Pax Orbis

Emmanuel Orwell

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ACTUALITÉ : ANALYSES

Pax Orbis

Comentary on current events

12/11/2019

C++

I just saw on YouTube an interview to Bjarne Stroustrup. Stroustrup began developing C++ in 1979 (then called “C with Classes”), and, in his own words, “invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation… chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee.” Stroustrup also wrote a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programming Language. The thing I found most interesting was the assertion by Stroustrup that higher levels of abstraction (or maybe the right level?) produces more compact and efficient code. There are two things that need to be matched, on one side the idea of what needs to be done, that is in the mind of the programmer, on the other side is the machine instructions that are executed by the computer. The function of the programming language, or rather the compiler, is to allow the programmer to express his idea clearly, so that the optimizer will produce an executable that its reliable, efficient, and that corresponds to the idea of the programmer. According to Stroustrup, reliability and efficiency are systems properties, and the way to achieve them is by simplification. The central idea is to have a flexible and effective type implementation that allows the programmer to match the types of his application to his needs without a performance penalty.

3 min
05/11/2019

Terrorism

A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism. If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter-terrorism. In December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that’s when the furor over the plague was peaking, The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras, abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There was one paragraph in that long resolution which said that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel can’t accept that. There was another one at the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon.

3 min
25/10/2019

Crime rates among senior citizens around the world.

BloombergBusiness reported a sharp uptick in crime rates among senior citizens around the world. In South Korea for example, crimes committed by people 65 and over rose 12.2 percent from 2011 to 2013, which includes a shocking 40 percent increase in violent crime, such as murder, robbery, and rape, according to the Korea Times.

2 min
20/09/2019

Bulletproof backpacks

Every day, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence, and hundreds more are injured. While most of these shootings are not in public schools, children safety at school is a major concern. Gun control measures are currently political non-starters and people are turning to palliatives like bulletproof backpacks among other desperate solutions in an attempt to protect their children. Sales of bulletproof backpacks have spiked almost 300 percent following a spate of school shootings and the recent attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Yet, none of the backpacks currently on the market would have stopped a single rifle round coming from those gunmen.

4 min
11/09/2019

Arn-Wolf

Eagle (Arn) is a symbol of leadership and forsight but man knows that his roots are closer to the wolf. The wolf is very dear to man and represent the purity of heart he has lost in his quest for godness. The wolf is a loner that fights to death for the clan if need comes. Gray wolves are social predators that live in nuclear families consisting of a mated pair, their offspring and, occasionally, adopted immature wolves. They primarily feed on ungulates, which they hunt by wearing them down in short chases. Gray wolves are typically apex predators throughout their range, with only humans and tigers posing significant threats to them. The genetic relationship between wolves and dogs was elucidated by Robert WAYNE and Carles VILÀ, opening the possibility that the split between wolves and dogs may date back as far as 135,000 years before present. Such a long common history of dogs and modern humans begs the question as to the dog’s part in the endeavor of humans to take control of the world, and led to the formulation of a hypothetical “lupiﬁcation” of human behavior, habits, and even ethics. There is something in the bond among wolves and between dogs and humans that goes beyond that between us and our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Here we are not talking about intelligence, but about what we may poetically associate with kindness of heart. Wolves were pack animals. They survive as a result of teamwork. They hunt together, den together, raise pups together. This ancient social order has been helpful in the domestication of the dog. Chimpanzees are individualists. They are boisterous and volatile in the wild. They are always on the lookout for opportunities to get the better of each other. They are not pack animals. If you watch wolves within a pack, nuzzling each other, wagging their tails in greeting, licking and protecting the pups, you see all the characteristics we love in dogs, including loyalty. If you watch wild chimps, you see the love between mother and offspring, and the bonds between siblings. Other relationships tend to be opportunistic. And even between family members, disputes often rise that may even lead to ﬁghts. The good relationship as we have with our dogs is not related to intelligence, but to the desire to help, to be obedient, to gain our approval.

7 min
03/09/2019

Pay it forward

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1841 essay Compensation, wrote: “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.” In 1916, Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, “You don’t pay love back; you pay it forward.” Woody Hayes (February 14, 1913 – March 12, 1987) was a college football coach who is best remembered for winning five national titles and 13 Big Ten championships in 28 years at The Ohio State University. He misquoted Emerson as having said “You can pay back only seldom. You can always pay forward, and you must pay line for line, deed for deed, and cent for cent.” He also shortened the (mis)quotation into “You can never pay back; but you can always pay forward” and variants.

2 min
31/08/2019

Justino

My grandfather Justino was the Benjamin of a long list of siblings. The older ones were more surrogate parents than brothers and sisters. The records show that he was born in Cameron County, Texas, in 1897, however the family folklore says he falsified the records to enlist for World War I when he was a minor. Justino grew up in San Benito, a typical Texas town of the beginning of the twentieth century, where the railroad tracks marked the segregation boundary, on one side was San Benito, for Texans and Mexicans, and on the other, was Harlingen, for the new conquerors. Grandpa’s family had been in Texas for over two hundred years and they were Mexican in the sense that Texas was once part of Mexico. My grandfather would refer to himself as Texan, without qualifications, to Mexican migrants as “pelones” and to the invaders as “gabachos.”

12 min
29/08/2019

Settler-colonial societies

Settler-colonial societies eliminate the indigenous population. Thomas Jefferson said, well, we have no choice but to exterminate the indigenous population, the Native Americans; the reason is they’re attacking us. Why are they attacking us? Because we’re taking everything away from them. But since we’re taking their land and resources away and they defend themselves, we have to exterminate them. The settler-colonial societies are a striking illustration of, first of all, the massive destructive power of European imperialism. If some extraterrestrial observer were watching this, they’d think the species was insane. And, in fact, it is. But the insanity goes back to the basic institutional structure. That’s the way it works. It’s built into the institutions. It’s one of the reasons it’s going to be very hard to change. The U.S. was founded on two racist principles: the system of slavery, the source of much of its wealth (and England’s too), and the need to rid the national territory of Native Americans, whom the Declaration of Independence explicitly describes as “the merciless Indian savages,” and whom the framers saw as barring the expansion of the “superior” race. Immigrants were supposed to be basically “Anglo-Saxon,” in accord with racist myths of the founding fathers that persisted through the 19th century.

6 min

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Comentary on current events

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Emmanuel Orwell
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