经济学家译文3.doc

“Puppy mills”小狗工厂A dogs life狗的生活Direct democracy cares for canines 直接民主惠及犬类朋友Nov 11th 2010 | Kansas City ODD as it seems, the state of Missouri is home to 1,462 licensed commercial dog breeders. Between them, they breed about 1m puppies a year. About 40% of all the dogs that end up in pet shops across America are born in Missouris smaller country towns.听起来可能有些奇怪，密苏里州拥有1,462家执照经营的商业育狗场。他们每年繁育大约100万只狗仔，全美宠物店里大约40%的狗狗出生在密苏里州的乡村小镇。Some breeding places hardly bear inspection. Cori Menkin, senior director of legislative initiatives for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has seen “horrific” conditions there, with up to 1,000 breeding bitches under one roof. The worst of these “puppy mills” are filthy with urine and piled-up faeces. The animals have such matted coats that they cannot defecate properly. Some bitches freeze to death; others spend their whole lives on wire-floored cages, unable to walk on solid ground. “Whenever you are engaging in an industry that uses live animals and is seeking to make as much profit as possible, less money is put into the business, meaning less care is provided for the animals,” Ms Menkin says. 在这些育狗场中，其中一些几乎不受任何监管。美国防止虐待动物协会立法事务高级主管Cori Menkin曾目睹过这些场所“可怕的”饲养条件，多达1,000条母犬被关在一个犬舍里。再糟糕一些的“小狗工厂”里尿液横流，粪便堆积，狗身上的毛严重缠结，以致无法正常排便；一些母犬被冻死，一些则终身被关在铁丝笼中，不能在坚实地面上行走半步。“在任何利用活的动物盈利的行业中，为了获得尽可能多的利润，老板们总是会尽量减少投入，忽视对动物们的照顾，” Menkin先生说道。Animal-rights supporters claim that the laws governing these breeding sheds are vague, unenforceable and insufficient to maintain even the most rudimentary care. This is why they gathered more than 190,000 signatures in support of the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Actan exercise in direct democracy that was passed on November 2nd to improve conditions in the states breeding facilities. 动物权利支持者声称有关监管法律过于模糊、不具可执行性，不足以为这些可怜的动物们维持最基本的照顾。为此，他们收集了超过190,000份签名以支持小狗工厂虐待阻止法案（Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act）。这是一项公投提案，于11月2日获得通过，旨在改善密苏里州犬类繁育场所的饲养条件。The groups created the ballot initiative after repeatedly failing to get bills passed by the Missouri General Assembly, explains Barbara Schmitz, director of the Missouri branch of the Humane Society. She estimates that licensed premises may account for only half the number of puppy mills in the state. There are probably as many unlicensed ones, adding up to almost 3,000 in all, operating under laws that have not been updated in 18 years. 支持团体是在提案几次被密苏里州全体议会否决之后才发起的公民投票，保护动物协会密苏里州分部主任Barbara Schmitz解释说。据她估计，执照经营的繁育机构大约只占该州小狗工厂数量的一半。此外还有同样多无照经营的繁育机构（总数约为3,000家），18年来从未更新的现行法律规定对他们毫无约束。In 2009 the Missouri Department of Agriculture, which oversees breeders, created a programme called Operation Bark Alert. Under this, individuals can report unlicensed breeders to the state. According to Misti Preston, a spokesman for the department, the initiative has helped rescue more than 3,600 dogs and put 180 unlicensed commercial breeders out of business. 2009年，承担育狗场监管职责的密苏里州农业部门发起了一项“非法繁育举报”计划（Operation Bark Alert），鼓励个人向州当局举报无照经营的育狗场。据该部门发言人Misti Preston称，该计划帮助解救了超过3,600只狗，关闭了180家无照经营的商业育狗场。But the department can only do so much. Ms Preston admits that there are only 12 inspectors and that, between them, they have to check on more than 2,800 facilities each yearincluding breeding sheds, dog pounds and pet shops. And with puppies selling for $50-200 each, the fines levied are so low that they are simply seen by unscrupulous breeders as part of the cost of doing business.但是农业部门所能作的也就仅此而已。Preston先生承认部门只有12名检查员，每年需要检查超过2,800处场所，包括育狗场、野狗栏和宠物店。而且即便在检查中被抓住，鉴于每条50-20美元的狗仔售价，低额的罚款也只会被那些寡廉鲜耻的育狗场老板看作是做此类生意的一笔正常支出。The new amendment will provide clearer, enforceable standards. It allows no more than 50 breeding bitches in any one facility. Breeders with more than ten will have to provide sufficient food and clean water, veterinary care, regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles. The amendment also regulates the size of kennels, so that the animals have room to stretch. Any violation of this law will count as a class C misdemeanor, carrying a maximum penalty of up to 15 days in jail and a fine of up to $300, still rather low.新修正案将提供更为清晰和更具可执行性的标准。它规定任何场所的繁育母犬数量不能超过50条。母犬数量超过10条的育狗场必须提供充足的食物和干净水，安排兽医检查，定期遛狗并在两次繁育之间保障充足的休养。此外修正案还规范了犬舍的尺寸，让狗狗们有足够的伸展空间。针对此项法案的任何违规都将被计为一次C类罪行，面临最高15天监禁和高达300美元（仍不算高）的罚款。Ms Menkin hopes the amendment will have an impact on breeders not only in Missouri, but other states as well. “We hoped that people in Missouri would understand the reputation they have garnered in the rest of the country as being the puppy-mill capital,” she says. “And Im glad they came out to vote to change it.”Menkin女士希望修正案所影响的不仅是密苏里州，还有全美其它州。“我们希望密苏里人能明白他们作为“小狗工厂之都”在全国的名声之坏，”她说，“我很高兴他们通过投票改变了这一切。”8Pirate radio in Britain 未经英国政府许可的广播Glory days 光辉岁月How Britains broadcasting monopoly was broken 英国的垄断广播是怎样瓦解的Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age 海盗电台广播人之死：英国无线电通讯和信息时代的形成TO A modern music executive a pirate is a teenager who illicitly downloads music from a file-sharing website. But to someone who was a teenager in the 1960s it will represent radio buffs and DJs stuck on a rusty old ship, safely outside British territorial waters, broadcasting rock n roll to a country chafing under the government-sponsored monopoly of the BBC.对现代音乐主任来说，非法收听音乐者就是那些从文件共享网站上非法下载音乐的青少年。但是对于那些生活在20世纪60年代的青少年来说，它代表着是那些收听广播迷和在英国领海之外的一艘锈迹斑斑的破船上安全地向英国播放摇滚乐并且使由政府资助的英国广播公司抓狂的那些DJ们。It is this “pirate radio” that is the subject of the latest book by Adrian Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago who specialises in intellectual property rights. The subject is not nearly as dry as it sounds. Mr Johns begins his book with a murder: the 1966 shooting of Reg Calvert, a pirate-radio operator, by Oliver Smedley, an ex-army man and commercial rival. That provides the jumping-off point for a history of radio in Britain, from the founding of the BBC in 1922, with its patrician ambition to educate its listeners and its distaste for commerce and populism, through plans for a “wired” broadcasting system that is an early foretaste of the modern internet, to the emergence in the 1960s of the pirate ships broadcasting from international waters.“海盗电台”是身为芝加哥大学专注于研究知识产权的历史学家Adrian Johns 新书的题目。这个题目并非那样的枯燥无味。Johns 先生首先以1966年以曾经当过兵并且在商业上与当时的海盗电台的经营者Reg Calvert为对手的Oliver Smedley枪杀Reg Calvert的事件为开始。这件事为从1922年以建立一个有着现代网络原型的互联广播网络为计划并带着贵族式野心来教育收听者和对商业和平民主义所不齿的BBC公司的成立到在60年代在公海上非法广播船只的出现的这段英国广播的历史提供了出发点。The murderer is the books central character. Unlike many of the other pirate-radio operators, who were in it mostly for money or adventure, Smedley saw his broadcasts as part of a wider moral crusade. Decorated in the second world war, he was a shady serial entrepreneur sympathetic to the views of an Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek, and a group of liberal, free-marketeering economists that coalesced around him at the London School of Economics. In the wars aftermath, with the paint still fresh on Clement Attlees welfare state, that put Smedley wildly out of step with popular opinion. Undaunted, he launched an endless stream of think-tanks, journals and businesses all dedicated to undermining the post-war consensus from within. Most sank without a trace. But the Institute for Economic Affairs, a think-tank that endures to this day, and Radio Atlanta, his venture into pirate broadcasting, are the two that really got themselves noticed. 凶手是本书的中心人物。Smedley并非像其他本着以赚钱和做投机买卖为目的的非法电台经营者反而是把他的广播看作是坚持不懈的道德斗争。在二战中他被授勋并且是一个名声不是很好的连续企业家，他在与奥地利经济学家Friedrich Hayek 和在伦敦经济学院宣扬自由市场论的团体的一些观点相似。二战之后克莱门特艾德礼的福利国家计划刚刚形成，Smedley在这备受推崇的观点上冒天下大不韪。他毫无畏惧地领导智囊团学术界和企业群体发起了一波又一波活动，其目的在于从内部削弱二战之后的共识。其大部分不了了之。但是作为延续到今日智囊团经济事务研究所和他非法创办的亚特兰大电台曾经轰动一时。Smedleys crime finally convinced the government that it could not ignore the pirate broadcasters, and all were closed down by the end of 1968. Mr Johnss thesis is that Smedleys commercial failure was in fact a heroic moral success. The BBCs monopoly was broken. Legitimate commercial competitors were set up. All were forced at last to take the listeners views seriously. Even the BBC began hiring pirate DJs to front its new pop-music station. Hayeks views became more respectable, informing the liberalising, privatising governments of Margaret Thatcher.Smedley的犯罪行为让政府意识到再也不能忽视非法电台。在1968年末所有的非法电台都被取缔。Johns先生把Smedley失败的商业一事看作是一种无畏的道德胜利。BBC公司的垄断被彻底粉碎，合法的商业对手浮出水面。最