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

Botox was used 336,834 times by American men in 2010, up 9 % from 2009, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. But women are still 15 times more likely than men to have their faces frozen.

I'm on a seafood diet – I see food and I eat it.

As anyone who has been to Japan knows, there are strict rules about bathing in onsen, or hot springs. Bodies must be scrubbed beforehand, swimming trunks are banned and tattoos are taboo.

He is a pescatarian, i. e. a vegetarian who eats fish.

More voters come to believe that Fidesz and its friends, just like their Socialist predecessors, have carved up Hungary among themselves as if it were a giant salami.

In ancient China suspected liars were sometimes required to hold rice in their mouths while their alleged misdemeanours were read out. A dry mouth was thought to be a symptom of a guilty conscience, so subsequent examination of the rice offered an easy indication as to innocence or guilt. The idea that lying produces physical symptoms found its modern expression in America in the early 20th century, with the invention of the polygraph, the «lie detector» so beloved of spy films and pulp detective novels.

Demand for lobsters, for example, has evolved in a curious way. The armour-plated delicacy used to be super-abundant and dirt cheap, he says – so cheap that it was fed to inmates in prison and children in orphanages. Farmers even fertilised their fields with it, and servants would bargain with their employers to be given it no more than twice or thrice a week.

Oxfam, an aid agency, warns of a humanitarian disaster, with more than 1m children facing severe malnutrition. Villagers in Chad already dig up ant hills to gather grain the ants have stored.

All that glisters is not gadolinium.

Champagne socialism.

The euphemism now lies buried beneath the rubble of reality.

Starbucks provides a comfortable environment, at considerable expense, so that people will buy overpriced coffee.

The main factor s1eparating success and failure of great strategies is luck.

The food was good, but not the mood.

This combination of challenges and opportunities is producing a fizzing cocktail of creativity.

The British have embraced the Liberal Democrats, lampooned not so long ago as gently eccentric granola-eaters and sandal-wearers.

Sparkling wines does not appear to work in stouts.

Useless as a chocolate teapot.

In the world of wine (regarded as an art form by at least some connoisseurs), being told the price of a bottle affects a drinker's appreciation of the liquid in the glass in ways that can be detected by a brain scanner.

Surely you know what a blue-plate is, man? They shove the whole meat at you under your nose, already dished up on your plate – roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sausages and carrots and Grench fried. I can't bear French fried, but there's no pick and choose with a blue-plate.

But one constant would remain through all of this fuss about whether Marmite is vegetarian, or baked beans kosher or halal.

Charles de Gaulle once said that the graveyards are full of indispensable men. The same can be said of the bars of Los Angeles and Paris.

in 1795 Napoleon offered a prize to preserve food for his army, which led to the canned food of today.

Indeed, there are enough sour grapes in these pages to fill an entire vineyard.

If you use a public toilet and it's dirty, clean it, otherwise those who come after you will think you dirtied it.

It takes roughly 3,000 litres of water to grow enough food for one person for one day, or about one litre for each calorie. Don't paint a snake with legs, the Chinese will say, when someone is in danger of spoiling something by overdoing it.

But the last word on Steve Irwin seemed to belong to Africa's greatest crocodile-hunter, Khalid Hassen, bagger of 17,000 crocs the easy way, with a rifle, who said it simply didn't seem right that a fish should have killed him.

«We say it is higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, stronger than steel, dearer than eyesight, sweeter than honey, and so on.»

Even where there is enough food, people do not seem healthier. On top of 1 billion without enough calories, another 1 billion are malnourished in the sense that they lack micro-nutrients (this is often called «hidden hunger»). And a further 1 billion are malnourished in the sense that they eat too much and are obese. It is a damning record: out of the world population of 7 billion, 3 billion eat too little, too unhealthily, or too much.

The connection between humour and Jews is so strong as to be almost axiomatic and it as similar to «French cuisine» or «Turkish baths».

George Bernard Shaw once wrote: «There is no love sincerer than the love of food.»

In his «Autobiography» John Stuart Mill argued that the best way to attain happiness is not to make happiness your «direct end», but to fix your mind on something else. Happiness is the incidental by-product of pursuing some other worthy goal.

Around 15,400 tonnes a year, a whopping 80 % of all antibiotics sold, go to farmers. Chicken farmers use even more than those who raise cattle or pigs. Only a small percentage of the drugs are used to cure illnesses.

Women aged 25–44 spend almost as much time shopping as they do eating and drinking.

You never expected Nelson Mandela or Gandhi to dress smartly.

“ Government, politics, democracy, society

If politicians were recyclable, they'd be worth less than cardboard.

Many moons ago Lyndon Johnson was widely quoted as justifying his unwillingness to sack J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, on the ground that «it's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in».

«If you look into the crystal ball,» says an experienced pollster, «you've got to be ready to eat ground glass.» Some put Hillary Clinton's chance of victory against Mr Trump above 99 %.

One quick question: do you know what a mugwump is?

Was the American Revolution not a civil war within the British empire?

The first rule of politics: don't kick your most faithful voters in the teeth for no reason.

Nobody reads party manifestos.

A figure of between 100 and 200 acquaintances is similar to the number of people with whom a human being can maintain a meaningful social relationship – a value known as Dunbar's number, after Robin Dunbar, the psychologist who proposed it. Dunbar's number for people is about 150.

This has encouraged a notion that the nominees are as bad as each other – Hillary and Trump are Coke and Pepsi, both bad for you.

The proportion of Britons telling pollsters that they almost never trust the government has risen from one in ten in 1986 to one in three today.

A more open, accessible imperial family has transformed the monarchy's appeal after the aloofness of Hirohito – even if it will be a while yet before the royals bicycle to the supermarket like Scandinavian ones.

Imagine an American election in which two-thirds of the senators and three-quarters of the state governors up for re-election are defeated. It would be a landside to end all landslides.

The whole purpose of having a drawbridge is that one can raise or lower it as necessary depending upon the situation at hand. A proper castle requires a sensible fellow at the controls.

Donald Rumsfeld, a former American defence secretary, once delighted policy wonks everywhere by distinguishing between «known unknowns» – things we know we don't know – and «unknown unknowns». China's political system is a known unknown.

«When the end of the world is nigh,» Otto von Bismarck allegedly said, «I will move to Mecklenburg, because everything happens 50 years later there.» Even locals agree that the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg – West Pomerania will always be a backwater. But backwaters can also be bellwethers.

It feels as if Britain has been visited by a battalion of sorrows.

When Richard Nixon got cross with Gough Whitlam, the independent-minded Australian prime minister at the time, he put Australia on his «shit list».

There is a saying in Japan that a monkey that falls from a tree is still a monkey, but a member of parliament who falls is a nobody.

Some legal scholars have, rather valiantly, cited as precedent Benjamin Franklin's seeking Congress's approval before accepting a jewel-encrusted snuffbox from the king of France as a retirement gift.

America already spends $19bn a year on immigration enforcement, more than on the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Drug Enforcement Agency and Secret Service combined.

The farther you live from a railway station, the more you are likely to vote FN (National Front).

Governments that were digitally blind when the internet first took off in the mid-1990s now have both a telescope and a microscope.

Multiplying parties can allow politicians to hide the fact that what matters is patronage. Voters may be bewildered when confronted with the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front – or with National Liberals, Democratic Liberals and Liberal Reformists, as they were in Romania in 2014.

The US prison system that, after decades of relentless growth, holds over 20 % of the world's prisoners, though America is home to less than 5 % of the global population. Every year, 600,000 people are released from American prisons. More than half of all prisoners have mental health problems, while about two-thirds did not complete high school. Once out, ex-cons join about 70m Americans with criminal records, a status which in several states will deny them public housing and the right to vote, and legally bar them from occupations which require a licence, such as hair-cutting or plumbing.

During the 20th century, a ghastly illness was almost a presidential prerequisite. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in his second term that his doctors concealed; Franklin Roosevelt's heart problems killed him while in office; John F. Kennedy's ailments could have filled an entire medical textbook, had they been disclosed. Richard Nixon's anguish during Watergate placed a large nuclear arsenal in the hands of a president who may temporarily have been of unsound mind. For the combination of sheer agony and high secrecy, though, it is hard to beat the unfortunate Grover Cleveland. For four days at the beginning of his second term, notes Robert Dallek of Stanford University's outpost in Washington, DC, he disappeared to a yacht, where six surgeons cut out a portion of his cancerous upper jaw. The offending bits were removed through his mouth so as not to damage his moustache, which might alert the public.

Frederick the Great of Prussia declared: «No woman should ever be allowed to govern anything.»

As Queen Elizabeth nears 90 after 64 years as its titular head, some wonder if the Commonwealth club will survive when she goes. Few knew much about it; a quarter of Jamaicans thought its head was Barack Obama.

Roughly one adult Chinese in every 13 is a member of the Communist Party, yet identifying such people can be difficult.

Mobutu Sese Seko, the late dictator of Zaire, used to reshuffle his cabinet every six months or so to show ministers who was boss. To reinforce the point, he sometimes also slept with their wives.

Excuse me, Mr. President, but you are an asshole.

Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, has a name that is about as Scottish as a Dorset cream tea.

No Congress has ever moved to dislodge a president of the same party as its majority tribe.

The Israeli government recently raised an interesting question for advertisers: whom can you safely insult?

Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant, advised Republicans to use words like «liberal», «sick», «corrupt» and «traitors» together, to tarnish the Democrats.

In London you've always had the Africans at the bottom of the pile along with the West Indians. Then you get some Afghans. Then the eastern Europeans coming up. Then you get the Asians. Then you get the Irish. Then you get the whites. And at the very top you get the rich. Where there is no race.

Bill de Blasio, New York's mayor, was asked whether transgender women were allowed to swim during female-only hours. He had no quick answer. That, he said, is under review.

Parliamentary committees are normally sleepy affairs.

Queens, the researchers found, were more likely to gain new territory. After overthrowing her husband, Catherine the Great expanded her empire by some 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km), which is a lot of territory, even for Russia. (She was the first, though not the last, Russian ruler to annex Crimea.) And married queens were more aggressive than single queens or kings, whether single or married.

The upper chamber is the nation's biggest and most successful Laundromat.

This country is not working for working people. It's working only for those at the top. That's not the American dream. That's the American nightmare.

In Britain the elected House of Commons is less effective than the unelected House of Lords.

The world knows what it wants, but cannot agree on how to get what it wants.

Even the government cannot do much if it does not rain.

Fifty years later, black America still fares badly on many of the predictors of success and signals of distress that concerned Moynihan. If it were a separate country, it would have a worse life expectancy than Mexico, a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast and a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth. This is despite the fact that, overall, America is home to the richest, most successful population of black African descent that the world has ever seen.

The distance between the front benches in Britain's House of Commons, it is said, is that of two drawn swords.

«The weather is like the government,» wrote Jerome K. Jerome, «always in the wrong.»

Asked how political coalitions are formed, Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, once shot back with a question of his own: «How do porcupines mate?» After a short pause, he then answered it with a grin: «Very slowly.»

If town meeting teaches anything, it is how to suffer damn fools and to appreciate the fact that from time to time you too may look like a damn fool in the eyes of people as good as yourself.

If Democrats had any brains, they'd be Republicans.

«Political language,» wrote George Orwell, «is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.»

Recep Erdogan is, as an old Turkish saying goes, holding a stick with shit at both ends.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the internet's forebear, ARPANET, was President Eisenhower's response to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union. The decentralised, packet-based system of communication that forms the basis of the internet originated in America's need to withstand a massive attack on its soil.

Israel's founder reckoned that a nation «has to have its own burglars and prostitutes».

This great crappiness was essentially American.

Britain's queen has over the years received «pineapples, eggs, a box of snail shells, a grove of maple trees, a dozen tins of tuna and 7kg of prawns». Presumably they went the same way as the pair of cowboy boots she was given on a visit to America two decades ago.

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk capacity.

Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and is not a conservative has no brains (Winston Churchill).

Nationalist protesters recently donned panda outfits to remind David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister, that there are more pandas in Edinburgh zoo (two) than there are Tory MPs in Scotland (one).

Is it a bad thing to have MPs voting for what they think is right?

The United States has taken Abraham Lincoln's admonition to heart: its constitution has been amended several times since coming into effect in 1789, but never replaced.

The world's countries no longer resemble «a flotilla of more than 100 separate boats»; rather, «they all live in 193 separate cabins on the same boat».

Sir Malcolm Jack, a former clerk of the Commons, was asked why the catering services of the House of Lords, the upper house, and the House of Commons could not have been merged to save money. He replied: «The lords feared that the quality of champagne would not be as good if they chose a joint service.» According to The Guardian newspaper, the upper house has spent £ 265,770 on 17,000 bottles of the stuff since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government took office in 2010 – enough for five bottles of bubbly per peer per year.

Using «farmer» to mean «stupid» is unwise in Iowa, where the word is synonymous with «voter».

Mr Clegg is Westminster roadkill; his net personal approval rating is minus 52.

One of Pol Pot's favourite sayings was, tuk min chamnen, dak chenh ka, min kat – «to keep you is no gain, to kill you no loss».

Arguably, the Founding Fathers favored a system in which one foot stayed permanently on the accelerator and the other on the brake. Hasn't America got what they wanted?

We're all Americuns, greatest race in the world!

Letting in dynamic immigrants, revamping the tax code and reforming entitlements would make the Great Society safe for another generation. Not enough to get Mr Obama's face carved on Mount Rushmore, but not bad.

Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher who thought up the concept of the «public sphere», has always been in two minds about the internet. Digital communication, he wrote a few years ago, has unequivocal democratic merits only in authoritarian countries, where it undermines the government's information monopoly. Yet in liberal regimes, online media, with their millions of forums for debate on a vast range of topics, could lead to a «fragmentation of the public» and a «liquefaction of politics», which would be harmful to democracy.

Being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once.

One of the most popular sports in Washington is the partisan flip.

If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.

North Korea is the world's most rational despotic regime: a highly successful Communist absolute monarchy.

Bushism is Reaganism minus the passion for freedom.

For all its faults socialism is manifestly superior to capitalism in one area: the making of myths.

Every nation knows what is right and how everyone else is wrong.

Romania, a country where governments have the longevity of mayflies.

The queen understands that she is a symbol, and that symbols are «better off mostly keeping quiet».

Three highly dysfunctional institutions: the state of California, the European Union and the G20.

Leticia Van de Putte, a Texas state senator from San Antonio with relatives on both sides of the border, points out that «our family was there when it was Spain, when it was France, when it was Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, the Confederacy. Our family's always been in the same place; it was the damn government that kept changing.»

Abraham Lincoln observed that «nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.»

The Newark mayor has long been a man of action. He once chased down a robbery suspect. He shovelled snow during a 2010 blizzard. In April he suffered burns when rescuing a neighbour from her burning house. Earlier this month he directed traffic away from an accident he came across.

For many years Northern Ireland was a large net importer of advice on how to end its troubles.

Neanderthal dictatorship.

The prime minister should stop being the custodian of vaginas.

It could almost be a question in a political-science exam. Three groups, A, B and C each lack the necessary parliamentary majority; A will not form a coalition with B; C will not support either. How do you form a government.

Short of taking bribes or fornicating in a public park, there is no surer way to detonate a career in British politics than to accept a job as home secretary.

A cartoon of a fully clothed, bespectacled Mr Zuma, virtually unrecognisable save for the characteristic bump at the back of his shaven head, in a heroic Leninesque pose, but with his genitals hanging out of his trousers.

Joe Biden, the American vice-president, stood beside Mr Hollande in Paris and applauded his «decisiveness» and «the incredible competence and capability» of France's military forces. For a politician whom members of his own party compared variously to a marshmallow, a woodland strawberry and a caramel pudding, this was bliss indeed.

In a short story called «Franchise», Isaac Asimov dreamed up a computer that saved Americans from going to the polls. The machine was fed data, and interviewed one representative voter, before announcing a result that perfectly reflected what would have happened had the election been held.

Mr Obama's problems were partly structural. An incumbent must defend the realities and compromises of government, while a challenger is freer to promise the earth, details to follow.

Old regimes fall to revolutions not when they resist change, but when they attempt reform yet dash the raised expectations they have evoked.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

George Bush senior picked Dan Quayle, whom many treated harshly as a figure of fun who could not spell «potato».

The Senate, so George Washington is reputed to have told Thomas Jefferson, is a saucer into which legislation is poured to cool it down. But the Founding Fathers, alas, did not specify just how cold they wanted their tea or their laws to be.

The biggest number (15 %) went to the Five-Star «movement» of a comedian, Beppe Grillo, whose web-fired campaign denounces all parties and promises not to ally with any of them. Mr Grillo is alarmingly thin on policies and wants a referendum on leaving the euro. Some call his movement the «anti-party»; others the «Fuck Off party». We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we have done it.

Democracy in America does not come cheap. The election cycle that has just limped to its exhausted conclusion cost around $6 billion – a new record, as in every new presidential cycle.

America's vice-presidency, one of its occupants once asserted in an oft-bowdlerised remark, is «not worth a bucket of warm piss».

«Latinos are Republicans,» Ronald Reagan is supposed to have said. «They just don't know it yet.»

Plato warned that democratic leaders would «rob the rich, keep as much of the proceeds as they can for themselves and distribute the rest to the people».

Officials would prefer you to be born, live, work, pay taxes, draw benefits and die in the same place, travel on one passport only, and bequeath only one nationality to your offspring.

Otto von Hasburg, 97, liberated from court etiquette, can call someone an «idiot» if he wants, instead of «your excellency». He was a technicolour politician in a monochrome landscape.

Public urinators rule the London streets.

CASA-CE, a new group headed by Abel Chivukuvuku, a former Unita man, is one of several being allowed to run for the first time, and may take votes from Unita.

Gerge McGovern promised swingeing cuts in the defence budget, an end to the war in Vietnam, an amnesty for draft-evaders, universal health care, a guaranteed job for every American and an income above the poverty line for every American household. Bright-eyed young volunteers stuffed envelopes for him; Hollywood stars turned out for him; Simon and Garfunkel sang. To no avail. Richard Nixon won 49 states; he won Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. His name became a byword for Democratic disaster.

Air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the long-standing Democratic lock on southern politics. America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything.

In 2008, we changed the guard. This year we must guard the change.

America comes to believe that it has wings. Then, Icarus-like, it soars too close to the sun and the wings melt.

The world is a competitive place. Britain is trying to run with its shoelaces tied together.

Houston was elected president of Texas five months later and in 1845 it became the 28th and largest of the United States of America. Alaska, the 49th state, is even larger. But, as some say in Texas, just wait 'til the ice melts.

If one compares Сastro's lodgings with the White House, Buckingham Palace or the Elysée Palace, it would be fair to conclude that their residences are unpretentious.

Dr Gloor has found that, in Western countries at least, non-violent protest movements begin to burn out when the upbeat tweets turn negative, with «not», «never», «lame», «I hate», «idiot» and so on becoming more frequent. Abundant complaints about idiots in the government or in an ideologically opposed group are a good signal of a movement's decline. Complaints about idiots in one's own movement or such infelicities as the theft of beer by a fellow demonstrator suggest the whole thing is almost over. Condor, then, is good at forecasting the course of existing protests. Even better, from the politicians' point of view, would be to predict such protests before they occur.

The difference between Barack Obama, leader and Barack Obama, campaigner is in the sleeves. When Mr Obama speaks as the president – sober, calm, head of a nation – he tends to encase them in a suit jacket. When he speaks as a candidate – fiery, enthusiastic, figurehead of a party – he loses the jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeves.

In 1922 Archduke Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor became the head of the House of Habsburg: «Your Majesty» to legitimists, and by the Grace of God «Emperor of Austria; King of Hungary and Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; King of Jerusalem, etc; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Silesia, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia». His other titles were more minor.

With the war over, Seward found the time to devote to expansionism. He not only arranged to buy Alaska for $7.2m in gold – one senator declared his support for the treaty on the condition «that the secretary of state be compelled to live there» – but he also began planning for the acquisition of Hawaii and the construction of the Panama canal, both of which later came to pass. He also wanted to buy British Columbia, which would have connected the rest of America to Alaska, but «British honour» kicked in, among other factors, and he failed.

The great fear of every political leader is events, especially unexpected ones, and especially unexpected ones that are beyond the power of politicians to control.

An iron law of politics holds that at times of political unravelling the fixer becomes the scapegoat and the planter of stories turns into the story itself.

Inside were the contents of President Lincoln's pockets on the night he was assassinated. Two pairs of spectacles; a lens polisher; a pocket knife; the fob of a watch; a leather wallet; a linen handkerchief; and nine newspaper clippings admiring of the president's policies.

Being a President is like riding a tiger – a man has to keep on riding or being swallowed.

The after-life for a prime minister is a particularly empty one.

Ronald Reagan famously said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: «I'm from the government and I'm here to help.»

While in opposition, Mr Cameron invited the Swede to his house for supper. I bicycle home, so may be late, he warned Mr Reinfeldt. Great, replied the Swedish prime minister, I'll grab a pint at a pub near your house.

Azhar Usman, a stand-up comic, says he is a «very patriotic» American Muslim. «I would die for this country,» he declares. After a pause, he adds: «By blowing myself up.» After another pause: «Inside of a Dunkin' Donuts.»

Bush blamed the Iraqis for their inability to accept America's gift of freedom.

In Congo the government spent more than $500m on elections last year, making them the world's most costly after America's. High rates of illiteracy and a lack of capable institutions do not help. In Sierra Leone's border regions, officials judge who should get a voting card by listening to people's accents.

Tens of thousands of Puritans, who were religiously akin to the Pilgrims, reached America in the 1630s and 1640s, clustering in Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. The Indians were squeezed into ever smaller spaces as the English convinced them to sell their land. Dartmouth, Mr Philbrick reports, went for «30 yards of cloth, eight moose skins, 15 axes, 15 hoes, 15 pairs of shoes, one iron pot, and ten shillings' worth of assorted goods».

An Icarus-like government career: a shimmering rise and cut short by incaution.

Ben Bradlee was the 52nd male Bradlee to study at Harvard since 1795.

One of the best things about being a government is that nobody audits your accounts.

Toowoomba today – the rest of the world tomorrow?

«Give me a balcony and I will become president,» said José Maria Velasco, Ecuador's most prominent populist, who was five times elected president and four times overthrown by the army.

Now that «nigger» (which he calls the N-word) has become taboo in polite society, what happens to Niggerhead Point? The author notes in passing that this cape on Lake Ontario was thus named because it was a point on the laudable underground railroad that helped thousands of escaped slaves to freedom in Canada. That interesting historical association survives in the first name change, to Negrohead Point (which remains on federal maps). But to call it merely Graves Point (as New York state maps do) seems a pity. «Nigger» and «Jap» are now banned on American maps, though a Dago Gulch survives in western Montana. More puzzling to the non-American is the onslaught on the use of «Squaw», which according to some activists (though not philologists) is not an innocent word for a Native American woman, but a derogatory term for her vagina. So Squaw Peak is now set to be renamed after Lori Piestewa, the first Native American woman in the American army to be killed in combat.