hook: the central
element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong
emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In
the case of the Gulf War, the “hook” was invented
by Hill & Knowlton — babies snatched from
incubators and tossed out the window [Review video
here – please read comments after]. In style, substance and
mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England's WW I
hearings, unsubstantiated, that accused German soldiers
(AKA “the
Huns”) of “killing babies.”
horseshoe
theory : term
used in political
science that asserts that rather than the far
left and the far
right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear
political continuum,
they in fact closely resemble one another, much like the ends of a
horseshoe; the
theory posits that “left and right-wing parties are closer to each
other than the centre.” The theory is attributed to French writer
Jean-Pierre
Faye.
hypothetical example:
An example
describing imaginary or fictitious situations.
idea:
Anything existing in the mind as an object of knowledge or thought;
concept refers to a
generalized idea of a class of objects, based on knowledge of
particular instances of the class; conception,
often equivalent to concept, specifically refers to something
conceived in the mind or imagined; thought
refers to any idea, whether or not expressed, that
occurs to the mind in reasoning or contemplation; notion
implies vagueness or incomplete intention; impression
also implies vagueness of an idea provoked by some
external stimulus. Critical thinkers are aware of what ideas they are
using in their thinking, where those ideas came from, and how to
assess them. See clarify, concept, logic, logic of language. (Source:
also for next two: hereafter CTO)
imply
(verb) implication
(noun): A claim or truth which follows from other claims
or truths. One of the most important skills of critical thinking is
the ability to distinguish between what is actually implied by a
statement or situation from what may be carelessly inferred by
people. Critical thinkers monitor their inferences to keep them in
line with what is actually implied by what they know.
When
speaking, critical thinkers try to use words that imply only what
they can legitimately justify. They recognize
that there are established word usages that generate established
implications. To say of an act that it is murder, for example, is to
imply that it is intentional and unjustified. (Note:
the infinitive “to imply” is often confused with the infinitive
“to infer.” An easy way to distinguish the two opposite terms is
to remember that the preposition commonly used
with imply is “by” --- “to imply by”;
the preposition commonly used with infer is “from. “We often
infer the presence of fire from the
fact that we detect smoke.” Or, “the presence of smoke implies
fire.” Note: neither proposition is necessarily
true.
infer
(verb) inference
(noun): An inference is a step of the mind, an
intellectual act by which one concludes that something is the case in
light of something else definitively being the case, or seeming to be
the case. If you approach someone with a knife in your hand, that
person would probably infer that you mean to do harm. Inferences can
be strong or weak, justified or unjustified. Inferences are based
upon assumptions regarding how we acknowledge facts.
identification: A
process in which speakers seek to create a bond with the audience by
emphasizing common values, goals, and experiences.
internal summary: A
statement in the body of the speech that summarizes the speaker's
preceding point or points.
invalid
analogy: An
analogy in which the two cases being compared are not essentially
alike.
invisible hand:
a metaphor
conceived by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behavior
of the marketplace. The exact phrase
is used just three times in Smith's writings, but has come to capture
his important claim that individuals' efforts to maximize their own
gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have
no benevolent intentions. . . Adam
smith first introduced the concept in The
Theory of Moral Sentiments,
written in 1759. In this work, however, the idea of the market is not
discussed, and the word "capitalism" is never used.
By
the time Smith wrote The
Wealth of Nations in
1776, Smith studied the economic models of the French Physiocrats for
many years, and in this work the “invisible hand” is more
directly linked to the concept of the market: specifically that it is
competition between buyers and sellers that channels the profit
motive of individuals on both sides of the transaction such that
improved products are produced and at lower costs.
The
presumed process whereby competition channels ambition toward
socially desirable ends comes out most clearly in The
Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 7.
. . . The idea of markets automatically
channeling self-interest toward socially desirable ends is a central
justification for the laissez-faire economic philosophy and a prime
example of “begging the question,” where specifically, questions
not to be answered emerge such as “Whose hand is that?” “How is
it invisible?” “Is it Invisible to everyone?” and, of course,
“Why is that invisible hand in my pants grabbing my wallet?”
(Wiki)
Irangate: the Iran–Contra affair also referred to as Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that became national news in November of 1986. During Reagan’s administration, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of several hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Under the Boland Amendment, funding of the Contras by the government was prohibited by Congress. [See Gary Webb bio]
Iron
Law of Wages:
from David
Ricardo, which
stated that all attempts to improve the real income of workers were
futile and that wages perforce
will always remain near the subsistence level. The
iron law of wages is a presumed law of economics that asserts that
real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage
necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first
named by Ferdinand
Lassalle in
the mid-nineteenth century.
jargon:
The specialized
or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar
group.
jumping
the shark: Jumping
the shark is a colloquialism used by U.S. TV critics and fans to
denote that point in a TV show or movie series history where the plot
veers off into ridiculous story lines or out-of-the-ordinary
characterizations, undergoing too many changes to retain the original
appeal of the series. Shows (or people) that have “jumped the
shark” are typically deemed to have passed their peak as after this
point critical fans can point to a noticeable decline in overall
quality or credibility.
jury nullification: occurs
when a jury in a criminal case reaches a verdict contrary to the
weight of evidence, often
because some jurors disagree with the relevant law or with the
government officials who arbitrarily,
gratuitously, capriciously, or incompetently prosecute certain
individuals while neglecting to enforce other laws or prosecute
notorious offenders. The American jury
draws its power of nullification from the right of a jury to render a
general
verdict in criminal trials, the
inability of criminal courts to direct a verdict no matter how strong
the evidence, the Fifth
Amendment’s Double
Jeopardy Clause (which prohibits the
appeal of an acquittal) and the fact that jurors
can never be punished for the verdict they return.
Jury
nullification began in the United States in 1670 when Quakers
were acquitted by a jury of violating a law which only
permitted religious assemblies under the Church
of England. In 1734 , Peter
Zenger, a publisher and journalist in New York, was acquitted by
a jury who nullified a law making it a crime to criticize public
officials such as the
royal
governor of New York,
William Cosby. Later, colonial juries nullified the
Navigation
Acts which would have forced all trade
with the colonies to pass through England for taxation. Just prior to
the Civil
War northern juries sometimes refused
to convict for violations of the Fugitive
Slave Act because jurors felt the laws
were unjust. In 1851, 24 people were indicted but acquitted for
helping
a fugitive escape from jail in
Syracuse,
New York. [See
here.]
keiretsu:
(lit. a
system, series,
grouping of enterprises, order of succession in Japan) is a set
of companies with interlocking business relationships and
shareholdings. It is a type of informal business group dominating a
so-called free market. The keiretsu
maintained dominance
over the Japanese economy for the last half of the 20th century.
The member companies own small portions of the shares in each other's
companies, centered on a core bank; this system helps insulate each
company from stock market fluctuations and takeover attempts, thus
enabling long-term planning in innovative projects. [For
more ]
key-word outline:
An outline that
briefly notes main points and supporting evidence in rough outline
form.
killing the messenger:
(or Shooting
the messenger)
a metaphoric phrase for the tendency first expressed in Plato’s
Allegory of the Cave, used to describe
the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of bad news. Too
often this is the fate of a journalist insofar as murder is the
leading cause of work-related deaths for journalists as punitive
censorship increases worldwide. In addition to those who have been
killed, dozens have been attacked, kidnapped, or forced into exile in
connection with their coverage of crime and corruption.
In
December 2006, the UN Security Council unanimously passed landmark
Resolution 1738 which demanded greater safety for journalists in
conflict areas and called for an end to impunity for their killers.
Since the UN resolution was passed, over 400 news media workers have
been killed, while more have been imprisoned or have simply
disappeared while on the job. Countless others have been intimidated
into self-censorship or have gone into exile.
If no story is
worth a life, then why is murder the number one cause of journalists’
deaths worldwide? [ Source
“killing the messenger” 2 Samuel
4-10 King
James Bible
]
When one
told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought
good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag (the
Biblical name of a town that was located in the Negev region in the
south of what was the Kingdom of Judah), who thought
that I would have given him
a reward for his tidings (i.e., good news). [
More
here.]
kinesics:
The study of
body motions as a systematic mode of communication, often termed
“body language.”
kleptocracy
(from Greek: κλεπτοκρατία, klépto- thieves
+ -kratos rule, literally "rule by thieves"): a
government with corrupt rulers (kleptocrats) that use their power to
exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in
order to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically
this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense
of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of
honest service. Kleptocracies are generally associated with
dictatorships, oligarchies, military juntas, or other forms of
autocratic and nepotist governments in which external oversight is
impossible or does not exist. But
note the current threat to our commonwealth. This
lack of oversight can be caused or exacerbated by the ability of the
kleptocratic officials to control both the supply of public funds and
the means of disbursal for those funds.
Kleptocratic rulers
often treat their country's treasury as a source of personal wealth,
spending funds on luxury goods and extravagances as they see fit.
Many kleptocratic rulers secretly transfer public funds into hidden
personal numbered bank accounts in foreign countries to provide for
themselves if removed from power. Kleptocracy is most common in
developing countries whose economies are based on the export of
natural resources. Such export incomes constitute a form of economic
rent and are easier to siphon off without causing the income to
decrease. A specific case of kleptocracy is
Raubwirtschaft, German for “"plunder economy” or “rapine
economy,” where the whole economy of the state is based on robbery,
looting and plundering the conquered territories. Such
states are either in continuous warfare with their neighbors or they
simply milk up their subjects as long as the subjects have any
taxable assets. Such rapine-based economies were commonplace in the
past before the rise of capitalism. Arnold
Toynbee has claimed the Roman Empire was basically a
Raubwirtschaft.
Latin quotation and phrase list: This Wiki page lists direct English translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni, vidi, vici and et cetera. Some of the phrases are themselves translations of Greek phrases, as Greek rhetoric and literature were highly regarded in Ancient Rome when Latin rhetoric and literature were still maturing. 10 Basic Latin Roots
listener:The
person who receives the speaker's message.
listening:
Paying
close attention to, and making sense of, what we hear.
living option:
“A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If
I say to you: “Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,” it is
probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely
to be alive. But if I say: “Be an agnostic or be a Christian,” it
is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal,
however small, to your belief.” [ Modern context: Go Ahead, choose
to be “gay or straight.”] From The
Will to Believe by William James.
logos:
The name
used by Aristotle for the logical appeal of a speaker. The
two major elements of logos are evidence and reasoning.
lying:
A
lie is a statement, believed by the liar to be false, made to another
person with the intention that the person be deceived by the
statement. This
is the definition used by Sissela Bok [get her book here]
and it has antecedents as far back as St. Augustine. What,
Bok asks you, would it be like to live in a world in which
truth-telling was not the common practice? In such a world, you could
never trust anything you were told or anything you read. You would
have to find out everything for yourself, first-hand. You would have
to invest enormous amounts of your time to find out the simplest
matters. In fact, you
probably couldn’t even find out the simplest matters: in a world
without trust, you could never acquire the education you need to find
out anything for yourself, since such an education depends upon your
taking the word of what you read in your lesson books. More
here.
main
points: The
major points developed in the body of a speech. Most speeches contain
from two to five main points.
Mandarin: [from
Wiki ] In the West, the term mandarin (note lower case “m”)
is associated with the concept of the scholar-official, who immersed
himself in poetry, literature, and Confucian learning in addition to
performing civil service duties. The speech standard of the Ming and
Qing empires was called “Mandarin language” by European
missionaries, translating the Chinese name Guanhua ("the
language of the officials") for this speech standard, which was
already current in the Ming Dynasty.
The
term “Mandarin” is
also used to refer to modern Standard Chinese, which evolved out of
the earlier standard, and to the broader group of Mandarin dialects
spoken across northern and southwestern China. For
around 1,300 years, from 605 to 1905, mandarins were selected by
merit through the extremely rigorous imperial examination. [ See
keyterm: meritocracy ]
.... It was not until the Tang Dynasty when the final form of the
mandarin was completed with the replacement of the nine-rank system.
The mandarins were the founders and core of
the Chinese gentry. . . . The mandarins were replaced with a modern
civil service after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Vietnam, after becoming free of Chinese rule and setting up its own
independent monarchy, emulated the Chinese system of mandarins in its
civil service. [Wiki]
mansplaining: the
tendency some men (and some women) have to grant their own speech
greater import than a perfectly competent statement from a woman.
While not a
universal male trait, it suggests the “intersection between the
Dunning-Kruger
effect, overconfidence, and cluelessness
where a significant portion of that gender gets stuck.” The
term, “mansplaining”
was proposed in an article by
writer Rebecca Solnit.
means, motive, and opportunity: In US Criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a popular cultural summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can be determined in a criminal proceeding. (often ignored, btw, see jury nullification) Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant felt the need to commit the crime (motive), and whether or not the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity). Opportunity is most often disproved by use of an alibi, which can prove the accused was not able to commit the crime as he or she did not have the correct set of circumstances to commit the crime as it occurred. Motive is not an element of many crimes, but proving motive can often make it easier to convince a jury of the elements that must be proved for a conviction. Establishing the presence of these three elements is not, in and of itself, sufficient to convict beyond a reasonable doubt; the evidence must prove that an opportunity presented was indeed taken by the accused and for the crime with which he or she is charged. Contrary to popular depictions in the fictional media, the court cannot convict merely on these three famous elements, but must provide convincing evidence, and opportunity actually acted upon by the defendant charged.
meritocracy:
The most common
definition of meritocracy conceptualizes merit in terms of tested
competency and ability, and most likely, as measured by IQ
or standardized achievement tests.”
In government or other administration
systems, meritocracy, is a system of government or other
administration (such as business
administration) wherein
appointments and responsibilities are assigned to individuals based
upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and
education, determined through evaluations or examinations.
Supporters of meritocracies do not
necessarily agree on the nature of "merit"; however, they
do tend to agree that “merit” itself should be a primary
consideration during evaluation. In a more general sense,
meritocracy can refer to any form of government based on achievement.
Like “utilitarian”
and “pragmatic”,
the word “meritocratic” has also developed a broader definition,
and may be used to refer to any government run by “a ruling or
influential class of educated or able people.”
This
is in contrast to the term originally coined by Michael
Young in 1958, who critically
defined it as a system where “merit is equated with
intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors are identified at an early
age and selected for appropriate intensive
education, and there is an obsession with quantification,
test-scoring, and qualifications.” Although
meritocracy as a term is a relatively recently coined word (1958),
the concept of a government based on standardized examinations
originates from the works of Confucius,
along with other Legalist
and Confucian
philosophers. The first meritocracy was implemented in
the second century BC, by the Han
Dynasty, which introduced the
world's first civil
service exams evaluating the
“merit” of officials. Meritocracy
as a concept spread from China to British India during the
seventeenth century, and then into continental Europe and the United
States. [Wiki]
message:
Whatever a
speaker communicates to someone else.
metaphor:
An implicit comparison, not introduced with
the word 'like' or 'as,' between two things that are essentially
different yet have something in common.
metasearch engine: A
search aid that sends a researcher's request to several search
engines at the same time.
Miss
Lonelyhearts: meme
referring to a novel by Nathanael West, a
study in nihilism; that is, to assert that all human motives are
selfish, and the universe is empty of any power that can judge
people, set things right, or provide guidance to help people improve.
Miss
Lonelyhearts writes a newspaper column advising those forlorn from
unrequited love. Continued
exposure to incessant, deep pathos leads Miss Lonelyhearts to
suicidal behavior. Download Miss
Lonelyhearts free
in PDF
misprision:
(from
Wikipedia) A
term used in literary criticism, brought into currency by Harold
Bloom to designate a “creative misreading” or distortion of a
previous thesis or argument in a previously written text.
In many cases, a
misreading so strong that the original thesis or text is forgotten.
Often abused (see Iran),
it can often produce new insights even if by incongruity.
Negative misprision is
the willful refusing to recognize, acknowledge, and thereby to
conceal, a felony. By common law of England it was the duty of every
subject to inform the king's justices and other officers of the law
of all treasons and felonies of which the informant had knowledge,
and to bring the offender to justice by arrest (see Sheriffs Act
1887, s. 8). Similarly here in the US, if an officer of the law
(anyone from Senator to a policeman) conceals knowledge of a felony,
that too is to be regarded as a felony, with the apparent exception
of the 2020 election where some Congressional Representatives
asserted fraud in part of the election ballot (for President) but not
in the part of the ballot for Representative.
mode:
The
number that occurs most frequently in a group of numbers.
moon-landing
myth:
spurious claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and
the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA with the aid
of other organizations. Note how often the fake news article implies
there was only one moon landing relying on the low-information many
people have who believe this. The most outrageous claim is that all
six manned
landings
(1969–72)
were faked and that 12 astronauts did not actually walk on the Moon.
See Myths
Debunked and consider the Indian and Chinese lunar
photography missions at http://www.apollohoax.net/.
For this myth to be true all nations of the world would have to be
complicit — a rare example of co-operation — if only that were
true!
multimedia presentation:
A speech that uses computer software to combine several kinds of
visual and/or audio aids in the same talk.
mythos
(plural mythoi ): A
story or set of stories relevant to or having a significant truth or
meaning for a particular culture (fables), religion (parables), or
ethnic groups (legends), term now includes influential films and
other art forms.
name-calling:
The
use of language to defame, demean, or degrade a person or
groups.
natural
selection:
first
formulated in Darwin's book
"On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which
organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable
physical or behavioral traits.. . Individuals in a population are
naturally variable, meaning that
they are all different in some ways. This variation means that some
individuals have traits better suited to the environment than others.
. . an example of
this process with a mutation that allows adult humans to produce
lactase, an enzyme used to digest milk, in cultures that have
adopted dairy farming.Stabilizing
selection, directional selection, diversifying selection,
frequency -dependent selection, and sexual selection all
contribute to the way natural selection can affect variation within a
population. Stabilizing
selection, directional
selection,
diversifying selection,
frequency-dependent selection, and sexual
selection all
contribute to the way natural selection can affect variation within a
population..
narrative:
any
report
of
connected events, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words,
or in a sequence of (moving)
pictures or all of the preceding… Human beings often claim to
understand events when they manage to formulate a coherent story or
narrative explaining how they believe the event was generated.
Officially sanctioned narratives
(Master Narratives)
underpin our story with memes about the status quo and its inherent
rationale (“honesty
is the best policy”; “our leaders are ethical,” ”the US only
goes to war as a last
resort” “the US is ‘exceptional’”).
These
Master Narratives legitimize our current arrangement of who is
entitled to privileges and who gets entitlements.
Once Master Narratives erode or break down (the Domino Theory
justifying military intervention in SE Asia), the legitimacy of the
status quo is at risk. The shell remains in place, but nobody really
believes our system is a fair, just meritocracy. In
order to avoid "hardened stories," or "narratives that
become context-free, portable and ready to be used anywhere and
anytime for illustrative purposes" and are being used as
conceptual
metaphors as
defined by linguist George
Lakoff,
an approach called narrative
inquiry was
proposed, resting on the epistemological
assumption that human beings make sense of random
or complex multi-causal
experience by the imposition of story structures."
Narratives
thus lie at foundations of our cognitive procedures and also provide
an explanatory framework for the social sciences, particularly when
it is difficult to assemble enough cases to permit statistical
analysis. Narrative is often used in case
study research
in
the social sciences. The dense, contextual, and interpenetrating
nature of social forces uncovered by detailed narratives is often
more interesting and useful for both theory and social policy than
other forms of inquiry. [More]
need:
The first
basic issue in analyzing a question of policy: Is there a serious
problem or need that requires a change from current policy?
New
World Order: A common theme in conspiracy
theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with
a globalist agenda conspires to rule the world through an
authoritarian world government—replacing sovereign
nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda that idealizes the
current ruling establishment as the culmination of history's
progress. [See North
American Union] Significant occurrences in politics and finance
are speculated to be orchestrated by an unduly influential cabal
operating through many front organizations. Numerous historical and
current events are seen as steps in an on-going plot to achieve world
domination through secret
political gatherings and decision-making
processes.
Newspeak: the
fictional language in
the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell. It
is a controlled language created by the totalitarian state as a tool
to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the
regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and peace.
Any form of thought alternative to the party’s construct is
classified as "thoughtcrime".
Neuro-Linguistic
Programming: [NLP] a movement which
teaches that people are only able to perceive a small part of the
world using their conscious awareness, and that this view of the
world is filtered by experience, beliefs, values, assumptions, and
biological sensory systems. NLP
argues that people act and feel based on their perception of the
world rather than the real world. NLP teaches that language and
behaviors (whether functional or dysfunctional) are highly
structured, and that this structure can be 'modeled' or copied into a
reproducible form.Using NLP a person can ‘model’ the more
successful parts of their own behavior in order to
reproduce it in areas where they are less successful or
'model' another person to effect belief and behavior changes to
improve functioning. If someone excels in some activity, it can be
learned
how specifically they do it by observing certain important details of
their behavior. [See also”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reframing_%28NLP%29
nonverbal
communication: Communication
based on a person’s use of voice and body, rather than on the use
of words alone.
non
sequitur: Latin for “It does not follow” An
inference or conclusion that does not follow from established
premises or evidence and too often, does not relate to a previous
clause or fragment. (E.g., there occurred an increase of births
during the full moon. Conclusion: full moons cause birth rates to
rise.) But does a full moon actually cause more births, or did it
occur for other
reasons, perhaps from expected statistical variations or increased
scrutiny ? Other examples arise from figures of speech: e.g., "How
high is up?" "Is everything possible?" "Up"
describes a direction, not a measurable entity. If everything proved
possible, then the possibility exists for the impossible, a
contradiction. Although everything may not prove possible, there may
occur an infinite number of possibilities as well as an infinite
number of impossibilities. Many meaningless questions result from
including empty words such as "is," "are,"
"were," "was," "am," "be," or
"been."
nullification:
A policy practiced by jurors serving on an American jury and even
abused by prosecutors on a grand jury as seen in the Ferguson and
Staten Island police investigations. Nullification
draws its power from the right
of a jury to render a general
verdict in
criminal trials, the inability of criminal courts to direct a verdict
no matter how strong the evidence (misprision
perhaps), the Fifth
Amendment’s Double
Jeopardy Clause (which
prohibits the appeal of an acquittal) and the fact that jurors can
never be punished for the verdict they return.
object:
Anything that is visible, tangible, and stable in form.
Occam's
Razor : the principle
that, "non sunt
multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem" [Latin phrase: i.e.,
"don't multiply the agents in a theory beyond what's
necessary."] If
two [or more] competing theories explain a single phenomenon, and
they both generally reach the same conclusion, and they are both
equally persuasive and convincing, and they both explain the problem
or situation satisfactorily, the logician should always pick the less
complex one. The explanation with the least number of moving parts,
so to speak, is more likely to be correct. The idea is always to cut
out extra unnecessary concepts, hence the name “razor.” [Related
term: parsimony. As applied in SONY
hacking case ]
oligarchy:
(from Greek ὀλιγαρχία
(oligarkhía);
from ὀλίγος
(olígos),
meaning "few", and ἄρχω
(arkho),
meaning "to rule or to command") a form of power structure
in which power effectively rests with a small number of people.
These people were distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties,
education, corporate, or military control. Such states are
often controlled by a few prominent families who typically pass their
influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a
necessary condition for the application of this term. All societies
are, more or less, well-disguised oligarchies.
As Andrew
Undershaft, the business tycoon in “Major
Barbara” Act III, a play by George Bernard Shaw
(1906), declares “ . . .
you will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us,
and keep peace when it does not. You will find out that trade
requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures.
When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that
my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep
my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in
return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and
the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman.”
ontology:
the
branch of philosophy that
studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming,
and reality.
It includes the questions of how entities are grouped into basic
categories and
which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level. Ontology
is sometimes referred to as the science
of being and
belongs to the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics.
OODA loop
: The phrase refers to the
decision cycle of observe,
orient, decide, and act,
developed by military
strategist and
USAF
Colonel John
Boyd.
Boyd applied the concept to the combat
operations process,
often at the strategic
level in military
operations. It is now also often applied to understand commercial
operations and learning processes. The
approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with opponents in
any endeavor.
According to Boyd, decision-making
occurs in a recurring cycle
of observe-orient-decide-act.
Any entity (whether an individual or an organization) that can
process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding
events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside”
the opponent's decision cycle and gain the advantage.
open-ended
questions: Questions allowing
respondents to answer any way they want.
opinion
poll:
The first known example of an opinion poll was a tallies of voter
preferences prior to the 1824 presidential election, showing Andrew
Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest
for the United States Presidency. In 1916, The Literary Digest
embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising
exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as
president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the
returns, The Literary Digest correctly predicted the victories of
Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in
1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Then, in 1936,
its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that Alf Landon would win
the presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a
landslide. The error was mainly caused by participation bias; those
who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about participating in the
poll. Furthermore, the survey over-sampled more affluent Americans
who tended to have Republican sympathies and sufficient income to
still own telephones, then a luxury. At the same time, George Gallup
conducted a far smaller (but more scientifically based) survey, in
which he polled a demographically representative sample. The Gallup
organization correctly predicted Roosevelt's landslide victory. The
Literary Digest soon went out of business, while scientific polling –
and Gallup -- started to take off and prosper.
Opinion:
"If
you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realise is that
most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have
no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of
beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they
cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make
them feel comfortable; Truth, for most people is a secondary
consideration.” Bertrand Russell, The Art of
Philosophizing: And Other Essays (1968), Essays:The Art of Rational
Conjecture (1942), p. 7s.
oral
report:
A speech presenting the findings, conclusions, decisions, etc. of a
small group.
Overton window:
The Overton window is an approach to identifying the ideas that
define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. It
says politicians can act only within the acceptable range. Shifting
the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window
persuading the public to expand the window.panel discussion: A
structured conversation on a given topic among several people in
front of an audience.[Wiki]
parallel
structure: The similar arrangement of a pair
or series of related words, phrases, or sentences.
paraphrase:
To restate or summarize an author's ideas in one's own
words.
parthenogenesis:
a form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development
of embryos occur without fertilization. In animals, parthenogenesis
means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell and is a
component process of apomixis. [Wiki]
Pascal’s Wager: “You
must either believe or not believe that God exists—which will you
choose? Your human reason cannot say. A game is going on between you
and the nature of things which at the day of judgment will bring out
either heads or tails. Weigh what your gains and your losses would be
if you should stake all you have on heads, or God’s existence: if
you win in such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose, you
lose nothing at all. If there were an infinity of chances, and only
one for God in this wager, still you ought to stake your all on God;
for though you surely risk a finite loss by this procedure, any
finite loss is reasonable, even a certain one is reasonable, if there
is but the possibility of infinite gain. Go, then, and take holy
water, and have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your
scruples,— Cela vous fera croire et vous abetira. (“That will
make you believe and will stupefy you.”) Why should you not? At
bottom, what have you to lose? Before you accept this argument as
sensible, read the Source.
See also: William James’ comments on a “living
option”
patchwork
plagiarism: Stealing
ideas or language from two or three sources and passing them off as
one's own.
pathos: The
name used by Aristotle for what modern students of communication
refer to as emotional appeal.
Pax
Romana : (Latin
for "Roman
Peace") was the long period of relative peace and minimal
expansion by the Roman military force experienced by the Roman Empire
after the end of the Final
War of the Roman Republic and before the beginning of the Crisis of
the Third Century. Please
avoid the term “Pax Americana” when describing the abuses of our
military overseas. It is a Roman term, and the Romans held their
military in the highest respect. The Romans built up every region
they conquered, Romanized them all with social order, commerce, law,
health, communication, and so forth. This in turn brought peace,
hence the term. We use our military to destroy entire regions, and
for building nothing but narcotics transport stations. Then we abuse
our veterans upon their return home. Roman soldiers were salaried and
their veterans got paid in land.
[More]
phronesis: (Ancient Greek: φρόνησις, phronēsis) is a Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence. It is more specifically a type of wisdom relevant to practical things, requiring an ability to discern how or why to act virtuously and encourage practical virtue, excellence of character, in others. Phronesis was a common topic of discussion in ancient Greek philosophy. The word was used in Greek philosophy, and such discussions are still influential today. In Aristotelian ethics, for example in the Nicomachean Ethics, it is distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues – such as episteme and techne. Because of its practical character, when it is not simply translated by words meaning wisdom or intelligence, it is often translated as "practical wisdom", and sometimes (more traditionally) as "prudence", from Latin prudentia. Thomas McEvilley has proposed that the best translation is "mindfulness." [from Wiki]
pie graph: A graph that highlights segments of a circle to show simple distribution patterns.
pitch: The
highness or lowness of the speaker's voice.
plagiarism:
Presenting
another person's language or ideas as one's own.
polls:
An
opinion poll,
sometimes simply referred to as a poll, is a survey
of
public
opinion from
a particular sample.
Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a
population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating
generalities in ratio or within confidence
intervals.
(See polls.htm ]
post
hoc, ergo propter hoc (Literally: "After
this, therefore because of this"): This
type of false cause occurs when the writer mistakenly assumes that,
because the first event preceded the second event, it must mean the
first event caused the later one. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it
doesn't. It is the honest writer's job to establish clearly that
connection rather than merely assert it exists. Example: “A black
cat crossed my path at noon. An hour later, my mother had a
heart-attack. Because the first event occurred earlier, it must have
caused the bad luck later.” This is how superstitions begin.
The
common examples are arguments that viewing a particular movie or
show, or listening to a particular type of music “caused” the
listener to perform an antisocial act — to snort coke, shoot
classmates, or take up a life of crime. These may be potential
suspects for the cause, but the mere fact that an individual did
these acts and subsequently behaved in a certain way does not yet
conclusively rule out other causes. Perhaps the listener had an
abusive home-life or school-life, suffered from a chemical imbalance
leading to depression and paranoia, or made a bad choice in his
companions. Other potential causes must be examined before asserting
that only one event or circumstance alone earlier in time caused a
event or behavior later.
presentation : A PowerPoint file containing
all the slides for a given speech.
privatization: This
term may have several meanings. Primarily, it is the process of
transferring ownership of
a business, enterprise, agency, public service, or public property
from the public sector (a government) to the private sector, either
to a business that operates for a profit or to a nonprofit
organization. It may also mean government outsourcing of services or
functions to private firms, e.g. revenue collection, law enforcement,
and prison management. Privatization
is expected by many to promote competition and eliminate corruption.
In
practice, the converse has been true as privatization beneficiaries
have successfully colluded and engaged in new types of corruption to
maximize their own gains.
In education, it emerges as
an attempt by the right to minimize the power of the teacher’s
union. Charter schools promise efficiency while overcompensating
management and underpaying teachers who lack the power of colective
bargaining. Privatization is also
used to describe two unrelated types of business transactions.
The
first is the buying of all outstanding shares of a publicly traded
company by a single entity, making the company privately owned. This
is often described as private equity. The second is a demutualization
of a mutual organization or cooperative to form a joint-stock
company. . . . In a
comprehensive social welfare analysis of the British privatization
program under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and
John Major, Massimo Florio points to the absence of any productivity
shock resulting strictly from ownership change. Instead, the impact
of the UK privatization program had surprisingly small effects on
firms and most employees, and generally harmed taxpayers and most
consumers. [ More
here.]
problem-cause-solution
order: A method of organizing persuasive
speeches in which the first main point identifies a problem, the
second main point analyzes the causes of the problem, and the third
main point presents a solution to the problem.
problem-solution
order: A
method of speech organization in which the first main point deals
with the existence of a problem and the second main point presents a
solution to the problem.
problem-solving
small group: A small group formed to solve a
particular problem.
procedural needs:
Routine
“housekeeping” actions necessary for the efficient conduct of
business in a small group.
process:
A
systematic series of actions that leads to a specific result or
product.
proof
(infinitive form: to prove or test the validity of a claim): Evidence
or reasoning so strong or certain as to demonstrate the truth or
acceptability of a conclusion beyond a
reasonable doubt.
How strong evidence or reasoning have to be to demonstrate what they
purport to prove varies from context to context, depending on the
significance of the conclusion or the seriousness of the implications
following from it.
pronunciation:
The
accepted standard of sound and rhythm for words in a given
language.
propaganda:
a form
of communication aimed towards influencing
the attitude of a population toward some cause or
position. Propaganda
is information that is not impartial
and
used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often
by presenting facts selectively (thus possibly lying
by omission)
to encourage a particular synthesis, or using loaded
messages
to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the
information presented.
Propaganda can be used as a form of
ideological or commercial warfare. While the term propaganda
has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its
most manipulative and jingoistic
examples,
propaganda in its original sense was neutral and could refer to uses
that were generally positive, such as public health recommendations,
signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or
messages encouraging persons to report crimes to law enforcement,
among others. Originally
this word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic
Church (congregation)
created in 1622, called the Congregatio
de Propaganda Fide
(Congregation for
Propagating the Faith), or informally simply Propaganda.
Its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith
in non-Catholic countries. From the 1790s, the term began being
used also for propaganda in secular activities. The term began
taking a pejorative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was
used in the political sphere. It is important to distinguish
“white propaganda” (positive information) from “dark
propaganda” (negative information) released in the news media
through op-eds secretly financed by the government.
The
government is still
paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate
media are acting like virtual
“escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access –
for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually
investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.
[More
here.]
[North Korea coverage here.]
Protestant Ethic:
classic work written
by Max
Weber,
a German sociologist,
economist, and politician, and translated into English by Talcott
Parsons in
1930. It
is considered a founding text in economic
sociology and
sociology
in general. In the
book, Weber argued that capitalism in
Northern
Europe evolved when the
Protestant (particularly Calvinist)
ethic
influenced large numbers of people to engage in work
in the secular world, developing their own enterprises
and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth
for investment. In
other words, the Protestant
work ethic was
an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence
of modern capitalism.
This idea is also known as the “Protestant Ethic” thesis. [More
at wiki]
PSYOPS:
Psychological Warfare
(PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations
(PSYOP),
have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops,
Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds”, and Propaganda.
Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target
audience's value
system, belief
system, emotions,
motives,
reasoning,
or behavior.
It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors
favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined
with black
operations or false
flag tactics. Target audiences can be
governments,
organizations,
groups,
and individuals.
In Propaganda:
The Formation of Men's Attitudes,
Jacques
Ellul discusses psychological warfare
as a common peace policy practice between nations as a form of
indirect aggression in place of military aggression.
This
type of propaganda drains the public opinion of an opposing regime by
stripping away its power on public opinion. This form of aggression
is hard to defend against because no international court of justice
is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it
cannot be legally adjudicated. [More]
purity:
the absence of
impurity or contaminants in a substance. The
term also applies to the absence of vice in human character. All
modern cultures have concepts of what is pure and impure, clean and
taboo, good and evil.
Purity and danger are concepts used in an anthropological argument
posited by Mary Douglas in her work, Purity and Danger, regarding how
these concepts are created. A major problem societies face is that
many events are seen as ambiguous and anomalous;
paradox and apparent contradictions are hard to interpret cognitively
and socially. Additionally, reactions to those might be seen as
either valid or invalid in a larger community. Purity and taboo
emerge as a set of shared values that helps us interpret ambiguities
and that resolution lets us determine clearly whether culture
practices are either in or out. [Buy
the book.]
QAnon:
the
viral conspiracy theory that claims a cabal of left-wing, satanic
pedophiles is secretly plotting a coup against former President
Trump. It
began
with an October 2017 post on the far-right message board 4chan,
thought to be the first time the anonymous poster “Q” issued a
conspiratorial missive, known as a “drop,” to the world. The
Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance, who wrote a definitive investigation
of QAnon, told NPR, “I never got to the point where I was confident
enough in Q’s identity to say with certainty who it is.” ( More
here)
question of fact: A question about the truth or falsity of an assertion.
quoting out of
context: Quoting
a statement in such a way as to distort its meaning by removing the
statement from its conext: the words and phrases surrounding
it.
racket:
a
service that is fraudulently
offered
to solve a problem (such as the “war on drugs”), for a
problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into
effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not
exist. Conducting
a racket is racketeering.
Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party
that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with
the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party.
One
archetype is the protection
racket,
wherein a person (such as Crassus of ancient Rome; founder of the
first “fire company”)
or a group (“the mob”) indicates that they could protect a
warehouse or store from potential damage (such as an “accidental”
fire) – damage that the same person or group would otherwise
inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more
or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act
of extortion.
[See also: Crassus
and Butler’s
War
is a Racket. (See
also.)
Rashomon
effect: a
1950 Japanese period drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa famous for
its plot device involving various
characters providing alternative, self-serving and contradictory
versions of the same incident.
The name of the film refers to the enormous city gate of Kyoto. The
stories are mutually contradictory and not even the final version can
be seen as unmotivated by factors of ego and “face”. Even the
actors kept approaching Kurosawa wanting to know the truth, which he
claimed was not the point of the film as he intended it to be an
exploration of multiple realities rather than an exposition of a
particular truth. Later film and TV uses of the "Rashomon
effect" focus on revealing “the truth” in a now conventional
technique that presents the final version of a story as the truth, an
approach that only matches Kurosawa's subtly film on the surface.
rate
:
The speed at which a person speaks
[Rate
of Delivery].
reactionary:
a person who
holds political viewpoints that favor a return to a previous state
(the status quo ante) in a society. The word can also be an adjective
describing such viewpoints or policies. Reactionaries are considered
to be one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is
radicalism, though reactionary ideologies may be themselves radical.
Modern American Conservatism is sometimes considered to be a
reactionary ideology, due to its emphasis on the importance of
traditional morality in the social and political order and its
nationalistic elements. Conservatism, more broadly than the Modern
American variant, is generally opposed to change in the status quo
and is manifest as a reaction to change.
reality-based
community :
an
informal term in the United States. In the fall of 2004, the phrase
"proud member of the reality-based community" was first
used to suggest the commentator's opinions are based more on
observation than on faith, assumption, or ideology. [See chaos
magick] The
term has been defined as people who "believe that solutions
emerge from judicious study of discernible reality."
Some
commentators have gone as far as to suggest that there is an
overarching conflict in society between the reality-based community
and the "faith-based community" as a whole, seen as an
example of political framing. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)
reframing: a psychological technique that consists of identifying and then disputing irrational or maladaptive thoughts. Reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives. In the context of cognitive therapy, cognitive reframing is referred to as cognitive restructuring. Cognitive re-framing, on the other hand, refers to the process as it occurs either voluntarily or automatically in all settings [Wiki].
reification:
(also known
as hypostatisation or concretism) is a
fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or
hypothetical construct) is treated as if it represented a concrete,
real event or physical entity.
In other words, it is the error of treating as a “real thing”
something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea, e.g.,
confusing legal persons (corporations) with real people. [See Lon
Fuller: Legal
Fictions ] For example: when someone “holds” a meeting,
the idea of people gathering together for some reason is being
reified. You are not holding any thing; you are meeting people. Words
formed from verbs with endings such as -tion, -ent, -sis, -acy are
noun substantives.
“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever
received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent
existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name
could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none
existed, but imagined that it was something particularly abstruse and
mysterious.” - John Stuart Mill [More here.]
R O I:
acronym for Return On Investment -
In finance, return is
a profit on an investment. It comprises any change in value, and
interest or dividends or other such cash flows which the investor
receives from the investment. Ambiguously, return
is also used to refer to a profit on an investment,
expressed as a proportion of the amount invested. This is also called
the holding period return.
A loss instead of a profit is described as a negative
return. Rate of return
is a profit on an investment over a period of time,
expressed as a proportion of the original investment. The time period
is typically a year, in which case the rate of return is referred to
as annual return.
Return, in the second sense, and rate of return, are commonly
presented as a percentage. ROI is
an abbreviation of return on investment, i.e. return per dollar
invested. It is a measure of investment performance, as opposed to
size (c.f. return on equity, return on assets, return on capital
employed).
rule
of law: term
(also known as nomocracy) primarily refers to the influence and
authority of law within society, especially as a constraint upon
behavior, including behavior of government officials. The concept was
familiar to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, who wrote “Law
should govern”. Rule of law implies that every citizen is subject
to the law, including law makers themselves. It
stands in contrast to the idea that any ruler is above the law, for
example above by divine right.
Despite wide
use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been
described as “an exceedingly elusive notion” giving rise to
a "rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it
but have contrasting convictions about what it is.” At least two
principal conceptions of the rule of law can be identified: a
formalist or
"thin" definition, and a substantive or
“thick” definition. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do
not make a judgment about the “justness” of law itself, but
define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must
have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive
conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include substantive
rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of
law.
sans-serif
font : A
typeface with straight edges on the letters like this sentence, e.g.,
Arial and Helvetica font families. Contrast
with serif fonts such as this example of Times New Roman.
scale
questions : Questions
that require responses at fixed intervals along a scale of
answers.
scam:
Slang term
for confidence trick (synonyms include confidence scheme, scam and
stratagem), an attempt to defraud a person or group after first
gaining their confidence, in the classical sense of trust. A
confidence artist (or
con artist) is an individual, operating alone or in concert with
others, who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as
dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,
naïveté, or greed.
search
aid: A
program used to find information on the World Wide Web.
search
engine: A
search aid that indexes Web pages and checks them for sites that
match a researcher's request.
selection
bias:
selection
bias refers to the selection of individuals, groups or data for
analysis such that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby
ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the
population intended to be analyzed. [Source
here describing many types of bias.] It is sometimes referred to as
the selection effect. The phrase "selection bias" most
often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, resulting
from the method of collecting samples. If the selection bias is not
taken into account, then some conclusions of the study may not be
accurate.
selling
short: borrowing
of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required
to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls
precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can
then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has
fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These
contracts often have a window of as long as four months. "Put
Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell
stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example,
$1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised,
they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a
future date at a price set when the contract is issued.
Thus,
for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000
shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the
seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is
executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures,
the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and
immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then
stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in
effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
serif
font : A
typeface with sharp or rounded edges on the letters set in a type
bed, traditionally used to choke or trap excess ink in the bed of a
printing press. This is serif font style.
shibboleth:
a custom,
principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of
people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no
longer important by many. It usually refers to features of language,
and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker
as being a member or not a member of a particular group (See list ).
Modern usage derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which
pronouncing this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose
dialect lacked a /ʃ/
phoneme
(as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect included such a
phoneme.
In WWII, the
Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as
a shibboleth to tell Germans from the Dutch ("Sch"
in Dutch is
analyzed as the letter "s"
and the digraph "ch",
producing the consonant
cluster [sx],
while in German it
is analyzed as the trigraph "sch,"
pronounced [ʃ]).
. . During World
War II,
some United States soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word
lollapalooza
as
a shibboleth to challenge unidentified
persons, on the premise that Japanese people often
pronounce the letter L as R or
confuse Rs with Ls.
(For
more)
shock
doctrine:
Shock
Doctrine The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and
social activist Naomi Klein. In her book, Klein argues that
neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton
Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries
because of a deliberate strategy of “shock therapy”. This centers
on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to
establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are
too distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an
adequate response and resist effectively.
The Chicago School of
Economics, led by this theory of economic shock doctrine by Milton
Friedman, was the spearhead that led to the experimentation of using
disaster capitalism to gain control of another country's economic
infrastructure which opened the gateway for multinational
corporations to go in and set up shop. Poverty, wide spread
illnesses, death and destruction was the result of the experiment.
Readers and educators should expose the truth about what happened in
South America as well as what is happening now in our own country.
Multi-national corporations and political forces are pushing their
twisted understanding of capitalism. The goal is to privatize all
national institutions, abolish all regulations, and be rid of all
safety nets that serve the common welfare of the public good like
social security.
sic:
The Latin adverb sic
(“thus”; in full: sic erat
scriptum, “thus was it written”) added
immediately after a quoted word or phrase (or a longer piece of
text), indicates that the quotation has been transcribed exactly as
found in the original source, complete with any erroneous or archaic
spelling or other nonstandard presentation. The notation's usual
purpose is to inform the reader that any errors or apparent errors in
the transcribed material do not arise from errors in the course of
the transcription, and the errors have been repeated intentionally,
i.e., that they are reproduced exactly as set down by the original
writer or printer.
It may also be used as a form of ridicule
or as a humorous comment, drawing attention to the original writer's
spelling mistakes or emphasizing his or her erroneous logic. Sic
is generally placed inside square brackets ‘[ ]”,
and traditionally in italics, as is customary when printing a foreign
word. It is sometimes placed in parentheses “( )” instead, though
this is less than optimal, as brackets are meant to signify that
something was added to a quote.
significant
form: the
creation of forms symbolic of human feeling, not
merely emotion in the ordinary sense, but the entire realm of
subjectivity, connecting
traditional concepts of art to the concept of virtual reality. For
Susanne Langer, figuring out the space of an art work by its creator
was no less than building a virtual
world
that we figuratively inhabit. Langer describes virtuality as “the
quality of all things that are created to be perceived”. For
Langer, the
virtual is not only a matter of consciousness, but something external
that is created intentionally and existing materially, as a space of
contemplation outside of the human mind.
Langer
sees virtual reality as a metaphysical space created by the artist,
such as a painting or a building, that is “significant in itself
and not as part of the surroundings.” See Susanne Langer, Feeling
and Form: A Theory of Art (1953)
signpost:
A very
brief statement that indicates where a speaker is in the speech or
that focuses attention on key ideas.
simile:
An explicit
comparison, introduced with the word 'like' or 'as,' between things
that are essentially different yet have something in common.
situation: The time and place in which speech communication occurs.
slang: fills a necessary
niche in all languages, occupying a middle ground between the
standard and informal words accepted by the general public and the
special words and expressions known only to comparatively small
social subgroups. It can serve as a bridge or a barrier, either
helping both old and new words that have been used as ‘insiders’
terms by a specific group of people to enter the language of the
general public or, on the other hand, preventing them from doing so.
colloquialisms are
familiar words and idioms used in informal speech and writing, but
not considered explicit or formal enough for polite conversation or
business correspondence. Unlike slang, however, colloquialisms are
used and understood by nearly everyone in the United States. The use
of slang conveys the suggestion that the speaker and the listener
enjoy a special ‘fraternity’, but the use of colloquialisms
emphasizes only the informality and familiarity of a general social
situation. Almost all idiomatic expressions, for example, could be
labeled colloquial. Colloquially, one might say: Friend, you talk
plain and hit the nail right on the head.
cant,
jargon, and argot
are the words and expressions peculiar to special
segments of the population. Cant is the conversational, familiar
idiom used and generally understood only by members of a specific
occupation, trade, profession, sect, class, age, group, interest
group, or other sub-group of our culture. Jargon is the technical or
even secret vocabulary of such a sub-group; jargon is “shop talk”.
Argot is both the cant and the jargon of any professional criminal
group. [ See Partridge and Chaloupsky]
Social Darwinism:
modern name given to various theories of society that emerged in the
United
Kingdom,
the United
States and
Western
Europe in
the 1870s, and which sought to apply biological concepts of natural
selection and
survival
of the fittest to
sociology and politics.
Social Darwinists, ( most often
so-called “Christians” who disavow fact-based formal Darwinism)
generally argue that the
strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak
should see their wealth and power decreased.
Different social Darwinists
have different views about which groups of people are the
strong and
the weak,
and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanism
that should be used to promote strength and punish weakness. Many
such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire
capitalism,
while others motivated ideas of eugenics,
racism,
imperialism,
fascism,
Nazism,
and struggle between national or racial groups.
speech of introduction: A
speech introducing the main speaker to the audience.
speech
of presentation: A
speech that presents someone a gift, an award, or some other form of
public recognition.
stage fright: Anxiety over the prospect of giving a speech in front of an audience.
Star, Chain and Hook: Tactics
to be used in opening the Introduction to your speech. Star:
Start with an attention-getting opening fact, event or anecdote that
is positive and upbeat usually. Chain:
create a chain of convincing facts, benefits,
and reasons that transform the attention of
your audience into prolonged interest and then transform that
interest into a desire to act. Each word and paragraph in your speech
is a link within your chain. Links of your chain must be strong in
order to lead an audience through to your desired outcome. Only the
strongest, most vivid words, facts, stories, and images best create
the effective chain. Hook:
entice your audience with a powerful call to action, making it as
easy as possible to respond. Even if one or two links in the chain
are weak, a strong hook at the end can compel your audience to act …
on your closing. [More
here]
statistics:
Numerical data
status quo:
a Latin
phrase meaning
the existing state
of affairs. It is the nominal form of the prepositional Latin
phrase "in statu
quo" – literally "in the state in which", which
itself is a shortening of the original phrase in
statu quo res erant ante bellum,
meaning "in the state in which things were before the war".
To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they
presently are. The related phrase status
quo ante,
literally "the state in which before", means "the
state of affairs that existed previously".
strategy:
(from Greek
στρατηγία
stratēgia,
“art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship” )
describes the comprehensive plan
to achieve one or more
goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the “art of
the general”, which included several subsets of skills including
tactics,
siegecraft, logistics etc. The term came into use in the 6th century
C.E. in East Roman terminology, and was translated into Western
vernacular languages only in the 18th century. From then until the
20th century, the word “strategy” came to denote “a way to
pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force,
in a dialectic of wills” in a military conflict, in which both
adversaries interact. [from
Wiki]
straw
man: creating a false
scenario (e.g., referring to the so-called “liberal media”
and then attacking them. or
“Evolutionists think that everything came about by random chance.”)
Most evolutionists think in terms of natural selection which may
involve incidental elements, but this does not depend entirely on
random chance. Painting your opponent with false colors only deflects
the purpose of the argument. [See Fox
Errors and Outfoxed]
Sturgeon’s
Law: Sturgeon's revelation, commonly referred to as Sturgeon's
law, is an adage commonly cited as “ninety
percent of everything is crap.” It
is derived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science
fiction author and critic: while Sturgeon coined another adage that
he termed “Sturgeon's law”, it is his “revelation” that is
usually referred to by that term.
subalterns
: Some
thinkers use subaltern in a general sense to refer to marginalized
groups and the lower classes— a person rendered without agency
(power to effect change) by his or her social status ( See Gramsci
). Others use it in a more specific sense, arguing that “subaltern
is not just a classy word for the oppressed, for the Other, for
somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie.” Subalterns are also
subordinates (e.g., non-commissioned officers) who enforce conformity
and enable oppression at all social levels. (See Spivak)
sunk
cost fallacy: Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they
continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested
resources (e.g., time, money or effort) (Arkes & Blumer, 1985).
This fallacy, which is related to loss aversion and status quo bias,
can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment. For
example, individuals sometimes order too much food and then over-eat
just to “get their money’s worth”. Similarly, a person may have
a $20 ticket to a concert and then drive for hours through a
blizzard, just because she feels that she has to attend due to having
made the initial investment. If the costs outweigh the benefits, the
extra costs incurred (inconvenience, time or even money) are held in
a different mental account than the one associated with the ticket
transaction (Thaler, 1999). Research suggests that rats, mice and
humans are all sensitive to sunk costs after they have made the
decision to pursue a reward (Sweis et al., 2018).
supporting materials: The
materials used to support a speaker's ideas. The three major kinds of
supporting materials are examples, statistics, and testimony.
survivorship
bias: the
natural tendency to
look at the survivors for the keys to success rather than to examine
those who didn’t survive, many of which disappear without a trace.
If 100 restaurants are founded and five of the new eateries achieve
rip-roaring success, business schools usually study the decisions and
strategies of the five survivors, not the 95 failures which closed
their doors and left no trail of decisions and strategies to study.
As David McRaney observes in his excellent account of survivorship
bias, by
focusing solely on survivors rather than those who failed, the causes
of failure become invisible. And if the causes of failure are
invisible, the critical factors that determine success also become
invisible. Even
worse, we draw faulty conclusions from the decisions of the
survivors, as we naturally assume their decisions led to success,
when the success might have been the result of luck or a confluence
of factors that cannot be reasonably duplicated.
Symposium:
A public
presentation in which several people present prepared speeches on
different aspects of the same topic. Derived from the famous
circumstance of the
first one.
target audience:
The portion
of the whole audience that the speaker most wants to persuade.
task
needs: Substantive
actions necessary to help a small group complete its assigned
task.
Texas
sharpshooter:
[Source]
A
form of cherry
picking that
refers to the related procedure for proving your worth as a target
shooter by first shooting random holes in the side of a barn, and
then afterwards drawing your target around a cluster of holes so that
it looks like you are a great shot. Is this done in Texas? Probably
not, but whoever named it must have had a low opinion of Texans –
no offense intended and if you are from Texas, substitute your state
of choice. [
See errors
in regression analysis ]
terminal credibility: The credibility of a speaker at the end of the speech.
Testimony:
Quotations or
paraphrases used to support a point. [testimonial]
thesaurus
: A
book of synonyms.
thesis:
A one
sentence statement summing up or encapsulating the major ideas of a
speech.
the
Tavistock movement: Some
research suggests society is ruled by non-creative lying conformists
pursuing an agenda to establish a New World Order. Tavistock
Institute allegedly developed the mass brain-washing techniques which
were first used experimentally on American prisoners of war in Korea.
Its experiments in crowd control methods have been widely used on the
American public, a surreptitious but nevertheless
outrageous assault on human freedom by modifying “undesirable”
individual behavior through topical psychology.
the
one-percent: The
unknown group of people who own 80 percent of the world's wealth
appearing to be earned by a "core" of 1,318 corporations,
which in turn are controlled by only 147 companies. 75 percent of
these companies are financial institutions -- and the top companies
on the list are the Federal Reserve banks. This is actually more like
.01% of the population, but they do have servants, cronies and
misinformed subalterns that provide an illusion of consensus for
their policies.
thought
experiment: Gedankenexperiment
(from German) considers some hypothesis, theory, or
principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. Given
the structure of the experiment, it may or may not be possible to
actually perform it, and if it can be performed, there need be no
intention of any kind to actually perform the experiment in question.
The common goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential
consequences of the principle in question. One famous example is the
baby in the IVF clinic — what would you choose! More examples
here.
thumos:
a person’s ideals,
ambitions, and affiliations, and the emotional energy that infuses
them is what Homer termed thumos. Your own thumos (enthusiasm)
is critical to your capacity to persuade others.
topic:
The subject of
a speech; what the speech content discusses at length.
topical
order: A
method of speech organization in which the main points divide the
topic into logical and consistent subtopics.
Tor:
a system of
servers which routes user requests through a layer of secured
connections to make it impossible to identify a user’s IP from the
addresses of the websites he/she visits. The network of some 5,000 is
operated by enthusiasts and used by hundreds of thousands of
privacy-concerned people worldwide. Some live in countries with
oppressive regimes, which punish citizens for visiting websites they
deem inappropriate. Caveat:
Searching for encryption software like
the Linux-based operating system Tails also places you on the NSA
grid, says a report by German broadcasters NDR and WDR.
The report is based on analysis of the source code of the software
used by NSA’s electronic surveillance program XKeyscore. The NSA
marks and considers potential "extremists" all users of the
internet anonymizer service Tor, German media reports. Among those
are hundreds of thousands of privacy concerned people like
journalists, lawyers and rights activists; the issue provides an
example of begging the question
as it presumes Tor
users are guilty by fiat (i.e., a declaration) not by means of
incriminating evidence. [Source]
transition: A word or phrase
that indicates when a speaker has finished one thought and is moving
on to another.
transparency: A
visual aid drawn, written, or printed on a sheet of clear acetate and
shown with an overhead projector.
tribalism:
Tribalism
is the state of being organized in, or advocating for, a tribe
or
tribes. In terms of conformity,
tribalism may also refer in popular cultural terms to a way of
thinking or behaving in which people are more loyal to their tribe
than to their friends, their country,
or any other social group. Tribalism has been defined in engaged
theory as
a 'way of being' based upon variable combinations of kinship-based
organization, reciprocal exchange, manual production, oral
communication, and analogical enquiry.
Ontologically, tribalism
is oriented around the valences of analogy, genealogy and mythology.
This means that customary tribes have their social foundations in
some variation of these tribal orientations, while at the same time
often taking on traditional practices (including through religions of
the book such as Christianity
and
Islam),
and modern practices, including monetary exchange, mobile
communications, and modern education.
trivia:
Latin term meaning
“the three ways” or “the three roads” — a place where local
gossip, trivial, as well as useful information would be posted on
walls, columns, etc. In medieval universities, the trivium comprised
the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and
rhetoric. Grammar is the art of inventing symbols and combining them
to express thought; logic is the art of thinking; and rhetoric is the
art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation
of language to circumstance. Another description is: Grammar
is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized, Logic is concerned
with the thing as-it-is-known, and Rhetoric is concerned with the
thing as-it-is-communicated. This
study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The quadrivium includes
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music. Combining the trivium and
quadrivium results in the seven liberal
arts of classical study.
[See Wiki]
trolls: On
the Internet, a troll
is a person who is deliberately inflammatory in order to provoke a
vehement response from other users. Usually intended as a red
herring in
any online discussion that could communicate truth about how our
handlers try to spin discussion of public issues in their favor.
Covert intelligence operatives, whether from corporations or
spy agencies,have
developed
covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including
the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially
inflate page view counts on web sites, “amplify” sanctioned
messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be
“extremist.” (View
source).
truthiness:
the
belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on
the intuition or
perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard
to evidence, logic, intellectual examination,
or facts.
Truthiness
can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate
duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions. The concept of
truthiness has emerged as a major subject of discussion
surrounding U.S.
politics emerging
in the 1990s and persisting in 2020 because of the perception among
some observers of a rise in propaganda and a growing hostility toward
factual reporting and fact-based discussion. American television
comedian Stephen
Colbert coined
the term truthiness in
this
meaning
as
the subject of a segment called “The
Wørd” during
the pilot episode of his political satire program The
Colbert Report on
October 17, 2005.
TVA: [Wiki
source] The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned
corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in
May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity
generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the
Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the First Great
Depression, and now a region of people who in the majority deny
others the same help the Federal Government gave the ancestors of
these people during the previous Great Depression of the 1930’s.
useful
idiots: a
pejorative term used to describe people perceived as propagandists
for a cause whose goals they do not understand (e.g., Tea Party), and
who are used cynically by the leaders of that cause. Term originally
used to describe Soviet sympathizers in Western countries. The
implication is that although the people in question naïvely thought
of themselves as allies of the USSR, they were held in contempt and
were being cynically used by their Kremlin masters.
URL
(Uniform Resource Locator): The
string of letters or numbers that identify a website's
address.
visual
framework: The
pattern of symbolization and indentation in an outline that shows the
relationships among the ideas being presented.
visualization:
Mental
imaging in which a communicator vividly pictures himself or herself
giving a successful presentation.
vocal
variety: Changes
in a speaker's rate, pitch, and volume that give the voice variety
and expressiveness.
vocalized
pause: A
pause that occurs when a speaker fills the silence between words with
vocalizations such as 'uh,' 'er,' and 'um.'
volume:
The
loudness or softness of the speaker's voice.
white lies: a
minor or benign falsehood. However, in the USSC
Alvarez case [At
issue was the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act (SVA)] a
federal law makes it a crime for a person to falsely represent that
he or she has received a military decoration or medal. All lies are
protected speech unless they chill or inhibit protected speech in
some legally indeterminate context. But what happens if they do chill
protected speech? Should “strict scrutiny” apply? …, the
dissent does not adequately locate this dispute about false facts in
the larger setting of cases—including defamation cases—in which
the Court has grappled with false assertions of fact in other areas.
Also, the dissent provided no limiting principle for the
review of regulations of lies that do not chill protected speech. The
only check on such laws would then be political accountability. And
that’s not an adequate response— particularly so when it comes
from Justices who insisted upon the need for limiting principles and
decried the unreliability of political accountability when they
dissented in the health care case, decided the very same day as
Alvarez.
- See more at source:
http://verdict.justia.com/2012/08/17/teaching-and-learning-about-united-states-v-alvarez-the-stolen-valor-act-case#sthash.G5WAGYcU.dpuf
Keyterms content largely based upon: The Art of Public Speaking, Eighth Edition by Stephen E. Lucas. © 2004 by the McGraw-Hill Companies All rights reserved. Various internet sources cited above are reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and are for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. And, of course, Wikipedia . Please consider donating time or money even if you assert, as many students do, that Wiki is just another CIA front, after all, another excellent reference is the CIA Factbook ! As with all information gathered on the internet, caveat emptor, a reminder to think critically, even when regarding statements from your esteemed instructor.
