Y: Hmm, 好象幸运女神不太喜欢你。
J: I guess not. Well, you try yours and see how you do.
Y: 好，我来试试我的运气。(scratch, scratch) 哇! 我赢了五块钱!
J: What! Let me see that. You won five bucks! I think I gave you the wrong ticket. I think I gave you mine. Can I have it back?
Y: No way!
J: Now, what would really be exciting is if you won the BIG Lottery.
Y: 你说的好多州一起办的那个超级乐透奖,对不对？
J: Yes. That"s right! The POWERBALL!
(Enter sharp lightning crack)
Y: 这个声音好恐怖啊！
J: What our listeners may not know but a well-timed lightning bolt sound is meant to signify the mysterious, the awesome, like the POWERBALL!!!
(Enter sharp lightning crack)
Y:好了，好了，我现在已经感受到超级乐透的威力了。现在你这个音响效果可不可以停止了呢？
J: Okay. No more lightning bolts. For a while.
Y: 可是，我们是不是先来解释lottery这个词，然后再发挥你的音响效果。
J: Let"s do. The Lottery is gambling. It"s a drawing of numbers. And you have to get all six numbers right AND pick the right number as the Powerball to win.
Y: 噢，对，Lottery是以买彩票或奖券的方式进行赌博。
J: The jackpot recently is really high: $210 million!
Y: 哇! 两亿一千万美元!! 啊，我要昏倒了。
J: That"s right, Sister! You go ahead and faint. The night before the drawing, I stopped at my neighborhood store and there was a line of about 50 people waiting to buy their lottery tickets. Here"s some on-site interviews of people actually buying their lottery tickets.
Here"s Carl from Miami...
实录1 Carl: Lottery ticket is a gambling format for a winning of a ticket for $210 million.
J: $ 250 million. What are the odds that you can win?
Carl: one in 250 million, I think.
J: So why are you here?
Carl: Someone"s gotta win, that"s basically it. The chances are low, but someone does have to win.
Y: 他刚才提到一个词“odds”，我看我们需要先给大家解释一下。
J: Sure. O-D-D-S. You know, your chances of winning. What are your odds of winning? But for this lottery, the odds were 1 in 250 million.
Y: 那么这里就是说赢得机律是1比2亿5千万。
J: So the odds are very low. And this woman Susan had a very funny way of describing how she views her odds and why she still plays.
Y: 好，我们听听Susan的见解。
实录2 Susan: Your have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than you do of winning the lottery. However, people do get hit by lightning. So it does make sense to give it a try.
J: So, you"re willing to risk a couple of dollars and see if you can win the jackpot.
Susan: Yes!
J: See! She mentioned the word "lightning!"
(Enter sharp lightning crack)
Y: 你知道吗，你听起来象个巫婆一样。
J: Okay. Now, get serious, Yang Chen. You know, after I started interviewing people they all started talking about the big "what if?" You know what if I win?
Y: 就是，我都替他们发愁。如果赢了，那么多钱怎么花呀？
J: Here"s what Susan had to say.
Y: 好吧, 我们来听听Susan的宏伟计划。
实录3 Susan: Well, that"s what everyone always thinks as they"re waiting in line ... "What would they do if they won." And of course, the first thing you think is quit your job and buy all those things that are on your list, that you wanted to get...you know...
J: Another woman, Olivia from New Orleans, Louisiana, said that after she paid off her and her family"s debt she would give some of her winnings to charities.
实录4 Olivia: I would definitely donate some to charity, because there are a lot of good courses. And pay off all my debts, my mother"s debts, my sister"s debts and travel.
Y: 每个人都那么说。如果赢了以后先把工作辞了，然后买下所有以前买不起的东西，还要捐一部份给慈善机构。
J: Well, that"s what they say before they win. I don"t know what they say after they win.
Y: 好，我们的时间到了。谢谢大家收听美语咖啡屋。
J: Yeah! Thanks for joining us today at American Cafe. I certainly enjoyed talking with you about the American tradition of the...
Y: Stop it, Jody! 如果你再让我听到...
J: ...POWERBALL!!
美国习惯用语第280讲
今天我们要讲的习惯用语里都有这样一个词：devil。它的意思是魔鬼。这可是个引起人们恶感的词。在基督教文化里，魔鬼是背叛上帝的邪恶之灵，但是被正义的天使打败，驱逐出天堂。从此魔鬼就在地狱称王，并成为人间的万恶之源。
今天我们要讲的第一个习惯用语是：raise the devil. Raise这个词有“惹起”，或者“使出现”的意思。那么从字面意思看来，raise the devil可不就是让牛鬼蛇神都出笼，闹得鸡犬不宁吗？
好，我们来听一个例子。这是一个公司经理在发脾气。让我们仔细听听raise the devil在这段话里是什么意思，还有这位经理为什么这样恼火？
例句-1：Ask Tom to come right now! I just found out he shipped the watches to New York instead of Los Angeles. I"m going to raise the devil with him.
这位经理火冒三丈要马上把Tom叫来，因为他刚发现Tom把那些手表定货送错了地方，运去了纽约而不是洛杉矶，所以经理要把Tom叫来好好训斥一番。可见raise the devil这个习惯用语意思就是“暴跳如雷，大叫大骂。”
还有，不知你有没有注意到，“大声训斥某一个人”，就是raise the devil with someone. 这里用介词with。
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接下来我们还要听一个例子，里面也有习惯用语raise the devil。这是一位大学校长在和学校的财务主任争辩，反对提高学费。请你仔细听，在这段话里raise the devil表达甚么样的情况。先让我们来学一个生词：tuition这个词的意思是学费。还有一个生词：parent，意思是家长。好，让我们一起来听这段话：
例句2：We raised tuition ten percent last year. If we raise it again, our students and their parents will raise the devil with us and some of them will go somewhere else next year.
那位大学校长说：“我们去年已经把学费增加了百分之十，如果我们再次提高学费的话，就会引起学生和家长们的强烈抗议。他们中有些人甚至明年会转学。”
从这段话我们可以看出raise the devil不仅表达“大叫大骂”的意思，也可以解释为“强烈抗议”。
******
我们要学的第二个习惯用语是：devil"s advocate. Advocate这个词本身的意思是提倡和维护某种思想、事业或者维护某一人物的人。比方说，在法庭上的辩护律师就是advocate。也许有人会想devil"s advocate岂不是和魔鬼狼狈为奸，为虎作伥的坏蛋吗？完全不对！
Devil"s advocate这个习惯用语来自罗马天主教教会。在这个教会的悠久历史上，曾经有不少品德高超，行为圣洁的人。他们无懈可击的生活作风和坚定不移的信仰使他们在身后能当之无愧地被称为圣贤，但是要得到圣贤的称号实在不容易。这得经过好几年的调查。罗马天主教会会委派一名神父或者其他神职人员竭尽全力地挖掘这名候选人是否有任何瑕疵以至不配得到圣贤的荣誉。而这名调查人员就叫devil"s advocate。
这下你该明白了，尽管有这样的名号，但是devil"s advocate却并不是为魔鬼效劳的人，而是吹毛求疵的人。
好，现在我们来听一个例子。这是一家公司的雇员在讨论公司搬迁的事情，而这次搬迁几乎已成定局。请你边听边体会devil"s advocate这个习惯用语的含义。
例句3：I"m in favor of moving too, but let me be the devil"s advocate for a moment. Let"s take a look at how much money we might save by staying right here.
首先那位雇员表示他是赞成搬迁的，但是他说他姑且充当一下devil"s advocate，看看如果不搬，可以省下多少钱。这样看来devil"s advocate还可以解释为“不随大流而从反面角度来探究问题的人”。也可以说是为了看清一切事实真相而有意唱反调的人。
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在辩论或者讨论中，必须有各种不同的观点才会出现百花齐放，百家争鸣的局面，所以电视脱口秀主持人为了开阔人们的思路、活跃气氛，往往会提出一些反面论点。这时这位主持人就是devil"s advocate。
好，让我们再听一个例子，这是一位电视脱口秀主持人在说话：