Ross Andersen: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011
Ross Andersen is freelancer living in Washington, D.C. He has recently written about technology for The Atlantic, and is now working on an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
罗斯·安德森 (Ross Andersen) 是居住在华盛顿特区的自由职业者。他最近为《大西洋月刊》撰写了有关技术的文章，目前正在为《洛杉矶书评》撰写一篇文章。
He can also be found on Twitter at @andersen.
您还可以在 Twitter 上找到他：@andersen。
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“The Mother of Possibility,” by Sven Birkerts, Lapham’s Quarterly
《可能性之母》，Sven Birkerts，《拉帕姆季刊》
Procrastination being my favorite vice —and the impetus behind many a plunge into Longreads.com— it is perhaps not coincidental that this essay, an elegant defense of idleness, is my favorite of the year.
拖延症是我最喜欢的恶习——也是许多人进入 Longreads.com 的动力——这篇优雅地为懒惰辩护的文章成为我今年的最爱，这也许并非巧合。
Reading Birkerts may mean forgoing more pressing tasks, but he at least has the decency to make you feel like a visionary for doing so:
阅读 Birkerts 可能意味着放弃更紧迫的任务，但他至少有礼貌让你觉得自己是一个有远见的人：
“Idleness …
“闲着……
It is the soul’s first habitat, the original self ambushed—cross-sectioned—in its state of nature, before it has been stirred to make a plan, to direct itself toward something.
它是灵魂的第一个栖息地，是在自然状态下被伏击的原始自我，在它被激发制定计划、引导自己走向某事之前。
We open our eyes in the morning and for an instant—more if we indulge ourselves—we are completely idle, ourselves.
我们早上睁开眼睛，有那么一瞬间——如果我们放纵自己的话——我们自己完全闲置了。
And then we launch toward purpose; and once we get under way, many of us have little truck with that first unmustered self, unless in occasional dreamy asides as we look away from our tasks, let the mind slip from its rails to indulge a reverie or a memory.
然后我们朝着目标出发；一旦我们开始工作，我们中的许多人就会对最初的松散的自我感到不高兴，除非当我们把目光从任务上移开时，偶尔会做一些梦幻般的事情，让思绪偏离轨道，沉迷于遐想或回忆。
All such thoughts to the past, to childhood, are a truancy from productivity.
所有这些对过去、对童年的想法都是对生产力的逃学。
But there is an undeniable pull at times, as if to a truth neglected.”
但有时会有一种不可否认的吸引力，就好像一个被忽视的真相。”
“Evolve,” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Orion
《进化》，Michael Shellenberger 和 Ted Nordhaus，猎户座
Orion, billed as America’s finest environmental magazine, is a strange place to find a moving paean to technology, but that’s exactly what Shellenberger and Nordhaus have written here: a brief, albeit sweeping, history of the relationship between man the toolmaker and his environment.
《猎户座》被誉为美国最好的环境杂志，但却是一个奇怪的地方，可以找到对技术的感人赞歌，但这正是谢伦伯格和诺德豪斯在这里所写的：一部关于工具制造者与环境之间关系的简短但全面的历史。
“After the project was approved, the head of World Wildlife Fund Italy said, “Today the city’s destiny rests on a pretentious, costly, and environmentally harmful technological gamble.” In truth, the grandeur that is Venice has always rested—quite literally—on a series of pretentious, costly, and environmentally harmful technological gambles.
“该项目获得批准后，世界自然基金会意大利负责人表示，“今天这座城市的命运取决于一场自命不凡、成本高昂且对环境有害的技术赌博。”事实上，毫不夸张地说，威尼斯的辉煌始终建立在一系列自命不凡、成本高昂且对环境有害的技术赌博之上。
Her buildings rest upon pylons made of ancient larch and oak trees ripped from inland forests a thousand years ago.
她的建筑建立在由一千年前从内陆森林砍伐的古老落叶松和橡树制成的塔架上。
Over time, the pylons were petrified by the saltwater, infill was added, and cathedrals were constructed.
随着时间的推移，塔楼被盐水石化，添加了填充物，并建造了大教堂。
Little by little, technology helped transform a town of humble fisherfolk into the city we know today.”
一点一点地，技术帮助将一个简陋的渔民小镇变成了我们今天所知道的城市。”
“Why We Shouldn’t Treat Rap as Poetry,” by Willy Staley, The Awl
“为什么我们不应该把说唱当作诗歌”，作者：Willy Staley，The Awl
Because what’s not to like about a close look at the understudied phenomenon of ghostwriting in Hip-Hop?
为什么不喜欢仔细观察嘻哈音乐中未被充分研究的代写现象呢？
I’d almost forgotten about this piece until this superb tweet by John Pavlus reminded me of it.
我几乎忘记了这篇文章，直到约翰·帕夫鲁斯的这篇精彩推文提醒了我。
“The Next Future,” by Michael Crowley, Lapham’s Quarterly
“下一个未来”，迈克尔·克劳利，《拉帕姆季刊》
I badgered my Google Reader clique (R.I.P.) relentlessly with this essay, a sprawling take on science fiction, prediction and futurism—first by sharing it twice, and second by commenting on both shares with selected excerpts from the piece, so that it would show up at the top of Reader’s (since departed) Comment View.
我用这篇文章不断地困扰着我的谷歌阅读器群体（R.I.P.），这篇文章是对科幻小说、预测和未来主义的广泛解读——首先分享了两次，然后用这篇文章的精选摘录对两次分享进行了评论，这样它就会出现在读者（已离开）评论视图的顶部。
One such excerpt:
其中摘录如下：
“And when read now, forty years from when I first began to write it, what is immediately evident about my future is that it could have been thought up at no time except the time in which I did think it up, and has gone away as that time has gone.
“当我现在读到它时，距离我第一次开始写它已有四十年了，关于我的未来，立即显而易见的是，除了我确实想到它的那一刻之外，它不可能在任何时候被想到，并且随着时间的流逝而消失。
No matter its contents, no matter how it is imagined, any future lies not ahead in the stream of time but at an angle to it, a right angle probably.
无论它的内容如何，无论它如何想象，任何未来都不是在时间的洪流中遥遥领先，而是与它成一个角度，很可能是一个直角。
When we have moved on down the stream, that future stays anchored to where it was produced, spinning out infinitely and perpendicularly from there.”
当我们顺流而下时，未来就锚定在它产生的地方，并从那里垂直地无限旋转。”
“Windsor Knot,” by Jonathan Freedland, New York Review of Books
《温莎结》，乔纳森·弗里德兰着，《纽约书评》
Sure, Christopher Hitchens’ takedown of the Royal Wedding was a more satisfyingly vicious read (“By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even fairy tale.”) but it missed the complexity of Freedland’s piece, which opens with a withering run of digs at the crown, before finishing on a grace note about the Queen’s place in British culture.
当然，克里斯托弗·希钦斯（Christopher Hitchens）对皇家婚礼的解读是一种更令人满意的恶毒读物（“通过某种神秘的炼金术，一个王朝的繁衍必要性变成了浪漫，甚至童话故事的内容。”）但它忽略了弗里德兰作品的复杂性，该作品以对王冠的一系列枯燥的挖掘开始，最后以关于女王在英国文化中的地位的优雅音符结束。
“Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas,” by Zach Baron, The Daily
《拉斯维加斯的恐惧和自我厌恶》，扎克·巴伦 (Zach Baron)，《每日报》
As the author notes, Vegas, particularly Hunter S.
正如作者指出的，维加斯，尤其是亨特 S.
Thompson’s Vegas, is without peer as clichéd essay subject.
汤普森的维加斯，是无与伦比的陈词滥调的论文主题。
Nonetheless, Baron manages a dazzling walk along the meta-tightrope he has stretched between himself and the strip’s gaudy towers.
尽管如此，巴伦还是沿着他在自己和大道上华而不实的塔楼之间拉出的超钢丝，完成了一次令人眼花缭乱的行走。
He manages to generate fresh insights about the culture of the city, while serving up a penetrating, and at times unflattering, look at the impulse behind Thompson’s original project and his own.
他成功地对这座城市的文化产生了新的见解，同时对汤普森最初的项目和他自己的项目背后的冲动进行了深刻的、有时不讨人喜欢的审视。
Oh and all this before Baron goes undercover at DEFCON, an annual hacker convention at which journalists are notoriously unwelcome.
哦，这一切都是在 Baron 在 DEFCON 上卧底之前发生的，DEFCON 是一年一度的黑客大会，众所周知，记者在会上不受欢迎。
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Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December.
整个 12 月，分享您自己的 2011 年 5 首长读作品。
Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
只需在 Twitter、Tumblr 或 Facebook 上标记#longreads 即可。