Economist, Nov 9, 2013

choi

(1) The Los Angeles aqueduct | A Hundred Years of Soggy Tubes; California’s largest city salutes the source of its growth.
http://www.economist.com/news/un ... d-years-soggy-tubes

Note:
(a)
(i) View only photos and a map in
Los Angeles Aqueduct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct
(the people of Los Angeles approved a US$1.5 million bond for the 'purchase of lands and water and the inauguration of work on the aqueduct;' The construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct effectively eliminated the Owens Valley as a viable farming community)

The encircling 九斷/段線 is the dried Owens Lake
(ii) The Story of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Department of Water and Power (DWP), City of Los Angeles, undated.
http://wsoweb.ladwp.com/Aqueduct/historyoflaa/

Quote:

"From the time that Los Angeles was first founded in 1769, the small settlement  had depended upon its own river for water. The 11 families that settled in the area dammed up the Los Angeles River and built canals to irrigate fields.

"the dedication of the Los Angeles Aqueduct on November 5, 1913

* There is no need to read the rest.
* Los Angeles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles
("Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese-born explorer, claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on Aug 2, 1769"/ The city was incorporated in 1850)

(b) "On November 5th[, 2013], at the aqueduct’s terminus in the San Fernando Valley, near the city’s northern tip, these efforts culminated in a re-enactment of the event itself, complete with period costumes, dodgy acting and questionable history (Theodore Roosevelt may have backed the project, but he did not attend its opening)."
(i) View the map only in
San Fernando Valley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fernando_Valley
(ii) Mission San Fernando Rey de España
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mis ... _Rey_de_Espa%C3%B1a
("founded on Sept 8, 1797 near the site of the first gold discovery in Alta California [in 1842 by Francisco Lopez], and was the seventeenth of the Spanish missions established in present-day California. Named for Saint Ferdinand, the mission is the namesake of the nearby city of San Fernando and the San Fernando Valley")

* Leon Wordenm California's REAL First Gold. COINage magazine, October 2005
http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhis ... den-coinage1005.htm
("The year was 1842. Both Californias — Alta and Baja — were part of Mexico, and Francisco Lopez was herding cattle" on Mar 9, 1842)
(ii) Ferdinand III of Castile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_III_of_Castile
(1199-1252; enthroned 1217; masterminding the most expansive campaign of Reconquista yet [against muslims]; canonized in 1671 by Pope Clement X)
(iii) Ferdinand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand
(a Germanic name;  Variants of the name include Fernando [and] Hernando in Spanish)
(iv) dodgy (adj): "chiefly British: QUESTIONABLE, SUSPICIOUS"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dodgy

(c) "The aqueduct, a 233-mile (375km) engineering marvel that transports water from the Owens Valley south-west through the Mojave desert to Los Angeles * * * It was this water, more than the car or any nebulous love of the suburb, that turbocharged the city’s vast westward sprawl; after annexing the valley in 1915, more than doubling its own size, a freshly watered Los Angeles marched relentlessly onwards, sucking up previously independent townships like Venice, Watts and Sawtelle. By 1930 the population had almost quadrupled, to 1.24m, in two decades, and Los Angeles had leapfrogged San Francisco to become California’s first (and America’s fifth) city. * * * the farmers [of Owen Valley] willingly sold their land."
(i) Owen Valley (still) has Owens River running through it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_River
(approximately 183 miles (295 km) long; "Owens River was first seen by American explorers. One of the first explorers was John C. Fremont, who led a cartographic expedition to the Owens Valley in 1845. His party included Kit Carson, Edward Kern and Richard Owens, the latter for whom the river, lake and valley are named")

Take notice of a map in this Wiki page, noting "Owens Lake (dry)," into which the River once emptied.
(ii) The Welsh surname Owens means son of Owen.

The Welsh surname Owen is "probably from the Welsh personal name Owain, probably a borrowing in Roman times of Latin Eugenius (see Eugene [“well born”])."
(iii) Mojave Desert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Desert
(the word is a shortened form of the name for themselves in their native language 'Hamakhaave', which means 'beside the water')
is Spanish spelling.

(d) "'Chinatown,' Roman Polanski’s masterpiece of fabulation"
(i) Chinatown (1974 film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film)
(set in 1937; for movie title, see section 3.3 Script)
(ii) fabulation (n): “the act of inventing or relating false or fantastic tales”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/fabulation

This Web dictionary does not supply etymology, but Oxford states, “from Latin fabulat- 'narrated as a fable.’”  

(e) “today half of the water carried by the aqueduct is used for environmental mitigation in the Owens Valley. Thanks partly to that, the aqueduct’s role in watering Los Angeles is shrinking: in a typical year it provides just a third of the city’s water. Most of the rest is imported from the Colorado river or from wetter parts of California. And a growing part comes from the city’s own resources: the DWP wants to reduce water imports by half over the next 12 years.”

Bettina Boxall, Coastal Panel Delays Action on Huntington Beach Desalination Plant’ Poseidon Resources offers to withdraw its application for further study after a long day of testimony and criticism from speakers and Coastal Commission members. Los Angeles Times, Nov 14, 2013
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-desal-20131114,0,7690306.story#axzz2l7iIns8m
(“Poseidon Resources — a small, privately held company that is building the nation's largest seawater desalination facility in Carlsbad in San Diego County — wants to construct a similar plant next to the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station”)

choi

(2) High-speed railways | Faster Than a Speeding Bullet; China’s new rail network, already the world’s longest, will soon stretch considerably farther.
http://www.economist.com/news/ch ... ably-farther-faster

Quote:

"THE new high-speed railway line to Urumqi [1,776 km from Lanzhou; Lanxin Railway Second Double-Tracked Line 兰新铁路第二双线, to distinguish it from a conventional line from Lanzhou to Xinjiang that was completed in 1962 but does not follow exactly the same route] climbs hundreds of metres onto the Tibetan plateau before slicing past the valley where the Dalai Lama was born [east of Xining in Hongya village 青海省海东市平安县石灰窑乡 红崖村 whose Tibetan name is Taktser]. It climbs to oxygen-starved altitudes and then descends to the edge of the Gobi desert for a final sprint of several hundred windblown kilometres across a Martian landscape. The line will reach higher than any other bullet-train track in the world and extend what is already by far the world’s longest high-speed rail network by nearly one-fifth compared with its current length. The challenge will be explaining why this particular stretch is necessary.

"One obvious benefit for Qinghai, or at least its image-obsessed officials, is an excuse to spend lots of money on the construction of business parks and apartment blocks around lavish new railway stations. The county surrounding the Dalai Lama’s ancestral home is engaged in an orgy of construction in what it calls a 'high-speed rail new district 高铁新城.' Another benefit will be easier access for tourists to vast fields of rape that bloom in July in an explosion of photogenic yellow in Menyuan county north of Xining. Menyuan’s new station will disgorge passengers into the middle of such a field that is tended by inmates of a nearby prison (its function disguised by the name 'Haomen farm' 门源县 浩门农场). In the Qilian Mountains in the north of Menyuan 2,000 workers are toiling in plummeting temperatures on a 16km-stretch of tunnels, joined by a bridge, at an altitude of more than 3,600 metres (nearly 12,000 feet), the highest point of any high-speed track in the world.

Note:
(a) Menyuan 海北藏族自治州 门源回族自治县
(b)
(i) Qilian Mountains  祁连山
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilian_Mountains
(a northern outlier of the Kunlun Mountains, forming the border between Qinghai and the Gansu provinces; Qilian (祁连) is said to be as a Xiongnu word meaning "sky" (Chinese: 天) by Yan Shigu 顏師古 [581-645], a Tang Dynasty commentator)
(ii) Kunlun Mountains 昆仑山
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunlun_Mountains
(The name seems to have originated as a semi-mythical location in the classical Chinese text Shanhai Jing)

choi

(3) Exports and the economy | Paying Its Way; Britain would be able to sell more if it stopped bashing bankers and immigrants (in the Special report: Britain).
http://www.economist.com/news/sp ... migrants-paying-its

Quote:

(a) "THERE IS A global trade at which Britain excels. In little more than a decade exports have risen tenfold. Its biggest customers are emerging markets, particularly China. The industry is green and uncontroversial—indeed, though most British households play a part in it, they seem unaware of its existence. It is not financial services or education or health care. It is recycled cardboard.

"Paul Briggs, the British managing director of Mark Lyndon Paper Enterprises, explains how the trade works. A factory in China makes a television, puts it in a box and ships it to Britain. A customer buys the television and discards the box. A recycler sends the box back to China, where it is pulped and turned into a new cardboard box. A factory buys the box, puts another television inside and sends it back to Britain.

"It is a thoroughly useful trade. Container ships must sail from Britain to China anyway, to pick up goods; if they were empty they would have to take on ballast. Mr Briggs’s company, which is owned by a Chinese firm, did not exist ten years ago. This year it has already exported more than 1m tonnes of paper (the going rate is up to $200 a tonne). “I want to stand on the roof and scream it,” says Mr Briggs. But, as he points out, the success of his industry results from the weakness of others. Britain exports a lot of empty cardboard boxes because it does not export many other goods.

(b) "It still attracts more foreign direct investment than any other country in Europe, although Germany is fast catching up, according to Ernst & Young, an accountancy firm.

"Workers in Jaguar Land Rover’s factory near Birmingham say things have improved greatly under the ownership of Tata, an Indian conglomerate. * * * (One key to success, says Mike Wright of Jaguar Land Rover, is to make back seats exceedingly comfortable: most Land Rover buyers in China have chauffeurs.)

(c) "Britain is a strong exporter of services, with champions both large and small. Serco, a huge outsourcing firm, operates the Dubai metro and speed cameras in Australia.

"Indeed, some of Britain’s strongest manufacturers are scrambling to turn themselves into services firms. BAE Systems, which makes fighter jets and submarines, now derives over half its turnover from after-sales service. The firm maintains and upgrades jets for the Royal Air Force and the Australian Air Force, and teaches Saudi pilots how to fly. Increasingly, BAE allows other countries to make its planes.

"Biggest of all is financial services, which accounts for a larger share of the country’s net exports than all other services put together. Britain’s advantage in this industry is immense. In HSBC and Standard Chartered it has two of only three truly global banks (the other is America’s Citi).


My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) Dubai Metro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_metro(a driverless, fully automated metro rail network)
(c) The last graphic of the article shows US and Britain running neck and neck, from 2001 to 2012, on “financial-services exports; current prices and exchange rates, $bn   Source: UNCTAD” (which stands for United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). Naturally “export” is an component of production (or output), the other (component) being domestic use.

choi

(4) German carmakers | Stuck in Third; Daimler is set to keep chugging down the Autobahn behind BMW and Audi.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... nd-audi-stuck-third
("AS A corporate motto, 'The best or nothing' has a timeless quality. Gottlieb Daimler pasted it on the wall as he went about inventing the modern car in the late 19th century. In 2010 the firm that bears his name adopted it as a slogan. It was as badly timed as a misfiring engine. Mercedes-Benz, Daimler’s car division, already trailing BMW in terms of sales and profitability, saw another Geman premium carmaker, Audi, also start to pull away in the same year”)

Note:
(a)
(i) Gottlieb Daimler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottlieb_Daimler
(1834-1900; he and and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach invented the high-speed petrol engine [in 1885] and the first four-wheel automobile [in 1886 when they fitted that engine to a stagecoach]; In 1890, they founded Daimler; in 1926 merged with Karl Benz's Benz & Cie)

But see Benz Patent-Motorwagen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen
("built in 1886, is widely regarded as the first automobile; that is, a vehicle designed to be propelled by a motor")
(ii)
(A) Mercedes (car)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_(car)
(the brand name eventually would be applied to an automobile model built by Wilhelm Maybach to specifications by Emil Jellinek that was delivered to him in 1900)
(B) Emil Jellinek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Jellinek
(a wealthy German Jew; Jellinek required naming the engine after his daughter, Mercedes Jellinek)
(C) Mercedes (name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_(name)
(a feminine given name of Spanish origin, referring to a title for the Virgin Mary, "Our Lady of Mercy")
(D) mercedes:
“fem. proper name, from Spanish, abbreviation of Maria de las Mercedes "Mary of the Mercies," from plural of [Spanish noun feminine] merced "mercy, grace," from Latin mercedem (nominative merces); see mercy”
Online Etymology Dictionary, undated.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Mercedes

(b) Dieter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter
(a German given name, a short form of Dietrich, from theod+ric "people ruler," see Theodoric)

(c) “Mr Zetsche has completed Daimler’s return to its core business of making premium cars after years of costly errors. An attempt in the 1990s to turn it into a transport conglomerate, adding planes, trains and even spaceships to the mix, had ended in failure. Mr Zetsche presided over the demise of Daimler’s stab at becoming a global car giant by merging with Chrysler and allying with Mitsubishi and Hyundai. He sold the American carmaker at a spanking loss, the year after he took over. Fiat of Italy now controls it.
(i) Daimler paid $37 billion to acquire Chrysler in 1998, but in 2007 ended up having to actually pay Cerberus Capital Management $650 million to unload Chrysler.
(ii) Jürgen E Schrempp (1944- ; Daimler chairman and CEO 1995-2006) was the architect of the Daimler/ Chrysler merger. Dieter Zetsche (1953- ) became a member of the DaimlerChrysler's Board of Management in 1998 and served as president/CEO of Chrysler Group 2000-2005, before becoming chairman and CEO 0f Daimler, 2006-present.  Wikipedia for both names.
(iii) spanking (adj): “remarkable of its kind”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spanking

(d) "The entry-level A Class, introduced in 1997 and intended to induce a new generation to the Mercedes brand, was a flop; Smart, a frugal city car, was a financial disaster. A dull mid-range E Class failed to meet buyers’ expectations of a luxury barge."
(i) Mercedes-Benz A-Class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_A-Class
(1997- )
(ii) Smart (automobile)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_(automobile)
(1994- )
(iii) Mercedes-Benz E-Class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_E-Class
(1993- ; The E initially stood for Einspritzmotor (German for fuel injection engine))

choi

(5) Palaeontology | Black Gold; A hundred years after the first excavations, the asphalt pools at Rancho La Brea, in Los Angeles, are still filling in details of life in the Pleistocene
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... ools-rancho-la-brea
("The oldest [fossil] dates from 38,000 years ago")

Note:
(a) This is Economist's own translation: "Rancho La Brea (Tar Farm)."

Spanish English dictionary:
brea (noun feminine): "tar"
(b) Pleistocene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene

(c) "Before people arrived, for example, the area that is now called the United States supported six species of big cat. Now it supports but one, known, according to taste, as the cougar, puma or mountain lion. * * * American lions and sabre-tooths [were] among the species that did not survive humanity’s arrival).
(i) American lion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_lion
(The American lion is one of the largest types of cat ever to have existed * * * about 25% larger than the modern African lion)
(ii) For sabre-tooth, see smilodon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon
(Smilodon likely lived in closed habitats like forests and bush which would have provided cover for ambushing prey; The name Smilodon comes from Greek: smilē "carving knife" + odoús "tooth;" Smilodon was around the size of a modern lion or tiger but was more robustly built)

(d)
(i) Short-eared Owl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-eared_owl
(Asio flammeus; a medium-sized owl measuring 34–43 cm (13–17 in) in length and weighing 206–475 g (7.3–16.8 oz)); Over much of its range, Short-eared Owls occurs with the similar-looking Long-eared Owl[, which, a]t rest, the ear-tufts of Long-eared Owl serve to easily distinguish the two; occurs on all continents except Antarctica and Australia)
(ii) burrowing owl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrowing_Owl
(Athene cunicularia; a tiny but long-legged owl found throughout open landscapes of North and South America; They nest and roost in burrows)