Friday, 29 August 2014

Metaphors sans Frontières


The World Health Organization announces it has ‘launched a road map’ against Ebola. One must hope it is printed on waterproof paper. I suppose the idea is to contain the virus by so confusing it that it won’t know whether to travel by land or sea.

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ON THE 29TH OF AUGUST 1839 Michael Faraday discovered Electromagnetic Induction. (We can date it so precisely because his notebooks have been kept ever since in the very place where he wrote them.)

Hmm… Yes … I can almost hear nearly all of you putting on that special jokey voice, beloved of BBC presenters, that seems to suggest that ignorance is respectable and knowing these things is a bit weird: ‘Well… Ha-ha… Michael who? Electro-what?’

If you really want to know, which I doubt, you will have to read at least parts of my ‘Anatomy of Wireless’. Just ask and I’ll send it.

In the picture below Faraday is the didactic little chap on the right, explaining things to his large puzzled friend on the left.


 

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