HSBC

Galileo Galilei

Allison Pierce, Catherine Pierce

And you want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

You only want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
You want never bitter
And all delicious
And a clean conscience
And all it's blisses
You want one true lover with a thousand kisses
You want soft and gentle and never vicious
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

Shirley Jackson

Eleanor Vance was thirty-two years old when she came to Hill House. The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister. She disliked her brother-in-law and her five-year-old niece, and she had no friends. This was owing largely to the eleven years she had spent caring for her invalid mother, which had left her with some proficiency as a nurse and an inability to face strong sunlight without blinking. She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words. Her name had turned up on Dr. Montague’s list because one day, when she was twelve years old and her sister was eighteen, and their father had been dead for not quite a month, showers of stones had fallen on their house, without any warning or any indication of purpose or reason, dropping from the ceilings rolling loudly down the walls, breaking windows and pattering maddeningly on the roof. The stones continued intermittently for three days, during which time Eleanor and her sister were less unnerved by the stones than by the neighbors and sightseers who gathered daily outside the front door, and by their mother’s blind, hysterical insistence that all of this was due to malicious, backbiting people on the block who had had it in for her ever since she came. After three days Eleanor and her sister were removed to the house of a friend, and the stones stopped falling, nor did they ever return, although Eleanor and her sister and her mother went back to living in the house, and the feud with the entire neighborhood was never ended. The story had been forgotten by everyone except the people Dr. Montague consulted; it had certainly been forgotten by Eleanor and her sister, each of whom had supposed at the time that the other was responsible.

David Bogoslaw

The week between Christmas and New Year tends to be a little wild on Wall Street. For one thing, trading volumes are thin, and some portfolio managers are looking to shuffle their holdings one last time before the year ends—and the combination may have an exaggerated impact on any stock movement, up or down. Also, many senior traders are on vacation, leaving more risk-averse junior employees in charge. This year isn't likely to be much different, even if Washington did take away some of the motivation to game taxes when it settled the income tax and capital gains picture for 2011 and 2012.

Historically, the stock market has ended the year on an up note more often than not—the so-called Santa Claus rally. Since 1928, the Standard & Poor's 500 index has had a positive return 74.7 percent of the time during the last week of the year, with an average gain of 0.74 percent, according to Bespoke Investment Group, a money management and financial research firm in New York's Westchester County. And in years when the S&P 500 Index has risen more than 10 percent, an average gain of 1.1 percent has come in the last week of trading, Bespoke says. As of Dec. 22, the index was up 12.9 percent for 2010.

The last week of the year also tends to show more stock swings than usual. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, or VIX, has been higher in the last week than during the first week of December in 11 years out of 20. This December, the volatility index averaged 17.65 through Dec. 22. Over the past 20 years, the VIX has averaged 19.85 during the last week of the year.

Bill Luby

I guess I should not be surprised that a VIX of 15.45 – the lowest since July 2007 – has all manner of pundits scrambling to pull some sort of explanation out of a hat and weave it into their favorite bullish or bearish forecast for the markets.

In fact, the new low in the VIX is not a big deal, at least during this time of the year. I have talked about this before on a number of occasions, including in VIX Holiday Crush and earlier this week in Chart of the Week: Historical Volatility Plummets in Seasonal Swoon. Call it the holiday effect or calendar reversion, but when the VIX’s 30-day window includes two holidays and two additional historically slow days in advance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, volatility has a tendency to take a vacation.

How strong is the tendency toward a low VIX? Well, consider that in five of the last eight years, the annual low in the VIX fell during the week leading up to Christmas. Last year, some may recall that the VIX made its annual low on Christmas Eve. Back in 2004, the VIX had its low for the year on December 23rd; and in both 2003 and 2006, the VIX bottomed out for the year on December 18th. Today’s low makes it five pre-Christmas bottoms in eight years.

So keep a close eye on the VIX and feel free to marvel at how low it goes, but consider that during the holiday season, experienced investors will give very little credence to the absolute level of expected 30-day implied volatility in S&P 500 options. Only after the first of the year should we take the VIX numbers seriously, regardless of how low prices and implied volatility levels may be marked down in the pre-Christmas shopping rush.

Judah Cohen

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

Future Brief

Predictions are those statements made about future events that include specific details as to when, what, who, and so forth. Examples abound – where the Dow Jones will finish in 2011, whether the Eurozone can survive the year intact, whether gold will fall to $800 or rise to $2,000, $5,000 or whatever, who will win the Super Bowl, whether Barack Obama will choose to run for a second term or not, whether John and Mary’s marriage is going to end in divorce, the list is nearly endless. I don’t give much weight to the specifics, but will read the author’s reasoning if the subject interests me. However, I see predictions as guesswork and of limited use, if any.

I prefer forecasts which look at two or more potential future general scenarios, each with a different outcome, and which attempt to guess which general scenario is most likely, but never suggesting that that scenario is certain and always recognizing that future events that cannot be known now may change the forecast radically. It is the difference between saying, for example, “Gold will reach $3,000 an ounce by December 31st of 2011″ and “Gold will likely continue to increase in value in 2011, barring an unforeseen event”.

Graham Bowley

The number-crunchers on Wall Street are starting to crunch something else: the news.

Math-loving traders are using powerful computers to speed-read news reports, editorials, company Web sites, blog posts and even Twitter messages — and then letting the machines decide what it all means for the markets.

The development goes far beyond standard digital fare like most-read and e-mailed lists. In some cases, the computers are actually parsing writers’ words, sentence structure, even the odd emoticon. A wink and a smile — ;) — for instance, just might mean things are looking up for the markets. Then, often without human intervention, the programs are interpreting that news and trading on it.

Given the volatility in the markets and concern that computerized trading exaggerates the ups and downs, the notion that Wall Street is engineering news-bots might sound like an investor’s nightmare.

Ron Paul

A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.

大内清

ある国の大統領一家がジェット機で遊覧中のこと。大統領が１００エジプトポンド（約１５００円）札を取り出し、「これを投げて、拾った人を喜ばせよう」と言い出した。

これを聞いた妻は「５０ポンド２枚なら２人を喜ばせられるじゃない」。息子たちは「１０ポンドなら１０人を喜ばせられるよ」と主張した。

パイロットは振り向いてこう言った。「大統領ご自身が身を投げれば８３００万人が喜びますよ」

---

舞台はある国の首都。タクシー運転手に１人の男が近づき、「大変だ、大統領が誘拐された！」と叫んだ。「犯人は大金を要求していて、用意できなければ大統領に火を付けると言っている。少しでいいから寄付してくれないか？」

運転手が「ほかの人はどれくらい寄付してるんだい？」と聞くと、男は「ガソリン５リットルぐらいかな」－。

George R. Packard III

It is not surprising that we are badly informed about Japan. Our press coverage of the major power in Asia and the fourth greatest industrial power in the world is absurdly inadequate. Only one of the regular American correspondents in Tokyo can speak and read Japanese usefully. American editors seem determined to limit all stories on Japan to the exotic, inscrutable or threatening. Scholarly works, with few exceptions, are becoming increasingly specialized. Despite new attention to East Asia in college and high school courses, it is still hard for the layman to find out what he needs to know about our most important and difficult Asian ally.

The Japanese, it should be added, have done little better. Members of their press corps in Washington speak English badly as a rule, and reach few important sources. Their editors favor critics of the Administration without giving equal space to majority views. Japanese visitors tend to be subjective and emotional when they record their impressions of the United States, and scholars are either specialized like our own or committed to a viewpoint before they arrive. Because of the Occupation and our continuing physical presence in Japan, it is easy for Japanese to feel they know us when often they are dealing in false images.

It may be that we can each survive our misapprehensions, letting the diplomats try to untangle the knots, but it would seem better to try to get the picture in focus now than to face a new round of frustrations later on.

JALNA

The JFK Library and Museum

矢部孝

R. W. Apple Jr.

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a documentary history tracing the ultimately doomed involvement of the United States in a grinding war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

They demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.

The Government sought and won a court order restraining further publication after three articles had appeared. Other newspapers then began publishing. They, too, were restrained, until finally, on June 30, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 6 to 3, that publication could resume.

土屋賢二

決心しなければ挫折は避けられる。だが、決心しないと限りなく堕落して自分でも耐えられなくなるから、どうしても決心してしまう。当然、決心の内容は、早起きしよう、家の中を片づけよう、ダイエットしよう、真面目に仕事をしようなど、建設的なものになる。だが人間は建設的なことができない。だから挫折してしまう。人間は自分のためになることが分かっていることを実行できないのだ。

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たぶん人間はシミ一つない清らかな生活には耐えられないのだ。清廉潔白で気高い自分など、嘘っぱちのような気がしてしまい、ぶちこわしたくなるのだ。人間には光の部分と闇の部分があり、空高く飛翔することもあれば、泥の中をはいずりまわることもある。その両方がないと生きて行けないのではないかと思う。

人間には心を洗う天上の音楽も、泥臭い音楽も必要なのだ。決意したら挫折し、堕落したら挫折する、という繰り返しは必然なのだ。

Erwin N. Griswold

During the campaign, President Johnson kept reiterating that he would never send American boys to fight in Vietnam. As I say, he knew at the time that American boys were going to be sent. In fact, I knew about ten days before the Republican Convention. You see I was being called trigger-happy, warmonger, bomb happy, and all the time Johnson was saying, he would never send American boys, I knew damn well he would.

Grisélidis Réal

Ni la maladie, ni la mort, ni le mépris, ni la bassesse misérable de ceux et celles qui nous jugent ne nous détourneront de nos noyaux

les plus précieux, enfouis en nous sous tellement de souffrances:

nos rages, nos espoirs, notre amour fou de la vie, des rêves, et de nos révoltes foudroyées.

Jean-Luc Hennig

They have to come back to us, because we know every detail of their orgasms, their little caprices, their little weaknesses and strengths. We know all of them. I mean, where do you expect them to go? They'll be disappointed anywhere else. Except for with us, because we know them like the back of our hand. As soon as they get in the door, it's like we'd made them ourselves. We know all the right things to say, all the gestures, there're no surprises.

Clement Clark Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Teri Tynes

In 1822, wealthy New York scholar and poet Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), a resident of the Chelsea neighborhood, wrote the famous Christmas poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas," known widely as "Twas the Night Before Christmas." The poem first appeared in a Troy, New York newspaper in 1823 with "anonymous" listed as the author, and Moore acknowledged authorship in 1844 after the poem became a standard. Some scholars suggest he appropriated a poem authored by Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828) and turned it into the most famous Christmas poem of all time.

Clement Clarke Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street, was once the Clarke family estate. The house, located at what is now Eighth Avenue and West 23rd, was called "Chelsea," named for a old soldier's hospital in London. "Chelsea," as we know, became the name for the surrounding neighborhood. At the time he wrote "A Visit From St. Nicholas," Clement Moore was a Professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He had donated the family land for use as a seminary, and the still-thriving seminary stands today along Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets.

Computer Support of San Diego, Inc.

LibraryThing

Gordon Livingston

• Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.
• We are not what we think, or what we feel, or what we say, we are what we do.
• The perfect is the enemy of the good.
• Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses.
• Happiness is the ultimate risk.
• True love is the apple of Eden.
• Only bad things happen quickly.
• Love is never lost, not even in death.
• Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing.

Keith Richards

But then all you had to do was cross the tracks and you’d get a real education. If we were playing with black musicians, they’d look after us. It was “Hey, you wanna get laid tonight? She’ll love you. She ain’t seen anything like you before.” You got welcomed, you got fed and you got laid. The white side of town was dead, but it was rockin’ across the tracks. Long as you knew cats, you was cool. An incredible education.

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The first time I went to heaven was when I awoke with Ronnie (later Spector!) Bennett asleep with a smile on her face. We were kids. It doesn’t get any better than that. Just more refined. What can I say? She took me to her parents' house, took me to her bedroom. Several times, but that was the first time. And I'm just a guitar player. You know what I mean?

Robert Plant

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by.

My love is strong, with you there is no wrong,

together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.

An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look ... see.

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,

Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.

Happiness, no more be sad, happiness ... I'm glad.

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.

When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

Choi Jae-koo

Catherine Ponder

It’s amazing how fast doors open to us when we dare to take control of the situation and command our high expectations to manifest themselves.

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Obviously, you cannot be very happy if you are poor, and you need not be poor. It is a sin. Poverty is a form of hell caused by man's blindness to God's unlimited good for him. Poverty is a dirty, uncomfortable, degrading experience. Poverty is actually a form of disease and in its acute phases, it seems to be a form of insanity.

Poverty fills prisons with thieves and murderers. It drives men and women to drink, prostitution, drug addiction, suicide. It drives potentially fine, talented, intelligent children to delinquency and crime. It makes people do things they otherwise would never dream of doing. Communism, one of the most dreaded movements in the world today, often gets a stronghold as the direct result of poverty.

Nature news

The worlds of ancient and modern DNA exploration have collided in spectacular fashion in the past few months. Last week saw the publication of a long-awaited draft genome of the Neanderthal, an archaic hominin from about 40,000 years ago1. Just three months earlier, researchers in Denmark reported the genome of a 4,000-year-old Saqqaq Palaeo-Eskimo2 that was plucked from the Greenland permafrost and sequenced in China using the latest technology.

As researchers compare these ancient genomes with the ever-expanding number from today's humans, they expect to gain insights into human evolution and migration — with more discoveries to come as they decipher DNA from other branches of the human evolutionary tree. "For the first time, ancient and modern genetic research is going hand in hand," says Eske Willerslev, whose team at the University of Copenhagen led the Palaeo-Eskimo sequencing project. "It is really a fantastic time."

Already, analysis of the Neanderthal genome has helped to resolve a debate about whether there was interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens: genome comparisons suggest that the two groups mated an estimated 45,000–80,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean area. The sequencing study, from a consortium led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that the genomes of non- African H. sapiens today contain around 1–4% of sequence inherited from Neanderthals.

火红歳月主题餐庁

张大中

Roger Cohen

At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.

I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.

Wikipedia

1.Yeonpyeong Island;
2.Baengnyeong Island;
3.Daecheong Myeon;
4.Jung-gu (Incheon Intl. Airport);
5.Seoul;
6.Incheon;

A. Northern Limit Line (NLL, the border claimed by South Korea since 1953)
B. Military Demarcation Line (the border claimed by North Korea since 1999)

クォン・ヨンソク

３年前にソウルで中国国宝展が開催され大ブームになった。それを見て思った。中国は東アジアの国なんかではなく、イスラムや西洋の文化も融合した文字通りの帝国だったのだ。帝国の基本的性格には、多民族と多文化主義がある。その開放性と多様性が学問、思想、宗教、文化の隆盛をもたらし、それらが混ざり合うフュージョンこそ中国文化の栄華の根源ではなかったか。

そんな「大物」たる中華帝国の子孫たちが、少数民族を弾圧し、民主化運動家を抑圧し、小さな島のことで周辺国と小競り合いをしている。これは、中国人がかつての自分たちの姿を見失い、近代化＝西洋化のボタンをかけ間違えたことに起因すると思われる。

近現代において中国は、革命と新しい世界秩序を実現しようと邁進してきた。独立、抗日、革命、社会主義......。中国はよく頑張った。世界での役割は十分果たした。21世紀の中国は、「キャラ」を変えて新しいヴィジョンを提示してもいいのではないか。

李小牧

「ノーベル平和賞」とか「人権」とか「民主化」と言うと言葉の上ではきれいだが、その裏ではさまざまな人間の政治的な思いが渦巻いている。聞くところによると、オバマはＡＰＥＣでの訪日中、神奈川県内のある都市を訪れる予定だという。そんな時間があるのなら、日帰りでいいから広島に来てもう一度核廃絶をアピールすればいい。そうしないのは、オバマが「平和」や「核の廃絶」を政治的に利用している何よりの証拠である。

それが悪いと言っているのではない。たまたまこのノーベル賞サミットでは、関係するあらゆる人たちのあらゆる「政治的な思惑」を客観的に見ることができた。歌舞伎町で２２年間ありとあらゆる「政治的な思惑」と付き合って来た私に言わせれば、それは人間にとって一種の本能のようなもの。セックスほど気持ちよくはないが、決してなくすことはできない。

表の世界には必ず裏があるが、人間は裏の世界と付き合わずにはいられない――。

私は以前、あまり裏の世界と深く付き合いすぎて彼らに監禁されたことがある。もちろん、「監禁歴」では大先輩の劉暁波にはかなわないが（笑）。

Lovely Lama Obeid

CNN personnel was able to corner the United Nations Security Council and coerce them into giving our press staff statements concerning how they believe the conferences were going for them.

Russia: I've slightly managed to engineer the resolutions to follow Russian policy.

Austria: The conference is going very well for Austria as counties are willing to compromise and find a middle ground.

Burkina Faso: Burkina Faso feels glad to see negotiations between nations and continues to participate enthusiastically despite situations at home.

Turkey: Turkey has made a lot of compromise in order to satisfy both sides.

Vietnam: Vietnam is getting exactly what they want.

Indonesia: Indonesia feels that a lot of compromise is needed.

Japan: Japan commends the efforts of the Security Council and is sure the council will come to fruitful and feasible resolutions.

Libya: Libya is happy at how the conference is going.

U.S.A.: The U.S.A found the conferences to be very fruitful and is hoping for a solution to the issue of the wall in Israel,

China: China is very pleased with the course of the debate but has a disagreement with Japan.

Uganda: Uganda is pleased that the focus of the Security Council has been acceptable to Uganda.

産経ニュース

　海江田万里経済財政担当相は１９日、民放の報道番組に出演し、２０１１年度税制改正大綱で、給与所得控除の上限とすることが決まった年収１５００万円について「金持ちではない。中間所得者だ」と述べた。

　高所得者層を狙った増税との批判が出ていることに反論した。しかし、年収１５００万円を超える給与所得者は全体の１．２％に当たる約５０万人で、海江田氏の認識に批判が出る可能性もありそうだ。

　政府は大綱に基づき、税制改正法案をつくり、年明けの通常国会に提出する。ただ、海江田氏は、参院で否決された法案を衆院で再可決するための「３分の２」の勢力が確保できていない現状を踏まえ「（大綱は）下手をすれば絵に描いた餅になってしまう」と懸念を示した。

The Council of Conservative Citizens

Samuel Francis

We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.

Regis Arnaud

　私にはスカイツリーが、58年に完成した東京タワーのように不朽の業績になるとは思えない。東京タワーは、日本が好景気に沸き、人口が上り調子だった時代に建設された。対する東京スカイツリーは、発展のシンボルというより衰退のシンボルだ。

　東京は、発展がいつも建設を意味するわけではないということをアジアに示すことだってできたはずだ。この教訓は、パリやニューヨークなど、先進国のあらゆる都市で採用されている。

　下町を東京のサンジェルマン・デ・プレに変身させることもできただろう。最先端のトイレや現代的な高級マンションにあるような細々した機能を備えているからではなく、古い町並みが保存されているからこそ価値が増す、そんな地域にすることが。

　その代わりに東京は、広東やドバイといった三流都市をまねる道を選んだ。いずれ東京は、開発業者に食い尽くされるだろう。東京はこれまで、幸運にも一流の都市でいられた。長い目で見れば、東京スカイツリーという木には、苦い果実が実ることになるかもしれない。

James Daily, Ryan Davidson

Every supervillain or supervillain organization worth its salt needs a secret lair, and a location outside the jurisdiction of any government would be ideal. The legal benefits are numerous: no pesky employment laws or civil rights for henchmen, no local police, no taxes. But in the age of air travel and GPS is there anywhere left for a supervillain to set up shop? Here we consider three possibilities: unclaimed land, the high seas, and outer space.

---

Conclusion: A supervillain with effectively unlimited resources would be best served by a base located in space, probably on the dark side of the Moon. A supervillain with significant but not-unlimited resources might be better off buying a private island or a slice of Bir Tawil, then keeping a low enough profile to avoid attracting attention (and airstrikes).

Sax Rohmer

Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.

JPMorgan Chase

弗雷迪麦克瑞

我天生注定爱你

每一次心跳都表明

是的，我就是为了呵护你而生

我生命中的每天都如此

我想要爱你

我爱你的一切

我想要爱你，爱你，爱你

我生命中的每天都如此

一种奇妙的的感觉

像潮水般涌来

是的，我就是为爱你而生

我想要爱你，爱你，爱你

我想要爱你

Фредди Меркьюри

Я был рожден, чтоб любить тебя
С каждым ударом моего сердца
Да, я был рожден, чтоб заботится о тебе
Каждый божий день моей жизни

Я хочу любить тебя, я люблю в тебе все до мелочей
Я хочу любить тебя, любить тебя, любить тебя
Рожден любить тебя, рожден любить тебя, да, я был рожден любить тебя
Рожден любить тебя, рожден любить тебя каждый божий день моей жизни

Необыкновенное чувство переполняет меня

Я был рожден, чтоб любить тебя
С каждым ударом моего сердца
Да, я был рожден, чтоб заботится о тебе, золотце
Каждый божий день моей жизни

Tribune de Genève

Nicholas Negroponte

“People will say ‘no, no, no’ — of course you like your libraries,” Negroponte said. But he cited the report that sales of books for the Kindle recently surpassed sales of hardcover books.

---

“It’s happening. It not happening in 10 years. It’s happening in 5 years,” he said.

---

By “dead,” he of course doesn’t mean completely dead. But he means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form.

Alan K. Henrikson

"There is no such thing as empty space on a map." This declaration, though exaggerated, indicates Harley's view that the "silences" on maps, as he distinctively termed them, could be as meaningful as the geographical and other data actually drawn or written on them. "Assuming the world to be a place where human choice is exercised," Harley contended, "the absence of something must be seen to be as worthy of historical investigation as is its presence. So it is with cartography".

Harley's interest was in the stories that maps do not tell. His interest grew out of his encyclopedic knowledge of cartographic history and his extensive and eclectic reading in subjects outside the field, including postmodernist literary criticism and social theory.

J. B. Harley, Paul Laxton, J. H. Andrews

In contrast, the idea of a power internal to cartography stresses that power is not separate from knowledge. It is an integral part of the practices that create knowledge and of the way maps—as a particular form of knowledge—work in society. It is universal, being found wherever maps are made, but equally it creates a local knowledge dependent on context. The focus of inquiry, therefore, shifts from the place of cartography in a juridical system of power to the political effects of what cartographers do when they make maps. We find that cartographers cease to be "nonpolitical agents" in society, above or beyond politics. Inasmuch as power traverses the everyday workshop practices of map making, the atlas maker—albeit often unwittingly—was inevitably concerned with the manufacture of power.

Joseph Rouse

And power does not merely impinge on science and scientific knowledge from outside, but power relations permeate the most ordinary activities in the praxis of science. Scientific knowledge in this sense is never removed from "power issues" but actually arises out of these power relations. In this sense, then, knowledge is power and power is knowledge.

I.F. Stone

Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

---

Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

---

Mr. Truman thinks of himself as a liberal. It is at once something subtler and more human than hypocrisy which leads him to say, "We must take our stand on the Bill of Rights. The inquisition, the star chamber, have no place in a free society." The same capacity for inviting war in the name of peace made it possible for him to launch star chamber loyalty purges and peacetime sedition prosecutions while preaching civil liberties.

George Wald

Is it to have a chance to live? We don’t ask prosperity. We don’t ask security. But a decent chance to live, and to work out our destinies in peace and decency. That’s the problem. Without more assurance than we now possess that this generation has a future, nothing else matters. It’s not good enough to have given it tender loving care, to have supplied it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those things don’t mean anything unless that generation has a future. And we’re not sure that it does.

Norman Solomon

Compared to the kind of secret cables that WikiLeaks has just shared with the world, everyday public statements from government officials are exercises in make-believe.

In a democracy, people have a right to know what their government is actually doing. In a pseudo-democracy, a bunch of fairy tales from high places will do the trick.

Diplomatic facades routinely masquerade as realities. But sometimes the mask slips – for all the world to see – and that’s what just happened with the humongous leak of State Department cables.

No government wants to face documentation of actual policies, goals, and priorities that directly contradict its public claims of virtue. In societies with democratic freedoms, the governments that have the most to fear from such disclosures are the ones that have been doing the most lying to their own people.

The recent mega-leaks are especially jarring because of the extreme contrasts between the U.S. government’s public pretenses and real-life actions. But the standard official response is to blame the leaking messengers.

---

But what kind of “national security” can be built on duplicity from a government that is discredited and refuted by its own documents?

Jason Ditz

The Obama Administration is hard at work attempting to “acquire” Julian Assange from either the British or Swedish government. They’re not really sure what they can charge him with, but they’ll think of something, probably.

But concerns about the prospect that Assange is about to “disappear” into some US black hole for his role in the publication of information severely embarrassing to the US government is finally starting to rise not just among human rights groups, but in official circles as well.

“It’s just astonishing what is happening,” noted the UN’s top Human Rights official Navi Pillay, adding that the US moves against them are “potentially violating WikiLeaks’s right to freedom of expression.”

Brazilian President Lula expressed “solidarity” with Assange, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned his detention as “undemocratic.” US officials have condemned Assange as a terrorist on the basis of his publications, and top US presidential hopefuls have expressed support for assassinating him.

Michael A. Lindenberger

Thanks to nearly a century of cases dealing with the clash between national security and the freedom of the press, the Constitution provides enormous protection for publishers of state secrets. Those who leak the secrets in the first place — government officials, even soldiers, for instance — can and are prosecuted, such as Army private, Bradley Manning, now sitting in a military prison after having been charged with illegally downloading secret files amid suspicions that he gave them to WikiLeaks.

---

But if WikiLeaks was wrong to publish the cables, what of the newspapers that also published the secret documents? After all, WikiLeaks gave the documents to the New York Times and a number of other papers around the world well in advance, and the newspapers have spent the past week publishing story after story related to their findings — and in some cases, have published the secret cables themselves.

---

But the law is too broad a brush to try to draw a distinction between WikiLeaks' indiscriminate posting of the cables — which Burns called "nihilistic" — and the more careful vetting evidenced by The New York Times, Abrams said. How do you draft a law that targets WikiLeaks but leaves intact our system of press freedoms?

---

The only real ammunition America has to protect state secrets, most legal observers agree, is the Espionage Act of 1917, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson amid fears of domestic unrest and possible sabotage as American entered the First World War. It's a broadly worded act, still on the books, that on its face would make stealing or sharing secrets from the government a federal crime — if a jury agreed that doing so harmed America or aided a foreign power. But Abrams said courts soon recognized that such a broadly worded statute could "make illegal many things that American newspapers publish every day. It was over-broad and covered much too much material." As a result, the Supreme Court spent most of the 20th Century steadily narrowing the Espionage Act's reach when it comes to the news media's publication of secrets.

Esfandiar Rahim Mashai

These documents are not authentic. The national interests of the United States and its allies are behind this. They see the world through their eyes, pursue their own goals, and draw the conclusions that suit their purposes. ... America wants to portray itself as the leader of the world, as master of the destinies of nations. It wants to play off the regimes in the region against one another. It wants the world to believe that we are divided. It wants to legitimize its presence and influence in the region. ... No, the United States is behind this deliberate leak. The Americans are trying to paint the world in black and white. They underscore the differences among nations and want to show everyone that peace is only possible in cooperation with them. ... I don't want to get into individual documents and their authenticity. But I have no doubt that a US government plan is behind this disclosure. When someone wants to suggest something, they include fake information with real information so as to create a certain impression. That's why each country has to analyze the documents that relate to it, which is what our experts in Tehran are doing now. ... We are only examining them to figure out the Americans' tricks. ... Anyone can access the site. Why should be block it? We are a great nation that doesn't have a problem with such disclosures. Our nation is smart enough to see through this campaign.

Jason Ditz

Columbia University’s Office of Career Service is said to have passed around an email warning students that if they read WikiLeaks or make comments related to the releases it would render them ineligible for any government jobs in the future, based on a warning sent by a former student working at the State Department.

State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson insisted the warning wasn’t an official Department directive but added that making public comments or posting links to WikiLeaks content wasn’t “a good move for any US citizen.”

Efforts across the US government to restrict access to the documents are having limited success, although Sen. Joe Lieberman (I – CT) did succeed in getting the WikiLeaks website removed for a few hours following a threatening phone call to Amazon.com.

Beyond the State Department, the US military is also said to be trying to curb access to the content among active duty personnel, with attempts to visit any media website from the military’s open network resulting in a warning message not to read anything related to the WikiLeaks release. The Social Security Administration has also sent an alert to all its employees warning them that reading anything related to the WikiLeaks release could subject them to “federal criminal statutes for unlawful access to or transmission of classified information.”

Even the Library of Congress is getting into the game, with attempts to visit the website at the Library resulting in a warning that the site is “malicious content” and has been blocked.

Eric Lipton

In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.

The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have accidentally already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”

The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and contractors, says that simply viewing these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.

"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.

The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.

“It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. “This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.” The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: “Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks”.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

It's not a question of worry. It's, rather, a question of whether WikiLeaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.

And I wonder whether, in fact, there aren't some operations internationally, intelligence services, that are feeding stuff to WikiLeaks, because it is a unique opportunity to embarrass us, to embarrass our position, but also to undermine our relations with particular governments.

For example, leaving aside the personal gossip about Sarkozy or Berlusconi or Putin, the business about the Turks is clearly calculated in terms of its potential impact on disrupting the American-Turkish relationship.

---

Seeding -- seeding it is very easy.

I have no doubt that WikiLeaks is getting a lot of the stuff from sort of relatively unimportant sources, like the one that perhaps is identified on the air. But it may be getting stuff at the same time from interested intelligence parties who want to manipulate the process and achieve certain very specific objectives.

The Australian

New embassy cables, released by WikiLeaks to Fairfax newspapers today, reveal the influential right-wing Labor MP has been one of the embassy's best ALP informants, along with former frontbencher Bob McMullan and current MP Michael Danby.

The documents say the Minister for Sport had been secretly offering details of Labor's inner workings even before his election to the Senate in 2007, dating back to his time as general secretary of the party's NSW branch from 2004.

Senator Arbib was one of the "faceless men" who was instrumental in the decision to oust Kevin Rudd and install Julia Gillard as Prime Minister in June.

The documents also identify Senator Arbib as a strong backer of the Australia-US alliance.

Jason Ditz

The Obama Administration’s cables railing about Germany’s Free Democratic Party in general and leader Guido Westerwelle (now Germany’s Foreign Minister) in particular came with references to an unnamed informant the US had on the inside of the FDP who was eager to report on the party’s internal meetings to the US embassy.

According to Helmut Metzner, Foreign Minister Westerwelle’s (now former) chief of staff, he is that informant, and he has been sacked for being a US mole, the direct confirmed firing to come out of the WikiLeaks cables leak.

The Obama Administration was said to have serious reservations about the Free Democratic Party’s commitment to limited government and individual liberty ahead of September 2009′s election, and expressed hope that Chancellor Angela Merkel could be convinced to foil their agenda to protect her “legacy.”

The cables never named Metzner, but referred to him as “a young, up-and-coming party loyalist” who was providing the US embassy with information. Publicly, Westerwelle appeared contented to let the matter drop until Metzner confessed to his role as the mole.

Socyberty

The attempts to control opinion in the democracies of this world are commonplace. Newspapers, radio, television, and the web all present examples of efforts to control opinion. Contrasted to this democratic impulse to persuade the citizenry is the old army adage, “When I need an opinion from you I’ll give you one.”

In terms of news broadcasts, TV was an evolutionary step after radio, and cable TV was another step after broadcast TV. The web followed cable TV, promising more opportunities to exchange opinions and ideas. Inevitably, the elite in a democracy attempt to control opinion. On the Internet, that effort is reflected in consolidation of the resource by big names like Google and Yahoo, by video media, and by rating systems that rely on questionable estimates like “Percentage of Global Internet Users”. This last concept bounces like rubber; it is reminiscent of the TV rating systems, shaky estimates of numbers that can’t be proven.

Will communication remain free? Almost certainly it will. It is a futile exercise to attempt to control it because it is a natural right.

Will the web remain free? Hopefully it will. To the extent that it does not, free expression will migrate to other avenues.

David Hume

Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Nancy Snow

What's so fascinating about all these propaganda efforts in the War on Terror is how reconstituted they appear. The United States has a one-hundred-year history of marrying commerce with politics and tapping public relations to “brand” America abroad. President Woodrow Wilson told the International Congress of Salesmanship to "go out and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and more happy and convert them to the principles of America." That was in 1916. Is today all that much different? No, not really, but it's more intensified now because we have the technology age to aid the efforts to brand the product America, and we have the unpredictable dark cloud of that catch-all new enemy, terrorism, magnifying our efforts.

Jacques Ellul

Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render the system.

The Economist

The first attacks may indeed be just “a few days away”. But another sort of war is already under way, one in which journalists are already playing an important role as a conduit or filter, though not just the scribblers and broadcasters from the West. It is the propaganda war. That word has come to have a derogatory meaning, of the dissemination of untruths. In this case, America's task is (in truth) to disseminate truths, about its motives, about its intentions, about its current and past actions in Israel and Iraq, about its views of Islam. For all that, however, this part of the war promises to be no easier to win than the many other elements of the effort.
Success in the propaganda war is a vital preparation for military action; it will be vital if the coalition of allies is to be maintained during that action and amid the inevitable setbacks; and it will be most vital of all if defeats of these particular terrorists are to be followed up, as they should be, by a wider effort to make the ensuing peace more secure, within Central Asia and the Middle East as well as at home.

Howard Zinn

If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

André M. Timpanaro, Carmen P. C. Prado

In the last decade the Sznajd model has been successfully employed in modeling some properties and scale features of both proportional and majority elections. We propose a version of the Sznajd model with a generalized bounded confidence rule—a rule that limits the convincing capability of agents and that is essential to allow coexistence of opinions in the stationary state. With an appropriate choice of parameters it can be reduced to previous models. We solved this model both in a mean-field approach (for an arbitrary number of opinions) and numerically in a Barabási-Albert network (for three and four opinions), studying the transient and the possible stationary states. We built the phase portrait for the special cases of three and four opinions, defining the attractors and their basins of attraction. Through this analysis, we were able to understand and explain discrepancies between mean-field and simulation results obtained in previous works for the usual Sznajd model with bounded confidence and three opinions. Both the dynamical system approach and our generalized bounded confidence rule are quite general and we think it can be useful to the understanding of other similar models.

F. Slanina, H. Lavicka

There is significant convergence between statistical physics and mathematical sociology in approaches to their respective fields. Ising model, the single most studied statistical physics model, finds its numerous applications in sociophysics simulations. Conversely, sociologically inspired models pose new challenges to statistical physics. We believe this is the case of the Sznajd model we are studying here.
The model of Sznajd-Weron and Sznajd was designed to explain certain features of opinion dynamics. The slogan “United we stand, divided we fall” lead to simple dynamics, in which individuals placed on a lattice (one-dimensional in the first version) can choose between two opinions (political parties, products etc.) and in each update step a pair of neighbours sharing common opinion persuade their neighbours to join their opinion. Therefore, it was noted that contrary to the Ising or voter models, information does not flow from the neighbourhood to the selected spin, but conversely, it flows out from the selected cluster to its neighbours.

Bangkok Post

With its unsavoury reputation for prostitution and crime, it came as no real surprise to find child pornography openly and widely on sale in the seaside resort of Pattaya - although the vendors are far more cautious than their Bangkok counterparts.

Jacques Ranciere

For Plato, the demos is the intolerable existence of the great beast which occupies the stage of the political community without ever becoming a single subject. The name which accurately qualifies it is ochlos: the common rabble or, in other words, the infinite turbulence of collections of individuals who are always at odds with themselves, living rent by passion and at the mercy of desire. On the basis of this observation an original duplicity can be defined, a relationship between philosophy and the political which is both thoroughly immanent and radically transcendent, prohibiting the existence of any such thing as 'political philosophy'.

John Dunn

What we mean by democracy is not that we govern ourselves. When we speak or think of ourselves as living in a democracy, what we have in mind is something quite different. It is that our own state, and the government which does so much to organize our lives, draws its legitimacy from us, and that we have a reasonable chance of being able to compel each of them to continue to do so. They draw it, today, from holding regular elections, in which every adult citizen can vote freely and without fear, in which their votes have at least a reasonably equal weight, and in which any uncriminalized political opinion can compete freely for them.

Pakistan Defence

Charles Waldstein

Our motto must be: liberty, fraternity and inequality. Democracy must never degenerate into ochlocracy.

JATIS

As a short form of lyric poetry, tanka (Japanese poetry) stresses the beauty of life and nature, and a feeling of yearning is an important element.

What is sought within this simple form is to express the essence of this yearning with a depth in which all the emotions are intermingled.

The vivid expression of that which has touched the heart has the power to evoke a wealth of associations.

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

I.

AESTHETICA (theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologėa inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi ratíonís,) est scientia cognitionis sensitiuae.

2.

Naturalis facultatum cognoscitiuarum inferiorum gradus solo usu citra disciplinalem culturam auctus AESTHETICA NATURALIS dici potest, et distingui, sicuti logica naturalis solet, in connatam, ingenium pulcrum connatum, et acquisitam, et haec denuo in docentem et utentem.

The British Society of Aesthetics

The Society is established to promote study, research and discussion of the fine arts and related types of experience from a philosophical, psychological, sociological, scientific, historical, critical and educational standpoint.

James W. Manns

It is hard to imagine a subject matter being more capricious and elusive than aesthetics. It is easy enough to characterize it as the philosophy of art — or, to capture a greater portion of the aesthetic tradition, the philosophy of art and beauty — but once said, we right away find ourselves face-to-face with the slippery question "What is art?" (or the equally slippery question "What is beauty?").

Denis Diderot

Beauty is a term we apply to an infinitude of beings; but whatever differences there may be among these beings, it must be the case either that we falsely apply the term beautiful, or that there is in all these beings a quality of which the term beauty is the sign.

Elbert Hubbard

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

断捨離

Joshua M. Neff

We tend to say the same thing at the same time or email each other at the same time. It’s just one of those things.

9E66th

Tit

The New York Times

Khalil Gibran

One day you will ask me which is more important? my life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

---

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

---

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Andrew Batson

One widely touted solution for current U.S. economic woes is for America to produce more of the high-tech gadgets that the rest of the world craves.

Yet two academic researchers have found that Apple Inc.'s iPhone—one of the most iconic U.S. technology products—actually added $1.9 billion to the U.S. trade deficit with China last year.

How is this possible? Though the iPhone is entirely designed and owned by a U.S. company, and is made largely of parts produced by other countries, it is physically assembled in China. Both countries' trade statistics therefore consider the iPhone a Chinese export to the U.S. So a U.S. consumer who buys what is often considered an American product will add to the U.S. trade deficit with China.

Violeta Parra

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto

Me dio dos luceros que, cuando los abro

Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco

Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado

Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo

Tina Rosenberg

Dr. Rey took a challenge that most people would assume requires more money, personnel and technology and solved it in a way that requires less of all three. I am not a romantic who wants to abandon modern medical care in favor of traditional solutions. People with AIDS in South Africa need antiretroviral therapy, not traditional healers’ home brews. If you are bitten by a cobra in India, you should not go to the temple. You should go to the hospital for antivenin. Modern medical care is essential and technology very often saves lives.

Facebook

i.B

The world becomes even more interesting when somebody walks next to you.

Histoire & Voyages

Sur les traces de Tamerlan et des conquérants d’Asie centrale : les Perses, Alexandre le Grand, les Arabes, Gengis Khan... découvrez celles qui furent considérées longtemps comme les trois plus belles villes du monde : Samarcande, Boukhara et Khiva. Au milieu des sables, le mirage des dômes d’un bleu éclatant et les revêtements de faïences ont attiré et fasciné conquérants et voyageurs de tous temps.

火星网友

当年投胎选了hard模式，结果生在中国，还好没选very hard，不然生在朝鲜了...

神一样的回复：

选择professional模式，更杯具。生在了阿富汗和伊拉克

Hell模式 埃塞俄比亚，苏丹，刚果，扎伊尔

easy模式大概是在北欧那片吧～normol应该是美日欧

hell模式真情提示：请先完成very hard再尝试

选择hard模式下次投胎有机会获蛋甕Y爱生活eaven模式。

从玩家数量来看，还是玩hard的多啊~

也不一定啊，人家选了Hard模式，加外挂，加加速，神装比那些选择easy模式的裸装备不知道好玩儿多少倍呢

増子直純

過ぎたるシアワセはきっと俺ダメにする　貧しいながらも清く正しく

喰うために汗を流して　エンヤコラ働こう

そして生きるために唄おう　明日を生きるために

＿＿＿＿

人のため　義理のため　死ぬのが武士道

愛のため　夢のため　生きるが俺道

Jargon File

Users /nm./: collective term for those who use computers. Users are divided into three types: novice, intermediate and expert.

• Novice Users: people who are afraid that simply pressing a key might break their computer.
• Intermediate Users: people who don't know how to fix their computer after they've just pressed a key that broke it.
• Expert Users: people who break other people's computers.

PRQ

Refugee hosting

Our boundless commitment to free speech has been tested and proven over and over again. If it is legal in Sweden, we will host it, and will keep it up regardless of any pressure to take it down.

Confidentiality

We defend your integrity to the end. With our discreet customer relations policy we don't even have to know who you are, and if we do, we will keep that knowledge strictly confidential.

Technical proficiency

The PRQ team has a solid background in computer networking, security, hardware, and software. Most of us have been online for over 10 years. We can assist you with almost anything - keeping your servers secure, mitigating DDoS attacks, or keeping your high-traffic websites up and running smoothly. To make this possible, we run our own fully multi-homed backbone network (AS33837), with the capacity needed both to handle large DDoS attacks and to provide excellent connectivity to customers with bandwidth utilization ranging from a few Mbps to several hundred.

Interflora

Le jour de la Saint-Valentin, le 14 février, est connu comme la fête des amoureux. Les couples en profitent pour s’échanger cadeaux et comme preuve d’amour, ainsi que des roses rouges afin d’exprimer leur passion.

A l’origine de cette fête, on retrouve un prêtre romain, du nom de Valentin. Au IIIème siècle, l’empereur Claude II le Gothique interdit le mariage, les fiancés faisant de mauvais soldats, en raison de leur amour et attachement à la famille. Saint-Valentin, qui mariait les couples en secret, fut démasqué et arrêté.

On raconte que pendant sa captivité, il se lia d’amitié avec la fille aveugle de son geôlier, à laquelle il rendit miraculeusement la vue. Avant d’être exécuté, Valentin fit parvenir à cette fille des feuilles en forme de coeur.

Il fut décapité à Rome le 14 Février 268, et canonisé par le pape Alexandre VI au 15ème siècle. Depuis, il est considéré comme le saint patron des amoureux, et l’on fête l’amour chaque 14 février.

太田富雄

井上伸一郎

さてこの度、角川書店は来年の東京アニメフェアへの出展を取りやめることにいたしました。マンガ家やアニメ関係者に対しての、都の姿勢に納得がいかないところがありまして。

Josh Groban

retournons avant la guerre, avant la fin

avant le besoin de toutes ces prieres

aucun mal, aucun bien, aucun mot croche

ni mots malins que l'on dit quand on n'sait pas

sous un ciel bleu, ciel sans nuage, retournons la-bas

sans orage, retournons la-bas

au jardin des sans pourquoi

je t'ai vue te promener la-bas, sous l'arc-en-ciel

brillante comme une etincelle dans la nuit

ou je t'ai vue aussi, tombant du ciel

comme une larme de st laurent, disparaissant

dans un ciel blue, ciel sans nuage, retournons la-bas

sans orage, retournons la-bas

au jardin des sans pourquoi

МакSим

Такая нежность на зеркалах

Где тени поз в дошкольном платье

Рисуют нежность на телах, а в глазах лето

Бесконечно ещё так нежно

Больше не забыть это лето

Ветром по щекам будет где-то

Осень целовать. Жаль наверное

Ветер не умеет так нежно

Река рассвета скрывала ночь

Мерцанье слёз. О, это лето

Сгорало в сотни тысяч звёзд в любовь одето

Роняло небо лучик света

西部邁

あの日あの時、私は集団心理の力学がいかに素早く転変するものであるかを痛感した。同時に、自分の少々果敢な姿が実は滅びの姿にほかならぬことを強く感じとっていた。それから一ヶ月後に逮捕されて独房に入り、またその後に続いたいくつもの長い裁判の過程において、自分のオツムが蒸発乾燥していくのか沈思黙考に入っていくのかはっきりしないという奇妙な感覚にとらわれつつ、「人が左翼であるのは、その新旧のいずれかを問わず、人が右翼であるのと同じように、人が莫迦になるための近道である」という真実を少しずつ学んでいった。また、あの宣伝カーの上での仲間に向かってのネガティブ・キャンペーンは、何ほどかは自分にたいしても発したものであったことを認めねばならぬ、と納得しもしはじめたのである。

Jose Luis Marroquin

There is ... a basic issue that is only very seldomly discuscussed: What do we mean by "visual experience"? Very often the problem of vision is oversimplified, and to "see" a scene is identified with the task of computing a verbal description of it. This problem is difficult enough, but it is important to recognize that there is much more in visual perception than assigning verbal labels to "objects".

If we pay attention to what we actually see, instead of thinking about it, we find that our visual experience is richer than any verbal description. This fact becomes evident as we observe a pictoric representation of a landscape - i.e., a non-verbal description - and compare the visual image with a literary description of the same scene or, further, with a list of the "objects" it contains. Moreover, we all recognize that certain visual patterns have qualities such as simplicity, elegance, unity, beauty, harmony, etc., but all these words denote experiences which are almost impossible to be described verbally, and which cannot be explained by a theory which considers visual perception merely as the assignment of verbal labels.

Gert J. Tonder, Michael J. Lyons

We present an investigation into the relation between design principles in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground segmentation, while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement.

i.A.s

The Smiths

優恵

Hajine Tachibana

Darren Jones

The global economy while rarely stable has undergone a recent seismic shift. All Insignificant Things Must Disappear is an attempt to uncover new ways of thinking about what has become an encompassing event. ...

This almost unprecedented crisis has opened up a range of social and cultural consequences that we are still struggling to comprehend. Artists, so often acting as barometers for society’s evolution have a role to play in navigating this latest challenge. By offering alternative ways of seeing the volatility of recent times, All Insignificant Things Must Disappear aims to foster discussion and consideration for the road ahead.

Trinity Wall Street

Estimate of Giving - Pledging Our Financial Resources

I/We pledge $ _______ every ( ) Week ( ) Month ( ) Year to Trinity Wall Street for 2011.

( ) I/We pledge to give to God through offerings to Trinity Wall Street as I am/we are able.

( ) Please do not send weekly offering envelopes

( ) Please send information about electronic pledging (debit or credit)

( ) I/We have remembered Trinity Wall Street in my/our will

( ) Please send information about planned giving

You can make your pledge online at trinitywallstreet.org/congregation/stewardship

...all shall give as they are able,

according to the blessing of the Lord

your God that he has given you.

Deuteronomy 16:17

St Francis of Assisi

He who works with his hands is a laborer.

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

Nigel Dwyer

Paintings and sculptures were used in two ways. First as a means to communicate the word of God and Jesus Christ to a largely illiterate community, It does seem that in mediaeval times the clergy really went to town with this, covering much of the wall space of their churches with vividly painted murals or with narrative carvings of bible stories. Stained glass in the windows was used to similar effect a tradition that still continues. The inside of these churches really must have been a wonder to behold for a largely serf or peasant congregation, illuminating even transcending lives which were, probably, not only short and brutish, but also rather dull and colourless.

The other main use of visual art was to produce devotional aids. Probably this is where sculpture came into prominence. There was of course the risk that such effigies might actually be worshipped and thus be a source for idolatry. Certainly most of these objects whether carved in wood or stone were polychromatic suggesting an attempt to make them as lifelike as possible. Later on this issue became one of those all too common excuses for violent confrontation in the church.

David Carrier

The relationship between artistic originality and finance is complex. In the early seventeenth-century many northern artists moved to Rome, which then was prosperous. But by the late eighteenth-century, Paris was an important art center, and Rome a backwater. But then the defeat of France by Prussia in 1871 did not cause the art world to move to Berlin. Degas, who copied Dinner at the Ball by his German contemporary Adolph Menzel, is the greater artist. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the center of the art world was in Paris. Then after World War Two, it moved to Manhattan. To some extent, then, art follows the money, which is why so many Mainland Chinese artists recently have been exhibited in Chelsea.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

After violating my wife, the robber, sitting there, began to speak comforting words to her. Of course I couldn't speak. My whole body was tied fast to the root of a cedar. But meanwhile I winked at her many times, as much as to say "Don't believe the robber." I wanted to convey some such meaning to her. But my wife, sitting dejectedly on the bamboo leaves, was looking hard at her lap. To all appearance, she was listening to his words. I was agonized by jealousy. In the meantime the robber went on with his clever talk, from one subject to another. The robber finally made his bold brazen proposal. "Once your virtue is stained, you won't get along well with your husband, so won't you be my wife instead? It's my love for you that made me be violent toward you."

While the criminal talked, my wife raised her face as if in a trance. She had never looked so beautiful as at that moment. What did my beautiful wife say in answer to him while I was sitting bound there? I am lost in space, but I have never thought of her answer without burning with anger and jealousy. Truly she said, … "Then take me away with you wherever you go."

This is not the whole of her sin. If that were all, I would not be tormented so much in the dark. When she was going out of the grove as if in a dream, her hand in the robber's, she suddenly turned pale, and pointed at me tied to the root of the cedar, and said, "Kill him! I cannot marry you as long as he lives." "Kill him!" she cried many times, as if she had gone crazy.

Rudolf Steiner

The one leads to a knowledge of the Sun state of the past; the other represents a future form of the earth existence—namely, that into which the earth will have been transformed when the fruits of all that takes place on it and Jupiter have merged into the forms of that future world. What can thus be observed of this future world may be characterized in occult phraseology as the Venus condition.

-ilonQua-

European Commission

In fact the new digital media can permit a wider distribution of cultural and creative content, because the reproduction is cheaper and quicker and creates more opportunities for authors and content providers to reach new and larger – even global - audiences. The internet is also a driver of greater pluralism in the media, giving both access to a wider range of sources and points of view as well as the means for individuals – who might otherwise be denied the opportunity – to express themselves fully and openly.

John Wood

Increasingly, in the new open innovation model, innovative products are made public before being finalised, through the so-called permanent beta approach, because such large-scale deployment brings insights that would not be evident in a protected environment. A parallel change is likely to happen in science: results will no longer be solely delivered as a finished product (the publication of a journal or book) but as draft products, in order to enable wider feedback and subsequent improvement, enabled by the sharing of rough data, facilitating serendipitous innovation. This will also help to meet the demand for improved knowledge transfer.

Tony Hey

In the next five years, we undoubtedly will collect more scientific data than we've collected so far in the whole of human history.

Scientists won't be able to look at every piece individually but instead will need to use computing tools to aid in the interpretation of vast amounts of information. There's a unique role right now for computer science and the IT industry to help scientists explore their data.

Soon, it will be impossible to do any kind of science without computational tools – and the more advanced and powerful, the better for the scientist and the science.

Roger Barga

We view researchers as extreme information workers, who in order to carry out a project must search and navigate a range of web services, access remote data and compute resources, share and manage document collections, and collaborate in virtual teams.

Chase Creek

Anna Gavalda

Je croise des gens. Je les regarde. Je leur demande à quelle heure ils se lèvent le matin, comment ils font pour vivre et ce qu'ils préfèrent comme dessert par exemple. Ensuite je pense à eux. J'y pense tout le temps. Je revois leur visage, leurs mains et même la couleur de leurs chaussettes. Je pense à eux pendant des heures voire des années et puis un jour, j'essaye d'écrire sur eux.

Taerim Kim

梶井基次郎

いったい私はあの檸檬が好きだ。レモンエロウの絵具をチューブから搾り出して固めたようなあの単純な色も、それからあの丈の詰まった紡錘形の恰好も。――結局私はそれを一つだけ買うことにした。それからの私はどこへどう歩いたのだろう。私は長い間街を歩いていた。始終私の心を圧えつけていた不吉な塊がそれを握った瞬間からいくらか弛んで来たとみえて、私は街の上で非常に幸福であった。あんなに執拗かった憂鬱が、そんなものの一顆で紛らされる――あるいは不審なことが、逆説的なほんとうであった。それにしても心というやつはなんという不可思議なやつだろう。

その檸檬の冷たさはたとえようもなくよかった。

Claude Adrien Helvetius

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

Rex Stout

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct.

Gene Roddenberry

Cogley: What's the matter? Don't you like books?

Kirk: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space.

Cogley: A computer, huh? I got one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents, a synthesis of all the great legal decisions written throughout time. I never use it.

Kirk: Why not?

Cogley: I've got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something--my library. Thousands of books.

Kirk: What would be the point?

Cogley: This is where the law is, not in that homogenized, pasteurized, synthesized... do you want to know the law, the ancient concepts in their own language, learn the intent of the men who wrote them, from Moses to the tribunal of Alpha 3? Books.