Language of the Circumlocution Office

I have a small sampling of circumlocutions, collected haphazardly over the last twenty years or so, since I decided a sampler of 21st Century gibberish might be valuable.  Today is the day I stuff and mount these husks for display in the Crowndot Circumlocution Museum.

The phrase that started all this is "knowledge amid general understanding."  In 1998 the Republic Powdered Metals company, manufacturer of a waterproofing material for the interior rain gutters in metal buildings, included this documentation:

Part 1 General
1.01 Applicator's Qualifications
  1. Applicator shall have knowledge amid general understanding of building design as well as Republic's products specified for the project.

I imagine a committee trying to write a "Gutter Liner Specification" document.  I imagine some overly honest member of the committee saying something to himself, only he actually said it out loud: "Well, they ought to know what the fuck they're doing in the first place..."  Instead of being kicked out of the meeting, the chairperson agrees, and puts the question of how to say that without actually saying that. 

Another phrase that came into use around the turn of the millennium is "compatibility issues."  In fact, the "Y2K" era was the beginning of describing a problem as an issue.  If there's a problem, there's a possibility of blame.  If there's an issue, gee, well, everybody's got "issues"  and nobody's to blame, right?  So if The End Of The World As We Know It happened one second after midnight on the First of January, 2000 -- well, there were some compatibility issues.  That's all. 

In fact, here is a real quote from a British credit card company spokesman when 20,000 of their card-swipers failed during a "Pre-Y2K" test on 27 December 1999:

It is a software time and date related issue, which will be resolved and we're entirely confident that terminals will revert to full functionality.

On 20 March 2002 I first encountered the term "Open Issue" (meaning unresolved problem" in the readme.txt file distributed with UPS Online WorldShip software.  "We still have some open issues..." means "Shit keeps happening and we have no idea what the hell we're going to do or when or if the problems are going to be addressed!"

A story on Slashdot.com posted by Zonk on 6 January 2006 and titled "Microsoft Censors Chinese Bloggers" quotes a Ziff-Davis article saying "Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements..."  Unique Elements.  Which means, Microsoft never did hold any values above $ale$ Dollar$.

Product descriptions, formerly in print, and now online, receive ever less editorial scrutiny.  A listing from CDI in January 2006 for the Ultra ATX 600-Watt SATA-Ready power supply lists among specifications, "Low Acoustic Noise."  As opposed to electomagnetic "noise" I guess? It also boasted "Thermal Overload Cutoff Protection" which sounds like it means that it protects the circuit breaker from cutting off in the event it overheats. 

Circumlocution is nothing new.  Read Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (Really -- it's a great book!).  Dickens invented the term.  One of the great practitioners of the past was "journalist" Will Duranty, who sang thus about the Holodomor while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine:  there was "no actual starvation" and furthermore "no deaths from starvation" -- merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."  Oh.  All right then. 

In 2011 I was told by a customer at the Valero refinery in Benicia, "We are rapidly becoming critical path on our coker!"  Me no know what that mean.  But I assume he means that if the repair schedule isn't shortened to IMMEDIATELY!, bad shit is gonna happen -- and when it hits the fan, there will be plenty to spread around to everybody.

In 2012 the Obama economy got worse and worse.  A spokesperson for the president insisted the economy was not in a recession or depression; it was not contracting, in his view, it merely showed numbers "consistent with a weakening growth backdrop."

In August 2016 it came to light that Defense Department intelligence assessments about ISIS had been skewed to downplay the threat and the White House (remember the "Junior Varsity" comment?) incompetence.  "The facts on the ground didn't match what the intelligence was saying out of the United States Central Command," said then-Representative Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas), adding that the intel had clearly been "manipulated."  In response, one Lieutenant Commander Patrick L. Evans spoke from the Pentagon to say that the intelligence community assessments were "based on multifaceted data related to the security environment."  Whatever that means.

I got an email from FedEx on 13 May 2017:

FedEx experienced interference with some of our systems which caused disruptions to the FedEx Express Memphis Hub sort operations.  We immediately implemented contingency plans to minimize the impact to our customers.  We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

The email concluded by reminding us that, "consistent with the provisions of the FedEx Service Guide, the money-back guarantee is not in effect for FedEx Express packages due for delivery on May 13, 2017."  Great money-back guarantee, that.

Some notes on the idea of citizenship

This is an unpolished collection of sources and thoughts prompted both by the so-called migrant caravan working its way up from Central America and also the daily ongoing ingress of illegals sneaking through our southern border.

= = = =

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
ARTICLE II, Section 1, Paragraph 5.
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President.

= = = =

AMENDMENT XIV. [ratified 1869]
SECTION. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
SECTION. 2. [Deals with apportioning the number of the states' members of the House of Representatives by population. Basically holds that former slaves are whole persons now. (summarized for brevity)]
SECTION. 3. [Former members of Congress who went with the Confederacy in the Civil War can no longer hold office unless a special act passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress says they can. (summarized for brevity)]
SECTION. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
SECTION. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

= = = =

Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes says, "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States." [emphasis added] This was enacted by the same Congress that had adopted the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.  They were making sure in the Constitution and in statutory law that the former slaves would have citizenship in the United States of America.

= = = =

Constitution Amendment XIV Section 1 uses the qualifier "...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

The law in Section 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes uses the qualifier "...and not subject to any foreign power."

= = = =

"Framer of the Fourteenth Amendments first section, John Bingham, said Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes meant 'every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.' If this statute merely reaffirmed the old common law rule of citizenship by birth then the condition of the parents would be entirely irrelevant."  This quote is from the Federalist Blog – Read the whole scholarly article!  Michael Anton from Hillsdale College has an article in the commie WaPo that sheds some light if you can get past the formatting, disclaimers, and possible paywall – including this: "The notion that simply being born within the geographical limits of the United States automatically confers U.S. citizenship is an absurdity – historically, constitutionally, philosophically and practically."

= = = =

Seems to me all the President of the United States needs to do is direct the Departments of which he is the chief executive to read "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and "and not subject to any foreign power" to mean that persons entering the United States illegally are extrajudicial invaders who are actually subject to the foreign power of their native land, and are to be apprehended and prosecuted under existing law.

= = = =

House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly said in an interview, "You cannot end birthright citizenship with an Executive Order."  Ryan is wrong.

= = = =

Adding another link 10/31/18, 11:58AM –
Matt Walsh at PJ Media has more analysis.

Our 'Spotless' Sun

This is from NASA latest solar image “movies” available here. This shows a 48 hour time lapse of the surface of the sun, 15 October to 17 October 2018.  The surface of the sun is currently “spotless” in that there are no “sunspots.”  But as you can see, it is hardly featureless; in fact a coronal hole pointed our way may cause visible aurora if you live in a dark place close enough to the poles.   

[Here's the URL for the video.]

Forgive myself for all of my mistakes

[I originally wrote this June 9, 2006, not quite six years after my mother died suddenly, and not quite a year after my father died of cancer.  I'm offering this today very slightly edited.] 

Every Halloween we are treated to images of ghosts with rattling
chains.  In Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Mr. Scrooge is
confronted by the shade of his old business partner.  Marley's Ghost
is chained and burdened by cashboxes, coin purses, locks.  The things
that occupied Marley's thoughts are supposed to bind him to earth
after death.   

Bah, humbug!  The image may function for the plot of Dickens' ghost
story, but it hardly jives with my world-view, let alone my
"other-world"-view!   

In my dreams my mother walks without a limp.  In my dreams my father
is healthy, unworried, well-rested. 

No, I don't think it's the shades of those whom we have lost who bear
the chains.   

The chains are the ones I carry.  The chains are the burdens of
accumulated grieving, loss after loss.  The chains are the regrets and
second thoughts and wish-I-hads.  The chains are the freedom I dare
not grant myself -- perhaps the freedom to be angry at Dad.  Or
perhaps the freedom to create my own standard for being ME, a
standard that would not be always a comparison, a relative judgment
about me *as* son, or me *as* friend (or me *as* blogger).   

Are my chains, my burdens, ones I *choose* to carry?  Why should there
be something inescapable, something inevitable, about the burdens
*others* put upon us?  Oh, how I wish I knew the ins and outs of the
countless little habits I have developed over the years, habits for
making my chains seem normal, necessary, even *deserved*.
Many of the links in my chains are negative memories.  Some of the
locks are believing that I failed to meet expectations.  Here is a
coffer full of guilt.  Here is a cashbox filled with the coin of
resentments. 

Every relationship -- even the very best --  has challenges and
difficulties.  I keep saying that one of the principal tasks of grief
is to find a way to keep our love alive in spite of the fact that the
one we love is gone.  I am barely beginning to learn how to deal with
the fact  that the challenges and difficulties, the bumps and
barriers, have not gone away.   

But now the relationship is a bit single-sided, no?  If the bumps are
going to be smoothed, it is I who will have to do the smoothing.  

I know:  how 'bout if I work on forgiving ME for the failures and the messes?   

Mom would if Mom were here.  Dad would if Dad were here.   

There is a song by Aeone that says in part:

From a point of faith within my head 

I believe in all the choices I have made;

From a point of love within my heart

I forgive myself for all of my mistakes.

That would be nice, wouldn't it...  

Peace and happy dreams, 

--
Crowndot

Point of Faith - Aeone

Maximum Randomness Meets Its Match

Years ago when Ernő Rubik's Cube was a hot gift idea, the brother-in-law introduced me to the mathematical concept of maximum randomness.  Apparently there is a position of the colored pieces of Rubik's Cube from which ANY move takes you closer, not farther away from, the solution: the maximum order of a single color on each face of the cube.

Maximum chaos, or maximum randomness.

Like the sign in the hands of the panhandler says: "Anything would help."

An interesting math concept.  When brother-in-law handed me his mixed-up Rubik's Cube and announced that, for once, anything I did would help, I of course had to take it on faith.  He's a bright guy and takes his mathematics quite seriously, after all.

"Maximum chaos" has bounced around in my mind [I know: "Is he talking about the concept or the usual background noise in his brain now?" And how could I tell?] since the early 1980s.  But I'm not sure I ever really believed in the idea until last week.

I have met maximum randomness in the real world!  It's not pretty.

Opening a new box of blue nitrile gloves from my usual supplier, I beheld not 100 blue nitrile powdered gloves, size medium, lying flat and docile in a stack like Kleenex; I beheld a box packed with the shriveled carcasses of withered blue cocoons, a mass grave of blue nitrile prunes preserved clutching each other in their final agony, an expended and dessicated worm-orgy of rubber gloves packed, pressed, sealed at the factory in Thailand so I could save my delicate digits from the ravages of the industrial workplace.

The picture is a handful of gloves.  Six? Eight? Hard to tell.

How do you even put these on your hand?  There's no opening.

Somebody once said, "You must find the way."  Maybe it was Lao Tzu.  Maybe it was somebody who merely looked like Lao Tzu (which come to think of it is probably most of everybody, ever, on on the planet).

At this point maximum randomness is your friend.  Reach out and pinch a little piece of blue glove anywhere.  It doesn't matter where.  with your other hand pull the wad of wrinkly glove away from the pinch.  There.  You have introduced ORDER to the system.  You will now be able to see the glove shape, to find the opening, and to introduce your hand to the inner sanctum of industrial safety.

Why did I write this?  I figured, "Anything would help!"

Bücherverbrennung 10 May 1933

It might start with burning books, but it ends with piles of corpses.  It starts with "purification" of thought and speech, and ends up with secret police enforcing the will of the State.  It starts with the self-appointed cultural elite having the "correct" ideas, and becomes a death cult. 

On this day 85 years ago, 10 May 1933, the Deutsche Studentenschaft student group staged a massive book burning at the Opera Plaza in Berlin. 

[photo credit Liz Sheld's PJ Media Morning Briefing]

German Wikipedia pompously explains:

"On May 10, 1933, in National Socialist Germany, book burnings took place as part of an action against the non-German spirit of the German student body. Tens of thousands of books by Jewish, Marxist and pacifist writers were publicly confiscated and burned in 22 university towns, beginning with the Berlin Opera Square. In June 1933, and in the months thereafter, numerous other actions followed. The staging and the cult ritual, the systematics of performance have given this auto-da-fé the rank of uniqueness in the continuity of the historical series from antiquity to the most recent present." [thanks, google translate!]

Side note. The German wiki authors seem to be hedging their bets, striving to place the late National Socialist unpleasantness in a wider historical context. "Continuity of the historical series." See! Even St. Paul condoned burning the books of the pagan sorcerers! Yeah, Acts 19. Hmpf. The big difference, though? The Mages of Ephesus voluntarily converted and brought their own books for destruction.

One thing burning is good for: totalitarians. Kill the beast, cut off its head, burn it, grind the ash and flush it down the sewers.

As Gerard says,

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.