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自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です
Posted at 2013.12.21 Category : Nature
喜ばしいニュースに水を差すのは本意ではないのですが、やはり冷静にニュース価値というのを捉えることが「グローバル化」とやらを望むなら必要になってくるのではないでしょうか。 来年の注目は「ｉＰＳ臨床」 英科学誌ネイチャー、理研の高橋氏選ぶ2013.12.19 03:00 共同通信 英科学誌ネイチャーは「来年注目の５人」に、人工多能性幹細胞（ｉＰＳ細胞）を使い、目の網膜を再生する臨床研究を進めている理化学研究所発生・再生科学総合研究センター（神戸市）の高橋政代プロジェクトリーダーを選んだ。１９日付の同誌で発表した。
同誌は５人のうち、高橋氏を１番手に挙げ「ｉＰＳ細胞で初めての臨床研究になるかもしれない」と紹介した。高橋氏は「大変光栄で、責任重大と感じる。多くの方に喜んでもらえるよう緩まずプロジェクトを進めていく」と話している。
このような記事を読むと、あたかもNatureが大々的に高橋さんが選ばれたような印象ですが、下記に記事のリンクを貼ったように本文はたったの34語なんですよね。 Ones to watch in 2014
Masayo Takahashi, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology
Induced pluripotent stem cells could get their first test in the clinic. Using cells derived from patients, Takahashi plans to create sheets of retinal cells to treat macular degeneration, a common cause of blindness.それもそのはず、以下の記事タイトルをみて分かるようにメインテーマは2013年の今年活躍した科学者を紹介するものだったのです。 NATURE | NEWS FEATURE
365 days: Nature's 10
Ten people who mattered this year.
18 December 2013 ２０１３年に活躍した10人の科学者については5078語以上も費やして丁寧に紹介していますが、Five to watch 2014という「来年注目の5人」は200語ほどしかないんです。2013年に活躍した人には一人に500語以上費やしていますから、「来年注目の5人」の紹介はサイドラインにしか過ぎないことが分かります。 FENG ZHANG: DNA’s master editor
Borrowing from bacteria, a biologist helps to create a powerful tool for customizing DNA.
By Daniel Cressey
Words checked = [605]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [81%]
******
TANIA SIMONCELLI: Gene patent foe
A US science-policy expert fought to keep genes open to all.
By Heidi Ledford
Words checked = [505]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]
きっかけとして日本人が選ばれたことを話題にするのはいいですが、それだけではこの記事を理解したことにならないですよね。いつまで発展途上国のような報道をしているのかという批判するのは簡単ですが、少なくとも英語を学んでいる我々は全体像を掴んで学べるようにしたいですね。
Posted at 2013.12.17 Category : 未分類
日曜日に機械学習を取り上げてみて、先月のIBMのワトソン関連のニュースがあるのを知りました。 使用されるのは最先端の研究所だけではないようです、動画で依拠していたVergeというサイトの記事ではアウトドアブランドのノースフェースのオンラインショップでワトソンが使われるとあります。 IBM's more powerful Watson supercomputer is opening up for public useBy Russell Brandom on November 14, 2013 12:52 am The program is launching with three partners, including a Fluid Retail deployment that plans to bring a Watson-powered personal-shopper feature to North Face's e-commerce shop in 2014.
これは日経でも報じられていました。 米ＩＢＭ、「ワトソン」をクラウド経由で提供 2013/11/15 9:58 日本経済新聞 【ニューヨーク＝小川義也】米ＩＢＭは14日、人工知能を搭載した高性能コンピューター「ワトソン」を外部のソフト開発者がインターネット経由で利用できるようにすると発表した。次世代のアプリ（応用ソフト）開発に活用してもらい、新たな用途や市場を開拓する。
ワトソンは米クイズ番組で人間のチャンピオンに勝った「学習するコンピューター」。新サービスの名称は「ＩＢＭワトソン・デベロッパー・クラウド」で、コンピューターの機能をネット経由で提供するクラウドコンピューティングの仕組みを利用する。
日経の記事は淡々と事実を伝えるストレートニュースでしたが、All Things Dの記事の書き方は読み物的に伝えています。 Want to Work With IBM’s Watson? Now’s Your Chance.NOVEMBER 14, 2013 AT 8:05 AM PT If you’ve been keeping track of IBM’s Watson — that’s the supercomputer that beat two human champions at the TV game show “Jeopardy!” — and ever wondered when you might get to work with it (him?) yourself, your chance has apparently come.
IBM announced today that it has opened up the Watson computing environment to developers in the cloud. You’ll have access to a development sandbox where you can work with the Watson technology, train it on the information in which you want it to become an expert, and even ready an application to introduce to the marketplace.
It’s called the IBM Watson Developer Cloud, and a few companies have already done some work with it. Welltok has developed something of a personal-health-and-fitness coach that will help you stay on target with your diet and exercise goals. Fluid has created an app that stands in for that one person at a specialized retail store who knows everything you’re going to need for, say, a backpacking trip. MD On-Line created a medical app.
ワトソンの特設ページいつものようにIBMのプレスリリースも確認します。 IBM Watson’s Next Venture: Fueling New Era of Cognitive Apps Built in the Cloud by DevelopersIBM Opening the Watson Cognitive Platform to Global Community of Entrepreneurial Software App Providers, from Start-ups and VC Backed Companies to Established Players
ARMONK, NEW YORK - 14 Nov 2013: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that, for the first time, it will make its IBM Watson technology available as a development platform in the cloud, to enable a worldwide community of software application providers to build a new generation of apps infused with Watson's cognitive computing intelligence.
The move aims to spur innovation and fuel a new ecosystem of entrepreneurial software application providers – ranging from start-ups and emerging, venture capital backed businesses to established players. Together with IBM, these business partners share a vision for creating a new class of cognitive applications that transform how businesses and consumers make decisions.
To bring this shared vision to life, IBM will be launching the IBM Watson Developers Cloud, a cloud-hosted marketplace where application providers of all sizes and industries will be able to tap into resources for developing Watson-powered apps. This will include a developer toolkit, educational materials and access to Watson's application programming interface (API).
Posted at 2013.12.16 Category : 未分類
実際の授賞式の招待状や寄付のお願いを見る機会はなかなかないものなので紹介させていただきます。事務手続き的なことは何てことのない事ですが、滞りなく業務をこなすには大切なことですね。TOEICがこういうのを取り上げるのは大変理にかなっていると思います。 昨日紹介した動画は先月に開催されたGlobal Leadership Dinnerというもので国際的に活躍したリーダーを表彰していました。マララさんも表彰者のひとりのようです。受賞者を発表している元祖セレブ活動家のジェーンフォンダさんはなんともパワフルですね。 Global Leadership Dinner
Wednesday, November 6, 2013 Gotham Hall, New York City The United Nations Foundation and the United Nations Association of the USA celebrated the important work of the UN, the U.S.'s key support of the UN and the inspirational leaders who are working to advance peace, prosperity, and justice here in the United States and throughout the world at our annual Global Leadership Dinner on November 6, 2013 at Gotham Hall in New York.
Annually one of the most impactful events in New York, the Global Leadership Dinner brings together a distinguished audience like no other, including A-list attendance representing the highest levels of the diplomatic, business, government, philanthropic, media, celebrity, and social sectors.
This year’s honorees included:
Malala Yousafzai, the courageous Pakistani teenager who has overcome enormous challenges to speak out for girls education;
Senator Timothy E. Wirth, the UN Foundation’s Vice Chair and the person who turned Ted Turner’s vision for the UN Foundation into a reality;
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, who was honored for her fierce commitment to human rights;
Frontline polio workers, who are performing heroic work in protecting children from this crippling disease;
GE Africa, a leader in improving health care for women and children through the Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child movement; and
10x10, the filmmakers who created Girl Rising and are trailblazers in raising awareness of the importance of girls’ education. -
招待状は以下のリンク先にあります。 2013 Global Leadership Awards Dinner Invitation
この招待状でやはり国連がらみの団体だなと思ったのはドレスコードに民族衣装とあったことです。TOEIC学習的にはattireという言葉が使われるのを目にして嬉しいというのもありますね。 Cocktail Attire Or National Dressまた、この団体の理事会にヨルダン王妃がいらっしゃるそうですが、国王・王妃など皇族に対する敬称Her Majestyがついていますね。このようなフォーマルな招待状はなかなか目にする事はないのでとても参考になりますね。
Her Majesty
Queen Rania al-Abdullah
Jordan
（オックスフォード）
His/Her/Your Majesty
a title of respect used when speaking about or to a king or queen
Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Spain
The President is here to see you, Your Majesty.
つぎの寄付のお願いについては、寄付の種類と寄付の特典を確認しておきます。 2013 Global Leadership Awards Dinner Sponsorship
PLATINUM SPONSOR TABLE for $100,000
GOLD SPONSOR TABLE for $50,000
SILVER SPONSOR TABLE for $25,000
PLATINUM SPONSOR TABLE for $100,000
• Table of nine with premier placement
• Full-page color ad in event program book with priority placement (as available)
• Special donor profile in printed program
• Nine tickets to VIP reception
• Name acknowledgement on screen during dinner, event signage, website, and other event media
• UN Ambassador or Dignitary at table
• Special recognition in United Nations Foundation Anniversary Report
• Business Council of the United Nations (BCUN) membership for one year
• Private lunch with United Nations Foundation President and CEO
• Four tickets to International Women’s Day luncheon
• Invitations to Better World Campaign/UNA events on Capitol Hill
• Six Private Briefing and Dialogue tickets
• Logo recognition at the Private Briefing and Dialogue, as well as in the Briefing program
• Acknowledgement in Global Classrooms® conference programs
Posted at 2013.12.15 Category : 未分類
先月ロボットが東大入試に挑戦するイベントがありメディアも取り上げていました。 人工知能が東大模試挑戦 「私大合格の水準」
国立情報学研など
2013/11/23 20:06 国立情報学研究所や富士通研究所の研究チームは23日、人工知能を載せたコンピューターで東京大学入試の模擬試験に挑んだと発表した。数式の計算や単語の解析にあたる専用プログラムを使い、実際に受験生が臨んだ大学入試センター試験と東大の２次試験の問題を解読した。大手予備校の代々木ゼミナールの判定では「東大の合格は難しいが、私立大学には合格できる水準」だった。
チェスや将棋ソフトで力をつけた人工知能がまた進歩をみせた。
この研究所は井戸端会議にも挑戦しているようです。外国語学習者にとっては試験よりも、普通の人との何気ない日常会話こそが難しいというのは体験的に知っていることですね。 62号／No.62, Dec. 2013 ロボットは井戸端会議に入れるか「井戸ロボ」を通じて、コミュニケーションの本質に迫りたい
ロボットは井戸端会議に入れるだろうか？ それは、ロボットが東大に入ることと同じくらい、いや、それ以上に難しいだろう。そもそも人間がどうやって井戸端会議に加わり、自然な会話をしているのかということ自体、解き明かされていない。そうした人間のインタラクション理解を深めるべく、NII グランドチャレンジの１つとして、2012 年度から「ロボットは井戸端会議に入れるか」（通称：井戸ロボ）がスタートした。その概要と方向性について、代表研究者の坊農真弓助教に、会話情報学の提唱者であり、AI 研究者の西田豊明教授が話を聞いた。
以下の抜粋は何気ない会話も文脈次第で意味が変わることがわかります。 西坂 はい。「質問」といってもさまざまで「、~ か?」のように明確な終助詞が常に用いられるわけではありません。さらに、質問が誰に向けられたものか一義的には決まらない。「坊農さんのご出身は?」という問いかけは、坊
農さんがその場にいるときは坊農さんへの質問ですが、坊農さんがいない場面でも、坊農さんを知っている人に対して使うことができる。つまりそれは、文脈次第です。そういう
「発話のデザイン」の構造を定式化してロボットに会話させるのは、非常に困難なのです。 逆に言えばこれは、文脈に対する人間の適応性がいかに柔軟かということを示しています。
「井戸ロボ」を大変興味深いと思ったのは、人間のように会話するロボットを作るのではなく、人間みたいな格好の物体を人間のなかに置くことによって、会話する人間のほうを見 ようという、発想の転換が感じられるからで す。
東大入試や井戸端会議のプロジェクトの概要についてはリンク先の冊子を読んでいただきたいのですが、共感をもって読めたエッセイが以下のものです。外国語学習っていまだに、情報を得ればできるようになると素朴に思っている人が多いですよね。 60号／No.60, Jun. 2013 人工頭脳プロジェクト「ロボットは東大に入れるか。」「わかる」という体験
影浦 峡 (東京大学大学院 教育学研究科 教授)
レストランや料理の紹介を読んで美味しそうと思うことと実 際に食べて美味しさを体験することとが質的に違うこと、そし て味が「わかる」ことが後者を指すことは、恐らく誰もが認め るところでしょう。料理ほど明確ではありませんが、映画評を 読んだだけでその映画がわかったとは言えないことにも、たぶん 多くの人が同意するのではないでしょうか。
ところが、いわゆる「知識」とそれを伝える本について、私 たちは、解説を読めば元の本が「わかる」と考える傾向がある ようです。もしかすると、料理を食べることと料理の解説を読 むことに相当する違いがあるにもかかわらず、「わかる」体験 をもたらす媒体が解説を伝える媒体と同じ「言葉」であるため、 両者が混同されているのかもしれません。
このように考えると、少しはっきりすることがあります。まず、 「わかる」瞬間、すなわち「腑に落ちる」ことはあくまで体験で あって、情報の受容や操作とは違うこと。また、人が何かを「わかる」ときには没頭するプロセスを経ることが多いこと――つ まり人はいわば「過学習」を通して普遍的知識を身につけるように見えることなどです。
そうだとすると、一般に過学習を避けて一般化をめざす機械 学習的な方法で知識を伝える言葉を扱うことにより、コンピュータが人間のように「わかる」状態を実現するのは難しそうです。 それでもなお、「腑に落ちる」ことは人間のみに許された特権 で、所詮コンピュータにはできないことだと開き直るのではな く、コンピュータが「わかる」ことを目指すのならば、「腑に落 ちる」ぎりぎりのところまで突き詰める。例えば読書に「没頭 する」プロセスをコンピュータでどう扱うかが ―― 手段とは別 に ―― 概念的にとても大切な課題になりそうです。
このような研究への知見が広まれば、フレーズを覚えればしゃべれるようになるとか、１０年後には人工知能が人間の知性を凌駕するといった素朴な考えはなくなるんですけどねえ。
Posted at 2013.12.15 Category : Financial Times
今週末のフィナンシャルタイムズはWomen of 2013という特集を組んで今年活躍された女性を紹介していました。Malala Yousafzaiさんが巻頭インタビューでAera EnglishでおなじみだったFTのアジア編集長David Pillingさんが相手をしています。 December 12, 2013 10:45 pm Malala Yousafzai
By David Pilling The Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban has astonished the world with her courage and determination to fight for education and equal rights for women 何人もの女性が選ばれていますが、その中にSamantha Powerさんもいらっしゃいました。Kindle版ではPersuasive Powerという記事タイトルになっています。文字通り「説得力」という意味ですが、Persuasive Power（説得力のあるパワーさん）という周囲を説得させてうまく物事を進めているSamantha Powerさんを好意的に評価しているのでしょう。 December 12, 2013 10:45 pm Samantha PowerBy Geoff Dyer This year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former war reporter became the youngest person to hold the role of US ambassador to the United Nations この記事は、Samantha Powerさんの生い立ちから現在の活動までを丁寧に説明している1700字程度の長めの記事です。理想を押し付けるだけでなく、理想を実現していく実務能力も評価しています。同じようにシリアへの介入は積極的ですがが、単なるリベラルな武力介入積極派Liberal hawkというわけでもないという現実的な面もあるようです。 She was one of the White House officials who persuaded Obama to intervene in Libya – against the advice of his secretary of defence Robert Gates – when Muammer Gaddafi’s forces were threatening a massacre in Benghazi. She was the driving force behind the creation of Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board, designed to provide warnings about looming threats. Tommy Vietor, who worked with Power in both Senator Obama’s office and the White House, says she was an effective bureaucratic operator.
“People think of her as a moral conscience, which is true,” he says. “But they forget she also spent a lot of time studying how governments respond to this type of crisis. She knows the system well.”
英語学習的に面白い表現を紹介します。If A Problem From Hell made her career, it is also a cross Power has to bearと「十字架を背負う」というイディオムがそのまま使われていますね。 If A Problem From Hell made her career, it is also a cross Power has to bear, a series of stark judgments against which to assess her performance now. In the book she argues that in the face of mass atrocities, “American leaders did not act because they did not want to”. Perhaps the most famous passage concerns the genocide in Rwanda and the reaction of Susan Rice, then a White House official and now Obama’s national security adviser (and Power’s predecessor at the UN). “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” Rice told Power.“poster child for the ‘lean-in’ generation”として記事で取り上げられていたPoliticoのイベント動画がありました。本当にネット社会は便利ですよね。
These days Power juggles a very different set of challenges, mixing her job at the UN with the demands of two young children, Declan, four, and Rían, who is not quite two. Speaking in November at an event in Washington organised by Politico magazine, she blushed at being described as a “poster child for the ‘lean-in’ generation”. Power replied: “I am happy if I can read them their story before bed without screwing up the negotiation the next day.”
Posted at 2013.12.14 Category : Time
世界の乳幼児３５％が未登録 国連、教育と福祉の障害に 【ニューヨーク共同】世界で５歳未満の乳幼児のうち約３５％が政府や自治体に住民として登録されておらず、出生段階で届けが出ていない割合は４割に上るとの報告を国連児童基金（ユニセフ）が１０日発表した。教育や福祉の障害になると警告し、背景には手続きが不便な地域の存在や、手数料が高すぎるなどの事情があると指摘している。
アフリカ東部ソマリアでは５歳未満児が３％しか登録されず、最貧国全体では３７％。アジアではパキスタンが２７％、インドが４１％の登録にとどまり、中国は有効な統計がない。日本は１００％。2013/12/11 11:27 【共同通信】We must count every child because every child counts.（すべての子供達を数えないといけないのはすべての子供達がかけがえのないものだから）という部分は、英語らしいリズムのある文ですね。ちょっと狙い過ぎと感じたのかご本人も若干照れている印象も受けましたが、多読や多聴をしないとこういうリズム感のある表現は英語学習者には思いつきませんね。 このUNICEFの発表は Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and trends in birth registrationという報告書の告知も兼ねてのものだったようです。以下プレスリリースです。 Press release One in three children under-five does not officially exist - UNICEF
UNICEF releases new birth registration report on its own 67th birthday underscoring the importance of counting every child
NEW YORK, 11 December 2013 - On UNICEF’s 67th birthday today, the organization released a new report showing that the births of nearly 230 million children under-five have never been registered; approximately one in three of all children under-five around the world.
“Birth registration is more than just a right. It’s how societies first recognize and acknowledge a child’s identity and existence,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director. “Birth registration is also key to guaranteeing that children are not forgotten, denied their rights or hidden from the progress of their nations.”
The new report, Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and trends in birth registration, collects statistical analysis spanning 161 countries and presents the latest available country data and estimates on birth registration.
Globally in 2012, only around 60 per cent of all babies born were registered at birth. The rates vary significantly across regions, with the lowest levels of birth registration found in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The 10 countries with the lowest birth registration levels are: Somalia (3%), Liberia (4%), Ethiopia (7%), Zambia (14%), Chad (16%), United Republic of Tanzania (16%), Yemen (17%), Guinea-Bissau (24%), Pakistan (27%) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (28%).
共同通信のベタ記事では現状だけでしたが、プレスリリースにはUnicefの取り組みも簡単に紹介してくれています。 Programmes need to address the reasons that families do not register children, including prohibitive fees, unawareness of the relevant laws or processes, cultural barriers, and the fear of further discrimination or marginalization.
UNICEF is using innovative approaches to support governments and communities in strengthening their civil and birth registration systems. In Kosovo for example, the UNICEF Innovations Lab has developed an efficient, effective, and low-cost means of identifying and reporting unregistered births, built on the RapidSMS mobile-phone based platform.
In Uganda, the government – with support from UNICEF and the private sector – is implementing a solution called MobileVRS that uses mobile phone technology to complete birth registration procedures in minutes, a process that normally takes months.
“Societies will never be equitable and inclusive until all children are counted,” added Rao Gupta. “Birth registration has lasting consequences, not only for the child’s wellbeing, but also for the development of their communities and countries.”
BBCの記事は携帯による取り組みのほうもしっかり報じてくれています。 11 December 2013 Last updated at 21:02 GMT Unicef: 230m young children 'do not officially exist'
The UN children's charity, Unicef, says one in three children under five have not had their births registered.
ブログ記事は「UNICEFつながりで、点と点がつながった瞬間」とちょっとおおげさにタイトルを書かせていただきました。というのもこのUnicefの取り組みは今年春のTIME100人に選ばれた日本人、高知エリカが取り組んでいたものだったからです。『 TIMEの100人に入ったもう一人の日本人はエリカ様』の一部を再掲します。 Pioneers
Christopher Fabian and Erica Kochi
Development geeks, both 33
By Jack DorseyApril 18, 2013
More than half of the 6 million births each year in Nigeria are not recorded. Without a birth certificate, a child is much less likely to get educated, be vaccinated or receive health services. Two young UNICEF staffers — Erica Kochi and Christopher Fabian — moving fast within their 66-year-old organization, have made registering a birth as easy as sending a text. They’ve employed similar methods to prevent early deaths as well, creating systems to track the distribution of some 63 million insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets to stop the spread of malaria. Erica and Chris are using technology and accessible, intuitive interfaces to quickly transform the face of humanitarian aid and international development. The world will benefit from their continued efforts.
Dorsey is a co-founder of Twitter and Square
（Yutaのざっくり訳）
ナイジェリアでは毎年新たに生まれる600万人の半数以上が記録されていません。出生証明書がないと、子どもは教育を受けたり、ワクチンを接種したり、医療サービスを受けたりするのが難しくなってしまいます。二人の若いユニセフのスタッフ、高知エリカさんとChristopher Fabianさんは創立から66年にもなる組織の中で素早く対応し、携帯メールを送るのぐらい簡単に出生登録できるようにしました。お二人は同じような方法を用い、早期新生児死亡を防止しようとしています。6300万もの殺虫剤付きの蚊帳の配布をトラッキングして、マラリアの拡大を食い止めているのです。エリカとクリスは技術を活用し、利用しやすい直感的なインターフェイスを使って人道援助と国際開発の様相をあっという間に変革しました。世界はこれからも二人の継続的な取り組みの恩恵を受けることでしょう。
ドロシー氏は、ツイッターとスクエアの共同創業者。
TIMEの記事では高知エリカさんに取材して書いています。 U.N. 1 in 3 Children Under the Age of 5 Does Not Officially Exist, Says UNICEF
Worldwide, 230 million children under age 5 were not registered at birth and, as a result, may face difficulties for the rest of their lives
By Noah Rayman Dec. 10, 2013 “Birth registration is incredibly important as the gateway to all other essential services that children and people need in general,” says Erica Kochi, who co-heads UNICEF’s Innovation Unit that is working to develop low-cost technology to identify and report unregistered births. “It’s the first stop to health services, it’s the first stop to education, and as you move forward it’s the first stop to have citizenship and the right to vote.”
Already, UNICEF is working with the Ugandan government to create a mobile system that lets newborns be registered in a matter of minutes and, in the eyes of authorities, brings the children into existence. In Kosovo, where the roughly 5% of unregistered newborns come from some of the country’s most marginalized communities, Kochi’s Innovation Unit developed a way to use mobile phones to allow social workers to report unregistered births.
しっかりと計画を立ててこなしていくことも大事なんですが、たくさんの情報に触れていく中で見取り図ができていく流れも大切にしたいんですよね。資格試験レベルでは計画こなすだけで十分ですが、それ以降のレベルには上がれなくなってしまいますから。
Posted at 2013.12.14 Category : 映画予告編
映画公開初日の映画を観に行くほど映画マニアではありませんが、昨日は仕事を無理矢理終わらせ『ゼログラビティ』を見てきました。個人的にはアバターとはまた別の切り口で3D映画の可能性を知らしめてくれたパイオニア的存在の映画でした。 「原題は『グラビティ』なのに日本だと『ゼログラビティ』なんだぜ」、なんてくだらない議論で訳知り顔をするよりも、騙されたと思って是非3Dでこの映画を「体験」していただきたいと思います。残念ながら 都内にIMAXの映画館は数えるほどしかないのですが、同じ3DならIMAXの方がいいのではないでしょうか。 Space-tacularについては米国での公開第一週での興行収入を報じているときに使われていた（spectacularなspace映画）もので、自分の考えたものではありません（と、責任転嫁（苦笑）） Box Office Report The Awe of Gravity: A Space-tacular $55 Million
Sandra Bullock and George Clooney hit all-time highs in the debut of Alfonso Cuarón's sci-fi thrillerBy Richard Corliss Oct. 06, 2013 この映画はワシントンポストの今年の映画21本にももちろん選ばれていました。今年の映画は豊作なのでトップ10ではなく２１本を選んだと語っています。残念ながら選ばれた映画の多くがまだ日本で公開されていないものが多いです。 Best Movies of 2013May we stipulate that 2013 has been a flat-out, stone-cold, hands-down spectacular year in movies?
Which means that many of us are frustrated. After all, the average filmgoer only sees about six films a year. This is being written at a time when there are at least 10 must-see movies in area theaters, not to mention titles that are stacking up in our on-demand queues like backed-up shuttle flights circling Reagan National.
And guess what: There are more on the way. Even with names like Soderbergh, Spielberg and Lucas decrying the current state of cinema in recent months, it’s still easy to choose 10 movies of exceptional ambition, vision and artistic sensitivity – so easy that we decided to expand the list to a lucky 21. And that’s leaving out such standouts as “Blue Jasmine,” “Before Midnight,” “Rush,” “Short Term 12,” “20 Feet From Stardom” and “Frozen” – to name only a few.
With such above-average fare to choose from, filmgoers may want to adjust their averages, too.
*****
7. “Gravity”
This year’s single best reason to ditch the couch and go back into theaters, Alfonso Cuaron‘s sci-fi ride brought vigor and unmatched technical virtuosity to the humble Popcorn Movie.
評価など気にせず観に行って欲しい映画ですが、自分メモとして以下リンクを整理しておきます。ワシントンポストでも4段階で最高の4つ星ですし、ニューヨークタイムズでもNYT Critics’ Pickとオススメ映画に選ばれています。 （ワシントンポスト） ‘Gravity’ works as both thrilling sci-fi spectacle and brilliant high art
View Photo Gallery — Four-star movies: Keep tabs on the films that received top honors from Post critics over the last year.
By Ann Hornaday, Published: October 4 （ニューヨークタイムズ） MOVIE REVIEW Between Earth and Heaven
‘Gravity’ Stars George Clooney and Sandra BullockBy A. O. SCOTT Published: October 3, 2013 （タイムの映画評） Review Gravity: The Glory of Cinema’s Future
George Clooney is Buzz Lightyear and Sandra Bullock is Space Goddessy in Alfonso Cuarón's epic adventure of survival
By Richard Corliss Oct. 03, 2013 Read more: Review: 'Gravity': The Glory of Cinema's Future | TIME.com
Posted at 2013.12.09 Category : 未分類
オックスフォード辞典がselfieを今年の流行語に選んだ事は日本でも広く報道されました。Selfieについてはこのブログでも『 最高の自分撮り写真とは？』という英国インデペンデントの記事を紹介させていただきました。 今年の単語は自分撮りの「ｓｅｌｆｉｅ」 オックスフォード辞典2013.11.20 Wed posted at 11:40 JST selfieについてはなるほどと共感できるものですが、果たして10年前、20年前に選ばれた流行語はどうでしょうか。どれだけ定着しているのでしょうか？1990年代からの今年の流行語を振り返る興味深い記事がありました。 Words of the Year: Where are they now?Why some endure, and others become embarrassing By Britt Peterson | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT DECEMBER 08, 2013 IF YOU’RE A LINGUIST, lexicographer, or just a person who likes to argue about language, the winter months bring a special treat. From November until January, a growing number of dictionaries, learned societies, and university groups release their picks for Word of the Year. Oxford Dictionaries kicked it off last month with “selfie.” Merriam-Webster just announced last week that “science” had seen the greatest increase in lookups this year. And in January, the American Dialect Society meets to debate winners in several categories, including “most useful” and “most likely to succeed.”
過去の恥ずかしいものの例はA failed one is more like an embarrassing Christmas photo with perm and reindeer sweater.はなぜか共感できますね（苦笑） But Word of the Year is more than a linguistic parlor game: It’s a snapshot of a year in the culture. And this is the perfect time of year to reflect on how good those snapshots turned out to be. A successful WOTY looks great in hindsight—the beginning of something big, or at least a resonant moment in our shared history. A failed one is more like an embarrassing Christmas photo with perm and reindeer sweater.
恥ずかしい筆頭候補が１９９０年代のBushlipsだそうです。英語学習者的にもbushlipsはどうでもいいですが、ブッシュ大統領が選挙で“Read my lips: no new taxes!”と言っておきながら増税したというエピソードは覚えておいた方がいいかもしれません。 When you ask members of the ADS, which has been choosing WOTYs the longest, which words of the year they regret, they all mention “Bushlips,” the society’s first WOTY. “Bushlips” spoke to a particular historical moment: President George H.W. Bush’s broken “Read my lips: no new taxes!” promise. But even back in 1990, it wasn’t clear people were actually using the term. “Even a couple years after, everybody was rolling their eyes going, uh, why did we choose that,” says Grant Barrett, a scholar of slang and ADS vice president. Another “classic” early failure, according to Barrett, was the 1995 WOTY choice “to newt,” a verb meaning “to make aggressive changes as a newcomer”—perhaps too obvious a successor to 1994’s “Most Useful” choice, “to gingrich” (“to deal with government agencies, policies, and people in the manner of...Newt Gingrich”).
新しい単語が定着する条件のようなものが以下のようなものだそうです。 Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College, started the WOTY voting at the ADS and is the author of “Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success.” He calls his criteria for new-word stickiness the “FUDGE factors”: frequency of use; unobtrusiveness (is it normal-sounding enough to become a comfortable part of speech?); diversity of users (i.e., can you say it at the dinner table and be understood?); generation of new forms (is it grammatically versatile?); and endurance of a concept (does it describe something that will continue to exist?).じゃあ今年のselfieはどうなのという説明は記事の最後にありました。こちらはスマホが健在の限り定着しそうです。 So what are the prospects for “selfie”? (We’re pretty sure “science” isn’t going away.) Critics wasted no time in proclaiming Oxford’s word of the year a silly fad; as Daniel Menaker wrote in The New York Times, “selfie” “seems like an embarrassing word to me, on the baby-talk side of talk, and destined for the etymological trash basket that is already brimming with ‘jeggings,’ ‘man cave,’ ‘chillax,’ ‘locovore,’ etc.”
But “selfie” actually has a lot going for it. On Google Trends, while “twerk” appears to have peaked, “selfie” is gathering steam. Where Menaker finds it embarrassing, Metcalf sees it as both unobtrusive and “cute,” he said. The list of variants is endless—“unselfie,” “helfie” (self-portrait with hair), “shelfie” (with bookshelves). Whatever anyone says about “selfie” as an emblem of our narcissistic society, the self-portrait has been around for centuries. So whether or not 2013 was the year of “selfie,” “selfie” could well be with us long after 2013 ends.
Posted at 2013.12.09 Category : 未分類
松本道弘さんリバイバルで雑誌TIMEが注目を集めるようになっていますが、IT化の流れで週刊ニュース雑誌というプラットフォームに寿命がきていることは間違いないようです。Capitalというサイトは知りませんでしたが、今年後半に編集長となったNancy Gibbsと現在のTIMEの苦境が分かる丁寧な記事となっています。 上記は３年前のインタビューです。Nancy Gibbsさんは以下のような本も出したりしていて、ライターとしての力が大変あることが伺えます。 広告費が６年前と比較してほぼ半減しているところを見ると、メディアとしての力がなくなっていることが分かります。何度も書いていることですが、50年前などの復刊したTIME記念号を読んで真っ先に気づく違いは広告量の多さですから。。。。 Her 'Time'By Joe Pompeo 4:59 a.m. Dec. 5, 2013 "In order to grow, we need to be able to change," she said. "We need to stop doing things that it doesn't make sense to do, and start doing things that it does make sense to do. We need to divert resources into the areas with the greatest growth opportunities. We need to be much more nimble and entrepreneurial."
That need, some would say, is dire. Advertising revenue for the first nine months of this year clocked in around $245.2 million, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, down from $442.8 million in 2006, that moment of calm before an economic downturn that battered magazines and newspapers the world over. Time still makes money thanks to consumer revenues, but the finances have been trending closer to the red, according to sources with knowledge of the magazine's books. They cited deep frustrations with a sales side that has seen six publishers in as many years and a dramatic slowdown in RFPs.
歯医者の待合室と書かせていただいたのはcynics might argue, who even looks at the thing anymore besides people sitting in the their dentists' waiting rooms?とあったからです。幸いTIMEはまだ黒字を維持しているようですが、広告費も読者数も減っていく中で、今後黒字を維持していける保障はまったくないようです。 Ad pages are in peril. The digital strategy has lagged. Nor has the newsroom been impervious to the type of industry-wide bloodletting that's put scores of journalists back on the job market in recent years. And anyway, cynics might argue, who even looks at the thing anymore besides people sitting in the their dentists' waiting rooms?
Ken Doctor, a media analyst, summed up the state of Time like this: "It's still breathing, but it's not breathing deeply." That doesn't mean it's time to start working on the magazine's obituary. "This is the media cat that has nine lives," said Doctor. "It has great brand resonance. The question is, how do you harvest that?"
Time is the champion of a once mighty triumvirate of American newsweeklies. While advertising and print circulation have been shrinking (the latter to around 3.26 million copies on average during the first six months of 2013, compared to 3.39 million during the same period five years ago and 4.12 million in 2003, according to the Alliance for Audited Media), Time maintains a robust readership that dwarfs the scale to which its traditional rivals have been reduced—U.S. News & World Report to a little-talked-about website and Newsweek to a tablet-first digital title that is chic and conversation-starting by comparison but has a relatively modest subscriber base. The latter publication has set a cautious first-year circulation goal for its just-announced return to print, as an Economist-like "boutique" product, in early 2014: 100,000 copies.
雑誌メディアが新しい方向性を模索しなければいけないことは10年前から言われていましたが、問題は新しい方向性がまだ見えていないことでしょう。そのような状況をTo steer Time through uncharted watersと表現しています。 Which is to say that Gibbs' mission seems a Herculean one: To steer Time through uncharted waters, and to do so while grappling with headwinds stronger than those encountered by any of her recent forebears.
"This is a much different job than it was even three or four years ago," said Michael Duffy, a deputy managing editor based out of Washington D.C. who's worked closely with Gibbs (including co-authoring two books) since the mid 1990s. "She's now presiding over a magazine and a website that had 40 million uniques last month, plus a documentary unit"—Red Border Films, which launched in August—"plus tablet and mobile apps, a conference business, an education play with Time for Kids, just a much bigger operation. It's a challenge previous managing editors didn't have."
この記事で、彼女がとても有能な記者であることやTimeに入った理由などについても知る事ができます。夏のバイト感覚で新聞社の仕事をしたのがジャーナリズムの世界に入ったきっかけなんですね。 Gibbs attended elementary and high school at Friend Seminary, a private Quaker school on 16th Street. She studied history as an undergrad at Yale and spent her summers at Chautauqua, an educational retreat nestled in the southwestern corner of upstate New York. Her first journalism job was writing for The Chautauquan Daily, a newspaper that existed only two months out of the year. Gibbs enjoyed the access it provided to prominent lecturers like Alger Hiss and Gen. William Westmoreland, even though she didn't see a media career in her future back then. "It was just a way better summer job than being a camp counselor or scooping ice cream," she said.
By 1985, Gibbs had a master's degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford and an itch to give professional magazine journalism a try. In Time, she saw a platform for "getting to watch events unfold over a period of days, as opposed to minutes or hours, and then taking a first crack out of making some sense of them," versus the more urgent meter of daily newspapers, which she found "too staccato, too incremental," or the comparatively sluggish pace of a monthly, which "felt too far removed from real time." She got her foot in the door as a factchecker and never looked back.
Nancy Gibbsさんにとっては世論形成力としてのTIMEの力を今でも信じているそうです。確かに今年も話題になった表紙はいくつかありました。やはり問題はどういうプラットフォームに載せるかということでしょうか。。。 But at its best, a Time cover can be much more powerful, and that's why Gibbs believes that the physical magazine, even with its migrating readership and plunging ad pages and declining prominence in the collective psyche of America, is so essential.
"There are very few institutions that can change the direction of a national conversation by virtue of the real estate we have inside that red border," she said. She cited Steven Brill's epic March cover story on rising medical costs as a "classic example" of a piece that ended up "changing the rules in Washington ... and there have been so many of those. When a lawmaker stands up on the floor of Congress, with a blown up image of Time's cover on military suicides, to argue for more funding for mental health resources for veterans, it's..."
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
今週のMetropolisはYurukara Revolution The cult of cute rules Japan（ゆるキャラ革命 かわいさ信仰が日本を席巻）とゆるキャラ特集でした。ゼロから説明しようとすると大変なので、こういう記事を読んで説明をパクるのが一番簡単ですね。 Yurukara Revolution
The cult of cute rules Japan By: Cal Widdall | Dec 5, 2013 | Issue: 1028 | No Comments | 351 views There’s no perfect translation for yurukyara, the Kumamons and Hikonyans of Japan. The kyara is short for “character,” but the yuru part seems to be designated a different English word by everyone who tries: Weak? Soft? Gentle? None of them really fit. Perhaps the closest word we have is mascot, but suggest that to any English-speaking Japanese person and they’ll furrow their brow and inhale sharply, as though trying to suck the word right out of the air to avoid anyone else hearing your misguided attempt.
Much like their name, the concept of yurukyara doesn’t really translate to other cultures, this need for all-smiles all the time, for everything to be embodied by happy bears and cats in helmets. Their presence has seeped throughout the fabric of Japanese society and bled into more serious aspects of life where they simply don’t belong, like glitter from a Halloween costume still making an appearance on your work clothes in December.
ちょっと検索をして「ゆるキャラ」をどう説明しているか、比較してみます。 What is "Yuru-kyara"?"Yuru-kyara(ゆるキャラ)"(loose characters) are cute, friendly and a little bizarre mascots owned by national government organizations, local governments, companies, individuals for the purpose of public relations. In recent years in Japan, more and more local governments(prefectures and municipalities) compete to create their own yuru-kyara. It is commonly called "yuru-kyara boom."
One of the most popular yuru-kyara in Japan is "Kumamon(くまモン)", which is a mascot of Kumamoto Prefecture. "Kumamon" is a combination of two words: "Kuma" is short for Kumamoto and "Mon" represents the local dialect that uses that word for the standard Japanese word for "things," or "mono(物)."
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Yuru-kyara literally means “a loose character.” Hundreds of local governments, companies and other entities use characters based on animals and imaginary creatures for promotional purposes.
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The popularity of yuru-kyara – literally loose characters in English – has rocketed thanks largely to the promotional activity of Kumamon, a rosy-cheeked black bear character from Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan. Kumamon may look whimsical but his cash-generating ability is no joke: He generated ¥29 billion ($285 million) for his prefecture last year in sales of related goods. Kumamon has entertained the emperor and empress, visited France, Taiwan and the U.S. and even participated in an economics seminar at Harvard University since winning the national mascot contest in 2011.
メトロポリスの記事は分析的にこの現象を考えている真面目なものですが、この記事で知ったのですが、旭川刑務所もゆるキャラを出しているのですね。英文記事内ではAshikawa Prisonと、旭川のスペルが間違っていますが、やはり固有名詞が外国の人にとっては難しいことが分かります。 なぜ刑務所が「ゆるキャラ」を作ったのか？(更新 2013/10/ 7 07:00) 週刊朝日記事
熊本県の誇る広告塔「くまモン」に、千葉県船橋市“非公認”の「ふなっしー」――。着ぐるみをまとった「ゆるキャラ」たちの勢いがすさまじい。そしてついに、刑務所にもその波が押し寄せた。
その名も「カタックリちゃん」。北海道の旭川刑務所はこのほど、2009年から使用しているPRキャラクター「カタックリちゃん」の着ぐるみを作製した。もちろん、全国の刑務所で初めての試みだ。
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The most recent example of this mascot mania is Ashikawa Prison’s adoption of two six-foot cuddly characters to welcome convicts into incarceration. Human rights campaigners protested that harsh prison conditions were being masked by Katakkuri-chan, whose giant smiling face is topped with a purple flower, but a spokesperson explained their creation was necessary to reinforce the facility’s image as a rehabilitation institution that is connected to, and supported by, society. The underlying message was clear: regardless of any seemingly conflicting role, organizations don’t consider themselves part of modern Japanese society without a yurukyara to represent them.
やはりこの記事も、単調な事務仕事のうるおいというよりも、「町おこし」の部分に注目して書かれています。
The reason for their saturation of anything and everything, besides bored office workers looking for something other than administrative duties to do, seems to be the overwhelming success of regional yurukyara in promoting tourism.
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One factor that goes part way to explaining his prevalence is Kumamoto’s relatively lax control of his image rights, which also contributed to a staggering ¥30 billion (USD $305 million) of merchandise sales last year. To put that figure into perspective, it’s $63 million more than Barbie merchandise generated in North America during the same period and equivalent to 0.6% of Kumamoto Prefecture’s entire annual GDP.
With this kind of money attainable it’s no surprise every prefecture, city and ward wants their own Kumamon. Even the bafflingly high ¥5 million spent on producing Nara’s Sento-kun was a pittance compared to the estimated ¥1.5 billion worth of PR his controversy generated.
Though yurukyara are often designed by public competition winners, there’s little variation in their composition. The vast majority are a basic anthropomorphic combination of the area’s notable characteristics and a name to match (though choosing a name isn’t always so simple, just ask Fukushima Industries’ Fukuppy). For example, Yubari is famous for Yubari melons and bears, hence Melon-kuma, a part-melon, part-bear, all-terrifying monstrosity which regularly makes children cry and hide behind their parents.
最近人気のフナッシーももちろん紹介されています。 FUNASSYI The unofficial mascot of Funabashi, Chiba had humble beginnings. Armed with a homemade costume and plenty of yaruki (motivation) this now international star is more famous (and possibly richer) than his kigurumi-clad compatriots. One of the few yurukyara that talks, he squeals and finishes each sentence with, “Nashiiii!” This smarter-than-your-average pear-shaped prodigy runs, jumps and shakes like a tazered would-be bag-snatcher. He jetted off to London recently, and was also the unfortunate victim of a prank involving the setting off of multiple explosions. His high-pitched voice and strange mannerisms make him a point of ridicule, but at the same time he’s just one of those characters you have to like. 個人的には何の思い入れもないんですが、雑貨屋みたいなところに入ってもゆるキャラがありますし、東京の地方自治体が出しているアンテナショップでもゆるキャラのお菓子が結構な値段（単なるスナック菓子なのに）で売られていたのが印象的でした。
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
Youtubeの広告で最近みかけるものですよね。広告の場合は日本語字幕付きで見れます。素人の勝手な推測ですけど、南スーダンへの支援と引き換えに今回のNespressoのCMに登場したんでしょうか。そういうしたたかさはあってもいいですね。 これはEcologicalとCollaborationを結びつけたEcolaborationとして取り組んでいるようです。こういう説明文はTOEIC的文章ですね。このような文書、文体は新聞・雑誌記事では目にしないので、TOEIC教材がありがたい分野です。単純にTOEICが下で、TIMEが上という判断はやめて欲しいと思います。こういう文章を書けるようになることは、ビジネスで英語を使える人は目標としていいと思うからです。 Nespresso Ecolaboration™ Program
The Nespresso Ecolaboration™ Program is committed to continuous improvement in sustainability.
At Nespresso we know that ensuring a future supply of highest quality coffee means protecting the environment and supporting farming communities. The Nespresso Ecolaboration™ Program brings together NGOs, consultants, academics, technical experts and business partners to improve our sustainability performance from cherry to cup.
Since 2003, Nespresso has partnered with the Rainforest Alliance to build the innovative AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program. The program ensures highest quality coffee cultivation in ways that are environmentally sound and beneficial to farming communities.
Through our Vertech™ Network (R&D teams, machine suppliers, designers and sustainability experts) we are designing greener machines for the future. To achieve our goal of reducing CO2 emissions, we are examining new energy supplies and ways of recycling waste materials. For example, our latest machines are equipped with automatic power-save or power-off functions.
As part of the Ecolaboration™ Program, Nespresso has made a commitment for 2013:
to source 80% of our coffee from the AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program
to reduce the carbon footprint of a cup of Nespresso Grand Crus coffee by 20%最後の方のto source 80% of our coffeeは「〜を調達する」という動詞で使われていますね。TOEICの公式では登場していませんが、出てもおかしくない表現です。（頻度は低いでしょうけど。。。） source verb
to get something, especially products or materials, from a particular place:
source sth from sth
The supermarket decided it wanted to source all its milk from one company.
More and more of its merchandise will have to be sourced overseas.
Financial information can now be sourced from an endless stream of online services.
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
サマンサパワーズさんを知ることで、人道援助に興味が出たので上記の新書を読んでみました。マンデラさんの訃報で彼の偉大さを改めて認識する人もたくさんいらっしゃる（自分もその一人です）と思いますが、世界をより広く、深く知る事ができればきっかけは何でもよいのではないでしょうか。したり顔で何か分かったような口を聞く人のほうが厄介だと思います。 自分は90年代 カンボジアに自衛隊が派遣されるという頃に大学生だったので、どうしてもPKO＝平和維持軍のイメージが強いのですが、国際的には「平和構築」という問題意識になっているんですね。ユーゴスラビアやルワンダ、ソマリアの事例などをひきながら具体的な問題点をベースに語ってくださっている本です。主権国家、武力介入、犯罪処罰、開発援助、人名援助、それぞれの観点から平和を構築することについて考察しています。 最近、以下のようなニュースがあったりしましたが、ルワンダやコンゴの問題も説明を読むと単純にはいかない問題であることが分かります。ルワンダのカガメ大統領は、開発独裁とも言える、権威主義的なアプローチをとっているため、反体制側はコンゴに追い出しているそうです。また、コンゴに対しても天然資源があるためか介入を繰り返しているようです。 コンゴ民主:最大武装勢力が降伏 軍など、他組織も掃討へ毎日新聞 2013年11月18日 21時05分（最終更新 11月19日 00時10分）
多数の武装勢力が割拠するアフリカ中部コンゴ民主共和国で最大規模の「３月２３日運動（Ｍ２３）」が今月、政府軍との戦闘で占領地域を失い、事実上降伏した。政府とＭ２３は１８日現在、正式和平に向けた最終協議を進めている。政府軍と国連戦闘部隊は他の武装組織の掃討作戦にも乗り出す構えで、１５年間混乱が続くコンゴ東部で、治安回復が進むのか注目される。【ゴマ（コンゴ東部）で服部正法】
政府軍などは先月下旬からＭ２３の占領地域を次々奪回。今月５日までに拠点をほぼ制圧し、Ｍ２３は同日、一方的に終結宣言を出した。
Ｍ２３はツチ人保護などを主張して政府軍と戦い、一時和平に合意し政府軍に編入された。ところが昨年３月に離脱して戦闘を再開。同１１月には東部主要都市ゴマを制圧、その後自発的に撤退し、政府軍と戦闘を展開した。
最後の人道援助の章でもルワンダのことを取り上げます。ルワンダというとどうしても1994年のルワンダの大虐殺が思い出されますが、人道援助的に難しい問題は、その後の第一次コンゴ戦争にあったと言います。この戦争では500−６００万人の犠牲者が出たとも言われたそうで、８０万人といわれるルワンダの大虐殺よりも規模が大きいです。ここで、難民キャンプがルワンダの虐殺首謀者や旧政府関係者によって支配されていて、援助物資を与えることが、問題を拡大する構造になっていたという問題は考えさせられます。長期的な視点に立てば援助は打ち切ればいいのでしょうが、それは今苦しんでいる人を見殺しにつながることになりますから。 2010年の記事ですが、ちょうどそのような内容を取り上げたニューヨーカーの記事があります。『クライシス・キャラバン』という本の書評に絡めてのもので、この本は『平和構築入門』でも参考文献として挙げられていました。 A CRITIC AT LARGEALMS DEALERS
Can you provide humanitarian aid without facilitating conflicts?
BY PHILIP GOUREVITCH OCTOBER 11, 2010 Polman might also have found more heartening anecdotes and balanced her account of humanitarianism run amok with tales of humanitarian success: lives salvaged, epidemics averted, families reunited. But in her view the good intentions of aid—and the good that aid does—are too often invoked as excuses for ignoring its ills. The corruptions of unchecked humanitarianism, after all, are hardly unique to Sierra Leone. Polman finds such moral hazard on display wherever aid workers are deployed. In case after case, a persuasive argument can be made that, over-all, humanitarian aid did as much or even more harm than good.
“Yes, but, good grief, should we just do nothing at all then?” Max Chevalier, a sympathetic Dutchman who tended amputees in Freetown for the N.G.O. Handicap International, asked Polman. Chevalier made his argument by shearing away from the big political-historical picture to focus instead, as humanitarian fund-raising appeals do, on a single suffering individual—in this instance, a teen-age girl who had not only had a hand cut off by rebels but had then been forced to eat it. Chevalier wanted to know, “Are we supposed to simply walk away and abandon that girl?” Polman insists that conscience compels us to consider that option.
上記のように援助という良い事をするには、前提として悪い事が必要になってきます。逆説的に戦争や虐殺を欲してしまう危うい構造があるというのです。下記に紹介されている詩のような状況が起きてしまうというのです。 Maren, who came to regard humanitarianism as every bit as damaging to its subjects as colonialism, and vastly more dishonest, takes a dimmer view: that we do not really care about those to whom we send aid, that our focus is our own virtue. He quotes these lines of the Somali poet Ali Dhux:
A man tries hard to help you find your lost camels.
He works more tirelessly than even you,
But in truth he does not want you to find them, ever.
先ほどのルワンダの虐殺についてもこの記事は触れています。当時は緒方貞子さんが国連難民高等弁務官を務めていましたが、この記事では人道援助のアクターは政治的責任を負っていないという批判を取り上げています。 Everyone knew that the Hutu génocidaires bullied and extorted aid workers, and filled their war chests with taxes collected on aid rations. Everybody knew, too, that these killers were now working their way into the surrounding Congolese territory to slaughter and drive out the local Tutsi population. (During my visit, they had even begun attacking N.G.O. vehicles.) In the literature of aid work, the U.N. border camps set up after the Rwandan genocide, and particularly the Goma camps, figure as the ultimate example of corrupted humanitarianism—of humanitarianism in the service of extreme inhumanity. It could only end badly, bloodily. That there would be another war because of the camps was obvious long before the war came.
Aid workers were afraid, and demoralized, and without faith in their work. In the early months of the crisis, in 1994, several leading aid agencies had withdrawn from the camps to protest being made the accomplices of génocidaires. But other organizations rushed to take over their contracts, and those who remained spoke of their mission as if it had been inscribed in stone at Mt. Sinai. They could not, they said, abandon the people in the camps. Of course, that’s exactly what the humanitarians did when the war came: they fled as the Rwandan Army swept in and drove the great mass of people in the camps home to Rwanda. Then the Army pursued those who remained, fighters and noncombatants, as they fled west across Congo. Tens of thousands were killed, massacres were reported—and this slaughter was the ultimate price of the camps, a price that is still being paid today by the Congolese people, who chafed under serial Rwandan occupations of their country, and continue now to be preyed upon by remnant Hutu Power forces.
Sadako Ogata, who ran the U.N. refugee agency in those years, and was responsible for all the camps in Congo, wrote her own self-exculpating book, “The Turbulent Decade,” in which she repeatedly falls back on the truism “There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems.” She means that the solution must be political, but, coming from Ogata, this mantra also clearly means: no holding humanitarianism accountable for its consequences. One of Ogata’s top officers at the time said so more directly, when he summed up the humanitarian experience of the Hutu Power-controlled border camps and their aftermath with the extraordinary Nixonian formulation “Yes, mistakes were made, but we are not responsible.”
It is a wonder that the U.N. refugee chiefs’ spin escaped Linda Polman’s notice: it’s the sort of nonsense that gets her writerly pulse up. But Polman does effectively answer them. “As far as I’m aware,” she remarks, “no aid worker or aid organization has ever been dragged before the courts for failures or mistakes, let alone for complicity in crimes committed by rebels and regimes.”
Aid organizations and their workers are entirely self-policing, which means that when it comes to the political consequences of their actions they are simply not policed. When a mission ends in catastrophe, they write their own evaluations. And if there are investigations of the crimes that follow on their aid, the humanitarians get airbrushed out of the story. Polman’s suggestion that it should not be so is particularly timely just now, as a new U.N. report on atrocities in the Congo between 1993 and 2003 has revived the question of responsibility for the bloody aftermath of the camps. There can be no proper accounting of such a history as long as humanitarians continue to enjoy total impunity.
こういう難し事を言い出すと、人道援助なんかいらないというのが一番簡単な決断になってしまうでしょうが。。。
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
ケイティペリーって歌手を名前ぐらいしか知らなかったのですが、11月下旬のアメリカンミュージックアワードで芸者みたいな格好でのパフォーマンスをしていたんですね。 「お・も・て・な・し」って挨拶は日本人なら絶対しないだろうと話題になりましたが、ケイティのパフォーマンスでは両手を合わせてお辞儀を何度かしています。やはりあの挨拶は外国のイメージに近いんでしょうね。 Katy Perry Goes Full Geisha for 'Unconditionally' at AMAs: WatchARTICLESNEWSPOP-SHOP By Billboard Staff | November 24, 2013 8:40 PM EST Katy Perry took American Music Awards viewers on a trip to Japan during a sophisticated and oft-high flying opening performance of new single "Unconditionally" on Sunday.
Draped in geisha-inspired clothing -- which she kept on, completely -- Perry and her cadre of background dancers made good use of strobes, confetti and gigantic stage-enveloping screens playing colorful scenes of the Orient.
At one point at least three of her dancers took flight as Perry's vocal began to soar during the song's chorus. (Props to Katy for singing completely live with no apparent self-backing tracks.)
別に人種差別とは思わないですけど、うるさく言う人はどこにでもいるようで、記事になっています。 Was Katy Perry's AMAs Performance Racist?November 24, 2013 at 8:40PM by Amy Odell Katy Perry opened the American Music Awards with an Asian-themed spectacle that seemed mightily confused about which nationality it meant to culturally reappropriate. Her Japanese-inspired kimono-esque robe came with a Chinese-inspired collar. Her dancers also carried fans typical of a Chinese fan dance while her microphone was decorated with cherry blossoms. And all the while, litter was falling from the sky!!! Thank god for that parasol.
個人的には大変迫力のあるパフォーマンスで、何度も見てしまいました。まあ、やっぱり芸者、フジヤマのイメージが強いのだなと思ってしまいますが。。。レノボの「ヨガタブレット」のセンスもなんだかなと思いますが、こんなものなんでしょうね。
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
今日は今年最後のTOEICなんですね。先ほどのU2ボノのマンデラ元大統領追悼記事で理想と現実路線の両方が分かる人だと語っていました。テスト対策とやらが何かと批判にさらされますが、principles and pragmatism are not foes; they can go hand in hand.の精神でidealist without –naivetéを心がけていただければと思います。 Mandela would be remembered as a remarkable man just for what happened—and didn’t happen—in South Africa’s transition. But more than anyone, it was he who rebooted the idea of Africa from a continent in chaos to a much more romantic view, one in keeping with the majesty of the landscape and the nobility of even its poorer inhabitants. He was also a hardheaded realist, as his economic policy demonstrated. To him, principles and pragmatism were not foes; they went hand in hand. He was an idealist without -naiveté, a compromiser without being compromised.さて、不本意な状況で受けざるを得ないような方はテニスのフェデラー選手のインタビューを読むとやる気がでるかもしれません。今年は6位で終わってしまい、年齢も年齢なのでもうフェデラーは過去の選手だと思っている人もいそうですが、このインタビューを読むとまだ彼の心は折れていないことが分かります。インタビュー記事を抜粋してご紹介します。 Roger Federer: “It Boosts My Morale for 2014″
BY: MARCO FALBO PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 6, 2013 MF: Was 2013 a lost year?
RF: No year is lost. In the circumstances, it was actually an interesting season. It’s no joke being injured, of course. But I had to get through it, I had to question everything. Along with the back problems, I had other setbacks of a kind I had seldom had in the previous ten years. But nonetheless it was an interesting experience – to see how different people reacted, and how I dealt with this situation myself. Sometimes, I could hardly move properly, and yet was sharply criticized by some people.
********
MF: Haven’t these unaccustomed defeats against low-ranked players taken away your enjoyment of tennis?
RF: Defeats are part of tennis. What matters is how you react. What is also important for me is that I am honest with myself. I am the sort of person who often questions everything; I did the same when things were going really well for me. That’s why I am not affected much by the criticism, which I don’t think is justified.
MF: Where do you see yourself in terms of your performance? Have you come up against certain limitations, or do you think that you are still capable of top performances?
RF: I can see no reason why I shouldn’t play better again in 2014, and have some great wins. I have still got some major goals, because I certainly haven’t forgotten how to play tennis; after all, I was still number one in the fall of 2012, and at the end of the season, once my back was better, my results also improved. I reached the final in Basel and the semi-finals at Paris-Bercy and the World Tour Finals, and beat top-ten players without playing my best tennis. If my serve or my forehand had been a bit more solid, the results could have been much better.
********
MF: What are your specific goals for 2014?
RF: I would like to win about five tournaments again and play in great finals, that’s where I have most fun. My ranking is less important to me, unless it’s about being number one. But it would be good to be in the top four or top eight, to get good seedings.
MF: Are there any changes in your planning in 2014?
RF: Yes, they’re already being prepared. I’m concentrating fully on my training; for once I won’t be participating in any show tournaments, in contrast with 2012 when I went to South America. What is important is that I can train hard in Dubai in December without any setbacks. I think that it will take until April for me to catch up completely with my training. For once, I’ll be opening the new season at the ATP tournament in Brisbane, after which it’s the Australian Open.
来年、彼の優雅で圧倒的なテニスをまた見れること願っています。
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : 未分類
マンデラ元大統領関連では各紙社説で取り上げ、ガンジー、キング牧師と並ぶ人物と評価しているところが多いですね。単純にダークサイドを取り上げることがマンデラ氏をより良く知っていることを示す訳ではないとも思うので、まずはマンデラ氏の功績を学んでいきたいですね。 この記事ではオバマ大統領、コフィアナン前国連事務総長、ノーベル賞作家ナディン・ゴーディマー、デズモンド・ツツ大司教、ビル・ゲイツ、U2のボノの追悼文をまとめました。 ズマ大統領の公式発表 Jacob Zuma addresses South Africa on Nelson Mandela's death – full text'Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father. Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss' Jacob Zuma The Guardian, Thursday 5 December 2013 22.32 GMT 各国首脳などの追悼コメントは各メディアがそれぞれまとめてくれていますが、WSJでは安倍首相のものを紹介してくれています。 Mandela Tributes Pour in From Around the World
A Wall Street Journal Roundup
Updated Dec. 5, 2013 8:58 p.m. ET
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe :
"I am engulfed in deep sadness upon hearing the passing of former South African president Mandela. President Mandela was a man of faith. Even during his incarceration of 27 years, he fought to abolish apartheid. I bow my head deeply and send my highest praise to his indomitable will. He not only was a tenacious fighter but also a champion of reconciliation. When he achieved the abolition of apartheid after a long struggle, he sought not revenge but national reconciliation. For that I salute him with my deepest respect."
上記の安倍首相の追悼コメントは 首相官邸サイトの談話によるものだと思いますが、首相官邸の発表している英語版とは少し違っています。記者の方が訳したのか、他のメディアが英訳したものを訳したのでしょうか。まあ、いかにも和文英訳みたいな英語になっています。。。 マンデラ元南アフリカ共和国大統領の逝去の報に接し、深い悲しみに包まれております。
マンデラ元大統領は、信念の人でした。27年間におよぶ投獄にもかかわらず、その間ずっとアパルトヘイト撤廃のため闘い続けた不屈の精神に、深く頭を垂れ、最大の賛辞を送ります。
彼は、不屈の闘士であるのみならず、和解の推進者でもありました。長い苦難の末にアパルトヘイトの撤廃を実現した後に、復讐ではなく、国民和解を先頭に立って推進されたことに、心より敬意を表します。
（ 首相官邸の英語版） Upon receiving the news of the passing of H.E. Mr Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, former President of the Republic of South Africa, I was filled with great sadness.
Former President Mandela was a man of conviction. Despite 27 years of imprisonment, he kept fighting to abolish apartheid. May I pay sincere tribute to his indomitable spirit.
Not only was former President Mandela a tireless fighter, he was also a promoter of reconciliation. Indeed, after bringing about the abolition of apartheid at the end of long years of suffering, he devoted himself to the pursuit of national unity rather than seeking vengeance. For his selfless devotion to this worthy cause I am full of respect and admiration.
ガーディアンのものが一番詳しかった感じでしょうか。ツツ大司教がミサを取り仕切るようですね。 http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2013/dec/06/nelson-mandela-tributes-and-reaction-to-his-death-live-updates Nelson Mandela: tributes and reaction to his death - live updates Matthew Weaver and Tom McCarthy theguardian.com, Friday 6 December 2013 21.58 GMT 詩人のMaya Angelouが追悼する詩を作り、読み上げていました。国務省のサイトで発表しているので、政府主導のような感じもしますが。。。 Video Message by Dr. Maya Angelou in Memory of Nelson MandelaBarack Obama: Nelson Mandela was a symbol for justice, equality and dignityThe story told by Mandela's life is not one of infallible human beings and inevitable triumph. It is the story of a man who was willing to risk his own life for what he believed in Barack Obama theguardian.com, Thursday 5 December 2013 22.38 GMT December 6, 2013 7:04 pm Africans must walk to freedom in Mandela’s memoryBy Kofi Annan Financial Times The moral courage of Nelson Mandela
BY DESMOND TUTU December 5 at 6:22 pm Washington Post December 06, 2013 | By Bill Gates Remembering Nelson MandelaボノがTimeに書いた記事も80年代からの思い出が語られています。The Man Who Could Not Cryと泣くことができない人物にマンデラさんがなってしまった理由が書かれている最後の部分をご紹介します。 Bono Honors The Man Who Could Not Cry
Humor, humility and the ability to compromise were the marks of the man By Bono Dec. 05, 2013421 Comments Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.
Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.
He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.
Today, we can.
どうしても「不屈の精神で変革を導いた」という言葉が上滑りしてしまうのですが、ノーベル賞作家ナディン・ゴーディマーの記事を読むと並大抵の苦難ではなかったことが伺えます。 DECEMBER 5, 2013 MANDELA, MY COUNTRYMANPOSTED BY NADINE GORDIMER New Yorker
In 1979, I wrote a novel, “Burger’s Daughter,” on the theme of the family life of revolutionaries’ children, a life ruled by their parents’ political faith and the daily threat of imprisonment. I don’t know how the book, which was banned in South Africa when it was published, was smuggled to Mandela in Robben Island Prison. But he, the most exigent reader I could have hoped for, wrote me a letter of deep, understanding acceptance about the book.
Even when there was no news of him publicly, and no sense of what he must be thinking or planning for the continuation of the struggle to end apartheid, we had his statements, the public speeches that he had made while he had been physically present with us. For a spirit like his, “walls do not a prison make”; his spirit could not be in the custody of apartheid. We could still feel his political intellect. I was able to keep in touch with Mandela during that time, thanks to the remarkable George Bizos, his more-than-lawyer, who stayed close to him even at the distance of Robben Island.
In 1985, the apartheid President P. W. Botha offered Mandela his freedom if he unconditionally renounced all violence as a political instrument. Mandela’s reply was read out by his daughter Zindzi, at a huge stadium in Soweto: “Let him renounce violence. Let him say that he will dismantle apartheid. Let him unban the people’s organization, the African National Congress. . . . I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free.”
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, his wife then, for whom he could not conceal his passionate love, was allowed only highly restricted visits to him, until he had been moved from Robben Island, in 1982, to a prison built for common-law prisoners on the Cape Town mainland. Finally, in 1990, Nelson Mandela was to be seen freed, hand in hand with his wife.
恥ずかしながらマンデラさんが1964年に国家反逆罪で終身刑の判決を受けた裁判のことをRivonia Trialというのも知りませんでした。伝記映画Mandela: Long Walk To Freedomで使われている“I am prepared to die”は、この裁判での証言。 こちらで読むことができます。動画もありました。 （ウィキペディア） The Rivonia Trial was a trial that took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964, in which ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system. This trial was made after the police raid on the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) base in Rivonia, which showed documents of relations to the 10 accused men.
なんか音声と証言があっていない部分もあるんですが。。。 During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Posted at 2013.12.08 Category : New York Times
今週の日曜版の書評は今年の10冊を発表していました。もう、そんな時期になってしまったということですね。 The 10 Best Books of 2013
The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
Published: December 4, 2013 10冊について語るポッドキャストはこちら。今年の100冊については先週発表されていました。 100 Notable Books of 2013Published: November 27, 2013 The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. 自分が読んだことのある本は、フィクション、ノンフィクション各１冊ずつでした。 TENTH OF DECEMBER
Stories
By George Saunders.
Random House, $26.
Saunders’s wickedly entertaining stories veer from the deadpan to the flat-out demented: Prisoners are force-fed mood-altering drugs; ordinary saps cling to delusions of grandeur; third-world women, held aloft on surgical wire, become the latest in bourgeois lawn ornaments. Beneath the comedy, though, Saunders writes with profound empathy, and this impressive collection advances his abiding interest in questions of class, power and justice.取り上げたブログ過去記事WAVE
By Sonali Deraniyagala.
Alfred A. Knopf, $24.
On the day after Christmas in 2004, Deraniyagala called her husband to the window of their hotel room in Sri Lanka. “I want to show you something odd,” she said. The ocean looked foamy and closer than usual. Within moments, it was upon them. Deraniyagala lost her husband, her parents and two young sons to the Indian Ocean tsunami. Her survival was miraculous, and so too is this memoir — unsentimental, raggedly intimate, full of fury.
取り上げたブログ過去記事来週末あたりはTimeが同じように今年の本を特集しそうですね。
Posted at 2013.12.07 Category : 未分類
ケイティペリーってツイッターのフォロワーが4800万もあるんですね。レディーガガが4000万程度だったので、彼女がフォロワー数世界一の歌姫ではないでしょうか。そんな彼女がUnicefの親善大使になるというニュースがありました。 Goodwill Ambassador Katy Perry: Put the spotlight on children and amplify the voices of youth
By Priyanka PruthiDoing her new role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, world-famous singer and songwriter Katy Perry expressed her unconditional support for the most vulnerable children. “I really believe in UNICEF. I really believe that it’s important for us as adults to look after children. They are innocent. They deserve that innocence, and their happiness and joy is pure – and it should be maintained.” Katy official appointment as new Unicef Goodwill Ambassador took place at the organization’s headquarters in New York. The pop star will be lending her voice and her media platform to amplify the voices of young people. “You are going to make a huge difference, especially through social media, in helping us reach youth to get them more involved in global conversations – but also in acting locally, as well” Katy’s journey with UNICEF began in April this year when she visited Madagascar, one of the poorest countries of the world. She said the trip changed her life and inspired her songs. “I remembered being inspired by the incredible joy that these kids had on their faces and their interactions with each other. And how, it really kind of reprioritized my thinking, and my whole approach on life, and how to find my own joy and my own happiness that isn't based on material possessions or social status. I was really inspired to write this song “Unconditionally” based on my experience in Madagascar seeing these children just have the currency of love between them and exchanging that. And it’s the situation of children like those in Madagascar, children living in severe poverty, affected by violence and those in emergencies, that Katy will place in the spotlight. In an interview with UNICEF, she talked about the power of youth as a force of change. “I believe that the youth culture is not one that is lost. I think we actually are headed in a positive direction.” This is Priyanka Pruthi for Unicef. For more information, go to unicef.org. “Unconditionally”という曲は普通のバージョンとUnicefバージョンがあうのですね。この曲についてつぶやいたケイティのつぶやきに１万以上のリツイートがついていました。メディアとしての彼女の力をUnicefが借りたくなるのもわかります。 ( Katy Perryのtweet) Yes, unconditional love sometimes feels like being hit by a car... Or being on fire... How does it feel to you?
先ほどのは記事形式ですが、下記はUnicefのプレスリリースです。プレスリリース的な形式、書き方にも慣れておきたいですね。 Press release
Katy Perry is UNICEF’s newest Goodwill Ambassador
NEW YORK, 3 December 2013 – At a special event today at UNICEF Headquarters, global pop superstar Katy Perry was appointed UNICEF’s newest Goodwill Ambassador, with a special focus on engaging young people in the agency’s work to improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents.
“Katy Perry is already a champion for children, and we look forward to hearing her ‘roar’ on behalf of UNICEF,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “We are delighted that she is joining us as UNICEF’s newest Goodwill Ambassador and lending her remarkable voice to amplify the voices of children and young people around the world.”
As a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Katy will work to engage young people in speaking out about the issues they believe are most important in their own lives and enlisting them more directly in coming up with solutions to those challenges. She will focus her outreach especially on children and adolescents who are most vulnerable, including those living in severe poverty, affected by violence, abuse, and neglect, and in emergency and conflict situations.
***
As a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, the 29-year-old singer joins an impressive list that also includes Amitabh Bachchan, David Beckham, Harry Belafonte, Orlando Bloom, Jackie Chan, Mia Farrow, Danny Glover, Angelique Kidjo, Liam Neeson, Leo Messi, Sir Roger Moore, Vanessa Redgrave and Susan Sarandon.
Oscar winning icon Audrey Hepburn drew worldwide attention to the role of UNICEF Goodwill ambassador, following in the footsteps of actor and comedian Danny Kaye, who pioneered the concept of the Goodwill Ambassador, serving from 1954 until his death in 1987.
Posted at 2013.12.07 Category : 未分類
ニューヨークタイムズもマンデラ元大統領を追悼してOpEd面は彼の記事一色ですね。エコノミストもA giant passesと彼を表紙にしています。（体調不良のニュースがあったので、予定稿を準備していたでしょうが、差し替えなど大変だったでしょうね）。Timeは金曜日の発売に間に合わなかった代わりとしてか、マンデラ追悼号を無料でiPad版アプリで配信していますね。 そんな中説得力をもって迫ってくるのがモハメドアリのtributeでしょうか。生前に書かれたものですが、ちょうどいいタイミングになってしまいました。日本語と英語でも読めるので、英語学習者にもありがたいです。 ネルソン・マンデラに捧ぐ
投稿日: 2013年12月06日 18時52分 このブログは、元プロボクサー、モハメド・アリ氏によるネルソン・マンデラ元大統領への賛辞である。マンデラ元大統領生前の11月26日に投稿された。 Tribute to Nelson Mandela
Posted: 11/26/2013 9:59 amMr. Mandela could have easily spent those 27 years of incarceration abroad, protesting the evil from afar, safe from repercussions. Not him. If his people suffered, he would suffer with them.
ミスター・マンデラは27年間も監獄島に幽閉された。彼がそのとき収監を逃れようと思ったならば、他国に亡命し、安全な場所から不正義に対する抗議を続けることも容易だったであろう。しかし、ミスター・マンデラはそれを選択しなかった。彼はそのような人間ではなかった。仲間が苦しみを味わい続ける限り、彼も共に苦しみを背負うことを選択したのだ。
I know something about protest. I know well the feelings and questions that run through the mind of those who stand against a system, braving everything for a cause. It is never easy. The personal price is high, but the greatest of people persevere for the greater good. Modern South Africa is built on the back of Mr. Mandela's sacrifice. It still amazes me, even to this day, that a man could give up two and half decades of his life, emerge from prison and forgive his imprisoners.
私は抗議することの意味を知っている。私は体制に逆らい、理想にまい進する人たちの心に通底する感情や疑問を十分知っている。個々の犠牲は尊いものだ。しかし、もっとも偉大な人物は、大義のために忍耐し続けた。今日の南アフリカはミスター・マンデラの犠牲の上に築かれた。今でも驚かされるのは、一人の男が己の人生の25年以上を捧げ、刑務所から出所し、自らを投獄した人間に赦しを与えたことだ。
1994年５月のマンデラ大統領の大統領就任スピーチがペンギンのHistoric Speechesに収載されていました。動画もすぐに見つけることができましたので、最後のクライマックスのところと合わせてご紹介します。 （スクリプトは下記から） Statement of the President of the African National Congress, Nelson R Mandela, at his inauguration as President of the democratic Republic of South Africa
Item type: Address; Statement
Acquisition method: From website
Source: ANC Website
Unique ID: NMS176
（最後のクライマックス） We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free. Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward. We are both humbled and elevated by the honour and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first president of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, to lead our country out of the valley of darkness. We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfil themselves. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement Let freedom reign. God bless Africa Timeのマンデラ追悼号ではこの人も寄稿しています。
Posted at 2013.12.05 Category : 読書報告
Ruth OzekiさんのA Tale For the Time Beingを読み始めました。日本が舞台で日本語も英語の本にちょくちょく登場しますので、日本人にとっては読みやすい小説ではないかと思います。 NPRのインタビュー（Transcript付き）本の冒頭抜粋ちょっと脱線しますが、ハイデガーの『存在と時間』を『有と時』と訳しているものがあるのですが、道元の『正法眼蔵』の第二十『有時』の章から来ていたのですね。存在と時間を巡る物語なのでこの小説ではプルーストのA la recherché du temps perdu（失われた時を求めて）が登場します。 下記のプロモーション動画は本の冒頭を読んでくれていますし、まさに本そのままの情景なのでこの動画を見てから読み始めた方が読みやすくなるかもしれません。 Nao
1.
Hi!
My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you're reading this, then maybe by now you're wondering about me, too.
You wonder about me.
I wonder about you.さて、タイトルの『主人公の名前をどう訳す？』に戻りますが、動画を聞いていただくとHi My name is Nao.の部分は英語の発音だとNaoとNow（今）と一緒なのですね。NPRのインタビューではHer name is Nao - spelled N-A-O. とあるのもNowのように聞こえてしまう人のために明言しているのかもしれません。 This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. The story we're about to hear starts with the voice of a 16-year-old girl in Tokyo. Her name is Nao - spelled N-A-O. She's sitting in a cafe writing in her diary, explaining to no one in particular that she's about to take her own life. This fictional character came fairly easily into the imagination of writer Ruth Ozeki. And a couple of years ago, she had finished Nao's story and she was ready to send it off to her editor in early 2011.
存在と時間がトピックであるこの本で主人公の名前が「今」「現在」というのはベタかもしれませんが、日本語の翻訳書はどのように訳すのだろうと気になってしまいました。Naoをそのまま「奈緒」とすると英語の原書に込められた「今」「現在」の意味が伝わらなくなってしまいますよね。いっそのこと主人公の名前をNaoから例えば「由真（ゆま）」のようにすれば日本語で読む読者には「今」の意味を込めることができますが、原書と違いが出てしまいますね。。。 これから出るといわれる翻訳書はどのように処理しているのでしょうね。
Posted at 2013.12.01 Category : WSJ
先ほど記事にしたBen Zimmerのコラムは先週ケネディ政権を示すCamelotという言葉の経緯を紹介してくれていました。 WORD ON THE STREET: BEN ZIMMER
Jackie Started The Legend of JFK 'Camelot'
In the remembrances of John F. Kennedy's presidency this week as the 50th anniversary of his assassination passes, one word continues to resonate above all: Camelot.
The name of King Arthur's mythical court city has its roots in medieval romantic literature, but thanks to skillful media manipulation by Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband's death, "Camelot" remains a potent mythmaking metaphor for the Kennedy administration.
この語に関しては 以前もブログで取り上げました。そのとき紹介した『アメリカ英語背景辞典』の説明です。 Camelot 「キャメロット」
ジョン・ケネディ John F. Kennedy (1917-63)が大統領に就任した1961年に、ブロードウェイではミュージカルCamelotが人気を呼んでいた。リチャード・バートン Richard Burton (1925-84)とジュリー・アンドリュース Julie Andrews (1935-)の主演であった。Camelotは中世伝説のアーサー王がその宮廷をおいた町の名である。理想主義に燃える若き大統領と魅力的な夫人の醸し出す新政権の雰囲気が、アーサー王の宮廷の華やかさと重なって、いつしか、ケネディ政権のことをCamelotと言うようになった。
暗殺直後の大統領夫人のインタビューを載せた 雑誌Lifeの記事を目を通しておくと次の記事もイメージがしやすくなると思います。 Zimmerさんの記事で触れられていたJames Peresonさんの記事が大変興味深かったのでご紹介します。この言葉がつかわれる経緯と、Camelotのイメージ化の成功と代償は言葉を学び、使おうとしているものにとって考えさせられます。 How Jackie Kennedy Invented the Camelot Legend After JFK’s Death
James PieresonBy James PieresonNovember 12th 20135:45 AM More Stories by James Piereson Few events in the postwar era have cast such a long shadow over our national life as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy fifty years ago this month. The murder of a handsome and vigorous president shocked the nation to its core and shook the faith of many Americans in their institutions and way of life.
Those who were living at the time would never forget the moving scenes associated with President Kennedy’s death: the Zapruder film depicting the assassination in a frame-by-frame sequence; the courageous widow arriving with the coffin at Andrews Air Force Base still wearing her bloodstained dress; the throng of mourners lined up for blocks outside the Capitol to pay respects to the fallen president; the accused assassin gunned down two days later while in police custody and in full view of a national television audience; the little boy saluting the coffin of his slain father; the somber march to Arlington National Cemetery; the eternal flame affixed to the gravesite. These scenes were repeated endlessly on television at the time and then reproduced in popular magazines and, still later, in documentary films. They came to be viewed as defining events of the era.
In their grief, Americans were inclined to take to heart the various myths and legends that grew up around President Kennedy within days of the assassination. Though the assassin was a communist and an admirer of Fidel Castro, many insisted that President Kennedy was a martyr to the cause of civil rights who deserved a place of honor next to Abraham Lincoln as a champion of racial justice. Others held him up as a great statesman who labored for international peace.
アメリカ人がケネディ暗殺で浮かべるイメージを紹介してくれていますが、Camelotという言葉は先ほどご紹介した暗殺後に出たLifeで大統領夫人が語った言葉が最初で、当初Life編集部はセンチメンタル過ぎるからと掲載を渋ったようです。 In that interview Mrs. Kennedy pressed upon White the Camelot image that would prove so influential in shaping the public memory of JFK and his administration. President Kennedy, she told the journalist, was especially fond of the music from the popular Broadway musical, Camelot, the lyrics of which were the work of Alan Jay Lerner, JFK’s classmate at Harvard. The musical, which featured Richard Burton as Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guinevere, and Robert Goulet as Lancelot, had a successful run on Broadway from 1960 to 1963. According to Mrs. Kennedy, the couple enjoyed listening to a recording of the title song before going to bed at night. JFK was especially fond of the concluding couplet: “Don’t ever let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was Camelot.” President Kennedy, she said, was strongly attracted to the Camelot legend because he was an idealist who saw history as something made by heroes like King Arthur (a claim White knew to be untrue). “There will be great presidents again,” she told White, “but there will never be another Camelot.” In this way, and to her credit, Mrs. Kennedy sought to attach a morally uplifting message to one of the more ugly events in American history.
Following the interview, White retreated to a guest room in the Kennedy mansion to review his notes and compose a draft of the essay. His editors were at this hour (late on a Saturday evening) holding the presses open at great expense while waiting to receive his copy over the telephone. When White later phoned his editors to dictate his text (with Mrs. Kennedy standing nearby), he was surprised by their reaction for they initially rejected the Camelot references as sentimental and inappropriate to the occasion. Mrs. Kennedy, interpreting the gist of the exchange, signaled to White that Camelot must be kept in the text. The editors quickly relented. White later wrote that he regretted the role he played in transmitting the Camelot myth to the public.
Camelotのイメージ化に成功した代償についてはThe images she advanced had a double effect: first, to establish Kennedy as a transcendent political figure far superior to any contemporary rival; and, second, to highlight what the nation had lost when he was killedと語っています。このイメージは我々日本人が抱くイメージそのものですよね。 But the Camelot image as applied to the Kennedy presidency had some unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. By turning President Kennedy into a liberal idealist (which he was not) and a near legendary figure, Mrs. Kennedy inadvertently contributed to the unwinding of the tradition of American liberalism that her husband represented in life. The images she advanced had a double effect: first, to establish Kennedy as a transcendent political figure far superior to any contemporary rival; and, second, to highlight what the nation had lost when he was killed. The two elements were mirror images of one another. The Camelot myth magnified the sense of loss felt as a consequence of Kennedy’s death and the dashing of liberal hopes and possibilities. If one accepted the image (and many did, despite their better judgment), then the best of times were now in the past and could not be recovered. Life would go on but the future could never match the magical chapter that had been brought to an unnatural end. As Mrs. Kennedy said, “there will never be another Camelot.”
どうでもいいですが、Camelotというアーサー王のドラマが最近あったんですね。あまり評判になりませんでしたが。。。
Posted at 2013.12.01 Category : PBS Newshour
ノーマンロックウェルの伝記が11月初旬に発売されたようですが、NewshourはThanksgivingに週まで紹介はとっておいたのでしょうか。あの絵が"Freedom from Want"っていうタイトルなんですね。And I think that he kind of captures both an American tradition and the fact that Americans can laugh at their own traditions.とこの絵を説明されていますが、パロディ的な要素があるとは思いませんでした。 JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you about one specific work of art, one of the most famous, right, "Freedom from Want," a famous Thanksgiving painting. DEBORAH SOLOMON: Right. That is absolutely my favorite Rockwell. JEFFREY BROWN: Your favorite? Why? Why? DEBORAH SOLOMON: Well, absolutely. Absolutely, it's my favorite -- well, for many reasons. One is that traditional portrayals of Thanksgiving tend to have people giving thanks at a table. And at Rockwell's table, no one is giving thanks. Everybody is kind of talking and animated and not looking at the old couple who are valiantly carrying in this humongous turkey to the table. And I think that he kind of captures both an American tradition and the fact that Americans can laugh at their own traditions. JEFFREY BROWN: Really? DEBORAH SOLOMON: Yes. JEFFREY BROWN: So there's more to it than just saying, here's the American table? DEBORAH SOLOMON: Exactly. It's not a pious image. It captures some of the laughter that does take place in the midst of our most sacred rituals. この話の後でAmerican Mirrorというのがロックウェルがアメリカの日常を反映したのではなく、理想のアメリカを描いたものだという意味で少し括弧付きの使い方を込めているようです。オックスフォードはI paint life as I would like it to be.というロックウェルの言葉を紹介しています。本人もその点を自覚していたのではないでしょうか。 （ロングマン） Rockwell, Norman
(1894-1978) a US artist famous for his pictures which appeared on the cover of 'The Saturday Evening Post.' His pictures often show children and families in ordinary places such as at home, in the countryside, or in small shops.
（オックスフォード） Norman Rockwell
(1894–1978)
a US magazine artist who drew over 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post between 1916 and 1963. His pictures, done in a realistic style, were full of warmth and humour and very popular with most Americans. They showed people in small towns and in the country engaged in ordinary activities at home and at work.
I paint life as I would like it to be.
Norman Rockwell
（ウィキペディア） Freedom from Want or The Thanksgiving Picture is one of Four Freedoms paintings by Norman Rockwell that were inspired by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the State of the Union Address, known as Four Freedoms, he delivered to the 77th United States Congress on January 6, 1941.[1] The other paintings in this series were Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom of Worship. Unlike the other freedoms, Freedom from Want was not a commonly understood and accepted universal freedom before its presentation.
Freedom from Want was published in the March 6, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post with a corresponding essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.[2] The painting was included as the cover image of the 1946 book Norman Rockwell, Illustrator, written when Rockwell was "at the height of his fame as America's most popular illustrator."[3] Although the image was popular in the United States it caused resentment in Europe where the masses were enduring hardship at the time. Drawing comparisons to John Steinbeck, Bulosan's essay spoke on behalf of those enduring the socioeconomic hardships domestically rather than those enduring sociopolitical hardships abroad, and it thrust him into prominence.
この伝記は、ロックウェルのDarker Sideを描いているようです。ニューズアワーでも触れていましたが、homosexualの傾向については取り上げていませんでしたね。 BOOKS OF THE TIMES One Complicated Life, Illustrated
‘American Mirror,’ About Norman Rockwell, by Deborah Solomon
By JOHN WILMERDING Published: October 31, 2013
Most important, we learn of Rockwell’s darker side. The life revealed here is one of anxiety, depression and loneliness, with feelings of failure, neglect and inadequacy. Other adjectives describe Rockwell as unanchored, repressed and loveless. He was a person of “complicated proclivities” and “extreme dependencies,” Ms. Solomon writes. One of them was a lifelong reliance on doctors (a frequent image in his art) because of hypochondria, and later regular visits to psychiatrists, most notably the Freud follower Erik Erikson, who became both counselor and friend.
Rockwell married three times, fathering three sons, but the marriages are characterized as alternatively unhappy, dysfunctional or not sexual. He favored the company of schoolboys as models and younger male artists as friends. One later exception was a friendship with the folk painter Grandma Moses, sufficiently older not to be a threatening female presence. Few girls posed for or appeared as convincingly in his compositions.
Was he a repressed homosexual? We don’t really know. Ms. Solomon points to the homoerotic undertones in early paintings like “Sailor Dreaming of a Girlfriend” (1919), as well as two from 1958, “Before the Shot,” with its bare behind of an innocent young boy at the doctor’s office, and “The Runaway,” showing a beefy policeman seated next to a boy at a cafeteria counter. She uses the phrase “romantic crush” to describe Rockwell’s admiration for his fellow illustrator, J. C. Leyendecker, creator of the Arrow Collar Man. Rockwell once admitted, “Sex appeal seems to be something I just can’t catch on a piece of canvas.”
ニューヨークタイムズの書評は芸術的な再評価とゲイの疑惑にトピックが絞られていたので、普通の英語学習者にはロックウェルの概要を紹介しているWSJの書評の方が参考になります。 Book Review: 'American Mirror' by Deborah Solomon
Norman Rockwell painted our beautiful, bountiful, self-perfecting nation as he knew it could be.
By JONATHAN LOPEZ Updated Nov. 8, 2013 5:23 p.m. ET いやいやNewsHourやNYTのトピックをもっと詳しく知りたいという方はSlateの書評がオススメできます。I paint life as I would like it to be.って表現を悪意を込めて表すとthe sugar coating that sweetened the bitter pillとなっちゃうんですね（苦笑） Mi Gosh and By-heck
Deborah Solomon’s life of Norman Rockwell, whose art looked back to an America that never was.
By Ben Davis In 1972, Ramparts, the San Francisco journal that had been one of the key outlets for the 1960s New Left, published a barbed little takedown of Norman Rockwell. Titled “Capitalist Realism,” the item was occasioned by a touring career retrospective of Rockwell’s work:
His later work contains attempts at a greater “relevance”: but his is one world where nothing has really changed. Rockwell is Rockwell, possibly the only one who sincerely believes in his vision of things. This retrospective is vintage nostalgia. It holds up a mirror to America: not the America that was, or the America that should have been, but the sugar coating that sweetened the bitter pill.
Ramparts’ venomous assessment is well-turned but unremarkable—Norman Rockwell was, after all, a representative of the “culture” against which the “counterculture” pitted itself. The funny thing is that five years earlier, the venerated American illustrator had assented to do a cover for the outspokenly lefty magazine, offering a double portrait of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell for the May 1967 issue (which also contained Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam.”) Evidently, by this time, the Rockwell legend was so overpowering that it was impossible to see through, even by those who might have had a reason to.
The Ramparts review uses the metaphor of the mirror, and American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell happens to be the title of Deborah Solomon’s robust new biography. Like the author of “Capitalist Realism,” Solomon is aware that Rockwell didn’t “mirror” American life in any true way; his work was, if anything, a kind of funhouse mirror in reverse, turning a world that was really full of strange bumps and twists into something eerily becalmed and normal-looking. “Rockwell Land is its own universe, freestanding and totally distinct,” Solomon admits at the outset. We think of his work as of the past now, but even in its own time it was out-of-time: Already in 1936, his editor at the Republican, anti-New Deal Saturday Evening Post was fuming to Rockwell that the subject of his illustration The Ticket Agent, a glum, bony man trapped behind the cage of a window at a small-town train station, came off as too provincial: “We feel it would be more typical of millions of our citizens if he worked in a town of between ten and fifty thousand inhabitants and not such ‘Mi gosh’ and ‘by-heck’ surroundings.”
ロックウェルの絵は好きなので、この伝記は年末の読書リストに入れたいと思います。
Posted at 2013.12.01 Category : 未分類
雑誌FortuneがBusines Person Of the YearはElon Muskを選んでいました。Tesla Model Sをヒットさせ、Hyperloopで新交通システムの夢を語り、ビジネスとイノベーションを高いレベルで実践していた活躍を考えると順当な選出でサプライズではありませんね。日本人にとってはAkio ToyosaさんがGoogleのLarry PageやWarren Buffet、MarissaMayerを抑えて７位に選ばれていたことがいいニュースでしょうか。 Elon MuskTesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
--Cultural impact
--No. 1 revenue gainer
--No. 2 stock price gainer
It is no Secret that Elon Musk is a triple threat: The co-founder of PayPal has gone on to disrupt aeronautics with Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX; shake up the auto business with Tesla Motors (TSLA); and retool the energy sector with SolarCity (SCTY). (He is CEO of the first two companies and chairman and largest shareholder of the third.) But 2013 was an especially notable year for Musk, as investors and consumers wholeheartedly embraced his ideas and vision. After a rocky start a decade ago, Tesla has emerged to become the world's most prominent maker of all-electric cars. Revenue at Tesla is up more than 12-fold for the first three quarters of the year, and the company is on track to top $2 billion in sales in 2013. The stock is up more than fourfold year to date, and that's after giving back some gains when recent vehicle sales missed some analysts' estimates. (A series of troubling car battery fires has not helped.) And just as SpaceX has helped reignite interest in space exploration, Musk's plans for a "hyperloop" between San Francisco and Los Angeles got Americans buzzing about ultra-high-speed transit when Musk released his design plans in August. Musk's creations have already made him tremendously wealthy -- Bloomberg Wealth says he is worth $7.7 billion -- but it is his audacity and tenacity that make him Fortune's Businessperson of the Year.
--Adam LashinskyTedのChris Andersonがスティーブジョブズとの共通点を挙げてマスクを誉め立てている自己啓発的な記事を書いています。元気が出る読み物なので英語学習者にもオススメできます。今でこそ成功者のシンボルですが、始めた当初はI thought the likeliest outcome was failure.と思っていたようです。 The shared genius of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
By Chris Anderson @FortuneMagazine November 27, 2013: 9:28 AM ET And if his clarity comes from physics, the desire fueling Musk's conviction stems from his core beliefs of what a better future looks like. Since his college days, he's been certain that humanity must move to sustainable energy and that it must find a path to expand beyond Earth. Those are fundamental to who he is. So when he saw a possible path to get there, he was willing to gamble everything to attain it.
And that's why conviction doesn't necessarily mean certainty. Indeed, Musk emphasized to me that in the early years of both SpaceX and Tesla he had zero certainty that they would succeed. "In fact," he said, "I thought the likeliest outcome was failure." Now that's an astonishing statement. But he insisted that all he knew when he started was that success was a possibility. The reason he plowed ahead was his strength of feeling that the possibility had to be pursued.
In the case of SpaceX, Musk was convinced first and foremost that someone had to do something about humankind's increasingly uninspiring efforts in space. He had been horrified to discover that NASA had no serious plans to send humans to Mars. In his worldview, that amounted to gambling our species' entire history of progress. Human civilization on Earth faced numerous risks. We had to become a multiplanetary species to ensure long-term survival. (I can hear cynics saying, "C'mon, that's spin. He's just doing it to get rich." Those who know Elon well would profoundly disagree.)
記事の最後にTALE OF TWO ENTREPRENEURSとジョブズとマスクの類似点をまとめてくれています。ちょっと脱線しますが、TALE OF TWO …の書き方はディケンズのA Tale of Two Cities（二都物語）を意識してのものでしょう。単なる書き方だけなので、たいして気にする必要はありませんが、書き出しもちょくちょく引用されるものなのであわせて確認しておきます。 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. それはすべての時世の中で最もよい時世でもあれば、すべての時世の中で最も悪い時世でもあった。叡智の時代でもあれば、痴愚の時代でもあった。信仰の時期でもあれば、懐疑の時期でもあった。光明の時節でもあれば、暗黒の時節でもあった。希望の春でもあれば、絶望の冬でもあった。人々の前にはあらゆるものがあるのでもあれば、人々の前には何一つないのでもあった。人々は皆真直に天国へ行きつつあるのでもあれば、人々は皆真直にその反対の道を行きつつあるのでもあった。――要するに、その時代は、当時の最も口やかましい権威者たちのある者が、善かれ悪しかれ最大級の比較法でのみ解さるべき時代であると主張したほど、現代と似ていたのであった。 TALE OF TWO ENTREPRENEURS
Dropping out
• Musk earned business and physics degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1995 nearly started a Stanford University Ph.D. program in materials science and applied physics. He left to start a business before ever taking classes.
• Jobs spent only one semester at Reed College before he dropped out in 1973.
First company
• Musk launched Internet software company Zip2 in 1995 and sold it to Compaq for $ 300 million.
• Jobs started Apple with Steve Wozniak from his parents' garage.
Uniform
• Musk prefers form-fitting T-shirts. And jeans.
• Jobs wore black mock turtlenecks. And jeans.
You're fired!
• Musk was fired as CEO of X.com (later PayPal) while on vacation in 2000. (He was replaced by co-founder and friend Peter Thiel.) Musk later joked, "That's the problem with vacations."
• Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 after clashing with then-CEO John Sculley.
Power play
• Musk ousted Tesla co-founder and then-CEO Martin Eberhard in 2007. The next year, he installed himself as CEO and started working on a turnaround.
• Jobs returned to a troubled Apple in 1996 after it bought his company, NeXT, and helped push out then-CEO Gil Amelio. He became interim CEO in 1997 and permanent CEO in 2000.
Lucrative sideline
• Musk is the chairman and a major backer of SolarCity.
• Jobs acquired Pixar in 1986 and as CEO (while running NeXT and later Apple), he released the first CGI animated feature film, Toy Story. (He sold Pixar to Disney in 2006 for $7.5 billion.)
成功者の太鼓持ちみたいなガイアのなんとかみたいなテレビ番組になってしまっているのが鼻につく記事ですが、マスクなら本当に火星にコロニーを作ってしまうのではないかと思えてきました。 先月のAtlanticはInvention特集だったのですが、そこでも現代の偉大なInventorとして選ばれていました。 NOVEMBER 2013
Who Will Tomorrow's Historians Consider Today's Greatest Inventors?
We asked leading figures in technology, science, medicine, and design for nominations. Here's what they said. NICOLE ALLAN OCT 23 2013, 7:08 PM ET Elon Musk
Co-founder, PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors
NOMINATED BY: Adam Cahan, senior vice president, Yahoo; Mark Hurd, co-president, Oracle; Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president, Google
In the spirit of inveterate and wide-ranging tinkerers like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, Musk has transformed virtually every field he’s taken an interest in, from electronic payments to commercial spaceflight to electric cars.
Raised in South Africa, Musk studied physics and business in the U.S. Like any good entrepreneur, he dropped out of a Stanford graduate program to launch his first company, an online mapping and directory service whose sale enabled the launch of what would become PayPal—and Musk’s ticket to big-time innovation.
Like many of his PayPal colleagues, Musk used his fortune from the sale of that company to fund a flurry of new ventures, including Tesla, a manufacturer of electric cars, and SpaceX, a commercial spaceflight operation. He splits his time between the companies’ facilities in Palo Alto and Los Angeles, and at one point resorted to taking loans from friends to keep Tesla alive.
The range and scale of Musk’s ambitions have attracted skepticism, but over time, he has proved himself to be not only an ideas man but an astute business thinker. “He’s a guy who dreams big dreams,” says Hurd, “and then makes them happen.”
Musk’s latest dream is the Hyperloop, a giant pneumatic tube that would transport passengers from L.A. to San Francisco in 35 minutes. It sounds crazy, but as Wojcicki points out, “Elon Musk is one of the few people who can propose the Hyperloop and be taken seriously.”ちょうどいいタイミングで雑誌Economistも四半期ごとのTechnology Quarterlyの号です。 Innovation awards
And the winners are…
Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in eight categories. Here are this year’s winners
Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition 興味深い情報があればご紹介したいと思います。
Posted at 2013.12.01 Category : 未分類
ケリー国務長官が先週の日曜日の政治番組でThere is no daylight between us(イスラエルと米国)という発言をしたようですね。 Sec. John Kerry: ‘No Daylight’ Between Israel, U.S. on Goal for Iran Nuclear Program
By MaryAlice Parks Nov 24, 2013 9:00am STEPHANOPOULOS: The Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu call it a bad deal. Are you confident that you can convince him to respect it and that Israel will not take unilateral military action against the Iranian nuclear program?
KERRY: Well, actually, Israel and the United States absolutely share the same goal here. There is no daylight between us with respect to what we want to achieve at this point. We both want to make it certain Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and Iran cannot be in place where they can break out and suddenly get that nuclear weapon.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the prime minister says this deal won't do that?
KERRY: With this -- that's not accurate. The deal is the beginning and first step. It leads us into the negotiation so that we guarantee that while we are negotiating for the dismantling, while we are negotiating for the tougher provisions, they will not grow the program and their capacity to threaten Israel.
Israel will actually gain a larger breathing space in terms of the breakout capacity of Iran. It's just clear. なかなか今回のような意味で紹介している辞書は少ないのですが、さすが英辞郎、ピッタリのものが載っていました。 （英辞郎） There is no daylight between A and B.
AとBの間に違い［隔たり］はない、AとBとは同じものである
（Webster） daylight
6. a perceptible space, gap, or difference 辞書編集者で、最近はWall Street Journalで言葉の使われ方について毎週コラムを書いているBen Zimmerさんがこの表現を取り上げていました。 WORD ON THE STREET: BEN ZIMMER
'Daylight' Has Its Day in the Political ArenaNov. 29, 2013 6:53 p.m. ET After helping to broker an interim nuclear agreement with Iran, Secretary of State John Kerry took to the airwaves to insist that the U.S. still sees eye-to-eye with Israel, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scathing dismissal of the deal.
"There is no daylight" between Israel and the U.S., "with respect to what we want to achieve at this point," Mr. Kerry told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" last Sunday. It was a familiar diplomatic refrain: In November alone, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the news media three times that "there is no daylight between the United States and Israel" in preventing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
daylightは「日の光」とか「昼の光」が原義のはず。どうして「隔たり」のような意味を持つようになったのでしょうか。その辺りをZimmerさんが歴史的な経緯とともに説明してくださっています。さまざまな例は是非リンク先の記事を参照ください。 How has "daylight" become such a popular metaphor to portray differences of political opinion? Historically, the answer lies in races—whether on horses, boats or runners' own feet.
In the early 19th century, "daylight" came to be applied to various spaces through which light might creep. That included the space between the brim of a wineglass and the wine: A toastmaster would call for "no daylights" to ensure that all glasses were filled to capacity. A good equestrian was expected to keep close to the horse's saddle, showing no "daylight" while riding.
ここでのdaylightは「光が差し込む余地＝隔たり」なんですね。確かにレースで差がついてない接戦なら光が差し込む余地はありません。このようにイメージがつかめると何てことのない表現になります（苦笑） 外交や政治の世界は直接的な表現よりも婉曲的な表現が好まれるから、このような語も定着したのでしょうか。
Posted at 2013.12.01 Category : Newsweek
日本語版はそこそこの存在感を示していますが、最近すっかり陰が薄くなっているNewsweek。次にニュースを騒がせるとしたら月刊化とかなんでしょうか。 ニューヨークタイムズの編集長を取り上げたときに、ニューリパブリックという雑誌でのインタビューをご紹介しましたが、そのときにI didn’t even know there was a Newsweek. - Me neither. Or a cover.なんてボロクソに言われていました。 A Q&A With Jill Abramson
The Times' top editor on mean bosses, liberal biases, and the demise of the Washington Post
BY MICHAEL KINSLEY Michael Kinsley: So I understand Newsweek scooped me. They had you on the cover, with an article by Lloyd Grove. I didn’t even know there was a Newsweek.
Jill Abramson: Me neither. Or a cover.
MK: Or a Lloyd Grove for that matter.
JA: Well, I knew there was a Lloyd Grove.
自分もTimeやEconomist以外にNewsweekを購読しようとは思いませんが、先週号は日本人なら興味を引かれてしまう特集記事がありました。7000字を超える長い者ですが、長崎に投下した原爆の原料を作った原子炉があったハンフォードでの核廃棄物の処理が遅々として進んでいない現状が分かる読み応えのあるものでした。 （ウィキペディア）
ハンフォード・サイト（英語: the Hanford Site）は米国ワシントン州東南部にある場所で、原子爆弾作成のマンハッタン計画でプルトニウムの精製が行われた所。その後の冷戦期間にも精製作業は続けられ、現在はこの作業は行われていないが、米国で最大級の核廃棄物の問題を残しており、その処理が継続されている。America’s FukushimaBy Alexander Nazaryan The reactor on these desiccated steppes converted uranium-238 into plutonium-239, the fissionable stuff inside the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The ensuing Cold War escalation was a boon for the engineers and workers at Hanford, with eight more reactors built throughout the subsequent two decades. Only one of them - completed in 1963 and visited by John F. Kennedy two months before his assassination - was ever harnessed to produce energy. The rest worked solely to enrich nuclear materiel for rockets intended to fend off a Soviet assault that never materialized.
The last of those nine reactors was decommissioned in 1987, inaugurating an era that would prove even more lucrative for those who sought to make Hanford their livelihood: cleaning up the waste left behind from four decades of making nuclear weapons. The Atomic Energy Commission had by now become the Department of Energy, and it presented a daunting challenge to contractors: 177 underground storage tanks (the bucolically named "Tank Farms") holding 56 million gallons of waste that included radionuclides like strontium-90 and cesium-137.
センセーショナルにAmerica’s Fukushimaとありますが、福島のような事故に結びつく可能性は低いようです。 The risks of a Fukushima-type disaster are incredibly slight, and those who make the comparison caution against a literal interpretation of their warnings. Yet the consequences of such a mishap would be so catastrophic that it cannot be allowed to happen. The Tokyo Electric Power Company was not worried about an earthquake causing a tsunami, and that tsunami in turn flooding and disabling a nuclear power plant on the eastern coast of the island of Honshu. Much later, a panel would find "collusion" between the Fukushima Daiichi plant operators and government regulators, as well as "ignorance and arrogance" and a "disregard for public safety."
Tamosaitis calls Hanford an example of "corporate welfare," in which Bechtel is stringing along the federal government as it moves completion dates further and further into the future, all for the supposed sake of the very safety issues it has repeatedly ignored. As long as nothing horrific happens, he says, the money will flow. Tamosaitis sums up Bechtel's strategy as "delay, delay, delay, deny."
Nobody really knows if Hanford has made people sick. Locals refer to the "Hanford necklace" - "a thyroidectomy scar that distinguishes many of the downwinders whose diseased thyroid glands were removed," as the Associated Press once described it. Yet the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study did not find an association between the release of iodine-131 during the 1940s and 1950s and an increase in cancers of the thyroid gland, thus discounting a major illness related with radiation exposure.
That is only one cancer dismissed, however, and maladies from the past aren't the most pressing concern here anyway. It's what remains in the ground that worries the likes of Carpenter, the Seattle watchdog. He says of Hanford: "We've opened a Pandora's box that we can't put the lid back on." Behind him, the city settles comfortably into dusk.
予定通り進んでいない現状を密告した社員を窓際に追いやってしまうという部分を読むと組織なんてどこも似たり寄ったりだなと思ってしまいます。 And he was. On July 2, Tamosaitis was told that he was being transferred to URS headquarters in downtown Richland. URS tells Newsweek that his "reassignment had been discussed with him for several months prior to June 2010, as his work scope on the project was coming to an end," a position seconded by Bechtel, which says he had been offered a job at Sellafield in England.
Tamosaitis says the transfer was retaliation. "They wanted to send a signal" to other potential whistle-blowers: "Don't do what that guy did."
Tamosaitis was buried in a basement office with two copiers, one of which was "used to compile large documents," he told Congress. "I brought in a pair of earmuffs to dampen the sound when it was running." One time, with a snowstorm approaching, everyone else left the building without bothering to tell him. He jokes that when he emerged from the basement into a silent office in the middle of the afternoon, he thought the rapture had come.
“the situation is under control.”というのは簡単ですが、予定通り着実に実行する事は大変難しいのだなと実感できるものでした。記事の本筋とは関係ありませんが地元の高校のフットボールチームがRichland Bombersという名前であり、原爆製造とゆかりがあり、それを誇らしく思っていたという心情が読み取れるエピソードがさりげなく紹介されていました。動画だとよく分かりませんが、ヘルメットにはきのこ雲が書かれています。 The Richland High School football team at practice. In the fall of 1945, after an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, students changed the team's mascot to a mushroom cloud and called themselves the 'Bombers'. Credit: Stuart Isett
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