Word: metaphor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...very commercial form of mental illness," says Farrelly. "He's a very sweet guy--he's got a big heart, a lot of soul--but he's a tortured animal. My metaphor for Jim is a dog who's constantly beaten up by his owner. The dog can't figure out why. He tries everything to please his owner. He walks on his hind legs; he juggles. Nothing works. Then one day the circus comes along and scoops him up, and he makes a career...
...alone.) Translation: Nemtsov may be hinting at a cosmic bailout. "They?ve been talking to European countries about short-term financing in order to get the thing into space," says TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier. "Somebody will probably step into the breach with a bailout -- it's an interesting metaphor for the country?s entire crisis...
...friend of mine told me his favorite metaphor for thinking about the University's administration. Here at Harvard, he said, the administration is like the ocean. Despite attempts to comb its depths, whole segments of it are hidden in the dark; despite the thousands of people who swim in its waters every day, it remains fundamentally unchanged. Sometimes it slaps you in the face with a wave, other times it carries you softly in its current, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict its particular behavior, certainly not for the novice explorer of less than four years...
...metaphor, a metaphor of resignation. And frighteningly astute. It often feels to an undergraduate on this campus that the administration is at best an ocean and at worst, something even less sentient. In the course of my time here, the University has made, with seeming consistency, decisions in blatant opposition to student opinion. Cases in point: randomization, where the majority of the student body spoke out against it; Phillips Brooks House Association, when hundreds of students rallied for greater student autonomy; the Core, which few professors and even fewer students believe is intellectually meaningful; even our anachronistic schedule, with finals...
Fortunately, though, the ocean metaphor is just a metaphor--and it is a fundamentally flawed one. The ocean has no will of its own and has no capacity to interact with those who live in its waters. The administrators of Harvard have independent wills and the human ability to listen, to reflect and to change...