MATHEMATICALLY confident drivers stuck in the usual jam on highway 101 through Silicon Valley were recently able to pass time contemplating a billboard that read: “{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com.” The number in question, 7427466391, is a sequence that starts at the 101st digit of e, a constant that is the base of the natural logarithm. The select few who worked this out and made it to the right website then encountered a “harder” riddle. Solving it led to another web page where they were finally invited to submit their curriculum vitae.

If a billboard can capture the soul of a company, this one did, because the anonymous advertiser was Google, whose main product is the world's most popular internet search engine. With its presumptuous humour, its mathematical obsessions, its easy, arrogant belief that it is the natural home for geniuses, the billboard spoke of a company that thinks it has taken its rightful place as the leader of the technology industry, a position occupied for the past 15 years by Microsoft.

In tone, the billboard was “googley”, as the firm's employees like to say. That adjective, says one spokeswoman, evokes a “humble, cosmopolitan, different, toned-down” classiness. A good demonstration of googley-ness came in the speeches at a conference in Las Vegas this year. Whereas the bosses of other technology companies welcomed the audience into the auditorium with flashing lights and blasting rock music, Google played Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number Three and had a thought puzzle waiting on every seat. The billboard was also googley in that, like Google's home page, it had visual simplicity that belied the sophistication of its content. To outsiders, however, googley-ness often implies audacious ambition, a missionary calling to improve the world and the equation of nerdiness with virtue.

The main symptom of this, prominently displayed on the billboard, is a deification of mathematics. Google constantly leaves numerical puns and riddles for those who care to look in the right places. When it filed the regulatory documents for its stockmarket listing in 2004, it said that it planned to raise ,718,281,828, which is $e billion to the nearest dollar. A year later, it filed again to sell another batch of shares—precisely 14,159,265, which represents the first eight digits after the decimal in the number pi (3.14159265).

The mathematics comes from the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The Russian-born Mr Brin is the son of a professor of statistics and probability and a mother who works at NASA; Mr Page is the son of two computer-science teachers. The breakthrough that made their search engine so popular was the realisation that the chaos of the internet had an implicit mathematical order. By counting, weighting and calculating the link structures between web pages, Messrs Page and Brin were able to return search results more relevant than those of any other search engine.

So far, they have maintained this superiority. Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch, an online industry newsletter, ranks Google as the best search engine, Yahoo! as second-best, Ask (the re-named Ask Jeeves) third, and Microsoft's MSN last among the big four. Google's share of searches has gone up almost every month of the past year. Including those on AOL, an internet portal that uses Google's search technology, Google had half of all searches in March. Excluding AOL, the figure was 43%. This is why people “google”—rather than, say, “yahoo”—their driving directions, dates and recipes.

Mathematical prowess is also behind the other half of Google's success: its ability to turn all those searches into money. Unlike software companies such as Microsoft which get most of their revenues from licence fees, Google is primarily an advertising agency. It does not sell the usual sort of advertising, in which an advertiser places a display on a page and pays per thousand visitor “impressions” (views): it has perfected the more efficient genre of “pay-per-click” advertising. It places little text advertisements (“sponsored links”) on a page in an order determined by auction among the advertisers. But these advertisers pay only once an internet user actually clicks on their links (thereby expressing an interest in buying). This works best on the pages of search results, which account for over half of the firm's revenues, because the users' keywords allow Google to place relevant advertisements on the page. But it also works on other web pages, such as blogs or newspaper articles, that sign up to be part of Google's “network”.

These two interlocking “engines”—the search algorithms coupled with the advertising algorithms—are the motor that powers Google's growth in revenues (.1 billion last year) and profits (.5 billion), as well as its 7 billion market capitalisation. Its horsepower is the reason why Andy Bechtolsheim, Google's first investor (as well as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a big computer-maker) still holds on to all his shares in the firm. It's all about advertisers “bidding up the keywords” in Google's auctions, he says. “How far this thing could go, nobody can say.”

Since its stockmarket debut, however, Google has been adding new and often quite different products to this twin engine. It now owns Picasa, which makes software to edit digital photos on computers; Orkut, a social-networking site popular mainly in Brazil; and Blogger, which lets people start an online journal. It also offers free software for instant-messaging and internet telephony, for searching on the desktop computers of users, for (virtually) flying around the Earth, for keeping computers free of viruses, for uploading and sharing videos, and for creating web pages. It has a free e-mail program and calendar. It recently bought a firm called Writely, which lets people create and save text documents (much as Microsoft's Word does) online rather than on their own computers. Google is also scanning books in several large libraries to make them searchable. It is preparing to offer free wireless internet access in San Francisco and perhaps other cities, and dabbling in radio advertising. And that is only the start of a long list.

Whether these are arbitrary distractions or not depends on one's point of view. For Messrs Brin and Page, they make mathematical sense. Mr Brin (“the strategy guy”) has calculated that Google's engineers should spend 70% of their time on core products (ie, the search and advertising engines), 20% on relevant but tangential products, and 10% on wild fun that might or might not lead to a product. The result is that lots of tiny teams are working on all sorts of projects, the most promising ones of which end up on the prestigious “top 100” list that Mr Page (“the product guy”) spends a lot of his time on. Most of the items on that list in theory have something to do with Google's mission, which is “to organise the world's information”. Scanning and indexing books, for instance, brings offline information online.

The outside world increasingly sees it differently. Among Google fans, the company has come to epitomise the more mature (ie, post-bust) internet generation, which goes by the marketing cliché “Web 2.0” (see article). In this context, it is assumed to be working on absolutely everything simultaneously, and every new product announcement, no matter how trivial, is greeted as a tiny step toward an eventual world-changing transformation.

At a minimum, this hypothetical transformation would consist of moving computation and data off people's personal computers and on to the network—ie, Google's servers. Other names for this scenario are the “GDrive” or the “Google grid” that the company is allegedly working on, meaning free (but ultimately advertising-supported) copious online storage and possibly free internet access. Free storage threatens Microsoft, because its software dominates personal computers rather than the internet; free access threatens other internet-access providers.

At a maximum, the transformation goes quite a bit further. George Dyson, a futurist who has spent time at Google, thinks that the company ultimately intends to link all these digital synapses created by its users into what H.G. Wells, a British science-fiction writer, once called the “world brain”. Google, Mr Dyson thinks, wants to fulfil the geeks' dream of creating “artificial intelligence”. Passing the so-called “Turing test”, created by Alan Turing, a British mathematician, to determine whether a machine can be said to be able to think, would be the ultimate reward.

But many who deal with Google in their daily lives are getting fed up with such grandiose notions. Google's shares, after nearly quintupling since they began trading, have fallen in recent months. Pip Coburn, an investment strategist, says that “Google was a simple story at one point: online ads on top of the most popular search mechanism on the planet. Simple. But now it is pretty much a mess and to get the stock going again, the company may need to work on its own simplicity so as to match the simplicity of the Google home page itself.”

Mr Sullivan of Search Engine Watch says Google has become distracted. “Oh, give me a break,” he wrote in his blog after yet another product announcement. “A break from Google going in yet another direction when there is so much stuff they haven't finished, gotten right or need to fix.” He points to a rule in Google's corporate philosophy that “it's best to do one thing really, really well,” and suggests that the company is “doing 100 different things rather than one thing really, really well.”

Google is thus starting to look a bit as Microsoft did a decade ago, with one strength (Windows for Microsoft, search for Google) and a string of mediocre “me-too” products. Google Video, for instance, was supposed to become an online marketplace for video clips, both personal and business, but has been overtaken by YouTube, a start-up that is a few months old but already has four times as much video traffic. Google News, where the stories are, characteristically, chosen by mathematical algorithms rather than by editors, perennially lags behind Yahoo! News, with its old-fashioned human touch. Google's instant-messaging software is tiny compared with AOL's, Yahoo!'s and MSN's.

Google is beginning to resemble the old Microsoft in another way, too. A decade ago, Microsoft stood accused of stifling innovation, because entrepreneurs would stay away from any area of technology in which it showed any interest. Google, whose slogan is “Don't be evil”, hates this comparison and wants to think of itself as ventilating rather than stifling the ecosystem of developers and entrepreneurs. “I don't see how they can say that,” says an entrepreneur and competitor who is too afraid of unspecified consequences to speak on the record. Like most of Silicon Valley these days, he finds Google's slogan ridiculous, because “we're not evil either, we just don't go around saying it.”

Entrepreneurs like him are getting annoyed by Google's seemingly endless “betas”, also known as “technical previews”, when new products are not yet officially launched but available, ostensibly for testing and review. Traditionally, beta reviews were meant to last weeks or months and were targeted at testers who would find and report bugs. Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees—so that rivals know where it is. Google News recently graduated out of its beta after about four years.

In fairness, Google's role today is more complex than Microsoft's was in the 1990s, when start-ups often hoped to “exit” by listing their shares on the stockmarket, and were occasionally expunged by Microsoft before they got there. Today, start-ups (such as Writely, Picasa, Orkut and Urchin) often use Google (or the other internet titans) as the exit, selling themselves to the big guy. It works for individuals too. Paul Rademacher is a software engineer who last year came up with a clever way of combining Google's interactive maps with other websites. Google hired him.

To Google's initial surprise and subsequent chagrin (is it not enough to vow never to be evil?), it alienates more groups of people as it enters more areas of modern life. It appeared to be genuinely taken aback that some book publishers oppose its plan to scan their books and make them searchable. Google also seemed surprised when privacy advocates voiced concerns over its practice of placing advertisements in contextually related e-mail messages on its webmail service, and again this year when it announced a Chinese version that censors the search results.

Slowly, the company is realising that it is so important that it may not be able to control the ramifications of its own actions. “As more and more data builds up in the company's disk farms,” says Edward Felten, an expert on computer privacy at Princeton University, “the temptation to be evil only increases. Even if the company itself stays non-evil, its data trove will be a massive temptation for others to do evil.” In a world of rogue employees, intruders and accidents, he says, Google could be “one or two privacy disasters away from becoming just another internet company”.

Such concerns are forcing Messrs Brin and Page, still in their early 30s, and Eric Schmidt, whom they hired as chief executive and who is in his early 50s, to behave increasingly like a “normal” company. Google recently sent its first lobbyists to Washington, DC. Its decision to build an “evil scale” to help it devise its China strategy was more unusual, but its hiring of Al Gore, a former American vice-president, to aid the process, was just the kind of thing that old-fashioned empire-building firms do all the time.

Other companies are reacting in traditional ways to Google's dominance. Former rivals, such as eBay, Yahoo! and Microsoft, are exploring alliances to counter its influence. When Microsoft tried to buy AOL from its parent, Time Warner, Google's Mr Schmidt flew in for talks that led to Google taking a defensive stake in AOL, thus keeping it out of Microsoft's and Yahoo!'s reach. In response, Microsoft has contemplated buying all or part of Yahoo!, and has recently announced a vague but large increase in research spending which amounts to an arms race. Google is now alleging that Microsoft is unfairly steering users of its web browser to MSN for searches, and is preparing to dispatch lawyers to keep Microsoft in check.

Google thus finds itself at a defining moment. There are plenty of people within the company who want it to play the power game. “The folks who are closest to Larry and Sergey are very, very worried about Microsoft, as well they should be,” says John Battelle, the author of a blog and a book on Google. Yet the company's founders themselves may not be prepared to drop their idealism and their faith in their own mathematical genius. They have always wanted to succeed by being good and doing good. “Never once did we consider buying a big company,” says David Krane, Google's 84th employee, by way of example. It would not be googley. It would, he says, be “yuck”.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

这几天，国大经济系和国务院发展研究中心在合作一系列的论文创作与调查研究。我给老板叫过去当秘书。忙翻。过去72小时马不停蹄在赶着翻译一篇12，000多字的论文。国大的Sarah .Y. Tong 与国务院发研中心的Chen Bo合著。俺没用中文学过经济或统计，感觉比较吃力，比当年考北外和人事部的那两张翻译资格证书累多了。其间遭遇n+n个难题，发出n次求助， 收到n-1个回复（livy 你个擅自闪人还不回电邮的猪！BS!）
 

赞一下李鼎，作为长期在新东方教授GRE和高级翻译的老师，我的顶头上司，他在收到我求助的短短十分钟内，利用看球的间隙对我存有重大疑惑的若干专业度高难度大的问题进行了深入剖析和详细解答，同时修改了我的译文中存在的若干错误。牛人风范，高山仰止。狂赞。
 

昨天翻译“The coefficients are significantly negative for the first and significantly positive for the second.”这个句子时，我吃不准这种关系回归系数的显著性检验的关键词怎么处理。各方反应大体如下：

Nico 或 Michelle : （英语和经济学相关专业）

                               没空聊这个，在说正经事情

                               虽然我们不懂，但是我们认为你非常帅（我同意你们的观点，但这无助于解决我的问题）

                               你把中文大意说一下（我能说清楚还问你们？）

                               学习不好

                               我没学过（浪费我时间）

 
GH:  （南京大学，NTU accounting）

学是学过, 忘的差不多了, 系数？重大性？(我晕）我就是不会哎。。。（统计你肯定学过的）就说是一个很   大的正数( 汗ing)。。。

Xu Chi: (南外时同桌，后报送北外，现就读北外高翻院，当时在日内瓦联合国机构实习)

这么专业,你当我是谁啊, 现行回归是什么, 第一比率的系数为负,  第二为正, 我乱翻的, 相当的负, （我要的是学术语言，不是冯巩的语言。。。）“明显的负”, 行不行, 不行你去死, （。。。）你住几楼？（问这个干什么？）你可以走到窗边，跳下去，一次就能摔死了.（交友不慎）

 

Gu Jing:（金融专业，当年同事）

不是很懂艾, 在第一个比例下，协同参数绝对负？（我听不懂你在说什么，但看上去挺玄乎，决定用你的。）这个模型偶知道哎. 是不是在做模型看是否具相关性？  在第一个税率下，协同因素绝对取负, 我忽悠呢，以后还是问李鼎吧.（谦虚了，问到现在，你是最着调的）


Livy: 擅自下线潜水，没理我，很不讲礼貌的说

 
下面是李鼎修改的答案和我的未经修改的版本，有的错误是急急忙忙没仔细读句子导致，还有些则是实实在在的差距啊，差距。。。

Table 1:Tobit Estimation Results

Dependent Variable: Share_LCSale

                         All                    Industry               Agriculture          Service

Profitability

Importance of SOEs

Labor Intensity

Export Competitiveness

Import Competition

Geography & infrastructure

Firm size & age

Constant

 句子：

1. We proposed three key hypotheses. One is that the regional leaders of Chinese provinces, after gradual but substantial decentralization of both fiscal and administrative autonomy, are provided strong incentives and capability to shelter local industries from competing with non-local domestic firms.

钱：我们提出了三个关键的假设。首先，在各地的财税和行政自主权经历了有步骤但扎实有效的分权化改革以后，中国各省区领导有了强大的动力和能力在与外来企业的竞争中保护本地工业。

李：我们提出了三个关键的假设。首先，在各地的财税和行政自主权经历了有步骤但扎实有效的分权化改革以后，中国各省区领导有了强有力的动机和能力在与国内的外地企业的竞争中保护本地工业。

钱的反省：这里我是有疑虑的。在新加坡non-local就等于是foreign, as opp. to domestic, 但在中国，当我们在常规语言中提到“外地“时，一般没有人会把这个概念的外延拓展到“国境线以外“， 换句话说“外地“一般就指“non-local albeit still domestic" ,那样的话，“国内的外地“就显得不够简练，而且也比较拗口。。。但我还没有提出这点，李鼎就下了，估计去看球了。。。sigh 

2.At the same time, local authorities are able to exercise various measures to favor local profitable industries, such as quantity and price controls, and purchasing requirement for local buyers, and extract financial benefits in return. 

 钱：同时，地方政府还可以采取多种对当地的高利润行业有力的措施，比如数量和价格控制，对本地买家实施强制消费( 或提出购买要求)以及允许本地厂商提取财务回扣等。

李：同时，地方政府还可以采取多种对当地的高利润行业有力的措施，比如数量和价格控制，对本地顾客提出购买要求，并以经济利益作为回报。

 
钱的反省：一开始我就犯了重大概念性错误。“extract" 这个动词是谁完成的，考GRE必须注意复杂句式下搭配和主谓一致的问题。之后在改正过程中又往原文里添加了自己的理解和想法，大忌。

 3. Two ratios…The coefficients are significantly negative for the first and significantly positive for the second.  

钱：为了测算行业利润率，我们采用了两个比例：一个是行业的增值税税率(即一个行业缴纳的税额占其实现的增值额的比例)，另一个是行业利润占其实现的增值额的比例。第一个比例的参数符号显著为负，第二个的符号显著为正。

 

李：为了测算行业利润率，我们采用了两个比例：一个是行业的增值税税率(即一个行业缴纳的税额占其实现的增值额的比例)，另一个是行业利润占其实现的增值额的比例。第一个比例的参数符号（系数）显然为负，第二个的符号（系数）显然为正。

4. As regulators and representatives of the SOE’s owners, regional governments have a much higher interest in these firms.

钱：由于既是监管者又是所有者代表，地方政府的利益与这些企业更加紧密地联系在一起

李：由于既是监管者又是所有者代表，地方政府可以从这些企业中获取更大的利益。

5. In the next section, we propose our theoretical argument and state key hypothesis to be tested in the empirical analysis.

    

钱：在下一节里，我们将论述自己的理论，陈述关键的假设，并用实验分析检验这些假设。

李：在下一节里，我们将论述自己的理论，陈述关键的假设，并将用经验分析来检验这些假设。

It is said that a boy's university life can never be consummate without

the experience of drinking beer and watching football games. Ideally, he

should accomplish this task for at least once in a bar. From this

prospective, my university life has been, so far,  inexpressibly but

indubitably boring,  at least to those sports fans. My friends, I guess,

will never make a fuss over my inexperience and lack of interest in

sports. The only motivation for my once in a blue moon participation in

sports such as swimming and badminton hae been weight control. And

despite all these, i made my way to the Pin Fen Cafeteria with Dai Liang,

Lai Ming and a group of football fans to watch the FIFA world cup

tonight. To be accurate, they were there to watch the game of England v.s

Paraguay, i was there to indulge myself with potato chips and

Cocacola.The food was nice by the way. I made several futile attemptes to

participate in their heated conversation and soon i realized that i was

the only one at that table without the gifted talent to recall the most

minute persoal information about the players, their height, weight, and

marital status...sigh. At least i demonstrated the sagacity to shut up

in time and  do what i am good at---gluttoning.    

EPA

IT WAS a thrilling election, by Singaporean standards. For the first time since 1988 opposition parties managed to put up candidates for over half the 84 constituency seats. So in theory the ever-ruling People's Action Party (PAP) ran the risk of losing power, especially if its fears of a rebellion among well-educated young voters came to pass.

Of course, no one expected it to do anything but win handsomely. And within hours of the close of polling on May 6th, it was clear that the party had kept its unbroken record. The “men in white”—the colour of the PAP's campaign uniforms, signifying integrity—have won all ten elections since Singapore's independence from Britain (via a brief, unhappy marriage to Malaysia) in the 1960s. The party, led for decades by Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, and now by his son, Lee Hsien Loong, raised the city-state to first-world income levels. In each election it has convinced Singaporeans it would be foolish to risk this prosperity by voting it out.

The opposition won just two seats, as in 2001, though under the rules it will again get a third, “non-constituency” seat. By agreeing not to stand against each other, the three opposition parties reduced the PAP's share of the vote in contested seats, from 75% last time to 67%. The Workers' Party came within sight of victory in Aljunied, a big “group” constituency (in which voters select a party slate of five or six candidates), gaining 44%. This was despite a row involving one of its candidates, James Gomez. Security cameras showed he had failed to hand in one of his registration papers, despite claiming to have done so. The PAP said it was a stunt to discredit the Elections Department. Since election day, Mr Gomez has been interviewed by police.

The younger Mr Lee, prime minister since 2004, was seeking his first mandate, and the PAP hoped to deliver him a clean sweep. His immediate predecessor, Goh Chok Tong, was dispatched to win over the two opposition constituencies with the PAP's customary mixture of carrots (lashings of money to improve their housing if they voted the right way) and sticks (last place in the queue for state grants if not). But neither this nor the PAP's harping on about Mr Gomez's antics worked.

Critics of Singapore's government point to its tight restrictions on political protest and its repeated use of defamation suits against the opposition and journalists. In the run-up to the election the PAP sued the tiny Singapore Democratic Party, arguing that one of its campaign leaflets had impugned the ruling party's honesty—the one thing that is guaranteed to inflame its ire. The party's leader, Chee Soon Juan, has already been bankrupted by a PAP lawsuit. Several of his colleagues, named in the new lawsuit, quickly apologised and agreed to pay damages.

Although those who challenge the PAP can expect a tough time, Singapore is by no means the hardest country for an opposition candidate to win votes in. Opposition parties were allowed to hold big campaign rallies and they got a moderate amount of coverage in the government-friendly local media. Desmond Lim, a defeated candidate of the Singapore Democratic Alliance, concedes that the fragmented opposition would do better if it united. Mr Lee senior, still in the cabinet as “minister mentor”, aged 82, is harsher, saying recently that Singapore needed “a world-class opposition, not this riffraff”. What is clear is that the PAP does not just win by squashing its opponents. Its tenth successive victory shows that it remains a most formidable political machine.

The reasons for the PAP's success are manifold, but the main one, as it never fails to remind voters, is that it has always kept its promise of efficient and clean government. Singapore's economy continues to grow at tigerish rates—9% in the year to March. Though Singaporeans grumble about the rising cost of living, their incomes and the public services they enjoy compare favourably with those anywhere else in South-East Asia.

But how has the PAP maintained its form, when dominant parties elsewhere have become flabby and corrupt for want of a strong opposition to keep them nimble? In part this is because of its obsession with seeking new talent, and its ruthlessness in turfing out established figures to keep its line-up of ministers and MPs fresh. Over a quarter of its candidates are new this time around; a similar proportion were new at the previous election, in 2001.

Sinapan Samydorai of the Think Centre, a group promoting political openness, says the PAP is also expert in co-opting any bright spark who might otherwise become a critic. For example, he says, Raymond Lim, now a cabinet minister, once belonged to the Roundtable, an extinct political club that briefly looked like a nucleus of opposition. The PAP puts results above ideology, which makes this easier.

Chiam See Tong of the Democratic Alliance, one of the two re-elected opposition MPs, has argued that Singapore must increasingly compete in a knowledge-based world economy and will need a “climate of freedom”. As he put it, “One does not expect slaves to be creative.” In the long term, he is likely to be right. But so far, the PAP's Brave New World, in which a pampered and politics-shy public is led by strict but benevolent leaders, seems to make Singaporeans pretty happy.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

With most of my friends on holiday in China and myself enmeshed in an enthralling  little red book which entails not days but months of memorizing, i have to relieve my ennui by devouring almost 50 papers from the econLIT database in a single day . As a result, i missed the finale of my favourite show---the west wing. Well, technically, I didn't miss the show because of the preliminary research . I do not have cable TV in old KR anyway. To commenorate such a great and enlightening series, any desultory ideas will be improper not only to the working of Aron Sorking and John Wells, the magnificent performance of Martin Sheen and the rest of  the cast, but also to the energy and enthusiasm with which i have been waching this show in the past 2 years. It is wellknown beforehand that all good things must come to an end, yet it is unavoidably a heartbreaking moment when we know that the Bartlet Administration has come to the last day in the oval office. I guess many of its viewers will never forget the addictive terse witty language they speak, the tone of Martin Sheen, the cute smile on the face of Sam Seaborn, the ha-ha funny response of  Josh Lyman, the feminine professionalism of C.J Cregg, the overwhelming eloquence of Toby Ziegler  and the shrewd gentlemanlike manner of Leo McGarry....So many good memorries about the West Wing, but  before i got time to arrange my thoughts, i'd like to put together the comments and criticism from major US and EU press....





"West Wing" finale an emotional goodbye  

By Barry Garron

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - It came on with a bang seven seasons ago, startling viewers who could scarcely believe a TV series could be so smart, thought-provoking, beautifully written and well-acted, all at the same time.

And with the final episode of "The West Wing" on Sunday, it seems a safe bet that it will be a long time, if ever, before TV again tackles profound topics like politics as policy with as much dramatic mettle.

The series, a contemporary video version of President Kennedy's Camelot conceived by Aaron Sorkin and upheld by John Wells, went out with its head held high. Instead of tackling thorny issues with compelling explosive story lines, the finale was a long goodbye, filled with emotional moments that evoked the richness of the show's past. These included references to Leo McGarry, the character played by late actor John Spencer. His death in December seemed to foretell the lowering of the curtain on this much-honored yet oddly underappreciated series.

Clinging to tradition, "West Wing" imparted yet another important civics lesson before leaving the stage for good. This time, it demonstrated the efficient and orderly way power is transferred from one administration to the next. Perfect timing, considering it was broadcast on the eve of the "upfronts," the annual week of TV transition.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

 

The final episode of acclaimed political drama The West Wing has been screened in the US, ending the programme's seven-year run on TV.

Martin Sheen has bowed out as President Josiah Bartlet after serving two terms.

Viewers saw the outcome of the battle between characters played by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits to be his successor.

The show won Emmy Awards for best TV drama in four successive years and has the record for most Emmys in a single season, with nine in its first year.

Set in the West Wing of the White House, the programme followed the administration of the fictional Democratic president.

THE WEST WING FACTS First shown in the US in 1999 Follows a fictional Democratic White House administration Won 24 Emmy Awards Won a record nine Emmys for its first season NBC dropped it after ratings dropped to half the audience of its heyday

Broadcaster NBC decided in January to drop the drama because ratings had declined.

At its peak, it was among the most popular shows on US television with audiences of 17 million, and was frequently praised by critics.

But the current season made its debut with 7.6 million viewers in a new Sunday night slot.

The West Wing's use of intricate terminology, delivered during punchy back-and-forth dialogues between the characters, could also baffle viewers unfamiliar with the finer points of US politics and law.

Actor John Spencer, who played chief of staff Leo McGarry, died last December after a heart attack.

In a sad coincidence, his character had also suffered coronary failure - but in the programme, McGarry recovered and returned to politics.

This final series of The West Wing had to be rewritten in order to fill the gap left by the death of the popular actor.

Rob Lowe reprised his role as Sam Seaborn as the show ended

Former cast members agreed to return to the show as it approached its final episodes.

Rob Lowe reprised his role as Sam Seaborn, who had been the deputy communications director.

Lowe had left in 2003, with a dispute about his salary rumoured to be to blame.

Mary-Louise Parker and Emily Proctor - who is now one of the stars of CSI: Miami - have also come back to The West Wing.

The programme's creator, Aaron Sorkin, left the show after its fourth series in 2003, with NBC bringing in a new team of writers.

Sunday's last edition saw the inauguration of a new leader to replace President Bartlet.

Viewers in the UK must wait approximately three months to see it as digital channel More 4 has only shown 10 episodes of the 22 in series seven.

Final closure of The West Wing

Rumours of the demise of the show began in 2005 Political drama The West Wing, which has been axed after falling ratings, has earned widespread acclaim in its seven-year history. Set in the West Wing of the White House, it follows the administration of fictional Democratic president Josiah "Jed" Bartlet, played by Hollywood veteran Martin Sheen. Touching on issues such as anti-terror legislation and presidential scandal, its view of White House life earned the series an unprecedented 24 Emmy awards and two Golden Globes. "It didn't insult you and it was supremely clever at it," said freelance TV critic William Gallagher. 'Huge tension' "You might not know the finer points of US law but you got it and - much more - you got why it was so important to these characters." The series had "verve", Mr Gallagher added. "It could build huge tension over people just waiting to go into a meeting." The West Wing was devised by New York writer Aaron Sorkin, who created the series with unused plot elements from his 1995 movie The American President and 1998 TV series Sports Night. Martin Sheen's role as President Bartlet was expanded in the series He originally intended to make deputy communications director Sam Seaborn, played by Rob Lowe, the central figure among a cast that included Stockard Channing and John Spencer. However, when The West Wing made its debut on NBC in 1999 the role of the president soon expanded as critics praised Sheen's portrayal of a tough-minded liberal. In 2000 former White House aide Matthew Miller said The West Wing "captivates viewers by making the human side of politics more real than life - or at least more real than the picture we get from the news". Anti-terror episode Attracting 17.6 million US viewers and winning a record nine Emmy awards for its first season, The West Wing was soon broadcast in countries including Japan and the UK. Programme-makers endeavoured to keep the show relevant by basing plots around ongoing or current political issues. It dealt with public stances on homosexuality and religion, and in 2001 a one-off episode entitled Isaac and Ishmael discussed anti-terror legislation in the wake of the Twin Towers attacks. Aaron Sorkin (left) had drug charges against him quashed It was later revealed that President Bartlet had multiple sclerosis, with the show examining the personal and political implications of the disease. The West Wing's first setback came in 2002 when Lowe left in a dispute over pay and the prominence of his character. "It has been increasingly clear, for quite a while, that there was no longer a place for Sam Seaborn on The West Wing," the actor said. The show had developed a loyal following by this time, however - even in the UK, where it lacked a permanent timeslot and moved from Channel 4 to E4 then More4. But a turn of events tested that loyalty to such an extent that a number of fans would actively campaign for The West Wing to be taken off air. The show's creator Aaron Sorkin was arrested in possession of cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in 2001. When (creator Aaron) Sorkin left, the show stepped off a cliff TV critic William Gallagher Charges against him were quashed but he subsequently quit the show in 2003 amid rumours of tension with producer Warner Bros. The West Wing continued for a further three seasons, but ratings fell as the series replaced Mr Sorkin's dialogue-heavy writing with traditional plot-heavy drama. "There were teams of writers on it from the start but Aaron Sorkin wrote or rewrote all of them for the first four years and the show had his voice," William Gallagher said. "When Sorkin left, the show stepped off a cliff - its fifth season was extraordinarily poor." The first episode of its final season attracted a respectable 7.6 million viewers in the US, but this remained 10 million fewer than the series at its height. John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry, died in December 2005 The West Wing's unprecedented run of award wins came to an end at last week's Golden Globes, with drama series such as Lost, House and new political drama Commander-in-Chief - with Geena Davis as a female president - stealing its thunder. "It's a different world from when the West Wing started in 1999," said Mr Gallagher. "Politics is getting very serious debate in the most unexpected dramas like Battlestar Galactica and we do have the more straightforward Commander-in-Chief." Meanwhile John Spencer, who had played politician Leo McGarry since the series began, died of a heart attack in December aged 58. Spencer will be remembered in a two-hour US finale in May. And with that, the respected and influential West Wing will close to the public for the last time.  Fans say goodbye to The West Wing By Jonathan Beale BBC News, Hollywood After seven long years, through overseas crises in the Middle East, rising tensions with China and interesting romantic dalliances, The West Wing is ending its critically acclaimed - although recently low-rated - run in the United States.   The show's demise will surely bring tears to the eyes of liberals who sought refuge from the current occupant of the real White House by watching the romantic portrayal of Democratic president Josiah Bartlet. Played by real-life Democrat supporter Martin Sheen, he gave liberals a parallel universe they would have far preferred. Many of the cast make no apologies for the show's left-wing tilt - partly because they're Democrat supporters in real life. Bradley Whitford, who plays the politically savvy Josh Lyman, says: "Does anybody want to watch a television show where the music swells at the end and we jump up and down and go, 'We're drilling on protected land', 'We got a tax cut for the rich people'? It wouldn't work." Real president's view In truth, the series took advice from both sides of the political divide in trying to make it as real as possible, and it has appealed to a much wider audience than just downcast Democrats.     The president ... didn't come over to say 'Hi' - I don't think he watches it Richard Schiff, cast member But was there any concern as to what the current occupant of the real White House thought about the portrayal of his party? That remains a mystery, says Richard Schiff, who plays former communications director Toby Ziegler. "We met the support staff of the Bush administration very early on in their takeover and then we had tea at the White House with the staff. "The president was walking with his wife and his dog on the lawn and didn't come over to say 'Hi'. I don't think he watches it."   The notion that The West Wing somehow transformed the American political landscape is of course as far-fetched as some of the drama's plot lines. It was President Bush, the anti-Jed Bartlet, who came to power during the show's early heyday. And even Sheen, never afraid to make his own opinion known, could not help his friend Howard Dean win the presidency in 2004. Sadly for Democrats, their fairy-tale ending only came true in Hollywood. Influencing a generation Then again, even with the recent ratings dip which contributed to its ultimate demise, The West Wing still drew millions of viewers weekly. And Joe Lockhart, a White House spokesman for former President Bill Clinton, thinks it may have had an even greater impact.   "If this show could make people want to get involved in government, that's great for government, and I think it actually did. "I think there's more enthusiasm now for working in government and getting into public service and - ratings aside, awards aside - that's a service that this show provided." To quote President Bartlet, the show may have contributed to a new generation of Americans aiming to serve in government to "ensure that the promise of this country is the birthright of all the people". The West Wing ends in the US on Sunday with the inauguration of a new president.  City Says Goodbye to 'West Wing,' Its Chattier Self   By Daniel de Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 15, 2006; Page B01   Washingtonians gathered around televisions last night for the series finale of "The West Wing," a program from a parallel universe in which the president is named Bartlet, terrorists come from Qumar and no one in the White House is allowed to finish a sentence. The NBC program, which signed off its final broadcast at 9 p.m., was television's homage to Washington, from its regal theme music and iconic imagery of the city to its celebration of leaks, press briefings and spin control. Viewing parties popped up across the region. "West Wing" was, in many ways, a home-town show, as "Cheers" was for Boston and "Seinfeld" for Manhattan. For some, it was a little too close to home. "It was exactly like watching work," said Adam Levine, a communications specialist in the District who was an assistant White House press secretary for two years under President Bush. "You'd sit there and you would have just come out of a meeting in the Roosevelt Room, and you'd flip on the show and they are all sitting there having a meeting in the Roosevelt Room." The show wasn't necessarily water-cooler material inside the real West Wing; people there work just as hard as their counterparts on the program and they haven't the time, Levine said. But it was a beloved weekly ritual for many former West Wingers, some of whom, such as Levine, consulted for the show's writers. "I watched the show early on and haven't missed an episode in the last two seasons," said Scott Stanzel, another former Bush White House spokesman. He stopped watching only during what he calls the show's "preachy period," in the middle of its seven-season run, when the left-leaning Democratic administration portrayed on the program went a bit "over the top with its devout liberalism." In an Arlington apartment last night, six young Democrats watched the finale on a projection screen, after an "all-American" turkey dinner. The core of the group -- twin sisters Morgan and Lauren Miller and Christy Gill, all 22 -- began watching "The West Wing" three years ago with their Democratic club at the University of California at Los Angeles, and imported the tradition to Washington when they moved east. Someone in the group noted how old everyone looked: NBC had replayed the show's 1999 pilot before airing the final episode. "They're supposed to look old when they leave the White House," Lauren Miller responded. "Look at Bush; look at Clinton." The general consensus among fans, insiders and TV critics is that "The West Wing" began as a riff on the Clinton administration. Critics say it continued down that path even as it strayed farther and farther from political reality, to the point that its fictional White House would find liberal resolutions to real-life problems faced by the right-leaning Bush administration. Some Republican detractors dubbed the show "The Left Wing." Jennifer Palmieri, a press aide during the Clinton years, recalls when the real West Wing learned of an early concept for the show. "We heard it was going to be about young former Southern governor who was divorced and had a 13-year-old daughter. Does that sound familiar? Except for the divorced part," she said. Producers ended up giving the fictional president a New Hampshire background and three daughters and patching up his marriage. Palmieri, who lives in the Old Town section of Alexandria, remembers when the cast came to visit their counterparts in summer 1999: John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff, hung out with actor John Spencer, his TV facsimile; Press Secretary Joe Lockhart paired off with Allison Janney. But she stopped watching the show after the 2001 season, because "when Gore lost, it was like being at your ex-boyfriend's wedding, every week." There are good reasons for the show's undeniable appeal to legions of Republicans, whatever its apparent Democratic bias. Its accuracy in rendering real life in the West Wing was "jaw-dropping," said Levine, who was a consultant early in the series, down to "which staffers would talk to what people about what subjects, to what pins they would wear." Do real-life West Wingers really talk as fast as the jabber-jaws who play them on television? No, said Levine: The real halls of power have "more the feel of a library." Yes, Palmieri said: "I don't think anybody ever finished a sentence in eight years in the West Wing, including Clinton." Some of the program's best moments transcended partisan politics, as when, in a recent episode, victorious Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, offers to make his vanquished foe, Alan Alda's Arnold Vinick, secretary of state. Alda's character so eloquently expressed Republican views in the final weeks of the show that he changed some minds on the predominantly left-leaning writing staff, said Lawrence O'Donnell, an executive producer. "It's Pat Buchanan's favorite TV show," O'Donnell said. "And that, for me, means that it's a very successful TV show." Ultimately, "The West Wing" was not a program about politics, he said. "I was always trying to write the best drama that I could write for television," O'Donnell said. "If it had been a politics show, it wouldn't have lasted a season." Joel Bradshaw, a computer consultant to a defense contractor had "absolutely no interest in politics, or a show about politics," when he stumbled across a "West Wing" episode early on. The Fairfax resident was hooked by the plot lines, and "it got to the point where I planned my week around not missing an episode of 'West Wing,' " he said. "I've seen people around town with 'Bartlet is my president' T-shirts, and if I knew where to get one, I'd probably buy one."   'West Wing' Ends With Graceful Transition Filed at 12:44 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- It was an orderly transition Sunday night as President Jed Bartlet left office and ''The West Wing'' came to a graceful end. After seven TV seasons (and two terms in his fictional White House), the heroic, quirky, often embattled chief executive played by Martin Sheen was succeeded by Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits). As the Bartlet administration came to its inevitable conclusion, so did the NBC drama. ''You did a lot of good, Jed, a lot of good,'' the First Lady (Stockard Channing) told her husband as Inauguration Day dawned. Bartlet's mood at that moment must have matched many viewers': relief, satisfaction, gratitude and sadness that it was about to be over. And later on, Abbie Bartlet said proudly, ''Jed, you made it. You're still here'' -- after the assassination attempt, his battle with multiple sclerosis, and the punishing duties of his job. Sentiment hung heavy through the hour, both for the characters and the audience. In particular, former chief of staff Leo McGarry, who had died suddenly on the campaign trail as Santos' vice-presidential running mate, was repeatedly recalled (as was, implicitly, the late John Spencer, who played him until his death of a heart attack last December). ''I'm gonna take one final stroll around the joint, to make sure nobody's making off with the cutlery,'' Bartlet told his secretary (Lily Tomlin) after tending to one final presidential task: signing some pardons in the oval office. Caution: Spoiler alert. Would he pardon Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), a trusted senior adviser who had leaked classified information out of conscience, then confessed; been fired, tried and indicted; and now was facing prison? Though still torn between feelings of betrayal and affection -- well, of course, Bartlet pardoned Toby. For the episode, a full-scale inauguration platform was erected, where the ceremony would soon begin as, back at the White House, Bartlet staffers watched coverage of it on their TVs and finished packing up. Then, at 42 minutes into the hour, Santos took the oath of office. An era was over. So, remarkably, was the brief inauguration scene. ''Nice speech,'' the former president told President Santos (viewers will never know). ''No JFK,'' Santos replied. ''No,'' smiled Bartlet. ''But you've got time. Make me proud, Mr. President.'' ''I'll do my best, Mr. President,'' Santos said. And Bartlet was gone. In the unseen Santos administration ahead, ''West Wing'' favorites Donna Moss and Josh Lyman (Janel Moloney and Bradley Whitford) will be part of the team -- and presumably will remain an item, a recent development after having been partners for years in TV's sexiest unconsummated, unacknowledged romance. ''The West Wing,'' which premiered in fall 1999, was the vision of Aaron Sorkin, whose genius was reflected in the pilot episode, repeated Sunday night just before the finale aired. Sorkin not only created the series, but wrote all the episodes for several seasons before leaving it. Although a popular hit as well as a critical smash, the series in recent seasons dropped precipitously from its former Top-10 status and was canceled by the network. Even so, this season's episodes have been strong, charting not only White House goings-on but also the campaign between Santos and his Republican challenger, Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). Viewers can be cheered that Sorkin will be back on TV: NBC has announced that his new series, ''Studio 60 on Sunset Strip'' will be on its fall lineup, with stars including ''West Wing'' alumni Whitford and Timothy Busfield. And Sunday the final scene of ''The West Wing'' left the audience on a forward-looking note, too, even if expressed in a wistful tone. ''What are you thinking about?'' Abbie Bartlet asked her husband as they flew back home to New Hampshire after the marvelous adventure they had shared with ''West Wing'' fans. ''Tomorrow,'' he replied. ------

it is now 11:38. i finished my plan today 22 minutes ahead of schedule and i idid it despite of the out-of-budget two and half hour nap this afternoon...sigh

It is far from between that i show any tendency of contumaciousness.however, the more word lists i go through, the more cynical i become. What kind of students do top US universities want? Creative and independent problem-solvers or walking polysemantic dictionaries? I can almost see the end product of this excruciating process: a guy who instead of saying  bird use the phrase " feathered biped", a guy instead of calling another " unpredictable and hard to deal with" use the expression " cranky flighty surly snobbish blockhead/curmudgeon" ...sigh

It is Vesak Day today, a public holiday on which all libraries and studyrooms across NUS are closed. So, instead of sitting comfortably in a well luminated and air-conditioned commodious studyroom, i ended up sitting in my room sweating and asleep during most f the day time...screw the public holiday

What is laudable is my implementation of the plan despite of the plan itself being discombobulated to such an extent.


白宫群英看到第六季， 当全身瘫痪的Barlet总统语气坚定地下令继续对中国的访问的时候，俺感动坏了。如果AARon Sorkin是一个语言特别是控制对话模式和节奏的大师， 那John Wells就是个讲故事的大师。第四季以后的west wing靠情节的发展来吸引观众的眼球。