「英語にハマリませんか？」No.4

私が、職業がら、あるいは、個人的趣味で毎日聞いている/読んでいる
英語のニュースソースはいろいろあります。

ちなみに、現在よく聞くPodCast配信の番組は、「Economist」、「Car Talk」、
「Football Today(アメリカンフットボールです！)」、「Wall Street Journal」の
4種類です。

初回から紹介している「Car Talk」はいわゆる日常会話に参考になる表現や
テクニックを学ぶことを目的としています。

一方、「Wall Street Journal」と「Economist」は政治経済を中心としたニュース
ですが、いわゆる「WSJ」は雑ネタも扱っています。司会者と記者がやり取り
しながら、色々なトピックについて解説するという形式なので、複雑な政治問題
などを分かりやすく説明するテクニックが学べると思っています。

それから質問（good questionというやつですね）の仕方も分かります。

今回は、ちょっと前に取り上げられた、衛星放送用パラボラアンテナが近所の
美観を損ねるとしてシカゴなどの都市で規制対象となっているという話です。
（紙面の関係で詳しい解説は来週行います）

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司会者：Cloth lines, idling cars, and trash are typical annoyances in cities.  Today, it is
apparently satellite dishes. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are among the cities that
have recently passed or are drafting a bill banning satellite dishes from fronts of home
unless signals cannot be obtained in another way.  （中略）

ボストンの記者：The city says that it is a lot of aesthetic problems there. There are
too many of them and are bringing down the appearance of neighborhoods, they are
tacky and make them look like area 51.  They say things are not classy, so they are
trying to crack down on this by law, and the satellite dish industry is not happy about it.

司会者：Are there any (federal) laws in place about this?

記者：There are several laws from 1996; the federal government says that you cannot
prevent people from getting signals to watch TV or video, so it makes really hard for
cities to pass this type of ordinance   You are seeing that the dish industry has gone to
FCC to say, please examine this for legality.  It is kind of interesting to see what happens
because dishes are now very popular, people like them, you can get a lot of channels
and a good deal, so the city is saying enough is enough.  （中略）

司会者：Satellite companies cannot say they are very happy?

記者：Well, they say that this is the household and this is unfair.  They are being singled
out, there are a plenty of things in cities and neighborhoods that are not at all attractive,
you know, air conditioners on windows, so why single out dishes, people should have
the right to put dishes wherever they want.
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