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,
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