Tuesday, June 24, 2008
IammmmmmW
It's time to revive the oft-quoted, utterly descriptive and apt phrase "it's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world." It is very much needed. This time, there's a story from the U.K., a place I revere for many things - scenery (Cornwall, for starters), literature, television and theater, flowers, gentility and generosity of culture, etc., etc., that challenges one's ability to laugh at the absurd.
The Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent, usually thought of as a particularly balanced and solid corner of the kingdom and certainly neither insane nor off its collective rocker, has edicted that council members immediately cease using the term "brainstorming" and substitute the phrase "thought showers." The Telegraph is a paper thought of fairly well; it's not known for reporting false events or humans who give birth to Martians and asking readers to take them seriously. Nevertheless, today it relates that the TW Council chiefs took this step because they "feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy."
But since "brainstorming" is used to describe people working together and stimulating each other's ideas so as to gather better ideas than they might on their own, then even if somehow one made a connection between "brainstorming" and "mentally ill people and those with epilepsy" (although how they might do so is beyond me), how could it be at all offensive?
And it occurs to me that meteorologists should take organized offense at the term "thought showers" and protest that the TW Council is publicly humiliating their intelligence.
The Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent, usually thought of as a particularly balanced and solid corner of the kingdom and certainly neither insane nor off its collective rocker, has edicted that council members immediately cease using the term "brainstorming" and substitute the phrase "thought showers." The Telegraph is a paper thought of fairly well; it's not known for reporting false events or humans who give birth to Martians and asking readers to take them seriously. Nevertheless, today it relates that the TW Council chiefs took this step because they "feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy."
But since "brainstorming" is used to describe people working together and stimulating each other's ideas so as to gather better ideas than they might on their own, then even if somehow one made a connection between "brainstorming" and "mentally ill people and those with epilepsy" (although how they might do so is beyond me), how could it be at all offensive?
And it occurs to me that meteorologists should take organized offense at the term "thought showers" and protest that the TW Council is publicly humiliating their intelligence.
Labels: philosophy, ridiculousness, U.K.
