(Reuters) - Google Inc launched a same-day delivery service in the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday as the world's largest Internet search company works with retailers such as Target Corp to compete more with e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc.
Google has been testing the service, called Google Shopping Express, with employees for a few months. The company opened it up to the public on Thursday morning in a limited launch focused on San Francisco residents and others living south of the city from San Mateo to San Jose.
Shoppers who sign up will get six months of free, same-day delivery of online orders placed with select retailers in the area. Google plans to charge for the service in the future, but it has not decided how much yet.
How it works Find what you need Browse local stores online in one place
Select a delivery window Provide delivery instructions for our couriers
Get it delivered today Live life on your schedule
ロイターの記事ではWalmartとEbayの試みを紹介しています。グーグルのは明らかにEbayのパクリのような気がしますが。。。 By getting into local delivery services, Google is joining an increasingly crowded field.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, is testing a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go in five metro areas.
EBay Inc launched a same-day delivery service in San Francisco and New York last year.
Thanks for your interest in helping us test Google Shopping Express.
The pilot is currently open to a limited number of shoppers in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you'd like to help us test, please complete this form. We'll be adding new testers over time.
Please note: you must be 18 years or older to participate.
この中で以下のようなアンケート項目がありました。今後はスマホを使っていることを前提にサービスができていくのかもしれませんね。 What type of mobile device(s) do you use? Android iOS Windows Blackberry I don't use a smartphone Check all that apply.
Imagery on Google Maps of Fukushima Exclusion Zone Town Namie-machi Posted: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 From time to time we invite guests to post about items or interest and are pleased to have Mister Tamotsu Baba, Mayor of Namie-machi, Fukushima, Japan, join us here. - Ed. 本日、浪江町がGoogle マップのストリートビューでご覧いただけるようになりました。
Namie-machi is a small city in Fukushima Prefecture sitting along the coast of the Pacific. We are blessed with both ocean and mountains, and known as a place where you can experience both the beauty of the sea and the forests. Tragically, however, since the nuclear accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, all of Namie-machi’s 21,000 townspeople have had to flee their homes.
「日本の太平洋に面する」というのはsitting along the coast of the Pacificと訳されていますね。物を主語にした動詞sitの使い方はTOEICテストのパート1で出ててもよさそうですね。
（ロングマン） sit objects/buildings etc [intransitive always + adverb/preposition] to be in a particular position or condition sit on/in etc a little church sitting on a hillside The parliament building sits in a large square. He's got a computer sitting on his desk, but he doesn't use it. 震災から 2 年経過した今でも、浪江町には自由に立ち入ることができません。多くの町民から、ふるさとの状況を見たいという声があります。また、世界的にも原発事故の悲惨な状況を映像で見たいという方がたくさんいらっしゃると思います。
Two years have passed since the disaster, but people still aren’t allowed to enter Namie-machi. Many of the displaced townspeople have asked to see the current state of their city, and there are surely many people around the world who want a better sense of how the nuclear incident affected surrounding communities.
「～に立ち入ることができません」というのはaren’t allowed to enter …となっています。まあ立ち入りを制限されているのですから、少し考えればcanを使うのはおかしいと気づくのですが、字面だけをみてしまうと「できない＝cannot」みたいになりがちです。 Google の協力で、今回ストリートビューで町のありのままの姿を多くの町民の皆さまにお知らせできること、世界に発信できるということをとても、嬉しく思っています。
Working with Google, we were able to drive Street View cars through Namie-machi to capture panoramic images of the abandoned city exactly as it stands today. Starting today, this Street View imagery is available on Google Maps and the Memories for the Future site, so anyone from Namie or around the world can view it.
「～の協力で」はIn cooperation withといった重々しい表現を使いやすいのですが、 Working withでいいんですよね。「ありのままの姿」もいざ表現しようとすると考えてしまいがちですが、as it stands todayのように表現できるのですね。こういうのは英語に触れてなれていきたいです。
This image shows an area located one kilometer inland from the Pacific Ocean. In the distance you can see Ukedo Elementary School. Nearby Ukedo Harbor once proudly boasted 140 fishing boats and 500 buildings, but suffered some of the worst tsunami damage. After being set off-limits, we have not been able to clean up the wreckage on the side of the road, including the many fishing boats that were washed several kilometers inland.
Ever since the March disaster, the rest of the world has been moving forward, and many places in Japan have started recovering. But in Namie-machi time stands still. With the lingering nuclear hazard, we have only been able to do cursory work for two whole years. We would greatly appreciate it if you viewed this Street View imagery to understand the current state of Namie-machi and the tremendous gravity of the situation.
Those of us in the older generation feel that we received this town from our forebearers, and we feel great pain that we cannot pass it down to our children. It has become our generation’s duty to make sure future generations understand the city’s history and culture—maybe even those who will not remember the Fukushima nuclear accident. We want this Street View imagery to become a permanent record of what happened to Namie-machi in the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.
Finally, I want to make a renewed commitment to recovering from the nuclear hazard. It may take many years and many people’s help, but we will never give up taking back our hometown.
「私達は約束します」ではI want to make a renewed commitment to recoveringとされています。TOEICをやっていればcommitmentという単語になじみがでているので、こういうケースにはふさわしい表現であることがピンとくるのではないでしょうか。
今週のBusinessweekはサムスンの現状を李健煕（イ・ゴンヒ, Lee Kun Hee）会長のリーダーシップを中心に紹介しているものでした。サムスンの軍隊的な厳しい組織の様子がよく分かります。常に危機感を持ってビジネスをしている会社に日本の大手家電メーカーではかなわないだろうなと思ってしまいます。
Samsung Electronics is the largest part of Samsung, a conglomerate that accounts for 17 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product. It employs 370,000 people in more than 80 countries, but nowhere can its presence be felt more acutely than in its native country, where it’s so dominant it may as well be a second government.
A Seoul resident may have been born at the Samsung Medical Center and brought home to an apartment complex built by Samsung’s construction division (which also built the Petronas Twin Towers and the Burj Khalifa). Her crib may have come from overseas, which means it could have been aboard a cargo ship built by Samsung Heavy Industries. When she gets older, she’ll probably see an ad for Samsung Life Insurance that was created by Cheil Worldwide, a Samsung-owned ad agency, while wearing clothes made by Bean Pole, a brand of Samsung’s textile division. When relatives come to visit, they can stay at The Shilla hotel or shop at The Shilla Duty Free, which are also owned by Samsung.
有名な“Change everything but your wife and children,”（ 妻と子ども以外はすべて変えること）という会長の言葉は1993年にフランクフルトでなされたもののようです。会長の絶対的な力を感じることができるエピソードです。
By June, he’d made it to Germany and was staying at the Falkenstein Grand Kempinski Hotel in Frankfurt. He summoned all of Samsung’s executives—who numbered in the hundreds—to meet him there. “He did this at the drop of a hat, and they all gathered,” says communications chief Lee. On June 7 the chairman delivered a speech that lasted three days (they adjourned in the evenings). The most famous quote to emerge from the address was, “Change everything but your wife and children,” which has “Ask not what your country can do for you” levels of recognition at Samsung.
The event became known, formally, as the Frankfurt Declaration of 1993, with all the United Nations import the name suggests. The content of the Frankfurt Declaration is called New Management, its principles distilled into a 200-page book that’s distributed to all Samsung employees. A stand-alone glossary was later published to define the terms laid out in the first book. Workers who weren’t fully literate were given a cartoon version. Lee went around the globe, evangelizing his gospel to all corners of the Samsung empire. “He conducted a lot of lectures,” recalls Shin. “It comes to 350 hours. We transcribed those events; it took 8,500 pages.”
興味深いと思ったエピソードを一つ。今ではスマホに4インチ画面は普通に感じられるようになりましたが2010年の時には異論もあったようです。サムスンは企業体力があるので、いろいろなタイプを出して最適のモノを探ることができることが他のメーカーにはできない強みの一つのようです。 In 2010, Samsung introduced the Galaxy S line, exemplifying its second momentous decision: using bigger screens. The Galaxy S’s screen was significantly larger than the original Galaxy and other Android models. “We settled on a 4-inch screen, which people thought was too big,” says DJ Lee. “There was a lot of argument about that.” But the bigger screens proved to be a major selling point; they grew larger still on the Galaxy S II and S III. Now, Samsung smartphones come in sizes ranging from 2.8 inches to 5 inches (to say nothing of the company’s “phablets,” which go up to 5.5). “Nobody had any idea what the right screen size was, so Samsung made all of them and saw which one worked,” says Benedict Evans, a researcher at Enders Analysis.
アプローチが違いますが、サムスンとアップルが垂直統合的なやり方でスマホの分野で2強になっています。サムスンは半導体や画面などの部品を自ら製造し、アップルは部品の設計とOSを押さえています。 Producing a range of similar devices in various sizes to see which sells best is one of those high-cost undertakings most companies shy away from. But Samsung’s ability to produce display, memory, processors, and other high-tech parts gives it a flexibility competitors can’t touch. “There was this orthodoxy 10 years ago that vertical integration was passé,” says Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at Alekstra, a mobile-phone consultancy. “Then it turned out that the only two companies that took it seriously [Samsung and Apple] took over the whole handset industry.”
Apple’s approach is fewer models, each of them exquisitely designed. Samsung’s is try everything, and fast. “When we released the Galaxy S III, our research showed that, for some people in some markets, the handset was too big,” says DJ Lee. “So we were able to create the same phone with a 4-inch screen, and we called it the Galaxy S III mini.” Getting the smaller device into production took about four to six months, says DJ Lee. “We watch the market, and we immediately respond,” he says. The new Galaxy S 4 is coming out only nine months after the GS3. “Samsung has taken differentiation to a new art,” says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner (IT). “If I want something in between an iPad and an iPad mini, I can’t get that from Apple.”
Apple’s vertical integration has one thing Samsung’s doesn’t, though: control over the software. Only Apple smartphones and tablets run iOS, and one of the hallmarks of the iPhone and iPad is how smoothly the software and hardware work together. That’s fostered an industry of app makers, and the company gets a cut of every app sold.
‘Our major businesses can disappear in 10 years.’（サムスンの主要事業は10年後になくなっているかもしれない）というのも 李会長の言葉として有名ですよね。このような危機感が医療、太陽電池、LEDなどの新分野に向かわせているのでしょう。 When the mobile business ceases to be profitable, Samsung will have to force its way into some other industry that requires a lot of upfront capital and expertise in mass-manufacturing. The company announced in late 2011 that it would spend $20 billion by 2020 to develop proficiencies in medical devices, solar panels, LED lighting, biotech, and batteries for electric cars. And if Samsung batteries or MRI machines don’t take over the market, maybe the chairman will set a huge pile of them on fire. “The chairman is saying all the time, ‘This is perpetual crisis,’ ” says mobile marketing chief DJ Lee. “We are in danger. We are in jeopardy.”
先ほどの動画の下りで、“Hey, Watson, I think you’ve been in Afghanistan.”と語っていた部分はシャーロックホームズを読んだことのない人は何のことだか分からないかもしれませんね。
And over time I build up that expertise that will allow me to look at you and in one second say, “Hey, Watson, I think you’ve been in Afghanistan.” And it seems like it’s completely just out of the blue, oh, my God, how did he know that? But then if you go back, you’ll see that this is not intuition in the sense of just “I knew it.” It’s intuition in the sense of expertise, in the sense of judgment that has been honed over years and years of practice. （徐々にこの専門能力が身についていき、あなたを見れば一瞬で「ワトソンさん、あなたはアフガニスタンにいましたね」と言えるようになるのです。全く唐突な事に思えるので、一体どうして、そんなことを知っているのだとなるのですが、後で検証してみると、単なる「そう思っていたよ」という意味の直感ではないことが分かります。この直感は専門技能によるもので、何年もの実践を経て磨かれてきた判断力によるものなのです）
このくだりは第一作『A Study in Scarlet（緋色の研究）』でホームズとワトソンが初めて会った時の下りで、“How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” 「はじめまして。見たところ、あなたはアフガニスタンに行ったことがありますね」
日本語版はコンプリート・シャーロックホームズから。 “Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us. 「ワトソン博士だ。シャーロックホームズ氏だ」スタンフォードは私たちを紹介しながら言った。
“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which [18] I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” 「はじめまして」彼は、常識を越えた握力で私の手を握りしめながら、心を込めてこう言った。「見たところ、あなたはアフガニスタンに行ったことがありますね」
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment. 「いったいどうやって分かったんですか？」私は驚いて尋ねた。
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?” 「お気になさらずに」彼は一人含み笑いをして言った。「今重要なのは、ヘモグロビンに関してです。僕の発見の重要性はもちろんお分かりいただけますよね？」
この本の書き出しは以下のように始まるので、ワトソンがアフガニスタンで軍医として従軍したことは読者は分かるのですが、ホームズは全くの初対面だったのでワトソンは驚いていたのです。 IN THE YEAR 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.
先ほどの動画でHe’s able to attain what he does because he’s become an expert of sorts at observing.（ホームズがあのようなになれたのは観察することにおいて熟達したからでしょう）と語っていましたが、その観察の鋭さを描いている点は以下の部分です。 “But do you mean to say,” I said, “that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?” 「しかし君は本気で言っているのか」私は言った。「自分の部屋を離れることなく、君は他の人間が手におえなかった謎を解決できるのか。相手は自分の目で詳細をくまなく見てきているんだぞ？」
“Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes. You see I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Those rules of deduction laid down in that article which aroused your scorn are invaluable to me in practical work. Observation with me is second nature. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan.” 「もちろん解ける。僕はその方面ではひらめきのようなものがあるのさ。時折、もう少し複雑な事件が持ち込まれることもある。その時は、僕も駆け回って自分の目で状況を確認しなければならない。君は僕が多量に特殊な知識を持っているのを知っているだろう。僕はそれを事件に適用しているが、そのおかげで素晴らしく事が容易になっている。その記事の中に示した推理の手続きを君はあざ笑ったが、僕の実務には計り知れない価値がある。観察は僕にとっては第二の天性だ。君と初めて会った時、僕が君はアフガニスタンから戻ってきたと言ったら、君は驚いたようだった」
“You were told, no doubt.” 「きっとそう聞いていたんだろう」
“Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.’ The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.”
“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.” 「説明されると単純なことだな」私は笑いながら言った。「君を見ているとエドガー・アラン・ポー*のデュパン*を連想するよ。小説以外にあんな人間がいるとは思ってもみなかった」
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmesという本が出ているようです。シャーロック・ホームズのように考えるにはどうしたらいいのかを、科学的な知見を交えながら教えてくれるみたいです。それでもこの著者の方の話を聴くと実践を積んで観察力を磨くしかないとしごく真っ当なことを語ってらっしゃいます。
（トランスクリプトはこちら） Maria Konnikova: It’s important to remember that Holmes wasn’t born Holmes. Holmes was born like you and me but probably with greater potential for certain elements of observation, but he learned over time to think like Sherlock Holmes. At the beginning, he probably thought more like Watson because that’s more of our natural state. He’s able to attain what he does because he’s become an expert of sorts at observing. （ホームズは生まれながらにホームズだったわけではないことを思い起こすとは重要です。ホームズは皆さんや私と同じように生まれたのですが、きっと観察に関する点で大きな潜在能力があったのでしょう。最初の頃は、ホームズもどちらかといえばワトソンのように思考していたでしょう。そちらのほうがずっと私たちの自然な状態に近いですから。ホームズがあのようなになれたのは観察することにおいて熟達したからでしょう）
He’s become an expert at person perception. What I mean by this is he has thousands and thousands of hours of practice, and that practice has been interwoven with feedback. So I look at you and I tell you something about yourself. And you say, “No, that’s actually wrong. That has nothing to do with me at all.” Or you say, “Wow. How did you know that?” So I’m learning which details matter, which details don’t matter, which observations are logical, which ones are false. And over time I build up that expertise that will allow me to look at you and in one second say, “Hey, Watson, I think you’ve been in Afghanistan.” And it seems like it’s completely just out of the blue, oh, my God, how did he know that? But then if you go back, you’ll see that this is not intuition in the sense of just “I knew it.” It’s intuition in the sense of expertise, in the sense of judgment that has been honed over years and years of practice. （ホームズは人物観察に熟達しました。指摘したいことは、ホームズは何千時間も実践を積んでおり、この実践はフィードバックによって強化されていることです。私があなたを見て、あなたについて何か伝えたとします。「違います、そうではありません。私とは全く関係ありません」か、「すごい。どうして知っていたのです」と返答するでしょう。それによって私は、どの細部が重要で、どの細部が重要でないかを学んでいるのです。徐々にこの専門能力が身についていき、あなたを見れば一瞬で「ワトソンさん、あなたはアフガニスタンにいましたね」と言えるようになるのです。全く唐突な事に思えるので、一体どうして、そんなことを知っているのだとなるのですが、後で検証してみると、単なる「そう思っていたよ」という意味の直感ではないことが分かります。この直感は専門技能によるもので、何年もの実践を経て磨かれてきた判断力によるものなのです）
Sherlock Holmes–his limits 1. Knowledge of Literature.–Nil. 2. ” ” Philosophy.–Nil. 3. ” ” Astronomy.–Nil. 4. ” ” Politics.–Feeble. 5. ” ” Botany.–Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6. Knowledge of Geology.–Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has [22] shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. 7. Knowledge of Chemistry.–Profound. 8. ” ” Anatomy.–Accurate, but unsystematic. 9. ” ” Sensational Literature.–Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. 10. Plays the violin well. 11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. 12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
He’s become an expert at person perception. What I mean by this is he has thousands and thousands of hours of practice, and that practice has been interwoven with feedback. （ホームズは人物観察に熟達しました。指摘したいことは、ホームズは何千時間も実践を積んでおり、この実践はフィードバックによって強化されていることです）
UH-OH, THOUGHT TORU SAITO when his house started shaking and things began flying off the shelves. The quake’s first tremor was not that strong and unusually long. He had been watching TV with his grandmother, sitting snugly under a warm kotatsu (heated table), eating mandarin oranges, relaxing and happy that he had finally completed his driving school course that day before.
Toru had graduated from high school on March 1 and was all set to enter Tohoku University in April.
sitting snugly under a warm kotatsuでsnuglyが分からなくてもこたつに入っているので「ぬくぬくした」みたいな意味であることは簡単に推測できそうです。現にそのような意味でした。
（オックスフォード） snug 2 warm, comfortable, and protected, especially from the cold synonym cozy a snug little house I spent the afternoon snug and warm in bed.
snugly adverb I left the children tucked up snugly in bed. The lid should fit snugly.
こたつでeating mandarin orangesとあればmandarin orangesはみかんだろうなと想像できますし、また、he had finally completed his driving school course that day beforeのくだりもトオルさんが高校三年生の春休みであることが分かれば自動車教習所で免許を取ったのだなとわかりますよね。
（ウィキペディア） "Mikan" (みかん Mandarin Orange?) is the thirty-fifth single of J-pop idol group Morning Musume. The song's title was chosen in accordance to the habit of eating mandarin oranges while sitting by a kotatsu, as a representation of each member's childhood memories.
Wattentionのブログ If you live here, you might have kotatsu. This wonderful piece of table has a heater built in, and top of that, you cover the whole thing with a big blanket to keep all the precious heat inside. It’s so warm and comfortable that it gets excruciating when you need to leave it to do the chores. In fact, many of us have an experience sleeping in it and consequently catching a cold, so you have to be careful! Anyhow, sitting in kotatsu with your family eating mikan (clementines) is a cliche winter scene here, and despite people’s life style is becoming less traditional, kotatsu is still a widely popular item in the household.
そんな一例を一つご紹介します。ニューヨークタイムズのToday's Headlinesの電子メールを登録しているのですが、今日の一言みたいなコーナーQUOTATION OF THE DAYは以下のようなものでした。 QUOTATION OF THE DAY "It's like the Oklahoma land rush for an hour. We encourage people to use multiple phones and to dial and dial and dial." RUSSELL OVERBY, a Legal Aid lawyer, on a program in which Tennessee opens a hot line for a few hours a year to people who are not eligible for Medicaid, but who cannot afford health care.
まあ分からない事を調べるのは仕事みたいなものなので、Oklahoma land rushの部分を調べてみました。
（ウィキペディア日本語語版） ランドラッシュ ランドラッシュ (Land Rush, Land Run) とは1889年4月22日にアメリカ合衆国政府が入植を解禁したオクラホマに白人が未開の土地を求め殺到した現象を指す。
（ウィキペディア英語版） Land run Land run (sometimes "land rush" ) usually refers to an historical event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened to homestead on a first arrival basis. Some newly opened lands were sold first-come, sold by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other than a run. The settlers, no matter how they acquired occupancy, purchased the land from the United States Land Office. For former Indian lands, the Land Office distributed the sales funds to the various tribal entities, according to previously negotiated terms. The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 was the most prominent of the land runs, although there were several others, as enumerated below.
strong in the rainとstrongという言葉を使ったロジャー・パルバースさんの訳が気になったので『英語で読み解く賢治の世界』を購入してきました。まず他の訳とも合わせて確認します。
（株式会社mpiの動画の訳） I will not give in to the rain I will not give in to the wind I will have a healthy body that won’t give in to the snow or to summer’s heat
（MLS Japanの動画の訳） Rain, I will not be defeated Wind, I will not be defeated Snow, nor the summer heat, I will not be defeated I want to remain strong and healthy
（ウィキペディアの訳） not losing to the rain not losing to the wind not losing to the snow nor to summer's heat with a strong body
この美しい祈りのような詩は、「……マケズ」と否定形で始まります。この「マケズ」を文字通りに訳せば、unyielding（屈しない）とか、not giving in to （負けない）となるかもしれません。しあｋし、unyielding to the rainやnot giving in to the rainとしてしまうと、なんだか弱い感じがしますし、このようなことばで詩を始めるのは効果的ではありません。そんなふうに訳してしまいますと、詩にならないのです。
グーグル検索していた時に見付けたものをご紹介します。今年の1月からオバマ政権は第二期目に入ったわけですが、外交問題についてBrookings InstituteがBig Bets and Black Swansというかたちで推進すべき点と気を付ける点の両面からアドバイスをおくる資料を作っていました。100ページ近くもあるので、全部を読むのは大変ですが自分が関心のあるポイントだけを読むといいのではないでしょうか。
President Obama begins his second term at a critical moment in world affairs. Administration officials have already generated internal policy recommendations for dealing with the many challenges that an unstable world, much of it in turmoil, will present the president in the next four years. In the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, we decided to mirror this process from an outside perspective, taking advantage of the diversity and depth of our scholars’ expertise to generate innovative policy recommendations for the President.
What follows is a series of memos designed to present President Obama with a suggested “to do” list for the major issues of our time. We divided these memos into “Big Bets” and “Black Swans.” The Big Bets are places where the Foreign Policy scholars believe the President should consider investing his power, time and prestige in major efforts that can have a transformational impact on America and the world, as well as on his legacy. The Black Swans are those low probability but high impact events that can trip the President up and divert him from his higher purposes; events so dramatically negative that he will need to take steps in advance to avoid them.
The Foreign Policy Program is very grateful to Brookings Trustees David Rubenstein and Ben Jacobs for their generous support of this project. Brookings scholars maintain the highest standards of quality and independence in their research, analysis and prescriptions. This publication is solely a reflection of their individual views
Big BetsとBlack Swansとキャッチーなタイトルですよね。Advantage/Disadvantagesのように書くよりもずっと伝わりやすくなるような気がします。英語学習者というか、日本人の文書作成に結構書けている点なんですよね。少し手も読み手に伝わるように工夫することも心掛けたいです。
Big Bets の一つFREE TRADE GAME CHANGERを見ながら、構成を簡単に確認します。どのポイントも同じ構成をとっていますので読みやすくなっています。はじめは以下のようにオバマ大統領に送るMEMORANDUMのかたちがとられています。こういう使われ方を見ると日本のメモとは違いMEMORANDUMが社内向けとはいえ、ちゃんとした書式をとるものであることがわかりますね。 MEMORANDUM TO: President Obama FrOM: Mireya Solis and Justin Vaïsse DATE: January 17, 2013 BIG BET: Free Trade Game Changer
Recommendation: • Pursue both TPP and TAFTA simultaneously. Conclude negotiations in close succession to gain momentum in international bargaining, reap the benefits of emulation (through setting rules and standards of global applicability), and increase your leverage domestically; • Start the process to secure Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) early in 2013 by reaching out to Congressional leaders in unison with an aggressive public awareness campaign on the benefits of free trade, led by the White House, which seeks to allay some of the concerns about opening U.S. markets. • Set October 2013, the time of the next APEC leaders’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, for the conclusion of negotiations. This will provide a focal point for leaders of TPP countries to bridge differences at the negotiating table; • Launch TAFTA talks as early as possible in 2013 after the U.S.-EU high-level working group makes it recommendations, with the objective of concluding negotiations before the next U.S. midterm elections in 2014.
Black Swansの一つとしてあげられたのはTHE BIG THAWで、地球温暖化対策についてです。ここでもBig betsに合わせてキャッチーなタイトル（問題は深刻ですが）になっています。
ここでの提言は以下です。 Recommendations: • raise the priority of climate change on your foreign policy agenda, in particular by re-vitalizing negotiations over a post-Kyoto treaty. The Doha round of negotiations, which ended last month, was disappointing. Countries are further away today than they were a year ago on reducing emissions. U.S. leadership can reverse current trends of inadequate global commitment to reduce greenhouse gases. • Support measures that will enable communities and countries to adapt to the most egregious effects of climate change. On the international level this means supporting and leading the difficult discussions around climate finance and using U.S. aid to support government planning to respond to the effects of climate change, including financial assistance to encourage communities to stay where they are as well as to plan for the relocation of communities whose homes will no longer be habitable. • Support effective multilateral action to increase both mitigation and adaptation measures. Use your influence with the multilateral development banks to encourage more attention to disaster riskreduction measures in development planning. Work with international agencies and legal experts to devise an international legal regime for dealing with the expected increase in trans-border migration. It is easier to put a system in place before a crisis is at hand. • Strengthen domestic efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing carbon emissions and enhancing domestic capacity to prepare for, respond, and recover from sudden-onset natural disasters.
クラウドアトラスの監督の一人Lana Wachowskiがスピーチで引用した“If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden and I couldn’t allow that.”（私が目立たないようにしていれば、真実は隠れたままになってしまう。そうするわけにはいかなかったの）の場面をYoutubeで見付けることができました。
All of us harbour dark recesses of violence and horror. I’m just a man hiding in the corner with a camera. Watching.
Mr Hitchcock. You’re the most famous director in the history of the medium. But you’re sixty years old. Shouldn’t you just quit while you’re ahead?
This is murder. I’m getting blisters just watching you. He’s going out of his mind looking for something for his next project. I need something fresh. Something different.
It was the knife that a moment later cut off her scream, and her head. Charming! Doris Day should do it as a musical.
Good afternoon. This book Psycho is fiendishly entertaining. Is this really going to be your next picture? Yes madam. By the way. Try the fingers sandwiches. They’re real fingers.
No one respects the name Hitchcock more than Paramount, but even a talented man sometimes backs the wrong horse. This is Mr Hitchcock’s next film. Fine. If you can get the money. Who do I make it out to? Well are we going to have to sell the whole house or just the pool?
You are intrigued, aren’t you? Killing off your leading lady half way through the movie. How are you going to shoot this shower scene? It’s only that, well, from here up, I’m not exactly bouyant. You shouldn’t wait till half way through. Kill her off after thirty minutes. Wow!
Why are you letting her do something so tasteless. Don’t upset yourself darling. It’s only a bloody movie. More anger. More. Argh! I’m married to a man obsessed by murder.
This will not be released in this country. Show me some damn footage now. I am under extraordinary pressures on this venture… …and the least you could do is give me your full support. We’ve mortgaged our house.
I am your wife. I celebrate with you when the reviews are good. I cry for you when they are bad, and I put up with those people who look through me as if I were invisible because all they can see is the great and glorious genius Alfred Hitchcock.
How does it end? I promised mother I wouldn’t tell. Oh you fiend! You’ve got nudity in there. Well, her breasts were rather large. It was a challenge not to show them.
3分14秒当たりから I beg to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration.
The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat [Patricia Hitchcock], and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.
最後の部分はAnd their names are Alma Revilleだけですので、「偶然にも4人全員が同じ名前、その名もアルマ・レヴィルです」の翻訳はちょっと訳し足しているのですね。
スピーチは具体例を付け加えることというアドバイスがあります。「ありがとう」とお礼をいうよりも今回のスピーチのように具体的にお礼を伝えたいことをあげた方が聞いているほうもずっと分かりやすいですよね。mention by name only four peopleと言いつつも一人でしたが、それぐらいの活躍をしていたんだということがユーモアとともに伝わります。このような愛情と感謝がこもったスピーチができるようになりたいですね。
Had the beautiful Miss Reville not accepted a lifetime contract, without options, as "Mrs Alfred Hitchcock" some 53 years ago, Mr Alfred Hitchcock might be in this room tonight...not at this table, but as one of the slower waiters on the floor. （美しい未婚だったRevilleさんが生涯契約を何の選択権もないまま受け入れ「アルフレッド・ヒッチコック夫人」53年ほど前になっていないとしても、アルフレッド・ヒッチコック氏は今晩この部屋にはいれたのかもしれません。でもそれはこのテーブルではなくて、フロアでのろのろとした動きのウエイターの一人としてだったでしょう）
May it please Ambassador Jay, Queen Ingrid, Director Stevens, and my co-conspirators in this bizarre trade of making films. It has been my observation that man does not live by murder alone... he needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal.
Tonight you have provided me with three... out of four! Anxiety strangled my appetite! This demonstration of your approval and affection has encouraged me...I will go on!
It makes me very proud indeed to be the recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. It is especially meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid. After all, when a man is found guilty of murder and condemned to death, it always makes him feel much better to know it was done by a jury of his friends and neighbours...with the help of an adequate attorney.
It would tax your endurance, and mine, to recite the names of those thousands of actors, writers, editors, cameramen, musicians, technicians, bankers, exhibitors...and a variety of other criminals who have contributed to my life.
I beg to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement...and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen...and their names are Alma Reville.
Had the beautiful Miss Reville not accepted a lifetime contract, without options, as "Mrs Alfred Hitchcock" some 53 years ago, Mr Alfred Hitchcock might be in this room tonight...not at this table, but as one of the slower waiters on the floor.
I share my award, as I have my life, with her. Now let me share something with those promising young people who have earned their Alfred Hitchcock Fellowships. When I was no more than six years of age, I did something that my father considered worthy of reprimand. I don't recall what transgression it was – at the age of six, it could have hardly involved a serving girl!
Whatever, father sent me to the local police station with a note. The officer on-duty read it and locked me in a jail cell for five minutes, saying "This is what we do to naughty boys."
I have, ever since, gone to any lengths to avoid arrest and confinement.
To you, young people, my message is "stay out of jail"!
Some day, one of you may be standing here, with this American Film Institute Award – that's what they do to good little boys!
3月8日が国際女性でしたが、3月22日は国連が定めるWorld Water Day（世界水の日）なんだそうですね。Businessweekの水問題の特集で初めて知りました。
Fix This/Water Water Quality: An Ignored Global Crisis By Cecilia Tortajada and Asit K. Biswas on March 21, 2013 As we mark World Water Day on March 22, it is appropriate to reflect on why a critical problem such as water pollution has disappeared from the global agenda and what that means for our future.
Ignored for decades, water pollution has increased in both developed and developing countries, undermining economic growth as well as the physical and environmental health and quality of life for billions of people.
もう水問題が出題されることはないので英検対策にはなりませんが、このような問題の現状をしることは国連英検などにも生かせそうですね。BusinessweekのFix ThisというシリーズはFood and Agriculture、City Planning、Cyber Securityなど現代社会が抱えている問題を専門家を招いて現状や対策を伺うというもののようです。インタビュー形式なので分かりやすいので、このような問題が苦手な人のとっかかりになりそうです。（本当に苦手な人は日本語で学んでからの方がいいかもしれませんが。。。）
Fix This/Water How the Experts Would Fix the Water Supply Posted on March 21, 2013 Is water the new oil? Population growth and agricultural demand, combined with aging infrastructure and waste, have produced water scarcity in many countries. Prices are rising, and the lack of a dependable water supply is a massive health and economic issue. So how do we fix our water quality and management problems? That’s the question Bloomberg Businessweek Chairman Norman Pearlstine put to our panel: Ahmet Bozer, President, Coca-Cola International (KO); Jae So, Manager, World Bank Water and Sanitation Program; Carlos Riva, CEO, Poseidon Water; Thomas Powers, Commissioner of Water Management, Chicago; and Jeff Sterba, President and CEO, American Water (AWK). Their conversation has been condensed and edited.
Is conservation the most important issue with regard to water in the U.S.? Sterba: I think of it as increasing efficiency of use. I spent a lot of time in the desert Southwest, and the way that you think about water there is very different than the East Coast or the Midwest. A lot of home stock has already gone through the retrofitting of low-flush toilets and all of those kinds of things. California is an interesting one. In Carmel they literally have an ordinance that if you rebuild a home, you can only rebuild it with the same number of faucets or bathtubs or showers that were in the original. You’re talking about homes that were built 50 years ago, when you had one bathroom to four bedrooms. Well, you’re stuck with that.
Are there other technologies on the horizon that are going to become part of our water system? Every once in a while you read about icebergs being dragged to the Sahara and so forth. Riva: (Laughs.) I don’t think we’re there yet.
（中略）
Bozer: India is a perfect example. When you have the monsoon season, so much water comes and gets wasted. So how do we fulfill our commitment of returning the amount of water we use back to nature? A rainwater harvesting system. Now these systems don’t cost too much. And we’ve actually placed somewhere around 500 of them. And that water is stewarded back underground, and you’re replenishing the sources. So maybe there are emerging-market solutions that can also be applied to developing markets.
So: In developing countries the World Bank is the largest financier of water projects. Last year we lent $7 billion. But it’s a tiny, tiny portion of what’s needed. One of the reasons that in developing countries water utilities cannot make ends meet is that people don’t pay their water bills. And these are sometimes the most powerful people in the country. (Laughs.) Ek Sonn Chan, who runs the Phnom Penh Water utility in Cambodia, looked at the situation and realized that there was no way he could make the utility viable until customers started paying. And he started cutting people off. He cut off the military. He cut off the powerful ministers.
最後の締めはやはり、水を大切に使おうということでした。People don’t value water until it’s gone.ですから。
And if we don’t manage it correctly, it’s not going to be there in future years. So we have to change our habits. People don’t value water until it’s gone. Until they go to take a shower and it’s no longer there. I’ll be honest with you, I was one of those people. (Laughs.) And I am now the biggest proponent in the entire city for the water system.
So you brush your teeth with the tap off now? Powers: Absolutely. (Laughs.) The challenge is getting your kids to do it.
（オックスフォード） David and Goliath ADJECTIVE used to describe a situation in which a small or weak person or organization tries to defeat another much larger or stronger opponent The match looks like being a David and Goliath contest. From the Bible story in which Goliath, a giant, is killed by the boy David with a stone.
下記の書評ではit retells the famous biblical story of David and Goliath from the point of view of Goliathと説明されています。ゴリアテの視点からこの話を捉えたらどうなるか、そしてもしゴリアテが争いを嫌う心優しい人物だったらという視点で書かれているものでした。
Goliath is a graphic novel by Scottish cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld. Published by Drawn & Quarterly, it retells the famous biblical story of David and Goliath from the point of view of Goliath of Grath himself, a gentle giant who actually prefers doing paperwork to fighting.
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Goliath tells a familiar story from a fresh angle and the results prove delightful. Graphic novels have the power to move and stir emotions as successfully as any novel. The only real negative of Goliath is its brevity – at 96 pages, this charming tale will easily be consumed within an hour, if not less. Perhaps more graphic novella than graphic novel then, but don’t let that put you off. Goliath is one of the very best of its genre and shouldn’t be missed, especially by those who like their humour spiked with a healthy dose of melancholy – the ending, when it comes, is a total knockout.
下記の書評にある以下の部分に共感を覚えます。
In Goliath, Gauld renders his obsessions with various aspects of daily life which we can all relate to: the middle management of the army captain serving his superior; the fantastically personal questions of the boy shield-bearer; and Goliath's put-upon reluctance to be part of the army's puffed up, gung-ho spiel.
we can all relate toにあったcan relate toという表現は、感想を述べる時に使えそうですね。
（英辞郎） I can relate to your feelings because I had a similar experience. 私も同じような経験があるから、あなたの気持ちに共感できる。
Some readers can relate to the subject. 一部の読者はこのテーマに共鳴［共感］できる。
The generation now can relate to film very easily. 今の世代にとって映画は身近なものだ。
In Tom Gauld's new story, the Biblical tale of David and Goliath is retold from the giant's point of view, making for the comic book artist's most accomplished and moving work to date...
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In Goliath, Gauld renders his obsessions with various aspects of daily life which we can all relate to: the middle management of the army captain serving his superior; the fantastically personal questions of the boy shield-bearer; and Goliath's put-upon reluctance to be part of the army's puffed up, gung-ho spiel.
As a character, Gauld's Goliath gets our sympathy from the outset and his story is beautifully brought to life by one of the UK's best. A win for the giant.
5.0 out of 5 stars David V Goliath, Man vs Myth..., 4 May 2012 By Stephen Collins (UK) - See all my reviews
Goliath is a beautiful, thought-provoking meditation on the myths we make from people's lives, and one of the best graphic novels to come out of Britain in recent years.
Tom Gauld has made something of a trademark of witty, calm storytelling with a dark undertone, and Goliath shows him at his best. We know the tragic ending to this tale already, so the discoveries the reader makes give the tale a kind of backward structure with all unknown elements - the big man behind the big myth, his backstory and character - being delicately fleshed out over the course of the tale.
Gauld's artwork is elegant as ever, with not a line wasted and everything sitting in its right place on the page. There's a beautifully light touch to the writing too, with apparently inconsequential - and often very funny - chatter between characters sometimes stretching out for pages. It's a slow, meditative and beautiful build to an inevitably tragic end.
It's not giving too much away to say that it all ends badly for Goliath, but it's Gauld's use of the 'violent noise' comic book convention at that climactic point, that really got me in the eye. It's the saddest noise you'll ever read.
3.0 out of 5 stars Minimalistic, December 9, 2012 By Kaikaikiki - See all my reviews
I was a bit disappointed by the artwork when i opened the book. But when i started tor read it i found the style was fitting the story very well. I liked the mood of the book very much but wasn't always convinced by every drawings.
3.0 out of 5 stars Ok, but not great, November 16, 2012 By Federico Huffmann - See all my reviews
It is Rather simple. It has few dialogues. Not bad, but I enjoy reading more. Nice drawings. A twist to the story we all know.
今回のはギャグではありませんが、よく参照されるイメージでA Marathon, Not a Sprintというものです。前のブログでも取り上げたことがあると思いますが、Natureが長い期間かけて取り上げている実験を取り上げるさいにscience is a marathon, not a sprintと紹介していました。科学界も資金提供の関係から、短期の成果主義に陥っているようです。
Long-term research: Slow science The world's longest-running experiments remind us that science is a marathon, not a sprint. Brian Owens 20 March 2013 Although science is a long-term pursuit, research is often practised over short timescales: a discrete experiment or a self-contained project constrained by the length of a funding cycle. But some investigations cannot be rushed. To study human lifespans or the roiling of Earth's crust and the Sun's surface, for instance, requires decades and even centuries.
Here, Nature takes a look at five of science's longest-running projects, some of which have been amassing data continuously for centuries. Some generate hundreds of papers a year; one produces a single data point per decade.
Experiments operating at this pace are challenged by shifting research priorities and technologies, and their existence is regularly threatened by funding droughts and changes in stewardship. But they are bound together by the foresight of the scientists who started them and the patience and dedication of those who carry the torch. If persistence predicts a long and healthy life — as one 90-year study of human longevity has suggested — then the scientists featured here could set some records themselves.
400 years: Counting spots Astronomers have been recording the appearance of sunspots ever since the telescope was invented more than 400 years ago; even Galileo recorded his observations. But early observers had no knowledge of what the dark patches on the Sun's surface were, or of the magnetic fields that created them. That began to change when, in 1848, the Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf began making systematic observations and developed a formula that is still used today to calculate the international sunspot number, also known as the Wolf number, which gives a measure of how solar activity is changing over time.
In 2011, Frédéric Clette became director of the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, based at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle, which curates sunspot counts gleaned from photographs and hand drawings of the Sun's surface made by more than 500 observers since 1700.
Still, says Clette, it is fascinating to 'work' with colleagues from hundreds of years ago. For instance, he says that even though Galileo's coverage of the Sun was spotty because Galileo was “busy with planets and other things”, the drawings are detailed enough to reveal information about the magnetic structure of the sunspot groups and the size and tilt of the star's dipole. “You can extract from those drawings exactly the same information as from a drawing made today,” he says.
More than that, however, he is taken with his forebears' foresight. They faithfully recorded what they saw, thinking that it could be useful later on, he says. “It's a fundamental aspect of science,” he says, “not worrying what will be the final result.”
A Marathon, Not a Sprintというイメージはいろいろな場面で応用可能なようですから、マーケティングやキャリア形成などのシチュエーションでも用いられていました。
上記の本を読み始めました。読み始めるまでStron in the rainというタイトルにピンきていませんでした。年末から紀伊国屋の洋書売り場でよく見かけた本ですが、311をもっともらしく語る安っぽい本なのではないかと思って買う気がしませんでした。礼儀正しい日本人みたいにエキゾチックに書く類の本だと疑っていたのですよ（汗）。図書館で借りて今日から読み始めたのですが、日本滞在の長いベテランジャーナリストの手による本であることが分かりました（滝汗）被災者の目線で、その時にどんなことが起き、どんな風に対応したのかが丁寧に書かれています。
第一章は以下のように始まっています。Strong in the Rainは『雨ニモマケズ』だったのです。本のタイトルに込められた意図がようやく分かりました（汗）東日本大震災直後でいろいろと参照された詩でしたね。
One The Quake
Strong in the Rain That is the kind of person I want to be - Kenji Miyazawa
グーグル検索をして見つけた以下のブログ記事がこの部分の翻訳についていろいろと説明してくださっています。Strong in the rainはロジャー・パルバースさんの訳のようです。
こちらの動画は「雨ニモマケズ」がI will not give in to the rainとなっています。
下記の動画ではRain, I will not be defeatedと訳されています。
Japan Timesの書評では宮沢賢治が理想とした人物をpersevering and selfless individualとして紹介しています。
BOOKS / REVIEWS Giving voice to the survivors of the unprecedented 3/11 disaster BY JEFF KINGSTON The strength of this book lies in the narratives of six individuals and how they responded to this cascading disaster. We learn of the near-death experience of an American English teacher whose school was hit without warning. Then there is a fisherman who dashed from his bath to race his boat to safety, returning a day later to what was left of his tsunami-pulverized village. We also meet Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, who broadcast an appeal for help on YouTube and vaulted to global fame. Sakurai considers himself the embodiment of the Kenji Miyazawa poem “Strong in the Rain” about a persevering and selfless individual. These are valued virtues that were tested by the triple disaster all over Tohoku and beyond. It must be said that ordinary Japanese collectively passed this test with flying colors even as the political, bureaucratic and utility elite floundered so egregiously.
ウィキペディアの記事を参照するといろいろな英訳があることが伺えます。 Ame ni mo makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain[1]) is a famous poem written by Kenji Miyazawa,[2] a poet from the northern prefecture of Iwate in Japan who lived from 1896 to 1933. The poem was found posthumously in a small black notebook in one of the poet's trunks.
（オックスフォード・ビジネス） overnight an overnight delivery of goods arrives the day after you order them: Most of our products are available by overnight delivery.
TA-Q-BIN is a delivery service for sending parcels 365 days a year. TA-Q-BIN delivers on the next day to anywhere in the country (excluding certain regions).
Faster Than Overnight: How Etailers Get You Stuff the Same Day You Ordered It BY MARCUS WOHLSEN03.19.136:30 AM Forget next-day delivery. The standard in online shopping is rapidly approaching next-hour delivery. Retail giants Walmart, Amazon, and eBay, and a few nimble startups, are testing same-day services, bringing whatever you desire—ice cream, toothpaste, a new TV—to your door, right now. To make it happen, the sellers are revving up supply chains that rely on algorithms of military-grade complexity and workers (human and robot) who roam vast distribution centers 24/7. The trillion-dollar online shopping economy is about to get bigger—and a lot faster.
記事ではWalmart, Amazon, eBayの注文処理プロセスを 1 Placing the order 2 Filling the order 3 Deliveryの3つに分けてイラスト付きで説明してくれていてとても分かりやすいですので、是非リンク先をご覧ください。
E-Commerce EBay and Amazon Eye Same-Day Delivery By Meghan Walsh on August 10, 2012 Earlier this week, EBay (EBAY) invited select San Francisco customers to sample EBay Now—a shopping app that boasts same-day delivery. Bay Area residents who have received an invite will be able to download the app to their Apple (AAPL) iPhones and iPads. All of the products featured will be new and sold directly by local stores, including Target (TGT), Nordstrom (JWN), and Walgreens (WAG). Once you hit the “Bring It” button, your personal EBay shopping valet will pick up and deliver the item to wherever you are—the office, home, coffee shop. The Web auction house will waive the delivery fee for your first three purchases (which can’t cost less than $25), after which point a $5 surcharge will be tacked on. The beta pilot is only meant to gauge whether there’s an appetite. “Same-day services are satisfying both the convenient need of online shopping and immediacy factor of offline,” says Scot Wingo, chief executive officer of ChannelAdvisor, a global e-commerce software provider.
3回目の買い物まで送料がwaive（免除される）とあります。eBayのことをThe Web auction houseと言い換えています、こういう記事の書かれ方にも慣れたいです。
The Web auction house will waive the delivery fee for your first three purchases
これはまだパイロットのサービスで、需要があるかどうかgauge（見定める）ためのようです。
The beta pilot is only meant to gauge whether there’s an appetite.
I've read the Wikipedia entry for Indian names (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_name… so there's no need to cite it or explain to me how surnames are formed, used or not used.
What I'm wondering about is what that article doesn't explain: The prevalence (or lack) of surnames (last names) in India, which are most common, and [if possible] the meanings of the most common surnames, if appropriate.
Thanks in advance! I always pick a best answer, so this is a sure 10 points for the person with the best answer.
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Best Answer - Chosen by Asker Common Northern India Surnames: (Delhi, Haryana, Punjab,etc) Sharma Verma Gupta Malhotra Bhatnagar Saxena Kapoor, Kapur Singh Mehra Chopra Sarin Malik
ウィキペディアでがGuptaはcommon surname of Indian originとあります。
（ウィキペディア） Gupta Gupta /ˈɡuːptə/ (Devanagari: गुप्ता) is a common surname of Indian origin. According to some academicians, the name Gupta is derived from Sanskrit goptri, meaning military governor.[1] According to prominent historian R. C. Majumdar, the surname Gupta was adopted by several different communities in northern and eastern India at different times.[2]
Indian nameという項目ではベンガルのヒンドゥー系の姓として紹介されています。
Indian name Bengali names Bengali Hindu names: Bengali Hindu names have the following format: given name, middle name, family name. In casual conversation, people may omit middle names. The middle name is not the father's name. There are no patronymics.
Kayastha surnames include Das, Sen, Ghosh, Dey, Bose, Dutta, Mitra etc. Brahmin surnames include Goswami, Ganguly, Chatterjee, Mukherjee, Banerjee etc. A Brahmin name is often the name of the clan or gotra, but can be an honorific, such as Chakravarti or Bhattacharya.
Sometimes honorifics are used with the family name. However, the family name may be dropped completely as well. Some honorifics are Purkayastha, Chaudhuri, Ray Chaudhuri, Paul, Balan, Bose, and Dutta.
Other Bengali names include Garai, Makur, Bhuinya, Chanda, Deb, Deb-Nath, Deb-Rai, Malakar, Nath, Guha, Guha-Thakurta, Gupta, Das-Gupta, Sen-Gupta, Sharma, Sil/Shil/Sheel, Shil-Sharma, Das-Sharma, Deb-Sharma, Das-Munshi, Munshi, Dewanji, Munshiji, Kannungo/Qannungoh, Mahalanobis, Kundu, Kar, Purakayastha/Purkait, etc.
3分30秒あたりから The nature of our mortal lives is in the consequence of our words and deeds. The fundaments upon all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. We’re always interested, as storytellers all three of us, in the nature of that inexplicability. 死すべき存在としての我々の本質は、言葉と行いの結果としてあります。我々の知識と学問の土台となっているのは説明できないものです。私たちがいつも興味を引かれているのは、語り手として、我々３人は、この説明できないものの本質なのです。
To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us unique. （自分の衝動を否定することは、自分をかけがえのないものにしてくる、まさにそのものを否定することになるの）
I think anyone who goes through something so difficult you know you become detached from that somewhat and you’re just like you’re so insulated by your experience and it’s so intense you’re just you’re trying to make everything perfect and you can’t look up and then suddenly he was like “look up, look up.” （あまりにも大変なことを経験している人は、自分を切り離して、自分の経験とは切り離して、あまりにも集中して、すべてを完璧にやろうとしてしまっているので、顔を上げることができなくなってしまいます。そして「見上げて、見上げてごらん」と突然なってしまうのです）
映画『クラウドアトラス』をまだ見ていないのですが “If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden and I couldn’t allow that.”（私が目立たないようにしていれば、真実は隠れたままになってしまう。そうするわけにはいかなかったの）Somni451であろう言葉を引いて語っている部分から自らの体験を語っていきます。
（15分あたりから） And we’re alternating perspectives quite conscious of the fact that we have just made a film about this subject, about the responsibilities human beings have to one another, that our lives are not entirely our own. And there is dialogue from the film merging easily with our discussion and I find myself repeating a line from a character, who I was very attached to who speaks about her own decision to kind of come out. She says, “If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden and I couldn’t allow that.” And she says this aware that even at the moment that she’s saying it that even the sacrifice she has made will cost her her life. Suddenly I begin this very intense rush of images, thoughts and memories going through my mind, a kind of life flashing before my eyes that happens. People describe near death 3experiences. As it begins I start to understand just how complex the relationship between visibility and invisibility has been throughout my life.
Invisibilityを選んでいた彼女が勇気を出してカミングアウトしたのは同じような悩みを抱えている人の励みになるのでは、If I can be that person for someone else then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value.と思ったからそうです。ためらいがちに照れながらも語ることこそ真実味があふれているように思います。
（2７分30秒あたりから） I remember thinking about my dad’s words, his acceptance of me, when my wife and I first read about [murdered transgender teen] Gwen Araujo. It seemed impossible that something like that could happen so close to this city, yet here was this person like me murdered by ignorance, by prejudice, murdered by intolerance, it seemed in direct inverse proportion to the acceptance of my family. Murdered by a kind of fear that seeks to obliterate any evidence that the world is different from the way they want to see it, from the way they want to believe it to be.
Invisibility is indivisible from visibility; for the transgender this is not simply a philosophical conundrum -- it can be the difference between life and death.
A few short weeks ago after my coming out, the three of us, Tom, Andy and I were being interviewed, one of the reporters ventured away from the subject of the film towards my gender. Imagine that, a reporter. My brother quickly stepped in, “Look, just so we’re clear,” he says, “if somebody asks something or says something about my sister that I don’t like, understand that I will break a bottle over their head.” [applause] Few words express love clearer than these.
I am here because Mr. Henderson taught me that there are some things we do for ourselves, but there are some things we do for others. I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn’t find anyone like me in the world and it felt like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others.
If I can be that person for someone else [pause, applause] then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value. I know I am also here because of the strength and courage and love that I am blessed to receive from my wife, my family and my friends. And in this way I hope to offer their love in the form of my materiality to a project like this one started by the HRC, so that this world that we imagine in this room might be used to gain access to other rooms, to other worlds previously unimaginable.
クリントン氏は同性愛者の権利擁護団体「ヒューマン・ライツ・キャンペーン（Human Rights Campaign）」が公表した6分間の動画のなかで、「LGBTの米国人は、私たちの同僚、教師、兵士、友人、そして愛する仲間だ。彼らは結婚も含めて米国市民として同等の権利を全て擁するべきだ」と訴え、自身も個人的な立場から同性婚を支持すると言明した。
A few years ago, Bill and I celebrated as our own daughter married the love of her life, and I wish every parent the same joy. To deny that opportunity to any of our daughters and sons solely on the basis of who they are and who they love is to deny them the chance to live up to their own God-given potential.
クラウドアトラスのサウンドトラックに載せた大統領就任式のダイジェストは素晴らしいです。
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone.
For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
シェア経済の場合は以下のような法制度上の問題があるようです。Economistの社説の抜粋です。 The main worry is regulatory uncertainty (see Technology Quarterly article). Will room-renters be subject to hotel taxes, for example? In Amsterdam officials are using Airbnb listings to track down unlicensed hotels. In some American cities, peer-to-peer taxi services have been banned after lobbying by traditional taxi firms. The danger is that although some rules need to be updated to protect consumers from harm, incumbents will try to destroy competition. People who rent out rooms should pay tax, of course, but they should not be regulated like a Ritz-Carlton hotel. The lighter rules that typically govern bed-and-breakfasts are more than adequate.
The sharing economy is the latest example of the internet’s value to consumers (see Free exchange). This emerging model is now big and disruptive enough for regulators and companies to have woken up to it. That is a sign of its immense potential. It is time to start caring about sharing.
Sign the thank-you letter for Hillary Clinton now Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added her voice to the growing chorus of public figures and everyday Americans who believe that loving and committed gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry.
Please join us in thanking Hillary Clinton for always standing up for our community.
下記のお礼状では以下の感謝表現が使われていました。
I am so thankful that … Thank you for your dedication to the values …
仕事でもプライベートでもお礼状を書く機会はいつでもありうるでしょうから、こういう生の素材で少しでも慣れておきたいですね。 Letter: Thank you, Secretary Clinton! Dear Secretary Clinton, As the momentum for LGBT equality continues to grow, I am so thankful that you have been a tremendous leader in this fight. From your time as a Senator to your groundbreaking work as Secretary of State and now as a private citizen, you have been a true ally for freedom and equality here at home and around the world.
Hearing your thoughtful reflection on your experiences as Secretary of State and your heartfelt support of marriage equality filled me with pride. Thank you for your dedication to the values that make our country strong and for speaking out on this critical civil rights fight of our time. Sincerely, [Your Name]
この囲み記事がいいのは具体例も豊富なところです。 （劇場で）”May I show you to your seat, ma’am?” “Yes, please. Thank you.”
（機内で）”Sir, may I offer you aother cup of tea?” “No, thanks.”
（招待客に）”May I offer you something to drink?” “Yes, thank you. Do you have white wine?”
May I …?に関しては、TOEICでも店員の定番表現のHow may I help you?があったりと店員から客への場面で使われていましたし、How may I direct your call?やMay I take a message?のように電話の取り次ぎが多かったです。 さらにshallの項目では申し出のさまざまなバリエーションを紹介してくれています。
申し出をする際は、一般に次の表現がよく使われる。上のものほど直接的で、下のものほど間接的な言い方。 (1) I’ll …, Let me … (2) Can [Could] I … (for you)? (3) Shall [Should] I …? 《格式》May I …? (4) Do you want me to … ? (5) Would you like me to …?
TOEICでもDo you want me to … ?やWould you like me to …?が登場しています。TOEICでは丁寧な表現が使われることが多いのが見て取れますね。
助言・提案の表現 (1) You [We] should…は直接的な助言や提案の表現。相手がその助言・提案を受け入れる可能性が高い場合に使うことが多い。
“Do you think this book is worth reading?” “Yes, it’s a very helpful book. You should read it.”
TOEICでは何かの手順、指示を伝えるときにYou shouldが使われることが多かったです。
Where can we get copy toner? - You should ask George.
口調を和らげるなどの説明があるのも助かります。
(2) 断定口調を和らげるたにmaybe, perhaps, probably, I think, I believe, I guessなどを文頭につけることが多い。
これに関しても公式問題集ではprobablyやI thinkを使った例がありました。
You should probably take the bus. A taxi will be expensive. - That’s’ what I’m planning to do.
表現のバリエーションの説明も助かりますね。
(3) 助言する際には主に次の表現がよく使われる。上のものほど直接的で、下のものほど間接的な言い方。 (1) You should [ought to] … (2) How about doing?, Why don’t you …? (3) (If I were you, ) I would … (4) You could … , It might be better to … (5) You might want to …, It might be an ideat to …
「You should = 助言」とがっちがちに教えるのではなく、以下のようなバリエーションも丁寧に説明してくれるのが好感が持てます。
本の初めにある“This book is not a memoir, although I have included stories about my life…”を使って紹介しているものがありました。
"Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" by Sheryl Sandberg Perhaps this one isn't entirely a memoir. Sandberg confirms this, saying, "This book is not a memoir, although I have included stories about my life. Its not a self-help book, although I truly hope it helps. It is not book on career management, although I offer advice in that area. It is not a feminist manifesto -- okay, it is sort of a feminist manifesto, but one that I hope inspires men as much as it inspires women." Sandberg reflects on her own experiences, contributing career advice and solutions to hard problems with an open mind and unparalleled passion. With Lean In, Sandberg does help, does inspire, and opens the floor so that others might lean in, speak up, and have an imperative conversation.
ニューヨークタイムズの日曜版の書評で作者が自分が好きな本などについて語るBy the Bookというコーナーに彼女が登場していました。どんな本を読んでいるかで彼女の人となりが垣間見れます。以下が彼女が触れていた本ですが、やはりビジネス系が多いです。
Sheryl Sandberg: By the Book Published: March 14, 2013 The chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In” doesn’t like to use the iPad Kindle app on the elliptical. “When you get sweaty, you can’t turn the pages.”
When and where do you like to read? Paper or electronic? I probably shouldn’t admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books. (In “Lean In,” I also admit that I carry a notebook and pen around to keep track of my to-do list, which, at Facebook, is like carrying around a stone tablet and chisel.) I travel with an iPad, but at home I like holding a book open and being able to leaf through it, highlight with a real yellow pen and dog-ear important pages. After I finish a book, I’ll often look to see how many page corners are turned down as one gauge of how much I liked it. I also still read newspapers and magazines the old-fashioned way; I tried the Kindle app for the iPad on the elliptical, but when you get sweaty, you can’t turn the pages.
Are you a fast or slow reader? How many books would you say you read in a year? I am painfully slow and don’t get through nearly as many books as I want to. I pile them up on my night stand, and when the piles start tipping over, I force myself to speed up or to give up on the ones that, realistically, I am never going to get to.
英語学習的に興味深かったのは詩の暗唱について語っていた点です。you don’t own a poem until you memorize itなんていい言葉ですね。TOEIC学習でも暗唱が流行っていますからyou don’t own a Part 4 message until you memorize itなんていえそうです（笑）
What are your most cherished books, and where do you keep them? I keep my books from Helen Vendler’s college class on American poets in my night stand (inside the drawer, not to be confused with the stack piled up on top). Professor Vendler says that you don’t own a poem until you memorize it, and I agree. Every year my New Year’s resolution is to meditate for just five minutes a day. I never do it, but when I recite one of the poems I memorized, I think it comes close to having the same effect.
I believe that anybody in the world can make a difference. I think there's too much of a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the people I know who received the prize including the Archbishop are normal human beings. They just happen to have had passionate conviction about certain ways to make the world better for everybody and they followed them.
I think it’s a tool. Activism is not pushing a button to sign a petition online. I think they have a place but if that’s all that you do, that is not activism not at all. It takes people working together, talking togethr, strategize together to create overarching strategies for the long term to create standing peace. That is not done by pushing a button.
エコノミストで個人的に気になった点を2点。人との交流ができるので、貸す方にもメリットがあるという点です。TOEIC学習に置いても、リアルに出会って交流していることがさらなる勉強へのモチベーションになっている例をみるとプラスの効果があることを見て取れる気がします。 For sociable souls, meeting new people by staying in their homes is part of the charm. Curmudgeons who imagine that every renter is Norman Bates can still stay at conventional hotels. For others, the web fosters trust. As well as the background checks carried out by platform owners, online reviews and ratings are usually posted by both parties to each transaction, which makes it easy to spot lousy drivers, bathrobe-pilferers and surfboard-wreckers. By using Facebook and other social networks, participants can check each other out and identify friends (or friends of friends) in common. An Airbnb user had her apartment trashed in 2011. But the remarkable thing is how well the system usually works.
エコノミストはこの流れは定着するとみていて、transport, tourism, equipment-hire and moreなど幅広い分野で影響を及ぼすとしています。プラットフォームがあれば、サービスが可能になるので、大企業である必要がなくなる分野がいくつも出てきそうですね。
Peering into the future The sharing economy is a little like online shopping, which started in America 15 years ago. At first, people were worried about security. But having made a successful purchase from, say, Amazon, they felt safe buying elsewhere. Similarly, using Airbnb or a car-hire service for the first time encourages people to try other offerings. Next, consider eBay. Having started out as a peer-to-peer marketplace, it is now dominated by professional “power sellers” (many of whom started out as ordinary eBay users). The same may happen with the sharing economy, which also provides new opportunities for enterprise. Some people have bought cars solely to rent them out, for example.
BOOKSHELF Updated March 17, 2013, 8:19 p.m. ET Built Not to Last A 12-year-old who builds smartphone apps. A company that fights blood disorders without a physical office. Meet your new competitors. By ALAN MURRAY Is the age of the big corporation over? That is one of many ideas that James McQuivey advances in "Digital Disruption," a portrait of the tumultuous innovation that is unleashing itself on our economy. Mr. McQuivey, an executive at Forrester Research, a business advisory firm, argues that technology has made it possible to launch companies without large amounts of capital, proprietary labor pools or vast swaths of intellectual property. Increasingly, anyone with a powerful idea can assemble the tools to make his idea a reality.
"There will emerge a new type of company I call the disposable company," Mr. McQuivey writes, "an entity that exists solely to accomplish a particular task defined by its collaborators." Such entities "can rapidly scale up, drawing on mercenary employees with whom they will have no permanent relationship." They can also "assemble to serve a particular need, serve that need, and then dispose of the company."
この書評者も時代の流れを認めつつももっとデータに基づいて書いてほしいと注文を付けています。 Because of Mr. McQuivey's affiliation with Forrester Research, one might expect his sweeping thesis to be backed up by data. We all know the anecdotal cases of digital disruptors taking on mighty businesses: Skype versus the telecom companies; Airbnb versus Marriott. But it would be helpful to have more evidence to support Mr. McQuivey's expansive notions of how far and how fast the phenomenon is spreading. Moreover, any number of sectors of our economy are less susceptible to this decentralized digitalization than others—think of the struggles Boeing has had with its Dreamliner, in part because it outsourced more production. Mr. McQuivey's limited examples, inevitably, focus on the tech, telecom and marketing sectors.
"Digital Disruption," alas, is largely data-free. It's a slim book—only 150 pages—and feels more like an expanded speech or marketing pamphlet than a serious work of analysis. In his acknowledgments, Mr. McQuivey says that the book, in essence, disrupts his own role at Forrester Research. Maybe, but the crux of his alarmist message may be this: If you really want to understand how these trends may disrupt your business, hire us.
Say you're an aid worker toiling in an area that's been devastated by an overwhelming calamity -- a war-torn conflict zone, a famine-stricken village, or a crowded refugee camp. You have a finite amount of emergency food and see far too many outstretched hands. The kids around you are all much too short and scrawny for their ages, and most seem sickly and under-fed. What's more, many of the youngsters show sure signs of acute malnutrition -- they literally are skin and bones.
Who do you feed first?
In this type of situation, aid groups might be tempted to spread out the food supplies to as many needy children as possible, giving each a small amount until there's nothing left. But according to a new study out of Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the University of Bergen in Norway, relief workers should instead give as much emergency food as possible to only those children who are in the greatest danger of dying. The rest should get nothing.
この記事の元になった調査は下記リンク先で全文も読むことができます。
Ready-to-use food-allocation policy to reduce the effects of childhood undernutrition in developing countries Yan Yanga, Jan Van den Broeckb, and Lawrence M. Weinc,1 Author Affiliations Edited by Burton H. Singer, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, and approved January 28, 2013 (received for review September 14, 2012) Abstract Several aid groups have proposed strategies for allocating ready-to-use (therapeutic and supplementary) foods to children in developing countries. Analysis is needed to investigate whether there are better alternatives. We use a longitudinal dataset of 5,657 children from Bwamanda to construct a bivariate time-series model that tracks each child’s height-for-age z score (HAZ) and weight-for-height z score (WHZ) throughout the first 5 y of life. Our optimization model chooses which individual children should receive ready-to-use therapeutic or supplementary food based on a child’s sex, age, HAZ, and WHZ, to minimize the mean number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per child during 6–60 mo of age [which includes childhood mortality calculated from a logistic regression and the lifelong effects of stunting (i.e., low HAZ)] subject to a budget constraint. Compared with the strategies proposed by the aid groups, which do not use HAZ information, the simple strategy arising from our analysis [which prioritizes children according to low values of a linear combination of HAZ, WHZ, and age and allocates the entire budget to therapeutic (i.e., 500 kcal/d) food for the prioritized children] reduces the number of DALYs by 9% (for the same budget) or alternatively incurs the same number of DALYs with a 61% reduction in cost. Whereas our qualitative conclusions appear to be robust, the quantitative results derived from our analysis should be treated with caution because of the lack of reliable data on the impact of supplementary food on HAZ and WHZ, the application of our model to a single cohort of children and the inclusion and exclusion errors related to imperfect food targeting.
you can only solve a food crisis by targeting those starving mostとAtlanticの記事が書いた根拠となるのはAbstractでは以下の部分でしょう。 Compared with the strategies proposed by the aid groups, which do not use HAZ information, the simple strategy arising from our analysis [which prioritizes children according to low values of a linear combination of HAZ, WHZ, and age and allocates the entire budget to therapeutic (i.e., 500 kcal/d) food for the prioritized children] reduces the number of DALYs by 9% (for the same budget) or alternatively incurs the same number of DALYs with a 61% reduction in cost.
Atlanticの記事ではControversialであることも理解しているし、こういう研究がなくても援助の現場ではこのような判断は常になされていることを指摘しています。 Stanford acknowledged that the findings might be controversial -- who wants to keep food out of the hands of starving children, after all, even if they're less-starving than others? But Wein said that in reality, aid groups already make cutoffs to determine which children are fed first in emergency situations, based on wasting, disease, or other metrics.
"They already draw a line in the sand and say 'anyone worse than this, we're going to go all out and save you,'" he said.
This finding, it seems, recommends concentrating life-saving food resources on only one side of that line.
論文を見てもらうと分かるんですが、数式を使ったデータ分析なんですよね。政治や行政が好きになれないのは、政策を決めるさいにはどうしてもこのような機能主義的な分析が幅をきかせやすいことでしょう。「有限な資源の効率的な配分」が命題としても、you can only solve a food crisis by targeting those starving mostという結論をどんな状況にも機械的に当てはめるようにはなって欲しくはありません。
マレーシア作家のTan Twan EngさんのThe Garden of Evening Mistsが2012年Man Asian Literary Prizeを受賞したというニュースがありました。以前のブログで紹介させていただいた本です。自分が読んだ本が賞を取ると何か嬉しいものですね（笑）この賞には川上弘美さんの『センセイの鞄』の英訳The Briefcaseもノミネートされていたようです。
Tan Twan Eng scoops Asia’s top literary prize 2012 Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize HONG KONG – Tan Twan Eng was announced tonight as the winner of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, becoming the first Malaysian author to win Asia’s most prestigious literary prize.
The author won with his novel The Garden of Evening Mists, which is only the second time the Man Asian Literary Prize has been won by a novel originally written in English. All previous winners, except Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco (2008), won as English translations.
Toyo Ito（…） will be the recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Tan Twan Eng was announced tonight as the winner of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, becoming the first Malaysian author to win Asia’s most prestigious literary prize.
ただし時制には注意しておきたいです。建築賞は授賞式はまだ先なのでwillが使われています。一方でMan Asian Literary賞は授賞式がありましたからwas announced tonightとなっています。 The winner, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, revisits the traumatic aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and the post-war insurgency against British rule, with stylistic poise and probing intelligence. Taking its aesthetic cues from the artful deceptions of Japanese landscape gardening, it opens up a startling perspective on converging histories, using the feints and twists of fiction to explore its themes of personal and national honour; love and atonement; memory and forgetting; and the disturbing co-existence of cultural refinement and barbarism.
The layering of historical periods is intricate, the descriptions of highland Malaysia are richly evocative, and the characterisation is both dark and compelling. Guarding its mysteries until the very end, this is a novel of subtle power and redemptive grace.”
March 18, 2013, 6:00 PM Tan Twan Eng: ‘Each Book Gets Harder’ By Brittany Hite The Wall Street Journal: The main character is a woman held in a Japanese camp who eventually befriends a Japanese gardener. How’d you get the idea? Mr. Tan: After I finished writing my first book, “The Gift of Rain,” I did so much research and felt there were so many stories to be told. I wanted to move on to the next stage of Malaya’s/Malaysia’s development and to see the story from the opposite side—from a woman’s point of view. I had all of these elements floating around. Then I met a man in South Africa who was the gardener of the emperor of Japan. His job description haunted me, and I realized I wanted to create a character based on him.
Both books are set in Malaysia during World War II. What is it about this era? It’s one of the—if not the—most catastrophic events that occurred in Malaya. It signified the end of the British Empire in the East, and it gave birth to a lot of the independence movements across Southeast Asia. Malaysia was one of these. This was the event that marked the end. For a novelist, that’s a rich field to probe and dig and write about.
Tan Twan Engさんはマレーシアのトラウマ的な過去に向き合っていますが、今月初めに見に行った文芸フェスティバルで浦沢直樹さんやジュノ・ディアスさんもそういう過去、確実に存在していて現在にも影響を及ぼしているけど積極的に語ろうとせず、むしろなかったように振る舞っている過去に向き合っていたんですよね。
少し重い話になってしまいましたが、そういう影の部分と向き合っているからこそ、彼らの作品が真実味を帯びたものになっているのかもしれません。Tan Twan Engさんは今Cloud Atlasを読み直しているようです。日本でも公開されていますから僕も読み直そうと思います（笑） What was the last book you read? I’ve been rereading “Cloud Atlas” because of the movie.
彼の事務所にいた妹島和世氏さんの後に受賞というのは複雑な思いがあるのかもしれませんが、受賞を喜びたいですね。今回注目したいのは、will be the recipient of …という受賞者発表の表現のバリエーションでしょうか。
Toyo Ito（…） will be the recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
伊東豊雄さんの建築を以下のように評しています。こういうのはかっこつけた言葉使いになりやすいですね。
Calling him a “creator of timeless buildings,” the Pritzker Jury cites Ito for “infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works.”
伊東豊雄さんの受賞コメントはかっこいいものです。
However, when one building is completed, I become painfully aware of my own inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project. Probably this process must keep repeating itself in the future.
“Therefore, I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works,” he concluded.
Los Angeles, CA—Toyo Ito, a 71 year old architect whose architectural practice is based in Tokyo, Japan, will be the recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize. It was announced today by Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation which sponsors the prize. Ito is the sixth Japanese architect to become a Pritzker Laureate — the first five being the late Kenzo Tange in 1987, Fumihiko Maki in 1993, Tadao Ando in 1995, and the team of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa in 2010.
The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor will be at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, May 29. This marks the first time the ceremony has been held in Boston, and the location has particular significance because it was designed by another Pritzker Laureate, Ieoh Ming Pei who received the prize in 1983.
In making the announcement, Pritzker elaborated, “We are particularly pleased to be holding our ceremony at the Kennedy Library, and it is even more significant because the date is John F. Kennedy’s birthday.”
The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which was founded in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy, is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. The laureates receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion.
Toyo Ito began working in the firm of Kiyonori Kikutake & Associates after he graduated from Tokyo University’s Department of Architecture in 1965. In 1971, he founded his own studio in Tokyo, and named it Urban Robot (Urbot). In 1979, he changed the name to Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects.
He has received numerous international awards, including in 2010, the 22nd Praemium Imperiale in Honor of Prince Takamatsu; and in 2006, The Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal; and in 2002, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for 8th Venice Biennale International Exhibition. Calling him a “creator of timeless buildings,” the Pritzker Jury cites Ito for “infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works.”
Toyo Ito made this comment in reaction to winning the prize: “Architecture is bound by various social constraints. I have been designing architecture bearing in mind that it would be possible to realize more comfortable spaces if we are freed from all the restrictions even for a little bit. However, when one building is completed, I become painfully aware of my own inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project. Probably this process must keep repeating itself in the future.
“Therefore, I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works,” he concluded.
今朝、電話での対応でのMay I take a message?（伝言を承りましょうか）のような提案表現が英和辞典ではほとんど取り上げていないと書かせてもらいました。TOEICのリスニングセクションでのmayの用法はほとんどが提案にもかかわらず、日本の英和辞典は現状を反映していないのではと思ったからです。マクミランは以下のように独立した項目として扱っています。
（マクミラン） 3 SPOKEN used when making a polite request or offer May I have a biscuit? May I help? May we offer you a glass of wine? May I see your ticket, please?
今日の出掛で本屋に立ち寄り、昨年の10月に出たばかりの『ライトハウス英和辞典 第６版』にはmayの項目で「丁寧な申し出」という詳しい説明がありました。店員が客に申し出る時に使われ、普通の会話でもよく知らない相手に対しては使われるとありました。例として、劇場で係の人が座席の案内を申し出るさいの表現May I show you to your seat?や飛行機の中で添乗員が乗客に飲み物を勧める表現May I offer you something to drink?などが紹介されていました。（立ち読みの記憶で書いていますので、細部に誤りがあるかもしれません）
It would be another decade before you could actually buy one. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, left, went on sale in 1983 for about $4,000 — and became a symbol of yuppie excess. In the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko strolls on the beach at sunrise and snarls into his brick-size phone, “This is your wake-up call, pal.” Soon enough, everyone else would get the wake-up call, too.
映画ウォールストリートの“This is your wake-up call, pal.”のシーンは有名なようで下記の動画でもレンガ大の携帯電話を持ったマイケルダグラスが語っています。
Oh, jeez, I wish you could see this … the lights coming up. I've never seen a painting that captures the beauty of the ocean in a moment like this. I'm going to make you rich, Bud Fox, rich enough you can afford a girl like Darien. This is your wake up call, pal. Go to work.
SPYING ON YOURSELF Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Lab at M.I.T., studies cellphone data for clues about our behavior.
The phone tracks our movements, as well as our calls and texts, so it can reveal a lot about our daily lives. What did you learn about yourself by studying your own cellphone data? That I’m very predictable. We tend to pay attention only to the new things in our lives. Meanwhile, our habits are invisible to us. You may say you don’t always eat Tex-Mex food, but if you’re always at the Tex-Mex restaurant, I’d have to disagree.
REINVENTING SOCIETY IN THE WAKE OF BIG DATA A Conversation with Alex (Sandy) Pentland [8.30.12] With Big Data we can now begin to actually look at the details of social interaction and how those play out, and are no longer limited to averages like market indices or election results. This is an astounding change. The ability to see the details of the market, of political revolutions, and to be able to predict and control them is definitely a case of Promethean fire—it could be used for good or for ill, and so Big data brings us to interesting times. We're going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society.
ALEX 'SANDY' PENTLAND is a pioneer in big data, computational social science, mobile and health systems, and technology for developing countries. He is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world and was named by Forbes as one of the world's seven most powerful data scientists. He currently directs the
TR10: Reality Mining Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior. KATE GREENE, March/April 2008
Every time you use your cell phone, you leave behind a few bits of information. The phone pings the nearest cell-phone towers, revealing its location. Your service provider records the duration of your call and the number dialed.
Some people are nervous about trailing digital bread crumbs behind them. Sandy Pentland, however, revels in it. In fact, the MIT professor of media arts and sciences would like to see phones collect even more information about their users, recording everything from their physical activity to their conversational cadences. With the aid of some algorithms, he posits, that information could help us identify things to do or new people to meet. It could also make devices easier to use--for instance, by automatically determining security settings. More significant, cell-phone data could shed light on workplace dynamics and on the well-being of communities. It could even help project the course of disease outbreaks and provide clues about individuals' health. Pentland, who has been sifting data gleaned from mobile devices for a decade, calls the practice "reality mining."
Reality mining, he says, "is all about paying attention to patterns in life and using that information to help [with] things like setting privacy patterns, sharing things with people, notifying people--basically, to help you live your life."
The fine-grained behavioral data, according to Mr. Pentland, opens the way to changing how we think about society and how a society is governed. Adam Smith and Karl Marx, he explains, thought about markets and classes, respectively. “But those are aggregates,” he said. “They’re averages.”
Yet now, Mr. Pentland says, it becomes possible to track social phenomena down to the individual level and the social and economic connections among individuals. The ability to monitor these “micro-patterns,” Mr. Pentland said, means “we’re entering a new era of social physics.”
Why do some teams consistently deliver high performance while other, seemingly identical teams struggle? Led by Sandy Pentland, researchers at MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory set out to solve that puzzle. Hoping to decode the “It factor” that made groups click, they equipped teams from a broad variety of projects and industries (comprising 2,500 individuals in total) with wearable electronic sensors that collected data on their social behavior for weeks at a time.
With remarkable consistency, the data showed that the most important predictor of a team’s success was its communication patterns. Those patterns were as significant as all other factors—intelligence, personality, talent—combined. In fact, the researchers could foretell which teams would outperform simply by looking at the data on their communication, without even meeting their members.
In this article Pentland shares the secrets of his findings and shows how anyone can engineer a great team. He has identified three key communication dynamics that affect performance: energy, engagement, and exploration. Drawing from the data, he has precisely quantified the ideal team patterns for each. Even more significant, he has seen that when teams map their own communication behavior over time and then make adjustments that move it closer to the ideal, they can dramatically improve their performance.
1. Reality Mining: Using Data to Influence Healthy Behavior Using smartphones to collect information about what people are doing and how they are behaving, which Alex "Sandy" Pentland, director of the MIT Human Dynamics Laboratory, describes as "passive monitoring from the things you carry around every day," results in a data set that's "hugely richer than anything you've ever seen before." It's an extension of data mining known as reality mining, and its predictive capabilities seem to know few limits.
For security purposes, information is shared using an "answer architecture" that makes yes-or-no queries of the open personal data store (openPDS) on a user's smartphone, Pentland says, much like the SWIFT platform banks use to exchange information. In this manner, and in accordance with the U.S. Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, the data belongs to the individual.
Societal patterns and habits inherent in these data sets can predict behavior, such as the likelihood of residents of a certain neighborhood developing diabetes or alcoholism. (Predicting behavior from verbal and visual cues, it turns out, is rather easy; technology that Pentland and his team have developed is used by two large health insurers to screen callers for signs of depression.)
However, if exposure to external forces drives behavior changes, Pentland says, then getting to the root of the problem means changing exposure. Through its research, Pentland's lab reports that social influence—knowing that others are being rewarded for good behavior such as riding a bicycle to the office—is more than three times as effective as simply receiving that reward on an individual basis.
This influence has helped veterans coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, who see that fellow veterans are more active and social and decide to do something about it, but further uses within the highly individualized U.S. healthcare system are only emerging slowly.
センサーが安価に手に入るようになり、スマホの所有率も50%を超えるようになってきていますから、具体的なデータが取りやすくなってきているでしょうから、このような地検からの組織作り、法律作りがこれから加速していくかもしれません。ニューヨークタイムズの記事で印象深い談話がありました。 “You get elected with Big Data, but you govern without it,” Mr. Hundt said. “How much sense does that make?”
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