"congressional meat-puppet"..........!

[Dave Wilton]

And there is the 1994 SF short story, "They're Made of Meat," by Terry
Bisson. This was an much-copied story on the internet about ten years ago.
Very popular.

http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm

Made into a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Benjamin Zimmer
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 9:08 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "congressional meat-puppet"..........!

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> So where does the "meat" part come from?

It's a pejorative for a human who acts like a puppet. "Meat" = human (or
human-ish). Cf. "meatspace" vs. "cyberspace".

William Gibson used "meat puppet" to mean "a person with a neural cut out
chip;
the chip allows computer software to completely control their actions":

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1439


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org