我的每日听写#

20160126##

万物简史###

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. [---1---] In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. [---2---]For the next many years, we hope, these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. [---3---]For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you - indeed, don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. ([---4---]) It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you.

20160127##

【经济学人】科隆性侵袭击：新年，心忧###

As the New Year's fireworks went up in German cities, a brief panic seized Munich, which had information about planned terrorist attacks at two railway stations. Those never occurred. But, much less noticed at first, a different sort of crime was occurring in Cologne and, to a lesser extent, in Hamburg and Stuttgart. While partiers gathered on the square between Cologne's cathedral and railway station, a large group of young men, later described by the police as "looking North African or Arabic", also massed there. Some threw fireworks into the crowd to cause panic. Then the men formed rings around individual women, so that police and onlookers could not see inside each huddle. According to over 100 women who subsequently filed complaints, the men groped the women sexually, while others stole their mobile phones, wallets or purses. One woman was raped. Oddly, the Cologne police reported the following day that the festivities had been relaxed and peaceful. Only after scores of women came forward did the country react with rage. The interior and justice ministers promised to bring down the full force of the law -- even as the police had to admit that they as yet had no information to make individual arrests. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, called the assaults "disgusting" and demanded justice "without regard to origin or background" she said. The assaults tapped into deep fears at a tense time, as Germany struggles with record numbers of refugees -- more than 1million in 2015, largely from Arab countries. Populist politicians were quick to infer a connection. Frauke Petry, boss of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, blamed the outrage on the "terrible consequences of a catastrophic asylum and migration policy". There is no evidence yet that any of the criminals were refugees, as Cologne's mayor, Henriette Reker, emphasised. Ms Reker personifies the conflicts straining German society. She ran for office as a non-partisan candidate with a liberal and welcoming stance toward migrants. For that, a neo-Nazi extremist stabbed her at a campaign event in October. She was elected the next day, while still in a coma. If it is confirmed that some of the muggers, molesters and rapists were asylum-seekers, the damage to what is left of Germany's Willkommenskultur could be severe.