The lives of very few Newark residents are untouched by violence: New Jersey’s biggest city has seen it all. Yet the murder of three young people, who were forced to kneel before being shot in the back of the head in a school playground on August 4th, has shaken the city. A fourth, who survived, was stabbed and shot in the face. The four victims were by all accounts good kids, all enrolled in college, all with a future. But the cruel murder, it seems, has at last forced Newarkers to say they have had enough.
    Grassroots organizations, like Stop Shootin', have been flooded with offers of help and support since the killings. Yusef Ismail, its co-founder, says the group has been going door-to-door asking people to sign a pledge of non-violence. They hope to get 50,000 to promise to “stop shootin’, start thinkin’, and keep livin’”. The Newark Community Foundation, which was launched last month, announced on August 14th that it will help pay for Community Eye, a surveillance (监视) system tailored towards gun crime.
    Cory Booker, who became mayor 13 months ago with a mission to revitalize the city, believes the surveillance program will be the largest camera and audio network in any American city. More than 30 cameras were installed earlier this summer and a further 50 will be installed soon in a seven-square-mile area where 80% of the city’s recent shootings have occurred. And more cameras are planned.
    When a gunshot is detected, the surveillance camera zooms in on that spot. Similar technology in Chicago has increased arrests and decreased shootings. Mr. Booker plans to announce a comprehensive gun strategy later this week.
    Mr. Booker, as well as church leaders and others, believe (or hope) that after the murders the city will no longer stand by in coldness. For generations, Newark has been paralyzed by poverty—almost one in three people lives below the poverty line—and growing indifference to crime.
    Some are skeptical. Steven Malanga of the conservative Manhattan Institute notes that Newark has deep social problems: over 60% of children are in homes without fathers. The school system, taken over by the state in 1995, is a mess. But there is also some cause for hope. Since Mr. Booker was elected, there has been a rise in investment and re-zoning for development. Only around 7% of nearby Newark airport workers used to come from Newark; now, a year later, the figure is 30%. Mr. Booker has launched a New York-style war on crime. So far this year, crime has fallen 11% and shootings are down 30% (though the murder rate looks likely to match last year’s high).

    Olympic Games are held every four years at a different site, in which athletes (l) ________ different nations compete against each other in a (2) ________ of sports. There are two types of Olympics, the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics.
    In order to (3) ________ the Olympics, a city must submit a proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) After all proposals have been (4) ________, the IOC votes. If no city is successful in gaining a majority in the first vote, the city with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voting continues, with (5) ________ rounds, until a majority winner is determined. Typically the Games are awarded several years in advance, (6) ________ the winning city time to prepare for the Games. In selecting the (7) ________ of the Olympic Games, the IOC considers a number of factors, chief among them which city has, or promises to build, the best facilities, and which organizing committee seems most likely to (8) ________ the Games effectively.
    The IOC also (9) ________ which parts of the world have not yet hosted the Games. (10) ________, Tokyo, Japan, the host of the 1964 Summer Games, and Mexico City, Mexico, the host of the 1968 Summer Games, were chosen (11) ________ to popularize the Olympic movement in Asia and in Latin America.
    (12) ________ the growing importance of television worldwide, the IOC in recent years has also taken into (13) ________ the host city’s time zone. (14) ________ the Games take place in the United States or Canada, for example, American television networks are willing to pay (15) ________ higher amounts for television rights because they can broadcast popular events (16) ________, in prime viewing hours.
    (17) ________ the Games have been awarded, it is the responsibility of the local organizing committee to finance them. This is often done with a portion of the Olympic television (18) ________ and with corporate sponsorships, ticket sales, and other smaller revenue sources. In many (19) ________ there is also direct government support.
    Although many cities have achieved a financial profit by hosting the Games, the Olympics can be financially (20) ________. When the revenues from the Games were less that expected the city was left with large debts.

    “The Heart of the Matter,” the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America. Regrettably, however, the report’s failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good.
    In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identify actions that could be taken by “federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others” to “maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education.” In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the commission’s 51 members are top-tier-university presidents, scholars, lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism.
    The goals identified in the report are generally admirable. Because representative government presupposes an informed citizenry, the report supports full literacy; stresses the study of history and government, particularly American history and American government; and encourages the use of new digital technologies. To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students’ ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day. The report also advocates greater study of foreign languages, international affairs and the expansion of study abroad programs.
    Unfortunately, despite 2½ years in the making, “The Heart of the Matter” never gets to the heart of the matter: the illiberal nature of liberal education at our leading colleges and universities. The commission ignores that for several decades America’s colleges and universities have produced graduates who don’t know the content and character of liberal education and are thus deprived of its benefits. Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for publicizing“progressive,” or left-liberal propaganda.
    Today, professors routinely treat the progressive interpretation of history and progressive public policy as the proper subject of study while portraying conservative or classical liberal ideas — such as free markets or self-reliance—as falling outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes legitimate, intellectual investigation.
    The AAAS displays great enthusiasm for liberal education. Yet its report may well set back reform by obscuring the depth and breadth of the challenge that Congress asked it to illuminate.

    The term “business model” first came into widespread use with the invention of the personal computer and the spreadsheet (空白表格程序)．Before the spreadsheet, business planning usually meant producing a single forecast. At best, you did a little sensitivity analysis around the projection. The spreadsheet ushered in a much more analytic approach to planning because every major line item could be pulled apart, its components and subcomponents analyzed and tested. You could ask what-if questions about the critical assumptions on which your business depended—for example, what if customers are more price-sensitive than we thought?—and with a few keystrokes, you cold see how any change would play out on every aspect of the whole. In other words, you could model the behavior of a business. Before the computer changed the nature of business planning, most successful business models were created more by accident than by elaborate design. By enabling companies to tie their marketplace insights much more tightly to the resulting economics, spreadsheets made it possible to model businesses before they were launched.