In 2015 when Angela Merkel, the former center-right chancellor of Germany, declined to shut her country’s doors to asylum seekers coming into Europe, she garnered bouquets from liberals, but also hoots from the far right and grumbling from European neighbors miffed that Germany was unilaterally taking the high ground without taking their interests into account.
Arthur Rimbaud was an "angel in exile", according to his lover and fellow poet Paul Verlaine. But Rimbaud's terrorising of established literary figures (calling them "cunty" or "ink-shitter") and his hosts (he once spiked a glass of milk with his own semen) meant that few shared Verlaine's admiration. He was born on this day in 1854
The no campaign offers merely stasis. Even with devo max, Scots would remain in political shackles. It’s time to break free
Two terrorist attacks in the city of Volgograd within 24 hours, coming only six weeks before the opening of the Olympics just 400 miles away, sowed widespread fear across Russia.
Stephen Mally for The New York Times
A Feud Over the Size of the Sty
By STEPHANIE STROM
Some corporate buyers are refusing to buy pork derived from farms that
use tiny gestation crates, but farmers say the crates are for the good
of the sow — and consumers.
British pigs have greater fertility, with the average sow producing twice as many piglets a year – up to 32 – as her Chinese cousin. That explains the next export agenda: pig semen.
英國豬的繁殖力更強，平均每隻母豬的年產仔量是中國母豬一倍，達到32只。這就滋生了下一個出口計劃——豬精液。
KMT lawmakers miffed at Taiwan Academy's name
Taipei Times
By Chen Hui-ping / Staff Reporter The name of the Taiwan Academy, established in some US cities last month, is too narrow in meaning, degrades Taiwan and should be changed to “Zhonghua Academy (中華書院),” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators ...
Singapore elects a new president
Tantamount to a humiliation
Aug 28th 2011, 8:07 by Banyan
PRESIDENTIAL elections in Singapore rarely set pulses racing. The job is that of a well-paid but largely ceremonial head of state, who is not allowed to represent any particular party. The poll on August 27th was the fourth time the post has been directly elected, but the first time there has been any doubt at all about the outcome. Four candidates competed, all surnamed Tan. One, Tony Tan Keng Yam, was seen as the representative of the government and the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore ever since it withdrew from the Malaysian Federation in 1965. As expected, he won. But he barely scraped home, with a shade over 35% of vaild votes cast, and just 7,000 more than his nearest challenger, Tan Cheng Bock, a former PAP MP, who campaigned against his former party colleague. Tan Jee Say, a former senior civil servant and banker who was an opposition candidate in the general election in May, won 25%, and the fourth candidate, Tan Kin Lian, just 5%. Voting is compulsory but nearly 2% of voters spoiled their ballots—more than 37,000, it was judged.
The PAP never endorsed Tony Tan formally. But he has held a number of cabinet jobs, and the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy. He also enjoyed the backing of party activists, trade unions, chambers of commerce and community groups. So, that he won not much more than a third of the vote is a remarkable slap in the face for the government. All the same PAP diehards protested that, since two former PAP MPs had garnered 70% of the vote, this was an endorsement for the party.
This follows the general election in May when the PAP did worse than in any election since 1965. It still won 60% of the vote, which left it, in Singapore’s first-past-the-post system, with 81 out of 87 elected seats in parliament. But the party acknowledged it as a setback, and Mr Lee promised to do some “soul-searching”. Voters seem to feel, however, that the government has still not got the message. The presidential election turned into a relatively low-risk chance to teach it a lesson.
A constitutional change in 1991 accorded the president some limited powers—including a veto over the government’s use of past financial reserves, and over senior appointments. The idea was to install a check over a putative future government that was spendthrift and populist, and stacked the civil service with its cronies. The eligibility criteria for presidential candidates are strict, ensuring that only pillars of the establishment need apply.
Until this year, only the first direct presidential election in 1993 had more than one candidate—in that case a virtual unknown who barely campaigned, but who still, in a foretaste of this year’s shock, won more than 40% of the votes.
In general elections opposition parties, which are small and fragmented, are at a disadvantage. Most parliamentary seats are in big “group” constituencies, where they struggle to field slates of credible candidates, and whose boundaries, they claim, are manipulated in the PAP’s favour. The presidential poll is the only one that is island-wide and not affected by these considerations. It gave voters the opportunity to install a different sort of check into the political system. The result is sobering for the PAP. As the country's biggest newspaper, the pro-government Straits Times, put it in reporting the result: "the voting patterns show a society more politically divided than ever before.”
They reflect a widespread sense that the government, blinded by Singapore’s astonishing economic progress, has lost touch with the grievances of ordinary citizens. This sense is in part about particular issues, such as the cost of housing or immigration, which some blame for depressing local wages. But it is as much a question of style—a resentment at what is seen as the government’s paternalistic belief that it knows best.
They also reflect the breakdown, thanks to the internet, and especially social-networking sites, of the government’s virtual monopoly over the media. In both general and presidential elections, the government’s opponents were able to change the terms of the debate by taking it online. For example, when one of the newly elected opposition MPs complained on his Facebook page that he was not allowed to attend constituency functions on a public-housing estate, the issue soon became a national one about the perception of a pro-PAP bias in public bodies.
The realisation that more than 60% of Singaporeans voted against the government’s favoured candidate will presumably provoke more soul-searching within the PAP. Some will take it as proof that the party must move further and faster in opening up to adjust to the “new normal” of a political system with a sizeable opposition. Others, however, may take the opposite view: that too much liberalisation has led to a fading of the fear of the unpleasant repercussions that used to deter critical commentary and opposition activism. In short, that Singaporeans are forgetting who knows best what's good for them.
(Picture credit: AFP)
stasis 此字正負新義數個， 請參考 Shorter O.E.D. 等。
Between Caesar and Chernenko
Sep 29th 2005 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition
A broad left-right coalition is the only way out of Germany's stasis
Contrast this quarter-century of near-stasis with the technological revolution that's remade our daily lives. When we were kids, computers were hulking things off in universities that chattered and blinked mysteriously before spitting out reams of paper. Today, we feel guilty about putting exponentially more-powerful machines than those out on the curb. Back then if you wanted cash you structured your day around when you'd stand in line at the bank; today your choice might be between deli ATMs or settling a debt via PayPal. We have Web-enabled phones in our pockets, instant messaging at the office and can shop in our skivvies at 3 a.m. Wonders upon wonders -- it's only up in the heavens that we're a generation behind.
Sigmund Freud - Google 圖書結果
Pamela Thurschwell - 2009 - Literary Criticism - 162 頁
The final goal of the death drive is to reduce life to an inorganic state, a state of absolute stasis. Freud's complicated logic suggests that there may be ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0415473683...
hermit's thatch › Freud's “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”
- [ 翻譯此頁 ]
3 Jun 2008 ... Reality is stasis, no change, no growth. And, Freud says, no life. Self-preservation intends not life but death, or rather, the organism ...
stasis
(noun) A stable state characterized by the cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces: balance, counterpoise, equilibrium, equipoise. See order/disorder. (© Houghton Mifflin Company)
Usage: "One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic — are all designed to maintain hunger for stasis." — Toni Morrison, from her commencement address at Wellesley College, 2004
stasis
(stā'sĭs, stăs'ĭs)
n., pl., sta·ses (stā'sēz, stăs'ēz).
- A condition of balance among various forces; motionlessness: "Language is a primary element of culture, and stasis in the arts is tantamount to death" (Charles Marsh).
- Pathology. Stoppage of the normal flow of a body substance, as of blood through an artery or of intestinal contents through the bowels.
[Greek, stationariness.]
[名]（複 -ses 〔-si
z〕）[U][C]
z〕）[U][C]
1 均衡［静止］状態.
2 《病理学》（体液の流れの）静止；血行停止, うっ血.The epoché is our willed refraining from the continuity of cosmic time. The epoché is therefore related to the dis-stasis of theoretical thought, which abstracts from the continuity of cosmic time, and splits apart our normal enstatic experience of temporal reality.
gestation[ges・ta・tion]
- 発音記号[dʒestéiʃən]
[名][U]
1 妊娠；懐胎期間；（病気の）潜伏期(gestation period).
2 （アイデア・プランなどを）温めること［期間］.
ges・tá・tion・al
[形]sow 1
Syllabification: (sow)
Pronunciation: /sō/
Translate sow | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanishverb (past sowed; past participle sown /sōn/ or sowed)
Old English sāwan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zaaien and German säen
miff(mĭf) n.
- A petulant, bad-tempered mood; a huff.
- A petty quarrel or argument; a tiff.
To cause to become offended or annoyed.
[Possibly expressive of disgust.]
tantamount(tăn'tə-mount')
adj.
Equivalent in effect or value: a request tantamount to a demand.
[From obsolete tantamount, an equivalent, from Anglo-Norman tant amunter, to amount to as much : tant, so much, so great (from Latin tantum, neuter of tantus , from tam, so) + amunter, to amount to, variant of Old French amonter. See amount.]
Full fiscal autonomy (sometimes referred to as devolution max,[1] devo-max,[2] fiscal federalism,[3] independence lite,[4] or independence-minus,[5]) is a particular form of far-reaching devolution proposed for Scotland.
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