Tools

Vocabulary for journalists

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foreclose

  • take possession of a mortgaged property when the mortgagor fails to keep up their mortgage payments.
    “the bank was threatening to foreclose on his mortgage”
  • rule out or prevent (a course of action).
    “the decision effectively foreclosed any possibility of his early rehabilitation”

One of your central arguments revolves around the proposition that the emergence of the anti-impunity movement has established individualized “victim” and “perpetrator” categories, furthering the judicialization and individualization of post-conflict transitions. In turn, these efforts foreclose the potential for deep and pervasive social repair.

discursive

  • digressing from subject to subject.
    “students often write dull, second-hand, discursive prose”
  • (of a style of speech or writing) fluent and expansive.
    Opposite: concise
    “the short story is concentrated, whereas the novel is discursive”
  • relating to discourse or modes of discourse.
    “the attempt to transform utterances from one discursive context to another”
  • from Latin discurs-, literally ‘gone hastily to and fro’

The power of law is often in its commanding of the fiction of order and objectivity. But as this work shows, law’s power is in its discursive and imaginary force.

undergird

  • secure or fasten from the underside, especially by a rope or chain passed underneath.
    formal
  • provide support or a firm basis for.
    “that’s a philosophy that needs to undergird retailers’ business plans this year”

Native genocide is a big issue that undergirds the foundations of life here in the Americas and one that has been long debated given the ongoing legacies of slavery that continue to entrench contemporary life.

 

World Countries Game – Test your country facts

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[cal_eftg_game]

Tap/click the question above to see the answer. Tap it again for the next question.

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How many countries are there in the world? How many square kilometers is the world? What are the three largest countries and non-countries?

 

This tool should help journalists improve their readiness to write about the roughly 195 counted independent sovereign nations and 60 dependent areas, disputed territories, etc.

The 195 number doesn’t include Taiwan. If we include Taiwan, it’s 196. Taiwan has de facto independence, but China considers Taiwan to be a province.

Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of China. The Faroe Islands and Greenland are self-governing overseas administrative divisions of Denmark. French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, New Caledonia and a dozen other islands are overseas lands, departments and territories of France. Gibraltar, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands are overseas territories of the UK. The British Virgin Islands are self-governing, though. The Falklands are also claimed by Argentina. The American Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam are unincorporated territories of the US. Antarctica, the Spratly Islands, the West Bank, Western Sahara, and the Paracel Islands are claimed by various countries and make the news often on this basis.

The world’s youngest country is South Sudan, which became independent of the rest of Sudan in 2013.

The world is 510m square kms, of which 150m square kms is land. (We’ll use kms here because only the U.S., the UK, Myanmar and Liberia use miles.)

To understand the sizes of countries in square kms, think of Germany. You can look at it on a map to compare it in size to its neighbors here. Germany is a country of 350,000 sq km. It’s roughly the same size as Norway, Japan, the DRC, Vietnam, and Poland. However it’s less than half the size of Venezuela, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Germany is twice as large as Cambodia or Greece.

The largest country, Russia, has 16m square kms of land and 700,000 square kms of water. The next biggest country is Canada, but China and the US are of similar land size with over 9m square kms, although Canada has around 3x as much water as China or the U.S., albeit much of it in cold northern regions, a situation it shares with Russia. Brazil and Australia are only slightly smaller.

Although not a country, the continent of Antarctica is midway between Russia and Canada in land size (because it’s not a nation it doesn’t claim water off its shores).

If, while playing this game, you have some suggestions or find it’s missing something, leave us a comment.

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