Human language, as well as symbolic rationality, leaves much to be desired in terms of communication. If it is trial and error, then it is 100% trial and 99.999 … % error. Because we humans are stuck with language, we are effectively walled off from fact, we are effectively walled in by perception.
Author: Kilgore Forelle
Words Poorly Used #127 — Secrecy, Security, Privacy
These three words, secrecy, security, and privacy, are thrown about, often with an intent to imply relationship among them. But none of them actually imply the others or any combination of the others. the critical element for each is whether they are legitimate provinces of the state, and in the hands of the state, are they appropriately administered. Let’s look at each as a standalone entity.
Corruption
I heard a radio program, this morning addressing the issue of politicians accused of dirty politics in our justice system. In the particular cases, the alleged corruption-mongers skated based on narrow technical interpretations of laws under which the prosecution had, perhaps unwisely, chosen to proceed. The short-term lesson seemed to be that the laws were not sufficient to stop the corrupt behavior.
Partitions IX — Abstract
As a software engineer, I learned that there are only two things that you can do with entities, combine them or separate them, sort them or collect them. In the real world, one has a third option, leave them alone. This works well as long as there is no principled reason to engage with them.
Partitions VIII — The Mexican Border Wall
There will be a partially completed money pit on the US-Mexican Border for ever more. No POTUS nor COTUS nor SCOTUS will ever finish it, because 1) the political budgeting process never finishes anything, and 2) no one who could possibly take the blame for the failure and unintended consequences of a completed wall will allow the wall to be completed.
Partitions VII — The Iron Curtain
Joseph Stalin always had the annexation of the world — the Iron Curtain — in mind. It was at the Yalta Conference where he finessed FDR and Churchill to make his dreams come true. Maybe it was because he had the home court advantage, since Yalta was the major resort city in Crimea, Ukraine, USSR.
Partitions VI — Germany and Berlin
This seems such a trifling complaint, since Germany and Berlin played such a minor role on the world stage for four and a half decades after the nominal end of WW II
Partitions V — Iraq
I imagine that there have been many conjunctions and disjunctions of territories in the swirling sandstorms of the deserts and the mingling illusions of the imperialist minds. Mesopotamia is criss-crossed with these fictions.
Partitions IV — India-Pakistan
History had totally intermixed the Muslims among the Hindu and the minority ethnicities of the sub-continent. So one has to wonder what the English thought they would accomplish by breaking out the Pakistans, then separating them with a huge wedge.
Partitions III — Northern Ireland
I am not an expert on either Irish or British history. There is too much of it. But I do know that I have yet to find anything in it which justifies the present problem, the UK feel as though they have a foothold on the Emerald Isle.