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Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Dec 17, 2018

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发表于 12-19-2018 15:03:50 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
(1) Blake Schmidt with Shawn Donnan, Jenny Leonard, Kevin Hamlin, Miao Han and David Tweed, Caught in US-China Crossfire.
("Ren [Zhenfei], who declined to be interviewed, is a legend in China's business world. After Mao Zedong's great famine, he went on to build a telecom giant the No 1 smartphone maker in China, which this year eclipsed Apple Inc to become No 2 globally behind Samsung, according to research firm IDC [IDC only calculates numbers shipped, not revenue]. Although it has a low profile compared with Chinese internet giants Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, Huawei's $92 billion revenue last year [fiscal year: Jan-Dec] outmatched the other three companies' combined [Alibaba Apr 2017-Mar 2018 $37b]. About half of Huawei's revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East, and Africa -presumably the other half comes from within China]")

My comment:
(a)
(i)  summary underneath the title in print: The arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou makes a tricky situation downright perilous
(ii) This report is not available in the Web.
(iii) There is no need to read the rest.
(b)
(i)
(A) One contributor's last name is Tweed, which is an English surname after River Tweed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Tweed
(Mouth  "North Sea [at] Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England")

, whose name is unclear in meaning.
(B) The top map shows the "catchment" which is divided into two by a black demarcation. That is the border between Scotland and England. You see "Wooler" south of the black line; that is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooler
(a small town in Northumberland, England)
(C) Northumberland  (The northernmost county of England; county name "meant 'the land of the people living north of the River Humber")  en.wikipedia.org for Northumberland ("th" is pronounced "θ")
(ii) What Is a Watershed?  Water Science School, US Geological Survey (USGS), US Department of the Interior, undated
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/watershed.html
("The word watershed is sometimes used interchangeably with drainage basin or catchment [All three are translated as 流域]. Ridges and hills that separate two watersheds are called the drainage divide. The watershed consists of surface water--lakes, streams, reservoirs, and wetlands--and all the underlying ground water. Larger watersheds contain many smaller watersheds. It all depends on the outflow point; all of the land that drains water to the outflow point is the watershed for that outflow location.")

There is no need to read the rest. The quotation is American English with respect to definition of watershed. In British English, watershed means 分水岭.
(iii) The preceding Wiki page quotes part of a quatrain:

Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories, and Amusements of Scotland. People's editions
www.presscom.co.uk/chambers/chambers_popular.html

"ANNAN, TWEED, AND CLYDE.

Annan, Tweed, and Clyde,
Rise a' out o' ae hill side.
Tweed ran, Annan wan,
Clyde fell, and brak its neck ower Corra Linn.
      These three chief rivers of the south of Scotland rise at different sides of one hill, and run in different directions towards the Solway Firth [Annan], the German Ocean [Tweed; see en.wikipedia.org for "North Sea" section 4 Name], and the Atlantic [River Clyde into Firth of Clyde]; the course of the Annan being the shortest, whence, in the rhyme, it is said to win the race. This rhyme prevails all over the south of Scotland, with slight variations."

(A) This "Information for the People" was published in 1833-34. See its Web page 2 -- and into a book of the same title and content, by Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers in 1842.
https://books.google.com/books?i ... e&q&f=false
(B) Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Chambers_(publisher,_born_1802)
(1802-1871; Scottish)
(C) This is a quatrain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatrain
("a complete poem, consisting of four lines")

I fail to find its (poem) meter.

Of course, the poem is written in English, not Gaelic. Here is the poem in plain English: Annan, Tweed, and Clyde, Rise all out of a hillside. Tweed ran, Annan won [changed to 'wan" just to suit the rhyme with ran], Clyde fell, and broke [changed to "brak" due to rhyme] its neck over Corra Linn

falls of Clyde (waterfalls)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_of_Clyde_(waterfalls)
(four linn (Scots: waterfalls): Bonnington Linn, Corra Linn, Dundaff Linn, and Stonebyres Linn)

The "four linn" is correct (without "s" at the end of linn) and seems to be a proper name -- though The English noun linn itself is countable (in many online English dictionaries):
(etymology): "Scottish archaic a waterfall"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/linn
Wiktionary shows "linn"  means something different in Modern Scottish Gaelic.

There is ruined Corra Castle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corra_Castle
("It overlooks Corra Linn")
The map in this Wiki page shows the river runs straight, so 'brak its neck" can not  possibly means a bend in the river, causing it (river) to change course.
(D) Here is a sketch of these three rivers. The unmarked river flowing south is Annan.
http://www.freeworldmaps.net/eur ... otland/scotland.jpg

Francis Hindes Groome (ed), Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland; A graphic and accurate description of every place in Scotland. new edition. Edinburgh: TC and EC Jack, 1901, at page 1585
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ;lpg=PA1585&dq="ANNAN,+TWEED,+AND+CLYDE"+english&source=bl&ots=KsLAm01AnY&sig=wyKJ9BGllYnYgJGjEEshACJW7MA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGgpCF3azfAhWMmuAKHXMGDfMQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q="ANNAN%2C%20TWEED%2C%20AND%20CLYDE"%20english&f=false
(" ' The Tweed and Clyde flow in parallel courses, and within about 7 miles of each others, till near Biggar they finally take their separate ways E and W[est]. They are much on the same level, and it would not be a very difficult matter to divert the upper Clyde waters into the Tweed by the cutting of a very short channel")
(E) Steven Brockle, How 'the Same Hillside' Is the Source of Three Rivers. BBC, Mar 3, 2017
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-39139549
("Three of Scotland's best-known rivers have their source in one small, wild and largely-forgotten area in south-west Scotland")

There is no need to read the rest of this BBC report.
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沙发
 楼主| 发表于 12-19-2018 15:03:59 | 只看该作者
(2) Jeremy Kahn, Artificial Intelligence Has Some Explaining to Do.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... me-explaining-to-do
("AI is software that can learn from data or experiences to make predictions. A computer programmer specifies the data from which the software should learn and writes a set of instructions, known as an algorithm, about how the software should do that—but doesn't dictate exactly what it should learn. This is what gives AI much of its power: It can discover connections in the data that would be more complicated or nuanced than a human would find. But this complexity also means that the reason the software reaches any particular conclusion is often largely opaque, even to its own creators. * * * It's hard for humans to trust a system they can’t understand—and without trust, organizations won’t pony up big bucks for AI software. * * * IBM's [cloud-based AI] software can tell a customer the three to five factors that an algorithm weighted most heavily in making a decision. It can track the lineage of data, telling users where bits of information being used by the algorithm came from")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Software makers offer more transparent machine-learning tools—but there's a trade-off
(b) Print and the online version are the same and identical.
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