to address, choke, caries, badlands, factotum

Parties Plot Strategy as Sotomayor Visits Capitol
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE
After Judge Sonia Sotomayor met with senators Tuesday, Democrats began to address her conservative critics.


How to Raise the Standard in America's Schools
National standards have long been the third rail of education politics. The right chokes on the word national, with its implication that the feds will trample on the states' traditional authority over public schools. And the left chokes on the word standards, with the intimations of assessments and testing that accompany it. The result is a K-12 education system in the U.S. that is burdened by an incoherent jumble of state and local curriculum standards, assessment tools, tests, texts and teaching materials.


Yet there seemed to be not one jealous bone in Neil Aspinall's body; which was why, for almost half a century, he was factotum, doorkeeper and man-of-all-work for four friends who became, in the words of Philip Norman, their biographer, “the greatest engine for human happiness the modern world has known”.


A factotum is a general servant or a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities. The word derives made from the Latin command (imperative construction) fac totum ("do/make everything").




Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue
A high school student hunting fossils in the badlands of his native North Dakota discovered an extremely rare mummified dinosaur that includes not just bones but also seldom seen fossilized soft tissue such as skin and muscles, scientists will announce today.
(By Christopher Lee, The Washington Post)

bad・lands

━━ n.pl. 悪地; 荒地; （the B-） バッドランズ ((South Dakota州南西部の不毛地帯)).


a dry area without plants and with large rocks that the weather has worn into strange shapes, especially the area like this in Dakota and Nebraska in the US

choke (STOP BREATHING)
verb
1 [I or T] If you choke, or if something chokes you, you stop breathing because something is blocking your throat:
She choked to death on a fish bone.
Children can choke on peanuts.
Peanuts can choke a small child.

2 [T] to make someone stop breathing by pressing their throat with the hands

choke (FAIL)
verb [I] (ALSO choke it) INFORMAL
(usually in sports) to fail to do something at a time when it is urgent, usually because you suddenly lose confidence:
He could score points at will during the qualifying matches, but in the final he completely choked.

caries

n., pl. caries.
Decay of a bone or tooth, especially dental caries.

[Latin cariēs.]

address
tr.v., -dressed, -dress·ing, -dress·es.

1. To speak to: addressed me in low tones.
2. To make a formal speech to.
3. To direct (a spoken or written message) to the attention of: address a protest to the faculty senate.
4. To mark with a destination: address a letter.
5. 1. To direct the efforts or attention of (oneself): address oneself to a task.
   2. To deal with: addressed the issue of absenteeism.
6. To dispatch or consign (a ship, for example) to an agent or factor.
7. Sports. To adjust and aim the club at (a golf ball) in preparing for a stroke.