・・・Relaxed men who took part in the study rated women on average 14% less appealing if they looked very different from themselves compared with women who looked similar. But a group of stressed men found dissimilar women 9% more attractive.・・・
We think that chronically stressful environments should increase outbreeding, because inbreeding may lead to offspring that are not genetically diverse enough to deal with the varying circumstances that a risky and stressful environment imposes on them,・・・ http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/10/men-sexual-tastes-broaden-stressed
突然、トヨタ激励記事ばかりになったのはどういうわけだ？
新アメリカ財団（New America Foundation）のシニア・フェローが次のような一文で終わるコラムをNYタイムスに載せてる。↓
・・・even if every sudden-acceleration complaint proved valid, Toyotas are among the safest cars made.・・・
・・・why the emphasis on mechanical defects above all else? Evans says it began with Ralph Nader and his 1965 book, "Unsafe at Any Speed." Today it's perpetuated by trial lawyers seeking the deepest pockets and a media that know it's sexier to crusade against corporations than emphasize individual responsibility. ・・・ http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fumento9-2010mar09,0,3126393.story
アカデミー賞での元夫婦対決の結果をみごとにまとめてる。↓
・・・The Hurt Locker has taken to date, 100 times less money than Avatar. ・・・
The contrast between the two films speaks for a yin and yang as old as cinema. Truth versus magic; reportage versus make-believe; Lumière versus Méliès. Next year it is quite possible a good fantasy epic will beat a not-so-good reality drama. There is nothing intrinsically worthier in either genre. It is simply that The Hurt Locker is the better film.・・・ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4b7440e8-2b0b-11df-93d8-00144feabdc0.html
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この史観への援軍が、面白いことに米国で出現しました。
さすがに、そっくりそのままでは使えませんがね。
それは、ジェームス・ブラッドレー（James Bradley。1954年～。米国の著述家）の 'THE IMPERIAL CRUISE A Secret History of Empire and War' という本です。
The EU ban on seal imports was imposed last July on the grounds that Canada's annual hunt was cruel.
The east coast seal hunt, the largest in the world, kills about 275,000 harp seals between mid-November and mid-May. The seals are either shot or hit over the head with a spiked club called a hakapik.
Animal rights groups believe the hunt is cruel, poorly monitored and provides little economic benefit. Seal hunters and Canadian authorities say it is sustainable, humane and provides income for isolated communities.
The EU ban includes processed goods derived from seals, including their skins which are used to make coats, bags and clothing, as well as meat, oil blubber, organs and seal oil, which is used in some omega-3 pills.
It exempts products derived from traditional hunts carried out by Inuit in Canada's Arctic, as well as those from Greenland, Alaska and Russia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/08/sealmeat-canada-ottawa
・・・It was the UK in 1822 who introduced the world’s first animal welfare law with the Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle. It was Jeremy Bentham’s thinking that invertebrates should have common value to other animals・・・ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/lawyer-who-defends-animals
YUKIHISA FUJITA is an influential member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. As chief of the DPJ's international department and head of the Research Committee on Foreign Affairs in the upper house of Japan's parliament・・・
Mr. Fujita's ideas about the attack on the World Trade Center, which he shared with us in a recent interview, are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion. He questions whether it was really the work of terrorists; suggests that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot played the stock market to profit from it; peddles the fantastic idea that eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well; and hints that controlled demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center, which was adjacent to the twin towers.
As with almost any calamity whose scale and scope assume historic proportions, the events of Sept. 11 have spawned a thriving subculture of conspiracy theorists at home and abroad. The only thing novel about Mr. Fujita is that a man so susceptible to the imaginings of the lunatic fringe happens to occupy a notable position in the governing apparatus of a nation that boasts the world's second-largest economy. ・・・
・・・his views, rooted as they are in profound distrust of the United States, seem to reflect a strain of anti-American thought that runs through the DPJ and the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. ・・・
Japan's alliance with the United States・・・and its benefits for the・・・East Asia・・・region, will be severely tested if Mr. Hatoyama tolerates elements of his own party as reckless and fact-averse as Mr. Fujita. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/07/AR2010030702354_pf.html
The hard-hit 'Club Med' countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy once flourished within the eurozone. Now the financial markets have turned on Athens, and Greece's neighbours fear they could be next
The managing director of a British company that has been selling bomb-detecting equipment to security forces in Iraq was arrested on suspicion of fraud today...At the same time, the British government announced that it was imposing a ban on the export of the ADE-651 detectors because it was concerned they could put the lives of British forces or other friendly forces at risk...Iraq has invested more than £50m in buying the devices and training people to use them. Police and military personnel have used them to search vehicles and pedestrians for explosives...McCormick, managing director of ATSC, based in a former dairy in Sparkford, Somerset, defended his devices last year. He claimed they were derided because of their flimsy appearance and said the detectors pinpointed explosives in the same way a dowsing rod finds water...ATSC's brochures claim the device can detect minute quantities of explosives at large distances ? up to 1km...McCormick once told the BBC that "the theory behind dowsing and the theory behind how we actually detect explosives is very similar." http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/22/bomb-detectors-iraq-arrest
「・・・モーゼを冷戦の英雄に仕立て上げたのはセシル・B・デミル（Cecil B. DeMille）だった。
1956年に封切られ、史上５番目の観客動員数をたたきだした＜映画＞「十戒」の始めの部分で、デミルは、銀幕に登場し、観客に向かって、この映画は自由対共産主義についてであると伝えた。
そして、この映画の終わりの部分で、＜モーゼを演じた主演の＞チャールトン・へストンは、自由の鐘に刻まれたモーゼの言葉を口ずさみ、自由の女神のポーズのまねをしてみせるのだ。・・・」（注4）（B）
（注5）黒人霊歌。歌詞は次の通り。
When Israel was in Egypt's land: Let my people go,
Oppress'd so hard they could not stand, Let my People go.
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt land,
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go.
この中のイスラエルは黒人奴隷を、エジプトとファラオは奴隷主を指している。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Down_Moses （太田）
・・・A pair of German politicians, incensed at the thought of paying for a bailout of the profligates to the south, suggested Thursday that the Greeks consider plugging the large hole in their budget by selling off some of their lovely islands. Several Greek politicians and commentators have argued that the Germans should pony up reparations for the death and destruction wrought by the Nazis during World War II. ・・・
Few recall today, but the Greek War of Independence (from the Ottomans) was followed by 30 years under the rule of a king from what today is Germany. In 1832, a 17-year-old Bavarian prince became King Otto I of Greece, chosen by Britain, France and Russia, ushering in an era of unpopular foreign rule labeled “Bavarokratia.” ・・・
A coup sent Otto into exile in Bavaria in 1862,・・・
The year after Greece lost another war against the Ottomans, Germany joined five other European powers in imposing the International Financial Commission on Greece in 1898. The commission controlled customs duties at ports including Piraeus and Corfu; state monopolies for products such as kerosene, matches and playing cards; and duties on stamps and tobacco consumption, all to ensure that Greece continued repaying its loans. ・・・ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/weekinreview/07kulish.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print
・・・P.I.I.G.S. forcing together Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. ・・・（同上）
中共の対ドル平価切り上げ近しだってさ。↓
・・・Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, gave the strongest hint yet from a senior official that China would abandon the unofficial dollar peg, in place since mid-2008. He said it was a “special” policy to weather the financial crisis. ・・・ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cd3a766-2925-11df-972b-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
・・・George Orwell with introducing the term in a 1945 essay on the meaning of the atomic bomb. Orwell wrote of the prospect "of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them." Although it was widely feared that these new weapons would lead to another great war, Orwell wondered whether it was not more likely "that surviving great nations make a tacit agreement never to use the bomb against one another? Suppose they only use it, or the threat of it, against people who are unable to retaliate?" This new form of supreme power would lead to an uneasy standoff between states, with each in "a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors." As he saw it, this would lead to more effective ways of controlling the world's exploited classes and "a peace that is no peace" between "horribly stable . . . slave empires."
Orwell feared that such an order could result in a system of universal totalitarianism like that in his dystopia, 1984. ・・・
・・・the original use of the term in the United States was much more prosaic. The journalists Walter Lippmann and Herbert Bayard Swope put forth rival claims on who was first to invent the term "cold war.・・・
Both Lippmann and Swope saw the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that was emerging in the late 1940s not as a completely new phenomenon deserving of a special name but merely as a new example of a phenomenon they had observed not long before. It was not necessarily a durable situation; unless the United States adopted more sensible policies, the tentative standoff might lead to a full-blown "hot war."・・・
1983, with the Reagan administration at its most reactionary and bellicose, Fred Halliday, a British political scientist, wrote about a "second Cold War." ・・・
＜ちなみに、＞Both the United States and the Soviet Union were born of revolutions that took on universal, rather than nationalist, values.＜このこともあって冷戦は深刻化した。＞・・・ http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/66112
Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman to win the best directing Oscar・・・only the fifth woman to be nominated in Academy Awards history・・・, as her Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker took six prizes, including best film.
James Cameron's 3D sci-fi juggernaut left with just three technical awards - for art direction, cinematography and visual effects. ・・・
The Hurt Locker has made just $15m (£9.9m) at the box office, becoming the lowest-grossing film ever to win best picture.
Avatar, meanwhile, has become the biggest-grossing film in history, taking more than $2bn (£1.32bn) in the box office. ・・・ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8554786.stm
あたりで、ゴードン・バーガーの論を論拠とされている（詳しくは同著をご確認願いたい）。
戦前の日本が民主主義国家であったことの理解を妨げる桎梏は、やはり、憲兵による抑圧に見られるようないわゆる人権の制約が起きてしまうことであろう。ここは程度の問題（That's a question of degree.）とするべきところだ。
・・・"love" was the most frequently used word in Harlequin romance novel titles (occuring 840 times), followed by "bride" (835), "baby" (696), "man" (672) and "marriage" (612). Other frequently used words included "cowboy" (314), "night" (340) and "nurse" (224). Delving deeper, into the most popular professions in the romance books, they found that "doctor" topped this count with 388 making it into titles, followed by "cowboy" (314), "nurse" (224) and "boss" (142). "・・・
Many of the occupations were centred around high incomes (eg surgeon), or positions that demand physical fitness (eg cowboy). ・・・
・・・long-term commitment and reproduction are important to readers.・・・ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/04/evolutionary-psychologists-romantic-fiction
・・・Toyota has always・・・treat＜ed＞ parts makers as collaborators. Contracts are awarded based not primarily on price but on defect rates. If a manufacturer is fumbling, Toyota will send engineers to help fix the problem. American companies long took a more adversarial approach, analysts say. Cost was the No. 1 concern ? generally, if you were the low bidder, you won ? and when mistakes were made the supplier was fired. ・・・
Where American workers feared recriminations if they spoke up, Japanese workers feared recriminations if they spotted problems and said nothing. The difference is part of a culture of shared responsibility ・・・ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/business/07quality.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
翻訳戦線に新人登場？]]>
sakimono999米国とは何か（続ｘ４）（その１）2010-03-06T23:06:07Z2010-03-07T08:06:07+09:00tag:blog.livedoor.jp,2010:sakimono999.51661536太田述正コラム#3652（2009.11.17）
＜米国とは何か（続ｘ４）（その１）＞（2010.3.7公開）
１ 始めに
学者の手になるものではありませんが、ブルース・フェイラー（Bruce Feiler）という一人の米国人が、新著 'AMERICA'S PROPHET Moses and the American Story' の中...
＜米国とは何か（続ｘ４）（その１）＞（2010.3.7公開）
１ 始めに
学者の手になるものではありませんが、ブルース・フェイラー（Bruce Feiler）という一人の米国人が、新著 'AMERICA'S PROPHET Moses and the American Story' の中で、米国史に対するコロンブスの卵的な新しい見方を打ち出し、米国の草の根のメディアの間で大変な話題になっています。
さっそく、書評等を手がかりに、彼が主張していることをご紹介しましょう。
・・・The British Museum, which acquired objects from all these men, was itself a public-private partnership par excellence, originating in a private collection bequeathed to the nation, and established by act of parliament.
The public side of these partnerships has often been downplayed by historians, who portray British cultural endeavour as a rather amateurish affair. Post-colonial critics might attribute this to a purposeful whitewashing of the role of the imperial state. But it also has to do with another British trait, namely an exceptionalist desire to distinguish itself from continental Europe. Not for Britons the ceremonial pomp and bluster of the French, or Prussian-style martial triumphalism, or the showy despotism of the Hapsburgs. Britons were contained, reserved, never so brash.・・・ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/06/empires-imagination-politics-holger-hook
・・・The system is known as "fakelaki" -- a word meaning "little envelope" and which refers to the bribes regularly demanded of Greek citizens to "expedite" service. In reality, of course, no fakelaki often translates to no service. Sums of money stuffed in envelopes are passed across desks to secure appointments, documents and permits. It's a playful form of corruption that is firmly anchored in everyday Greek life.・・・
In a recent survey, 13.5 percent of Greek respondents admitted to paying fakelaki; on average, they said they paid ?1,450 ($1,970) a year. In reality, though, the numbers and sums could be much, much higher. ・・・ http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,682030,00.html
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一人題名のない音楽会の「ロシアとウクライナ」の第四弾、最終回です。
ようやく、ウクライナにたどり着きました。
以下、お聴きになると分かりますが、ウクライナの曲は、田園的で素朴であり、明るいものも多く、かつ、ウクライナという言葉が登場する歌詞が多い、という印象です。
「・・・1989年の種々の出来事は、「一つの帝国の崩壊をはるかに超えることだった。
それは、２世紀にわたった時代の終わりだったのだ。
それは、最初に欧州で起こり、ついで世界の政治が近代社会に係る幻想の概念・・地上における虐げられた人々が調和と平等に立脚した社会を創造する・・によって強力に影響された時代だった。」
エドムンド・ウィルソンがマルキストの伝統とロシア革命について 'To the Finland Station' で披露した古典的説明のように、プリーストランド（＜David ＞Priestland）の本＜、'The Red Flag: A History of Communism'＞ は、1789年のフランスの革命期の夜明けから始まる。
彼は、それからお馴染みの登場人物達・・ロベスピエール、バブーフ（＜François-Noel ＞Babeuf＜。1760～97年。共産主義の祖と称せられる＞）、サンシモン、フーリエ（＜François Marie Charles ＞Fourier＜。1772～1837年。空想社会主義者にして哲学者＞）、ブランキ、プルードン、カベ（＜Etienne ＞Cabet＜。1788～1856年。哲学者にして空想社会主義者＞）その他から、同じ場面への1848年におけるマルクスとエンゲルスの到着、そしてその先まで・・を整列させる。
最初から、プリーストランドは、やがてやってくるいくつもの悲劇の前兆を見出す。
「人民の敵」という新しい犯罪者概念を含む「ジャコバンのるつぼの中に、共産主義者の政治とふるまいの要素的諸傾向が粗っぽくかつ混ぜもののない形で登場した」と彼は記す。
フランス革命においては、後の諸動乱の時もそうだが、指導者達は、平等の約束を通じて大衆の革命的熱狂を掻きたてることと、内からと外からの敵から守るために強力な国家を建設する必要性の認識との間で股裂きになった。
究極的には、共和国の徳がナポレオン３世＜による統治＞へと道をあけたように、後者の衝動が勝利を収めた。・・・
マルクス主義は、次第にますます革命と科学の両方の哲学となって行った。
そして、その両者の間の緊張はマルクス主義の中に亀裂を生み出し、この亀裂はその歴史を通じて続いた」・・・
「＜東欧がソ連圏となってから＞後の期間、ずっと、東欧はソ連の軍事的かつ経済的資源を恒常的に減少させ続けた。
これは奇妙な帝国の形態だった。
各植民地が宗主国を＜潤すの＞ではなく、宗主国が各植民地に補助金を与え、そのため、臣民たる人々が宗主国の人々よりも高い生活水準を享受したのだ。（とはいえ、西欧の基準に照らせば、彼等は貧乏だったが・・。）・・・」（F）
「・・・早くも1981年には、その翌年にレオニード・ブレジネフ（Leonid Brezhnev＜。1906～82年＞）のソ連の指導者としての地位を引き継ぐことになる、KGBの長のユーリ・アンドロポフ（Yuri Andropov＜。1914～84年＞）が、彼の同僚達に、「我々はポーランドに部隊を導入するつもりはない…。仮に連帯のコントロール下にポーランドが置かれることになったとしても、かまわない」と語っている。
アンドロポフと彼の後継者のコンスタンティン・チェルネンコ（Konstantin Chernenko＜。1911～85年＞）の下で、ソ連の東欧でのねらいは、クレムリンの外＜にいる人間＞からは引き続きはっきりは見えなかった。
でもゴルバチョフは、東欧の共産主義諸体制は自分で歩め、そして自らを運命にゆだねよ、という紛うことなき信号を送ったソ連の指導者だった。（そして、短期間で、ソ連もそうなった。）
1989年10月にドイツ民主共和国建国40周年祈念の行事に、しぶしぶゴルバチョフが赴いた時、集まった群衆から次々に声がかかった。
「ゴルビー、我々を助けて」と。
プレシャコフは、ゴルバチョフをドジの機会主義者であるとこきおろす。
「彼は大義を抱いていたわけではなく、彼の同輩者達や仲間達に対し、おしなべて風見鶏的に接した。だからこそ、彼は、人生の終末近くなった現在、独りぼっちなのだ」と。
これに対し、セベスティヤンは＜ゴルバチョフについて、＞もっと暖かい、そして究極的にはもっと公正な評価を下す。
「彼自身の意図に照らせば（By his own lights）彼は失敗した。しかし、何百万人もの人々は彼に礼を言うべきだろう」と。・・・」（F）
・・・＜There is a＞ broader effort by China over the past few years to use everything at its disposal -- the courts, the regulatory system, trade law and even hacking -- to promote its own "national champions.・・・
Many of the clashes in recent months have been in an area where the United States and Europe still excel and China is trying to catch up: research and development in science and technology.
Foreign businesses accuse China of unfairly trying to gather intelligence about research data, computer code, patents and other intellectual property.
Pharmaceutical ventures are being told to open the books on their clinical data to get regulatory approval to sell their products. Security companies are being asked to provide the source code -- the blueprint for a program -- if they want to sell encryption software.
One of the key questions for companies trying to decide their future in China is whether there will ever be rule of law・・・ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/03/AR2010030303852_pf.html
1954年にフランスで出版された『O嬢の物語（Histoire d'O＝Story of O）』は、衝撃的なポルノ文学であり、世界を震撼させた。
私は1970年代に古本屋で買った英語版を読んで目をシロクロさせたもんだ。
著者は女性で、30歳くらい年上の既婚の男性へのラブレターとしてこの作品を書いたって、迂闊にも知らなかったな。↓
・・・in 1994 that Dominique Aury revealed her identity, admitting, at last, that she had written the novel for her lover, Jean Paulhan, a prominent intellectual who had written the introduction, "Happiness in Slavery." Aury and the married Paulhan had had an affair, which began in the 1930s, when she was in her 30s and he in his 60s, and continued until his death in 1968. In the interview with St. Jorre, Aury movingly states that she wrote the novel out of a fear that Paulhan would leave her. "What could I do?" she asks, "I wasn't young, I wasn't pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons."・・・
To forge a deep connection with another human being is to transcend the bounds of our selves, Aury is saying, and only then can we truly be free. ・・・ http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials?pubdate=2010-03-05
・・・Japanese government data show that since 1984, all age categories of women from 20 to 59 have become more thin・・・
Japanese women are bombarded by media images of gorgeous, very thin women -- and public health experts say they believe those images have played a substantial role in increasing pressure on Japanese women to be skinny. ・・・
"In the United States, you see all these beautiful skinny people on television, and yet Americans keep getting fatter anyway," http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030401436_pf.html
・・・the first complete English translation of the work of Confucius' earliest philosophical enemy, Mozi（墨子）, has been published in Hong Kong・・・
Mozi's ideas are deeply in contrast not with one but with two important branches of Chinese thought, Confucius and Sunzi. ・・・ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LC04Ad06.html
・・・Lincoln's greatest act, the Emancipation Proclamation, which was what we today would call a unilateral act of executive authority. Lincoln freed the slaves solely under his power as Commander-in-Chief, and so limited its effects only to the South and the areas of fighting. He did not apply it to loyal parts of the Union where slavery still existed. At the same time, Lincoln did order the detention of suspected Confederate spies and operatives even behind the front lines, which Congress would not approve for several years later.・・・
・・・the U.S. and the world prosecuted, and actually hung, several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding prisoners during WWII・・・
・・・in past wars, the United States had bombed civilian targets -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind, as well as the U.S. strategic bombing campaign in Europe during World War II. Those are controversial decisions today・・・
＜しかし、＞Why should the United States, which has every interest in enforcing the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions, give the same high protections to al Qaeda operatives who violate the laws of war・・・ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/03/03/DI20100303011
リンカーンが南北戦争中にやったこと↑は、アングロサクソンの法伝統に照らせば問題なしとせざるをえないが、彼による奴隷解放宣言の手段性をますます感じる今日この頃だ。
それ以外の部分↑については、相手が戦時国際法違反をやったらこっちもやってよい、と言っちゃあおしまいよ、という感を深くする。
あのニール・ファーガソンが、またまためずらしくも、傾聴に値することを書いてるよ。↓
・・・ Most of the fat-tail（注） phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems.・・・
・・・causal relationships are often nonlinear, which means that traditional methods of generalizing through observation (such as trend analysis and sampling) are of little use. Some theorists of complexity＜（＝（帝国のような）複雑系）＞ would go so far as to say that complex systems are wholly nondeterministic, meaning that it is impossible to make predictions about their future behavior based on existing data. ・・・
If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, rather than cycling sedately from Arcadia to Apogee to Armageddon, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time・・・
Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. ・・・ http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/66118
・・・ Kato (40), who is in the mail-order business・・・has since last year sent thousands of letters and e-mails to foreign governments and lawmakers asking them to investigate Kim's slush funds, which are believed to be stored in a bank in Luxembourg. His efforts began after reading the Jan. 2 issue of the Japanese magazine Aera, which interviewed a former South Korean intelligence official who said Kim transferred slush funds worth US$400 million from a Swiss bank account to another one in Luxembourg. ・・・
Although his e-mails are sent as requests from a private citizen, he has received official pledges from the governments of Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, and U.K. to investigate. The Luxembourg government told Kato that it has participated in international efforts to detect and block North Korea's illicit activities using financial institutions in the principality. ・・・ http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/03/02/2010030200305.html
・・・the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by - 20%.・・・
・・・not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it. ・・・ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8543906.stm
文化が進化を促し、進化が文化を促すだと。↓
・・・Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, “leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution・・・
Lactose tolerance is now well recognized as a case in which a cultural practice ? drinking raw milk ? has caused an evolutionary change in the human genome. ・・・
The style of stone tools called the Oldowan appeared 2.5 million years ago and stayed unchanged for more than a million years. The Acheulean stone tool kit that succeeded it lasted for 1.5 million years. But among behaviorally modern humans, those of the last 50,000 years, the tempo of cultural change has been far brisker. This raises the possibility that human evolution has been accelerating in the recent past under the impact of rapid shifts in culture. ・・・ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
・・・ the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwei ・・・sanitises the depths to which the men sank on the building of the infamous railway bridge.
For years he went barefoot and naked except for a simple loin cloth. After another death march through the jungle, Alastair Urquhart was taken back to Singapore and, with 400 other men, loaded into the hold of a cargo ship.
There was standing room only. It was airless, fetid, the heat baking. Many died here too.
The ship did sink, torpedoed at sea by an US submarine.
He spent five days and night alone on a barge. By the time he was picked up by a Japanese whaling ship, he was dehydrated, hallucinating and close to death.
He ended up in a camp in mainland Japan. He was there when the war ended. But his prison camp was a few miles from the city of Nagasaki.
The blast of hot air from the bomb that fell on August 9th knocked him off his feet. Within days he was on his way home.
He arrived in Aberdeen in November. For years he'd dreamt of being re-united with his family. When, finally, he was, they scarcely recognised each other.
Those who returned came home to a country that did not understand what they had endured, and which, for the most part, did not want to know.
Like many of his generation, Alistair Urquhart didn't speak about his experience for 60 years. His wife died after 46 years of marriage without knowing any of it.
I am breaking my silence now, he writes in his book, to bear witness. I am a lucky man, but I am also an angry man, and my business with Japan is unfinished.
Germany has atoned. Young Germans know of their nation's dreadful crimes. But young Japanese are taught nothing of their nation's guilt. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8534000/8534377.stm
・・・Hearing loss from exposure to loud noises is cumulative and irreversible・・・
・・・more than 15 minutes of exposure to 100 decibels is unsafe. The noise in a football stadium can reach 100 to 130 decibels.
And noise that is potentially dangerous to an adult is even more dangerous to a child・・・
Hearing loss, which accumulates slowly over a lifetime, is neither painful nor disfiguring, so it goes unnoticed.・・・ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/health/02baby.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
・・・In 1790, Hamilton set about establishing the financial credibility of the federal government. Central to his proposals was that the government would assume the debts of the states. This precipitated the “assumption” crisis because different states had different levels of debts and had proved more or less conscientious in paying them off.
James Madison complained that his home state of Virginia and some other Southern states that had paid their wartime debts would be unfairly treated if “having done their duty” they were obliged to “contribute to those states who have not equally done their duty.”
You can just hear those words being uttered today by a German burgher or Finnish techie faced by the financial woes of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain ? a group that has acquired the acronym “PIGS.”・・・
“Assumption” was only approved when Hamilton trumped the ire of Madison and Jefferson by agreeing to locate the new federal capital (tentatively planned for New York) at a permanent site on the Potomac River. Through astute political horse-trading, the basis for the financial coherence of the United States was laid.
I don’t see any such clever deal that would make of Europe’s crisis an opportunity for a renewed push toward a United States of Europe. The integrative dream has faded. Europe, for the foreseeable future, will remain in the halfway house of monetary union, fiscal divergence and à la carte national politics.・・・
We are a long way here from Hamilton’s (unheeded) admonitions to his countrymen to avoid the perils of debt: The differences between America and Europe go beyond the political to their very nature. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/opinion/02iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
トヨタは米国自動車産業化したからつまずいたってさ。
ドイツまで言いたい放題だな。↓
・・・Toyota has in fact become an American company, but this is hardly a compliment. The company, once known for quality, shifted its focus to volume, just as the Americans had done.・・・
Toyota, it seemed, no longer wanted to be the best on the market -- its cars were often merely the cheapest. As was the case at Ford and GM in the past, unbridled growth was the company's new mantra. ・・・ http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-680961,00.html
・・・It was primarily during the reigns of Louis XIII (1610-43) and, especially, Louis XIV (1643-1715) that the monarchy expanded its armed forces, legal authority, and bureaucracy and took control of the country.
This process was remarkably conflictual. Its first several decades were marked by peasant revolts, religious wars, and the obstinate resistance of provincial authorities, which culminated in the series of conflicts known as the Fronde (1648-53) and threatened to plunge the country into complete chaos. Louis XIV eventually defeated the recalcitrant nobles and local leaders on the battlefield, but the costs of victory were so high that he decided to complete the process of centralizing power by co-opting his remaining rivals rather than crushing them.
During the second half of the seventeenth century, accordingly, he and his ministers focused on buying off and winning over key individuals and social groups that might otherwise obstruct their state-building efforts. ・・・
Louis XIV and his ministers also adopted what would now be called targeted tax breaks.・・・
・・・the two Louis and their ministers essentially bribed their way to power.・・・ http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/66117
・・・ハイテクに精通した支那人にはツイッターの殆ど宗教的愛好者がいる。彼らは、権力者がツイッターへのアクセスをブロックするよりも速く、＜ツイッターの＞サービスを受けてしまう力を持っている。・・・
ツイッターは、当局者よりも速い情報の流れを作り出すことができる。・・・
つまり、人々は＜中共＞政府よりも速く情報を取得するであろう。これは、共産主義者にとって現実的な危機である。
ツイッターは、また、市民個々人の保護を支援する。ブロガーであるピーター・グオは、ツイッターによって刑務所から助け出されたと断言する。彼は、地方当局者が関与した犯罪を広めたところ逮捕されてしまった、と語った。彼は、昨年６月に逮捕された後、携帯電話からツイッターにSOSを発信した。彼の事件は即座に国内外の関心を呼び、そのことが、彼が二週間あまりで安全に解放される一助となった。・・・
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sakimono999北朝鮮論をめぐって（その１）2010-03-02T23:44:20Z2010-03-03T08:44:20+09:00tag:blog.livedoor.jp,2010:sakimono999.51517173太田述正コラム#3806（2010.2.2）
＜北朝鮮論をめぐって（その１）＞（2010.3.3公開）
１ 始めに
米国で新たな北朝鮮論が出ました。
マイヤーズ（B.R. Myers）の 'The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters' です。
この本を取り上...
＜北朝鮮論をめぐって（その１）＞（2010.3.3公開）
１ 始めに
米国で新たな北朝鮮論が出ました。
マイヤーズ（B.R. Myers）の 'The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters' です。
この本を取り上げる理由は、北朝鮮論のおさらいをするとともに、米国人の国際認識がやはりいかにダメかを読者の皆さんに分かっていただくためです。
・・・On the Titanic, the study found, children were 14.8 percent more likely to survive adults, while on the Lusitania they were 5.3 percent less likely to do so. And women on the Titanic were 53 percent more likely to survive than men, while on the Lusitania they were 1.1 percent less likely to do so. ・・・
The Lusitania sank in about 18 minutes, while the Titanic took nearly three hours.・・・
When you have to react very, very fast, human instincts are much faster than internalized social norms・・・ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02ships.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
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「・・・韓国の外食産業企業が西洋料理でさえ、本場のヨーロッパからではなく日本に目を向けるのは、日本の外食トレンドが韓国より一歩先を行き、ベンチマーキングするには理想的で、料理の味やサービス方式も韓国人の好みに合っているからだ。米国の「ハードロックカフェ」やフランスの「ヒポポタマス」など、本場から直接韓国に入ってきた外食企業が次々と韓国で失敗したのとは対照的だ。
また、日本の外食企業の情緒や体質が韓国と似ており、働きやすく効率的という点も見逃せない。・・・
「日本のテレビ番組を盗作している」という批判に常にさらされてきた韓国だが、最近は日本から番組の形式・企画を正式に輸入している。KBS第2の大人気ドラマ『花より男子～Boys Over Flowers』は日本の同名漫画とドラマ版権を購入し、ほぼ原作通り制作したもの。SBSの『クイズ！第6感対決』はフジテレビに著作権料を支払い、『クイズヘキサゴン』という番組のフォーマットをそのまま使用している。KBSのあるプロデューサーは「日本の番組を見ると、観客の活用、字幕スーパーの使用、再現ドラマの挿入、奇想天外な罰ゲームなど、面白い要素がとても多い。新番組の企画を練る際に、まず日本の番組を参考にするのは事実」と話している。」 http://www.chosunonline.com/news/20100228000021
ツイッターに代表されるインターネットの普及は、中国共産党の支配を確実に堀崩すとよ。↓
・・・Twitter has an almost religious following among tech-savvy Chinese, whose determination to use the service outstrips authorities' efforts to block access to it.・・・
Twitter can create a faster information flow than any official agency,・・・
That means people would get information faster than the government. That's a real crisis for Communists."
Twitter also helps protect individual citizens. Blogger Peter Guo claims that Twitter got him out of jail. He says he was arrested after spreading word about a crime that allegedly involved local officials. He tweeted an SOS via his mobile phone after he was arrested last July, and his case quickly attracted both domestic and international attention, which helped secure his release a little over two weeks later.・・・ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/28/china-google-twitter-democratisation
所得の平等な社会は精神疾患者が少ないんだと。↓
・・・ One in 10 people in fairly equal societies such as Japan or Germany report a mental health problem in a given year; in less equal nations such as Britain, Australia or Canada, the figure rises to one in five - and one in four in the US. It does seem that inequality breeds anxiety. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/28/spirit-level-richard-wilkinson-kate-pickett
Even if music did little more than lift our spirits, he says, it would be a powerful force in maintaining physical and mental health. The pleasure that results from listening to music we love stimulates the release of neural growth factors that promote the vigor, growth and replacement of brain cells.
In that way, Damasio says, just the simple act of absorbing music may help keep older minds healthy, active and resilient against injury and illness. http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-0301-brain-music-adults-20100301,0,2032734.story]]>
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