Economist, Apr 13, 2013

choi

(to be continued)

(1) Slovenia and the euro | The Next Domino?

My comment: There is no need to read the rest.


(2) Repression in Russia | Put in His Place; Vladimir Putin comes under fire abroad for repressive laws at home.
http://www.economist.com/news/eu ... -home-put-his-place

My comment:
(a) Just view the photo. There is no need to read the text.
(b) Here is the news report about that protest.

Jeevan Vasagar and Tom Parfitt, Bemused Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel Confronted by Topless Femen Protester in Hanover; Vladimir Putin appears to have at last found a form of anti-government protest that he can support. Daily Telegraph, Apr 9, 2013 (video).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ ... ter-in-Hanover.html

choi

(3) Farming in Japan Field Work; With fewer, bigger plots and fewer part-time farmers, agriculture could compete.
http://www.economist.com/news/as ... -compete-field-work

Quote:

"Of Japan’s 1.5m farmers, only 420,000 are engaged in farming full-time. * * * Rice cultivation has the highest concentration of part-timers.

"Today, with rural areas increasingly depopulated, perhaps a tenth of all plots are abandoned to weeds.

Note:
(a) The article talks about "Mutsuo BANBA’s rice farm in Ishikawa prefecture."
(i) Mutsuo BANBA  番場 睦夫

* mutsumi 睦み (n)   
* mutsumu 睦む 【むつむ】 (v) "(See 睦ぶ) to be harmonious; to get on well; to be intimate or close"   (Japanese pronunciation)  
(ii) Ishikawa prefecture 石川県
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_prefecture

* ja.wikipedia.org says, "石川県の名称は加賀地方にあった石川郡に由来する."  The name of the prefecture came from 石川郡 (~823-2011). That Wiki does not explain where the name of 石川郡 came from.

(b) "Japan Agriculture (JA)" actually is "Japan Agricultural Cooperatives" (Ebglish acronym: JA) 全国農業協同組合 (略称：農協).
(c) Kozo WATANABA  渡部 恒三
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozo_Watanabe
(1932- ; with Democratic Party of Japan; a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet) 
(d) Masatoshi WAKABAYASHI  若林 正俊
(e) Masayoshi HONMA  本間 正義

choi

(4) Global business | English to the Fore; A Japanese maverick tells it as it is
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... -it-it-english-fore
(book review on Hiroshi Mikitani, Marketplace 3.0; Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Note: Hiroshi MIKITANI  三木谷 浩史
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Mikitani

choi

(5) Infrastructure | Back on Track; The quiet success of America’s freight railways.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... railways-back-track

Quote:

(a) "In 2009 Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investment firm, bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a railroad company based in Texas. Mr Buffett described the purchase as an 'all-in wager on the economic future of the United States.'

"That bet is already paying off. In 2011 the seven largest freight railways had operating revenues of $67 billion (up from $47.8 billion in 2009). Net income was $11 billion, with returns on equity averaging 11.1%.

(b) "Today some 43% (by weight) of what is moved on American freight trains is coal. * * * But John Gray, a policy expert at the Association of American Railroads, sees growing opportunities for moving crude oil. * * *  In the last quarter of 2009 about 2,700 carloads of crude oil were moved by rail. This had grown to 81,100 in the last quarter of 2012.

Note:
(a) all-in (adj; First Known Use 1890):
"chiefly British : being almost without restrictions <all–in wrestling>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/all-in
(b) The graphic refers to "constant $."
(i) constant dollars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_dollars
(ii) Current versus Constant (or Real) Dollars. US Census Bureau, undated (under the category Income)
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/i ... orical/dollars.html
("Example: The median household income in 1989 in current dollars is $28,906. If you compared that with the 1990 median household income of $29,943, there appears to be an increase. If you adjusted that 1989 income for changes in the cost of living (converted it to 1990 constant or real dollars), the resulting 1989 median household income is $30,468 (now a 1989-to-1990 comparison of income shows a decline of 1.7 percent)")

"The converted it to 1990 constant" dollar is where the word "constant" comes from. The dollar can be converted to "contant" of any year, not just 1989 or 1990. In plain English, all values (say, in a graphic last years) can be said to be "in 2000 dollars."

choi

(6) Censorship |  Contradictions Among the People; A senior censor examines his conscience
(ZENG Li (审读员) 曾礼, formerly at Southern Weekend)

My comment: There is no need to read the text, because presumably you know the story by now.


(7) Male attractiveness | Abs-olutely Fabulous; Women’s expectations of the opposite sex are at least as unrealistic as men’s.
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... e-least-unrealistic
(Researchers in Australia gathered "105 heterosexual Australian women and showed them a series of digitally generated pictures of men in which three bodily characteristics were varied—height, shoulder-to-waist ratio and flaccid penis size")

My comment:
(a) The report is based on

Mautz BS et al, Penis Size Interacts With Body Shape and Height to Influence Male Attractiveness. Proc Nat Acd Sci, _: _ ("published [online] ahead of print April 8, 2013")
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/03/1219361110.abstract
(b) It is just a scientific report. One should not put too much faith in it, until more research is done, to prove or disprove it.
(c) Regarding the "abs" in the title.

ab (n; First Known Use 1956):
"an abdominal muscle —usually used in plural"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ab
(d) The article states, "'The optimum values appear to lie outside the tested range,' they [researchers] note, adding that the 'maxima are more than two standard deviations from the population mean for each trait.' That means that, for each trait, fewer than 2.5% of the men whom women encounter in the real world will be as generously proportioned as they might hope. Men with perfect scores in all three traits will be rarer than hen’s teeth."
(i) standard deviation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
("If a data distribution is approximately normal [bell-shaped] then about 68 percent of the data values are within one standard deviation of the mean (mathematically, μ ± σ, where μ is the arithmetic mean), about 95 percent are within two standard deviations (μ ± 2σ), and about 99.7 percent lie within three standard deviations (μ ± 3σ). This is known as the 68-95-99.7 rule, or the empirical rule")

* View the graphic displaying a bell-shaped curve.
* Beyond two standard deviations, there is 2.5% on one extreme and 2.5% on the OTHER extreme.
* The PNAS report supposes women are not attracted by the one extreme (penis too short; height too low etc). That leaves the other 2.5% for each characteristic.
(ii) hen’s teeth
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hen's_teeth