Saturday 26 October 2013

Someone Hates TBF


Rummaging around the internet (occasionally) I searched for the term Boiling Frog - as you do - this meant I stumbled upon this site.

The author, Tod Kelly, is really really angry about the Boiling Frog metaphor. No really he is...
I really, really hate this metaphor
He continues...
Can we collectively, as a society, take its amphibious body, throw it in a pot, and crank up the fire until it explodes?
Charming, I'm sure...
It’s constantly thrown into political discussions and presented as either a reasoned argument for action or evidence that proves a supposition, despite the fact that it is clearly neither.  Rather, the boiling frog is just a lazy excuse not to have to bother thinking critically about whatever ludicrously hyperbolic comment one can dream up.
But...but even worse he asserts the analogy is not even true...
And if that’s not enough reason to retire the metaphor, there’s also this: it isn’t actually true.  In fact, it’s literally the opposite of true.  As Professor Douglas Melton of Harvard Biology points out, “If you put a frog in boiling water, it won’t jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot—they don’t sit still for you.”
As a rather warm frog myself it’s tempting to get angry at his lack of understanding and compassion for my current predicament, but one must consider that he doesn't live in the European Union so his experience is somewhat lacking. One must never get angry at a chap's lack of awareness, even if one is sitting in a saucepan of water being gently warmed up.

Instead I merely chuckled at his article, like EU Commissioner Barroso did when asked if Cameron could repatriate powers back for the UK.

Not that any of this bothers me of course; my blog title is not a reference to the metaphor it merely reflects the fact I'm an angry Frenchman who lives in the Sahara Desert.

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