不會算數

Don’t Know Algebra
不會算數

Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Jan 20 2005

Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, has been pilloried for suggesting that women may be biologically unsuited to succeed at mathematics.
Lawrence Summers，哈佛大學校長（譯按：Summers不只是哈佛校長，他還是美國前財政部長，一位傑出的經濟學家，連Krugman都覺得他聰明絕頂），最近以來不斷地被公開抨擊，因為他提出女性不容易在數學領域有傑出成就是因為生理構造不適於研究。

He may have a point.
他說的可能是對的。

Just look at Condoleezza Rice.
只要想想Condoleezza Rice（譯按：前美國國家安全顧問，在新內閣的職務就不大清楚了）的例子。

She's clearly a well-educated, intelligent woman, versed in Brahms and the Bolsheviks, who has just been rewarded for her loyalty with the most plum assignment in the second Bush cabinet.
她明顯地是一位受到充份教育，聰慧過人的女士，曾經講授印度宗教與布爾什維克主義；並且因為忠誠不二而被授予布希第二任內閣中，最令人羨慕的職務。

Yet her math skills are woefully inadequate.
雖然如此，她的數學真的是糟透了。

She can't do simple equations. She doesn't even know that X times zero equals zero. If you multiply 1,370 dead soldiers times zero weapons of mass destruction, that equals zero achievement for Ms. Rice, who helped the president and vice president bamboozle the country into war.
她沒辦法解答簡單的問題，她甚至不知道X乘上零等於零。如果你將死亡的1370位將士乘上零個大規模殺傷性武器，這就剛好等於協助總統與副總統誤導國家進入戰爭的Rice女士的”零成就”。

Was Condi out doing figure eights at the ice skating rinkwhen she should have been home learning her figures? She couldn't have spent much time studying classic word
當她應該在家好好地學習數學（譯按：figures指的是數學）的同時，她是否樂得在溜冰場上展現曼妙舞姿（譯按：figure指的是曼妙身段）（註：作者在此運用了雙關語的修辭）？

problems: If two trains leave Chicago at noon, one goingsouth at 20 miles an hour and one going north at 30 miles an hour, how far will each have gotten by midnight?
問題如下：如果有兩列火車同時在正午離開Chicago，一列以時速二十英里往南走，另一列以時速三十英里往北走，到午夜時，雙方將會距離多遠？

Otherwise, she might have realized that if two cars leavethe Baghdad airport at noon on the main highway into the capital of Iraq, neither one is going to get there with any living passengers. Our 22 months at war have not added up to that one major highway's being secured.
或者，她應該會明白，如果兩輛車在正午時，駛離Baghdad機場，上了高速公路主幹，往首都開去，沒有一輛會載著任何生還者安全抵達。我們投入戰爭的二十二個月當中，所有的成就總合都還未能確保一條高速公路的安全。

It's lucky for Ms. Rice that she's serving with men who are just as lame at numbers as she is. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz couldn't be bothered to tally correctly the number of dead soldiers when he testified before Congress. And his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, didn't realize that using an autopen signature on more than 1,000 letters to the relatives of fallen troops added up to zero solace.
對Rice女士來說，非常幸運地，她現在所服務的男士們，數學跟她一樣差。副國防部長Paul Wolfowitz連在國會聽證會中，都無法將死亡將士的數目弄清楚。而他的老闆，Donald Rumsfeld甚至不明白，在送給陣亡戰士親屬的一千多封弔唁信上以原子筆簽名，是無法讓人舒解悲傷情緒的。

Our new top diplomat has obviously not mastered fractions. When she asserted during her confirmation hearing that 120,000 Iraqi troops had been trained, Senator Joe Biden corrected her, saying she was off by a bit. His calculation of trained Iraqi troops was actually 4,000 - hers was 30 times that. Maybe she's confusing hyperbole and hypotenuse.
我們的高材生（譯按：指Rice女士）明顯地不懂分數。當她在聽證會中堅決地指出有超過十二萬名的Iraqi已經受過訓練，參議員Joe Biden糾正她，她的數字有些離譜。根據他的計算，實際受訓的Iraq士兵應該只有四千位，而她的數字卻是三十倍於此。或許，她將分子和分母搞混了（譯按：Hyperbole與Hypotenuse，milo不知應該如何翻譯才好，Hyperbole是指等比放大，Hypotenuse是指三角形的長邊）。

Her geometry is skewed if she thinks she'll now be more powerful than Rummy and Dick Cheney. Doesn't she know that the Pentagon has more sides than her Crawford triangle with George and Laura?
如果她想像她將會比Rummy與Dick Cheney更有權利，那她的幾何真是念砸了。難道她不清楚國防部（譯按：Pentagon指的是國防部的五角大廈，也是五邊形）比她與George與Laura的三角習題更多邊？

She could at least have read "The Da Vinci Code." Then she would have learned about Fibonacci numbers, a recurring mathematical pattern in nature. When you invade a country, you should expect an insurgency. Or, as Fibonacci might have calculated it, if you kill one jihadist, two more arrive to take his place; if you kill three, five more pop up; if you get five, eight more appear, and so on.
她至少可以讀一下”達文西密碼”吧。那她就會學到Fibonacci數列（譯按：費邊數，例：1,1,2,3,5,8,13……），一個在大自然中重複出現的數學模式。當妳入侵一個國家，你應該要預期到反抗勢力。或是妳可以用Fibonacci數列稍微計算一下，如果妳殺了一個聖戰士，會有兩位起而代之，如果妳殺了三個，會再出現五位，如果妳殺了五個，八個會出現，如此下去。

The incoming secretary of state and her colleagues are, alas, also lousy at economics. After Bush officials promised that the postwar expenses would be covered by Iraqi oil revenues, we find ourselves spending $1 billion a week of our own money.
新進的國務卿與她的同事同樣地沒學好經濟學。當布希當局宣布戰後的費用支出將會由Iraqi的石油收益負擔，卻發現我們每個星期要負擔十億元的支出。

Ms. Rice and her fellow imperialists know so little about physics that they arrogantly jumped into "spooky action at a distance," turning the country they had hoped to make into a model democracy into a training ground for international terrorists, a nucleus for a new generation of radioactively dangerous fanatics.
Rice女士與她的帝國主義支持者對物理懂得太少了吧？（譯按：這段實在太難了，milo放棄）。

How could they forget Newton's third law: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction?
他們怎可以忘記牛頓的第三定律：任何施力，都會有一相等的反作用力。

The administration needs a lesson in subtraction. How do we subtract our troops and replace them with Iraqi troops while the terrorists keep subtracting Iraqi troops with car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades?
當局也需要一門減法的課。當恐怖份子不段地以汽車炸彈與火箭筒襲擊Iraqi部隊，我們如何能將梅國軍隊減少，而以Iraqi軍隊取代。

Condi may not know Einstein's theory of relativity, but she has a fine grasp of Cheney's theory of moral relativity. Because they're the good guys, they can do anything: dissembling to get into war; flattening Iraqi cities to save them; replacing the Geneva Conventions with unconventional ways of making prisoners talk. The only equation the Bushies know is this one: Might = Right.
或許Rice女士（譯按：Condi是小名）不大懂愛因斯坦的相對論，但她應該稍稍了解Cheney的道德相對論。因為他們是好人，所以他們可以為所欲為：偽裝以達到戰爭目的；把Iraqi的城市摧毀以拯救Iraqi人民；將日內瓦公約轉換成可刑求以獲得情報的非公約。布希派人士唯一了解的方程式可能是這個：權利＝正確

It is puzzling that if you add X (no exit strategy) to Y (Why are we there?) you get W²: George Bush's second inauguration.
這實在滿令人困惑的：如果妳將X（沒退出策略！）加上Y（為什麼在這？），你將得到：Bush的第二任就職大典。

At Condi's hearing, she justified the Bush administration's misadventures by saying history would prove it right. "I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment, but in how it all adds up," she told a skeptical Senator Biden.
在Rice女士的聽證會上，她以歷史會證明一切的說法，來替布希當局的無能脫罪。（譯按：這段也很難，milo也放棄）。

Problem is, she's calculating, but she can't add. For now, Sam Cooke is right about the Bushies. They don't know much about history.
最大的問題是：她正在試著計算，但是她不會作加法。現在，Sam Cooke對布希派的看法是正確的，他們不大了解歷史。