To have resolutions is a static thing. They are already on the shelf. But having resolve is a dynamic thing — not something you pay lip service to once a year. Using the calendar to instill resolve is self-delusion. If you accomplish a thing a week before New Year’s day or a week after, is…
Category: Words Poorly Used
Words Poorly Used #17 — Victim
The place where I feel unease with the use of victim is in the idea of victimlessness. Strategically, I think it is a poor tactical argument to use against arbitrary legislation. If one’s complaint is against the proliferation and enforcement of victimless crime, then all the authoritarians need to do is to trump up a…
Words Poorly Used #16 — Survival of the Fittest
So how do you determine fitness in an ever changing world? Unpacking the idea, I say there are two approaches, culling or creative neglect. The first method is adopted by authoritarians, in their conviction that humankind is destined to live forever, but must be herded toward that end. Individuals must be improved for doing their…
Words Poorly Used #15 — Security
Since when is 3 ounces of liquid less likely to bring a plane tumbling from the sky than 4 ounces? Since when are 75 years old people automatically not wearing exploding shoes? Theater is not security, and security is not theater. Kilgore.
Words Poorly Used #14 — Courtesy
May I see your papers … please? Kilgore.
Words Poorly Used #13 — Machiavellian (Update)
OK, I stand corrected. Niccolo Machiavelli is not the culprit here. Although I still have a bit of a bone to pick with him as a court hanger-on, a minion of the ruling class. One of my greatest creative heroes, it’s true, also lived as a courtier, but Mozart did not advise on affairs of…
Words Poorly Used #13 — Machiavellian
Could there possibly be a more egregious authoritarian suck-up than this sockhead, Machiavelli? Why do people use the adjective, Machiavellian, with a kind of grudging admiration? Kilgore.
Words Poorly Used #12 — Simplicity
After hassling with a beyond-conceivable variety of unforeseen consequences, traveling and trying to be online, I am convinced that the market is trying to choose simplicity but has not yet succeeded. So far, the signal is that if you throw money at your problems they will go away. But since you have to throw the…
Words Poorly Used #11 — Security
Security, as in Transportation Security Administration. TSA agent confiscates sock monkey’s toy gun. Great! And today I am taking my first commercial flight since the TSA went gonzo! Dang bunned sock monkeys! Always stirring things up. I’ll probably get an endoscopy out of this! Kilgore
Words Poorly Used #10 — Emancipate, Liberate, Free
No one can emancipate, liberate, or free another man. People are inherently free or they are not. To enslave a living being is to deny them their obvious purpose. It is to interfere illegitimately with their living. People should seek to live together in a semblance of harmony, but there is no man empowered to…