Re: technical terms overhaul
On Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:51:27 -0300
riveravaldez <riveravaldezmail@gmail.com> wrote:
> For humans, white is also full-spectrum visible light refraction, and
> black, full-spectrum visible light absorption - or absence of light.
> So, not always black-and-white (as in typography, let's say) has a
> necessary sociopolitical connotation, I guess.
> Hope this has any utility.
What *ought* to be done is make the skin colour descriptions more
representative of reality.
'White' people certainly aren't white, and there are very few genuinely
black people in the world. I've seen a few, basically Africans who spend
a lot of time outdoors near the Equator. Pretty much all non-'whites'
are really some shade of brown. Of course, 'pink' and 'brown' do not
form an obvious dichotomy for the purpose of rabble-rousing.
If the racists can fix their terminology, we can continue to use the
words 'white' and 'black', which between them describe a lot of useful
things that really are black and white (for various colour temperatures
of white, of course). Ideally, completely new words should be made up
for skin colours, so that the people who are bothered about it don't
screw up life for the rest of us. Not that that is the intention, of
course...
The disc drives can be the more descriptive 'primary' and 'secondary',
now that we don't need those words for partitions. Or even 'drive 0'
and 'drive 1', which can be extended as necessary for more than two
drives, especially as few computers now have two drives hanging from a
single cable.
Unfortunately, 'master' and 'slave' are extremely descriptive of
several situations, such as some electronic buses. 'Master' doesn't
seem too bad, and it's the generic term for both sexes, we don't say
that a woman has 'mistressed' a skill. Why not 'servant' or 'serf'
instead of 'slave'?
--
Joe
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