"Snake Oil Salesman." The phrase conjures up images of seedy profiteers trying to exploit an unsuspecting public by selling it fake cures. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary defines snake oil as "a quack remedy or panacea." What the OED does not note, however, is that the history of snake oil is linked to an often forgotten chapter of Asian-American history.
効果の怪しい薬を売るのは巡業のmedicine showというのがあったようで、snake oil以外にもKickapoo Indian Medicineというのも有名だったようです。
(Wikipedia)
Medicine show
Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck, horse, or wagon teams) which peddled "miracle cure" patent medicines and other products between various entertainments. They developed from European mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth century, especially in the Old West (though some continued until World War II).[1] They usually promoted "miracle elixirs" (sometimes referred to as snake oil), which, it was claimed, had the ability to cure disease, smooth wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common ailments. Most shows had their own patent medicine (these medicines were for the most part unpatented but took the name to sound official). Entertainments often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical acts, magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor who drew the crowd with a monologue. The entertainers, such as acrobats, musclemen, magicians, dancers, ventriloquists, exotic performers, and trick shots, kept the audience engaged until the salesman sold his medicine.
"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, step right up. Put your quarter on the line. Money back if not cured within twenty-four hours. I can help every one of you"
Kickapoo Joy Juice was a fictional moonshine created by Al Capp, but there were real Kickapoo ‘medicines’ that sold like wildfire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Former CIA director John Brennan has launched an extraordinary attack on President Donald Trump, describing him as a “snake oil salesman” who “lies routinely to the American people without compunction.”
Political protection for the planet’s last great wilderness is no longer fit for purpose. Make its governance democratic: scrap the veto that lets individual interests rule.
The continent’s rate of ice loss is speeding up, which is contributing even more to rising sea levels.
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
June 13, 2018
Between 60 and 90 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen in the ice sheets of Antarctica, a continent roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined. If all that ice melted, it would be enough to raise the world’s sea levels by roughly 200 feet.
While that won’t happen overnight, Antarctica is indeed melting, and a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that the melting is speeding up.
“Around Brooklyn you get flooding once a year or so, but if you raise sea level by 15 centimeters then that’s going to happen 20 times a year,” said Andrew Shepherd, a professor of earth observation at the University of Leeds and the lead author of the study.
East Antarctica has sometimes been a focus of attention for people who deny the science of global warming. “A lot of the argument has been made from stakeholders that are not quite as interested in dealing with climate change that the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass — therefore we don’t need to worry,” said Michele Koppes, a glaciologist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved with the study.
East Antarctica, which makes up two-thirds of the continent, is a remote region of an already remote location, where data is scarcer because there are fewer measurement stations, Dr. Koppes said. Researchers must extrapolate a smaller amount of data over an area the size of the United States, which can make the analysis less precise.
（中略）
The researchers concluded that the changes in East Antarctica were not nearly enough to make up for the rapid loss seen in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica is, on balance, losing its ice sheets and raising the world’s sea levels.
Nearly half of Afghanistan’s children do not attend school because of war, widespread poverty and cultural factors, according to a new report released June 3 as part of the U.N.’s effort to identify where and how children are kept away from education. This marks the first time that attendance has declined since the situation improved after the 2001 fall of the Taliban, which had prohibited all girls from attending school.
(CNN)Breshna Musazai leaned on her brother as she climbed out of her wheelchair and up the stairs of the graduation stage at the American University of Afghanistan. With polio in one leg and injuries from a Taliban attack in the other, the climb was difficult. She heard cheers from behind her.
When she took her diploma and turned to look at the audience, she was shocked to see the crowd standing for her as she crossed the stage.
"It was a very proud moment for me," Musazai told CNN.
Musazai's graduation from college last month -- she earned a bachelor's degree in law -- was a life dream for her family. But two years earlier, Musazai wasn't sure she'd even live to see the next morning.
For lack of time, money, or skilled staff, we are besieged with “he said, she said” stories in which the reporter is little more than a parrot. I always thought it was a newspaper´s mission to search out the truth and not merely to report on the dispute. Was there a war crime? The newspapers now rely on a negotiated United Nations report that comes, at best, months later to tell us. And have the media made any significant effort to explain why a UN report is not considered to be the last word by many throughout the world? Is there much critical reporting at all about the UN? Do I dare ask about the war in Yemen? Or why Donald Trump took Sudan off his travel ban list? (The leadership in Khartoum sent troops to fight in Yemen on behalf of Saudi Arabia.)
While widely regarded as one of the finest Japanese directors working today, Hirokazu Kore-eda has a somewhat uneven body of work to his name, notwithstanding the fact that his measured pacing, gentle tone and uncluttered visuals make his style unusually distinctive. His best films, almost without exception, have been those about families – real or surrogate – so that titles like ‘Nobody Knows’, ‘Still Walking’ (arguably his masterpiece), and ‘Like Father, Like Son’ have earned him something of a reputation as an heir to the great Yasujiro Ozu.
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters swiped the Palme d’Or from hotter tips but few could begrudge this masterful veteran of world cinema his time in the sun
Sat 19 May 2018 22.15 BST Last modified on Sat 19 May 2018 23.44 BST
It’s a very complex film – one which pays its audience the compliment of treating them like intelligent people who are prepared to engage intensely with his film. Kore-eda has to be considered a great Japanese master, and spoken of in the same breath as Ozu and (his own personal model) Naruse.
I ask how he reacts to being compared to Yasujiro Ozu. “I of course take it as a compliment,” he replies carefully. “I try to say thank you. But I think that my work is more like Mikio Naruse [the Japanese director of sombre working-class dramas] – and Ken Loach.”
調査報道が重要だと認めながらウォーターゲート事件の映画だってEconomistの映画評のようにan expertly-made cultural product by an approved artist that is interesting in all the right predictable waysと批判することも可能でしょう。映画を楽しめるのはすでに過去のものですからねえ。
The film puts Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks into roles that they were made for—almost too much so, in a film made to flatter the journalists who will cover it
Jan 11th 2018by J.F. | WASHINGTON, D.C.
“The Post” is Oscar bait. But is it good? Well, it’s a like a gripping episode of “This American Life”, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri or a new album from The National: an expertly-made cultural product by an approved artist that is interesting in all the right predictable ways, which is to say not really interesting at all, but comforting in a public-radio book-interview sort of way. There’s nothing wrong with that. People go to “Star Wars” to see spaceships and light-sabres and heroes wrestling with the dark side. People go to “The Post” to see decent people wrestling with tough problems. They go to both to see the good guys win.
I am a survivor from the golden age of journalism, when reporters for daily newspapers did not have to compete with the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle, when newspapers were flush with cash from display advertisements and want ads, when I was free to travel anywhere, anytime, for any reason, with company credit cards. There was sufficient time for reporting on a breaking news story without having to constantly relay what was being learned on the newspaper’ web page.
There were no televised panels of the “experts” and journalists on cable TV who began every answer to every question with the two deadliest words in the media word–“I think”. We are sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information, and false assertions delivered nonstop by our daily newspapers, our television, our online news agencies, our social media, and our President.
Yes, it´s a mess. And there is no magic bullet, no savior in sight for the serious media. The mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television networks will continue to lay off reporters, reduce staff, and squeeze the funds available for good reporting, and especially for investigative reporting, with its high cost unpredictable result, and its capacity for angering readers and attracting expensive lawsuits. The newspapers of today far too often rush into print with stories that are essentially little more than tips, or hints of something toxic or criminal. For lack of time, money, or skilled staff, we are besieged with “he said, she said” stories in which the reporter is little more than a parrot. I always thought it was a newspaper´s mission to search out the truth and not merely to report on the dispute. Was there a war crime? The newspapers now rely on a negotiated United Nations report that comes, at best, months later to tell us. And have the media made any significant effort to explain why a UN report is not considered to be the last word by many throughout the world? Is there much critical reporting at all about the UN? Do I dare ask about the war in Yemen? Or why Donald Trump took Sudan off his travel ban list? (The leadership in Khartoum sent troops to fight in Yemen on behalf of Saudi Arabia.)
My career has been all about the importance of telling important and unwanted truths and making America a more knowledgeable place. I was not alone in making a difference; think of David Halberstam, Charley Mohr, Ward Just, Neil Sheehan, Morley Safer, and dozens of other first-rate journalists who did so much to enlighten us about the seamy side of the Vietnam War. I know it would not be possible for me to be as freewheeling in today’s newspaper world as it was until a decade ago, when the monkey crunch began. I vividly remember the day when David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, called in 2011 to ask if I could do an interview with an important source by telephone rather than fly three thousand miles to do one in person. David, who did everything possible to support my reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison horror in 2004–he paid dearly to enable me to publish reporting pieces in three consecutive issues–made his plea to me in what I thought was a pained, embarrassed voice, almost a whisper.
The best of his generation writes a how-to that undermines the industry of Access Journalism
By Matt Taibbi 2 days ago
Hersh's career is a tribute to the pursuit of the "unpredictable result." We used to value reporters who were willing to alienate editors and readers alike, if that's the way the truth cut. Now, as often as not, we just change the channel. This has been bad for both reporters and readers, who are losing the will to seek out and face the unpredictable truth.
When it comes time for the next generation of journalists to re-discover what this job is supposed to be about, they can at least read Reporter. It's all in here.
一方で、最近はトンデモ系に成り下がったという評価もつきまといます。New York Timesではその辺の事情も取り上げています。このブログでもビンラディン殺害はやらせだった？と扱いました。
Mr. Hersh has found himself at odds with much of Washington’s reporting establishment since The New Yorker declined to publish his report on the death of Osama bin Laden — a story that directly contradicted the account given by the Obama White House and much of the mainstream press. Mr. Hersh instead turned to an unlikely venue, the London Review of Books, to make his case that Pakistani intelligence had not only been aware of the Bin Laden mission, but had cooperated with it as well.
Other reporters criticized the article, and his subsequent reporting on Syria, which questioned whether President Bashar al-Assad had gassed his own people, was similarly derided. But Mr. Hersh is unrepentant.
“It’s pretty clear now; nobody disputes it anymore,” he said, in an asked-and-answered tone, when I brought up the Bin Laden piece. (In fact, many reporters and former White House officials still dismiss his version of events as fantasy.) “When I wrote it, there was just hell to pay.” In his memoir, which refers to “the American murder of Osama bin Laden,” he writes: “I will happily permit history to be the judge of my recent work.”
I do not pretend to have an answer to the problems of our media today. Should the federal government underwrite the media, as England does with the BBC? Ask Donald Trump about that. Should there be a few national newspapers financed by the public? If so, who would be eligible to buy shares in the venture? This is clearly the time to renew the debate on how to go forward. I had believed for years that all would work out, that the failing American newspapers would be supplanted by blogs, online news collectives, and weekly newspapers that would fill in the blanks on local reporting as well as on international and national news, but, despite a few successes–VICE, BuzzFeed, Politico, and Truthout come to mind–in isn’t happening; as a result, the media, like the nation, are more partisan and strident.
So, consider this memoir for what it is: an account of a guy who came from the Midwest, began his career as a copyboy for a small agency that covered crime, fires, and the courts there, and eleven years later, as a freelance reporter in Washington working for a small antiwar news agency, was sticking two fingers in the eye of a sitting president by telling about a horrific American massacre, and being rewarded for it. You do not have to tell me about the wonder, and the potential, of America. Perhaps that’s why it’s very painful to think I might not have accomplished what I did if I were at work in the chaotic and unstructured journalism world of today.
仮定法といえば、昔、上司から "I'd ask him." とメールが来て、「彼に聞いてくれるんだ」と思ってずっと待ってたことがあった。これ、正しくは "If I were you, I would ask him."＝「自分なら、彼に聞く」の省略で、要するに「お前が自分で聞け」という意味。これを間違えると一大事になりかねない。
Oh, so there’s a front-desk supervisor position open? I’ve been looking for a chance to take on a managerial role. Are they still accepting applications?
- Yes, and if you don’t mind working evening hours, I think you have a good chance at the job. I’d contact the manager right now, though—she’s starting interviews this week.
I’d contact the manager right now, though.は新公式問題集では「でも、すぐに支配人に連絡した方がいいわよ。」と提案している表現として訳しています。でも相手に対して提案しているのになんで主語がIなんでしょうか。なぜYou shouldのように直接的にアドバイスしていないのでしょうか。
すぐにネタバレしてしまいますが、きっとIf I were youが省略された形なんでしょう。この表現に関する説明は以下が詳しいです。
A courageous girl seeks to save her father from the Taliban in Nora Twomey’s magical adaptation of Deborah Ellis’s novel
We first meet 11-year-old Parvana (affectingly voiced by Saara Chaudry) on the streets of Kabul, where she is helping her father, Nurullah (Ali Badshah), to sell their meagre goods. A teacher by trade, he lost a leg in the Russian war, but is now considered a subversive for encouraging his daughters to be independent – to learn the history of their land and to understand the liberating power of its stories. “Stories remain in our hearts, even when all else is gone,” Nurullah tells Parvana, although she’s starting to wonder: “What’s the use?”
TOEIC学習者としては予告編の25秒あたりから出てくるI think business will pick up.という表現にピンと来たかも知れません。このブログでも以前取り上げました。
プロデューサーにAngelina Jolieの名前があったので、地味な映画なので客寄せパンダの役割を買って出てくれたのかと思ったら、もっと積極的な役割を果たしていました。そのあたりを次の記事ではTwomey didn’t want Jolie’s name; she wanted her mind.と表現して説明してくれています。
Rookie director Nora Twomey turned to U.N. Special Envoy Angelina Jolie for her expertise on Afghanistan.
Anne Thompson
Feb 15, 2018 5:20 pm
Irish animator Nora Twomey didn’t need Angelina Jolie to make the Oscar-animated “The Breadwinner.” The production was already fully financed by Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny, Ireland, Aircraft Pictures in Toronto, and Melusine Productions in Luxembourg.
However, Twomey didn’t want Jolie’s name; she wanted her mind. This would be Twomey’s first outing as a solo director, and she recognized early on that she could use Jolie’s expertise on Afghanistan, where the U.N. Goodwill Ambassador has built schools for girls. Twomey wanted to tackle a sensitive drama about political oppression with adult sophistication and style; the story is based on Deborah Ellis’ 2000 YA novel about a tough 11-year-old girl who dresses as a boy in order to feed her mother and sisters when her father is captured by the Taliban.
The former head coach of the Nihon University American football team who allegedly ordered a player to injure the opposing team's quarterback or be benched has resigned as a standing director of the university.
The resignation of Masato Uchida, dated May 30, was approved in a meeting of the university’s board of directors on June 1.
TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The board of the Kanto Collegiate Football Association on Tuesday decided to expel two former coaches of Nihon University’s American football team over a violent hit by one of its players.
The two, who received the harshest penalty the association of college football teams in Tokyo and neighboring prefectures can mete out, are former head coach Masato Uchida and former assistant coach Tsutomu Inoue.
Masato Uchida, the longtime football coach at Nihon, denied ordering the hit, and said he told his team only to play hard.
この記事ではアメリカ人にもわかるように日本でのアメフト受容についても説明があります。
Nearly three weeks have passed since the notorious hit and debates about “ame futo,” as the sport is known here, have consumed Japan. The hit was captured on video and has been shown on a seemingly continuous loop in a country where football barely registers. The linebacker has been suspended, the coach of the team from Nihon University has resigned, schools have canceled their games against Nihon, and a national conversation about the inherent dangers of the game and its place in Japanese society is at a full boil.
If I were asked the title of my address to you today, I would say, ‘Above all else, do not lie.’ Or ‘don’t lie too often’—which is really to say, ‘Tell the truth.’ But lying, the word, the idea, the act, has such political potency in America today, that it somehow feels more apt…Today, the political discourse in America includes questions that are straight from the land of the absurd. Questions such as, ‘Should we call a lie a lie? When is a lie a lie?’
To help you do this, make literature your religion, which is to say read widely: read fiction, and poetry, and narrative, nonfiction—make the human story the center of your understanding of the world. Think of people as people, not as abstractions who have to conform to bloodless logic but as people—fragile, imperfect with prides that can be wounded and hearts that can be touched. Literature is my religion. I have learned from literature that we humans are flawed, all of us are flawed, but even while we are flawed, we are capable of enduring goodness. We do not need first to be perfect before we can do what is right and just.
そうは言っても彼女のことを色々知れて有益でした。例えばハーバード大のスピーチで彼女のルーツであるIbgoになんども触れていましたが、この記事によって思い入れの強いものだったと知ることができたのです。大辞泉でもビアフラ戦争のことを書いていますが、彼女の2作目のHalf of a Yellow Sunの舞台になったものです。
As her subjects have expanded, her audience has, too, but visibility has its drawbacks.
By Larissa MacFarquhar
She had always known that she would write about Biafra, but it was no small thing to presume to tell the story of the war that had been such a defining catastrophe for her country, and one that she had not lived through herself: it ended in 1970, seven years before she was born. It had been a catastrophe especially for Igbos, and, while being Igbo was not important to most people she knew, it was very important to her. She had written a play about Biafra in high school, but decided it was dreadful and put it aside. Then, shortly after she finished “Purple Hibiscus,” she wrote a short story about the war, as a second test. The story worked. It was time.
She wanted the incidents she described to be true, so she asked many people about those years. She had not known much before she started asking: her parents had lived through the war, but they rarely mentioned it. She knew that when Chuks, her eldest brother, was born in Biafra, in 1968, her mother had had to beg for milk for him, fearing he would die of malnutrition. Her father, like most academics, had worked in one of the directories in the Biafran capital. He had tried to persuade his father to join him there, but he didn’t want to leave Abba
“Who am I running away from my own house for?”
and stayed there until it was almost too late: the Nigerian Army was close to overrunning the town, and most people had already fled. At the last minute, he left for a refugee camp, and there he grew sick and died. Her father believed that it was the loss of his dignity as much as the physical circumstances that killed him—to be a titled man reduced to begging for food from relief agencies, or, if that food ran out, scrambling for lizards. As the eldest child, her father was obligated to bury his father, but because of the war he couldn’t do it.
To stand for social justice is, in many cases, to be uncomfortable. Please, be willing to be uncomfortable. You might squirm a bit. You should squirm a bit, because nobody really enjoys being uncomfortable. But be uncomfortable. Discomfort can breed resilience. Discomfort can open up new understanding and meaning and knowledge.
