Thursday, March 31, 2011

猪瀬直樹

田中は個性だけでのし上がったのではない。戦後民主主義という「制度」と田中という個性とが交錯したとき、はじめてひとつのパワーが発生したのである。田中は民主主義という普遍的理念を巧みに利用し、そして、彼自身の持つ庶民的合理主義を最大の武器としてのし上がったのである。この民主主義という制度があるかぎり、彼は有罪判決に抗して不死鳥でいられるのだ。

Daniel J. Flynn

Production, not destruction, is the engine of growth. More than 150 years ago, Frederic Bastiat observed his fellow Frenchmen falling for the notion that “it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it." Simpletons noticed the man with the broken window paying the glazier to replace it. They could not have noticed that had the window not broken, the man would have had money to buy something that he wanted—and still have a window.

It’s called the broken window fallacy. And despite its simple logic, liberals have acted as though it was never written. From Franklin Roosevelt’s wild-eyed idea to pay farmers to plow under crops and slay livestock to Barack Obama’s mush-headed cash-for-clunkers program that subsidized the destruction of functional automobiles, liberal schemes perpetually confuse destruction for production.

Thomas G. Donlan

The destruction of a fishing boat, for example, is not a good thing for fishermen or fish-eaters or tax collectors, even if it is a good thing for boat-builders and construction workers.

Money—whether private or public, whether taxed or borrowed—spent on replacing building boats and buildings is money that could have been spent on something else. Demand for everything else that consumers and the government buy must fall while formerly useful assets are replaced.

松浦肇

「誠に残念ですが、日本は貧しい国になるでしょう」。米国家経済会議(NEC)前委員長のローレンス・サマーズ米ハーバード大学教授が23日、ニューヨーク市内の講演で断言すると、会場が静まり返った。

米国では、震災後の落ち着いた日本の社会秩序が評価される一方で、経済の先行きが懸念されている。

米国のエコノミストは第2四半期(4~6月)の日本の国内総生産(GDP)が前年比約3%減るとみているが、減少率の半分、1・5%分が東電「発」によるネガティブ要因。放射能漏れや停電が都心部の経済活動を妨げ、消費の低迷につながるという見方だ。

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Marilyn Monroe

This life is what you make it. Not matter what, you’re going to mess up sometimes, it’s a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you’re going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they’ll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they’re your true best friends. Don’t let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they’ll come and go too. And babe, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can’t give up becuase if you give up, you’ll never find your soul mate. You’ll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don’t, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.

George W. Bush

Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify the war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray to be as good a messenger of his will as possible.

Ron Suskind

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

John Jameson

My golden rule: Treat others as I would treat my whisky.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Kristie Lu Stout

After four days of reporting on the state of the tech industry in China, I can safely make this assertion...
China is a kingdom of geeks.
There are more than 350 million mobile phone users here -- that's more than any other country.
As for the Net, more than 100 million are plugged in, making China the second largest Internet market in the world.
Access to technology is cheap. A full desktop system from China's Lenovo can be had for less than $500.
And for those who can't afford a PC, there's more than two million cybercafés -- or "wang ba" -- across the country.
As a quick gauge of local "geekdom," I randomly pulled aside a few locals walking in Beijing's Wangfujing district to see what kind of gadgetry they had on them.
One young woman showed me not one but two mobile phones in her handbag -- a GSM phone that provides nationwide access, and a Xiao Ling Tong or Little Smart service that offers city-wide access at cheaper rates.
A man unzipped all the pockets in his black nylon fisherman's vest to reveal a cell phone, two digital cameras and a flash MP3 player.
This is Geek Nation, and the Geek Gold Rush is on.

Isaac Mao

I think the problem to the whole country is that if we censor more and more keywords, we will be stopping the country from more and more innovations. I described it as a snake swallowing its own tail because the snake is trying to find the food and attack, but eventually he found his own tail.

Monday, March 28, 2011

google.com

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
for aol
for best buy
for craigslist
for dictionary    
for ebay
for facebook
for gmail
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
for hotmail    
for ikea
for jet blue    
for kayak
for lirr
for mapquest    
for netflix
O
P
Q
R
S
T
for old navy
for pandora    
for qwop
for run
for skype
for target
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
for usps
for verizon    
for weather
for xbox
for youtube
for zappos

ICAO

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
for Alfa
for Bravo
for Charlie    
for Delta
for Echo
for Foxtrot
for Golf
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
for Hotel
for India
for Juliett
for Kilo
for Lima
for Mike
for November    
O
P
Q
R
S
T
for Oscar
for Papa
for Quebec    
for Romeo
for Sierra    
for Tango
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
for Uniform
for Victor
for Whiskey    
for X-ray
for Yankee
for Zulu

Lewis Wolpert

Nick Collins

Traditional wisdom states that our younger years are the best of our lives, with the milestone of 40 meaning we are "over the hill" and already on the wane.

But in fact satisfaction and optimism steadily increase after middle age, easily eclipsing the earlier years and peaking as late as the eighties, according to research.

An easing of the responsibilities of middle age combined with maturity and the ability to focus on the things we enjoy combine to make old age far more enjoyable than one might expect.

This is greatly increased by having good health, a stable income and good relationships with family and friends, according to scientists.

Утро

В среднем возрасте человек, как правило, разрывается между семьей и работой, что влечет за собой депрессию, а также безрадостные мысли о том, что все самое хорошее осталось в молодости. Однако это не совсем так, уверены ученые.

Чем старше становится человек, тем он счастливее, к такому неожиданному выводу пришли ученые. Самые лучшие годы ждут людей, когда они выходят на пенсию, говорят специалисты.

Согласно выкладкам британских и американских ученых, ощущение гармонии возвращается к старости. Правда, для этого должны быть определенные условия — наличие денег, крепкого здоровья и близких людей, друзей, родственников или второй половины.

堺屋太一

(モンゴル帝国の財政官)ヤラワチは「自分に通貨の発行権を与えてくれたら、向こう100年間、増税なしで国家運営できるようにしてみせます」と大見得を切り、実際に紙幣を大量に発行した。彼は「おカネは金や銀に換わるから価値があるのではなく、有利子で借りる人がいるから価値がある」と考えた。つまり、おカネの「投資手段としての価値がある」ことに目を向けたわけです。
 そこで、ヤラワチは借り手を確保するために今で言うファンドを作り、貿易商人らに事業の運転資金としておカネを貸した。しかし30年後には、運転資金に貸すだけでは借り手が足りず、設備資金としても貸します。さらに、もう30年後には、王侯貴族に大名貸しまで始めた。これは消費者金融ですから、危険です。
 はたしてその20年後、モンゴル帝国は内乱が起きて大名貸しが回収不能となり、ファンドは次々に倒産してモンゴルの紙幣は価値を失ってしまうのです。

 このヤラワチと同じことをやったのが、レーガン大統領以降のアメリカです。
 つまり'80年代から、アメリカはドルをどんどん発行し、中小企業や新興企業に貸した。これがジャンクボンドです。そして、'90年代にはジャンクボンドが行き詰まると新興国に貸した。それも、'97年のアジア通貨危機でダメになり、次にはIT企業の設備投資に融資してITバブルが起きます。これも'01年には崩壊した。こうしていよいよ貸す相手がなくなり、目を付けたのが消費者金融、つまりサブプライムローンです。
 問題はここからです。こうしておカネの借り手が行き着くところまで行くと、次なる借り手はどこか。いま、それは国です。
 アメリカもイギリスもイタリアも日本も、めちゃくちゃな財政赤字の国です。だから国が借り手になるわけです。では、国の財政再建が実現したらどうなるか。もはやおカネの借り手はなくなり、資金の行き場がなくなります。だから、財政再建を先送りして減税を継続した。これが現在のアメリカです。

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Jessica Simpson

Natural beauty is really happiness with who you are. It you like who you are on the inside, that'll come through on the outside.

Hank Fu

If we observe things around us, we will find out that "None is permanent". Things, whether material or non-material, change constantly. Some of the changes are evident, some of them are not. Ever since life began, natural phenomena have been like this. From this point of view, we should understand that things always arise depending on conditions. When the appropriate conditions come together, things arise; when those conditions disperse, things cease.

If you could understand the point that Nothing is permanent, you will not keep thinking of something in your memory all the time, because it is impermanent and will eventually vanish, no matter how much you keep remembering it. In such a case, why don't we just leave it alone?

In the Universe, everything that we can see, hear, and think of all arising depending on conditions, meaning that everything is impermanent. The people we love the most or the situations we like the most will all vanish. The people we hate the most or the situations we like the least will all vanish too. Do we still want to persist in our own opinions of things that happen one minute and vanish the next in this world?

Thich Nhat Hanh

Nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. ... Confucius, while looking at a stream, said, "It is always flowing, day and night." The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent? ... How can the situation in the world improve? We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.
If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don't suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away.

If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise. Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.

अनिच्चा

All is impermanent. And what is the all that is impermanent? The eye is impermanent, visual objects ... eye-consciousness ... eye contact ... whatever is felt as pleasant or unpleasant or neither-unpleasant-nor-pleasant, born of eye-contact is impermanent.
(Likewise with the ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.)

All formations are impermanent.

Whatever is subject to origination is subject to cessation.

末富

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Victor Hugo

L'avenir a plusieurs noms.
Pour les faibles, il se nomme l'impossible; pour les timides, il se nomme l'inconnu; pour les penseurs et pour les vaillants, il se nomme l'idéal.
L'impossible !
L'inconnu !
Quoi ! plus de misère pour l'homme, plus de prostitution pour la femme, plus d'ignorance pour l'enfant ce serait l'impossible !
Quoi ! les États-Unis d'Europe, libres et maîtres chacun chez eux, mus et reliés par une assemblée centrale, et communiant à travers les mers avec les États-Unis d'Amérique, ce serait l'inconnu !
Quoi ! ce qu'a voulu Jésus-Christ, c'est l'impossible !
Mais on nous dit : – Et la transition ! et les douleurs de l'enfantement ! et la tempête du passage du vieux monde au monde nouveau ! un continent qui se transforme ! l'avatar d'un continent ! Vous figurez-vous cette chose redoutable ? la résistance désespérée des trônes, la colère des castes, la furie des armées, le roi défendant sa liste civile, le prêtre défendant sa prébende, le juge défendant sa paie, l'usurier défendant son bordereau, l'exploiteur défendant son privilège, quelles ligues ! quels obstacles ! Préparez vos yeux à verser des larmes; préparez vos veines à verser du sang ! arrêtez-vous ! reculez !... – Silence aux faibles et aux timides ! l'impossible, cette barre de fer rouge, nous y mordrons; l'inconnu, ces ténèbres, nous y plongerons; et nous te conquerrons, idéal !
Vive la révolution future !

良寛

地しんは信に大変に候
野僧草庵は何事もなく
親るい中死人もなくめで度存じ候

うちつけにしなばしなずてながらえて
かかるうきめを見るがわびしさ

しかし災難に逢う時節には災難に逢うが
よく候 死ぬ時節には死ぬがよく候
是はこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候

            かしこ

上杉謙信

運は天にあり。鎧は胸にあり。手柄は足にあり。 
何時も敵を掌にして合戦すべし。疵つくことなし。
死なんと戦えば生き、生きんと戦えば必ず死するものなり。
家を出ずるより帰らじと思えばまた帰る。
帰ると思えば、ぜひ帰らぬものなり。不定とのみ思うに違わずといえば、
武士たる道は不定と思うべからず。 必ず一定と思うべし

三崎無我

釈迦の教えの究極は何かと言いますと、それは無常であると思うのです。
無常と言いますのは、この世のすべては変化流動し、固定されたものは一切ないという事です。
人はとかく安定したものを求めたがるわけでありますが、安定を求めるばかりに、それが失われた時に動揺する。激しく苦しむ。ゆえに釈迦は、世に安定したものなど一切無いという事を前提として生きよと説いたのです。
人は安定を求めます。
しかしながら、自分という存在、人という存在、いや、世の中という存在そのものが、不安定なものなのです。
「必ず上手く行く」「絶対に成功する」という事は、決してない。決してないのだと心に刻む事。そこに、かえって安心が生まれます。
仏教の安心とは、絶対的なものを掴まえることで得る安心ではありません。不安定なものであると悟ることによって生まれる安心です。
我々は、誰人たりとも、将来の安泰は保証されていない。将来の健康を保証されていない。
もちろん、できるだけ努力して、生活の安定や健康に努めますが、それでも、いざという時は仕方ないという覚悟を決めてこそ、精神的な安定性を得られるのです。
将来が恐くてならないという状態から解放されるのです。
我々は朝の露の如く、いつか消えて行く存在です。
健康や財産を失うことを、必要以上に心配してはなりません。今を楽しむのです。無常だからこそ、今に感謝し、今を生きるのです。

Friday, March 25, 2011

Donald Peterson

ウィキペディア

単に「花」といえばサクラのことであり、いまなお日本人が桜を愛してやまないのは、そこに常なき様、すなわち無常を感じるからとされる。「永遠なるもの」を追求し、そこに美を感じ取る西洋人の姿勢に対し、日本人の多くは移ろいゆくものにこそ美を感じる傾向を根強く持っているとされる。
「無常」「無常観」は、中世以来長い間培ってきた日本人の美意識の特徴の一つと言ってよかろう。

鴨長明

行く川の流れは絶えずして、しかも もとの水にあらず。淀みに浮ぶ うたかたは、かつ消えかつ結びて、久しく止まる事なし。世の中にある人と住家と、またかくの如し。

玉敷の都の中に、棟を竝べ甍を爭へる、尊き卑しき人の住居は、代々を經て盡きせぬものなれど、これを まことかと尋ぬれば、昔ありし家は稀なり。或は、去年焼けて今年は造り、あるは、大家滅びて小家となる。住む人も、これにおなじ。處もかはらず、人も多かれど、いにしへ見し人は、二・三十人が中に、僅かに一人・二人なり。

朝に死し、夕に生るゝ ならひ、たゞ水の泡にぞ似たりける。知らず、生れ死ぬる人、何方より來りて、何方へか去る。また知らず、假の宿り、誰がために心をなやまし、何によりてか、目を悦ばしむる。その主人と住家と、無常を爭ふさま、いはば、朝顔の露に異ならず。或は、露落ちて花殘れり。殘るといへども、朝日に枯れぬ。或は、花は萎みて露なほ消えず。消えずといへども、夕べを待つことなし。

吉田兼好

つれづれなるまゝに、日ぐらし硯に向かひて、心にうつりゆくよしなしごとをそこはかとなく書き付くれば、あやしうこそ物狂ほしけれ。
いでや、この世に生れては、願はしかるべきことこそ多かめれ。

信濃前司行長

祗園精舎の鐘の声、
諸行無常の響きあり。
娑羅双樹の花の色、
盛者必衰の理をあらはす。
おごれる人も久しからず、
唯春の夜の夢のごとし。
たけき者も遂にはほろびぬ、
偏に風の前の塵に同じ。

Газета «Труд»

Данные переписи населения, проведенной в девяти странах мира, показали, что религиозные взгляды их жителей Австралии, Австрии, Ирландии, Канаде, Нидерландах, Новой Зеландии, Финляндии, Чехии и Швейцарии постепенно исчезают.

Ученые использовали математическую модель получения данных, которая позволяет объяснить взаимосвязь между количеством верующих людей и социальными мотивами, побуждающими человека обратиться к религии. Результаты работы, были представлены на конференции Американского физического общества в Далласе и показали, что религия в ряде стран обречена на практически полное исчезновение.

Jason Palmer

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Richard Wiener, Haley Yaple, Daniel Abrams

Applications of Statistical and Nonlinear Physics to Social Systems

Modeling the decline of religion

People claiming no religious affiliation constitute the fastest growing "religious" minority in many countries throughout the world.

Here we use a minimal model of competition between social groups to explain historical data on the growth of religious non-affiliation in 85 regions around the world. We also describe numerical experiments that support the validity of the model. According to the model, for societies in which the perceived utility of not adhering is greater than the utility of adhering, religion will be driven toward extinction.

涅槃経

諸行無常,是生滅法;生滅滅已,寂滅為樂

James Redfield

The thought spawned a flood of memories as I recalled how quickly word of the First Nine Insights of this Prophecy had circulated around the planet. Why? Because they made sense in a world too shallow and materialistic. The message of this Prophecy was clear. ...

... The Tenth delved into the mystery of the Afterlife and chronicled a decade long focus on Heaven and its inhabitants, forever dispelling, along the way, an age- old repression of death and what happens afterward.

... the Eleventh, born of a collective knowing that we are all here to participate in some as yet undefined agenda—a Plan of some kind. It involved the discovery of how to manifest our deepest dreams and to lift the world to its ideal. ...

The Document says when we integrate all eleven, we get the final download: the Twelfth. After that, we'll understand not just the full picture of spirituality in this life, but we'll be able live it most of the time.

... we have to learn to communicate what's going on with us to others.

If you sense the truth of what is occurring and believe that people of integrity can make a difference, take action. To let us know what you are doing or to receive the latest commentaries by James Redfield, visit celestinevition.com.

[Spread religion through books, web, then social networking, saying that we are not a religion]

Thursday, March 24, 2011

United Nations

加藤公康

塩谷喜雄

 深刻な原発事故の拡大を防ぐべく、「総力戦」が日夜続いている。聞こえてくるのは「作戦は成功」という大本営発表ばかりで、冷静な評価や高度な専門知識に支えられた今後の見通しが示されることはない。その役割を果たすべき組織、原子力安全委員会(班目春樹委員長)は、この間ずっと「行方不明」なのだ。
 安全委員会は日本の原子力安全を統べる元締めである。行政組織上は内閣府の審議会のひとつで、経済産業省の原子力安全・保安院や文部科学省など役所の行なう安全規制を再チェックし、事業者と行政を両方監視する。必要なら政府や自治体に勧告を行なう権限を持つ。
 その元締めが、東電福島の深刻な事故が判明してから10日経っても、一度も記者会見をしていない。班目委員長が12日に菅直人首相と同道して現地訪問したこと、職員を現地対策センターに派遣したことなどは、ホームページに記されているが、国民に向けての情報発信はゼロである。
 何ゆえの沈黙なのか。2000年に作られた原子力災害対策特別措置法=原災法では、安全委は対策本部長(首相)に技術的な助言を行なう、と決めている。法制度上は、安全委という客観的な専門家の評価と意見を、政府は受け止めなければならない。
 班目委員長は官邸で連日開催されている対策本部の会議にはほとんど出席しているようだが、首相への助言はきちんとなされているのだろうか。法律上は事故後すぐに立ち上げるはずの緊急技術助言組織はいつ作られ、どう機能しているのだろうか。国民の目には何も見えていない。

原子力安全委員会

原子力安全委員会の対応

原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第11回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/21)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第10回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/17)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第9回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/16)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第8回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/15)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第7回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/14)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第6回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/13)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第5回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/13)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第4回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/12)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第3回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/12)
原子力安全委員会委員長代理は、官邸で開催された第2回原子力災害対策本部に。。。(3/12)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、総理大臣の現地視察に同行した。(3/12)
原子力安全委員会委員長は、官邸で開催された第1回原子力災害対策本部に出席した。(3/11)

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Dan Blumenthal

Sometimes it takes a crisis to dispense with intellectual fads. The world’s response to Libya has made clear that currently fashionable arguments about the “rise of the Rest” and the world’s new “nonpolarity” are simply untrue. Charles Krauthammer was wrong about one thing in his description of the “unipolar moment” at the end of the Cold War: We are not living in a unipolar moment, we are witnessing a unipolar era. Why? Because the “rest”—China and India—are unable and unwilling to lead.

What the new declinists miss is that while the United States is not as far ahead of India and China in material strength as it used to be, the vision of world order it shares with its NATO allies provides it with a moral strength and legitimacy impossible to measure. The new declinists point to the ways in which the “Rest” can make life marginally more difficult for the West. But while the “Rest” may carp from the sidelines and gum up the works on international trade and financial agreements, when it comes to upholding international order, Delhi and Beijing will take a pass. We may be tiring of it, but the Unipolar Era is alive and well.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Akin Iwilade

The globalization era is still rapidly unfolding. It may therefore be difficult to say for sure what diplomacy may look like in the next few decades. One may however safely predict that tensions will continue to rise along the fault lines defined by cultural civilizations as a consequence of the tendency of globalization to deny the specificities of relatively weak regions. Diplomacy will therefore have to focus increasingly on proactive measures to forestall the degeneration into armed conflict. Diplomacy is also likely to have to evolve to reflect the increasing salience of non state actors. For instance, diplomats will have to learn how to negotiate with highly irregular foes like terrorists. Economic matters will also likely increase in relevance. There is also the possibility that multilateral diplomacy, to accommodate the increasing cosmopolitan character of the international political system, will become much more important in the coming period. Above all, diplomacy in the era of globalization will inevitably mirror the very many contradictions of the period. It will create new areas of conflict and at the same time improve cooperation.

Monday, March 21, 2011

藤野眞功

「ちゃんと電車で帰ったよ。逃げる奴は追われるというからな」
「凄いですね」
「いったい、今の話のなにが凄いんだ? ええ! 教えてくれ」
「だって、そんな状況から逃げ切るなんて」
「いいか。凄いのは、金を持って逃げた奴らだけだ。おれを嵌めた二人の覆面と運転手だけだ。おれのことじゃない。おれが言いたいのは、言葉には意味がないってことだ。いいか。逃げるとき以外、あの時のおれは常に冷静だった。だが、事にあたっては冷静であることに何の意味もない。それが、おれの言いたいことだ。言葉を信じるな。それがもっとも肝心なことだ。奴らはおれを嵌め、オヤジはおれとの約束を破った。それが、おれの得た経験だ。言葉は無意味だ」
「でも、今の話はおれにはすごく為になりました」
 健一は言った。
「だから言葉には意味がない」
 藤井は笑った。
「いまのは作り話だ」
「なんのために、そんな嘘を」
「ここでは、すべてが無意味だからさ。言葉も行動も、おれもお前さんも」
 健一には、すべてが作り話とは思えなかった。

Sunday, March 20, 2011

モスクワ時事

ロシアのメドベージェフ大統領は18日、東日本大震災の被災者をロシアに受け入れ、治療や再就職のあっせんを行う用意があると表明した。インタファクス通信が伝えた。

大統領は安全保障会議で、被災者への人道支援物資提供以外に、「日本の子供たちや負傷者をロシアの休暇・療養施設に受け入れ、治療や心理的リハビリを行うことも検討する必要がある」と強調。また、「必要があれば、シベリアや極東の人口過疎地で日本人の労働力を活用することも考えるべきだ」と述べた。

ショイグ非常事態相は、外交ルートで負傷者の治療受け入れを日本側に提案したと大統領に報告した。

Рита Долженкова

Шесть лет за пластик

Подделка банковских карт будет караться уголовной ответственностью




Soroptimist International of the Americas

Soroptimist International

  • Soroptimist International of the Americas
  • Soroptimist International of Europe
  • Soroptimist International Great Britain & Ireland (SIGBI) Limited
  • Soroptimist International South West Pacific

日本ユニセフ協会

日本ユニセフ協会は、当協会内に「東日本大地震緊急支援実行委員会(仮称)」を設置。当面の支援活動の費用として、当協会が同実行委員会に1億円を準備し、本緊急支援への募金を受け付ける口座を設置しました。こちらでお預かりした募金は、全額、子どもたちを中心とする被災者の方々への支援に活用させていただきます。(なお、当緊急支援に必要な資金を上回るご協力をいただいた場合(被災者の皆さまへの支援が行き届き、ユニセフと日本ユニセフ協会が提供できる内容の支援が被災地では必要ないと判断される場合)、ユニセフが実施する他国・地域での紛争・自然災害などによる緊急・復興支援に活用させていただくことがありますので、ご了承願います。)

TSUTAYA阿佐ヶ谷ゴールド街店

営業再開しました! テレビは地震ばっかりでつまらない、そんなあなた、ご来店お待ちしています!

國母和宏

Saturday, March 19, 2011

John Lennon, Paul McCartney

Oh yeah, all right
Are you going to be in my dreams
Tonight?

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

Shannon Peck

I have seen Love heal a young man in his thirties who was dying of a hemorrhaging liver, where the doctors said his liver was the equivalent of an eighty year old alcoholic and they gave him no chance of survival.

I have seen Love heal extreme crippling in a woman who had not noticed the toll many years of quiet marital abuse had taken on her. She was deemed incurable. And I have seen the many hundreds of times people have suffered from congestions, heart problems, infections, injuries, pains, aches, inflammations, swellings, as well as diseases. There is no limit to what and how Love heals us.

Love also heals all that our hearts are breaking from, including old hurts and wounds from ways we were treated, abuse, regrets, fears, dreads, burdens, guilt, anger, shame, grief, and so many other afflictions we suffer from – whether life-long habits or one-time incidents, whether hidden from us or blatantly known by us.

I have seen people in desperate situations from financial crises, family relationship crises, and health crises (acute and chronic) all healed. Some of these were quick healings. Some took months and even years.

齋田章

司馬遼太郎氏の作品 『ロシアについて (北方の原形)』 は、数少ない私の愛読書のひとつである。。。氏が語るコサックの東方遠征は、ソヴェト映画 『シベリア物語』 の中で演奏されるオラトリオ 「シベリア物語」 がバックに流れる中で映し出される、コサックによるシベリア征服の映像をほうふつとさせる。 また、この時代のロシアのすばらしい平衡能力、良心的世論が存在したロシア国家の良質さ、苛酷な漢族商人から 「本然的ないたわり」 のあるロシアへ逃れたモンゴル人たちのことなど、 氏のロシアに対する好意的な語り口は、「ロシア大好き爺々」 を自認する私には、とても心地よい。。。特に、幕末鎖国下の日本に開国を迫るために相前後して来航した、アメリカ合衆国のペリーと、クルーゼンシュテルン、ゴローニン、プチャーチンたちロシア帝国の海軍軍人との人物比較は面白い。
「シベリアの食糧問題は、ロシアにとって恒常的な難問題」 であり、その解決のために、ロシア艦隊を日本に派遣した、という。
司馬遼太郎氏のペリー評はまことに痛烈で、ペリーの人間性をして 「傲岸と卑屈は、しばしば紙の表裏であるという一例」 と談じている。 ペリー提督閣下もまったく形無しである。 「品性のわるさ」 を言われては、武人として、これ以上の不名誉はあるまい。
。。。何はともあれ、この作品の中で司馬遼太郎氏の語る日露交渉史は、シベリア産のエネルギー需給の関係など、将来の両国の善隣関係のありようを示唆しているように思われる。

14th Dalai Lama

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines but less healthiness.
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour.
We built more computers to hold more copies than ever,
But have less real communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall mean but short characters;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It’s a time when there is much in the window
But nothing in the room.

Donald G. Mitchell

Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream.

Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce

This story is about truth, beauty, freedom; but above all things, this story is about love.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

- She said you make her feel "like a virgin."
- Like a... virgin?
- Touched for the very first time!

- Things aren't always as they seem.
- Things are exactly the way they seem.

Love? Above all things I believe in love! Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!

Every man wanted her. But One man dared to love her.

Benjamin Franklin

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Marilyn Manson

There is a hurricane ablowing and just by knowing what you know, you have an advantage to the blind morons that surround you everyday. However not everyone can be saved. Ancient proverb: don't bother telling the truth to your friend because he already knows and don't bother telling the truth to your enemy because he won't believe you. Civilize those you can and fuck the rest. There are too many people in this world. It is not our responsibility to be constantly cleaning up after the weak-minded. Nature will eventually run its course and those too stupid to live will fortunately be crushed beneath the wheels of our progress. Assume your individuality. Culture can rob you of your uniqueness. That's how stereotypes exist, and not without reason. Anyone too wrapped up in the sheep mentality of their ethnicity can never truely express themselves as individuals. Read, watch, listen, do what you want. But be warned! You cannot have this freedom at no cost. You must pay in responsibility. If you listen to Marilyn Manson and murder your family then you will go to jail. That's reality. If you decide to commit suicide for a song - so long sucker! That kind of thinking has no place in our movement. Right now as a family, as an army we are limited as a minority. Laws bind us. But it is important to remember the law is only what is popular. Not whats right or wrong. Marilyn Manson rejects conventional morality and society's self-serving standards. When we become the majority, we will decide who doesn't belong. As misanthropes and throw-away lods we will not submit to the mainstream. You will become it. And America should be very, very afraid. I am you.

Madonna Ciccone

I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.

Bill Hicks

See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!

John Lennon

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.

Alexandra Wallace

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Ambassade de France au Japon

SEISME : Message de l’Ambassade à la commnunauté française
Dimanche 13 mars à 18.00 heures

1. Pertes humaines
Nouveau bilan provisoire : au moins 10.000 morts (source : police de Miyagi)

2. Points ressortissants :
Sur les 137 ressortissants français présents dans la région Nord-Est, la plus touchée par le séisme, 116 ont pu être contactés et sont indemnes. La cellule de crise de l’Ambassade met tout en œuvre pour rentrer en contact avec les 21 dont on reste aujourd’hui sans nouvelle.

3. Point nucléaire :
Deux scénarios sont actuellement possibles :
  • Une mise sous contrôle des centrales défectueuses : dans ce cas le risque reste celui d’une contamination résiduelle liée au relâchement contrôlé de gaz radioactifs, avec un risque négligeable pour l’agglomération de Tokyo. Ce scénario est actuellement privilégié par les autorités japonaises et par un grand nombre de scientifiques.
  • Ou au contraire l’explosion d’un réacteur avec dégagement d’un panache radioactif. Ce panache peut être sur Tokyo dans un délai de quelques heures, en fonction du sens et de la vitesse du vent. Le risque est celui d’une contamination.
La période critique sera les trois à quatre jours à venir.

4. Recommandations :
L’Agence Météorologique japonaise vient de faire état de la probabilité d’une réplique de magnitude 7. Cette probabilité est de 70% dans un délai de trois jours et de 50% dans les deux jours suivants.
Compte tenu de ce qui précède (le risque d’un fort tremblement de terre et l’incertitude sur la question nucléaire), il paraît raisonnable de conseiller à ceux qui n’ont pas une raison particulière de rester sur la région de Tokyo de s’éloigner de la région du Kantô pour quelques jours.
Nous déconseillons fortement à nos ressortissants de se rendre au Japon et nous recommandons fortement de reporter tout voyage prévu.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

On peut tout faire avec des baïonnettes, sauf s'asseoir dessus.

On ne croit qu'en ceux qui croient en eux.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

James Gleick

Clay Shirky


Internet use is as widespread as cable TV, and an internet user in rural Utah has access to more books than a citizen of Greenwich Village had before the web. Millions more books. Like record stores and video rental places, physical bookstores simply can’t compete for breadth of offering and, also like the social changes around music and moving images, the internet is strengthening rather than weakening the ability of niches and sub-cultures to see themselves reflected in long-form writing.

The internet also moderates the competitive threat, because the competition is only a click away. Amazon lists millions of books, but so does eBay, and publishers like O’Reilly or McGraw-Hill or Alyson can sell directly to the reader. If you had to choose between buying books only offline or only online, the choice that maximizes the number of ideas in circulation is unambiguously clear. Even if all but a dozen online booksellers were to vanish, there would still be more places to buy books on the web than there are bookstores in the average American city today.

The Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Association

For our members -- locally owned, independent bookstores -- the effect will be devastating. There is simply no way for ABA members to compete. The net result will be the closing of many independent bookstores, and a concentration of power in the book industry in very few hands.

... That they are taking place in the market for books is catastrophic. If left unchecked, these predatory pricing policies will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to maintain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public, and will allow the few remaining mega booksellers to raise prices to consumers unchecked.

Bill Petrocelli

You have a choke point where millions of writers are trying to reach millions of readers. But if it all has to go through a narrow funnel where there are only four or five buyers deciding what's going to get published, the business is in trouble.

David Gernert

If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King's new novel or John Grisham's 'Ford County' for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best sellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

We need to synchronize our technological progress with our principles. In accepting the Nobel Prize, President Obama spoke about the need to build a world in which peace rests on the inherent rights and dignities of every individual. And in my speech on human rights at Georgetown a few days later, I talked about how we must find ways to make human rights a reality. Today, we find an urgent need to protect these freedoms on the digital frontiers of the 21st century.

There are many other networks in the world. Some aid in the movement of people or resources, and some facilitate exchanges between individuals with the same work or interests. But the internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And that’s why we believe it’s critical that its users are assured certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them. This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship.

Amy Smith

Rules for design in the developing world:
  1. Try living for a week on $2 a day.
  2. Listen to the right people.
  3. Do the hard work needed to find a simple solution.
  4. Create “transparent” technologies, ones that are easily understood by the users, and promote local innovation.
  5. Make it inexpensive.
  6. If you want to make something 10 times cheaper, remove 90 percent of the material.
  7. Provide skills, not just finished technologies.

Jay Rosen

Appealing to national traditions of fair play in the conduct of news reporting misunderstands what Wikileaks is about: the release of information without regard for national interest. In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it.

Hugo L. Black, William O. Douglas

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

Nicholas Carr

Wikipedia isn’t much help. “As a concept,” it tells us, “information has many meanings,” which are “closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.” It might have been simpler to list the notions that information isn’t related to. Dictionaries are a little clearer. They suggest that information is more or less synonymous with knowledge. But that definition no longer seems sufficient. What does a gigabyte of knowledge look like? The fact is, although we live in an information age, we don’t really know what information even means.

---

When the amount of information available to be filtered is effectively unlimited, as is the case on the Net, then every improvement in the quality of filters will make information overload worse.

Scott Fitzgerald

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Alan Gordon

I'm waiting for the pitch to buy gold and the suggestion we buy guns etc to get ready for the riots. If the the dollar stops being the reserve currency, it won't happen in my lifetime.

Barry Eichengreen

The greenback ... is not just America's currency. It's the world's.

But as astonishing as that is, what may be even more astonishing is this: The dollar's reign is coming to an end.

I believe that over the next 10 years, we're going to see a profound shift toward a world in which several currencies compete for dominance.

The impact of such a shift will be equally profound, with implications for, among other things, the stability of exchange rates, the stability of financial markets, the ease with which the U.S. will be able to finance budget and current-account deficits, and whether the Fed can follow a policy of benign neglect toward the dollar.

Michael Pento

It now appears that the United States has finally succeeded in its efforts to destroy confidence in the U.S. dollar. Given the currency's reserve status, its ubiquity in financial markets, and the economic power and political position of the United States, this was no easy task. However, to get the job done Washington chose the right man: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Thanks to Bernanke's herculean efforts, investors across the globe have now been fully weaned from their infantile belief that the U.S. dollar will remain the ultimate safe haven currency.

(... for the last twenty years or so the monetary arrangement that pegged the yuan against the dollar served the interests of both countries. The U.S. enjoyed a flood of cheap imports, the benefits of ultra-low interest rates, and a strong currency. The Chinese received a booming export economy, which accounted for about a third of the country's GDP, and the ownership of a significant portion of the future of the United States. To maintain this peg, the People's Bank of China had to print trillions of yuan and perpetually hold more than $1 trillion U.S. dollars in reserve.
But recently, having led to rampant money supply growth and inflation in China, the peg has become more trouble than it's worth, particularly from the Chinese perspective.)

The dollar's recent reaction to the turmoil in the Middle East and China's inflation problem illustrate that we have come to a watershed moment in American history. The decade beginning in 2010 should prove to be the decade in which the U.S. dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency. As bad as that blow may be, the loss may provide the shock needed to get our economy back on a sustainable path. The real danger lies in refusing to adapt to the changing environment. Our current economic stewards are acting as if the dollar's status is written in stone, when in fact it's hanging by a thread.

Steve Jobs

... almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.


Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Rudyard Kipling

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

Loretta Young

A charming woman doesn't follow the crowd.

She is herself.

Rasha Ajalyaqeen

Interpreters adhere to the idea that a word is like a bullet:
once it's out, it cannot be retrieved or replaced.

David Goldman

Google's recent change to its search algorithm has dramatically shaken up the businesses of websites that moved up or down its search rankings. Sites whose rankings rose to the top found that their traffic and revenue soared -- but the adjustment had an equally devastating effect on those that were dropped.

The Online Publishers Association, a group of content producers comprising many of the Internet's largest properties (including CNN.com), estimates that the algorithm change shifted $1 billion in annual revenue.

Some of the losers felt the hit immediately. Mahalo.com laid off 10% of its workforce last week thanks to what CEO Jason Calacanis called "a significant dip in our traffic and revenue."

The stakes are high in the Google-placement game. The top spot on a search page typically attracts 20% to 30% of the page's clicks, according to Adam Bunn, SEO director of Greenlight. After that comes an enormous tail-off: Positions 2 to 3 generate 5% to 10% of the clicks, and links below the fold receive less than 1% of users' attention. Fall off to the second page and your search-engine-driven clicks will be negligible.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Paul Strand

Wall Street, 1915

Edward Steichen

The Flatiron Building, 1904

Alfred Stieglitz

Winter 5th Avenue, 1892

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Roger Shimomura

大日本軍司令官

Sankei Shimbun

Inter Milan players from Italy, Argentina, Netherlands, Brazil, Cameroon, Japan, Colombia, Romania, Serbia, Kenya, Czech Republic, Morocco, Macedonia, France, Ghana, Nigeria ...

United Nations Secretariat

Assessment of Member States’ contributions to the United Nations regular budget
for the year 2011: US$ 2,648,538,700 (0.069% of the US federal budget)

US$ 582,678,514 - United States of America (0.015% of the US federal budget)
US$ 331,861,899 - Japan
US$ 212,359,833 - Germany
US$ 174,909,496 - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
US$ 162,170,025 - France
US$ 132,400,450 - Italy
US$ 84,938,636 - Canada
US$ 84,461,899 - China
...
US$ 26,485 (0.001%) - Belize, Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Comoros, Djibouti, Dominica, Eritrea, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea-Bissa, Guyana, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, Palau, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tuval, Vanuatu

Office of Management and Budget

2011 United States federal budget (total outlays): 3,834 billion dollars













Department of Defense: 718,795 million dollars
Department of State and Other International Programs: 53,809 million dollars

于文静

国务院扶贫办政策法规司司长、新闻发言人洪天云在此间召开的新闻通气会上表示,“十一五”期间,国家全面推进统筹城乡发展,坚持以工促农、以城带乡,以大扶贫的工作格局引领扶贫开发。具体来说,主要采取了整村推进、扶持产业化经营、组织劳动力转移培训、移民搬迁、连片开发、对连片深度贫困地区进行集中攻坚等措施。

洪天云介绍说,2010年是金融危机以来全国减贫形势最好的一年。贫困人口从上年的3597万,减少到2688万,减少了909万人。重点县农民人均纯收入从上年的2842元,增加到2010年的3273元,扣除物价因素,实际增长11.2%。

据悉,“十二五”时期,全国扶贫开发将把基本消除绝对贫困现象作为首要任务,把连片特困地区作为主战场。坚持政府主导,以专项扶贫、行业扶贫、社会扶贫为支撑,更加注重转变发展方式、人力资源开发、基本公共服务均等化,并解决连片特困地区贫困问题,努力打好新一轮扶贫开发攻坚战,确保全国人民同步进入小康。

Justin Halpern

Social media such as Twitter might be making kids too impatient and lacking the attention spans needed to get into the classics.

It was such a silly thing reading this 50-word review of this 4-pound book in my lap, ...

I think I am part of the problem. I would say I am definitely part of the problem.

(On Lego's) Listen, I don't want to stifle your creativity, but that thing you built there, it looks a pile of shit.

The dog is not bored. It's not like he's waiting for me to give him a fucking Rubik's Cube. He's a goddamned dog.

Eva Feder Kittay

Society does not see caregiving as work in its own right, but rather as a familial obligation, as a natural capacity of a woman, as a gift we give to those we love. However, caregiving is a human capacity, not a gendered one, and it can be a gift only when given ungrudgingly, generously, joyfully, ...

Imagine a world where familial caregiving was remunerated through paid family leave policies and funds to provide care, so that families were not forced to assume additional financial hardships. Imagine further that home health care were adequately subsidized, required extensive training, and commanded a respect it currently lacks. ...

Clearly these remedies involve substantial investment of public funds. Good care is costly. But who is to pay, and in what coin? ...

Louis Theroux

But people don't change their beliefs easily. Even when their deepest convictions are challenged - by the failure of the world to end, for example - they continue on their way, sticking to the old routine: They get back on their Weired bikes and ride again.

The same applied to me. I'd hoped the trip might be an opportunity for me to get in touch with my own weiredness. Without a camera, I wondered if I might become more immersed in my stories and therefore more open - forced to acknowledge my shadow side. But if anything, I found myself less susceptible to the call of the weired the second time round.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Doug Stych

“This October has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays all in one month. It happens only once in 823 years.” ... it’s posted all over the Internet, often with dozens of comments and jokes about how cool it is and how it’s a great month to enjoy the weekend and so on. ... Is the average Internet reader so brain-dead that they believe the most egregious garbage if they see it posted on a website? ... 99% of people ... simply accepted it at face value. What the hell is going on here?

... most people are ... happy to succumb to “argument from authority.” Basically that means if they trust the source of some tidbit of information, they believe it. And apparently a huge number of people think that if they see something posted on a blog somewhere, and it doesn’t contradict their world view, it must be true. It’s hard to imagine the five weekends thing as being a threat to any particular religion, politics, or ideology, and that’s apparently as deep as most people’s filters operate.

... No one predicted the power that television would give to the advertising industry, it completely changed aspects of our society and industry in ways that are still unfolding. And the Internet is not only expanding on that, it has proved to be a powerful tool for any group with an agenda to spread its message and both influence and convert followers.

... the above illustrated tendency of people to uncritically believe something they read is a tremendous loophole in human society, and a lot of people are actively exploiting that loophole. It’s possible the calendar falsehood in the title may have been deliberately created to study how gullible people are and how to write a message that will be accepted at face value by people who read it. Yes, the Internet is allowing people to program society.

Robin K. Lowe

I have found with a mixture of amusement and annoyance this thought that has permeated the blogosphere over the last year or so concerning the iPad. Simply put, the meme that the game is over before it has even begun. Apple won. Everyone else is doomed. Doomed, I tell you.
To those people, may I present a little reality into the Jobsian distortion-field. You see, while tablets are now white hot, while the iPad is the fastest growing electronic gadget evah, when you combine the number of users of tablet with smartphones, (you know, your iPhone, Android and the like) it comes out to only 0.3% of the Earth’s inhabitants as of the end of 2010. That represents about 394 million users total. That number, while quite large falls behind the following:
  • Newspaper subscriptions (530 Million)
  • TV subscriptions (600 million)
  • Landline telephones (1 billion)
  • Total PCs (1.3 billion)
  • Mobile subscribers (5.1 billion)
Now I’m not saying the market is not growing; in fact it will continue to grow at a pretty heady pace. If it wasn’t growing, there wouldn’t be any interest and the iPad would be another “hobby” like Apple TV. But it is rather ridiculous to call the game before the teams are even introduced. There are plenty of players and plenty of time and room to disrupt the market. Because, to quote Exene Czervenka, “this is the game that moves as you play it”. And there are a lot of groups out there that can play.

Bill Herr

From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out. People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.

John Markoff

When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates.

But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.

Malia Wollan

Outside of college campuses and romantic comedies, the library is not usually a place to pick up a date. But that didn’t stop several dozen singles, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from showing up on a recent Tuesday night at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library for its first speed-dating session.
Literary speed dating seems to have its roots in Europe. Among the first of similar events in the United States took place at the Omaha Public Library Benson Branch, where Amy Mather, a librarian, and her colleague at the time, Manya Shorr, organized a “Hardbound to Heartbound” night in 2009, on Valentine’s Day. Some 65 people showed up.
Last spring the Collaborative Summer Library Program, a national consortium of public libraries, included literary speed dating on its list of suggested adult library programming. Since then, libraries across the country have been dimming the lights and playing matchmaker.
One logistical snag is the preponderance of women. Libraries reported difficulties attracting men in sufficient numbers. In downtown Fort Collins, an event had to be canceled when no men signed up. At the San Francisco event, the sign-up ratio was about one man to every five women. (The one exception seemed to be the same-sex night, when more than twice as many gay men turned up as lesbians.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York -- and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals -- like egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end -- but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the windless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

王民

安理会的合法性来源于《联合国宪章》,事关国际社会对二战结果的普遍共识。中方坚决反对任何以安理会改革为名,质疑二战结论的企图。

Friday, March 4, 2011

NY_Liberty

Jim Jarmusch

Eva, stop bugging me, will you? You know, this is the way we eat in America. I got my meat, I got my potatoes, I got my vegetables, I got my dessert, and I don't even have to wash the dishes.

Richard A. Holmgren

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

田川博己

旅とは「日常の生活から離れ、普段は見られない資源、体験、文化、そして生活に触れることで、感動や感銘、発見、心身の癒し等を得る」ことです。いわば時間が価値を持つ無形の消費活動です。そして、旅の喜びは万人一律ではなく、旅行者は一人ひとりがわが身に照らして感じるものであり、「自己を見直し、発見する活動」と言ってもいいでしょう。

さらに、旅を通じた感動や発見は、思い出として次の感動を求める“いきがい”につながり、日常生活や生産活動への活力源となるはずです。

ただし、こうした旅を通じた感動や発見は、ただ漠然と旅の時間を消費しているだけでは見逃すことになりがちです。そのためにも旅先や地域に対する好奇心は重要であり、その好奇心が旺盛なほど得られる感動や発見は大きいはずです。

それぞれの国における文化、環境、伝統、宗教、さらには生活様式等、テレビやインターネット等によって何でもどこでも見られる時代であっても、生身の五感を通じて得られる感動に勝るものはありません。