More Buzzwords

This site began way back in the year 2000. Back then it wasn't even called Dontmindme.com, and it existed on a free webhost that no longer exists. The very first article posted on the site was a Good/Bad/Ugly rating of buzzwords. Nine years have passed since then, and we have yet to revisit that rating. Until now. Enough new buzzwords have come up that it's past time to rate some new ones.

Weaponized: This one probably arose sometime between the anthrax scare of late 2001 and the ill-fated search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Essentially it means to equip with a weapon, or more commonly, to adapt or modify something to make it into a weapon. So you could theoretically weaponize your 1994 Dodge Spirit by bolting a machine gun to the roof.

The media seems to like using weaponize to stress how additionally dangerous something might be, as in 'weaponized anthrax' or 'weaponized plutonium' to distinguish from the nice and safe non-weaponized versions of these things. Personally, I think it's time people starting using the term as a synonym for awesome, tough, or heavy-duty. For example "You should order the pulled pork sandwich, it's totally weaponized." This could only be a Good thing. Or should I say a weaponized thing?

Green: This one is hardly new, and for anyone who has been living under a rock in rural Afghanistan or North Korea for the last decade, it means "environmentally friendly." Well, sort of. Perhaps it more accurately means "not especially environmentally harmful." Wait, that's not entirely true. Maybe more "Hopefully not quite as environmentally destructive as the non-green alternative."

Now I'm all for not destroying the planet; I use reusable bags, I drive a fuel efficient car, I separate recyclable plastics, and I kill barely any seals at all. But I'm also half Irish, and the fact that green is actually a colour, and not a concept, really bothers me. It also bothers me that people refer to their reusable bags as 'green' bags even if they might be blue. Or black. Or multicoloured. But what makes it really Bad is that I do that too.

Surge: We can thank the Iraq war for this one. Or more specifically, the increased deployment of troops to Iraq in 2007. Surge is hardly a new word, but now it gets tossed around in regards to any sort of increase or escalation. As someone who for years has worked with electronics and been an advocate for the use of surge protectors, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. After years of trying to stop electrical surges, or at least mitigate the damage they caused, now surges are a good thing? Yeah, I'm not quite buying it. Too Bad the media really seems to like the term.

Green Shoots: Sometimes the media latches unto a term and seems to use it at every opportunity. Green shoots is one of those terms. Ever since US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used the term in a speech to refer to signs of possible improvement in the economy, economic commentators everywhere have been spouting about green shoots. It's enough to make the business report on CBC radio news sound like a gardening segment. Sure, the imagery is evocative, the first hints of growth arising from recently tilled soil. We get it. Come up with a new metaphor already. Besides, the emergence of green shoots suggests that everything was completely dead and in need of new life. While the recession of 2008-2009 was rough, it's not like the world came to an end and we had to rebuild civilization from scratch of anything. It was nowhere near that Ugly.