Kenneth Adelman and Richard Perle said "oops" earlier this month. As personality types, these two longtime Washington hawks couldn't be more different. Adelman is relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, while Perle is legendarily gloomy and dark. But both played a role in pushing the U.S. into war in Iraq--Adelman in an influential Washington Post Op-Ed promising that the war would be "a cakewalk" and Perle warning of catastrophe if we left Saddam Hussein and his weapons unmolested. Now, interviewed in Vanity Fair, they say it all may have been a mistake. Oops!
Yet in Vanity Fair's quotes, there is no note of contrition. It's not their fault. In fact, dispensing with Saddam, establishing peace and democracy in Iraq and then watching those ideals spread throughout the Middle East is still a good idea. It's just that President George W. Bush bungled the job. Among other things, he failed to recognize the degree of "disloyalty" within his Administration, says Perle--who was chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board--thus proving the accusation even as he makes it.
Opponents of the Iraq war ought to be happy for two such prominent converts. So why is their conversion so enraging? Well, first, howzabout an apology? It's maddening that there's no cost for being wrong, even when it translates into thousands of people dead and billions of dollars down the drain. In our culture of value-free celebrity, in which a famous ax murderer equals a famous actress equals a famous Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adelman and Perle have merely earned another 15 minutes as hot guests on the talk shows. They have reason to be pleased, having deserted the Bush Administration five minutes ahead of the other rats. But they should try not to show their pleasure.
Second, you don't get to assume the success of your intentions then plead a shrugging "Who knew?" when they don't pan out. I also am in favor of toppling dictators, establishing democracy and watching it spread painlessly throughout every region where there is no experience of it. Not only that: I am in favor of turning sand into ice cream and guaranteeing a cone to every child in the Middle East. But you can't turn sand into ice cream. That is not a defect in the execution of the idea. It is a defect in the idea itself. Although Perle and Adelman and others may think they are dissing the Bush Administration when they talk about its incompetence in failing to turn sand into ice cream, they are also displaying the Bush Administration's key vice, which is assuming that things are how you wish them to be and not how they are.
Third, condemning Bush's conduct of the Iraq war has become an overly handy cop-out for people who don't want to support the war but can't bring themselves to say it was wrong. This would include almost every Democratic candidate in last week's midterm elections. What would these Monday-morning quarterbacks have done differently? Sent in more American troops? Puh-leeze.
What is the proper way to act when you have made a boo-boo on the scale of what Perle and Adelman now admit to? A brief period of silence might be in order, followed by a bit of ideological spring cleaning. If this big idea has turned out to be wrong, isn't it possible that some of their other ideas are also wrong? In fact, maybe their whole philosophy is mistaken. Perle and Adelman are both neoconservatives, or neocons, a group that prides itself on being tough-minded and pragmatic while rejecting liberals as soft and romantic. Yet they managed to turn a President who was elected on a promise to eschew nation building into Woodrow Wilson in cowboy boots, promising democracy everywhere.
Adelman and Perle probably put on a better display of chagrin when they are 20 minutes late for a dinner party than they have managed to come up with so far in concluding that maybe the war was not such a great idea after all. "Just say 'oops' and get out" might be an excellent policy for the U.S. at this stage in the Iraq war. But it's not sufficient for the people who got us into it.
I'm not proud of my reason for wanting to slap Kim Jong Il. Shouldn't we be beyond just not liking someone's face? I always thought so, but recently the folks at Princeton University reassured me that, nope, it's perfectly fine and in fact entirely human. A study by psychologist Alex Todorov shows that we form opinions about a person with a 100-millisecond glance at the face alone. What's more, you can't even blame your higher brain for such bias. The impulse seems to arise in the primitive amygdala. If your prefrontal cortex is your summa cum laude lobe, the amygdala is Barney Rubble. Says Todorov: "This is a case of a high-level judgment being made by a low-level brain structure."
Todorov has a special interest in politicians, people for whom physiognomy can be destiny. Take Mikhail Gorbachev. After the ursine Leonid Brezhnev, Gorby was Kris Kringle. His rounded cheeks, his careless hairlessness, even his great red spot all left him looking disarmingly rumpled. That was a guy who not only could dismantle an empire and knock down a wall but would also remember to keep caramels in his pocket for the grandkids. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, is less gentle grandpa than live mink. President George W. Bush may have looked into Putin's soul and been reassured by what he saw, but he might have found less to like if he'd paid closer attention to the Russian leader's beady eyes and take-no-prisoners cheekbones.
The U.S. too has leaders whose faces reveal as much as their résumés. Bill Clinton's image as affable rascal is partly due to his having the twinkly look of a man who enjoys his indulgences. He even sprouted a bit of a drinker's nose despite the fact that, by all accounts, he has no taste for the stuff. In this case, form seems to want to follow function.
There's more science than sorcery in the way we eyeball faces and respond to what we see. Our species wouldn't survive if we weren't suckers for what's called neoteny--features like large eyes, an oversize head and a gumdrop nose that signal babyness. We swoon at such traits in people and animals, which is one evolutionary explanation for why we rush to the aid of a lost child or stray puppy instead of, you know, eating them. Stanford University studies showed that the same area of the brain that responds to faces also processes objects like cars and sculptures, explaining the huggable appeal of the VW Beetle and the porcelain cherub.
Facial symmetry appeals to us too. Dick Cheney's least trustworthy feature is easily his smile, a lopsided thing that makes him look as if half his face is pleased with something while the other half is paying bills. Research at Columbia University revealed that when some people see fleeting, subliminally projected images of fearful faces, their brain's fright center lights up. If fear is infectious, perhaps a dishonest face makes us feel similarly slippery or a surly face leaves us feeling sour--hardly what politicians want to stir up in voters.
The mingling of face and temperament raises the question of whether the two co-evolve or one produces the other. Was John Kerry's hangdog face responsible for his sodden campaigning? Did Richard Nixon grow his shadowy stubble, or did his shadowy stubble grow him? The British weekly New Scientist has touched on this, exploring what is known as nominative determinism--the common case of people whose names echo their jobs. There is the director of penal reform Frances Crook, the marine biologist Steven Haddock. American culture has been rife with such synchronicity--pitcher Rollie Fingers, Senator George McGovern. "Are these whimsicalities of chance," Carl Jung once asked, "or the suggestive effects of the name?"
If names drive careers and faces drive personas, we should have sympathy for politicians consigned by countenance to personalities they might not have chosen. As the midterm elections end and presidential hopefuls look ahead to 2008, there are perils for both the lovely and the unlovely. Those easy on the eye should take care not to overstate the point (MITT ROMNEY: MORE SYMMETRICAL THAN EVER!). Those with aesthetic hurdles should consider whether it's finally time for that eye lift or chin tuck. Remember, candidates think of November as a time to face the voters, but for the electorate, it's often a time to vote the faces.
Does anyone really fear dying in a nuclear blast? In my atomic nightmare, my family survives. A flash of light across the East River in Manhattan; a tremor and roar; a column of flame. Then the questions. Do we pack up the kids and flee? Duct tape the windows and hope for help? How much food is in the pantry? How strong are the locks on the doors?
This morbid fantasy just became a little more plausible. Pariah state North Korea's purported test of a small A-bomb spotlighted the morbid fantasy of our age: the small-scale, survivable Armageddon.
Even a relatively tiny bomb by nuclear standards might kill hundreds of thousands. But it could leave millions in the same city alive, panicked and beset, and the U.S. changed irrevocably.
And not only neurotic urbanites are willing to imagine what comes after; high and mass culture are on a postapocalyptic kick. Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is an unflinching tour of an America rendered barbaric by a fiery cataclysm that ends most life on earth. NBC's Heroes depicts Manhattan destroyed; on Sci Fi network's Battlestar Galactica, billions die in a nuclear attack. And the most unlikely fall hit, CBS's Jericho, has more than 11 million people a week tuning in to visit a Kansas town that survives a nuking that has incinerated untold U.S. cities (taking, presumably, your local CBS affiliate with them).
If there's a common thread to these disparate works, it's their intimacy. Jericho, for instance, gives us doomsday as soap opera. The postapocalyptic tales of the cold war--On the Beach, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Day After, Threads--were books and movies that had conclusions; a TV series is open-ended, like life. Jericho doles out its horror in doses--flickering TV images of ruined cities, radiation victims dead by a lake--and softens it with soap-opera B-plots. The survivors have affairs and family fights; teenagers flirt and throw parties. Chicago may be burning, but somewhere on the Great Plains, The O.C. lives.
Still, Jericho is trying to do something serious: to ask what apocalypse would do to the humanity of us who survive. That is also the question of The Road; its answer is tougher to take. A father and son trudge across a wasteland of burnt trees and skeletons, evading murderers and cannibals. The evil control most of the weapons and scant provisions; the good have, literally, been eaten away. Grim as The Road is, it's more anguishing emotionally, as the ailing father struggles, out of a febrile love for his son, to keep the boy and hope alive. As opposed to The Road Warrior, it's heartrendingly realistic, a masterpiece but nearly unbearable. It is also No. 4 on the New York Times best-seller list.
Clearly there's a hunger for insight, however painful, on the end-time fears particular to our time. The cold war stories could pin the disaster on a simple East-West showdown. The new apocalypses are more shadowy, less ideological. In Jericho, we do not know who attacked or why. In The Road, the cataclysm may have been war, or it may have been an asteroid strike. Who would do this? you might ask these works. Terrorists? A superpower? Americans? God? Their unspoken shrug: Any. All. None. Pick a number.
Here is, I hope, a kind of pack-a-go-bag practicality to this mini-craze. Mass destruction, after all, has been the animating bogey of American politics for more than five years, but we haven't really thought through what, on a human and social level, it would mean. Could we survive? Would we want to? Would we pull together or feed on one another? That millions can handle the question, in literature or a soft-focus made-for-CBS version, may be testament to our willingness to face the times--to put ourselves mentally, for a while, where Dick Cheney lives 24/7.
That's the charitable explanation. The more disturbing one is curiosity, fatalism, even, at some level, a measure of acceptance. We need to face our darkest possibilities. And yet, looking at Jericho's ratings, I have to wonder: Do I want America to be this comfortable with the apocalypse? In Jericho's yet-unseen outside world, millions of people in cities like mine could be incinerated, starving or in anarchy. But in at least one small town, life goes on, to a pop sound track, without us--without, in fact, much time or verbiage spent mourning us. Sitting in sight of the Manhattan skyline, I would say that's the scariest story of all.
模考
“A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.” “All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. VIII
“Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. VIII
“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“The Power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“To yield readily—easily—to the persuasion of a friend is no merit with you.”
“To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.”
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“Arguments are too much like disputes.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their colour and shape, and the eye-lashes, so remarkably fine, might be copied.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. X
“But there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better shew more affection than she feels.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. VI
“My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. VI
“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. VI
SN |
Latin Roots |
Meanings |
1 |
BENE |
Well |
2 |
CADere, CASus CID, CIS |
To fall |
3 |
caedere, caesus, CID, CIS |
To cut |
4 |
CEDere, CESSus |
To go, yield |
5 |
CAPere, CAPTus, CEPT, CEIVE, CIP |
To take |
6 |
CREDere, CREDITus |
To believe |
7 |
CLAMare |
To call out |
8 |
claudere, CLAUSus, CLOS, CLUD, CLUS |
To close |
9 |
COR, CORDis |
Heart |
10 |
CURa |
Care, concern |
11 |
CURrere, CURSus, COURS |
To run |
12 |
DICere, DICTus, |
To speak |
13 |
DOLere |
To grieve, feel pain |
14 |
DUCere, DUCTus |
To lead |
15 |
ESSE |
To be |
16 |
FAri, FATus |
To speak |
17 |
FACere, FACTus, FEC(T), FIC, FIT |
To do |
18 |
FERre, LATus |
To carry |
19 |
FINis |
End, border |
20 |
FORMa |
Form, shape |
21 |
FORTis |
Strong |
22 |
FUNDus |
Bottom |
23 |
FUNDere, FUSus |
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Spelling differences between American and British English |
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In British English, words that end in -l preceded by a vowel usually double the -l when a suffix is added, while in American English the letter is not doubled. The letter will double in the stress is on the second syllable.
|
Base Word |
American |
British |
|
counsel |
counseling |
counselling |
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equal |
equaling |
equalling |
|
model |
modeling |
modelling |
|
quarrel |
quarreling |
quarrelling |
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signal |
signaling |
signalling |
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travel |
traveling |
travelling |
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excel |
excelling |
excelling |
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propel |
propelling |
propelling |
Spelling of verbs
This is related to formation of the past participle for verbs. For a complete list of irregular verb spellings, see Susan Jones' Complete List of English Irregular Verbs at this web site. Below is a sampling of the three main categories of differeneces with verbs.
-ed vs. -t
The first category involves verbs that use -ed or -t for the simple past and past participle. Generally, the rule is that if there is a verb form with -ed, American English will use it, and if there is a form with -t, British English uses it. However, these forms do not exist for every verb and there is variation. For example, both American and British English would use the word 'worked' for the past form of 'to work', and in American English it is common to hear the word 'knelt' as the past tense of 'to kneel'.
|
Base form |
American |
British |
|
to dream |
dreamed |
dreamt |
|
to leap |
leaped |
leapt |
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to learn |
leareded |
learnt |
base form vs. -ed
The second category of difference includes verbs that use either the base form of the verb or the -ed ending for the simple past.
|
Base form |
American |
British |
|
to fit |
fit |
fitted |
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to forecast |
forecast |
forecasted |
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to wed |
wed |
wedded |
irregular vs. -ed
The third category of difference includes verbs that have either an irregular spelling or the -ed ending for the simple past.
|
Base form |
American |
British |
|
to knit |
knit |
knitted |
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to light |
lit |
lighted |
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to strive |
strove |
strived |
So what does tall his mean for learners of English? In the beginning, unfortunately, it means a lot of memorization (or memorisation) and of course, a few mistakes. For spoken English, the differences are barely audible, so forge ahead and don't be too concerned with whether a word is spelled 'dwelled' or 'dwelt'. With written English, however, if you are unsure about the spelling, better to ask your teacher or look the word up in the dictionary and see what the experts say.
今天考了AWA，大致都很順利
——- 考試前 ——————
我是報10:30的，約10:00到 (要提早半小時)
在台大語言中心的走廊默背模板沒多久，
就有人來問我要考什麼，
拿東西要我填，還要照抄一段”不作弊…”之類的，
寫完後，他就拿寄物櫃的鑰匙給我，
叫我把東西鎖在寄物櫃中，只能帶護照，
然後又填了一些東西，還照了一張相，領了草稿紙和2B鉛筆，
接著，就是生死關頭了…………………….10:20 進考場
——- 考場內 ——————-
考前有一堆問卷要填：大學主修、預計哪一年出國、預計去哪個國家、研究所要念什麼、
打算念到什麼學位、還問了爸媽的學歷……
我問卷和考試說明大概花了10分鐘，
按了一堆 “proceed” 之後，就正式開始了
——- Issue ——————–
兩個題目我之前都有準備過，
雖然沒有實際寫，不過都有想過要怎麼寫、要舉哪些例子，
我碰到的兩題是：
1.”So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding of
the past provides little guidance for living in the present.”
2.”The human mind will always be superior to machines because machines are only
tools of human minds.”
我是選第一題，因為覺得這題比較多例子可以舉，
我的重點是放在 “不能忽視過去，要用過去的基礎來處理現在的問題”，
但也強調 “不能緬懷過去，或固守過去不向前看”，
另外也提到， “過去是現在的基礎，現在我們遇到的難題也會成為將來的基礎”，
大致是這樣。
時間分配的還蠻剛好的，
寫完還有時間全部檢查一次，
也發現了幾個打字錯誤。
——- Argument —————–
Argument的題目：
The following appeared in an editorial in a Prunty County newspaper. “In an
attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County recently lowered its speed
limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 on all major county roads. But the 55 mph
limit should be restored, because this safety effort has failed. Most drivers
are exceeding the new speed limit and the accident rate throughout Prunty
County has decreased only slightly. If we want to improve the safety of our
roads, we should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project
that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths and
resurfacing rough roads. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph
speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler
County this past year than there were five years ago.”
這題我沒準備過，不過印象中有看過類似的。
我一開始就先把第一段和最後一段的模板打出來，
然後開始挑錯誤：
第二段：兩地經驗不能複製，文中沒提到Prunty的路是否狹窄或不平滑，有可能Prunty
的路很寬、很平，因而導致居民喜歡超速，若路況不佳，超速機率應該不高。
第三段：舉了一些”他因”：Prunty五年來可能多了不少新手駕駛，可能經常有濃霧，
可能工廠廢氣增加影響能見度，可能通勤的居民增加(因此新手也增加)，
可能酒後駕車的人增加。
第四段：提出降低車禍率的方法：宣導交通安全，加強酒駕取締，提升居民的
consciousness of safety and driving moral。應該還有一些，因為這段
我寫最長，不過現在想不起來了。
30分鍾真的很短，寫完第四段時間就差不多了，
所以我最後一段完全都是模版，
沒有加一些這個argument的東西。
中間三段雖然都算有充分發展，
但2、3段篇幅超嫌短，也寫得不夠深入。
——- 寫完作文 —————-
寫完之後，可以選擇 送成績 或 取消成績，要確認很多次，
接著是可以選擇送成績的學校，
我因為還沒選好，所以就沒有填，按 Exit 結束考試。
——- 出考場 ——————-
把草稿紙和鉛筆帶出去，
護照交給試務人員，再簽名、寫結束時間就可以了。
——- 心得 ———————
還是一些老掉牙的：
1.打字要快，我argument一開始打模板花掉不少時間，
2.模板要背熟，不過我覺得只要背argument的首尾段即可，中間那些他因、資料等等，
多看幾遍看到熟就可以，不用被那麼多，現場靈活運用較實際。
Issue應該是完全不需要模板，自己的想法比較重要，還有多舉例。
3.時代百大人物很好用(我是補來欣謝忠理的作文)，在我準備Issue時，幾乎每一篇的例子
都可以從百大中找到。
4.Issue的高頻率題目要多看，我實際練習寫的只有3篇，而且都是寫了3個小時以上，
其他都只用想要怎麼寫而已。我遇到的兩題，一題出現頻率第8高，一提第19，
而我是準備了前28題。
5.Argument只要看幾題就可以，我是準備了10題，實際寫的也是3題，
每個題目都大同小異，抓到要領即可。
———————————–
最後，祝一樣要考GRE的人考試順利，
真的很難熬，但總是會熬出頭的，
再說，以後出國唸書更難熬阿，
就當作是暖身吧！
醫學之路 (2)
