Even their health is a state secret.Such basic ignorance, however, has not stopped China-watching, once the arcane pursuit of a few experts, from becoming a vast industry.
I am reasonably sure there is no bad faith on the part of the connectivity messiahs, often their statements about connection and the value of communication come from a place of basic ignorance or naivety rather than one of deceit.
Rob Goodfellow, an Indonesianist based in Melbourne, wrote in the Jakarta Post that basic ignorance played a role.
Tom Carson's review of Bob Dylan's "Chronicles" (Oct . 24 punctures a lot of the mystique, but also reveals some basic ignorance of the Greenwich Village folk scene.
"In part," concludes the magazine, "this work fits into a proud tradition of social science research demonstrating the basic ignorance of the average American".
As a newcomer to national politics, he was given the benefit of the doubt even when he displayed basic ignorance about foreign affairs and other matters.
"The basic ignorance by our leadership is going to cause the deaths of many fine American troops with no positive outcome," the statement said.
Clouding that intent is an essential part of the job.All the more extraordinary, then, that Wim Duisenberg, the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), should betray basic ignorance of the rules.
"I began to get pleasure out of the technique itself," he writes in "Untold Stories," "sketching out skeleton answers to all sorts of questions and using the same facts to engage the examiner's interest and disguise my basic ignorance".
