The Atlantic, May 2013

choi

(1) Ethan Devine, The Slacker Trap. Japan's 1990s bust permanently undermined the country's workforce and corporate culture. America should take notice.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... lacker-trap/309285/

(a) Excerpt in the wondow of the print: In 1992, 80 percent of young Japanese workers had regular jos. By 2006, half were temps. [(Over the same period, the portion of young Americans working as temps stayed put at one-third.)]

(b) Quote:

"Even if it rains jobs tomorrow, America’s current bout of high unemployment is already the longest in its postwar history. And youth unemployment is twice the national average.

"America is not destined to repeat Japan’s fate. For starters, Japan’s real-estate bubble was much larger than America’s. And its demographics are far worse; a shrinking population has undermined economic growth both arithmetically and psychologically. Making matters worse, Japan’s conformist culture ostracizes displaced workers. Any gap on a candidate’s résumé is viewed with deep suspicion, so temporary job loss in many cases leads to chronic unemployment.

(c) Note:
(i) film director Hiroki IWABUCHI  映画監督 岩淵 弘樹

his 2007 documentary: Freeter's Distress  遭難フリーター
* sōnan 遭難 【そうなん】 (n,v): "disaster; shipwreck; accident; being stranded"
* フリーター  katakana for "freeter"

フリーター  (n) (abbr[eviation] from FREElance and arbeitER):
"young people subsisting on part-time work; one whose livelihood is provided by part-time work"
Jim Breen's online Japanese dictionary
* German to English dictionary:

arbeiter (noun masculine): "worker, laborer"
* a video clip from the documentary:
http://www.sounan.info/

Toward the end of the video, he screamed (as shown in kanji): "大変だ, 大変だ!"

taihen 大変 【たいへん】 (adj) "(3) serious; grave; dreadful; terrible; (4) difficult; hard"

(ii) "He slurps absently."

absent (adj): "lost in thought : not attentive"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absent
(iii) "So Iwabuchi’s film was an unwelcome comedown."

comedown (n): "a descent in rank or dignity"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comedown

See the two examples in the Web dictionary.

(iv) "Although the green shoots of the mid-aughts didn’t exactly wither, neither did they blossom into a full-blown recovery."
* aught (n; etymology: alteration (resulting from false division of a naught) of naught; First Known Use 1872):
"zero"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aught
* mid-aughts means "mid 2000s" or the middle of 2000 to 2009. The last two digits of that decade are two zeros--thus "aughts."

(v) "That generational problem, while far more advanced in Japan, is not unlike our own."

In US, that generation is called Millennials, who face a dicey situation. The European counterparts fare even worse.
(vi) "Naoki SHINADA, an economist at the Development Bank of Japan"
* 品田 直樹
* Development Bank of Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_Bank_of_Japan
(a private bank wholly own by Japanese government; formed in 1951)

(vii) The article quotes MIT economist David Autor as saying many companies "don’t make lots of little reorganizations each time things get slightly out of true.”

true (n): "the quality or state of being accurate (as in alignment or adjustment) —used in the phrases in true and out of true"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/true

(viii) "Kyoji FUKAO, an economist at Hitotsubashi University"
* 深尾 京司

fukai 深い 【ふかい】 (adj): "deep"
* Hitotsubashi University 一橋 大学 (a national university, located at 一橋 neighborhood--near palace--of Tokyo).  
(The "hitotsu" is the Japanese pronunciation of 一, which rigorously should be written as 一つ--to distinguish the Chinese pronunciation "ichi," 一 not followed by "tsu" つ)

一橋: "東京都千代田区の町。もしくは、その由来である日本橋川に架かる橋"
translation: "A neighborhood in 千代田区. Or, its namesake: the bridge over 日本橋川"--namely the celebrated 日本橋.

choi

(2) Scott Stossel, Thanks, Mom. Revisiting the famous Harvard study of what makes people thrive.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... /thanks-mom/309287/

Note:
(a) George E Valiant, Triumphs of Experience; The men of the Harvard Grant Study. Belknap Press, Sept 24, 2012.
(b) Grant Syudy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study
(c) The study is named after its funder, Mr William T Grant.

William Thomas Grant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Grant
(1876-1972; in 1906 opened his first "WT Grant Co 25 Cent Store" in Lynn, Massachusetts, which grew to a chain of almost 1,200 stores, before it failed in 1975)

choi

(3) Daniel Sarewitz and Roger Pielke Jr, Learning to Live With Fossil Fuels.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... ossil-fuels/309295/

Quote:

"We already know that carbon can be removed immediately at its principal emissions sources: coal- and gas-fired power plants. Various chemical processes, some of which are already widely adopted for industrial applications (such as producing hydrogen and ammonia), can remove up to 90 percent of power-plant emissions, although they have yet to be deployed on a large scale. And while capturing carbon from coal plants is estimated to raise the cost of generating electricity by between 30 and 80 percent, costs can be reduced by recycling the captured carbon dioxide for commercial purposes, such as pumping it into oil fields to recover more oil, a technique in use since the 1970s.

My comment: There is no need to read the rest of the article, which talks about capturing CO2 from the atmosphere or storing underground, which are experimental.