--- In
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G. McManus"
<mcmanus71496@m...> wrote:
> > if i had to come up with a better indicator
> > i would pick ownership of a seat at the united nations instead
> > & resign myself to missing a couple of odd crabapples
> > namely taiwan & the vatican
>
> What about all of the countries that existed between the
beginning of
> civilization and 1945? Were they all "odd crabapples"?
well thats not what i meant by this conceit
i was talking about cutting directly to the chase in the present
& was comparing iso diglyph possession in the present to
united nations membership in the present
& you would only have to go back to 2002
before switzerland joined the united nations
to start confounding & multiplying my 2 odd crabapples
if thats what i had meant & you had wanted
but pre1945 countries just as surely predate iso as they predate
the united nations
& they are besides of no concern to our try pointing in the world
as it exists in the present
for ghost pointing yes of course they would matter
but for actual try pointing today they are not applicable
only the countries states counties etc as they exist today are
applicable
moreover our nomenclature has always been especially
problematic when projected into the past or future
since it was never intended to bear the extra burden of multiple
meanings
without additional qualification
such as the date actually being referred to etc
Surely we can come up
> with a definition that does not force us to resort to a unit of
measure that is
> so recent in origin and already into its decline.
i think our simple list of 193 generally recognized states does it
& the commonest reference works share in this consensus
>
> Another argument: Did the separate UN seat of the former
Byelorussian SSR make
> it a country when it was so obviously one of the 15 constituent
parts of the
> USSR?
no argument here
that was one of a couple of odd sugar plums at the time
rather than a crabapple now
etc
By that measure, Scotland, Manitoba, Arkansas, Tlaxcala, and
Queensland
> should have had UN seats!
>
> This just goes to show that the UN is as flawed as the ISO in
determining what
> is and is not a country.
2 present exceptions on the one hand compared with several
dozens of present exceptions on the other hand is far from an
equality in terms of defectiveness
it is a rout
& if i had to choose
i would always go for the cleaner or more nearly true formulation
not only because i wish to be as right as possible
but also because keeping track of all the exceptions is easier in
that case
>
> Lowell G. McManus
> Leesville, Louisiana, USA