EVEN MORE WORDS OF THE WEEK - Part II

EVEN MORE WORDS OF THE WEEK - Part II

General terms. The terms below are used everyday, many in the operations of government.

• Unmasking – requests to identify American citizens who were part of an intelligence gathering operation on a foreign national. Normally, unmasking is against the law except for national security purposes, and then only by officials with very high security clearances (i.e. you can’t and I can’t).
• Bifurcation - a splitting of outcomes along two different paths contingent on particular circumstances.
• Calculus – Meaning “My strategy for addressing this problem is …. In the everyday sense, this term is mostly used by politicians and other morons, seeking to sound intelligent. This term rarely used by those who actually use calculus. The original meaning of “calculus” is as an advanced mathematical topic, principally dealing the rates of change.
• Inflection Point – This is a point on a graph where the rate of the rate changes sign. So for example, if the rate of the rate of infections changes from positive to negative or from negative to positive, the time value is called an inflection point.  In automobile driving, this means changing from accelerating to decelerating or the reverse. However, when the rate changes from positive to negative, this is usually called a relative extreme point. Politicians almost always use this term incorrectly.
• Model – a method, formula, or procedure for typing, addressing, or solving a problem.
• Cyclical stock – stocks that cycle in value over time.  Examples include automobile stocks, furniture manufacturers, and restaurants.
• Duplicity -  dishonest behavior posited to trick the reader.
• Gig work – basically contract labor, usually not recipients of corporate benefits
• Strategic oil reserve – the national repository of crude oil, normally deposited within high capacity domes deep underground.
• Future oil contracts – oil contracts are sold month by month with specific delivery times.