2017年9月29日 星期五

fecund, fecundity and fertility, offspring, alchemy, assisted reproductive technology


The result is a compact yet liberated primer of Bourgeois’s implicitly feminist art, its fecund repeating forms, alternately architectonic and fleshy figures, intimations of pregnancy and birth and, most famously, giant spider sculptures in bronze or steel.


AN APPRAISAL | GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, 1927-2014
Entwining Tales of Time, Memory and Love
Gabriel García Márquez, foreground, with Colombian journalist José Salgar in 2003. As a writer, Mr. García Márquez found the familiar in the fantastic.
Mr. García Márquez — who died on Thursday at his home in Mexico City, at the age of 87 — used his fecund imagination and sleight of hand to conjure the miraculous in his fiction.
 German women have fewer children

German women are having fewer babies, new research has found. The
revelation is likely to further fuel domestic debate about whether states
should give more funding to fertility treatment services for childless
couples.


OPINION | Op-Ed Contributors

Selling the Fantasy of Fertility

By MIRIAM ZOLL and PAMELA TSIGDINOS

Assisted reproductive technology fails much more often - and leaves more scars - than we are led to believe.




That spending includes pensions and benefits – in other words, redistributing money to the unemployed, the retired and the fecund from childless people with well-paid jobs. Then there’s free healthcare, free education, the army, the police, the courts, and infrastructure such as roads.
这些支出包括养老金和福利——换句话说,将资金从没有子女的高薪人士再分配给失业者、退休人士以及生育多个孩子的母亲。此外,还包括免费医疗、免费教育、军队、警察部门、法院和道路等基础设施。

If population policy can do little more to alleviate environmental damage, then the human race will have to rely on technology and governance to shift the world’s economy towards cleaner growth. Mankind needs to develop more and cheaper technologies that can enable people to enjoy the fruits of economic growth without destroying the planet’s natural capital. That’s not going to happen unless governments both use carbon pricing and other policies to encourage investment in those technologies and constrain the damage that economic development does to biodiversity.
Falling fertility may be making poor people’s lives better, but it cannot save the Earth. That lies in our own hands.



Birth Defects Tied to Fertility Techniques

By DENISE GRADY
Infants conceived with techniques commonly used in fertility clinics are two to four times more likely to have certain birth defects than are infants conceived naturally, a study found.
Future of Giant Turtle Still Uncertain
An attempt to mate two elderly turtles during this year’s breeding season ended without producing any offspring.





sleight of hand

Manual dexterity, typically in performing conjuring tricks:a nifty bit of sleight of hand got the ashtray into the correct position
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • There is every chance that he performed a little sleight of hand and other conjuring.
  • After my first success I became intensely interested and gave up the sleight of hand and conjuring work I had been doing.
  • These people are magicians - expert architects of enjoyment - performing incredible sleights of hand.
SYNONYMS
Skilful deception:this is financial sleight of hand of the worst sort
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
  • He freely admitted that magic depended on deception and sleight of hand but said: ‘Origami is real magic!’
  • One of the most startling public acts of deception and sleight of hand has been undertaken by the provincial government.
  • However, people of the present day are getting more enlightened; and although they see something done beyond their ken, yet they know it is only a piece of deception or sleight of hand on the part of the performers.
offspring
[名](複 ~, ~s)
1 (人・動物の)子.

2 生じたもの, 所産, 結果.

生育力 Fecundity (經濟學)
新帕尔格雷夫经济学大词典专题
公共衛生
Fecundity and Fertility
Literally, "fecundity" means the ability to produce live offspring, and "fertility" means the actual production of live offspring. So fecundity refers to the potential production, and fertility to actual production, of live offspring. Fecundity cannot be measured, but it can be assessed clinically. Fertility and its impairments and aberrations are recorded for individuals in their medical charts and are measured in the population by routinely collected vital statistics about reproductive outcomes such as births, stillbirths, miscarriages, and so on. Fecundity and fertility are often confused. The confusion is further confounded by the fact that in French the meanings of the two similar-sounding words are reversed: fécondité means "fertility," and fertilité means "fecundity." Communication among demographers and others about these demographic details therefore requires care and awareness of this fact.
(SEE ALSO: Pregnancy; Reproduction)

It would be impossible in the brief space of an introduction such as this to discuss at any length the characteristics of Hugo as a literary artist, but a few remarks may be made on some of the features of his art which are most conspicuous in the poems selected for this volume. It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the poet's extraordinary fecundity of words and images.
史詩 La Légende des siècles ( 1859)之 中文翻譯本,厚約702頁(『雨果文集 第三卷 /20卷』河北教育出版社)

Although this all makes for a more discursive and at times less focused narrative than that of Volume 2, “The Triumphant Years,” like its predecessors, is informed by Mr. Richardson’s consummate knowledge of Picasso’s work — his intimate understanding of the artist’s temperament and endlessly inventive styles, his expansive vocabulary of myths and motifs and, most important, the mysterious nature of the alchemy by which he transformed his own experiences and emotions into art. So incisive and revealing are Mr. Richardson’s commentaries on individual Picasso paintings and sculptures that the reader’s one serious complaint about this book is that photos of individual works discussed are not always included in this volume or do not appear on the same page on which they are so artfully deconstructed. Mr. Richardson leaves us not only with a deep appreciation of Picasso’s Promethean ambition and prodigious fecundity, but also with a shrewd understanding of his tumultuous, subversive and often disturbing art.More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God





fertile (REPRODUCTION)
adjective
1 describes animals or plants that are able to produce (a lot of) young or fruit:
People get less fertile as they get older.
NOTE: The opposite is infertile.

2 describes a seed or egg that is able to develop into a new plant or animal


I wouldn't want to call him a liar, but he certainly has a fecund imagination.



fecund
adjective FORMAL
1 able to produce a lot of crops, fruit, babies, young animals, etc:
fecund nature/soil

2 active and productive:
a fecund career/imagination

fecundity noun [U] FORMAL

fecund

Line breaks: fec¦und
Pronunciation: /ˈfɛk(ə)nd, ˈfiːk-/

ADJECTIVE

  • 1Producing or capable of producing an abundance of offspring or new growth; highly fertile:a lush and fecund garden
  • 1.1Producing many new ideas:her fecund imagination
  • 1.2• technical Capable of bearing children.

Derivatives

fecundity[fe・cun・di・ty] 

音記号[fikʌ'ndəti]

[名][U]
1 多産性, (特に雌の動物の)多産能力;肥沃(ひよく).

2 (才能の)豊かさ.
fecundity

Pronunciation: /fɪˈkʌndɪti/
NOUN

Origin

late Middle English: from French fécond or Latinfecundus.
fertility
noun [U]
a fertility symbol
declining fertility rates

fertilize, UK USUALLY fertilise
verb [T]
to cause an egg or seed to start to develop into a new young animal or plant by joining it with a male cell:
Bees fertilize the flowers by bringing pollen.
Once an egg is fertilized by the sperm, it becomes an embryo.

fertilization, UK USUALLY fertilisation
noun [U]
In humans, fertilization is more likely to occur at certain times of the month.
alchemy /alchemist千年前舊式化學,阿拉伯追求將廉價金屬轉為貴重金屬(Transmutation of base metals into gold.);隨著這種過程,人也從出生時的基本,逐漸在性靈上發展、發現,甚至於取得魔術般能力,這有如再生(Jung心理學將這種追求渾圓、完全的過程,稱為"individulation",經驗的一些階段就稱為"archetypes"--最早從孤立無援的孤兒"Orphan"到有神助的魔術師"Magician"。這樣的轉型就是"alchemy")。 組織中的人"being"一直懼怕--而變化更是懼怕的引擎,使人們更怕。

The Pop Alchemist
追求長生不老之藥; 文藝復興期相信上帝以化學方式創造世界,所以舊式化學成為了解宇宙構成的線索。


The Alchemy of Fear, How to Break the Corporate Trance and Create Your
Company's Successful Future by Kay Gilley
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750699094/learningorg
Newton was an alchemist.
The authors discovered that all of them--young and old alike--had endured intense, often traumatic, experiences that transformed them and became the source of their distinctive leadership abilities. Bennis and Thomas call these shaping experiences "crucibles," after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold.


lead sb by the nose, wily, prequel to “Walden.” , excerpt


By JOHN PIPKIN
Reviewed by BRENDA WINEAPPLE
This novel of a young Thoreau setting fire to 300 acres of Concord forest is in effect a wily prequel to “Walden.”




The fifth book in the series introduces 1,120 words and 80 idioms (adding up to the 1,200 items mentioned in the title), giving readers an opportunity to learn important words and idioms in business-related English concerning general topics ranging from management strategies to finance and banking matters through interesting excerpts from articles, mainly from The Economist. Three compact discs are included.


Taiwan actress Stephanie Hsiao will play a wily Cupid on TV in excerpts from the Peking Opera "Matchmaker." Acclaimed as the "most beautiful woman in Taiwan ..



Bourgeois also had the advantage of a long life: from 1911, when she was born in Paris into a family of tapestry dealers and restorers, to 2010, when she died in New York at the age of 98, a wily, celebrated art star. That’s seven years more than Picasso had and, like him, she worked almost to the end.


Give the wily Mr Aso credit, too, for leading the opposition by the nose since he came to office on September 24th.


lead sb by the nose INFORMAL
to control someone and make them do exactly what you want them to do

wily
adjective
(of a person) clever, having a very good understanding of situations, possibilities and people, and often willing to use tricks to achieve an aim:
a wily politician
See also wiles.



wi·ly ('pronunciation
adj.-li·er-li·est.
Full of wiles; cunning.

excerpt Show phonetics
noun [C]
a short part taken from a speech, book, film, etc:
An excerpt from her new thriller will appear in this weekend's magazine.

excerpt Show phonetics
verb [T] MAINLY US
This passage of text has been excerpted from her latest novel.

紐約時報
Cloak and Dollar Oversight 
It is time to bring the almighty dollar in from the cold as a principal agent in the wily art of avoiding intelligence oversight.
稍深

The surest way to track power on Capitol Hill is to follow the money through the precincts of “the old bulls” — the ranking committee appropriators who paw the floor at any threat to their authority. All the more interesting, then, that the incoming House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, would risk their ire by forming a select committee to force the two discordant spheres of intelligence committees — budget wielders and policy watchdogs — to find common ground.
For decades, rival committees and egos have been at the heart of Congress’s failure to effectively oversee the government’s mass of overlapping spy agencies. The results have been so bad that the 9/11 commission said they contributed to the lack of preparedness for the terrorist attacks...



Books of The Times

More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God




He was a Nietzschean shaman who regarded art as a mysterious, magical force, offering the possibility of exorcism and transfiguration; a chameleon who effortlessly moved back and forth between Cubism and classicism, irony and sentimentality, cruelty and tenderness; a wily, self-mythologizing sorcerer who inhaled history, ideas and a cornucopia of styles with fierce, promiscuous abandon — all toward the end of exploding conventional ways of looking at the world and remaking that world anew.



top-heavy, Do outside (or out of) the box

Nearby hangs another bit of brilliant upgrading: the 36 airy, tragi-comedic images of “The Fragile.” All were originally sketchbook doodles — Munch-scream faces, top-heavy women or heads. Digitally printed on fabric, these images were supplemented with spider’s legs, nipples and so forth in pale red or blue dye. Bourgeois did this for seven editions, meaning that every print in every edition is unique.




America's corporate world has grown top-heavy thanks to the dominance of large firms. This stagnation in competition isn't hurting profits, but workers' wages instead
Workers benefit when firms must compete aggressively for them
ECONOMIST.COM



The genre represents only about 1.2% of recorded and streamed albums sold—compared with the 26.8% for rock and 22.6% for hip-hop, rhythm and blues combined
Playing outside the box
ECONOMIST.COM

頭重腳輕

top-heavy 

Pronunciation: /tɒpˈhɛvi/ 


ADJECTIVE

1Disproportionately heavy at the top so as to be in danger of toppling:double-decker carriages proved to be unsafe and top-heavy
2(Of an organization) having a disproportionately large number of senior administrative staff:a top-heavy bureaucracy



think outside (or out of) the box




informal Think in an original or creative way.

2017年9月22日 星期五

fart, randy, rack, papal bul, flatulence, fire and brimstone, grizzled old farts, alimentary canal


NPR
Cows warm the planet because their flatulence releases methane, a greenhouse gas. But, there’s cool news -- scientists have found a way to breed less-gassy cattle. Do you have a question about cows and greenhouse gases? Drop it in the comments, and we might use it in a Facebook Live at 11 a.m. ET.



Eggs without yolks are actually far more common than you might think, and have earned a number of nicknames from "witch egg" to "fart egg."

Otherwise known as a "fart egg."
ATLASOBSCURA.COM


"Email, as someone once said, is the body odour of the office, but group emails are offensive corporate flatulence"



“If a character is yacking about flatulence, making randy remarks to a member of the opposite sex or being baffled by simple things, that character is likely to have some gray hair,” writes Neil Genzlinger.

Given how badly the world has fared in trying to solve many of its biggest problems, it is debatable whether the best source of advice is grizzled veterans. But the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations, which distilled their wisdom in a report published on October 16th, has done its best http://econ.st/1eC8aos
 
A youth wasted on video games unexpectedly paid off for me in an assignment to profile the old dogs behind the newest gaming company: Innovative Leisure. Operating under the theory that the 99-cent download is the new quarter drop, a team of programmers from the original video game company, Atari, have reunited to make a new generation of games for the iPad. TIME gathered these self-described “grizzled old farts” together in the Supercade, a private museum in Pasadena, Calif., to photograph them alongside some of their greatest hits from the Golden Age of video games, including Asteroids, Battlezone, and Missile Command. Gone are their rockstar days of Friday beer bashes and weekend-long “gamestorming” retreats on the California coast, complete with naked hot-tub parties, fat doobies, food fights and broken furniture. Yet they retain every ounce of their countercultural creativity, as well as a youthful enthusiasm for inventing new games, new mechanisms of gameplay—possibly even new genres. Seamus Blackley, the owner of Supercade and the impresario behind the new company, calls them “the Jedi Council of video-game design.”




He defecated ( two of clubs ) on asalmon burger ( king of clubs ) and captured his flatulence ( queen of clubs ) in aballoon ( six of spades ).



放屁放屁
Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals. The mixture of gases is known as flatus in medical speak, informally as a fart, or simply (in American English) gas, and is expelled from the rectum in a process colloquially referred to as "passing gas", "breaking wind" or "farting". Flatus is brought to the rectum by the same peristaltic process which causes feces to descend from the large intestine. The noises commonly associated with flatulence are caused by the vibration of the anal sphincter, and occasionally by the closed buttocks.

The Papal Belvedere.jpg

German peasants greet the fire and brimstone from a papal bull of Pope Paul III in Martin Luther's 1545 Depictions of the Papacy.


flatulence

(′flach·ə·ləns) (medicine) Excessive intestinal gas.

[形]
1 〈食物が〉腹にガスを生じさせる;〈病気などが〉鼓腸性の;〈人が〉ガスで腹の張った.
2 〈言葉・表現が〉大げさな,空疎な.
flat・u・lence
[名] 
flat・u・len・cy
[名] 
flat・u・lent・ly
[副] 

flatulence

Syllabification: (flat·u·lence)
Pronunciation: /ˈflaCHələns/



noun

  • the accumulation of gas in the alimentary canal:foods that may cause flatulence
  • inflated or pretentious speech or writing; pomposity:the flatulence characterizing his writings

Derivatives

flatulency
noun

alimentary canal


 
(口から肛門までの)消化管.

bull, papal :教宗詔書;教宗訓諭:為教宗所頒發的最隆重之文告;通常以「某某主教,天主眾僕之僕」字句開始;如任命主教的文告即是。拉丁語原文為 Bulla ,指鉛封而言。教宗使用的公文程式均為拉丁文,共分五種: (1) 詔書 Bulla (2) 自動詔書 Motu Proprio (3) 通諭 Littera Encyclica (4) 宗座簡函 Brevis (5) 牧函 Littera Pastoralis
papal letter :教宗文告:包括教宗的憲章、通諭、詔書、答書、書簡等。

grizzled

Syllabification: (griz·zled)
Pronunciation: /ˈgrizəld/






adjective

  • having or streaked with gray hair:grizzled hair

Origin:

late Middle English: from the adjective grizzle1 + -ed1



fart

Syllabification: (fart)
Pronunciation: /färt/
informal
Translate fart | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

verb


[no object]
  • emit gas from the anus.
  • (fart about/around) waste time on silly or trivial things.

noun

  • an emission of gas from the anus.
  • a boring or contemptible person:he was such an old fart

Origin:

Old English (recorded in the verbal noun feorting 'farting')


brímstòne[brím・stòne]

[名]
1 [U]((古))硫黄(sulfur)
fire and brimstone
地獄の業火.
2 《昆虫》ヤマキチョウ(brimstone butterfly).
BURNSTONE




randy

Syllabification: (rand·y)
Pronunciation: /ˈrandē/
Translate randy | into German | into Italian



adjective (randier, randiest)

  • 1 informal sexually aroused or excited.
  • 2Scottish archaic (of a person) having a rude, aggressive manner.




Derivatives






randily


Pronunciation: /-dəlē/
adverb





randiness

noun

Origin:

mid 17th century: perhaps from obsolete rand 'rant, rave', from obsolete Dutch randen 'to rant'




yak2

Syllabification: (yak)
Pronunciation: /yak/
(also yack or yackety-yak)
informal
Translate yak | into French | into Italian | into Spanish



noun

[in singular]
  • a trivial or unduly persistent conversation.

verb (yaks, yakking, yakked)

[no object]
  • talk at length about trivial or boring subjects.

Origin:

1950s: imitative

2017年9月20日 星期三

bong, stoner, done for, done thing, bongo


BBC Breakfast


Big Ben's famous bongs will sound for the last time next Monday before major conservation works - regular bongs won't restart until 2021!



Stuart Hall: ‘He was incredibly well mannered. He wouldn’t raise his voice because that wasn’t the done thing.’ Photograph: David Levene

World’s oldest bongs discovered in Russia

Archaeologists have uncovered 2,400-year-old golden bongs used by royalty to smoke cannabis and opium in Russia. The bongs were uncovered in a secret chamber covered with clay by construction workers during…
DANGEROUSMINDS.NET



Dictionary: bon·go1 (bŏng'gō, bông'-pronunciation
n.pl. -gos.
A large, forest-dwelling antelope (Boocercus eurycerus) of central Africa, having a reddish-brown coat with white stripes and spirally twisted horns.
[Probably of Bantu origin; akin to Lingala mongu, antelope.]

bon·go2 (bŏng'gō, bông'-pronunciation
n.pl. -gos or -goes.
One of a pair of connected tuned drums that are played by beating with the hands.
[American Spanish bongó, probably of West African origin.]

n. - 非洲產大羚羊
2.
n. - 一種用手指敲的小鼓
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ボンゴ

Plot summary forExpresso Bongo (1959)

Johnny Jackson, a sleazy talent agent, discovers teenager Bert Rudge singing in a coffee house. Despite Bert's protestation that he really is only interested in playing bongos, Johnny starts him on the road to stardom. The deal they cut, however, is highly exploitative of the young singer, and their relationship soon begins to go bad. Written by George S. Davis {mgeorges@prodigy.net}
Pop manager Johnny Jackson ducks and dives in the 1950's Soho of coffee bars, strip clubs and clip joints. With singer Bert Rudge he realises he is on to a winner. Renaming him Bongo Herbert and trickily launching his career on network television, he seems to have hit the jackpot. But Johnny is both greedy and naive, and having a successful artiste is new to him. He is soon out of his depth, with only his stripper girlfriend Masie King always there with support. Written by Jeremy Perkins {jwp@aber.ac.uk}





done

Definition of done in English:

VERB

past participle of do1.

ADJECTIVE

Back to top  
2No longer happening or existing:her hunting days were done
3British informal Socially acceptable:therapy was not the done thing then

EXCLAMATION

Back to top  
Used to indicate that the speaker accepts the terms of an offer:‘I’ll give ten to one he misses by a mile!’ called Reilly. ‘Done!’, said the conductor
Phrases


a done deal


1
An agreement that has been finalized:although a few details still had to be worked out, the settlement was a done deal





done for

2
informal In a situation so bad that it is impossible to get out:if the guard sees us, we’re done for
Image result for Honoré Daumier LAFAYETTE DONE FOR





 bong

NOUN




low-pitchedresonant sound of the kind made by a large bell:the clock had struck the hour and it was only three bongs

VERB

[NO OBJECT]Back to top  
(Especially of a bellemit a low-pitchedresonant sound.

Origin

1920s (originally US): imitative.







stoner
Pronunciation: /ˈstəʊnə /

Definition of stoner in English:




NOUN

1informal A person who regularly takes drugs, especially cannabis.
2[IN COMBINATION] British A person or thing that weighs a specified number of stone:couple of 16-stoners
Waiting to inhale: the stoner movie is back


Phil Hoad: What is it that we love about cinema’s stoners? As Inherent...
THEGUARDIAN.COM|由 PHIL HOAD 上傳