【英语时差8,16】洛杉矶

If you’ve ever driven in LA, you know that people don’t cooperate terribly well. Traffic jams, folks cutting folks off, people shouting at you out their windows . . . it’s a real headache. We’d all do a lot better–at least, we’d all move through congestion¹ a lot faster–if we were ants. Why ants, you ask? That’s what Ian Couzin of Princeton University wanted to know. You may have seen films of huge numbers of South American Army Ants zooming² across the grass on raids³ and coming back with all sorts of goodies to eat. So why don’t they all crash into each other and suffer ant-gridlock the way humans do? One answer Couzin found is that army ants follow a simple procedure: everybody coming home has the right-of-way. It results in a stream of home-going ants passing unobstructed through the center of a crowd of out-going ants. Among other things, this means raiding⁴ parties can go any direction from the anthill, because nobody has to remember some complicated rule about turning left or turning right. Also, the guys bringing home the goodies will always be protected on both sides by out-going ants . So, would this work in LA? Probably not. Thousands of human beings just can’t be made to follow a behavioral rule like that. Somebody would try to get a little bit ahead, then somebody else would see that and get angry, and pretty soon, you’re back to LA traffic. For better or worse，people just don’t think like ants.

1 congestion   

n.阻塞，消化不良

参考例句：

• The congestion in the city gets even worse during the summer.夏天城市交通阻塞尤为严重。
• Parking near the school causes severe traffic congestion.在学校附近泊车会引起严重的交通堵塞。

2 zooming   

adj.快速上升的v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去分词 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨

参考例句：

• Zooming and panning are navigational tools for exploring 2D and 3D information. 缩放和平移是浏览二维和三维信息的导航工具。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• Panning and zooming, especially when paired together, create navigation difficulties for users. 对于用户来说，平移和缩放一起使用时，产生了更多的导航困难。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

3 raids   

突然袭击( raid的名词复数 )； 劫掠，劫夺； 突然查抄[搜捕]

参考例句：

• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。
• We can annoy the enemy by raids. 我们可以用空袭骚扰敌人。

4 raiding   

对…进行突然袭击（raid的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• A 19-year-old man has been found guilty of raiding a bank. 一个19岁的男子被判抢劫银行罪。
• But Magellan sent disguised raiding parties aboard the Victoria and the Santiago and recaptured them. 但麦哲伦派出便衣搜查“维多利亚号”和“圣地亚哥号”，并收复了它们。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史