The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for a change. （多くの国でバランスが崩れ、国家に都合のよいものとなり、個人の権利がないがしろになっています。米国憲法で保障された権利にもかかわらず。これによって我々全員が大切にしている自由が侵害されています。変革すべき時です）
rights that are enshrined in our Constitution（米国憲法で保障された権利）とありますが、どの条項を指しているのでしょうか。サイトを見ても具体的なことはありません。Free expressionとあるので表現の自由を定めたFirst Amendmentであること予想できますが。。。
Consistent with established global norms of free expression and privacy and with the goals of ensuring that government law enforcement and intelligence efforts are rule-bound, narrowly tailored, transparent, and subject to oversight, we hereby call on governments to endorse the following principles and enact reforms that would put these principles into action.
これに関して訴訟があったようで、どうやら問題となっているのは、修正第一条と修正第四条のようです。
Judge: NSA phone surveillance is legal and a 'vital tool' The government gets a victory in a case brought by the ACLU, which charged that the spy agency was violating Americans' First and Fourth Amendment rights. by Jennifer Van Grove December 27, 2013 9:29 AM PST A US district judge on Friday dismissed the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the government's top spy agency, ruling that bulk collection of telephony metadata by the NSA is lawful.
In June, the ACLU filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's mass collection of phone records, arguing that the practice violates Americans' First and Fourth Amendment rights. The ACLU sought a preliminary injunction to stop the government's phone-surveillance program and to have all of the collected data deleted.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
本条は直接には捜索・押収（Search and Seizure）についての規定であるが、ここにいう押収には、「人の押収」すなわち逮捕（Arrest）が含まれるとするのが米国における判例・通説である。 本条については、非常に多数の判例がある。アメリカ合衆国における刑事事件に関する捜査の手続きは、大陸法系のような詳細な刑事訴訟法が存在しないため、専ら本条の解釈によって規律されており、結果としてその解釈が多数の刑事事件で争われてきたためである。
オックスフォードの学習辞典では、修正条項では第一条以外には第二条（武器の携帯）や第五条（デュープロセス）が載っていましたが、第四条はありませんでした。Bill of Rights（権利章典）の中ではマイナーなのでしょうか。
（オックスフォード） the First Amendment the statement in the US Constitution that protects freedom of speech and religion and the right to meet in peaceful groups
the Second Amendment an amendment (= change) to the American Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, passed in 1791. The Second Amendment gives people the right to bear arms (= to own and carry weapons). This has become an issue because of a number of recent tragic events when one armed person has shot a number of people. There is now much disagreement over what this Amendment actually means. Some people believe it only applies to the military and others that it applies to all citizens. It states: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’
the Fifth Amendment one of the amendments to the American Constitution which is part of the Bill of Rights. It states that people need not say anything against themselves in a court of law. However, when people ‘take the Fifth’ or ‘plead the Fifth’ in court, some people believe it is because they are guilty. The Fifth Amendment also protects individuals from double jeopardy and requires due process of law and fair payments in cases of eminent domain.
修正第四条を確認することで、公開書簡で以下のように語っていたことも納得できました。
We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law
We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for a change.
For our part, we are focused on keeping users’ data secure — deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.
We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight. To see the full set of principles we support, visit ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com
We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But … まず、書き出しで政府の立場に理解を示しています。いきなり、this summer’s revelations highlighted …で始めてしまうと糾弾するだけの文章になってしまいます。相手の立場を尊重することは、手紙やメールのような文字情報だけの連絡手段の場合は特に念頭に置きたいですね。他にもgovernment requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scopeと、政府の行動を全否定するのではなく、法に則った、妥当なものであることを伝えています。
For our part, we are focused on keeping users’ data secure 第三パラグラフでWe urge the US to take the leadと強く要望する動詞urgeを使って要求事項を述べていますが、その前の第二パラグラフでまず、for our partと自分たちの取り組みを伝えています。これも、相手に要求する前に、自分でやるべきことはやりますと伝えることで、押し付けがましさは弱まると思います。
米IT企業と擁護団体の連合体、米政府の透明性向上を目指す法案の支持を表明 2013/10/01 鈴木 英子＝ニューズフロント （筆者執筆記事一覧） 米Google、米Microsoft、米Apple、米Facebookなど米国IT企業と、米プライバシー擁護団体Center for Democracy and Technology（CDT）をはじめとする市民権擁護団体による連合は現地時間2013年9月30日、米政府の透明性向上を目的とした法案を支持する公開書簡（PDF文書）を米連邦議会の議員に送った。
公開書簡 Words checked = [461] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [88%]
The Principles 1 Limiting Governments’ Authority to Collect Users’ Information 2 Oversight and Accountability 3 Transparency About Government Demands 4 Respecting the Free Flow of Information 5 Avoiding Conflicts Among Governments
ニューズアワーでも取り上げていました。
ANALYSIS AIR DATE: Dec. 9, 2013 Tech giants call for tighter limits on government surveillance SUMMARY Eight prominent American tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter, sent an open letter to President Obama and Congress expressing concern about the way the U.S. government collects personal data online. Judy Woodruff talks to Brad Smith of Microsoft about their call to limit the scope of government spying.
We’ve stepped up our efforts in other ways. We’re doing more to protect women and girls from the horror of wartime sexual violence. With the arrest of fugitives like Ratko Mladic, charged with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the world sent a message to war criminals everywhere: We will not relent in bringing you to justice. Be on notice. And for the first time, we explicitly barred entry into the United States of those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Now we’re doing something more. We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities. So I created the first-ever White House position dedicated to this task. It’s why I created a new Atrocities Prevention Board, to bring together senior officials from across our government to focus on this critical mission. This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign policy. The board will convene for the first time today, at the White House. And I’m pleased that one of its first acts will be to meet with some of your organizations -- citizens and activists who are partners in this work, who have been carrying this torch.
Going forward, we’ll strengthen our tools across the board, and we'll create new ones. The intelligence community will prepare, for example, the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on the risk of mass atrocities and genocide. We're going to institutionalize the focus on this issue. Across government, "alert channels" will ensure that information about unfolding crises -- and dissenting opinions -- quickly reach decision-makers, including me.
Our Treasury Department will work to more quickly deploy its financial tools to block the flow of money to abusive regimes. Our military will take additional steps to incorporate the prevention of atrocities into its doctrine and its planning. And the State Department will increase its ability to surge our diplomats and experts in a crisis. USAID will invite people and high-tech companies to help create new technologies to quickly expose violations of human rights. And we’ll work with other nations so the burden is better shared -- because this is a global responsibility.
With the APB having just completed its first anniversary and the nomination of Samantha Power to be U.N. ambassador, it is a useful time to take stock. This report details the history of the Atrocities Prevention Board and its current functions, assesses its relative accomplishments and challenges to date, and articulates a series of alternatives for how the APB might be institutionally organized and funded to best ensure that atrocity prevention within the U.S government is made both more effective and enduring.
AIR DATE: July 21, 2011 'Rock the Casbah' Author: Hip-Hop Has Been the Rhythm of Arab Spring SUMMARY Journalist Robin Wright chronicles the cultural and social forces behind this year's Arab revolt in her new book, "Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.' Margaret Warner and Wright discuss her book and the new wave of empowerment in the Arab world.
There are various ways of doing history. It’s one of the amazing things about history and it’s also true of documentary filmmaking. You don’t have to follow the same hard path. You don’t have to do the same thing everybody else does. You have the freedom to reconceive history and how to do history. （いくつもの方法で歴史に取り組むことができます。それが歴史の素晴らしいことのひとつなのです。これはドキュメンタリー映画の制作にも当てはまります。踏み固められた同じ道に従う必要なないのです。他の皆がやっていることと同じことをする必要はないのです。自由に歴史を捉え直したり、歴史の取り組み方を見直したりできるのです）
And I have had this crazy idea. I think it’s a crazy idea of doing history from inside out. The normal way of doing it is you would perhaps interview Rumsfeld and you would interview twenty other people, reporters, ex-officials of the Department of Defense and State and on and on and on, asking each of them in turn their opinion of him. I did not want to do any of that. （これはおかしなアイデアでした。内側から歴史に取り組むのはおかしなアイデアだと私も思います。普通のやり方はラムズフェルドにインタビューして、それから記者や国防省や国務省の元職員など20人ほどに次々とインタビューしていき、それぞれに彼についての意見を求めることでしょう。そんなことはしたくありませんでした）
The focus of this movie is what Donald Rumsfeld thinks about Donald Rumsfeld, about his attempt to define his role in history through the endless memos he wrote, through interview, through press conference he gave for years both in Ford administration and in Bush administration. How does he see what he did? （この映画で力を入れたことは、ドナルドラムズフェルドがドナルドラムズフェルドについてどのように考えているかということ、彼が書いた膨大なメモや、インタビュー、フォード政権とブッシュ政権の両方で何年にもわたって行った記者会見を通して歴史における彼の役割を定義してもらうことなのです。彼は自分がやったことをどのように見ているのでしょうか）
（ウィズダム英和） grin like a Cheshire cat（くだけて）わけもなくにたにた歯を出して笑う Lewis Carroll作『不思議の国のアリス』に登場するいつもにやっと笑っているネコより
（オックスフォード） the Cheshire Cat a character in Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice in Wonderland. It is a cat that disappears, leaving only its smile behind. If a person is described as smiling like a Cheshire cat, it means that they have a broad, fixed smile He just sat there, grinning like a Cheshire cat and saying nothing.
（ロングマン） Cheshire Cat, the a character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, which disappears very slowly until only its big smile is left. People sometimes say someone is "grinning like a Cheshire cat" to mean that they have a big and rather silly smile on their face.
ドキュメンリー映画作りのやりがいについて聞かれている動画ではアーレントのbanality of evilを持ち出していますね。
Death and the Civil War With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before -- permanently altering the character of the republic and the psyche of the American people. Contending with death on an unprecedented scale posed challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began. Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, and new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale.
The Civil War in America Exhibition Home November 12, 2012–January 11, 2014 The Civil War in America assembles more than 200 unique items, many of which have never been seen by the public, to commemorate the sesquicentennial of this nation’s greatest military and political upheaval. Drawing from hundreds of thousands of items from across many collections of the Library of Congress, the materials included in this exhibition attest to the valor, sacrifices, emotions, and accomplishments of those in both the North and South whose lives were affected by the bitter conflict of 1861–1865.
（トランスクリプト） The unimaginable scale of the slaughter, the sheer numbers of the dead, would be all but impossible to comprehend. Nearly two and a half percent of the population would die in the conflict. An estimated 750,000 people in all, more than in all other American wars combined. Never before and never since have so many Americans died in any war by any measure or reckoning.
>> Transpose the percentage of dead that mid-19th century America faced into our own time. Seven million dead if we had the same percentage. What would we as a nation today be like if we faced the loss of seven million individuals? And so it invaded just about everyone's life in one way or another.
>> The enormous tide of death unleashed by the war posed challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began. Challenges so large they frequently overwhelmed the abilities of individuals and institutions to respond to them. Challenges that go forth, slowly at first by fits and starts, immense and eventually heroic efforts by individuals, groups and the government as Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale.
Before the Civil War there were no national cemeteries in America. No provisions for identifying the dead or for notifying next of kin or for providing aid to the suffering families of dead veterans. No Federal relief organizations. No effective ambulance corp. No adequate Federal hospitals. No Federal provisions for burying the dead. No Arlington Cemetery. No Memorial Day.
>> The United States embarked on a new relationship with death in a whole series of ways. As a nation it embarked on a new relationship with death because its survival would be assured and defined by the deaths of so many hundreds, thousands of people. So it would become inseparable from death in that sense. In a second way the United States would develop a new relationship with death in a national sense because of the pension system, the re-burial system, the bureaucracy of death that would transform the nature of the Federal government. So it would become a different nation, a stronger, more centralized nation with more responsibilities partly because of taking on these obligations that would grow out of Civil War death. But then there are all the changes for individuals who are living in a world of mourning and loss in the North and in the South where ultimately 20 percent of white men of military age were going to die and where everyone had lost a loved one. And so lives were shattered in undefined ways often because so many of the dead were unknown. And ideas about what death was would be changed by the intensity and wide-spread nature of this experience.
For the journey which begins where it ends, there is no finish, I must speak of the birth which comes within the grave. Why must people live in this way?
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 八七年前、われわれの父祖たちは、自由の精神を母胎に、すべての人間は平等に作られているという信条に捧げられた新しい国家を、この大陸にもたらしました。
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. いまわれわれは、大きな内乱の渦中にあり、 これを乗り切れるかどうかでわれわれの国家が、いや自由を謳い平等を信ずる国家すべてが永続できるかどうかが決まります。われわれはこの戦争の一大激戦地で顔を合わせることになりました。われわれは、この国家の将来を願って自らの生命を投げ出した人々の最後の安息の地として戦場の一部を捧げるべく集まったのです。目下、わたしたちにとってこれほどにふさわしいつとめはありません。
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate ― we can not consecrate ― we can not hallow ― this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. とはいうものの、より大きな意味に思いめぐらせてみるなら、わたしたちはとうていこの土地を捧げることも清めることも崇めることさえも、行うことはできません。ここで闘った勇者たちは、生きていようが亡くなっていようが、すでにこの地を聖別してしまっているのであり、そこにわたしたちが微力ながら介入できるような余地は、いささかもないのです。世間はいまここでわたしたちが語っていることなどほとんど気に留めず、末長く記憶に留めることもないでしょうが、彼ら勇者たちの偉業については、断じて忘れはしないでしょう。
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ― that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion ― that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ― that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ― and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. われわれの前に残されている大事業に、ここで実を捧げるべきは、むしろわれわれ自身であります。その大事業とは何か。それは、これら名誉の戦死者が最後に全身全霊をふりむけた偉大な目的を、そのあとを引き継いだわれわれ自身がいっそう献身的に成就させていくことであり、彼らの死を決して無駄にせぬよう誓うことであり、この国家アメリカが神のみもとで新たな自由を生み落とすようさしむけることであり、ひいては、人民のために、人民が、人民を治める政治がこの地上から絶えることのないよう心を砕くことにほかなりません。
SUMMARY President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address articulated a powerful message 150 years ago that endures today. How did a speech with so few words come to effect such great meaning in American history? Drew Gilpin Faust of Harvard University and Richard Norton Smith of George Mason University join Jeffrey Brown to offer reflections.
After months of investigation, the New York Times has published its comprehensive account of the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission and C.I.A. compound in Benghazi, which killed four people including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
The Times finds no evidence that al-Qaida or any other international terrorist group played any role in the attack: “The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”
The video in question refers to the “Innocence of Muslims”, a 14-minute film uploaded to YouTube in the summer of 2012.
While some may see the report as a vindication of sorts for the Obama administration and former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who in early days cast the event as a spontaneous response to this YouTube posting, the Times says the reality is “murkier” and “wasn’t without warning signs.”
New York Review of Booksで2回に渡りラムズフェルド元国防長官を取り上げています。秋にErrol Morris によるUnknown Knownというドキュメンタリーが公開されたからでしょうか。Errol Morrisと言えばマクナマラ元国防長官にベトナム戦争の過ちを告白させて話題になりました。
Unknown knownが映画のタイトルでラムズフェルドの回想記がKnown and Unknownです。これは2002年での会見でのやり取りから来ているようです。開戦の大義を問われている問いに対して、なかなか深いことを語っていると悠長に捉えるわけにはいかない回答ですよね。失笑がもれるのも分かります。
Q: there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations. Rumsfeld:There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.
Q: Excuse me. But is this an unknown unknown? Rumsfeld: I'm not -- Q: Because you said several unknowns, and I'm just wondering if this is an unknown unknown. Rumsfeld: I'm not going to say which it is. Q: Mr. Secretary, if you believe something -- Rumsfeld: Right here. Right here. Right here.
Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations. Rumsfeld: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are -- what was the word you used, Pam, earlier? Q: Free associate? (laughs) Rumsfeld: Yeah. They can -- (chuckles) -- they can do things I can't do. (laughter) Q: Excuse me. But is this an unknown unknown? Rumsfeld: I'm not -- Q: Because you said several unknowns, and I'm just wondering if this is an unknown unknown. Rumsfeld: I'm not going to say which it is. Q: Mr. Secretary, if you believe something -- Rumsfeld: Right here. Right here. Right here.
The topic of war seems to fascinate you. Why are we in a seemingly constant state of war? Because I think people are crazy. I talk very briefly about Shakespeare, and with Shakespeare, the motivating force of history is insanity, greed, jealousy, hate, power. Rumsfeld said, “Well, maybe that was true then, but it’s different now.” Then he reads this memo to Condi Rice where he basically tells her to shut up, you’re not in the chain of command, nobody wants to hear from you, and if you continue to talk out, I’m going to the president and I’m going to have you muzzled.
It’s a very relevant documentary, given what’s going on in Syria right now. That it is. When I got the Oscar for The Fog of War, we were on the verge of an invasion of Iraq, and McNamara wouldn’t come out against the war publicly, but privately, and oddly enough in Canada, he would. And Rumsfeld has just come out against intervention in Syria. It’s somewhat ironic!
What’s your stance on intervention in Syria? War has, as Rumsfeld points out in The Unknown Known, unintended consequences. When you go to war, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know whether you’re going to increase or decrease suffering. I don’t understand what’s going on well enough. I don’t think most people do.
（5幕5場） To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
（No Fear Shakespeare） Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. The days creep slowly along until the end of time. And every day that’s already happened has taken fools that much closer to their deaths. Out, out, brief candle. Life is nothing more than an illusion. It’s like a poor actor who struts and worries for his hour on the stage and then is never heard from again. Life is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and emotional disturbance but devoid of meaning.
（1幕5場） Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty.
（No Fear Shakespeare） Come, you spirits that assist murderous thoughts, make me less like a woman and more like a man, and fill me from head to toe with deadly cruelty!
A technical difficulty interrupted the November 27 evening performance of Macbeth at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. An announcement was made midway through Act 1 that there was a problem with equipment essential to the blocking in the following scene.
After two additional announcements thanking the audience for their patience, house lights were raised and patrons were informed that the performance had been canceled due to a technical difficulty that could not be addressed in a reasonable amount of time.
As the audience was leaving, Ethan Hawke (who plays the role of Macbeth) came onstage with a guitar and offered to sing a song, "You Belong to Me." After a few bars, Hawke wished the audience a Happy Thanksgiving and left the stage to applause.
Further details of the difficulty were not available at the time of the performance cancellation.
technical difficultyはtechnical problemぐらいに思って問題ないと思います。現にthere was a problem with equipmentと第一パラグラフにありますね。TOEIC公式問題集にまさに似たようなものがありました。
The afternoon flight from Tokyo has been canceled due to a mechanical problem.
動詞cancelが使って中止を伝える場合には、due to …で原因を述べることが多いと思った方がよさそうです。自分でライティングする場合にも、原因を加えた方がより相手に納得してもらいやすい文章になるでしょう。
40語を超える文章になっている第二パラグラフの方に注目してみます。中心となる情報はpatrons were informed that the performance had been canceledの部分ですが、タイトルや第一パラグラフで公演中止は伝えていますから、このパラグラフではより詳細に状況を説明しているという役割を果たしているのだと思います。詳細に説明しようとしているから、どうしても長くなってしまうのでしょう。
After two additional announcements thanking the audience for their patience, house lights were raised and patrons were informed that the performance had been canceled due to a technical difficulty that could not be addressed in a reasonable amount of time.
After two additional announcementsとあることで中止の決断をするまで対処しようと何度か試みたことがわかりますが、文章の最後にcould not be addressed in a reasonable amount of timeで短い時間では対処することができない問題であったことが分かります。
patrons were informedでのpatronsはTOEICでも使われることがあるので慣れておきたいですね。TOEICでもゆるゆるな言い換えがなされることがありますが、この文脈でもpatronsは別に常連客を指しているわけではなく、直前のthe audienceを言い換えただけでしょう。patronは公演の観客だけでなく図書館の利用者にも使われているようですね。
Three-time Tony Award winner Frank Langella will tread the boards again, this time in the title role in Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
The new production will be directed by Angus Jackson, and will run at the Chichester Festival Theatre in the U.K. from Oct. 31 to Nov. 30. It will transfer to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York from Jan. 7 to Feb. 9, 2014.
Langella, 75, a veteran of both stage and film, received Tony Awards for his performances in “Frost/Nixon” (and an Oscar nomination for the film adaptation), “Seascape” and “Fortune’s Fool.” His other theater work includes “Dracula” (also the film version), “Match,” “A Man for All Seasons,” and “Man and Boy.”
つぎにレビューです。以下は5つ星満点で４つ星がついていましたのでpositiveなレビューです。what impresses is the spellbinding power of that fine American actorとほめていますね。Spellbindingのような大仰な形容詞もレビューでは登場しやすいですね。
We are used to director's Shakespeare. This production, which plays 32 performances in Chichester before moving to Brooklyn, is unequivocally actor's Shakespeare. It is staged with great clarity by Angus Jackson as a timeless moral fable. But what impresses is the spellbinding power of that fine American actor, Frank Langella, best known in Britain as the disintegrating president inFrost/Nixon, who plays Lear and wins.
Langella has that mysterious quality known as "weight". It is not merely that he is tall, has a voice that could be heard in Bognor Regis and is more oak than ash: it is that he has an authority that compels our attention. This is palpable from the start when he needs help ascending the steps of Robert Innes Hopkins's set, which looks like a miniaturised version of Chichester's hexagonal main stage with appropriately crazy paving. Langella even cups a hand to his ear to hear Goneril's fake protestations of affection. But, despite his slight stoop and white thatch, this is a Lear who looks born to command.
以下が締めの部分ですがin Langella we have not only a star but a real actorと最後までLangellaを褒めています。
In many ways, however, the production is a throwback to the days when we went to see star Shakespeare. But after a glut of concept-driven productions, it makes a refreshing antidote. And in Langella we have not only a star but a real actor: one who follows the familiar arc of Lear's moral awakening, but who also makes the part his own. At the end, Langella's Lear lays out Cordelia's lifeless body with paternal care as if, even in death, still anxiously searching for the love he never achieved in life.
King Lear Frank Langella By William Shakespeare Chichester Festival Theatre Directed by Angus Jackson
“Frank Langella offers a compelling King Lear teetering perilously between majesty and madness.” —London Evening Standard
A legendary presence on stage and screen, Tony Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Frank Langella takes on King Lear. Betrayed by his daughters and shaken by his own mortality, Shakespeare’s aging patriarch wanders mad, as a kingdom disintegrates in the wake of his divested power. Langella joins forces with Britain’s Olivier Award-winning company Chichester Festival Theatre to present this monumental interpretation of the Bard’s tragedy.
最後の部分はマクミランにWilliam Shakespeare is sometimes referred to as the Bard or the Bard of Avon.とあるようにthe Bard’s tragedyで、「シェイクスピアの悲劇」という意味ですが、TOEIC的には動詞presentの使われ方をチェックしておきたいですね。
to present this monumental interpretation of the Bard’s tragedy
Frank Langellaって誰だか分からなかったのですが、映画『フロスト×ニクソン』でニクソン大統領を演じた人だそうです。いやあ、あのニクソンは憎たらしい存在感が出ていました。
次はプレスリリースです。We are absolutely delighted to announceやI am thrilled to welcome特にポジティブに伝える方法を学んでいきたいですね。また、and equally delighted toとalsoを使わずにequallyを用いているところなんかも参考になります。
Three time Tony Award-winning, Oscar nominated Broadway and film star Frank Langella will play the title role in a new production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear opening at Chichester Festival Theatre this autumn, prior to transferring to the Harvey Theater at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) in New York.
Jonathan Church, Artistic Director at Chichester Festival Theatre, said: “We are absolutely delighted to announce that this legendary American actor has accepted our invitation to lead the company of King Lear here at Chichester; and equally delighted to be returning to BAM after our previous collaboration, Macbeth, in 2008.”
BAM Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo added, “I am thrilled to welcome one of our greatest actors to the BAM stage in January. The Chichester Festival Theatre production of King Lear will provide New York audiences the opportunity to experience Mr Langella perform perhaps the most challenging role in the Shakespearean canon. It will be a significant theater experience and a momentous occasion for BAM.”
King Lear will be directed by Chichester Associate Director Angus Jackson and designed by Robert Innes Hopkins.
King Lear will run at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester from Thursday 31 October – Saturday 30 November 2013. For further details, visit cft.org.uk or call 01243 781312.
Following the Minerva Theatre run, the production will transfer to BAM, New York playing from 7 January – 9 February 2014.
Susan Rice on contending with crisis President Obama's national security advisor answers questions about the NSA leaks, Iran, Syria and the attack in Benghazi 2013 Dec 22 CORRESPONDENT Lesley Stahl
Newshourも60ミニッツもトランスクリプトがあるのが英語学習者には助かります。冒頭すぐの部分でShe’s the one who wakes up the president when there’s a 3 a.m. international crisis.と彼女を紹介しています。
As the president’s national security advisor, Susan Rice works in what some consider the second best office in the White House. Lesley Stahl: This is the office, huh? Susan Rice: This is Henry's office, as we call it. Lesley Stahl: Henry's office, Henry Kissinger's office. As Kissinger was, Rice is the quarterback of American foreign policy. She’s the one who wakes up the president when there’s a 3 a.m. international crisis.
when there’s a 3 a.m. international crisis である理由は2008年の大統領選を思い出していただくとピンとくると思います。ヒラリー陣営がオバマ大統領候補の経験不足を訴えるために仕掛けた広告が当時話題になりました。
But what about the humanitarian crisis in Syria? More than 100,000 killed; eight million driven from their homes. After the genocide in Rwanda, when Rice worked on President Clinton’s national security council, she vowed if there ever was another atrocity, she would support dramatic action. So why no dramatic action in Syria?
Susan Rice: It’s not that simple. The international community isn’t unified, there’s no agreement to intervene, there’s no basis in international law to intervene. And yet nobody who works on that problem is at all satisfied with how it’s unfolded.
Susan Rice became national security advisor as a consolation prize. She lost her chance to be Secretary of State when she – then the UN ambassador – was asked to pinch hit for Hillary Clinton and answer questions about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi where our ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and 3 others were killed.
[Susan Rice on "Face the Nation": What our assessment is as of the present, is in fact what, it began spontaneously in Benghazi…]
That particular assessment from talking points prepared by the CIA was wrong, and Rice was accused of being deliberately misleading. But a former senior intelligence official told us that the talking point that called the Benghazi attack spontaneous was precisely what classified intelligence reports said at the time.
シャルルペローの昔話を工藤庸子さんが訳し直した新著が発売されていました。翻訳と同じくらいの分量で訳者解説があるのも有り難いです。どれもおなじみの話ばかりですが、Little Red Riding-Hoodは赤ずきん、Puss in Bootsは長靴をはいた猫、など英語での表記にもなじんでおきたいですね。英語版は無料で入手できるのもありがたいです。
‘Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya)’ Ghibli's Takahata returns triumphant after 14 years BY MARK SCHILLING This is all pretty much from the folk tale, which raises the question of what, beyond their way of telling it, Takahata and his collaborators have brought to it. The film’s tag line, “A princess’ crime and punishment,” offers a clue, while Takahata himself has said he wanted to explore what “crime” Princess Kaguya might have committed, since the original story is silent on that point.
His exploration, though, has little to do with plot, everything to do with his heroine’s emotional and spiritual journey — and the way it ends. Not to enter spoiler territory, but the climax is a haunting, wrenching evocation of mono no aware — or as it is literally translated, the pathos of things. The basis of Japanese aesthetics since time immemorial, mono no aware is hard to define, but “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” brilliantly illuminates it with images of life at its transient loveliest, of parting in its terrible finality.
There is a deep wisdom in this film, but a deep sadness too. If it is Takahata’s farewell, it’s one that will have a long echo, just like his 1,000-year-old source.
英語字幕や英語吹き替えのあるバージョンがないか少し探してみましたが、まだありませんでした。いろいろ検索している間に、NHKワールドにTale of the Bamboo Cutterをはじめとする日本の昔話を取り上げるコーナーがあるのを見つけました。英語で朗読されているのはおなじみの青谷優子さんです。翻訳者の方との対談もあって楽しめます。
In just three months, the girl grew into a beautiful young woman. Her beauty lit every corner of the house so the old couples named her “Princess Kaguya,” which means shining night.
ウィキペディアでも輝夜姫とありますね。40年近く生きてきて初めて知りました（汗）
（Wikipedia） The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (竹取物語 Taketori Monogatari?), also known as Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫 Kaguya Hime?, 赫映姫 or 輝夜姫), is a 10th-century Japanese folktale. It is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative[1][2] and an early example of proto-science fiction.[3]
It primarily details the life of a mysterious girl called Kaguya-hime, who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. She is said to be from Tsuki-no-Miyako (月の都 "The Capital of the Moon").
TOEICに頻出ではないですがいつ出てもおかしくない単語というものがあると思います。クーポンや商品券などを使う場合に使われる動詞redeemもその一つでしょう。ニューヨークタイムズの購読者の方はここ一週間以下のようなメールが来ていると思いますので、メールの文言は日によって多少変わることもあるようですが、REDEEM SPECIAL OFFER という表現が一つのメールに３回も使われていたのでredeemという単語についつい目がいきました。
GET THE MUST-HAVE ADDITION FOR YOUR MOBILE DEVICE REDEEM SPECIAL OFFER
Dear Times Reader, The New York Times and your digital devices are perfect together — innovative, future-forward and engaging.
This holiday season, we invite you to enhance your device with a Times Digital Subscription for just 99¢ for 12 weeks.
Get more informed, inspired and challenged with unlimited access to nytimes.com and our apps for smartphones or tablets or both.
Have the world's finest journalism at your fingertips anytime, anywhere. Act now to take advantage of this special, limited-time offer: just 99¢ for 12 weeks.
ACT NOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS SPECIAL, LIMITED-TIME OFFER.
REDEEM SPECIAL OFFER
Award-winning journalism Expert commentary Innovative multimedia Best-in-class mobile apps REDEEM SPECIAL OFFER
Redeemという動詞はなかなかなじみがない単語かもしれませんが、こういう売り込みの広告でREDEEM SPECIAL OFFERとあればある程度意味を推測できそうですね。
（英辞郎） redeem a coupon 商品券を商品と引き換える Redeem this coupon for a free cup of coffee. このクーポン券と引き換えで、コーヒー1杯を無料サービスします。
（オックスフォード） redeem something to exchange something such as shares or vouchers for money or goods This voucher can be redeemed at any of our branches.
（ロングマン） redeem get money for something to exchange a piece of paper representing an amount of money for that amount of money or for goods equal in cost to that amount of money: You can redeem the coupon at any store.
Shoppers, many armed with gift cards, are flocking to stores in the days after Christmas to redeem them and return unwanted presents. There are more bargains to he had as retailers try to clear their shelves to make room for their spring lines, according to Bill Martin, founder of ShopperTrak, which tracks sales in bricks-and-mortar stores.
"Today is the number 7 shopping day of the year," he said in an interview Thursday. "It's important...They will be heavily promoting this weekend."
Retailers are eager for shoppers to redeem their gift cards because they don't count as revenue until that occurs. Many retailers such as Wal-Mart ( WMT) and Target (TGT) were expecting a tough holiday season and early indications are that's what happened. Data from MasterCard Advisers estimates that U.S. holiday sales rose 2.3 percent this year, a growth rate that the company considers to be "decent."
Neither UPS nor FedEx have said exactly how many customers were impacted by the holiday delays, but they've brought in extra people and they've rented extra trucks to deliver a late Christmas to a lot of angry customers.
UPS now promises to refund shipping costs to some customers who didn't get their Christmas packages on time. A UPS spokesperson says only air and international customers are eligible for refunds, Mark Strassman reported on "CBS This Morning." FedEx has apologized for the delays, but has yet to say what its refund policy will be.
And they're not the only ones trying to get back into the good graces of shoppers. Companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Kohl's are offering everything from full refunds on shipping charges, to free gift cards toward future purchases.
UPS promises shipping cost refunds to some customers UPS now promises to refund shipping costs to some customers
to some customersとsomeがついているのは一部の顧客にしか返金されないから。その条件は以下の文で語っています。be eligible for…という表現はTOEICでもおなじみです。 only air and international customers are eligible for refunds
配達の遅れにはお詫びがつきもの、ここでthe delaysと複数形になっているのは各地で配達の遅れが発生しているからでしょう。refund policyなんてのもTOEIC学習者にはピンとくるものですね。 FedEx has apologized for the delays, but has yet to say what its refund policy will be.
配達の遅れでrefund以上のものを期待するのはTOEICの世界だけではないでしょう。Amazonなどはfree gift cards toward future purchasesを提供しているそうです。 Companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Kohl's are offering everything from full refunds on shipping charges, to free gift cards toward future purchases.
Lucky great-grandfather Julius. This first member of the Helm family to settle in Japan was “as rooted in his German identity as an old oak tree.” For his mixed-race descendants, life would not be so simple.
Yokohama in 1869 had something of the “wild west” about it. Twenty years earlier it had been a backwater fishing village of 80 households. Japan then had been a “closed country.” Now it was open a crack, the Black Ships of the American Navy having demanded and secured trading privileges in the 1850s. Yokohama, possessing a natural harbor, grew into Japan’s biggest foreign settlement. “The scum of Europe,” was one British visitor’s acid summation of the crowd he met there.
Julius Helm (1840-1922) was a German farm boy who aimed to better himself and migrated to the United States. The life there didn’t satisfy him, and he thought next of China. He boarded a train to San Francisco but missed the China boat “by the length of my nose.” The next boat out was bound for Yokohama. So to Yokohama he went. The year was 1869.
“Yokohama Yankee” is more than the history of a business and more than the history of a family. Former Los Angeles Times journalist Leslie Helm, Julius Helm’s great-grandson, was born in Yokohama in 1955. His real theme is identity — identities, rather. Most people have one, some have none, others have multiple identities that clash and clamor rather than harmonize.
His real theme is identity — identities, rather.とidentityが複数形で語られるのは日英バイリンガルでありながらもhe was neither quite Japanese nor quite Americanという状況だったからでしょう。そのような状況を受け止められるようになるにはそれなりの時間が必要で、養子にもらった子供にようやく気づかされることになったようです。
The author’s own childhood was full of anomalies. A Japan-born American citizen, perfectly bilingual, he was neither quite Japanese nor quite American. What was he, then — a “gaijin”? Is a word that essentially means “non-Japanese” — a pure negative — an adequate identity? Years later he would agonize over whether some of the derogatory reporting he did from Japan was honest criticism or subconscious revenge against the culture that had excluded him.
He and his American wife adopted two Japanese children and discovered new dimensions of the identity crisis. “Why is my skin so dark?” his daughter Mariko would ask as a child. At 16 she was saying, “I realize that it is us, our family, who have to teach people that it’s OK to look different.” But it was a long rocky road, with probably more rocks ahead.
As city dwellers become richer, the amount of waste they produce reaches a limit. Wealthy societies tend to curb their waste. So as living standards around the world rise and urban populations stabilize, global solid-waste generation will peak.
Just when is difficult to predict. But by extending current socio-economic trends to 2100, we project that 'peak waste' will not occur this century. Unless we reduce population growth and material consumption rates, the planet will have to bear an increasing waste burden.
Urban problem Solid waste is mostly an urban phenomenon. In rural communities there are fewer packaged products, less food waste and less manufacturing. A city resident generates twice as much waste as their rural counterpart of the same affluence. If we account for the fact that urban citizens are usually richer, they generate four times as much.
As urbanization increases, global solid-waste generation is accelerating. In 1900, the world had 220 million urban residents (13% of the population). They produced fewer than 300,000 tonnes of rubbish (such as broken household items, ash, food waste and packaging) per day. By 2000, the 2.9 billion people living in cities (49% of the world's population) were creating more than 3 million tonnes of solid waste per day. By 2025 it will be twice that — enough to fill a line of rubbish trucks 5,000 kilometres long every day.
Together, the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are the largest waste generators, producing around 1.75 million tonnes per day. This volume is expected to increase until 2050, owing to urban population growth, and then to slowly decline, as advances in material science and technology make products smaller, lighter and more resource efficient.
Some countries generate more waste than others. Japan issues about one-third less rubbish per person than the United States, despite having roughly the same gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. This is because of higher-density living, higher prices for a larger share of imports and cultural norms. Waste quantities worldwide can also vary seasonally, by up to 30%, as horticultural and food wastes fluctuate. For example, household waste volumes double in the week after Christmas in Canada.
Extending those projections to 2100 for a range of published population and GDP scenarios shows that global 'peak waste' will not happen this century if current trends continue (see 'When will waste peak?'). Although OECD countries will peak by 2050 and Asia–Pacific countries by 2075, waste will continue to rise in the fast-growing cities of sub-Saharan Africa. The urbanization trajectory of Africa will be the main determinant of the date and intensity of global peak waste2.
Using 'business-as-usual' projections, we predict that, by 2100, solid-waste generation rates will exceed 11 million tonnes per day — more than three times today's rate. With lower populations, denser, more resource-efficient cities and less consumption (along with higher affluence), the peak could come forward to 2075 and reduce in intensity by more than 25%. This would save around 2.6 million tonnes per day.
How can today's situation be improved? Much can be done locally to reduce waste. Some countries and cities are leading the way. San Francisco in California has a goal of 'zero waste' (100% waste diversion by reduction and recycling) by 2020; already more than 55% of its waste is recycled or reused. The Japanese city of Kawasaki has improved its industrial processes to divert 565,000 tonnes of potential waste per year — more than all the municipal waste the city now handles. The exchange and reuse of materials connects steel, cement, chemical and paper firms into an industrial ecosystem3.
Reducing food and horticultural waste is important — these waste components are expected to remain large. Construction and demolition also contribute a large fraction by mass to the waste stream; therefore, building strategies that maximize the use of existing materials in new construction would yield significant results.
The planet is already straining from the impacts of today's waste, and we are on a path to more than triple quantities. Through a move towards stable or declining populations, denser and better-managed cities consuming fewer resources, and greater equity and use of technology, we can bring peak waste forward and down. The environmental, economic and social benefits would be enormous.
It’s hard to think of a high-ranking French official with less promising beginnings than Pellerin. Born in South Korea in 1973, she was found as a tiny bundle, a few days old, abandoned on a street in Seoul. A local orphanage took her in and named her Kim Jong Suk. Six months later a French couple, Joël and Annie Pellerin, came looking for a baby to adopt. They flew the infant home to France, where young Fleur enjoyed a conventional upbringing in the Paris suburbs. Her father, the first from his village in northwestern France to graduate from high school, started a business selling gene-sequencing devices to medical facilities. Her mother, who had quit school at 16 to help her parents, drummed a message of financial independence into Fleur and her younger sister, also a Korean adoptee. “She always told me that school and education was the chance I needed to take if I wanted to get ahead,” Pellerin says. “It was a very powerful incentive.”
Businessweekの記事でも“Even when I look in the mirror, I don’t see someone who is Asian”と語っている通り、自らをアジア系とは思っていないようですね。ENA出身でしかも成績がよかったそうですから、フランスでの超エリート街道を進まれていることが閣僚になっている要因の一つと言えそうです。
Pellerin is the first French-Asian person ever appointed to the top ranks of government. France’s Parliament, too, is still heavily white, with only nine minority representatives out of the 577 members. Even in a cabinet that is half female, Pellerin stands out (in part for her well-documented high-fashion wardrobe). Despite her unconventional origins, she’s an old-fashioned French official who has passed through the predictable feeder schools and jobs. Pellerin says her family rarely discussed her adoption, and that she thinks of herself as thoroughly French. “Even when I look in the mirror, I don’t see someone who is Asian,” she says.
Pellerin is shrewd enough to know when her background can be an asset. Last March she flew to Seoul to meet government officials and executives, her first visit to Korea since her adoption. About 25 TV crews greeted her at the airport, and several trailed her for days through the city. Strangers plied her with gifts in a street market. The Korean Broadcasting Service aired a one-hour documentary on her life. “They were fascinated,” says Aymeril Hoang, a staff adviser to Pellerin, who accompanied her to Seoul. “She was a rock star.” Pellerin met privately with Korean President Park Geun Hye and with Samsung’s vice chairman and heir apparent, Jay Y. Lee. “I wasn’t expecting that sort of mania,” says Pellerin. “People kept asking, ‘What do you feel?’ ” Under the circumstances, “it wasn’t possible to have really personal feelings.” It was, nonetheless, great for business. Samsung has since opened a product development center in Paris to design apps and software for the Galaxy smartphone and other devices, one of four such Samsung centers worldwide.
Pellerin says one of her biggest challenges is overcoming French suspicions of the business world. Her countrymen traditionally regard wealth and success as unfit for polite conversation. Most would prefer a reliable job in the civil service or at a big corporation, rather than rolling the dice at a startup. “In the U.S., if you’ve failed in one company, investors consider you to have experience. In France, people are very stressed about failing,” she says. “I am working on the mindset, on the culture, not only in the government but in the whole society.”
Pellerin’s relationship with Silicon Valley is more complicated. Last June she flew to San Francisco for a round of meetings with industry heavyweights, including Facebook’s (FB) Sheryl Sandberg, Google (GOOG) Vice President David Drummond, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. The trip came at a delicate time. One month before, her direct boss, Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg, had erupted over an offer by Yahoo! (YHOO) to buy a 75 percent stake in the video-sharing site Dailymotion, in which the French government has a sizable stake. Montebourg said he would not allow Yahoo to “devour” a homegrown “French nugget.” After Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer walked away, Dailymotion’s execs swallowed their disappointment. “We decided to tourne la page,” says CEO Guiseppe di Martino.
The decision, however, undermined Pellerin’s attempts to pitch France as ripe for U.S. tech investment. Montebourg had scuttled a major deal with a U.S. giant—the kind Pellerin and others believe French startups need to grow into global powerhouses. The incident left Pellerin pitching her grand plans to Silicon Valley but uncertain of backing from above. Pellerin told reporters upon arriving in San Francisco, “We are absolutely not in a crusade against American companies or Americans. On the contrary, my purpose is to visit great tech companies and discuss with them the possibilities of partnerships.”
The Snowden leaks exploded just as U.S. technology companies were coming under fire in France for tax avoidance. The involvement of American companies in the surveillance programs has made them more vulnerable to regulation. At a European Union summit in Brussels in late October, France pushed to force U.S. technology giants to pay taxes in countries where they earn revenue, a measure Pellerin supports.
In November, France banned Amazon.com (AMZN) from delivering books for free, saying the company risked driving the country’s independent bookstores out of business. To Pellerin, all those moves make financial sense, though she says she realizes that Amazon’s superior service is likely to win out (“Jeff Bezos is a genius,” she says). Within the Paris offices of big U.S. companies, there’s a sense that at home Pellerin is less hospitable to foreign companies. One French representative for a major U.S. tech company says that when Pellerin went to Silicon Valley, she expressed support for U.S. companies’ expansion in France but in Paris sounded more protective of French business interests.
Pellerin has work to do. Among other things, she has pushed for legislation that would change the government’s definition of innovation and tilt public financing away from big corporations and toward startups. One evening in November thousands of people converged on a six-story building on Rue du Caire in the Sentier district for the inauguration of Numa, a tech startup incubator. The €2 million renovation of the former clothing factory was financed by Google and the city of Paris. Pellerin arrived in a cropped leather jacket, clingy dress, and spiked-heel boots, her bright lipstick setting off her all-black outfit.
Inside, she told the audience of tech executives and government officials that projects such as Numa are key to her plan to harness the creative potential of entrepreneurs. “We want France to be among the leading nations for digital innovation,” she said, listing France’s advantages, such as sophisticated infrastructure, nationwide broadband access, and attractive cities like Paris. “C’est ‘le French touch,’ ” she laughed.
There was loud applause from the audience. And then the neighborhood celebrated the opening of Numa with an all-night block party—organized through Facebook.
記事の最後ですが、And then the neighborhood celebrated the opening of Numa with an all-night block party—organized through Facebook.と締めています。Facebookを用いてパーティーをアレンジしたと、まだまだフランスにはプラットフォームとなるIT企業が育っていないことを示唆しているのかもしれません。
A hundred years ago, my country, the United States, was not one economy and culture, but two of them, so opposed to each other that ninety-five years ago they went to war against each other to test which one should prevail. My side, the South, lost that war, the battles of which were fought not on neutral ground in the waste of the ocean, but in our own homes, our gardens, our farms, as if Okinawa and Guadalcanal had been not islands in the distant Pacific but the precincts of Honshu and Hokkaido. Our land, our homes were invaded by a conqueror who remained after we were defeated; we were not only devastated by the battles which we lost, the conqueror spent the next ten years after our defeat and surrender despoiling us of what little war had left. The victors in our war made no effort to rehabilitate and reestablish us in any community of men or of nations. 百年前、私の国アメリカ合衆国は経済的にも文化的にも一つではなく、二つに分かれた国がお互いに激しく対立し、九十五年前どちらの側が勝っているかを試すために戦争になりました。私の側、南部はその戦争に負けました。戦争は広々とした海洋のような中立の場で戦われたのではなく、我々の家、庭、農場で戦われたのです。ちょうど沖縄とガダルカナルが、遠い太平洋上に位置している島ではなくて、本州とか北海道にあるようなものです。我々の土地も家も征服者によって侵入され、私たちが負けた後も彼らは居残りました。私たちは負けた戦争によって打ちのめされたばかりではありません。征服者は私たちの敗北と降伏の後十年も南部に滞まり、戦争が残した僅かなものまで略奪していきました。戦争の勝利者たちは、人々のコミュニティとしても、また民族のコミュニティとしても、南部を復興し再建するための、どんな努力もしませんでした。
下記の激励の部分は2011年を経験した今の我々にも響く部分ですね。
I believe it is war and disaster which remind man most that he needs a record of his endurance and toughness. I think that that is why after our own disaster there rose in my country, the South, a resurgence of good writing, writing of a good enough quality that people in other lands began to talk of a "regional" Southern literature even until I, a countryman, have become one of the first names in our literature which the Japanese people want to talk to and listen to. 人間が忍耐と強靭さの記録を必要としているということを、人間に最も強く思い起こさせるのは、戦争と災害であると私は信じています。だからこそ戦争による災害がもたらされた後で、私の国、南部において、優れた文学の復活が起こったのだと思うのです。それは、＜地方性＞豊かな南部文学のことを、外国の人々までが語り始めたほど十分優れた特質の文学で、ついに田舎者の私が、日本の方々が話をし、また耳を傾けたくなる最初のアメリカ作家たちの一人になったのです。
I believe that something very like that will happen here in Japan within the next few years - that out of your disaster and despair will come a group of Japanese writers whom all the world will want to listen to, who will speak not a Japanese truth but a universal truth. これからの数年のうちに日本でも、これに似たことが起こるだろうと私は信じています。つまり、あなたがたの災難と絶望の中から、世界中の人々が耳を傾けたくなるような、そして日本の真実ではなく、普遍的な真実を語るような、一群の日本の作家が登場してくるだろうと思います。
When their daimyo is tricked into having to commit seppuku, his now-masterless samurai get their revenge, but at the price of their own ritual suicides. This tale of honor, loyalty and sacrifice is the most famous example of the bushido code, and amounts to Japan’s “national legend.” Then there’s this movie. Granted, most Chushingura dramatizations are fictionalized, but this one takes the pink potato. A monster-slaying Keanu Reeves (and where is Steven Seagal when you really need him?), after worming his way into the title troop, proceeds to rally and reboot the retired ronin, but first must battle CG monsters and giant gladiators, and outsmart forest demons to acquire swords—all this to give the creators of the crappy 3D something to do. The sets are more Temple of Doom than feudal Japan. The dialogue’s eye-rollingly corny, and the (over)acting by a mostly Japanese cast almost makes Keanu look good. (It’s shown in two versions: Japanese and tortured English.) This is one of the worst movies ever made. Someone should do jail time for making a movie this bad. If I were Japanese I’d protest in front of the American Embassy. All that said, however, it does have hilarious bad-movie potential. A few drinks first wouldn’t hurt. (121 min)
邦題『悪の法則』もこれだけの役者、監督、原作者をそろえたのにHow can this be such a misfire?とキツく語っています。
THE COUNSELOR The first original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy; direction by Ridley Scott; a killer cast comprising Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and even Brad Pitt. How can this be such a misfire? With the exception of Diaz's overcooked femme fatale, it's not the actors. Scott's direction is stylish but unmoving. It's compliant. The problems are in the script. The pseudo-existential narrative's thin, the cartoony, unlikable characters talk way too much, and the philosophical dialogue's pretentious. Maybe McCarthy is better at providing source material. Wait for the book. Japanese title: Aku noHousoku. (117 min)
映画GravityについてはIt joins Avatar and Hugo in justifying the overused and abused 3D treatment.と基本褒めています。が、Yet as it floated toward its wildly improbable ending, I was torn between wanting more character development, so I could care, and a 2001-like minimalism.と注文をつけることも忘れていません。
Gravity Shipwreck narrative that justifies the overused and abused 3D treatment By: Don Morton & Don Morton | Dec 12, 2013 | Issue: 1029 | No Comments | 971 views In a stunning update of the classic shipwreck narrative, space-walking astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are literally knocked for a loop when space debris destroys their shuttle, the ISS and any means of returning to Earth. More Kubrick than Cameron, this weightless, true-science ballet from Alfonso Cuaron is elemental, immersive, and awesome. It joins Avatar and Hugo in justifying the overused and abused 3D treatment. Yet as it floated toward its wildly improbable ending, I was torn between wanting more character development, so I could care, and a 2001-like minimalism. Big screen, please. (90 min)
芸術家を取り上げたことで12月号のVanity FairでWho are the six greatest living artists?とアーティストや研究者、キュレーター100名にアンケートをとり、6人の芸術家を選んでいました。
Paint by Numbers Who are the six greatest living artists? This provocative, perhaps unanswerable question is worth asking for what it reveals about a cultural arena in which money and fame often seem to be the paramount obsessions. Surveying the results from V.F.’s poll of top artists, academics, and curators, Mark Stevens creates a portrait of the art world today and identifies the values that really preoccupy its best and brightest. By Mark Stevens
“I do not believe in ranking artists. Art is for life.”という反応は編集部も織り込み済み、アンケートも54名からしか返事がなかったそうです。詳しい結果はこの下に紹介している別のリンク先をご覧ください。
A different group of voters, of course, might have picked different artists. (The voter pool selected by the Vanity Fair editors tended toward the older, American, and mainstream.) Of the roughly 100 asked to vote, more than half (54) did so. That’s more than I would have expected. It’s natural not to want to “judge” artists; Mark di Suvero responded by explaining, “I do not believe in ranking artists. Art is for life.” It’s also natural to arch an eyebrow at the low pop appeal of lists. (Jasper Johns offered an elegant demurral, writing “Regrets” on the editor’s invitation to participate in the poll.) But compiling lists can also be a useful parlor game, forcing one to make difficult distinctions and clarify murky values. I admired those with the courage to make a call. Besides, they risked making six friends now—and a thousand enemies forever.
この著者は6人に共通する特徴として「I（私）」を見出しています。
What portrait emerges? There is no single look to the art or common countenance to the sensibility of the artists who top the list, each of whom can be viewed in a variety of ways. But there is a powerful shared preoccupation with, to put it as nakedly as possible, “I.” In a period whose presiding spiritual disease is narcissism, the artists we most admire play, seriously, with what we can know about who we think we are. Me, myself, and I—the modern trinity—has rarely seemed less fixed or certain.
Democracy Has Bad Taste Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery: 2013 Episode 1 of 4 Duration: 42 minutes First broadcast: Tuesday 15 October 2013 In the first of four lectures, recorded in front of an audience at Tate Modern in London, the artist Grayson Perry reflects on the idea of quality and examines who and what defines what we see and value as art. He argues that there is no empirical way to judge quality in art. Instead the validation of quality rests in the hands of a tightknit group of people at the heart of the art world including curators, dealers, collectors and critics who decide in the end what ends up in galleries and museums. Often the last to have a say are the public. Perry examines the words and language that have developed around art critique, including what he sees as the growing tendency to over-intellectualise the response to art. He analyses the art market and quotes - with some irony - an insider who says that certain colours sell better than others. He queries whether familiarity makes us like certain artworks more, and encourages the public to learn to appreciate different forms of art through exploration and open-mindedness. Perry was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, and is known for his ceramic works, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and tapestry as well as for his cross-dressing and alter-ego, Claire. The Reith lectures are presented and chaired by Sue Lawley.
SUE LAWLEY: He’s also a well-known cross dresser. As he said when he won that big prize, “it’s about time a transvestite potter won the Turner”. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Grayson Perry. You have fans, you have fans. I have to say, Grayson, that this must be the first time in the sixty-five year history of Reith that a cross-dresser has been the lecturer. GRAYSON: Well, as far as we know. SUE LAWLEY: Touché. GRAYSON: Look for the eyebrows, I always say. SUE LAWLEY: Touché. Listen, this is radio. You have to describe what you’re wearing. GRAYSON: Yes, I’m usually dressed by St Martins Students now so this, this sort of oversized t-shirt in psychedelic colours was made by a student called Angus, a Chinese student actually, and I’m wearing my orange patent flatforms, I think you call them.
（1回目） The Human Hive Niall Ferguson: The Rule of Law and Its Enemies: 2012 Episode 1 of 4 Duration: 42 minutes First broadcast: Tuesday 19 June 2012
トランスクリプト The eminent economic historian Professor Niall Ferguson argues that institutions determine the success or failure of nations. In a lecture delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he says that a society governed by abstract, impersonal rules will become richer than one ruled by personal relationships. The rule of law is crucial to the creation of a modern economy and its early adoption is the reason why Western nations grew so powerful in the modern age.
But are the institutions of the West now degenerating? Professor Ferguson asks whether the democratic system has a fatal flaw at its heart. In the West young people are confronting the fact that they must live with the huge financial debt generated by their parents, something they had no control over despite the fact that they were born into a democracy. Is there a way of restoring the compact between different generations?
（2回目） The Darwinian Economy Niall Ferguson: The Rule of Law and Its Enemies: 2012 Episode 2 of 4 Duration: 42 minutes First broadcast: Tuesday 26 June 2012
The eminent economic historian Niall Ferguson travels to the world's financial centre to deliver a lecture at the New-York Historical Society. He reflects on the causes of the global financial crisis, and argues that many people have drawn erroneous conclusions from it about the role of regulation. Is regulation, he asks, in fact "the disease of which it purports to be the cure"?
（3回目） The Landscape of the Law Niall Ferguson: The Rule of Law and Its Enemies: 2012 Episode 3 of 4 Duration: 42 minutes First broadcast: Tuesday 03 July 2012
The historian Niall Ferguson delivers a lecture at Gresham College in the heart of legal London, addressing the relationship between the nature of law and economic success. He examines the rule of law in comparative terms, asking how far the common law's claims to superiority over other systems are credible. Are we living through a time of creeping legal degeneration in the English-speaking world?
（4回目） Civil and Uncivil Societies Niall Ferguson: The Rule of Law and Its Enemies: 2012 Episode 4 of 4 Duration: 58 minutes First broadcast: Tuesday 10 July 2012
The historian Niall Ferguson examines institutions outside the political, economic and legal realms, whose primary purpose is to preserve and transmit particular knowledge and values. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he asks if the modern state is quietly killing civil society in the Western world? And what can non-Western societies do to build a vibrant civil society?
Americans often have difficulty understanding the grip that World War I exercises upon European consciousness. World War II, after all, seems more important and was more destructive. For Europeans, however, the earlier contest represents a horrible chasm between sublime grandeur and bleak modernity. Prodigious losses provided a cruel counterpoint to expectations of a short and glorious war. “We are readying ourselves to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness,” André Gide correctly predicted in July 1914. The immense destruction seems all the more tragic because the war lacked clear cause and noble purpose.
A century after its outbreak, Europeans remain obsessed with the 1914-18 war; they still find it difficult to shoulder its heavy burden. The deluge of books that will mark the war’s centenary is proof of this obsession. A market for these books exists because the war bewilders, frustrates and angers those who seek understanding. Yet as new books by Margaret MacMillan and Max Hastings reveal, the war’s most profound conundrums continue to evade solution.
THE SLEEPWALKERS How Europe Went to War in 1914 By Christopher Clark. Harper, $29.99. Clark manages in a single volume to provide a comprehensive, highly readable survey of the events leading up to World War I. He avoids singling out any one nation or leader as the guilty party. “The outbreak of war,” he writes, “is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse.” The participants were, in his term, “sleepwalkers,” not fanatics or murderers, and the war itself was a tragedy, not a crime.
The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. By Margaret MacMillan. Random House; 739 pages; $35. Profile Books; £25. How Europe (and the world) could have avoided the grief and ruin of war if its leaders had been wiser and more far-sighted. The centenary of the start of the first world war is generating an unprecedented wave of books. Margaret MacMillan’s is one that should not be missed.
ちなみにThe War that Ended PeaceというタイトルはThe war to end warという第一次世界大戦の参戦のお題目を揶揄してのものかもしれません。The war to end warと聞いて、第一次世界大戦のことを指しているとすぐに分かるというのも語学力と言えるでしょう。
（ウィキペディア） The war to end war "The war to end war" (sometimes called "The war to end all wars")[1] was a term for World War I. Originally idealistic, it is now used mainly in a disparaging way.[2]
Origin During August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the war, British author and social commentator H. G. Wells published a number of articles in the London newspapers that subsequently appeared as a book entitled The War That Will End War.[3] Wells blamed the Central Powers for the coming of the war, and argued that only the defeat of German militarism could bring about an end to war.[4] Wells used the shorter form, "the war to end war", in In the Fourth Year (1918), where he noted that the phrase had "got into circulation" in the second half of 1914.[5] In fact, it had become one of the most common catchphrases of the war.[4] In later years, the term became associated with Woodrow Wilson, despite the fact that Wilson used the phrase only once.[6] Along with the phrase "make the world safe for democracy," it embodied Wilson's conviction that America's entry into the war was necessary to preserve human freedom.[6]
CATASTROPHE 1914: EUROPE GOES TO WAR by Max Hastings "Among the plethora of brilliant accounts of this period, this is one of the best." Does the world need another book on that dismal year? Absolutely, if it's by Hastings (Inferno: The World at War, 1939–1945, 2011, etc.). After many accounts of World War II, the veteran military historian tries his hand, with splendid results.
先ほど紹介したEconomistの社説のパラグラフタイトルにI have drunk and seen the spiderとありました。
I have drunk and seen the spider Two precautions would help prevent any of these flashpoints sparking a conflagration. One is a system for minimising the threat from potential dangers. Nobody is quite clear what will happen when North Korea implodes, but America and China need to plan ahead if they are to safeguard its nuclear programme without antagonising each other. China is playing an elaborately dangerous game of “chicken” around its littoral with its neighbours. Eventually, somebody is bound to crash into somebody else—and there is as yet no system for dealing with it. A code of maritime conduct for the area is needed.
（１分50秒当たりから） How blest am I In my just censure! in my true opinion! Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accurs'd In being so blest! There may be in the cup A spider steep'd, and one may drink; depart, And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge Is not infected), but if one present Th' abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. (II.i.36-45)
（4分40秒あたり） PAULINA It is required You do awake your faith. Then all stand still; On: those that think it is unlawful business I am about, let them depart.
LEONTES Proceed: No foot shall stir.
PAULINA Music, awake her; strike! (Music) 'Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come, I'll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away, Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs: HERMIONE comes down
第五幕第三場、ポーライナがハーマイオニの彫像を動かそうとする直前に言う「それにはまず、信じる力を目覚めさせていただかねばなりません(It is required You do awake your faith. Then all stand still)」。このfaithも当初は「ご信仰」としたのだが、それを「信じる力」に変えた。faithを宗教的な信仰心にとどまらず、演劇の舞台で起こることを信じることと解釈したのである。（中略） 『冬物語』の舞台では、劇中人物たちも観客も、信じる力によってこの「物語」の最も奇跡的な出来事を目の当たりにする。現実の世界ではおよそあり得ないことを「あり得る」と信じさせてくれる劇、それが『冬物語』なのだ。
AS NEW YEAR approached a century ago, most people in the West looked forward to 1914 with optimism. The hundred years since the Battle of Waterloo had not been entirely free of disaster—there had been a horrific civil war in America, some regional scraps in Asia, the Franco-Prussian war and the occasional colonial calamity. But continental peace had prevailed. Globalisation and new technology—the telephone, the steamship, the train—had knitted the world together. John Maynard Keynes has a wonderful image of a Londoner of the time, “sipping his morning tea in bed” and ordering “the various products of the whole earth” to his door, much as he might today from Amazon—and regarding this state of affairs as “normal, certain and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement”. The Londoner might well have had by his bedside table a copy of Norman Angell’s “The Great Illusion”, which laid out the argument that Europe’s economies were so integrated that war was futile.
Yet the parallels remain troubling. The United States is Britain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee global security. Its main trading partner, China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristling with nationalist indignation and building up its armed forces rapidly. Modern Japan is France, an ally of the retreating hegemon and a declining regional power. The parallels are not exact—China lacks the Kaiser’s territorial ambitions and America’s defence budget is far more impressive than imperial Britain’s—but they are close enough for the world to be on its guard.
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