Текст книги "Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist"

When it comes to a 30-year partner of the United States, a man who has helped keep peace in the region and been a durable ally in the war on terrorism, Mr. Obama is quick to toss Mr. Mubarak under the bus.

We've been studying nuclear waste for 40 years and we still have no idea what to do with it.

There is a long tradition of shooting messengers who bring bad news.

The bomber always get through. Charles Portal was thrilled to learn in 1944 that a single Lancaster bomber had eliminated more German man– hours on its first sortie than the number of British man-hours required to build it, suggesting that all subsequent sorties would be «clear profit».

Swastika – to some a 5,000-year-old symbol of peace – Sanskrit svastika – «good-luck sign,» from svasti «good luck».

Next time you bury a beet bottle stuffed with money in a park, you should ponder what cameras and sensors may be hidden in the trees nearby. Like so many other once-solid professions, spying is becoming less of a career and more a job for freelancers.

Precedent suggests that voters unhappy about the economy will dump successful war leaders. The first George Bush's triumph in the first Gulf war did not win him a second term. British voters turfed out Winston Churchill two months after his victory against Hitler. And Mr Obama has not «won» the war against al-Qaeda. Killing Mr bin Laden has scotched the snake, not killed it.

NATO was making in Afghanistan the best of a bad job.

General Tommy Franks describes him as the «dumbest fucking guy on the planet».

George Bush repeated like a scratched gramophone record that Americans were at war with the terrorists who had attacked them on 9/11, not at war with Islam.

Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, was writing «The Art of War», a book that celebrates cunning by arguing that the way to win is by always doing the opposite of what your opponent expects.

Could Mrs Thatcher have survived as prime minister had the Falklands not been retaken? (In her memoirs, she says not.) Would the Tories have won the 1983 election had Argentina never invaded? (Probably). Lady Thatcher's victory suggested that war could achieve political ends quickly and efficiently.

In 1993 Colin Powell (then the top soldier) told the Senate that when the world dialled 911, the emergency phone number, America was expected to answer.

The odour of a police station like the ammoniac smell of zoos all over the world.

And to defend against the invading legions of would-be gardeners and hotel cleaners, the US-Mexican frontier is also equipped with high-tech military gizmos, such as unmanned spy planes with infra-red cameras.

In England between the 13th and 16th centuries, extramarital sex was policed with such energy that up to 90 % of the litigation handled by church courts was about combating fornication, adultery, sodomy and prostitution. The punishments were often savage. When the Reformation got going in the mid-16th.

A weathered Middle East truism holds that, while there can be no all-out Arab-Israeli war without Egypt, there can be no long-term peace without Syria.

On April 2nd 2003, during the second Gulf war, a hundred or so Iraqi armoured vehicles approached a far smaller American reconnaissance unit south of Baghdad. Responding to a call for help, a B-52 bomber attacked the first 30 or so vehicles in the column with a single, historic pass. It dropped two new CBU-105 bombs, and the result shocked the soldiers of both sides – and, soon enough, military observers everywhere. While falling, the CBU-105 bombs popped open, each releasing ten submunitions which were slowed by parachutes. Each of these used mini rockets to spin and eject outward four discs the size of ice-hockey pucks. The 80 free-falling discs from the pair of bombs then scanned the ground with lasers and heat-detecting infra-red sensors to locate armoured vehicles. Those discs that identified a target exploded dozens of metres up. The blast propelled a tangerine-sized slug of copper down into the target, destroying it with the impact and the accompanying shrapnel. The soldiers in the 70 vehicles farther back in the column surrendered immediately.

In the 20 years since the end of the cold war NATO's obituary has been written many times, so far always prematurely. In a world of few dragons but a great many more snakes, it can look clumsy.

Seven of the world's eight most violent countries lie on the bloody trafficking route from the cocaine fields of the Andes to the nostrils of North America.

Somalia is not important until it launches a terrorist attack which makes it important.

There are over 17,000 Border Patrol agents on the border with Mexico, a fivefold increase over 1993. They patrol in cars and all-terrain vehicles, on bicycles and horses, in boats, planes and helicopters. When there are no agents around, cameras, reconnaissance drones and three different types of sensors – seismic, magnetic and infra-red – keep tabs on things. A third of the border is fenced, and most of the rest is in areas so remote or rugged as to make fences pointless or impractical. Some parts of the fence are 17 feet high, with metal plates extending ten feet below ground to prevent tunneling.

To bomb Iran's programme out of existence.

The United States then made some 30 military interventions in and around the Caribbean in the next 30 years, many of them under Smedley Butler, a marine corps general, who summed up his career thus: «I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico…safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.»

But then the army began marching in the wrong direction, and its general shot himself in the foot.

Turkish generals are down, but they are not out.

If humans, for example, were black-and-white striped then the history of intercommunal violence the species has suffered when different races have met might not have been quite as bad.

"The Godfather's Michael Corleone: «Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.»

I Since Dunblane, handguns have been outlawed in Britain, meaning that even the Olympic shooting squad has had to train abroad. Because of these strict laws, plus Britain's relative lack of a hunting culture, gun ownership is unusual: there are just 56 guns per thousand people in Britain, compared with 300 per thousand in Germany and 900 in America.

A firefighter's first rule of survival is «know your way out».

The defeats are more painful than the victories are sweet.

Napoleon: «Let China sleep, for when she wakes the world will shake.»

Mr Putin uses his KGB training to cultivate those who might be of use to him. He likes to quote a remark once made to him by Henry Kissinger, whom he greatly admires: «All decent people started their careers in intelligence.»

“ Russia, USSR, mysterious Russian soul, communism, vodka, fatalism

But what exactly makes Russia unique?

It was an old rule in Russia that the subordinate must never be cleverer than the boss.

The Crimean war was certainly the most significant conflict of the second half of the 19th century. If deaths from disease are included, it cost at least 750,000 lives, two-thirds of them Russian, and it triggered big social and cultural changes in all the countries affected.

Catherine the Great: «I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.»

Russia holds plenty of promise.

Only Fyodor Dostoyevsky can offer a double lesson on the love of God and the love of a good woman.

Not everyone will be in a condition to toast death's imminence with champagne, as Anton Chekhov did.

Killing someone, Sleed discovers, is «like winning at Russian roulette and having the taste of gunmetal forever on your tongue because even if you win, you lose.»

To the slopes clings Clee Hill village which, until it closed, had Shropshire's highest pub (called «The Kremlin» because, via the radar aerials on the hill, its juke box could pick up Radio Moscow).

As the news broke of the upheaval at home, Lenin became increasingly desperate. He even considered trying to reach Russia on a false passport, as a Swedish deaf mute. His ever-practical wife reminded him that this was bound to fail because of his habit of talking – in Russian, angrily, about politics – in his sleep… Lenin lambasted an anti-war article in The Economist – dismissing it caustically as «a journal which speaks for British millionaires» – on the ground that the authors wanted peace only because they were «afraid of revolution».

«Hitler nudged, so did Stalin,» writes Mr Sunstein.

The Russians are very good at linking two unrelated issues in a negotiation.

Mr Correa, who has a respectable approval rating of 42 %, is not a candidate. He is counting on Lenin Moreno, a former vice-president, and his running mate, Jorge Glas, the current vice-president, to carry on his «citizens' revolution». Mr Moreno, who shares his alarming first name with 18,000 other Ecuadoreans, hopes to win in the first round by capturing the bulk of Mr Correa's support and adding to it.

The first Russian to inquire about political asylum in Britain may have been Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who wrote to Queen Elizabeth I in 1570 asking whether she would take him in if things got too hairy in Moscow. (Elizabeth replied that he could come if he paid his own way.) Ivan never came, but England has since offered refuge to generations of Russian political exiles. Alexander Herzen, Russia's first socialist, came to London in the 1850s and published his newspaper Kolokol (Bell), which was smuggled back into Russia. Lenin lived briefly in Bloomsbury, and is said to have met Stalin at a pub in Clerkenwell. Today London is home both to Mr Putin's cronies and to opponents of his regime trying to lay the groundwork for the day it vanishes.

In cheap action films the bad guy is taken out by force. In the better sort, he falls victim to his own hubris. The great risk, though, is that Europe and Russia find themselves in a film noir, where the villain's plot fails but takes everyone down with it.

Having been caught off guard by online protest movements, many governments are now investing heavily in their web-based propaganda infrastructure. Russian government agencies, for instance, are not just good at setting up social-media bots and other spamming weapons to drown out genuine online discourse. They also employ armies of «trolls» to fight on their behalf in Western comment sections and Twitter feeds.

J. K. Galbraith, an economist, argued that there was not much difference between state planning as practised by the Russians and corporate planning as practised by General Motors.

A mild winter and robust European Union policy have blunted the edge of what was once Vladimir Putin's most effective foreign-policy weapon: the politicised export of gas.

By Khrushchev's death in 1971, more than 125m lived in the Khrushchevki buildings. Most were not meant to last more than 25 years (by then, presumably, the bright communist future would have dawned.

Lenin is said to have sneered that a capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him. The quote may be spurious, but it contains a grain of truth. Capitalists quite often invent the technology that destroys their own business.

Biographies of Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev abound, but nobody has written seriously about Leonid Brezhnev, on whose watch the Soviet Union sank into drunken decay.

A fortuitously placed wart on the penis of the «mad monk» Rasputin, whose scandalous behaviour and bad advice helped bring about the dynasty's downfall, is cited as a possible reason for his success with aristocratic women.

Ukrainian president must choose between a rich Russian dinner with lots of vodka and with the risk of discovering that he has been captured and his car stolen.

In pre-war Russia, for example, the central bank was called the «Red Cross of the bourse» Mr Obama is using measures associated with Soviet central planning out of desperation: he cannot get climate laws through Congress, so executive orders are his only weapons.

Surely no true, law-abiding Russian could side with the enemies of his country?

Dick Cheney, or so his critics aver, became George W. Bush's Rasputin.

The Russians are a sentimental lot.

On switching off the light after reading «War and Peace», Edmund Wilson, an American critic, would find his bedroom magically «full of people».

Dostoevsky wrote about the Amur region: «If only Englishmen or Americans lived in Russia instead of us!.. Oh, they would have opened up everything: the metal ores and minerals, the countless deposits of coal.»

Homo Sovieticus.

Young Alexander Pushkin disports himself Odessa brothels, scandalising society first with his impromptu dinner-party versifying and then with a too-public affair with Lise Vorontsov, wife of the governor. As a punishment Pushkin, nominally a civil servant, was asked to do some work: to write a report on a plague of locusts that was paralysing the city. Outraged, Russia's greatest poet left town.

A novelist writing about a novelist writing about an editor reading a novel: these Russian dolls might come across as merely cute.

The rule of law means the law of the ruler in Russia.

Although they seem a godless lot, many Russians subscribe to an old religious fatalism. How else – in this well-educated nation – to explain the universal scorn for seatbelts, the epidemic of poisonings during every mushroom-picking season or the amazing number of winter fishermen who die each year after falling through the ice? (More than 400, some drunk, were rescued from a floating slab off Sakhalin last month; some refused to go.) There is little pressure for better safety standards. «Life is dangerous,» a Siberian tour guide said recently, when asked if the extreme sports he recommended were risky. «No one has survived it yet.»

A retailer could legally sell a second-hand «Gone with the Wind» DVD, but could not buy it cheaply in Russia, bring it to America and sell it for a low price. With the Supreme Court's ruling, that protection has been swept away.

Russian immigration officer – usually sporting peroxide blond hair, six-inch heels and an abbreviated skirt.

At a minimum a potential vice-president needs to look capable of taking over as president. This was the test Mrs Palin is deemed to have failed, despite all the knowledge of Russia she gleaned by being able to see it from Alaska.

When Dmitri Mendeleev devised his periodic table in 1869, it contained 63 elements; a similar chart in a chemistry classroom now has up to 118 entries.

Nowhere in the world matches North Korea for forced disappearances. Victims are held incommunicado, rendering the level of inhumanity even worse in the North Korean gulag than in that of the former Soviet Union.

Gazprom, the trading name of the gas division of the Kremlin.

The Soviet model kept capitalistic titans on their best behaviour. Now that it has gone, capitalism, with no incentive to contribute towards social purpose, is running wild. I had to teach my children the value of sharing and that lesson should not be lost on those who reap disproportionate gains that to me look like nothing more than psychopathic hoarding.

Words for work, money, sex, death and horrible personal habits may well tell you more about national attitudes than anything else. Why would Russian have a special word, koshatnik, for someone who deals in stolen cats and Turkish another, cigerci, for a seller of liver and lungs, or Central American Spanish a particular name, aviador, for a government employee who shows up only on payday?

Yet, throughout the cold war, Russia remained a reliable gas supplier. Why should things be different now? The Soviet Union was politically more predictable than its successor. «It was run by geriatrics, but we knew that one geriatric would succeed another.» Russia's political stability is ephemeral. It relies on Mr Putin's will, not on an institutional transfer of power. With nationalism on the rise, it is anybody's guess who will be in charge of Russia in ten years' time.

There is an old Soviet joke that where common sense ends railways begin.

Russia could benefit hugely from a bit of warming: large parts of the country that are currently uninhabitable could become comfortable enough to live. The 25 % of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves that are reckoned to be in the Arctic, much of them in Russia, would become easier to get at. According to one estimate of the costs and benefits of climate change, by Robert Mendelssohn, a professor at Yale University, a 2.5C increase in temperature would increase GDP of the former Soviet Union by 11 %.

Medvedev either earn a place in history or a footnote in the story of his predecessor.

Russian government left enough crumbs on the table to keep foreign businesses happy.

The Russian tactic, it seems, is to keep Mr Lukashenka just above the surface, occasionally dipping him in and then pulling him out to make sure he is still breathing. But if the Kremlin miscalculates and keeps Mr Lukashenka under a moment too long, it could inadvertently provoke a more serious revolt.

Russia's rapprochement is fragile since it hinges on an idea of modernisation that is unlikely to succeed without liberalisation. The risk is that when modernisation fails, Russia will blame the West for sabotaging it.

There are 4 types of capitalism: state-guided (Japan), oligarchic (Russia), big-firm (US), entrepreneurial.

Mr Bell was right that the ideology of communism was doomed. In China it has given way to market Leninism. In Russia it has been replaced by kleptocracy.

There is no such thing as a point of no return in the Moscow – Minsk battle, because both sides are represented not by noble knights, but cynical traders.

Legal ivory sells for around $900 a kilogram in China's wholesale market, with the average tusk weighing between five and nine kilograms. A cheaper sort comes from extinct woolly mammoths, which are periodically excavated from Siberia's tundra.

By the mid-1930s Hemingway found it easier to catch huge marlin than to write. «I am supposed to lay back and come in with 'War and Peace' or be considered a bum,» he said.

Scandal that speaks volumes about Russia has snowballed recently.

If America did not exist, Russia would have to invent it. In a sense it already has: first as a dream, then as a nightmare. No other country looms so large in the Russian psyche.

As a former Turkish president put it, «building relations with big states is like getting into bed with a bear.» When that bear is Russia, it is best to stay wide awake.

Часть II

A

The ultra-violence that saw the deaths of 60,000 civilians over the past decade has abated somewhat – ослаблять, умерять.

Even its campaign against banks that abet tax evasion, the one financial crime it is widely reckoned to have tackled with firmness – поощрять, содействовать.

The old stuffed-shirt politics might also be in abeyance; Facebook's policy of prohibiting hate speech was apparently in abeyance: drawings of pigs urinating on the Koran – and worse – were posted – состояние неопределенности, неизвестности.

Even uglier was the stampede, of governors and congressmen as well as presidential candidates, to insist that Barack Obama abjure his (rather paltry) plan to take in some 10,000 Syrian refugees next year – отказываться, отрекаться.

Politics abhors a vacuum and the gap between the elite and the public will eventually be closed – не выносить, не терпеть.

Widespread abhorrence of it enabled the eventual rise of pragmatists led by Deng Xiaoping – омерзение; ненависть.

It is inherent in human nature to seek security via special status, and it necessarily increases with time, as so ably explicated by Mancur Olson – умело; квалифицированно.

To fulfil millennial Jewish yearning to restore the tabernacle, the company is also repairing what it says are ancient ablution pools – омовение; обмывание.

European culture has been diminished by a mixture of self-abnegation and political correctness, while declining Christian values have left most western European countries unmoored – отрицание учения.

Examples abound, from Barack Obama's online campaign to activism on Twitter – кишеть, изобиловать.

Sexually insatiable, she had two husbands and countless lovers, and neglected her children abominably; some of the book's most striking passages are about «well-oiled feudal barbarity», the abominable treatment that was meted out to those who tried to escape – грязно, мерзко.

Iran is prepared under ANY circumstances to recognize this abomination to Islam and more specifically its Imperial Designs for the Middle East – отвращение, мерзость.

Three states have banned doctors from prescribing abortifacient medicine remotely, as is often done in rural areas – средство, вызывающее аборт.

The government has hounded the Brotherhood, referring to its loyalists as "terrorists", to the point of removing them from above-board politics – откровенный, прямой.

Fears spread that the EU, which had found in Mr Davutoglu a sensible interlocutor and a channel to bypass his abrasive boss – резкий, колкий.

British prisons are not as porous as a recent rash of absconding suggests – бежать от суда; скрываться.

A distinguished restaurateur who runs the school, tells me they come for cooking, rather than golf or abseiling, as a group activity – спускаться на веревке.

The government will be less abstemious than it claims – воздержанный, умеренный (в пище, питье).

It also marked the moment when maths began to slip away from being part of the armamentarium of any educated person and towards the dizzyingly abstruse field it has become today – глубокомысленный, серьезный.

China's coast abuts relatively shallow seas, rendered turbid by the sediment of China's east-flowing rivers – примыкать, граничить.

Europe is abuzz with talk of a growth compact, but nobody agrees what it means – возбужденный, охваченный деятельностью.

Academe of the Oaks offers a rigorous college preparatory course of study that prepares students for future academic work – научное сообщество, мир науки.

For Mr Reddy, the ack-ack guns held no fears – зенитные орудия, зенитная артиллерия.

A vote for independence almost impossible in a region of low literacy and abysmal infrastructure – ужасный.

Before such honours were bestowed, many worthy of the accolade were fellows of the Royal Society – похвала, хороший отзыв.

Obama has all the accoutrements of a president-in-waiting – антураж; внешние атрибуты.

The resulting minuscule fibres accrete into a dense mesh – срастаться.

An ever larger share of the benefits of growth accrues to owners of capital – вступать в силу (о правах, требованиях).

Mr Capriles, who came within an ace of winning a snap presidential election on April 14th – на волосок от, на грани.

Нe has an ace in the hole – преимущество, козырь в кармане.

It takes time for an institution based in the Anglophone world to be acculturated in Asia or Latin America – интегрироваться.

Without such total acculturation, managing distant operations with few communications would have been all but impossible – слияние разных культур.

He is an acidulous critic of the incumbent administration and its military servants – едкий, язвительный.

There are wealthy people who contribute, and wealthy people who just accrete – обрастать, прикрепляться.

Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's clever and acerbic ambassador to the EU, wonders what European values really are – едкий, язвительный.

Calvin Klein underpants may not exactly represent the acme of spiritual, political or even material freedom – кульминация, точка наивысшего подъема.

The Hamas government that then briefly held power gave acolytes jobs administering government mosques – ассистент, помощник.

China will acquiesce to another round of sanctions on Iran – уступать, молча соглашаться.

After acrimonious debates over Barack Obama's appointments to head the Treasury, there was little energy left in the Senate this week for a fight – язвительный; злой.

The uproar this provoked only grew when a state-appointed actuary concluded that the firm's justification for the hike was bogus – актуарий, специалист по страховой математике.

Low olfactory acuity portends a curtailed lifespan – тонкость, резкость (восприятия).

And conservative pundits are people of adamantine principle compared with conservative politicians – неколебимый, несокрушимый.

John Kennedy's adage that «a rising tide lifts all boats» – афоризм, изречение.

His memories are addled, but the young member of Cocaine Anonymous can just about recall his formal drug education – сбивать с толку, запутывать.

Slow jurisdictions, like Italy, let lawyers adduce new evidence whenever they want, allowing them to prolong a case with new submissions – представлять, приводить (в качестве доказательства).

Al-Qaeda is still dangerous and is adept at changing its shape – эксперт, специалист.

Hyperconnectivity exaggerates some of the most destabilising trends in the modern workplace: the decline of certainty (as organisations abandon bureaucracy in favour of adhocracy), the rise of global supply chains and the general cult of flexibility – адхократия (модель организации, в которой текущие проблемы решаются группами специалистов с различными профессиональными знаниями, подобранными в соответствии с ситуацией).

Chinese companies don't want to be mere adjuncts to foreign firms – придаток; случайное свойство.

A curious admixture of civic conscience (support of many green initatives) and Standard Oil-type monopoly practices – примесь.

Delivering the same stump speech ad nauseum; He had already spoken ad nauseam on this very subject – до отвращения.

Good fortune and adroit political management have marked Mr Howard's four wins since 1996 – ловкий, проворный; искусный.

He was using "adscititious", correctly, in letters home from his military academy at 17 – дополнительная, не основная часть.

On her tour of Europe last month, she was swaddled in praise verging on adulation – низкопоклонство; лесть.

Between detours through nanotechnology, robotics and military strategy, he adumbrated a resilient society of «Odyssean» citizens – предзнаменовать, предрекать.

Heckling politicians is rarely an effective form of advocacy – пропаганда, активная публичная защита.

The order described by the Guardian, which was issued under the aegis of section 215 of the Patriot Act, doesn't let the NSA see the content of individual calls – эгида (щит Зевса).

Barry Cunliffe has scoured those aeons of under-achievement for signs of promise and hints towards an explanation – бесконечность, вечность.

A government body that provides financial assistance to the affianced about 60 % of women over 30 are unmarried – помолвленный.

Yet the distinction between illnesses of affluence and illnesses of poverty is misleading as a description of the world – богатство, изобилие.

The ruling Islamist parties in Morocco and Tunisia have long vaunted an affinity with Mr Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) party – близость, родство.

Typically, you were affrighted by an attack on that most sacred of all sacred things: property! – пугать, ужасать.

Similar moves are afoot among other non-politicians – готовиться, назревать.

But none of that is likely to put off hardcore vampire aficionados – ревностный поклонник, поборник.

They came as far afield as Chicago – вдали от дома, издалека.

An ambitious trade deal with Australia has Chinese businessmen aflutter – взволнованный, возбужденный.

The debate and its aftermath dominated political news for several days and has transformed the race – последствия, состояние после случившегося.

What a thoroughly ageist and offensive sub-title – дискриминационный.

The horn, which is merely agglutinated hair, the same stuff as finger nails, has no pharmacological value – склеиваться (в однородную массу).

It worked hard to prevent the countries challenging it over some or all of its absurdly aggrandizing territorial claims in the sea from ganging up against it – увеличивать, усиливать.

When aggregate military spending in the US rises by 1 % of GDP, military spending in California on average rises by about 3 % – общий, итоговый.

American politicians, aggrieved at claims that victims of terrorism were targeted, are calling for investigations – огорченный, расстроенный.

For some, the annual July aggro is the most exciting event in their alienated young lives – агрессивное поведение; уличная драка.

Aghast at the prospect of an American victory, panic-stricken Soviet bureaucrats turned to Nikita Khrushchev himself. «Is he (Van Cliburn) the best?» asked the general secretary. Yes, came the answer. «Then give him first prize» – пораженный ужасом; ошеломленный.

It could take the brand back to its agitprop roots – агитация и пропаганда.

The airline world is agog at the news that «something» is happening between British Airways, American Airlines and Continental – возбужденный, сгорающий от любопытства.

The industry has, ahem, a long tail of thousands of smaller ones – гм!

The loss of revenue is serious and should not be airily dismissed as you have attempted to do – беспечно, беззаботно, легкомысленно.

The firms spend big sums on "thought leadership": ie, papers, books and conferences, this is not all airy-fairy theory – мечтательный; причудливый.

A brochure for the SS Great Britain airbrushed out the offending stump in the late 1990s – ретушировать.

His picture appeared on the cover of Time, chin high and arms akimbo – руки в боки, подбоченясь.

The alacrity with which people transition from enthusiasm to sour entitlement when presented with free stuff is depressing – готовность (как ответная реакция на предложение).