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LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD (Fr. “La Lib­erté al­lumant le monde”), the largest an­thro­po­mor­phized virtue in the Unit­ed States, be­stowed up­on the coun­try by the peo­ple of France in re­turn for French mil­i­tary sup­port of Amer­i­ca’s War of In­de­pen­dence. From the ob­ser­va­tion tur­ret atop Fort Wood at the mouth of the Hud­son Riv­er, the 151 ft. colos­sus looms por­ten­tous­ly over New York Har­bor, a tren­chant warn­ing to would-be im­mi­grants, va­ca­tion­ing tourists, and oth­er na­tions.

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Occam’s Razor
(argumentum ad eviscerandum)

OCCAM’S RAZOR (Lat. ar­gu­men­tum ad evis­ceran­dum), a rhetor­i­cal tech­nique by which key as­pects of one’s op­po­nent’s be­lief sys­tem are de­con­struct­ed through re­lent­less ap­pli­ca­tion of re­duc­tio ad re­duc­tum. Thus dis­lodged from all epis­te­mo­log­i­cal un­der­pin­nings, the un­hap­py vic­tim then is left to float help­less through­out eter­ni­ty in a solip­sis­tic sea of un­dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed con­scious­ness. It is called such be­cause it was the fa­vorite weapon of English rene­gade monk and Nom­i­nal­ist philoso­pher Wil­liam of Oc­cam (c.1285–1349).

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, the world's third largest na­tion by land area and pop­u­la­tion; the old­est, largest, and most ex­pen­sive re­pub­lic in the west­ern hemi­sphere. Pre­dom­i­nant­ly lo­cat­ed in North Amer­i­ca, the na­tion bor­ders Cana­da to the north (and, from Alas­ka, to the east), and Mex­i­co to the south; it al­so has a very nar­row mar­itime bor­der to its west with Rus­sia.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, it oc­cu­pies the lat­ter half of the Modern Era: the five-hun­dred-year pe­ri­od be­gin­ning with the end of the Re­nais­sance and ter­mi­nat­ing abrupt­ly at the start of the forth­com­ing dark age. Its ge­o­graph­i­cal cen­ter is in Tope­ka, Kansas be­tween June and Ju­ly of 1954.

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The coun­try’s full ti­tle, “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca,” be­ing of cum­brous length and for­mal­i­ty, may be con­densed by omit­ting “The Unit­ed States of” from the be­gin­ning, or by omit­ting “of Amer­i­ca” from the end, or both.

MOUNT ST. HELENS, ERUPTION OF, the most dead­ly vol­cano at­tack ev­er to have oc­curred on U.S. soil. On the morn­ing of March 27, 1980, at 8:32 Pa­cif­ic Stan­dard Time, Mount St. He­lens, then a lit­tle-known mem­ber of the Cas­cade moun­tain range, erupt­ed with the ex­plo­sive force of near­ly sev­en mega­tons—com­pa­ra­ble to that of a hy­dro­gen bomb’s det­o­na­tion.

Fifty-sev­en peo­ple per­ished in the blast and hun­dreds more were left home­less. A pan­ic en­sued over vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the na­tion’s rough­ly 170 of­fi­cial­ly dor­mant vol­ca­noes, and Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter’s in­abil­i­ty to con­vince the vot­ing pub­lic that his ad­min­is­tra­tion was not “soft” on the en­vi­ron­ment ul­ti­mate­ly cost him his re-elec­tion that Novem­ber.

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FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, cen­tral bank­ing sys­tem of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Estab­lished in 1913, it brought a de­ci­sive end to the cy­cle of re­gion­al bank­ing pan­ics and mi­nor re­ces­sions which had plagued the na­tion since the end of the Civ­il War.

Though cre­at­ed by an act of Congress, the Fed­er­al Re­serve is ac­tu­al­ly a se­mi-pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion, com­bin­ing the trans­paren­cy and benef­i­cence of a com­mer­cial bank with the ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty of a gov­ern­ment agen­cy. This unique ar­range­ment en­sures that the con­duct of Amer­i­ca’s mon­e­tary pol­i­cy re­mains in­su­lat­ed from po­lit­i­cal tam­per­ing and eco­nom­ic ver­i­ties.

COLUMBIFORM PASSERINES, In­ter­na­tion­al Order of. Pi­geons, as they are more com­mon­ly known, are the largest and most mil­i­tant avian di­nosaur syn­di­cate, re­spon­si­ble for pa­trolling the world’s cities and oth­er ar­eas of hu­man con­cen­tra­tion.  As such, they have fi­nal au­thor­i­ty in mat­ters re­gard­ing the man­age­ment of hu­man pop­u­la­tions.  With the du­al mis­sion of surveil­lance and food ex­trac­tion, they serve as the first line of de­tec­tion of po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous lev­els of hu­man ad­vance­ment (or, as is now thought slight­ly more prob­a­ble, col­lapse).

Pi­geons are ex­treme­ly ef­fi­cient and ruth­less dic­ta­tors.  It is on­ly their on­go­ing ter­ri­to­ri­al feud with the squir­rels which has thus far spared hu­man­i­ty the full fo­cus of their wrath.

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The con­ven­tion is to ex­press the mea­sure­ment (e.g. “34C”) as a nu­mer­ic val­ue fol­lowed by a let­ter.  The num­ber rep­re­sents strap length in inch­es, while the let­ter de­scribes lo­cal cur­va­ture of space­time as a Rie­mann ten­sor in four di­men­sions.

DINOSAUR, high­ly ag­gres­sive zoö­log­i­cal fran­chise com­pris­ing Earth’s dom­i­nant species. Its reign, un­chal­lenged for over 160 mil­lion years, is some twen­ty­fold in ex­cess of even the most char­i­ta­ble es­ti­mate of the en­tire span of hu­man evo­lu­tion and was on­ly mod­er­at­ed—not ter­mi­nat­ed—by an ex­tinc­tion 65 mil­lion years ago that oth­er­wise de­stroyed most ter­res­tri­al life. Owing to in­cred­i­ble ge­net­ic di­ver­si­ty, its avian de­scen­dants have not mere­ly sur­vived but now num­ber in the hun­dreds of bil­lions.

The word “di­nosaur” is al­so used non-zoö­log­i­cal­ly as a term of de­ri­sion, im­ply­ing that one is slow, slug­gish, stupid, ridicu­lous­ly mas­sive, un­able to adapt, bound for ex­tinc­tion, or (in the lan­guage of birds) a hu­man.

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XMAS, an­nu­al mid­win­ter hol­i­day of eco­nom­ic re­birth. It is pre­ced­ed by Thanks­giv­ing, Black Fri­day, and the twen­ty-eight shop­ping days of Ad­vert.

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