History’s Biggest Fraud
语言词汇
But, by 8500 BC, the Middle East was peppered with permanent villages such as Jericho, whose inhabitants spent most of their time cultivating a few domesticated species.
V-T If something is peppered with small objects, a lot of those objects hit it. (以小物体) 大量击中[usu passive]
例：He was wounded in both legs and severely peppered with shrapnel.
例：Like something out of a sci-fi film, it is peppered with the remnants of a wind-seared forest.
例：Though the weather-worn rockface is still peppered with ancient dwellings and sepulchres(墓室[文学性]), many are more modest.
例：It seems that almost every speech is now peppered with a reference to growth and jobs.
But the price is subjugation to a way of life completely alien to their urges and desires. It’s reasonable to assume, for example, that bulls prefer to spend their days wandering over open prairies in the company of other bulls and cows rather than pulling carts and ploughshares under the yoke of a whipwielding ape.
v. forced submission to control by others
例：The governor of South Tyrol, a German-speaking province ceded to Italy after the First World War, said that it was unreasonable to expect his people to celebrate their subjugation to an alien culture.
例：Remember that the Islamic term for such lands is Dar al-Harb, the House of War, and it signifies that all such communities are targets, in the Islamic bull's-eye, for eventual conquest and subjugation to Islamic law.
例：If stealth jihad seems less threatening than terrorism, the objective is exactly the same as that of violent jihad: the subjugation to the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) of all non-Islamic states that, like the United States, make up the Dar al-harb (House of War).
But we have no documents from the Natuɹan culture, so when dealing with ancient periods the materialist school reigns supreme. 主宰；称雄; 盛行
例：In a media marketplace heavy on celebrity news, stories are interesting, but pictures reign supreme.
例：For the top-of-the-line, best-tasting, most scrumptious steak in Manhattan, this continues to reign supreme.
例：When it comes to shoes, exclusive French label Weston and British label Church's reign supreme.
We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated.
V-T/V-I When the engine of a vehicle revs, or when you rev it, the engine speed is increased as the accelerator is pressed. (使)加速
例： The engine started, revved, and the car jerked away down the hill.
例：The old bus was revving its engine, ready to start the journey back towards Mexico City.
2. PHRASAL VERB Rev up means the same as . 同rev
例： ...drivers revving up their engines. ...司机们加大了油门。
例： ...the sound of a car revving up. ...汽车加速的声音。
例：Honeywell is also trying to rev up interest among various carriers, but support from manufacturers is vital.
例：For those deemed worthy, Disney and Nickelodeon rev up the star machine, starting with their much-watched television projects.
例：Bush will try to rev up the conservative base by talking up tax cuts and his religious faith.
Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers
PHRASE If you describe something as a millstone or a millstone around your neck, you mean that it is a very unpleasant problem or responsibility that you cannot escape from. 重担; 包袱[usu v-link PHR][表不满]
例： For today's politicians, the treaty is becoming a millstone.
例：That contract proved to be a millstone around his neck.
例："Decoupling Tree now is really taking a millstone off the other company's necks, " added Lindsay.
Yet it did bestow something on Homo sapiensas a species.
V-T To bestow something on someone means to give or present it to them. 授予 [正式]
例：The United States bestowed honorary citizenship upon England's World War II prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. 美国授予了二战期间的英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔爵士荣誉公民的称号。
例：The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor a President can bestow on a civilian.
例：Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends.
例：The state lacks capacity for compassion, or any of the myriad qualities liberals naively bestow on it.
汉英积累
公母山羊 billy goat and nanny goat
摘野果 pluck wild figs
日落而出，日落而息 take care of wheat plants from dawn to dusk
孩子成群的死 children died in droves
除根 dig up the roots
（说法、学说）盛行 reigns supreme
欠收期 in the lean(er) season; lean years
役畜，役用动物；挽畜 draught animals
割下鼻子上的一块肉 slice off a chunk of each pig's nose
挖出眼睛 gorge out pigs' eyes
刺痛母牛 pricks the mother
内容
农业革命的过程
与近代的众多革命不一样的是，农业革命既不是一夕造成的，也不是智人有意而为之的。为了让自己的生活变得舒服一点，每一代智人用自己的智慧做出了一些小改变，这些微小的改变一代代积累下来，终于发生了质的变化，这才完成了所谓的农业革命。
另一种说法是，宗教和信仰也推动了农业革命的进程。为了建造宗教用地，来自各个族群的人需要长时间的聚集在一起、辛勤劳作。为了给这些人提供充足的食物，农业革命在某些地区迅速完成了。
农业革命的内容
作者主要阐述了智人为了获得安全的生存环境和充足的食物，在一代代的演化中逐渐驯化了玉米、小麦之类的粮食作物和鸡牛羊之类的牲畜。
农业革命的影响
作者认为，尽管农业革命奠定了人类社会后续革命的基础，给人类带来了看似富足、稳定、美满的生活，但是农业革命并没有让智人生活变得更加轻松舒适。相反，农业革命让智人暴露在了新的危险和挑战下：旱季引发的饥荒、居有定所导致的传染病肆虐、食物源稳定所致的人口爆炸等等。农业革命后的智人不仅很难意识到这一革命的发生；即使他们的确意识到了，智人也很难回到千年前他们祖先的生存状态，一方面代价太大难以实现，一方面由俭入奢易，由奢入俭难。
词汇背后的故事
Banana Republic
American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910) coined "banana republic" to describe the fictional Republic of Anchuria in the book Cabbages and Kings (1904), a collection of thematically related short stories inspired by his experiences in Honduras where he lived only six months until January 1897, holed up in a hotel in Trujillo, when he was wanted in the United States for bank embezzlement.
In political science, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile dictatorship that abets or supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation. More generally, it is a derogatory term for a country that is considered to have a weak economy, a dishonest or cruel government, and public services that do not work. In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion between the State and favored monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and tends to cause the national currency to become devalued paper-money, rendering the country ineligible for international-development credit.
From Wikipedia
The Fourth Estate
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.
The Soul of Man - Oscar Wilde
Even though the word today has been shortened to State, sometime during the medieval era people began to use the word estate to describe a key“political or social group or class.” ”The number of‘estates’in most of the nations of Christendom,”says the OED,“has usually been three (exceptionally four, as in Sweden and Aragon), but the specific enumeration has varied considerably.”For example the British estates that Parliament was initially composed of were the Clergy, Barons and Knights, then Commons. Over time these groups were called Lords Spirituals, Lords Temporal and Commons. The French had their own designations for estates, Clergy, Nobles and Townsmen or the tiers état which were the French bourgeoisie before the Revolution. Additionally the Scottish estates were originally Prelates Tenants in Chief and. Townsmen until 1428 when they were called Lords, lay and clerical; Commissioners of Shires and Burgesses. In modern times the first two estates are rarely referred with their numerical designation and the third estate are considered to be the people.
“You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet.” –Don Henley
In the 1700’s British politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) referred to the daily press or Reporters’Gallery when he said,“Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, more important than them all.”This was a vast improvement over the more jocular descriptions of the day such as“the army”or“the mob.”In 1841 Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) attributed the Fourth Estate of the Realm to Burke his book Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters., however the OED says there has been no confirmation of Carlyle's attribution saying that,“A correspondent . . . states that he heard Brougham use it in the House of Commons in 1823 or 1824, and that it was at that time treated as original." William Safire writes in Safire's New Political Dictionary (1993) that his vote for the originator of this saying goes to William Hazlitt, an English essayist, describing the personality of William Cobbett in an 1821 issue of Table Talk,“He is a kind of 'fourth estate' in the politics of the country.”
The expression eventually became a synonym for newspapers. Often one would hear it interchanged with Fleet Street meaning British Journalists and journalism in general. Although most of the press has moved away one can still find it located in the middle of London where they had their offices. With the introduction of radio, televisions, and news magazines the fourth estate now includes all of what is known as the mass media and the expression is often used with a sense of irony as in,“bring in the stick of the 4th estate"
The fourth estate is being watched by the fifth estate -unknown
More recently the phrase the fifth estate has been surfacing in text which Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary defines as,“any class or group in society other than the nobility, the clergy, the middle class, and the press." The earliest allusions are for groups like trade unions, the poor and organized crime. Another reference that indicates the fifth estate comes from those frustrated with mainstream journalism claiming that it is abandoning its task of presenting unbiased reporting. In this sense, the fifth estate could be an alternative newspaper that tends to appear online now days and, in a general sense, currently means any sort of electronic medium.
摘录
In order to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression and sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed. Farmers developed techniques such as locking animals inside pens and cages, bridling them in harnesses and leashes, training them with whips and cattle prods, and mutilating them. The process of taming almost always involves the castration of males. This restrains male aggression and enables humans selectively to control the herd’s procreation.
Yet from the viewpoint of the herd, rather than that of the shepherd, it’s hard to avoid the impression that for the vast majority of domesticated animals, the Agricultural Revolution was a terrible catastrophe. Their evolutionary ‘success’ is meaningless. A rare wild rhinoceros on the brink of extinction is probably more satisɹed than a calf who spends its short life inside a tiny box, fattened to produce juicy steaks. The contented rhinoceros is no less content for being among the last of its kind. The numerical success of the calf’s species is little consolation for the suffering the individual endures.
When a foraging band was hard-pressed by a stronger rival, it could usually move on. It was difficult and dangerous, but it was feasible. When a strong enemy threatened an agricultural village, retreat meant giving up fields, houses and granaries. In many cases, this doomed the refugees to starvation. Farmers, therefore, tended to stay put and fight to the bitter end. 挣扎着走向生命的终结