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自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です

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立ち入り禁止区域で

 


動画は数年前のものですが、ニューヨークタイムズのOpEdにジョージクルーニーが投稿していました。独立した南スーダンではなく、スーダンにある北部ダルフールのことを取り上げています。これを読むと政府が立ち入り禁止をしているところには何かあると思わないといけないことがわかります。立ち入り禁止を是とする人は面倒くさいことはしたくないんじゃないかと勘ぐるようにしています。

George Clooney on Sudan’s Rape of Darfur
By GEORGE CLOONEY, JOHN PRENDERGAST and AKSHAYA KUMAR
FEB. 25, 2015

Because Sudan’s government routinely blocks journalists from going into the Darfur region and severely restricts access for humanitarian workers, any window into life there is limited. The government has hammered the joint peacekeeping mission of the United Nations and African Union into silence about human rights concerns by shutting down the United Nations human rights office in the capital, Khartoum, hampering investigators of alleged human rights abuses and pressuring the peacekeeping force to withdraw.

Just last week, the regime reportedly convinced the peacekeeping mission to pull out of areas it says are stable, hoping no one takes a closer look. As a result, mass atrocities continue to occur in Darfur with no external witness. This is also the case in Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, two southern regions devastated by the government’s scorched-earth tactics.


この地域では石油ではなく金の利権が絡んでいることを指摘しています。

When South Sudan won its independence in 2011, the part of Sudan left behind lost its biggest source of foreign exchange earnings: oil revenues. So gold has become the new oil for Sudan.

According to the International Monetary Fund, gold sales earned Sudan $1.17 billion last year. Much of that gold is coming from Darfur and other conflict zones. The government has attempted to consolidate its control over the country’s gold mines in part by violent ethnic cleansing.


OpEdの最後に彼の提言を述べていますが、First, Second..とオーソドックスな書き方をしています。別に論点は3つじゃなくていいんですよね(笑)

First, international banks, gold refiners and associations like the Dubai Multi Commodities Center and the London Bullion Market Association should raise alerts for Sudanese gold and initiate audits to trace it all to its mine of origin to ensure that purchases are not fueling war crimes in Darfur. The gold industry has already adopted a similar approach to suppliers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Second, the international community has imposed sanctions unevenly and without sufficient enforcement to have a significant impact. The United States and other countries should expand sanctions and step up enforcement to pressure Sudan to observe human rights and to negotiate for peace. Most important, the next wave of American sanctions should target the facilitators, including Sudanese and international banks, that do business with the regime either directly or through partners.

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まだ映画は観ていないのですが。。。

 


The whole movie is about a man who dedicated his life to protecting others. The price of doing that.

The thing that haunts me are all the other guys I couldn't save.

ペーパーバックしかまだ読んでいませんが、帰還後の苦悩についてだけでなく、奥さんの視点も盛り込まれていて兵士の家族のことも垣間見れるようになっています。どうしても好戦的なアメリカ人が喜ぶ映画とみなしてしまいがちなんですが、このような部分に共感を持った部分があるのではないかとも思ってしまいます。

ちょうどいいタイミングで『帰還兵はなぜ自殺するのか』というノンフィクションが翻訳されました。「内田樹氏推薦」という帯は余計だと思いますが、亜紀書房の志の高さを賞賛したいです。


帰還兵はなぜ自殺するのか (亜紀書房翻訳ノンフィクション・シリーズ16)帰還兵はなぜ自殺するのか (亜紀書房翻訳ノンフィクション・シリーズ16)
(2015/02/10)
デイヴィッド・フィンケル

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本書に主に登場するのは、アダム・シューマン、トーソロ・アイアティ、ニック・デニーノ、マイケル・エモリー、ジェームズ・ドスターの五人の兵士とその家族。そのうち一人はすでに戦死し、生き残った四人は重い精神的ストレスを負っている。妻たちは、「戦争に行く前はいい人だったのに、帰還後は別人になっていた」と語る。戦争で何があったのか、どうしてそうなったのか…。イラク・アフガン戦争から生還した兵士200万のうち、50万人が精神的な傷害を負い、毎年250人超が自殺する。戦争で壊れてしまった男たちとその家族の出口なき苦悩に迫る衝撃のレポート!

原書のThank you for your serviceを読み終わった報告です。ノンフィクションなので本の紹介にあったように「イラク・アフガン戦争から生還した兵士200万のうち、50万人が精神的な傷害を負い、毎年250人超が自殺する」と状況説明をしながら進んでいくのかと思ったのですが、あたかも小説のように5人の兵士の帰還後の日常をその場で体験したように描いていきます。



先月に紹介したニューヨークタイムズの書評家ミチコ・カクタニさんのイラク戦争の小説紹介でもそれなりのスペースで紹介されていました。

Human Costs of the Forever Wars, Enough to Fill a Bookshelf
DEC. 25, 2014
Michiko Kakutani

In two heart-stopping books, “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You for Your Service,” David Finkel of The Washington Post chronicled the experiences of men from the Second Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment during a grueling tour in Iraq and their difficult journey home.

One of those men is Adam Schumann, who thought he had “a front seat to the greatest movie I’ve ever seen” during the initial invasion. He became a great soldier — the “smart, decent honorable” one, who insisted “on being in the right front seat of the lead Humvee on every mission.”. But, as Mr. Finkel reports, Mr. Schumann came home broken — unable to forget all the death and loss, unable to stop seeing his friend Sgt. First Class James Doster “being shredded” by a roadside bomb “on a mission Adam was supposed to have been on, too.”

In “Thank You,” Mr. Finkel writes that an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the two million Americans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Today’s war literature echoes with a sense of the emotional and psychological toll exacted on soldiers: the stress of multiple deployments in an overstretched military; the anxiety of working in chaotic conditions where it was difficult to distinguish between the people you were trying to protect and the people who were trying to blow you up; and where I.E.D.'s, sniper fire and roadside bombs turned daily patrols into a dangerous game of Russian roulette.


帰還兵と家族の苦しさがダイレクトに伝わってくる著作なので気軽に勧められないんですが、アメリカンスナイパーという映画を脳みそからっぽのマッチョ体質なものとみなしているような人には手にとって読んでもらいたい本です。
 

報道写真家として、母として

 


後藤さんの事件で紛争地帯を報道することが注目を集めました。渡航を許可するか、どうかという話になってしまうのは止むを得ない部分があるかもしれませんが、紛争地帯を取材するというのがどのようなものなのか、知る機会にしてもいいのではないかと思います。


It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and WarIt's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
(2015/02/05)
Lynsey Addario

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Lynsey Addarioさんという報道写真家の女性が回顧録を出したようで、抜粋をニューヨークタイムズで読むことができます。リビアで取材中に政府軍から襲撃される緊迫したシーンから始まり、妊娠して、妊娠しながらも報道写真を取り続けるところを語っています。このためWhat Can a Pregnant Photojournalist Cover? Everythingという記事タイトルになっています。

What Can a Pregnant Photojournalist Cover? Everything
By LYNSEY ADDARIOJAN. 28, 2015

You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint in a war zone, and each is a gamble. The first is to stop and identify yourself as a journalist and hope that you are respected as a neutral observer. The second is to blow past the checkpoint and hope the soldiers guarding it don’t open fire on you.

In 2011, three weeks into the Libyan uprising, I was in a car with three of my colleagues from The New York Times when we approached a checkpoint near Ajdabiya, a small city near Libya’s northern coast, more than 500 miles east of Tripoli. By then, as a photojournalist documenting conflict zones in the post-9/11 wars, I had been in dozens of risky situations. I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.


チャリーローズでは、この記事で書いている部分を口頭で説明しています。



お子さんが生まれた後も世界を旅して写真を撮っていますが、In the year after giving birth, I shot assignments in Mississippi, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone and India, avoiding any work on the front line, because for the first time, I felt I needed to stay alive.とさすがに紛争の最前線に立つことは避けるようになってきているようです。

Three months after I gave birth, I started traveling again. My first assignment was for The Times Magazine in rural Alabama, photographing families of women addicted to methamphetamine. I cried from the moment I left for the airport, right up to the morning I loaded the memory cards into my Nikons, placed my lenses in their pouches, strung them around my waist and set off to meet the people I would photograph. Being away from Lukas was worse than any heartbreak, any distance from a lover, anything I had ever known, but with my first few frames, I lost myself in my work. In the year after giving birth, I shot assignments in Mississippi, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone and India, avoiding any work on the front line, because for the first time, I felt I needed to stay alive. When I was on an assignment, I was confronted with the price of my absence: Lukas calling out “Daddy, Daddy” as I called on Skype from a hotel room in India or Uganda, or him running into our nanny’s arms rather than my own when I returned home. I thought often about how Anthony and Steve had infants who were Lukas’s age when we were in prison in Libya; Steve Farrell has since moved to Brooklyn and is no longer covering war; Anthony died tragically in Syria; and Tyler continues on as a war photographer.

National Geographicの記事ではAddarioさんの撮影した写真も見ながら、インタビューを読むことができるのでオススメです。紛争地帯を取材するため仲間を失ったりすることは避けられないようです。

Witnessing War's Horrors Through a Camera Lens
When Lynsey Addario started out, journalists were respected as neutral observers. Now you can be beheaded.

By Simon Worrall
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 11, 2015

How did the deaths of Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington affect you?
I'd been kidnapped in Libya. And when I got out, I felt we were so lucky to have survived. There were so many times we could have been killed. But I felt emotionally pretty stable. Then Tim and Chris were killed almost exactly a month after we were released. I was in New York, having meetings and spending time with friends and family. When I found out they'd been killed, it was as if the trauma I had never suffered after Libya hit me. I don't know if it's survivor's guilt. But my first thought was, "How could they have been killed when we lived? That's not fair." It took a week for me to stop crying pretty much all the time.

There are not that many people who have covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we all know each other pretty well. The night they were killed a big group came together at the Half King, a bar in Chelsea [in New York City] owned by Sebastian Junger. We just cried and hugged. And I think that feeling of camaraderie really helped. I've had many close friends my whole life, but I really gravitate toward my colleagues because my colleagues can understand the way I feel. At this point in our careers, many of us have lost friends and had friends lose a leg. It's something we can understand in a way that people outside the profession have a harder time understanding.


彼女もイスラム国の危険性を語っていました。それまではジャーナリストはneutral observerとして敬意を払ってもらっていたそうです。

Since you wrote the book, a new, even more deadly, foe has emerged in the Middle East. You've also become a mother. Has the spate of beheadings by IS deterred you from reporting on them?
The question that I get all the time is, Now that you've become a mother, do you still do this work? I roll my eyes because, yes, I still do this work! Of course, every time I almost die, or a friend loses his life, I have to pause and reevaluate how I can continue to do this work in a way in which I can stay alive.

IS has changed the dynamic 100 percent. When I first started out, journalists were respected as neutral observers. In 2004, we were kidnapped by a group affiliated with al Qaeda. But they let us go when they ascertained we were journalists. Now you can get beheaded for doing your job as a journalist.

So every assignment, I have to weigh where am I going, what is the story I'm covering, what can I contribute to that story, and how close am I going to be to IS. The last time I was in Iraq, I couldn't get a straight answer from the peshmerga fighters where the front line was. Almost as a joke, I'd say, "OK, so where is IS now?" "Oh, they're that way." "Well, no—I want to know where they are. Not a direction!" [Laughs]

In my 20s and early 30s, I felt invincible. I hadn't lost friends. I hadn't been kidnapped twice. Motherhood has made me realize that I need to stay alive. I have this tiny little person who's depending on me. I'm more cautious. I don't go right to the front line. I cover the same places and the same stories, but I try and stay back a little bit. But am I giving up the work? No! Will I give up the work? No!


NPRのフレッシュエアーでこの本が出ていることを知ったのですが、彼女は2度の誘拐など修羅場を切り抜けた経験を語ってくれています。相手の文化を知ることの大切さを訴えます。



Twice Kidnapped, Photographer Returns To War Zone: 'It's What I Do'
FEBRUARY 11, 2015 2:05 PM ET

GROSS: Well, once, when you were getting groped in Pakistan, you said to the men, haram - which means forbidden - don't you have sisters, mothers? Aren't you Pakistani men Muslim? You did say that. Was that effective?
ADDARIO: Yeah, I did. And that's what I was referring to when I first said - I think, you know, another very important thing is for a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that. So, for example, I know that men put their sisters and their mothers on a pedestal - Muslim men. And it's important for me to say, look, don't you have a sister? Don't you understand I am like your sister? Don't touch me.


ニューヨークタイムズの書評では写真はすばらしいが、文章がおおざっぱになってしまっていると少し苦言を呈しています。書評にある通り、この本には彼女が写したたくさんの写真も掲載されているのでお得かもしれません。

‘It’s What I Do,’ by Lynsey Addario
By SCOTT ANDERSONFEB. 4, 2015

In the photographs liberally scattered throughout “It’s What I Do” are clues to how Addario rose to the top of her field. The very best photographers develop an ineluctable bond with their subjects, an intimacy built on patience and trust; in the strongest photos here, such as her portraits of women rape victims in Congo, her ability to capture their strength and vulnerability is profoundly touching.

Yet the qualities that make for a brilliant photographer may not make for a brilliant memoirist. Only occasionally does Addario linger long enough to render the kind of fully sketched scene that makes the account of her kidnapping in Libya so riveting. Instead, she has a tendency to tell her story in a summary travelogue fashion, with people and places and events — even the succession of disappointing boyfriends — flitting by at such a rapid clip as to blur to dimness. What makes this doubly frustrating is that when Addario does slow down, she is incisive: In the acutely observed account of her negotiations with a young Taliban visa clerk, for example — a complex dance requiring her to shift constantly between submission, flirtation and defiance — the reader is likely to learn more about the capricious nature of Islamic fundamentalism than from a dozen essays or position papers.


 

来年度のNHK語学講座が楽しみ

 
来年度の入門ビジネス英語は柴田真一さんが担当するようですね。豊富なビジネス経験を持ちかつ、英語力のある方なので非常に楽しみです。目白大学で大学教授になられていたのですね。外大に移られた鶴田先生の後任という感じなのでしょうか。


国際ビジネスパーソンを目指す人必聴!
海外ビジネス経験20年の新講師が基本を伝授
入門ビジネス英語


ビジネスの相手は「世界」という今の時代、世界中の人が語る英語を理解し、自らも発信してい くことが重要である。新シリーズのテーマは「世界を旅するビジネス英語」。月替わりの日本人 主人公が英語ネイティブだけでなくノンネイティブ相手にビジネスシーンで奮闘する。長年海外 勤務を経験した新講師による、実用性の高いビジネス英語と円滑なビジネスに必須なコミュニケ ーションマナーの解説はビジネスで英語を使う人に身につけてほしいものばかり。


使える金融英語100のフレーズ使える金融英語100のフレーズ
(2005/10)
柴田 真一

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使える金融英語100のフレーズ

上記の本はTEX加藤さんがTOEICブログを始めたばかりの頃に取り上げていました。TOEIC的ではないですが、とても良いフレーズ集だと思います。

前のブログでは以下の本を取り上げました。他にもコスモピアからスピーチ集を鶴田先生と出していましたね。


英語で伝えるオジサン的ビジネス表現英語で伝えるオジサン的ビジネス表現
(2007/12/18)
鶴田 知佳子、柴田 真一 他

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TOEIC愛といってTOEIC受験勉強しかしない態度は問題があると思います。ビジネスコミュニケーションの大切さは過小評価すべきではありません。日本企業に勤めている方の英語は相手に勘違いを生じさせることがあります。日本企業にいた頃は日本人社員のコミュニケーションのまずさでちょっとしたトラブル対応を通訳翻訳をよくさせられていた身としては、この大事さは身にしみていますから。TOEIC講師でもビジネス経験がほとんどいない方が多いなかこの講座はとても貴重なものになるに違いありません。
 

ジーニアス地味にアップグレードしています

 


チェルシーサポーターのパリの人種差別問題では厳格に対処しています。人種差別関連では弁明すら許さない態度で挑むんですね。

New CCTV images of those ‘racist’ Chelsea fans have been released
Jimmy Nsubuga for Metro.co.ukSaturday 21 Feb 2015 9:29 am

Police have released CCTV images of three Chelsea fans they’re seeking in relation to an alleged racist incident on a Paris Metro train.

British authorities think the trio were among a group of supporters who pushed a black man off the train and chanted a racist song while on the way to a Champions League match against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday.

The three suspects are not the same as the trio initially suspended by Chelsea from Stamford Bridge.


防犯カメラの映像ということで、CCTV imagesという用語が登場しています。英語の辞書よりも国語辞典の方が的確に説明してくれています。防犯カメラという場合も、security cameraの意味でCCTV cameraがよく使われます。

(デジタル大辞泉)
CCTV
《closed-circuit television》閉回路テレビ。特定の建物や施設内での有線のテレビ。防犯カメラのモニターとして使われることが多い。


(オックスフォード)
closed-circuit television
a television system that works within a limited area, for example a public building, to protect it from crime


プログレッシブやウィズダムはこの語の説明としてはイマイチです。

(プログレッシブ)
closed-circuit television
閉回路テレビジョン;有線テレビ


(ウィズダム)
有線[閉回路]テレビ(⦅略⦆CCTV).

この語に関してはルミナスが飛び抜けています。こういうわかりやすい説明が辞書には欲しいですね。

(ルミナス)
closed-circuit television
クローズドサーキットテレビ《ビルの警備などに使用する; 略 CCTV》.

・a closed-circuit television image 監視カメラの映像.

年末に改訂されたジーニアスですが、地味に書き換えられていました。地味ながらもより現実の使い方に即した説明になっていますね。

(ジーニアスG5)
有線[閉回路]テレビ<ローカル有線放送や監視カメラ用など>(⦅略⦆CCTV)

(ジーニアスG4)
有線[閉回路]テレビ<ローカル有線放送や教室内授業用のテレビなど>

地味な部分で英和辞典の総体評価には影響を及ぼさない範囲に思えるかもしれませんが、実際に使われている意味・用例を反映させようとする努力は評価したいです。

TOEICでも防犯カメラの設置・点検という内容なら出るかもしれません。New Strait TimesにTOEICぽい問題がでていました。

Question 5
Read the notice below and answer the following question.

OUR STORE IS EQUIPPED WITH CLOSED-CIRCUIT TV AND OTHE ANTI- SHOPLIFTING DEVICES

5 The phrase equipped with in the above notice means
A fixed with
B armed with
C stocked with
D cleared with


防犯カメラというのは日常生活ではまあまあ使われますから、こういう表現も慣れておきたいです。プログレッシブやウィズダムの定義を書いた人はこのような体験がなかったんでしょうね。もちろん、この一点だけでこれらの辞書の価値が下がるわけではありません。辞書によってよく書けている部分といまいちな部分が混在してしまうものですから、余裕があれば定評のある辞書を複数揃えたいです。
 

羅生門効果

 
興味深いOpEdがニューヨークタイムズにありました。現実はnothing more than a kaleidoscope of infinite possibilitiesというのです。

The Reality of Quantum Weirdness
FEB. 20, 2015
Gray Matter
By EDWARD FRENKEL

IN Akira Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon,” a samurai has been murdered, but it’s not clear why or by whom. Various characters involved tell their versions of the events, but their accounts contradict one another. You can’t help wondering: Which story is true?

But the film also makes you consider a deeper question: Is there a true story, or is our belief in a definite, objective, observer-independent reality an illusion?

This very question, brought into sharper, scientific focus, has long been the subject of debate in quantum physics. Is there a fixed reality apart from our various observations of it? Or is reality nothing more than a kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities?

This month, a paper published online in the journal Nature Physics presents experimental research that supports the latter scenario — that there is a “Rashomon effect” not just in our descriptions of nature, but in nature itself.


ここで紹介されている論文は公開されていて読むことができます。

Measurements on the reality of the wavefunction

Here we experimentally test this approach with single photons. We find that no knowledge interpretation can fully explain the indistinguishability of non-orthogonal quantum states in three and four dimensions. Assuming that some underlying reality exists, our results strengthen the view that the entire wavefunction should be real. The only alternative is to adopt more unorthodox concepts such as backwards-in-time causation, or to completely abandon any notion of objective reality.

ここで使われていたRashomon effectは英語の辞書にはまだ載っていないようですがWikipediaには詳しく説明されています。

(Wikipedia)
The Rashomon effect is contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people. The phrase derives from the film Rashomon, where the accounts of the witnesses, suspects, and victims of a rape and murder are all different.

その例としてGone Girlも取り上げられています。



Gone Girl
The film relates the different accounts of events leading up to the disappearance of a woman, one account from said woman, as per her diary, and one account from the woman's husband, as he relates it.


Rashomon effectをグーグル検索するとスティーブジョブズの伝記の前書きで使われていたという報告がありました。以下がその箇所です。

I leave it to the reader to assess whether I have succeeded in this mission. I’m sure there are players in this drama who will remember some of the events differently or think that I sometimes got trapped in Jobs’s distortion field. As happened when I wrote a book about Henry Kissinger, which in some ways was good preparation for this project, I found that people had such strong positive and negative emotions about Jobs that the Rashomon effect was often evident. But I’ve done the best I can to balance conflicting accounts fairly and be transparent about the sources I used.




One Crime Four versions of the truthと予告編で伝えられるこの映画は芥川の『藪の中』が下敷きなんですね。一回くらい観ておかないとで(汗)

(Wikipedia)
"In a Grove" (藪の中 Yabu no Naka?) is a short story by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, first appearing in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shinchō. Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for the plot of his award-winning movie Rashōmon.



ニューヨークタイムズのOp-Edの後半部分の問いです。

Does the wave function directly correspond to an objective, observer-independent physical reality, or does it simply represent an observer’s partial knowledge of it?

If the wave function is merely knowledge-based, then you can explain away odd quantum phenomena by saying that things appear to us this way only because our knowledge of the real state of affairs is insufficient. But the new paper in Nature Physics gives strong indications (as a result of experiments using beams of specially prepared photons to test certain statistical properties of quantum measurements) that this is not the case. If there is an objective reality at all, the paper demonstrates, then the wave function is in fact reality-based.

What this research implies is that we are not just hearing different “stories” about the electron, one of which may be true. Rather, there is one true story, but it has many facets, seemingly in contradiction, just like in “Rashomon.” There is really no escape from the mysterious — some might say, mystical — nature of the quantum world.


量子力学が提唱されてから100年が経ちますが、まだまだ違和感があります。。。
 

遠いアメリカ

 
町田市の町田市民文学館ことばらんどで「常盤新平-遠いアメリカ」の展覧会を見てきました。アメリカ文化が憧憬の的だった時代が戦後すぐにあったのだと実感できる展覧会になっています。インターネットのない時代にどうやって翻訳をしていったのか、今の僕には想像すらできません。無料ですが、常盤さん所蔵の雑誌やペイパーバックなども展示してあり、充実した内容になっています。町田付近にお住いの方は是非。

英語学習者として気になるのが、翻訳家としての常盤新平さんのレファレンス。展覧会では以下のような資料が展示してありました。

リーダーズ英和辞典(研究社)
ランダムハウス・ウェブスター アメリカ英語辞典(桐原書店)
imidas;外来語 略語辞典(集英社)
アメリカの風物(研究社)
アメリカ地名辞典(研究社)


私の「ニューヨーカー」グラフィティ私の「ニューヨーカー」グラフィティ
(2013/09/25)
常盤新平

商品詳細を見る


前のブログで紹介させてもらった記事を改めて紹介します。今週は雑誌ニューヨーカーが90執念記念号を出していました。上記の常盤さんの本も合わせて読んでみようと思います。

2012年01月08日(日) 茂木 崇
総合誌が軒並み不振の時代に高級誌「ニューヨーカー」はなぜ100万部の部数を誇れるのか


常盤はレムニックの手腕を評価し、『銀座旅日記』(筑摩書房、2011年)にこう記している。

2011年11月14日号
 「「『ニューヨーカー』なんか読んじゃって、気どっちゃって」と言われる。でも読みごたえのある雑誌だ。取材が綿密で情報が正確、信用できる。四十年以上も購読して、最近ようやくこの週刊誌のおもしろさがわかるようになった。老後の楽しみがもう一つ見つかったようだ。レムニックの編集には外連味(けれんみ)がまったくない。洋書店でこれを手にするとき、老いたる胸が躍る」(156ページ)




ポッドキャストでも90年の歩みを振り返っています。

FEBRUARY 16, 2015
Out Loud: Ninety Years of The New Yorker

BY THE NEW YORKER
The first issue of The New Yorker was published in February of 1925, ninety years ago this month. In celebration of our anniversary, David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, hosts a special episode of Out Loud in which writers and editors revisit New Yorker history, share memories, and discuss how the tone and direction of the magazine have evolved since its founding editor, Harold Ross, first envisioned a publication of “gaiety, wit, and satire.”

現編集長のDavid RemnickはFresh Airに登場していろいろ語っていました。イラク戦争の大量破壊兵器について書いてしまったことを公開しているとしています。イラク戦争でアブグレイブの虐待を暴いたのもこの雑誌でしたね。



David Remnick Looks Back On Tough Decisions As 'The New Yorker' Turns 90
FEBRUARY 18, 2015 2:45 PM ET

今週号の目玉はなんといってもアップルのデザイナージョナサンアイブを特集した記事でしょうか。

Profiles FEBRUARY 23, 2015 ISSUE
The Shape of Things to Come
How an industrial designer became Apple’s greatest product.

BY IAN PARKER

90周年の記念号の小説に選ばれたのは村上春樹でした。ひとつのブランドになっているんですね。『女のいない男たち』の「木野」が掲載されています。

Fiction FEBRUARY 23, 2015 ISSUE
Kino
BY HARUKI MURAKAMI


90周年の振り返り記事もありますし、今号は「買い」の号ですね。英語学習者がTea Partyのように知的関心ゼロの内向きの人が多くなっている今、このような雑誌を通して関心を外に向ける学習者が一人でも多く生まれて欲しいです。
 

少女漫画のような「つぶらな瞳」を英語では?

 
Big Eyeの映画に関する記事を読んでいて出会った単語がdoe-eyed。大きなつぶらな瞳を指すようです。

Everything You Need To Know About Margaret & Walter Keane, Tim Burton's Latest Obsession
The Huffington Post | By Katherine Brooks
Email
Posted: 09/23/2014 9:02 am EDT

Tim Burton's newest film trailer has fans of the macabre master staring into a set of very large, very peculiar, somewhat familiar eyes.

The title of the movie is, fittingly, "Big Eyes." It tells the story of two once married artists, Margaret and Walter Keane, who rose to fame in the 1950s and '60s. Their subject of choice -- doe-eyed children reminiscent of Precious Moments characters gone wrong.


Precious Momentsというのはディズニーの人形のようです。



(オックスフォード)
doe-eyed
(Especially of a woman) having large, gentle dark eyes:
doe-eyed waifs


Websterには「having large eyes that make you look innocent」とありますから、日本語の「つぶらな瞳」の語感に近そうです。

日本の漫画に出てくる女の子の眼もdoe-eyedで表現できるのではと思って調べてみたらありました。コミケの紹介記事です。

Manga's Doe-Eyed Girls, Ninja Boys Woo U.S. Comic-Book Readers
Review by Lucy Birmingham - January 22, 2008 10:06 EST
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Doe-eyed girls with melon-sized breasts, slasher samurai, resilient teenage heroines wielding magical powers and adventurous ninja boys: Japan's manga artists know how to hook an audience.

More than 35,000 groups of amateurs sold their versions on Dec. 28-31 at the world's biggest comic market, in Tokyo International Exhibition Center, or Tokyo Big Sight. The biannual event, known in Japan as a comiket, drew a crowd of more than 500,000. Producers of doujinshi, or lookalike copies of established manga characters, rubbed shoulders with Japan's top three manga publishers, Shueisha, Shogakuan and Kodansha, as potential copyright violations are rarely contested.


あの日本アニメの名作もthe doe-eyed portrayals typical of Japanese manga, in the 1988 "Grave of the Fireflies”と紹介されています。2分30秒あたりで大きな眼はディズニー映画の影響ではと話していますが、Margaret Keaneさんもそうかもしれませんね。今日のアカデミー賞でかぐや姫がノミネートされているのでした。



Hand-drawn look of Oscar nominee 'Princess Kaguya' stands apart from Hollywood's digital focus
Article by: YURI KAGEYAMA , Associated Press Updated: February 17, 2015 - 3:25 AM

And so visually his works take many styles, from the doe-eyed portrayals typical of Japanese manga, in the 1988 "Grave of the Fireflies," a powerful anti-war tear-jerker, to the oil-painting inspired "Gauche the Cellist," a tasteful 1982 rendition of a classic by early 20th century poet-writer Kenji Miyazawa.

まあ単刀直入にAnime-style eyesと説明している動画もありました。



ちょくちょく調べてみると日本語でもバンビ目何て言うんですね。Doeとは鹿のメスなのでまったく同じ発想です。日本語のバンビ目はディズニー映画の影響でしょうが。。。


 

死ぬまで嘘をつき続ける

 


Big Eyesの映画を見てきました。映画の出来としては平均点ではないかと思うのですが、Christoph Waltzのすごさが印象に残りました。どうしても日本だと例の作曲家や科学者に結びつけて見てしまいますね。

現に“Nobody could paint eyes like El Greco, and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane”と自分を巨匠と比較したり、"My psyche was scarred in my art student days in Europe, just after World War II, by an ineradicable memory of war-wracked innocents. In their eyes lurk all of mankind's questions and answers. ”と世界の悲惨さを引き受けようとしたり、日本の作曲家を連想させるものがあります。

The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes: The Phenomenal Success of Walter Keane
Howard, Jane (August 27, 1965) Life Magazine.

映画に盛り込まれている内容は以下のガーディアンの記事を読むといいかもしれません。

The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud
In the 1960s, Walter Keane was feted for his sentimental portraits that sold by the million. But in fact, his wife Margaret was the artist, working in virtual slavery to maintain his success. She tells her story, now the subject of a Tim Burton biopic
Jon Ronson
Sunday 26 October 2014 17.59 GMT

動画でも裁判のシーンは信じられないかもしれないだけど実話なんだと言っていますが、当時の記事を読んでもそうだったようです。

June 23, 1986 Vol. 25 No. 25
Margaret Keane's Artful Case Proves That She—and Not Her Ex-Husband—made Waifs

By James S. Kunen

Margaret, 58, and Walter, 70, hadn't laid eyes on each other for nearly 20 years when they walked into federal court in Honolulu last month. They proceeded to have at it in an often heated 3½-week trial. Margaret acknowledged that she had gone along with Walter's claims during their marriage, but only because he threatened to kill her and her daughter by a prior marriage if she revealed the truth. At the behest of her attorney, Margaret sat before the jurors and in 53 minutes painted a small boy's face with those unmistakable outsize orbs. The painting, Exhibit 224 of the trial, may be her greatest artistic triumph.

Challenged by Margaret's attorneys to show the jury his stuff, Walter, who acted as his own lawyer, pleaded that he was taking medication for a painfully injured shoulder and declined to put brush to canvas.


ある意味すごいと感心してしまったのが、映画のエンドロールで出てきた旦那だったKeaneは最後まで自分が描いたと主張していたということです。下記のObituary記事でも触れています。

Keane, Artist Associated With Big-Eyed Portraits
Dan Levy Published 4:00 am, Thursday, January 4, 2001

The dispute came to a climax in a 1986 lawsuit, when a federal judge in Honolulu ordered both Walter and Margaret Keane to paint pictures for the jury.

Margaret produced a likeness of a big-eyed child in 54 minutes. Mr. Keane declined to paint, saying he had a sore shoulder.

There was also a scheduled Union Square "paint-off" in 1970, covered in Life magazine, where Margaret again produced a painting but Walter failed to attend.

Herb Caen, who knew Mr. Keane from his North Beach days, concluded in a 1991 column that Margaret Keane was the real painter.

Until the end, though, Mr. Keane insisted he was the creator of the big- eyed children. In 1991, he told The Chronicle, "I painted the waifs of the world."


小保方さんも墓場まで真相を持っていくのではという気がしてきました。
 

Foreign Affairsがタイムリーな特集

 
曽野綾子のコラムで人種問題に光が当てられた今、なんともタイムリーな特集をForeign Affairsが組んでくれました。2回連続で読んでいない状態で紹介するのは申し訳ないですが、こちらもしっかり読んだ後に改めてご紹介したいと思います。



Hi, there. I’m Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs. I’m here to talk about March/April 2015 issue. The lead package is to deal with race, a hot button issue not just in United States but around the world. There’re wonderful articles, everything from multiculturalism in Europe to a surprising lack of significance of race in Latin American history to South East Asia, South Africa, affirmative action across the world. An interesting package that you want to take a look at

オックスフォードのOALDでもちょうどraceがhot buttonの例文として使われていました。

(オックスフォード)
hot button
a subject or issue that people have strong feelings about and argue about a lot
Race has always been a hot button in this country's history.
the hot-button issue of nuclear waste disposal


動画との語り口の違いを見るためにも広告メールの方も目を通してみます。

Dear Reader,
Once again, racial issues are at the top of the news—and once again, most coverage sheds more heat than light. So for our March/April issue, we decided to add some perspective and got world-class experts to look at racial issues across the globe.

Learn how race and politics mix not only in the United States but also in Europe, Latin America, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and more. This is fascinating, first-rate analysis of the kind you get only from Foreign Affairs.

Subscribe today at 83% off, and you’ll also get The Clash of Civilizations? eBook—a great companion to this issue. And don’t miss our exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—it’s a must-read. With all this and more inside our March/April issue, there’s never been a better time to become a Foreign Affairs subscriber.

Best,

Gideon Rose

Editor, Foreign Affairs

印象的な表紙はブラジルの芸術家Angélica Dassさんによるものだそうです。



色見本のことをPantone Colour Matching Systemというようですね。

(Wikipedia)
パントン・マッチング・システム
世界で使用されている色見本帳のひとつで、日本では通称「パントン」または「パントーン」とも呼ばれ、DICと同様にグラフィックデザイン、印刷、マルチメディア、Web、プロダクトデザインの制作・製造工程においての色指定に使用されている。中華人民共和国では、グラフィックデザインや印刷、テキスタイル、プラスチックなどの業界でデファクトスタンダードである。


以下はパントンの企業サイトの説明です。

The Pantone Colour Matching System is largely a standardized colour reproduction system. By standardizing the colours, different manufacturers in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colours match without direct contact with one another. The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is a proprietary colour space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of coloured paint, fabric and plastics. The Pantone colour guides have been widely adopted and are used by artists, designers, printers, manufacturers, marketers and clients in all industries worldwide for accurate colour identification, design specification, quality control and communication. Pantone recommends that PMS Colour Guides be purchased annually, as their inks become yellowish over time. Colour variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated). The below chart is intended as a reference guide only. The Pantone colours here have been matched as closely as possible. Use official Pantone colour product for most accurate colour.

DassさんはTEDにも登壇しているようですね。



Pantoneは年末に次の年の色、Color of the Yearを発表しているんですね。今年の色はマサラMarsalaだそうです。。。



HomePANTONE Color of the Year 2015PANTONE COLOR OF THE YEAR 2015
Introducing Marsala: PANTONE Color of the Year 2015

Since 2000, the Pantone Color Institute™ has been designating a Color of the Year to express in color what is taking place in the global zeitgeist. A color that will resonate around the world, the PANTONE Color of the Year is a reflection of what people are looking for, what they feel they need that color can help to answer. Not necessarily the hot fashion color of the moment, but a color crossing all areas of design which is an expression of a mood, an attitude, on the part of the consumers.

To distill the prevailing mood into a single hue, the PCI team, led by executive director Leatrice Eiseman, combs the world looking for future design and color influences, watching out for that one color seen as ascending and building in importance through all creative sectors. Influences can include the entertainment industry, upcoming films, art, emerging artists, travel destinations and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from technology, lifestyles + playstyles, new textures and effects that impact color, and even upcoming sports events that capture worldwide attention.

With each unique color shade having its own special symbolism, an additional key consideration is the emotional component and the inherent meaning of the color.

The color for 2015? The charismatic and highly varietal shade of Marsala; a tasteful hue that embodies the satisfying richness of a fulfilling meal, while its grounding red-brown roots emanate a sophisticated, natural earthiness. Complex and full-bodied, this hearty, yet stylish tone is universally appealing; translating easily to fashion, beauty, industrial design, home furnishings and interiors.

For more inspiration in color, color direction or color insights subscribe to PANTONEVIEW.com, our unique trend service devoted to color. Free 30-day trial. Sign up now!

 

今月号の'Harper's Magazine'は福島特集記事

 


Vollmann Writes About Fukushima's 'Quiet Horror' In 'Harper's Magazine'
FEBRUARY 12, 2015 5:09 AM ET

教養総合月刊誌の'Harper's Magazine'は14ページにわたり福島の避難民の方々の現状をレポートした記事を掲載しているようです。

LETTER FROM JAPAN — From the March 2015 issue
Invisible and Insidious
Living at the edge of Fukushima’s nuclear disaster
By William T. Vollmann


For the past three years my dosimeter had sat silently on a narrow shelf just inside the door of a house in Tokyo, upticking its final digit every twenty-four hours by one or two, the increase never failing — for radiation is the ruthless companion of time. Wherever we are, radiation finds and damages us, at best imperceptibly. During those three years, my American neighbors had lost sight of the accident at Fukushima. In March 2011, a tsunami had killed hundreds, or thousands; yes, they remembered that. Several also recollected the earthquake that caused it, but as for the hydrogen explosion and containment breach at Nuclear Plant No. 1, that must have been fixed by now — for its effluents no longer shone forth from our national news. Meanwhile, my dosimeter increased its figure, one or two digits per day, more or less as it would have in San Francisco — well, a trifle more, actually. And in Tokyo, as in San Francisco, people went about their business, except on Friday nights, when the stretch between the Kasumigaseki and Kokkai-Gijido-mae subway stations — half a dozen blocks of sidewalk, which commenced at an antinuclear tent that had already been on this spot for more than 900 days and ended at the prime minister’s lair — became a dim and feeble carnival of pamphleteers and Fukushima refugees peddling handicrafts.

Yutaは見栄で定期購読しているので(滝汗)、この記事くらいは読んでみたいと思います(苦笑)。
 

(あえて投稿)僕たちは曽野綾子以下なのでは

 
外電も打っていて、曽野綾子を批判すれば「僕たちはまともだもんね」と誇示できるかっこうのトピックとなっています。

Japan PM ex-adviser praises apartheid in embarrassment for Abe
BY ELAINE LIES AND TAKASHI UMEKAWA
TOKYO Fri Feb 13, 2015 3:11am EST

(Reuters) - A former adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has praised apartheid as a model for how Japan could expand immigration, prompting the government's top spokesman on Friday to emphasize that Japan's immigration policy was based on equality.

Author Ayako Sono, considered part of Abe's informal brain trust, set off a wave of online fury this week when she wrote in the conservative Sankei newspaper that South Africa's former policies of racial separation had been good for whites, Asians and Africans.

Her comments could complicate Abe's efforts to address a deepening labor shortage and his efforts to burnish the country's image abroad, analysts say.


ひねくれ者なのであえて書かせていただきます。

曽野綾子は自分勝手な理由かもしれませんが外国人労働者に門戸を開くように主張しました。でも外国人労働者に門戸を開くことにはまだ及び腰の日本人の方が多いのではないでしょうか。フランスの極右主義を僕たちは正論で批判しようとしますが、極右主義並みの排外主義は現在の日本そのものではないかと見ることは行き過ぎでしょうか。ここら辺の問題から目をそらして、頭のおかしいおばさんと曽野綾子を批判してもなんだかなという気がしてしまうのです。

シェリエブドで影が薄くなってしまいましたが、ミシェル・ウエルベックの小説Submissionもイスラム系の大統領がフランスに生まれるというショッキングに思える内容のようです。

ニューヨーカー音声

Cultural Chronicles JANUARY 26, 2015 ISSUE
The Next Thing
Michel Houellebecq’s Francophobic satire.
BY ADAM GOPNIK


The French writer Michel Houellebecq has become a literary “case” to be reprimanded as much as an author to be read, and his new novel, “Soumission,” or “Submission,” shows why. The book, which will be published in English by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is shaped by a simple idea. In France in the very near future, the respectable republican parties fragment the vote in a multiparty election, and the two top vote-getters are Marine Le Pen, of the extreme right, and one Mohammed Ben Abbes, the fictive leader of a French Muslim Brotherhood. In the runoff, the French left backs the Muslim, preferring the devil it doesn’t know to the one it does. Ben Abbes’s government soon imposes a kind of relaxed Sharia law throughout France and—this is the book’s central joke and point—the French élite are cravenly eager to collaborate with the new regime, delighted not only to convert but to submit to a bracing and self-assured authoritarianism. Like the oversophisticated Hellenists in Cavafy’s poem, they have been secretly waiting for the barbarians all their lives.


昨年の秋にはフランスの自殺という復古主義的な内容の本も話題になっていることをこの記事で知りました。どうやらムスリムの移民を追い出せという過激な主張もあるそうです。

Like most satirists worth reading, Houellebecq is a conservative. “I show the disasters produced by the liberalization of values,” he has said. Satire depends on comparing the crazy place we’re going to with the implicitly sane place we left behind. That’s why satirists are often nostalgists, like Tom Wolfe, who longs for the wild and crazy American past, or Evelyn Waugh, with his ascendant American vulgarians and his idealized lost Catholic aristocracy. Houellebecq despises contemporary consumer society, and though he is not an enthusiast, merely a fatalist, about its possible Islamic replacement, he thinks that this is the apocalypse we’ve been asking for. What he truly hates is Enlightenment ideas and practices, and here his satire intersects with a fast-moving current of French reactionary thought, exemplified by “The Suicide of France,” a surprise best-seller by the television journalist Éric Zemmour

Zemmour’s is one of those polemical books, like span Alan Bloom’s Allan Bloom’s* “The Closing of the American Mind,” which carry everything before them, because they run right over every obstacle. For honest, thorough scrutiny of the opposition’s authors and actions, Zemmour makes Bloom look like John Stuart Mill: his argument depends on his never dealing with a specific instance. Everything flows by in a torrent of hysterical rhetoric. He hates feminism, but there is no extended treatment of feminist authors, or any attempt to discriminate between French feminism and the American kind; shrieking harpies dethroned the father, and now everything sucks. He hates ecologists, but there is no argument about why the world would be cleaner or pleasanter had environmentalism not happened. American universities, he says, have become playpens for empty legacies of the rich; there is no recognition that the historical trend has run in the opposite direction.


Yuta本人が積極的な移民受け入れ国に日本もなるべきだという主張するほどまでにはなっていないのですが、少子高齢化の人口減でゆっくりと衰退していくよりは新たな可能性を模索していいのではと思っています。

むしろ本丸の議論はこっちではないんじゃないでしょうか。
 

常習犯だった?

 


Vanity Fair最新号を読んでいて、CNNのFareed Zakariaが再び盗用疑惑をかけられているのを知りました。昨年の9月に話題になっていたようです。元上司のようですが、クロ認定をしています。

Parsing the Plagarism of Fareed Zakaria
With Fareed Zakaria accused of plagiarism, V.F.’s columnist (Zakaria's onetime boss) examines the fine line writers walk—and whether the pundit crossed it.
BY MICHAEL KINSLEY

Somewhere between plagiarism and homage, there is a line. Fareed stepped over it. For example, way back in 1998, he wrote an article for Slate about the glories of the martini. American Heritage magazine had run an article on the same subject the previous year, by Max Rudin. Rudin wrote that the martini “had acquired formal perfection, a glamorous mystique.” He also noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt “liked his with a teaspoon of olive brine.” In his own article, Fareed wrote that the martini had “acquired an air of mystery and glamour” and then noted that F.D.R. “added to the standard recipes”—can you guess? right!—“one teaspoon of olive brine.”

In a memo to me, Fareed makes a vigorous and often persuasive defense of himself. Unfortunately, CNN won’t let it be quoted. When he acknowledged making a mistake, at the time of his suspension, he didn’t just use the classic Nixonian passive-voice evasive formula, “Mistakes were made.” However, conscious changes in wording like the ones about the martini are not “mistakes” in the sense of something inadvertent or accidental. Fareed made these little changes in order to disguise his borrowing. His pursuers cite many examples (including this one).


Wikipediaにも経緯が載っています。2012年に関しては前のブログで取り上げたことを記憶しています。

(Wikipedia)
Plagiarism controversies
Zakaria was suspended for a week in August 2012 while Time and CNN investigated an allegation of plagiarism involving an August 20 column on gun control with similarities to a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore. In a statement Zakaria apologized, saying that he had made "a terrible mistake." Six days later, after a review of his research notes and years of prior commentary, Time and CNN reinstated Zakaria. Time described the incident as "isolated" and "unintentional"; and CNN said, “we found nothing that merited continuing the suspension...."

The controversy intensified in September 2014, when Esquire and The Week magazines reported new allegations that were first identified and documented in pseudonymous blogs. Newsweek added a blanket plagiarism warning to its archive of articles penned by Zakaria, before altering it to appear in seven specific articles that Newsweek felt warranted it. On November 10, 2014, Slate and The Washington Post added corrections to their articles by Zakaria. Slate warned on one that, "This piece does not meet Slate’s editorial standards, having failed to properly attribute quotations and information...". Slate executive Jacob Weisberg, who, months before, exchanged barbs with one of the aforementioned anonymous bloggers on Twitter in defense of Zakaria, kept his original position that what Zakaria did was not plagiarism. The Washington Post in turn told the Poynter media industry news site that it would be investigating the new batch of allegations against Zakaria. Later on the same day, November 10, the Post said that it had found "problematic" sourcing in five Zakaria columns, "and will likely note the lack of attribution in archived editions of the articles."

In total, some 26 individual reports attributed to Zakaria have been found to possess questionable passages.


盗用を告発したサイトOur Bad Mediaが作成した動画をみると一発です。



SEP 22, 2014 @ 10:55 AMNEWS & POLITICSJUST
CNN Does Not Get to Cherrypick the Rules of Journalism
The news is evolving. Old media is not evolving with it.
BY CRUSHING BORT AND BLIPPO BLAPPO

以下がOur Bad Mediaのサイトで詳しく検証しています。

NEWSWEEK CORRECTED 7 OF FAREED ZAKARIA’S PLAGIARIZED ARTICLES; THE WASHINGTON POST NEEDS TO DO THE SAME FOR THESE 6
by @blippoblappo & @crushingbort
UPDATE, 11/10/14, 2:45 PM: BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski has pointed out that Slate appears to have updated one of Zakaria’s “Wine’s World” columns with an editor’s note regarding plagiarized text. Our story has been updated to reflect this note.

Newsweekのインタビューに応じていました。きっと検証ソフトにでもかけたのだろうと思ったらそういうのは使っていいないと主張しています。sudden shifts in voice; inaccurate statistics; and the deployment of incredibly specific factsなどが盗用の兆候だそうです。

An Interview With the Anonymous Media Watchdogs Who Accused Fareed Zakaria of Plagiarism
BY TAYLOR WOFFORD AND ZACH SCHONFELD
11/7/14 AT 1:23 PM

NW: Tell me about your methods. How do you go about finding specific instances of malfeasance? Paint me a picture of the process.

BB: We do what any diligent editor would when marking up a piece, with an eye toward: research claimed as “original” that seems beyond the skill of the author; sudden shifts in voice; inaccurate statistics; and the deployment of incredibly specific facts. There was surprise that we were able to find Zakaria’s theft without the use of anti-plagiarism software (we don’t use software because, well, it’s expensive, and considering the lengths some will go to cover up their lifting, it’s hard to know if those programs would be adequate in ferreting out theft). What we’re surprised about is that any editor could have read Zakaria’s pieces and not have found clear theft. Many of the examples stuck out like a sore thumb, even to the untrained eye.

NW: Why did you choose to be anonymous? Do you think your anonymity has helped or hurt your cause? Would you ever consider shedding your anonymity? Do you expect it to last?

CB: Like a lot of other people on Twitter, we’ve just used the site as an anonymous outlet to shoot the shit, joke around and catch up on news. We were anonymous before we ever posted anything on OBM. While we’d like to think that calling out blatant plagiarism is a nonpartisan good deed that wouldn’t result in any sort of underhanded backlash, we don’t feel an overriding need to test that theory. Brian Stelter reinforced that recently when he went on a multibillion dollar news network to trash our work without ever feeling the need to seek or acknowledge any comment from us. As for whether that anonymity has hurt us, we’ve never felt that we’re the ones losing face here. Even assuming the worst-case scenario here where we’re some kind of Astroturf operation or hired guns (we’re not), the examples we’ve found are public and independently verifiable, as well as newsworthy for a number of reasons. Zakaria’s a big name who already had one well-reported instance of plagiarism that his outlets claimed was isolated. It very clearly wasn’t and it very clearly hasn’t stopped. If reporters pass on that story because we won’t give our names, I don’t think we’re the ones people would be raising eyebrows at. How many anonymous sources does the average reader already come across on any given day?


盗用を疑われた記事に関しては、Newsweekなどは現在、以下のような注意書きをつけるようにしています。

TACKLE THE NUKE THREAT
BY FAREED ZAKARIA 6/20/04 AT 8:00 PM


Note: Newsweek has established that this article does not meet editorial standards. It borrows extensively from June 1, 2004 remarks by John Kerry without proper attribution. Newsweek acknowledges the error.
 

2050年の世界

 

The Economist: Megachange: The world in 2050The Economist: Megachange: The world in 2050
(2012/03/22)
The Economist

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2012年に出た本で邦訳も出ていますが、たまたま図書館にあったので読んでみました。経済や技術動向を期待して読んだんですが、一番興味深く読めたのは以下の宗教についての分析でした。ありがたいことにこの章は著者の方が無料公開してくれているみたいです。

9. Believe it or not
Anthony Gottlieb


日本で無宗教と言うのは何ともないですが、少なくとも1980年代ごろまでは無宗教者であると告白することは共産主義者であると同義であったんですよね。そのあたりのことを説明しているところです。どのような体制であるかが国民の信仰に影響を与えてしまうという実情には敏感でありたいです。じゃないと国民の8割がムスリムだという説明を鵜呑みにして、皆が皆ムスリムを心から信仰しているという単純化した理解になりやすいですから。

After Marx and Mao
Most of the places with the highest levels of unbelief – such as France, Scandinavia and Japan, where nearly half or more of the population say they do not believe in God – are not communist or ex-communist states. But the rise and fall of communism in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe greatly complicates the business of charting unbelief. So does China’s communist revolution in 1949 and its government’s increasing tolerance of some religions since Mao’s death in 1976. It is, to put it mildly, a fair bet that many religious believers who lived under an authoritarian and officially atheist regime will not have had their religious beliefs recorded correctly. Similarly, it is only to be expected that many people who grew up with atheist secularism imposed on them will embrace religion once they are permitted to do so, especially if the secular regime was an unpopular one. That is why unbelief seems to have peaked in the 1970s (seeFigure 9.1). According to Todd Johnson, a co-editor of the WRD, the global decline in recorded unbelief in the final four decades of the 20th century is explained by the collapse of communism in the former Soviet bloc. Because some of the people registered as unbelievers will not in fact have been any such thing, the fall in recorded unbelief is to some extent a correction of the figures rather than a reflection of any real change. It is also true, though, that religious belief seems to have genuinely increased in former communist countries. Similarly, an expected decline in atheism and agnosticism in the coming decades (from 11.6% of the global population in 2010 to 7.6% in2050) reflects a rising toleration of religion in China.


国が発展すると世俗化が進むという考えがあるそうですが、アメリカがこの傾向に当てはまらない理由について考えているところが勉強になりました。

According to the secularisation thesis, this trend will continue: religion will eventually weaken as countries develop. But in the past couple of decades, a minority of sociologists have begun to question this idea, mainly because of the apparently anomalous position of the United States, which seems to buck the trend by combining wealth and piety.

日本からだとTea Partyやキリスト教原理主義を類型的に捉えやすいですが、実際には世俗化が進んでいるのではという指摘は興味深いです。Americans continued to pay lip service to religion, but their religion became less religiousと信仰深いポーズを取っていますが、現状は世俗化が進んでいるとしています。その例として礼拝への参加理由が「pleasure」となっていることを挙げています。メガチャーチなんてのもショッピングモール的な感じだと書いている記事もあったのでこのような方向なのかもしれません。

In 1966 Bryan Wilson, a British sociologist of religion, observed that while Europeans had secularised by abandoning churches, Americans had instead secularised their churches. In other words, Americans continued to pay lip service to religion, but their religion became less religious. As Steve Bruce, another British sociologist, shows in his book, Secularization , the focus of American faith has “shifted from the next world to this one and from the glorification of God to the satisfaction of human needs”. Bruce notes that there was a transformation in mainstream American Christianity from around the 1930s as religion began increasingly to be presented as a matter of personal growth. (One of the most influential pioneers of the modern American self-help movement, Norman Vincent Peale, was the minister of one of New York’s biggest churches.)

Perhaps the most telling indication of this shift in American religion is to be found in the reasons people give for attending religious services. According to one study of an American city in the 1920s, the most popular reason given for going to church was that obedience to God required it; but when the study was repeated in 1977, the most popular reason was instead “pleasure”.


このような状況だから、我々が想像するキリスト教原理主義の動きは誇張されたものであり、同性婚が認められるなどキリスト教原理主義は敗北続きなのが現状だとみています。

Non-believers and adherents of liberal denominations tend to be dismayed and baffled by the apparent strength of fundamentalist beliefs and the “religious right” in the United States. But the power of literalist and conservative denominations is exaggerated by what could be called the headline fallacy: fundamentalist groups are news worthy precisely because their views are not the norm. And religious conservatives campaign noisily because they are losing all their battles (“Winners don’t protest,” as Bruce puts it). The “Moral Majority” movement was started by television evangelists in the late1970s because conservative Christians felt, quite rightly, that a tide of secularism and liberal values had turned against them.

そうは言っても、アメリカは欧州と比べて信仰心がある国であるのは間違いないようです。その一つの理由が多民族の移民国家であるためで、キリスト教が多いのは移民の出身国にキリスト教徒が多いからだと分析しています。

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Americans are, on average, significantly more religious than the inhabitants of other large, rich countries. Many explanations have been offered for this. One oft he most plausible invokes the source of community that churches provide for an extremely mobile, ethnically diverse and immigrant population. Nearly 12% of people in the United States were born in another country – usually a poorer and more religious one than America – and the recently arrived turn for social support to churches used by other members of their ethnic group. More than two-thirds of these immigrants are from Christian countries, so they tend to strengthen the local religious institutions; in Europe, by contrast, most immigrants are Muslims or Hindus. Even native-born Americans are much more likely than people in other developed countries to live far from their families and friends: the average American moves home nearly 12 times in a lifetime, and America is a very large place. Churches provide an instant community for recent arrivals.

また別の理由として社会保障制度が確立していないために、社会を頼ることができないため、教会のような組織に頼らざるをえいないという厳しい現状があることを挙げています。

Welfare safety nets are poor by European standards: lose your job, and you may well lose everything. Poverty and economic inequality are strikingly high. It is a violent country: the murder rate is by far the highest in the developed world – twice as high as in the next most murderous country – and a much larger proportion of Americans are incarcerated than in any other rich nation. In short, Americans live closer to disaster than the citizens of other rich countries. They are especially in need of God, because nobody else will help them.

どうしても単純に信仰だけを考えようとすると、ハチントンの文明の衝突的な単純化した方向になってしまいます。中東情勢にしてもこのような社会経済的な分析も必要なんだろうなと思いました。


The Clash of Civilizations?
By Samuel P. Huntington
FROM OUR SUMMER 1993 ISSUE
 

Woman’s place & Girlhood

 


Emotional Jon Stewart Addresses Retirement on Air: "It's Been an Absolute Privilege" (Video)
8:39 PM PST 2/10/2015 by Aaron Couch

退任スピーチについて丁寧に説明している記事ですが、動画の2分30秒あたりについてが以下です。

Getting emotional, he pounded on his desk to stave off tears and did an impersonation of Frankenstein's monster.

"What is this fluid? What are these feelings? Frankenstein angry!"

He ended by calling it an honor to host the show.

"It's been an absolute privilege. It's been the honor of my professional life, and I thank you for watching it. For hate-watching it. Whatever reason you were tuning in for," Stewart said.


今月は100分de名著で『フランケンシュタイン』を取り上げているので、ついFrankenstein angry!に反応してしまいました。ロングマンでもPeople sometimes mistakenly call the creature Frankenstein, instead of the scientist who made it.と書いているように怪物を生み出したのがフランケンシュタインであって、怪物には名前がないんですよね。

(ロングマン)
Frankenstein
a novel by Mary Shelley, which was published in 1818 and tells the story of a scientist, called Frankenstein, who makes a creature by joining together bits of dead bodies. The creature is gentle at first, but later becomes violent and attacks its maker. People sometimes mistakenly call the creature Frankenstein, instead of the scientist who made it.


規範的な立場をとると思われたオックスフォードですが、こちらは通常の使われ方の語義と用例を載せています。用例を調べるには、こちらの方がありがたいですね。

(オックスフォード)
Frankenstein
used to talk about something that somebody creates or invents that goes out of control and becomes dangerous, often destroying the person who created it

The organization has now become a Frankenstein monster beyond the control of the people who created it.

If you were going to do a Frankenstein and put a swimmer together from scratch, you would build Michael Phelps

Can genetic engineering shake off its Frankenstein image?

From the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in which a scientist called Frankenstein makes a creature from pieces of dead bodies and brings it to life.


「フンガ、フンガのフランケン」と、一般的には知能が足りない力持ちのように描かれやすいですが、原作では言葉を覚えたりしてむしろ知能は高いことも知りました(汗)



単にJon Stuartが辞めることになって残念だぐらいにしか思っていなかったのですが、Lean Inの共著者でもあるNell Scovellが女性ホストが代わりを務めることがない状況を嘆いているエッセイをNYTに寄稿していました。彼女自身David Lettermanのショーのスタッフだったようです。



エッセイでmen are promoted on potential and women on performanceで、women are stuck in a Catch-22: Women can’t prove they can do the job until they get it, and they can’t get it until they prove they can do it.と語っています。英語学習者としてはCatch-22のわかりやすい例となります。

A Woman’s Place Is on Late Night
Goodbye, Jon Stewart. And Hello to a Host of Possibilities

By NELL SCOVELL FEB. 13, 2015

Now, all these hosts are talented and deserving. Their worthiness is not the issue. The issue is that they are not representative of the available talent. Nor do they reflect the audience. For example, Mr. Letterman’s audience is around 55 percent female. So why are women considered only for “next time”? Maybe it’s because studies show that men are promoted on potential and women on performance. This makes it far easier for a relative neophyte like Mr. Corden to get the nod at CBS while women are stuck in a Catch-22: Women can’t prove they can do the job until they get it, and they can’t get it until they prove they can do it.

These franchises are big money generators, so networks feel it’s important to limit any risk. But Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres have been plenty profitable in daytime. And while the old notion was that Americans wanted to “go to bed with” the charming Johnny Carson, on-demand viewing has changed the dynamic. More and more, we’re watching nighttime TV during the day, on our smartphones and tablets. Yet the host model remains stuck on a dad in a 1960s living room.




これと同じような指摘がアカデミー賞最有力の作品Boyhoodでもあったのを思い出しました。確かに活発な少女だったSamanthaは映画の後半になるにつれて脇にやられてしまっています。

What ‘Boyhood’ Shows Us About Girlhood
In Richard Linklater’s Oscar-nominated movie, a boy grows independent even as his sister loses her self-confidence

By SHARON MARCUS and ANNE SKOMOROWSKY
Updated Feb. 6, 2015 4:33 p.m. ET

Even in early adolescence, Samantha remains outspoken, challenging her controlling stepfather about the pointlessness of dusting, worrying about her stepsiblings when he turns abusive and her mother flees the house.

But in the film’s last hour, Samantha starts to fade. Her speech and voice start to disintegrate audibly: She speaks less, signals uncertainty with the constant use of the filler phrase “I mean” and punctuates many of her statements with a nervous laugh. At Mason’s high school graduation party, she makes a toast only after being prompted to do so.

By contrast, as Mason gets older, he speaks in a loud, deep voice and expresses himself in well-formed sentences, unhampered by nervous tics and distracting phrases. The teenage Mason is full of ideas and grows in confidence with every passing year.


言われてみるとこのBoyhoodという映画は、父親は子育てをせずに音楽家になる夢を追いかけ、少年もカメラに熱中していきます。その間、母親や娘が我慢を強いられているというのがWSJでのエッセイの主張です。

One of the achievements of “Boyhood” is to show us how girls are discouraged from putting themselves first. A boy can dream, the film suggests, but a girl…not so much.

AdichieのフェミニズムのTEDスピーチの世界そのものが今でも根強くあるということでしょうか。



We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man.
 

Ravenのなぞなぞ

 

ユリイカ 2015年3月臨時増刊号 総特集◎150年目の『不思議の国のアリス』ユリイカ 2015年3月臨時増刊号 総特集◎150年目の『不思議の国のアリス』
(2015/02/02)
高山宏、巽孝之 他

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今年はアリスがAlice's Adventures in Wonderlandが出版されて150年にになるようです。アリスの7章A Mad Tea Partyはこのブログでも取り上げたことがあります。



A Mad Tea Partyの訳ですが、「はちゃめちゃなお茶会」(島本薫さん)「気がふれ茶った会」(高山宏)なども、言葉遊びを反映したものになっています。

A Mad Tea / Partyと区切ると音がリズミカルになりますので、それを反映させた山形浩生さんの「キチガイお茶会」もすごいなと思います。昭和2年の菊池寛と芥川竜之介による『アリス物語』でも「気違ひの茶話会」となっています。

なぜMadがつくのかについてはWikipediaの「帽子屋」の項で説明があります。

成句
帽子屋は三月ウサギと同様、「帽子屋のように気が狂っている」 (mad as a hatter) という、当時よく知られていた英語の慣用句を元にキャロルが創作したキャラクターである。この表現はより古い言い回しの「mad as an adder」からの転訛とも考えられるが、それとともに当時の現実の帽子屋は、帽子のフェルトの製造過程で使われる水銀(フェルト地を硬くするために当時使われていた)のためにしばしば本当に気が狂ったということもある。水銀中毒の初期症状である手足の震えは当時「帽子屋の震え」と呼ばれており、やがて舌がもつれ、さらに症状が進むと幻覚や精神錯乱の症状が起こった。現在のアメリカのほとんどの州やヨーロッパの国々には水銀の使用を禁じる法律がある。



(ポーのThe Raven(大鴉)が1845年でAlice's Adventures in Wonderlandが1865年です)

この章で登場するなぞなぞWhy is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?については説明をしてくれているサイトもたくさんあるようですが、取り上げている内容はどれもだいたい同じです。

Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?
The answer to this famous riddle is, of course, that neither one is made of cheese.

Actually, this riddle is designed to be nonsensical, and according to its author, Lewis Carroll, he never intended for there to be any real answer to the question: “why is a raven like a writing desk?” The entire point of the riddle is that it has no answer, although numerous people have come up with creative interpretations of the riddle.

(Wikipedia)
帽子屋のなぞなぞ
「狂ったお茶会」のはじめのほうで、帽子屋はアリスに「カラスと書き物机が似ているのはなぜ?」("Why is a raven like a writing desk?") というなぞなぞを投げかける。アリスはしばらく考えても答えがわからずに降参するが、帽子屋や三月ウサギは自分たちにもわからないと答え、結局答えのない問いかけであったということがわかる。この本来答えのないなぞなぞは、ヴィクトリア朝の家庭の中でその答えをめぐってしばしば話題になり、1896年の『不思議の国のアリス』の版のキャロルによる序文には、後から思いついた答えとして以下の回答が付け加えられた。

"Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!"
(訳)なぜならどちらも非常に単調/平板 (flat) ながらに鳴き声/書き付け (notes) を生み出す。それに決して (nevar) 前後を取り違えたりしない!

「決して」は正しい綴りは"never"であるが"nevar"とするとちょうど"raven"(カラス)と逆の綴りになる。しかしこのキャロルのウィットは当時編集者に理解されず、"never"の綴りに直されて印刷されてしまった(キャロルはこれを訂正する機会のないまま間もなく亡くなっている。このキャロルの本来の綴りは、1976年になってデニス・クラッチによって発見された)。


何気に見たYoutubeの動画では、never backwardsがRavenでalways forwards(for words)なのがWriting Deskだという説明でした。



なかなか論理的な説明で、キャロル本人の説明よりも説得力を感じます。
 

Economistは教師と英語教育に辛口

 




今週のEconomistは珍しく学校教師や英語教育を取り上げていました。経済界の意見というのはどこも同じようです。

Teacher recruitment
Those who can
How to turn teaching into a job that attracts high-flyers
Feb 14th 2015 | From the print edition

アメリカのTeach for AmericaやイギリスのTeach Firstなどを好意的に捉える一方で組合が既得権を守り凡庸な教師を延命しているとEconomistは見ているようです。まあ、日本の一般的な考えも似たようなものでしょうね。

(Wikipedia)
ティーチ・フォー・アメリカ(Teach For America、TFA)とはアメリカ合衆国のニューヨーク州に本部を置く教育NPOである。アメリカ国内の一流大学の学部卒業生を、教員免許の有無に関わらず大学卒業から2年間、国内各地の教育困難地域にある学校に常勤講師として赴任させるプログラムを実施しており、2007年にはビジネスウィーク誌が調査したアメリカの学部学生の就職先人気ランキングの10位に入っている[1]。また、2010年には全米文系学生・就職先人気ランキングで、GoogleやAppleを抑えて1位となった[2]。

Even where the profession is in disrepute, high-flyers can be lured into the classroom. Teach for America, which sends star graduates from elite universities for two-year stints in rough schools, is being copied around the globe (see article). Private employers snap up its alumni—but many stay in teaching. Teach First, Britain’s version, has helped raise standards in London and is one of the country’s most prestigious graduate employers. Such schemes are small, but show that when teaching is recast as tough and rewarding, the right sort clamour to join.

Spreading the revolution to the entire profession will mean dumping the perks cherished by slackers and setting terms that appeal to the hardworking. That may well mean higher pay—but also less generous pensions and holidays. Why not encourage teachers to use the long vacation for catch-up classes for pupils who have fallen behind? Stiffer entry requirements would raise the job’s status and attract better applicants. Pay rises should reward excellence, not long service. Underperformers should be shown the door.

Standing in the way, almost everywhere, are the unions. Their willingness to back shirkers over strivers should not be underestimated: in Washington, DC, when the schools boss (a Teach for America alumna) offered teachers much higher pay in return for less job security, their union balked.


このような記事があると現役の教師が怒るのも無理がありません。すでに以下のようなコメントがあります。

How do you determine who is abysmal and who is successful? Testing? Testing doesn't measure the teacher, it measures the student. Funny, we don't blame doctors when obese patients die nor do we blame lawyers when the murderer they are representing is convicted. Since most schools are run by elected school boards, the parents already have this power.

より冷静にTeach for Americaの成果そのものを疑問視するコメントもあります。

Secondly, the research on these programmes is mixed to say the least. This is well-known. Recent studies in England (IFS, 2014) suggest behaviour management of Teach First recruits is significantly worse than other routes.

Thirdly, the recent revelation that TFA numbers are down for a second year. The article attributes this to the upturn in the graduate job market, others would attribute this to widespread criticism from within and outside these programmes such as the complaint that the most disadvantaged in society deserve better than to be treated as a stepping-stone to another career, that recruits are not adequately prepared, that schools are being overcharged, that recruits are being exploited in order to break the teaching unions, to lower staff costs, to reduce pension liabilities etc. etc.


このコメントで紹介されていたのが以下のワシントンポストの記事です。

Answer Sheet
Teach For Finland? Why it won’t happen.

By Valerie Strauss February 12 at 4:00 AM

これと同じ調子でEconomistは英語教育も批判します。南米の状況も日本と同じ感じです。ただし、日本で流行しているフィリピンのオンライン英会話のような試みが南米でも行われ始めているようです。

English-language education
The mute leading the mute

Why are countries failing so badly at teaching English?
Feb 14th 2015 | MEXICO CITY | From the print edition

the blind leading the blind(盲人が盲人を導く)にかけて、英語を話せない英語教師に当てつけてThe mute leading the mute(唖者が唖者を導く)と煽りタイトルになっています。

(オックスフォード)
the blind leading the ˈblind
a situation in which people with almost no experience or knowledge give advice to others who also have no experience or knowledge


Comparable global data are scarce, but experts say the situation is similar in much of the non-Anglophone world. Common problems include bad teachers hired via written tests rather than oral ones, and an outmoded approach that sees English as a foreign language to be taught about, rather than a lingua franca to be taught in. Teachers’ lack of fluency means too little English conversation in the classroom, says John Knagg of the British Council, so pupils do not get used to using the language. It is as if they were being taught to swim without ever getting into the water.

(比較できる国際的データは少ないが、専門家によれば英語を母国語としない国のほとんどは似た状況である。共通の問題には口頭のテストではなく筆記テストで雇われた質の悪い教師や、英語を国際語として習うのではなく、外国語として教える時代遅れのアプローチなどが含まれる。教師が流暢に喋れないため教室で英語が話されることはほとんどないとブリティッシュカウンシルのJohn Knaggは語る。このため生徒は英語を使うことに慣れていかないのだ。これは水に入ることなく泳ぎ方を教えられているようなものである。)


まあ、こういう外国語教育批判は昔からあるものですぐに直るようなものではないでしょう。ただ、いわゆるグローバル化で人の交流が活発になっているのでコミュニケーションをとることがこれまで以上に求められるようになってきていることは確かでしょう。必要になっている英語の内容が変わってきているのでカリキュラムを見直すことは大切なのかもしれません。

まあ、YutaとしてはTOEICなら基礎的なコミュニケーションを学べるのでぴったりだと言いたいところですが、鬼の形相で否定しようとする英語教師がすぐに浮かんでしまいます(苦笑)今週末はTwitterで愚痴をこぼす英語教師が多くなるかもしれません。。。
 

Disruptionとconnectivity

 



エボラの正体エボラの正体
(2015/01/09)
デビッド・クアメン、西原智昭(解説) 他

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最近日本語訳も出たこの本。昨年のエボラ流行のレポートを期待する方には肩透かしを食らうかもしれません。しかし、エボラがどのように環境で発生したのか、その歴史など、より広く深い知識を得ることができます。

昨日彼の本Spilloverを読んだのですが、エボラだけではなく、マラリア、SARS、HIVなどいろいろなウィルスがあるのだと改めて実感しました。2013年にTEDに登壇されていて、ここでも様々なウィルスについても説明しています。



ここで語っていたのはDisruptionとconnectivity。ウィルスが人間に感染するのも森林を伐採して動物の居住地をなくしてしまって人間と接触する機会を作ってしまったから。今では人は飛行機で簡単に世界を飛びまわれるので、ウィルスもあっという間に広まってしまうようです。

訳書で解説を書いている西原智昭さんは本でも登場しています。西原さんは森林認証などの取り組みで環境を守ることの大切さを解説で触れていました。


Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human PandemicSpillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
(2012/09/24)
David Quammen

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西原さんが著者と知り合ったのは2000年のナショナルジオグラフィックでの徒歩でアフリカを横断するプロジェクトだったそうです。

 

「話を盛る」って英語では

 
こちらは本人が間違いを認めたこともあり、処分はスムーズにいっているようです。6ヶ月分の給料はでないとありますから、辞めるまで給料をもらっていた小保方さんとはえらい違いですよね。



Brian Williams Suspended From NBC for 6 Months Without Pay
By EMILY STEEL and RAVI SOMAIYAFEB. 10, 2015

Brian Williams, the embattled NBC news anchor whose credibility plummeted after he acknowledged exaggerating his role in a helicopter incident in Iraq, was suspended for six months without pay, the network said Tuesday night.

動画の最後に出てくる謝罪のスピーチは以下の通りです。

I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago. I want to apologize. I said I was travelling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert. This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and, by extension, our brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not. I hope they know they have my greatest respect and also now my apology.

ニューヨークタイムズの記事ではexaggerating his roleとありますが、TIMEの記事ではembellish his war recordという表現がありました。こちらの方が「話を盛る」という意味に近そうです。

But this isn’t as simple as one famous, successful, charming news anchor setting off on his own to embellish his war record. Whatever Brian Williams did or didn’t do, wherever he ends up, we’ve been with him each and every step of the way.

(オックスフォード)
embellish something to make a story more interesting by adding details that are not always true synonym embroider
His account of his travels was embellished with details of famous people he met.


TIMEの記事は事実を伝えるというよりも、文化的背景を語るエッセイみたいな感じです。

It Wasn’t All Brian Williams’ Fault
• David Westin 2:07 PM ET Updated: 6:24 PM ET

Here’s a dirty little secret about the news: people love stories about others’ misfortunes. Our fellow citizens in California love to watch the snowstorms in the east; those of us in the east don’t mind seeing the brushfires and mudslides of our western brethren. And all of us join together to watch the devastation of a tsunami half way around the globe. Whatever problems we might have, at least we don’t have those problems.

So, it’s hardly surprising that the recent travails of Brian Williams and NBC News are so popular in the press. The media always love stories about the media, and if the media get to cover the failings of their competitors, so much the better. After all, it’s happening to them (in this case, Williams and NBC News) and not to us. What could be better?

The problem is that what we’re all watching now is about us as much as it’s about them. It’s about “us” in TV news – for that matter all the news media. And even more troubling, it’s about “us” in the audience as we’re drawn so powerfully to the growing celebrity status of journalists.


Daily ShowでもBrian Williamsを取り上げたそうです。



Jon Stewart Leaving ‘The Daily Show’
By DAVE ITZKOFFFEB. 10, 2015

“See, I see the problem. We got us a case here of infotainment confusion syndrome. It occurs when the celebrity cortex gets its wires crossed with the medulla anchor-dala. “

“Finally someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War.”


個人的にはDaily ShowからJohn Stewartがいなくなるというニュースの方がショックです。
 

Starbucksと政治の謎

 


今週のTIMEはStarbucksのHoward Schultzがカバーストーリーです。12月に高級志向とも言えるReserve Roastery and Tasting Roomがシアトルで開店したタイミングではBloombergにも登場していました。



なぜ2ヶ月遅れなのかはわかりませんが、このカバーストーリーのおかげでなぜHoward Schultzが政治に関心を持つのかの一因がわかった気がします。

Starbucks For America
Rana Foroohar @RanaForoohar Feb. 5, 2015

Howard Schultz is transforming his company. Changing the country is going to be harder

Words checked = [3560]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]

これまでSchultzが政治に関わっているのは経済的に成功して名誉や公的な分野に色気が出たんだろうぐらいにしか思っていませんでした。Yutaの勝手な解釈ではありますが、政治不安はStarbucksの売り上げを直撃することが、政治をなんとかしたいと思う一因ではないかとこの記事を読んで思いました。Sales will rise and fall with the national mood, tanking quickly during events like the New York City police protests–or the 2013 government shutdownとあります。やっぱり政治が安定していないと落ち着いてカフェでくつろぐ気持ちにはなれませんよね。

Schultz is acutely aware of this because four times a day, he gets what may be the most up-to-date consumer-confidence indicator in America–Starbucks’ coffee-sales figures. With nearly 12,000 stores nationwide, “we have a lens on almost every community in America,” he says. “At 4:30 in the morning, I wake up and see the numbers of basically every store from yesterday.” Those numbers give a picture that is very different from and much more sensitive than quarterly GDP figures. Over the past few years, says Schultz, they’ve pointed to a “fractured level of trust and confidence” that he attributes in large part to a sense that government is no longer functional and that no one is looking out for the welfare of the middle and working classes.

Sales will rise and fall with the national mood, tanking quickly during events like the New York City police protests–or the 2013 government shutdown, just one of the recent moments when Schultz has worried about the effects of partisan politics on the economy. “I called the White House after the government shutdown and shared with them [figures showing] that leading into the shutdown and for weeks afterward, we saw a significant drop in consumer spending.” He spoke to people “at the very highest level on both sides of the aisle” to stress his feeling that this effect would be “lingering” and would result in a more skittish consumer. “And that’s exactly what’s happened,” he says.


日本でもセブンイレブンの100円コーヒーとコーヒー界のアップルと言われるブルーボトルが話題になっていますが、そのような二極化はアメリカでも起こっているようです。皮肉にもアメリカの二極化を批判しているSchultzが二極化そのものを受け入れて対応しなくてはいけない状況になっている年適しています。今回のシアトルの店舗は高級志向の一環ですものね。

In part, that will involve taking seriously the crowded space for cheaper coffee, a phenomenon that along with the financial crisis helped lead to a steep downturn in Starbucks’ fortunes in 2008. Starbucks will have to compete more directly not only with McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts but also with budget outfits like 7-Eleven. (When even Taco Bell is advertising its coffee, you know things are getting tough.) You will start to see the mermaid logo near places like your local bowling alley. The firm that built its image on an “emotional” connection to coffee that allowed for personal indulgences like $5 mocha Frappuccinos is going to have to find ways to compete with those that sling bare-bones $1 coffee–and a lot of it. (Starbucks hasn’t decided yet how the menu might change.) The company is approaching this in a characteristically cool way–building outlets from used cargo containers at highway exits, for example–but it’s not going to be easy to make one brand mean two things to different customers.

More important, this change of course puts the company in an awkward position. To continue to grow, it must adapt to the economic landscape, making a play for high-end consumers with disposable income while also tailoring outlets and products to lower-end consumers who have less to spend. But doing this means Schultz is implicitly accepting a truth that he has been rallying against for years. That leaves Starbucks aggressively changing its business model to make the most of a country in which the middle class is shrinking while its outspoken CEO loudly cries out against the forces that shrink it. The future of Starbucks, like the economy itself, has a split personality.


Schultzの人となりの負の部分をhe’s no saintとして、control freakである点やtendency to parachute into situationsであることをあげています。まあたったの一代でこれだけの会社を作り上げたのですから普通の人じゃないことはわかりますが、the future of Starbucks after him is unclear at best.と彼の後継者のことが心配になってしまいます。

Schultz may be of the people, but he’s no saint. He’s more sensitive than most executives to criticism and tough questions. So much so that he has a tell: when he’s on the defensive, his eyes open wider than normal. And like many business leaders from hardscrabble backgrounds, he can be a control freak. Top staffers say multiple 5 a.m. emails from him aren’t unusual. Is that tough? I ask one lieutenant. “Only if you are a normal person who gets started at 8 a.m.,” he responds, a little weary. Schultz also has a tendency to parachute into situations, pre-empting members of his staff who are trying to do their jobs. He says he needs to combat his tendency to “override the people who are responsible. [It’s] not healthy for the organization.” One rare rich-guy move, Schultz’s purchase of the Seattle SuperSonics in 2001, ended with a very unpopular sale that relocated the team to Oklahoma City; Schultz was frustrated by the experience in part because he didn’t get as much control as he would have liked.

2016年の第三の候補になるのかという思わせぶりな表紙にしていましたが、記事本文で彼自身は完全に否定しています。For now, Schultz says, he’s content to “see what Hillary does.”とヒラリーさんを推しているようです。

For his part, Schultz insists he’s not interested in running for office at the moment and has neither the temperament to make the compromises necessary to embark on a Democratic political career nor the desire to be a third-party candidate. “I don’t think that is a solution. I don’t think it ends well.” There is also the baggage that every successful businessman turned politico has to carry in terms of translating his successes–and his failures–in one realm to another. In 2012, for example, Starbucks ran into PR trouble in the U.K. after revelations that it had paid only minimal corporation taxes on many hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. The company, which had been domiciling in the Netherlands, as many large companies do, says it complied with all tax laws. Starbucks has since voluntarily paid more, and it has moved its European headquarters to the U.K. Still, the episode shows how difficult it would be to balance running a multinational company with running a progressive political campaign. For now, Schultz says, he’s content to “see what Hillary does.”
 

Netflix上陸前の予習

 



Wired [UK] February 2015 (単号)Wired [UK] February 2015 (単号)
(2015/01/23)
不明

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いよいよ日本でもサービスを開始することを発表したNetflix。イギリスのWiredではちょうどNetflixをカバーストーリーにしていました。ヨーロッパにも拡大しているようです。

MEET NETFLIX FOUNDER REED HASTINGS
MAGAZINE 05 FEBRUARY 15 by JAMES SILVER


Words checked = [3469]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [86%]

昨年の秋に、フランス、ドイツ、オーストリア、ベルギー、スイス、ルクセンブルクに進出したようです。

Lean and silver-haired, with a goatee and an easy-going, laconic manner, Hastings, 54, sits in Netflix's European headquarters, which overlooks a canal in the heart of Amsterdam. The space is so new that it's almost entirely empty, although the artwork has been finished: graffiti art adorns the walls, and doors have been decorated with unnerving, life-size blow-up portraits of characters from some of the channel's best known series, including a malevolent George "Pornstache" Mendez (played by Pablo Schreiber) from Orange Is the New Black. Hastings is in the Dutch capital to host a dinner with journalists to mark Netflix's first anniversary in the Netherlands, and to oversee the firm's push into Europe.

France was one of six territories into which Netflix launched in autumn 2014 (the others were Germany, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg), as growth in the core US market, where the service currently has 37.2 million customers, inevitably starts to slow. (Hastings has said that, in the long term, he's aiming for between 60 million and 90 million subscribers in the US.) Next on his list are central, eastern and southern Europe. "We've got Asia, the Middle East and Africa still to go," he says. "Our basic view is that we want to make Netflix available everywhere in the world."


ネット環境が整わないとストリーミングサービスはストレスが溜まるだけになってしまいます。そのあたりの品質について語っている部分です。

Hunt explains that to ensure streaming quality, Netflix has purpose-built its own content-delivery network (CDN) called Open Connect -- essentially, a set of servers that house Netflix video that the company offers to ISPs either to install directly into their own networks, or to connect with at common internet exchange points throughout the world.

"If the data is travelling a shorter distance -- the industry calls it the last mile -- it makes things work substantially better," he says. "But in many ways, the real smarts happen on the client end. We leverage very straightforward, conventional protocols -- in this case just http -- to gather data very efficiently and use it as effectively as possible. A key piece of that is adaptive streaming. We can pick and choose which of several different versions of the video and audio to request and deliver, in order to get the best picture that your particular internet connection is capable of. We spend a lot of time trading off how quickly and how aggressively it shifts up to higher-quality levels, and how much buffer to retain, so it never stops, never freezes and doesn't interrupt unless there's absolutely no alternative."


ストリーミングの利点は、より詳細な視聴データを集められること。Netflixは番組釣りにも生かしているようです。

Netflix's second differentiator lies in its use of data, terabytes of which are analysed to build recommendations for each subscriber. Every title on the service is tagged and cross-referenced with a vast array of global viewer data, including what an individual subscriber watched and how they watched it. Did they binge watch seven episodes in a row, for instance? Did they fast forward through certain sections, or rewind to rewatch a particular scene? Or if they abandoned a film, when did they do so? And what did they click on next?

According to Kevin Slavin, assistant professor and founder of Playful Systems at MIT Media Lab, this has far-reaching implications for legacy television's business and delivery models. "The premise of lining up entertainment around a demographic, which is basically what networks do, may fall apart when you place it next to lining up entertainment around a person, which is what Netflix does," he says. "It's not just the shift in availability, or mode of consumption, but it's also the shift in how decisions get made about what to watch. It's true that one of the single biggest determinants about whether a show is going to get watched on linear network television is what was on right before it. But if you're given an alternative [way to choose] that seems to be vastly preferable."


今でこそストリーミング会社としての地位を確立しましたが、元々はDVDレンタル会社だったんですよね。5年前にカナダで初めてストリーミングだけに絞ったサービスを展開したとあります。今では当然のことも当時は思い切った決断が必要だったようです。

As Hastings tells it, Netflix's breakout moment came 13 years after the company was founded. In 2010 the company had just launched into Canada, its first new territory. Until then, the Netflix model had been a hybrid of DVDs -- which were ordered online and delivered via the post -- and streaming. But north of the border they opted, with some trepidation, to go to market offering a streaming-only service.

"It was a beautiful day in Toronto," Hastings says, sitting in the Netflix office in Amsterdam, "and because we'd spent the day doing demos, we didn't know what our [Canadian launch] numbers were. That night we got them and found that the number of sign-ups was like ten times larger than we'd thought it would be. That was just shocking and I remember thinking, 'Gosh, streaming works!' That was the beginning of our great, global expansion."


Netflixは高画質の4kテレビにも積極的に取り組むようです。

A single-lane, superfast connection is, of course, integral to Hastings' vision for the next frontier for television, which he believes centres on both internet streaming -- which he predicts will account for around 50 per cent of all viewing in the US by 2020 -- and on 4K Ultra HD television (with a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels). This is the first format that's internet-centric, rather than broadcast-centric, he says. The shift from standard- to high-definition TV has been slow because it didn't make sense for traditional broadcasters to change their signal when only five per cent of consumers owned an HD TV set, he says. "And there was no incentive for consumers to buy an HD TV if they couldn't get any content on it -- so that chicken-and-egg problem forestalls the development of better audio-visual standards.

"But the internet solves that, because we can now have one in a thousand people buy a 4K television, and then Netflix can supply them, over the internet, with 4K content. So then you can, much more quickly, move from one in a thousand, to one in a hundred, to one in ten, to almost everybody, because you don't have to switch over the whole broadcast spectrum. You can treat each individual as an individual. So we're very big on 4K Ultra HD television, which is the next big wave, and you'll see TVs now out there at £1,500, and coming down. Samsung and Sony are both being very aggressive in pushing that -- and we're their primary source of 4K content."


現在Huluを視聴しているYutaですが、迷わずNetflixに変えてしまいそうです。
 

村上春樹の翻訳の師匠

 

アメリカ合衆国憲法を英文で読む―国民の権利はどう守られてきたか (中公新書)アメリカ合衆国憲法を英文で読む―国民の権利はどう守られてきたか (中公新書)
(1998/07)
飛田 茂雄

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村上春樹が翻訳の師匠として飛田茂雄さんと柴田元幸さんをあげていました

飛田茂雄さんはYutaにとっても永遠の目標みたいな方です。英語文化の知識についておろそかにせず 専門外にもかかわらずアメリカ憲法を自ら訳し直した姿勢にはすごみがあります。


翻訳の技法―英文翻訳を志すあなたに翻訳の技法―英文翻訳を志すあなたに
(1997/12)
飛田 茂雄

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英語資格や学習教材が溢れている現在ですが、そのような良さがわかるのは自分がある程度実力をつけた後なんですよね。YutaがTOEICや英検の完成度の高さを実感できるようになったのも何にもしないで受けても別に疲れることなくそれなりのスコアが取れるようになってからでした。そのあたりのことを飛田先生も語っておられます。学習法うんぬんの前にがむしゃらにいろいろ触れても無駄にはならないと思います。

芸術であろうとスポーツであろうと、すぐれた教則本に書いてあることのひとつひとつをなるほどと納得できるのは、自分の能力がかなり進んでからである。私はずっと昔、友人に誘われてしばらくゴルフ場に通ったことがある。もちろん人並みに教則本をかじってみたが、ドライバーのテークバックひとつにしても、スローモーション写真を細かく分析したような説明にこちらの動作が全然ついていかず、ただいらだつばかりであった。それでも、何ヶ月かボールや土くれを打っているうちに、書いてあったことの意味がほんのすこしわかってくるのだった。翻訳についても同じようなことが言えるのかもしれない。かつて名翻訳家とうたわれた故中野好夫氏が「難しい翻訳論なんぞに先走りするよりは、その間に訳出せんとする外国語をマスターすることである」(『文学』1955年9月号「翻訳ノート」)とおっしゃった気持ちはよくわかる。翻訳論といい、翻訳技術の指導者といい、ほんとうのところは翻訳の達人にしか理解できないのだから。

この本の巻末には日本語表記の詳しいリストがあったりして、先生が訳出する日本語もおろそかにしていなかったことがわかります。先生が翻訳で大切にしていたのは「想像力」でした。

一見単純な英語を甘く見て穴に落ちてしまうのは、たいがいは「想像力」を働かせていないからである。つい惰性に陥りがちな私は、いつも「自分の頭を錆びついた古い機械翻訳にしてはならない。絶えず想像力を働かせよ」と自分に言い聞かせている。それは翻訳志望者にとっても大事な戒めであろう。


 

まずはここから

 

アイスクリームの皇帝 (Poetry in Pictures)アイスクリームの皇帝 (Poetry in Pictures)
(2014/10/20)
不明

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昨晩本屋で上記の本を見つけました。1900円とちょっと値が張りましたが柴田元幸の訳ということもあり思い切って買ってきました。

(以下はこちらのサイトから抜粋)
人気翻訳家・柴田元幸氏が選訳した世界の名詩アンソロジー『アイスクリームの皇帝』。
古典から現代作家までを、英語・日本語の対訳で味わう大人の詩の絵本ができました!
それぞれの詩の世界を全く異なるタッチで描き出したイラストレーターきたむらさとし氏の絵も圧巻!

【収録作家・作品】
エミリー・ディキンソン/ラッセル・エドソン/ルイス・キャロル/チャールズ・シミック/スティーヴン・クレイン/ハーマン・メルヴィル/ウィリアム・コーベット/イギリス民謡/ナサニエル・ホーソーン/旧約聖書/ジョン・ダン/ディラン・トマス/W・H・デイヴィス/リザ・ロウィッツ/エドガー・アラン・ポー/ジョナサン・アーロン/ウォレス・スティーヴンズ/マザー・グース/エドワード・リア/ウォルター・デ・ラ・メア/ T・S・エリオット/スチュアート・ダイベック


匿名性を考えた箱男を取り上げたこともあり、本の冒頭にあるディキンソンの有名な詩も違った感じで味わえました。



私は誰でもない! あなたは誰!
あなたも — 誰でもないの?
じゃあ私たち二人一組ね!
人に言っちゃだめ! 宣伝されるから — ね!

なんてつまらない — 誰かになるなんで!
なんて公な — 蛙みたいに — 
自分の名前を — 永い六月ずっと — 
聞き惚れる沼に言いつづけるなんで!


『アイスクリームの皇帝』という本のタイトルはウォレス・スティーヴンズの詩からです。



映画『インターステラー』に登場したディラン・トマスの詩も紹介されていました。



Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(映画インターステラー予告編字幕)
“おとなしく夜を迎えるな”
“賢人は闇にこそ 奮起するもの”
“消えゆく光に対して 果敢に挑むのだ”

あの善き夜へ大人しく入らないで(柴田元幸訳)

あの善き夜へ大人しく入らないで
日の終わりに 老いは燃えてほしい叫いてほしい
怒り狂え 光が死んでいくことに怒り狂え


あの快い夜のなかへおとなしく流されてはいけない(鈴木洋美訳)

あの快い夜のなかへおとなしく流されてはいけない
老齢は日暮れに 燃えさかり荒れ狂うべきだ
死に絶えゆく光に向かって 憤怒せよ 憤怒せよ

あのやさしい夜のなかへ静かにはいってゆかないでください (松田幸雄訳)

あのやさしい夜のなかへ静かにはいってゆかないでください、
老人は日の暮れに燃えあがり怒号するものなのです。
怒ってください、怒ってください 光の死んでゆくのを。

下記のジョンダンのような有名どころの詩を中心に短いものばかりで気軽に楽しめるようになっています。



旧約聖書とあるのはVanity Vanityで始まる伝道の書の抜粋が載っています。



英語と日本語が対訳形式で紹介されていて英語学習者には嬉しいつくりなのですが、30も満たない詩しか紹介されていないことに不満を持つ方もいるでしょう。そのような方には英語原文はついていないですが、柳瀬尚紀が翻訳されていることですし以下の本がいいかもしれません。


キャロライン・ケネディが選ぶ「心に咲く名詩115」キャロライン・ケネディが選ぶ「心に咲く名詩115」
(2014/06/20)
キャロライン・ケネディ

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こちらの本の原題はPoems to Learn by Heart。「暗記したい詩」「心に留めておきたい詩」といったところでしょうか。こちらも有名なものばかりなので、英語学習者には助かります。
 

一般人の感覚

 
宮川 友里という方が「TOEIC850点取得する15のルール」という連載を書いていることをたまたまネットで知りました。以下のような触れ込みです。

わずか3か月間の勉強、たった8500円の投資で、休日を犠牲にすることなくTOEIC850点が取れる!
失敗続きの経験から著者が導き出した、超効率的な勉強法を一挙公開!!

短期間で効率的にTOEIC高スコアを取得することを目指しているという立場のようで、王道的に思える英語学習方法をことごとく退けています。あーるさんがまともに思えるほどで、TOEICブロガーにも手厳しいです。

<TOEICブログに書かれる勉強法の多くが忙しいビジネスパーソンの参考にならない理由>
●TOEICブロガーはTOEIC愛が強い。=TOEICの勉強にかける努力・時間・お金を惜しまない人が多いので、その勉強法は“効率性”が主眼にはなりにくい!
●オススメ参考書が多すぎてどれがベストかを選別できない。=継続記録していくというブログの性質上、オススメの参考書も継続的に紹介される。そのため、どれがベストワンなのか、ブログを読んでもわからない!


このような感覚が英語なんか別に勉強したくない層では一般的なんでしょうね。中村澄子先生がサラリーマンに支持され続ける理由もこのあたりの感覚に応えているからでしょう。

≪Rule1≫ まとめ
✔シャドーイングは非効率!
✔ディクテーションは非効率!
✔CNN、BBCニュースの利用は効果的ではない!
✔TOEICブログに書かれている勉強法の多くは忙しいビジネスパーソンの参考にならない!
✔ “分厚い文法書を読む”は非効率!~TOEICはTOEIC対策本で制する。
✔ “洋書を原文(英語版)のまま読む”は非効率!
✔“自分だけの単語帳を作る”は非効率!

熱心なTOEICkerの学習法ですらぬるいと思っているYutaにとってはかなりショックですね(苦笑)このような人の英語力が一番トラブルを起こしやすいのにドヤ顔で連載していて大丈夫なんでしょうか。まあ女性自身だから実害はないんでしょうかねえ。
 

(自分メモ)ニュースについて

 

箱男 (新潮文庫)箱男 (新潮文庫)
(2005/05)
安部 公房

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ニュースについていつも思い出すのが安部公房の『箱男』の一節。20代で読んだ本に今でも影響を受けてしまっています。


ここは箱男の街。匿名が市民の義務となり、誰でもない者だけに許された、居住権。登録された一切のものが、登録されたというそのことによって、裁かれるのだ。

Here is a town for box men. Anonymity is the obligation of the inhabitants and the right to live there is accorded only to persons who are no one. All those who are registred are sentenced by the very fact of being registred.


アメリカのGoodreadsのBox manで紹介されていた一節で一番Likeが多かったのは以下でした。

 小さなものを見つめていると、生きていてもいいと思う。
 雨のしずく……濡れてちぢんだ革の手袋……
 大きすぎるものを眺めていると、死んでしまいたくなる。
 国会議事堂だとか、世界地図だとか……

When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet...When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world...

見ることには愛があるが、見られることには憎悪がある。見られる傷みに耐えようとして、人は歯をむくのだ。しかし誰もが見るだけの人間になるわけにはいかない。見られた者が見返せば、こんどは見ていた者が見られる側にまわってしまうのだ。

In seeing there is love, in being seen there is abhorrence. One grins, trying to bear the pain of being seen. But not just anyone can be someone who only looks. If the one who is looked at looks back, then the person who was looking becomes the one who is looked at.


あの事件の後に下記の一節を引くのは不謹慎なのかもしれないんですが、どうしても思い出してしまうんです。

でも、死ぬってのは、たしかに一種の変化だな。第一、皮膚の色がさっと青みがかってくる。それから、鼻が薄くなり、顎(あご)がしなびて小さくなる。半開きの口は、ナイフを入れた蜜柑(みかん)の皮の切口みたいで、その間から下顎の赤い入歯がはみ出しかけているのさ。おまけに着ている服まで変わるんだ。かなり上等に見えていたのが、見る間にへなへなと見かけ倒しの安物に変わってしまったよ。もちろんそんな事だってニュースじゃない。しかし死んだ当人にとっては、ニュースになろうと、なるまいと、ぜんぜん関係ないみたいだったな。仮に指名手配中の兇悪犯の手にかかった、十人目の犠牲者だったとしても、べつに違った死に方が出来るわけじゃないだろう。自分も変化したけど、外の世界も変化しちゃって、もうこれ以上変化のしようがないんだ。どんな大ニュースも追いつけないほどの、大変化さ。

Dying is, of course, a kind of transformation. First of all, the skin suddenly pales. Then the nose thins, and the jaw withers and gets smaller. The half-open mouth resembles the edge of a tangerine skin cut open with a knife, and the red artificial teeth of the lower jaw begin to jut out from the opening. Further, even the clothes that are being worn change. What appeared to be of very high quality turns before one's eyes into cheap goods, showy but worthless. Of course, such things are not news. But it would seem that for the dead man in question whether it's news or not has nothing to do with him. Supposing one is the tenth victim that had fallen into the hands of a much-wanted, fiendish killer, I don't suppose he would devise a particularly different way of dying. The dead person has changed himself, but the outside world has changed too, and things cannot change any more than they have. It's such a great change that no news, however big, can match it.

と、そう思ったとたんに、ニュースに対する感じ方が、がらりと変わってしまっていた。どう言ったらいいのか……「あなたもニュースをやめられる」ってなわけにはいかないよ……でも、分かるだろう、なんとなく……なぜ誰もが、こうニュースを求めるのか……世間の変化を、あらかじめ予知しておいて、いざという時のため備えるんだって?以前はぼくもそう思っていた。でも大嘘さ。人はただ安心するためにニュースを聞いているだけなんだ。どんな大ニュースを聞かされたどころで、聞いている人間はまだちゃんと生きているわけだからな。本当の大ニュースは、世界の終わりを告げる、最後のニュースだろう。もちろんそれが聞けたら本望だよ。ひとりぼっちの世界を手離さなくてもすむんだからな。考えてみれば、ぼくが中毒にかかったのも、結局のところその最後の放送を聞きのがすまいとする焦りだったような気がする。しかし、ニュースが続いているかぎり、絶対に最後にならないんだ。まだ最後ではありません、というお知らせなのさ。ただ後に続ける、ちょっとした決まり文句が省略されているだけのことでね。昨夜B52による本年度最大の北爆が行われました、でもあなたはまだなんとか生きています。ガス工事中引火して八人重軽傷、でもあなたは無事に生きています。物価上昇率記録更新、でもあなたは生きつづけています。工場廃液で湾内の魚介類全滅、でもあなたはなんとか生きのびています。

No sooner had I realized this than my thinking about news suddenly changed completely. How shall I say . . . ? Slogans won't do the trick: "You too can stop news-watching." But I think you understand . . . somehow . . . why everybody wants news the way they do. Are they preparing for times of emergency by knowing in advance the changes taking place in the world, I wonder? I used to think so. But that was a big lie. People listen to news only to feel reassured. Because however great the news of catastrophe they hear, those listening are still perfectly alive. The really big news is the ultimate news announcing the end of the world, I suppose. Of course, everybody wants to hear that. For then one does not need to abandon the world alone. When I think about it, I feel the reason that I was addicted was my eagerness not to miss this ultimate broadcast. But as long as the news goes on, it will never get to the end. Thus news constitutes the announcement that it is still not the end of the world. The following trifling cliches are merely abridgments. Last night the greatest bombings of North Vietnam this year were carried out by B-52s, but somehow you are still alive. Gas lines under construction ignited and eight persons received serious and light wounds, but you are alive and safe. Record rate of rising prices, yet you continue to live. Extinction of marine life in bays by waste products from factories, but somehow you survive everything.


といってもYutaはニュースが好きなままですが(汗)ちょっと話が飛躍するかもしれませんが、スコア中毒になるのも同じ発想に思えます。人より高いスコアを取るということは生き延びる可能性が高くなるんですよね。

 

TOEICkerの正体

 
Morite2さんや加藤さんから始まり、TommyさんやHUMMERさん、そして、それに続く熱心なTOEIC学習者に共通することは数年後に教える側に回っていることですね。正体というより自然な流れなのかもしれません。ですから、現状ではTOEICkerとは単にTOEIC講師の卵だとして問題ないかもしれません。教えるという立場になった以上、TOEICの高度で細かな知識が要求されるようになりますのでますますTOEICをやりこむことになっていきます。

そこそこの実力しかない人たちが教える側に回っている、回ろうとしていうる状況というのは、何も英語学習業界に限った話ではないようです。以下の本の前書きでは、読者数よりも作家数の方がおおくなってしまうのではないかというアメリカの状況を伝えています。日本でも文学雑誌が文学賞を募集すると、発行部数よりも多い応募数があるという笑えない笑話も耳にします。まあ、ろくに本を読まない英語教師による「つながり」や「まとまり」という流行の言葉もこれに近いものを感じます。




Best American Short Stories 2014Best American Short Stories 2014
(2014/10/07)
不明

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ハフィントンポストにこの本の前書きを改変したものがありました。Adapted from the forward by Heidi Pitlor from THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2014.と断り書きをいれています。

Heidi Pitlor
When Writers Outnumber Readers

Posted: 10/09/2014 8:40 am EDT Updated: 12/09/2014 5:59 am EST

本の前書きはGoogle Bookで読めます。

Sometimes it seems as if the aspiring--and financially well enough endowed-- writer is offered more than the reader in this country. For the young writer, there are a fast-growing number of MFA programs, fellowships, summer workshops, residencies, creative writing centers, books that teach about writing and traditional publishing. For evidence of the opportunities for and widespread desire to write, note the sheer number of blogs that populate the Internet, Facebook and Twitter (where everyone is a published writer, at least within the confines of a status update or tweet), the army of the self-published and the army of books about how to self-publish.

作家を希望するのは別に悪いことではないとしながらもこの流れだと行き着く先はa nation of attention-seeking performers with no audienceだと心配しています。

There is, of course, nothing wrong with wanting to write and seeking help in that endeavor. I am the proud owner of an MFA, a shelf full of books about how to write fiction, how to get published, memoirs by fiction writers, and at least a dozen story anthologies that I bought before I was lucky enough to land my job. But what happens if and when the number of writers begins to outnumber the readers? What happens when writing becomes more appealing to more people than reading? Will we become--or are we already--a nation of attention-seeking performers with no audience?

まずは読者をしっかりと増やしていくしかないと自身の取り組みを紹介したりしています。

We--editors, writers, publishers, all of us--need to do whatever we can to help enliven readers, to help create communities for them if we want to continue to have readers at all. Our independent bookstores are the front lines and many booksellers are fighting the good fight. Here, books stimulate conversation. Conversation stimulates a sense of community. Listening happens. Thinking. The exchange of thoughts.

まずは読むことをしないとa crucial part of us will witherになると警告を発しています。

But we all know the drill: if we only eat candy, if we cultivate our friendships and relationships primarily online, if we forget to walk to town sometimes instead of drive, a crucial part of us will wither. You don't have to read all the books on your list at once. Just pick up the one that grabs you right now, fiction or nonfiction or self-help or whatever. If you don't love it, put it down. Move on.

TOEICを教える側に回るとTOEICの勉強を最優先しなければいけなくなるのでやむをえないでしょう。ただ、もし普通に英語の本を読めるようになりたいという人は、早めに取り込まないと10年経っても読めるようにはなれません。まず本を手にして、開くことから始めるしかないんですよね。
 

教育界のゴジラ

 


日本でピアソンというと、日本から撤退というイメージぐらいでフィナンシャルタイムズも含んだ巨大出版グループであることを意識していないかもしれません。

(Wikipedia)
ピアソン PLC (Pearson PLC) は、ロンドンに本部を置くメディア・コングロマリット 。出版社としてはイギリス・インド・オーストラリア・ニュージーランドで最大規模、アメリカ合衆国・カナダで2番目の規模。

出版不況でもあることから、教育に力を入れているようですが、そのあたりの現状をレポートしている読み応えのある記事がFortuneにありました。アメリカではTOEICのような標準テストが公立学校で実施されていますが、それに合わせてピアソンの業績も上がっているようです。

LEADERSHIP EDUCATION
Everybody hates Pearson

by Jennifer Reingold @jennrein JANUARY 21, 2015, 7:00 AM EST

Words checked = [3972]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]

Everybody hates Pearsonとなっているのはいろいろと問題視されているためです。テスト産業が流行すると金儲け主義と批判する人はどの国にもいるようです。

The problem is, legions of parents, teachers, and others see the new Pearson in a very different light. Many of them, particularly in North America, where the company does some 60% of its sales, think of it as the Godzilla of education. In their view, Pearson is bent on controlling every element of the process, from teacher qualifications to curriculums to the tests used to evaluate students to the grading of the tests to, increasingly, owning and operating its own learning institutions.

Liberals distrust Pearson’s profits: “Always earning,” snipes teacher Pamela Casey Nagler in a blog, mocking the company’s “always learning” slogan. Conservatives despise the idea of foreigners shaping U.S. education. “We feel like Pearson is an alien enemy and they are propagandizing our children,” says Chris Quackenbush of Stop Common Core Florida. Others malign Pearson’s competence, its “history of mistakes,” according to a recent letter signed by 47 New York City school principals.

Most of all, people fear the company’s reach. Alan Singer, a professor of secondary education at Hofstra University in New York who has written extensively about the company, calls Pearson a corporate “octopus.” Diane Ravitch, the former Department of Education official and author of the bestselling Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, has derided what she calls “the Pearsonizing of the American mind.” The company’s name has penetrated far enough into popular culture that comedian Louis C.K., whose daughters attend public school, has blasted Pearson in tweets.
 

作家は意外にも現実的

 
Americanahが話題となったAdichieがNYTに寄稿していました。今月14日にナイジェリアで大統領選挙があるからでようか。大きな政治問題を語るのではなく、身近な問題を取り上げていました。

Lights Out in Nigeria
By CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIEJAN. 31, 2015

LAGOS, Nigeria — WE call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian phenomenon that can buoy spirits and smother dreams. Whenever I have been away from home for a while, my first question upon returning is always: “How has light been?” The response, from my gateman, comes in mournful degrees of a head shake.

Bad. Very bad.

The quality is as poor as the supply: Light bulbs dim like tired, resentful candles. Robust fans slow to a sluggish limp. Air-conditioners bleat and groan and make sounds they were not made to make, their halfhearted cooling leaving the air clammy. In this assault of low voltage, the compressor of an air-conditioner suffers — the compressor is its heart, and it is an expensive heart to replace. Once, my guest room air-conditioner caught fire. The room still bears the scars, the narrow lines between floor tiles smoke-stained black.


作家の想像力を感じさせてくれるのは、電力不足がもたらす悲劇をいろいろと描いているところでしょうか。

I cannot help but wonder how many medical catastrophes have occurred in public hospitals because of “no light,” how much agricultural produce has gone to waste, how many students forced to study in stuffy, hot air have failed exams, how many small businesses have foundered. What greatness have we lost, what brilliance stillborn? I wonder, too, how differently our national character might have been shaped, had we been a nation with children who took light for granted, instead of a nation whose toddlers learn to squeal with pleasure at the infrequent lighting of a bulb.

As we prepare for elections next month, amid severe security concerns, this remains an essential and poignant need: a government that will create the environment for steady and stable electricity, and the simple luxury of a monthly bill.


このOpEdを読んで思い出したのがマーガレットアトウッドが年末NYTに寄稿していたロボットと人間の未来の考察も根本的な問題としてthe lifestyle we have built and come to depend on floats on a sea of electricityと語っていたことでした。

Are Humans Necessary?
Margaret Atwood on Our Robotic Future

By MARGARET ATWOODDEC. 4, 2014

Every technology we develop is an extension of one of our own senses or capabilities. It has always been that way. The spear and the arrow extended the arm, the telescope extended the eye, and now the Kissinger kissing device extends the mouth. Every technology we’ve ever made has also altered the way we live. So how different will our lives be if the future we choose is the one with all these robots in it?

More to the point, how will we power that future? Every modern robotic form that exists, and every one still to come, depends on a supply of cheap energy. If the energy disappears, so will the robots. And, to a large degree, so will we, since the lifestyle we have built and come to depend on floats on a sea of electricity. Hephaestus’ bronze giant was powered by the ichor of the divine gods; we can’t use that, but we need to think up another energy source that’s both widely available and won’t end up killing us.

If we can’t do that, the number of possible futures available to us will shrink dramatically to one. It won’t be the Hurrah; it will be the Yikes. This will perhaps be followed — as in a Ray Bradbury story — by a chorus of battery-powered robotic voices that continues long after our own voices have fallen silent.


 

TOEICの模擬問題をロボットが作成する日

 
TOEICはフォーマットが決まっているから、とはよく言われる話です。それならアルゴリズムで問題を自動作成できる日はすぐそこにきているかもしれません。APが決算報告の記事作成をロボットに本格的に任せるようになったというニュースがありました。以下の記事を読んでみてください。

Apple tops Street 1Q forecasts
Apple posts 1Q profit, results beat Wall Street forecasts

Associated Press
January 27, 2015 4:39 PM

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) _ Apple Inc. (AAPL) on Tuesday reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $18.02 billion.
The Cupertino, California-based company said it had profit of $3.06 per share.

The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $2.60 per share.

The maker of iPhones, iPads and other products posted revenue of $74.6 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Analysts expected $67.38 billion, according to Zacks.

(中略)

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on AAPL at http://www.zacks.com/ap/AAPL


いや本当にわからないものです。昨年の夏のワシントンポストのクイズをやってみるとロボットの書く記事がどれだか本当にわからないです。

Robot vs. man -- can you tell the difference?
The Associated Press has started running stories on earning reports produced by an algorithm. Take this quiz and see if you can guess which ones were written by humans and which ones by a machine. Below are fragments of news stories published by the AP.
BY MARIANA MARCALETTI July 24, 2014

決算報告の数値報告の部分は機械で、分析記事は人間がといった役割分担になるようです。自動化するとスピードと量が格段に差が出ています。

AP's 'robot journalists' are writing their own stories now
By Ross Miller on January 29, 2015 11:55 am

Philana Patterson, an assistant business editor at the AP tasked with implementing the system, tells us there was some skepticism from the staff at first. "I wouldn't expect a good journalist to not be skeptical," she said. Patterson tells us that when the program first began in July, every automated story had a human touch, with errors logged and sent to Automated Insights to make the necessary tweaks. Full automation began in October, when stories "went out to the wire without human intervention." Both the AP and Automated Insights tell us that no jobs have been lost due to the new service. We're also told the automated system is now logging in fewer errors than the human-produced equivalents from years past.

Before this program was implemented, the AP estimates it was doing quarterly earnings coverage for about 300 companies. Now it automates 3,000 such reports each quarter. Of those, 120 will have an added human touch, either by updating the original story or doing a separate follow-up piece. One such company is Apple; as Patterson notes, that automated Apple story freed up reporter Brandon Bailey to focus on this angled, more nuanced report contextualizing the company's earnings along with quotes from Apple executives. Others include Google, Coca-Cola, and American Airlines. 180 more are monitored to see if a follow-up is needed
.

このアルゴリズムを作成した会社ではケーススタディとして紹介しています。

Case Study
The Associated Press Leaps Forward

AP can now produce 4,400 quarterly earnings stories - a nearly 15-fold increase over its manual efforts.

Vergeの記事最後はちゃかして終わっています(笑)

So no, computers are not taking journalists' jobs — not yet, at any rate. Instead, they're freeing up writers to think more critically about the bigger picture. "One of the things we really wanted reporters to be able to do was when earnings came out to not have to focus on the initial numbers," said Patterson. "That's the goal, to write smarter pieces and more interesting stories."

This story was generated by a Homo sapiens who really wanted to use this Shutterstock photo as the lead image:


もちろんこれは報告する内容が決まっている決算報告だからこそここまでの質が可能になったのでしょう。でも決算報告でここまでできるのですから、TOEICの問題だったら朝飯前ではないかという気がします。使用語彙の縛りなんかもプログラムならキッチリ守ってくれそうですし。。。韓国との差が思わぬ形で埋まる日も近いかもしれません。

 

Owakare: The Great Parting

 
BOOKS
Lingering outside the way station for the dead
Only show author if their role is equal to author

BY KRIS KOSAKA
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

Fitting for a book that unveils a place between worlds, Mockett’s telling sits in-between genres. Part memoir, part introduction to Buddhist practices in Japan, part travelogue, Mockett’s book becomes a resting place: for the bereaved, the Japanophile or for any inquisitive soul.

先々週のJapan Times On Sundayで紹介されていたWhere the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye(死者が立ち寄る場所で、日本人はお別れをする)を読み始めました。

死者が振り返るところ
ひとはあらがえない悲しみにどう立ち向かうのか

Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye
Marie Mutsuki Mockett (Author)
978-0-393-06301-1, 336 pp., 2015/1, Hardcover $26.95
サンフランシスコに住むマリー・ムツキ・モケットの家族は福島第一原発から約40キロの所にあるお寺を所有している。 2011年3月の東日本大震災の後、高い放射線レベルにより彼女の祖父の骨を埋めることができなくなった。 日本人がこの地震で亡くなった何千人もの人々の喪に服していたとき、モケットもまた時を同じくして突然亡くなったアメリカ人の父親の死を悼んでいた。
慰めを求めながらモケットは葬儀の時に僧侶と日本人たちの独特さにつつまれた。葬儀では動揺したり恐れたりしたが、やがて救われるような高揚を感じた。 彼女の旅は紆余曲折の中、放射線ゾーンに白い防護服をまとって入り、僧侶のための学校である永平寺や不思議な恐山、さらに清水寺の地下の“漆黒の闇”の胎内めぐりへとつながった。 放射線ゾーンでの桜祭りの高揚から神の宿る箸まで、モケットはたぐいまれな感受性で世俗さと崇高さの両方を描いている。 気取らないがぐいぐい惹き込む語り口は、彼女の行く先がどこであれ読者を導き、悲しみそのものにさえ向き合わせてくれるようなガイド書になっている。 

“A poignant spiritual journey through Japan… Touching on themes of modernity and tradition, Mockett takes part in various religious customs to come to terms with her grief and understand her mixed-cultural heritage.” ― Publishers Weekly

著者:マリー・ムツキ・モケット
著書の‘Picking Bones from Ash’は2010年サローヤン賞及びAsian American 文学賞フィクション部門で候補作、パターソン賞で最終候補作。サンフランシスコ在住。


この本はVeneration for the departedというNHKの番組をさらに広げたようですね。モケットさんは、大震災の直後New York Timesにも寄稿していたようです。

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Memories, Washed Away

By MARIE MUTSUKI MOCKETT
Published: March 14, 2011



After Father's Death, A Writer Learns How 'The Japanese Say Goodbye'
JANUARY 27, 2015 4:34 PM ET

Japan TimesだけでなくNew York Timesでも書評で取り上げてくれています。

‘Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye,’ by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
By RICHARD LLOYD PARRYJAN. 23, 2015

Among the many shocking things about tsunamis — along with their suddenness, violence and indiscriminate destruction of life and community — is how little there is to say about them. Man-made catastrophes, like wars or nuclear accidents, provide infinite opportunities for blame, recrimination and lessons learned. But natural disasters have no politics. One can quibble about the height of sea walls, the promptness of warnings and the quality of aid given to survivors. But such events have always occurred in countries like Japan, and always will. When the wave has receded, the dead have been counted and the slow work of recovery has begun, the pundits sheepishly quit the field and abandon it to the theologians, the spiritualists and the priests.

These are the people at the core of Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s book, which opens with the tsunami that struck northeastern Japan in 2011 and closes with a ghost. The act of God and the haunting frame an intriguing, but often awkward, travelogue through a landscape of Japanese spiritual belief, with forays into history, folklore and memoir. But the book’s central subject, deferred and evaded for much of its length, is the stubborn anguish of personal grief — the experience, as Mockett puts it, of being “kidnapped against one’s will and forced to go to some foreign country, all the while just longing to go back home.”


NPRのインタビューによるとMount Doomも出てくるようですね。そこまでいくとちょっとという感じもします。NYTの書評の方も同じように感じたようです。

Uncertainty in language deflates Mockett’s insights; she has a weakness for incongruous pop cultural references — in the space of a few lines she compares a Zen priest comforting tsunami survivors to both Santa Claus and Mary Poppins. The slackness of the book’s structure drains power from what should be moments of intensity: Mockett’s “conversation” with her dead father, conducted through a blind medium, is as anticlimactic as the exorcism she attends and the ghost story with which the book closes.

サイトの無料会員登録が必要ですが、この本の第3章はNarrativeというサイトで読むことができますので、興味を持った方はまずはこの章から読んでみてはいかかがでしょうか。

Owakare: The Great Parting
AN ESSAY
BY MARIE MOCKETT


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