A deal with the devil (also known as compact or pact with the devil) is a cultural motif, best exemplified by the legend of Faust and the figure of Mephistopheles, but elemental to many Christian folktales. According to traditional Christian belief about witchcraft, the pact is between a person and Satan or a lesser demon. The person offers his or her soul in exchange for diabolical favours. Those favours vary by the tale, but tend to include youth, knowledge, wealth, fame, and/or power.
It was also believed that some persons made this type of pact just as a sign of recognizing the devil as their master, in exchange for nothing. Nevertheless, the bargain is considered a dangerous one, as the price of the Fiend's service is the wagerer's soul. The tale may have a moralizing end, with eternal damnation for the foolhardy venturer. Conversely, it may have a comic twist, in which a wily peasant outwits the devil, characteristically on a technical point. The person making the pact sometimes tries to outwit the devil, but loses in the end (e.g., man sells his soul for eternal life because he will never die to pay his end of the bargain. Immune to the death penalty, he commits murder, but is sentenced to life in prison).
Great achievements might be credited to a pact with the devil, from the numerous European Devil's Bridges to the violin virtuosity of Niccolò Paganini to the "crossroad" myth associated with Robert Johnson.
The "Bargain with the devil" constitutes motif number M210 and "Man sells soul to devil" motif number M211 in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.
A season of programmes to mark 70 years since the Partition of India, explores the hidden history of what happened in 1947 and reveals the legacy Partition leaves us with today.
In 1947, the Subcontinent was divided into two parts: India and Pakistan. Countless people living on both sides of the border were displaced and began to flee from one side to the other. During this massive immigration, several riots broke out and rivalry soared to new heights between Hindus and Muslims.
During the horrific period of partition in 1947, an American documentary photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, captured some of the crucial moments of that time that sum up what partition was like and how it affected millions of lives.
Bourke-White was the first American female war photojournalist, and the first female photographer for Henry Luce’s Life magazine.
この写真家はとても有名な方でアメリカンヘリテージの辞書では見出語になっているほどです。
（アメリカンヘリテージ）
Bourke-White, Margaret 1906-1971.
American photographer and writer. During her career at Life magazine (1936-1969), she photographed such diverse subjects as the rural South, Soviet life, and the release of concentration camp victims.
A historical region of India considered at various times to include only the upper Ganges River plateau or all of northern India from the Himalaya Mountains to the Deccan Plateau and from the Punjab to Assam. The term has also been applied to the entire Indian subcontinent.
Why dreams generated by long-ago stress can keep coming back.
Posted Nov 14, 2014
You suddenly realize that your final exam starts in five minutes—but you have not even begun to study! Not to mention, the exam takes place on the other side of campus! You hurry to gather all your materials and start racing through the hallways. But every corridor is crammed with students, the clock is ticking, and the doors are locked! Now you'll fail for sure ...
This is a common example of a recurrent dream that an individual may experience, perhaps during times of stress or change, or even throughout their life. Recurrent dreams are often comprised of typical dream themes, (click here to learn more). What differs about recurrent dreams is that they are experienced frequently and repetitively in one individual’s life, whereas typical dream themes refer to the universal or inter-individual commonness of dream themes.
Recurrent dreams occur in between 60% and 75% of adults, and more often in women than men (Zadra, 1996). The common themes include: being attacked or chased, falling, being stuck, being late, missing or failing an exam, and even losing control of a car. Theoretically, recurrent dreams are assumed to reveal the presence of unresolved conflicts or stressors in an individual’s life. This is corroborated by findings that recurrent dreams are usually accompanied by negative dream content, and that they are associated with lower psychological well-being (Zadra et al., 1996).
I have this recurring dream: I’m a little girl, sitting with my mom, and she’s singing to me. We’re at the beach on an old blanket I still have tucked away in my closet. I hear the waves crashing as my mom’s voice rises and falls. I feel the warmth of the sun on my skin and the comfort of her arms around me.
I want to stay in this moment forever.
When I wake up, I miss the dream. I miss the sun. I miss my mom. I want so badly for this dream to be real, but that would be impossible because my mom died when I was six years old. And I can't go out into the sun... like, at all. I have a rare genetic condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, aka XP, which basically means a severe sensitivity to sunlight. If sunlight so much as glances off my skin, I 'll get skin cancer, and my body can't repair the damage so my brain starts to fail …
Have you ever felt like you were having déjà vu in your dreams? If you have reoccurring dreams, you just might feel that way. Recurring dreams are important and need your attention.
What are Reoccurring Dreams?
A reoccurring dream is any dream you have more than once. Generally these dreams repeat several times over a period of weeks, months, or even years.
You may get the same dream once a week, once a month, or once a year. It doesn’t matter how far apart the dreams are, the important piece here is that the dream repeats.
Many people find reoccurring dreams disturbing, if only for the fact that they seem to be stuck on repeat. Recurrent dreams tend to stand out in your mind. And if you have a sense that your reoccurring dream is meaningful, you’re right…
I’m going to. I just need a little longer being someone more than just a disease.
望ましくないことをやんわりと伝えるのに便利な表現ですね。まあ、この映画を取り上げた理由はcomfortableの使い方を紹介したかっただけなのですが、日本の映画が原作であることはBased on a 2006 Japanese filmのように表現されています。
Based on a 2006 Japanese film, Midnight Sun centers on Katie (Thorne), a 17-year-old sheltered since childhood and confined to her house during the day by a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Fate intervenes when she meets Charlie (Schwarzenegger) and they embark on a summer romance. A September shooting start is planned.
Xeroderma pigmentosum, which is commonly known as XP, is an inherited condition characterized by an extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight. This condition mostly affects the eyes and areas of skin exposed to the sun. Some affected individuals also have problems involving the nervous system.
Midnight Sun is a romantic tearjerker about 17-year-old Katie Price (Bella Thorne), sheltered at home since childhood with a rare genetic condition, a life-threatening sensitivity to sunlight. Having only her father Jack (Rob Riggle) for company, Katie’s world opens up after dark when she ventures outside to play her guitar. One night, her dreams come true when she’s noticed and asked out by her longtime crush Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger), whom she’s secretly watched from her bedroom window for years. As they embark on nightly summer excursions, Katie’s risk to sunlight grows and she’s presented with the gut-wrenching dilemma of whether she can live a normal life with her newfound soul mate.
アラフォーのオヤジとしてはcheesy teen romanceと書いている次の記事に共感してしまうんですが、こういうジャンルではNicholas Sparksものがすぐに思い浮かぶようです。
Posted on Friday, December 1st, 2017 by Ben Pearson
I suppose every generation needs its own cheesy teen romance, but with apologies to everyone involved with Midnight Sun, I have to believe there are better options out there for today’s kids than this.
別の記事ではcheesy chick-flickではなくてpure love storyと弁護していましたが。。。
What I thought would be another cheesy chick-flick, turned out to be a pure love story that was exciting to watch. Midnight Sun will be released March 23.
On the 25th anniversary of its premiere in San Francisco, Angels in America is being rebooted at the National Theatre in London with an all-star cast.
by OSKAR EUSTIS
APRIL 10, 2017 10:00 AM
Roy Cohn was Donald Trump’s mentor. The bold-faced lies, guilt-free immorality, blistering aggression, blithe refusal of introspection, and astonishing vulgarity that we now associate with our 45th president are key elements of a style created and refined by Roy Marcus Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man and Donald Trump’s red-baiting lawyer. Cohn is at the center of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Tony Kushner’s masterpiece, which is receiving a glittering 25th-anniversary revival at the National Theatre in London this spring. Marianne Elliott directs an astonishing cast, with the irreplaceable (and irrepressible) Nathan Lane playing Roy.
In 1973, a brash young would-be developer from Queens met one of New York’s premier power brokers: Roy Cohn, whose name is still synonymous with the rise of McCarthyism and its dark political arts. With the ruthless attorney as a guide, Trump propelled himself into the city’s power circles and learned many of the tactics that would inexplicably lead him to the White House years later.
雑誌に掲載された時点で使われていたタイトルDEAL WITH THE DEVILから「“悪魔”と取引した」という表現になったようです。
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
As the brash scion of a real-estate empire, in the early 70s, Donald Trump sought the counsel of Roy Cohn, ruthless lawyer, fixer, and Joe McCarthy henchman. More than three decades after Cohn’s death, Trump has taken his mentor’s playbook all the way to the Oval Office
The Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (English title: Poem on the Lisbon Disaster) is a poem in French composed by Voltaire as a response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. It is widely regarded as an introduction to Voltaire's later acclaimed work Candide and his view on the problem of evil. The 180-line poem was composed in December 1755 and published in 1756. It is considered one of the most savage literary attacks on Optimism.[1]
Optimism is not generally thought cool, and it is often thought foolish. The optimistic philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in 1828, “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” In the previous century, Voltaire’s “Candide” had attacked what its author called “optimism”: the Leibnizian idea that all must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. After suffering through one disaster after another, Candide decides that optimism is merely “a mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly.”
Yet one might argue (and Steven Pinker does) that the philosophy Voltaire satirizes here is not optimism at all. If you think this world is already as good as it gets, then you just have to accept it. A true optimist would say that, although human life will never be perfect, crucial aspects of it can improve if we work at it, for example by refining building standards and seismological predictions so that fewer people die in earthquakes. It’s not “best,” but it is surely better.
いくらピンカーがA true optimist would say that, although human life will never be perfect, crucial aspects of it can improve if we work at itと言ったところで、メッセージそのものは同じだと思うんですよね。It’s not “best,” but it is surely better.とありますが、今良いと言おうが、これから良くなると言おうが、世界を肯定しようとする点においては変わらないからです。再びヴォルテールの詩の抜粋です。
Without offense to my master,
I humbly wish Only that the pit of fire and sulphur had erupted,
Spewing its fires in the desert wastes.
I respect my God, but I love the universe.
When one dares to moan of a terrible scourge,
It’s not arrogance; alas, it’s sensitivity!
私は主に抗わず、ただ控え目に願う
硫黄が燃える地獄の業火は
奥地の砂漠で噴き出してほしかった
私は神を敬うが、人間の住む地球を私は愛する
悲惨な災害にたいして人間が吐き出す声は
思い上がりの声ではなく、痛みを共感する声だ
In the midst of their torments, would it comfort
The sad inhabitants of these desolate shores
If someone said to them: “Fall, die in peace;
Your homes are destroyed for the good of the world;
Other hands will rebuild your ruined palaces;
Other people will be born from the rubble of your walls;
The North will grow rich from your terrible loss.
To the universal law, all your troubles are for the best.
I’ve encountered even more prejudice as a researcher from the Middle East than as a woman working in Saudi Arabia, says Malak Abedalthagafi.
Malak Abedalthagafi
A reporter from a world-famous newspaper contacted me a few months ago to talk about science in Saudi Arabia. I was excited by the foreign outlet’s interest in my country, where women are advancing in fields that include aerospace, engineering, finance and medicine. But all she wanted to hear were my thoughts on headscarves and driving.
Yes, all of the common complaints are true. Yes, women will soon be allowed to drive. Yes, we wear scarves. We even need permission to travel. Our society is still antiquated in so many ways.
But there is another reality I yearn to discuss, one that many of my foreign colleagues are blind to. It is this: women within Saudi Arabia have long done, and long been recognized as doing, real science.
それじゃまずいと思い読んだのがイスラム女性の社会進出を紹介しているFifty Million Risingという本。World Economic Forumに所属しているパキスタン出身の女性が書いています。サウジアラビアの状況も色々紹介されていて参考になりました。
Muslim women are gaining economic independence and control
Review by Shaista Aziz JANUARY 29, 2018 4
Saadia Zahidi’s debut book proposal won the inaugural 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Bracken Bower prize for young business authors. The finished product has just been published: Fifty Million Rising provides a detailed and deeply informative look at the changing nature of work and employment for Muslim women, including drives to increase girls’ access to education and women’s participation in the labour market.
The head of gender, education and work at the World Economic Forum, starts with some facts about Muslim women in business that do not sit comfortably with many widely held assumptions and stereotypes — notably that Muslim women lack agency and autonomy.
So far, it seems less bad than other kinds of pollution (about which less fuss is made)
Print edition | International
Mar 3rd 2018
MR MCGUIRE had just one word for young Benjamin, in “The Graduate”: plastics. It was 1967, and chemical engineers had spent the previous decade devising cheap ways to splice different hydrocarbon molecules from petroleum into strands that could be moulded into anything from drinks bottles to Barbie dolls. Since then global plastic production has risen from around 2m tonnes a year to 380m tonnes, nearly three times faster than world GDP.
Unfortunately, of the 6.3bn tonnes of plastic waste produced since the 1950s only 9% has been recycled and another 12% incinerated. The rest has been dumped in landfills or the natural environment. Often, as with disposable coffee cups, drinks bottles, sweet wrappers and other packets that account for much of the plastic produced in Europe and America, this happens after a brief, one-off indulgence. If the stuff ends up in the sea, it can wash up on a distant beach or choke a seal. Exposed to salt water and ultraviolet light, it can fragment into “microplastics” small enoughto find their way into fish bellies. From there, it seems only a short journey to dinner plates.
映画『卒業』の有名なシーンjust one world, plasticsから書き始めるケースは以前このブログでも取り上げました。現在のAIみたいな地位をかつてはプラスチックも占めていたのでしょうか。
I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Yes, sir.
Are you listening?
Yes, I am.
Plastics.
Exactly how do you mean?
There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
In the 1967 classic film, “The Graduate”, a conversation between young Ben and Mr. McGuire goes like this: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word.” “Yes, sir.” “Are you listening?” “Yes, I am.” “Plastics.” “Exactly how do you mean?” “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
So, 50 years later, and plastics are ubiquitous in our everyday life. But not without an environmental impact, “microplastics”. Almost too small to notice, the term generally refers to pieces of plastic that are smaller than 5 mm in size, or about 2/10 of an inch. Microplastics can be found throughout the world’s ocean and coastal habitats—from surface waters to deep sea sediments, as well as in the stomachs of a variety of marine life—from plankton to whales.
The perception of plastics as ugly, unnatural, inauthentic and disposable is not new. Even in “The Graduate” they symbolised America’s consumerism and moral emptiness. Visible plastic pollution is an old complaint, too (years ago, plastic bags caught in trees were nicknamed “witches’ knickers”). What is new is the suspicion that microplastics are causing widespread harm to humans and the environment in an invisible, insidious manner. “Blue Planet 2”, a nature series presented by Sir David Attenborough that aired in Britain last October and in America in January, made the case beautifully. But the truth is that little is known about the environmental consequences of plastic—and what is known doesn’t look hugely alarming.
Plastic pollution “is not the Earth’s most pressing problem”, in the words of one European official. But, he immediately adds, just because plastics may not be the biggest problem facing humanity does not make them trouble-free. As scientists never tire of repeating, more research is needed. It is the absence of evidence about how plastics influence health rather than evidence of absence that explains their bit part in the Lancet Commission report, says Philip Landrigan of the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, who chaired it.
As the Bank of Japan’s prolonged ultra-easy money policy weighs on earnings, the emergence of technology like artificial intelligence is transforming the mechanics of financing and threatening to replace thousands of roles with automated systems.
The nation’s major banks have announced restructuring measures including downsizing to deal with the situation and are rushing to catch up with digital innovations, but some critics say it could be too late in the game.
Dr. Andreas Jacobsen: The cause of all the catastrophes we are seeing today is overpopulation. We are proud to unveil the only practical remedy to humanity’s greatest problem. Are you ready, doctor?
Jorgen Asbjørnsen: Yes, I am ready.
[he lifts the wooden box on the table and we see a miniaturized Asbjørnsen]
Paul Safranek: Wow, that is wild, isn’t it? That’s just wild.
[referring to the miniaturized Dave and Carol]
Paul Safranek: Dave? That’s Dave, Dave Johnson.
Dave Johnson: Hi, everybody.
Paul Safranek: And Carol. He never struck me as the kind of guy who’d go get small. Wow.
Dave Johnson: Downsizing takes the pressure right off.
Paul Safranek: Plus you’re really making a difference.
Dave Johnson: You mean all that crap about saving the planet?
Paul Safranek: Yeah.
Dave Johnson: Downsizing is about saving yourself. We live like kings. We got the best houses, the best restaurants. Cheesecake factory, we got three of them.
[to Paul and Audrey]
Leisureland Salesperson: In Leisureland your fifty-two thousand dollars translates to twelve point five million dollars to live on for life.
Paul Safranek: Wow.
[to Paul and Audrey]
Leisureland Employee: Do you understand that you will undergo the permanent and irreversible medical procedure commonly known as downsizing, and that your bodies will be approximately point zero three six four percent of their current mass and volume?
A charmingly warm and hopeful story of love, friendship, and the power of human connection, award-winning Japanese author Shion Miura’s novel is a reminder that a life dedicated to passion is a life well lived.
Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it’s time for him to retire and find his replacement.
He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime—a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics—whom he swipes from his company’s sales department.
Led by his new mentor and joined by an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining accomplishment: completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the bond that connects us all: words.
