flop, flap, unreal, disconnected, interconnectedness, monopoly rent, petaflop. She shared her small apartment with a youthful poodle that had the run of the place and…

“Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, ‘You’re all a lost generation.’ That got around to certain people and we all said, Whee! We’re lost. Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren’t. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.” —Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker, The Art of Fiction No. 13

Dorothy Parker, 1956. At the time of this interview, Mrs. Parker was living in a midtown New York hotel. She shared her small apartment with a youthful poodle that had the run of the place and…

THEPARISREVIEW.ORG

Yet economies do change over time, and sometimes in fundamental ways. So what’s really different about America in the 21st century?

然而經濟的確會隨著時間轉變而改變，而且有時改變的幅度很大。那麼21世紀的美國究竟有哪些實質的不同呢？

The most significant answer, I’d suggest, is the growing importance of monopoly rents: profits that don’t represent returns on investment, but instead reflect the value of market dominance. Sometimes that dominance seems deserved, sometimes not; but, either way, the growing importance of rents is producing a new disconnect between profits and production and may be a factor prolonging the slump.

我想說，最重要的一個就是壟斷租金 (monopoly rent)的重要性越來越高。壟斷租金這種收益並不反映投資回報，而是反映市場支配地位的價值。有時候這種支配地位似乎是應得的，有時候則不是。但無論怎 樣，壟斷租金的重要性越來越高，反映了利潤與生產環節之間新的脫節現象，或許也是經濟持續低迷的一個原因。

Jazz Covers Julius Wiedemann (ED),

Joaquim Paulo

Softcover with flaps,24 x 24 cm, 496 pages


漫畫來源: Ted Goff
By breaking the petaflop barrier sooner than had been generally expected, the United States’ supercomputer industry has been able to sustain a pace of continuous performance increases, improving a thousandfold in processing power in 11 years. The next thousandfold goal is the exaflop, which is a quintillion calculations per second, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraflop.


petaflop 每秒運算百萬億次

peta-

A word element used in naming units of measurement to designate a quantity 10¹⁵ (a thousand-million-million) times the unit to which it is joined. Symbol P.

flap

n.

1. A flat, usually thin piece attached at only one side.
2. A projecting or hanging piece usually intended to double over and protect or cover: the flap of an envelope.
3. 1. The act of waving or fluttering: the flap of the flag in the wind.
   2. The sound produced by this motion.
4. A blow given with something flat; a slap.
5. A variable control surface on the trailing edge of an aircraft wing, used primarily to increase lift or drag.
6. Either of the folded ends of a book jacket that fit inside the front and back covers.
7. Medicine. Tissue that has been partially detached and used in surgical grafting to fill an adjacent defect or cover the cut end of a bone after amputation.
8. Linguistics. A sound articulated by a single, quick touch of the tongue against the teeth or alveolar ridge, as (t) in water. Also called tap.
9. Informal. A commotion or disturbance: a flap in Congress over the defense budget.

Professor Taylor, 56, said: "It has been quite unreal."
"I'm fed up of opening my post - I get an awful lot of bills - so when a letter dropped on the floor marked 'knighthood', I thought 'Oh my God!'
"I went into a complete flap.
He added: "Even though many of my predecessors at the Royal Society have been knighted, I was still completely shocked.





So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.

flop

(flŏp)
v., flopped, flop·ping, flops. v.intr.

1. To fall or lie down heavily and noisily.
2. To move about loosely or limply: The dog's ears flopped when it ran.
3. Informal. To fail utterly: The play flopped.
4. Slang.
   1. To rest idly; lounge.
   2. To go to bed.

v.tr.
To drop or lay (something) down heavily and noisily: flopped the steak onto a platter.
n.

1. The act of flopping.
2. The sound made when flopping.
3. Informal. An utter failure.

[Alteration of FLAP.]

disconnect

v., -nect·ed, -nect·ing, -nects. v.tr.

1. To sever or interrupt the connection of or between: disconnected the hose.
2. Electricity. To shut off the current in (an appliance) by removing its connection to a power source.

v.intr.
To sever or interrupt a connection.

n. (dĭs'kə-nĕkt')
A lack of connection; a disparity: "There is a cosmic disconnect between what the voters want and what the party of the corporate interests can give them" (Bob Herbert).

disconnection dis'con·nec'tion n.




Peter Drucker’s immense contribution to the thinking and practice of management extends to social responsibility in business. This work goes back over 60 years but remains relevant today -- notwithstanding the impacts of globalisation and the greater interconnectedness of business and society.