Hedy Lamarr
Try to think of a handful of people who have excelled in two entirely unconnected fields. A prime minister with his own boutique fashion line, say. Or perhaps an NBA championship-winning basketball player who was also a chess grandmaster. It isn’t easy to compile a convincing catalogue, but one who should undoubtedly appear on any such list is the Hollywood sex symbol Hedy Lamarr, who took time out from playing smouldering femmes fatales to invent an unjammable missile-guidance system for use by the Allies in the Second World War.
Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, she rose to fame at the age of eighteen when she became the first actress to portray an orgasm onscreen. For anyone interested, the exuberant and oddly touching scene, which appeared in the 1933 movie Ekstase, can be found on YouTube. Soon afterwards, she married a jealous munitions manufacturer named Friedrich Mandl who tried to destroy every copy of the film. Marital life could be tense, with Hedy expected to play the dutiful wife while her husband had the likes of Hitler and Mussolini to dinner at his schloss. It was while listening to his conversations that the girl, who had always been scientifically minded, first developed a serious interest in weapons technology. Yet the shared enthusiasm wasn’t enough to save the marriage. In the late 1930s, she did a runner, making her way to Hollywood where, performing as Hedy Lamarr, she became a huge star.
Billed as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, she was dazzling to look at, with perfect bow lips, a delicate nose, and knowing eyes. Few, though, would claim she was a brilliant actress. In any case, she was bored by the boozing and the schmoozing required to sustain her career. In her spare time, Hedy liked nothing better than to hunker over her drafting table and invent things. (Her devices included a traffic light and a tablet for creating a carbonated drink.) In 1940, working with the avant-garde composer George Antheil, she came up with a ‘spread spectrum’ system for directing torpedoes. Because it continually altered the frequency of the radio waves it used, no one could block it. The US Defense Department didn’t adopt the new technology at the time, but dug it out in the 1960s. A version of Hedy’s system is now used in all wireless communication, including mobile phones and wifi. It wasn’t until decades later that the former film star began to receive the credit for her work. When a communications company gave her an award in the 1990s, she observed drily, ‘It’s about time.’
P209 海蒂·拉玛
请你想想看有几个人能在两个完全不相关的领域都有出色的表现。比如，一位拥有自己的精品时装品牌的首相。或者一位同时也是国际象棋大师的NBA冠军篮球运动员。汇编一个令人信服的目录并不容易，但毫无疑问，好莱坞性感女神海蒂·拉玛(Hedy Lamarr)应该出现在任何一个这样的名单上，她从扮演闷闷不乐的蛇蝎美人中抽出时间来发明了一种不受干扰的导弹制导系统，供二战中的盟军使用。
她出生在维也纳，原名海德薇·凯斯勒， 18岁时成为第一个在银幕上描绘性高潮的女演员，并一举成名。有兴趣的人可以在YouTube上找到1933年的电影《神魂颠倒》中出现的这一热情洋溢的动人场景。后来，她嫁给了一个善妒的军火制造商，名叫弗里德里希·曼德尔，他试图销毁这部电影的每一份拷贝。婚姻生活可能很紧张，海蒂被期望扮演一个尽职的妻子，而她的丈夫有希特勒和墨索里尼这样的人来他的城堡吃饭。正是在听他谈话的过程中，这个一直具有科学头脑的女人第一次对武器技术产生了浓厚的兴趣。然而，共同的热情并不足以挽救这段婚姻。在20世纪30年代末，她逃离家庭来到了好莱坞，在那里她扮演海蒂·拉玛，成为了一名巨星。
被誉为“世界上最美丽的女人”，她有着迷人的外表，完美的弯嘴，精致的鼻子和通晓世故的眼睛。然而，很少有人会说她是一位才华横溢的女演员。无论如何，她对维持她的职业生涯所需要的豪饮和闲扯倍感厌烦。在她的业余时间，海蒂最喜欢坐在她的绘图桌旁发明东西。(她的发明包括一个交通灯和一个用来制造碳酸饮料的片剂。)1940年，她与前卫作曲家乔治·安泰尔(George Antheil)合作，提出了一种“展频”鱼雷导航系统。因为它能不断地改变它所使用的无线电波的频率，没人能阻拦它。美国国防部当时并没有立刻采用这项新技术，20世纪60年代才又将其挖掘出来。海蒂系统的一个版本现在被用于所有的无线通信，包括移动电话和wifi。直到几十年后，这位前电影明星才开始因她的作品而获得赞誉。1990年代，当一家通讯公司颁奖给她，海蒂干瘪瘪地说了一句“是时候了”。
The Independent Principality of Sealand
Seven miles off the east coast of England, there is a country. It isn’t a very big country. To be precise, it’s the smallest country in the world, with a surface area that extends to no more than 6,000 square feet, which is about twice the size of a tennis court. You won’t find it on Google Maps and it isn’t a member of Nato or the EU. But I know it exists, because I’ve been there. The full name of this obscure speck of territory is the Independent Principality of Sealand and it has a history that is about as rock ’n’ roll as could be imagined.
During the Second World War, the Navy built a handful of fortresses in the North Sea and kitted them out with anti-aircraft guns. They were later abandoned and left to rust away, pounded by the wind and waves. In the 1960s, some were commandeered by so-called radio ‘pirates’, who used them to broadcast rock music to the nation’s teenagers, while making money from advertising. (Commercial radio stations were then banned in the UK, but the forts were outside jurisdiction.) When the British government outlawed the practice, the Bates family from Essex hung on to their fort, which was called Roughs Tower. They rechristened it Sealand and on Christmas Day 1967 they proclaimed it an independent nation.
The Bates family remains in possession of Sealand to this day. The authorities haven’t intervened, at least partly because it isn’t so easy to launch a maritime operation to retake a military structure that is defended by armed occupants. The Bateses are a pugnacious lot. They have a sense of humour, too. They’ve designed a flag, coins, stamps and passports for their fledgling country, and the head of the family – first Major Roy Bates; now his son Michael – styles himself ‘Prince’. In 1987, when the Territorial Sea Act extended the reach of British territorial waters from three miles to twelve (meaning Sealand would now be automatically British), the outraged Bateses responded by declaring that they had also extended their territorial reach to twelve miles. This, they explained, meant the town of Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast now belonged to them.
P211 西兰独立公国
在离英格兰东海岸七英里的地方，有一个国家，它不是一个很大。确切地说，它是世界上最小的国家，面积不超过6000平方英尺，大约是一个网球场的两倍。它不是北约或欧盟的成员，你也不会在谷歌地图上找到它，但我知道它的存在，因为我去过。这片鲜为人知的小领土全名是西兰独立公国，它的历史可想而知。
第二次世界大战期间，海军在北海建起了几座堡垒，并装备了高射炮。它们后来被遗弃，在风吹浪打中日渐锈蚀。在20世纪60年代，堡垒被“海盗”电台征用，他们利用这些电台向全国青少年播放摇滚音乐，并通过广告赚钱。(当时商业电台在英国被禁止，但堡垒不在司法管辖范围内。)当英国政府宣布这一行为违法时，来自埃塞克斯的贝茨家族坚守着他们的堡垒“怒涛塔”。他们将其重新命名为“西兰”，并在1967年圣诞节宣布其为独立国家。直到今天，西兰仍归贝茨家族所有。当局尚未进行干预的部分原因，至少是因为要发动海上行动收复一个由武装人员保卫的军事建筑并非易事。
贝茨家族是一群好斗的人，他们也很有幽默感。他们为这个羽翼未丰的国家设计了国旗、硬币、邮票和护照，还有主人——罗伊·贝茨少校一世。现在他的儿子迈克尔把自己称为“王子”。1987年，英国通过《领海法案》将领海范围从3英里扩大到12英里(这意味着西兰群岛现在自动归英国所有)，愤怒的贝茨家族回应称，他们也将其领海范围扩大到了12英里。他们解释说，这意味着萨福克海岸的费利克斯托镇现在隶属于他们。
Children
A naturalness. A lack of self-consciousness. The absence of the desire to judge. The ability to exist in the present, as if the past hadn’t happened and the future were nothing to fear. A readiness to laugh and to forgive. A lack of side. A disinclination to cliquishness. Near freedom from sexuality. An experimental approach to food and drink. The willingness to try anything. Lack of interest in hygiene. Lightness of touch. Delight in simplicity. An instinct for play. Imagination. Trust.
Children have just got it. No one taught them. They aren’t putting it on. I don’t know how long it lasts. Maybe in some cases, you lose it the first time you’re attracted to a member of the opposite sex. Or it might happen when you engage in competitive sports, the first time you want to win. At the age of four or five, or a little later. But it’s clear some people keep it a lot longer, and there are a few who never let it go. This childlike quality is one of the distinctive features of genius, prominent in its clearest instances in cultural history, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein. ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world,’ Isaac Newton once remarked, ‘but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary.’
From the eternal student Hamlet* to the school-age heroes played by James Dean*, coolness has found its foremost expression in adolescent types. That has been the age, when the freedoms and physical strength of adulthood meet the spontaneity of childhood. Yet the childishness is key. It can be seen to link not only geniuses, but also many of those who defined and refined an idea of what cool means in the 20th century. Dean, definitely. But also Marlon Brando* and Paul Newman*. Bob Dylan*. Vivienne Westwood*. Richard Branson*. Madonna*. Björk*. In all these cases, it isn’t hard to see the five-year-old concealed within the actor, singer, fashionista and entrepreneur.
P212 孩子们
不饰雕琢, 缺少自我意识, 没有评判的欲望，活在当下的能力，好像过去什么都没发生过，未来没什么好害怕的。愿意笑，愿意原谅。不搞派系，不搞小集团。几乎没有性方面的困扰。用实验性的理念对待任何食品和饮料，愿意尝试任何事情，对卫生缺乏兴趣。轻柔的触摸，简单的喜悦，玩耍的本能，富于想象力，能信任人。
孩子们天生就拥有这些品质，没人教过他们。他们不伪装。我不知道这种状态会持续多久。也许在某些情况下，当你第一次被异性吸引时，你就失去了。或者可能发生在你参加竞争性体育运动时，那是你第一次想要赢。时间上看大约是在四五岁或更晚一点的时候，但很明显的是，有些人持续的时间久一些，也有一些人从未丢失过。这种天真烂漫的品质是天才的独特特征之一，在文化史上显而易见的例子很多，如沃尔夫冈·阿玛德乌斯·莫扎特、巴勃罗·毕加索和阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦。“我不知道我在世人面前会是什么样子，”艾萨克·牛顿(Isaac Newton)曾经说过，“但对我自己来说，我似乎只是一个在海边玩耍的孩子，不时为发现一块比平常更光滑的鹅卵石或更漂亮的贝壳而欢欣鼓舞。”
从永远的学生哈姆雷特到詹姆斯·迪恩扮演的学龄英雄，‘酷’在青少年身上得到了最好的表现。”这是一个成年人的自由和体力与孩童时的自发性不期而遇的年龄。然而, 童心是关键。它不仅与天才息息相关，也与那些对20世纪“酷”的定义和完善的人们联系在一起：詹姆斯·迪恩肯定是，还有马龙·白兰度和保罗·纽曼，鲍勃·迪伦*，薇薇恩·韦斯特伍德*，理查德·布兰森*，麦当娜*，比约克*。在所有这些例子中，不难看出隐藏在演员、歌手、时尚达人和企业家的内心深处的5岁孩童。
Conchita Cintrón
History’s most famous female bullfighter, Conchita Cintrón was always terrified before a performance. Once she was in the arena, however, her fear used to melt away. This was fortunate, she remarked, since ‘A qualm or a cringe before 1,200 pounds of enraged bull is sure death.’
Brought up in Peru, the daughter of American parents, she became fascinated by the sport after taking riding lessons from a former bullfighter. She fought her first bull at fifteen. By eighteen, she was internationally renowned. Known as La Diosa de Oro (The Golden Goddess) on account of her mane of flowing blond hair, she drew attention as a young, attractive woman operating in a field dominated by men. She earned particular respect for her mastery of two styles of bullfighting: that of the Portuguese rejoneador, who faces the bull on horseback (and so is less likely to be gored), and that of the Spanish toreador, who performs on foot. While performing as a toreador, she was once so badly wounded that she was stretchered off to hospital. But she refused surgery and instead insisted on returning to the arena to kill her bull. This done, she promptly fainted.
It always riled Cintrón that, in Spain, women were forbidden to fight on foot, the supposed justification being that if one were gored, the more intimate parts of her body might have to be revealed by medics in the arena before the prurient eyes of thousands of spectators. In 1950, she was due to deliver what was billed as her last-ever performance, in the town of Jaén in southern Spain. Although down to fight as a rejoneador, she rode up to the official box and asked permission to fight as a toreador. This was refused. With a rush of blood to the head (she later said, ‘I could not help myself ’) The Golden Goddess slipped off her horse and grabbed the cape and sword from the startled novillero (novice) who had been waiting to make the kill. She prepared the bull with a couple of passes; then, as it charged towards her, she dropped the sword, and instead of killing the beast, lovingly caressed it between the shoulders with the tips of her fingers (thereby also showing that she could have killed it). The crowd went wild. Hats and carnations were thrown at Cintrón’s feet. She wept as she left the arena, and was immediately arrested. But the public protested so violently that the local governor released her, fearing a riot.
P212 肯奇塔·辛特隆
历史上最著名的女斗牛士肯奇塔·辛特隆在表演前总是会感到害怕。然而，一旦她进入竞技场，她的恐惧就退却了。她说，幸亏如此，因为“在1200磅的被激怒了的公牛面前感到不安或畏缩必死无疑。”
她在秘鲁长大，父母都是美国人，在一位前斗牛士的教导下，她开始迷上了这项运动。她十五岁时第一次与公牛搏斗。到18岁时，她已经蜚声国际。因为她有着飘逸的金色长发，亦被称为La Diosa de Oro(黄金女神)。作为一个年轻、有魅力的女性，在这个由男性主导的领域中她吸足了眼球。她更因精通两种斗牛方式而赢得了特别的尊重:一种是在马背上面对公牛的葡萄牙斗牛(因此不太可能被公牛抵伤)，另一种是徒步表演的西班牙斗牛。在表演斗牛时，她曾受了重伤，被担架送往医院。但她拒绝手术，而是坚持要回到竞技场杀死她的公牛。事毕，她立刻昏厥了过去。
在西班牙，妇女被禁止徒步战斗，这一直让辛特隆很恼火，而所谓的理由是，如果一个女人被牛顶伤了，她身体更私密的部位可能会被医护人员暴露在成千上万淫邪的观众面前。1950年，她在西班牙南部的哈恩镇举行了据称是她最后一次表演。虽然她本就是参加战斗的斗牛士，但她还是骑马来到了官方包厢，请求以斗牛士的身份参加战斗，这一要求被拒绝了。热血冲向她的头部(她后来说，“我受不了”)，黄金女神旋身下马，从惊恐万状的正等着杀牛的新手诺维列罗手中夺过斗篷和。她逗引着牛来回几圈后，当它朝她冲过来，她没有杀死这头猛兽，反而放下了剑用指尖深情地抚摸着牛的双肩之间(这也表明她本可以杀死它的)。人群疯狂起来，将帽子和康乃馨扔在了辛特隆的脚边。她哭着离开了竞技场，随即被捕。但由于公众强烈抗议，当地官员担心会发生骚乱，只好又释放了她。
