Earlier in this blog (Yesterday? Last year? It's so hard to tell...) I was discussing how brokenhearted I'd become finding out that the Boiling Frog Syndrome is a myth. How, then, was I to explain such phenomenon as becoming accustomed to eating handfuls of wasabi peanuts without blinking an eye?
Luckily, the Oceanographers have come to my rescue. Again.
Fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly coined the term "shifting baseline syndrome" in 1995. It's explained this way:
"Shifting baselines are the chronic, slow, hard-to-notice changes in things, from the disappearance of birds and frogs in the countryside to the increased drive time from L.A. to San Diego. If your ideal weight used to be 150 pounds and now it's 160, your baseline -- as well as your waistline -- has shifted."
It's the perfect way to explain going from, say, Mozart to Madonna in under 200 years.
Though, sadly, I'm sure Vienna had their own Madonna, she probably just wasn't so popular.
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