Bottling the Sun's Power on Earth

Bottling the Sun's Power on Earth - Scientific American

The military, space and aviation experts at Lockheed Martin want you to know that they're closing in on fusion. The firm's secretive Skunk Works has announced that its compact fusion reactor is a mere 10 years away and would investors please send money.

The device would work… if it works…by fusing atoms of hydrogen together. This fusion produces a larger atom—helium—plus copious energy. As a bonus, fusion does not produce radioactive waste, unlike its poor cousin fission that's in use in nuclear reactors around the world today.

The key to Lockheed's device, they say, is superconductors. They’ll create magnetic fields strong enough to contain the superhot plasma created by fusion. When the atoms of heavy hydrogen fuse in that plasma, neutrons are released that then hit the reactor wall, heating it. That heat then boils water to make steam to spin a turbine.

Or so the theory goes. Unfortunately neutrons have a nasty habit of making materials brittle, among other challenges faced by Lockheed and everyone else chasing fusion. 

Of course, the world already enjoys the benefits of one fusion reactor, which sits at a comfortable remove and can be easily harnessed with a working technology called photovoltaics. It's called the sun.

—David Biello

Tiffany Studios Fish Lamp

Watch Appraisal: Tiffany Studios Fish Lamp on PBS. See more from Antiques Roadshow.

GUEST:
This lamp is on our father's side of the family. It was his great-great-aunt who lived in New York City and was the private secretary to J.C. Penney. And she and her husband bought a lot of beautiful things, one of which was this lamp-- been passed down through the years and it ended up in my dad's house and in my house, so...

APPRAISER:
In your house. This is your sister?

GUEST:
My sister.

APPRAISER:
Aha. This is not an ordinary Tiffany lamp. We've seen a lot of lamps that have floral decoration and some of them geometric. This one is a fish lamp. You can see that there are fish swimming; the glass that these fish are designed with enhances the fish themselves, which are iridescent, and then they're swimming through glass, which is rippled and gives it the look of water. In addition to that, it has these little jewels of glass in different colors. We're going to take it off the base to have a little better look at the glass that's involved. And we'll show you that the different kinds of glass that Tiffany used enhanced the design-- not only the rippled glass but also some glass that is striated and some glass that has different colors in it. Your base is signed on the bottom with the "Tiffany Studios" markings, and the socket has been replaced somewhere along the line, but the value of a Tiffany lamp is not in the base as a general rule. The value is in the shade. Can you tell us a little bit about your... your great-aunt, is that it?

GUEST:
It would be my great-great-aunt. She kept it in her home from when she bought it till she passed away. Then it was kept in our... Third cousin's. ...third cousin's house until she passed away well into her 90s.

APPRAISER:
Did she ever tell you what she paid for it?

GUEST:
No.

GUEST:
The original owner died when I was a little girl and my third cousin was 90-something when she passed away...

APPRAISER:
I see, right. So they never really discussed the value of it. Did you ever have an appraisal of the piece?

GUEST:
Um... about in the upper 20s.

APPRAISER:
Okay, well, I think I've got some good news for you folks.

GUEST:
Oh...

APPRAISER:
Um, a Tiffany lamp of this type, because of its rarity and because of the unusualness of the form and the style, would sell on today's market in the vicinity of $100,000. It's a wonderful lamp.

GUEST:
Hey, Dad! You're kidding!

APPRAISER:
You think your family would be surprised?

GUEST:
Yes.

APPRAISER:
My mom! I think they're going to be very surprised.

GUEST:
They'll be very happy.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

iridescent　虹色に輝く[きらめく], 真珠光沢の, 玉虫色に変化する.
striated 　平行に走るすじ[溝]のある; 横紋筋の.
ripple 1 …にさざなみを立てる; …に波紋を起こす; 〈毛髪などを〉小さく波打たせる.
in the vicinity of something「（数量などが）だいたい～，およそ～」¶



Tiffany Studios Fish Lamp | Roadshow Archive | PBS

Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model

Hi. My name is Cameron Russell, and for the last little while I've been a model. Actually, for 10 years. And I feel like there's an uncomfortable tension in the room right now because I should not have worn this dress. (Laughter)

So luckily I brought an outfit change. This is the first outfit change on the TED stage, so you guys are pretty lucky to witness it, I think. If some of the women were really horrified when I came out, you don't have to tell me now, but I'll find out later on Twitter. (Laughter)

I'd also note that I'm quite privileged to be able to transform what you think of me in a very brief 10 seconds. Not everybody gets to do that. These heels are very uncomfortable, so good thing I wasn't going to wear them. The worst part is putting this sweater over my head, because that's when you'll all laugh at me, so don't do anything while it's over my head. All right.

So why did I do that? That was awkward. Well, hopefully not as awkward as that picture. Image is powerful, but also image is superficial. I just totally transformed what you thought of me in six seconds. And in this picture, I had actually never had a boyfriend in real life. I was totally uncomfortable, and the photographer was telling me to arch my back and put my hand in that guy's hair. And of course, barring surgery, or the fake tan that I got two days ago for work, there's very little that we can do to transform how we look, and how we look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives.

So today, for me, being fearless means being honest. And I am on this stage because I am a model. I am on this stage because I am a pretty, white woman, and in my industry we call that a sexy girl. And I'm going to answer the questions that people always ask me, but with an honest twist.

So the first question is, how do you become a model? And I always just say, "Oh, I was scouted," but that means nothing. The real way that I became a model is I won a genetic lottery, and I am the recipient of a legacy, and maybe you're wondering what is a legacy. Well, for the past few centuries we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we're biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures, and femininity and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it's a legacy that I've been cashing out on. And I know there are people in the audience who are skeptical at this point, and maybe there are some fashionistas who are, like, "Wait. Naomi. Tyra. Joan Smalls. Liu Wen." And first, I commend you on your model knowledge. Very impressive. (Laughter) But unfortunately I have to inform you that in 2007, a very inspired NYU Ph.D. student counted all the models on the runway, every single one that was hired, and of the 677 models that were hired, only 27, or less than four percent, were non-white.

The next question people always ask me is, "Can I be a model when I grow up?" And the first answer is, "I don't know, they don't put me in charge of that." But the second answer, and what I really want to say to these little girls is, "Why? You know? You can be anything. You could be the President of the United States, or the inventor of the next Internet, or a ninja cardio-thoracic surgeon poet, which would be awesome, because you'd be the first one." (Laughter) If, after this amazing list, they still are like, "No, no, Cameron, I want to be a model," well then I say, "Be my boss." Because I'm not in charge of anything, and you could be the editor in chief of American Vogue or the CEO of H&M, or the next Steven Meisel. Saying that you want to be a model when you grow up is akin to saying that you want to win the Powerball when you grow up. It's out of your control, and it's awesome, and it's not a career path. I will demonstrate for you now 10 years of accumulated model knowledge, because unlike cardio-thoracic surgeons, it can just be distilled right into -- right now. So if the photographer is right there and the light is right there, like a nice HMI, and the client says, "Cameron, we want a walking shot," well then this leg goes first, nice and long, this arm goes back, this arm goes forward, the head is at three quarters, and you just go back and forth, just do that, and then you look back at your imaginary friends, 300, 400, 500 times. (Laughter) It will look something like this. (Laughter) Hopefully less awkward than that one in the middle. That was, I don't know what happened there.

Unfortunately after you've gone to school, and you have a resume and you've done a few jobs, you can't say anything anymore, so if you say you want to be the President of the United States, but your resume reads, "Underwear Model: 10 years," people give you a funny look.

The next question people always ask me is, "Do they retouch all the photos?" And yeah, they pretty much retouch all the photos, but that is only a small component of what's happening. This picture is the very first picture that I ever took, and it's also the very first time that I had worn a bikini, and I didn't even have my period yet. I know we're getting personal, but I was a young girl. This is what I looked like with my grandma just a few months earlier. Here's me on the same day as this shoot. My friend got to come with me. Here's me at a slumber party a few days before I shot French Vogue. Here's me on the soccer team and in V Magazine. And here's me today. And I hope what you're seeing is that these pictures are not pictures of me. They are constructions, and they are constructions by a group of professionals, by hairstylists and makeup artists and photographers and stylists and all of their assistants and pre-production and post-production, and they build this. That's not me.

Okay, so the next question people always ask me is, "Do you get free stuff?" I do have too many 8-inch heels which I never get to wear, except for earlier, but the free stuff that I get is the free stuff that I get in real life, and that's what we don't like to talk about. I grew up in Cambridge, and one time I went into a store and I forgot my money and they gave me the dress for free. When I was a teenager, I was driving with my friend who was an awful driver and she ran a red and of course, we got pulled over, and all it took was a "Sorry, officer," and we were on our way. And I got these free things because of how I look, not who I am, and there are people paying a cost for how they look and not who they are. I live in New York, and last year, of the 140,000 teenagers that were stopped and frisked, 86 percent of them were black and Latino, and most of them were young men. And there are only 177,000 young black and Latino men in New York, so for them, it's not a question of, "Will I get stopped?" but "How many times will I get stopped? When will I get stopped?" When I was researching this talk, I found out that of the 13-year-old girls in the United States, 53 percent don't like their bodies, and that number goes to 78 percent by the time that they're 17.

So the last question people ask me is, "What is it like to be a model?" And I think the answer that they're looking for is, "If you are a little bit skinnier and you have shinier hair, you will be so happy and fabulous." And when we're backstage, we give an answer that maybe makes it seem like that. We say, "It's really amazing to travel, and it's amazing to get to work with creative, inspired, passionate people." And those things are true, but they're only one half of the story, because the thing that we never say on camera, that I have never said on camera, is, "I am insecure." And I'm insecure because I have to think about what I look like every day. And if you ever are wondering, "If I have thinner thighs and shinier hair, will I be happier?" you just need to meet a group of models, because they have the thinnest thighs and the shiniest hair and the coolest clothes, and they're the most physically insecure women probably on the planet.

So when I was writing this talk, I found it very difficult to strike an honest balance, because on the one hand, I felt very uncomfortable to come out here and say, "Look I've received all these benefits from a deck stacked in my favor," and it also felt really uncomfortable to follow that up with, "and it doesn't always make me happy." But mostly it was difficult to unpack a legacy of gender and racial oppression when I am one of the biggest beneficiaries. But I'm also happy and honored to be up here and I think that it's great that I got to come before 10 or 20 or 30 years had passed and I'd had more agency in my career, because maybe then I wouldn't tell the story of how I got my first job, or maybe I wouldn't tell the story of how I paid for college, which seems so important right now.

If there's a takeaway to this talk, I hope it's that we all feel more comfortable acknowledging the power of image in our perceived successes and our perceived failures.

Thank you. (Applause)



Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model. | Video on TED.com

New Reading Standards Aim To Prep Kids For College ? But At What Cost?

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

This is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden.

Once upon a time, in the long ago world of high school reading on a hill top far, far away, Holden Caulfield was perhaps the epitome of angst, a young man suddenly an outcast in the world he thought he knew. J.D. Salinger's anti-hero was about to enter a perilous journey of self-discovery.

Today, down from the hilltop, high school English teachers may identify with Holden because reading scores for American students have dropped precipitously. How much? David Coleman, president of the College Board, says it's alarming.

DAVID COLEMAN:
We have a crisis in the country around remediation rates. What I mean by that is so many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school in this country, visibly, demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first year college course or a career training program, which means they enter remediation courses in college, which they don't get credit. And that's often the path to not completing college, particularly for low-income children.

LYDEN:
David Coleman is the lead architect of the Common Core, a sweeping new curricula change, which integrates nonfiction into the English program. Only one problem: Where does it leave The Catcher in the Rye? That's our cover story today: fiction, nonfiction and the great debate.

The Common Core is an ambitious realignment of schools curricula. With remarkable unity, it's been touted by the Obama administration and Republicans and by the two largest teachers unions. States receive federal money to opt in, and only four states have not.

At the heart of the debate, though, is the requirement over exactly how fiction will fare in this brave new world. By the last couple of years of high school, 70 percent of what students will be reading across all subjects must be nonfiction. I asked David Coleman what this achieves.

COLEMAN:
Fiction remains at the heart of the Common Core standards in English language arts classrooms. For example, Shakespeare has twice required there's a focus on American literature. What changes instead is that high-quality nonfiction becomes an essential part of the history and social studies curriculum as well as science and technical subjects.

Within English language arts, the only shift is that there's some entry of high-quality literary nonfiction, such as the founding documents and the great conversation they inspired. The idea is that things like Lincoln's second inaugural, Martin Luther King's magnificent Letter from Birmingham Jail, these documents are worthy of close attention, not just in a historical context, but also for the interweaving of thought and language. And in that way, they are appropriate for studying English language arts as well.

LYDEN:
I don't think anyone would disagree that Letter from Birmingham Jail isn't an important historical document, but I wanted to ask, when those are incorporated into the English class, isn't this something that students should actually they've required to read in either history or American studies or social studies?

COLEMAN:
The idea is that in English language arts, there's a wonderful attention paid, not only to the historical impact of such a work, but its use of language, expression of language through rhetoric. And so what English teachers throughout this country as well as other teachers talk to us about is for kids to be ready for the demands of college and career. They should attentively read literature and understand the force of language in that context to convey ideas, to debate them, to distill them. That is also a part of the essential work of preparation and a wonderful part of the force of English language.

LYDEN:
How will you know, as a person who has developed this curricula, if it's working?

COLEMAN:
I think if the Common Core standards are successful, we should see a world in which remediation rates at colleges, in other words, where kids enter college after receiving a high school degree and still need remediation, we need those rates to go down. So that would be a visible victory. In this country, for the past 14 years, the scores on the national assessment educational progress in reading in eighth grade have been flat.

If we can't have a breakthrough in this country in reading performance, particularly in later grades, so many students will be consigned to a world where they can't read the text in front of them and hence grow and learn. So success in performance terms would look like breakthroughs in those areas of achievement. Those aren't happen in a moment but over time.

LYDEN:
That's David Coleman, the lead architect behind new guidelines. Before the Common Core, most high school English classes read mostly literature. The reality now is that students must split their time between fiction and nonfiction. There are even some school districts where teachers have been asked to drop novels to meet the new requirements. And that's exactly what Azar Nafisi is afraid of.

Nafisi is the author of a critically acclaimed "Reading Lolita in Tehran," a nonfiction book. In Iran, she used Western literature to challenge autocratic thinking. Now, she's worried that in America, the great novels will inevitably be sacrificed.

AZAR NAFISI:
Imaginative knowledge is a way of perceiving the world, relating to the world and changing the world. And nothing can replace it. So where I disagree with Mr. Coleman is trying to replace fiction with nonfiction rather than finding creative ways of teaching students a very creative interdisciplinary program where you could teach them side by side and focus on quality rather than on bringing about these sort of changes.

LYDEN:
And according to Nafisi, the value of getting lost in a really good novel can't be overstated.

NAFISI:
When you look at a documentary or read a real-life story, you can understand the experiences that that person went through. When you read Zora Neale Hurston, you not only do not understand that particular person's experiences, but you also are able to empathize and become that person. You put yourself in that person's mind and heart. And so the experience is completely different. And that is why I think from time immemorial, human beings have had the need to understand the world through telling the story.

LYDEN:
Writer Azar Nafisi. Her new book called "Dispatches from the Republic of Imagination" talks about the necessity of fiction.

However, almost the entire country - 46 states and Washington, D.C. - have already signed on to the Common Core. While some states won't adopt the guidelines for several years, others already have. Kentucky was the first.

Angela Gunter teaches English at Daviess County High School in Owensboro. Gunter says that at first, many of her colleagues opposed the changes.

ANGELA GUNTER:
As you can imagine, we English teachers love our literature. And the greater emphasis on nonfiction text was uncomfortable for some of us.

LYDEN:
Now, Gunter says her students actually like it. She kept them in the loop the whole way, beginning by showing them their own reading level scores.

GUNTER:
When they realized how relatively low they were, it was a real wake-up call for them. They were very upset, and I told them they should feel like they should've been cheated. They've not been taught this. And we understood at that point that we needed to start challenging the students more.

LYDEN:
Take, say, "To Kill a Mockingbird." That's a novel, she says, with deceptively simple language.

GUNTER:
However, there are so many themes that are much more complex that required mature thinking that we want to keep it at the high school level. So we paired it with Malcolm Gladwell's piece, which alleges that it's an elitist story. And the kids have never heard that. So the students find that there's a purpose in the reading that may not have been as apparent before.

LYDEN:
The downside?

GUNTER:
We can't read everything. We can't fit everything in. So we have had to deal with abridging a bit.

LYDEN:
Take Shakespeare. Instead of reading all five acts of Julius Caesar, her freshmen now read only the speeches delivered by Brutus and Mark Antony after Caesar's execution, rather than reading the play as a whole. And that's the problem, according to Mark Bauerlein. He's an English professor at Emory University.

A few years ago, he helped the team developing the Common Core. But he eventually parted ways with David Coleman mainly because he disagrees with the attempts to standardize learning. Mark Bauerlein says the standards pile so much onto English teachers, but the cultivation of critical, passionate reading is in jeopardy.

MARK BAUERLEIN:
When you interpret these standards at the state level, when you try to develop lesson plans, when you select works to be assigned, when you find the assignments that people have, one can interpret those so broadly that we actually end up with a lot of weak practices.

LYDEN:
So what happens to the classic novels, Mark Bauerlein, when we're reducing the amount of fiction students are reading? Is that a concern?

BAUERLEIN:
It is a concern. Now, the Common Core has a wonderful standard for 11 and 12th grade English, which runs demonstrate knowledge of 18th, 19th and early 20th century foundational works of American literature. But you've got so many other pressures on English teachers in Common Core - the teaching of writing, of nonfiction text, you have research skills that they're supposed to develop. And the problem is that all those classics, they take a lot of time, especially in the hustling, bustling, hyper-digital world of 17-year-olds.

I worry that we're just going to find that teachers will teach shorter works, they will spend less time on those classics, and they'll tend to orient them more toward topical, relevant concerns.

LYDEN:
Do you think that students and teachers will both, in some ways, evaluate the entire experience of literature quite differently so that they're reading with some sort of purpose to fit a curriculum and perhaps, oh, I just want to fall into the world of this novel, maybe getting left out?

BAUERLEIN:
The sort of free-floating, open-ended literary intellectual experience simply is hard to fit into the achievement orientation and accountability system. So if the English class does not hold the line against the kid who has a curiosity, who is really struck by Quentin Compson in "The Sound and the Fury," the kid who gets taken up with Yvonne Karamazov in "The Brothers Karamazov," that bright kid who's having issues with atheism or with despair, things that happen often during those years, well, that area in which you want to cultivate the intellect of that thoughtful 18-year-old who often isn't oriented toward grades but who often ends up being the kind of thoughtful intelligence that ends up doing something extraordinary 10 years later, are we losing the support or at least the conditions that will prompt that student to continue reading and thinking?

LYDEN:
That's Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University and an opponent of the Common Core State Standards. You're listening to NPR News.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


outcast 追放された, 締め出された

remediation 矯正, 改善; 治療教育.

tout しつこく勧誘する, うるさく求める

opt in （計画・活動・組織などに）加わる（ことにする）

interweave 織り合わせる；混交する

interdisciplinary 2 つ(以上)の学問分野にまたがる, 学際的な.



New Reading Standards Aim To Prep Kids For College ? But At What Cost? : NPR

George Carlin - Euphemistic Language

I don't like euphemistic language, you know, words that shade the truth. American English is packed with euphemisms. Because Americans have trouble dealing with reality and in order to shield themselves from it. And they use soft language and somehow it gets worse with every generation. Here's an example.

There's a condition in combat that occurs when the soldiers completely stressed out and is on the verge of a nervous collapse. In World War I it was called "shell shock". Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables. Shell shock. It almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was more than eighty years ago.

Then a generation passed, and in World War II the same combat condition was called "battle fatigue". Four syllables now; takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. "Fatigue" is a nicer word than "shock". Shell shock! Battle fatigue.

By the early 1950's, the Korean War had come along, and the very same condition was being called "operational exhaustion". The phrase was up to eight syllables now, and any last traces of humanity had been completely squeezed out of it. Like something that might happen to your car.

Then, barely fifteen years later, we got into Vietnam, and, thanks to the deceptions surrounding that war, it's no surprise that the very same condition was referred to as "post-traumatic stress disorder". Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen, and the pain is completely buried under jargon: post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll bet if they had still been calling it 'shell shock,' some of those Vietnam veterans might have received the attention they needed.

But it didn't happen, and one of the reasons is soft language; the language that takes the life out of life. And somehow it keeps getting worse. Here are some more examples.

At some point in my life, the following changes have occurred: Toilet paper = bathroom tissue, sneakers = running shoes, false teeth = dental appliances, medicine = medication, information = directory assistance, the dump = landfill, motels = motor lodges, house trailers = mobile homes, used cars = previously owned vehicles, room service = guest room dining, riot = civil disorder, strike = job action, zoo = wildlife park, jungle = rain forest, swamp = wetlands, glasses = prescription eyewear, garage = parking structure, drug addiction = substance abuse, soap opera = daytime drama, gambling joint = gaming resort, prostitute = sex worker, theater = performing arts center, wife beating = domestic violence, constipation = occasional irregularity

When I was a little boy, if I got sick I went to a doctor, who sent me to a hospital to be treated by other doctors. Now I go to a "family practitioner", who belongs to a "health maintenance organization", which sends me to a "wellness center" to be treated by "health-care delivery professionals".

Poor people used to live in slums. Now the "economically disadvantaged" occupy "substandard housing" in the "inner cities". And a lot of them are broke. They don’t have "negative cash flow." They’re broke! Because many of them were fired. In other words, management wanted to "curtail redundancies in the human resources area", and so, many workers are no longer "viable members of the workforce". Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that.

The CIA doesn't kill anybody, they "neutralize" people. Or they "depopulate" an area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in "disinformation". The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something called "sunshine units." Israeli murderers are called "commandos", Arab commandos are called "terrorists". The contra killers were known as "freedom fighters". Well, if crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?

And some of this softened language is just silly and embarrassing. On the airlines they say they're going to preboard "passengers in need of special assistance." Cripples. Simple, honest, direct language. There's no shame attached to the word "cripple". No shame. It’s a word used in Bible translations: "Jesus healed the cripples." It doesn’t take six words to describe that condition.

But we don't have cripples anymore; instead we have the "physically challenged". Is that a grotesque enough evasion for you? How about "differently abled"? I've actually heard cripples referred to as differently abled. You can't even call them handicapped anymore. They say, "We’re not handicapped, we're handi-capable." These poor suckers have been bullshitted by the system into believing that if you change the name of the condition, somehow you'll change the condition. Well, it doesn't happen that way.

I'm sure you've noticed we have no deaf people in this country. "Hearing impaired". And no one's blind. "Partially sighted" or "visually impaired", And thank God we no longer have stupid children. Today's kids all have "learning disabilities". Or they're "minimally exceptional". How would you like to be told that about your child? Actually, it sounds faintly positive.

"He’s minimally exceptional."
"Oh, thank God for that, I guess."

Best of all, psychologists now call ugly people "those with severe appearance deficits". Things are so bad that any day I expect to hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.

Of course, it's been obvious for some time that there are no old people in this country. They all died, and what we have are "senior citizens". How's that for a lifeless, typically American, twentieth-century phrase? There's no pulse in a senior citizen.

But that's a term I've come to accept. That's what old people are going to be called. But the phrase I will continue to resist is when they describe an old person as being "ninety years young". Imagine how sad the fear of aging that is revealed in that phrase. To be unable even to use the word "old"; to have to use its antonym.

And I understand the fear of aging is natural; it's universal, isn't it? No one wants to get old, no one wants to die. But we do. We die. And we don’t like that, so we bullshit ourselves.

I started bullshitting myself when I reached my forties. I'd look in the mirror, and say, "Well, I guess I'm getting... older!" Older sounds better than old, doesn't it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. Bullshit. I'm getting old. And it's okay. But the Baby Boomers can't handle that, and remember, the boomers invented most of this soft language. So now they've come up with a new life phrase: "pre-elderly", they said "pre-elderly." How sad. How relentlessly sad.

But it's all right, folks, because thanks to our fear of death, no one has to die; they can all just pass away. Or expire, like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital, it will be called a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient-care outcome. And if it’s the result of malpractice, they'll say it was a therapeutic misadventure.

To be honest, some of this language makes me want to vomit. Well, perhaps "vomit" is too strong a word. It makes me want to engage in an involuntary, personal protein spill.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

・soft language　これはGeorge Carlinの造語。日本語にするなら「腑抜けた言い回し」ですかね。

・途中の聖書の引用はこれかな。

Luke 13:10-17: Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman | Washed By The Water
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood straight up and began praising God.

・完全な transcript がなかったので、一部はディクテしました。間違ってたらごめーんね。

Two Ludwig Bemelmans Drawings

Watch Appraisal: Two Ludwig Bemelmans Drawings on PBS. See more from Antiques Roadshow.

GUEST: What I mainly know is that I love them, because I've collected the books. And then my husband gave me first the London one about 20 years ago as a Christmas gift, and about ten years ago the Noodle.

APPRAISER: Okay, so enlighten us, who's the artist here?

GUEST: His name is Ludwig Bemelmans.

APPRAISER: And he is famous for...

GUEST: Madeline books...

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: I would say are the most...

APPRAISER: That's the most recognizable name. He's a very famous illustrator. And he was actually a German immigrant. Came to the United States. Actually has painted some murals at a bistro that he owned in Paris some time ago. So he was into murals. And obviously he was into doing children's illustrations. And this is an illustration from one of the books. And this is called Madeline in London. Now, everybody knows of Madeline in Paris. Do you know the line in Madeline when it says, "In the middle of the night, "Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, 'Something is not right'"?

GUEST: "Something is not right."

APPRAISER: Yeah, well, when I first looked at this, you look and you see the beautiful hand-applied color, and the colors start up here at the British flag. And the white of this here and obviously the famous double-decker bus down here and these statues are all done in a gouache overcolor. So they really pop off the page. But when we turn to the black lines is when we begin to think that there might be an issue here. And I thought to myself, "I think these lines are printed." But it turns out that they're not, because once you get them into the right light, you see that there is a gradation in the black. And that is... a printed line stays black from end to end and it's the same shade of black. So that's what putting this in the right light allows us to tell. 

GUEST: Oh, good.

APPRAISER: He died in 1962. And in 1961 he finished Madeline in London. So these were probably sold as part of his estate. So he probably never really intended these to go anywhere, which is why he was a little haphazard with what he did, including signing over the white mark down at the bottom. And this one here. Now tell me what you know about this one.

GUEST: Well, this was done as an illustration for somebody else's book.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And... but I do know that he loved dachshunds himself.

APPRAISER: Okay. But you said you thought that the book was never published.

GUEST: I don't know whether it was ever published.

APPRAISER: Actually the book was published.

GUEST: Oh?

APPRAISER: It says at the bottom here, "Sketch for Noodle."

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: And it's signed over here. And Noodle was a book that was written by Munro Leaf in 1937, and was a collaborative effort. Noodle the dachshund finds a wishbone and changes his appearance. It's a great story. It's likely that this sketch, if it's contemporaneous with the book, would have been done in about 1936, a few years before the Madeline series and well before the 1961 Madeline in London. Bemelmans have gone up in value considerably recently. On this one, given that it is a full sketch, part of the estate, wonderful piece, it's probably worth around $12,000 to $15,000.

GUEST: Whoa!

APPRAISER: And this one, Mr. Noodle, is, although not as famous, a wonderful sketch, and is worth probably around $5,000 at auction.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: You done good.

GUEST: Oh, I'm... I am astounded! That's great!

APPRAISER: Congratulations, it's a great pair.

GUEST: Thank you so much.

APPRAISER: You're certainly welcome.


Two Ludwig Bemelmans Drawings | Roadshow Archive | PBS

Accounting for Hostages in Algeria as Militant Conflict Intensifies in Mali

JEFFREY BROWN:
Information trickled out today about the siege of a natural gas plant in Algeria. There was word that one American hostage had been killed, but a definitive accounting of all the captives remained elusive. At the same time, the Algerians allowed the world to see pictures of some who'd been rescued.

Amid continued confusion, these were the first images of natural gas workers freed by Algerian special forces.

MAN:
We went out and waved up white banners so the national army would recognize us as workers and let us go.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Others were less fortunate, shown bandaged and in hospital beds.

State TV broadcast the footage a day after the army launched its operation and two days after Islamist militants seized the In Amenas complex in the desert near the Libyan border. An Algerian worker said the kidnappers had separated Algerians from foreign workers. Then came the army assault.

MAN:
We were in a room, all of us, 260 people, all of us gathered there when the army started firing from a plane. So we went out through a door, the back door, to escape, to get away. The army helped. If it wasn't for the army, we would never have got out and got to the foreigners who were held hostage.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Some of the rescued foreigners joined in praising the Algerian military.

MAN:
I think they did a fantastic job. I was very impressed with the Algerian army. Very exciting episode. I feel sorry for anybody who has been hurt.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Algeria's state news agency reported that 100 out of 132 foreign hostages got out, and a dozen Algerians and foreigners died. It said nothing about the others. The militants had claimed to hold 41 foreigners, including seven Americans.

Today, U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said some Americans are still being held.

VICTORIA NULAND, State Department:
I think we have been clear that we have American hostages. We have been clear about that.

QUESTION:
And that's still the case?

VICTORIA NULAND:
Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Later, The Associated Press reported that one American had died. Nuland flatly rejected a reported demand by the militants to trade two Americans for two convicted terrorists jailed in the U.S. One is Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted of plotting to blow up major sites in New York.

There were also reports that the Algerian gas plant had not yet been fully secured, and that the military operations were continuing. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the issue after meeting with the Japanese foreign minister. She said she spoke today with the prime minister of Algeria.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON:
I urged the utmost care be taken in the protection of the hostages, Algerian and expatriate foreign hostages.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Other countries raised questions as well and pressed for more information.

PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON, Great Britain: Thank you, mister speaker.

JEFFREY BROWN:
In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament that he'd had no advance warning of the rescue.

DAVID CAMERON:
I was told by the Algerian prime minister while it was taking place. He said that the terrorists had tried to flee, that they judged there to be an immediate threat to the lives of the hostages, and had felt obliged to respond.

JEFFREY BROWN:
In Indonesia, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cut short his first overseas trip since taking office, with Japanese workers among the missing in Algeria.

PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE, Japan:
We must absolutely not forgive any act that takes a life of the innocent, and at the same time, the hostages' lives have to be given absolute priority. Since the incident, our government has kept in touch with other nations and coordinated closely to gather information.

JEFFREY BROWN:
Meanwhile, the Algerian militants threatened today to carry out more attacks at foreign-owned sites.

RAY SUAREZ:
In Algeria's neighbor, Mali, French forces battled again today with Islamists. We have an on-the-ground report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM:
Crossing the river Niger, heading to the towns and villages threatened by Mali's jihadi rebels further north. Every vehicle coming down the road is checked. Now that the French have bombed the jihads' camps and convoys, the fear is that individual Islamists will infiltrate themselves and start a campaign of terror further south.

We speed up the road, evidence everywhere of how poor Mali is, how deprived, how hard life was even before war disrupted the people's existence. As we arrived in Niono, we found a truckload of exhausted people who had fled Diabaly, 50 miles away, last night. The jihads have occupied the town for a week and yesterday's French airstrikes were intense. She ran for 24 miles through the bush with her children before the truck picked them up.

WOMAN:
So many things happened. The rebels did everything. They destroyed our houses. They did everything. I'm so tired. We are very, very tired.

LINDSEY HILSUM:
Several told me the jihads are mainly light-skinned Arabs whom they suspect are foreigners. Some are teenagers.

MAMADOU SOGODOGOU, Mali:
I couldn't tell their age. I could just see their size. It was clear they were very young people. Some were too small even to carry their own backpacks.

LINDSEY HILSUM:
The Malian army is in Niono to hold the line until the French arrive. The Malian soldiers say that without the French, they'd have no chance of confronting the jihadis. And the people I have been speaking today are just terrified.

With the tragedy in Algeria, people outside must be asking if the French were right to intervene in Mali. Here, there are no such doubts. When the jihadis took over the north last year, Malian troops just ran away. They couldn't believe their eyes.

COL. SEIDU SODOGO, Malian Army:
They're really heavily armed. I don't know how they managed to get those weapons. They're the most sophisticated in the world. And those vehicles, how did they get the supply line? I saw hundreds of vehicles in the north of Mali. There are no petrol stations there, but they keep driving. It's incomprehensible.

LINDSEY HILSUM:
Local people bring rice to feed not just the displaced people, but the soldiers, too. They know they're not out of danger yet.

SEIDU TRAORE, Prefect, Niono:
What happened in Algeria is a manifestation of what we fear in Mali. After Mali, surely it would happen somewhere else.

LINDSEY HILSUM:
The people of Mali have lived with this threat for years. Now the rest of the world is beginning to understand.

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後半のマリからのレポートはフランス人のかただろうか。微妙に聴き取りづらかった。


Accounting for Hostages in Algeria as Militant Conflict Intensifies in Mali | PBS NewsHour | Jan. 18, 2013 | PBS