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.
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.
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。
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.
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。
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。
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
（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.
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.
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.”
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。
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。
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.
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 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
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.
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."
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.
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。。。
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!
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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） 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
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。
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?
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
（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.
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。
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.
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.
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.
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。
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！
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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。
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.
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
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
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.
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:
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。
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.”
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.
![Wired [UK] February 2015 (単号)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KMBF-7UgL._SL160_.jpg)
