:: The Occupied Buggitories ::

Doron Rosenblum, columnist for "Mussaf Haaretz" has often stated the following sociological fact (well-known to left-wing activists who consider themselves criticists): The choice of a certain word to describe a situation usually serves to change the meaning of the object described, even if the tone of voice is allegedly objective.

This phenomenon, also called "linguistic white-washing", leads to phrases like: "The Territories" describing the occupied Palestinian territories, or "The Security Zone", a rather positive name for the (until lately) occupied Lebanese territories.

This sociological tendency is also known in our trade. "Bug", a name stemming from an accidental moth caught between the wires and contacts of an ancient computer, is used today to describe human-generated errors, that prohibit the correct run of a program.

It's so much better to talk about "bugs" that "crept into the system" while we were programming, than to simply call the thing by its real name: "If I would have thought this out a little better, this would never have happened".

Wadi Writer #2 (Blue)

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