An article in this week's Economist about surveillance technology uses the old analogy of boiling a frog: supposedly if you put a frog in hot water it will jump out, but if the water is gradually heated it will stay put and eventually boil to death without noticing. I'm not sure I really believe this. Has anyone ever actually tried it?
Forgive me for asking but why on earth would you want to BOIL A FROG?! Or know about it for that matter...
it's all about an analogy people use to show that if you allow change to happen slowly that you will end up dead over time or well living in a fascist state with no way to change it (for instance). people use the story of boiling a frog how if you drop him in hot water he'll jump out, but if you put him in cold water he'll stay there even if you heat the water slowly until he's dead. roffa, wasn't really interested in boiling frogs, but just wanted to know if the statement was really based on reality, the link i provided talks about the analogy at the top but then showed that the statement might not actually be based on truth. though it seems the scientific evidence around it is rather mixed as to whether or not the frog dies or just hops out. so it's more a question of whether or not the etomolgy of the phrase is based on reality or not, and not actually about boiling frogs. ... though it still makes me think of Alberto for some reason ...
Well if you're talking about people Id have thought we'd of slowly died. Of course a few would get out but the majority probably wouldnt even notice the temperature increase till it was too hot for us to do anything. Maybe itd burn the skin off so the muscles would be too sore... Not sure. Of course i kinda mixed the two things - person in water.
thanks for explaining that phoenix_indigo. it's just one of those cliches that's always annoyed me - another one is "it's always darkest before the dawn", whereas anyone who's ever stayed up all night knows that it's always darkest in the middle of the night, and it starts getting lighter several hours before dawn.
never thought about that one before. but you are totally right, it most certainly isn't darkest before the dawn. wonder what other cliched phrases are totally wrong?
Sweating like a pig - Pigs cant sweat so they roll around in mud to cool down. Run like you've never run before - Runners have to build their stamina up and get loads of practise. If youve never run before you're gonna be pretty crap. And run like the wind. The wind cant run! it doesnt have legs - its cos of the hot and cold air etc.
eats like a bird ... that's another one that's wrong. as to eat like a bird would mean you eat like 3x your body weight in a day. and i dont' think any human could possibly do that.
darkest before dawn, simply means that a problem always seems worse, just before a solution is found, its an analogy, not ment to be taken as read S
that's the point though isn't it? if the phrases are taken as read they make no sense, so who the hell started using them to tell people the way to do things, and why? i think we all are fully aware that they are analogies; that aren't meant to be taken as read, but it still doesn't mean they make sense.
it doesn't make sense if one tries to be logical with them, however on a poetic level it makes perfect sense and by negating them don't we risk not exploring creative ways of useing our langauge? S
