Gaming’s New Lifestyle: Less Pizza, More Yoga
電競選手 接受傳統運動團隊訓練
By Andrew Keh

The squats and leg lifts were harder than they looked, and after a few sets, Alfonso Aguirre Rodriguez placed his hands on his knees and attempted to compose himself.
深蹲和抬腿動作比看起來要困難，做了幾組後，阿方索．艾吉瑞．羅德里蓋茲把手放在膝蓋上，試著讓自己放鬆。

In November, Aguirre, a 24-year-old professional video game player from Spain, joined the five-man roster of Origen, a League of Legends team that competes in the game’s top European league. The players – all signed in late fall – were told at the time that the team might be run a bit differently from what they were accustomed to.
24歲的艾吉瑞是西班牙的電子競技（電競）職業選手，去年11月加入五人組成的奧里根戰隊，這是一支在電玩「英雄聯盟」歐洲頂尖聯盟中競賽的隊伍。該隊選手－全於去年秋季末尾簽約加入－當時即被告知，這支隊伍的運作方式也許會和他們習慣的有些不同。

Now here they were, five young men who make their living sitting almost completely still in front of desktop computers, sweating through an hourlong workout in a cramped gym.
現在，眼前就是這麼五個靠著坐在桌上電腦前幾乎全不移動來維生的年輕男子，他們正在一間狹窄的健身房裡汗流浹背地鍛鍊一小時。

“I think I’m going to puke my oatmeal,” said Aguirre, who is known in the gaming community as Mithy. “I’m dying.”
「我覺得我快把燕麥片吐出來了。」艾吉瑞說，他在電玩社群中被喚作米西。「我快死了。」

Some years ago, traditional sports leagues were revolutionized by young analysts wielding computers. The way things had always been done, it turned out, was not always the best way to do things. Now echoes of that transformation have arrived in the growing world of professional e-sports, where gamers are being shepherded toward a new frontier, oddly, by the old, corporeal wisdom of traditional sports.
數年前，傳統運動聯盟被使用電腦的年輕分析家給顛覆了。事實證明，人們一向用來做事情的方法，並非永遠是最好的方法。現在這項轉變的迴響已觸及成長中的職競世界，說也奇怪，選手們竟被傳統運動的古老、肉體智慧引向新的領域。

The debate about whether competitive gamers can be considered athletes may never end. In the meantime, though, gamers are increasingly acting like them.
關於電競選手能否被視為運動員的爭論，恐怕永遠不會停止。而於此同時，玩家的作為卻越來越像運動員了。

Origen is one of two teams owned by Rfrsh Entertainment, an e-sports company based in Copenhagen. Two years ago, the organization hired Kasper Hvidt, a former captain of Denmark’s national handball team, to be its sporting director. Hvidt, 43, had no previous exposure to gaming. But that was the point.
奧里根是以哥本哈根為據點的電競公司「更新娛樂」旗下兩支隊伍之一，兩年前，這家公司雇用丹麥手球國家隊前隊長卡斯伯．赫維特為運動總監。43歲的赫維特以前不曾接觸過電玩，但這正是重點。

E-sports in recent years have crept into the mainstream, attracting new fans, new sponsors and new investment. The top professionals now make six-figure salaries and earn even more with endorsements and prize money. And yet, Hvidt observed, their approach to performance remained amateurish.
近年電競已打入主流，吸引新粉絲、新贊助商和新投資。頂尖職業選手現在可賺進六位數薪水，而且靠代言和競賽獎金還能賺更多。不過赫維特說，選手優化表現的方法仍然很不專業。

Eating right, sleeping right, exercising, cleaning up for sponsors – these ideas have undergirded traditional sports for generations. In e-sports, they are regarded as almost radical.
吃得對、睡得好、做運動、為贊助商打理好門面－這些想法數個世代以來支撐著傳統運動。但在電競界，卻被視為近乎激進。

“They don’t look at themselves as physical human beings,” said Hvidt, who won the European handball championship with Denmark in 2008.
「他們並未視自己為活生生的人類。」2008年帶領丹麥隊贏得歐洲手球錦標賽冠軍的赫維特說。

“It’s common sense, in a way. But with them, it was not.”
「這多少可算是常識了，對他們來說卻並非如此。」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/esports-league-of-legends.html

2019-04-21 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 莊蕙嘉

說文解字看新聞 莊蕙嘉

電子競技（electronic sports，可寫為e-sports或esports）指用電子遊戲進行競賽，近年來逐漸被視為正式運動項目，玩家的地位也升級成選手，頂尖職業選手更是身價不凡。

知名的電競遊戲以對戰類為主流，例如文中提到的英雄聯盟、星海爭霸（Starcraft）、爐石戰記（Hearthstone）、以及被暱稱為「吃雞」的絕地求生（Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds）等。

既然被視為運動項目，電競也引入贊助商制度，合作廠商提供選手裝備及訓練經費，換取品牌曝光。常見的贊助形式有title sponsor（冠名贊助），不但出資比率最高，且品牌名會出現在賽事名稱、選手服裝或電視畫面一角。此外還有official sponsor（官方贊助），例如Visa是爐石戰記2019世界總決賽的官方贊助商，有權使用賽事影像做行銷。

本文介紹電競選手接受傳統運動訓練，以鍛鍊肌肉及加強體能，文章一開頭就提到squat（深蹲）和leg lift（抬腿），這兩個動作都著重鍛鍊下半身肌肉，且不需設備就可訓練。sit-up（仰臥起坐）和push-up（伏地挺身）也是常見的徒手訓練法，近幾年相當流行的還有plank（棒式），可鍛鍊核心肌群。

When the Poacher Is a Scientist
當盜獵者是名科學家…
By Rachel Nuwer

In February, the Journal of the British Tarantula Society published a paper describing a new species of tarantula, which was discovered in a national park in Sarawak, Malaysia. While the male of the species was an unremarkable brown, the female had eye-catching, electric blue legs.
今年二月，《英國蜘蛛學會期刊》發表一篇論文，描述在馬來西亞砂勞越國家公園發現一個新狼蛛物種。雖然雄狼蛛顏色是平淡無奇的棕色，雌狼蛛卻有引人注目的電光藍色的腿。

New spiders are discovered all the time, and the paper likely would have gone largely unnoticed – were it not for an article in Science magazine that appeared soon afterward.
一直有新蜘蛛被發現，若不是另一篇文章緊接著在《科學》雜誌上刊出，前述論文很可能乏人注意。

The article claimed that the tarantula researchers had received their specimens secondhand from private collectors in Poland and Britain, who had poached them in Malaysia.
《科學》雜誌那篇文章聲稱，狼蛛研究人員從波蘭與英國的私人收藏家那裡取得二手標本，而標本是這些收藏家在馬來西亞盜獵的。

Neither Ray Gabriel nor Danniella Sherwood, the authors of the study, responded to email requests for comment. But Peter Kirk, chairman of the British Tarantula Society and editor of the society’s journal, said the collectors had shown the scientists an import permit from Poland, and they “had no reason to think due process wasn’t followed.”
研究報告的作者是雷．蓋布里爾和丹尼拉．薛伍德，兩人均未回覆要求評論的電子郵件，但英國蜘蛛學會主席兼該學會期刊主編彼得．柯克表示，收藏家有向科學家們展示波蘭的進口許可證，所以他們「沒理由認為有違正當程序」。

“The paper absolutely will not be retracted, because it’s a completely legitimate published paper,” he said.
他說：「這篇論文絕對不會撤回，因為它是一篇完全合法發表的論文。」

The incident has reignited a decades-old debate among scientists and hobbyists alike about research ethics, specimen collection and “biopiracy” – the use of natural resources without obtaining permission from local communities or sharing any benefits with them.
這起事件再次在科學家跟業餘愛好者圈內引發長達數十年、有關研究倫理、標本收集及「生物剽竊」的爭論，而生物剽竊指的是未經當地社區許可，或與其分享任何利益而使用自然資源。

“The majority of responses I’ve seen are people saying, ‘Yes, we need to stop this,’ but there’s also been a fair amount of people basically trying to justify the poaching and smuggling of these tarantulas,” said Ernest Cooper, a conservation consultant in British Columbia.
加拿大卑詩省保育顧問恩斯特．庫柏說：「我看過的大多數人都說『是的，我們需要阻止這種事』，但也有不少人基本上試圖把盜獵與走私這些狼蛛合理化。」

“It’s this very strange, slightly colonial attitude of, ‘We know better than developing countries, so their laws don’t matter.’”
「這是種非常奇怪、略帶殖民主義色彩的態度：『我們知道的比發展中國家多，所以他們的法律不重要』。」

Illegal wildlife trade is dominated by headlines about criminal cartels trafficking in ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales. But scientists can also be complicit in illegal trade by poaching specimens themselves or by working with those who do.
有關非法野生動物貿易的報導，幾乎全集中在犯罪集團販賣象牙、犀牛角與穿山甲的麟片，但科學家也能透過自己盜獵標本或是跟盜獵者合作而參與非法貿易。

This type of wildlife crime occurs on a much smaller scale, but experts in a variety of fields believe it is a significant issue.
這類有關野生動物的犯罪行為規模雖然小得多，但諸多領域的專家都認為是個重大問題。

“It’s a problem globally, and it happens a lot,” said Sérgio Henriques, chairman of the spider and scorpion group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
國際自然保育聯盟蜘蛛與蠍子專家組主席塞吉歐．亨利克斯說：「這是項全球性問題，而且經常發生。」

For Henriques and others, this sort of collection raises deep ethical concerns. “We’re the scientists, the ones who are supposed to know better and who should be leading by example,” he said. “If we can’t follow the rules, why are we demanding that others do?”
對於亨利克斯這些人來說，這類收藏引起了高度道德憂慮。他說：「我們是科學家，理應更明白且以身作則。要是我們自己不遵守規則，又為何要求別人這樣做呢？」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/science/poaching-wildlife-scientists.html

2019-04-21 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 陳韋廷