2021经济学人文章精选

As fuels, oil and electricity have meaningfully different characteristics OIL shaped the 20th century.  In war,  the French leader Georges Clemenceau said, petroleum was “as vital as blood”.  In  peace  the oil business dominated stock markets,  bankrolled  despots  and propped up the economies of entire countries. But the 21st century will see oil’s influence wane. Cheap natural gas, renewable energy, electric vehicles and coordinated efforts to tackle global warming together mean that the power source of choice will be electricity. That is welcome. The electricity era will diminish the clout of the $2trn oil trade, reduce the choke points that have made oil a source of global tension, put energy production into local hands and make power more accessible to the poor. It will also make the world cleaner and safer—reassuringly dull, even. The trouble is getting from here to there. Not just oil producers, but everyone else, too, may find the transition  perilous . bankroll: to supply money for ( a business, project, person, etc.) despot: a ruler who has total power and who often uses that power in cruel and unfair ways perilous: full of danger: dangerous 石油早就了20世纪，在战争年代，石油就像血液一样重要；在和平年代，它掌控着经济命脉... Oil and electricity are a study in contrasts (see our special report). Oil is a wonder fuel, packed with more energy by weight than coal and by volume than natural gas (both still the main sources of electricity). It is easy to ship, store and turn into myriad refined products,  from petrol to plastics to pharmaceuticals.  But it is found only in specific places favoured by geology. Its production is concentrated in a few hands, and its oligopolistic suppliers—from the Seven Sisters to OPEC and Russia—have consistently attempted to drip-feed it on to the market to keep prices and cartelisation make oil prone to crises and the governments of oil-rich states prone to corruption and abuse. 石油有很多的优点，很容易运输，储存和合成其他产品... from petrol to plastics to pharmaceuticals 记住这个表达  但石油只产在某几个国家与地区，就让这些国家形成了垄断... Different kettles of fuel Electricity is less user-friendly than oil. It is hard to store, it loses its  oomph  when shipped over long distances, and its transmission and distribution require hands-on regulation. But in every other way, it promises a more peaceful world. Electricity is hard to monopolise because it can be produced from numerous sources of fuel, from natural gas and nuclear to wind, solar, hydro and  biomass . The more these replace coal and oil as fuel for generation, the cleaner it promises to be. Given the right weather conditions, it is abundant geographically, too. Anyone can produce electricity—fromgreener-than-thou Germans to energy-poor Kenyans. oomph: power or energy ( his argument lacks oomph; the truck doesn't have the oomph to haul the boat) 电力能源虽然不如石油方便，但是却不会被某几个国家垄断，很多方法可以产生电力能源：风力，太阳能，氢能等 True, the technologies used to produce electricity from renewable resources, and the rare earths and minerals that some, including solar panels and wind turbines, rely on, could be subject to protectionism and trade wars. China, which produces 85% of the world’s rare earths, sharply tightened export quotas in 2010 with OPEC-like zeal. America and the European Union have  slapped  tariffs on Chinese solar-panel imports. Yet the vital substances involved in generating and storing electricity are not burned up like oil. Once a stock of them exists it can for the most part be recycled. And, even if today’s output is concentrated, for most materials the planet has undeveloped deposits or substitutes that can  thwart  a would-be monopolist. Rare earths, for example, are not rare—one of them,  cerium , is almost as common as zinc. Electricity also rewards renewables are  intermittent , regional grids are needed to ship electricity from where it is plentiful to where it is not. This could replicate the pipeline politics that Russia engages in with its natural-gas shipments to Europe. More likely, as grids are interconnected so as to diversify supply, more interdependent countries will conclude that manipulating the market is self-defeating. After all, unlike gas, you cannot keep electricity in the ground. thwart: to prevent someone from doing something or to stop something from happening intermittent: starting, stopping, and starting again: not constant or steady An electric world is therefore getting there will be hard, for two reasons. First, as rents dry up, authoritarian oil-dependent governments could collapse. Few will miss them, but their passing could cause social unrest and strife. Oil producers had a taste of what is to come when the price plunged in 2014-16, which led to deep, and unpopular, austerity measures. Saudi Arabia and Russia have temporarily stopped the rot by curtailing production and pushing oil prices higher, as part of an“OPEC+” agreement. They need high prices to buy time to  wean  their economies off oil. But the higher the oil price, the greater the incentive for energy-thirsty behemoths like China and India to invest in renewable-powered electrification to give themselves cheaper and more secure supplies. Should the producers’ alliance crumble in the face of a long-term decline in demand for oil, prices could once again tumble, this time for good. wean: to start feeding ( a child or young animal) food other than its mother's milk 从石油能源时代转换到电力能源时代是一个艰难的过程，第一个难点就是石油价格下降的话，这些产油国就会产生动荡和冲突... That will lead to the second danger: the fallout for investors in oil assets. America’s frackers need only look at the country’s  woebegone  coalminers to catch a glimpse of their fate in a distant post-oil future. The International Energy Agency, a forecaster, reckons that, if action to limit global warming to below 2°C accelerates in coming years,$1trn of oil assets could be stranded, ie, rendered obsolete. If the transition is unexpectedly sudden, stockmarkets will be dangerously exposed. The tension is the one hand government policy should press forward with the transition as fast as it can. On the other, a rapid transition will cause upheaval. Expect the big consumers, especially India and China, to force the pace. woebegone: looking or feeling very sad 点评：矛盾是无法避免的，一方面各国政府希望尽快转变到可持续的能源（产油国除外），另一方面这个转变过程速度太快的话会造成动乱。一言以蔽之，就是钱惹的祸 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Results Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L Mean Sentence Length: Mean Log Word Frequency: Word Count: 853 这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 是经济学人里普通难度的文章~ 使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~

本文节选自《经济学人》期Business版块的一篇文章《China’s YouTube》，简单介绍了bilibili营收及发展情况 本文总共6段，建议大家先自主阅读原文，再学习精读笔记。 文末会总结此次学习写作可以使用的词句，读者也可自己总结。 会定期将内容进行总结，做成word分享，希望大家也能坚持学习 1 The  mission statement  of Bilibili, often  dubbed  “China’s YouTube”, stands out for  its modesty. Instead of promising to change the world, the firm  aspires  merely  to  “enrich the everyday life of young generations in China”. If  user figures  are a guide, the Chinese young feel enriched. In the last quarter of 2020 the number of people who used the service at least once a month  shot up by half from a year earlier , to 202m. Nearly nine in ten were under the age of 35. Videos on the platform, which range from sports highlights to  self­help lectures  and everything in between, attract an average of   daily views . mission statement ： 宗旨说明，英文：an official statement of the aims of a company or an organization，即一家公司或组织的目标 【词汇积累】 dubbed ： dub，称作，起绰号，A is dubbed被动形式表示……被称作 【词汇积累】 stand out for sth ： 以……脱颖而出，引人注目 【词组积累】 aspire to do or sth ： 立志于做某事 【词组积累】 user figures ： 用户数据 【词汇积累】 shot up by half from a year earlier ： shot up表示激增，猛涨，by half表示增长的量，表示比一年前猛增了一半 【词组积累】 self­help lectures ： self-help表示自助的，可以表示自主学习课程 【地道表达】 bn daily views ： 12亿每日观看次数 【地道表达】  Bilibili，常被称作中国的YouTube，以其谦虚的公司宗旨而引人注目，他并非承诺改变世界，而只是希望“丰富中国年轻一代的日常生活”。如果以用户数据为依据，中国年轻人确实感受到了充实感。在2020年的最后一个季度，每月至少使用这项服务一次的人数比一年前猛增了一半，达到了亿，将近十分之九的人年龄在35岁以下。该平台上的视频，从体育高光时刻到自主学习，以及介于两者之间的一切，平均每天吸引12亿人次观看。 2 Launched  in 2009 as a website for fans of Japanese anime, Bilibili has evolved into  a diversified entertainment group. In recent months even Western musicians (such as Jessie J and Charlie Puth) and Hollywood stars (including Dwayne Johnson) have  rushed to set up Bilibili accounts . Investors, too, have taken notice.  Between  March 2018, when the firm  listed  in New York,  and  February this year its market capitalization rose more than ten­fold, to $41bn. On March 23rd it raised $ in a secondary listing in Hong Kong. Launch ： 上市。除了发射（火箭）外，还有上市的意思，launched in 2009 于2009年上市。下文中的 list  in New York中的list也有上市的意思 【词汇积累】 evolved into ： 进化成为 【词组积累】 rush to set up Bilibili accounts ： rush to do争先箜篌地做某事，set up …… accounts则表示开设创建……的账号 【词组积累】 Between  ……  and  ……： 表示在……和……之间，可以为两个时间段之间 【词组积累】 Bilibili于2009年上市，是一家面向日本动漫迷的网站，现已发展成为一家多元化的娱乐集团。近几个月来，甚至连西方音乐家（Jessie J和Charlie Puth）和好莱坞明星（包括Dwayne Johnson）都争先恐后地开设了Bilibili账户。投资者也注意到了这一点。从2018年3月该公司在纽约上市到今年2月，其市值增长了10倍多，达到410亿美元。3月23日，在香港二次上市中筹集了26亿美元。 3 Unlike YouTube, Bilibili refuses to  clutter  user­generated videos with adverts. That way, the thinking goes, it can attract new users  put off by  such interruptions, and convince them to spend more time on the platform. The central aim, as described by executives, is to “convert” this “sticky community” into “paying users”. Bilibili does so in two main ways:  by offering games where   players purchase virtual items to advance to the next level , and access to original and licensed firms and series. This Netflix­like business, launched in 2018, now has paying subscribers. clutter ： ~ sth (up) (with sth/sb) 凌乱地塞满；乱堆放to fill a place with too many things, so that it is untidy。文中指的是bilibili不会在用户上传的视频中，随意添加广告：clutter user-generated videos with adverts 【词汇积累】 put off by ： 被……推迟，这里指的是bilibili运用不放广告的理念吸引那些被广告阻碍看视频的用户 【词组积累】 by offering games where players purchase virtual items to advance to the next level ： 这里的定语从句where后面句子是完整的，不缺成分，where表示玩家在游戏中发生购买行为时的场所，也可以理解为in which 与YouTube不同，Bilibili拒绝在用户自制的视频中添加广告，这样做可以吸引新用户推迟这种中断，并说服他们花更多的时间在平台上。正如高管们所描述的，核心目标是将这个“粘性社区”转化为“付费用户”。Bilibili主要通过两种方式实现这一点：提供玩家购买虚拟物品以提升到下一个级别的游戏，以及访问原始和许可的公司和系列产品。这种类似Netflix的业务于2018年推出，目前拥有1450万付费用户。 4 The share of users who pay for things like in­game  accessories  and subscriptions has risen from in 2018 to in 2020. Receipts from these sources helped Bilibili nearly to  double its revenues in each of the past three years , to 12bn yuan ($) in 2020. It also sells adverts on parts of its platform, but they made up less than fifth of its sales. accessory ： 配件、附属品，文中指游戏中的付费物品，in-game accessories 【词汇积累】 double its revenues in each of the past three years ：： 在过去的三年中收入每年都翻了一番 【地道表达】 支付游戏内附属品和订阅费的用户比例从2018年的上升到2020年的。这些来源的收入帮助Bilibili在过去三年中每年的收入翻了一番，到2020年达到120亿元人民币（合17亿美元）。它也在部分平台上销售广告，但这些广告所占的份额还不到其销售额的四分之一。 5 All this has yet to make any money . Last year Bilibili reported an operating loss of 3bn yuan, double the  shortfall  in 2019. Profits may remain elusive; the company must invest to maintain a pipeline of addictive games and  pays top dollar  to  outbid  big streamers like iQiyi  for  the rights to popular movies and shows its  nascent subscription business needs. All this has yet to make any money ： 然而这还没有赚到一分钱 Shortfall ： 亏空，缺口 【词汇积累】 pays top dollar ： 付高价 【词汇积累】 outbid sb for sth ： 出价高于某人 【词组积累】 nascent ： 新生的，萌芽的 【词汇积累】 然而所有这些都还没有赚到钱。去年，Bilibili公布了30亿元的经营亏损，是2019年亏损额的两倍。利润可能仍然难以捉摸；该公司必须通过投资维持游戏渠道，并支付高价，以超过爱奇艺等大型流媒体，获得热门电影的版权，并展示其新生的订阅业务需求。 6 Bilibili’s executives are  sanguine . “As our net revenues continue to grow, we do not expect our total content costs as a percentage of total revenue to  substantially  increase,” they wrote in the prospectus  for the firm’s Hong Kong listing. Its share price, down by a third since its February peak, suggests investors want finally to see some proof. Sanguine ： 充满信心的，乐观的 【词汇积累】 Substantially ： 除了基本上，总体来说，还有大大地，大幅地 【熟词僻义】 Prospectus ： 招股书 Bilibili的高管们很乐观。“随着我们的净收入继续增长，我们不希望我们的总内容成本占总收入的百分比大幅增加，”他们写道，在该公司的香港上市的招股书。该公司股价自2月份高点以来下跌了三分之一，这表明投资者终于希望看到一些证据。 总结 mission statement ： 宗旨说明，英文：an official statement of the aims of a company or an organization，即一家公司或组织的目标 【词汇积累】 dubbed ： dub，称作，起绰号，A is dubbed被动形式表示……被称作 【词汇积累】 user figures ： 用户数据 【词汇积累】 Launch ： 上市。除了发射（火箭）外，还有上市的意思，launched in 2009 于2009年上市。下文中的 list  in New York中的list也有上市的意思 【词汇积累】 clutter ： ~ sth (up) (with sth/sb) 凌乱地塞满；乱堆放to fill a place with too many things, so that it is untidy。文中指的是bilibili不会在用户上传的视频中，随意添加广告：clutter user-generated videos with adverts 【词汇积累】 accessory ： 配件、附属品，文中指游戏中的付费物品，in-game accessories 【词汇积累】 Shortfall ： 亏空，缺口 【词汇积累】 pays top dollar ： 付高价 【词汇积累】 nascent ： 新生的，萌芽的 【词汇积累】 Sanguine ： 充满信心的，乐观的 【词汇积累】 stand out for sth ： 以……脱颖而出，引人注目 【词组积累】 aspire to do or sth ： 立志于做某事 【词组积累】 shot up by half from a year earlier ： shot up表示激增，猛涨，by half表示增长的量，表示比一年前猛增了一半 【词组积累】 evolved into ： 进化成为 【词组积累】 rush to set up Bilibili accounts ： rush to do争先箜篌地做某事，set up …… accounts 则表示开设创建……的账号 【词组积累】 Between  ……  and  ……： 表示在……和……之间，可以为两个时间段之间 【词组积累】 outbid sb for sth ： 出价高于某人 【词组积累】 put off by ： 被……推迟，这里指的是bilibili运用不放广告的理念吸引那些被广告阻碍看视频的用户 【词组积累】 Substantially ： 除了基本上，总体来说，还有大大地，大幅地 【熟词僻义】 self­help lectures ： self-help表示自助的，可以表示自主学习课程 【地道表达】 bn daily views ： 12亿每日观看次数 【地道表达】 double its revenues in each of the past three years ：： 在过去的三年中收入每年都翻了一番 【地道表达】

A revolution in healthcare is coming Welcome to Doctor You Feb 1st 2018NO WONDER they are called “patients”.When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests, baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some stoicism will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling week three of the biggest names in American business—Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—announced a new venture to provide better, cheaper health care for their employees. A fundamental problem with today’s system is that patients lack knowledge and control. Access to data can bestow both. The internet already enables patients to seek online consultations when and where it suits them. You can take over-the-counter tests to analyse your blood, sequence your genome and check on the bacteria in your gut. Yet radical change demands a shift in emphasis, from providers to patients and from doctors to data. That shift is happening. Technologies such as the smartphone allow people to monitor their own health. The possibilities multiply when you add the crucial missing ingredients—access to your own medical records and the ability easily to share information with those you trust. That allows you to reduce inefficiencies in your own treatment and also to provide data to help train medical algorithms. You can enhance your own care and everyone else’s, too. jargon: the language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people stoicism: the quality or behavior of a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion 现在病人走进一家医院，都能预料到会是什么样的：仓促的医生，数不清的检测，看不懂的病例，涨不停的费用和无尽的等待... 病人的问题就是他们不清楚状况和缺乏对自己病情的控制 所以亚马逊和JPMorgan还有Berkshire Hathaway 成立了一个新的公司，为他们的员工提供更好更廉价的医疗 The doctor will be you now Medical data may not seem like the type of kindling to spark a revolution. But the flow of information is likely to bear fruit in several ways. One is better diagnosis. Someone worried about their heart can now buy a watch strap containing a medical-grade monitor that will detect arrhythmias. Apps are vying to see if they can diagnose everything from skin cancer and concussion to Parkinson’s disease. Research is under way to see whether sweat can be analysed for molecular biomarkers without the need for an invasive blood test. Some think that changes in how quickly a person swipes a phone’s touchscreen might signal the onset of cognitive problems. A second benefit lies in the management of complex diseases. Diabetes apps can change the way patients cope, by monitoring blood-glucose levels and food intake, potentially reducing long-run harm such as blindness and gangrene. Akili Interactive, a startup, plans to seek regulatory approval for a video game designed to stimulate an area of the brain implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (see article). 医疗数据可能不会带来一个伟大的变革，但是会有非常多的好处，这四段分别讲了四个有用的地方，看经济学人重要的是看清楚文章的逻辑！ 第一个好处是：更好地诊断 第二个好处是：管理复杂的疾病 Patients can also improve the efficiency of their care. Although health records are increasingly electronic, they are often still trapped in silos. Many contain data that machines cannot read. This can lead to delays in treatment, or worse. Many of the 250,000 deaths in America attributable to medical error each year can be traced to poorly co-ordinated care. With data at their fingertips, common standards to enable sharing and a strong incentive to get things right, patients are more likely to spot errors. On January 24th Apple laid out its plans to ask organisations to let patients use their smartphones to download their own medical records (see article). A final benefit of putting patients in charge stems from the generation and aggregation of their data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being trained by a unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to identify cancerous tissues and retinal damage. As patients’data stream from smartphones and “wearables”, they will teach AIs to do ever more. Future AIs could, for instance, provide automated medical diagnosis from a description of your symptoms, spot behavioural traits that suggest you are depressed or identify if you are at special risk of cardiac disease. The aggregation of data will also make it easier for you to find other people with similar diseases and to see how they responded to various treatments. 第三个好处是提高医疗效率 第四个好处是病人掌控自己的数据整合等 讲完了好处接下来讲坏处... An Apple a day As with all new technologies, pitfalls accompany the promise. Hucksters will launch apps that do not work. But with regulators demanding oversight of apps that present risks to patients, users will harm only their wallets. Not everyone will want to take active control of their own health care; plenty will want the professionals to manage . Data can be pored over by those who are interested, while those who are not can opt to share data automatically with trusted providers. The benefits of new technologies often flow disproportionately to the rich. Those fears are mitigated by the incentives that employers, governments and insurers have to invest in cost-efficient preventive care for all. Alphabet has recently launched a firm called Cityblock Health, for example, which plans to trawl through patients’ data to provide better care for low-income city dwellers, many of them covered by Medicaid, an insurance programme for poorer Americans. pitfall: a danger or problem that is hidden or not obvious at first pore over: to read or study something very carefully trawl: to search through something in order to find someone or something 很多先进的技术都是益了富人，因此这需要纳税人，政府和保险公司一起想出保障到所有人的医疗制度 Google在这方面有做出了努力，成立了一各公司Cityblock Health，为低收入人群提供更好的医疗！（真心觉得googlers 是为了人类进步而发展的公司...) Other risks are harder to deal transparency may encourage the hale and hearty not to take out health insurance. They may even make it harder for the unwell to find cover. Regulations can slow that process—by requiring insurers to ignore genetic data, for example—but not stop it. Security is another worry. The more patient data are analysed in the cloud or shared with different firms, the greater the potential threat of hacking or misuse. Almost a quarter of all data breaches in America happen in health care. Health firms should face stringent penalties if they are slapdash about security, but it is naive to expect that breaches will never happen. Will the benefits of making data more widely available outweigh such risks? The signs are that they will. Plenty of countries are now opening up their medical records, but few have gone as far as Sweden. It aims to give all its citizens electronic access to their medical records by 2020; over a third of Swedes have already set up accounts. Studies show that patients with such access have a better understanding of their illnesses, and that their treatment is more successful. Trials in America and Canada have produced not just happier patients but lower costs, as clinicians fielded fewer inquiries. That should be no surprise. No one has a greater interest in your health than you do. Trust in Doctor You. hale: healthy and strong, usually used in the phrase hale and hearty  一个坏处就是让那些身体情况良好的人不会再买保险，而让那些身体不好的人很难买到保险；还有分享的数据越多，就越有可能发生数据泄露和被黑客黑的可能 stringent: very strict or severe slapdash: quick and careless 那分享这些医疗数据到底是不是利大于弊还是弊大于利？种种迹象标明是 利大于弊的！ 总结：科技改变生活，本文是这期经济学人杂志的封面文章 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Results Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L Mean Sentence Length: Mean Log Word Frequency: Word Count: 1030 这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 适合英语专业大二的水平学习，是经济学人里比较简单的使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~