金滿地；對他們而言，生活是單調的重複，只求物質的不貧乏而已，父女兩代都徬徨在命運的十字路口。

Eva thought she arrived at a country that was a cultural desert. She saw the majestic mountains and waters, but felt only soreness to her eyes and emptiness of her soul. The sound of English was so empty, she missed the warmth of her mother tongue--the rhythm of Polish was so intimate and yet still leaves room for her imagination to roam. While a child she often fell asleep in the midst of her parents' hearty conversation with house guests. Now she would smile in her dreams where she heard the sound of her hometown. To get acceptance, she tried to dress like her friends, she wore smile on her face and chit chat politely, she mingled and frolicked with friends, but she was aware that people pitied her. She became self conscious. At the same time, her father lost the zest of life--the western world was not as rosy as he had fantasized. They were just trying to make do; they both felt lost at the cross street.

處在朋友之間她有太多的顧忌，變遷讓她早熟：看不慣同學的胡鬧卻勉為其難處在其間，有了煩惱迷失自己失去幽默。她警覺模仿偽裝建立的保護層，也是阻止她成長突破的束縛，她需要一個呼吸的空間顯露完整的自我，於是夜深時候，藉著一支筆在日記裡，她剖心開懷；經由文字，對英語，這個當初排斥的語言，有了間接的接觸感受到文化層面的交流，求知的欲望終於讓她茁壯，高中畢業時代表畢業生致詞。 此後，語言變成溝通的工具辯論的工具賴以為生的工具。大學時代，她時常在兩個世界裡掙扎，緊緊抓住根深的價值觀，捨不掉故鄉的懷念，放不開執著去擁抱新世界的刺激。對人情世故，政治時勢，甚至對美國中上等家庭生活的意識型態，都築一道牆，深怕一旦踏入這個生活圈，她會永遠改變自己。一直到大學執教幾年後的一個深夜，為了準備第二天的英語教材，她唸著 『The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock』，她欣喜聽到詩文裡的情緒，領會了詩的畫意，另一種『鄉音』在她的舌尖微笑。

She was very self conscious among friends; changes made her overly mature. She was not amused by her peers' banter, but tried hard to get along; she had lost her youthful playfulness. She was alert, she built a shield to protect herself. The shield constrained her in a cocoon. She needed a space to breath. Therefore, she chose to pick up a pen and spill her guts to her diary in deep nights. Through words, she ............

她終於有機會回到童年的樂園：眼前見到的依舊是夢中的景物，但是在童年的街道上找不到自己的影子，夢裡的鄉情是一串串空白的洄瀾；這回顧的經驗，讓她領悟到當下生活的真實可貴，而容許自己接納領養她的美國文化，從而帶領她進入人生的第三部曲：美麗新世界。
流浪是一個自我設定的心境，可以自憐一輩子是失根的蘭花，也可以自傲的融入主流。擺脫這種流浪的徬徨是生根成熟的挑戰。

English into Chinese

I am trying to practice translating English pharases into Chinese. I welcome you to critique my translation, suggest a different translation, or leave me an English phrase to challenge my translation skill.

• I swear to tell the truth, the whole true, and nothing but the truth.

1. 我鄭重的宣誓，我必言無不實，言無不盡。

• To err is human; to forgive, divine.

1. 人非聖賢，孰能無過；倘能諒人，即屬聖賢。

• The ultimate test of the impact of an individual or a group of individuals is two fold: whether the world they left is qualitatively different than that they inherited and what contribution they made to that change.

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• We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. --- 1/1/1941; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Depression still lingered, Hitler's threat was growing.

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• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but rather a habit. -- Aristotle

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• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. --William Shakespeare

1. 有些人的偉大是天生的，有些是努力得來的，有些是時勢造成的.
2. 有人天縱英名，有人創造時勢，有人是時勢所造。

• Anyone who says they never had a chance never took a chance.

1. 自認運氣不佳的人一定是從不冒險的。
2. 從不冒險的人總是埋怨運氣不好。
3. 從不冒險的人總是埋怨時不我與。
   

• “The time to read is any time: It is the only art which can be practiced at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness.”-- Holbrook Jackson

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• “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -- Benjamin Franklin

1. 你若情願放棄基本自由以求苟安，你就不配享有自由與平安。

• "Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends." --Richard Bach

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• “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” --- Charles Darwin

1. 最能在生存競爭中脫穎而出的不是那最強悍的物種，也不是那最聰明的，而是那最能適應環境之變牽者。
   

• "To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart." --from a poem by Wendell Berry. Challenge from jeffy.

1. 眾人皆狂我獨醒令人心碎欲狂。

Chinese to English

I am trying to practice translating Chinese phrases into English. I welcome you to critique my translation, suggest a different translation, or give me a Chinese phrase to challenge me.

• 海闊縱魚躍，天空任鳥飛

＝＞ Let your mind be as wide as an ocean where fishes can jump at will; let your heart be as broad as the sky where birds can fly with no bound.

• 從大處著眼，從小處著手

＝＞ Plan with the big picture in mind, act from small steps.

• 不入虎穴焉得虎子

＝＞ Risk nothing, gain nothing.

• 其急如風，其徐如林，侵掠如火，不動如山

＝＞ Swift as wind, resourceful as forest, invade like fire, unmovable as mountains.

The Alands and the Falklands

Reference: “Cultures and Organizations—Software of the Mind” by Geert Hofsteede; ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

The Aland islands are a small archipelago halfway between Sweden and Finland; as part of Finland they belonged to the Tsarist Russian empire. When Finland declared itself independent from Russia n 1917 the majority of the 30,000 inhabitants of the islands wanted to join Sweden, which had ruled them before 1809. The Finns then arrested the leaders of the pro-Swedish movement. After emotional negotiations in which the newly created League of Nations participated, all parties, in 1912, agreed to a solution in which the islands remained Finnish but with a large amount of regional autonomy.

The Falkland islands are also a small archipelago disputed by two nations: the United Kingdom which has colonized the islands since 1833 and nearby Argentina which claims rights on them since 1767 and has tried to get the United Nations to support its claim. The Falklands are about 8 times as large as the Alands but with less than 1/15 of the Alands number of inhabitants: about 1800 poor sheep farmers. The Argentinean military occupied the islands in April 1982 whereupon the British sent an expeditionary force, which chased off the occupiers, at the cost of (officially) 725 Argentinean and 225 British lives and enormous financial expense. Besides, the economy of the islands has been further damaged because it cannot develop without trade relations with the Argentinean hinterland.

Today, the Falklands remain a disputed territory needing constant British subsidies and military presence; the Alands have become a prosperous part of Finland, attracting many Swedish tourists.

Longitude & Latitude & International Date Line

A key geographical question throughout the human experience has been, "Where am I?" In classical Greece and China, attempts were made to create logical grid systems of the world to answer this question. The ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy created a grid system and listed the coordinates for places throughout the known world in his book Geography. But it wasn't until the middle ages that the latitude and longitude system was developed and implemented. This system is written in degrees.

Latitude
• When looking at a map, latitude lines run horizontally.
• Latitude lines are also known as parallels since they are parallel and are an equal distant from each other. Each degree of latitude is approximately 69 miles (111 km) apart; there is a variation due to the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate ellipsoid (slightly egg-shaped).
• Degrees latitude are numbered from 0° to 90° north and south. Zero degrees is the equator, the imaginary line which divides our planet into the northern and southern hemispheres. 90° north is the North Pole and 90° south is the South Pole.
The Equator
• The equator is located at zero degrees latitude.
• The equator divides the planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
• The equator runs through Indonesia, Ecuador, northern Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya, among other countries.
• It is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers) long.
• On the equator, the sun is directly overhead at noon on the two equinoxes - near March and September 21.
The Tropic of Cancer
• The Tropic of Cancer is located at 23.5° North of the equator.
• It runs through Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and southern China.
The Tropic of Capricorn
• The Tropic of Capricorn lies at 23.5° South of the equator.
• It runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa.

Longitude
• The vertical longitude lines are also known as meridians. They converge at the poles and are widest at the equator (about 69 miles or 111 km apart).
• Zero degrees longitude is located at Greenwich, England (0°). The degrees continue 180° east and 180° west where they meet and form the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean.
• Greenwich, the site of the British Royal Greenwich Observatory, was established as the site of the Prime Meridian by an international conference in 1884.
• The Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American.
• Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface

The International Date Line
• While the equator divides the earth into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, it is the Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American. Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface.
• While the world is divided into 24 time zones, there has to be a place where there is a difference in days, somewhere the day truly "starts" on the planet.
• Thus, the 180° line of longitude, exactly one-half way around the planet from Greenwich, England and 0° longitude is approximately where the International Date Line is located. Cross the line from the east to the west and a day is added. Cross from west to the east and a day is subtracted.
• Without the International Date Line, people who travel west around the planet would discover that when they returned home, it would seem as though an extra day had passed. This situation actually happened to Magellan's crew when they returned home after their circumnavigation of the earth.

• The International Date Line is not a straight line, either. Since its beginning, it has zigzagged to avoid spitting apart countries into two days. It bends through the Bering Strait to avoid placing far northeastern Russia in a different day than the rest of the country. Unfortunately, tiny Kiribati was split. In 1995 the island country of Kiribati decided to move the International Date Line. Since the line is simply established by international agreement and there are not treaties or formal agreements associated with the line, most of the rest of the world followed Kiribati and moved the line on their maps. Most recent maps show the change and you'll see the big panhandle zigzag which keeps Kiribati all within the same day. Now eastern Kiribati and Hawaii, which are located in the same area of longitude, are a whole day apart.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot.
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

0-th. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly

Culture

• Ref: “Strategic Learning” by William G. Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management

Culture is probably the most misunderstood and mismanaged part of the business system—and arguably the most important success factor of all.

Culture expresses itself through specific values and observable behaviors.

In a particular society, culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors that persist over time because they help that society solve its problems. (whether social, economic, or political). Every society has an elaborate system of rewards and penalties designed to ensure that supportive behaviors continue and that that destructive behaviors are extinguished.

• "Cultures and Organizations--Software of the Mind" by Geert Hofstede ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

This word (Culture) has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilling of the the soil.
"Culture (One)": In most Western languages "culture" commonly means "cilivlization" or "refinement of the mind" and in particular the results of such refinement, like education, art, and literature. This is "culture in the narrow sense".
"Culture (Two)": Culture as mental software, however, corresonds to a much broader use of the word which is common among social anthropologists.
Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies, in particular (although not only) traditional or "primitive" ones. In social anthropology, "culture" is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting ... Not only those activities supposed to refine the mind, but also the ordinary and menial things in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping a certain physical distance from others, making love, or maintaining body hygiene.
"Culture (Two)" is always a collevtive phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or categrory of people from another.

• Claude Levi-Strausse, the grand old man of French anthropology:

Cultural relativism affirms that one culture has no absolute criteria for judging the activities of another cultrure as "low" or "noble". However, every culture can and shouold apply such judgment to its own activities, because its members are actors as well as observers.

Light & Electromagnetic Wave

James Clerk Maxwell enshrined the wave theory when he successfully conjectured a connection between light, electricity, and magnetism. He came up with equations that described the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, and when they were combined they predicted electromagnetic waves. He found that these electromagnetic waves had to travel at a certain speed: approximately 186,000 miles per second, which is the speed of light.

Light is the visible manifestation of a whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves. This includes what we now call AM radio signals (wavelength = 300 yards), FM radio signals (wave length = 3 yards), and microwaves (3 inches). As the wavelengths get shorter (i.e. the frequency of the wave increases), they produce the spectrum of visible light, ranging from red (25 millionths of an inch) to violet (14 millionths of an inch). Even shorter wavelengths produce ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays. When we speak of "light" and the "speed of light," we mean all electromagnetic waves, not just the ones that are visible to our eyes.

Measure the Circumference of the Earth

How Do You Measure the Circumference of the Earth with a Stick and a Ruler

Aristotle, 400 B.C. Knew that Earth must be round because he saw that the planet cast a curved shadow on the Moon during an eclipse.

Greek, Erastosthenes (276 – 196 B.C.)
Erastosthenes heard of a well in Syene (what is now Aswan, Egypt) in which the Sun’s reflection could be seen on June 21, the longest day of the year. He figured that meant the Sun was directly over the well on that day. He also knew that Syene was pretty much due south of the city of Alexandrea. By measuring the shadow cast by an obelis (a tall carved stone) in Alexandria on June 21, he computed the length of two sides of a right triangle—the length of the shadow and the height of the obelisk. Then he figured the angle of the remaining side of the triangle—about 7 degrees, or 1/50 of a full circle—and knew that was how far the Sun was from being directly overhead in Alexandria.

Erastosthenes learned that it took a camel fifty days to travel from Alexandria to Syene. Since the average well-fed camel could cover 10 miles a day. He figured the distance between the two cities is 500 miles. Multiply that by 50, he came up with a circumference of 25,000 miles.

Fact: The Earth’s actual circumference is 24,901 miles at the equator.
Only 0.4% error.

US Jury System

The History and Future of the Jury System in America

By Timothy Sexton, published Jan 08, 2007

Terminology

• voir dire (IPA /vwɑr dir/) is a phrase in law which derives from Middle French. In origin it refers to an oath to tell the truth (Latin verum dicĕre), in other words to give a true verdict. The word voir (or voire), in this context, is an old French word meaning "truth". It is unconnected with the modern French word voir, which derives from Latin vidēre ("to see"), though the expression is now often interpreted by false etymology to mean "to see [them] say".
  

o In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and sometimes in the US it refers to a "trial within a trial". A hearing to determine the admissibility of evidence, or the competency of a witness or juror.
o In the United States, it now generally refers to the process by which prospective jurors are questioned about their backgrounds and potential biases before being chosen to sit on a jury. As Gordon P. Cleary defined voir dire in his book Trial Evidence Foundations (James Publishing, 2007 at section 201), "Voir Dire is the process by which attorneys select, or perhaps more appropriately reject, certain jurors to hear a case." For more detail, see Jury selection.

• Magna Carta (Latin for "Great Charter", literally "Great Paper"), also called Magna Carta Liberatum ("Great Charter of Freedoms"), is an English charter originally issued in 1215. Magna Carta was the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today. Magna Carta influenced the development of the common law and many constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution. It required the King to renounce certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered — most notably the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment. Many clauses were renewed throughout the Middle Ages, and continued to be renewed as late as the 18th century. By the second half of the 19th century however, most clauses in their original form had been repealed from English law.

The Magna Carta was the first document that was forced onto an English King by his subjects in an attempt to limit his powers by law. (It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated what his own powers were under the law).
In practice Magna Carta mostly did not limit the power of the King in the Middle Ages; by the time of the English Civil War however it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the King was bound by the law.
Magna Carta is normally understood to refer to a single document, that of 1215. Various amended versions of the Magna Carta appeared in subsequent years however, and it is in fact the 1297 version which remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

History

• The concept of twelve strangers deciding the fate of another stranger dates back to a document formed at the height of the power of British monarchy. On June 15, 1215 rebellious barons forced King John of England to affix his seal to a list of freedoms and liberties. However, these rights were never intended to be enjoyed by the masses as some sort of democratic ideal. Despite this limited targeting of rights, it is the Magna Carta from which the term "a jury of one's peers" springs and not the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In practice, however, this was done to reduce the powers of the king to restrict him from creating laws at his whim. In addition, in local cases where laws were broken the result typically tended to be violent resolutions and the clauses in the Magna Carta were designed to bring a means whereby disputes could be solved equitably.
  

• The right to a trial by jury is one of the Constitutional foundations of American law. So important was the concept of trial overseen by a jury of one's peers that it was included among the Bill of Rights. The Sixth Amendment is a codification of the rights to be granted to individuals in case of criminal prosecutions in federal courts. With the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, these rights were made applicable at the state level. The trial by jury is a bedrock foundation for jurisprudence in the US. The founding fathers were heavily influence by the Magna Carta in the development of the constitutional law of the land and viewed their own revolutionary break with King George III as analogous in some ways to the revolutionary spirit that inspired the Magna Carta in the first place. It is incredibly difficult to imagine the American legal system operating under any other method.
• The jury system has undergone various transformations over the century.
  

Composition of a Jury

• (1968) Jury Selection and Service Act mandated that the pool of jury names be selected from registered voters and that names be randomly selected.

• American citizens can only serve on juries in those states in which they are official residents.

• Exemptions include not being a US citizen and not being able to understand the English language, as well as certain physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness, physical infirmities and age. Obviously, those under the age of eighteen are not allowed to serve on a jury, but elderly people are also typically allowed to be exempt. Those with pressing occupational excuses typically tend to receive exemptions as well. For instance, doctors and nurses rarely serve on juries lasting more than a day. Clergymen also usually receive exemptions.

Function of Jury

• The function of the jury in the American judicial system is to attend the trial and deliberate on the evidence in order to provide a unanimous verdict. The point of a jury system is that it is supposed to provide a fair and unbiased examination of the evidence; taking away the power of the judge who may be prejudicial in his decision.

• In addition, many view the use of jury as an important defense against unchecked power in the hands of the state. When the state controls the delivery and judgment of evidence the possibility for abuse increase exponentially.

• A US jury verdict must be unanimous, regardless of what the verdict is. Should a unanimous decision not be made, the term used to describe that circumstance is a hung jury. A hung jury does not mean that the defendant is either guilty or innocent; the decision on whether to try the person again or not falls into the hands of the district attorney.

In Other Countries

• The English jury is also 12-person system, but allows for the possibility of a non-unanimous verdict. At the discretion of the judge, if deliberations go past a certain point he can instruct the jury that a verdict can be brought based on a 10-2 vote.

• In other countries there are stipulations as to which kinds of crimes are tried by jury.

• People of some other nations actually frown upon putting their fate into the hands of their peers. The very idea of letting an uneducated person control their destiny is absolute anathema.

Misc

• Although the US court system has a vicious history of jury nullification in which all-white juries convicted blacks of crimes they not only were innocent of committing, but which the jury members knew they were innocent of committing, it several infamous cases during the 1990s that led to scrutiny about the very fairness of the jury system in America today.

• Many high-profile trials that ended in hung juries were discovered to have been nearly unanimous with only one or two holdouts. Subsequently there have been some efforts made to follow England's move toward allowing non-unanimous verdicts.

Culture Codes

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille; Broadway Books; ISBN: 978-0-7679-2057-5

1 Introduction
1.1 The Author
Clotaire Rapaille is a cultureal anthropologist and marketing expert. He is the chairman of Archetype Discoveries Worldwide. He is a personale advisor to 10 high-ranking CEO’s. He is kept on retainer by 50 Fortune 100 companies.
1.2 Background
1.2.1 Henry Laborit: learning and emotion are tied together.
1.2.2 Konrad Lorenz: Imprint; p.6
1.2.3 What does the author mean by Code and Discovery
“Discovery” process. Example: Nestle wanted to market coffee in Japan. The author's process of finding out:

1. 1st hour: I took the persona of a visitor from another planet, someone who had never seen coffee before and had no idea how one “used” it. I asked for help understanding the product, believing their description would give me insight into what they though of it.
   
2. 2nd hour: I had them sit on the floor like elementary school children and use scissors and a pile of magazines to make a collage of words about coffee. The goal here was to get them to tell me stories with these words that would offer me further clues.
3. 3rd hour: I had them lie on the floor with pillows. I put on soothing music and asked them to relax. What I was doing was calming their active brainwaves, getting them to that tranquil point just before sleep. When they reached this state, I took them on a journey back from their adulthood, past their teenage years, to a time when they were very young. Once there, I asked them to think again about coffee and to recall their earliest memory of it, the first time they consciously experienced it, and their most significant memory of ti. I designed this process to bring participants back to their first imprint of coffee and the emotion attached to it.
   

1.2.4 Human Brains; p.81
Human brain is divided into 3 parts:

• The cortex (the cerebral hemispheres), handles learning, abstract thought, and imagination. The cortex comes into practical use in most children after they are 7 years old.
• The limbic system (the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus), deals with emotions. The limbic brain is structured between birth and age five, largely through a child’s relationship with his mother. Because of this relationship with the mother, the limbic has a strong feminine side—when we say a man is “getting in touch with his feminine side—what we’re really saying is that he is not afraid to access his limbic brain.
• The reptilian brain (the brain stem and the cerebellum). The name comes from this region’s similarity to the brains of reptiles, which are believe to be relatively unchanged from the brains their predecessors had 200 million years ago. Our reptilian brains program us for 2 major things: survival and reproduction. These are our most fundamental instincts. The reptilian brain is therefore more influential than our other two brains.
  

1.2.5 Notion
Principle 1: You can’t believe what people say
Principle 2: Emotion is the energy required to learn anything
Principle 3: The structure, not the content, is the message
Principle 4: There is a window in time for imprinting, and the meaning of the imprint varies from one culture to another
Principle 5: To access the meaning of an imprint within a particular culture, you must learn the code for that imprint

2 Adolescent Culture
p.33; The American culture exhibits many of the traits consistent with adolescence: intense focus on the “now”, dramatic mood swings, a constant need for exploration and challenge to authority, a fascination with extremes, openness to change and reinvention, and a strong belief that mistakes warrant second chances.

3 Beauty and Fat
...
4 Health and Youth
...
4.1 Health
4.1.1 American
The code for health and wellness in America is MOVEMENT. Americans need to fill up their free time. Americans retirees begin second careers. They are devastated when, as they become elderly, they lose their driver’s licenses or find themselves relegated to wheelchairs. They feel lost when they give up their jobs. It is a very reptilian response. They suddenly find themselves with mush less to do—with must less movement in their lives—and the prospect is frightening. Many seek comfort and health affirming movement in hobbies or organizations.
4.1.2 Chinese; p. 81
Health means being in harmony with nature.
Chinese medicine has always taken into consideration the human being’s place in the natural world—curing illness using plants and herbs, astrology, and even the phases of the moon. The Chinese believe that they live in permanent connection with the natural elements and that good health is related to being at peace with nature.
4.1.3 Japanese; p.81
The Japanese see good health as an obligation. It you are healthy, you are committed to contributing to your culture, your community, and your family. They feel a powerful sense of guilt if they fall ill. Japanese children will apologize to their parents for getting sick, for they know illness may cause them to fall behind in school. In this culture, you don’t just wash your hands to stay clean, but also out of a sense of duty to yourself as a servant of the culture and to prevent someone else from getting sick because of you.
4.2 Youth
4.2.1 P.85 Immigrants keep America forever young
In many ways America is one of the oldest of the world’s nations: French Revolution began in 1789; the modern Italian became a nation-state in 1861, the German empire was founded in 1871. America has existed in the present form longer than France, Italy, and Germany. So why are American so fascinated with youth?
American culture is a culture filled with immigrants. Immigrants come here and leave the past behind. They start over in American. They are re-born here, often with new careers and new (American) dreams. Since we continue to receive immigrants in large numbers, this sense of renewal and reinvention is a living thing in our culture. In itself, this keeps us young.
4.2.2 The American code for youth is mask

5 Home and Dinner
5.1 Home
America was founded by a group of people who came here to create a new home. When they arrived, there were no houses, not roads, none of the trappings of home. For many of them, there was also no turning back. We see home not only as the house we grew up in or the one where we live with out families, but as out entire country. No invading force has ever occupied our country. Never in our history have we lost our home.
Thanksgiving is about coming home for dinner.
War is not won until “we bring ours boys home.”
The home plate in baseball.
American Code: “RE-“ return, reunite, reconfirm, renew. Home is a place where you can do things repeatedly and have a good sense of the outcome—unlike the outside world, where everything can be so unpredictable.
In the American house, the kitchen is the central room where the family gathers. The kitchen is the heart of the Americxan home because an essential ritual takes place there: the preparation of the evening meal. This is a ritual filled with repetition and reconnection that leads to replenishment.
On code: crowding around grandma’s dinner table for big family events.
Off code: go to a restaurant with spacious table.

6 Work and Money
6.1 Work
“What do you do?” => “What job do you do?” It’s another way of asking “What is your purpose?” as though one were looking at an unfamiliar machine and asking “What is it for?” The answers enable us to size someone up, as well as providing an evening’s worth of small talk. Many other cultures cannot fathom why one would continue to work hard long after someone has made enough money to keepa comfortable living. When our forefathers came to America and discovered a huge underdeloped land, their first though wasn’t “Let’s have some tea.” It was “Let’s get to work.” There was a New world to create, and it wasn’t going to create itself. Towns needed building. The West needed opening. The rudiments of a bold political experiment needed to be put in place. There wasn’t time for leisure then, and in a very real way, we still believe there isn’t time for it now.
The report, issued by the International Labor Organization, found that Americans work 137 hours, or about three and one-half weeks, more a year than Japanese workers, 260 hours (about six and one-half weeks) more a year than British workers and 499 hours (about 12 1/2 weeks) more a year than German workers, the report said. The Japanese had long been at the top for the number of hours worked, but in the mid-1990's the United States surpassed Japan, and since then it has pulled farther ahead.
American Code for Work: WHO YOU ARE.
Americans believe that they are what they do in their jobs. WE celebrate hugely successful businesspeople. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Lee Iacocca, Andy Grove, Donny Deutch show. Tom Clancy. Deep down we believe that you never have to be stuck in what you do. Entrepreneurs are inspirational to us because they set their own course of identity evolution.

6.2 Money
American Code for Money: Show Me the Proof
There is very little “old money” in America. The overwhelming preponderance of the wealth in this country belongs to the person who originally earned it. Our culture is filled with “self-made” people, and in some very real way, we all have the same starting point with regard to wealth—we all began poor. We came here with no money and established the goal of making life better for our children. The notion that we “come from nothing” pervades America. IN a sense, we have the poorest rich people in the world, because even those who accumulate huge sums of money think like poor people.
It isn’t a goal in and of itself for most Americans. We rely on it to show us that we are good, that we have true value in the world. An American can’t be knighted for his deeds or become a baroness or baron. American accolades are relative and ephemeral. We can prove what we’ve accomplished only by making as much money as possible. Money is our barometer of success.

7 Quality and Perfection
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an economic slump in the US, while the Japanese economy was growing robustly; many American companies questioned why the Japanese were succeeding while they floundered. Many believed the answer was quality. Many U.S. companies concluded that if they were to compete, they must adopt the Japanese approach to quality.
This foray failed. Our quality standards are not appreciably better today than they were in the 1980s, though corporations spend billions of dollars trying to change this. Why? The answer lies in the Codes.
American Code for quality: It Works
American Code for perfection: Death
Americans understand the concept of “getting it right the first time” at the cortex level, but deeper down they don’t want to do it, might even fear doing it. We are an adolescent culture with an adolescent attitude. We don’t want people telling us what to do and holding us to their standards. We want to discover things and lean how to do things our own way. When we arrived in the New World, there was no instruction manual teaching us how to deal with the conditions. We had to learn everything ourselves, and we did it the only way we could—through trial and error. Learning from our mistakes not only allowed us to survive, but also helped us to grow into a powerful and hugely successful country. We were rewarded for our ability to pick ourselves up off the ground and do things better the second and third times. Trying, failing, learning from our mistakes, and coming back stronger than ever is an essential part of the American archetype.
Japan has half of our population crammed into an area the size of Cal. State. There was never a vast frontier to explore. The Japanese couldn’t “dispose” of their houses or their property if they get disenchanted; they needed to make the most of their land and to keep it as productive as possible. Efficiency is critical. There’s no room for wasted products or wasted process. Mistakes are costlier. Quality is a necessity. Perfection is premium.
Americans find perfection boring. If something is perfect, you’re stuck with it for life. We want a new house, a new car, etc. We want things to become obsolete, because when they do we have the excuse we need to buy something new.

8 Food and Alcohol
Skip.
9 Shopping and Luxury
Skip.

10 The Code for the American in Other Cultures
What other cultures think of America?
10.1 France
A 40-year-old French man: “I keep thinking that Americans are going to fail terrible sometime soon. How can you succeed when you know so little about how the world works? Somehow, though, they tend to wind up on top. It’s a complete mystery to me.”
The Code for American in France is Space Travelers.
The French Code for France is Idea. Raised on stories of great French philosophers and thinkers French children imprint the value of ideas as paramount and refinement of the mind as the highest goal.

10.2 Germany
A 50-year old German: “Americans are cowboys. All of them are cowboys. They might wear business suits, but they still act like cowboys. They aren’t as smart or disciplined as we are, but they have an impressive ability to do what they set out to do.”

The Code for American in Germany is John Wayne
The image of John Wayne is of the strong, friendly stranger who helps save a town from trouble and then moves on with no expectation of thanks or remuneration. He is a tough guy. He’s “the law”. He never, however, shoots first. In this context, our actions in Iraq are off Code to Germans because they believe that we “shot first” there, embarking on a military response before exhausting all diplomatic solution.
German code for Germany is Order. As illustrated by the Lego toy.
Over many generations, Germans perfected bureaucracy in an effort to stave off the chaos that came to them in wave after wave, and Germans are imprinted early on with this most powerful of codes. That imprint makes children reach dutifully for the (Lego) instructions, and that Code prevents them from immediately destroying their neat construction in order to build it anew.

Lego, the Danish toy company, found instant success with their interlocking blocks in the German market, while sales foundered in the USA.
German kids read the instructions carefully and build what should be build. The results are exactly as what they should be. The mothers praise them and proudly put the result on display. It’s now time to buy another set.
American kids don’t read instructions. They build whatever strikes their fancy. Then they tear it apart and build something else that they want. They never need to buy a new set.

10.3 England
The English Code for America is Unashamedly Abundant.
An 18-year-old English woman: “Everything about American is big. The country is big, the people are big, their ambitions are very big, and their appetite for everything is big. I’ve never been there, but I imagine everyone living in a huge house and driving gigantic cars.”
A 55-year-lod English man: “It’s easy to think of Americans as somewhat beneath us. Their accents are ridiculous (and they insist on using their voices at such high volume), they all seem liked a bunch of bounding children, they consider “history” to be anything that took place in the past decade, and they all weigh too much. If they are beneath us, though, why have they accomplished so much? They seem to understand something we fail to understand.”
The English Code for England is Class. There is a strong sense among the English that they are of a higher social stratum than other people. This arises from England’s long history of world leadersip (“the sun never sets on the British Empire”) and from the messages passes down from generation to generation that being English is a special privilege that one receives at birth.

11 The Code for the American Presidency
Skip.

12 The Code for America
What Americans think of America?
WE see ourselves as “new”. We are always building and renewing, preferring to tear things down rather than preserve.
We see ourselves as occupants of vast amounts of space. You can drive from Seattle to Miami, stay in Holiday Inn every night, shop at Sears, eat lunch at McDonald everyday, and have a cup of Starbucks every morning. The sense of newness, size, diversity, and the unity forms a very strong imprint on Americans. Our symbols are eagles gliding in midair, a huge statue of a woman welcoming visitors to our shoures, a flag being raised on top of the ruins of a devastated building. These symbols form for us a very strong image of who we are meant to be.
The American Culture Code for America is Dream.
Dreams have driven this culture from its earliest days. The dream of explorers discovering the New World. The dream of pioneers opening the West. The dream of the Founding Fathers imaging a new form of union. The dream of entrepreneurs forging the Industrial Revolution. The dream of immigrants coming to a land of hope. The dream of a new group of explorers landing safely on the moon. Our Constitution is the expression of a dream for a better society. We created Hollywood and Disneyland and the Internet to project our dreams out into the world. We are the product of dreams and we are the makers of dreams.
Our notion of abundance is a dream: it is the dream of limitless opportunity that we believe is synonymous with being American.
p. 163; A French expression: “What is useless is what I cannot live without.”

“Angels & Demons”

by Dan Brown; ISBN 0-671-02736-0

p. 21 In CERN at Geneva, Switzerland, there is an engraved bronze:

For Cultural Innovation in the Digital Age
Awarded to Tim Berners Lee and CERN
For the invention of the
WORLDWIDE WEB

*The web began at CERN as a network of in-house computer sites.
* CERN: Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire

p. 78 Portuguese man-of-wars trap fish between their tentacles using nematocystic charges.

p.111 U.S. one-dollar bill. In the back, the Great Seal on the left. There’s an eye inside a triangle, which is above a pyramid. The writing under the pyramid says “Novus Ordo Seclrum”, which means New Secular Order.

p.108
(Vittoria asked) “Do you believe in God, Mr. Langdon?”

“Do I believe in God?”

A spiritual conundrum, Langdon thought. … Although he studied religion for years, Langdon was not a religious man. He respected the power of faith, the benevolence of churches, the strength religion gave so many people … and yet, for him, the intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to “believe” had always proved too big an obstacle for his academic mind.

“I wanted to believe,” he heard himself say.

Vittoria’s reply carried no judgment or challenge. “So why don’t you?”

He chuckled. “Well, it’s not that easy. Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracle—immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture … they all carry similar requirements—and similar penalties. They claim that if I don’t live by a specific code I will go to hell. I can’t imagine a God who would rule that way.”

“I hope you don’t let your students dodge questions that shamelessly.”

The comment caught him off guard. “What?”

“Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scriptures is stories … legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God’s hand?”

“Yes. As a scientist and the daughter of a Catholic priest, what do you think of religion?”
Vittoria, …. “Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same things. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”

(Langdon) “So you’re saying that whether you are a Christian or a Muslim simply depends on where you were born?”

(Vittoria) “Isn’t is obvious? Look at the diffusion of religion around the globe.”

(Langdon) “So faith is random?”

(Vittoria) “Hardly. Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

p.328 For Sylvie, the church has always been an innocuous entity … a place of fellowship and introspection … sometimes just a place to sing out loud without people starting at her. The church recorded the benchmarks of her life—funerals, weddings, baptisms, holidays—and it asked for nothing in return. Even the monetary dues were voluntary. Her children emerged from Sunday School every week uplifted, filled with ideas about helping others and being kinder. What could possible be wrong with that?
It never ceased to amaze her that so many of CERN’s so-called “brilliant minds” failed to comprehend the importance of the church. Did they really believe quarks and mesons inspired the average human being? Or that equations could replace someone’s need for faith in the divine?

Metaphor

(the use of) an expression which means or describes one thing or idea using words usually used of something else with very similar qualities. It does not use words “as” or “like”. A metaphor implies the comparison.

• Ignorance is a cancer that must be cured.
• The sunshine of her smile.
• The rain came down in buckets.
• I am a nice guy. I am all bark and no bite.
• You don’t hire a dog and bark yourself.
• to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat
• Dwight Eisenhower: Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
• Dwight Eisenhower: Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
• Dwight Eisenhower: If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
• Dwight Eisenhower: Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
• Dwight Eisenhower: There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
• Dwight Eisenhower: What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• The straw that breaks the camel's back.
• Someone who is enthusiastic and confident, but lacks ability and experience will rush in where angels fear to tread.
• That's putting the cart before the horse.
• That's the tail wagging the dog.
• I hate to rain on your parade.
• She has too many irons on the fire. (She is very busy.)
• It is the thought that counts. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. (Take what you have been given without criticism or emphasis on its worth)
• People in hell want ice water too. (Unlikely to happen) (asking too much)
• I have given you my best. Don’t try to squeeze a quart from a pint jug. (pushing the limits)
• Don’t bite more than you can chew.
• An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow.
• Language is the dress of thought.
• When the cat is away, the mice will play.

English Expressions

• Casting pearls before swine
• The straw that breaks the camel's back
• Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
• Someone who is enthusiastic and confident, but lacks ability and experience will rush in where angels fear to tread.
• That's putting the cart before the horse.
• That's the tail wagging the dog.
• I hate to rain on your parade.
• She has too many irons on the fire. (She is very busy.)
• It is the thought that counts; don't look a gift horse in the mouth. (Take what you have been given without criticism or emphasis on its worth)
• He never worries because he always lets the chips fall where they may. (to let the situation go without worry)
• Sometimes her husband plays fast and loose in the stock market. With romance, Dave will play fast and loose. (reckless behavior or do something carelessy)
• the chances are so few and far between
• People in hell want ice water too. (Unlikely to happen) (asking too much)
• trying to squeeze a quart from a pint jug (pushing the limits)
• It's like robbing Peter to feed Paul.
•