The new metaphor: The haystack and the 777

[Dan Goncharoff]

How long before the 777 has to go through the eye of the needle?...

DanG


On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Re: The new metaphor: The haystack and the 777
>
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> 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:
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> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: The new metaphor: The haystack and the 777
> >
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> >
> > 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
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