Theo Yansen

Strandbeest

http://www.strandbeest.com/

dnoakes

In this photo from June 1920, President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill into law. The lady next to him is Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the First Lady. She is steadying the paper he's signing to conceal the paralysis he was still suffering from a series of strokes the preceding November. Many historians believe Mrs. Wilson was the defacto President of the United States for much of the last year of her husband's term.

(Woodrow Wilson's first posed photograph after his stroke. He was paralyzed on his left side, so Edith holds a document steady while he signs. June 1920.)

foodcurated

有年由貴子

関西有数のビーチとして知られる神戸市須磨区の須磨海水浴場。昨夏に違法薬物事件が相次ぎ、今夏から入れ墨（タトゥー）露出や喫煙が市条例で禁止され、市は違反者に注意を重ねる一方、海水浴客から「厳しすぎる」との反発も。さらに「ファッションの小さなタトゥーまで規制するのは人権侵害」と海の家の組合が提訴を辞さない構えをみせる。健全化か自由か－。その答えを求めて浜辺を歩いた。

夏空が広がる休日、多くの利客らでにぎわう中、砂浜に立てられた真新しい看板が目に入った。

《他人に恐怖心を与える行為の禁止！（入れ墨等の露出）》《喫煙の禁止！》《騒音の発生禁止！》…。

看板には改正条例に基づく禁止事項が並んでいるが、立ち止まって見る客はほとんどいない。

浜辺では、肩や腕にワンポイントの花柄などのタトゥーを入れた若い男女の姿が目立つ。市職員や委託された兵庫県警ＯＢらが巡回し、違反者に指導を繰り返していた。

「兄ちゃん、入れ墨は見せたらあかんことになってるねん」

指導を受けるとタトゥーをタオルなどで隠して従う客もいるが、「分かった、分かった」とその場しのぎであしらう客もいる。

胸や足に入れた小さなタトゥーで注意された同市長田区の女性会社員（３３）は「ごみの分別などのマナーは守っている。外見で判断しないで」と反発。巡回中の警備員（４２）は「いたちごっこだが、何度も声をかけると聞いてくれる人もいる。根気強くやるしかない」と話した。

U.S. Government Accountability Office

In light of the high unemployment rate and the devastating effects that unemployment has on American families, the Government’s immediate focus is on encouraging private sector job creation. But the Government must simultaneously address the medium- and long-term fiscal imbalance resulting from past budget deficits, the impact of the economic downturn, and demands on the nation’s social programs, notably Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As currently structured, the Government's fiscal path cannot be sustained indefinitely and would, over time, dramatically increase the Government's budget deficit and debt (see Chart 2).

Chart 8 shows historical and estimated receipts, program spending, and primary deficits expressed as shares of GDP from 1980 to 2083. Program spending grew rapidly in 2008 and 2009 due to the financial crisis and the recession and the policies necessary to combat both, and is expected to fall in the next few years as the economy recovers. Starting in 2014, however, rising health care costs and, to a lesser extent, the aging population, are expected to cause program spending as a share of GDP to rise continuously from 19 percent in 2014 to 25 percent in 2040 and 29 percent in 2080. This reflects the expectation that heath care spending per person will continue to grow faster than will the economy as a whole and also reflects the movement of the 78 million ‘baby boomers’ (those born between 1946 and 1964) from work to retirement.

Ari Karpel

The few features with a message that do make it to theaters often have a single individual at their center, like Karen Silkwood or Erin Brockovich, or a pair, like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who become the audience's guide through a murky subculture.

Add Kathryn Bolkovac, an American police officer, to that list. She is portrayed by Ms. Weisz in the new film "The Whistleblower," opening Friday. It follows Ms. Bolkovac's real-life assignment as a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990s, a job that exposed her to a world of international workers complicit in and in many cases fostering the international trade of young women for sex. Ms. Bolkovac's investigation led to her firing.

"There were so many people in the same situation as her," Ms. Weisz said. "They saw what was going on, and they didn't respond in the way that she did."

Her crusade, which was widely covered by the European press after she filed a lawsuit in Britain for wrongful dismissal, drew Ms. Weisz, who in turn hopes to attract audiences in a season when Hollywood's prime concern seems to be the plight of superheroes and young wizards.

Leonhard Euler

CloudStor

CloudStor goes beyond network hard drives and simple storage. Each CloudStor is a personal storage solution designed with you in mind. It is your portal to freely access and share photos, videos, music and much more with anyone, anywhere through the cloud.

To access your content from myCloudStor.com, log in using your registered email address and password. You will immediately see all of the files stored on your CloudStor and any CloudStor enabled devices you own. You can then share, stream, upload or download to and from your CloudStor from anywhere in the world - no technical expertise or advanced networking knowledge required.

David Eagleman

Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse.

Six ways the internet will save civilisation:

• Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence
• The internet will predict natural disasters
• Discoveries are retained and shared
• Tyranny is mitigated
• Human capital is vastly increased
• Energy expenditure is reduced

Colum Lynch

The Whistleblower: The movie the U.N. would prefer you didn't see

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon traveled to Hollywood last year to cajole filmmakers and movie stars into making pictures that portray the U.N.'s good works. The Whistleblower, a scathing full-length account of the U.N. peacekeeping effort in Bosnia during the late 1990s, is not what he had in mind.
The Samuel Goldwyn Films movie, which is due out in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on Aug. 5, stars British actress Rachel Weisz as a U.N. policewoman who stumbles into the sordid world of Balkan sex trafficking and finds her fellow U.N. peacekeepers implicated in the trade.
It constitutes perhaps the darkest cinematic portrayal of a U.N. operation ever on the big screen, finding particular fault with top U.N. brass, the U.S. State Department, and a major U.S. contractor that supplies American policemen for U.N. missions.
The actual abuses in Bosnia were so shocking that the film's director, Larysa Kondracki, told Turtle Bay that she had to tone it down to make it believable and to ensure that viewers didn't "tune it out." The movie, she said, in some ways resembles a "70s paranoid thriller" in which it can be hard to tell the difference between the heroes and the villains. Kondracki declined to name DynCorp as the model for the company portrayed in the movie, citing unspecified legal concerns.

Marie Jégo

Est-ce parce ce que le bonjour russe, "zdravstvouite !", est si difficile à prononcer qu'il a tant de mal à venir ? Lancé à un voisin, le mot n'appelle en général aucune réponse, pas un signe de tête. Ainsi l'auteure de ces lignes, installée dans le même immeuble moscovite depuis plus de cinq ans, a dû attendre deux bonnes années avant d'obtenir un franc bonjour ou un petit signe de tête de la part de ses voisins.

Le sourire est encore plus rare. Sourire, en Russie, est souvent interprété comme un aveu de faiblesse de la part de celui qui l'esquisse, ou, pire encore, comme le signe de quelque requête à venir. Il faut le savoir : la méfiance du Moscovite de base est d'autant plus en éveil que vous vous évertuez à faire apparaître vos dents.

Alain de Botton

Le pessimisme est d'humeur, l'optimisme est de volonté.

Economist

Good news from Iran is rare, and the IMF is seldom a font of happy tidings about anything. So when a mission from the Fund cheered the Islamic Republic’s economy earlier this month, heaping praise on the policies of its ruthless government, eyebrows spiked upwards as in a comic scene in a Persian miniature. The shock was even sharper given that the IMF, whose biggest shareholder happens to be the Great Satan, America, is a pillar of global capitalism, a system that Iran’s maverick president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gleefully lambasts as evil.

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Whatever its name, the sweeping reform of a ruinous, three-decade-old system of state subsidies that Iran began last December seems to be radically reshaping the country’s economy for the better.

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Yet tight controls on the money supply have kept inflationary pressure lower than feared. By some counts it has already fallen from an annualised 20% in March to 14% in May. With government finances now in better shape, that may drop still further, and quickly.

Marc Lynch

In developing a new approach to Iran, the administration should:

• Engage newly empowered publics. The administration should lay out a vision that aligns the United States with the aspirations of publics in the Arab world and Iran, and demonstrate that commitment in practice.
• Focus on human rights and universal freedoms. The United States should call for the same universal rights and freedoms in Iran that it has articulated for the rest of the region, and significantly increase its focus on human rights in its approach to Tehran.
• Communicate Iran’s weakness. The administration should launch a strategic communications campaign designed to highlight Iran’s irrelevance to the uprisings and dwindling soft power, and avoid the temptation to embrace narratives that give Tehran an undeserved centrality in the region’s transformation.
• Use diplomacy to shape the future. A negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear challenge is unlikely in the short term, and this is not the time for a new public initiative. However, the administration should continue pursuing lower-level diplomacy and confidence-building measures designed to create possibilities for movement when conditions change.
• Watch out for war. The administration should guard against sudden spirals to war based on miscalculations, fear and unpredictable proxy struggles. It should reject efforts to adopt the model of intervention applied in Libya to Iran, and continue to resist calls for military action.

YellowBridge

矜持

reserved; aloof

她看上去像一个矜持的少女

She looks like a very demure young lady.

他喝了点酒之後那矜持态度消失了。

A few drinks broke through his reserve.

女主人将生客作彼此介绍以打破矜持的气氛。

The hostess broke the ice by introducing the strangers to each other.

小関智弘

本当の職人は目に見えないところでも丁寧な仕事をしている。

ごまかしや手抜きを恥と思うのが職人の気質だ。

手で考えることを忘れては、良い知恵は生まれない。

職人が持つべき矜持のかけらも感じられない。

機械乾燥なら簡単。しかしギター材としては、水分がなくなるだけでは不十分。木の細胞が落ち着く自然枯れでなくてはいけない。

许常德

我从来不曾抗拒你的魅力

虽然你从来不曾对我著迷

我总是微笑的看著你

我的情意总是轻易就洋溢眼底

我曾经想过在寂寞的夜里

你终於在意在我的房间里

你闭上眼睛亲吻了我

不说一句紧紧抱我在你的怀里

我是爱你的

我爱你到底

生平第一次我放下矜持

任凭自己幻想一切关於我和你

你是爱我的

你爱我到底

生平第一次我放下矜持

相信自己真的可以深深去爱你

John Stuart Mill

One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.

伊藤若冲

千載具眼の徒を俟つ

Prussian Blue Pigment

Niko Alm

Amos Lee

My heart is a flower

That blooms every hour

I believe in the power

Of love

Well this lonesome meadow

It's soft as a pillow

Oh I pray that we'll go back

To Love

I'm going to reach on up over that fear

Whenever I'm alone won't you please be near

I know that darkness before the dawn

Tomorrow's coming and yesterday's gone

David Hampshire

Americans are raised with a ‘can do’ mentality and to believe that they can achieve anything, from world champion horseshoe pitcher to President of the United States of America. They think that if they dedicate enough energy to it they can have a bigger house, more intelligent children, and an option on immortality (preferably in California or Florida). Most Americans have a rose-tinted view of the world, where provided you rise early, work hard and fight fairly, everything will turn out fine. America peddles dreams, hopes and lifestyles, where life’s a giant candy bar and all you’ve got to do is take a BIG bite!

The American attitude towards sex is indicative of their philosophy that everything must be available on demand. Sex is open, available and free for the taking (just do it!). Like their obsession with all good things in life, the Americans’ sexual appetite is insatiable and many just cannot get enough of it. Most Americans wish they could spend more time making love, although not necessarily with their regular partners. Americans analyse their sexual performance to death and every stroke is examined, reviewed and evaluated. Americans have few inhibitions about discussing sex and do so incessantly.

James Pankow

you are my love and my life

you are my inspiration.

just you and me

simple and free

your everything i ever dreamed of

give me your own special smile

promise you'll never leave me

just you and me

simple and free

life is so easy when you're beside me

Kenny O'Dell

You like to mix with people, I like to be alone
Baby you can stay out all night, and I'd just as well stay home
Two people with so little in common, and different as we can be
We come together around midnight when it's just you and me
When it's just you and me and there's nothing between us but our own sweet love

Hope Solo, Aya Miyama

http://youtu.be/UGV-mr-xYM4

Wikia

World Map in 1930

Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order of America

Expansion of the Ottoman Empire

Decline of the Ottoman Empire

English Bill of Rights

United States Bill of Rights

United States Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Jean Jacques François Le Barbier

南怀瑾

道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。无，名天地之始。有，名万物之母。故常无，欲以观其妙。常有，欲以观其徼。此两者，同出而异名，同谓之玄。玄之又玄，众妙之门。

Richard Dawkins

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

Robert G. Ingersoll

Is there a supernatural power—an arbitrary mind—an enthroned God—a supreme will that sways the tides and currents of the world—to which all causes bow? I do not deny. I do not know—but I do not believe. I believe that the natural is supreme—that from the infinite chain no link can be lost or broken—that there is no supernatural power that can answer prayer—no power that worship can persuade or change—no power that cares for man.

I believe that with infinite arms Nature embraces the all—that there is no interference—no chance—that behind every event are the necessary and countless causes, and that beyond every event will be and must be the necessary and countless effects.

Is there a God? I do not know. Is man immortal? I do not know. One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.

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We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.

Søren Kierkegaard

Let us call this unknown something: God. It is nothing more than a name we assign to it. The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it. For at the very outset, in beginning my proof, I would have presupposed it, not as doubtful but as certain (a presupposition is never doubtful, for the very reason that it is a presupposition), since otherwise I would not begin, readily understanding that the whole would be impossible if he did not exist. But if when I speak of proving God's existence I mean that I propose to prove that the Unknown, which exists, is God, then I express myself unfortunately. For in that case I do not prove anything, least of all an existence, but merely develop the content of a conception.

Thomas Henry Huxley

And, again, it is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward. Retrogressive is as practicable as progressive metamorphosis. If what the physical philosophers tell us, that our globe has been in a state of fusion, and, like the sun, is gradually cooling down, is true; then the time must come when evolution will mean adaptation to an universal winter, and all forms of life will die out, except such low and simple organisms as the Diatom of the arctic and antarctic ice and the Protococcus of the red snow. If our globe is proceeding from a condition in which it was too hot to support any but the lowest living thing to a condition in which it will be too cold to permit of the existence of any others, the course of life upon its surface must describe a trajectory like that of a ball fired from a mortar; and the sinking half of that course is as much a part of the general process of evolution as the rising.

Hiragana Times

The U.S. has two faces that contradict each other. One is the symbol of peace as the world's police defending freedom, human rights and democracy. The other face is that of the world's largest military industrial empire/merchant of weapons.

For the merchant of weapons, North East Asia is the best market, and for that reason, they have to exaggerate the risk of emergency in the Korean peninsula and the Strait of Taiwan more than reality requires.

Цензор.НЕТ

"Черный август" в России - Август традиционно считается в России несчастливым месяцем. Конец лета с пугающей регулярностью отмечается терактами, техногенными или природными катастрофами.

14 августа 1992 года грузинские войска вторглись в Абхазию, началась грузино-абхазская война, в которой с обеих сторон активно участвовали российские граждане.

18 августа 1997 года в центре Санкт-Петербурга застрелен вице-мэр, глава комитета по управлению городским имуществом Михаил Маневич.

8 августа 2002 года в результате наводнения и смерча в Новороссийске погибли 59 человек. 19 августа в Чечне сбит военный вертолет Ми-26, погибли 127 военных.

Rebekah Brooks

I am proud of the many successful newspaper campaigns at the Sun and the News of the World under my editorship.

In particular, the 10-year fight for Sarah's Law is especially personal to me.

The battle for better protection of children from paedophiles and better rights for the families and the victims of these crimes defined my editorships.

Although these difficult times will continue for many months ahead, I want you to know that News International will pursue the facts with vigour and integrity.

I am aware of the speculation about my position. Therefore it is important you all know that as chief executive, I am determined to lead the company to ensure we do the right thing and resolve these serious issues.

We will face up to the mistakes and wrongdoing of the past and we will do our utmost to see that justice is done and those culpable will be punished.

Fareed Zakaria

If democracy becomes an empty shell, this would be a tragedy because democracy with all its flaws represents the 'last best hope' for people around the world. But it needs to be secured and strengthened for our times. Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took America into the twentieth century with a challenge to make the world safe for democracy. As we enter the twenty-first century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world.

Why Democracy?

Democracy is arguably the greatest political buzzword of our time and is invoked by everyone - but what does it mean? Can it be defined, measured, safeguarded? Can it be sold, bought, and transplanted? Can it grow? Can it die? What does it mean to people who can't even talk about it? What does it mean to people who don't believe in it? What does it mean to you?

With so much violence done in the name of democracy, it has undoubtedly become a more contested idea. However, there is even greater need than before to understand it better and, despite its ironies, there is an unparalled interest in the promise it holds.

Why Democracy? hopes to encourage everyone to engage with this task. It started on October 8th, 2007 and continues to be a global success. Wherever you are in the world, join in!

James Gleick

I got a real thrill in December 1999 in the Reading Room of the Morgan Library in New York when the librarian, Sylvie Merian, brought me, after I had completed an application with a letter of reference and a photo ID, the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton. First I was required to study a microfilm version. There followed a certain amount of appropriate pomp. The notebook was lifted from a blue cloth drop-spine box and laid on a special padded stand. I was struck by how impossibly tiny it was — 58 leaves bound in vellum, just 2 3/4 inches wide, half the size I would have guessed from the enlarged microfilm images. There was his name, “Isacus Newton,” proudly inscribed by the 17-year-old with his quill, and the date, 1659.

“He filled the pages with meticulous script, the letters and numerals often less than one-sixteenth of an inch high,” I wrote in my book “Isaac Newton” a few years later. “He began at both ends and worked toward the middle.”

Apparently historians know the feeling well — the exhilaration that comes from handling the venerable original. It’s a contact high. In this time of digitization, it is said to be endangered. The Morgan Notebook of Isaac Newton is online now (thanks to the Newton Project at the University of Sussex). You can surf it.

The raw material of history appears to be heading for the cloud. What once was hard is now easy. What was slow is now fast.

Drexel University

The bookless library at Drexel University in Philadelphia

Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

NBC BAY AREA

王晨

当然，我们也清醒地认识到，中国是一个发展中国家，中国的人权事业也在发展过程中。发展中不平衡、不协调的问题依然突出，如经济增长的资源环境约束强化，收入分配差距较大，物价上涨压力加大，部分城市房价涨幅过高，食品安全问题比较突出，优质教育、医疗资源总量不足、分布不均，城乡区域发展不协调，违法征地拆迁等引发的社会矛盾增多。同时，还应看到，我国在保障人民民主权利方面还存在不足。受自然、历史、文化、经济社会发展水平的影响和制约，中国人权事业发展仍面临许多困难和挑战，实现享有充分人权的崇高目标仍然任重道远。

我们要继续坚定不移地走中国特色社会主义道路，坚持以人为本，进一步健全人权的法律保障体系，全面提升全社会尊重和保护人权的意识，全面推进中国人权事业的发展，依法保障人民群众经济、政治、文化、社会等各项权益，使每一个社会成员生活得更有保障、更有尊严、更加幸福。

Embassy Beijing

Ethnic riots like those in Xinjiang July 5-7 and in Tibet in March of 2008 differ markedly in origin and nature from mass incidents, XXXXXXXXXXXX emphasized to PolOff on XXXXXXXXXXXX. Both present serious problems for the Party, XXXXXXXXXXXX said, but the Party leadership would not hesitate to open fire on Uighurs or Tibetans if they deemed it necessary to restore order. Mass incidents pose a different kind of threat, he said, as the leadership is "afraid" to fire on Han rioters for fear of sparking massive public outrage that would turn against the Party. XXXXXXXXXXXX told PolOff on XXXXXXXXXXXX that the Xinjiang riots and the June mass incidents were different in kind but shared an important similarity. In her view, at least some rioters in Xinjiang took to the streets because of general discontent unrelated to the immediate cause of the violence. Han people do not hate Uighurs and are not looking for revenge, she said, but some people "can always find an excuse to express their grievances."

Kevin Perry

"Saiou ga uma" is a Japanese phrase that means "Saiou's horse." It's an abbreviation of "Ningen banji saiou ga uma," by which a famous Japanese proverb is known.

The literal translation is "All human affairs are like Saiou's horse". It basically means you can never really know what will prove to be "good" or "bad". The meaning came from a Chinese folk tale about an old man called Sai. Here's the story:

Once upon a time, an old man, Sai, lived near the Chinese Northern Fort. One day his horse ran away. His neighbors commiserated with him over his misfortune, but Sai said "How do you know this is not really good luck?".

A few days later the horse returned, bringing another horse with it. When his neighbors congratulated him on his good luck, the old man said "How do you know this is really good luck?"

Sure enough, some while later Sai's son fell while riding the horse, and broke his leg. The neighbors called it a misfortune.

But it turned out to be good fortune when all the young men of the village were ordered to join the Emperor's army. Sai's son didn't have to go because he had a broken leg.

Psychologists call this reframing. When you take an event and view it from slightly different circumstances, its meaning can change dramatically.

Tim Newcomb

We've been hearing about it for years, but the bookless library has finally arrived, making a beachhead on college campuses. At Drexel University's new Library Learning Terrace, which opened just last month, there is nary a bound volume, just rows of computers and plenty of seating offering access to the Philadelphia university's 170 million electronic items.

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The upcoming transformation of the New York Public Library's main branch "anticipates the parallel and integrated worlds of electronic digital systems and traditional books" as they complement each other in flexible space that can endure changes, says architect Norman Foster. And although he celebrates the analog world of printed books in his design of the brain-shaped library at Berlin's Free University, he places the stacks in the center of the curved, modern building with digital technology around them, allowing room to adapt "for life beyond the book."

Mahatma Gandhi

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Александр Айвазов

Высокий уровень безработицы, низкий уровень загрузки производственных мощностей, отсутствие достаточного кредитования реального сектора экономики в развитых стран и падение вложений в обновление основного капитала свидетельствуют о том, что в рамках цикла Жюгляра мировая экономика будет находиться в депрессии, как минимум, до 2013-14 гг. В цикле Кузнеца мировая экономика достигнет своей нижней точки падения не раньше 2017-2018 гг., о чем свидетельствует отсутствие роста в строительной индустрии, низкий спрос и падение цен на жилье. Депрессия в цикле Кузнеца будет длиться до 2018-19 гг., когда в цикле Жюгляра уже начнется новая фаза кризиса. В цикле Кондратьева понижательная волна завершится не ранее 2018-20 гг., когда будет сформирован новый ТУ.

Таким образом, вторая волна кризиса или второй кризис понижательной волны шестого К-цикла нас ожидает в 2012-2015 гг., когда циклы Жюгляра, Кузнеца и Кондратьева будут находиться еще в состоянии депрессии, а цикл Китчина снова войдет в фазу рецессии. Именно в период этого кризиса можно ожидать обвала нефтяных цен до уровня их рыночного равновесия в 25-35 $ за баррель. В это же время произойдет крушение нынешней мировой финансовой системы, основанной на долларе США, как виртуальной денежной единице. Цены на золото взлетят до небес (вполне возможно достижение таких высот, как 2-3 тысяч $ за унцию), т.к. огромная масса спекулятивных капиталов попытается переждать "экономическую бурю" в "тихой золотой гавани". И только тогда сформируются предпосылки для создания новой мировой финансовой системы, без которой дальше уже просто не сможет развиваться мировая экономика.

News of the World

西口敦

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Eh bien force est de constater que l’Amérique pragmatique et rebelle aux idéologies, force est de constater que ce pays de l’habeas corpus dont Tocqueville disait qu’il avait le système judiciaire le plus démocratique du monde, s’est mis, dans cette affaire Strauss-Kahn, à l’heure d’un robespierrisme qu’il a emprunté à la France et qu’il a poussé, hélas, à l’extrême de sa folie.

---

Et il a été pulvérisé, enfin, par cette fraction de l’appareil judiciaire américain qui, en clouant Dominique Strauss-Kahn au pilori, en l’humiliant devant le monde entier, en s’acharnant sur lui, a probablement ruiné sa vie. C’est cela que j’ai voulu dire quand j’ai écrit qu’après avoir inventé, sous George Bush Jr, la notion de « preemptive war », l’Amérique, sous Cyrus Vance Jr, a peut-être commencé d’inventer la notion, à peine moins atroce, de « preemptive penalty». Et l’on permettra à un ami des Etats-Unis de répéter, à leur sujet, ce qu’il lui est arrivé de dire, si souvent, de son propre pays lorsqu’y ont déferlé des tornades médiatico judiciaires du même type : que tout cela mérite, à tout le moins, un sérieux, honnête et substantiel examen de conscience.

Dominique Moïsi

Demography is not an exact science. Countless dire predictions, from that of Malthus to that of the Club of Rome, have been proven wrong. But, according to a recent and very convincing essay published in the magazine Foreign Affairs, a dual demographic and economic trend is taking place that will result in spectacular shifts by the middle of this century. The western world will represent only 12% of the world's population, with Europeans reduced to 6%. (In 1913, a year before the outbreak of the first world war, Europe was slightly more populated than China.) Economically, the west will account for around 30% of global output – a level that corresponds to Europe's share in the 18th century and down from 68% in 1950.

What we are witnessing can be seen is a return to the past, with the west resuming to its old place in the world before the start of China's long process of historical decline at the beginning of the 19th century. The west's long period of global dominance is ending, encouraged and accelerated by its own mistakes and irresponsible behaviour. We are entering a new historical cycle, in which there will be proportionally fewer westerners, more Africans and Middle Easterners, and – with greater relevance economically and strategically – many more Asians.

---

There is a sense in Europe that you can’t be fully civilized with the death penalty. Now this feeling is reinforced — that the United States is not a fully civilized country with a police that behaves like that, that wants to humiliate. There is a sense that it’s a dangerous country.

Raphaëlle Bacqué, Ariane Chemin

Le petit cercle sait bien pourquoi l'histoire du Sofitel a "pris". Pourquoi elle a paru crédible, malgré ses extravagances, ses zones d'ombre et le spectre d'un possible complot. "En Dominique, résume un membre de son courant, il y a le type le plus brillant de sa génération, mais il y a aussi Dark Vador", le versant noir des chevaliers de la Guerre des étoiles. Nafissatou Diallo rencontrant le patron du FMI, c'est le hasard d'un planning de ménage croisant la fatalité d'un tempérament, le poison du doute instillé en terrain favorable.

L'incroyable fait divers révèle a posteriori les réelles fragilités d'un candidat et de son dispositif présidentiel. Trop de goût pour la jouissance et le risque. Une confiance en sa bonne fortune frôlant presque l'amoralité. Et, enfin, un entourage excusant toutes ses faiblesses. Même si la justice américaine le blanchit, l'épisode aura poussé DSK à un examen médical, révélant le squelette sous le costume.

Ce rapport aux femmes, d'abord, qui se trouve au coeur de toutes les suspicions. Dans le club strauss-kahnien, ce besoin insatiable n'était pas un tabou. On en riait même, à vrai dire. "Encore une", comptabilisaient les moins farouches quand leur patron leur faisait défaut au ministère de l'économie, dans les années 1990. "Il est parti faire une course", excusait, imperturbable, le prude François Villeroy de Galhau, sans faire illusion. Le sujet s'invitait même dans les conversations de patrons et hauts fonctionnaires qui gravitaient autour de lui. "Il a, en un mois, autant d'aventures que toi et moi nous en aurons en toute une vie", s'était vu obligé d'expliquer aux jeunes impétrants l'un de ses plus anciens conseillers. "Oui, j'aime les femmes... Et alors ?", assurait DSK à Libération, en avril.

Solimões and Negro Rivers

Elaine Sciolino

Séduction and séduire (to seduce) are among the most overused words in the French language. In English, "seduce" has a negative and exclusively sexual feel; in French, the meaning is broader. The French use "seduce" where the British and Americans might use "charm" or "attract" or "engage" or "entertain." Seduction in France does not always involve body contact. A grand séducteur is not necessarily a man who easily seduces others into making love. The term might refer to someone who never fails to persuade others to his point of view. He might be gifted at caressing with words, at drawing people close with a look, at forging alliances with flawless logic. The target of a seduction — male or female — may experience the process as a shower of charm or a magnetic pull or even a form of entertainment that ends as soon as the dinner party is over. “Seduction” in France encompasses a grand mosaic of meanings. What is constant is the intent: to attract or influence, to win over, even if just in fun.

Edith Wharton

The French possess the quality and have always claimed the privilege. And from their freedom of view combined with their sensuous sensibility they have extracted the sensation they call "le plaisir," which is something so much more definite and more evocative than what we mean when we speak of pleasure. "Le plaisir" stands for the frankly permitted, the freely taken, delight of the senses, the direct enjoyment of the fruit of the tree called golden. No suggestions of furtive vice degrade or coarsen it, because it has, like love, its open place in speech and practice. It has found its expression in English also, but only on the lips of geni.us: for instance, in the "bursting of joy's grape" in the "Ode to Melancholy" (it is always in Keats that one seeks such utterances); whereas to the French it is part of the general fearless and joyful contact with life.

Voltaire

Il ne suffit pas de conquérir, il faut savoir séduire.

SurveyMonkey

Millions of people use SurveyMonkey, including 100% of the Fortune 100.

UNHCR

Nationality is a legal bond between a state and an individual, and statelessness refers to the condition of an individual who is not considered as a national by any state.

Statelessness occurs for a variety of reasons including discrimination against minority groups in nationality legislation, failure to include all residents in the body of citizens when a state becomes independent and conflicts of laws between states.

Statelessness is a massive problem that affects an estimated 12 million people worldwide. Statelessness also has a terrible impact on the lives of individuals. Possession of nationality is essential for full participation in society and a prerequisite for the enjoyment of the full range of human rights.

While human rights are generally to be enjoyed by everyone, selected rights such as the right to vote may be limited to nationals. Of even greater concern is that many more rights of stateless people are violated in practice - they are often unable to obtain identity documents; they may be detained because they are stateless; and they could be denied access to education and health services or blocked from obtaining employment.

山崎弘一

「沖山秀子」

21日に亡くなったとのことだ

既に葬儀も親族のみで行われたとのことである

ステージでは何回も共演させていただいた

客席に向かう沖山秀子は　豪快　自由奔放　強引　などである

ステージでは沖山秀子の背中を見ることになる

繊細　気弱　気配り　などがよく見えた

また何度も私を頼ってくれた

身近な昭和が減って行く

残念でならない！

Adam Smith

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep tonight; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

天野昭

まるで盲腸のようにあってもなくてもいいのがマンハッタンの四番街だ。短くて、そしてさしたる有名な場所もない。そもそもマンハッタンに四番街があることさえ知らないニューヨーカーがいるほどだ。

浅井慎平

そういえば寺山がはじめてニューヨークに行くことになったとき、植草甚一に地図を描いてもらった。あれはおかしかった。というのはその頃、まだ植草はニューヨークに行ったことがないのに、本や映画で覚えたニューヨークのさまざまな街角やレストラン、カフェ、ジャズのスポット、映画館や公園に、やたらくわしくて、寺山にそれを教えたのだった。寺山も驚いていた。植草だけがなにくわぬ顔をしていたので、なんだかおかしく妙に嬉しくなってしまったことを龍平は思い出した。

Tony Manero, Stephanie Mangano

What shit is that?

Coffee, not sex.

Just coffee?

I work with very remarkable people. They're not like Bay Ridge people.

Snobs instead of slobs?

What?

Nothing. Bay Ridge isn't the worst part of Brooklyn.

It's no hellhole. Well, it ain't... isn't Manhattan.

Right over there, across the river, everything is completely different.

It's beautiful! People are beautiful, offices are beautiful.

Holly

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

別役実

思い出してください

そしてあなたの思い出の濃い方へ歩いてください

Daniel Keyes

"I feel ridiculous."

"I upset you by talking about it. I made you selfconscious."

"It's not that. What bothers me is that I can't put into words the way I feel."

"These feelings are new to you. Not everything has to... be put into words."

---

"This will be fine," she said. "No reason to be right on top of the orchestra."

"What's that they're playing now?" I asked. "Debussy's La Mer. Do you like it?"

I settled down beside her. "I don't know much about this kind of music. I have to think about it."

"Don't think about it," she whispered. "Feel it. Let it sweep over you like the sea without trying to understand." She lay back on the grass and turned her face in the direction of the music.

---

"Never mind that," she insisted. "You're beginning to see and understand things." She waved her hand to take in all of the neon and glitter around us as we crossed over to Seventh Avenue. "You're beginning to see what's behind the surface of things. What you say about the parts having to belong together-that was a pretty good insight."

柿木央久

メロディとハーモニーとビート。

音楽を構成するこの三つの要素がバランスよく融合されることはおよそ難しいことであります。

本作では　その難しいことが難なく実現されているばかりか、

音楽の魂である、音の悦びが満ちあふれているのであります。

お聴きください。

これがブラジル音楽の神髄であります。

Ike Quebec

Keith Jarrett

We live between birth and death

Or so we convince ourselves conveniently

When in truth we are being born and

We are dying simultaneously

Every eternal instant

Of our lives

We should try to be more

Cäsar Flaischlen

Hab Sonne im Herzen,

ob's stürmt oder schneit,

ob der Himmel voll Wolken,

die Erde voll Streit!

Hab ein Lied auf den Lippen,

verlier nie den Mut,

hab Sonne im Herzen,

und alles wird gut!

山本有三

心に太陽を持て。

あらしが　ふこうと、

ふぶきが　こようと、

天には黒くも、

地には争いが絶えなかろうと、

いつも、心に太陽を持て。

Abel Meeropol

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes

Numa pétala de flor

Brilha tranquila

Depois delevocila

E cai como uma lágrima de amor

A felicidade é uma coisa louca

Mas tão delicada também.

Tem flores e amores

De todas as cores

Tem ninhos de passarinhos

Tudo isso ela tem

E é por ela ser assim tão delicada

Que eu trato sempre dela muito bem.

Tristeza não tem fim

Felicidade sim

Catherine Friend

Sixteen years ago I was not at all sheepish. I was bookish, library- ish, wine-and-appetizer-ish. Decidedly unsheepish. My only exposure to sheep was as a child visiting my grandmother's sheep ranch in southeastern Montana—lots of dust, lots of heat, and every now and then a little orphan lamb that I could help Grandma feed with a bottle. My grandmother left the ranch when I was a teenager, so sheep played no role in my life after that.

As an adult, I met Melissa through a personal ad, the pre- Internet method for dating. She and I were totally different, not two people who should build a life together, so we fell in love and did precisely that. We led fairly boring, urban lives for over ten years while I discovered writing and Melissa cultivated her love of land and animals and caring for both.

Then, out of the blue, Melissa asked me if I would help her start a farm.

Joseph Polisi

If we get away from that word and think about what is of value to us and what we believe in and what has depth and profound meaning and longevity, then I don't think you have to be too sheepish about it.

The Economist

Where Mr Shirakawa and Mr Motani most directly see eye to eye is on the need for companies to boost domestic demand by unleashing the latent spending power of the elderly, who sit on the vast majority of Japanese households’ ¥1,500 trillion ($18 trillion) of savings. Mr Shirakawa believes there will be growing demand for health care, nursing, tourism and leisure. He reckons that a 40% rise in the turnover of fitness clubs in Japan in the past decade is due to increasing health consciousness as people live longer. He says deregulation would increase supply in such fields.

Mr Motani takes a more draconian view. He is fed up with the elderly hoarding their money. He says they do this because of a “King Lear” complex: they feel they will be deserted if they give too much away. And he favours tax reform to encourage them to bequeath their money to their grandchildren, rather than their children. One of the flipsides of longevity, he points out, is that the average age of those who inherit is a grand old 67.

General Electric Company

David McCandless

Chrisiopher Marley

2734 Hampshire Road, Cleveland Heights

Kampsville Free Ferry

Peter W. Gallagher

On average, they will enjoy a much higher standard of life than we do, partly because they will be healthier, even robust, and independent for most of their long lives. But medical advances will likely not be sufficient to secure a bright future for the new old age. We will also need new approaches to, and expectations of, employment and career; new regulatory frameworks for savings and retirement; and possibly new objectives in education to support individuals whose employment, household composition, location, and interests are sure to evolve as they enjoy eight, nine or 10 decades of maturity.

Tal Wilkenfeld

Nick Paumgarten

One evening, I found myself in such a place with a thirty-eight-year-old elementary-school teacher who had spent more than ten years plying Match.com and Nerve.com, as well as the analogue markets, in search of someone with whom to spend the rest of her life. She’d met dozens of men. Her mother felt that she was being too picky. In December, she started corresponding online with a man a couple of years older than she. After a week and a half, they met for drinks, which turned into dinner and more. He was clever, handsome, and capable. In their e-mails, they’d agreed that they’d reached a time and place in their lives to be less cautious and cool, in matters of the heart, so when, two days later, he sent a photograph of a caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil, where he’d gone for a few weeks on business, she found herself suggesting that she join him there. He made the arrangements. Her mother approved. She flew down to Rio the next week, and he came to the airport with a driver to meet her.

Months later, she savored the memory of that moment when he greeted her with a passionate hug, and the week and who knows what else lay before them. A swirl of anticipation, uncertainty, and desire converged into an instant of bliss. For that feeling alone—to say nothing of the chance to go to Brazil—she would do it all over again, even though, during the next ten days, with nothing but sex to stave off their corrosive exchanges over past and future frustrations, they came to despise each other. When they returned to New York, they split up, and went back online.

Контра-Версия

Российский танк показал чудеса выживания в пустыне.

Арабские заказчики устроили новейшему Т-90С испытания "на износ", однако так и не дождались даже незначительное его поломки, рассказали в "Рособоронэкспорте".

ZARD

Leon Aron

Everything you think you know about the collapse of the Soviet Union is wrong

___

And why it matters today in a new age of revolution.

Boris Vasiliev

Enough lies, enough servility, enough cowardice. Let's remember, finally, that we are all citizens. Proud citizens of a proud nation!

Институт современного развития

В прошлом Россия нуждалась в свободе, чтобы жить [лучше];. Теперь она нужна ей, чтобы выжить ... проблемой нашего времени является пересмотр системы ценностей, формирование нового сознания. Мы не можем строить новую страну со старым мышлением. ... Лучшей инвестицией [которую государство может сделать в человека] является свобода и верховенство закона. И уважение человеческого достоинства.

Roza Otunbayeva

The Almighty provided us with such a powerful sense of dignity that we cannot tolerate the denial of our inalienable rights and freedoms, no matter what real or supposed benefits are provided by 'stable' authoritarian regimes.

It is the magic of people, young and old, men and women of different religions and political beliefs, who come together in city squares and announce that enough is enough.

Barbara Hartwell

Independent Investigator, Intelligence Analyst, Journalist. Former CIA (NOC, Psychological Operations.) Black Ops Survivor. Sovereign Child of God. Believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Exposing Government Lies, Crimes, Corruption and Cover-ups.

Thomas Jefferson

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.

Adam Ulam

We tend to forget that in 1985, no government of a major state appeared to be as firmly in power, its policies as clearly set in their course, as that of the USSR.

Larry David

Finally, after years of pain and struggle, I had accepted the fact that I would never be a good golfer. No matter how many hours I practiced, no matter how many instructors I saw, how many books and magazines I read, or how many teaching aids I tried. Then it hit me. According to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s book “On Death and Dying,” Acceptance was the final stage of grief that terminal patients experience before dying, the others being Anger, Denial, Bargaining, and Depression. I was in the final stage! When I started thinking about it, I realized that I’d gone through every one of those stages, but not as a terminal patient . . . as a golfer.

I will never be good. There, I said it. I like saying it. I’ll say it again: I’ll never be good. It’s just not something I’m suited for. That’s O.K. I’m good at other things. What those are I have no idea. But I’m sure there are some. ... ... So it’s clearly psychological. I wonder . . . what if I blindfolded myself ? Is it possible?! Have I stumbled upon the Secret? It makes sense. The reason I can’t hit the ball is that I can see it! Tomorrow I’m going to play blindfolded, and if that doesn’t work then I’ll definitely and unequivocally accept Acceptance. I just want to try this blindfold idea. I have a very good feeling about it. Very good.

Nick Paumgarten

The process of selecting and securing a partner, whether for conceiving and rearing children, or for enhancing one’s socioeconomic standing, or for attempting motel-room acrobatics, or merely for finding companionship in a cold and lonely universe, is as consequential as it can be inefficient or irresolute. Lives hang in the balance, and yet we have typically relied for our choices on happenstance—offhand referrals, late nights at the office, or the dream of meeting cute.

Online dating sites, whatever their more mercenary motives, draw on the premise that there has got to be a better way. They approach the primeval mystery of human attraction with a systematic and almost Promethean hand. They rely on algorithms, those often proprietary mathematical equations and processes which make it possible to perform computational feats beyond the reach of the naked brain. Some add an extra layer of projection and interpretation; they adhere to a certain theory of compatibility, rooted in psychology or brain chemistry or genetic coding, or they define themselves by other, more readily obvious indicators of similitude, such as race, religion, sexual predilection, sense of humor, or musical taste. There are those which basically allow you to browse through profiles as you would boxes of cereal on a shelf in the store. Others choose for you; they bring five boxes of cereal to your door, ask you to select one, and then return to the warehouse with the four others. Or else they leave you with all five.

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