New Yorkerを定期購読しているせいか、以下のような販促メールが届きました。award-winning / SPECIAL OFFER というおなじみの表現やUse code 4DADS as checkoutとコードを使って割引を得るなど短いながらもベタな販促メールになっています（苦笑）
What Dad Wants for Father's Day Give Dad framed prints and gifts featuring cartoons from The New Yorker or award-winning photographs from Golf Digest. SPECIAL OFFER: Save 30% on framed and canvas prints through June 8th. Use code 4DADS as checkout.
Twenty-five years ago this week, the world was shaken by two seismic political events. Separated by continents, they shattered postwar certainties and helped to shape the global system in which we now live. In Poland, after months of negotiations with a sclerotic, but still thuggish communist regime, free elections were held that resulted in a resounding victory for Solidarity, the political movement set up by the irrepressible Lech Walesa. In China, the authorities launched their bloody assault on the student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. When the tanks moved in, hundreds perished.
It is hard to know how the communist regime can reconcile political with economic freedom – or whether this concept is compatible with one-party rule. To preserve its monopoly on power, the party often flirts with the base currency of nationalism. This is a dangerous path elsewhere in Asia, where nationalist sentiments are rarely far from the surface.
Europe’s experience gives grounds for hope. Freedom of expression may be wanting in China, but it is no totalitarian state. Millions of Chinese have tasted the benefits of trade, travel and the internet. The Communist party’s wager is that these economic freedoms and the overriding quest for internal stability will be enough to assure its survival and China’s rise. It is a big bet.
ウォールストリートジャーナルには『歴史の終わり』を1989年に書いたフランシス・フクヤマ氏が当時と現状を比べています。２パラグラフ目にThe process of economic and political modernization was leading not to communism, as the Marxists had asserted and the Soviet Union had avowed, but to some form of liberal democracy and a market economyと彼の主張を簡潔にまとめてくれています。History (in the grand philosophical sense)と彼の使う「歴史」の意味も明記しています。
Twenty-five years ago, I wrote the essay "The End of History?" for a small journal called the National Interest. It was the spring of 1989, and for those of us who had been caught up in the big political and ideological debates of the Cold War, it was an incredible moment. The piece appeared a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, right about the time that pro-democracy protests were taking place in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and in the midst of a wave of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
I argued that History (in the grand philosophical sense) was turning out very differently from what thinkers on the left had imagined. The process of economic and political modernization was leading not to communism, as the Marxists had asserted and the Soviet Union had avowed, but to some form of liberal democracy and a market economy. History, I wrote, appeared to culminate in liberty: elected governments, individual rights, an economic system in which capital and labor circulated with relatively modest state oversight.
WSJのサブタイトルにliberal democracy still has no real competitorsとあるように大まかな方向性に修正は加えていません。
In the realm of ideas, moreover, liberal democracy still doesn't have any real competitors. Vladimir Putin's Russia and the ayatollahs' Iran pay homage to democratic ideals even as they trample them in practice. Why else bother to hold sham referendums on "self-determination" in eastern Ukraine? Some radicals in the Middle East may dream of restoring an Islamist caliphate, but this isn't the choice of the vast majority of people living in Muslim countries. The only system out there that would appear to be at all competitive with liberal democracy is the so-called "China model," which mixes authoritarian government with a partially market-based economy and a high level of technocratic and technological competence.
Yet if asked to bet whether, 50 years from now, the U.S. and Europe would look more like China politically or vice versa, I would pick the latter without hesitation. There are many reasons to think that the China model isn't sustainable. The system's legitimacy and the party's ongoing rule rest on continued high levels of growth, which simply won't be forthcoming as China seeks to make the transition from a middle-income country to a high-income one.
2012年のフォーリンアフェアーズとの大きな違いは今回はインドを大きく取り上げている点でしょうか。 India has been held back by a similar gap in performance when compared with authoritarian China. It is very impressive that India has held together as a democracy since its founding in 1947. But Indian democracy, like sausage-making, doesn't look very appealing on closer inspection. The system is rife with corruption and patronage; 34% of the winners of India's recent elections have criminal indictments pending against them, according to India's Association for Democratic Reforms, including serious charges like murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.
ここではBut Indian democracy, like sausage-making, doesn't look very appealing on closer inspection.とLike watching sausage getting madeを念頭に置いたイディオムが使われています。イディオムはイメージが浮かびやすい利点がありますね。
'Like watching sausage getting made' If something is like watching sausages getting made, unpleasant truths about it emerge that make it much less appealing. The idea is that if people watched sausages getting made, they would probably be less fond of them.
もちろんsome form of liberal democracy and a market economyに替わる政治システムがないとしても、問題がないと言っているわけではありません。この流れに取り残される地域があることと、システムの劣化の2つを挙げています。
The question is whether all countries will inevitably get on that escalator. The problem is the intertwining of politics and economics. Economic growth requires certain minimal institutions such as enforceable contracts and reliable public services before it will take off, but those basic institutions are hard to create in situations of extreme poverty and political division. Historically, societies broke out of this "trap" through accidents of history, in which bad things (like war) often created good things (like modern governments). It is not clear, however, that the stars will necessarily align for everyone.
A second problem that I did not address 25 years ago is that of political decay, which constitutes a down escalator. All institutions can decay over the long run. They are often rigid and conservative; rules responding to the needs of one historical period aren't necessarily the right ones when external conditions change.
ここでフクヤマ氏は貧富の差が広がる原因をフランスの経済学者ピケティの資本の論理ではなく、身内びいきにあると見ています。 Moreover, modern institutions designed to be impersonal are often captured by powerful political actors over time. The natural human tendency to reward family and friends operates in all political systems, causing liberties to deteriorate into privileges. This is no less true in a democracy (look at the current U.S. tax code) than in an authoritarian system. In these circumstances, the rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.
The inability to govern effectively extends, unfortunately, to the U.S. itself. Our Madisonian Constitution, deliberately designed to prevent tyranny by multiplying checks and balances at all levels of government, has become a vetocracy. In the polarized—indeed poisonous—political atmosphere of today's Washington, the government has proved unable to move either forward or backward effectively.
（オックスフォード） veto [countable, uncountable] the right to refuse to allow something to be done, especially the right to stop a law from being passed or a decision from being made The governor used his veto to block the proposal.
では、このような状況をどうすればいいのか。the power of the democratic ideal remains immense.と民主主義を正当に機能させることだと指摘して締めています。
No one living in an established democracy should be complacent about its survival. But despite the short-term ebb and flow of world politics, the power of the democratic ideal remains immense. We see it in the mass protests that continue to erupt unexpectedly from Tunis to Kiev to Istanbul, where ordinary people demand governments that recognize their equal dignity as human beings. We also see it in the millions of poor people desperate to move each year from places like Guatemala City or Karachi to Los Angeles or London.
Transcript: One of the reasons that I love writing about the arts, you know, curating work is not even so much that you're able to honor one person's expression and pay tribute to that. But because of how much it can shift things in us, you know. Frederick Douglas during the Civil War surprised his audience when he spoke about this idea, you know. His idea was that it wouldn't be combat that would get America to have a new vision of itself but pictures, right. Pictures, he said. And the thought pictures that they create in the mind are the way that we can kind of slip in the back door by rational thought and see the world differently. I love that. His speech was called Pictures and Progress and then he retitled it Life Pictures.
And as I came across his speech I thought this is why I do what I do, you know. How many movements have begun in the world when one person's work, one song, one impactful aesthetic experience shifted things entirely for a leader, for a group of people, you know. The environmental movement really catalyzed and began when we saw that earth rise image, you know, taken from the Apollo VIII. And we saw that our world was in an environment that we needed to honor. Or think about the way that Brown versus the Board of Education would not have had Charles Black there, that constitutional lawyer if he hadn't seen Louis Armstrong perform that night in 1931 in Austin, Texas. And in that moment say to himself well there is genius coming out of this man's horn. And if there's genius in this black man then segregation must be wrong.
And to know in that moment that he was walking towards justice as he put it when he describes what got him to be on the Brown versus Board of Education case, you know. There's so many examples where really aesthetic force more than rational argument alone has been what has shifted and turned the tide, you know, in the face of massive injustice. So I think of the arts as far more than just a respite from life, a kind of a luxury. I see it as a galvanic force really that undergirds some of our most impactful changes and movements in this country and in this world.
The Russian told a press conference: “Sorry. I didn’t know who Judy Murray is.” She added: “I’m a big tea drinker. I don’t understand what she means.” 記者会見に臨んだシャラポワは、「ごめんなさい。ジュディ・マレーさんを知らないのですが」と話し始めると、「お茶はよく飲みますが、彼女が言うところの意味がよく分かりません」と困惑の表情を浮かべた。
When it was explained to her, Sharapova applauded the Wimbledon champion’s mother’s turn of phrase.
“That’s great. She’s very creative. I guess she could have put it many different ways, and she chose the English version.” 「素晴らしいわ。なんて創造的なの。きっと違う言い方もできたのでしょうが、彼女は英国風に例えたのね」
窮地に立たされてからの逆転だったので、in hot waterのイディオムにかけたのでしょう。
（ロングマン） in hot water if someone is in hot water, they are in trouble because they have done something wrong: The finance minister found himself in hot water over his business interests.
Q. Judy Murray just tweeted Sharapova is like a tea bag... MARIA SHARAPOVA: Who is that? Q. Judy Murray. Andy's mom. MARIA SHARAPOVA: Okay. Sorry. I didn't know who Judy Murray is. Q. I will quote: Sharapova is like a tea bag. Put her into hot water, and you'll find out how strong she is. People usually call you a fighter. How about being a tea bag? MARIA SHARAPOVA: Can you explain that to me? Q. You don't drink tea? MARIA SHARAPOVA: I love tea. Q. Put the bag in hot water... MARIA SHARAPOVA: I'm a big tea drinker. I don't understand what she means. Q. Hot water. In hot water. Water gets... MARIA SHARAPOVA: That's great. She's very creative (smiling). I guess she could have put it many different ways, and she chose the English version. Q. How about it? Fighter and tea bag? You cant relate... MARIA SHARAPOVA: I think it's better to ask her than me. Obviously she has a better sense of what's going on out there (smiling).
It was easier said than done. The only hill-length mirror we had was in the hall by the stairs. I couldn't exactly stand there naked, even if there was no one in the house, because someone could come home at any moment, and even if I reacted quickly that person would still see my butt beating a swift retreat up the stairs. No, it had to be the bathroom mirror. But it was designed solely for faces. If you got up close with your legs as far back as possible you could catch a glimpse of your body but from such a bizarre angle that it told you nothing. So I waited until Mom had finished washing up after dinner and had taken a seat in the living room with the newspa- per and a cup of coffee. Then I fetched a chair from the kitchen. If she asked what I was doing with it, I could say I was going to stand the cassette player on it while I was in the bath. But she didn't ask. First I looked at the front of my body. My dick wasn't like Tor's, not at all. More like a little cork. Or a kind of spring, because it quivered when you flicked it lightly. I put it in my hand. How big was it? Then I turned and looked at it from the side. In fact, it seemed a bit bigger that way. Anyway, it looked like all the dicks in our class, apart from Tor s, didn't it? I fared worse with my arms. They were so thin. So was my chest. I was supposed to do push-ups in soccer training, but I al- ways cheated, because in reality, and only I knew this, I couldn't do a single one. Finally, I ran my bath. The hot water stung my skin so much that it was impossible to sit. But I managed. I sat, got up, sat, got up, sat, got up until my skin was used to the temperature and I could lie there, letting the heat wash over me while music poured from the little tape player and I sang at the top of my lungs, dreaming about becoming famous and what all the girls I knew would say then. I feel lo lo lo, I sang. I feel lo lo lo, I feel lo lo lo. I feel lo lo lo, I feel lo lo lo, I feel lo lo lo. Lo, I feel lo. I feel lo. I feel so lonely. I feel so lonely. I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo. I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo. I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo. Lonely lone. Ah I feel SO LONELY! So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. I feel so lonely. I feel so lonely. I feel so lonely. I caught every little nuance in Sting s voice, even the whimper at the end.
ここからはTimeの記事に戻ります。雑誌Timeを読むと政治から文学まで幅広くカバーできることが分かりますね。この作家は米国でも批評家や作家から高い評価を受けているようです。In Knausgaard’s native Norway, where My Struggle was published from 2009 to 2011, 500,000 copies have sold–that’s one for every 10 people.とTimeの説明では10人に１人のノルウェー人が読んだことになっていますね（笑）
On May 27, the third volume in Knausgaard’s six-volume novel, My Struggle, will be published in the U.S. Among a certain set, it is awaited like a new Harry Potter novel. Reviewing the first volume for the New Yorker, critic James Wood placed Knausgaard in the same circle as Leo Tolstoy and Walter Benjamin. Author Zadie Smith has said, “I need the next volume like crack.” In Knausgaard’s native Norway, where My Struggle was published from 2009 to 2011, 500,000 copies have sold–that’s one for every 10 people. “His work,” says Bernhard Ellefsen, literary critic for the Norwegian paper Morgenbladet, “demands a place at the very center of culture.”
It’s true. In the 3,600 pages of My Struggle, Knausgaard unflinchingly portrays a life–his life, though he says it isn’t autobiography–in banal detail. Momentous events occasionally erupt from the routines of experience. But mostly there is the Proustian stuff that takes up so much time yet tends to be forgotten: the water boiled for tea, the diapers changed, the swim practices attended, the snippy little tiffs with siblings and, later, spouses. Though the story is told in artless language, the work’s power lies in its accumulation of detail.
That none of this comes across as boring is difficult even for Knausgaard to explain. “My first education in writing came from reading thrillers, Ken Follett, people like that, and they all had very powerful narrative motors,” says the writer, who lives in Sweden with his wife Linda and their four children. “Of course, this is not about climbing up some fortress. This is about going to the refrigerator, opening it, seeing what’s in there,” he says. “But there’s always an element of ‘What’s going to happen?’ in a very, very small way.”
Timeがなぜノルウェーのプルーストと評したのも大作であることの他に、このような作風によるものかもしれません。アメリカンヘリテージではプルーストをdetailed portrayal of the psychology of memoryと説明しています。
（アメリカンヘリテージ） Proust, Marcel 1871-1922. French writer whose seven-part novel Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927) is noted for its detailed portrayal of the psychology of memory. Proustian adj.
自身の人生を振り返っているので自伝と呼ぶべきものかもしれませんが、あくまで小説だそうで本人は“I was never after representing episodes from my life, which an autobiography does,” he says, “but rather to search a life for meaning. My life was just the raw material.”と述べています。
Truth, of course, is a slippery thing, especially when it springs from as unreliable a source as memory. Faced with his family’s denials about the causes of his father’s death, Knausgaard began to doubt his own account. It took confirmation from the medical team that collected his father’s body to assure him he was right. But he calls My Struggle a novel, not a memoir or an autobiography. “I was never after representing episodes from my life, which an autobiography does,” he says, “but rather to search a life for meaning. My life was just the raw material.”
A novel that is not fiction, a memory that is flawed yet true: these are not the only apparent contradictions in Knausgaard. In 2010 the Norwegian edition of Elle voted him sexiest man in the country. To accept the honor, he had to agree to an interview. On the one hand, he says, “this was exactly the opposite of what the book is about.” But as a serious author dealing with identity, he felt that he couldn’t avoid the subject of looks and image. He did the interview.
“I’m not a happy person, but I can write,” he says. “While I’m writing, I’m selfless, I’m balanced. Self-medicating is a good word for it. Just like my father did with his drinking.”と書くことが本人にとって平静でいられる手段になっているようです。書いていない時はというと、he admits to Googling himself 20 times a day. He knows that all this makes him seem a caricature–the artist tortured by nothing more terrible than himself.と自分の名前を１日に２０回もグーグル検索しているようです（苦笑） Kindleで各册1000円で購入できるようなので、是非読んでみようと思います。
As far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song “Yesterday” (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) was a guy named Kitaru. He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath.
Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago.
This is how it began, as I recall, but I haven’t heard it for a long time and I’m not positive that’s how it went. From start to finish, though, Kitaru’s lyrics were almost meaningless, nonsense that had nothing to do with the original words. That familiar lovely, melancholy melody paired with the breezy Kansai dialect—which you might call the opposite of pathos—made for a strange combination, a bold denial of anything constructive. At least, that’s how it sounded to me. At the time, I just listened and shook my head. I was able to laugh it off, but I also read a kind of hidden import in it.
ビートルズのYesterdayの歌詞Yesterday all my trouble seemed so far away.をしらなくても、ナンセンスな歌詞であることは分かりますね。
Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago.
本来のは「昨日は／あしたのおとといで／おとといのあしたや」みたいになっているようです。メロディにあっているといえばあっているかもです。単行本では替え歌のほとんどが削除されたそうですが、こちらのブログでは関西弁バージョンの歌詞が紹介されていてOh I believe in yesterdayが「それはまあ しゃあないよなあ」となっていたようですね。
"No, you don't," Erika said. "A person like you can't make friends. You were born in Tokyo, yet all you speak is Kansai dialect, and every time you open your mouth it's one annoying thing after another about the Hanshin Tigers or shogi moves. There's no way a weird person like you can get along well with normal people." "Well, if you're gonna get into that, this guy's pretty weird, too." Kitaru pointed at me. "He's from Ashiya but only speaks Tokyo dialect." "That's much more common," Erika said. "At least more common than the opposite." "Hold on, now - that's cultural discrimination," Kitaru said. "Cultures are all equal, y'know. Tokyo dialect's no better than Kansai." "Maybe they are equal," Erika said, "but since the Meiji Restoration the way people speak in Tokyo has been the standard for spoken Japanese. I mean, has anyone ever translated 'Franny and Zooey into Kansai dialect?" " If they did, I'd buy it, for sure," Kitaru said. I probably would, too, I thought, but kept quiet. Wisely, instead of being dragged deeper into that discussion, Erika Kuritani changed the subject.
The second-largest magazine wholesaler in the country, Source Interlink Distribution, which employs about 6,000 workers, will soon cease operations.
The shuttering is the result of a decision by Time Inc. last weekend to stop using Source Interlink as the distributor for its magazines because of unpaid fees.
“One of our largest suppliers has recently decided to cease supply and move in a different direction,” Michael L. Sullivan, the company’s chief executive, wrote in a letter to his other clients that was obtained and published on Thursday by Bob Sacks, an industry consultant who produces his own newsletter. “As such, it’s with a heavy heart that I am writing to advise you that Source Interlink Distribution Company will be discontinuing all operations in the near future.”
The battle between Time Inc. and Source Interlink, based in Bonita Springs, Fla., reflects the tremendous financial pressure that both magazine publishers and their distributors have been facing as the Internet has decimated newsstand sales and as retailers hand over prime shelf space to other products like candy and gum. In the last five years, the retail magazine business has shrunk 40 percent, to less than $3 billion. And while there were hundreds of magazine wholesalers in the 1990s, the industry has consolidated into just a few major players in recent years: Source Interlink, TNG and Hudson News.
Source Interlink had been trying to keep its head above water by offering clients like Walmart and Rite Aid a different payment model, one it described as a more modern and efficient way of doing business. Under this system, retailers would pay only for magazines that were actually bought. In the conventional system, retailers paid the wholesaler for an entire shipment and then received credit for returns weeks later.
On average, only 35 percent of a shipment is purchased, according to Bill Mickey, editorial director of Folio, which covers the magazine industry, and the rest might be returned. So the new system was appealing to retailers, but was costly for publishers, who would not be compensated for lost and stolen magazines, which can be up to 7 percent of shipments.
Timeは先週の火曜日にSECにForm 8-kを報告していたようです。そこで以下のように述べています。On May 25, 2014, Time Inc. (the “Company”) informed the second-largest wholesaler of the Company’s publications (the “Discontinued Wholesaler”) that effective immediately the Company will discontinue sales of publications to that wholesaler.という表現でeffective immediatelyとかdiscontinueとかはTOEIC的表現としてマークしておいてもいいかもしれません。またinform X that節の構文で、informedと過去形でもthat節ではwillが使われていますね。discontinueは事実としての事柄なのだからでしょうか。
Item 8.01 Other Events. On May 25, 2014, Time Inc. (the “Company”) informed the second-largest wholesaler of the Company’s publications (the “Discontinued Wholesaler”) that effective immediately the Company will discontinue sales of publications to that wholesaler. The Discontinued Wholesaler distributed publications primarily through U.S. retail outlets and the Company’s sales to that wholesaler collectively represented approximately 2% of the Company’s total 2013 revenues. This action was taken after due deliberation as a result of the Discontinued Wholesaler’s failure to pay amounts due to the Company and after discussions with the wholesaler. In connection with this action, the Company has determined that approximately $7 million of receivables from the Discontinued Wholesaler on the Company’s March 31, 2014 balance sheet are uncollectible and will be charged to earnings as bad debt expense in the second quarter of 2014. In addition, the Company has determined that it will not be able to collect for, and therefore to recognize revenues in respect of, approximately $19 million of net sales made to the Discontinued Wholesaler during the second quarter of 2014.
In light of the foregoing, on May 25, 2014, the Company amended the terms of its existing agreement with the largest wholesaler of the Company’s publications to retail outlets (the “Selected Wholesaler”) to expand the retail locations serviced by such wholesaler to include the vast majority of those that had been serviced by the Discontinued Wholesaler prior to the aforementioned discontinuation. The Company expects that it will take approximately six to twelve weeks for the Selected Wholesaler to fully ramp up its distribution capabilities to cover the additional retail outlets. During this transition period, the Company estimates that its revenues will be adversely affected by approximately $4 million and that it will incur approximately $1 million of incremental transition costs. After the transition period, the Company does not expect the change in its distribution arrangements to have a material impact on future results of operations, although changes to the payment terms of the Company’s agreement with the Selected Wholesaler are expected to result in an increase in days receivables outstanding and a resultant decrease in 2014 operating cash flows of approximately $12 million. The Company’s amended agreement with the Selected Wholesaler extends through May 2019.
The Company closely monitors its retail distribution network and the impact of the continued financial pressures on U.S. magazine wholesalers resulting from the industry-wide decline in sales at newsstands and other retail outlets. The Company replaced the Discontinued Wholesaler only after careful assessment of its financial condition and future business prospects. The Company believes that the actions it has taken will improve the strength and stability of its retail distribution network. However, the Company will continue to closely monitor industry-wide trends and the implications they may have on its relationships with its wholesalers.
Form 8-Kとは、非定期で株主が知っておくべき重要事項を報告するためのものですので、今回の決定もそれだけ重要な経営判断なんでしょう。
Form 8-K In addition to filing annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, public companies must report certain material corporate events on a more current basis. Form 8-K is the “current report” companies must file with the SEC to announce major events that shareholders should know about.
The instructions for Form 8-K describe the types of events that trigger a public company's obligation to file a current report, including any of the following :
Section 8 Other Events Item 8.01 Other Events (The registrant can use this Item to report events that are not specifically called for by Form 8-K, that the registrant considers to be of importance to security holders.)
Time leads the magazine industry with 24% of 2013 ad revenue, ahead of Hearst (18%), Condé Nast (16%), and Meredith (MDP; 11%). People, Sports Illustrated, and InStyle were the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 magazines last year based on U.S. ad revenues. People is Time's biggest franchise, accounting for 19% of company revenue. Yet even People has been feeling the pressure from aggressive online celebrity-news sites such as TMZ, which don't always adhere to a high journalistic standard. People is particularly popular among women, and that's reflected in an annual subscription price of $101, more than double the $41.55 at Sports Illustrated, whose once-dominant franchise has eroded. Time magazine, another former powerhouse, is essentially given away for as little as $15 for an annual subscription.
対応策は従業員の削減と本社移転などとあります。最近Timeの表紙に広告が入ったことが話題になりましたがこの記事でもselling ads on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Timeと触れています。
Under its new CEO, Joseph Ripp, the company is moving to address these issues and cut costs, including workforce reductions and real-estate savings. Time incurred $63 million of restructuring charges in 2013 and it expects another $150 million in the first half of this year. The layoffs reflect increasing austerity at an organization once known for being a cushy place for journalists.
Time said last week that it is moving its headquarters from the Time-Life building in midtown Manhattan, which it has occupied since it was built in 1959, to lower Manhattan. Time hopes to save $50 million yearly from lower rental expense, although it expects to incur $120 million to develop the new space. It's also moving to raise revenue by selling ads on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time.
Andy Murray will have even more to fear from rivals at Wimbledon this year as players including Rafa Nadal arrive armed with a new generation of 'smart racquets'.
Tennis giant Babolat has launched the racquets with computer technology built into the handle, which they say will give players an advantage over their rivals because they give a detailed breakdown of why their serve went wide or their forehand smash hit the net.
Within weeks, some of the world's top tennis players will show up at major tournaments armed with the new technology they hope will help them beat their opponents at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
（オックスフォード） computer-controlled 4 (of a device, especially of a weapon/bomb) controlled by a computer, so that it appears to act in an intelligent way smart bombs This smart washing machine will dispense an optimal amount of water for the load.
（ロングマン） smart machines, weapons, materials etc are controlled by computers and are designed to react in a suitable way depending on the situation [↪ smart bomb]: smart weapons
辞書制作者も時代の動きに合わせて見出し語の語彙を増やしているのですね。
（アメリカンヘリテージ） Capable of making adjustments that resemble those resulting from human decisions, chiefly by means of electronic sensors and computer technology: smart missiles; smart machines.
（コリンズ） (of systems) operating as if by human intelligence by using automatic computer control (of a projectile or bomb) containing a device that allows it to be guided to its target
The Yomiuri Shimbun The electronic version of author Nanami Shiono’s best-selling “Romajin no Monogatari” (The Story of the Roman People) is exclusively on sale on the amazon.com kindle store, both in Japanese and a new English translation.
(中略)
The electronic version of the English translation is available from the kindle store in 12 countries, including the United States and India. Fifteen volumes are to go on sale by the end of this year.
“The Aldine Press [a venerable Venetian company] produced [books in a size similar to that of] paperbacks 500 years ago,” Shiono said. “They would have published both paper and electronic versions if there were e-books back then.”
A Note to Readers of the English Edition Beloved today by tourists the world over. Michelangelo's statue of David was hailed as a masterpiece from the moment it was completed over five hundred years ago. The artist, who was still a young man at the time, was asked how he had created such an amazing statue. Michelangelo's reply was as follows: "I did not create David according to an image in my own mind. Rather, the statue was already inside the stone; all 1 did was enable it to emerge."
While I would never dream of comparing myself to Michelangelo. I think I have learned from his method. That is, I have not created the historical figures in these hooks according to an image in my own mind. Rather, all I have done is enable them to emerge from the darkness of history into the light of today, t leave it up to my readers to decide if I have succeeded, As always, it is my hope that as you read, the yawning chasm of two thousand years will melt away, and through me you will feel as though you are meeting and getting to know these historical figures in a new way.
Nanami Shiono Spring 2014, somewhere in the Mediterranean
In 2011, Mam sat down with Sandberg at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women summit and told the hushed audience what had motivated her to become a crusader against sexual slavery. “I have been sold in the brothel by the man who come and tell me that he’s my grandfather,” she said. “I stayed in the brothel nearly then 10 years. The brothel owner bring us all together, we all sit on the ground, and he tell us we have to do what he ask us to do. But one girl…she refused to do what he asked to do so he take a gun and kill her, so that is the day that I have been escaped from the brothel.”
Lost Innocence Interviews with Mam’s childhood acquaintances, teachers and local officials in the village where she grew up contradict important, lurid details in her autobiography. Many of the villagers in Thloc Chhroy say they never met or even saw Mam’s cruel “Grandfather,” the rich Chinese merchant who allegedly raped her or the violent soldier she says she was forced to marry.
Orn Hok, a former commune chief, remembers well the day Mam arrived in the village, noting, “Somaly came here with her parents. She is a daughter of Mam Khon and Pen Navy.”
Pen Chhun Heng, now in her 70s, says she is a cousin of Mam’s mother and rejects the notion that Mam was adopted or that she was raised (or kept) by “Grandfather.”
Sam Nareth, a childhood friend of Mam’s, says Mam first attended school in the village in 1981 and remained there until she got her high school diploma. “She finished secondary school in 1987, and Somaly and I went to sit the teachers exam in Kompong Cham together.”
これ以外にも、説明がコロコロ変わっている点や自身以外でも嘘の話も作り上げているようです。
Not even Mam can keep the story straight. In February 2012, while speaking at the White House, she said she was sold into slavery at age 9 or 10 and spent a decade inside a brothel. On The Tyra Banks Show, she said it was four or five years in the brothel. Her book says she was trafficked when she was “about 16 years old.”
Mam’s confusion isn’t limited to her book, or the backstory for some of “her girls.” In 2012, she admitted—after being confronted with some of my early reporting—that she had made false claims in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in which she said eight girls she had rescued from the sex industry were killed by the Cambodian army after a raid on her shelter in 2004.
記事では外と内の態度の違いも取り上げています。
But those who have worked with Mam in Cambodia say there is a vast difference between the image she puts forward in the media spotlight and the one she shows in Phnom Penh. “[With donors], she’s very polished and very on and very charming…exceedingly charming,” says Candace Blase, who worked as a volunteer psychologist for AFESIP in 2011. “And when people are not there, she can be tyrannical; she’s moody, she’s erratic, she’s entitled.” Blase adds that she saw Mam ordering the girls she looks after to carry out personal chores for her.
Thomas Steinfatt, a professor of statistics at the University of Miami, has done several reports on sex trafficking for the U.N.’s Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. In a 2008 study, for which he spent months conducting surveys in all corners of Cambodia, he estimated there were no more than 1,058 victims of trafficking in Cambodia and has said the situation has improved markedly since then.
The number of children, both those observed as sex workers and those mentioned by management or by sex workers in the 2008 data, was 127, with 11 of the children verifiably under age 15 and six under age 13. The high-end estimate for the number of children likely involved in sex work in Cambodia in 2008 was 310 children.
In response to a newspaper story about victim stories allegedly fabricated by Mam, Sébastien Marot, the executive director of Friends International, an organization that helps train and educate children in precarious situations, posted a response on the organization’s website: “A large number of organizations get sucked into using children to raise funds: making them talk about the abuse they survived in front of a camera, having their picture in a pitiful situation published for everyone to see. In worst cases, the truth is distorted or the stories invented to attract more compassion and money. The impact on the lives of these children is terrible: If they come from an abusive situation, such a process re-traumatizes them and in any case it stigmatizes them forever.”
THINK! Pity Charity – why it’s actually abusive to children… BY FRIENDS-INTERNATIONAL · OCTOBER 21, 2013 This thought-provoking piece comes from the Executive Director of Friends-International, Sebastien Marot. ‘Over the last week two separate shocking stories emerged from Cambodia: A globally renowned organization was again accused of faking stories used in international TV and other international media to raise funds and awareness about the organization; A local “orphanage” organized an auction of photos of children and had the children present their own photos while their life-story was made public to the audience in order to increase pity (and sales). These separate events are a direct consequence of the interconnected actions of the child protection organizations, the media, the donors and the general public; all wanting the best for these children, but instead turning them into victims.
It has been an incredibly difficult few months for all of us at the Foundation, and for all of our supporters.
In March, the Foundation retained the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP to conduct an independent, third party investigation into allegations concerning the personal history of Somaly Mam and Somana (Long Pros). The Foundation provided Goodwin Procter unfettered access to our information, documents, and staff, and, for the past two months, a team of Goodwin Procter legal professionals based out of Boston, San Francisco, and Hong Kong conducted an extensive investigation.
As a result of Goodwin Procter’s efforts, we have accepted Somaly’s resignation effective immediately. In addition, we are permanently removing Ms. Pros from any affiliation with the organization or our grant partner, but will help her to transition into the next phase of her life. While we are extremely saddened by this news, we remain grateful to Somaly’s work over the past two decades and for helping to build a foundation that has served thousands of women and girls, and has raised critical awareness of the nearly 21 million individuals who are currently enslaved today.
Despite our heartfelt disappointment, the work of the Foundation and our grant partners must and will carry on. We have touched the lives of over 100,000 women and girls. We have treated nearly 6,000 individuals at a free medical clinic in Phnom Penh’s red light district and engaged nearly 6,400 students in anti-trafficking activism.
We look forward to moving past these events and focusing all of our energies on this vital work, ensuring that the hundreds of women and girls that are currently being served in our grant partner AFESIP’s three centers for recovery and rehabilitation, receive the care that they so desperately need, and that we safeguard their identities and privacy to every extent possible.
Our work changes lives and we remain dedicated to it. Over the coming weeks, we will outline a plan that will be made available as to the revised course for the Foundation.
We don't expect this transition to be simple, but we ask that you stand with us in the face of these serious challenges and help us to honor all victims and survivors, and the millions of women and girls who are enslaved across the globe.
In solidarity,
Gina Reiss-Wilchins Executive Director Somaly Mam Foundation
Friends Internationalの先のサイトであった言葉です。 It’s an essential move that needs to be led by the general public and donors: say no to sensationalism, look at what is really happening and the complexity of issues involved, be interested and not just emotionally driven… this is a very difficult change in behavior. In many ways the ball is in the donor’s (big and small) court: they should be the ones leading so that organizations do not feel compelled to distort truth to receive funding （一般市民や支援者に率先して取り組んでもらう必要があります。センセーショナリズムにノーと言うこと、実際に起こっていることや問題の複雑性に目を向けること、関心を持つこと、単に感情に駆り立てられるのではなく。このような態度の変更は容易ではありません。いろいろな面で（大小の）支援者の手に委ねられているのです。支援者にこそ導いて欲しいのです。そうすれば団体は資金を集めるために事実を歪曲する必要に迫られないでしょう）
Say no to sensationalismとは何か事が起きる度に言われる事ですが、やはりその度に肝に銘じるべきことなんでしょう。
