My father;s favorite saying was: Things are never what they seem, skim milk
masquerades for cream! Not particularly elegant, but he LOVED to say it.
So it is that things are never about what they are called. For instance, if
you have ever painted a house, you know that the proceddure should be called
House Scraping, because the painting is a relatively insignificant part of the
whole operation. And vacuuming should be called "furniture displacement".
Last year I discovered that faculty life is really about "finding high minded
rationales from protecting our salary." At the university where I worked for
nearly 40 years, there is a "faculty discussion" list that was created so the
faculty could discuss matters of the mind. Since I left , it went completely
silent. I assumed that the list was defunct. But when the compensation
committee proposed a salary freeze as part of an austerity program, oh WOW did
THAT sucker come to life!
And in the last week, I discovered that FRIAM is really about FOOD and PUNS.
What a turnout! What amazing richness of information and imagination! Next I
expect to discover that the NAME of FRIAM is really the name for a cockney
method of cooking smoked pork.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
