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This is a section for comments/notes... that are not ready for Prime Time.

• Goodness / Badness? -- It has been proposed that we try to develop some measure of countries that determine how one country compares to another. One result of this measure is it would allow us to consider which countries are more or less suitable for Regime Change and what a country could do to reduce the probability of actions leading to Regime Change Of course there are major problems re such a measure, e.g. it will certainly not be objective, complete, etc. but perhaps it is useful, at least as a starting point. Donald Rumsfeld in an article in the Wall Street Journal had included a section that might be the basis for such a measure. The following is my interpretation of the components of this, In order to come up with a Goodness/Badness measure, we must determine how much a country satisfies each measure, +10 ... 0 ... -10, and how important each measure is: 0 ... 10. As an initial proposal I suggest that we assume each is equally important, e.g. weight each by 5. The Rumsfeld components are, as I see it a country:
  
  1. is a single country,
  2. does not support terrorists,
  3. does not threaten its neighbors
  4. does not threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction,
  5. does not threaten its diverse population with terror and repression;
  6. has a government that respects and protects minorities,
  7. provides opportunities for its people through a market economy,
  8. provides justice through an independent judiciary and rule of law

Note: I believe that the condition of being a single country is not general, but as it is included in the Rumsfeld set, I am including it.

• Numbers, Laws, and thoughts: -- There are some numbers, theorems that I have found interesting

• Definitions
  • Love-Hate
  • Love -- When one is willing to sacrifice one's life for the other person, country, or position
  • Hate -- When one is willing to sacrifice one's life to defeat/kill the other person, country, or position
  • Extreme, Far, Moderate, Centrist
  • Extreme -- 5% of the population, ~10% of the 50% position where the population is ~50/50 split
  • Far -- 10% of the population, ~25% of the 50% position.
  • Moderate -- 25% of the population, on either side of a position
  • Centrist -- 50% of the population reasonably in the center of the issue.
  • Fanatic, Believer, Opinionated, UnDecided
  • Fanatic -- One who "Hates" the other position
  • Believer -- One who can not restate the other's position to the acceptance of the other
  • Opinionated -- One who can state the other's position so that the other agrees, but has a low probably of changing their mind
  • UnDecided -- One who is willing to change their mind and feels that it is possible that they would.
  • Average (see)
  • Arithmetic Mean -- Sum(Values)/Numbers, e.g. Mean Salery = Add up all IRS incomes and then divide by the number of earners ~ $61.702.00
  • Mode -- Value of the people who are most frequent, e.g. if more people have saleries of $50,000-to-$75,000, then the Mode is ~ $61.190
  • Median -- Value at which half of the people are less than and half are more than, e.g. the value associeated with the average person, e.g the income associated with the 50% income tax return ~ $25.000
  • Linguistic "Likes"
    • Metaphor--A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another. e.g. The following sentences illustrate how the metaphorical understanding of anger-as-fire is expressed:
      • Your insincere apology just added fuel to the fire.
      • After the argument, Dave was smoldering for days.
      • That kindled my ire.
      • Boy, am I burned up
    • Analogy--Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects.
      • Hand is to palm as foot is to ____?
    • Simile--A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by the words like or as.

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  September 21, 2004 18:41