phrase-meaning
As you probably aware the ugly truth prevails that we cannot achieve our goals without the necessary financial support…
(from 7 Years Later, volume 1 "Shadows From the Past", page 3 by Alexandra W. Muller)
Please, can anyone tell me what it means?
Perhaps it means something like "rumors are spreading"?
In the context of a conference, a track is a series of related presentations all focused on the same topic.
For example, if you look at the conference planner for OOPSLA 2014, you'll see that they had four presentations on Program Analysis and the Web in one room, while there were four more talks on Runtime Systems in another room.
So, two conference attendees might be having lunch together, and say:
"Did you see that talk on garbage collection?"
"No, I was in the other track."
meaning that she was listening to the talk in the other room.
Evidently, the author of the book started the C++ track at the Software Development Conference, and later did the same thing with the Java track. The chair of a track often has the responsibility of introducing each speaker during that session, and making sure speakers don't go past their allotted time.
Incidentally, a corollary of Murphy's Law says: At a conference, the two talks you most want to attend will be held at the same time.
"The past day" can mean either yesterday or the previous 24 hours. The survey that went out to students was probably something like: How many hours did you spend playing sports yesterday? But the article is talking about the survey after it happened, so if the article used "yesterday" you would think it meant your (the reader's) yesterday. Instead they use "the past day" to indicate it was the survey-taker's yesterday, at the time they completed the survey.
As others have pointed out, there is ambiguity; the term might refer to the 24 hours immediately preceding the time when the survey-taker is answering the question, or it might refer to the most recent complete midnight-to-midnight 24-hour period. From the context of the article (a secondary source) it is not clear which is meant. Personally, if I were designing the survey I would use "yesterday."
The term "the past day" does not refer to any arbitrary day in the past, except in the sense that the day the survey was handed out may have been arbitrary. "A previous day" carries that sense of arbitrariness, which means it would not be good to use in a statistical survey (which is supposed to be a snapshot in time, and all survey-takers should be answering for the same time period).
Best Answer
The statement is saying that there is a price to be paid, referred to as the ugly truth, if people are to achieve their goals.
It can be understood in two ways.
The first is that a certain level of income is required for individuals to be able to exploit their potential. Poverty is a trap that prevents people from gaining the skills and education necessary for advancement. So society has to be ready to pay the necessary wages and give the assistance that people require to prosper.
The obverse is that people have to pay the taxes that government requires in order to provide the services that people need.
So, in the writer's view, the pain of paying taxes and spending money on the underprivileged - the ugly truth - is the necessary price of allowing people to achieve their goals.
In short, you get nothing for nothing. If you want something, you have to pay for it one way or another.