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Spiraling depression. A condition in which a person feels that each day they live is worse than the preceding day. Most generally, this phrase applies to individuals whose personal lives are merely stagnant, rather than actually becoming worse by the day, as might be the case for a starving refugee or a cancer patient.
"Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up. "
Office Space, 1999
People who exhibit symptoms of worst day ever syndrome are urged to immediately seek professional help -- or to acquire a social life, whichever seems more feasible.
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Along with R2-D2, quite possibly the only character who was cool in both Episodes I-III and Episodes IV-VI. Thus, one of the only things George Lucas didn't fuck up in the second Star Wars trilogy.
A: Did you see Yoda go berserk in Episode III?
B: Yeah, but did you see what they did to Darth Vader? All the way from badass to emo loser...oh, my poor childhood...
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Acronym for Global Thermonuclear War. A construct sometimes used in academic debate circles as a placeholder for an improbable (but not impossible) "worst case scenario." The term comes directly from the 1983 movie "Wargames," in which a young hacker went wardialing, tapped NORAD's central computer, and accidentally initiated a war simulation that almost started World War Three with the Soviet Union.
Suspending disbelief temporarily, the concept for debaters is this: no man-made event could be worse than several major world powers choosing to initiate a nuclear exchange. Theoretically, such an exchange could kill most of the life on the planet's surface. Given that, if you can show that there is a chance, however small, that a given plan of action increases the likelihood of nuclear war, then that plan cannot be enacted, regardless of its benefits. This basic logic can be tailored to suit a given topic by exchanging GTW for a more appropriate worst case scenario.
As a sidenote, while GTW may or may not really be a relevant consideration in some topics of debate, certain students relish finding inordinately convoluted paths by which, for example, domestic social policies could lead to the end of the world.
Magnet schools? They'll breed more right-wing hawks, therefore GTW!
National sales tax? They're regressive, will force folks to elect more neoconservative isolationists, therefore GTW!
Take the kids out for pizza? Children are the future; childhood obesity is rising; more sickly children equal more health costs; subsequent failure of the current state health program will lead the masses to request socialist-style health policies, snowballing socialist reforms throughout society; the western free market cannot persist under heavy socialist governance; the West suffers an unprecedented depression; global depression leads to an increase in nationalism, while the new power vacuum draws petty tyrants toward the dream of hegemony; a new fascist state arises, and decides to start ethnic cleansing with a nuclear broom, therefore GTW -- all because someone didn't make Willy eat his green beans.
The truly silly thing is that some number of academic debates get decided by the judge tallying how many GTW-style scenarios survived the round on each side, then handing it to the "lesser of two evils."
See debate.
KEEP IN MIND that these are just samples to show how GTW-type disadvantages get abused in debate and even some real foreign policy circles).
More seriously, here's how it goes (sans "evidence" -- read: bullshit).
An (arguably) rational GTW usage I heard awhile back:
Proposed plan: America to assist China to construct modern nuclear reactors, offering deals on fissionable matter and technical know-how.
Response:
a) China's nuclear capacity is currently no match for that of the West, in either live weapons or raw materials.
b) Providing nuclear materials could allow China to more quickly upgrade its nuclear capacity.
c) US-China relations are possibly at a tipping point now.
d) Rapid Chinese armament makes a 21st-century arms race likely, threatening GTW.
THEREFORE, America cannot help China build reactors.
A stupid, stupid GTW usage I heard in debate recently:
Proposal: Decrease (American) federal agricultural subsidies.
Response:
a) Currently, American agriculture is just barely surviving thanks to increased government-sponsored interest in biofuels. So, cutting subsidies will ruin many farmers.
b) The act of decreasing ag subsidies will increase voter sympathy for neoconservative interest groups in the next election, pushing the country further to the political right.
c) America is standing at the top of a slippery slope leading to severe isolationism; it is just a few right-wing Congressional seats from imposing many xenophobic policies, from protective tariffs to literal wall-building.
d) An immediate and wholehearted embrace of multilateralism is the only way to halt jihad and stop a dangerous Sino-US Cold War.
THEREFORE, America cannot decrease agricultural subsidies.
For more examples of the above, I'd advise you to go volunteer to judge a high-school debate tournament in your community. Then, try to imagine a wad of college kids jabbering (literally) three times as quickly as the high-schoolers and armed with the latest round of bad metaphors and buzzwords they've picked up in a few years of undergrad political science and philosophy courses. Finally, consider that many of our current world leaders "did debate" in college. Scary.
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A relative phrase, never to be uttered or even thought, lest a worse situation should arise.
A man was riding a mule along a steep mountain trail. Suddenly, a cougar darted in front of him. The mule spooked, pitched him from the saddle, and ran further down the trail, taking the man's gun, gps beacon, and supplies with it. The man tried to run, but found that his ankle was broken. He attempted to back away, instead, but his ankle collapsed on some loose stones and he fell backwards toward the precipice, catching himself at the last moment on some old tree roots. As he hung there, with the cougar pawing at the gravel above him and the roots beginning to come free of the rocky soil, he saw a bright cluster of wild berries just within reach. In despair, the man leaned out, grabbed a handful and began chewing on them -- to his surprise, they were wonderfully sweet! Savoring their taste, the man decided that he had, by all rights, lived a good life, and he braced himself for the worst.
Suddenly, the cougar pounced! The man jerked back, and to his amazement, the cougar sailed past him, lost its footing on the slope it had aimed for, and plummeted to the canyon floor far beneath. A cascade of tiny stones followed the big cat, and larger stones followed those. The man looked around and realized that a larger set of tree roots had been revealed beneath the shifting stone. He wiped his free hand, reached out, and got a secure grip. Within a minute, he was back on the trail. As he was catching his breath, he saw his slightly skittish mule trotting back down the path, heading for home. He whistled, bringing it back to him. He made a quick splint for his ankle and threw himself back into the saddle.
A few hours later, he was back at his campsite, where he told his fellow campers one of the most amazing stories they had ever heard. The man ate a hearty meal, took some aspirin for his ankle and his nerves, and went to sleep in his tent, anxious for the morning ride back to civilization.
He never woke up. The berries he ate were poisonous.
---
Whatever you are thinking, you haven't found the worst case scenario yet. Don't pretend that you have.
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Using a computer to dial telephone numbers within a given range, usually with the intention of finding a modem carrier signal. The practice largely predated the widespread penetration of broadband Internet connectivity; at the time, many businesses, agencies, and individuals operated computer systems "on-demand" through telephone-based modems, each of which might (or might not) offer a unique (and possibly privileged) selection of information, as well as possibly offering access to powerful hardware or a platform for reaching other networks and systems. Usually, the wardialer would be covertly planted on a public, shared, or corporate phone line, left to operate for a limited time, then retrieved so that any "positives" (phone lines returning a modem carrier signal) could be investigated later from yet another location. The practice often went hand-in-hand with phreaking, for obvious reasons.
Today, some telemarketing and social research firms use similar programs (usually working from a digital phone book) to reach residential numbers in search of sales or social information. Also, on rare occasions, people engaged in social engineering have used a form of this process to explore "gaps" in corporate phone listings to discover (and identify the owners of) unlisted numbers.
This term directly inspired the term wardriving, due to similarities between the two practices: both return unpredictable results, both require real-world travel, and both activities are done for rather similar reasons. On the other hand, while wardriving is inherently focused on and limited to a specific geographic area, wardialing is a prototypical bruteforce process, much like password cracking, and can theoretically be achieved from any location with a dial tone.
In the 1983 movie Wargames, a teenager engages in wardialing and discovers a backdoor into the NORAD (NAADS) computer system. He then accidentally runs a simulation which almost turns into World War III.
The wardialer is dead. Long live the wardriver.
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