Now I don’t mind PC terms at all. Why the hell not call people what they want to be called. But this. This is ridiculous. Brainstorm doesn’t have a history of being associated with epilepsy! Hey guys, let’s all get together and take a thought shower! As a dilletante meteorologist I find this term perjorative. I suggest Cerebral Sleeting.
Thought showers? How much longer must cultures who cannot bathe every day endure this harassment?
I think if I were to come to work and find that I must replace “brainstorm” with “thought shower,” I would have to question either my sanity, or everyone else’s.
My mother was almost killed in a sleet storm, you insensitive bastard!
We should have Synergy Blizzards. Just because it sounds like something you’d get at Dairy Queen.
Thought-showers? Sounds like a philosopher’s fetish
Actually, the term is most offensive to those that think, which explains why the people who use it find it unoffensive.
Brainstorm has been an informal term for seizures in the medical community since at least the 70’s. At least that’s when I first encountered it. I expect it pre-dates my era.
That’s not really possible, because Political Correctness IS the height of stupidity.
Or depth, depending on mood…
Thinking creatively is offensive to stupid people. They should drop this bigoted activity right away!
Could someone explain this?
Okay, speaking as someone who is actually brain damaged.[1] I find this whole “thought shower” thing to be a welcome relief to the oppression I have felt whenever I hear someone use the term “Brainstorming.”
I’m sorry, that was a typo. I meant stupid.
[1] Seriously. Apparently, my sister was the only one who was not surprised by the diagnosis.
That article quote sounds like a spoof to me. Are you sure the date wasn’t April First?
Could be. Let’s have a synaptical tsunami and figure it out.
Please don’t make light of tsunami victims.
That use of brainstorm is archaic now, but it was once used, commonly if not scientifically, to describe epilepsy and other disorders resulting in seizures. You can still find the terms associated, for example here: http://hum-molgen.org/NewsGen/07-2003/msg15.html and here: http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/98winter/brainstorm.html .
I think it surprising that anyone would find the term offensive when it is used in its more common current sense, but frankly “thought shower” is neither less nor more silly a phrase than “brainstorming” to describe what might be more plainly called “thinking.”
Only if they’re golden.
How about instead of brainstorming or any of the other offensive terms you people have come up with, we just call it DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB!
Someone need an inspirational poster in his/her office.
That would be insensitive to the unemployed.
Sort of. What you do is, you get a bunch of time-wasting morons with no real work to do to go through the whole dictionary looking for words for people to be virtuously offended by, devise suitably sanitised alternatives, wait for the alternatives to catch on and then rinse and repeat because by now the alternative is itself offensive.
I always thought “nit-picking” was a hangover from the days when just about everyone was permanently lousy, not just slaves; and I also had the weird impression that “manila” had something to do with a place in the Phillipines. But then, I also think “rule of thumb” related to any rough estimate involving the human anatomy as a measuring instrument, and is nothing to do with legalised wife-beating, so what do I know?