Month: September 2006
Something You Probably Shouldn’t Read Immediately Before Going to Bed
Here’s a report (pdf) on the results of some simulations run by the RAND Corp. on the effects of a nuclear bomb that arrives in southern California in a shipping container. The short summary of the probable near- and long-term consequences: very bad.
Of course this is a simulation and it’s impossible to know how accurate it is. The attack it describes may never happen, and if it does happen the effects might not be as bad as predicted. Or we might be attacked in other ways. The more important questions, which the RAND simulation can’t address and which may not be accessible via simulations, are, what are the odds of a WMD attack in the first place? and if the odds are much greater than nil, how can we minimize them?
Sad Anniversary
Norman Geras notes that today is the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre in which Nazi troops murdered 34,000 Jews near Kiev on Yom Kippur 1941.
Roger Scruton Knows What to Appreciate – And What Not To
Noam Chomsky is rather despicable. But I’ve always had mixed feelings when his name came up: one of my first classes at U.T. was in transformational grammar, taught by one of hisi students, fresh out of grad school himself. I remember it with great pleasure for a personal and trivial reason (I met my husband) but also as just a great class. Our teacher, young & fresh faced, would become visibly excited, walk back and forth in front of the room, motioning to the chalkboard and its diagrams of syntax & sense. I can still see him, leaning against the wall and intently looking at the board. He’d hold the chalk against his lips, then suddenly move across and move an element, point to a connection. We were there, we were being taught, but for a moment, he’d forgotten us, absorbed in the idea in front of him. We were watching thought – engaged, cheerful thought – in motion. It was electric – that was man thinking, drawing us into his world, Chomsky’s world. We loved Chomsky’s famous debate with Skinner. We were, of course, on Chomsky’s side.
And in that way, we still are. His analysis that blends nurture and nature leads us to understand language & human nature. The sense of universality that lies beneath these sentences informs my thinking to this day. I never studied trans gram again; that teacher, energizing as he was, didn’t get tenure. Yes, much has fallen by the way. But today, Roger Scruton discusses Chomsky by noting that electricity as well as how far Chomsky has fallen in his ability to connect ideas, to selflessly lose himself in thought. Scruton’s first paragraph is clear: “Noam Chomsky’s popularity owes little or nothing to the eminent place that he occupies in the world of ideas. That place was won many years ago in the science of linguistics, and no expert in the subject would, I think, dispute Prof. Chomsky’s title to it.” But if Chomsky thinking – like my old teacher – could be a beautiful sight, Chomsky feeling is less attractive. At one time, he lost himself in ideas; now, as Scruton concludes: “he is not valued for his truths but for his rage, which stokes the rage of his admirers. He feeds the self-righteousness of America’s enemies, who feed the self-righteousness of Prof. Chomsky. And in the ensuing blaze everything is sacrificed, including the constructive criticism that America so much needs, and that America–unlike its enemies, Prof. Chomsky included–is prepared to listen to. “