（ドーシー） Square Wallet is an application that anyone can download to their phone...and you link your credit card once....and then you can go to any Square merchant....and you can keep your phone in your pocket or your bag....and as you are walking up to the register, your name will appear on the register with your picture....and you can pay with your name.
We made a very simple device that looks like this....called a square....plugs into your iPhone or iPad...and allows you to swipe anyone's credit card....we charge 2.75 percent...and the money goes in your bank account the very next day...so very, very simple...people can run and build their businesses with devices they already have.
（店主） It saves us a lot of money....a couple hundred dollars a month....from that field alone....it's simple to use...we use ipad....it's one click away....it will show the customer how much they want to tip...it increases the tips for the employees....the employee loves it also
（ドーシー） More and more people are carrying less cash...they are not carrying their checkbooks....and they want to use plastic cards, debit cards and pre-paid cards....credit cards for everything...and they expect to see it in all places.
（顧客） I like it because it's very convenient....part of it is the novelty factor....i think it's cool just to pay for stuff with my phone....i like interface...it makes transactions simple...without having to deal with receipts...emails....i tell them my name is Tariq....everything else is taking care of.
気になった表現としてplastic cardと言う言葉をドーシーが使っていたことです。
（ドーシー） Moreand more people are carrying less cash...they are not carrying their checkbooks....and they want to use plastic cards, debit cards and pre-paid cards....credit cards for everything...and they expect to see it in all places.
（ケンブリッジ・ビジネス） plastic noun ( MONEY ) [U] (also plastic money) credit cards or debit cards, rather than money in the form of notes, coins or cheques I'd prefer a restaurant where they take plastic.
（スピーチ前の紹介） MR. HAMRE: But anyway, we’re delighted to have the prime minister here. This is – this is an exciting time for us, and we know, of course, Prime Minister Abe. We know of his leadership through the years, and we’re really delighted to have him here. We welcome him. We’re excited that he can be with us today. And thank you, Prime Minister. We’re delighted to have you here.
（中略）
You know, about 80 percent of Americans believe that the U.S.-Japan relationship is the most important foundational relationship in Asia, and I think that’s emblematic of this – how important we give this relationship, and why it’s so important that Prime Minister Abe would be here so early in his tenure and in President Obama’s second term. So we’re delighted to have him here. Would you please welcome him with your applause, Prime Minister Abe. Thank you.
（スピーチ直後のお礼） MR. HAMRE: First, Prime Minister, I don’t know of an American president who could give a speech to the Japanese public in Japanese. (Scattered laughter.) So I want to say thank you. This is a real honor that you gave us with your speech in English. Thank you. (Applause.)
この講演会で司会を務めていた知日家のMichael J. Green氏がフォーリンポリシーに書いていました。自分の主催した講演について悪く言う訳もなく、今回の訪米が実りあるものであることを述べています。
Shinzo Abe: Japan is back Posted By Michael J. Green Monday, February 25, 2013 - 11:30 AM In an energetic speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Friday, he declared to the audience that "Japan is back."
Abe's return seemed initially to confuse the Obama administration. His values-based, balance of power approach resonated much more with George W. Bush's second inaugural than the minimalist and risk-averse foreign policy vision President Obama has put forth for his second term. The administration also appeared spooked by Abe's intemperate campaign comments about the need to revisit Japan's previous official apologies to China and Korea. Numerous stories emerged before his visit to Washington citing unnamed senior U.S. officials promising to publicly shame Japan if the Abe administration went too far with historical revisionism. The pattern looked eerily reminiscent of what happened between the Obama administration and Bibi Netanyahu in the first term. For its part, the Japanese side was equally uncertain about seeming wobbliness in U.S. declaratory policy on the Senkaku issue since Hillary Clinton's departure and by John Kerry's promise in his confirmation hearings to "grow the rebalance towards Beijing" (it did not help that Chinese official editorials praised Kerry for having the wisdom not to "meddle" in Far Eastern affairs the way his predecessor had).
In the end, though, the Abe-Obama summit on Feb. 22 was a success for both sides. Since coming to office, Abe has moderated his stance on history issues and was firm but gracious towards China and especially South Korea in his CSIS speech. In the Oval Office press availability, President Obama reaffirmed that Japan is the "central foundation" of U.S. security policy toward the Pacific (though he sounded like he was searching for a teleprompter when he said it).
Q1: What is on the agenda? Q2: Why is this meeting significant? Q3: What are the expectations going forward?
もう少し冷静な分析はブルッキングズ研究所のブログなどで書かれていました。
Richard C. Bush III | February 22, 2013 5:51pm Shinzo Abe's Visit to Washington For the short term, U.S. expectations from the summit were probably low. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party faces elections for half the seats of the Upper House of the Diet (legislature) in July. Winning a majority in that election and so ending divided government in Tokyo is very important for Mr. Abe. He was not about to make bold initiatives in Washington that could hurt him back home (on TPP, for example), but the United States has an interest in a Japanese government that can work to meet the many challenges that faces it.
Over the longer term, the Obama administration expects more than a good set of meetings. It hopes that Japan will bear its part of the burden of preserving peace, stability, and prosperity in East Asia and the world, and that there would be close coordination and cooperation on how to manage China’s rise on issues large and small. In that regard, Abe pledged new action on the security relationship but also a renewed commitment to a positive and constructive global and regional role. Abe’s simple message was that, after several years of uncertainty about Tokyo’s future trajectory, Japan “was back,” and contrary to the doubts of some Americans, it would remain a first-tier country.
もう少し読み応えのある日本外交の分析は、日本のテレビでもおなじみのGerald L. Curtis教授がフォーリンアフェアーズの最新号に寄稿していました。安部首相はタカ派だけれども現実的に行動するのではないかと、冷静に分析しているようですね。まだ読んでいないので、これから読んでみようと思います。
Japan's Cautious Hawks Why Tokyo Is Unlikely to Pursue an Aggressive Foreign Policy By Gerald L. Curtis March/April 2013 The election of the hawkish Shinzo Abe as Japan's prime minister has the world worrying that Tokyo is about to part with its pacifist strategy of the last 70 years. But Japan's new leaders are pragmatic, and so long as the United States does not waver in its commitment to the country's defense, they are unlikely chart a new course. GERALD L. CURTIS is Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
Words checked = [3498] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]
THE STONE February 24, 2013, 7:30 pm312 Comments The Riddle of the Human Species By EDWARD O. WILSON To begin, biologists have found that the biological origin of advanced social behavior in humans was similar to that occurring elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Using comparative studies of thousands of animal species, from insects to mammals, they have concluded that the most complex societies have arisen through eusociality — roughly, “true” social condition. The members of a eusocial group cooperatively rear the young across multiple generations. They also divide labor through the surrender by some members of at least some of their personal reproduction in a way that increases the “reproductive success” (lifetime reproduction) of other members.
Eusociality stands out as an oddity in a couple of ways. One is its extreme rarity. Out of hundreds of thousands of evolving lines of animals on the land during the past 400 million years, the condition, so far as we can determine, has arisen only about two dozen times. This is likely to be an underestimate, due to sampling error. Nevertheless, we can be certain that the number of originations was very small.
Biologist E.O. Wilson on Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe Apr 2, 2012 1:15 AM EDT Religion. Sports. War. Biologist E.O. Wilson says our drive to join a group—and to fight for it—is what makes us human. The drive to join is deeply ingrained, a result of a complicated evolution that has led our species to a condition that biologists call eusociality. “Eu-,” of course, is a prefix meaning pleasant or good: euphony is something that sounds wonderful; eugenics is the attempt to improve the gene pool. And the eusocial group contains multiple generations whose members perform altruistic acts, sometimes against their own personal interests, to benefit their group. Eusociality is an outgrowth of a new way of understanding evolution, which blends traditionally popular individual selection (based on individuals competing against each other) with group selection (based on competition among groups). Individual selection tends to favor selfish behavior. Group selection favors altruistic behavior and is responsible for the origin of the most advanced level of social behavior, that attained by ants, bees, termites—and humans. Among eusocial insects, the impulse to support the group at the expense of the individual is largely instinctual. But to play the game the human way required a complicated mix of closely calibrated altruism, cooperation, competition, domination, reciprocity, defection, and deceit. Humans had to feel empathy for others, to measure the emotions of friend and enemy alike, to judge the intentions of all of them, and to plan a strategy for personal social interactions.
As a result, the human brain became simultaneously highly intelligent and intensely social. It had to build mental scenarios of personal relationships rapidly, both short term and long term. Its memories had to travel far into the past to summon old scenarios and far into the future to imagine the consequences of every relationship. Ruling on the alternative plans of action were the amygdala and other emotion-controlling centers of the brain and autonomic nervous system. Thus was born the human condition, selfish at one time, selfless at another, and the two impulses often conflicted.
NYTに戻りますが、人間が社会や集団で生きることになると、individual selection とgroup selectionの二つが重要になってくるそうです。ざっくりまとめると、集団の中で優れた個人となることと、集団内で助け合って優れた集団になるということで、利己的であると同時に利他的であるという、一見すると相反するものが同時に求められるというのです。 The second, more recently argued theory (full disclosure: I am one of the modern version’s authors), the grandmaster is multilevel selection. This formulation recognizes two levels at which natural selection operates: individual selection based on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between groups. Multilevel selection is gaining in favor among evolutionary biologists because of a recent mathematical proof that kin selection can arise only under special conditions that demonstrably do not exist, and the better fit of multilevel selection to all of the two dozen known animal cases of eusocial evolution.
The roles of both individual and group selection are indelibly stamped (to borrow a phrase from Charles Darwin) upon our social behavior. As expected, we are intensely interested in the minutiae of behavior of those around us. Gossip is a prevailing subject of conversation, everywhere from hunter-gatherer campsites to royal courts. The mind is a kaleidoscopically shifting map of others, each of whom is drawn emotionally in shades of trust, love, hatred, suspicion, admiration, envy and sociability. We are compulsively driven to create and belong to groups, variously nested, overlapping or separate, and large or small. Almost all groups compete with those of similar kind in some manner or other. We tend to think of our own as superior, and we find our identity within them.
Not to sound rude, but it is stupid. Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.’ ”
どっかで聞き覚えがあるなと思って思い出したのが、アクターズスタジオでのメリルストリープ。彼女はまさにActing is a stupid way to make a livingと語っていたんです。ジェニファー・ローレンスのこの発言は、メリルを意識したものなのかもしれませんね。前のブログでも紹介させていただいたことのある部分ですが、素晴らしい内容ですのでこのブログでも取り上げさせていただきます。
（1分10秒あたりから） I was thinking about applying to law school and thinking that acting is a stupid way to make a living, that it doesn’t do any good in the world. But I think it does, I think it does, there’s a great worth in it. And the worth is in listening to people who maybe don’t even exist or who are voices in your past and through you come through the work and you give them to other people. I think that giving voice to characters who have no other voice is the great worth of what we do. So much of acting is vanity. I mean, this [appearing on the show] feels so great to come here and sit here and have everybody clap. But the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I’ve said something for a soul, when I’ve presented a soul.
Gorgeous and talented 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence just won big — and fell hard — at the 2013 Oscars. We're not sure if it was the train on her gorgeous pink Dior Couture gown, the fact that she hadn't eaten anything before the long awards show, or just plain nerves, but homegirl went down while trying to get up to the stage to accept her Academy Award for Best Actress on February 24, 2013. She even made a joke about it before getting into her thank yous, "You guys are just standing up 'cause you feel bad that I fell, and that's really embarrassing, but thank you!" Aww, we love her!
February 2013 Girl, Uninterruptible Oscar nomination and indie cred (Winter’s Bone), franchise chops (X-Men), box-office record (The Hunger Games), romantic-comedy sparkle (Silver Linings Playbook): Jennifer Lawrence has, at 22, hit the bull’s-eye every time. Parts of her new life, like getting a $10 million paycheck but having no real home, or being on the other side of the fan-star equation, are pretty freaky, Lawrence tells Jim Windolf, but she’s not complaining, condescending, or playing it safe. By Jim Windolf
Kristen StewartやTaylor Swiftと同世代であることを考えると、彼女の存在感はすごいですね。彼女の気さくな態度をunguarded and uncensoredとかa celebrity who sounded more like a human being than a well-coached witnessと表現しています。
Jennifer Lawrence, the 22-year-old star of Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games, has no problem laying it all out there, unlike others in her cohort. Kristen Stewart, also 22, seems perpetually annoyed with media attention. Taylor Swift, 23, is happy to make the rounds, but she plays it safe, which is fitting for someone who does ads for Walgreens and Target. Miley Cyrus, 20, occupies a middle ground: she has worked to project a squeaky-clean image, only to find herself occasionally undone by leaked stories of wild nights.
Lawrence favors another line of attack altogether. She is completely unguarded and uncensored. On a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she happily told the host about the time she went to “a dive bar with senior-citizen strippers” while she was in Atlanta filming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which is slated for a November 2013 release. “I got a lap dance from Little Bo Peep, who was very bossy and kept getting on top of me,” she said. “I didn’t really want to reciprocate, but then she goes, ‘I’m gonna bend over and don’t you touch me.’ And I was like, ‘Don’t you worry about it!’ And then she inserted her breast into my mouth!” Awkward laughter rumbled through the audience, which had witnessed something rare—a celebrity who sounded more like a human being than a well-coached witness.
“The vibe on that set was exactly what makes me love indies. The only reason we were all out there in the freezing cold was because we loved the project. I love that feeling, that desperate, almost pathetic feeling of ‘Are we actually going to be able to pull this off?’ ”
“That’s different. I call my mom sobbing all the time. But it’s dealing with the repercussions of having no more anonymity. You lose privacy. And then, the third book, I teared up when I read it, because she finally realizes she can do good with it. Children are in the hospital, and just going and meeting them can lift their spirits and give them hope. As much as this is a curse, as stupid as it sounds, to make as much money as I am by doing something that I love, it’s hard not to regret it when you’re being chased by 15 strangers. All you want to do is rent a house, but then you have to rent one with a gate, and you’re like, What have I done? This is so stupid.”
“Is it worse in California?”
“So much worse. It’s a hornets’ nest. But then we have these children from Make-a-Wish coming to the set. On the first movie I met this girl, and I can’t tell this story without crying.” She hesitated. She was tearing up. “She had scars all over her body—burns—and she was telling me she was always so ashamed of the way she looked and she was so embarrassed, and now she has the nickname the Girl on Fire, but she loves it and wears it proudly. It gives her confidence. That was the first time in my entire career that I actually felt like there was a point in this. Not to sound rude, but it is stupid. Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.’ ”
この部分は難病と闘うこどもたちを支援する団体Make-a-Wishの子供たちについて語っている文脈で出ているわけです。難病のこどもたちを直接救うことはできない非力さを感じていたからIt’s stupid.と彼女は語ったのではないでしょうか。そんな馬鹿らしいことだけど、彼女が主演したハンガーゲームのおかげで、傷のある女の子がGirl on Fireという映画でのあだ名を誇らしげに感じてくれた、そこに映画で役を演じる意義を見いだせたと言っているんですよね。22才でそのように感じれるなんて、このままいくと彼女はオスカーをいくつも取るようになることでしょう。
In terms of elegance, it was some way off the inaugural dance that saw Michelle Obama ushered in as First Lady in 2009. But in terms of variety, it had it all. The Dougie, the Hip Bump, the Sprinkler and even the "Just the Hands Part of Single Ladies" all got a look-in as Obama cut a rug alongside a dragged-up Jimmy Fallon on Friday night.
最初の動画にあったように、Dream team, Michelle-Hillary 16と女性だけの大統領選キャンペーンについてWhat do you think?と聞いていました。こういう番組では、機転のきいた答えをしたいところですが、ミシェル夫人はうまく切り返していました。
"You know, I have my eye actually on another job. And I hear that when Jay Leno retires that The Tonight Show position is going to open and I'm thinking about putting my hat in the ring," she said.
Guns at Stephen King's Head: A Satire [Kindle版] Sammy Sneeze
America has been disarmed.
Thanks in large part to Stephen King's popular essays on gun control, the country has finally banned semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. And everyone is finally safe.
But safety can be as fleeting as liberty, as King learns when the monsters, in an ironic twist, come after him.
Guns at Stephen King's Head is a piece of satire. One that, like the essays it satirizes, is intended to stir debate on an issue that affects everyone.
Stephen King Don't Know Shit [Kindle版] Rick Carufel
This essay is in response to Mr. King's recent publication, Guns.
こういう反応がすぐに起きることからしても、銃規制に対するアレルギーが強い人たちがいることが伺えますね。まあ、内容はキングの意見をこきおろしていること、そして、キングの足元にも及ばない表現力だろうということは想像できましたが、興味本位でGuns at Stephen King's Head: A Satireの方を読んでみました。
始まりは以下のような引用句から始まります。よっぽど自由の侵害に敏感なんでしょうね。 “If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom.” W. Somerset Maugham
Enfant: Vous basez-vous sur des fais plus ou moins reels pour, euh, quand vous ecrivez vos livres? M.T.: Ah! Ca c’est la question de la verite, de ce qu’il y a de vrai dans un roman. Alors je vais vous dire une chose, moi je cherche beaucoup de documentation. Par example si je dois avoir un tireur a l’arc dans un de mes romans, ben, je cherche comment sont fabriques les arcs et comment on tire a l’arc. Mais il faut surtout eviter ensuite quand on ecrit que ca fasse une espece de paquet comme dans un dictionnaire, n’est-ce pas? Autrement dit, tout ce qu’on prend au reel, il faut l’avaler, le digerer, et que ca soit bien ensuite assimile dans le roman et que ca ne sente pas le catalogue, le dictionnaire, etc… C’est un probleme d’assimilation, c’est tres difficile; c’est le gros probleme du roman, c’est d’arriver a tout assimiler.
（1分10秒あたりから） We have decided to cut back on all of the electronics we use. What?!! You need to get outside more. You can build a fort. Do what in the fort? You need to develop your imagination. You don’t need technology. No technology. Charlotte, put that down.
この映画もスクリプトが簡単に手に入るので、先の場面のやり取りを確認することができました。build a fort / build a tree house / have a lemonade stand / kick the can / look fore dead bodies(!!)など、子供のときによくやったことに触れています。
PETE: You’re on your computer too much as it is. You need to get outside more. DEBBIE: Yeah. You can build things. You can build a fort. SADIE: What? DEBBIE: Yeah, build a fort. Play with your friends. SADIE: Make a fort?! Outside? And do what in the fort? DEBBIE: When I was a kid we used to build tree houses and play with sticks. SADIE: Nobody plays with sticks. PETE: You and Charlotte can have a lemonade stand. DEBBIE: Play Kick the Can. PETE: Look for dead bodies. DEBBIE: It’s fun.
fortというのを「秘密基地」というのは意訳しすぎかもしれませんが。。。lemonade standとか、こういう文化的事象は辞書では触れられていないことも多いので、TOEICの限界だけではなく、辞書の限界なんかにも自覚的でありたいです。Did you build a fort when you were a kid?と思い出話を語っているブログがありました。
Years before my father built my playhouse, even a few years before he built the bomb shelter in our basement, I was constructing my own forts out of sheets. They sprouted in our living room, my bedroom, and in the neighbor’s basement.
I would drag chairs and small tables close enough to heavy furniture that sheets could be draped from one object to another to create walls and a ceiling.
Youtubeの動画もいろいろあるので、今でも子供たちの遊びであることが分かります。
部屋での砦作りは、人気のある子供の遊びかもしれません。I know that was one of my favorite things to do.と語っているブログもありました。
Keeping your child busy during the Summer FAMILY & PARENTINGJUNE 10, 2010BY: MARCI PSALMONDS Build a fort in your living room -- How many times as a kid did you build a fort with all the blankets in the house? I know that was one of my favorite things to do. Make it your kids favorite too. Just make sure you have plenty of chairs and phone books to make it last more than 10 minutes.
(オックスフォード) the Alamo the fort (now in San Antonio, Texas) where an army of about 4000 Mexican soldiers killed all 187 Texans defending it in 1836. Davy Crockett and James Bowie died there. ‘Remember the Alamo!’ became a famous cry for Texas independence from Mexico. John Wayne directed and acted in a film about the battle, The Alamo (1960).
The rote tasks of any information-intensive job can be automated. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic.
And it has already begun.
このように書きましたが、医者や弁護士がロボットに変わるのはずっと先だろうと思っていましたが、何とAtlanticの3月号でThe Robot Will See You Now（もうこれからはロボットが診察してくれるようになります）という特集記事でした。And it has already begun.（もうすでに始まっているのだ）とあった通り、現在進行形のできごとのようです。医者や弁護士は今は社会的地位が高い職業ですが、このようなIT技術が発達すれば、オペレーターが大半をしめるようになる可能性もありそうです。
The Robot Will See You Now IBM's Watson—the same machine that beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy—is now churning through case histories at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, learning to make diagnoses and treatment recommendations. This is one in a series of developments suggesting that technology may be about to disrupt health care in the same way it has disrupted so many other industries. Are doctors necessary? Just how far might the automation of medicine go? By JONATHAN COHN
Words checked = [6768] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]
'She was just a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.' HILARY MANTEL, British author, describing Kate Middleton during a recent speech that sparked impassioned debate about the royals
Youtubeでもいろいろな反応も含めてたくさん動画があがっています。
キャメロン首相もコメントをしていますね。批判するのは当然の反応でしょうが。。。
I think she writes great books, but I think what she's said about Kate Middleton is completely misguided and completely wrong. What I've seen of Princess Kate at public events, at the Olympics and elsewhere is this is someone who's bright, who's engaging, who's a fantastic ambassador for Britain. We should be proud of that, rather than make these rather misguided remarks.
批判をする前に相手の良い点を挙げて敬意を示すというセオリーをキャメロン首相もI think she writes great books, but I think what she's said about Kate Middleton is completely misguided and completely wrong.と守っていますね。こういうところは意識してみにつけていきたいです。
London Review of Booksの講演会でRoyal Bodiesという題目でスピーチしたようで、全然別のトピックでぽろっと言ってしまったgaffe（失言）という類ではなく、確信犯的に批判をしているようでした。ただし、批判のほこ先はKateさん一人というのではなく、皇室のあり方、普通の国民の皇室への接し方というのに対して吟味をしようという真っ当な問いだったと思います。
Vol. 35 No. 4 • 21 February 2013 pages 3-7 | 5794 words Royal Bodies Hilary Mantel
Last summer at the festival in Hay-on-Wye, I was asked to name a famous person and choose a book to give them. I hate the leaden repetitiveness of these little quizzes: who would be the guests at your ideal dinner party, what book has changed your life, which fictional character do you most resemble? I had to come up with an answer, however, so I chose Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and I chose to give her a book published in 2006, by the cultural historian Caroline Weber; it’s called Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. It’s not that I think we’re heading for a revolution. It’s rather that I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung. In those days she was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth.
Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture. Diana was capable of transforming herself from galumphing schoolgirl to ice queen, from wraith to Amazon. Kate seems capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation. When her pregnancy became public she had been visiting her old school, and had picked up a hockey stick and run a few paces for the camera. BBC News devoted a discussion to whether a pregnant woman could safely put on a turn of speed while wearing high heels. It is sad to think that intelligent people could devote themselves to this topic with earnest furrowings of the brow, but that’s what discourse about royals comes to: a compulsion to comment, a discourse empty of content, mouthed rather than spoken. And in the same way one is compelled to look at them: to ask what they are made of, and is their substance the same as ours.
Kateさんを批判したいだけではなく皇室そのものを批判したいのだということは以下のところを読んでいただければ分かります。パンダと比較しながらexpensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environmentと容赦ないですね。
I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment. But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.
ヒラリーマンテルのスピーチを聞くと以下の歴史家の方の意見が少なくとも真っ当なものだと思えました。Animal in the zooのように、マネキンや人形のようにKateさんを扱っているのは我々ではないか、メディアではないかと、女王や国王の配偶者(consort)の悲劇を扱っているのです。マンテルさんはKateさんを責めているのではないと歴史家の人も言っていますね。
下記が最後のパラグラフなんですが、Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty.とメディアやわれわれの熱狂の危うさも指摘していて、むしろKateさんに同情的なんですよね。
Is monarchy a suitable institution for a grown-up nation? I don’t know. I have described how my own sympathies were activated and my simple ideas altered. The debate is not high on our agenda. We are happy to allow monarchy to be an entertainment, in the same way that we license strip joints and lap-dancing clubs. Adulation can swing to persecution, within hours, within the same press report: this is what happened to Prince Harry recently. You can understand that anybody treated this way can be destabilised, and that Harry doesn’t know which he is, a person or a prince. Diana was spared, at least, the prospect of growing old under the flashbulbs, a crime for which the media would have made her suffer. It may be that the whole phenomenon of monarchy is irrational, but that doesn’t mean that when we look at it we should behave like spectators at Bedlam. Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal. We don’t cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago. History makes fools of us, makes puppets of us, often enough. But it doesn’t have to repeat itself. In the current case, much lies within our control. I’m not asking for censorship. I’m not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes. Get your pink frilly frocks out, zhuzh up your platinum locks. We are all Barbara Cartland now. The pen is in our hands. A happy ending is ours to write.
Apple’s shares were hit after investors worried that a hiring freeze at Foxconn’s China plants is related to slowing iPhone 5 sales. Foxconn suspended recruitment at its factories in Zhengzhou and Shenzhen and it also reportedly postponed the construction of a new factory. Though this may point to slackening demand for the iPhone 5, it could also mean that Foxconn is preparing to adjust its production line in order to install automated robots as a way to get around increasing wages and concerns that poor working conditions played a role in a series of worker suicides. The Taiwanese electronics manufacturer refuted reports that the hiring freeze is related to iPhone 5 production and said that it was related to a glut of employees returning after the Lunar New Year break.
Foxconn halts recruitment as they look to automated robots Updated: 2013-02-20 15:26 By Mao Jing (Chinadaily.com.cn) Insiders said what’s behind the recruitment suspension is the overall consideration of the manufacturing prospects.
“Our goal is to see the first batch of fully automated factory in 5-10 years and to eliminate simple and repetitive processes through automation in the next few years,” said Guo Taiming, CEO of Foxconn.
“The robot project has been finalized, and the total investment is about 3 billion yuan,” said one staff member at the industrial park in Yiyang county, Luoyang, Henan province. Besides Luoyang, the robot project has begun in Jincheng, Shanxi province.
Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?
It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that—in slow motion—is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived—appliance repairman, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer—each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.
It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time. This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.
ロボット化というのは幅広い領域に広がっていて、組立作業だけではなく人工知能によってホワイトカラーの仕事にまで及んでいっているそうです。医者や記者、プログラマーなどの仕事もロボットによる自動化の射程に入っているのですね。 The rote tasks of any information-intensive job can be automated. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic.
And it has already begun.
しかも、以下のような製品はとても安くなっていて簡単に手に入るようになっているというのです。
新たな機械が、自動化プロセスが、さらに新たな仕事を生むようになるということを丁寧に説明してくれているのが以下の部分です。 Before we invented automobiles, air-conditioning, flatscreen video displays, and animated cartoons, no one living in ancient Rome wished they could watch cartoons while riding to Athens in climate-controlled comfort. Two hundred years ago not a single citizen of Shanghai would have told you that they would buy a tiny slab that allowed them to talk to faraway friends before they would buy indoor plumbing. Crafty AIs embedded in first-person-shooter games have given millions of teenage boys the urge, the need, to become professional game designers—a dream that no boy in Victorian times ever had. In a very real way our inventions assign us our jobs. Each successful bit of automation generates new occupations—occupations we would not have fantasized about without the prompting of the automation.
To reiterate, the bulk of new tasks created by automation are tasks only other automation can handle. Now that we have search engines like Google, we set the servant upon a thousand new errands. Google, can you tell me where my phone is? Google, can you match the people suffering depression with the doctors selling pills? Google, can you predict when the next viral epidemic will erupt? Technology is indiscriminate this way, piling up possibilities and options for both humans and machines.
It is a safe bet that the highest-earning professions in the year 2050 will depend on automations and machines that have not been invented yet. That is, we can’t see these jobs from here, because we can’t yet see the machines and technologies that will make them possible. Robots create jobs that we did not even know we wanted done.
”The rosy tint on Mr. Kelly’s glasses must be blinding – literally.” Rand Wrobel of Alameda, California, added: “The 900-pound gorilla of a fly in Kelly’s positivist ointment is the technological marginalization of labor. Automation will indeed create new jobs, but they will be fewer. The whole point of technology, from a business management perspective, is to maximize profits by minimizing labor costs.”
The 900-pound gorilla of a fly in Kelly’s positivist ointmentの部分はa/the fly in the ointmentというイディオムにひっかけての説明ですね。
（オックスフォード） a/the fly in the ointment a person or thing that spoils a situation or an occasion that is fine in all other ways
さて、Kellyさんの結論を紹介してしまいますが、彼の立場はrace against the machinesではなく、race with the machinesを提唱しているので、単純なバラ色の未来を描いているのではないと自分には思えます。ロボットによる自動化は避けられない動向なのだから、ロボットに任せることができるものは任せて、人間にしかできないことをしていこうと主張しています。
This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines. Most of what you do will not be possible without them. And there will be a blurry line between what you do and what they do. You might no longer think of it as a job, at least at first, because anything that seems like drudgery will be done by robots.
We need to let robots take over. They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were.
Let the robots take the jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters.
まあ、問題はロボット化といより「人間にしかできないこと」をやろうとしない怠惰な人間なのかもしれません。ベタですがrace against the machinesなんて表現をみるとこのバンドが思い浮かんでしまいますね。
イソップが登場したのは韓国の太陽政策があるからですよね。ウィキペディアでもThe term sunshine policy originates in The North Wind and the Sun, one of Aesop's fables. と触れられていました。
Sunshine Policy The Sunshine Policy was the foreign policy of South Korea towards North Korea from 1998 until Lee Myung-bak's election to presidency in 2008. Since its articulation by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the policy resulted in greater political contact between the two States and some historic moments in Inter-Korean relations; the two Korean summit meetings in Pyongyang (June 2000 and October 2007) which broke ground, several high-profile business ventures, and brief meetings of family members separated by the Korean War.
In 2000, Kim Dae Jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a result of the Sunshine Policy.
（中略）
The term sunshine policy originates in The North Wind and the Sun, one of Aesop's fables.
（オックスフォード） cry wolf to call for help when you do not need it, with the result that when you do need it people do not believe you
（マクミラン） cry wolf to keep saying that there is a problem when there is not, with the result that people do not believe you when there really is a problem Workers in the industry have cried wolf once too often.
（研究社ルミナス） cry wolf [動] うそを言って人を騒がす. 【由来】 「おおかみだ!」と叫んで村人をだました「イソップ物語」 (Aesop's Fables) の少年の話から.
（ウィキペディア） The Boy Who Cried Wolf The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", meaning to give a false alarm
Banyan The north wind and the scorpion As North Korea blusters, the world flounders in its hunt for a response Feb 23rd 2013 |From the print edition Indeed, last year North Korea adopted a new preamble to its constitution, describing itself as a “nuclear state and a militarily powerful state that is indomitable”. And since its successful test of a space rocket—little different from one that might carry a nuclear warhead—in December and its latest explosion, it has made clear that it hopes to force America, its arch-enemy, to negotiate not over its nuclear arsenal but rather its demands for recognition and security guarantees. No American president, especially one roasted on YouTube, could accept talks on those terms. Yet no American government, nor that of any other country, is ready to accept North Korea as the “nuclear state” it claims to be. So for the experts on North Korea, nuclear safety and proliferation gathered at a conference in Seoul this week, the outlook was gloomy.
Chung Mong-joon, founder of the Asan Institute, the think-tank that organised the conference, resorted to Aesop’s fables to sum up the predicament. The Greek fabulist provided the name for the “sunshine” policy which previous South Korean governments adopted towards the North. The sun and the north wind compete to make a traveller remove his cloak. The cold wind only makes him wrap up tighter; sunshine does the trick. But it failed with North Korea, which kept working on its nuclear programme even as it pretended to be discussing its termination at six-party talks with America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. A more relevant Aesop fable, Mr Chung suggested, was the one about the frog that agrees to help carry a scorpion across a river, taken in by its promise not to sting, since that would entail the scorpion’s own drowning as well as the frog’s. But the scorpion stings anyway. That, after all, is its nature.
例えこのような挿話を知らなくても、たいていの記事では説明してくれているものです。「さそりとかえるに」ついても最後の方で以下のように説明してくれています。 the one about the frog that agrees to help carry a scorpion across a river, taken in by its promise not to sting, since that would entail the scorpion’s own drowning as well as the frog’s. But the scorpion stings anyway. That, after all, is its nature.
The only consolation is that experts concur that North Korea’s sting is not as dangerous as it pretends. The North is at an early stage in developing both a bomb and a delivery system. It will be a long time before it directly threatens America. A more immediate danger, however, is that it sells its know-how or material to terrorists unbothered about hitting targets with any precision, or to another state, such as Iran, which was reported to have a senior representative monitoring the latest North Korean test. 中国が北朝鮮に対して強硬化するかもしれないことに触れていましたが、中国が一番恐れているのは北朝鮮の体制崩壊で混乱することのようですから、今のようなかたちを許容する方向になるのではないかとみるようです。
Even Mr Shi, however, thinks it neither likely nor desirable that China would cut the Kim dynasty loose. Continued influence allows China at least to try to moderate North Korean behaviour. It still sees North Korea as an important buffer between China and the American troops in South Korea. China fears chaos and regime collapse more than it does a nuclear-armed North Korea.
The North Wind and the Sunに関しても動画がいっぱいありました。インドとアメリカでは少し英語も違う感じがしますね。どちらもゆっくりな英語です。
The Scorpion and the Frogに関しては子供向けの動画ではほとんどありませんでした。まあ、両方とも溺れ死ぬという救いのない終わり方ですから、子供向けではないと判断されたのかもしれません。映画のワンシーンにあるように北朝鮮が"I can't help it, it's in my nature."と開き直ってしまわないことを願うだけでしょうか。。。
JODY Two types, Fergus. The scorpion and the frog. Ever heard of them?
Fergus says nothing.
JODY Scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can't swim. Goes to the frog, who can, and asks for a ride. Frog says, "If I give you a ride on my back, you'll go and sting me." Scorpion replies, "It would not be in my interest to sting you since as I'll be on your back we both would drown." Frog thinks about this logic for a while and accepts the deal. Takes the scorpion on his back. Braves the waters. Halfway over feels a burning spear in his side and realizes the scorpion has stung him after all. And as they both sink beneath the waves the frog cries out, "Why did you sting me, Mr. Scorpion, for now we both will drown?" Scorpion replies, "I can't help it, it's in my nature."
Jody chuckles under his hood.
FERGUS So what's that supposed to mean? JODY Means what it says. The scorpion does what is in his nature. Take off the hood, man. FERGUS Why? JODY 'Cause you're kind. It's in your nature.
Fergus walks toward him and pulls off the hood. Jody smiles up at him.
JODY See? I was right about you. FERGUS Don't be so sure. JODY Jody's always right.
SOCIETY & CULTURE - Posted by Yasmin Anwar-UC Berkeley on Monday, February 18, 2013 17:35 - 0 Comments (1 VOTES, AVERAGE: 5.00 OUT OF 5) ‘Time machine’ brings back ancestor languages Not only will the computer program speed up linguists' ability to rebuild the world’s proto-languages on a large scale, boosting our understanding of ancient civilizations based on their vocabularies, but it can also provide clues to how languages might change years from now. (Credit: "moai" via Shutterstock) UC BERKELEY (US) — A new computer program can rapidly reconstruct “proto-languages”—the linguistic ancestors from which all modern languages have evolved.
Not only will the computer program speed up linguists' ability to rebuild the world’s proto-languages on a large scale, boosting our understanding of ancient civilizations based on their vocabularies, but it can also provide clues to how languages might change years from now.
“What excites me about this system is that it takes so many of the great ideas that linguists have had about historical reconstruction, and it automates them at a new scale: more data, more words, more languages, but less time,” says Dan Klein, an associate professor of computer science at University of California, Berkeley and co-author of the paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research team’s computational model uses probabilistic reasoning—which explores logic and statistics to predict an outcome—to reconstruct more than 600 Proto-Austronesian languages from an existing database of more than 140,000 words, replicating with 85 percent accuracy what linguists had done manually.
While manual reconstruction is a meticulous process that can take years, this system can perform a large-scale reconstruction in a matter of days or even hours, researchers say.
Not only will this program speed up the ability of linguists to rebuild the world’s proto-languages on a large scale, boosting our understanding of ancient civilizations based on their vocabularies, but it can also provide clues to how languages might change years from now.
“Our statistical model can be used to answer scientific questions about languages over time, not only to make inferences about the past, but also to extrapolate how language might change in the future,” says Tom Griffiths, associate professor of psychology, director of the Computational Cognitive Science Lab, and another co-author of the paper.
僕みたいな素人はやっぱりコンピューターは凄いとなってしまいがちなんですが、この計算モデルの基礎となっているのはthe established linguistic theoryとあります。長年の研究の積み重ねがあったからこの計算モデルができたわけです。コンピューターはその手順を自動化する、スピードアップすることが特徴のようです。 The computational model is based on the established linguistic theory that words evolve along the branches of a family tree—much like a genealogical tree—reflecting linguistic relationships that evolve over time, with the roots and nodes representing proto-languages and the leaves representing modern languages.
Using an algorithm known as the Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler, the program sorted through sets of cognates—words in different languages that share a common sound, history and origin—to calculate the odds of which set is derived from which proto-language. At each step, it stored a hypothesized reconstruction for each cognate and each ancestral language.
(マクミラン) 2 used for saying that someone or something is considered to be very good or very important She has often said how highly she values your friendship. highly regarded/respected/valued: a highly valued member of the staff He is very highly regarded by his fellow musicians.
（ロングマン） 5 if you think highly of someone or something, you think they are very good and you admire them think/speak highly of somebody I've always thought very highly of Michael. a highly regarded author
highly regarded performing arts groupsという名詞句の表現について、さすがにこのままだとヒット数は少ないのですが、performing artsを入れ替え可能な形にするために*をつけてグーグル検索してみました。単数形と複数形で調べたのですが、複数形で調べて最初にヒットした用例がone of the Middle East's most highly-regarded medical groupsと出題されたのとほぼ同じ形でした。ヒット数もこれなら大丈夫だろという数がでていますね。
one of the Middle East's most highly-regarded medical groups one of the most highly regarded care home groups. highly regarded research groups Internationally highly regarded research groups highly regarded and effective groups
Highly Regarded Restaurant Group highly regarded national Group, highly regarded medical group highly regarded manpower recruitment group highly regarded FMCG manufacturing group
検索結果にあったInternationally highly regarded research groupsのInternationally highlyのように副詞が連続するものもTOEICで高得点者向けに出題してみたくなりますね。
highly regarded performing arts groupsに関してはregarded performingと分詞が続く感じで嫌らしい感じにしあげていますが、impressedという意味的に近い感じるのする誤答の選択肢も入れてきているといころも嫌らしいですね。
ただ、impressedに関しては、名詞を修飾する以下のように使われることが多いので、中村澄子先生風に言えば、英語にたくさん触れている人にとってはおかしいと感じ取れたのではないでしょうか。 be impressed by … be impressed with …
（ロングマン） steamy 1 full of steam or covered in steam: steamy windows 2 sexually exciting and slightly shocking: a steamy love scene 3 a steamy day or steamy weather feels hot and humid
（トラクリ） When you open up an audible audiobook, it opens up your imagination. Enjoy a steamy romance while you’re ironing a sheet. Discover a historic battle while battling a ball at the gym. A fantasy novel might just bring a little magit to your miniban.
Open one of 100,000 titles for free. Our great listen guarantee means if you’re not happy, you can exchange any title for another. No question is asked.
Visit audible.com/trial right now to download a book for free.
（答えのようなもの） Enjoy a steamy romance while you’re ironing a sheet. Discover a historic battle while battling a ball at the gym. A fantasy novel might just bring a little magic to your miniban.
最初はFifty Shades of Greyがあって、最後はThe Hunger Gamesがあったので想像しやすかったのですが、真ん中の例はどのベストセラーを指しているのでしょうか。分かりませんでした（汗）
オーディオブックを聞く主要なシチュエーションを家事とフィットネス、通勤の3つに分けて紹介していますね。Steamyな小説とsteam式のアイロンをかけて、剣での戦いとスカッシュなどのボールゲームをかけて、より状況が浮かびやすくしているのでしょうね。冒頭もWhen you open up an audible audiobook, it opens up your imagination.とopen upという動詞を連続して手使って、世界が広がることを連想できるようにしています。
THE CIVIL WAR On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we present this commemorative issue featuring Atlantic stories by Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and many more. Purchase on newsstands through March 5, or order your print or digital copy here.
下記のオックスフォードの説明でintelligent writing on culture and modern life とあるようにAtlanticは硬派で難しい感じの雑誌ですね。愛国歌として知られているリパブリック賛歌の初出はAtlanticだったそうです。
（オックスフォードOALD） The Atlantic Monthly a US magazine known for its intelligent writing on culture and modern life. It is published in Boston, where it began in 1857 as a ‘journal of literature, politics, science, and the arts’. It became famous for its reports on the American Civil War. Ernest Hemingway sold his first short story to the magazine in 1927.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic an American religious song, written by Julia Ward Howe for the North during the Civil War. It is sung to the tune of John Brown’s Body. It was also used during marches for civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s.
Perfecting Our Union The president of the United States reflects on what Abraham Lincoln means to him, and to America. By BARACK OBAMA
INCOLN IS A PRESIDENT I TURN TO OFTEN. From time to time, I’ll walk over to the Lincoln Bedroom and reread the handwritten Gettysburg Address encased in glass, or reflect on the Emancipation Proclamation, which hangs in the Oval Office, or pull a volume of his writings from the library in search of lessons to draw.
Always thoughtful, always eloquent, Lincoln’s writings speak to me as they speak to so many Americans, reminding us what is best about ourselves and the Union he saved: that though we may have our differences, we are one people, and we are one nation, united by a common creed.
What makes Alexander Gardner’s print so resonant, then, is its humanity. Here is Lincoln as he was, his eyes weary, his forehead wrinkled, wearing an expression, wrote a poet, of “deep latent sadness.” But Gardner also captures something else. An eyebrow, arched. An upturned lip. The faintest hint of a smile. There is, in the photographer’s print, something of his subject’s spirit.
There is, in the photographer’s print, something of his subject’s spirit.なんてしゃれたことを書いています。この記事のキャプションの説明にあったのですが、この写真はいわくつきのもので、写真版にひびが入ってしまったので、一枚しか現像しなかった貴重なもののようです。このひびは、暗殺の予兆で、ちょうど銃弾の軌道とそっくりだといううわさが立っているそうです。
Abraham Lincoln, photographed by Alexander Gardner on February 5, 1865, in Washington, D.C. While Gardner was processing the image, the photographic plate broke. Before destroying the negative, he produced only one print, which today resides in the National Portrait Gallery. Historians have assigned various symbolic meanings to the crack in the image—for instance, that it foretold Lincoln’s assassination weeks later (the bullet traced a similar line through his head), or that it represented his preservation of a divided nation.
前文（Preamble） [編集] ”We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”（われら合衆国の人民は、より完全な連邦を形成し、正義を樹立し、国内の平穏を保障し、共同の防衛に備え、一般の福祉を増進し、われらとわれらの子孫のうえに自由のもたらす恵沢を確保する目的をもって、アメリカ合衆国のために、この憲法を制定する。）
Upper Midwestern (9) Originally settled by people from New England and New York State who brought those dialects, this area was also influenced by Southerners coming up the Mississippi River as well as the speech patterns of the German and Scandinavian immigrants and the Canadian English dialects from over the border. It's sometimes referred to as a "Midwestern twang." They call jelly doughnuts bismarks. Minnewegian (Minnesota / Norwegian), a subdialect spoken in the northernmost part of this region was spoofed in the movies Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
this area was also influenced by Southerners coming up the Mississippi Riverとあった部分は別に逃亡南部奴隷だけを指しているのではないのでしょうが、何分自分の米国歴史の知識が乏しすぎるので以下のような図が浮かんできました。
Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going. （絶対に止まってはだめ。進み続けなさい。 自由を味わいたかったら、進み続けなさい。 最悪の時にでも、普通のアメリカ人たちは進み続けるという信念を見出してきたのです）
In this prepared emotionally charged speech at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton put her full support behind Barack Obama. "No way. No how. No McCain," she said. The speech as delivered may vary from the following text.
（4分30秒あたりから） These women and men looked into their daughters' eyes, imagined a fairer and freer world, and found the strength to fight. To rally and picket. To endure ridicule and harassment. To brave violence and jail.
And after so many decades – 88 years ago on this very day – the 19th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote would be forever enshrined in our Constitution.
My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for President.
This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.
How do we give this country back to them?
By following the example of a brave New Yorker , a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad.
And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice.
If you hear the dogs, keep going.
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.
If they're shouting after you, keep going.
Don't ever stop. Keep going.
If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.
Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going.
I've seen it in you. I've seen it in our teachers and firefighters, nurses and police officers, small business owners and union workers, the men and women of our military – you always keep going.
We are Americans. We're not big on quitting.
But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president.
We don't have a moment to lose or a vote to spare.
Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance.
I want you to think about your children and grandchildren come election day. And think about the choices your parents and grandparents made that had such a big impact on your life and on the life of our nation.
We've got to ensure that the choice we make in this election honors the sacrifices of all who came before us, and will fill the lives of our children with possibility and hope.
That is our duty, to build that bright future, and to teach our children that in America there is no chasm too deep, no barrier too great – and no ceiling too high – for all who work hard, never back down, always keep going, have faith in God, in our country, and in each other.
Thank you so much. God bless America and Godspeed to you all.
(ウィキクオートから) I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desparation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility. As quoted in The Artist Observed: 28 interviews with contemporary artists (1991) by John Gruen, p. 3 （強く感じていることは、芸術家は自分の情熱と絶望を糧にしていかなければいけないということです。これらは芸術家を変えていきます。良い方向に、より良い方向に、もしくは悪い方向かもしれませんが、芸術家を変えることには違いありません。絶望や不幸の感情は芸術家にとっては満足感よりもずっと有益です。絶望や不幸の感情は、芸術家の感受性全体を広げてくれるからです）
まだあと2週間ほどありますが、フランシス・ベーコン展が開かれるようですね。Knowledge is powerじゃない方のベーコンです（笑）
'One continuous accident mounting on top of another' An edited extract from Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester in 1963, 1966 and 1979 David Sylvester The Guardian, Thursday 13 September 2007 00.04 BST But you do, in fact, paint other pictures which are connected with religion, because, apart from the crucifixion, which is a theme you've painted and returned to for 30 years, there are the Popes. Do you know why you constantly paint pictures which touch on religion? In the Popes it doesn't come from anything to do with religion; it comes from an obsession with Velasquez's Pope Innocent X.
But why was it you chose the Pope? Because I think it is one of the greatest portraits that have ever been.
But aren't there other equally great portraits by Velasquez which you might have become obsessed by? Are you sure there's nothing special for you in the fact of its being a Pope? I think it's the magnificent colour of it.
But you've also done two or three paintings of a modern Pope, Pius XII, based on photographs, as if the interest in the Velasquez had become transferred on to the Pope himself as a sort of heroic figure. It is true, of course; the Pope is unique. He's put in a unique position by being the Pope, and therefore, like in certain great tragedies, he's as though raised on to a dais on which the grandeur of this image can be displayed to the world.
Francis Bacon interviewed by David Sylvester (23 March 1963)
とりあえず、１）の疑問に関しては、以下の部分を見ると明らかになります。each represented 11% to 15% of net salesのようにざっくりとした形でしてか発表していなかったということなんですね。ですから、今まではだいたいの額しか分からなかったけど、今年からは正確な額を発表するようになったということですね。
02/01/12 10-K Annual report which provides a comprehensive overview of the company for the past year Net sales earned from retail sales of consumer products (including from sellers) and subscriptions outside of the U.S. represented between 45% to 49% of net sales for 2011, 2010, and 2009. Net sales earned in Germany, Japan, and United Kingdom each represented 11% to 15% of net sales in 2011 and 2010, and 13% to 17% of net sales in 2009.
Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Sales up 22% to $21.27 Billion Operating income up 56% year-over-year – above high end of guidance SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 29, 2013-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2012.
(中略)
Full Year 2012 Net sales increased 27% to $61.09 billion, compared with $48.08 billion in 2011. Excluding the $854 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, net sales grew 29% compared with 2011.
Operating income decreased 22% to $676 million, compared with $862 million in 2011. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year on operating income was $14 million.
Net loss was $39 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, compared with net income of $631 million, or $1.37 per diluted share, in 2011.
アメリカ各地には日本と同じように方言があることは、先日の記事で取り上げたボストンの方言からも容易に想像できるとは思いますが、この方言の地図と米国住民の移動の分布を示したフロンティアラインってかぶっているのですよね。それもそのはずDialect Map of American Englishの説明によれば、migrateした流れが方言にも影響を及ぼしたとあります。
いくつか個人的に興味深かった例をご紹介します。
New England Many of the Northern dialects can trace their roots to this dialect which was spread westward by the New England settlers as they migrated west. It carries a high prestige due to Boston's early economic and cultural importance and the presence of Harvard University. A famous speaker is Katherine Hepburn. They sometimes call doughnuts cymbals, simballs, and boil cakes.
North Midland (11) Created as the people in Pennsylvania migrated westward and influenced by Scotch-Irish, German, and English Quaker settlers. They call doughnuts belly sinkers, doorknobs, dunkers, and fatcakes.
Upper Midwestern (9) Originally settled by people from New England and New York State who brought those dialects, this area was also influenced by Southerners coming up the Mississippi River as well as the speech patterns of the German and Scandinavian immigrants and the Canadian English dialects from over the border. It's sometimes referred to as a "Midwestern twang." They call jelly doughnuts bismarks. Minnewegian (Minnesota / Norwegian), a subdialect spoken in the northernmost part of this region was spoofed in the movies Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying the countries -- our colonial era, which this room certainly exudes, is really absolutely still key in understanding the nation we became and the nation we are?
COLIN WOODARD: It is, because the real Founding Fathers weren't the generation that came together in 1775, and 1789 to put together our federation. They were the early colonial clusters' Founding Fathers in the early 1600s or the late 1600s or the early 1700s. And each of these colonial clusters and each of these founders, these founding groups, came -- founding very different countries, in essence.
どうしても僕たちは漂白したかたちで文化や言語を学びがちです。人がそこに生きていた痕跡を感じることができる言葉がある。せっかく貴重な時間を割いて外国語を学んでいるのですから、そんな言葉を学ぶ余裕も持ち合わせていきたいです。study the world through the lens of the languageという姿勢があってもいいじゃないですか。
『イノベーションのジレンマ』がピンとこない人のために、このインタビューの冒頭で簡単に説明してくれています。 Sixteen years ago a book by Clayton Christensen changed business thinking forever. The Innovator’s Dilemma looked at industries ranging from disk drives to steel to mechanical excavators and exposed a surprising phenomenon: When big companies fail, it’s often not because they do something wrong but because they do everything right. Successful businesses, Christensen explained, are trained to focus on what he calls sustaining innovations—innovations at the profitable, high end of the market, making things incrementally bigger, more powerful, and more efficient. The problem is that this leaves companies vulnerable to the disruptive innovations that emerge in the murky, low-margin bottom of the market. And this is where the true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries. Think: the PC, the MP3, the transistor radio.
Jeff Howe: You’ve founded a company. You’ve worked at the White House. And now you teach at the most prestigious business school in the world. Are you disappointed that you didn’t achieve your original ambition—to be a journalist?
Clay Christensen: The head of the journalism department at BYU told me to study a real field instead. I wound up in economics, thinking that would eventually take me to The Wall Street Journal.
Howe: Is this around the time that Intel CEO Andy Grove heard about your work? Christensen: This was before the book came out. I’d published two papers on my theory, and a woman who worked in the bowels of Intel’s engineering department went to Andy and said, “You have to read this article. It says Intel is going to get killed.” I hadn’t even mentioned Intel, but the implications were there. So Grove called me up, and he’s a very gruff man: “I don’t have time to read academic drivel from people like you, but I have a meeting in two weeks. I’d like you to come out and tell me why Intel’s going to get killed.” It was a chance of a lifetime. I showed up there. He said, “Look, I’ll give you 10 minutes. Explain what you think of Intel.” I said, “I don’t know anything about Intel. I don’t have an opinion. But I have a theory, and I think my theory has an opinion on Intel.” I described the idea of disruptive innovations, and he said, “Before we discuss Intel, I need to know how this worked its way through another industry, to visualize it.” So I described how mini mills killed off the big steel companies. They started by making rebar cheaper than the big mills did, and the big mills were happy to be rid of such a low-margin, low-quality product. The mini mills then slowly worked their way upward until there was nothing left to disrupt.
Howe: If you had to list some industries right now that are either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon, what would they be?
Christensen: Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly. Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question. And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse. But I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble.
Christensen: The availability of online learning. It will take root in its simplest applications, then just get better and better. You know, Harvard Business School doesn’t teach accounting anymore, because there’s a guy out of BYU whose online accounting course is so good. He is extraordinary, and our accounting faculty, on average, is average.
彼にとって大切なことはビジネスという視点から世界を理解するということであるそうですが、それを可能にしたのは常に問い続ける姿勢だそうです。別のところでSo how should one measure one’s life?と聞かれていたのですが、その時の答えもBy asking yourself a series of questions. How can I be successful and happy in my career? と自分に問いかけていくことの重要性でした。 Howe: In the end do you feel you study business, or do you study the world through the lens of business?
Christensen: Oh, the latter, I’d say. What’s unique about the Mormon Church is that it encourages inquiry. I really do think my research and religion are all on the same page. I never could have come up with the notion of disruptive innovations, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom, if I hadn’t been raised to always be asking questions.
Executives and investors might finance three types of innovations with their capital. I’ll call the first type “empowering” innovations. These transform complicated and costly products available to a few into simpler, cheaper products available to the many.
The second type are “sustaining” innovations.
The third type are “efficiency” innovations.
アメリカ経済が今調子が悪いのは効率性ばかりを追求した“efficiency” innovationsが重視されすぎているからだと彼は主張します。そして“empowering” innovationsを支える政治経済体制の構築を訴えかけるのですが、彼の提案はきれいに3つにまた分けてくれています。 Is there a solution? It’s complicated, but I offer three ideas to seed a productive discussion:
CHANGE THE METRICS CHANGE CAPITAL-GAINS TAX RATES CHANGE THE POLITICS
War is a popular subject for shoot-’em-up video games. Beyond the 3-D animated battlefields, however, lie several engaging multimedia history apps that take interactivity to a different level — and explain why people have answered that call of duty over the years.
Released to commemorate the sesquicentennial of America’s bloodiest conflict, THE CIVIL WAR TODAY app for iPad ($2.99) continues its mission of presenting daily “real time” updates from the war — exactly 150 years to the day after those events occurred. Produced by the History Channel, the app’s first calendar entry appeared on April 12, 2011, to report the shots fired on Fort Sumter — and the start of the war more than a century and a half ago on April 12, 1861.
the “real time” updates do a great job of retelling the Civil War in quick installmentsとあるようにこのアプリの特徴は2月18日の今日は何が起こったのか分かることです。南北戦争を同時代の視点で感じとれるようになっているのです。
While the “real time” updates do a great job of retelling the Civil War in quick installments, and past events can be reviewed, there’s no peeking ahead to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Apart from a list of biographies and an armaments glossary, there’s no search function either. If you come in late to the war and want to read up on Antietam, you’d have to know that particular battle took place on Sept. 17, 1862, in order to flick back through the app’s calendar for the coverage.
ちなみに今日のトピックはGeneral Beauregard issues call to arms to citizens of Charleston and Savannahというもので、自分にとってはピンとこないものでした（汗）記事の分量は多いわけでもないので、少しずつ南北戦争になじめるようになっています。
個人的に気に入っているは当時の新聞が読めることです。Re-Opening of the City Bakery and Confectionery!なんてTOEIC的な広告も見れます。150年前の新聞なのに結構分かるのは感慨深いものがあります。
DISUNION One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
Experience the American Civil War For a limited time, get the app for 50% off. Download the App Now »
About the App One hundred fifty years after the American Civil War began, HISTORY™ presents The Civil War Today, a groundbreaking app created exclusively for the iPad. Explore every phase and aspect of America’s bloodiest conflict with daily updates that unveil the events in real time over the course of four years. The Civil War Today leverages the iPad multi-touch interface, enabling subscribers to delve into thousands of original documents, photos, maps, diary entries, quotes and newspaper broadsheets like never before.
App Features
This Day in Civil War History Get daily Civil War updates from April 12, 2011 through April 26, 2015.
Quote of the Day Read compelling quotations from the men and women who lived through the war.
In the Headlines Explore every page of historic newspapers from each day of the conflict.
Day in the Life Through their letters and personal diaries, follow the lives of 15 people who experienced the Civil War firsthand.
Photo Gallery Check out a stunning collection of original images from the period in high-resolution.
By the Numbers Get a unique spin on the war through surprising facts and figures.
Battle Maps Follow in the soldiers’ footsteps with historic battlefield maps.
Casualty Counter Measure the true cost of the war through the lives that were lost.
North South Quiz Test your Civil War knowledge with the daily North vs. South quiz.
Game Center Integration Earn Civil War era appropriate achievements for your engagement with the application.
“Hamilton wasn’t married then and didn’t have any kids,” Jerry whispered, inflaming my pet peeve about filmmakers who make up facts in stories about real people to add “drama,” rather than just writing the real facts better. It makes viewers think that realism is just another style in art, so that no movie, no matter how realistic it looks, is believable.
The affable and talented Ben Affleck has admitted that his film’s climax, with Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers jumping in a jeep, chasing the plane down the runway and shooting at it, was fabricated for excitement.
Hollywood always wants it both ways, of course, but this Oscar season is rife with contenders who bank on the authenticity of their films until it’s challenged, and then fall back on the “Hey, it’s just a movie” defense.
“Zero Dark Thirty,” “based on firsthand accounts of actual events,” has been faulted for leaving the impression that torture was instrumental in the capture of Osama. It celebrates Jessica Chastain’s loner character, “Maya,” when it could have more accurately and theatrically highlighted “The Sisterhood,” a team of female C.I.A. analysts who were part of the long effort.
このコラムは日本語のニュースでもあった映画『リンカーン』の事実の扱いの問題です。
And then there’s the kerfuffle over “Lincoln,” which had three historical advisers but still managed to make some historical bloopers. Joe Courtney, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, recently wrote to Steven Spielberg to complain that “Lincoln” falsely showed two of Connecticut’s House members voting “Nay” against the 13th Amendment for the abolition of slavery.
Tony Kushner, the acclaimed playwright who wrote the screenplay, told me he was outraged that Courtney was getting his 15 minutes by complaining about a 15-second bit of film on a project that Kushner worked on for seven years.
The writer completely rejects the idea that he has defamed Connecticut, or the real lawmakers who voted “Aye.” He said that in historical movies, as opposed to history books where you go for “a blow-by-blow account,” it is completely acceptable to “manipulate a small detail in the service of a greater historical truth. History doesn’t always organize itself according to the rules of drama. It’s ridiculous. It’s like saying that Lincoln didn’t have green socks, he had blue socks.”
映画に協力したリンカーンの歴史家もシーンの流れを優先させたからではないかと理解を示しています。 Harold Holzer, a Lincoln historian attached to the film, pointed out the mistake to Spielberg and Kushner, telling them that voting in those days was done alphabetically by lawmaker. But Kushner said the director left the scene unchanged because it gave the audience “place holders,” and it was “a rhythmic device” that was easier to follow than “a sea of names.” They gave fake names to the Connecticut legislators, who were, he said, “not significant players.”
Yet The Wall Street Journal noted, “The actual Connecticut representatives at the time braved political attacks and personal hardships to support the 13th Amendment.” One, the New London Republican Augustus Brandegee, was a respected abolitionist and a friend of Lincoln. The other, the New Haven Democrat James English, considered slavery “a monstrous injustice” and left his ill wife to vote. When he said “Aye,” applause began and the tide turned.
I’m a princess-and-the-pea on this issue, but I think Spielberg should refilm the scene or dub in “Illinois” for “Connecticut” before he sends out his DVDs and leaves students everywhere thinking the Nutmeg State is nutty.
OP-ED COLUMNIST Why ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Works By ROGER COHEN Published: February 11, 2013 182 Comments The movie woven around Maya is a feature, not a documentary. It says that it is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events.” It does not say that it is a factual, unembroidered recounting of those events. Boal did a lot of reporting at the C.I.A. and at the White House. Good scriptwriters, like good novelists, research their subjects. But as one good novelist, Amos Oz, has observed, “Facts at times become the dire enemies of truth.”
Or, put another way, while reality is the raw material journalism attempts to render with accuracy and fairness, it is the raw material that art must transform. Picasso’s “Guernica” is not a factual account of what happened in a Basque village in northern Spain on April 26, 1937. It does say something eternal and essential about war.
Now I am not suggesting that “Zero Dark Thirty” is art on the level of Guernica. But it is an important movie and much of the heated debate around it is misplaced. The chief accusation is that it is inaccurate in that it exaggerates the part played by torture in securing information that led to the killing of Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.
The charge of inaccuracy is a poor thing measured against the potency of truth.と語り、批判を批判して積極的に評価しようとしています。
The charge of inaccuracy is a poor thing measured against the potency of truth. “Zero Dark Thirty” is a truthful artistic creation, one reason it has provoked debate. Boal told The New York Times he did not want “to play fast and loose with history” — a statement held against him by several of the movie’s critics, most eloquently Steve Coll in The New York Review of Books. My sense, however, is that Boal has honored those words.
映画『リンカーン』の件も『ゼロダークサーティー』の件もThe charge of inaccuracy is a poor thing measured against the potency of truth.という意見の方に賛成です。このコラムで触れているSteve CollのNew York Review of Booksでのレビューも読みましたが、事実の積み重ねの方を大事にしていて映画がどんなことを訴えかけようとしているかという視点が欠けているような気がしました。映画『ゼロダークサーティー』を見て感じたのは、そんな細かい事実ではなく、もっと今自分たちはどんな時代に、どんな世界に住んでいるのだろうか、というもっと大きな視点・流れでした。まあ、僕自身がコネティカット州の住民だったら意見が変わってしまうのかもしれませんが。。。
Thu Feb 14 2013 In mentioning the economic recovery, President Obama mentioned that Apple will begin building Mac computers in America while Apple CEO Tim Cook was in attendance. CBS News
先週オバマ大統領はState of the Union（一般教書演説）を行いましたが、一般の人の関心を引いて、参加させようという戦略は選挙後もしっかりと行われていました。以下がホワイトハウスからのメールの抜粋です。SOTUという略語はState of the Union（一般教書演説）を指しています。there's someone he especially wanted to speak to: You.なんて書き方はYouメッセージとされるオバマの特徴がよくあらわれていますよね。
Hello --
On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address. He was talking to Congress, but there's someone he especially wanted to speak to:
You.
That’s why we created Citizen Response -- a new tool that lets you to tell President Obama and his advisers what you thought of his plan to create jobs and build a strong middle class.
In fact, Americans from all over the country have given us their responses. They sat down with President Obama's speech, read through it line by line, and highlighted the ideas that resonated with them. People like you are telling us why the President's proposals matter to their communities.
It's an incredible thing. And you should be part of it.
All you need to do is visit WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU to get started.
Twitter: A live megaphone for lobbying groups, companies By Cecilia Kang, Published: February 14 On television, President Obama spent a commercial-free hour delivering his State of the Union speech. But on Twitter, the nation’s biggest lobbying groups and corporations found a megaphone to place ad money and promote their views.
The National Rifle Association, AARP, Chevron and Microsoft bid for top placement of 140-character tweets aimed at spreading their policy and political positions and marketing their products.
AARPという団体の説明は以下の通りです。略称ではなくAARPが正式名称になったようですね。
（ネットで見つけた情報） AARPは、周知のように50歳以上の3,800万人の会. 員を持つ全米、そして世界最大の高齢者によるNPOである。 以前は「American Association of Retired Persons（全米退職者協. 会）」であったが、1999年から「AARP」が正式名称となった
The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Affairs won the most coveted keyword — “#SOTU” — so that people who searched for that term saw the gun group’s “sponsored tweet” pop up at the top of their personal feeds: “@BarackObama gives good speeches, but how would his gun policies actually work? Don’t be fooled by #SOTU.”
AARP nabbed “#POTUS” and “#JOBS,” and users looking for those words saw their message to protect retirees: “Keep your word, Mr. President. Protect seniors. No Social Security cuts!”
Four of 10 television viewers say they use smartphones and tablets as they watch shows, according to Nielsen. They were commenting on Beyonce’s fashion during the Super Bowl halftime performance and teasing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for breaking from his Republican response speech for a swig of water.
Advertisers who are able to capture those split-second flows of crowd sentiment can win massive exposure, as Nabisco did with its clever photo of Oreo cookies being dunked in the dark during the Super Bowl temporary blackout earlier this month.
To ensure speedy response, AARP had two people monitoring the speech. One staff member fired off regular tweets in response to the president’s remarks, and the other was bidding by the minute for better placement based on what the president was saying.
About halfway into the speech, AARP bid for the words “Desiline Victor,” the 102-year-old voter mentioned by name to illustrate problems in early voting during the presidential election.
In addition to the promoted spots on user pages, Twitter gave AARP data on how many people were responding to its tweets.
グーグルで政治広告販売部長を務めていたGreenberger氏を迎え入れての戦略だったようですが、彼の言葉が現状を物語っている感じです。 “Twitter has become a fact of marketing life. If you aren’t real time, you are missing marketing opportunities,” Greenberger said.
（ウィキペディア） Boston accent This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012) The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. Sociolinguists frequently group these regions with Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut to form the Eastern New England dialect region.
The best-known features of the Boston accent are non-rhoticity and broad A. It is most prominent in often traditionally Irish or Italian Boston neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns.
ケネディ一家やベンアフレックなどがボストンアクセントの有名人として番組内であげられていましたが、番組でも映画TEDの主人公Mark Wahlbergについて触れていて、彼は地元出身だっからアクセントは簡単だったでしょうと言っていました。NPRの番組でもJohnny, played pleasantly by Mark Wahlberg in his own Boston accentと語っていました。
MONDELLO: Well, there's that. Now, at this point, I'm still not really buying in. Johnny, played pleasantly by Mark Wahlberg in his own Boston accent, seems real enough. Mila Kunis is appealing as Lori and tolerant beyond words. And I guess Ted is animated persuasively, but despite this movie's boozing, profanity and bong hits, it's all striking me as a little precious.
またTodayの番組内でボストン特有の表現がいろいろ紹介されていたのですが、その中にwell dressed manに対しての褒め言葉Don't you look dapperが取り上げられていました。映画TEDの予告編でlook dapperって聞き慣れない表現だなと思っていたので、ようやく納得できました。ボストン的な表現だったのですね。
[Ted is dressed in a suit and tie as John helps him find a job] Ted: I look stupid. John Bennett: No, you don't. You look dapper. Ted: I don't! I look like Snuggles accountant. John Bennett: Come on. It's not that bad. Ted: John, I look like something you give to your kid when you tell 'em Grandma died. John Bennett: Look, I know it sucks, okay? But you gotta make some money so you can pay for an apartment. Ted: I don't wanna work at a grocery store. John Bennett: Yeah, but you have no skills. Ted: I told you, I can totally be a lawyer. John Bennett: You get the job, we're celebratin' after. Okay? [John takes out bag of weeds and shows it to Ted] Ted: Uh-huh. And if I don't get the job? Are we still gonna smoke that pot? John Bennett: Probably, yes. Ted: Uh-huh. Okay. Alright. Good talk, coach. Thanks. John Bennett: Alright, buddy. Go get 'em. [Ted goes to cross the street, as he's walking he turns to John] Ted: And don't worry. I'll do my very best to get this job that I so crave.
[at his job interview] Frank: So you think you got what it takes? Ted: I'll tell you what I got. Your wife's pussy on my breath. Frank: Nobody's ever talked to me like that before. Ted: That's cause everyone's mouth is usually full of your wife's box. Frank: You're hired. Ted: Shit.
下品な表現ばかりあるところで恐縮です（汗）
以下のような解説にある通り、一般的にはdapperはold-fashionedとあります。
(a man) is dapper "Dapper" is an old-fashioned word that means "handsome". You call a man "dapper" when he's clean, dressed nicely in a formal way, has a neat and stylish haircut, and so on.
Aside from calling a person "dapper", you can also say that a man's clothes are "dapper":
He wore a dapper white suit.
The word "dapper" sometimes appears in the combination "a dapper gentleman".
メトロポリスのサイトで今知ったのですが、すごい作家たちが参加するTokyo International Literary Festivalが3月2日（土）、3日（日）に開かれるようです。なんでもっと早く教えてくれなかったのと、誰かに八つ当たりしたい気分です（苦笑）TOEICか生英語か、なんてそんな話はどうでもいいですよ。英語か日本語か、なんてのもどうでもいいですよ。アメリカの作家、日本の作家が出会って話す、そんなイベントを生で体験しましょう！！
Book hounds get a rare up-close-and-personal look at world-famous authors at the first-ever Tokyo International Literary Festival. Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz (pictured), Granta editor John Freeman and Kyoto resident Pico Iyer are among a number of literary giants who will be in attendance. They will be giving readings and participating in group roundtables at venues ranging from the University of Tokyo and Waseda University to more intimate locations like SuperDeluxe and Rainy Day Bookstore & Café.
残念ながら申し込みを締め切っているイベントもたくさんあるのですが、浦沢直樹とジュノ・ディアスの対談なんて、とりあえず申し込んでおいて損はないと思います。ノーベル賞作家のJ.M. クッツェーの朗読、ニコール・クラウスの参加するディスカッション、TOKYO YEAR ZEROのデイヴィッド・ピースと古川日出男の参加するディスカッションなどすごいイベントがまだ申し込めるようです。
3月3日（日） TOKYOLITFEST X 早稲田大学 PART 0 NEW!! 11:00 – 12:00 「モンスターたちのいるところ」 会場：早稲田大学 浦沢直樹、ジュノ・ディアス
Movies Happy 20th Birthday, Groundhog Day By Wook KimFeb. 12, 2013Add a Comment Twenty years ago this day, Groundhog Day opened in 1,640 screens across the country. Initial reviews were mixed—TIME’s Richard Corliss, one of the critics praised the movie, said it was “a comic time warp anyone should be happy to get stuck in.” Posterity has been kind to the film, now widely regarded as a modern classic: in 2006, it was added to the United States National Film Registry—the official announcement calling it “a clever comedy with a philosophical edge to boot.”
（中略）
So, Happy Birthday, Groundhog Day! May Ned Ryerson continue to haunt Phil’s steps forever!
December 27, 2006 Librarian of Congress Adds Home Movie, Silent Films and Hollywood Classics to Film Preservation List Groundhog Day (1993) “Groundhog Day” is a clever comedy with a philosophical edge to boot. Bill Murray plays a smug, arrogant weatherman caught in a personal time-warp, who is continuously forced to relive the Punxsutawney, Penn., annual Groundhog Day event. At first Murray revels at being able to act dishonorably without consequences, but he soon grows weary of having to wake up every morning to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” and facing the same day again and again. The deft, innovative script creatively keeps rearranging and building on each day’s events, while at the same time moving Murray’s character into self-growth, redemption and personal rebirth. Andie MacDowell’s character tells him, “I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It’s inspiring in a way.” Murray’s character knowingly replies, “My years are not advancing as fast as you might think.”
Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered? Ralph: That about sums it up for me. （ひとつの場所から抜け出せなくて、毎日がまったく同じで、自分がやることのどれもが大したことじゃない場合、どうします） （それって俺のことをいっているみたいだ）
（2分12秒あたりから） Phil: When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. （チェーホフが長い冬に出会ったとき、荒涼として暗い冬で、希望が奪われたように感じました。そうだとしても冬は生命の循環の一つにすぎないはずです。Punxsutawneyの住民に囲まれて、人々の心の温かさに触れながらここに立っていると、長くてもきらめく冬以上に素晴らしい運命があるとは思えないのです）
Phil: I think people place too much emphasis on their careers. I wish we could all live in the mountains at high altitude. That's where I see myself in five years. How about you? Rita: Oh, I agree. I just like to go with the flow. See where it leads me. Phil: Well, it's led you here. Rita: Mm hmm. Of course it's about a million miles from where I started out in college. Phil: Oh yeah. You weren't in broadcasting or journalism, anything like that? Rita: Uh unh. Believe it or not, I studied 19th-century French poetry. Phil: [laughs] What a waste of time! I mean, for someone else that would be an incredible waste of time. It's so bold of you to choose that. It's incredible; you must have been a very very strong person.
Phil: You like your job? Rita: It's okay. I think it could be really challenging. Of course it's about a million miles from where I started out in college. Phil: You weren't in broadcasting? Rita: At Bryn Mawr? No, uh-uh. "Believe it or not, I studied Nineteenth Century French Poetry. Phil: (laughs good-naturedly) Really? What a waste of time.
Rita: At Bryn Mawr? No, uh-uh. Believe it or not, I studied Nineteenth Century French Poetry. Phil: La fille qui j'aimera / Sera comme bon vin / Qui se bonifiera / Un peut chaque matin. Rita: You speak French. Phil: Oui.
英語版のウィキペディアでは、Groundhog Dayがこの映画の影響でan unpleasant situation that continually repeats, or seems toを指すようになったとありますね。一方で、この映画のすとーりーがa tale of self-improvement which emphasizes the need to look inside oneself and realize that the only satisfaction in life comes from turning outward and concerning oneself with others rather than concentrating solely on one's own wants and desires.として前向きに受け止められていることも紹介しています。
Legacy The phrase "Groundhog Day" has entered common use as a reference to an unpleasant situation that continually repeats, or seems to.
In the military, referring to unpleasant, unchanging, repetitive situations as "Groundhog Day" was widespread very soon after the movie's release in February 1993. A magazine article about the aircraft carrier USS America mentions its use by sailors in September 1993. The film was a favorite among the Rangers deployed for Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia in 1993, because they saw the film as a metaphor of their own situation, waiting long periods between raids and monotonous long days. In February 1994, the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga referred to its deployment in the Adriatic Sea, in support of Bosnia operations, as Groundhog Station. A speech by President Clinton in January 1996 specifically referred to the movie and the use of the phrase by military personnel in Bosnia. Fourteen years after the movie was released, "Groundhog Day" was noted as American military slang for any day of a tour of duty in Iraq.
Member of Parliament Dennis Skinner likened British Prime Minister Tony Blair's treatment following the 2004 Hutton Inquiry to Groundhog Day. "[The affair] was, he said, like Groundhog Day, with the prime minister's critics demanding one inquiry, then another inquiry, then another inquiry." Blair responded approvingly, "I could not have put it better myself. Indeed I did not put it better myself."
Groundhog Day has been considered a tale of self-improvement which emphasizes the need to look inside oneself and realize that the only satisfaction in life comes from turning outward and concerning oneself with others rather than concentrating solely on one's own wants and desires. The phrase also has become a shorthand illustration for the concept of spiritual transcendence. As such, the film has become a favorite of Buddhists because they see its themes of selflessness and rebirth as a reflection of their own spiritual messages. It has also, in the Catholic tradition, been seen as a representation of Purgatory. It has even been dubbed by some religious leaders as the "most spiritual film of our time".
先にも述べましたが、全く説教臭くなく、でも、同じ繰り返しでも、より良くしていこうという気持ちにさせてくれるあったかい映画でお勧めです。 ビルマレーはHyde Park on Hudsonという映画に出たそうです。車いすにのったFDRを描くのはタブーなのかと思ったらそうでもないのですね。残念ながら今のところ日本未公開ですが。。。
This Guy Could Be President That is, if the president were a comedian, acclaimed actor, and beloved personality who's become famous for crashing kickball games, prank-calling his friends' wives, and busting into the karaoke rooms of gobsmacked (and delighted) constituents. And yet now here's Bill Murray playing FDR, bantering through a Hyde Park accent and cigarette holder, batting away murmurs of another Oscar nomination. But has the comic giant just gotten too damn beloved and too damn acclaimed for his own liking? BY BRETT MARTINPHOTOGRAPH BY PEGGY SIROTA 1 2013
何も考えずに風刺画というタイトルに興味を引かれて図書館から借りただけなので「ウィリアム・ホガースって誰よ」という感じだったのですが、Beer Street and Gin Laneの版画を見て、ああこの人かと分かりました。著書の一人である小林章夫先生はNHKの英語講座を担当されてもいた方ですが、当時の背景を丁寧に説明してくれるだけでなく、その人々の気持ちや息遣いも伝えようとしてくれる僕の大好きな先生の一人です。
（ウィキペディア） Beer Street and Gin Lane Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer. At almost the same time and on the same subject, Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers. Issued together with The Four Stages of Cruelty, the prints continued a movement which Hogarth had started in Industry and Idleness, away from depicting the laughable foibles of fashionable society (as he had done with Marriage à-la-mode) and towards a more cutting satire on the problems of poverty and crime.
（ウィキペディア） The Shrimp Girl The Shrimp Girl is a painting by the English artist William Hogarth. It was painted around 1740–45, and is held by the National Gallery, London.[1] The painting, a relatively late work by Hogarth, is one of several in which he experimented with a loose, almost impressionistic style comparable to the work of Fragonard. In its subject matter, it resembles the prints of hawkers and traders popular in Hogarth's day.
The painting depicts a woman selling shellfish on the streets of London, typically a job for the wives and daughters of fishmongers who owned stalls in markets such as Billingsgate. The subject balances a large basket on her head, bearing shrimps and mussels, together with a half-pint pewter pot as a measure. Its size suggests that it was intended as a portrait, rather than a sketch for a larger work.
A Rake’s Progress ‘I, Hogarth,’ by Michael Dean By ANDREA WULF Published: February 1, 2013
Born in 1697, William Hogarth was one of the most influential and fascinating British artists of the 18th century. A painter and satirist, he was known for depicting, as he himself puts it in Michael Dean’s new historical novel, “modern moral subjects.” Enlarge This Image
“I, Hogarth” follows the artist’s life from his impoverished childhood to the fame and fortune of his adult years. Brought up in Spitalfields, an area of East London that was home to a market and a labyrinth of narrow, stinking alleyways, Hogarth knew the underbelly of the metropolis from an early age. His father, Richard, was an unsuccessful scholar who spent his life trying — and failing — to sell the books he had written. Eventually, he landed the family in a debtor’s prison. His son took refuge in drawing and, haunted by his father’s downfall, was determined not to emulate him.
Although Hogarth began his artistic career as an engraver, he hated the repetitive work — and the fact that one wrong line could ruin an entire plate. “When I drew,” Dean’s fictional Hogarth explains, “I wanted to catch the passing moment, quick, quick, quick, not scratch away laboriously like a whore with the clap, easing her itch.” Hogarth’s art was inspired by the world around him, by the excesses and fashions of London life. Many of his paintings tell a story in a series of images: so-called “sequential art,” almost like the scenes of a play. The first and most famous of these was “A Harlot’s Progress,” in which six paintings portray the journey of a fictional country girl, Moll Hackabout, from her arrival in London to her experiences as a rich man’s mistress to her time as a prostitute to her death from venereal disease. The series made Hogarth famous.
Dean weaves Hogarth’s opinions on art into the narrative, as well as an account of his fight for the rights of artists, which resulted in the Engravers’ Copyright Act passed by Parliament in 1735. Dean has come up with a clever device to convey these more serious aspects of Hogarth’s career. Set in taverns, where the artist persuades his friends to support his petition to protect engravers, or in drawing rooms, where he explains his art to Jane during their courtship, Hogarth’s arguments are presented without didacticism, without dry theorizing.
Dean’s prose feels true to the 18th century without being irritatingly “historical.” A maid is described as having fine features that would have been even finer “had they been allowed to sharpen on a duchess,” while the crowd at the opening night of John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera” is “heaving like a bishop’s belly.” Dean paints with words as Hogarth did with his brush.
キンドルで購入したので、シルバーのThe signal and the noiseが読み終わったら早速読んでみようと思います。
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