I had the privelege again of seeing The Doug, as I call him, in action yesterday. It was another chapter in what I've come to expect from him. Nothing that was astoundingly radical. Just small nudges at the edges of my knowledge and beliefs that continue to resonate and burrow into my consciousness and thoughts long after the exposure to his ideas. Imagine a tiny pinhole in a dam, that eventually causes complete failure of the dam. My interactions with him cause the pinholes in my mind to be revealed.

*boom* :-)

His talk yesterday was about analogy, and his notion was that analogy is what helps define what may be considered human thought (My words, not his. Any misrepresentation is my fault.) He also had a mix of transparencies he used, some in English, some in French , and some in Italian, since he's given this talk a few times in the past year or so to different audiences. It only added delicious spice to the talk.

He also happened to radically operationally redefine what most of us think of as analogy. Just a small 'by the way', there. Most of us think of analogies as being somewhat like the SAT and Miller Analogies standardized exam examples, like:

finger:hand :: toe:foot

The Doug suggested that idiomatic phrases were also analogies. So common phrases in US conversation, such as "it's in the ballpark" and "she doesn't give a flying fsck" should be considered analogies, as well as the more common form.

I've had the pleasure of seeing The Doug speak in a formal lecture a few times, and I also saw an exhibit that displayed a few decades of his artistic meanderings, involving fontography, sculpture, and ambigrams They are all pretty related, when you look at them just so, and particularly when they are juxtaposed against each other. He is truly an amazing individual with a great mind.

I suppose what I find most admirable is his ability to take fantastically complex, genuinely twisted ideas and connections and present them using very simple language. In a way that anyone in the room can readily grasp. Immediately.

Imagine listening to someone explaining the theory of relativity using words no greater than four letters long. Only better, and regardless of the topic. Extemporaneously. Consistently. To me that is The Doug.

10:52:25 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this