(名詞) 完全電動車 (all-electric car)。根據美國正在進行的多項研究計畫以及多家著名車廠即將生產的車種，未來的電動車 (electric car) 在配備所謂 V2G (vehicle-to-grid — 車輛至電力網) 的軟硬體之後將可把車輛多餘的電力賣給發電廠或電力公司，每年賺取約 1,000 至 2,500 美元的收入，因此這種電動車又稱為 cash-back car or vehicle 或 V2G car or vehicle。美國總統歐巴馬 2009 年 3 月間在美國國家廣播公司 (NBC) 脫口秀節目 The Jay Leno Show 中亦提到 V2G，顯示這種完全電動車將成為未來汽車發展的主流或至少佔有一席之地。

引句：
While a handful of such vehicle-to-grid (V2G) research projects have emerged from California to Texas to Colorado, Dr. Kempton’s project has driven the farthest.

For more than a decade, Kempton has researched, lobbied, and agitated for these “cash-back cars.” His and other in-depth studies describe a future where electric-car owners plug in at malls, hardware stores, or home garages and earn $1,000 to $2,500 annually for the power they pump back into the system.
—Mark Clayton, “My ride? It’s a power plant,” Christian Science Monitor, April 24, 2009

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(動名詞/現在分詞) 心思播送 — 張貼一系列短文或訊息來反映個人目前的思想、觀念、心情、觀察到的現象或事物、閱讀的文章或書籍以及其他心智方面感興趣的事物。
—mindcast (動詞，名詞)：心思播送。
—mindcaster (名詞)：心思播送者。

引句中一再提到的 lifecasting 為：(動名詞/現在分詞) 生活播送 — 利用手提攝影機在網路上播送個人一天24小時的活動 (可能包括沐浴和如廁)。lifecast (動詞)：生活播送；lifecaster (名詞)：生活播送者。

引句：
But the claim that Twitter is nothing but mindless inanities is just as wrong as the analogous claim for blogs — in fact it’s precisely the same claim, five years later. There are other things you can do with the technology — the technical terms are “lifecasting” [here's what I had for dinner] vs. “mindcasting” [here's a thought, a question, an observation, a link to something more substantial].
—Sean Carroll, “Twitter Agonistes,” Discover, April 23, 2009

Twitter, the micro-messaging service where users broadcast short thoughts to one another, has been widely labeled the newest form of digital narcissism. And if it’s not self-obsession tweeters are accused of, it’s self-promotion, solipsism or flat out frivolousness.

But naysayers will soon eat their tweets. There’s already a vibrant community of Twitter users who are using the system to share and filter the hyper-glut of online information with ingenious efficiency. Forget what you had for breakfast or how much you hate Mondays. That’s just lifecasting.

Mindcasting is where it’s at.
—David Sarno, “On Twitter, mindcasting is the new lifecasting,” Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2009

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(名詞) 拼湊寫作 — 後現代文學創作的一種手段。雖然有學者主張拼湊寫作不應被視為惡意抄襲，但由於東拼西湊的句子仍大致採用原作者的詞句與結構，若沒有使用引號，以傳統的眼光來看，這仍然是不當的行為。因此，正當的作法是，要不就是使用引號，要不就是反芻原文後，用自己的話寫出來。除了 patchwriting，後現代文學創作常用的手段還有 pastiche (拼湊模仿 — 見引句) 和 parody (諷刺模仿) 等。

引句：
Ms. Blum also embraces various postmodern theories of plagiarism. Internet-savvy, intertextual ingénues don’t steal words; they engage in “patchwriting” and “pastiche,” constructing essays the way they create eclectic music playlists for their iPods. This practice, she argues, can be viewed as a form of homage or reverence as much as theft.
—Christine Rosen, ” It’s not theft, it’s pastiche,” Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2009

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lock yourself away +
到某個能獨自唸書或工作的地方
I lock myself away for a few weeks before exams.

log in
登入 (電腦系統)
I had forgotten my password and couldn’t log in.

log into +
登入 (電腦系統)
I logged into the staff intranet to check my email.

log off +
登出 (電腦系統)
When she’d finished working on the spreadsheet, she logged off and left the office.

log on +
登入 (電腦系統)
He entered his password for the college intranet and logged on.

log out
登出 (電腦系統)
Danny closed the programs and logged out when it was time to go home.

look after +
照顧，照料
When my sister goes on vacation, I look after her dog.

look back
回憶，回想，回顧
When we look back, we can now understand what caused the difficulty.

look back on +
回憶起，回想起
When I look back on my childhood, I often feel angry.

look down on +
輕視，看不起
She’s so conceited. She looks down on everybody else.

look for +
尋找 [通常用進行式]
I’m looking for my keys. Have you seen them?

look forward to +
(衷心) 企盼，期望，期待
I am looking forward to traveling to New York next year.

look in
(尤指某人生病或可能需要幫助時) 順路探訪，短暫拜訪
I’ll look in on my way home.

look in on +
(尤指某人生病或可能需要幫助時) 順路探訪，短暫拜訪
I’m going to look in on grannie on the way home tonight as she’s been a bit unwell recently.

look into +
調查，研究 (問題，罪行等)
The police are looking into the murder.

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A：這兩者都意為 7 月 1 日結束的某段時間，亦即這段時間是到 7 月 1 日終止，但它們的含意卻截然不同。the period ending July 1 是指未來的時間，它是片語，其中 ending July 1 是修飾 the period 的形容詞子句 that ends (on) July 1 的減化，而 the period ended (on) July 1 則是指過去的時間，它是句子，其理解方式與 The war ended in 1975. (戰爭於 1975 年結束) 或 The concert ended at 10 o’clock. (音樂會於 10 點結束) 一樣。這兩者都是標準英語的習慣用法。

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(名詞) 撞牆 — 一種刑求手段，刑求者用力將囚犯推去撞擊一面有彈性的假牆，讓囚犯的肩胛骨發出巨大撞擊聲，使其誤以為「撞很大」。囚犯的頭部和頸部通常會被戴上護頭和護肩，以免受傷。

引句：
NBC Nightly News noted that the memos provide “the fullest description yet of the techniques used by the CIA on roughly 30 detainees,” including “slapping, sleep deprivation, stress positions, nudity, something called “walling”—slamming detainees against a false wall, provided they wear a collar to minimize whiplash.”
—”Administration releases Bush-era interrogation memos,” US News & World Report: Political Bulletin, April 17, 2009

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17世紀的罪犯綁架或誘拐小孩到美國農場和農園擔任僕役或苦力。這就是 kidnapping 這個字的起源，其中 kid 當時是個俚語，意為「小孩」(child)，而 napping 意為「偷」(stealing) — napping 是 nab (偷竊，盜竊) 的相關字。kidnapping 的後遺症歷久不衰，napping 的觀念一直流傳下來，這期間出現不少以 napping 所構成的字，最有名的是 dognapping (偷狗 — 為取得贖金或轉售給實驗室所進行的偷竊狗隻行為)。

時序推移至2009年4月初，一種新的 napping 型態翩然出現，原因是法國公司的員工為抗議大量裁員而孤注一擲地強行監禁他們的外籍老闆、主管或上司。在這些 bossnapping (挾持或監禁老闆、主管或上司) 的事件中，3M法國公司的負責人被囚禁兩天兩夜，索尼 (Sony) 法國公司的執行長被監禁一個晚上，英國膠帶製造商「司卡帕」(Scapa) 公司的三名高階主管被堵在辦公室內動彈不得，而全球最大礦業與營建設備製造廠美國的「卡特彼勒」(Caterpillar) 公司的四名高階主管則遭到挾持。

這種作法在法國可謂歷史悠久，是員工尋求與老闆談判的一種手段。法國人稱之為 sequestration (隔離)，但英語國家則以 bossnapping 稱之。自此之後，bossnapping 這個新字新詞立即快速蔓延，隨處可見，並幾乎同時出現它的變體，如動詞 bossnap (挾持或監禁老闆、主管或上司)，名詞 bossnapper ( (挾持或監禁老闆、主管或上司的人) 和形容詞 bossnapped ([老闆、主管或上司] 被挾持或監禁的) — 顯示這個字被接受的程度很高。

引句：
Bossnapping is not new in France but the growing number of corporate restructurings and rising unemployment have fuelled growing militancy in labour protests. A poll this week showed almost half of those interviewed believed that actions such as bossnapping were acceptable. [金融時報 (Financial Times)，8 Apr. 2009]

Bossnappers struck again in France today as four executives of Caterpillar, the heavy equipment manufacturer, were detained by their employees in a protest over redundancy plans. [泰晤士報 (The Times)，31 Mar. 2009]

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Surgeons have been astonished by the medical rarity of a 26-year-old man trapped in the body of a two-year-old toddler.

Jerly Lyngdoh – who lives with his farmer parents in Meghalaya, northern India – looks like any other tot with his tiny head and delicate 2ft 9ins long body.

But it’s only when he opens his mouth to reveal a full set of adult teeth that the truth about the world’s oldest baby is revealed.

Experts believe glands which secrete growth hormones may be damaged in the 22 lbs medical miracle.

‘Jerly’s infantile features are remarkable, and the only thing he shares with an adult are his teeth,’ said paediatrician Dr J. Ryndong.

‘We think this is a case of pan-hypo pituitarism leading to poor secretion of growth hormones from the pituitary gland. He is a genuine rarity,’ he added.

Jerly – who is still dressed in baby clothes by his parents – measures up at just four inches taller than China’s He Pingping, officially the world’s smallest man. (roundup)

《字詞解析》

medical rarity — (n.) 醫學上罕見的人。與第4段的 medical miracle 同義。

trap — (v.) 陷入；困在。

toddler — (n.) 幼童；學步的兒童 (年紀比嬰兒 baby 或 infant 來得大一點)。

tot — (n.) (口語) 小孩。

delicate — (adj.) 嬌小的。這位文中所稱「世界年紀最大的嬰兒」(world’s oldest baby) 身高只有2呎9吋，亦即大約84公分，僅比金氏世界紀錄正式承認的全世界最矮的人何平平 (見最後一段) 高出約10公分。他的體重僅22磅，即10公斤。

reveal — (v.) 揭露；顯露出。

gland — (n.) 腺。

secrete — (v.) 分泌。

growth hormone — (n.) 生長激素。

medical miracle — (n.) 醫學奇蹟。與第1段的 medical rarity 同義。

infantile — (adj) 嬰兒的；幼稚的。

paediatrician — (n.) 小兒科醫師。這是英式英語的拼法，美式英語沒有 a，亦即拼成 pediatrician。這一拼字規則亦適用於大多數有二合字母 (digraph) ae 和 oe 的單字，即美式英語沒有其中的 a 和 o，如 anaemic (英) / anemic (美)，manoeuvre (英) / maneuver (美)。

pan-hypo pituitarism — (n.) 泛腦垂體功能不足。

secretion — (n.) 分泌。為 secrete 的名詞。

pituitary gland — (n.) 腦下垂體。

measure up — (phr. v.) 測量。

He Pingping — (n.) 何平平 — 金氏世界紀錄正式承認的全世界最矮的人。本網站的「萬象奇觀極短篇」有一篇中英對照短文對何平平作了比較詳細的介紹，有興趣的網友可以參閱。

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(名詞/現在分詞) 自大型社交資料庫提取或吸取有用的知識。亦寫成 crowd-mining。

引句：
The six billion people on Earth are changing the biosphere so quickly that traditional ecological methods can’t keep up. Humans, though, are acute observers of their environments and bodies, so scientists are combing through the text and numbers on the Internet in hopes of extracting otherwise unavailable or expensive information. It’s more crowd mining than crowd sourcing.

Much of the pioneering work in this type of Internet surveillance has come in the public health field, tracking disease. Google Flu Trends, which uses a cloud of keywords to determine how sick a population is, tracks epidemiological data from the Centers for Disease Control.
—Alexis Madrigal, “Crawling the Web to Foretell Ecosystem Collapse,” Wired Science, March 19, 2009

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(名詞) 政治遺傳學 — 一門研究政治行為和態度是由基因所決定的科學。它是由行為遺傳學 (behavioral genetics)、心理學 (psychology) 和政治學 (political science) 所構成，且與新興的政治神經學 (neuropolitics) 和政治生理學 (political physiology) 有密切關係。
—genopolitical (形容詞)：政治遺傳的；政治遺傳學的。

引句：
Why do some people vote and others stay home on Election Day? For years, scholars have assumed that a voter pulls the lever because she grew up in a voting household or perhaps sat through a lot of civics classes. But this year two political scientists published studies claiming that in addition to environment, genes may be a primary influence on political engagement. Not only that, they think they have identified the genes that increase the likelihood of voting. A political scientist who advocates this approach calls this emerging field genopolitics.
—Emily Biuso, “Genopolitics,” The New York Times, December 12, 2008

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