taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Life: Alec Muffett quotes an Economist opening line:

We tend to meet any new situation in life by reorganising, Petronius Arbiter, a 1st-century Roman satirist, is supposed to have remarked. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.

As apt today as it was then.

(I was recently talking to a mate who’s a post-grad in the classics. She noted that classicists aren’t the fastest-moving academicians around, speculating that maybe it was because, in studying the classics, you realise the same problems and the same solutions have been around for over two thousand years regardless of change in other aspects of life.)

Tags: confusion, economist, illusion, inefficiency, life, line, method, progress, satirist, situation

“There’s even dialects of ‘english’ military jargon. An ex-general giving analysis on Sky (TV) commented that during the last Gulf War, confusion was caused because when a US commander said they’d ‘cleared’ a town they meant they’d gone past it, but when a british commanders said he’d ‘cleared’ a town he meant he’d dealt with most pockets of enemey and there was no signifigant resitence left in it and it was now ’safe’ for occupation.

The two confusions caused american comanders to wonder what a british comander was still doing in a town he’d said he’d ‘cleared’, and british troops wondering who the hell was shooting at them out of towns the americans had said they’d ‘cleared’.” (via Barbara Barrett on the forteana list)

Tags: analysis, british, commander, confusion, english, giving, gulf, jargon, town, war

Absolutely classic.

1. Drop (a) food, in yellow parcels, then (b) cluster bombs, also in yellow casings.

2. Eventually realise potential for confusion.

“Do not confuse the cylinder-shaped [yellow cluster] bomb with the rectangular [yellow] food bag. [...] All bombs will explode when they hit the ground, but in some special circumstances some of the bombs will not explode.”

Riiiight. Way to get the locals on your side!

Tags: bag, bomb, cluster, confusion, drop, food, ground, realise, riiiight, way