Ping.
Please tell me this is his obituary!
Darn. I thought this was an obit. Guess not.
Assuming the title should read “dead at 90” not that he turned 90. The first is encouraging, the second disappointing.
Good old chumpsky; first encountered him when he was a linguist at MIT and I was studying linguistics at Wheaton. He had a novel approach, I thought, in that it was loosey-goosey psychobabble linguistics which I had no use for.
Dang. I got excited for a moment thinking this might be an obituary for that old scumbag.
Not dead yet
Saw him twice in the late 80s. His talks were complicated hairballs of conspiracy with gaps that leftists would easily fill with evil intent and class warfare. At that time, Henry Kissinger was his bête noire
He’s a bit like Michael Moore (although less popular), in that he appeals to strident leftists who want to believe anything that supports their world-view.
“Man somehow kept going and going...”
And now he’s gone...to Hades, I trust.
Nim Chimpsky and Paul Erlich...two loons from the past, still chattering their nonsense 50 years after their sell by date.
Cannot last too much longer.....
Cannot last too much longer.....
For a man to write about propaganda speech and how to recognized it, he sure won’t call out the BS in todays media...
His birthday is Pearl Harbor Day.
Irony: The Mark of Quality Literature.
Orwell would punch you in the face if you called him a socialist.
In Tom Wolfe’s “The Kingdom of Speech”, he discusses Chomsky’s work in the field of linguistics. Chomsky is basically regarded as the Einstein of linguistics, and much of his work stands the test of time, sort of.
For example, his theory that all human language on earth has a common thread, in that it uses recursion (I’m not smart enough to fully explain what recursion means, but it’s basically parenthetical references built into the language). For years, this theory was proven correctly, from the most obscure language in remote New Guinea to the major familiar world languages.
Then one missionary found a very remote group of South American natives who spoke a language that absolutely did not include recursion. This guy was excoriated for daring to challenge Chomsky. He wasn’t being a gadfly, he was just reporting what he observed. So the elite linguists went down there to prove him wrong. Surely he must be mistaken. Well guess what, they found zero recursion in this unique language. Chomsky was fit to be tied, and smeared this guy in academic circles.
I don’t think too highly of old Noam after reading this. Wolfe is a pretty fair author who researches everything to the hilt. Interesting deconstruction of a linguist’s theory, and the scientific method biting the dust in the service of Chomsky’s massive ego.
Only the good die young...
Sure, because nothing illustrates one's firm commitment to peace and human rights like supporting and helping to whitewash the bloody history of regimes like the Khmer Rouge.
Though the dissident intellectual has been a fierce opponent of US imperialism under both major political parties in America, in 2017 he called the Republican Party "the most dangerous organization in human history" for its consistent rejection of the science of climate change.
"Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth?”
How ironic, coming from a rabid leftist whose entire philosophy is based on rejection of science, reason and logic, who no doubt would be thrilled at some catastrophic event that causes millions of deaths.
I've heard Noam Chomsky speak; he says many words but does not convey any ideas. I think he chooses words that people interpret emotionally, even as his sentences are devoid of meaning. Not long ago, I read about a study that examined how people respond to a non-sensical sentence. The truly intelligent people immediately recognized the test sentence as nonsense. The not-so-intelligent people thought the test sentence was profound and meaningful. Based on this study and given that Chomsky typically utters meaningless strings of words, I think we can make some assumptions about the intellect of those who admire Chomsky.
Anyways, I must agree with the people who posted above who expressed disappointment that this article is not an obit. I know it is wrong to hope for someone to pass, but...
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
L
The treacle oozes from this paean.