If you’re a regular reader, you know that my mind sometimes wanders into the Twilight Zone and quirky questions pop into my head. Today’s comes from the news that brilliant Steven Hawkings is part of a 10-year, $100 million effort to find intelligent life somewhere in the universe. Here’s my question:
If we find living beings on another planet, how will ICE handle immigration issues with them?
After two very serious days of blogs, I need to lighten up a bit. To do so, I offer another origin of an often-used phrase, “break the ice,” meaning, of course, to do something when meeting a person to help get over that first discomfort, shyness, or embarrassment, to break through a feeling of formality.
The phrase came from the 18th century, when ice-breaking ships were invented to clear a path through the ice in a river so that harsh weather didn’t prevent trade. Because of these ships, which broke through to the Polar regions, people were able to communicate with and get to know people the ice had prevented contact with previously.
[For you pedants, this is known as a “dead metaphor”–a comparison that has been used so often that nobody remembers the comparison, or metaphor.]