。。。は平素よりこれを実践し、その研究熱心さは私達の知るところではある。しかし、より直接的な画技向上のためには、対象把握と描写力、画面構成や色彩の法といった基本的な技術の修練が必要である。この修練のために、裸体裸婦は最適なモチーフと言える。
かつてギリシア神話を題材に制作した画家は、今後もこれをテーマとしてゆくと言う。そのために基礎的な技術力アップの重要性を再認識し、今回人体裸婦を中心とした展覧会を開くに至った。克服すべき課題を残しつつも、制作の原点に立ち帰り、技術向上に取り組む姿勢は評価に価する。新たな第一歩となる意義ある発表に称賛を贈りつつ、今後の作品に期待を寄せるものとする。

The above literature has been diversifying of late in the wake of previous decades’ focus on interdisciplinary methods, literary turns, postcolonial, feminist and poststructuralist critiques in the social sciences, borrowing heavily from the humanities in doing so. Another, more recent impact on methods texts is the impact of ‘new technologies’ or ‘new media’; information and communication technologies (ICTs), the internet, the web, and automated data-gathering and analytical tools, and electronic database. This time-sensitive and growing literature roughly corresponds in terms of the tripartite division outlined so far; how-to books, discipline-based, or more abstract methodological exegeses.
All aim to guide research students through what is an emergent terrain circumscribed by various digital media (the web, ‘social media’, mobile communications devices, and older computer-mediated communications like email and discussion forums), the impact of ICTs on conventional research practices (automated research tools, web-mapping and data-mining software for searching the web, general-purpose search engines), and even new notions of the research field (virtual or cyberspatial domains), research subjects and topics (avatars to computer games, to simulations), to specific sorts of internet-based research tools and digitalized research techniques. Not only have these developments re-opened older methodological debates, but they have also upped the ante here in terms of the appropriate role, added value, and scientific status of the internet, ICTs, virtuality, and other mediated fieldwork scenarios in academe.

Prescriptive and proscriptive ethical duties and obligations for the academic researching of cyberspace or the ‘internet’ are not significantly different to those applying to traditional qualitative and/or quantitative research in human and animal communities. There are areas of consensus about about right and wrong and good and bad in relation to researching and researchers. In the UK there are also legal considerations particularly in any research concerning the process of establishing and developing human relationships online. There are also well-established research centres and journals exploring internet and cyberspace ethics and many academic institutions have publicly published their own guidelines.

Dirty alliances between governments and media companies and their handshakes behind closed doors damage journalists’ role as public watchdogs and prevent them from scrutinizing cronyism and abuses of power. And those who benefit from a continuation of corrupt practices also systematically seek to prevent serious investigative journalism.
The problem is simple: one need only follow the money. Turkey’s mainstream media is owned by moguls who operate in other major sectors of the economy like telecommunications, banking and construction. Since only a few large TV channels and newspapers make profits, the proprietors tend to keep them as bait for the government, which needs media managers who are submissive to the will of politicians.
It’s not possible to conduct serious journalism in such a polluted system. These conflicts of interest have transformed Turkey’s major newsrooms into prisons: coverage of economic corruption in Turkey today is almost zero. There are a few tiny, brave independent outlets, which break stories that are critical of the government, but these stories are hardly ever picked up by the mainstream media and therefore have little impact.

ナニワヤで買い物するたびに、気になっていることがあった。「今月は XXX がレシートサービス日です」、「換金は XXX まで有効です」というレシートの記載です。・・・何だろう？って。ずーっと不思議だったのさ。
で、調べてみたら。月のうちの、一番、お客さんが少なかった日を選んで、そのレシートを持っていくと、消費税を抜いた金額の半額分をキャッシュバックしてくれるとゆー話が！！！でも、そんなの、本当にそうなら、もっと知れ渡ってるハズでしょう？？？
「ガセなんじゃなかろーか・・・」そう思いながらも、レシートを探してみたら・・・あったのさっ！！！
ちょっと嬉しかったです。

Libraries around the country are facing budget cuts as local governments struggle with the aftermath of the recession – and in many cases that means fewer branches or services. But in the recession more people than ever relied on libraries for frugal entertainment options and to search for employment opportunities.
However, at the same time, libraries are facing an identity crisis: As the Internet has become the primary way people gather information, the traditional “building filled with books” model is less relevant to their lives.
As a result, libraries are really transforming themselves into technology hubs.
Pew’s research shows that while many patrons still want to use libraries to borrow books, they’re also increasingly thinking of them as a community space that enables access to technology and a source of digital literacy for all different demographics.

The internet has already had a major impact on how people find and access information, and now the rising popularity of e-books is helping transform Americans’ reading habits. In this changing landscape, public libraries are trying to adjust their services to these new realities while still serving the needs of patrons who rely on more traditional resources. In a new survey of Americans’ attitudes and expectations for public libraries, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that many library patrons are eager to see libraries’ digital services expand, yet also feel that print books remain important in the digital age.
The availability of free computers and internet access now rivals book lending and reference expertise as a vital service of libraries.

As the Pew report suggests, our predictions of the rise and fall of dominant powers tend to be driven more by popular excitability than by historical logic. For example in the 1930s, most people believed that Germany would overtake the U.S. In the 1960s it was obvious the U.S.S.R. would do so, and in the 1980s Japan’s rise to global dominance seemed inevitable.
There are however few cases in history, and none in modern history, of a less open power replacing a more open one. This is probably not a coincidence. The great strengths of the U.S., and fundamental to its rise, include its ability to adjust rapidly and its enormous creativity. It is hard to believe these qualities will become less important in the future.
China, on the other hand, faces tremendous challenges that will determine how successful its 30 years of economic reform will have been. This is not to say that China cannot meet the challenges, but it does mean that the jury is still out.
Strange as it may seem, many years of miracle growth are always the “easy” part for a poor country. The tough part is usually the subsequent adjustment needed to accommodate the changes generated over the miracle years. Few countries have done so successfully.

Just weeks before he demonstrates whether his campaign’s blend of grass-roots appeal and big media-budget know-how has converted the American electorate, Sen. Barack Obama has shown he’s already won over the nation’s brand builders. He’s been named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008.
Mr. Obama won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors gathered here at the Association of National Advertisers‘ annual conference. He edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. The rest of the shortlist, selected by Ad Age’s editorial staff, was rounded out by Nike, Coors and Sen. John McCain.

Carnegie launched a revolutionary plan in 2006 to build the first global think tank. Since then it has transformed an American institution into one well prepared to take on the challenges of a globalized world. At Carnegie’s international centers, local experts produce unrivaled work on critical national, regional, and global issues, collaborating closely with colleagues across the world. The result provides capitals and global institutions with a deeper understanding of the circumstances shaping policy choices worldwide as well as a flow of new approaches to policy problems.
Today, Carnegie has research centers in Beijing, Beirut, Brussels, Moscow, and Washington as well as a program in Almaty. It is supervised by an international board of trustees and its research activities are overseen by a global management group. More than two-thirds of its current scholars were born outside the United States, nearly all speak languages other than their native tongues, and most have had experience in government. The global think tank has websites in Arabic, Chinese, English, and Russian.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions, does not engage in lobbying, and is not involved in ideological advocacy. Instead, it relies on its independence and the quality of its scholarship to make notable contributions to national policymaking. It welcomes scholars with diverse political views and is acknowledged to be a centrist institution within the American political spectrum.

Part of the reason for the concerns that my blog has been hacked for political reasons may be the wide-spread belief abroad that no debate is permitted within China about the urgent need for economic reform. In fact this isn’t true. The discussion within China is quite vigorous, and the misperception is probably fueled by the belief – spread often enough, it seems, by China bulls – that the debate about the weaknesses in the Chinese economy is largely a debate between foreigners and Chinese, with some bulls even arguing that it is a debate between those who wish China ill and those who wish it well. The implication, of course, is that only someone who is incapable of understanding China – i.e. a foreigner – could possibly believe that China has problems.
But this is just silly. I will ignore the irony involved in a foreigner’s claiming that it is precisely because they are foreign that it is impossible for the foreign skeptics correctly to understand the Chinese economy, Chinese culture, and the thinking of the Chinese people (those inscrutable orientals!). I suspect the reason they find China so different and alien is because they have little experience of other developing countries, and know almost nothing either about developing countries outside East Asia or about economic history.

In 2009, TED, an organizer of highly respected conferences on “ideas worth spreading,” threw its doors open, allowing anyone, anywhere, to manage and stage local, independent events under its banner. In the next few years, an army of volunteers produced some 5,000 such TEDx events in more than 130 countries. The brand extension and new content TED gained through these gatherings would have cost millions to produce by traditional means. But they came with a risk: TED no longer completely controlled its brand, and an extended community of people who didn’t work for TED were now capable of damaging it. And when TEDx licensees began putting dubious pseudoscientific presentations on their programs, that risk became a real threat. The blogosphere trashed TED for producing dumb content and questioned its overall credibility.

The world is changing and we must change with it, innovate, and rush on to the next frontier and then the next one after that – forever in a rapid, dizzying traipse into the very near future. No time to stop.
And sure, it’s inevitable. That’s true. But we should be cognizant of what is lost, which old things are traded in for the new and shiny.

There are more inappropriate venues President Obama could have chosen than Amazon.com’s Chattanooga warehouse for his speech on creating good jobs on Tuesday, but not many.
Amazon is remarkably efficient in terms of employing few people per sales dollar. It employs just 14 employees per $10 million in revenue compared to 47 workers the same amount at an average physical store, based on U.S. Census data.
So while Amazon’s gaining a greater share of retail spending is a boon for its shareholders, it only exacerbates unemployment because jobs added at Amazon yield a net job loss for the country.

Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you.

… readers had learned that books could be cheap if ordered online, while the nation’s bookstores were becoming showrooms where some consumers browsed then ordered elsewhere, sometimes from their phones right outside (or even inside) the store. Something needed fixing, to be sure.
Your local bookstore can’t survive as a showroom. The Justice Department apparently wants you to have cheap book prices above all else. But isn’t there a bigger picture?

The terms of ordinary language fall into the same classes as those of science: they stand for things, classes of things, parts, or qualities, or activities of things; but they are far less precise in their signification. As long as popular thought is vague its language must be vague; nor is it desirable too strictly to correct the language whilst the thought is incorrigible. Much of the effect of poetry and eloquence depends upon the elasticity and indirect suggestiveness of common terms. Even in reasoning upon some subjects, it is a mistake to aim at an unattainable precision. It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong. In the criticism of manners, of fine art, or of literature, in politics, religion and moral philosophy, what we are anxious to say is often far from clear to ourselves; and it is better to indicate our meaning approximately, or as we feel about it, than to convey a false meaning, or to lose the warmth and colour that are the life of such reflections. It is hard to decide whether more harm has been done by sophists who take a base advantage of the vagueness of common terms, or by honest paralogists (if I may use the word) who begin by deceiving themselves with a plausible definiteness of expression, and go on to propagate their delusions amongst followers eager for systematic insight but ignorant of the limits of its possibility.

The 1859 drilling of the first commercial oil well by Colonel Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania marked a coming change in the way the world would use energy. Countries across the globe are now highly dependent upon oil, especially in the transportation sector.
Oil is a finite resource formed over millions of years. Its discovery and extraction are highly complex endeavors. In spite of advancing levels of technical sophistication in the oil industry and hundreds of billions of dollars of additional investment, discovery rates of new oilfields have been falling, reserves are being quickly depleted, and there are signs that world production may be beginning to plateau. These facts lead to the conclusion that the world will reach global peak oil, the point at which world oil production peaks and thereafter begins an irreversible decline, at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Peak oil’s effects will be considerable. It will lead to higher global prices as petrochemical feedstocks become more expensive and more land is devoted to food for fuel at the expense of food for consumption. Modern transportation, a sector extremely dependent upon oil, will be significantly impacted. The increasing scarcity of oil could also have substantial effects on international affairs as energy issues become more prevalent in national security concerns. The adoption of more belligerent foreign policies may be the consequence.

Demand for energy and associated services, to meet social and economic development and improve human welfare and health, is increasing. All societies require energy services to meet basic human needs (e.g., lighting, cooking, space comfort, mobility and communication) and to serve productive processes. Since approximately 1850, global use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) has increased to dominate energy supply, leading to a rapid growth in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the provision of energy services have contributed significantly to the historic increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations. Most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
Recent data confirm that consumption of fossil fuels accounts for the majority of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Emissions continue to grow and CO₂ concentrations had increased to over 390 ppm, or 39% above preindustrial levels, by the end of 2010.

Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (Summary for Policymakers and Technical Summary)

内容もさることながら、文章に工夫がたくさんありました。特に「ここに文章が入ります」の下りなどはさすが学研だと唸らされるものがありました。
また、カッコだけが半角だったり、さぞや手間をかけていることが伺えられます。作者のこだわりというものでしょうか。さすが学研です。
表の罫線も一種類で揃えず、いろいろな太さにしてあり、ただの表なのに見飽きません。かなり手が込んだ作りになっています。これも学研のなせる技かと思い、ここでも唸らせられました。
小数点の表現を文章によって変えるといった読者を飽きさせない工夫には感心いたしました。学研ならではの表現だと思います。
文章が途中で途切れているところもあり、その先を読者に想像させる楽しさが盛り込まれています。かつて、NHK教育チャネルで放送されていた小学生向けの道徳ドラマのようで、主人公はこのあとどう思ったでしょうか、という授業を彷彿とさせられました。教材作成においては右に出るものはいないと言われる学研ならではの手法です。
このほか、読者を唸らせる表現が多数あり、もはや野菜づくりなどどうでも良くなってしまいました。

Today the President of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program.  But rather than thank Edward Snowden, the President laughably attempted to criticize him while claiming that there was a plan all along, “before Edward Snowden.”  The simple fact is that without Snowden’s disclosures, no one would know about the programs and no reforms could take place.  As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently once stated, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”  Luckily for the citizens of the world, Edward Snowden is one of those “people of good conscience” who did not “remain silent”, just as Pfc Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg refused to remain silent.
Ironically, the Department of Justice is betraying two key principles that President Obama championed when he ran for office ­ transparency and protection for whistleblowers. During his 2008 campaign, the President supported Whistleblowers, claiming their “acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.”  Yet his administration has prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers than all other administrations combined.
Moreover, the US government’s hypocrisy over Snowden’s right to seek asylum has been stunning.  America offers asylum to dissidents, whistleblowers and political refugees without regard to other governments opposition all the time.  For example, the US has accepted 3,103 of their own asylees, 1,222 from Russia and 1,762 from Venezuela – http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2011/ois_yb_2011.pdf.
Today was a victory of sorts for Edward Snowden and his many supporters.  As Snowden has stated, his biggest concern was if he blew the whistle and change did not occur.  Well reforms are taking shape, and for that, the President and people of the United States and around the world owe Edward Snowden a debt of gratitude.

以前の災害記録と、今回の東日本大震災で撮られたビデオとの間には大きな違いがある。それは今回の大震災では、アマチュアによって数多くのデジタルビデオが各地で撮影されたことだ。
今回の震災は、デジタルAVネット時代が初めて遭遇した大災害と言える。日本ではデジタルビデオカメラはもちろん、多くのデジカメにもハイビジョンムービー機能が普及し、さらに携帯電話やスマートフォンでも手軽にビデオ撮影ができるようになった。また、ビデオ記録は傷つきやすいテープではなく、比較的堅牢でコンパクトなメモリーカードに録画可能になった。
こうした背景もあって、東日本大震災では多くの被災者が巨大津波の実際をムービーに収めている。東北各地で撮られたビデオの数は多い。それら災害ビデオを見た時の衝撃は一生忘れられない。多くのビデオが想像を絶する津波の来襲を被災者の目線で記録していたのだ。
津波の襲来によって日常の街が崩壊し、濁流に呑まれてゆく一部始終が録画されたビデオを見ると、これは本当に現実なのか！？……と今でも目を疑ってしまう。
これらの災害ビデオはネットの動画サイトにアップロードされ、世界中に公開された。中には興味本位のアクセスもあっただろうが、世界中の人々に津波被害の甚大さと日本が置かれた状況をリアルに伝えたことは間違いない。放送局の編集チェックなしに、ここまで多くの災害映像が世界に公開されたのは初めてのことだろう。

All children should be free to grow up in a world where they are allowed to question, doubt, think freely, and reach their own conclusions about what they believe.

I was a humanist without knowing it for many years before I found the Association – when I did, it was like finding a sort of home. Here were people with a range of views that matched my own, who shared my respect for life in all its forms, and who, above all, did not try to bully other people to follow their beliefs.

The invention of the electric telegraph changed the speed at which information could be transmitted and there was a new sense of everyone around the world being interconnected. The New York Herald called it “a new species of consciousness”, while the New York Tribune described the landscape full of telegraph wires as “a net-work of nerves of iron wire, strung with lightning”. The parallels with the internet are many. “Some worried that the telegraph would be the death of newspapers,” James Gleick observes in this fascinating book, but “newspapers could not wait to put the new technology to work . . . The relationship between the telegraph and the newspaper was symbiotic.” Some newspapers even called themselves the Telegraph. But in time the telegraph would be eclipsed by the “electrical speaking telephone”. Nobody called their newspaper the Telephone.

• （安倍晋三首相が内閣法制局長官に集団的自衛権行使の容認派である小松一郎駐フランス大使を充てる人事を固めたと報じられていることについて）　歴代の政権ですら「集団的自衛権の行使は認められない」といってきたものを、法制局長官の首を強制的にすげ替えてでも容認するというやり方は絶対に許されない。
• 自衛権というが、日本の防衛ともアメリカの防衛とも無関係で、実際には、大国の無法な干渉、軍事介入の口実に使われてきた。
• 自衛隊がアメリカの海外での戦争に公然と武器をとって協力することができないとした歯止めをなくせば、海外でのアメリカの干渉戦争に自衛隊が一緒に武器をとって戦闘する戦争仲間になる道に進むことになる。