通勤學英語 15Mins Today

每日跟讀#764: The beat goes on: fireworks, smoke and tear gas start new decade

New York dropped its traditional crystal-encrusted ball to ring in 2020 in a packed Times Square, after crisis-marred celebrations in other countries ended a year of worldwide upheaval that saw strike-hit Paris welcome the new decade with fireworks, and London’s Big Ben ring out after a long restoration. Billions around the world cheered in 2020 after a tumultuous year dominated by demonstrations calling for political revolt and action on climate change.

世界各國因各種危機而蒙上陰影的慶祝活動，為全球動盪不安的一年畫下句點──仍遭罷工影響的巴黎，以煙火迎接新的十年；倫敦的大笨鐘經過漫長的修復後，以鐘聲送走二○一九年──隨後，在人潮擠得水洩不通的紐約時代廣場上，水晶球依照慣例緩緩降下，宣告二○二○年來臨。

Chile saw thousands of demonstrators gather at Santiago’s Plaza Italia — the epicenter of protests against President Sebastian Pinera’s right-wing government since October last year — to celebrate a “New Year with Dignity.”

數千名示威民眾聚集在智利首都聖地牙哥的義大利廣場──自去年十月以來，此處一直是反對總統賽巴斯汀‧皮涅拉右派政府的抗議中心──慶祝「有尊嚴的新年」。

In the French capital, tens of thousands gathered on the Champs-Elysees, despite a grueling transport strike that has spelled weeks of misery for commuters. They came on foot, by bike, taxi — and a few by Metro — to ring in the new decade as a dazzling light show lit up the Arc de Triomphe.

法國首都巴黎讓人精疲力盡的交通大罷工已持續數星期之久，使得通勤族痛苦不堪，但是仍有數萬人湧入香榭麗舍大道。民眾以步行、腳踏車、計程車──也有部分民眾搭乘地鐵──來到璀璨燈光秀點亮的凱旋門前，迎接新的十年。

In the British capital, thousands of revelers lined the Thames to watch fireworks fired from the London Eye for the last new year before Brexit. Big Ben rang out 12 times after the bell had fallen mostly silent in 2019 because of renovation work. It followed a year of political wrangling that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May and culminated in Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledging to leave the EU on Jan. 31.

在英國首都倫敦，數千名狂歡民眾在泰晤士河沿岸觀賞倫敦眼施放的煙火，迎接英國脫歐前最後一次新年。因整修而沉寂了大半個二○一九年的大笨鐘以十二次鐘聲送走舊歲。過去一年來的政治爭議，促使英國首相特雷莎‧梅伊黯然下台，並以保守派首相鮑里斯‧強森宣示一月三十一日正式脫歐告終。

Smoke-choked Sydney ushered in the New Year with an enormous fireworks display, despite a petition to cancel it that received more than 280,000 signatures as devastating bushfires raged across the country. But the show did go on: more than 100,000 fireworks lit up the skyline for the hundreds of thousands of spectators thronging the city center.

被濃煙嗆得無法呼吸的雪梨以巨大的煙火秀迎接新年。隨著毀滅性森林大火肆虐全國，取消煙火的請願書日前獲得二十八萬人連署。只是演出仍然照常舉行：超過十萬發煙火為湧入市中心的數十萬名觀眾點亮了雪梨的天際線。

After more than six months of near-daily demonstrations, Hong Kong ushered in 2020 with tear gas and water cannon. Pro-democracy protesters took their movement into the new year with midnight countdown rallies and a massive march planned for Wednesday. Demonstrators at the harborfront counted down chanting “Ten! Nine! Liberate Hong Kong, revolution now!” in a sea of light from their mobile phones. Smaller crowds of protesters in the Mong Kok district set fire to barricades and riot police unleashed their first volleys of tear gas for 2020 in response.

六個月多以來幾乎每天都發生示威遊行的香港，則在催淚彈和水砲中迎接新年。民主派抗議人士藉由午夜的倒數跨年活動，以及在週三舉行的大規模遊行，將他們的社會運動帶進新的一年。維多利亞港邊的示威者，在手機燈海中倒數跨年，喊著：「十、九、光復香港！時代革命！」小群的抗議者在旺角縱火燃燒路障，鎮暴警察則發射二○二○年的第一批催淚彈作為回應。

Source article: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2020/01/07/2003728808

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每日跟讀#763: Australia’s bushfires: 2019 like nothing seen before

As the bushfires in Australia this year extend across five million hectares, an area larger than many countries, stories of destruction have become depressingly familiar.

大火不斷延燒，澳洲本季野火所焚毀的面積超過了五百萬公頃，比許多國家的面積都還要大，災情不斷傳出，在在都是慘重的破壞，令人灰心。

So far 24 people and 460 million animals have been killed. In New South Wales (NSW), the worst-affected state, up to 1,365 homes have been destroyed. It is too early for a thorough examination of?the impact on wildlife, including the many threatened species in the fires’ path.

目前已知大火造成了二十四人死亡、四點六億隻動物喪命。新南威爾斯省的災情最為嚴重，已有多達一千三百六十五座房屋被毀。現在仍無法全面調查野生生物所受的影響，包括火舌所席捲的區域中許多瀕危的物種。

Does this qualify as unprecedented? Plenty of experts say yes, but not all politicians and newspaper columnists are convinced. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged the fires were severe, but also adopted a familiar line: Australia has always had bushfires. That’s true. But a key question is whether it has always had bushfires like this.

這樣的大火算是前所未見的嗎？許多專家都說是的，但並非所有的政客和報紙專欄作家都這麼認為。澳洲總理史考特‧莫里森承認大火很嚴重，但也採用了一套常見的說詞：澳洲一直都有森林火災。確實如此。但一個關鍵問題是，澳洲是否一直都有像這樣的森林大火。

David Bowman, director of The Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania, says the most striking thing about this fire season is the continent-scale nature of the threat. “The geographic range, and the fact it is occurring all at once, is what makes it unprecedented,” Bowman says. “There has never been a situation where there has been a fire from southern Queensland, right through NSW, into Gippsland, in the Adelaide Hills, near Perth and on the east coast of Tasmania.”

塔斯馬尼亞大學消防研究中心主任大衛‧鮑曼表示，這次火災季節最突出的是，災情的威脅橫跨整個大陸。鮑曼說：「由於它所影響的地理範圍，且是同時發生，因此這火災是空前的」。「從未發生過像這樣的情況，大火從昆士蘭省南部燒到新南威爾斯省，吉普斯蘭、阿德雷德山、珀斯附近都燒起來，還有塔斯馬尼亞島東岸。」

He says one of the less explored issues, though it has begun to receive some attention in recent days, is the economic impact of having prolonged fires that affect so many Australians. “You can’t properly run an economy when you get a third to a half of the population affected by smoke, and the media completely focused on fires,” he says.

他說，有個問題雖近來已有人開始關注，但研究較少，那就是長時間的大火對許多澳洲人造成了經濟上的影響。他說：「當有三分之一到一半的人口受到煙塵影響，而媒體完全聚焦於火災時，就無法正常經營經濟」。

There are also fears critically endangered Wollemi pines have burned in the fires tearing through the Blue Mountains. They were thought extinct until discovered by bushwalkers in 1994. Their whereabouts had been kept secret from the public to keep them safe.

也有人擔心，瀕臨滅絕的瓦勒邁杉已在肆虐藍山的大火中被燒毀。一九九四年登山客在藍山發現了瓦勒邁杉，在此之前該樹種被認為已經滅絕。為保護瓦勒邁杉，其發現地點一直秘而不宣。

Authorities say the smoke that has smothered Sydney, Canberra and other centers and towns in recent weeks has produced pollution up to 11 times greater than the hazardous level for human health. In Sydney, the air pollution has been hazardous for at least 30 days.

澳洲政府表示，最近幾週以來，煙塵壟罩了雪梨、坎培拉與其他城鎮，所造成污染之巨，是足以造成人類健康危害程度的十一倍。在雪梨，空氣污染達有害程度的情況，已有至少三十天。

The explanation should be familiar by now: greenhouse gas emissions do not cause bushfires, but they play a demonstrated role in increasing average and particularly extreme temperatures and contribute to the extraordinarily dry conditions afflicting eastern Australia.

Scientists cite the near absolute lack of moisture in the landscape as a key reason the fires have been so severe.

Multiple studies, here and overseas, have found the climate crisis is lengthening the fire season.

以下的解釋如今應不陌生了：溫室氣體的排放不會引起森林大火，但它對於提高平均溫度，尤其是提高極端溫度，有舉足輕重的作用，助長了澳洲東部極端乾燥的成災條件。

科學家指出，地景中幾乎完全沒有水分，是火災如此嚴重的關鍵原因。

澳洲國內外所進行的多項研究已發現，氣候危機正在拉長火災季節。

Source article: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2020/01/07/2003728808

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每日跟讀#762: Big tech comes out ahead again in 2019. Can it be stopped?

On its surface, 2019 was the difficult year that most of us had anticipated. The simmering trade tensions (perhaps diffused by the new phase-one trade agreement) raised the prospect of constrained opportunities for US tech companies in China. Fears of intrusive government regulation, antitrust scrutiny and a consumer privacy backlash hung like a San Francisco fog over the major tech firms.

表面上看來，二○一九年就如我們多數人所預期，是艱難的一年。一觸即發的貿易緊張局勢（這緊張情勢或許因新的第一階段貿易協議而撥雲見日），讓美國的高科技公司在中國的發展可能受到更多限制。政府的侵入性監管、反壟斷﹝∕反托辣斯﹞審查、消費者隱私權的反撲，這些擔憂有如舊金山的霧霾般籠罩著科技大公司。

Just like 2018, 2019 was a banner year for tech. Alphabet stock is up 29 percent this year, Microsoft 52 percent and Apple Inc. 74 percent. They’re all beating the S&P 500 index, which is up 26 percent, and the year saw a slate of tech IPOs — a record haul, despite the poor market performance of unicorns like Uber Technologies Inc. and Slack Technologies Inc. and the debacle at WeWork.

如同二○一八年，二○一九年也是科技業發展特別旺的一年。Alphabet﹝谷歌母公司﹞的股票上漲了百分之二十九，微軟上漲百分之五十二，蘋果上漲百分之七十四，都超過了標準普爾500指數的百分之二十六漲幅。這一年也有很多科技公司上市──創紀錄地多，儘管交通網路公司優步和企業即時通訊服務商Slack等新創獨角獸公司股票上市後表現不佳，以及WeWork的潰敗。

By my measure, the year was defined by several breakthroughs: AirPods took off. Critics can no longer claim that Apple under Tim Cook hasn’t minted a mainstream hit, after the success of the Apple Watch and now these awkward ear accessories. The company is expected to sell 60 million units, double last year’s tally, and retailers are having a hard time keeping them in stock. One new research report said the AirPod’s popularity has surpassed the iPod’s at its peak. It’s a remarkable shift in fashion and culture — we’re now a species with no compunction about sporting white dongles from the sides of our heads. Amazon.com Inc., Google and others have introduced their own versions, with limited success so far.

在我看來，幾項重大的突破定義了這一年：

AirPods的起飛。Apple Watch（蘋果手錶）現在這些笨拙的耳機配件取得成功後，評論家們不能再說提姆‧庫克領導下的蘋果沒有創造出引領潮流的熱門商品。這一年蘋果預計會賣出六千萬組AirPods，是去年的兩倍，零售商也常賣到缺貨。一份新的研究報告稱，AirPod受歡迎的程度已超過了iPod的鼎盛時期。AirPod是時尚和文化的重大轉變──我們現在已是一種無怨無悔地在頭部兩側突變出白色藍芽傳輸器的生物。亞馬遜、谷歌和其他公司也各自推出了無線耳機，但迄今成效有限。

Voice-activated speakers continue to boom. This year, 78 million people in the US used a smart speaker like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, up about 18 percent from last year, according to estimates from EMarketer. That’s almost a quarter of the American population and comes despite the troubling revelations that companies farm out a small percentage of customer queries to human workers. Do people care about Silicon Valley snooping on their most intimate conversations? Some do, but apparently most are either confident in the noble intentions of tech companies or comfortable with sacrificing a bit of privacy for the privilege of asking a computer to play the latest hit tunes and recite the weather.

聲控喇叭繼續蓬勃發展。根據市場研究機構EMarketer的估計，今年，美國有七千八百萬人使用像Amazon Echo或Google Home這樣的智慧喇叭，比去年增加了約百分之十八。這人數幾乎是美國人口的四分之一，雖然有消息披露令人不安的情況──有一小部分的客戶查詢，公司是交給人工來處理。人們是否介意矽谷監聽自己最親密的對話？有些人介意，但顯然大多數人不是對科技公司的崇高意圖深具信心，就是為了可以叫電腦播放最新流行歌曲和報天氣，而願意犧牲一些隱私。

It was the year of TikTok. The Bytedance Inc.-owned video service is suddenly everywhere and putting a scare into Facebook and Snap Inc. The service has 680 million users, crossed a million downloads in February and then 1.5 billion in November, according to Sensor Tower. Irony isn’t dead, after all: At the very height of Sino-US tensions, teenagers around the world, in unison, flocked to an Internet service operated and owned by a Chinese company.

這是屬於TikTok（抖音）的一年。這屬於北京字節跳動科技公司的影音服務忽然變得無所不在，嚇壞了Facebook和Snap公司。據App分析平台Sensor Tower統計，抖音有六點八億用戶，二月份的下載量為一百萬，十一月的下載量則有十五億。諷刺畢竟仍未死：在中美關係最緊張的時候，世界各地的青少年卻都不約而同紛紛湧向一家由中國公司營運和擁有的網路服務。

So what’s on tap for 2020? 5G will reinvigorate the growth of smartphone sales; Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola will finally make foldable phones work; streaming services will push further into sports and live news, striking another blow to terrestrial cable and satellite TV; new products will invigorate a market for home robotics, and a distracted administration of US President Donald Trump in an election year will fail to mount any credible attack on the tech giants.

那麼，二○二○年有哪些發展潛力？5G將重振智慧型手機的銷售；三星電子以及聯想集團的摩托羅拉，最終會順利推出可折疊手機。串流媒體服務會進一步推廣至體育及實況新聞的發展，讓有線電視和衛星電視再受打擊；家用機器人市場將因新產品而注入活力，而川普政府在大選年將疲於奔命，無暇對科技巨頭採取任何有效的攻擊。

Source article: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2019/12/31/2003728436/2

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Summary:

Full article: https://www.15mins.today/blog/719-thai-mangosteens-a-gigantic-hit-in-taiwan

Vocabulary and Sample Sentences:

Queued v.: to line up

1. Do you enjoy queuing for food?

Entrepreneurs n. : people who start a new business and take risks

1. Does Taiwan have many entrepreneurs?

Eradicate v. : destroy completely

1. Can we eradicate corruption?

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每日跟讀#761: In Amsterdam, Floating Homes That Only Look Like Ships

When Karen Bosma first moved her boat to the Borneokade, northeast of Amsterdam’s bustling city center, in 1999, the neighborhood was barely more than a cluster of commercial docks and underused warehouses.

凱倫．博斯馬1999年剛把她的船移到荷蘭首都阿姆斯特丹熱鬧市中心東北方的波諾卡德時，這一帶幾乎只有成排商船船席和不常使用的倉庫。

“It was for poor people — a lot of artists lived on boats,” she said, sitting in her neat, cozy living room just below the waterline.

博斯馬坐在她整潔舒適的客廳裡回憶說：「當時這是窮人聚居區，很多藝術家住在船上。」客廳就在吃水線下方。

In the quarter century since, Bosma, a 62-year-old social worker, and her husband have raised two sons on the Distel, a 1912 82-foot freighter, which — stripped of its engine, fuel tanks and cargo hold — is one of Amsterdam’s iconic houseboats, with a seagoing hull, wheelhouse and curtained windows.

此後的四分之一個世紀，現年62歲的社工博斯馬和先生，在這艘船上把兩個兒子帶大。這艘船名叫「迪斯特爾」，是1912年打造的貨船，長25公尺，引擎、燃料槽和貨艙都已去除，是阿姆斯特丹著名船屋之一，具備遠洋船船體、舵手室和裝上窗簾的窗子。

Three boats down lies the B18, an elegant 131-foot, 2 1/2-story floating mansion (with more than 3,000 square feet of interior space) that shows just how perfectly the soul of a luxury yacht combines with open-space living and elegant living quarters.

三艘船以外停泊著B18，是雅緻的兩層半水上豪宅，長40公尺，室內面積超過279平方公尺（約84坪），顯示奢華遊艇的精髓如何與室外生活和優美的室內起居空間完美結合。

“It has to be a ship on the outside and a house on the inside,” said Gijs Haverkate, 53, who created the vessel and lives on it with his family.

53歲的哈福卡特造了B18，並與家人住在船上，他說：「B18必須外觀是艘船，內部是個家。」

In the Dutch capital, houseboats have gone upmarket. The new owners are wealthy and discerning, interested in new designs, upgraded comfort and sustainability.

在阿姆斯特丹，船屋已變得高檔了。新一批船屋主人富裕且有品味，對新設計、更高的舒適感和永續性都很感興趣。

Haverkate, a designer by trade, hopes his boat will inspire others to build on the water. He runs UrbanShips, a company that builds customized houseboats designed to look like ships.

哈福卡特以設計為業，希望他的船能激勵別人在水上蓋房子。他經營「都市船」公司，依照客戶需求打造看來像船隻的船屋。

After years of serving as a relatively cheap place to live in an expensive city, Amsterdam’s houseboats — or rather the spaces they float — have become popular and expensive, with prices increasing 30% to 40% over the past five years alone, according to Jon Kok, one of the city’s best known houseboat real estate agents.

阿姆斯特丹的船屋（更確切地說，是承載船屋的水面），原本的功用是在這昂貴的城市中作為相對廉價的住所，多年下來卻變得大受歡迎且價格高漲，阿姆斯特丹最知名船屋仲介公司之一「約翰科克」資料顯示，單單這五年來，船屋價格就漲了三到四成。

The whale’s share of the price increase comes from the value of the berth, not the ship.

船屋價格上漲，主要是因為船席變得更值錢，而不是船體本身。

A typical Amsterdam canal berth might be worth close to a half-million dollars, depending on its location and how big a ship it will allow; some of the older, unrenovated ships in those berths might be worth only $20,000 (building a new ship, of course, is much more expensive).

一個典型的阿姆斯特丹運河船席，可能就要近50萬美元，視地點和可容下多大船隻而定。停在這種船席上的一些老舊未翻新船隻，可能只值兩萬美元。（當然，造新船貴得多。）

But in this gentrification debate, the cost of new berths is less important than the architecture of the ship — and whether they ever served as actual commercial ships.

不過，在討論船屋愈來愈高級的話題時，新船席的價格並不如船隻的設計美感和是否曾作為真正的商船來得重要。

Once populated by converted working boats, the canal now holds an increasing number of floating houses designed to look like oceangoing vessels but with hardly any of the working features of a real boat.

阿姆斯特丹的運河曾經滿是工作船改造後的船屋，現在有愈來愈多的水上房屋，設計成外觀像遠洋船，但實際上幾乎不具備真正船隻的功能。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/348587/web/#2L-16188816L

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