New Yorkerの記事で人が関わらないようにして自然保護をする例としてE.O. Wilsonの名前があがっていました。よくある自然保護運動だと思っていたのですがPBS Newshourで彼が「地球の半分を自然に明け渡せ」となんともラディカルな主張をしているのを知りました。彼のHalf Earthという本をAudibleで聞き始めたところです。
“It’s amazing the things you hear these days,” he tells me while ordering us a vegetable sushi luncheon. “You actually hear people say the Earth is so damaged that you might as well let humans take over whatever is left. There’s a motley group going around saying that extinction of so many species is nothing to worry about because we can revive them by cloning their DNA! Still others suggest we shouldn’t be concerned because there have been great extinctions in the past and biodiversity has bounced back afterwards. They don’t mention it took millions of years.”
Wilson believes the policy wonks he calls “Anthropocene enthusiasts” have found an audience only because “we’re in love with technology. Silicon Valley has created a new Olympus with this feeling that American and Asian genius can pull off miracles. But extinction is irreversible.”
ちょっと極端な考えに思えますが、今年はアメリカのNational Park Serviceができて100周年だそうです。自然保護という考えもたかだか100年近くの考えで目新しいものと言えるかもしれません。100年後は自然と人間の住み分けが普通に行われている可能性だってなきにしもあらずでしょう。
（オックスフォード） National Park Service the US government organization in charge of the National Park System. This includes national parks and other types of protected area, including national historical parks, national military parks, national monuments, national memorials, national preserves and national recreation areas. The National Park Service was established in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson and is part of the US Department of the Interior.
Yellowstone National Park the first US national park, established in 1872, and one of the largest. It covers about 3 500 square miles/9 065 square kilometres in north-west Wyoming and parts of Idaho and Montana. It has many wild animals, including bears and buffalo, and is famous for its fine scenery, hot springs and geysers (= underground hot springs that shoot hot water or steam up into the air). The park was made a World Heritage Site in 1978. see also Old Faithful
It is tempting to see Theranos as another example of Silicon Valley hype — a company based on a wisp of an unproven idea becomes a multibillion-dollar phenomenon with the backing of pump-and-dump venture capitalists.
(Wikipedia) 価値の低いを株を買い上げて、風説を流布して価格を吊り上げ利益を得る不正取引は、英語でPump and dump（「ポンプ」で吸い上げ膨らませて「どさっと」投げ売る意）と呼ばれる。
（オックスフォード） pump-and-dump ADJECTIVE informal Denoting the fraudulent practice of encouraging investors to buy shares in a company in order to inflate the price artificially, and then selling one’s own shares while the price is high.
In fact, however, Silicon Valley’s most experienced investors in start-ups saw red flags at Theranos before anyone else. The Theranos saga shows just how well Silicon Valley does its homework, especially when considering medical technology, in which the risks of doing real harm to people are higher than those posed by the next photo-sharing app.
do one’s homeworkは「下調べをする」「しっかり準備をする」という意味のようですが、「やるべきことをやる」というニュアンスがある気がします。こういうのはたくさんの文例にあってニュアンスをつかむ必要がありますね。
（オックスフォード学習） red flag a flag used to warn people of danger You mustn’t swim when the red flag is flying.
homework (informal) work that somebody does to prepare for something You could tell that he had really done his homework (= found out all he needed to know).
（ロングマン） if you do your homework, you prepare for an important activity by finding out information you need [↪ research]: It's worth doing a bit of homework before buying a computer.
Theranos approached GV twice and was turned down twice because of what one partner called “so much hand-waving.” People I have talked to at other investment firms said they turned down Theranos for similar reasons, unsatisfied with Theranos’s attempt to substitute its intangible “coolness” in place of technical details needed to validate its diagnostic technology.
（オックスフォード） hand-waving NOUN The use of gestures and insubstantial language meant to impress or convince: their patriotic hand-waving lacked sincerity [AS MODIFIER]: her path of logic and hand-waving explanations
As the world warms, and the oceans acidify, and species are reshuffled from one continent to another, it’s increasingly difficult to say what would count as conservation. In his most recent book, “Half-Earth,” the biologist E. O. Wilson argues that the best hope for the planet’s remaining species lies in leaving them alone. Even today, there are vast regions where, Wilson writes, “natural processes unfold in the absence of deliberate human intervention.” (The Amazon Basin is one such region; the Serengeti is another.) We ought to allow these processes to continue, Wilson argues. To this end, he recommends setting aside fifty per cent of the planet’s surface as reserves.
“Give the rest of Earth’s life a chance,” he pleads.
Those scientists who recommend this sort of hands-off approach—and there are many of them—stress the limits of what science can accomplish. Just because you can break an egg doesn’t mean you can put it back together. They argue that even the best-intentioned intervention can do more harm than good. People may read about a project like Gates’s or Powell’s and take exactly the wrong lesson from it.
“There’s a lot of psychology here,” Terry Hughes told me. “There is a danger of thinking we’ve found the technological solution, so therefore we can keep damaging reefs, because we can always fix them in the future.
“In terms of protecting ecosystems like coral reefs or rain forests, prevention is always better than cure,” he added.
Advocates for techniques like assisted evolution and genetic engineering argue that the moment for being hands off has passed. Humans have already so violently altered the world that without “deliberate intervention” the future holds only loss and more loss.
“There’s just too many people right now,” Powell told me. “I always say, ‘We need a full toolbox of methods to keep our forests healthy.’ And we shouldn’t limit it by saying, ‘Well, you can do this method but you can’t do that method.’
“You have emerald ash borer going through right now,” he went on. (The borer, another import from Asia, is killing ash trees from Colorado to New Hampshire.) “Should we just leave the ash trees and say, O.K., they’re gone? Woolly adelgid is killing the hemlocks. If we lose all the hemlocks, do we just say, O.K., that’s gone? There’s what’s called thousand-cankers disease that’s spreading on walnuts right now. Is that the kind of attitude we should have? We have all these challenges out there, and the question is: Should we just let the trees die out? And to me that’s not an option.”
Those scientists who recommend this sort of hands-off approach—and there are many of them—stress the limits of what science can accomplish. Just because you can break an egg doesn’t mean you can put it back together. They argue that even the best-intentioned intervention can do more harm than good.
二つ目は技術的な解決方法があればもっと自然破壊をしていいという考え方につながりやすいこと。
“There is a danger of thinking we’ve found the technological solution, so therefore we can keep damaging reefs, because we can always fix them in the future.
記事の締めを紹介してしまい申し訳ありませんが、Yutaは諦観した態度をとるよりも、無駄なあがきでもいいからできる限りのことをしたいというタイプなので彼女には共感を覚えてしまいます。 “There are many, many unknowns,” she went on. “And people are very quick to criticize based on ‘But what happens if this doesn’t work and what happens if this doesn’t work?’ And I say, ‘Well, I don’t know now, but I know I’ll know more when I get there.’ And I feel that we’re at this point where we need to throw caution to the wind and just try.”
USA Todayの記事はThe Girl on the Train is approaching the platform. Are you ready to get on board?と列車にかけて映画公開が近いことを書いています。英語学習者にとっては凝った書き出しになるほど状況を理解できなくなってしまいますね。
The Girl on the Train is approaching the platform. Are you ready to get on board?
Wednesday brought the first trailer for the movie adaptation of Paula Hawkins' best-selling 2015 thriller, due in theaters on Oct. 7.
Emily Blunt stars as Rachel Watson, an alcoholic who hides her unemployment by continuing her old commute and passes the train trip by observing the Hipwells, a seemingly perfect couple, who live near her ex-husband. Rachel finds herself entangled in their story when Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett), a nanny for her ex-husband (Justin Theroux) and his new wife (Rebecca Ferguson), goes missing.
日本語の記事もゴーンガールと比較していますがVanity Fairでも同じことをしています。
The Girl on the Train Trailer Wants to Give Viewers That Gone Girl Feeling Another best-selling thriller is coming to theaters. BY JOANNA ROBINSON The Girl on the Train actually has a lot in common with 2014’s Gone Girl—and we’re not just talking about the word “girl.” Both are based on best-selling novels, both center on a woman who has disappeared, and both take full advantage of unreliable or, at least, incomplete narration. In this case, our narrator is alcoholic, heartbroken Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) who is making a mess of her life post-divorce and finds herself wrapped up in the disappearance of her ex-husband’s nanny, Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett). Readers of the book (and, soon, viewers of the film!) race to solve the mystery faster than poor Rachel’s booze-clouded brain. There’s a twist, but maybe not a shocking one if you’ve read your Agatha Christie.
最後にThere’s a twist, but maybe not a shocking one if you’ve read your Agatha Christie.とありますが確かにありがちなオチではありますが、最初の方のドキドキを考えると十分面白かった作品だと思います。映画でもそのようなサスペンスを味わえるといいのですが。。。
APRIL 21, 2016 Cover Story: “Purple Rain,” by Bob Staake BY FRANÇOISE MOULY AND MINA KANEKO The pop singer Prince died on Thursday, at the age of fifty-seven, but his legacy will remain with us for a long, long time. Our cover for next week’s issue, Bob Staake’s “Purple Rain,” is a tribute to the great performer.
The survey, commissioned by Deezer, found that 43 percent of young people could identify Bieber lyrics while only 38 percent recognised the work of England’s famous playwright.
Over half knew the lines “Girlfriend, girlfriend, you could be my girlfriend” and “Is it too late now to say sorry?” were from Bieber songs, while only a third knew “To be or not to be” was a Shakespearian line.
また現地の若者も知らないからシェイクスピアなんか知らなくてもいいという態度でいいのかと言いたくもなります。確かに英語力の基礎もままならない人にはとりあえず不要でしょうが、有名どころのセリフは抑えておかないと英文記事などで引用されたこと、それを元に改変していることに気づかないままになってしまうので、いつまでたってもネイティブ向けの英文はほとんど読めない人になってしまいます。ちょうどそんな影響の大きさがわかる動画をNew York Timesが作っていました。
In the decade or so that she has been creating music as M.I.A. — euphoric, provocative, tacky-glam music that makes other pop stars sound hopelessly homogenised — the Anglo-Sri Lankan artist has revealed an equal talent for controversy. She has offered confusing accounts of her father’s role in the Tamil separatist movement, and has herself been accused of being a terrorist sympathiser by the Sri Lankan government (and politically naive by just about everyone else). She has been sued by the National Football League in the US for making a one-fingered gesture while sharing the stage with Madonna and Nicki Minaj at the 2012 Super Bowl XLVI. In her most recent video, ‘Borders’, she sang from a dinghy full of actors pretending to be dead refugees in a doctored Paris Saint-Germain shirt (it read Fly Pirates, rather than Fly Emirates), which didn’t go down all that well with the French football club’s lawyers.
doctored Paris Saint-Germain shirt (it read Fly Pirates, rather than Fly Emirates)の部分について語っている動画です。2012年にマドンナと出演したスーパーボールの演奏で中指を立てた人という認識しかなかったんですが、マッチョなスポーツの世界に対する居心地の悪さというのもあったようです。
自身もスリランカ難民のためか、政治的なスタンスはどうしても強くなってしまうかもしれません。
A lot of M.I.A.’s frustration comes from the fact that she’s pretty much the only South Asian musician on the world stage. She has been accused of naivety in the past, but when she describes the refugee camps that she recently visited in Tamil Nadu, she is nuanced and knowledgeable. These problems are live for her. The Sri Lankan authorities no longer class her as a terrorist cheerleader but she doesn’t plan on returning any time soon. ‘They keep saying: “It’s all great now, come see for yourself!” But I have a kid, I don’t want to take that chance. The way Sri Lanka operates, you’ll get killed and the government will say: “Ah she went swimming, she was eaten by a shark, what can you do?” ’
大企業H&Mのために曲を書いたのは以下の理由があったようです。
She has recorded a new song, ‘Rewear It’, to encourage shoppers to recycle their old clothes at H&M stores during this week’s World Recycle Week, in exchange for shopping vouchers. ‘I’m brown. So the first thing people will say is that brown people make the clothes in the factory — what are you doing repping the other side and not addressing this?’ And what does she say to that? ‘OK, so with a mainstream brand, we know what it represents, we know what it means. It’s click-click-click, buy-buy-buy. We’re the max generation, maxed out, maximising on the, erm, max.’ And with H&M at the pinnacle of ‘fast fashion’, she feels it’s ‘brave’ of them to change their approach. ‘People will say that they’re greenwashing, and so on — but the fact that people can even make those comments and H&M will see those comments is a positive thing. ’
During the campaign period, April 18-24, H&M aims to collect 1,000 tonnes of unwanted or worn out garments from customers worldwide in its more than 3,600 stores. The initiative is part of H&M’s goal to close the loop in fashion, recycling unwanted garments to create recycled textile fibers for new products. The H&M Garment Collecting initiative was initiated already 2013.
To raise awareness M.I.A. wrote the song ‘Rewear it’ exclusively for H&M and the World Recycle Week campaign. H&M has worked closely with choreographer Aaron Sillis to interpret M.I.A.’s music and lyrics into dance moves for the campaign’s video.
“World Recycle Week is about embracing important environmental issues such as the landfills, and highlighting a global movement”, says M.I.A.
Harriet Tubman died in 1913 (two-paragraph New York Times obituary right here! Two paragraphs.), but her legacy endures. Her legacy is typing a third of this conversation. But ought there be a degree of catching up? For instance, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who died in 1902, is deserving of more than the possible “Avengers” treatment Treasury apparently has planned for suffragists.
こちらの記事でその訃報を紹介してくれています。語数は132語なのでTOEICでも少ない部類です。
8 Things Harriet Tubman's Obituary Writer Forgot to Include By Anna Swartz April 20, 2016 Wednesday's news that Harriet Tubman would be replacing former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill has launched the abolitionist hero back into the spotlight. With Tubman about to be honored by having her face in Americans' wallets, it's easy to think that this is just another in what must have been a long string of honors for a much-lauded star of American history. But, the truth is, when Tubman died in her 90s in 1913, her death merited only a 132-word obituary on page nine of the New York Times — and a significant amount of the space is devoted to naming her male contemporaries. Harriet Tubman Davis, an ex-slave, known as the "Moses of her people," who before the civil war took 300 slaves to Canada through her "underground railroad," died on Monday night at the home she founded for aged and indigent negroes at Auburn, N.Y. She was said to be 98 years old, and her death was caused by pneumonia.
Harriet Tubman Davis was esteemed by such men as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Phillips Brooks, Horace Mann, Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith and John Brown, while on the other hand planters and slave owners offered rewards of from $12,000 to $40,000 for her capture during the fifties, at the time when she was taking slaves out of the United States. She had served as scout, nurse and spy in the Union Army.
昨日取り上げたThe Birth of a Nationの映画は1915年に上映されたそうですから同時代ですね。もちろん時代のせいにして免責するつもりはないですが、そういう風潮だったのは確かなようです。
Inshallah Is Good for Everyone By WAJAHAT ALI APRIL 22, 2016 A COLLEGE student was recently escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight after a fellow passenger said she heard him making comments in Arabic that were “potentially threatening.” In a statement, Southwest Airlines said that the student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, who came to the United States as a refugee from Iraq, was removed for the “content of the passenger’s conversation” and not his language choice.
April 18 2016 - DALLAS, TX Statement Regarding Customer Situation on Flight 4620 We provided the passenger an immediate refund of his unused ticket and regret any less than positive experience a Customer has onboard our aircraft. We welcome onboard more than a hundred million Customers each year; and we aim to safely transport each, while maintaining the comfort of all. Safety is our primary focus, and our Employees are trained to make decisions to safeguard the security of our Crews and Customers on every flight. We would not remove a passenger from a flight without a collaborative decision rooted in established procedures. Southwest neither condones nor tolerates discrimination of any kind. Our Company could not survive if we practiced or believed otherwise. In fact, a cursory view of our workforce, as well as our expansive, multi-cultural Customer base is a reliable indicator that we exalt and appreciate diversity.
Inshallah is the Arabic version of “fuggedaboudit.” It’s similar to how the British use the word “brilliant” to both praise and passive-aggressively deride everything and everyone. It transports both the speaker and the listener to a fantastical place where promises, dreams and realistic goals are replaced by delusional hope and earnest yearning.
Inshallah is the Arabic version of “fuggedaboudit.”の “fuggedaboudit”でフリーズしてしまった方は新形式のTOEICで口語表現に苦戦するかもしれません。意味がわかるとなんてことのないものです。表現が耳で馴染んでいるとピンときますよね。
(wikitionary) fuggedaboudit English Etymology Eye dialect spelling of forget about it. Interjection fuggedaboudit (slang) Do not worry about it; it does not matter; it is beyond your control. (slang, New York) There is no hope of it being so, the idea is preposterous; do not waste my time with such notions
英語学習者として興味深かったのが、Inshallahのさまざまな使われ方の紹介です。文脈によってさまざまな意味を持ちます。こういうのをMIC(meaning in context)と呼ぶのでいいのでしょうか。このような文脈によってではないと意味が決まらないような表現が新形式TOEICで連発したら嫌ですね。
If you are a parent, you can employ inshallah to either defer or subtly crush the desires of young children. Boy: “Father, will we go to Toys ‘R’ Us later today?” Father: “Yes. Inshallah.” Translation: “There is no way we’re going to Toys ‘R’ Us. I’m exhausted. Play with the neighbor’s toys. Here, play with this staple remover. That’s fun, isn’t it?”
If you are a commitment-phobe or habitually late to events, inshallah immediately provides you with an ambiguous grace period. Wedding Planner: “We only have the hall from 7 to 10 p.m. We’ll incur extra charges if we go past 10. Please tell me you’ll be on time.” Wedding Attendee: “But of course! Inshallah, we’ll be there.” Translation: “Oh, you sad, sad, silly little man. I hope you have saved a lot of money or have access to an inheritance. I’ll leave my house at 9:45 p.m.”
Inshallah is also an extremely useful tool in the modern quest for love. Man: “So, you think we can go on a date later this week?” Woman: “Yeah, let me think about it, inshallah.” Translation: “No. Never. There is no way we are ever going on a date. Even if there was a zombie apocalypse and you were the last man on earth, I would not consider this an option and would rather the human species perish as a result of my decision.”
I drop about 80 inshallahs a day, give or take. I’ll get to the gym, inshallah. Yes, I’ll clean up around the house, inshallah. Most commonly, inshallah is used in Muslim-majority communities to escape introspection, hard work and strategic planning and instead outsource such responsibilities to an omnipotent being, who somehow, at some time, will intervene and fix our collective problems.
Heavenly Father, we've come to thank you for your word and your will. You listen to him and you might just make it into heaven. Amen. Submit yourselves to your masters with all respect. Brethren, I pray you sing a new song. Sing praise in the assembly of the righteous. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let the high praise of God be on the mouths of the saints and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the demonic nations and punishment on those peoples to bind their kings with chains! This honor have all His saints! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord! Sing to Him a new song!
Sundance Film Review: ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Chief Film Critic Justin Chang JANUARY 25, 2016 | 09:05PM PT Debuting writer-director Nate Parker stars in this searingly impressive account of the Nat Turner slave rebellion. It speaks to his ambition that the writer, director, producer and actor Nate Parker chose to title his slavery drama “The Birth of a Nation,” though the film would be a significant achievement by any name. Arriving more than a century after D.W. Griffith’s epic lit up the screen with racist images forever destined to rankle and provoke, this powerfully confrontational account of Nat Turner’s life and the slave rebellion he led in 1831 seeks to purify and reclaim a motion-picture medium that has only just begun to treat America’s “peculiar institution” with anything like the honesty it deserves. If “12 Years a Slave” felt like a breakthrough on that score, then Parker’s more conventionally told but still searingly impressive debut feature pushes the conversation further still: A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease. But the film is perhaps even more accomplished as a theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
48秒あたりから 1831 in Virginia Nat Turner leads slave rebellion hoping to spark slave uprising in the South. Dozens of whites are killed before the violent revolt is quickly defeated. Turner is later captured, tried and hunged.
（ロングマン） Turner, Nat (1800-31) a US slave who organized a successful revolt (=an attack against people in authority) against Southern slave owners in 1831. He was caught and later hanged for his actions.
（オックスフォード） Nat Turner (1800-1831) a US slave who in 1831 led a group of slaves to murder over 50 white people in Southampton County, Virginia. This was called the Southampton Insurrection. Turner and 16 other slaves were hanged. The murders almost ended abolitionism in the South and led to strict new laws to control slaves. see also William Styron
The Birth of a Nation review – slavery epic as brutal as Braveheart With a provocative title and a timely focus on America’s history of slavery, this is Sundance’s most talked-about film. If only it were less heavy-handed The story of Nat Turner had profound consequences for America. The slave who became a preacher and then, in 1831, the leader of a revolt is said to have triggered a chain of events that included the civil war and the abolition of slavery less than 35 years later. For Nate Parker – writer, director and star of The Birth of a Nation – it’s been a seven-year journey to get his film made, and with a title provocatively taken from DW Griffith’s famously racist 1915 film about the foundations of America and the current furore around diversity in Hollywood, the timing of its premiere couldn’t have been any better. This is an alternative history of America’s roots which spits in the face of Griffith’s account.
1915年の映画史に残るD W Griffithの名作・迷作のタイトルをあえてつけたことで野心の大きさを感じることができます。ロングマンの紹介は事実を述べているだけですが、オックスフォードの紹介はその作品が持つ反響や影響も付け加えてくれるので意味合いをつかむのに助かります。
（オックスフォード） The Birth of a Nation a US silent film (1915) by D W Griffith. It tells the story of the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction after it. Although it was a great success and influenced later films, it made the Ku Klux Klan seem good, and there was violence in several US cities when it was shown.
（ロングマン） Griffith, D.W. (1875-1948) one of the greatest US film directors, famous especially for inventing new ways of making films and of using the camera. His films include Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).
New Yorkerの記事で映画の文法を取り上げていましたが1915年の“The Birth of a Nation”はまさに映画の文法を作り上げた映画でもあったようです。
“The Birth of a Nation” was a landmark in motion picture history—full of technological innovations and new storytelling techniques, including flashbacks, crosscutting, dissolves, closeups, panoramic filming, and color tinting
A hundred years ago, on February 8, 1915, D. W. Griffith released “The Birth of a Nation.” The movie became the fledgling film industry’s first blockbuster. It ran for over three hours at a time when most films were not longer than ten minutes. It had employed eighteen thousand people and used three thousand horses during filming, and the finished product had five thousand discrete scenes. It was the first film to allocate money for an advertising campaign. Griffith wanted his film to resemble the high art of theater, so he hired a full orchestra to play the film’s soundtrack in certain movie houses. Griffith succeeded. “The Birth of a Nation” was a landmark in motion picture history—full of technological innovations and new storytelling techniques, including flashbacks, crosscutting, dissolves, closeups, panoramic filming, and color tinting, all of which heightened the dramatic and emotional effects. The film grossed somewhere between thirteen and eighteen million dollars (roughly three hundred to four hundred and fifty million dollars today). In March, 1915, under President Woodrow Wilson, “The Birth of a Nation” became the first film to be screened at the White House.
単に白人至上主義の人種差別主義の映画だったら過去の遺物で済んだのですが、映画芸術的には無視できない作品なので厄介なようです。そのあたりをThe Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Isと表しています。
Architect of new worlds Virtual reality is no longer the future. It is here now, and we saw first-hand, while working with Palmer Luckey and his team at Oculus on The Martian VR, how VR has opened up a new world of storytelling. The technology Palmer has shepherded has made it possible to experience storytelling in ways we previously could only imagine. It allowed us to invite everyone to go to Mars and to truly experience what astronaut Mark Watney did. It was especially gratifying after we had gone to such great lengths to ensure the accuracy of the film, including by partnering with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I have always loved creating and interpreting new worlds, and having the opportunity to do so in a full 360-degree scope was thrilling. Because of Palmer’s entrepreneurial and innovative nature, the needle for VR has moved from impractical to endlessly possible. Scott’s films include Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Blade Runner
Janicza Bravo makes short films about loneliness. In one, Michael Cera plays an abrasive paraplegic who can’t get lucky. In another, Gaby Hoffmann plays a phone stalker for whom the description “comes on too strong” is not strong enough. Bravo’s shorts employ the visual grammar of art-house cinema: over-the-shoulder shots representing a character’s point of view, handheld tracking shots depicting urgent movement, lingering closeups to heighten intimacy or unease, carefully composed establishing shots with an actor in the center of the frame
冒頭に紹介されていた文法はover-the-shoulder shots representing a character’s point of view, handheld tracking shots depicting urgent movement, lingering closeups to heighten intimacy or uneaseでしたが、VRのヘッドセットにするとこのような従来の方法が通用しなくなるというのです。
Cinematic grammar no longer applies. There is no frame in which to compose a shot. An actor who directly addresses the camera isn’t breaking the fourth wall, because the viewer is already in the middle of the action. The viewer can look anywhere, so the director often adds subtle visual or auditory cues to indicate where to look, or to signal that the viewer’s gaze can wander without missing anything important. Tracking shots must be steady and slow, because too much camera movement can cause discomfort—viewers have reported headaches, vertigo, and nausea. For the same reason, most V.R. experiences last only a few minutes; more sustained stories tend to be divided into episodes. With the current headsets, “virtual-reality sickness” can kick in after about twenty minutes. It seems to affect old people more strongly than young people and women more strongly than men. While researching this piece, I sometimes had trouble sleeping, which is unusual for me. I avoid looking at computers before bed, because they have been linked with disturbed sleep. I eventually realized that I had been spending much of my evening leisure time with a magnified AMOLED screen two inches from my face.
The Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear have been on sale since last year. More sophisticated V.R. headsets have been available to developers for about two years, in prototype form, and are now reaching the market. The Oculus Rift, which produces precise localized audio, sells for six hundred dollars. The HTC Vive, a “room-scale” system that uses laser emitters to track a user’s movement within a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space, costs eight hundred. (High-powered computers, sold separately, are required for both.) Omer Shapira, an artist and a software engineer, told me, “The tech is advancing astoundingly quickly, but the storytellers are still catching up. Humans are good at picking up language, including visual language, but first it has to be invented.” He mentioned the Kuleshov effect, which was established in the early days of cinema by the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov. When footage of a man with a neutral expression was intercut with an image of a child in a coffin, the audience thought that the man looked sorrowful; when the same footage was intercut with a shot of a bowl of soup, the man looked hungry. “Over time, that sort of thing becomes intuitive to an audience,” Shapira said.
I asked whether V.R. would be as transformative as the Internet, and Batt didn’t hesitate. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “It’s not a new way to watch movies, or a new gaming platform. It’s a new medium. How often do new mediums come along?”
VRの成功例として“Notes on Blindness”と“Giant”いう短編をあげていました。
One experience that succeeds within V.R.’s current constraints is “Notes on Blindness,” which was inspired by the theologian John Hull, who lost his sight in 1983. For years afterward, he recorded a diary on audiocassette. The V.R. experience animates excerpts of the diary, using only tiny points of light. You begin in darkness, and sounds cause shapes to coalesce fleetingly around you: a tree is marked by the wind blowing through its leaves; a person on a nearby park bench is imperceptible and then suddenly, with the rumpling of a newspaper, springs to life. The images are crude, but their crudeness is part of the point.
Another promising experiment is “Giant,” a six-minute experience by Milica Zec and Winslow Porter. Zec is Serbian, and she was sixteen years old in 1999, when NATO bombed Belgrade. “Parents would omit the truth, trying to create a normal situation in the home,” she told me. “I wanted to translate that emotion into fiction.” Zec called Porter, who had worked on V.R. projects, and they decided to film actors in front of a green screen and then place them in a computer-rendered 3-D environment—a combination that had not been attempted before. “What we needed wasn’t actually available when we started,” Porter said. “The technology came into existence during the few months that we were in production.” To view “Giant,” you wear an Oculus or Vive headset and sit on a “rumble chair”—an IKEA stool with a built-in subwoofer. You’re in a basement, presumably in the United States, along with a mother, a father, and a six-year-old girl. The parents tell the girl that the booming sounds she hears are a friendly giant’s footsteps—“He just wants to play”—but the truth is more dire. As the blasts move nearer, you hear them in your headphones, see them in the flickering light bulbs above you, and feel them in the stool vibrating below you. The sense of claustrophobia becomes acute—you can look behind you or above you, but you’ll find only close walls and low ceilings.
Both “Notes on Blindness” and “Giant” premièred at New Frontier, the V.R. showcase at Sundance, along with “Hard World” and some twenty other experiences. Shari Frilot, who curates New Frontier and has seen nearly every piece of cinematic V.R. ever made, told me, “I think we’re moving toward something amazing. I’ve seen a lot of things I really like, but I haven’t seen anything yet that I’d consider a classic.”
CHRISTMAS in New York was lovely this year — especially for those who prefer to spend the day working on their tans. It was the city’s warmest ever, with temperatures peaking at 66 degrees. Record-breaking temperatures are occurring with alarming frequency in the United States, but Americans are reacting with a collective shrug. In a poll taken in January, after the country’s warmest December on record, the Pew Research Center found that climate change ranked close to last on a list of the public’s policy priorities. Why? In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, we provide one possible explanation: For a vast majority of Americans, the weather is simply becoming more pleasant. Over the past four decades, winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the United States, but summers have not become markedly more uncomfortable.
In order to more effectively raise awareness and increase public concern about climate change, our research suggests that we need to stop talking so much about rising temperatures. A focus on extreme weather events — which are easily understood by the public and have potentially much greater impact on human health and the economy — may be a better strategy. And when we do discuss temperatures, we should acknowledge the temporarily pleasant side effects of global warming. But then we should stress that these agreeable conditions will one day vanish — like ice on a warm winter day.
New York TimesやEconomist、Timeなどは興味深いトピックを取り上げるキュレーション的役割を果たしていることを改めて認識しました。最初に見かけたときは余裕でスルーしてしました（滝汗）
A sort of Euro-English, influenced by foreign languages, is already in use. Many Europeans use “control” to mean “monitor” because contrôler has that meaning in French. The same goes for “assist”, meaning to attend (assister in French, asistir in Spanish). In other cases, Euro-English is just a naive but incorrect extension of English grammatical rules: many nouns in English that don’t properly pluralise with a final “s” are merrily used in Euro-English, such as “informations” and “competences”. Euro-English also uses words like “actor”, “axis” or “agent” well beyond their narrow range in native English. Jeremy Gardner, an official at the European Court of Auditors, has written a guide to “Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications”, which attempts to correct many of these quirks of Euro-English. It could be that whatever native-speakers might consider correct, Euro-English, second language or no, is becoming a dialect fluently spoken by a large group of people who understand each other perfectly well. Such is the case of English in India or South Africa, where a small group of native speakers is dwarfed by a far larger number of second-language speakers. One effect may be that this dialect would lose some of the tricky bits of English, such as the future perfect progressive (“We will have been working”) that aren’t strictly necessary.
DELAY Explanation ‘Delay’ is often used in the EU to mean ‘deadline’ or ‘time limit’. In English ‘delay’ always refers to something being late or taking longer than is necessary. You cannot, therefore comply with (or ‘respect’) a delay. Example ‘In order to respect the delay for transmission, the Commission can make small changes to the notification provided that they are agreed with the notifying member prior to transmission. Alternatives time limit, deadline, time allowed.
ウィキペディアにも見出語が立っていて、使用例なども少し紹介してくれています。
（ウィキペディア） Euro English is a set of varieties of English used in Continental Europe and especially in the institutions of the European Union or among young mobile Europeans (such as in the Erasmus programme).
アメリカで地球温暖化懐疑主義者が多いのは冬が暖かくなって住みやすくなっているからではないかという研究を今週のNatureが取り上げていました。誰でも思いつくようなことですがそれを実証する方法を論文としてまとめるのは大変ですよね。今回の研究者たちは何十年にも渡る温度変化と移住パターンから推論を導き出していました。Natureは有料記事だったので大学のプレスリリースを紹介します。 Recent warmer winters may be cooling climate change concern NEW YORK UNIVERSITY April 20, 2016
The vast majority of Americans have experienced more favorable weather conditions over the past 40 years, researchers from New York University and Duke University have found. The trend is projected to reverse over the course of the coming century, but that shift may come too late to spur demands for policy responses to address climate change.
The analysis, published in the journal Nature, found that 80 percent of Americans live in counties where the weather is more pleasant than four decades ago. Winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the United States since the 1970s, but summers have not become markedly more uncomfortable. The result is that weather has shifted toward a temperate year-round climate that Americans have been demonstrated to prefer.
Our results have implications for the public’s understanding of the climate change problem, which is shaped in part by experiences with local weather15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Whereas weather patterns in recent decades have served as a poor source of motivation for Americans to demand a policy response to climate change, public concern may rise once people’s everyday experiences of climate change effects start to become less pleasant.
To quantify how Americans are evaluating these changes, Egan and Mullin drew upon research by economists examining weather’s role in growth of the Sun Belt and population declines in the Northeast and Midwest. Using these findings, they developed a metric of the average American’s preferences about weather. This “weather preference index” (WPI) reflects the U.S. public’s preferences for places with warmer temperatures in winter and cooler temperatures and lower humidity in summer. The index also takes into account preferences about precipitation. Egan and Mullin found that WPI scores have risen in counties accounting for 80 percent of the U.S. population since the 1970s. But projections of future temperatures—and future WPI scores—offer a markedly different picture. Climate change models predict that under all potential levels of future warming, average summer temperatures will ultimately rise at a faster rate than winter temperatures. Using these projections, the researchers calculated that under a severe warming scenario, WPI scores will decline such that an estimated 88 percent of the U.S. public will experience less pleasant weather at the end of this century than it has in the past 40 years.
Nobody stays ready better than Ichiro Suzuki. The 42-year-old Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting is obsessive in his routines, his conditioning, his preparedness.
英語表現を見ると「なんだNobody stays ready better than Ichiro Suzuki.なんて簡単な表現じゃないか」と思うんですがこんな表現がサラッと出てくるかは別問題なんですよね。他にも以下のような部分は英語ではどのように表現されているでしょう。
But Ichiro was born to hit. This is a man who take meticulous care of his bats, storing them in a specially made dehumidifier after they are shrink-wrapped for shipping. That’s not all, Ichiro makes sure his bats always are upright in a special spot in the dugout after having been wiped clean of dirt and grass.
And his bats are not the only equipment he handles with care. Following Thursday’s game reporters had to wait a few extra seconds for Ichiro to clean his cleats with a sanitized hand wipe and then stuff paper inside the shoes.
How does Apple conduct its Product Greenhouse Gas Life Cycle Assessment? Apple uses five steps when conducting a product life cycle assessment (LCA): 1. To model the manufacturing phase, we use part-by-part measurements of the entire product along with data on part production. The measurements help us accurately determine the size and weight of the components and materials in the product, while data on manufacturing processes and yield loss during production allows us to account for the impact of manufacturing. The production of external accessories, such as keyboards and mice, and packaging is also included.
The transition to renewable energy can be highly technical. It often requires compli¬ cated deal structures across many regions with their own regulatory requirements. Apple is experienced in sourcing and building renewable energy—quickly and at a high standard across the globe—so we are working with our suppliers to help them overcome challenges. We know that, with some hard work and collaboration, suppliers can reduce their own carbon footprint through the development of high-quality and cost-effective renewable energy projects. As part of Apple’s industry-leading program, over the next two years, Foxconn will install 400 megawatts of solar to cover the energy use of its iPhone final production facility in Zhengzhou, China.
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Additionally, we’re committed to making sure all the waste created by our final assem¬ bly facilities and by us is reused, recycled, composted, or, when necessary, converted into energy. It’s an ambitious goal that requires collaboration among multiple Apple teams, local governments, and specialty recyclers, but we’ve already seen great success. In 2015, our facility in Cork, Ireland, was the first outside North America to receive UL’s Zero Waste to Landfill validation. In 2016, our final assembly sites, Foxconn Guanlan and Foxconn Taiyuan, were the first to receive this validation in China, and all our remain¬ ing iPhone and Apple Watch final assembly sites are on track to do the same before 2017. And most recently, all our stores worldwide have initiated zero waste programs.
公式のサンプル問題 For that reason, we are urging experienced project leaders to attend each one of the interactive seminars that will be held throughout the coming month. ---134.---. (We hope that you will strongly consider joining us.)
Morite2さんが紹介してくださった韓国公式のサンプル問題 We would be happy to go over these suggestions in more detail, if you would like. ---4.---.(A consultation is a free service for Ronson Tech customers. )
A Conversation With Whales By JAMES NESTOR APRIL 16, 2016 The New York Times Op-Docs and Annapurna Pictures are presenting a virtual-reality film, "The Click Effect," about the free-diving researchers in this Opinion essay. To view it, download the NYT VR app on your mobile device, if you don’t already have it. (Go here for Android, and here for iPhone.)
Words checked = [1514] Words in Oxford 3000™ = [84%]
As a result, most research on sperm whales’ communication has been conducted from a boat. This has nonetheless revealed some fascinating facts: Sperm whales live in close-knit societies; they are raised by matriarchal units that can include three generations; they appear to share regional dialects and family nicknames. But studying the animals from the deck of a boat can also be limiting. Researchers can analyze their clicks but can’t see how the whales’ interactions change in response to those clicks, which is crucial for understanding how they communicate.
Those willing to get in the water with the whales face another problem: The disruptive gurgle of scuba gear scares the animals away. They avoid submarines and robots. Rebreathers, which recycle the divers’ exhaled breath into breathable air, are relatively quiet but also expensive, finicky and too difficult to deploy on a moment’s notice when pods approach.
The best option for studying the behavior and communication of whales is free diving. This is what it sounds like: diving dozens, sometimes hundreds of feet, on a single breath of air.
While all almost all cetacean experts agree that the whales’ clicks are a form of communication, most are skeptical, at best, that we will be able to understand, and even join, these conversations.
Yes, I realize that the idea of talking to sperm whales sounds nuts. It certainly sounded ludicrous to me when I first met Mr. Schnöller and Mr. Buyle in 2012 on an unrelated magazine assignment. And the team’s free-diving approach seemed like a death wish. The only free diving I’d ever witnessed or read about was competitive free diving — a reckless and often deadly sport. Then there were the terrifying whales themselves. I’d read “Moby-Dick.”
But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president. （忘れてはならないのは、われわれが進み続けるにはその前にバラクオバマを大統領に選ぶことから始めないといけないことです）
This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up. How do we give this country back to them? By following the example of a brave New Yorker , a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad. And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going. I've seen it in you. I've seen it in our teachers and firefighters, nurses and police officers, small business owners and union workers, the men and women of our military – in America you always keep going. We are Americans. We're not big on quitting. But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has decided to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, making her the first woman on U.S. paper currency in 100 years, a Treasury official said Wednesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of Lew's official announcement, said that the 19th century abolitionist and a leader of the Underground Railroad, would replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president. Lew's announcement is expected to provide details on other changes being made to the $20, $10 and $5 bills. The decision to place Tubman's portrait on the $20 likely means that Lew has decided to keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, a victory for those who had opposed his initial plan to remove Hamilton.
（オックスフォード） Harriet Tubman (1821-1913) a US woman who was born a slave but escaped in 1849 and became active in the campaign to free slaves. She was given the nickname Moses because she helped more than 300 slaves to escape by the Underground Railroad. She also worked as a spy (= person employed to find out secret information) for the US Army during the Civil War. see also abolitionism
（ロングマン） Tubman, Harriet (?1820-1913) a US slave who escaped to the northern US (where slavery was not allowed) and became an important member of the Underground Railroad, a system for helping slaves who were trying to escape. She also worked for the army of the North in the Civil War.
正義を標榜するジャーナリズムを無邪気に憧れるには年を取りすぎているYutaですが、AP通信のピューリッツァー賞受賞は硬派なジャーナリズムの健在ぶりを示していくれています。Public Serviceは日本語に訳しにくいですし「皆のために尽くすこと」という意味にとりたいと思います。TOEICの新形式対策には1分18秒あたりの受賞コメントのWe couldn’t be happier.のような口語表現には慣れておきたいですね。
For a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material, a gold medal.
Associated Press For an investigation of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reforms.
（NHK実践ビジネス英語 3月号） Let’s start with the rumor that H&B is about to acquire another company. - Yes, that’s been the hot topic around the water cooler recently.
（ルミナス） water cooler 冷水機; (会社などでおしゃべりをするための)水飲み場. ･water cooler gossip 水飲み場でのうわさ話.
（ロングマン） water cooler [countable] 1 a piece of equipment, used especially in offices, from which you can get a cup of cold water to drink 2 water cooler gossip conversation about other people's behaviour or lives that happens in offices when people meet each other by the water cooler
One obstacle that remains, she says, is her face. It’s so round and Raphaelite that she might as well be peering out of the corner of the Sistine Madonna. “I’m young, and I look younger. I can play like I’m 16 still. Doesn’t really work for the things I want to do.”
TOEIC的にはDoesn’t really work for the things I want to do.の主語の省略が注目でしょうか。ぽっちゃりしたとか子供っぽいとか書かないで、ラファエルの絵に出てくるようだと書いていますね。ラファエルの絵画がどういう特徴か、必須の背景知識ではないんですけど、幅広く知っておくといいのは母国語だっていいはずですよね。
（ロングマン） Raphael (1483-1520) an Italian painter and architect (=someone who designs buildings), and one of the most important artists of the Renaissance, who painted mostly religious subjects. His full name in Italian is Raffaello Sanzio.
まあ「知識が必要」という説教くさい話ではなく、教養っぽい話をまぜるとdisな感じがなくなりますよね。英語でも童顔をbaby faceとかlook like kidsとか呼ぶようですが、そのような描写は彼女が一番嫌っているようですから。
Selena Gomez has always had a baby face, but when she was recently slammed for “looking like a sexy 12-year-old” on her V Magazine cover, it really hit home with the “Heart Wants What It Wants” singer. According to an insider, Gomez, 22, is self-conscious of her baby face and is contemplating getting some form of cosmetic surgery to refine her chin and give her more defined cheek bones.
OUR favorite Woody Allen joke is the one about taking a speed-reading course. “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes,” he says. “It’s about Russia.” The promise of speed reading — to absorb text several times faster than normal, without any significant loss of comprehension — can indeed seem too good to be true. Nonetheless, it has long been an aspiration for many readers, as well as the entrepreneurs seeking to serve them. And as the production rate for new reading matter has increased, and people read on a growing array of devices, the lure of speed reading has only grown stronger.
心理学の先生がこの記事を書いているので速読を否定する研究を紹介してくれています。
Unfortunately, the scientific consensus suggests that such enterprises should be viewed with suspicion. In a recent article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, one of us (Professor Treiman) and colleagues reviewed the empirical literature on reading and concluded that it’s extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning.
速読を全否定しているのではなく、スキミングはできるだろうと語っています。
Certainly, readers are capable of rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information, or to pick up a general idea of what the text is about. But this is skimming, not reading. We can definitely skim, and it may be that speed-reading systems help people skim better.
As in all forms of human behavior, there is a trade-off, in reading, between speed and accuracy. You can learn to skim strategically so that you spend more time looking where the more important words are likely to be, and if the words are presented in a stream you may be able to learn which words to focus on and which to ignore. However, that does not mean that you can somehow magically read parts of a page that you don’t look at, or process all the words in a superfast sequence.
Reading is about language comprehension, not visual ability. If you want to improve your reading speed, your best bet — as old-fashioned as it sounds — is to read a wide variety of written material and to expand your vocabulary.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the Inside The New York Times Book Review podcast, we’ll be recording an episode live on April 28 at The Times building in New York City. We’re giving away 10 pairs of tickets to 10 lucky listeners. To enter the giveaway, email your full name and phone number to BookReviewGiveaway@nytimes.com. The full giveaway rules can be found here. This giveaway closes on April 17 and prize winners will be notified within a few days.
動詞と名詞をWe’re giving away 10 pairs of tickets to 10 lucky listeners. To enter the giveaway, email your full name and phoneのように使い分けるのはネイティブにとっては自然なことなんでしょうね。
ポッドキャストでは以下のように伝えていました。
1分09秒あたり Here’s some fun news. Inside The New York Times Book Review Podcast is turning 10. Our 10th anniversary celebration would be an event here at Times on April 28th with the former host Sam Tanenhaus, Podcast founder and book critic Dwight Garner and Gary Shteyngart, our very first podcast guest. And for our listeners, we’re giving away 10 guest passes. Email us at BookReviewGiveaway@nytimes.com. We’ll be randomly selecting 10 listeners to attend our live podcast celebration with the guests hosted here at The New York Times. For the full giveaway rules, visit nytimes.com/books. The giveaway closes on April 17 and prize winners will be notified within a few days.
at The Times buildingと定冠詞theも大文字で始めていることを気になった方がもしかしたらいるかもしれません。以前気になって聞いたことがあるのですがそのネイティブの説明だとThe New York Timesと紙名にTheも含まれているからだそうです。NYTのサイトに行くとそのようですね。ロングマンではTheも大文字で始めていますが、オックスフォードは小文字ですね（汗）
（ロングマン） New York Times, The a serious daily newspaper which is produced in New York City. It is sold everywhere in the US and in many other countries, and people in the US often just call it 'the Times'.
（オックスフォード） the New York Times a famous US newspaper read mainly by people who are well educated. The paper is published each morning in New York and can also be bought all round the world. There is also a large Sunday issue. The Times first appeared in 1851 (as the New York Daily Times) and has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other newspaper, including one for the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times Company also owns radio and television stations, magazines and other newspapers, including the International New York Times.
All the News That's Fit to Print motto of the New York Times
（ロングマン） New York Post, the a US daily newspaper produced in New York City, which includes a lot of gossip (=information about famous people's private lives) and reports events in ways that make them seem as strange, exciting, or shocking as possible
(問われる可能性) I am pleased to confirm our offer of part-time employment at Western Enterprises. In your role as research assistant, you will report to Dr. Emma Walton, who will keep you informed of your specific duties and projects. (問われる可能性)Because you will be working with confidential information, you will be expected to follow the enclosed employee code-of-ethics agreement.
(問われる可能性)As we discussed, you will be paid twice a month according to the company's normal payroll schedule. As an hourly employee working fewer than twenty hours per week, you will not be eligible to receive paid holidays, paid time off for illness or vacation, or the employee benefits. (問われる可能性)Your employment status will be reviewed in six months.
(問われる可能性)If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, please sign and return one copy of this letter. (問われる可能性)You may keep the second copy for your file. (問われる可能性)We look forward to working with you.
