“In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.” KnowsMenWellsEnoughFactsHomeRunningJobsPastCertainKnow HowTakenBrokenMen And WomenWoodsDecadesMagazinesAssumptionShopsArticlesTransfersSuggesting Author:Robert Briffault
“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.” NeedsMindFactsLyingViewsPerspectiveLogicMetaphorCaughtWoodsAgentsComparisonTransitionTrapsRelentlessExitGuidelinesSpectacles Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History Source: Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
“In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was.” WayFactsNightCareersConditionsTelevisionAccountsFollowingWoodsChecksMinistersPhrasesFedsTransitionMetalsConcretePlasticDesksAnother WayJuniorsCabinetsExplosivesFed UpExasperationNonlinear Author:Douglas Adams