folly, tidbits of trivia, cleaning,stale, dog mushing, thongs and G-strings

 

The titbit about regional underwear buying habits will probably draw the most attention. Welsh women are especially partial to red lingerie while north-westerners go in for thongs and G-strings. But there is more to be learned than that about the state of Britain and of the retail industry from John Lewis's first report on its customers' shopping habits http://econ.st/HiXNdD

 

Woman wearing a T-back style thong.

 

 The thong is a garment generally worn as either underwear or as a swimsuit in many industrialized societies around the world.

 

 One type of thong is the G-string, the back of which consists only of a (typically elasticized) string.^[2]

 

 

French See Case Against Strauss-Kahn as American Folly

By STEVEN ERLANGER 12 minutes ago

Dormant anti-Americanism has been reawakened in France, fueled by a sense that the culture of the United States has undermined fair play.

Pogue’s Winter Tech Tidbits

By DAVID POGUE

This is our school system's February break, so I've taken the week off to spend with the family (which explains why there was no Pogue Times column and no video this week). (Yeah, I know--you're jealous of a February school week off, right? Sure. But YOUR schools don't carry on until the end of June to compensate!)
But I didn't want you to have to go Pogueless this week. So in today's e-column, it's Winter Cleaning: a whole bunch of little notes and ideas I've been meaning to write about, and want to get them off my chest before they get stale.

vital few, useful many.
80/20 原理

Spotlight

Alaska's Muldrow Glacier

Alaska is 50. The territory once known as Seward's Folly became the 49th and largest US state on this date in 1959. US Secretary of State William Seward bought the 587,875 square miles (1,522,595 sq km) in 1867 for $7.2 million. Here are some other tidbits of trivia about the state that makes up America's extreme northwest: the state motto is "North to the future"; its flower is the forget-me-not. The state bird is the willow ptarmigan; the fossil is the wooly mammoth; the insect is the four-spot skimmer dragonfly and the state sport is dog mushing. Alaska is an exclave of the US, separated from the other mainland states by British Columbia, Canada.

Quote
"It was the best purchase ever made." — Richard Nixon, of Alaska


Spotlight:

The Iditarod

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an annual race that takes place in March in Alaska over more than 1,000 mi. (1,600 km). The trail runs from Willow (north of Anchorage) to Nome, over hills, through forests and wilderness, across rivers and through small settlements. On this date in 1985, Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Iditarod, finishing the trail in 18 days. She led her 13 dogs into a blizzard that kept the rest of the racers delayed in Shaktoolik; she never lost her lead. This year, 71 mushers — including a team from Jamaica! — started out across the frozen Willow Lake. Lance Mackey came in first, making this his record fourth straight win. He completed the race in eight days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 9 seconds, taking home a cash prize of $50,000 and a new truck.

Quote:

"Dog mushing is a wonderful sport, mainly because the dogs are such wonderful creatures. We owe it to the dogs to treat them as well as possible." — Libby Riddles

mush² (mŭsh)

v., mushed, mush·ing, mush·es. v.intr.
To travel, especially over snow with a dogsled.

v.tr.
To drive (a dogsled or team of dogs).

n.
A journey, especially by dogsled.

interj.
Used to command a team of dogs to begin pulling or move faster.


stale
adjective
1 no longer new or fresh, usually as a result of being kept for too long:
The bread/biscuits/cake had gone stale.
The morning after the party, their apartment smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

2 not fresh and new; boring because too familiar:
stale jokes/news

3 describes someone who has lost interest in what they are doing because they are bored or are working too hard:
They had been working together for over five years and they had both become a little stale.

staleness
noun [U]
titbit, US USUALLY tidbit Show phonetics
noun [C]
a small piece of interesting information, or a small item of pleasant-tasting food:
Our guide gave us some interesting titbits about the history of the castle.
This magazine is full of juicy titbits (= small pieces of interesting information, especially about other people's private lives).
Grandma always has a few titbits for the children if they're visiting at lunchtime.



trivia Show phonetics
plural noun
unimportant details or information:
She has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop trivia.
I'm fascinated by the trivia of everyday life.

trivial Show phonetics
adjective
1 having little value or importance:
I don't know why he gets so upset about something that is utterly trivial.
Sexual harassment in the workplace is not a trivial matter.

2 describes a problem that is easy to solve:
Getting computers to understand human language is not a trivial problem.

triviality Show phonetics
noun
1 [C usually plural] something that is unimportant:
I'm a busy man - don't bother me with trivialities.

2 [U] lack of importance:
The prison sentence seemed rather harsh, considering the triviality of the offence.

trivialize, UK USUALLY trivialise Show phonetics
verb [T] DISAPPROVING
to make something seem less important than it really is:
I don't want to trivialise the problem, but I do think there are more important matters to discuss.

folly[fol・ly]

• レベル：社会人必須
• 発音記号[fɑ'li | fɔ'li]

[名]（複-lies）

1 [U]愚かなこと, 愚劣；[C]愚行, 愚かな考え, 愚言.

2 金ばかりかかるばかげた事業［企て, 建造物］；（遊園地などの）模造建築物.

3 ((-liesで単数扱い))（グラマーな女性出演者の出る）時事風刺劇.

［古フランス語fol（愚かな）の名詞形. △FOOL¹］