Why We Still Fall for Toxic Leaders - Oxford Dictionaries: “The Oxford Word of the Year 2018 is… toxic. The adjective toxic is defined as ‘poisonous’ and first appeared in English in the mid-seventeenth century from the medieval Latin toxicus, meaning ‘poisoned’ or ‘imbued with poison’. But the word’s deadly history doesn’t start there. The medieval Latin term was in turn borrowed from the Latin toxicum, meaning ‘poison’, which has its origins in the Greek toxikon pharmakon – lethal poison used by the ancient Greeks for smearing on the points of their arrows. Interestingly, it is not pharmakon, the word for poison, that made the leap into Latin here, but toxikon, which comes from the Greek word for ‘bow’, toxon.
The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance. In 2018, toxic added many strings to its poisoned bow becoming an intoxicating descriptor for the year’s most talked about topics. It is the sheer scope of its application, as found by our research, that made toxic the stand-out choice for the Word of the Year title. Our data shows that, along with a 45% rise in the number of times it has been looked up on oxforddictionaries.com, over the last year the word toxic has been used in an array of contexts, both in its literal and more metaphorical senses.Drawn from our corpus, the top 10 toxic collocates for the year – that is, words habitually used alongside toxic – are indicative of this…”
Defense One: “At a time of rampant executive branch corruption and large increases in defense spending, Americans are rightly concerned about the need for governmental transparency. People deserve to know how their money is being used, and what life-or-death decisions the Pentagon bureaucracy is making in their names. As President Trump asks for more defense dollars and relies more than ever on the military to conduct the country’s business, his administration should be taking commensurate steps to increase openness and strengthen accountability to the public. Instead, the Defense Department under this administration has been doing the exact opposite. Its current leaders declared war on transparency in their earliest days on the job. On issue after issue, they have made conspicuous decisions to roll back transparency and public accountability precisely when we need it most…”
See also via Secrecy News – the following CRS updates for the new members of Congress:
Defense Primer: Geography, Strategy, and U.S. Force Design, CRS In Focus, updated November 8, 2018
Defense Primer: Department of the Navy, CRS In Focus, updated November 8, 2018
Defense Primer: Naval Forces, CRS In Focus, updated November 8, 2018
Defense Primer: United States Airpower, CRS In Focus, updated November 7, 2018:
Defense Primer: The United States Air Force, CRS In Focus, updated November 7, 2018
