January 27, 2020 Would the German war effort have fared better had they not bombed Britain at all? What if Hitler had begun his bombing campaign earlier, even by just a few weeks? What if they had focused their targets on RAF airfields for the entire course of the battle? Using a statistical technique called weighted bootstrapping, the researchers studied these and other alternatives.

"The weighted bootstrap technique allowed us to model alternative campaigns in which the Luftwaffe prolongs or contracts the different phases of the battle and varies its targets," said co-author Dr. Jaime Wood in a statement.

«Метод взвешенного вероятностного распределения позволил нам смоделировать альтернативные варианты операции, в ходе которых действия люфтваффе продлевают или сокращают различные фазы этой битвы и варьируют цели для нанесения бомбовых ударов»

https://inosmi.ru/science/20200126/246664441.html

January 23, 2020 Now at the centre of the US impeachment drama, President Zelensky came to power after his role on Ukraine’s hit TV series, Servant of the People. It was a case of life imitating art, writes Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200103-the-ukrainian-tv-show-that-predicted-the-future?fbclid=IwAR3VOLQJYTjM5jI_Sy6DsOzegxFe083Ypc12gXjN6X-CLMAQwDXwKFIsnOk

January 21, 2020 Sometimes even Klimkin ia capable of a good joke:

Clinton, of course, had an affair with a White House intern, which is what led Congress to launch its investigation at the time. History buffs will recall that while Clinton was impeached by the House, he was ultimately acquitted by the Senate and not removed from office. (If that sounds confusing to you, you can read up on the impeachment process here.) Monica Lewinsky, the name of the intern, however, has gone down in infamy and is now the source of the Ukraine president’s new nickname: Monica Zelensky.

If Zelensky is lucky, he will not end up tarnished by the intrigue surrounding him. Lewinsky did. And Ukrainians seem to have mixed feelings (in Ukrainian) about their country’s newfound fame. “Now the country of Ukraine is known to the whole world,” TV presenter Taras Berezovets wrote on Facebook. But as Ukrainian diplomat Pavlo Klimkin joked on social media, “Whatever happens, in the history of the United States, Ukraine will remain the country that led to the impeachment of the US President. Not a very fun prospect. But now everyone knows what we are capable of

https://qz.com/1717059/ukraines-president-is-being-dubbed-monica-zelensky-at-home/

January 17, 2020 English is the world’s dominant scientific language, yet it has no word for the distinctive smell of cockroaches. What happens though, if you have no words for basic scientific terms?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200116-what-happens-when-you-have-no-word-for-dinosaur

January 13, 2020 In its most updated form, the S.O.P.P. is an eight-page document that spells out the tenets of “affirmative consent.” In each stage of a sexual interaction, consent must be verbally requested and verbally given, the policy says — and “silence conveys a lack of affirmative consent.”

Sexual Offence Prevention Policy violates the ABC of social interaction that abhors verbalization of emotion (Steven Pinker) However, the awkward tautology has the status of a respected term in American political culture, though for other cultures it spells absurdity and downright stupidity.

January 11, 2020 'You're playing catch up!' - Russia's bleak message to Trump as it flexes military muscles

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1226479/russia-news-world-war-3-vladimir-putin-crimea-donald-trump-avangard-hypersonic-missiles

«Ты играешь в догонялки!» Мрачное послание России Трампу, как она напрягает военные мускулы

https://inosmi.ru/military/20200111/246587647.html

Bad!!! There is a figurative expression "ИГРАТЬ мускулами"!

January 7, 2020 The death of Soleimani may cause the regime to pause its strategy of waging war though terrorist proxies..

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-08/iran-missile-attack-retaliation-more-conventional-than-expected

One of the possible translations of the ambiguous term "proxies": Cмерть Сулеймани может заставить иранский режим приостановить реализацию стратегии ведения войны с помощью своих террористических ставленников..

https://inosmi.ru/politic/20200108/246568900.html

January 3. 2020 Why are there so many professionals who claim that all our attempts at raising the standards of education seem to be futile? It is evident to me in many cases, but last November I discovered with surprise that Business English had shown a much better level than in the recent past!

January 1, 2020 The lack of any significant contention about Ukraine is reflected in the term groupthink, which first entered our political lexicon in the 1970s, when American policymakers and academics struggled to understand why the national security elite’s conventional wisdom about the war in Vietnam turned out to have been so wrongheaded. The term’s popularity enjoyed a fresh vogue in the wake of the Iraq wmd debacle, when numerous postmortems determined that analysts had been so convinced that Saddam Hussein was hiding stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that they “simply disregarded evidence that did not support their hypotheses.” The few policy advisors who attempted to warn the White House that the destruction of Baathist Iraq would also destroy the balance of power in the Persian Gulf—vital to containing Iran—were shown the door. But seldom has contemporary evidence of groupthink been on such stark public display as during the House impeachment hearings regarding Ukraine.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/groupthink-resurgent-106951

Отсутствие содержательных дискуссий об Украине находит свое отражение в термине groupthink (буквально — «мышление на основе группового консенсуса», в просторечии — «стадное мышление» — прим. ред.), который вошел в наш политический лексикон в 1970-х годах, когда американские политики и ученые тщетно пытались понять, по какой причине общее мнение экспертов из элиты национальной безопасности о войне во Вьетнаме оказалось настолько ошибочным. Почему все они рассчитывали на победу? Этот термин снова вошел в моду во время скандала на тему оружия массового уничтожения в Ираке. Во время «разбора полетов» выяснилось следующее. Аналитики были настолько уверены, что Саддам Хусейн прячет арсеналы химического и биологического оружия, что они «просто проигнорировали все факты, не подтверждавшие их гипотезы». Тем немногочисленным политическим советникам, которые пытались предупредить Белый дом, что разрушение баасистского Ирака также приведет к разрушению баланса сил в Персидском заливе, просто указывали на дверь. Между тем этот самый баланс сил оказался очень важным элементом сдерживания Ирана, чье влияние стало расти сразу после вторжения США. Но почти никогда признаки стадного мышления не проявляли себя так ярко и наглядно, как во время слушаний в палате представителей по Украине в рамках процедуры импичмента.
https://inosmi.ru/politic/20191226/246527786.html