2016年4月15日 星期五

shoo, foray, shoo-in, Fiona, metrosexual, conurbation

  Blast them with sound
   Was something Einstein predicted 100 years ago finally observed?


If true, it would 'probably be a shoo-in for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics'
USATODAY.COM
  

In a First, Chinese Navy Sails Off the Coast of Alaska

Pentagon officials said the entry into international waters of the sea off the coast of Alaska was the first such foray by Beijing.
 
 Next Media to Sell Taiwan Print, TV Businesses for $600 Million
Businessweek
Next Media Ltd. Chairman Jimmy Lai's foray into Taiwan's television industry in 2010 led to two straight annual losses for Next Media as the company battled regulators for licenses and distribution rights. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg ...
 
Facebook Urges Users to Add Organ Donor Status
In a rare foray into social engineering, Facebook will encourage users to list their donor status on their pages.
November 5, 2004

ADVERTISING

A British Line of Beauty Products Makes a U.S. Foray

By STUART ELLIOTT

ANEW YORK agency with ties to Hollywood is being hired to bring just a little touch of star quality, as the lyric goes, to the often-drab realm of private-label store brands.
A division of the Boots Group, the British retailer of health and beauty products, is naming Shepardson Stern & Kaminsky in New York to help market 10 lines of makeup, skin-care and hair-care items that two American chains are testing as house brands aimed at women. (Metrosexual males are, of course, welcome to buy them as well.) The products are being sold at 13 CVS drugstores in Fairfield County, Conn., and 19 Target discount department stores in Denver and Minneapolis.



--
A metrosexual is defined as a dandyish narcissist in love with not only himself, but also his urban lifestyle; a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side.
According to The Word Spy, Mark Simpson coined the term "metrosexual" in 1994, in an article in The Independent. His description of someone who is a metrosexual was printed on the internet's Salon.com. He wrote, "The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis – because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference." – Mark Simpson, "Meet the metrosexual," Salon.com, July 22, 2002



Hillary the healer?

comeback kids


American politics

The comeback kids


Oct 4th 2007

From The Economist print edition
The American presidency is Hillary Clinton's to lose. But that doesn't make her a shoo-in just yet


shoo 

Pronunciation: /ʃuː/ 

EXCLAMATION

A word said to frighten or drive away a person or animal:‘Shoo,’ said Mrs Beavis to her girls, and the passage emptied

VERB (shoosshooingshooed)

[WITH OBJECT AND ADVERBIAL OF DIRECTION]
Make (a person or animal) go away by waving one’s arms at them, saying ‘shoo’, or otherwise acting in a discouraging manner:I went to comfort her but she shooed me away
shoo-in
Noun [C usually singular]
someone who is certain to win an election or a competition:
He's a shoo-in for the White House.
Manchester United's a shoo-in to win the title this season.



IF GREAT writers have a special insight into the souls of their countrymen, Hillary Clinton ought to be pleased. Philip Roth, one of the grandest old men of American letters, said last year that if anyone could lose 50 states for the Democrats, she could. This week he said he is no longer sure.
Mr Roth is hardly alone, either in his previous hatred for the former first lady or in his grudging new acceptance of her. It is still more than three months until the votes are cast in the first primaries, and over a year until the election. With no incumbent president or vice-president running, this should be the most open race for 80 years—but it certainly doesn't feel that way. Never mind the oddness, in a republic, of having Bushes and Clintons in charge for, possibly, 28 years on the trot: at the moment, the return of Hillary and Bill Clinton to the White House looks likelier than any alternative (see article).

Mrs Clinton is polling an average of some 18 points clear of her nearest rival, Barack Obama, for the Democratic nomination, and one poll this week put her 33 points ahead. She leads solidly in all the early primary states except, crucially, Iowa (which matters because it comes first), where she has only an insignificant lead. In head-to-head polls, she now handily defeats any of her Republican rivals—and the Republicans are divided and demoralised. And this week she reversed the only measure on which she was trailing: in the third quarter of the year, she narrowly beat Mr Obama in raising campaign contributions. Mr Obama's superior fund-raising has been the main source of worry for the Clintonistas.
That does not mean she will win. Things could go wrong even in the primaries: ask Howard Dean, who seemed unstoppable for the Democratic ticket at Christmas 2003, before it all went wrong one night in Des Moines. There are plenty of things that could trip up Mrs Clinton, not least her husband. But barring some stumble or scandal, Americans will as usual decide on the candidates' merits, so the key to the election is to decide which qualities are most in demand this time around.

Brilliantly dull

Top of the list surely must come competence—the attribute that has been most sorely lacking in the Bush administration, whether in the planning for post-war Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina or the management of the federal budget, which George Bush, like a reverse King Midas, has transmuted from a $240 billion surplus to a $160 billion deficit.
This is where Mrs Clinton currently leads the pack. True, she has never run anything herself, and her most notable foray into governance, her 1993-94 attempt to reform the American health-care system, was a catastrophe. But she has learned from watching the rest of her husband's presidency and, more recently, as a senator for New York, where she has been hard-working, consensual, effective and a little dull. Her campaign is superbly organised. In debates, her mastery of detail is remarkable. Her second plan for health-care reform is a much more moderate beast. And her Democratic rivals, Mr Obama and John Edwards, have much less experience than she does. On the Republican side, though, she faces a couple of effective governors and a former mayor of New York who turned that city's finances and crime rates around. She has yet to spell out much of her policy platform, including on such vital issues as tax or climate change; and has suspiciously meddlesome tendencies. She has already retreated alarmingly from her husband's commitment to free trade.
After competence must come toughness on security: traditionally a difficult area for Democrats, but less so after seven years of incompetent machismo. More than any of her Democratic rivals, Mrs Clinton has striven to neutralise the Republicans' advantage here. She has refused to apologise for her 2002 vote in favour of war with Iraq, and declines to commit herself to withdrawing the troops that are still there. But she was fully involved earlier this year in Democratic attempts to saddle the president with a deadline for quitting, and remains vulnerable to a Republican challenger. America's military weakness during the Clinton years has been overshadowed by the disaster under Bush; but it was under Mr Clinton that al-Qaeda took root and grew. That said, Americans want a tough president, not a psychopath: some of her Republican rivals remain worryingly bellicose.

Hillary the healer?

The third challenge for the next American president requires a different set of qualities: he or she will have to be a healer, both at home and abroad. America's standing in the world has been hugely damaged by the war, by Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, and by the high-handed way in which it has treated international bodies and agreements. The country needs a leader who will rebuild alliances. Hillary Clinton has no direct experience of this, but she has already declared that Bill would be her “ambassador to the world”. His charm may help make up for the superpower's tendency towards unilateralism; though foreign leaders may be as uncomfortable as some Americans with the idea of an unelected spouse swanning round the globe representing America.
At home, Mrs Clinton will need to narrow the divisions that the bitter partisanship of the Bush presidency has widened. She can be an unforgiving enemy—witness her campaign's hysterical reaction when a Hollywood mogul went over to Mr Obama's camp. In recent years she has not given much impression of feeling anyone's pain but her own, though she is a funnier and warmer speaker than she gets credit for. Can such a woman, whose “negatives” are among the highest in the business, reunite America? This doubt remains a big obstacle to a Clinton comeback.
For all her years of scheming and positioning, Mrs Clinton is not the finished article. No process is better at revealing flaws than American presidential elections. This newspaper, like many voters, will reserve judgment on this still often awkward and unknowable woman until it has seen more of her and her policies next year. But so far the Clinton comeback has been impressive. That is why it is her presidency to lose.



foray[for・ay]

  • レベル:社会人必須
  • 発音記号[fɔ'ːrei | fɔ'r-]
[名]
1 略奪, 急襲, 侵略
make a foray into ...
…を急襲する.
2 (店などへ)出かけること((to, into ...)).
3 (慣れないことへの)ちょっかい, 手出し;(活動に)足を突っ込むこと((into ...)).
━━[動](自)(…を)急襲する, 略奪する((into ...)).
━━(他)…を急襲[略奪]する.
for・ay・er
[名]


Fiona
Gender: Feminine
Usage: Scottish
Pronounced: fee-O-na

Feminine form of FIONN. This name was (first?) used by Scottish poet James Macpherson in his poem 'Fingal' (1761).


Fiona這名字被女食人妖採用,是有點不相稱,這個發源於蘇格蘭的名字,原本有「皮膚潔白,容貌美麗」之意,早年較少人採用,直到十九世紀的蘇格蘭小說家兼詩人威廉.夏普(William Sharp)為自己取了Fiona Macleod的筆名,寫了好幾本頗受歡迎的小說,導致一般人對取名Fiona的女孩,先入為主產生才貌雙全的印象,它才普及起來。

Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent, also called The Potteries, is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation stretching for 12 miles, with an area of 36 square miles. Wikipedia

conurbation


 音節
con • ur • ba • tion
発音
kɑ`nərbéiʃən | kɔ`n-
conurbationの変化形
conurbations (複数形)
[名]連担都市:周辺の諸市を含む大都市圏.

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