2017年7月31日 星期一

sisterly, fluke, cesspool, negativity, befit, befitting, fighter,




According to MIT physicist Jeremy England, the existence of life is no mystery or lucky break, but rather follows from general physical principles and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”
Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s…
WIRED.COM



Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. So how can they evolve?

For a city to thrive, it has to change. But how?
NEWYORKER.COM



North Korea says President Barack Obama is “recklessly” spreading rumours of a Pyongyang-orchestrated cyber attack of Sony Pictures, as it warns of strikes against the White House, Pentagon and “the whole US mainland, that cesspool of terrorism”.

Pyongyang labels US ‘cesspool of terrorism’ and accuses Barack Obama of spreading rumours about cyberattack on Sony Pictures
THEGUARDIAN.COM


 As befits two disciplines, neither of which is clearly defined and both of which address themselves to the whole of human life and thought, anthropology and philosophy are more than a little suspicious of one another.


Fighters' Yoh enjoying spotlight with Taiwan at WBC
The Japan Times
Daikan Yoh was surrounded by a mob befitting a rock star. Most eyes had been trained on the Taiwanese outfielder during his team's practice session at Tokyo Dome on Friday, and finally they'd caught up to him. The Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters ...
Noted

Stronger, Faster, Nastier

By BEE-SHYUAN CHANG
Will the London Olympics one day be remembered as a cesspool of social media negativity?

These findings are no fluke; other studies have come to similar conclusions. But why would having a sister make you happier?
The usual answer — that girls and women are more likely than boys and men to talk about emotions — is somehow unsatisfying, especially to a researcher like me. Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women’s styles of friendship and conversation aren’t inherently better than men’s, simply different.

sisterly talk

sisterly
Meaning #1: like or characteristic of or befitting a sister
Synonyms: sisterlike, sororal
Antonym: brotherly (meaning #1)

sororal
adj.
Of, relating to, or resembling a sister; sisterly.

[From Latin soror, sister.]

fluke3 (flūk) pronunciation
n.
  1. A stroke of good luck.
  2. A chance occurrence; an accident.
  3. Games. An accidentally good or successful stroke in billiards or pool.
[Origin unknown.]

befit

Pronunciation: /bɪˈfɪt/
Translate befit | into Italian



verb (befits, befitting, befitted)

[with object]
  • be appropriate for; suit:as befits a Quaker, he was a humane man

Spelling rule

If a verb ends with a single vowel plus a consonant, and the stress is at the end of the word (as in refer), double the last letter when adding -ing or -ed: (befits, befitting, befitted).

befitting 

音節
be • fit • ting
発音
bifítiŋ
[形]適した, ふさわしい, 適当な, 似合う
in a befitting manner
ふさわしい態度で.
be・fit・ting・ly
[副]

césspòol[céss・pòol]

  • ˈsɛspuːl/
    noun
    1. an underground container for the temporary storage of liquid waste and sewage.
      • a disgusting or corrupt place.
        "the town is not the cesspool you portrayed"
[名]
1 汚物[汚水]だめ.
2 不浄の場所
a cesspool of infamy
悪の巣. (またcéss・pìt)

  negativity

  • 発音記号[négətivəti]

[名][U]消極性, 陰性.

2017年7月29日 星期六

earworm, f-bomb, sexting, flexitarian, obesogenic, energy drink, life coach, tirade

Try not to let this one get stuck in your head.

The Listening Service's top 10 👂🐛👇


We've rounded up 10 of the most hummable tunes from the 2017 season.
BBC.CO.UK




earworm


NOUN

  • 1A catchy song or tune that runs continually through a person's mind.

An exploration of why some tunes refuse to go away.
BBC.IN
f-bomb
noun   drop an f-bomb to use the word fuck in a situation where this might cause great offence [an allusion to the explosive impact of a bomb]

 flexitarian
(flĕk'sĭ-târ'ē-ən) pronunciation
n.
One who normally maintains a vegetarian diet but occasionally makes exceptions and eats meat or fish.

adj.
Of or relating to a diet that is primarily vegetarian but includes meat or fish on occasion.


obesogenic
adjective   medical causing obesity
The power of the 'obesogenic environment' is apparently such that it disempowers us from making choices over what we eat, duping us all the time into thinking that we are making choices when in fact we are just riding the junk-food wave (Spiked)
Life coaching is a practice that helps people identify and achieve personal goals.

(SEX texTING) Sending erotic messages or photos via text messaging. In 2010, a British survey revealed that some 20% of sexting messages were sent to the wrong person. Oops! See SMS and smexting.

tirade[ti・rade]

  • 発音記号[táireid | –]

[名](…への)長く手きびしい非難[攻撃, 演説]((against ...));(…についての)長い熱弁, 長広舌((about ...)).


Earworm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm

An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm, is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing. Phrases ...


F-bomb makes it into mainstream dictionary
Associated PressNEW YORK — It's about freakin' time.
The term "F-bomb" first surfaced in newspapers more than 20 years ago but will land Tuesday for the first time in the mainstream Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, along with sexting, flexitarian, obesogenic, energy drink and life coach.
In all, the company picks about 100 additions for the 114-year-old dictionary's annual update, gathering evidence of usage over several years in everything from media to the labels of beer bottles and boxes of frozen food.
So who's responsible for lobbing F-bomb far and wide? Kory Stamper, an associate editor for Merriam-Webster, said she and her fellow word spies at the Massachusetts company traced it back to 1988, in a Newsday story that had the now-dead Mets catcher Gary Carter talking about how he had given them up, along with other profanities.
But the word didn't really take off until the late '90s, after Bobby Knight went heavy on the F-bombs during a locker room tirade.
"We saw another huge spike after Dick Cheney dropped an F-bomb in the Senate in 2004," and again in 2010 when Vice President Joe Biden did the same thing in the same place, Stamper said.
"It's a word that is very visually evocative. It's not just the F-word. It's F-bomb. You know that it's going to cause a lot of consternation and possible damage," she said.
Many online dictionary and reference sites already list F-bomb and other entries Merriam-Webster is only now putting into print. A competitor, Oxford University Press, has F-bomb under consideration for a future update of its New Oxford American Dictionary but beat Merriam-Webster to print on a couple of other newcomers: mash-up, added to the Oxford book in 2005, and cloud computing, included in 2010.
No worries, Stamper said. The dictionary biz isn't a race.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate gets a cover-to-cover overhaul every decade or so in addition to yearly upgrades. The Springfield, Mass.-based company also picks a defining word of each year closer to Thanksgiving. Among the company's other additions this year, including online at Merriam-Webster.com, and various apps:
The Oprah-inspired "aha moment," the Stephen King-popularized earworm, as in that truly torturous tune you can't get out of your head, and man cave, brain cramp and bucket list.
King, in a 2009 column for Entertainment Weekly headlined "The Trouble With Earworms," wrote of waking up in the middle of the night for a glass of water when he found himself singing a snippet of a lyric.
"My friend the Longhair says that's what you call songs that burrow into your head and commence chewing your brains. The dreaded earworm can turn even a great song into something you'd run from, screaming at the top of your lungs. If only you could," he wrote.
Stamper said the word, a translation of the German ohrwurm, surfaced in English in the late '80s as a way to describe untranslatable words. As a tune that won't leave your head, "It just solidified itself in the national linguistic consciousness in America," she said.
Earworm isn't actually a new word for Merriam-Webster but the definition is to differentiate from the once-sole description of a specific blight on ears of corn.
The first reference found by Merriam-Webster for "aha moment" dates to 1939 in a book of psychology. Its use was sporadic until the '90s, when Oprah Winfrey began using it on her no-longer-on-the-air TV show.
"In fact, aha moment is so closely associated with Oprah that in 2009, she and Mutual of Omaha got involved in a legal imbroglio over Mutual of Omaha's use of the phrase, with Oprah claiming that aha moment was her catchphrase and she had the rights to it," Stamper said.
The case was settled out of court in 2009.
The word "tweet" led last year's new-word highlights from Merriam-Webster. This year's additions are more eclectic, Stamper said.
"This is a list of really descriptive and evocative, fun words. Some years, not so fun. Some years it's a lot of science words. Some years it's a lot of words around really heavy topics," she said.
There are a few of those this time around: copernicium among them.
It's a short-lived, artifically produced radioactive element that has 112 protons and is the most recent addition to the Periodic Table of Elements. It was first created in a German lab in 1996 and named for the astronomer Copernicus.
The recession blues are represented.
Merriam-Webster added "systemic risk" and a new definition for "underwater," to describe the heartbreaking realization that you owe more on your mortgage than your property is worth. Among other new economic terms is an extra definition for "toxic," as it relates to an "asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market."
Flexitarian, traced to 1998, is defined as "one whose normally meatless diet occasionally includes meat or fish," while obesogenic (dating to 1986) is an adjective for "promoting excessive weight gain: producing obesity."
Stamper calls flexitarian one in a long line of "you are what you eat" entries.
"As our society has become more aware of our eating patterns, we've seen a proliferation of its use," she said. "There are people who object to the very idea of being a flexitarian, and therefore to the existence of the word."
Obesogenic remains a term more restricted to technical writing, Stamper said. It refers to an environment where something or some pattern — food deserts in a city, for example — is suspected of putting people at risk for obesity.
"Over the last few years, it's showed up quite a bit in more general sources, like The New York Times," she said.
Merriam-Webster leads the dictionary market, said John Morse, president of the privately held company who wouldn't release sales figures. He also wouldn't release a full list of new entries, in part to put off competitors.
"Let them find their own new words," he joked. "It's not a cutthroat business but we like to say it's a bare knuckles business." Morse did acknowledge: "It's harder for some paper dictionaries to stay in business in the era of online dictionaries."
And he allowed for a sneak peak at the Top 25, rounded out by:
Craft beer, e-reader, game changer, a new definition for "gassed" as slang for drained of energy, gastropub, geocaching, shovel-ready (a construction site ready for work) and tipping point.

presto! 2-way, mustache, mustachioed, pyro/ pyromaniac, pyrotechnician, firework, town fire chief


The University of Chicago


Artist Cai Guo-Qiang 蔡國强 has amazed audiences around the world with his pyrotechnic artwork, including at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and with his celebrated work Sky Ladder.

In honor of #nuclear75, he will debut a new pyrotechnic piece Saturday at 3:20 p.m. above Regenstein Library at #UChicago. The piece will symbolize "the paradoxical nature of employing nuclear energy."

RSVP: http://bit.ly/2itXZPR













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'The president is a pyromaniac': the week Trump set fire to the White House





















'The president is a pyromaniac': the week Trump set fire to the White House


What went wrong? Take your pick: healthcare, transgender troops, the…


THEGUARDIAN.COM
























漫畫來源: Ted Goff











Personally, if I had a stylishly mustachioed batman I would happily delegate to him the task of spending all day, every day, doing nothing but unsubscribing to email "alerts" that, with a sardonic psychic violence, always send you one final piece of spam to alert you that you have successfully opted out of their useless alerts.




Chinese Internet giant Tencent wants to attract more mobile gamers with new video-game characters like mustachioed barbarians and pyromaniac wizards. The company is in early talks to buy a Finland-based maker of the farm simulator game “Hay Day” and combat simulator “部落衝突 Clash of Clans” from Japanese telecommunications and Internet giant ソフトバンク(SoftBank).


Chinese Internet major Tencent Holdings Ltd. is in talks with SoftBank…
ON.WSJ.COM|由 WAYNE MA, JURO OSAWA AND KATHY CHU 上傳









Smartphone? Presto! 2-Way Radio
Smartphone? Presto! 2-Way Radio
Instant Mustache

Instant Mustache



What's the fastest way to grow a mustache? You don't need to drive a Harley to sport a mustache anymore. Nowadays it is very trendy to grow hair in the middle of your face. The most popular styles include the thin pencil 'stache, the bushy "Mexican" cut, or the infamous Dali twirl that twists up at the ends. If you want a mustache and you want it fast, there's only one way to go about it: grow a Chia stache. It's just like a Chia pet, but for your face. The kit includes specialized biotin seeds that are spread onto the upper lip and a packet of nutrient powder to stimulate hair follicle growth. Mix the powder with water and spray onto the mustache twice a day for 6 days. Presto! By the weekend you'll have such a luscious mustache you'll be able to braid it! (Or, you could always leave the braiding to your pet unicorn).


Quote:
"I've grown this mustache which saves me from having to glue on one every day in the heat." Keith Carradine

whisker,sideburns

 




A Light Approach to a Grim Issue: Suicide Prevention
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN


A public service campaign aimed at potentially suicidal men introduces a fictional therapist, Dr. Rich Mahogany, a "manly" mustachioed cross between Dr. Phil and Ron Burgundy.






Yannick Grandmont for The New York Times


A French entry opened the Montreal international fireworks competition this year.


Published: June 27, 2008
LATE last Saturday evening, La Ronde, an amusement park that’s just a stone’s throw from downtown Montreal on an island in the St. Lawrence River, seemed an unlikely venue for a world-class competition. Teenagers with the giggles and other signs of roller-coaster overexposure contemplated yet another ride on the Super Manège or Le Monstre.


"This UN appointment is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief"
"這一聯合國任命就像製作縱火狂進鎮火首席"



Three of the world's top 5 executing countries sit on the U.N.'s human...
WASHINGTONPOST.COM|作者:CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM



pyro

n. Slang., pl. -ros. A person who has a compulsion to set fires; a pyromaniac.
A display of pyrotechnics.

Pyrotechnicians Light Up the Montreal Sky





pero-
希臘語 傷殘 變形

photoAwaiting an explosive summer (TAKESHI IWASHITA/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
Hundreds of fireworks dry outside a pyrotechnics factory in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, where production is reaching its peak ahead of the summer festival season. The factory plans to produce about 30,000 fireworks, ranging in diameter from 6 to 30 centimeters, for festivals and events mainly in the eastern part of the prefecture.(IHT/Asahi: May 22,2009)


 mus·ta·chio also mous·ta·chio  (m-stsh, -stsh-, -stäsh, -sh-)

n. pl. mus·ta·chios also mous·ta·chios
A mustache, especially a luxuriant one.

[Ultimately from Italian dialectal mustaccio, mustache; see mustache.]

mus·tachioed (-stshd, -stsh-d, -stäshd, -sh-d) adj.






moustachioed

Pronunciation: /məˈstɑːʃɪəʊd/ 
 /məˈstaʃɪəʊd/ 

(also mustachioed)



ADJECTIVE

Having a moustache, typically a long or elaborate one:the moustachioed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot



pyromania 

Pronunciation: /ˌpʌɪrə(ʊ)ˈmeɪnɪə/ 




NOUN

[MASS NOUN]
An obsessive desire to set fire to things.





pyromaniac 

Pronunciation: /ˌpʌɪrə(ʊ)ˈmeɪnɪak/ 





NOUN

A person suffering from pyromania:a ten-year-old pyromaniac




Derivatives





pyromaniacal

ADJECTIVE

pres·to (prĕs') pronunciation
adv.
  1. Music. In a very fast tempo, usually considered to be faster than allegro but slower than prestissimo. Used chiefly as a direction.
  2. So suddenly that magic seems involved; right away.
n. Music, pl., -tos.
A passage or movement that is performed presto.

[Italian, from Late Latin praestus, quick, from Latin praestō, at hand.]
presto pres'to adj.

pander, calamitous, shipwright, baton twirler, short of, podium, undoing, 4x100-meter relay



. “I think we are moving inexorably toward a constitutional crisis,” says one constitutional law scholar.


The president probably should have consulted the Constitution, or at least…
VANITYFAIR.COM




Since 1971 Malaysia has given preferential treatment in everything from education to investing to bumiputeras—people of indigenous descent, who are two-thirds of the population but poorer than their ethnic-Chinese and -Indian compatriots



Its benefits are debatable and its costs calamitous
ECONOMIST.COM


Unpredicted by the polls, the Conservatives win Britain's general election. Though it has pandered to some portions of the electorate, especially pensioners, David Cameron’s government can hardly be accused of shirking its fiscal responsibilities; it campaigned on a promise to take an additional £12 billion ($19 billion) from the welfare budget. For Labour, the result is calamitous http://econ.st/1F3gJb5

Victory was the pride of Chatham dockyard in Kent, the largest warship built for the Royal Navy. However, on 7 May 1765, shipwright Hartly Larkin realised, tossing in his bed in the small hours, with VIPs from the government and navy invited on board for a splendid ceremony later that day, there was a calamitous error: Victory was too wide to fit through the wooden gates of the dock to be launched into the Medway.

For U.S., Dread of Another Dropped Baton

Batons may not seem particularly calamitous, but they have been the undoing of several American 4x100-meter relay teams at recent Olympics and world championships.











BETTMANN / CORBIS
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So Light on Her Feet

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, the Lions Club of Greater Miami named one local woman "Miss Light," to be a spokeswoman for the club's annual "Lights for Sight" charity fundraising campaign. In 1954 the Miss Light crown was awarded to University of Miami student and baton twirler Sandy Wirth. Wirth went on to become a finalist in the 1955 Miss America competition.




Asia's historical impact on the US has been more calamitous and bloody by far than anything Middle Eastern; think of the conflict with Japan during the second world war, the Korean war and Vietnam. Even today, the US is fighting one of its two big wars in Afghanistan in central Asia.

 ca・lam・i・ty



 
━━ n. 悲惨, 惨禍.
 ca・lam・i・tous ━━ a. 悲惨な; 災難を起す; 不幸な.

calamity

a serious accident or bad event causing damage or suffering
A series of calamities ruined them - floods, a failed harvest and the death of a son.




calamitousLine breaks: ca¦lam|itous
Pronunciation: /kəˈlamɪtəs /

Definition of calamitous in English:

ADJECTIVE

Involving calamitycatastrophic or disastrous:such calamitous events as fireshurricanes, and floods
Derivatives
calamitously
1
ADVERB





Definition of pander in English:

verb

[NO OBJECT] (pander to)
Gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire ortaste or a person with such a desire or taste):newspapers are pandering to people’s baser instincts






shipwright
ˈʃɪprʌɪt/
noun
  1. a shipbuilder.


twirl
v., twirled,  
twirl·ing, twirls.v.tr.
  1. To rotate or revolve briskly; swing in a circle; spin: twirled a baton to lead the band.
  2. To twist or wind around: twirl thread on a spindle.
v.intr.
  1. To move or spin around rapidly, suddenly, or repeatedly: The pinwheel twirled in the breeze.
  2. To whirl or turn suddenly; make an about-face: twirled in the direction of the noise.
  3. Baseball. To pitch.
n.
  1. The act of twirling or the condition of being twirled; a quick spinning or twisting.
  2. Something twirled; a twist: a twirl of cotton candy.

[Origin unknown.]









China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet clashes with Tibetan demands for self-rule. A podium discussion, organized by the German China Association, debates the opposing positions.
Yahoo hopes to strike a deal to sell a minority stake to a private-equity firm by year's end. Short of that, the company will pursue other alternatives, they said.

short of
1. Having an inadequate supply of, as in We're short of cash right now. [Late 1600s] Also 

see fall short of.
2. Less than, inferior to, as in Nothing short of her best effort was needed to make the team. [Mid-1500s]
3. Other than, without resorting to, as in Short of yelling, I had no other way of getting his attention.
4. See stop short, def. 3.




Sergei Rachmaninoff began his long relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1909, when--at the invitation of then conductor Carl Pohlig--he appeared for the first time on an American podium to conduct his 2nd Symphony. Later, under Leopold Stokowski's baton, the Orchestra offered several Rachmaninoff world premiere performances, including his 4th Piano Concerto (1927), Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (1934), and 3rd Symphony (1936).


baton
n.
  1. Music. A slender wooden stick or rod used by a conductor to direct an orchestra or band.
  2. A hollow metal rod with a heavy rubber tip or tips that is wielded and twirled by a drum major or drum majorette.
  3. A short staff carried by certain public officials as a symbol of office.
  4. Sports. The hollow cylinder that is carried by each member of a relay team in a running race and passed to the next team member.
  5. A short stick carried by police; a billy club.
  6. Heraldry. A shortened narrow bend, often signifying bastardy.
[French bâton, from Old French baston, stick, from Vulgar Latin *bastō, *bastōn-.]





podium

  • レベル:社会人必須
  • 発音記号[póudiəm]

[名](複 〜s, -di・a 〔-di〕)
1 指揮台, 台, 壇;((米))(本・原稿などを載せる)演壇(lectern).
2 《建築》腰壁, 台壁;(古代神殿などの)基壇;(古典建築の)腰石;(古代ローマの円形闘技場の)ひな壇式観覧席.
3 (空港などの)チケットカウンター.
4 《植物》葉柄.
[ラテン語]






undoing
ʌnˈduːɪŋ/
noun
  1. a person's ruin or downfall.
    "he knew of his ex-partner's role in his undoing"
    • the cause of a person's ruin or downfall.
      "that complacency was to be their undoing"