Well, one of the things it seems to have turned into is a mechanism
for various trivia discussions with a sometimes modest cultural or
scientific connection, so in light of that, do you know, Nick (or
anyone), who wrote the couplet your father loved to quote?
js
On Mar 29, 2009, at 10:34 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
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 ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
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
