Comments on: LOL linguist

By: j9c

j9c — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 05:16:00 +0000

I can’t believe no one’s mentioned this yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gktRTuhehOA

The Horsies (of Austin, Texas) doing their song, “Noam Chompsky” in a very danceable little 1993 live gig; I admit the sound on this live version’s a bit subpar.

The better audio with intelligible audio clips from Chompsky himself, from their album “Trouble Down South”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbV_2AfYLHk&feature=endscreen&NR=1

God I miss The Horsies…

By: David Howe

David Howe — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:23:00 +0000

The US media excludes the Left systematically. The “left” as far as corporate media is concerned are moderates like Clinton and Obama. The best way to crush dissent is to control whether or not anyone even knows that dissent exists.

By: noah django

noah django — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:45:00 +0000

which brings me to my second one…

By: Stephan

Stephan — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:04:00 +0000

Chomsky is a cunning linguist.
There I said it.

By: Andrew Glines

Andrew Glines — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:20:00 +0000

I met Ferdinand de Saussure / on a [site] like this
On [linguistics] he said I’m not so sure / I even know what it is

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:17:00 +0000

You can ask them when they greet you at Walmart.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Whorf was the first to pop into my mind.

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:58:00 +0000

I literally just snorted.

By: noah django

noah django — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 07:34:00 +0000

sure, I’ve got one

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:41:00 +0000

I’m not sure if the definition of capitalism has been Newspeaked or has always been vague, but I see it used to mean two completely different things: One is the free market, which no one has a problem with, and the other is the practice of making money merely by owning stuff (that is, capital) which is a failure state of the free market that leads to a defacto hereditary aristocracy.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:24:00 +0000

$100,000 is six digits. If he meant $999,999, he’d probably have added a dollar and called it seven digits. So everything you just said, times ten. I’ve run the numbers many times. I’m not quite sure how the current retired generation managed to retire.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:00:00 +0000

A “six-digit retirement portfolio”? Woo Hoo!!!!

So, if my retirement portfolio (which is a joke term given that interest rates are about a tenth of a percent) is $999,999, and I have to make it last for 20 years, that’s $50,000 before taxes. I’m only 55, and my health care costs are $8,000 per year. They’ll only get higher. Those six digits are going to leave me eating a lot of ramen.

By: Dr P Fenderson

Dr P Fenderson — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:10:00 +0000

In the Tree, part of the Tree.

By: Yellow Hornet

Yellow Hornet — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:06:00 +0000

Yes, and even in linguistics, it also really depends on what subfield of linguistics you’re in. For me, I’m not into syntax, so Chomsky-as-linguist doesn’t come up too often when I’m doing sociolinguistics research.

By: DevinC

DevinC — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:55:00 +0000

My experience is the opposite. If you’re at all involved in the field of linguistics, of course his name is going to come readily to mind. But the number of people who are concerned about linguistics is teeny tiny (ask the person next to you to name a linguist other than Chomsky!)[1] compared to those interested in the many social issues Chomsky’s known for.

[1] My answer was George Lakoff. Though it really should have been Ferdinand de Saussure.

By: millie fink

millie fink — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Awesome!

By: millie fink

millie fink — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:19:00 +0000

I’m with wysinwyg, and I’m sorry for any confusion, Maggie. I wasn’t criticizing your title, only commenting that he’s just as noteworthy for his political writings and activism, and I wish he’d get more (hell, any) mainstream U.S. recognition for that.

By: mindysan33

mindysan33 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Reply to Sgt. Doom: I don’t know if I’d call him a fraud (also citation for his supposed lying thing), but I have deep reservation on his views of the Balkan Wars, to be perfectly frank. I just find him to be on the wrong side of history there. He tends to ignore what happened to the Albanian population in his rush to condemn the UN/NATO/US bombings of Serbia proper… This doesn’t mean the Milosevic regime was innocent, as he kind of indicates.

By: mindysan33

mindysan33 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:48:00 +0000

reply to petertrepan: SATANIC PANIC!!!!

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:31:00 +0000

@sgtdoom:disqus Forgive me if I require more than your saying so to believe it.

By: sgtdoom

sgtdoom — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:28:00 +0000

When I used to regularly read the leading US newspapers (something I gave up after 2003, just too many planted, phony stories) I routinely read articles on anything and everything uttered by Chomsky in the NY Times, WaPo, and outlying papers.

But he’s a fraud…..

His papers on the Kennedy administration were lies; his book “Camelot Revisited” contained lies without any supporting data, and his recent talks have strongly supported Wall Street as an apologist.

He’s a fraud…..

By: welcomeabored

welcomeabored — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:24:00 +0000

One might suspect the piles for being so much set dressing, but I have yet to walk into a professor’s office and not find the office looking just like that. I would be mildly alarmed if I found them tidy and organized. Each prof will swear there is an organizational principle at work in the chaos. They can usually lay their hands on exactly what they are looking for, however deeply buried. Awesome.

By: JPhilipp

JPhilipp — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:21:00 +0000

Maybe this is an issue with propaganda-style TV channels. But perhaps Boing Boing and Maggie Koerth-Baker can try it. He has a lot to say, and it’s even more interesting than the Lolcat format presented above.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:11:00 +0000

“I borrowed an album from a friend in order to listen to the lyrics and realized they were actually Humanist.” Uh, they’re mostly based on Ayn Rand’s anti-humanist philosophy. (“You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill.”) That and the inconsistent quality of their music are the only things about Rush I don’t love.

But I agree with you and mindysan otherwise.

By: petertrepan

petertrepan — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:01:00 +0000

When I was growing up, there were frequent panics in our local churches about Satanic music. I noticed that they never singled out bands that were explicitly Satanic, focusing instead on the progressive rock band Rush. I borrowed an album from a friend in order to listen to the lyrics and realized they were actually Humanist. The preachers recognized that devil worship is not a serious alternative for a believer, but Humanism is a sound and sensible alternative to religious belief, and therefore more threatening than devil worship.

Point is, talking heads single out Noam Chomsky as a crazy moonbat liberal because they recognize him as a serious threat.

By: mindysan33

mindysan33 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:59:00 +0000

The smartest people I know and the most committed activists I know generally have desks that look something like that… I can’t tell you the insane office of my MA thesis adviser! His office is impossible…

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:59:00 +0000

Right, but modern discourse doesn’t allow for such subtleties. You’re either a CAPITALIST or a SOCIALIST! A CONSERVATIVE or a LIBERAL! WITH US or AGAIST US!

By: mindysan33

mindysan33 — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:57:00 +0000

Well, fair enough maybe. But he’s been on Maher’s show for example, as well as shows like Charlie Rose. I think him being dismissed probably has to do with the general right-ward shift of the culture in general and then the fragmentation of the media into more specific “interests groups”. Back in the 60s he was on TV far more, I’d suspect. I know he was on Buckley’s show back in the day. I think maybe the problem is not the media being loath to give voice to leftists, but the more general anti-intellectual orientation of the media as of late.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:56:00 +0000

I’ve heard Chomsky say many times that capitalism as conceived by Adam Smith is a sensible system and it’s only the 20th century perversions of capitalism that he argues against. I’m still trying to figure out where Chomsky said or implied that talented and hard-working people shouldn’t be successful.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:55:00 +0000

I guess that statement may have been a bit over-broad, but I was thinking of his thoughts on "concision" in the mainstream media.