Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and stayed with Harvard University for half a century as a professor of economics.[3] He was a prolific author and wrote four dozen books, including several novels, and published more than a thousand articles and essays on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967).
--- In 2004, the publication of an authorized biography, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics[62] by a friend and fellow progressive economist Richard Parker renewed interest in Galbraith life journey and legacy.
Parker, Richard（郭路譯），2005，《加爾布雷斯傳》（John Kenneth Galbraith：His Life, His Politics, His Economics）。2009譯本，頁475。中國北京：中信出版社，2009。作者部分改寫引述文字。 ---- *表示有漢憶本
*Galbraith memoir, A Life in Our *Times was published in 1981.[61] It contains discussion of his thoughts, his life, and his times.
A new paperback edition of Dr. Bronowski's classic history of humankind, with a foreword by Richard Dawkins
Dr. Jacob Bronowksi's classic traces the development of human society through our understanding of science. First published in 1973 to accompany the groundbreaking BBC television series, it is considered one of the first works of "popular science," illuminating the historical and social context of scientific development for a generation of readers. In his highly accessible style, Dr. Bronowski discusses human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from alchemy to the theory of relativity, showing how they all are expressions of our ability to understand and control nature. In this new paperback edition, The Ascent of Man inspires, influences, and informs as profoundly as ever.
The Ascent of Man is a thirteen-part documentary television series produced by the BBC and Time-Life Films first transmitted in 1973, written and presented by ...
The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
As a kid in England, I watched a lot of television. There weren’t any books in our house, not even the Bible. TV was therefore pretty important, omnipresent actually. Of course, most of what it delivered was garbage. But in 1973, the BBC aired an extraordinary documentary series called “The Ascent of Man,” hosted by one Dr. Jacob Bronowski in 13 hour-long episodes. Each episode was what he called an “essay” and involved some exotic and elaborate locations, but the presentation was never flashy and consisted mostly of Dr. Bronowski speaking directly and deliberately to the camera.
A scientist who warned of ‘the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts — obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.’
Dr. Bronowski (he was always referred to as “Dr.” and I can’t think of him with any other, more familiar, moniker) died 40 years ago this year, at the relatively young age of 66. He was a Polish-born British mathematician who wrote a number of highly-regarded books on science, but who was equally at home in the world of literature. He wrote his own poetry as well as a book on William Blake.
He was a slight, lively, lovely man. Because it was the early ’70s, some of his fashion choices were bewilderingly pastel, especially his socks, though on some occasions he sported a racy leather box jacket. He often smiled as he spoke, not out of conceit or because he lived in California (which, incidentally, he did, working at the Salk Institute in San Diego), but out of a sheer, greedy joy at explaining what he thought was important. But there was a genuine humility in his demeanor that made him utterly likeable.
“The Ascent of Man” (admittedly a little sexist now – great men abound, but there are apparently few great women), deliberately inverted the title of Darwin’s 1871 book. It was not an account of human biological evolution, but cultural evolution — from the origins of human life in the Rift Valley to the shifts from hunter/gatherer societies, to nomadism and then settlement and civilization, from agriculture and metallurgy to the rise and fall of empires: Assyria, Egypt, Rome.
Bronowski presented everything with great gusto, but with a depth that never sacrificed clarity and which was never condescending. The tone of the programs was rigorous yet permissive, playful yet precise, and always urgent, open and exploratory. I remember in particular the programs on the trial of Galileo, Darwin’s hesitancy about publishing his theory of evolution and the dizzying consequences of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Some of it was difficult for a 13-year-old to understand, but I remember being absolutely riveted.
The ascent of man was secured through scientific creativity. But unlike many of his more glossy and glib contemporary epigones, Dr. Bronowski was never reductive in his commitment to science. Scientific activity was always linked to artistic creation. For Bronowski, science and art were two neighboring mighty rivers that flowed from a common source: the human imagination. Newton and Shakespeare, Darwin and Coleridge, Einstein and Braque: all were interdependent facets of the human mind and constituted what was best and most noble about the human adventure.
For most of the series, Dr. Bronowski’s account of human development was a relentlessly optimistic one. Then, in the 11th episode, called “Knowledge or Certainty,” the mood changed to something more somber. Let me try and recount what has stuck in my memory for all these years.
He began the show with the words, “One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an actual picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to show that such an aim is unattainable.” For Dr. Bronowski, there was no absolute knowledge and anyone who claims it — whether a scientist, a politician or a religious believer — opens the door to tragedy. All scientific information is imperfect and we have to treat it with humility. Such, for him, was the human condition.
This is the condition for what we can know, but it is also, crucially, a moral lesson. It is the lesson of 20th-century painting from Cubism onwards, but also that of quantum physics. All we can do is to push deeper and deeper into better approximations of an ever-evasive reality. The goal of complete understanding seems to recede as we approach it.
There is no God’s eye view, Dr. Bronowski insisted, and the people who claim that there is and that they possess it are not just wrong, they are morally pernicious. Errors are inextricably bound up with pursuit of human knowledge, which requires not just mathematical calculation but insight, interpretation and a personal act of judgment for which we are responsible. The emphasis on the moral responsibility of knowledge was essential for all of Dr. Bronowski’s work. The acquisition of knowledge entails a responsibility for the integrity of what we are as ethical creatures.
All knowledge, all information that passes between human beings, can be exchanged only within what we might call ‘a play of tolerance.’
Dr. Bronowski’s 11th essay took him to the ancient university city of Göttingen in Germany, to explain the genesis of Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the hugely creative milieu that surrounded the physicist Max Born in the 1920s. Dr. Bronowski insisted that the principle of uncertainty was a misnomer, because it gives the impression that in science (and outside of it) we are always uncertain. But this is wrong. Knowledge is precise, but that precision is confined within a certain toleration of uncertainty. Heisenberg’s insight is that the electron is a particle that yields only limited information; its speed and position are confined by the tolerance of Max Planck’s quantum, the basic element of matter.
Dr. Bronowski thought that the uncertainty principle should therefore be called the principle of tolerance. Pursuing knowledge means accepting uncertainty. Heisenberg’s principle has the consequence that no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are.
In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack of ultimate exactitude with a melancholic shrug, but we constantly employ such inexactitude in our relations with other people. Our relations with others also require a principle of tolerance. We encounter other people across a gray area of negotiation and approximation. Such is the business of listening and the back and forth of conversation and social interaction.
For Dr. Bronowski, the moral consequence of knowledge is that we must never judge others on the basis of some absolute, God-like conception of certainty. All knowledge, all information that passes between human beings, can be exchanged only within what we might call “a play of tolerance,” whether in science, literature, politics or religion. As he eloquently put it, “Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”
The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans can take place only within a certain play of tolerance. Insisting on certainty, by contrast, leads ineluctably to arrogance and dogma based on ignorance.
At this point, in the final minutes of the show, the scene suddenly shifts to Auschwitz, where many members of Bronowski’s family were murdered. Then this happened. Please stay with it. This short video from the show lasts only four minutes or so.
Dr. Jacob Bronowski’s argument against certainty, made at Auschwitz for his show “The Ascent of Man.”
It is, I am sure you agree, an extraordinary and moving moment. Bronowski dips his hand into the muddy water of a pond which contained the remains of his family members and the members of countless other families. All victims of the same hatred: the hatred of the other human being. By contrast, he says — just before the camera hauntingly cuts to slow motion — “We have to touch people.”
The play of tolerance opposes the principle of monstrous certainty that is endemic to fascism and, sadly, not just fascism but all the various faces of fundamentalism. When we think we have certainty, when we aspire to the knowledge of the gods, then Auschwitz can happen and can repeat itself. Arguably, it has repeated itself in the genocidal certainties of past decades.
The pursuit of scientific knowledge is as personal an act as lifting a paintbrush or writing a poem, and they are both profoundly human. If the human condition is defined by limitedness, then this is a glorious fact because it is a moral limitedness rooted in a faith in the power of the imagination, our sense of responsibility and our acceptance of our fallibility. We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.
In 1945, nearly three decades before “The Ascent of Man,” Dr. Bronowski — who was a close friend of the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, the reluctant father of the atomic bomb — visited Nagasaki to help assess the damage there. It convinced him to discontinue his work for British military research with which he had been engaged extensively during the Second World War.
From that time onward, he focused on the relations between science and human values. When someone said to Szilard in Bronowski’s company that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was science’s tragedy, Szilard replied firmly that this was wrong: It was a human tragedy.
Such was Dr. Bronowski’s lesson for a 13-year-old boy some 40 years ago. Being slightly old-school, I treated myself last Christmas to a DVD deluxe boxed set of “The Ascent of Man.” I am currently watching it with my 10-year-old son. Admittedly, it is not really much competition for “Candy Crush” and his sundry other video games, but he is showing an interest. Or at least he is tolerating my enthusiasm. And of course beginning to learn such toleration is the whole point.
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Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and the author of several books, including “The Faith of the Faithless,” and, with Jamieson Webster, “Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine.” He is the moderator of this series.
中午，收到"經濟新潮出版公司"社長博華的贈書。7月某日，博華來訪，很巧當時我有三位高朋在座。Henry Petroski《工程、設計與人性》（To Engineer Is Human）平裝本很單薄，中文版卻將它印得有模有樣....有點驚訝："第3章： 寓教於樂；寓教於生活"附錄是整首詩：〈副主祭的傑作〉。約16年前我公司的網站轉引了一長段.... 8月初，我說：Henry Petroski 的書，都值得一讀。
我再補充一則故事。昨天我們討論一篇科幻小說的一句的翻譯。
張華兄："我比較有興趣的事(sic)前一句，Minnesota is a human moment.不知梁兄如何翻譯？"
梁先生: "感謝兩位提供靈感, 應該是十之八九 這篇短篇題作Human moments in world war III 我之譯：人味時刻"
Henry Petroski 的書都值得一讀。 亨利．波卓斯基Henry Petroski
杜克大學的土木工程學教授與歷史教授。他素有「科技的桂冠詩人」美譽，專長為失效分析（failure analysis）、科技史、工程設計、日常用品的微物史。2004~2012年，他受邀擔任美國核廢料技術審查委員會的委員。他長期為《科學美國人》撰寫專欄，著作等身，獲獎無數，《工程、設計與人性》（To Engineer Is Human）是他的第一本書，被視為經典之作。
他的著作有中譯本者包括： 《利器》（The Evolution of Useful Things），時報，1997 《鉛筆》（The Pencil），時報，1997 《書架：閱讀的起點》（The Book on The Bookshelf），藍鯨，2000 《打造世界的工程師》（Remaking the World）。新新聞，2001 《小處著手：追求完美的設計》（Small Things Considered），時報，2004.
而本書中可能出現的任何錯誤，無疑都是我自己造成的，但我必須感謝那些給予我啟發和幫助的人與著作。杜克大學（Duke University）的氣氛向來有如育才搖籃，而我則盡情享受它所提供的機會，在工程學院（School of Engineering）以及三一文理學院（Trinity College of Arts and Sciences）雙方同仁攜手合作下，我投入「科學、技術與人類價值計畫」（Program in Science, Technology, and Human Values），從事工程學研究與跨學科計畫。而這些廣泛的互動，使我視野大開。
我已發現，有許多文獻都支持我的觀點，即失敗在工程設計中所扮演的角色，而書末所列的參考書目，正是對它們的默默感謝。而我用到的一些比較不為人知的文獻，則是杜克大學不屈不撓的工程圖書館員艾瑞克．史密斯（Eric Smith）為我追查發現的。此外，我在杜克大學工學院所開的斷裂力學與疲勞（fracture mechanics and fatigue）課程，學生們所準備的結構失效個案研究學期報告，也令我獲益良多。長久以來，我那身為土木工程師的手足威廉．波卓斯基（William Petroski），除了不斷提供我有關結構失效的資訊與意見，每當我去拜訪他時，他也給我看了許多實例。
就在本書發印的前幾天，我拜訪了顧問鍾漢清先生，以請教書中的問題，巧遇也在現場的毛毛蟲基金會的楊茂秀老師，還有翻譯了《挖開兔子洞：深入解讀愛麗絲漫遊奇境》的張華老師。由於張華是資深的工程師，英文底子又好，一下子就直指本書的原文書名To engineer is human，應是來自於To err is human（凡人必錯；犯錯是人之常情）。完整的句子是「To err is human, to forgive divine.」因此可以想像，作者將本書命名為To engineer is human，除了取engineer這一關鍵字之外，也企圖用engineer表達它做為動詞的「設計、策劃、處理」之意。所以作者會說，在這本書裏「工程」和「設計」幾乎是同義詞，因為工程既然是藝術也是科學，工程確實就是設計。
這是Henry Petroski所著的《工程、設計與人性》（To Engineer Is Human）這本書告訴我們的事。這本書就是環繞著工程失效、結構體、疲勞失效的問題，以及工程師如何與天為敵、設法克服環境與大自然的限制，設計出以前不存在的東西的努力。每當發生工程意外，或許就凸顯了這本書的重要性，但願工程師們、設計者、管理者能夠記取史上的災難教訓，繼續前進。
Henry Petroski 的"小東西群眾運動"，台灣翻譯了約2/3。 這篇提到晚近許多本"旁門左道"談文明的通俗名著。中文翻譯可能有一半強。 可以把這篇當學習英文的讀物。 有空再注。
Essay
Consider the Toothpick
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Illustration by Stephen Savage
By JOE QUEENAN
Published: October 28, 2007
From time to time, society itself is called upon to intervene when someone it admires goes astray. Whether it is rehab for Lindsay Lohan or a decisive thumbs down to Michael Jordan’s ancillary baseball career, we must periodically take our brightest stars aside and read them the riot act. No, we do not want any more songs like “Dandelions Don’t Tell No Lies.” No, we do not want any more movies like “Battleship Earth.” No, we will not be requiring your services as talk-show hosts, the Messrs. Chase and Sajak. In a loftier milieu, such intervention may now be required in the case of the redoubtable Henry Petroski. A professor of civic engineering and history at Duke University, Petroski has made quite a name for himself by publishing a series of delightful books in which he explores the history of such indispensable yet taken-for-granted devices as the pencil, the flashlight, the doorknob and the kitchen sink. These exhaustively researched, disarmingly affectionate books celebrate the genius of the quotidian, the elegance of the functional, the romance of the ubiquitous. But now, with the publication of “The Toothpick: Technology and Culture” (Knopf, $27.95), Petroski is literally tossing in the kitchen sink he has previously only written about. Originally projected as a single chapter in an earlier book, in which the “engagingly simple device ... would serve to illustrate some basic principles of engineering” and “help reveal the inevitable interrelationships between technology and culture,” “The Toothpick” swelled into a 443-page tome that (unlike the object it concerns) fills a need that does not exist, sealing up a void whose vacuity was a source of distress to no one. It is not so much a book as a threat: If you liked “The Toothpick,” wait till you get a load of “The Grommet.” If “The Pencil” was Petroski’s Sudetenland and “The Evolution of Useful Things” his Anschluss, then “The Toothpick” can only be characterized as his invasion of Poland. And just as France and England were compelled to belatedly intervene back then, literate, sane people must now step into the breach. This thing about things has gone far enough, Mr. Petroski. Knock it off. The very existence of “The Toothpick” is a testimony to the perils of inhabiting a permissive society, for just as the unchastised teenage shoplifter, mistaking society’s indulgence for applause, will evolve into a bloodthirsty hired killer, it is inevitable that the author of “The Pencil” will one day morph into the author of “The Toothpick.” Quite rightly, he assumes that society is simply not paying attention anymore. “The Toothpick” is animated by the dubious proposition that the venerable mouth-cleaning device in and of itself is worthy of our consideration. Yet, as Petroski himself admits: “With a toothpick, what we see is what we’ve got — inside a toothpick is the same wood that we see on the outside.” Despite amusing anecdotes about the preposterously gauche Roman emperor Nero turning up at a feast with a silver toothpick dangling from his lips, and the novelist Sherwood Anderson fatally puncturing his liver with a toothpick buried inside an olive, none of this makes the toothpick itself any more riveting: John Wilkes Booth is interesting, not his pistol. Asserting that “picking one’s teeth is believed to be the oldest human habit,” Petroski suggests that the toothpick may be two million years old. Be that as it may, the toothpick cannot hold a candle to the much younger fork or spoon, and finishes far out of the money behind such ingenious inventions as the laptop computer and the iPod. The toothpick is perhaps slightly more interesting than the staple, the washer and the index card, somewhat less fascinating than the screw or the bolt, but infinitely less exciting than the hydrogen bomb, the semiconductor chip or the microbe. The toothpick lacks the anthropological panache of the toupee, the bustle or the collateralized mortgage obligation, the flash and brio of the cuirass or the monstrance, the epochal influence of the stirrup, the shoelace, the ace of spades and the espresso machine, and it most assuredly cannot lay claim to the esoteric charm of the baritone saxophone and the tea cozy, much less the enduring mystery of the French maid’s flouncy apron. Petroski has mistakenly assumed that merely because he could assemble a huge amount of information about the rise and fall of the toothpick industry, such data was worth compiling in a 443-page book. Did you know that boxes of early machine-made toothpicks were labeled with “a caveat about imitators” to prevent consumers from falling prey to 19th-century gray-market toothpicks? Or that a remarkable Norwegian transplanted to Duluth once patented a toothpick dispenser “mounted on the back of a stylized metal turtle”? Reviewers of “The Toothpick” will automatically lump Petroski’s work in with “Salt,” “Cod,” “How Soccer Explains the World,” “A History of the World in Six Glasses” and other volumes that view society through an odd prism. These books argue that without cod, salt, booze or the penalty kick, we would not be where we are today. This is true, though the same could be said about tuna, cocaine, beavers, coriander, the infield-fly rule and the “going out of business” sale. These books settle arguments no one is having. It’s like writing a book called “How Annoying Roommates Changed the World.” Yes, annoying roommates — Robespierre, Marlon Brando, Al Gore— have changed the world. So what? Moreover, comparing “The Toothpick” to these other works is inappropriate. Books of the “How Longitude or Beer or the Irish or Something Changed Civilization” sort are mostly the work of journalists. No strangers to harmless hyperbole, these writers desperately want to close the deal but are aware that unless they keep hawking their wares, the reader may nod off. So they never stop with the balloons and the firecrackers, never stop pushing the merchandise. That’s why their books are fun to read. “The Toothpick,” by contrast, is the work of a maddeningly sober pedant who is anything but a crowd pleaser. “It would appear that in America the use of toothpicks has become largely a matter of class,” he writes in a passage that expertly captures his infatuation with the obvious and the insignificant. “Unlike in the late 19th century, when the urbane crutch-and-toothpick brigade proudly chewed its toothpicks on the steps of fine hotels and restaurants, now it is more the rural and less educated who openly chew theirs in the parking lots, if not at the counter itself, of big-box stores and fast-food establishments.” Where books like “Guns, Germs and Steel” or “Rats, Lice and History” examine overlooked trends or inventions and demonstrate the decisive role they have played, “The Toothpick” is basically a paean to our irrepressible friend, the toothpick. Petroski assumes that once they have overcome their initially blasé attitude, people will be mesmerized by the tale of how an inexpensive oral-particle-removing device came out of nowhere to take the world by storm. He has forgotten the hoary dictum: Never send a toothpick to do a pencil’s job. It’s possible that “The Toothpick” is inspired satire, a deliciously subtle send-up of a genre Petroski helped to popularize. A more plausible explanation is that the author was so emboldened by the public’s giddy response to his earlier work that he decided to go for broke. If this is the case, then we, the reading public, bear the greatest responsibility for this misfortune. There is no telling where he will strike next. But an ominous hint of his intentions is contained in the preface, where he writes: “I have never been a regular user of toothpicks, though there has always been a box or two of the little wooden things about the house. Occasionally they have come in handy for applying a dab of glue or oil to a small part, cleaning dust out of a tight crevice, plugging up an empty nail hole or two, serving as shims, testing the doneness of a batch of brownies and the like.” If Petroski is already fulfilling one clever historian’s prophecy that as academics retreat from the world writ large, they will teach us more and more about less and less, it is safe to suppose that his next books will include such titles as these: “The Dab: A Closer Look,” “The Shim That Time Forgot: A Short History of Those Little Wooden Things” and “Dust and the West.” All of which would be merely a warm-up for “The Doneness of Brownies.” Joe Queenan writes for Barron’s, The Guardian, Men’s Health and The Weekly Standard.
"Hedy's Folly" chronicles important moments in the filmstar's life—from filming nude scenes for 'Ecstasy' in 1933 to devising radio-controlled torpedoes meant to foil German defenses in World War II. Henry Petroski reviews.
In his new book, Richard Rhodes, the author of acclaimed histories of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, tells the story of a 1940s Hollywood bombshell and her fascination with military-weapon design. Yet even though "Hedy's Folly" ostensibly concerns, as the subtitle has it, "the life and breakthrough inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the most beautiful woman in the world," the book is equally about the role that chance and coincidence can play in the development of technology.
Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna in 1913, was the only child of Jewish parents. Emil Kiesler, a successful banker, was a doting father; her mother, Trude, a former concert pianist, was less indulgent, "concerned that such a pretty, vivacious child would grow up spoiled unless she heard criticism as well as compliments," Mr. Rhodes writes. Trude taught Hedy to play the piano, and Emil conveyed to his daughter a consuming interest in technology.
Hedy dropped out of high school at 16 to pursue an acting career in Berlin. At 18, after appearing onstage and in a few small film roles, she was cast by Czech director Gustav Machaty as the lead in "Ecstasy," a movie that contained two brief nude scenes and much sexual symbolism. Even though she was billed by her real name—the change to Hedy Lamarr would come in Hollywood—her association with a movie so daring for its time would, the author says, "both promote and plague her professional career."
The actress captured the attention of Fritz Mandl, a wealthy and powerful Austrian arms manufacturer. After she married him at age 19, her new husband tried, unsuccessfully, to buy up every print of "Ecstasy" so that no one else could ever view it again. As Mandl's wife, hosting dinner parties for his business associates, Hedy became familiar with the technology of war. Like much of this most unusual book about a Hollywood star, Mr. Rhodes relates the Austrian chapter of Lamarr's story with engaging efficiency.
As Europe in the mid-1930s was roiled by Hitler's rise, Lamarr, a Jew, resolved to flee her homeland and her marriage. Her controlling husband had Jewish roots—his father had converted to Catholicism, his wife's religion—but Mandl was also a proponent of fascism. In London, the actress met the MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a contract and insisted on a new screen name. The rest is Hollywood history—with a twist.
As Mr. Rhodes relates, Hedy Lamarr was hardly an intellectual, but she was a indefatigable tinkerer. Among her inventions was a sort of bouillon cube that, when dissolved in water, produced a cola-like drink. Another was an attachment for a tissue box to hold used tissues, a convenience that anyone with a bad cold can appreciate. But she also turned her attention beyond the domestic. Even as she was starring in movies such as "Boom Town" (1940), Lamarr applied her inventing talents to trying to combat German submarines preying on ships in the North Atlantic. She had an idea for radio-controlled torpedo delivery that could not be foiled by the enemy.
Enter George Antheil, an American avant-garde composer whose works were known for using unorthodox instruments such as player-pianos, airplane propellers and sirens. He also wrote music for movies and, like Lamarr, tinkered with ideas for inventions. His signature composition from the 1920s, "Ballet Mécanique," prompted him to develop a way to synchronize multiple player-pianos.
Ever scrambling to piece together an income, Antheil wrote frequently for Esquire magazine—including articles on endocrinology, particularly female hormones, that happened to catch Lamarr's attention. The actress told a friend who knew Antheil that she would like to meet him. When they were introduced at a dinner party in August 1940, she asked Antheil if he knew how she might make her breasts bigger. Mr. Rhodes reports that Antheil recalled, in his autobiography, "Bad Boy of Music," suggesting "various glandular extracts" that would help the pituitary gland, with the added benefit that "the bosoms stay up."
Antheil and Lamarr eventually moved on to talking about the war in Europe. She wondered if her knowledge of munitions and secret weapons projects from her time in Austria could help somehow. She also described an idea for a remote-controlled torpedo: A radio transmitting directions and a receiver implementing them would be synchronized so that their frequencies could be changed simultaneously in a random manner. This constant retuning would make it difficult for the enemy to jam the signals. Lamarr termed the technique "frequency hopping," a forerunner of the spread-spectrum technology that is used today in communications applications such as Wi-Fi.
Antheil lent his experience with synchronizing player pianos. The two refined the idea, then consulted with an electrical-engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology, who confirmed that the concept would work. U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 for a "Secret Communication System" was issued to Hedy Kiesler Markey and George Antheil in 1942. (Markey was the surname of a husband she had divorced in 1940.) The frequency-hopping technology was not put to use in World War II, but it was employed in 1962 during the blockade of Cuba.
Today, when innovation is often identified as essential for revitalizing an ailing economy, politicians demand more science funding as an incentive. They would do well to note the story of Hedy Lamarr and remember that innovation comes in many forms, often from unlikely sources, who all have one thing in common: a love for ideas and an urge to find out if they'll work.
Mr. Petroski is a professor of engineering and of history at Duke University. His latest book is "An Engineer's Alphabet: Gleanings From the Softer Side of a Profession."
About 20 years ago, historical novelist Ryotaro Shiba (1923-1996) visited Aomori Prefecture to write a series of travel essays titled "Kaido o Yuku" (On the highways街道をゆく（1971年9月 - 96年11月、朝日新聞社、43巻目で絶筆）). He noted, "Listening to the Tsugaru and Nanbu dialects, I sometimes feel they are poetry." I am sure this was not an idle observation of a sentimental traveler. Like well-used tools, all dialects enable their users to express themselves precisely.
Ryotaro Shiba, a writer known for his long historical novels, died on Monday after suffering from internal bleeding and lapsing into a coma two days earlier. He was 72. Mr. Shiba started writing historical novels after World War II and won the prestigious Naoki Prize for his 1959 novel, "Fukuro no Shiro" ("The Castle of an Owl"). His best-selling books include "Ryoma ga Yuku" ("Ryoma Is Going"), about the life of Ryoma Sakamoto, a major figure in Japan's transformation from feudal military rule in the 1860's. For the last quarter-century, Mr. Shiba's articles on his travels around Japan were printed weekly in the magazine Shukan Asahi in a series that reached 1,146 installments. He received the Government's Order of Cultural Merit in 1993.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.「新 世紀福爾摩斯」在英國和美國同步播出，獲得大西洋兩岸媒體好評，英國衛報稱讚本劇「即使原作者柯南道爾也會讚許」，紐約時報評論「娛樂性十 足…Martin Freeman 精準地詮釋忠心但愛發牢騷的華生，是本劇的一大亮點。」劇中福爾摩斯穿的風衣引起男性觀眾熱烈詢問，這款原本已經停產的風衣，在觀眾要求下重新製造上架。
"A Study in Pink" is the first episode of the television series Sherlock and first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 25 July 2010. It introduces the main characters and resolves a murder mystery. It is loosely based upon the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet.[1] The episode was written by Steven Moffat, who co-created the series. It was originally filmed as a 60-minute pilot for Sherlock, directed by Coky Giedroyc. However, the BBC decided not to transmit the pilot, but instead commissioned a series of three 90-minute episodes.[2] The story was refilmed, this time directed by Paul McGuigan. The British Board of Film Classification has rated the pilot as a 12 certificate for video and online exhibition, and it is included as an additional feature on the DVD released on 30 August 2010.[3]
John Watson, an ex-army doctor injured in the war in Afghanistan, meets Sherlock Holmes through a mutual friend. They become flatmates, sharing rooms at 221B Baker Street owned by landlady Mrs. Hudson. There have been a strange series of deaths that Inspector Lestrade supposes to be serial suicides. Sherlock is consulted by Lestrade to look into the latest crime scene which is of a woman wearing an "alarming shade of pink". Before departing with Lestrade, Sherlock utters a derivation of one of his famous phrases, "The game is on." Sherlock deduces that the woman is an serial adulterer with an unhappy, decade long marriage. However, this victim, unlike others, left a note: she clawed the word "Rache" into the floor before dying. Sherlock quickly ignores the suggestion of the forensic expert, Anderson, that it's the German word for revenge and settles on "Rachel", deeming that the victim died before finishing the scrawl. Examining the woman's clothing and accessories, Sherlock reveals that she's from out of town, intending to stay over for one night which he deduces from splashes of mud on only one leg, thrown up by the wheel of the case. However Lestrade explains that no suitcase was found in the premises. Sherlock flies off, searching for the spot where the murderer might have ditched the case. It turns out that the murderer threw it into a nearby garbage container. Meanwhile, John receives a call from a public phone. After the subsequent conversation, a black sedan arrives, taking John to an empty warehouse. There, he meets a man claiming to be Sherlock's "arch-enemy" who proposes money in return of information about Sherlock's activities, which John refuses. The man warns John to "choose a side" and walks off. John finds Sherlock in 221B, where he asks John to send a text message to a number which he reveals to be the fourth victim's. The two then go out for a dinner in a local Italian restaurant where it strikes Sherlock that the murderer must be someone who can stalk and approach people without raising suspicion on the streets of London. That instant, Sherlock perceives a cabbie across the street with a passenger. They give chase with Sherlock using his profound knowledge of London's streets and alleys to run into the cab via various detours and backstreets. Eventually they catch up with the cab but the passenger turns out to be a newly arrived American; a perfect alibi. Back at Baker Street, Sherlock and John find Scotland Yard executing a drug bust, in retaliation for the fact that Sherlock withheld evidence by chasing after the suitcase himself. In a chain of deductions, he reasons that the last victim planted her mobile phone on the murderer and clawed her mail address password upon the floor, allowing the investigators to trace the GPS signal. John sees that the signal is coming from 221B at which point Mrs. Hudson tells him that there's a cabbie waiting for him downstairs. Sherlock, in a moment of epiphany, realizes the plot. It was the cabbie approaching people without suspicion and taking them to irrelevant locations where they're found dead. Sherlock leaves his apartment, facing off the cabbie who confesses his doings, but also proclaims that he doesn't kill - instead, he speaks to his victims and they kill themselves. He challenges Sherlock to solve his puzzle instead of arresting him then and there. They drive around London and finally arrive at a school building. There, the cabbie pulls out a gun and two bottles he claims contain one harmless pill and one poisonous pill. Sherlock and the cabbie have a dialogue about motives and consequences after which Sherlock reads that the cabbie is dying. The murderer confesses that he has an aneurysm, and that his 'victims' can either take a 50/50 chance at picking the right pill and surviving or get shot by the gun. Refusing to play the pill game and calling off the cabbie's gun bluff (which in reality is a novelty cigarette lighter), Sherlock walks off, but he's challenged once again to choose a pill to see if he'd got it right. Meanwhile, John has traced the GPS signal from the victim's phone and followed Sherlock. He perceives him to be in danger when he spots him across the building where he is about to take one of the pills. The cabbie is shot by a bullet from John piercing through a nearby window. He lies there fatally wounded as Sherlock questions him, first about whether he got the pill game right, then, realising it's not important, about his 'fan'. Upon the cabbie's reluctance to tell, Sherlock stomps on the cabbie's bullet wound and manages to get a name: "Moriarty". Outside, Scotland Yard has surrounded the perimeter and Sherlock is treated for shock. Lestrade questions Sherlock about the shooter and he starts to make some deductions before realizing it must be John. Sherlock feigns shock to cover for John and tells Lestrade to ignore everything he has just said. Sherlock and John leave the scene but run into the man who abducted John earlier in the episode, who turns out to be Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's elder brother, with whom he has a grudge. After a brief conversation, Sherlock and John return to Baker Street, and Mycroft instructs his secretary to increase their surveillance status.
Allusions
The episode is loosely based on A Study in Scarlet and contains allusions to other works by Arthur Conan Doyle. Tom Sutcliffe of The Independent points out, "Fans will recognise at once that the close-reading Sherlock applies to John's mobile phone is drawn from an almost identical analysis of a pocket watch. More slyly oblique is the conversion of the lost ring that Holmes uses to lure the killer in A Study in Scarlet into a lost 'ring', a mobile phone that can be used to contact the killer directly."[4] John's reference in the final scene to having been shot in the shoulder (but developing a psychosomatic limp in the leg) refers to the fact that in the original A Study in Scarlet Watson's injury is said to be in his shoulder, but in Conan Doyle's later Holmes stories, it is said to be in his leg. The final victim's phone is described as a "Mephone" with email and GPS capability, probably as a gentle nod to Apple's iPhone. When Holmes sees that the fourth victim has scratched "Rache" into the floor before dying, he immediately considers both the fact that "Rache" is the German word for revenge, and that she was trying to write "Rachel" (two possibilities considered in the novel). In the novel, the word was"Rache", and "Rachel" was just a wild-goose chase for the police; in this episode, it is in fact reversed--one of the officers mentions the German explanation, and Holmes says "Don't be an idiot."
Production
The story was originally filmed as a 60-minute pilot for Sherlock, directed by Coky Giedroyc. However, when the BBC commissioned a three-part series, it ordered several changes and decided not to transmit the pilot. The Sun reported an unnamed source as saying, "The crew couldn't just re-use footage because the series is now totally different. The stories are now more intricate and detailed, so they basically had to start again."[2] The episode was set in 2010 rather than the Victorian period and so used modern devices such as mobile phones, TX1 London cabs and nicotine patches rather than the traditional pipe and other period props.[5]
The first broadcast was on BBC1 at 21:00 on 25 July 2010. Viewing figures were up to 9.23 million viewers and averaged a 28.5% share of the UK audience with a high AI rating of 87.[6][7]
Reception
The episode received critical acclaim. The Guardian's Dan Martin said, "It's early days, but the first of three 90-minute movies, "A Study in Pink", is brilliantly promising. It has the finesse of Spooks but is indisputably Sherlock Holmes. The deduction sequences are ingenious, and the plot is classic Moffat intricacy. Purists will take umbrage, as purists always do."[8] However, Sam Wollaston, also for The Guardian, was concerned that some elements of the story were unexplained.[9] Tom Sutcliffe for The Independent also suggests that Holmes was "a bit slow" to connect the attributes of the killer to a London taxicab driver, but his review is otherwise positive. He wrote, "Sherlock is a triumph, witty and knowing, without ever undercutting the flair and dazzle of the original. It understands that Holmes isn't really about plot but about charisma ... Flagrantly unfaithful to the original in some respects, Sherlock is wonderfully loyal to it in every way that matters.[4]
Benedict Cumberbatch, right, won the award for best actor in a miniseries, while Martin Freeman won the award for best supporting actor
In a curious twist, neither Holmes nor Watson was present to collect the record haul of seven Emmy awards won by the hit BBC series Sherlock in Los Angeles on Monday night.
However, solving the mystery of their no-show was not quite a “three pipe problem” the Deerstalker-wearing detective would normally have to solve. The critics had considered British stars of the show Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to be outliers for the awards.
The surprise victory for them, and for a series produced on a fraction of the budget of big US TV dramas that dominate the event, highlights the financial boost that Sherlock has provided for the BBC. It said last month that the series is now its biggest selling export, licensed to 224 territories worldwide – more than any other programme.
Revealing that filming of the fourth series of Sherlockwill begin in January, the head of BBC drama said he expects this series to outstrip the success of even the third, promising viewers around the world a “shocking” plot twist which was revealed to the lead actors in a secret meeting a month ago.
Winning gongs respectively for outstanding lead actor and supporting actor in a mini series or movie, Sherlock’s co-creator Steven Moffat also picked up the best writer trophy at the 66th annual Emmy Awards. Four technical awards took the total haul to seven, one more than the night’s other big winner, the US crime drama series Breaking Bad.
The three Emmys were all in recognition of His Last Vow, the final episode from the third series, first aired on UK screens in January. A contemporary reworking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Charles Augustus Milverton, the society blackmailer of his 1904 tale is transformed into a treacherous newspaper magnate, Charles Augustus Magnussen, played by Lars Mikkelsen.
Steven Moffat accepts the award for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries
“Sherlock is our best-selling programme, and won more awards than any other programme last night at a fraction of the cost of the American shows,” said Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama.
He said a significant share of BBC Worldwide’s profits was driven by the export of just four programmes – Sherlock, Dr Who, Top Gear and Dancing with the Stars (the US name for Strictly Come Dancing).
Financial results for the broadcaster’s commercial arm last month revealed that BBC Worldwide had generated profits of £174m to be returned to the BBC, an 11 per cent rise on the previous year, and equivalent to 10 per cent of the annual content funding budget for BBC TV programmes.
Conceding that Sherlock has made a “huge amount of money” for the broadcaster (the BBC will not break down specific revenues per show), Mr Stephenson was initially surprised at the rapturous reception the show received in America, where it is licensed to the channel PBS.
“In the US, the assumption is you have to make 12 or 24 episodes,” he said. “Sherlock has made nine episodes over the course of three years, yet it’s been such a big hit. Ultimately, it comes down to amazing creativity – whatever its shape or size, creativity does drive commerciality.”
Last month, it was revealed that BBC Worldwide is in talks to sell a near-50 per cent stake in its flagship BBC America channel to US television group AMC Networks – the home of Breaking Bad – as it seeks the financial power to compete with high-end drama rivals such as HBO and Netflix.
Nevertheless, Sherlock’s global success has broken many records. The BBC says the third series – where Mr Cumberbatch’s detective miraculously returns to sleuthing after seemingly plunging to his death from the roof of Bart’s Hospital at the end of series two – has received more than 70m hits on the Chinese digital platform Youku.
The DVD of the third series received the most pre-orders ever for a BBC series yet to be broadcast – at a time when the format is dying – and the final episode was the most tweeted about television programme when it was first aired on UK screens.
Fans around the world are waiting with breathless anticipation for series four, and screenwriter Mr Moffat revealed he had a “devastating” plan for the next instalment.
Mr Stephenson said: “This is not hyperbole.” He confirmed that the BBC will film a “special with a big twist” in January, followed by a three-part series filmed in 2015, with no fixed date for broadcast.
“Steven sat down with Martin [Freeman] and Benedict [Cumberbatch] a month ago and took them through what the plans are [for series four]. It’s impossible to guess what’s going to happen. They are being very bold and brave. There are twists and turns, as you would expect. But it is shocking.”
He said he was confident that sales of this series would eclipse the success that series three has enjoyed.
“The amazing thing about Sherlock is that every time we’ve done it, sales and ratings have gone up,” he added. “We sold to 224 countries last year, and I think that will continue to rise. Obviously there are only so many countries in the world, but maybe we’ll start selling it to the aliens next.”
路易十四時代 Le Siècle de Louis XIV ，法國著名學者伏爾泰著，於1751年本書脫稿，而後又修訂持續達十年之久。[1]，1745年—1747年，伏爾泰曾任王家史官，這給他翻閱各種資料提供了極大的方便。本書記錄了路易十四時代法國社會面貌，不僅是政治、軍事以外，財政、貿易、宗教、哲學、文藝、科學皆有涉及。現有商務印書館出版發行的漢譯世界學術名著叢書系列，譯者是吳模信、沈懷潔、梁守鏘。
Standing figure of Louis XIV, glass, flame-worked, in classical dress wearing a blue cloak and turquoise stockings, holding a sceptre standing on a large wooden pedestal..
Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse
Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Piles of crushed cars at a metal recycling site in Belfast, Northern Ireland.Photograph: Alamy
The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.
It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.
Limits to Growth was commissioned by a think tank called the Club of Rome. Researchers working out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including husband-and-wife team Donella and Dennis Meadows, built a computer model to track the world’s economy and environment. Called World3, this computer model was cutting edge.
The task was very ambitious. The team tracked industrialisation, population, food, use of resources, and pollution. They modelled data up to 1970, then developed a range of scenarios out to 2100, depending on whether humanity took serious action on environmental and resource issues. If that didn’t happen, the model predicted “overshoot and collapse” – in the economy, environment and population – before 2070. This was called the “business-as-usual” scenario.
The book’s central point, much criticised since, is that “the earth is finite” and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash.
So were they right? We decided to check in with those scenarios after 40 years. Dr Graham Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social affairs, Unesco, the food and agriculture organisation, and the UN statistics yearbook). He also checked in with the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration, the BP statistical review, and elsewhere. That data was plotted alongside the Limits to Growth scenarios.
The results show that the world is tracking pretty closely to the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario. The data doesn’t match up with other scenarios.
These graphs show real-world data (first from the MIT work, then from our research), plotted in a solid line. The dotted line shows the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario out to 2100. Up to 2010, the data is strikingly similar to the book’s forecasts.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Solid line: MIT, with new research in bold. Dotted line: Limits to Growth ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Solid line: MIT, with new research in bold. Dotted line: Limits to Growth ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.Photograph: SuppliedImage may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Solid line: MIT, and research in bold. Dotted line: Limits to Growth ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.Photograph: Supplied
As the MIT researchers explained in 1972, under the scenario, growing population and demands for material wealth would lead to more industrial output and pollution. The graphs show this is indeed happening. Resources are being used up at a rapid rate, pollution is rising, industrial output and food per capita is rising. The population is rising quickly.
So far, Limits to Growth checks out with reality. So what happens next?
According to the book, to feed the continued growth in industrial output there must be ever-increasing use of resources. But resources become more expensive to obtain as they are used up. As more and more capital goes towards resource extraction, industrial output per capita starts to fall – in the book, from about 2015.
As pollution mounts and industrial input into agriculture falls, food production per capita falls. Health and education services are cut back, and that combines to bring about a rise in the death rate from about 2020. Global population begins to fall from about 2030, by about half a billion people per decade. Living conditions fall to levels similar to the early 1900s.
It’s essentially resource constraints that bring about global collapse in the book. However, Limits to Growth does factor in the fallout from increasing pollution, including climate change. The book warned carbon dioxide emissions would have a “climatological effect” via “warming the atmosphere”.
As the graphs show, the University of Melbourne research has not found proof of collapse as of 2010 (although growth has already stalled in some areas). But in Limits to Growth those effects only start to bite around 2015-2030.
The first stages of decline may already have started. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08 and ongoing economic malaise may be a harbinger of the fallout from resource constraints. The pursuit of material wealth contributed to unsustainable levels of debt, with suddenly higher prices for food and oil contributing to defaults - and the GFC.
The issue of peak oil is critical. Many independent researchers conclude that “easy” conventional oil production has already peaked. Even the conservative International Energy Agency has warned about peak oil.
Peak oil could be the catalyst for global collapse. Some see new fossil fuel sources like shale oil, tar sands and coal seam gas as saviours, but the issue is how fast these resources can be extracted, for how long, and at what cost. If they soak up too much capital to extract the fallout would be widespread.
Our research does not indicate that collapse of the world economy, environment and population is a certainty. Nor do we claim the future will unfold exactly as the MIT researchers predicted back in 1972. Wars could break out; so could genuine global environmental leadership. Either could dramatically affect the trajectory.
But our findings should sound an alarm bell. It seems unlikely that the quest for ever-increasing growth can continue unchecked to 2100 without causing serious negative effects – and those effects might come sooner than we think.
It may be too late to convince the world’s politicians and wealthy elites to chart a different course. So to the rest of us, maybe it’s time to think about how we protect ourselves as we head into an uncertain future.
As Limits to Growth concluded in 1972:
If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.
So far, there’s little to indicate they got that wrong.
Internet Archive以保存完整的網站歷史資料而聞名，保存高達4000億頁的網頁資料，最早可回溯至1996年。除此之外，該組織的19 petabytes數位資料中還包括了橫跨500年歷史的200萬本公共領域書籍，這些書籍中約含有1400萬張圖片，近日開始上傳到Flickr供外界存取，截至今日，上傳至Flickr的書籍圖片已超過260萬張。
文/陳曉莉 | 2014-09-01發表 Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Internet Archive以保存完整的網站歷史資料而聞名，保存高達4000億頁的網頁資料，最早可回溯至1996年。除此之外，該組織的19 petabytes數位資料中還包括了500年以來的6000萬頁的數位化文本。Internet Archive表示，該組織已經數位化橫跨500年歷史的200萬本公共領域的書籍，這些書籍中約含有1400萬張圖片，而且已加上文字註解，允許使用者搜尋、檢視、點選或是閱讀這些圖片，並於近日開始將它們上傳到照片分享網站Flickr供外界存取，截至今日，上傳至Flickr的書籍圖片已超過260萬張。
Google's settlement with authors and publishers has been tossed out, shining a spotlight on copyright law. Maybe we shouldn't entrust that kind of project to a corporation anyway.
By Michael Hiltzik
March 25, 2011, 9:29 p.m.
Say what you want about Google— whether you believe it invariably adheres to its motto "Don't be evil" or you suspect that its true goal is world domination — the firm's behavior certainly has a way of shining the spotlight on the most important technological issues in our lives.
These include secrecy, privacy and now, in connection with a huge legal fight in which a New York federal judge last week dealt Google a huge defeat, copyright law. Judge Denny Chin threw a wrench into six years of litigation by tossing out a 165-page settlement reached in 2008 between Google and authors and publishers groups. At issue was Google's plan to create a global digitized library to "unlock the wisdom" imprisoned in the world's out-of-print books, as its co-founder Sergey Brin described the project in 2009. Like other authors and researchers, I'm conflicted about the project. On the plus side, the vision of a widely accessible digital library is a worthy one that is, for the first time in human history, technologically achievable. On the other hand, Google was plotting to acquire effective control over millions of works whose copyrights belong to others. The Google books case began as a narrow legal dispute but broadened out, like an umbrella unfurled in the rain, into an effort to provide a shelter for a huge, monopolistic profit-oriented corporate enterprise. The original lawsuit dealt with Google Book Search. The company announced in 2004 that it had made searchable digital copies, or scans, of millions of books contributed by Stanford, Harvard, the University of Michigan and other institutional libraries. Type a search term into your Web browser, and Google would display "snippets" of its scanned books displaying your term. Since many of those books were still under copyright, the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers sued Google for copyright infringement. Google's defense was that the snippets fell under the "fair use" exemption in copyright law, a very murky provision allowing limited use of works, without permission, for comment and criticism, news reporting, scholarship and research. Had the settlement been limited to that issue, it might have gained Chin's approval and performed a public service besides by clarifying the fair use exemption for digital indexing — for example, the judge might have set a standard for how big a snippet and how many words can be displayedwithout permission. But the document went much further. The settlement created a safe harbor for the vast digital bookstore Google hoped to create out of a digital hoard that so far comprises about 12 million volumes, or nearly 10% of the world's published library. The settlement would have allowed Google to continue scanning and offer access to the results for a fee. The company was to pay $45 million into a settlement fund for authors whose copyrighted books it had already scanned without permission. But infringement wasn't an issue for many books. Google or anyone else can copy and display the text of those out of copyright, such as the works of Charles Dickens. Books under copyright and still in print — and therefore whose rights holders are not a mystery — are subject to deals Google makes with their publishers or authors, typically allowing the display of limited chunks, such as several pages, at a time. The sticking point was "orphan books"— those copyrighted but out of print, and whose rights holders can't be found or identified. Google executives have portrayed their effort as one that would give these forgotten or overlooked tomes a new lease on life. The settlement required the company to fund an independent registry which would, among other things, oversee interests in yet-unclaimed works and hold payments from Google for their exploitation. Any author, including the parents of orphaned works when and if they surfaced, could opt out of Google's digital scanning on request. But that reverses the burden of existing copyright law, which forbids use unless the owners give affirmative permission for uses of their work. Critics observed that the deal would have given the company a huge advantage in the digital marketplace by validating its strategy of scanning books first and worrying about copyrights later. Google digitized material the ownership of which was unclear "in calculated disregard of authors' rights," observed copyright lawyer Robert Kunstadt in testimony cited by Chin. "Its business plan was, 'So, sue me.'" Rivals who went through the tough process of tracking down owners before scanning their books thus were left in the dust. Judge Chin concluded that rewriting copyright law is a task that belongs in the halls of Congress, not a courtroom, hinting that he couldn't have approved the settlement even if he wanted to. But his decision places the spotlight on several questions about the digital present and future. One is: How to advance the goal of a digital public library without Google's deep pockets? The rejection of the Google settlement has raised the profile of a leading alternative being promoted by Robert Darnton, a Harvard history professor and director of the university library, and a long-term critic of the Google settlement. Darnton's idea is for charitable foundations to fund a digital analogue to the Library of Congress, freely available to all citizens and accessible to anyone within reach of the Internet. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has agreed to play a leading role. "Now that the settlement seems to have unraveled, this looks like a serious alternative," Darnton told me. Darnton's proposal would eliminate the problems of entrusting a major archival project to an entity whose main purpose is commercial, not scholarly. The settlement would have required Google to provide the participating university libraries with a free digital copy of its scanned out-of-print books. But it also would have allowed Google to restrict its use by faculty members to reading, printing, or downloading no more than five pages for free — and only once per person each academic term. For greater access, the institution would have had to buy a subscription. Even a public digital library might need legal help dealing with orphan books. Chin's advice of referring the issue to Congress ignores the question of whether Congress is up to the job. As recently as 2008 a bill to fill the orphan-books gap sank without a trace in the House. Chin's ruling may well provoke Google to pressure Congress to solve the problem so it can proceed with its own project. But there it will face counter-lobbying by publishers, film studios and record labels. "Those content industries don't like any proposal seen as weakening copyright," says Peter Jaszi, an expert in copyright law at American University. The Google books case now looks like a salvage operation for the dream of a digital library. "There were many things in the settlement that were innovative and useful, and I'd be sorry to see lost," remarks Lewis Hyde, the author of "Common as Air," a recent book about copyright in the digital era. Judge Chin's decision forces us — or allows us — to ponder the dream of a digital library without ceding our future to Google. Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
"Some day it may be we shall see a new order of Jesuits, vowed not to the service of the Pope, but to the service of mankind."----Outline of History : H. G. Wells (我們讀羅文森著的《令人懷念的東海歲月與良師益友》台北：至潔出版社，2014。寫1962-66的故事)中，三位歐洲耶穌會神父來台之教育功績，可以感受他們很了不起。)
(《戀戀九號宿舍》的折頁廣告是九歌同年出版的《飄著細雪的下午》（作者：趙民德，台北：九歌，2007）也是作者跟父親的故事......飄著細雪的下午: quod erat faciendum) 朋友，今天羅文森 (1942~ ；1964級東海化學)學長來訪。他在九歌出版2本:《戀戀九號宿舍》2007、《當機會被我遇見》 (2009，中山文藝獎，獎金25萬)。
從1948年到世紀之交在人類的歷史長河中只是一個小小片段，人們在這一時期初步建立了以美國理想主義、傳統的歐洲國家理念和權力平衡為主的全球秩序。但世界上還有很多地區從未認同西方的秩序概念，只是勉強默認而已。這些持保留意見者如今不再選擇沉默，烏克蘭危機以及南中國海(South China Sea, 中國稱南海)問題便是証明。由西方建立並稱頌的秩序目前正處於一個十字路口。
基辛格回答這一問題的方式是回顧歷史，那是英國外交部一位高級官員艾爾·克勞(Eyre Crowe)1907年寫的一份備忘錄。克勞認為，“（德國）盡己所能建立一支強大的海軍”，是符合德國的利益的，而這本身就會導致與英帝國的“客觀”衝 突，不管德國的外交官說或做了什麼。如今在美國，基辛格注意到，有一個“克勞思想流派”(Crowe school of thought)，該派視中國的崛起“與美國在太平洋的地位不相容”，因此最好採取先發制人的敵對政策。他感受到兩國社會的焦慮在增大，他也擔心那些聲稱 中國的民主是信任關係前提的美國人會加劇這種焦慮。他警告說，隱含的下一次冷戰會阻止兩國的進步，並使兩國“分解為本身自會成為事實的預言中”，而在現實 中，雙方主要的競爭更有可能是經濟而非軍事上的。
Max Frankel是《紐約時報》前執行主編，報道了尼克松―基辛格1972年的中國之行。 本文最初發表於2011年5月15日。 翻譯：王曉元
Henry Kissinger was not only the first official American emissary to Communist China, he persisted in his brokerage with more than 50 trips over four decades, spanning the careers of seven leaders on each side. Diplomatically speaking, he owns the franchise; and with “On China,” as he approaches 88, he reflects on his remarkable run. To the degree that Washington and Beijing now understand each other, it is in good measure because Kissinger has been assiduously translating for both sides, discerning meaning in everything from elliptical jokes to temper tantrums. At every juncture, he has been striving to find “strategic concepts” that could be made to prevail over a history of conflict, mutual grievance and fear. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, then secretary of state for Nixon and Gerald Ford, and since 1977 as a private interlocutor extraordinaire, Kissinger has been unwaveringly committed to surmounting what he considers the legitimate Chinese resentment of American interference in their internal affairs and Americans’ distaste for China’s brutal suppression of ethnic, religious and political dissent.
The surprise buried in his lumbering review of Sino-American relations is that the much ballyhooed Nixon-Kissinger journeys to China in 1971-72 turned out to have been the easy part. “That China and the United States would find a way to come together was inevitable given the necessities of the time,” he writes. “It would have happened sooner or later whatever the leadership in either country.” Both nations were exhausted from war (Vietnam, clashes on the Soviet border) and domestic strife (antiwar protests in Nixon’s case, the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s). Both were determined to resist Soviet advances and so could quickly agree to make common cause. The menace of Moscow took the leaders’ minds off confrontations in Vietnam and Taiwan and quelled their ritual denunciations, whether of international imperialism or Communism. They decided that the adversary of my adversary was my pal, and for more than a decade that was fruitfully that. But that was a different time. China finally escaped from Mao Zedong’s mad doctrine of perpetual revolution and from the enfeebling nostrums of central planning; it became an industrial powerhouse. The Soviet Union and its empire collapsed. And the United States, feeling supreme, began promoting democracy with missionary zeal even as it grew dangerously addicted to foreign oil, goods and credit. The radical shift in the balance of power turned China and the United States into mutually dependent economic giants, but it left them without an overarching strategic design of partnership. It is to demonstrate the need for such a design that Kissinger reviews the ups and downs of Sino-American relations, reaching even into ancient Chinese history to define national characteristics. (He finds it apt that the Chinese like to play “wei qi,” or “go,” a protracted game of encirclement while we play chess, looking for control of the center and total victory.) Kissinger draws heavily on much recent scholarship and on notes of his trips to Beijing to celebrate the pragmatism of Mao’s successors. He says they are content to remain within their restored historic frontiers, willing to await a peaceful reunion with Taiwan, and most determined to continue their remarkable economic growth and to eradicate China’s still widespread poverty. He is less confident about America’s capacity to sustain a steady foreign policy, noting that “the perpetual psychodrama of democratic transitions” is a constant invitation to other nations to “hedge their bets” on us. As students of Kissinger well know, he has long considered democracy to be a burden on statecraft — both the clamor of democracy within the United States and our agitations for democracy in other lands. He recalls yet again his agonies in office in the 1970s, when he thought that American demonstrations during the Vietnam War could have misled Mao into believing that a “genuine world revolution” was at hand. He argues that the “destruction” of Nixon in the Watergate crisis, the withdrawal of Congressional support for Vietnam, new curbs on presidential war powers and the “hemorrhaging” of intelligence secrets all combined to undermine the quasi alliance with China, making America appear ineffectual against the Soviets. He is glad that Jimmy Carter did not let his human rights concerns upset relations with China and that Ronald Reagan’s cheerful personality overcame the “almost incomprehensible contradictions” of his dealings with Beijing even as he promoted the idea of an independent Taiwan. The severest test of the quasi alliance, of course, was the brutal suppression of democratic strivings in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That violent crackdown also tested Kissinger’s tolerance for the assertion of American values in foreign relations. Looking back, he believes everything depends on circumstances: “There are instances of violations of human rights so egregious,” he writes, “that it is impossible to conceive of benefit in a continuing relationship; for example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda. Since public pressure shades either into regime change or a kind of abdication, it is difficult to apply to countries with which a continuous relationship is important for American security. This is especially the case with China, so imbued with the memory of humiliating intervention by Western societies.” And so Kissinger admires the way President George H. W. Bush, “with skill and elegance,” walked the “tightrope” of punishing China with sanctions after Tiananmen while simultaneously apologizing with private letters and special emissaries. President Bill Clinton tried applying pressure for a time, Kissinger notes, but was shown no gratitude when he wisely relented; the Chinese “did not view the removal of a unilateral threat as a concession, and they were extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs.” And President George W. Bush, despite his “freedom agenda,” earns Kissinger’s praise for overcoming “the historic ambivalence between America’s missionary and pragmatic approaches,” by means of “a sensible balance of strategic priorities.” If America’s preference for democratic governance is made the main condition for progress on other issues with China, Kissinger concludes, “deadlock is inevitable.” Those who battle to spread American values deserve respect. “But foreign policy must define means as well as objectives, and if the means employed grow beyond the tolerance of the international framework or of a relationship considered essential for national security, a choice must be made.” That choice “cannot be fudged,” he insists, even as he attempts to protect his flanks with a fudge of his own: “The best outcome in the American debate would be to combine the two approaches: for the idealists to recognize that principles need to be implemented over time and hence must be occasionally adjusted to circumstance; and for the ‘realists’ to accept that values have their own reality and must be built into operational policies.” Still, in the end, Kissinger votes for national security über alles. Scattered through his history are tributes to American values and commitments to human dignity, which may indeed sometimes drive our policies beyond calculations of the national interest. Exactly that happened, in fact, after “On China” went to press, when President Obama ventured into Libya. Kissinger was perhaps surprised when that humanitarian intervention and bid for regime change failed to evoke a Chinese veto at the United Nations. But in Asia now more than Europe, he argues, “sovereignty is considered paramount,” and any attempt “from the outside” to alter China’s domestic structure “is likely to involve vast unintended consequences.” Besides, as he used to insist while practicing realpolitik in Washington, the cause of peace is also a moral pursuit. This central theme of Kissinger’s experience and counsel must be distilled from the sometimes meandering and largely familiar history he tells in “On China.” Only in its last pages does he discuss the essential question of future Sino-American relations: With no common enemy to bind them, what will keep the peace and promote collaboration and trust between the world’s major powers? Kissinger addresses this question by looking to the past, a memorandum written by a senior official of the British Foreign Office, Eyre Crowe, in 1907. Crowe argued that it was in Germany’s interest to “build as powerful a navy as she can afford” and that this would itself lead to “objective” conflict with the British Empire, no matter what German diplomats said or did. There is today a “Crowe school of thought” in the United States, Kissinger observes, which sees China’s rise “as incompatible with America’s position in the Pacific” and therefore best met with pre-emptively hostile policies. He perceives growing anxieties in both societies and fears they are exacerbated by Americans who claim that democracy in China is a prerequisite for a trusting relationship. He warns that the implied next cold war would arrest progress in both nations and cause them to “analyze themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies” when in reality their main competition is more likely to be economic than military. Indulging his habitual preference for diplomatic architecture, Kissinger insists that the common interests the two powers share should make possible a “co-evolution” to “a more comprehensive framework.” He envisions wise leaders creating a “Pacific community” comparable to the Atlantic community that America has achieved with Europe. All Asian nations would then participate in a system perceived as a joint endeavor rather than a contest of rival Chinese and American blocs. And leaders on both Pacific coasts would be obliged to “establish a tradition of consultation and mutual respect,” making a shared world order “an expression of parallel national aspirations.” That was indeed the mission of the very first Kissinger journey to Beijing. And while he does not quite say so, he invests his hopes in a concert of nations represented, of course, by multiple Kissingers.
Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The Times, covered the Nixon-Kissinger journey to China in 1972.
---- 2004/10 周日回台北了，傍晚去「舊香居 龍泉店」書店 Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger/Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison/The Gardens of William Morris 之所以要買大外交（Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger），因為中文本沒索引，無法查核翻譯或刪編（據云）。
The easy part: Kissinger, Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in 1972.
By MAX FRANKEL
Published: May 13, 2011
Henry Kissinger was not only the first official American emissary to Communist China, he persisted in his brokerage with more than 50 trips over four decades, spanning the careers of seven leaders on each side. Diplomatically speaking, he owns the franchise; and with “On China,” as he approaches 88, he reflects on his remarkable run.
To the degree that Washington and Beijing now understand each other, it is in good measure because Kissinger has been assiduously translating for both sides, discerning meaning in everything from elliptical jokes to temper tantrums. At every juncture, he has been striving to find “strategic concepts” that could be made to prevail over a history of conflict, mutual grievance and fear. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, then secretary of state for Nixon and Gerald Ford, and since 1977 as a private interlocutor extraordinaire, Kissinger has been unwaveringly committed to surmounting what he considers the legitimate Chinese resentment of American interference in their internal affairs and Americans’ distaste for China’s brutal suppression of ethnic, religious and political dissent. The surprise buried in his lumbering review of Sino-American relations is that the much ballyhooed Nixon-Kissinger journeys to China in 1971-72 turned out to have been the easy part. “That China and the United States would find a way to come together was inevitable given the necessities of the time,” he writes. “It would have happened sooner or later whatever the leadership in either country.” Both nations were exhausted from war (Vietnam, clashes on the Soviet border) and domestic strife (antiwar protests in Nixon’s case, the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s). Both were determined to resist Soviet advances and so could quickly agree to make common cause. The menace of Moscow took the leaders’ minds off confrontations in Vietnam and Taiwan and quelled their ritual denunciations, whether of international imperialism or Communism. They decided that the adversary of my adversary was my pal, and for more than a decade that was fruitfully that. But that was a different time. China finally escaped from Mao Zedong’s mad doctrine of perpetual revolution and from the enfeebling nostrums of central planning; it became an industrial powerhouse. The Soviet Union and its empire collapsed. And the United States, feeling supreme, began promoting democracy with missionary zeal even as it grew dangerously addicted to foreign oil, goods and credit. The radical shift in the balance of power turned China and the United States into mutually dependent economic giants, but it left them without an overarching strategic design of partnership. It is to demonstrate the need for such a design that Kissinger reviews the ups and downs of Sino-American relations, reaching even into ancient Chinese history to define national characteristics. (He finds it apt that the Chinese like to play “wei qi,” or “go,” a protracted game of encirclement while we play chess, looking for control of the center and total victory.) Kissinger draws heavily on much recent scholarship and on notes of his trips to Beijing to celebrate the pragmatism of Mao’s successors. He says they are content to remain within their restored historic frontiers, willing to await a peaceful reunion with Taiwan, and most determined to continue their remarkable economic growth and to eradicate China’s still widespread poverty. He is less confident about America’s capacity to sustain a steady foreign policy, noting that “the perpetual psychodrama of democratic transitions” is a constant invitation to other nations to “hedge their bets” on us. As students of Kissinger well know, he has long considered democracy to be a burden on statecraft — both the clamor of democracy within the United States and our agitations for democracy in other lands. He recalls yet again his agonies in office in the 1970s, when he thought that American demonstrations during the Vietnam War could have misled Mao into believing that a “genuine world revolution” was at hand. He argues that the “destruction” of Nixon in the Watergate crisis, the withdrawal of Congressional support for Vietnam, new curbs on presidential war powers and the “hemorrhaging” of intelligence secrets all combined to undermine the quasi alliance with China, making America appear ineffectual against the Soviets. He is glad that Jimmy Carter did not let his human rights concerns upset relations with China and that Ronald Reagan’s cheerful personality overcame the “almost incomprehensible contradictions” of his dealings with Beijing even as he promoted the idea of an independent Taiwan. The severest test of the quasi alliance, of course, was the brutal suppression of democratic strivings in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That violent crackdown also tested Kissinger’s tolerance for the assertion of American values in foreign relations. Looking back, he believes everything depends on circumstances: “There are instances of violations of human rights so egregious,” he writes, “that it is impossible to conceive of benefit in a continuing relationship; for example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda. Since public pressure shades either into regime change or a kind of abdication, it is difficult to apply to countries with which a continuous relationship is important for American security. This is especially the case with China, so imbued with the memory of humiliating intervention by Western societies.” And so Kissinger admires the way President George H. W. Bush, “with skill and elegance,” walked the “tightrope” of punishing China with sanctions after Tiananmen while simultaneously apologizing with private letters and special emissaries. President Bill Clinton tried applying pressure for a time, Kissinger notes, but was shown no gratitude when he wisely relented; the Chinese “did not view the removal of a unilateral threat as a concession, and they were extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs.” And President George W. Bush, despite his “freedom agenda,” earns Kissinger’s praise for overcoming “the historic ambivalence between America’s missionary and pragmatic approaches,” by means of “a sensible balance of strategic priorities.” If America’s preference for democratic governance is made the main condition for progress on other issues with China, Kissinger concludes, “deadlock is inevitable.” Those who battle to spread American values deserve respect. “But foreign policy must define means as well as objectives, and if the means employed grow beyond the tolerance of the international framework or of a relationship considered essential for national security, a choice must be made.” That choice “cannot be fudged,” he insists, even as he attempts to protect his flanks with a fudge of his own: “The best outcome in the American debate would be to combine the two approaches: for the idealists to recognize that principles need to be implemented over time and hence must be occasionally adjusted to circumstance; and for the ‘realists’ to accept that values have their own reality and must be built into operational policies.” Still, in the end, Kissinger votes for national security über alles. Scattered through his history are tributes to American values and commitments to human dignity, which may indeed sometimes drive our policies beyond calculations of the national interest. Exactly that happened, in fact, after “On China” went to press, when President Obama ventured into Libya. Kissinger was perhaps surprised when that humanitarian intervention and bid for regime change failed to evoke a Chinese veto at the United Nations. But in Asia now more than Europe, he argues, “sovereignty is considered paramount,” and any attempt “from the outside” to alter China’s domestic structure “is likely to involve vast unintended consequences.” Besides, as he used to insist while practicing realpolitik in Washington, the cause of peace is also a moral pursuit. This central theme of Kissinger’s experience and counsel must be distilled from the sometimes meandering and largely familiar history he tells in “On China.” Only in its last pages does he discuss the essential question of future Sino-American relations: With no common enemy to bind them, what will keep the peace and promote collaboration and trust between the world’s major powers? Kissinger addresses this question by looking to the past, a memorandum written by a senior official of the British Foreign Office, Eyre Crowe, in 1907. Crowe argued that it was in Germany’s interest to “build as powerful a navy as she can afford” and that this would itself lead to “objective” conflict with the British Empire, no matter what German diplomats said or did. There is today a “Crowe school of thought” in the United States, Kissinger observes, which sees China’s rise “as incompatible with America’s position in the Pacific” and therefore best met with pre-emptively hostile policies. He perceives growing anxieties in both societies and fears they are exacerbated by Americans who claim that democracy in China is a prerequisite for a trusting relationship. He warns that the implied next cold war would arrest progress in both nations and cause them to “analyze themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies” when in reality their main competition is more likely to be economic than military. Indulging his habitual preference for diplomatic architecture, Kissinger insists that the common interests the two powers share should make possible a “co-evolution” to “a more comprehensive framework.” He envisions wise leaders creating a “Pacific community” comparable to the Atlantic community that America has achieved with Europe. All Asian nations would then participate in a system perceived as a joint endeavor rather than a contest of rival Chinese and American blocs. And leaders on both Pacific coasts would be obliged to “establish a tradition of consultation and mutual respect,” making a shared world order “an expression of parallel national aspirations.” That was indeed the mission of the very first Kissinger journey to Beijing. And while he does not quite say so, he invests his hopes in a concert of nations represented, of course, by multiple Kissingers.
Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The Times, covered the Nixon-Kissinger journey to China in 1972.
****
America and China
No go
The Western politician who understands China best tries to explain it—but doesn’t quite succeed
May 19th 2011 | from the print edition
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
On China. By Henry Kissinger. Penguin Press; 586 pages; $36. Allen Lane; £30. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk CHINESE and American leaders have been sniping at each other in public again. This month Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, discussing political reform, told the Atlantic magazine that China’s leaders were “trying to stop history, which is a fool’s errand”. This may have been what provoked Wang Qishan, a Chinese deputy prime minister, to tell a television interviewer that Americans were “simple” (perhaps “innocent” conveys the Chinese word better), and have trouble understanding China, “because it is an ancient civilisation, and we are of the Oriental culture.” Mr Wang will applaud Henry Kissinger’s latest work, a distillation of more than 40 years of involvement with China and its leaders, and an unabashedly Orientalist affirmation of the otherness of the country. The most riveting chapters deal with Mr Kissinger’s leading roles in the Nixon administration as it established links with Mao Zedong’s China. The well-known story bears retelling by a central protagonist who made his first, secret trip in July 1971, pleading illness to take a few days out of his official schedule while on a visit to Pakistan. President Richard Nixon’s own trip in 1972, which had been initiated by Mr Kissinger, was indeed a “week that changed the world”, as China and America ganged up to deter Soviet expansionism.
Mr Kissinger’s encounters with the urbane, conciliatory prime minister, Zhou Enlai, and the elliptical, moody Mao—and indeed with every senior Chinese leader since—make gripping reading. Some of Mao’s allusively poetic dialogue, in particular, is beyond parody: “At the approach of the rain and the wind the swallows are busy.” The panoramic authority with which the Chinese leaders (and their interlocutor) dissect the world is breathtaking. But Mr Kissinger is not telling all. He recounts how, in the years beforehand, more than 100 exploratory meetings in Warsaw had made no progress because of Taiwan, which America still recognised as “the Republic of China”. It is not clear when or why America abandoned its notion that China should commit itself to peaceful reunification as a precondition for a presidential visit. China has never renounced the threat of invasion. Nor does Mr Kissinger explain the thinking behind the communiqué signed after Nixon’s first visit, in which America acknowledged “that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” Large numbers of people in Taiwan have never maintained any such thing. But for China’s leaders, and, it seems Mr Kissinger himself, public opinion anywhere outside the United States is not really a factor when the geopolitical stakes are so high. Before Mr Kissinger himself enters the narrative, the reader is offered 200 pages of history of modern China and its foreign relations. Most of this is uncontentious and well told. But it is marred by three related flaws. The first is Mr Kissinger’s insight that Chinese strategists think like players of wei qi or Go, which means that, in the long term, they wish to avoid encirclement. Westerners are chess-players, tacticians aiming to get rid of their opponents’ pieces “in a series of head-on clashes”, he writes. “Chess produces single-mindedness; wei qi generates strategic flexibility.” This conceit has been used by other authors. It appears every few pages here like a nervous tic. Even before Mr Kissinger joins the game, the metaphor is pulled into service to analyse, among other things, Chinese policy in the Korean war, the Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s (where, of course, “both sides were playing by wei qi rules”), the 1962 war with India (“wei qi in the Himalayas”). Later he describes events in Indochina as “a quadripartite game of wei qi”, just at the time when genocide was under way in Cambodia. Second, the picture of Chinese foreign policy, as formulated by cool, calculating, master strategists playing wei qi, makes it appear more coherent, consistent and effective than it has been. China’s involvement in the Korean war, for example, led, in Mr Kissinger’s phrase, to “two years of war and 20 years of isolation”, hardly a goal for China—or a wei qi triumph. Third, Mr Kissinger gives little weight to the fact that Mao, Zhou and the others were in fact communists. In power they soon replicated some of the forms of an imperial court, and China’s history always mattered more to them than “Das Kapital”. But one cannot ignore the influence of Mao’s adaptation of Marxist ideology on his foreign policy, let alone the importance to domestic politics of the Leninist structures imposed on the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s, which still wears well. In a rare admission of a blunder, Mr Kissinger recounts the only time he saw Zhou lose his serenity—at a banquet in Beijing in November 1973 when Mr Kissinger said that China had remained “essentially Confucian in its belief in a single, universal, generally applicable truth”. Communism, he suggested, had established Marxism as the content of that truth. This was an extraordinary gaffe. Zhou was under indirect attack by Mao’s cronies through a campaign criticising Confucius. But his reaction also illustrates the prickliness of Chinese leaders when foreigners presume to pronounce on the eternal verities of Chinese culture. If even the venerable Mr Kissinger can be caught out, what hope for American statesmen far less familiar with China? The problems that have beset relations since he left the stage are not surprising. His book describes the important role he played as an intermediary in trying to resolve the worst crisis—after the Beijing massacre of 1989. Shortly afterwards, the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the relationship of its “defining shared purpose”. Since then, America’s relations with China have been marked by a startling increase in economic interdependence, but not by any onset of mutual trust. Mr Kissinger notes that in the post-1989 era, China’s foreign-policy posture has been “closer to Bismarck’s than Mao’s”. It has, you could say, taken up chess. In his closing chapter Mr Kissinger finally turns to the big question: does China’s astonishingly rapid rise condemn it to inevitable conflict with America? He notes the similarities with the rise of Germany a century ago and the inevitable threat it posed to the British empire. America and China, too, could easily fall into a cycle of escalating tension that would be hard to break. Optimistically, Mr Kissinger insists that “were history confined to the mechanical repetition of the past, no transformation would ever have occurred.” But on how to avoid such repetition, he is disappointingly vague.
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*Karl Gustav Vollmöller, usually written Vollmoeller (May 7, 1878 – October 18, 1948) was a German playwright and screenwriter. He is most famous for two works, the screenplay for the celebrated 1930German film Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), which made a star of Marlene Dietrich, and the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime Das Mirakel (The Miracle), which he wrote in collaboration with Max Reinhardt, the famous director, and in which he cast his own wife Maria Carmi in the leading role. "The Miracle" retold an old legend about a nun in the Middle Ages who runs away from her convent with a knight, and subsequently has several mystical adventures, eventually leading to her being accused of witchcraft. During her absence, the statue of the Virgin Mary in the convent's chapel comes to life and takes the nun's place in the convent until her safe return. The play opened in Germany in 1911 and subsequently in London and on Broadway in 1924. Filmed twice as a silent movie, it was filmed once again in a much-altered version (with dialogue) in widescreen and Technicolor in 1959.
Henri Frédéric Amiel (28 September 1821 – 11 May 1881) was a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic. Born in Geneva in 1821, he was descended from a Huguenot family driven to Switzerland by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.[1] After losing his parents at an early age, Amiel travelled widely, became intimate with the intellectual leaders of Europe, and made a special study of German philosophy in Berlin. In 1849 he was appointed professor of aesthetics at the academy of Geneva, and in 1854 became professor of moral philosophy. These appointments, conferred by the democratic party, deprived him of the support of the aristocratic party, which comprised nearly all the culture of the city. This isolation inspired the one book by which Amiel is still known, the Journal Intime ("Private Journal"), which, published after his death, obtained a European reputation. It was translated into English by Mary A. Ward at the instigation of Mark Pattison. Although second-rate as regards productive power, Amiel's mind was of no inferior quality, and his Journal gained a sympathy that the author had failed to obtain in his life. In addition to the Journal, he produced several volumes of poetry and wrote studies on Erasmus, Madame de Stael and other writers. He died in Geneva.
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吳密察（國立臺灣大學歷史學系兼任教授） 胡家瑜（國立臺灣大學人類學系教授） 張隆志（中央研究院臺灣史研究所副研究員、國立清華大學人文社會學院學士班主任） 費德廉（Douglas L. Fix，美國里德學院歷史系教授） Paul D. Barclay（美國拉法葉學院歷史系副教授） 松田京子（日本南山大學人文學部日本文化學科教授） 聯合推薦
《伊能嘉矩：臺灣歷史民族誌的展開》的出版讓我們看到年輕學者陳偉智近年來所下的功夫與努力。與前人的研究相較，作者在本書不但介紹這位早期「臺灣通」──伊能嘉矩的人生經歷和學術旅程，也運用其對後殖民理論之深厚理解來批判伊能歷史文化理論內涵的政治性。若想了解伊能嘉矩之雙重知識脈絡、時代背景或研究方法，本書是必讀的好作品。 作者另外的貢獻乃是讓讀者更了解自己的歷史想像（包括臺灣或原住民主體、現今的族群分類範疇、基本空間單元等）有多少還依賴著伊能嘉矩百年前所建構的殖民論述。正如作者在書尾所言，「回到伊能嘉矩的時代，是為了重新在當下透過伊能嘉矩看到我們這個時代」。──費德廉（Douglas L. Fix，美國里德學院歷史系教授）
本書是討論兼具官員、人類學家、民俗學家、歷史學家以及記者身分的伊能嘉矩之代表性傳記，是帝國研究、概念史、人類學、以及東亞史等各領域之中受到歡迎的一本新作。這本傑出的研究著作是基於仔細的、領域廣泛的第一手史料研究，而且它提出了更大的問題：包括制度化的知識以及社會界線的本質、民族以及種族間的關係。在這本書的許多優點之中，作者廣泛性的研究平衡了同情的以及批判的觀點，描繪出伊能的制度性、文學的、以及組織的臺灣原住民研究，揭示了其複雜以及重層的計畫。本書也說明了伊能如何成功扮演原住民文化報導者、日本官員、田野探查者，以及學者的多重角色，以發展其種族分類與歷史論述，至今仍影響臺灣與日本的政治與學術。伊能嘉矩模糊了官僚與學界、學術與新聞學、以及理論與實務的界線，不僅在他所屬的時代取得了成就，並且持續地影響了後來。簡單來說，伊能嘉矩的故事闡述了在帝國的年代中，現代社會學知識的政治基礎。──Paul D. Barclay（美國拉法葉學院歷史系副教授）
The author of “Atonement” and, most recently, “Sweet Tooth,” believes the greatest reading pleasure has “an element of self-annihilation.” What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?
Stephen Sedley’s “Ashes and Sparks.” Sedley was a senior judge in our court of appeal until last year and in this collection of essays he writes on a range of issues that concern the individual and the state. He belongs, as one commentator noted, to the English tradition of radical nonconformism — the title is taken from a 17th-century Leveller pamphlet. But you could have no interest in the law and read his book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp. A novelist could be jealous. And what was the last truly great book you read? Epithet inflation has diminished “great” somewhat so we have to be careful. Last year I reread “Hamlet.” I believe the play really did represent a world historical moment — when there leapt into being a sustained depiction of a fully realized and doubting human being whose inner life is turned outward for our consideration. Even then, I blasphemously wondered whether the last two acts were as great as the first three. Is some vital tension lost when Hamlet returns from England? Another recent encounter has been Joyce’s “The Dead,” which I’ve read many times. It needs to be considered as a novella, the perfect novella, entirely separate from the rest of “Dubliners.” An annual winter party; afterwards, a scene of marital misunderstanding and revelation in a hotel room; a closing reflection on mortality as sleep closes in and snow begins to fall — I’d swap the last dozen pages of “The Dead” for any dozen in “Ulysses.” As a form, the novel sprawls and can never be perfect. It doesn’t need to be, it doesn’t want to be. A poem can achieve perfection — not a word you’d want to change — and in rare instances a novella can too. Do you have a favorite literary genre? The novella. See above. Do you read poetry? We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of existence, draw that neglected cloak of stillness around you — and concentrate, if only for three or four minutes. Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely. Do you remember the first book that made you cry? It was “The Gauntlet,” by Ronald Welch. I was 10 years old and in hospital, so I had time to read this wonderful historical novel for children in a day. Its hero, Peter, is transported in a dreamlike state back 600 years to a late medieval Welsh castle. Many adventures and battles and much falconry ensue. When at last Peter returns to the present, the castle is the awesome ruin it was in the opening pages, and all the scenes and the dear friends he has made have vanished. “Their bones must have crumbled into dust in the quiet churchyard of Llanferon.” It was a new idea to me then, time obliterating loved ones and turning them to dust — and I was stricken for a while. But no other novel on the children’s book trolley would do. The next day I read “The Gauntlet” again. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? I wouldn’t trouble the president with advice, or with one more transient treatise on America’s supposed terminal decline. For the sake of the general good, I’d have him absorbed in poetry. What would suit him well, I believe, is the work of James Fenton. His “Selected” would be fine. The range of subject matter and tone is immense. The long, wise reflections on conflict (“Those whom geography condemns to war”) would be instructive to a commander in chief, and the imaginative frenzy of “The Ballad of the Shrieking Man” would give him the best available measure of the irrational human heart. There are poems of mischief and wild misrule. A lovely consolatory poem about death is there, “For Andrew Wood.” (“And there might be a pact between/ Dead friends and living friends.”) And there are the love poems — love songs really, filled with a sweet, teasing, wistful lyricism that could even (but probably won’t) melt the heart of a Republican contender. “Am I embarrassing you?” one such poem asks in its penultimate line. If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I’ll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence. What would I want to know? His gossip, his lovers, his religion (if any), the Silver Street days, his thoughts on England and power in the 17th century — as young then as the 21st is for us. And why he’s retiring to Stratford. The biographies keep coming, and there’s a great deal we know about Shakespeare’s interactions with institutions of various kinds. England was already a proto-modern state that kept diligent records. But the private man eludes us and always will until some rotting trunk in an ancient attic yields a Pepys-like journal. But that’s historically impossible. He’s gone. Have you ever written a fan letter to an author? Did he or she write back? In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. (More than a review. I’ve stopped reading reviews.) So of course I write them occasionally. I owe Zadie Smith one for “NW.” The last I wrote was to Claire Tomalin about her biography of Dickens. Do you remember the best fan letter you ever received? What made it special? An Italian reader wrote to describe how he met his wife. She was on a bus, reading one of my books, one that he himself had just finished. They started talking, they started meeting. They now have three children. I wonder how many people owe their existence to their parents’ love of books. Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite? At the moment I put my latest, “Sweet Tooth,” just ahead of “Atonement.” If you could be any character from literature, who would it be? I don’t much like airports, long flights and lines for passport control and immigration, so I’d like to take on the form of Shakespeare’s Puck, who boasts of being able to “put a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.” That would put London to New York at around five minutes. What do you plan to read next? I’m well into a book in typescript about Iran and nuclear weapons, “Mullahs Without Mercy” by Geoffrey Robertson, a well-known human rights lawyer here in England. It gives a history of the murderous revolutionary theocracy, including an account of the rarely discussed mass execution of imprisoned communists and atheists in 1988. We do not want a country so careless of life to have the bomb, nor do we want the 40 or so other countries waiting in the wings to have it. But bombing Iran is not a solution. Robertson wants to bring international human rights law to bear on the problem. It should be a violation of rights to design or procure, let alone use, a nuclear weapon. The big five need to stand by their treaty obligations and set about the process of steady disarmament. Out of a dire situation, Roberston argues a case for optimism. If we can outlaw the dum-dum bullet, if we can put tyrants on trial for genocide, we can get serious about a nuclear weapon-free world.
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Genre: Drama
Movie Type: Docudrama
Themes: Men's Friendship, Unlikely Friendships, Members of the Press
Main Cast: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey, Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander, Lisa Gay Hamilton
Release Year: 2008
Country: US
Run Time: 109 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true-life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former cello prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles' Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin. The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater his respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on-stage with a symphony orchestra? Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Review
When The Soloist was originally intended to be a 2008 Oscar hopeful, the initial advertising campaign made it look like a cross between Shine and A Beautiful Mind. And the setup certainly smacks of Oscar bait: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), recovering from an especially nasty bike accident, meets the homeless Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Jamie Foxx) during a walk through the park. Because Nathaniel plays a violin with just two strings -- and plays it rather well -- he catches Steve's eye, and Steve, always on the lookout for a story, strikes up a conversation. When the obviously mentally ill Nathaniel mentions that he went to Juilliard, Steve decides to investigate the man's life, and discovers that the onetime cello prodigy suffered a schizophrenic breakdown while he was at the school, leading to a life on the street. Steve proceeds to write a column about Nathaniel, and the overwhelmingly positive response to the story prompts the gift of a cello from a reader. After delivering the present to Nathaniel, Steve slowly finds himself, almost against his nature, trying to make life better for the man.
This kind of movie quickly falls apart if the actors overplay the inherent sadness of the situation, and thankfully the stellar cast never makes that mistake. Although he's become more famous for performances in blockbusters like Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr. hasn't lost an ounce of his dramatic chops. He makes Steve selfish and prickly, but also so charming and funny that you understand why his subjects trust him with their life stories. You can also see why his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), who is now his boss, stays close to him even though she left their marriage. Steve begins asking himself why he cares so much about what happens to Nathaniel, questioning his own motivations -- is it really an ongoing act of selfless goodness, or is he just doing it for his career? Steve doesn't find a satisfying answer, until realizing that this new friendship offers the chance for him to become a better person.
As the catalyst for Steve's change, Jamie Foxx pulls off a disciplined, subtle performance. Foxx isn't interested in earning our pity -- a choice that undermines so many actors playing mentally ill characters. You never question the debilitating nature of Nathaniel's disorder, but you also never question that he's able to take care of himself to the best of his ability, surviving -- however miserably -- in L.A.'s large homeless community. Both he and Downey avoid obvious melodramatic choices, and in doing so they create unfailingly honest portraits of complicated people.
Now this all may sound like the kind of trite and sappy "feel-good" story that gives Hollywood a bad name. But director Joe Wright and screenwriter Susannah Grant maintain an emotionally controlled tone that keeps the film from sliding into goopy melodrama. They make sure Steve, not Nathaniel, is the center of the story, and by focusing more on the man who wants to help than the man who needs help, they've created a unique movie rather than just another example of cookie-cutter Oscar bait. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
'The family division is rooted in the same ground as fiction, where all of life’s vital interests lie'… Ian McEwan. Photograph: Karen Robinson
Some years ago I found myself at dinner with a handful of judges – abench is the collective noun. They were talking shop, and I was politely resisting the urge to take notes. The conversation was exotic in content, rather familiar in form. There was a fair amount of banter, of chuckling and teasing as they recalled certain of each other's judgments. They quoted well-turned phrases and fondly remembered ingenious conclusions. Clearly, they read each other closely. They may have been a little harder on the judgments of those not present. How easily, I thought at the time, this bench could be mistaken for a group of novelists discussing each other's work, reserving harsher strictures for those foolish enough to be absent.
At one point, our host, Sir Alan Ward, an appeal court judge, wanting to settle some mild disagreement, got up and reached from a shelf a bound volume of his own judgments. An hour later, when we had left the table for coffee, that book lay open on my lap. It was the prose that struck me first. Clean, precise, delicious. Serious, of course, compassionate at points, but lurking within its intelligence was something like humour, or wit, derived perhaps from its godly distance, which in turn reminded me of a novelist's omniscience. I continued to note the parallels between our professions, for these judgments were like short stories, or novellas; the background to some dispute or dilemma crisply summarised, characters drawn with quick strokes, the story distributed across several points of view and, towards its end, some sympathy extended towards those whom, ultimately, the narrative would not favour.
These were not cases in the criminal courts, where it must be decided beyond reasonable doubt whether a man is a villain or the unlucky victim of the Crown Prosecution Service. Nothing so black and white, nothing sonoir or pulp. These stories were in the family division, where much of ordinary life's serious interests lie: love and marriage, and then the end of both, fortunes querulously divided, the bitterly contested destinies of children, parental cruelty and neglect, deathbed issues, medicine and disease, religious or moral disputes complicating matrimonial breakdown.
The choices for a judge are often limited to the lesser harm rather than the greater good. When mother and father cannot agree, the court reluctantly assumes the role of the "judicial reasonable parent". Here, in my lap, were realistically conceived characters moving through plausible, riveting situations, raising complex ethical questions. If these judgments had been fiction, they would have belonged in the tradition of moral exploration that includes Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.
Then I came across an arresting sentence. It was in the opening paragraphs of a judgment in the court of appeal in 2000 concerning baby conjoined twins. Untreated, both would die. Separated, the weaker must perish, for it had a failing heart, virtually no brain and "no lungs to cry with". Only its healthier sibling kept it alive by way of their shared circulatory system. And slowly, the weak baby was sapping the strength of the strong. The hospital wanted to operate to save the viable child, but surgery would involve deliberately killing its twin by severing an aorta. The parents objected for religious reasons: God gave life; only God could take it away. Public interest was intense.
On the face of it, a simple moral premise: one rescued and flourishing child is better than two dead. But how was the law to sanction murder, and set aside the insistence of the parents, endorsed by the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, that both children should be left to die?
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Appeal court judge Sir Alan Ward. Photograph: Johnny Green/PA
In his introductory remarks Ward had offered a reminder to the general public: "This court is a court of law, not of morals, and our task has been to find, and our duty is then to apply, the relevant principles of law to the situation before us – a situation which is unique."
What is lawful is not always identical to what is right. Sometimes it falls to a judge to align the two. Ward's judgment runs to more than 80 closely typed pages. It is beautifully written, delicate and humane, philosophically astute, ethically sensitive and scholarly, with a wide range of historical and legal references.
The best of judgments, as I was to discover, are similarly endowed. They form a neglected subgenre of our literature, read in their entirety by almost no one except law students – and fellow judges. And in the family division particularly, they present a hoard of personal drama and moral complexity. They are on fiction's terrain, even though they are bound, unlike the fortunate novelist, to a world of real people and must deliver a verdict.
But as we all know, verdicts, indeed the whole system, can also be asinine – tough, even tragic, for its innocent victims, grimly fascinating for the novelist. For the obvious is true, the law is human and flawed. Just like newspapers or medicine or the internet, it embodies all that is brilliant and awful about humankind.
One of the sorriest and most sustained judicial errors in modern times was in the case of Sally Clark, the solicitor, two of whose children died of cot death. She was charged with their murder. The jury appeared impressed by some breathtaking statistical nonsense from one medical witness. Various other experts disagreed with each other profoundly about the causes of death, but the court showed no appropriate caution and she was found guilty. The tabloids "monstered" her, in jail she was horribly bullied, her appeal was turned down. By her second appeal it was apparent that a pathologist had withheld vital evidence about a fatal bacterial infection in one of Clark's children and finally she was released. But by then a few years had passed and the ordeal had broken her. A bereaved mother, brave and decent, harried by the legal system like a figure in a Kafka story, persecuted like Job, she lost her life to depression and drink.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Solicitor Sally Clark with her husband outside the high court. She was freed after her conviction for the murder of her two baby sons was ruled unsafe by the court of appeal. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian
The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, the Birmingham Six … a brief search on the internet will show that the list of less famous victims of miscarriages of justice in the courts is vast. And these are only the cases that have been successfully appealed. Then there are those that attract baffling lenience: a cyclist who rode extremely fast on the pavement and killed a 17-year-old pedestrian was ordered to pay a fine, and avoided jail. Or the punishment is weirdly harsh: a young man of my close acquaintance was caught by CCTV cameras on the edge of a pub brawl. He hurt no one, though he did manage to receive a split lip. On a "joint enterprise" basis, he was punished for offences committed by others, and for which the police hadn't even charged him. He is currently serving a two and half year sentence. And he was lucky – the prosecution was pushing for five to nine years. When I showed the case to a recently retired and very senior member of the judiciary, he was dismissive: "Not even worth a suspended sentence."
My young friend was often locked in his cell 23 hours a day in the Isis prison at Thamesmead, an institution that boasts "a broad-based curriculum that supports academic achievement, vocational training" etc. He lost his freedom for the grievous bodily harm the court accepted he did not inflict. Other mitigating factors, including previous wrongful imprisonment, were not addressed in the summing up. Had he been listed to appear before another judge, he might be enjoying the company of his partner and their baby, who was born just before he was sent down. As Kurt Vonnegut might have murmured as my friend was led away, so it goes.
Despite sentencing guidelines, there can be no consistency in the courts, unless everyone stands before the same even-tempered judge, as at the Day of Judgment. Perhaps this was always part of Christianity's appeal. Until that last trump, down here in the earthly courts brilliance and fairness must live alongside dull injustice. In the criminal courts neither jury nor judge are permitted to conclude that something might have happened. It either did or did not. Mistakes therefore are wired into the system. In the family division judges often make moral choices. Lord Hoffmann put the best face on it when he wrote, "These are value judgments on which reasonable people may differ. Since judges are also people, this means that some degree of diversity in their application of values is inevitable."
It follows that the judge and his or her character, moral sense, background, mood swings and attention span (one judge was recently reported to have fallen asleep while hearing evidence) have great consequence for the destinies of those who come before them. But the vast and rich fiction that has grown up around the law has been mostly fascinated by criminals and their victims, and the criminals' antagonists in the form of cops, private eyes and attorneys. Crime fiction as a genre has such sustained and wide popularity that it has become, inevitably, sclerotic with conventions. Fictional crime victims (of rape, of murder) are most often very beautiful young women. The investigating cop is expected to have a deeply flawed character and a disastrous private life. One follows less often, in fiction or on TV, the happily married detective of steady temperament pursuing the killer of a fat old geezer with bad breath.
Judges have not entirely escaped fictional invention. Apart from God himself and Judge Dredd (both so careless of due process) one eminent figure is Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts, whose multiple sentences of instant beheading are quietly reversed by her husband, the king, though he becomes less lenient and far more erratic as judge at the trial of the Knave of Hearts. As John Mortimer's Rumpole famously noted, a court is a blunt instrument to get at the truth.
Just as religion and religious passion and disputes have pervaded domestic and international politics to an extent we could not have predicted 20 years ago, so they have vigorously entered, or re-entered, the private realm, and therefore the family courts. In the case of the conjoined twins, Ward ruled against the parents and for the hospital. But it was, as the nice legal term has it, "an anxious question". The operation went ahead, the weaker baby died (or, as the then Archbishop of Westminster might have put it, was judicially murdered), while its sibling underwent extensive reconstructive surgery and flourished.
This was a high-profile case. Elsewhere, the family law reports are littered with routine disputes over the religious upbringing of children. Divorcing parents find themselves with irreconcilable differences over which "truth" their children are to be raised in. A Jehovah's Witness mother, opposed to Christmas celebrations because of their pagan origins, withdraws her child from the school nativity play on religious grounds. Her estranged Anglican husband objects. A Saudi father wants to remove his daughter from the jurisdiction to his homeland, where she will be brought up in his Muslim faith. The mother, a Catholic, brings a court action – but too late. An orthodox Hasidic father wants his children raised within his close community, without access to TV, the internet, pop music and fashion, and to leave school at 16. His less devout Jewish ex-wife will fight him to the end for the souls of their children.
Complex issue of religious freedom and child welfare bring these cases to the high court and beyond, to the court of appeal. Reluctantly, at a snail's pace, the law gets involved in the minutiae of daily arrangements – the sort of arrangements that couples in love could settle in seconds. Judgments in the family division tend to genuflect politely before the religious devotion of the parties, before arriving at decisions on non-religious grounds. Inevitably, there are differences in moral perspectives. Is this life less important than the afterlife? The law doesn't think so. Does God abhor homosexuality and abortion? Parliament has decided these issues and the courts must fulfil its will. Is it right to punish those who reject their own religion? The criminal courts must punish the punishers.
After a judge has heard out the warring parties and comes to settle the destinies of the children, the guiding principle will be the opening lines of the Children Act, 1989. "When a court determines any question with respect to … the upbringing of a child … the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration." If this sounds like a tautology, it's a useful one; the needs and interests of the parents or their gods are secondary to the interests of the child. If the act raises the question of what a definition of welfare should be, then a judge ought to be able to provide one in the role of "judicial reasonable parent".
Three years after my supper with that bench of judges, Ward told me of a Jehovah's Witness case he had once presided over. At the time he was doing his turn as duty judge, ready at the end of a phone, nights and weekends, to deal with emergency applications to the court. One came late in the evening from a hospital looking for permission to transfuse a Jehovah's Witness teenager against his and his parents' wishes. The boy was suffering from a form of leukaemia that was relatively easy to cure. The drugs the doctors wanted to use would compromise his already declining blood count. The medical staff were fiercely opposed to losing a patient they thought they could cure. The matter was urgent. Within a short time, the various parties, their representatives and expert witnesses assembled in the Royal Courts of Justice to present evidence and argument to the judge.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Royal Courts of Justice in London, which houses the court of appeal. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
A considerable distance in worldviews between secular law and supernatural belief is exposed in cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusion, especially where a child is concerned. And in this context, a child is anyone under 18. In law, the closer he gets to that age, the more his wishes have to be taken into account. Here is another anxious question. To refuse medical treatment for oneself is understood in law to be a fundamental right. A doctor who treats a patient against his will is committing criminal assault.
For Jehovah's Witnesses, the matter is simpler, though fraught with sacrifice and pain. The Bible is the word of God. His interdictions against blood transfusion are set out in Genesis, Leviticus and Acts. If the religion's Governing Body in Brooklyn ("the slaves") did not advise the worldwide followers ("the other sheep") against transfusion until 1945, it's because God prefers to reveal his wishes gradually and obliquely. As one Witness pointed out recently on my doorstep, the truth about blood was always waiting to be discovered. To the glib assertion that transfusion was not a feature of iron age therapies, any other sheep will be able to cite one of the relevant verses: "Only flesh with its life, its blood, you must not eat." (Genesis 9:4). Pointless, it turns out, arguing over the verb.
In the case of the five-year-old Ashya King, the knowledge that his parents were Jehovah's Witnesses may just possibly have prompted the confused, overheated responses of the Southampton hospital and police, and the CPS. The religion does not forbid its members sophisticated medical treatment and, as far as we know, in this sad and tangled affair blood transfusion is not at issue.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Brett and Naghmeh King, parents of five year old Ashya King, hold a press conference in Seville, Spain. Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images
But when it is, the matter often comes before a judge as a matter of life and death. Hospitals need a rapid decision. Even if the "child" is within a week of his 18th birthday, has his parents' backing, clearly knows his own mind and would rather die than be transfused, the act directs the court to the only proper decision. The paramount consideration is clear: no child's welfare is served by being martyred for his religion.
Many hospitals have devised elaborate means to accommodate the faithful with "bloodless surgery". Some Witnesses are prepared to trim by accepting their own recycled blood or certain blood products. But tragedies occur. The law exists to set and live by boundaries. One moment past its 18th birthday, the child is no more and is beyond the court's protection.
To embrace death, or allow one's child to die, for a questionable reading of certain biblical dietary restrictions will seem to most a pointless pursuit of grief. To die for one's beliefs is not always noble, and sincerity is not necessarily a virtue. For an extreme example, recall the 9/11 attackers, and all the gullible, murderous suicide bombers that followed. Most of us, even Christians, now struggle to understand those 16th-century martyrs who chose to be burned at the stake rather than yield on finer points of Protestant or Catholic dogma.
We prefer to think we are remote and well defended from such sacrifice. But there are always exceptions we might make, as long as we are brave enough. Some scales of moral value, some sacrifices, are superior, more meaningful, than others. We honour the parent who drowns while rescuing a child, as we do the men and women who gave their lives liberating Europe from Nazi barbarity. That in turn summons the complicating memory of the many Jehovah's Witnesses who were rounded up in the Third Reich's death camps and offered their freedom if they would renounce their pacifism. They always chose to die.
Back in the days when Ward was hearing his blood transfusion case, it was still possible for him to make a minor a ward of court. At some point in the proceedings he decided to go and meet his ward in person – a clear instance of the personality of the judge determining the course of a case. He suspended proceedings, crossed London in a taxi, met the loving, anxious parents, then sat at the boy's hospital bedside for an hour. Among many other things, they talked about football, which was the lad's passion. Later that evening, the judge returned to the Courts of Justice to give his decision. He "set aside" his ward's and the parents' articulately expressed refusal of a blood transfusion and ruled for the hospital. The child's welfare was his paramount consideration.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Some Jehovah's Witnesses are prepared to accept certain blood products. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Months later, Ward took the boy (now in good health) and his father to a football match, which they watched from the directors' box. The young man was able to meet his football heroes. The gleam of joy in his eyes, his excitement at being alive, was a sight the judge would never forget. The court's decision was vindicated. But the story did not end there. A few years later the young Witness was readmitted to hospital and needed another blood transfusion. By then, he was old enough to make an independent decision. He refused treatment and died for his beliefs.
Contemplating this tragedy one can only guess at the sorrow, the parents' thwarted love, the powerful sense of destiny they shared with their son, and all the defeated arguments of the court, the desolation of the nursing staff – and the waste. The character of the judge, who was so compassionately and rationally intent on a good outcome, seemed inseparable from the story. When I heard it, I remembered my earlier impression – the family division is rooted in the same ground as fiction, where all of life's vital interests lie. With the luxury of withholding judgment, a novel could interpose itself here, reinvent the characters and circumstances, and begin to investigate an encounter between love and belief, between the secular spirit of the law and sincerely held faith.
• The Children Act by Ian McEwan is published by Jonathan Cape. To order a copy for £13.59 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.
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