A multi-million dollar spaceship hurtles towards the moon — at 60km per minute. An explosion rips through its delicate shell. The astronauts must abandon the crippled mothership 300,000km from home. Their only hope is to trust the hardware that betrayed them, in a leap of faith that will become the most famous space rescue in history. It’s April 13, 1970, and Commander Jim Lovell must get his crew back to earth. A single false move could kill them all. Less than a year ago, the space race was won in dramatic style when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon for the first time and made history. NASA has another seven moon landings planned over the next three years and today Apollo 13 is undergoing final checks before launch.
一艘價值數百萬美元的太空船，以每分鐘六十公里的速度衝向月球。一場爆炸炸穿了它脆弱的外殼。太空人必須放棄受損的母船，當時他們和地球相距三十萬公里，只能將希望寄託在曾發生問題的硬體上，這項孤注一擲的嘗試，將成為史上最有名的太空救援行動。一九七０年四月十三日，指揮官吉姆•洛威爾必須讓組員安返地球，任何錯誤都可能害死他們。不到一年前，美國很戲劇性地在太空競賽中勝出，尼爾•阿姆斯壯首次踏上月球，寫下歷史新頁。美國航太總署計畫在三年進行七次登月計畫。阿波羅十三號正在進行發射前的最後檢查。
The mission commander is Jim Lovell, a 42-year-old father of four. Lovell’s mission is to explore the lunar highlands. The landing site could be treacherous, but the prize will be a new understanding of the moon’s geology and natural resources. But as Apollo 13 prepares to leave earth, it’s clear that the public’s appetite for space exploration has waned. Space flight seems to have become almost routine. In the run up to 13’s launch, a series of technical snags barely make the headlines, but there is one malfunction that no one has discovered. During pre-flight tests, a heating element inside an oxygen tank fails, damaging some electrical insulation. Apollo 13 is hiding a potentially deadly flaw.
吉姆•洛威爾是任務指揮官，四十二歲的他有四名子女。洛威爾的任務是探勘月球的高地，降落地點可能很危險，他們將能深入瞭解月球的地質和自然資源。但阿波羅十三號準備離開地球時，人們對太空探險顯然已經興趣缺缺了。太空飛行似乎已成家常便飯。這場發射在準備期間發生過多次技術故障，但幾乎都未成為頭條新聞。有一個故障一直沒被發現。在飛行前測試時，氧氣槽內一個加熱元件故障，破壞了電線的絕緣層。阿波羅十三號潛藏著一個足以致命的缺陷。
At 1.13pm on Saturday April 11, a 36-storey high Saturn Five rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Less than three hours later, Apollo 13 is racing toward the moon at nearly 37,000km per hour, almost 10 times faster than a bullet. Alongside Lovell are his crewmen, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. Both are crack military test pilots, but this is their first time in space. Swigert, an Air Force pilot, joined the crew only two days ago, but he knows the command module as well as anyone.
四月十一日週六下午一點十三分，三十六樓高的農神五號火箭從佛州的甘迺迪太空中心發射。不到三小時，阿波羅十三號就以近三萬七千公里的時速（幾乎比子彈快十倍）衝向月球。和洛威爾同行的組員是軍方頂尖試飛員弗萊德•海斯和傑克•斯威格特，這是他們第一次進入太空。空軍飛行員斯威格特兩天前才加入小組，但他對指揮艙非常熟悉。
Tune in tonight at 10pm to find out more about this treacherous voyage.
今晚十點敬請鎖定本節目，一同深入探索這場危險之旅。
Undersea cables are conductors wrapped in insulating materials and laid on the seabed. Their main functions are telecommunications or power transmission. The core of the undersea cables used for Internet signals is optical fiber, using light to transmit Internet signals. Taiwan’s communications are currently handled by 10 domestic undersea cables and 14 international undersea cables. About 99 percent of Taiwan’s Internet bandwidth relies on undersea cables, making them Taiwan’s “digital lifeline.” The demands on the cables’ bandwidth are only set to increase with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), which relies on the data fed into it. Today, data is
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Spoiler alert and shift blame 破梗&甩鍋 在新冠疫情期間，無論是因為封城 (lockdown) 還是居家隔離 (self-isolation at home)，人們關在家中使用網路的時間大增。這也讓一些原本只存在於網路論壇的用語廣為普及。我們來談一下破梗 (spoiler alert) 與甩鍋 (shift blame) 這兩個用語。 有位古典文學教授 Joel Christensen 針對領導統御與疫情控制寫了一篇以古喻今、相當深入的文章：“Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales”，文中出現一些講法，可用來翻譯上述的流行語： In the 5th century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins Oedipus Tyrannos with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. (Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.) (Joel Christensen, “Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales,” The Conversation, March 12, 2020) 作者提到 Oedipus（伊底帕斯）想找出瘟疫何以降臨他的城邦的緣由，加了一句：Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.（破梗：領導無方）。Spoiler alert 就是「破梗」，如果用在有人洩漏電影劇情的情境中，也可以翻作「小心爆雷」或「劇透警告」。疫情之下，在家看影集、電影成了很多人的娛樂，但要小心劇透 (spoilers)，很多 YouTube 上的影評在開頭也都會說 Spoiler alert!，警告還沒看過電影的觀眾小心爆雷、劇透。 至於「甩鍋」，源自大陸網民用語，通常意指某人犯了錯之後想推卸責任、轉移焦點、甚至讓別人背黑鍋的做法。疫情爆發後，相關網路資訊量爆增，許多中國網民也想找人為這場疫情負責，紛紛呼籲地方政府首長、地方黨書記不要「甩鍋」。 其實，在古代文學《奧德賽》中，就有「將自己的責任怪罪眾神」的說法，試用時下流行的「甩鍋」來重新翻譯： Humans are always blaming the gods for their suffering, but they experience
Continued from yesterday（延續自昨日） https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2025/01/18/2003830395 The invention of the incandescent light bulb in 1879 quickly led to the replacement of the arc lamp. It offered a softer, more pleasant light and became the new standard. The evolution of urban lighting didn’t stop there. From the 1960s to the early 21st century, sodium lamps became predominant. More recently, LED street lights, with their superior energy efficiency, have replaced many high-pressure sodium lamps. As technology continues to advance, even more efficient street lights are likely to provide a brighter future for nighttime pedestrians and drivers. 於1879年發明的白熾燈泡很快便取代了弧光燈。它提供了更柔和、更舒適的光線，並成為了新標準。城市照明的演變並未止步於此。從1960 年代到二十一世紀初，鈉燈成為主要照明方式。最近，LED 街燈因其卓越的能源效率而取代了許多高壓鈉燈。隨著技術持續進步，更高效的街燈可能會為夜間行人和駕駛人提供更加明亮的未來。 Word in Use 4. pedestrian n.
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