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恐惧症家族又添新成员！ 学习高级英语的人都知道，凡是后缀为“phobia”的英文单词一般都和害怕什么有关，而且是指那种可以导致严重焦虑甚至惊恐发作的极端的恐惧。 比较常见的例子包括：claustrophobia（幽闭恐惧），指害怕呆在封闭的空间里；agoraphobia（广场恐惧），害怕开放的空间；acrophobia（恐高症），害怕登高；或者xenophobia（陌生恐怖症），害怕外国人。 一些比较少见的例子包括： 恐犬症 怕狗 恐鸟症 怕鸟 蜘蛛恐惧症 怕蜘蛛 恐火症 怕火 畏老症 怕变老 恐婚症 怕结婚 裸体恐怖症 怕裸体 电话恐惧症 怕电话 飞行恐惧症 怕坐飞机 要想了解更多鲜为人知的恐惧症，你可以试着在英语同义词字典里查一下“fear”（害怕）或者“phobia”（恐惧）。 这些词如果以“phobia”结尾，就是名词，意为“xx恐惧症”，如果把后缀改为“phobic”，就变成了形容词——“怕xx的”。 例如：“比尔怕高，所以在摩天大厦80楼的会议室，他尽量不往靠窗的地方站。” 或者：“那家抗衰老诊所的病人包括很多男女畏老症患者，他们花大价钱接受复杂的回春治疗。 再或者：“萨莉怕坐飞机，所以出门总是坐火车或者坐汽车，不乘飞机。” 你可能遇见过这样或那样的恐惧症患者，有些恐惧症（比如裸体恐惧、恐婚、电话恐惧）乍看上去也许有点儿滑稽，但对患者本人来说却很难一笑了之，它们比你想象的更为常见。 心理学家说，很多恐惧症都源于早年经历过的精神创伤，当遇到某一特殊物体或特殊状况时，就会触发不合理的恐惧。在更多极端案例中，恐惧症还会给病人生活带来极大的不便。 虽然我不是心理学家，但我发现了一个例子，也许能算是一种全新的恐惧症吧。但它和我童年的生活无关，都是后来才发生的。 这种恐惧症也太不可能在我小时候就形成，因为当时还没具备相应的条件，甚至一般人都难以想象未来会发生这种状况。 我可以欣慰地说，现在我已经能够抵御这种恐惧了，但它还是留下了较长久的阴影，让我总是时刻小心警惕。 我查阅了相关的资料，发现这种恐惧症到现在还没有正式命名。 根据美国、中国和其他世界大国的“灰色”人口统计趋势，已有证据表明，即将由我命名并定义的这种恐惧症正处在爆炸性增长的边缘。 也就是说这可能会是个突破，是个石破天惊的重大发现。你可千万要记住啊，你首次见到它可是在“四不像”博客上。 这个重大发现的“尤里卡”时刻（eureka，意为“我找到了”，源自阿基米德在洗澡时发现浮力原理，高兴得大喊Eureka——译注）是在一个早晨，当时我接到银行的电话，说我拖欠了信用卡的账单。我查了一下记录，确认支票已经在两个多礼拜前就寄出去了，于是就给银行打电话商量下一步怎么办。 银行的自动语音电话让我输入不同的数字选项（语言选择、信用卡号码、查询性质等等），我一一照办。之后它又让我输入电话银行的个人识别码（这个号码不同于ATM机的身份识别号和网银账号）。电话银行PIN码？！ 我的心沉到了谷底。我不仅记不清这个号码，甚至连到底有没有这个号码都记不起来了。可语音电话中再没有别的选项了，我被绕进死胡同出不来了。我感到一种新的恐惧症正悄悄地袭来。 让我先给这种新恐惧症起个名字吧，我叫它“密码恐惧症”。 我建议将“密码恐惧症”定义为由密码、个人识别码（PIN码）、门禁密码以及其他秘密编码引发的恐惧，这些秘密编码在生活中发挥着越来越重要的作用、要求我们牢记但不能写下来、以防落入不轨之徒手中会导致个人钱财、资产或身份信息损失。 考虑到凡此种种，最终我的密码（“经常更换还不能写下来！”）、用户名、PIN码加在一起都快凑成小电话簿了，而且还在不断地增加。 这里面有各种密码、用户名、登录账号，以便我能在不同地点使用笔记本电脑和无线上网服务；操作iPad和手机；使用多个银行帐号和信用卡（在ATM机、网银、电话银行上还需要不同的号码）；登录新闻网站、提供电影票的影院网站、航空公司常客计划、酒店积分奖励计划、租车公司、商会会员网站、网店、校友录和社交网站等等。 十年前我的生活中决不会出现这些密码的，更别提童年了，这些都是网络时代的副产品。不要误会我，它们的用处还是很大的，只不过对于我这把年纪的普通人来说确实有点儿太多了，而且还会越来越多。 如今要是离开了密码，我一天也玩儿不转。我的密码比家人还多，照现在的增长速度，很快就会超出我在这个星球上生活的年头了，这可不是个小数目。（“别写出来！经常更换！不要重复使用！”） 随着私人和企业网络安全措施的升级，我们需要编制更长、更复杂、更换更频繁的密码，我们的压力在与日俱增。 同时，随着年龄增长，记忆力下降，这也正是“密码恐惧症”悄然产生的原因。 设想一下某天醒来，你忽然忘了某些或者全部密码，甚至忘记了——违背专家建议——偷偷写下密码的地方，你肯定会陷入瘫痪，什么都做不了，也找不到可以寻求帮助的地方。设想一下语音电话会增添一个新的选项——“丢失全部密码，希望向律师咨询，请按99。” 除了心里感到拔凉拔凉的，你还没法从账户上取钱汇给家人、没法去影院看电影、没法通过喜欢的社交网站了解亲友的状况、没法网上购物、订机票酒店、浏览新闻——换句话说，你实际上陷入了密码恐惧，走投无路了。 我盼着年轻的发明家们能创造一种新的便携设备，用于安全管理和组织所有密码、PIN码、用户名、编码。惟有抱着这种希望，我才能应对“密码恐惧症”。 发明家们，加油啊！ |
Warmly Welcome a New Member of the Phobia Family! Advanced students of English will know that any English word ending in the suffix "-phobia" refers to a fear of something, generally a fairly extreme fear of the sort which can cause serious anxiety or even panic attacks. Some relatively common examples would be: claustrophobia, which is the fear of enclosed spaces; agoraphobia, the fear of open places; acrophobia, the fear of high places; or xenophobia, the fear of foreigners. Some slightly more obscure examples of phobias would be: cynophobia the fear of dogs ornithophobia the fear of birds arachnophobia the fear of spiders pyrophobia the fear of fire gerascophobia the fear of growing old gametophobia the fear of marriage gymnophobia the fear of nudity telephonophobia the fear of telephones aviatophobia the fear of flying Readers interested in finding even more obscure examples of phobias may want to check an English language thesaurus under "fear" or "phobia." Each of these "phobias", which are noun forms, can be turned into an adjective by changing the suffix from "-phobia" to "-phobic." For example, "Bill is acrophobic, so he avoided standing near the window of the conference room on the 80th floor of the skyscraper." Or, "The anti-aging clinic's clientele included a number of gerascophobic men and women who paid high fees for elaborate rejuvenation treatments." Or, "Sally is claustrophobic, so she always chose to travel by train or car rather than by airplane." You've probably met people with one phobia or another. Although some phobias (e.g. fear of nudity, marriage, or telephones) seem a bit comical at first glance, a phobia is definitely not a laughing matter to someone who suffers from one; and they are more common than you might think. Psychologists tell us that many phobias have their roots in some traumatic experience very early in life which triggers the phenomenon of irrational fear associated with a particular object or situation. In more extreme cases, phobias can impose great inconvenience on the sufferer's lifestyle. Although I am not a psychologist, I have discovered an example of another, perhaps brand new, category of phobia which appears to have developed not during my childhood but much later in my life. It would not have been possible for me, for example, to have developed this particular phobia early in life, because the circumstances did not exist yet, nor were they even imaginable to ordinary people. I am happy to report that I am successfully resisting this phobia so far, but it casts a long shadow which makes me vigilant and watchful at all times. I have checked the reference materials and found no existing name for this phobia. Based on the "graying" demographic trends in the United States, China, and many other major countries around the world, the evidence suggests that we are on the verge of explosive growth in the phobia I am about to name and describe. In other words, this could be a breakthrough, a discovery of possibly epic proportions. And, please note, you read about it first right here in Sibuxiang's blog. The "eureka" moment in which I discovered this phenomenon happened the other morning when the bank called me to report my credit card payment was late. I checked my records and confirmed I had mailed the cheque more than two weeks earlier, so I telephoned the bank to discuss next steps. The automated answering service asked me to input various numbers into the phone (language options, credit card number, nature of my inquiry, etc. ), which I did. It then asked me for my telephone banking personal identification number (separate and distinct from my ATM personal ID number or my internet banking personal ID number). Telephone banking PIN?! I had a sinking feeling. Not only could I not recall that number, but I could not recall whether I even had such a number or not. And no more voicemail options were available to me. This was a dead end, and I appeared to be trapped. I felt the pangs of this new form. of phobia creeping in. Let me first propose a name for this new phobia: passophobia. I suggest "passophobia" refer to the fears associated with passwords, personal identification numbers (PINs), door codes, and related secret codes which are required to perform. a fast-growing range of important functions in our daily life, yet which we are told to remember without writing them down anywhere, lest they fall into the wrong hands, resulting in theft of our money, assets, or identity. Consider this. At last count my collection of passwords ("Change them often! Don't write them down!"), user names, and PINs is the size of a small telephone book, and growing. Within this list are various passwords, user names and access codes required to operate my laptop and wireless access services in several locations, my iPad, my cell phone, various bank accounts and credit cards in different locations (different ones for ATM, online banking, and telephone banking), a host of online information websites, movie cinemas offering online ticketing, airline frequent flyer programs, hotel loyalty point programs, car rental companies, chamber of commerce membership online access codes, specialty online retailers, alumni networks, social networking sites, etc.. None of these passwords were a factor in my life until ten or so years ago, let alone during my childhood years, because they are all by-products of the internet age. Don't get me wrong. They are very useful. But there are way too many of them for a normal person of my age to keep track of, and the number just keeps growing. Nowadays, I cannot operate on a typical day without using them. I have more passwords than family members, by far. If the current rate of growth continues, soon I'll have more passwords than the number of years I've lived on the planet, which is a lot. ("Don't write them down! Change them often! Don't use the same one twice!" ) As personal and corporate internet security concerns continue to spiral, it follows that we'll be under more pressure to create longer, more clever passwords, and change them more often. At the same time, with advancing years comes declining memories. And that's exactly where "passophobia" creeps into the picture. Can you imagine waking up one day, not recalling some or all of your key passwords or the location of the secret place where -- against all the best advice of the leading experts -- you wrote them down? You'd be paralyzed, unable to function, with nowhere to turn for help. Can you imagine a new voicemail option such as "Press 99 if you've lost ALL your passwords and want to talk to a lawyer." Apart from experiencing a great big sinking feeling, you'd also be unable to get money out of your bank account, or transfer it to a loved one, or watch a film in the cinema, or check the status of friends and family on your favorite social network, or buy something online, or book an airline or hotel, or (maybe) read the news online -- in other words you'd be virtually stuck in a passophobic funk. My hope is that some innovative young inventor will soon create a brand new portable device which will securely manage and organize all these passwords, PINs, user names and codes. Clinging to this hope is what helps me keep passophobia at bay. Come on, inventors, get busy! |