John Green, 9.44 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW5FDhsHkUg Powerpoint Definition: an expression that means something other than the literal meaning of its individual words http://www.idiomsite.com/
turtles all the way down The phrase comes from an anecdote told in the opening to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!" The phrase is used to describe any system that appears to have dependencies that never end. For example, imagine accountability in a (hypothetical) police department. The citizens are policed by police, the police are policed by internal affairs, which might lead to the formation of an "internal internal affairs" to police internal affairs. Someone might describe this system of policing as "turtles all the way down", meaning that the system of policing never ends. Playing games" happens when someone's actions don't reflect their true intentions. Two examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA36i1jdg7A&list=PLEC3B012F433FD5C0 |