OK, I’m going to expose my English-major roots here, not to mention my first career as an English teacher. I am tired of hearing and seeing “a perfect storm” used to describe a rare confluence of factors that produces a negative result. It was a pretty cool phrase when the usage began, inspired by the powerful book and movie, The Perfect Storm. It was a concise and visual way to make a point about, essentially, really bad luck causing a really bad result.
But is *everything* negative that results from multiple factors really worthy of the label, “a perfect storm”? I think not. Instead, it’s a lazy way to explain complicated causal relationships. We don’t have to actually provide any explanation of cause and effect, let alone Read the rest of this entry »
