The new metaphor: The haystack and the 777

[Neal Whitman]

I was interested in the elaborated "haystack" metaphor used by Sir Iain
Lobban, Director of GCHQ, last November:


    Sir Iain attempted a metaphor. The internet, he said, was "an
    enormous hay field", and his job was to "collect hay from those
    parts of the field which might be lucrative in terms of containing
    needles or fragments of needles". The hay came from "only a tiny
    proportion of that field", and he was "very, very well aware that
    within that haystack there's going to be plenty of hay which is
    innocent". He did not, he insisted, "intrude upon the surrounding
    hay". He elaborated on this theme for quite some time. "I'm looking
    for needles, I'm looking for fragments of needles. I do not look at
    the hay."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10434183/Sketch-Tinker-Tailor-Needle-Haystack.html

On 3/25/2014 9:19 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: The new metaphor: The haystack and the 777
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> What I thought notable was the very concrete image of a 777 in a
> haystack.  Must have been large enough to feed Babe.  Perhaps
> confusingly, I wrote "the new metaphor".  I didn't really mean to
> suggest non-needles in haystacks were new, just that this one was
> exceptionally large.
>
> Joel
>
> At 3/25/2014 03:56 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>> This is also a common academic law and scientific metaphor. Certainly,
>> not new. In the early days of the Higgs Boson search, you could
>> frequently hear the reference for having to "look in the right
>> haystack". You also hear the same expression frequently in reference to
>> counter-terrorism intelligence.
>>
>> http://goo.gl/wiz76L
>> The Emergence of High Technology Litigation
>>> The right technology can allow counsel to identify hot documents,
>>> wherever maintained; preserve privilege claims and/or pierce the
>>> privilege log; apply the federal and state rules to maximum advantage
>>> -- in short, bring light into dark places, look in the right haystack
>>> and find the needle.
>> http://goo.gl/xdjgrg
>>> "We may know that high value individuals are in a general area. We
>>> need to be able to look in the right haystack. We could use ways to
>>> bring infrared imagery and hyperspectral data into the video."
>>
>>      VS-)
>>
>> On 3/25/2014 12:57 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
>>> Joel S. Berson wrote
>>>> "Australian military official", quoted (in TV text display) by CNN
>>>> tonight (that is, early Tuesday morning EDT):
>>>>
>>>> "We're still trying to find where the haystack is."
>>>>
>>>> Longer quote at http://http://uk.inagist.com/ --
>>>>
>>>> "We're not searching for a needle in a haystack, we're still trying
>>>> to find where the haystack is."
>>>> Aussie vice chief of def staff
>>> Thanks, Joel. I've heard that extended metaphor in the past. Here is
>>> an instance with a GB date of 1956. I suspect it is considerably
>>> older:
>>>
>>> Journal Title: The Florida Bar Journal
>>> Volume 30
>>> Page 433
>>> Year 1956
>>> (Google Books snippet data may be inaccurate)
>>>
>>> {Begin extracted text]
>>> IF YOU ARE going to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack,
>>> you must first find the haystack. Probably a great many lawyers shun
>>> tax research because they are uncertain where the haystack is.
>>> [End extracted text]
>>>
>>> Garson
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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