I'm so proud.

Thats great. He is such a cunning linguist..

Anakin Skywalker (as Vader): NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Is that PBS ad----} what is setting tax free killer off today about PBS?

BTW, who were the polled?

Your neo-textualism and proto-generative crypto-fascism make you and other dominant corporatists unable to see the sub-textualist genius of Chomsky in both pre- and non-formationalism paradigms.

as all the erudite say:

BLECCCCCCH.

no way he's smarter than dawkins.

Chomsky's Law - the intelligence of a population varies inversely with the number of times they use the words "Chomsky" and "intellectual" in a single sentence without also including the word "not".

#4 Ed

i don't know, but i wish he'd stop.

(people, take your meds before posting)

He's a fart smella.

Umberto Eco and Richard Dawkins were the other top contenders ? Boy, intellectualism ain't what it used to be !

Where does Rove stack up against this twerp?

emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Which explains his background pertaining to international political theory.

/moonbat logic

#9 Jammie

That wasn't very intellectual! (Or maybe it was, since apparently intellectual doesn't mean what I thought it meant.)

where are the einsteins of our time? seriously.

#10 Mike C.

Richard Dawson IS smarter than all of those... oh... Dawkins...

sorry.

Carry on :)

If he's so friggin' brilliant, why doesn't he realize his ideology is a miserably failed experiment?

You ask me, he's a dumbass.

I know alot of people from MIT way smarter than this schmuck.

Who came in fourth, Whiffy the Wonder Gerbil ?

Chomsky first became known for his theory of grammar developed at MIT in the 1950s, which held that the ability to form structured language is innate in the human mind.

Tell that to a feral child.

Dumbass.

As a political scientist by training, I'm offended that Noam Chomsky is allowed to spout off ANYTHING related to Politics, political theory, political structure, geopolitics, or the politics of Barney the purple dinosaur. Having been forced in college to read his claptrap in my military history and international relations courses, I resent having to choke back my bile toward his, (and to a lesser extent, feminist international relations)theories. I'd sooner punch him in the face. How's that for realist international relation theory, Noam?

I think they just picked them alphabetically. Chompsky, Dawkins, Eco...

#11 Jammie

Where does Rove stack up against this twerp?

Exactly. This proves that Numb Chimpsky is just a tool of GrandMaster KKKarl Rove's Master Plan.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Hypocrisy of Chomsky
[Link: www.newcriterion.com...]

he's just your normal everyday communist apologist, with two standards of morality. America is evil no matter what, while China, Stalin, and Vietnam were just killing people for their own good.

Swampwoman,

That my brother-in-law's oldest line.

"You're a really smart fella, I mean, a fart smella"

I knew I'd get to use it eventually.

#16 JammieWearingFool

You ask me, he's a dumbass.

LOL. Well, that's two for "dumbass" ...

Here's the complete list and # of votes.

The most revealing comment I've ever heard about Chomsky came from the man himself: he once admitted to an interviewer that he had finished formulating his political outlook by the time he was 14 years old.

It's a telling measure of Chomsky's ignorance both of self and of the wider world that he seems to think of this as a good thing.

No rational adult would entrust a 14-year-old with the responsibility for deciding how a household should be run, let alone a country or the world.

Somebody should send Noam a copy of "Lord of the Flies", post haste.

Did the people of Cambodia get to vote?

Did Michale Moore come in second?
Michael Moore is Chomsky for Children.

America hatred is all the rage with the kidz.

Whatever happend to Noam Chomsky's blog?

It was fun watching LGF's A-Team demolish his lies in full view of his acolytes.

Too bad some dumbass had to spam it with porn and an unabridged version of "War and Peace".

"MIT was after me, you know. Wanted me to rule the world for them."

-obscure Beatles movie quote

Michael - PIMF.

#4 Ed mahmoud

Good catch on what may be rubbing Taxfree today--that ad for Disease Carrier on PBS--though Charles getting paid our tax dollars by PBS seems a good public use of funds, IMHO.

Which liberal arts college womyns studies department did they conduct this poll at?

Chomsky's got the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize in the bag!

Well, at least he admitted that his friends padded the poll.

"MIT was after me, you know. Wanted me to rule the world for them."

somewhat priggy scientist in "Help"
"it's the braindrain, his brain is draining"

Another vote here for "dumbass".

Silver lining: VDH polled ahead of Bono in the bonus round...

I think bugs bunny was voted fourth

Like virtually any poll, this is meaningless. It's obvious the respondents had a limited number of choices.

Dismissed.

"Why am I surounded by frickin idiots?"

Dr. Evil

# 25 redstateredneck

Not exactly populated with familiar names.

BTW, I got nothing against Richard Dawkins, but intellectual ? And Salman Rushdie is on the list ? Did any of you ever plough through that book ?

We're doomed.

I mean, we would be if we paid attention to these people.(I pay attention to Benedict XVI -how did he get on that list?)

And where's Orianna, I'd like to know?

#10 Mike C.

Hey, I always thought Richard Dawson was pretty smart, myself.

Best known for his loud and consistent criticism of the Vietnam War and US foreign policy proselytizing for vile murderous Marxist regimes over the last 40 years, Chomsky, 76, decisively beat...

Again, I have to fix these things. Who the hell edits this crap?

#16 jamie wearing...

"I know alot of people from MIT way smarter than this schmuck."

I know alot of people from "Bobs Bar and Grill" that are way smarter than this schmick.

PIMF

schmuck

(unless a schmick is an Irish schmuck)

Hey, I always thought Richard Dawson was pretty smart, myself.

"Survey says..."

Chomsky believes that professional sports are a conspiracy of the "elites" to distract the "masses" from "economic justice".

Let's all say it together. One, two, three:

Self-hating Jew!

He "earned" much of his fame by dissing Israel, this pig. It's coz of that, not coz anyone can understand a single effing sentence in his incomprehensible effing traitorous books.

His father was a rabbi or Hebrew scholar or some such (I forget) and the surname was originally, in Noamster's childhood, pronounced not with the hard English CH as in "chair" but with the Hebrew CH, sort of like a wet throaty H, as in "l'chaim."

Self-hating Jew self-hating Jew self-hating Jew.

#44 Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

Good to see, I'm not the only one.

I like number 46 on the list, at least.

Thomas Sowell not even top 100?

I guess that's his punishment for renouncing communism in the 1940s.

How did that elite list overlook The Arianna?

Thank you#18
I have so much trouble with Chomsky on so many accounts, but primarily, before I even became a focused conservative, I was made aware of his arrogance from a New Yorker piece about the girl he "studied"named Genie. Anyone else know her story? Very, very tragic - horribly abused by psychotic parents and essentially without language.
He got wind of her existence and saw her primarily as a SUBJECT for research over and above her needs as a damaged human being. Somehow he interfered with her remaining in foster care with a loving nurse who was helping to socialize her, and as a result, she went into
"the system " and group homes and reverted to an incommunicative state.
The impression I remember from the article was that he was interested in her until he wasn't any more.

#11 jammie wearing

Karl Rove attended my alma mater George Mason University for a time in his youth. Some of us suburban hicks cared about such things as remembering "Oppressed Baltic Nations Day" or whatever we called them in 1977. No Chomsky double speak even during the Carter years of US Depression.

#46 hous bin pharteen

I know alot of people from "Bobs Bar and Grill" that are way smarter than this schmick.

Ha! The guys and gals up at the feedstore could demolish ALL his arguments but they'd probably just spit baccy juice on him.

#50 Chicken Kiev

but with the Hebrew CH, sort of like a wet throaty H, as in "l'chaim."

The Cheth?

Hey!

I thought Charles and his alter ego Carl Rove ruled the world?

What have I been paying dues for then?

Its even on the mast head of the super secret LGF newsletter.

_LGF NEWS/WHERE CHARLES IS SUPREME OVERLORD

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.

Perfect poster boy for the radical left, ie Marxist/Lenninst. They do not have a clue about the real world as they live their lifes in ivory towers and gated communities. What do they care of the millions of cracked eggs in their universally failed social experiments! The left no more cares about the people than they do of the eggs that are cracked to make an omulet. They are the usefull idiots which are successfully destroying Western Civilisation as we type! What's so funny is that they will be the first to be cleansed when their idea of a socialist paradise is created. A ruthless strong man such as Stalin will always end up with the power and the pointy headed intellectual elitists will be dispatched!

Further proof this poll is complete political bullshit, even Chumpsky's vaunted Linguistic Theory has been thoroughly debunked:

Forty-Four Reasons Why the Chomskians Are Mistaken.

Richard Dawson?!? LOL!

Definitely the most smarmy (and uber snarky), while holding that cigarette.

Umberto Eco's Italian?

I thought he was Mexican.

54.

GMU, the home of the great Dr. Walter E. Williams, another intellect far superior to Chumpsky.

I've worked with several professors there, as well as the Dean of one of their more reknowned departments, now retired. He laughs at the Chumpsky's of the world.

Actually, after reconsidering my earlier post, I think calling him a "dumbass" was incorrect and I apologize. He is also an America hating Communist who is caught in a 1960's tiome warp and thinks the world hit a high-water mark with Woodstock. I would hope that someday Chomsky would see fit to live in Cuba or China and enjoy first hand the allure of the economic philosophy he embraces. Interesting that he stays here, isn't it?

# 62 brainsimple

I thought he was overhyped. The novels weren't all that.

Chomsky's "Standard Theory" of generative grammar was the rage of the linguistics-trendy world in the 1960s and 1970s. After it was demonstrated that his "universal grammar" did not work for Mandarin, it was re-named the "Revised Standard Theory". These days, it is pretty much rejected by linguistic theorists. His essays on language are classic, 1960s leftist boilerplate. He obsessed on East Timor for 40 years, although no one could figure out why. He hates everything about America; its culture, history, politics. As said above, he is one of the worst self-loathing Jews. But he can pack 'em in at the lecture halls at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Cambridge...you know, the HOT spots.

In the Reality Based community, the Noamster's gotta be the most overated intellectual in history. Are we gonna have to break out the Noam Chomsky scorecard? The one that says Pol Pot really didn't kill all those people in Cambodia, that millions didn't starve in Afganistan. This a**&^% clown is like the Kos of predictions.

You gotta love these friggin anarchists talkin' about greed while hawkin' their books and bobble head dolls.

How's about we play the "Is that a Fart or Noam Chomsky game?"

Soooo, Charles, I think you need to come up with a list of actual intellectuals and let us vote on it.

In fairness, I'll exclude myself from the list :D

Noam Chomsky, the American linguistics expert

Feh.

Not according to this article on Front Page Mag.

...I think it says a lot when someone of Chomsky’s stature is so clearly ignorant of the workings of his own language that he allows not just one but several elementary mistakes to go uncorrected for years and years...

BTW, how can someone be considered a genuine intellectual if he can be mocked and parodied by a simple script?

The Chomskybot

"5 Christopher Hitchens 1844
6 Paul Krugman 1746"

OK, the world is not **completely** screwed up -- yet ...

#69 Crimsonfisted

Thanks for the link. See my #60.

;^)

Chomsky is the uber-pseudo-intellectual.

Chomsky is good for rebellious minded college students with a shallow understanding of both history and human nature.

Reading Chomsky makes you think you are "in the know" about the evil corporate imperialist conspiracy, while the sheep who dont read Chomsky's insane ramblings are in deep ignorance of the "facts"

Gives one a completely false, empty sense of superiority, which is perfect for the college level mind set.

As one grows intellectually and emotionally, one sees the Chumpster for what he is- an overgrown, pretentious, angry, gray haired infant.

#64 3 wood

No-- dumbass works too!

Die.Already.Chomsky

I remember studying Chomskey back when I was an undergraduate. He made no sense. Then he began to apologize for Pol Pot, and I have despised him ever since.

If I apologized for Pinochet, I would be shunned forever. But Noam gets a free pass. Incredible.

He obsessed on East Timor for 40 years, although no one could figure out why.

And who could forget the "Silent Genocide" that Chomsky claimed would engulf Afghanistan in the wake of America's efforts to remove the Taliban.

A few months ago BBC4 conducted a poll on who is a leading philosofer, and Marx won, so Chomsky being a marxist and following Marx steps into the British intelligentsia's esteem is not that surprising.

At the time of Marx's victory Britisg MP Michael Gove also offered insightful, and quite amusing, explanation for the intelllectuals' love affair with Marxism in his article for the Times:
"Karl Marx has the answer to the central question that most troubles contemporary intellectuals. Not, "what is the meaning of life?" but "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?". For all those who form our intellectual classes, the readers of the New Statesman and the London Review of Books, the lecturers in sociology and cultural studies, the Arts Council England administrators and LEA curriculum advisers, life is plagued with a nagging injustice. They possess what they believe to be superior insights to the majority, a more cultivated mind, a more refined sensibility, a broader intellectual range. And yet they don't enjoy the worldly success, or esteem, of those coarser souls who devote themselves to the grubby business of commerce and exchange. How can this injustice be explained? There must be something deeply, systemically, wrong with the way society is organised.

And Uncle Karl provides just such an over-arching, deeply satisfying, all-encompassing explanation. The system is wrong. Capitalism is not just unjust, but inherently illogical and destructive of the true, transcendant value of things. In Marx's own words, it "has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers." And a pretty poor wage at that.

Marxism offers much more, however, than just an explanation of the injustice that leads money to become the principal scale of value, and the intellectual to be valued at a level well below his true worth. It also privileges the intellectual with a leading role in the organisation and leadership of society. Marxism presents a world which can only really be made intelligible by theory, and thus only properly understood, and shaped, by the theoretically literate. The workers, poor dears, are in a state of "false consciousness", unware of the reality of their exploitation. History proceeds through a dialectic between forces which only intellectuals can effectively discern. And progress is brought about by a vanguard enlightened enough to have freed themselves from illusions and skilled enough to see the hidden meanings behind events.

Marxism can have a myriad applications. There are Marxist literary critics, such as Terry Eagleton, who can see the hidden truths in texts which eluded not just previous readers but the author himself. There are contemporary Marxist polemicists, such as Noam Chomsky or John Pilger, who can work out the real, and diabolical, motivation behind the actions of George W. Bush even though the President himself is too stupid to realise what he's up to. But what unites the Marxist approach to every issue is the privileging of the intellectual's elite status as society's natural guide."

"8= Thomas Sowell 45
10= Cornell West 39
10= Nelson Mandela 39"

Mandela has to be doubly pissed -- not included in the original ballot **and** losing out to T. Sowell!
:-)

# 70 Spiney Norman

At present rates, the Chomskybot will continue to provide new wisdoms for about 4.416989583892 X 1022 years, which is about ten percent of the time left until the heat death of the universe.

Now THAT calls for a double 'heh.'

The bottom 5 of the poll:
"95 Pramoedya Ananta Toer 84
96 Zheng Bijian 76
97 Kenichi Ohmae 68
98= Wang Jisi 59
98= Kishore Mahbubani 59
100 Shintaro Ishihara 57"

Hm, for al the multi-culti Kool-Aid the British swallow, when push comes to shove the folks with the funny names just don't make the cut, hm?
:-0

Final results have yet to be certified by the accountants from Deloitte and Touche, but so far we have a runaway leader for dumbest person on the planet.

#72 Spiny
Thanks for that link. Duly bookmarked. I remember in college studying transformational syntaz, the universal grammar and thinking, what a load THIS is. Now I know why.

So the Brits like Chompers....big wup!

NEXT TOPIC....

PPPPPPPPUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHLLLLLEEEEEEAAAAASSSEEEEE!

To quote Gloria Steinem:

The world needs Chomsky like a fish needs a bicycle

This assh*le needs to get the f*ck off of my planet.

He is No. 1 on my list for a giant economy size paddling though......

I am impress.

Where did Bono place?

# 86 E

Behind VDH -- in the consolation group ...
:-)

#27 BIG 10/18/2005 09:57AM PDT

Did the people of Cambodia get to vote?

Yes, the Democratic party made sure all the deceased from the Killing Fields were enrolled and registered.

#83
syntaz = syntax
PIMF!

Although "syntaz" does sound like a cool punk band, or a cwwwazy looney tunes character!

Personally, since my college days, when I had to take transformational grammar (which was a load of crap, IMHO), I have loathed Dr. Chomsky.

I got an A by writing a load of crap similar to Dr. Chomsky's crap.

Now, I know he is a moonbat, but I hate him for his grammar theories resulting in that class.

Chomsky is a crappy linguist and a communist.

Here's a good link to some of his ideas.

Search for "Chomsky" at the website.

[Link: www.mattwelch.com...]

"I don't mean to equate a Vietnamese villager to Vaclav Havel. For one thing, I doubt that the former would have had the supreme hypocrisy and audacity to clothe his praise for the defenders of freedom with gushing about responsibility for the human race. It's also unnecessary to point out to the half a dozen or so sane people who remain that in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.

Yeah. That's why he lives in the U.S.

Lefties have no problems with jews as long as you are the self hating anti israel, anti american pro terrorist variety.

So as long as you are merely another socialist swine its ok.

#83 Crimsonfisted

Lol. So I wasn't the only one. Good.

Just be grateful he is stuck in academia where he can do (comparatively) little harm. Imagine if he was the ruler of the world (the horror, the horror).

John Backus .GT. Noam Chomsky

I am far smarter than any one on the list top to bottom , just ask me.

#66 scott in east bay

He obsessed on East Timor for 40 years, although no one could figure out why.

Because East Timor was where bloodthirsty, neo-colonialist Christians were slaughtering poor defenseless Muslims by the thousands, of course!

/bad guess, I suppose

#56 titus quinctius cincinnatus

but with the Hebrew CH, sort of like a wet throaty H, as in "l'chaim."

The Cheth?

I guess so ... unfortunately I never learned to read or speak Hebrew.

Being the world's top intellectual is like having the world's largest case of crotch lice.

Chomsky is practically unreadable. He writes in circles using words that mean nothing in context of what he is trying to relate. This makes him what we unrefined people call a dumb-fuck. This for thinking that using $.50 words makes you smarter than everyone else. What a self important pendantic asshole.

I would't take basket weaving from him at a grade school.

Clearly, the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial is not to be considered in determining the system of base rules exclusive of the lexicon. A consequence of the approach just outlined is that the systematic use of complex symbols is necessary to impose an interpretation on a corpus of utterance tokens upon which conformity has been defined by the paired utterance test. It appears that relational information suffices to account for irrelevant intervening contexts in selectional rules. To characterize a linguistic level L, an important property of these three types of EC cannot be arbitrary in the extended c-command discussed in connection with (34). To provide a constituent structure for T(Z,K), this selectionally introduced contextual feature may remedy and, at the same time, eliminate the requirement that branching is not tolerated within the dominance scope of a complex symbol.

Wouldn't you agree?

Chomsky, I am told, is long since (decades) past it in his chosen field.

How he came to be chosen as the moonbat spokeswimp of the world is obvious: his rants are so impenetrable even he can't understand them.

What seemeth like wisdom is merely the rush of many long words in the wind...

#14 blue_like_jazz

where are the einsteins of our time? seriously.

He wrote Mathematica.

Also A New Kind of Science which I haven't yet read.

Anyone notice that Noam Chomsky and George Soros look alike?

#58 piglet
Quote is from 1984 by George Orwell, I believe.

I think that all the characters on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' - Jed, Jethro, Elly Mae and Granny - are smarter then Chumpsky the Kapo.

#36 bill headrick-

I'm so impressed you knew that!

"It's what comes from teaching science through television".

This book is a must read for anyone who doesn't know whom Chomsky really is.

Another brilliant "intellectual" who thought so much he went (thought) around in a circle and kicked himself in the ass.

I've long believed a person can think so much that they go right past the logical conclusion and end up in nutcase territory.

Christ, even I could win the world's top intellectual award!

All I'd have to do is go to London, Germany, Berkeley or some other hotbed of America-hatred and say stuff like "America sucks! I hate America! America must be destroyed! All Americans must die!"

Bring on those top intellectual trophies! They're worth a cool 5 bucks on ebay!

When I was in grad school studying linguistics, there were two camps: Those of us who were studying historical linguistics, i.e. the history of languages, their relationships to each other, the reconstruction of protolanguages, and the comparison of protolanguages to discover deeper connections. The other group were the theorists, mostly Chomskyian, who obsessed on Generative Grammar, the trend of the day. They hated us for doing "pedestrian" work on real languages while they were doing "real" linguistics. Then there were the language-acquisition people, the applied linguistics people, and the psycho/biological people. We all hated each other. Ah, those were the days!

#29 Dirk Diggler 10/18/2005 09:58AM PDT
Whatever happend to Noam Chomsky's blog?

Here (somewhat infrequent though?)

ep

#18 Thom 10/18/2005 09:55AM PDT

Chomsky first became known for his theory of grammar developed at MIT in the 1950s, which held that the ability to form structured language is innate in the human mind.

Tell that to a feral child.

Chomsky's grammar failed in all but the simplist and most artificial cases. It's been thoroughly shredded by many serious linguists.

He uses a lot of long words and hates GW Bush, and he's a grade A BSer, so of course that makes him a hero of the pseudo-intellectual left.

At a moment's notice, I can pull up a database of well over a million published scientific documents.

Chomsky can found found once in the literature, from 1956, with a scant three references to that work over a 49-year span.

Yeah, a towering intellect.

108 MoonbatBane
Thanks. I just placed an order (used books - a bargain!) on Amazon.com

And i thought listening to John Kerry's circuitous circular non-sequitur boring interminable droning was bad...behold the master bore from whence the Dems learn to spout.

It's also unnecessary to point out to the half a dozen or so sane people who remain that in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.

He thinks because he's a linguist, that makes him a great rhetor, too:

1. "It's also unnecessary to point out..." [i.e., everyone with any sense or morals already agrees with me.]

2. "...to the half a dozen or so sane people who remain..." [i.e. besides me, there's only six or seven people in the world who get it.]

3. "...that in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise." [i.e. though I wouldn't want to live there myself, I prescribe communism and five-year plans for everybody else. Me, I'm staying in Cambridge!]

This is pretty thin gruel for such a famous "thinker." I heard better from the semi-intellectual Commies I met living in Germany - though, to be fair, they had with Chomsky in common that none of them wanted to actually live in the East, either. They just moaned like little girls when the Wall came down and their "Great Red Hope" disappeared. That's why they're all so bitter today.

I'd love to see a Chomsky vs. Hitchens smackdown!

The man isn't stupid. Look at how a no-talent like him has gamed the system.
He is, however, dishonest and vile. The ultimate poseur.
I'll vote for him for THAT title.

Communism was so wonderful in Eastern Europe. I work with a Leipziger; he's got a fund of anarchic jokes, the butt of which is always the Soviet system.

Who was the best philosopher? Not Karlo the Klown, certainly. I think probably George Berkeley.

Dirk Diggler #77

And who could forget the "Silent Genocide" that Chomsky claimed would engulf Afghanistan in the wake of America's efforts to remove the Taliban.

Hey, it's not fair to look at what "intellectuals" said in the past and compare it to what really happened.

Viggo Mortenson will portray a younger Chomsky in an upcoming movie bio, with script by Harold Pinter. Tim Robbins directs.

From the article - a little bit of honesty at least:

"Chomsky was unimpressed with the honour, telling The Guardian newspaper that polls were something "I don't pay a lot of attention to," adding that "it was probably padded by some friends of mine."

Enough said.

Gnoam = George Galloway without the mustache and with intellectual pretensions.

#121 deuce:

And both Oliver Stone and Spike Lee will produce.

Right, Chomski is the worlds top intellectual and Charlie Manson is the worlds top humanitarian. Saddam is the leading military stratigist of the past half century and Molly Ivans is a right wing fanatic.

So now we know that Chomsky's got at least 4,800 family members.

#123 deuce:

And Spike Lee and Oliver Stone will produce.

Any resemblance between Chompers and Comrade Stalin is purely cooincidental.

# Pope Insouciance IV

What a wonderful nick -

Chumpsky and ALL who love him need to book the next SHUTTLE off earth to somewhere...perhaps just roaming about aimlessly...with Chomp the Chump leading a chorus of "we will overcome" until, ofcourse, they run out of fuel and food and the really UGLY side of human consciousness shows itself and they all ache longingly for the hefty bank accounts and good food that they "hated" so virulently when here on earth.

Is it really news worthy?

From Prospect magazine site/ About Us

Prospect is growing rapidly. Our latest audit confirmed our circulation at 23,244 (ABC Jul-Dec 2004)

#129
With a humble heart I accept your praise.

# 127 lawhawk

Executive producer George Soros, of course.

Anyone else out there who feels that if you
took Chomsky, made him 10 times as arrogant
and 20 times as malicious, you would get
William Kunstler

/sensing a great distubance in the force. Or a glitch in the Matrix. Dunno. Sorry about the double posting (not to mention the bad refer to #123 instead of #121).

On topic:

Why in the world is Chomsky actually renowned? The guy is/was a linguistics professor who wrote a book that was very influential. He then wrote an essay during the Vietnam War called "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" which garnered attention and thereafter became a darling of the far Left.

The rest is history as his anti-US and Leftist views dominate his work.

But have you actually tried to read his stuff? I mean really read it? It's dense to the point of incomprehensibility (and I've got post-grad degrees) - more than the average academic mumbo jumbo that passes for intelligent and cogent work-product.

#103 todd
I am looking at that link now. It looks very interesting. Thanks.

Swiss Tex #131

Prospect is growing rapidly. Our latest audit confirmed our circulation at 23,244 (ABC Jul-Dec 2004)

Well, Prospect is almost up there with the old Daily Worker, which topped out at 35,000. Of course, the US population was much smaller back then.

121 Deuce

Viggo Mortenson will portray a younger Chomsky in an upcoming movie bio, with script by Harold Pinter. Tim Robbins directs.

And the Dynamic Duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will be playing MIT acolytes of the Chumpster while Howard Zinn will also make a cameo appearance playing himself promoting "A Peoples History of the United States.".

#133 Deuce

John McCain will make a cameo appearance in any Hollywood produced cheesy Chompsky movie, so long as his credit says "Straight Talkin' Chompsky Party Crashin'" to appeal to "both" sides.

135 lawhawk

But have you actually tried to read his stuff? I mean really read it? It's dense to the point of incomprehensibility (and I've got post-grad degrees) - more than the average academic mumbo jumbo that passes for intelligent and cogent work-product.

His works, like the Koran - is virtually unreadable. Intellectual gobbledy gook with a pinch of pseudo psycho babble thrown in for good measure. When I was a 10 year old learning "Pig Latin" I made more sense then that moron.

Now for your Moment of Irony --

Ya gotta wonder how many of the pro-Chomsky votes were from Deconstructionist and Postmodernists. Behold,

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science," "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

- from the Hippipedia with a little context-sensitive highlightin on my part.

Chomsky's getting old, but if he would just go over his entire life with this philosophical razor he might experience a powerful conversion to anti-Idiotarianism before he dies.

The TV shows Jackass and Fear Factor feature better intellectuals than Noam Chomsky.

I already see "Da Chomsky Code" a strong contender for Academy Award as Best Picture.

The strange thing is that when it comes to describing the structure of languages Chomsky is an absolute genius.

It must be emphasized, once again, that the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition is unspecified with respect to a parasitic gap construction. For any transformation which is sufficiently diversified in application to be of any interest, relational information delimits the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)). It appears that the notion of level of grammaticalness is not to be considered in determining a descriptive fact. Conversely, most of the methodological work in modern linguistics is, apparently, determined by an abstract underlying order. Suppose, for instance, that this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of features does not affect the structure of problems of phonemic and morphological analysis.

All hail the Chompskbot!

This jibberish makes about as much sense at he does.

More on Chomsky as a political activist:

"...The long political history of this aging activist demonstrates that double standards of the same kind have characterized his entire career.

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.

Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk."

[Link: www.newcriterion.com...]

Now an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky first became known for his theory of grammar developed at MIT in the 1950s, which held that the ability to form structured language is innate in the human mind.

Well big fricking deal,
I have a master’s degree in thinklogy in addition to my history degree from ASU.
My theory is that when you think about these dipshits for more than 30 seconds it can cause male pattern baldness and pre nuptial agreements in women.

any college needs a lecture,
i charge $15,000 an hour.

Re: my post 138
In the movie "Good Will Hutning", Matt Damon makes fond references to the Chumpster as well as to Howard Zinn. His boyfriend Ben Affleck also is a Lefty.

#141 Tohddi

So today's New York Times article about the "Yes" vote in Iraq (THEIR scare quotes, not mine) is Chompskyite truism, error or gibberish?

#144 strictnein

"The strange thing is that when it comes to describing the structure of languages Chomsky is an absolute genius."

Who said so?

#145 chairman mow

There you go quoting John Kerry's answers in any of the presidential debates.

(Now I understand my strange sense of relief when Bush would smirk, shrug, hunch up or give a one word answer instead of bloviate like the Chompskyites expected.)

#150 Righty

Ill bet if anyone wants to delve into quotes about "intellectuals" by other "intellectuals" you would find that they are "circular references".

i.e. You are an intellectual because I say that you are, and I should know because I heard you said that I am intellectual.

F*ck Chompers... tell me again, why do I care what a (Brit) poll thinks?

Hey, it just occurred to me ! If brevity is the soul of wit, what does that make Chimpsky ?

"Forty-Four reasons why the Chomskians are Mistaken":

[Link: language.home.sprynet.com...]

I for one welcome our new linquistic overlords!

/Kent Brockman/

Old Chomper still cruising the net for teenage socialist. And the Brits want him for world ruler?

Algore should be on that list with Gates and Jobs.

Algore invented the Internet, right?

"Intellectuals" have been overrated for a long time. Plato wanted them to be our rulers. Noam Chomsky is proof of how wrong Plato was.

Too bad for Chomsky that his Linguistic Structuralism collapsed over thirty years ago as an unworkable theory. The biggest problem with the language-proceeds-our-thinking shtick? Deaf people. It was common to find deaf people who did not read or write but showed average intelligence and lived productive lives. Chomsky's MIT theories were undone by people who skipped school.

Chomsky has been a celebrity radical since the mid-1960s when he made his name as an anti-Vietnam War activist. Although he lost some of his appeal in the late-1970s and 1980s by his defense of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, he has used September 11 to restore his reputation, indeed to surpass his former influence and stature. At seventy-four years of age, he is today the doyen of the American and much of the world’s intellectual left.

to bad he was not allowed to give one of his famous lectures in front of the Pol Pot pig he so admired. after the discussion pol pot would have had a plastic bag put over chomskys head and he would have been buried alive in the rice paddies.

#149 alegrias

So today's New York Times article about the "Yes" vote in Iraq (THEIR scare quotes, not mine) is Chompskyite truism, error or gibberish?

Maybe all three?

Truism -- the vote really was yes.

Error -- the NYT actually got something right, which can only happen by mistake, so that's an error, right?

Gibberish -- is the title of their Style Guide.

What a towering intellect...

My theory is, eh, eh,...

"Chomsky first became known for his theory of grammar developed at MIT in the 1950s, which held that the ability to form structured language is innate in the human mind."

Anyone who has spent any time around small children could tell you that parsing language is one of the things they do best and it runs a close race with filling diapers and consuming untold bottles of milk and juice.

To even suggest that humans lack an inborn ability to parse language seems ludicrous, which would imply that Comsky's "discovery" falls well within the bounds of the "blatantly obvious".

What I'd like to know is how can we get Chomsky to stop using language.

ibmkeyboard #161

Pol Pot would have killed Chomsky for three reasons:

1) He wears glasses
2) He had a college degree
3) He lives in an apartment (ie not on the ground)

All three of these conditions were prohited by the workers paradise of Pol Pot.

146 rightymouse

He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins.

In other words, a typical academic.

The British are just itching to bring Orwell's vision to life.

Chomsky is a self-described libertarian socialist, meaning he has the liberty to prosribe socialism for the rest of us.

The vote of anyone who would even think of being for someone to "rule the world", is, on the face of it, the vote of an extremely naieve person.

And that's who Chomsky attracts.

Touche!

#152 Chairman Mow

Not sure. He seems to have contempt for everyone but himself and dictators.

Of course Bugs is smarter. He knew he should have taken a "Right Turn at Albuquerque ".

Ties That Bind
Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left

At the beginning of the war in the Middle East, Chomsky addressed large Islamic crowds in India and Pakistan where he called the United States “the greatest terrorist state” that was planning to commit genocide in neighbouring countries. This attempt to turn his Muslim audiences against his own country in that volatile part of the world must have been his personal effort to “turn the guns around. “ In normal times such explosive falsehoods would be called treason.

"The strange thing is that when it comes to describing the structure of languages Chomsky is an absolute genius."

question for you,
who the hell told Webster that the words were spelled correctly?
and deaf people proved his theory was hog wash.

/chomsky needs a pol pot plastic bag.

#165 Earth2moonbat

Yep. Typical.

Oops. Just realised I should have posted this story on the Chomsky thread (sorry for the repetition, to those who encounter it elsewhere).

Chomsky is one of the supporters of the new Cantata to Rachel Corrie according to this article about Clare Short's support for it

If you then look at the rest of the cast listed as patrons of the cantata to commemorate Rachel, you will see they are almost a pantheon of world class radicals and marxists of Chelm, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger,Harold Pinter, Dr Ilan Pappe, Baroness Jenny "I could have been a suicide bomber" Tonge, and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,

I have been told that Chomsky's theories were indeed important (and that can be true even if the theories have been proved wrong by today's knowledge). In science, sometimes a wrong theory can be as useful as a correct theory as long as it encourages debate and research. On the other hand I always looked at Chomsky the way one should consider a Linus Pauling or a Shockley. Someone intelligent and prehaps even a genius, but lacking the common sense to acknowledge when they are engaging in speculation. In Paulings case that was the enthusiasm over vitamin C and Shockley extrapolated data to claim a racial difference in learning abilities.

I have PhD and I've met my share of really bright people. My general rule is that in order to make a tremendously stupid mistake it helps to be really bright. Just think about how communism gripped the world's imagination. Too few people are willing to be critical when the proponent of some stupid idea has a professorship at MIT.

#159 martinsmithy

"Intellectuals" have been overrated for a long time. Plato wanted them to be our rulers. Noam Chomsky is proof of how wrong Plato was.

To be more accurate - Plato wanted philosophers to be the rulers. He was a philosopher after all, so naturally he assumed his profession was the most apt. Luckily most philosophers are poor politicians, so none ever make it into power.

#176 ilan toren

Well put. I agree. I've been struggling to put that into words, and now I don't have to.

Thanks.

#135 lawhawk:
Hey, it's not fair to look at what "intellectuals" said in the past and compare it to what really happened.

Here, let me fix that for ya...

Hey, it's not fair to look at what "elected officials" said in the past and compare it to what really happened.

#140 Joel, #135 lawhawk
But have you actually tried to read his stuff?
His works, like the Koran - is virtually unreadable.

Hm, if reading N.C. is not your thing (you're right it ain't Dick and Jane), try watching the bonus debates on the Manufacturing Consent dvd (spoiler alert: That old yale yahoo, William F. Buckley Jr. does not fair well.)

ok, ep

"The strange thing is that when it comes to describing the structure of languages Chomsky is an absolute genius."

Vladimir Nabokov -- an actual genius -- has called Chomsky's linguistics "neochomsky": ne o chom means "about nothing" in Russian. Nabokov's opinons has been known to be highly idiosyncratic, but something tells me he's got a point this time.

And for the record: "Chomsky" is derived from the shtetl of Chomsk (pronounced "Khomsk" in Russian) in what is now Belarus.

#176 ilan toren

His theories on language being the basis for all knowledge and thinking were pretty groundbreaking for their time. Later research hints that that mathmatics involves a different part of the brain then language/linguistics, so that theory isn't quite valid anymore.

#135 lawhawk:
Hey, it's not fair to look at what "intellectuals" said in the past and compare it to what really happened.

Here, let me fix that for ya...

Hey, it's not fair to look at what "elected officials" said in the past and compare it to what really happened.

#140 Joel, #135 lawhawk
But have you actually tried to read his stuff?
His works, like the Koran - is virtually unreadable.

Hm, if reading N.C. is not your thing (you're right it ain't Dick and Jane), try watching the bonus debates on the Manufacturing Consent dvd (spoiler alert: That old yale yahoo, William F. Buckley Jr. does not fare well.)

ok, ep

This brings to mind William F. Buckley's incisive remark:

"I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty."

[yes, I know Chomsky isn't at Harvard, but you get the general point]

Another treat in the show for Rachel Corrie is a 'Dance for Tom Hurndall'

If your stomach is strong, you can read some very tacky and pretentious 'songs' to Rachel, too.

Re: 163

Rewind...

Having read through the thread it seems that Chomsky's theory points more in the direction of humans having the ability to tap into a innate resevoir to access complex grammar rules with which to drive their use of language.

I guess that would imply that if we gave a child a bucket of words and the sounds that correspond to them they would be able to compose a story off the top of their head.

How does he explain the disparities in grammar rules that exist between different languages?

Is it just coincidence that human children are born with human grammar engines in their heads as opposed to dolphin grammar engines?

If a child grew up in a pack of dogs, would he speak dog language with a human grammar?

#179 elvis2k:

try watching the bonus debates on the Manufacturing Consent dvd

Yes, of course. I'm pretty sure if I did that, I'd come away sharing NC's conviction that the Khmer Rouge really weren't all that bad. Amazing what DVD bonus tracks will do.

Near as I can tell, Chomsky is just a guy who is technically "smart" but lacks common sense and has a big mouth. Lefty intellectuals (as most of them, unfortunately, are, since they are generally out of touch with the real world) like him because he vocalizes their hatred of America and capitalism and their love for socialism and their guilt over living comfortably while the downtrodden brown people starve.

Personally I cast my votes for Oriana Fallaci and Victor Davis Hanson.

Oh God, a concert for Corrie.

I'd rather have the Bay City Rollers.

179 elvis2k
That post of yours was Chumpskian unfathomable. As to your remark that it is not Dick and Jane, why bring up the caliber of The Nation Magazine?

todd @ 141 speculates: he might experience a powerful conversion to anti-Idiotarianism before he dies.

Fat chance of that. But his cult followers may yet be deprogrammed by exposure to The Anti-Chomsky Reader;

In "The Anti-Chomsky Reader," editors Peter Collier and David Horowitz have assembled a set of essays that analyze Chomsky's intellectual career and the evolution of his anti-Americanism. The essays in this provocative book focus on subjects such as Chomsky's bizarre involvement with Holocaust revisionism, his apologies for Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot, and his claim that America's policies in Latin America in the 1980s were comparable to Nazism. Scholar Paul Bogdanor writes about Chomsky's hatred of Israel. Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz discuss his gloating reaction to the September 11 attack. Linguists Paul Postal and Robert Levine reevaluate Chomsky's linguistics and find the same qualities there that others see in his politics: "a deep contempt for the truth, descents into incoherence, and verbal abuse of those who disagree with him."

Radian: Cunning linguist

Now that is a joke that I haven't heard in a long while. That was so funny that I couldn't stop a voiced labial-velar plosive from escaping.

#190 Terp Mole

Is that the same David Horowitz whose wife was found murdered?

184 RC neo-Jew
Wow - Jon Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Claire Short, Miriam Margolyies - what a rogues gallery of moonbats, Jew haters and otherwise demented individuals. How soon before St. Rachel is officially entombed next to the Cenotaph on Whitehall Street?

192 rightymouse
You are mistaking David Horowitz of Frontpagemagazine with Daniel Horowitz.

#113 MoonbatBane

Chomsky's grammar failed in all but the simplist and most artificial cases.

Which is why it is regarded by many as foundational in Computer Science, particularly compilers and other lex/yacc thingies.

It's been thoroughly shredded by many serious linguists.

Yes it has, for natural languages.

If not for his infamy, Chomsky would be known as a useless linguist whose wacky theories found some application in the severely stupid (by human standards) languages of computers.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky

According to the Chicago Tribune, Noam Chomsky is "the most often cited living author. Among intellectual luminaries of all eras, Chomsky placed eighth, just behind Plato and Sigmund Freud." On the Web, there are more chat room references to Noam Chomsky than to Vice President Dick Cheney and 10 times as many as there are to Democratic congressional leaders Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. This is because Chomsky is also the political mentor of the academic left, the legions of Sixties radicals who have entrenched themselves in American universities to indoctrinate students in their anti-American creeds. The New York Times calls Chomsky "arguably the most important intellectual alive," and Rolling Stone – which otherwise does not even acknowledge the realm of the mind – "one of the most respected and influential intellectuals in the world."

Cleanup up troll mess in post 182.

Elvis2k:

How do you type wearing a straitjacket anyway?

#176 ilan toren 10/18/2005 12:24PM PDT

I have PhD and I've met my share of really bright people. My general rule is that in order to make a tremendously stupid mistake it helps to be really bright. Just think about how communism gripped the world's imagination. Too few people are willing to be critical when the proponent of some stupid idea has a professorship at MIT.

I'd like to take a moment to recommend the following book:

Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas

I read it about a year ago and it is both shocking and full of valuable ammunition.

Did you know that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to create a concentration camp for the retarded and advocated abortion strictly in black communities?

Want to know more about Chomsky, Zinn, or Kinsey's gross sexual perversions and bogus research?

Read it.

#194 Joel

Thanks. Was confused for a moment there.

182 elvis2k
Blow me!

Is that the same David Horowitz whose wife was found murdered?

You mean Daniel Horowitz?
No relation.

198 Globular Cluster

Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas

I read that book last year. A good read although I disagreed with him regarding Ayn Rand and to a lesser extent, Leo Strauss.

He's an anarcho-syndicalist.

In Chomsky's world everyone would belong to a union-commune and there would be no states or national governments, hence no monetary system.

All trade would be on a barter system which is great if your union-commune produces something useful, like say tires, but would suck for the World Grommet Makers Union.

How does he propose working out the inequality when markets will be abolished (to make things equal for everyone)?

This circular argument is also known as mental masturbation for "intellectuals". The simple answer is that markets aren't bad after all but "intellectuals" like Chomsky dismiss that as reactionary and spend their time thinking up convoluted ways around it. But in the end, in spite of all of the chin rubbing, a market will form and then it is only a matter of time, given the anarchist nature, laissez-faire economics come to bear.

It's completely inane and esoteric but it sounds so cool to call yourself an anarcho-syndicalist in front of pot addled college kids.

#201 Terp Mole

Gotcha.

The hell with him he is 76 years old and will be dead in due time along with many of the 60's radicals that never left that time...

Good lizardoids, a little sense of perspective. You may be wondering how and why Noam Chomsky garnered so many votes in these elective honours competition. The simple answer is that he has a dedicated following (I did not use he word "groupies"), that they are organised around his website, and that they voted en masse for him. It shows what you can do with a little dedication, a little organisation, and a great many useful idiots.

I read that book last year. A good read although I disagreed with him regarding Ayn Rand and to a lesser extent, Leo Strauss.

Of course you didn't like it, being conservative. :-)

Everything he said about Ayn Rand, I believe, can be verified. Plenty of stuff on-line. I agree with him completely. I dislike her novels intensely, although she writes well, for the reasons outlined -- simplistic, unrealistic characters that bear no resemblance to the real world.

The Straussian stuff is harder for me to comment on, specifically because many of our "neo-cons" are simply "moderate conservatives" or have renounced the restricted sense of the term.

His stuff does have plenty of references and footnotes that can be explored.

182 elvis2k

One of the typical illusions of the Chomsky cult is the belief that its imam and sensei is not the unbalanced dervish of anti-American loathing he appears to everyone else, but an analytic giant whose dicta flow from a painstaking and scientific inquiry into the facts.

This conviction is almost as delusional as Chomsky’s view of the world itself.

You'll find the facts on Chomsky laid bare by David Horowitz.

206 Loch Inkopf
In these bookstores in NY there are small books about intellectuals and philosophers such as Camus, Freud, Kafka, etc. I was sickened to see one about Chomsky who is no intellectual but a nihilistic gas bag.

207 Globular Cluster
I'm a conservative? I guess guees I am. I thought in the chapter on Strauss, Flynn delved into Buchananite/Raimondoesque paleoconservative crapola.

Chomsky was unimpressed with the honour, telling The Guardian newspaper that polls were something "I don't pay a lot of attention to," adding that "it was probably padded by some friends of mine."

Should read:

"...it was probably padded by some padded friends of mine."

Well the field of neurolinguistics (yes there is such a animal) has made great strides using PET scans to look at loci of brain activity. And this knowledge essentially disproves Chomsky, but then again neuroscientists once thought of other hardwired associations (the grandmother cell for the aficiandos) Still Broca's and Wernicke's area for speech production and comprehension had been known for some time. It's clear that specialized areas for language existed and that as that they are not adjacent, there intervening steps were likely. Very little seems to be innately hardwired in the brain. Neural circuits are very dynamic (which is why we can learn almost anything).

Chomsky went out on a limb and that probably also explains his forays into political analysis

207 Globular Cluster

Everything he said about Ayn Rand, I believe, can be verified. Plenty of stuff on-line. I agree with him completely. I dislike her novels intensely, although she writes well, for the reasons outlined -- simplistic, unrealistic characters that bear no resemblance to the real world.

You will have to take that up with the lovely Pamela of the Atlasshrugged blog. She is a member of the PJ media that Charles belongs to.

Cato agrees that Ayn Rand is a highly overrated writer. Got about ten pages into "The Fountainhead" before I quit in perplexity and boredom. She reads like bad Heinlein on meth.

Found this gem among Victor David Hanson's private papers;

The Ayatollah of Anti-Americanism

...In actual fact, the quality of Chomsky's thinking is on a par with the rantings of a bus-stop conspiracy theorist. Yet Chomsky camouflages the essential irrationalism of his ideas with a carapace of footnotes and references that to the unwary suggest vast scholarly and empirical support. This barrage of facts, pseudo-facts, disputed facts, and outright lies is convincing to the badly educated, the ignorant, and those who simply don't have the time or inclination to track down every reference and check every alleged fact. However, if one analyzes these references, as Thomas Nichols does in his essay "Chomsky and the Cold War," one discovers that "the copious references are there to create a kind of pseudo-academic smog; many of them are repetitive, and many more are so vague as to be useless. Quite often, his citations regarding a contentious point only lead the reader back self-referentially to another of Chomsky's own works in which he makes the same unsupported assertion, and not to some piece of original evidence or to an analysis built on original evidence, as would be expected in a normal footnote." The result is not an analysis based on evidence but rather "a Potemkin village of intellectual authenticity."

#193 Joel

How soon before St. Rachel is officially entombed next to the Cenotaph on Whitehall Street?

Oh, any day now, I expect. Unless her worshippers prefer something more like the memorial to Princess Diana (which got clogged up with leaves). Or something really big, towering over the landscape, like the
Angel of the North

Of course, a winner of the Turner Prize could produce something suitably meaningless.

Went to Oxford. Worked with some really intelligent folks - ones who would literally gag at the mention of the "top three". Roger Penrose (physicist) could have a total lobotomy and still beat Chomsky. Come on, Dawkins? Chomsky? Have those folks who were polled ever heard of real intellects - a la physicists, mathematicians? Arghhhhhhh. They probably even believe that Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather are actually capable of thought.

#185 Pennies for Patriots 10/18/2005

If a child grew up in a pack of dogs, would he speak dog language with a human grammar?

Nope. Go to Thom's post #18 and follow the link.

Well, well, what have we here? I happen to have a PhD in philosophy, and I did my dissertation research on the philosophy of language, so I know Chomsky's work very well. To anyone who suggested otherwise: Chomsky is one of the most intelligent people alive. There's no question about that. No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that. I can attest to it myself, as I've met him a number of times.

He's just evil. When he writes about politics, he knows he's lying. In this he differs from pretty much the entire rest of the moonbat crowd. In fact he openly admits that he lies, and he trusts that his followers won't come across these admissions when he makes them in obscure interviews (David Horowitz has good references to these interviews, such as one in which he says he knows Cuba is a "totalitarian dungeon" [I think those were his exact words] but he prefers to lie about it to his readers).

Don't underestimate the intelligence of the Noamster. In this he differs from the whole rest of the moonbat crowd: he's *very* intelligent and he *knows* he's wrong, but doesn't care. Why should he? He sells millions of books and American college students and European foreign ministers worship him.

#91 rightymouse

Chomsky is a crappy linguist and a communist.

Yeah. That's why he lives in the U.S.

I no longer consider Massachusetts to be part of the US. It is now part of Canada, as far as I'm concerned.

You get the politicians you deserve, after all... Any people who continue to vote for a bloated, drooling, tax-happy senator like Kennedy, no longer deserve to be part of the United States. They espouse socialism? Fine. Go be a socialist-Marxist protectorate of Quebec. (And keep your social services draining illegal immigrant community, as well.)

216 RC neo-Jew
The anti Israel hatred right now in the U.K. is so visceral that I wonder if not for the fact that he was an enemy of Britian, the chattering classes of the U.K. would have something good to say about Reinhard Heydrich.

Globular Cluster

It is a dirty little secret, but academics are sometimes so committed to an ideology that they use their intellect to "prove" the indefensible. Chomsky's antics in defending Pol Pot are only one example. There was a group of academics including Stephen Jay Gould that consistently tried to shoe horn science to support their neo-marxist world view. I have to say that as someone who fell in love with biology with reading Sociobiology I have a certain satisfaction debunking these people.

The problem is that you really have to know your stuff to a) understand their argument and b) know when they are taking their evidence too far. Dawkins does a good job.
Dawkins reviews "Not in Our Genes"

#219 Yanqui in Europe

My Dad has a PhD in linguistics. He thinks Chomsky's theories are a waste of time.

Globular Cluster #198

Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas

All these great intellectuals seem to engage in a sort of outcome based thinking. They have their whacked-out ideologies, then think or spin their theories to support a desired outcome or conclusion. Not exactly rational thought they engage in.

#223 rightymouse

How is that relevant to what I said? I think his theories are a waste of time, too. Did I say otherwise? No, I did not.

The bottom line is that we engaged Iraq in war to save the lives of American civilians who remain earmarked as legitimate targets by Islamo-fascist terrorists whom Saddam sponsored.

This point, however, will NEVER penetrate the syrupy skulls of Noam Chomsky and his numerous stooges who constitute the noisy majority of American academics. They are slaves to the diseased mentality of Leftism-- an illogical and insular world-view that allows Leftists to operate like spoiled children, while the rest of us carry out the unpleasant task of addressing the dangers inherent to life in the real world.

I recommend "Intellectual Morons" as well. It's a good bed time read. I didn't disagree with anything in particular even the Ayn Rand and Strauss chapters were food for thought.

I actually read Atlas Shrugged but I don't think I could do it again. I was in the midst of a libertarian fervor at the time.

I don't think I would like Rand's world any more than Chomsky's. But I will note that what happened to the tobacco industry was somewhat predicted by Rand. The similarities can't be ignored.

#219 Yanqui in Europe:

as I've met him a number of times.

Some suggestions for the next time.

[hey, just kidding, we kid the Noamster]

#217 Da Coyote 10

Chomsky has an exquisite mathematical mind. You obviously don't know his work.

Read his papers from the 1950s in the _Journal of Symbolic Logic_ and other mathematical and computer science publications, and you'll come away with a different impression, I think.

#225 Yanqui in Europe

"...Chomsky is one of the most intelligent people alive. There's no question about that. No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that..."

Dad's a linguist. He thinks Chomsky's theories are as useless as the man himself. So that refutes your "No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that" comment.

#195 toddhisattva 10/18/2005 12:44PM PDT

That does make sense. Never knew that any of Chomsky's work ever ended up having any real value whatsoever. Hmm, learn something new every day...

230 rightymouse

Dad's a linguist. He thinks Chomsky's theories are as useless as the man himself. So that refutes your "No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that" comment.

Good retort. I dislike it when people make broad statements such as "nobody" and/or "everybody."

#225 Yanqui in Europe

If your dad *in addition* to finding Chomsky's theories worthless thinks Chomsky is not extremely intelligent, then I do stand corrected.

No linguist I've met thinks that, though. It's still true that the vast majority of the profession think as highly of his intellect as I do.

#230 rightymouse

PIMF - that was a reply to you, not to myself!

Re philosophy: Philosophers test their ideas against other philosophers. Physicist/Mathematicians/Engineers tests their ideas against nature. With all due respect, computers and computer languages would have done quite well without Chomsky...perhaps done a bit better. Now, if we can only link Chomsky with Microsoft, we'll have true proof of evil. Neither entity has produced anything of lasting quality.

#232 Joel

Me too. Especially one that is patently false.

In #219, Yanqui in Europe writes:

To anyone who suggested otherwise: Chomsky is one of the most intelligent people alive. There's no question about that. No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that.

Really. No one?

Are you sure it isn't a matter of impenetrability eliciting the Pavlovian response of wise nods from people who have been conditioned not to want to appear defective in understanding?

As far as I can tell, Chomsky's work in his field ended years (decades?) ago. He's a tenured old fraud who now pontificates on politics.

I agree with you that he's evil, I just doubt he's whatchamacallit - an evil genius.

No matter, I'm sure he thinks he is...

The fact is that you can't make major contributions to abstract branches of mathematics, as Chomsky has, without being pretty damn smart.

It's precisely *because* he's so smart that he's able to get away with so much lying and build such a huge following.

#225 Yanqui in Europe: Chomsky is one of the most intelligent people alive. There's no question about that. No one in linguistics or philosophy doubts that

Bravo Sierra!

Chomsky's Linguistics Refuted

Chomsky: The Theory Unified and Deconstructed

The Chomsky Challenge

Which of the following statements best describes the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky?

A. Ground-breaking discoveries which rank with the greatest discoveries of science?
B. Solid scholarship and the precise cataloguing of important human knowledge?
C. The source of much unintended hilarity?

If you answered A or B, you probably won't read the above links.

#237 Cato the Elder

Chomsky's major mathematical contributions are from the 1950s and 1960s, but surely you don't mean to suggest that somehow lost his intelligence after that? He had the same politics when he was 14, as he says in the interview that someone quoted here.

However smart he might be, it's pretty clear Chomsky has a downright bizarre view of the world. One where the US is the natural heir of Nazi Germany. He just luvvvvvvvvvvved the Khmer Rouge and was their apologist for years until the truth became even to much for Chomsky to deny. At which point, he simply declared that the US created them.

Being proven wrong is just water off a duck's back with him. Holding the US to unimaginably high standards while ignoring any other country's shortcomings (except, of course, Israel's) is perfectly fair and presents an accurate measure of the US's sins. Luckily his fans assume everything he utters to be the gospel truth and don't bother examining anything he says with the slightest skepticism.

239 Terp Mole

Your comment addresses nothing I said. I talked about his intelligence.

His linguistic theories are wothless, but I said nothing about them.

That Chomsky has an extremely high IQ is evidenced by his mathematical contributions from the 50s.

If memory serves me, Scientific American had articles on the acquisition of language in primates--minus mention of CHOMPSKY's name. Bwahaha.

At my home-university (Salzburg/Austria), if you agree with Chomsky and quote him in your term paper or in your diploma thesis, you get the work back with disgust and you are ordered to remove the quotations or risk that your work will not be accepted.

Noam Chomsky has a high IQ.

Adolf Hitler was an effective public speaker.

Jeffrey Dahmer knew how to stretch his food budget dollar.

In each case, the statement is true, but not terribly relevant.

Intelligence applied to math does not equate to intelligence applied to linguistics or politics. In math, the numbers prove you right or wrong. Period.

With linguistics and politics, time and history are your only proofs.

History will prove Choamsky dead wrong. Again.

Generalization of Chimpsky's theory:

Gaga professors shifting far left is innate in the human mind.

#245 Occasional Reader

The statements are not relevant? I beg to differ.

You don't think Hitler's abilities as a public speaker contributed to his success in German politics?

You don't think Chomsky's high IQ has anything to do with his ability as a propagandist?

Well, Yanqui, I do think people tend to slow down as they age, and even compared to Cato, Chomsky is, shall we say, senior.

You know of course that especially mathematicians are likely to do their best work before their mid thirties. So although he can no doubt string a sentence together better than most, I would doubt that Chomsky in his seventies still qualifies as "one of the most intelligent people alive." That's like saying Liz Taylor is one of the most beautiful.

The operative word here being "was."

#244 zuckerlilly

Meine Dame oder Herr Zuckerlilly,

Ich Kongratuliere Sie--how excellent that your university in Austria is anti-idiotarian in this respect (anti-Chomsky), as well as in opposing Moslem Turkey's further unwarranted invasion of Europe by economic/legal means in addition to its demographic assault on Europe.

Long live Kleine Gruene Fussballen anti-idiotarian fans everywhere.

Yanqui in Europe: Your comment addresses nothing I said. I talked about his intelligence.

His linguistic theories are wothless [sic], but I said nothing about them.

That you can simultaneously admit his linguistic theories (Chomsky's primary area of academic expertise) are "worthless", yet still praise his intelligence, speaks more to your own reasoning skills.

Perhaps you're implying Chomsky is an idiot savant?-- a form of mental retardation which expresses extraordinary mental abilities, often in the fields of numerical calculation (not to be confused with mathematics).

I've been thinking about my past comments about the Left's desire for the creation of Utopia.

In reading much of this thread it is apparent that a leading architect of this drive for Utopia is Gnome Chumpsky himself.

It seems to me that with above average intelligence comes a responsibility to make damn certain that your ideas are valid and correct. In poor deluded Chumpsky's case, I sense he has no training as either a scientist or as a mathmatician. Why? Because he has not tested his ideas plus he refuses to alter his magnum opus long after it has been proven false by even people of average intelligence.

Genius is a wonderful thing. It allows humanity to expand the horizon. Unfortuantely there is as much negative to be learned on the horizon as there is positive. In Gnome Chumpsky's case I think we have learned that hooking the electrodes to the genetilia and throwing the switch doesn't need to be tried again.

JFM

#248 yanqui in Europe

You make sense stating Chomsky's intelligence allows his achievements as a propagandist.

We fight Chomsky's tactics and doublespeaking LLL followers every day at LGF.

Chomsky is the Unabomber without balls.

#248 Yanqui:

The statements are not relevant?

Let me be more clear: The statements are not terribly relevant in rendering judgment on the man in question.

#103 toddhisattva... thanks for those links! i have been thinking about math and music for a while, so this will be great to study.

Yea... Definitely intellectual... yea...

Wapner at seven! K-Mart sucks!

Yea... Definitely...

Chomsky was overheard telling his brother Charlie Babbet "I'm an excellent driver."

Chomsky liked the Khmer Rouge.

Beagle:

"Chomsky is the Unabomber without balls."

LOL!

Can I steal that, please? I'll give you proper attribution, of course.

#248 YiE

You don't think Hitler's abilities as a public speaker contributed to his success in German politics?

You don't think Chomsky's high IQ has anything to do with his ability as a propagandist?

Chomsky = Hitler

Q.E.D.

250 alegrias 10/18/2005 01:43PM PDT

*lol* 'zuckerlilly' means 'sugar lilly' and is female ;-))

Last year we had a Prof. from Rutgers here as a guest-teacher and he was only interested in Bush-bashing not in teaching. After some hours the students complained about him and he was asked to teach and nothing else. He was very angry about the students.;-)

#251 Terp Mole

They're not "worthless" as in "so obviously wrong that no thinking person would seriously entertain them even in the absence of evidence". But they *are* "worthless" in that they've proved *empirically inadequate* by now. That happens in science all the time. If your theory is refuted, it doesn't mean you weren't smart -- you just made some wrong guesses.

We seem to disagree on what Chomsky's most important contributions are. It is *my* understanding that Chomsky's central contributions are mathematical in nature: they are studies of formal languages and abstract automata that were published for the most part in the 1950s. *You* seem to think his most important contributions were in applying that work to natural language. I wonder how well you know his work, though.

#259 beagle

If Chomsky never met a dead murdering genocidal totalitarian gulagy jihadist he didn't like, Chomsky must loooove Robert Mugabe's chomskyisms at the UN food conference: "Bush, Blair 'Terrorists'"

NOAM CHOMSKY IS A STUPID CULT

Rational, logical thought has never been a strongpoint for the left who, like their new buddies on the extreme right always relied on unfocussed emotion to justify their idiot policies.

Chomsky has become a cult figure to pretentious, spotty student twats whose only hope of getting laid is to wave the predictable, dullard banner of ersatz radicalism at anti-Bush marches.

Chomsky is also a popular figure among Champagne Socialists who like to drop names between courses at their bourgeois soirées.

It sounds so "aware" to mention you voted for him in a poll of a "serious" magazine that nobody has ever heard of.

I doubt it goes beyond that. There's never any chatter about Turdsky's support of Pol Pot, terrorism & holocaust denial to be heard over the ubiquitous Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack.

Just because his supporters don't actually read his works, doesn't mean that his detractors can afford to be uninformed.

As the extreme left, right and Islamists meld into one big blob of moronic hatred, the phrase "Know they enemy" becomes increasingly more important.

The Intellectual's Michael Moore

....On 9/12 and for several days afterward, Chomsky discussed the attack on America without particular regret as an understandable response to a longstanding grievance. His audience was far broader than the true believers who had followed him in his idees fixes about East Timor. Those Chomsky rallied were as high as he was on schadenfreude and as committed to the idea that America had it coming for a history of misdeeds stretching back at least to 1812, the last time foreigners attacked the homeland, and actually to 1492, where the nightmare began, according to another Chomsky tract (Year 501: The Conquest Continues).

While bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble of the Twin Towers, Chomsky was charging that the U.S. military response against the terrorists would immediately lead to a "silent genocide" that would cause the wintertime starvation of 3-4 million Afghans. But as David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh show, nothing remotely resembling Chomsky’s scenario actually happened. Relatively few civilian deaths occurred in the U.S. offensive against the Taliban and of those virtually none were the result of starvation. But Chomsky, obeying the first law of the left-- never look back—offered no explanations and certainly no apologies about being so wrong. After going to Pakistan to repeat his calumnies in the weeks after the attack on the Twin Towers, he continued to spread his Big Lie around the world by a slender collection entitled 9/11 that was translated into 23 languages and published in 26 countries. And when asked about his lie Chomsky simply denied that he had ever made it.

Saddam’s regime, one of those actually existing fascisms that gets crowded out of Chomsky’s worldview by the imaginary fascism of America. The second part perversely summons the specter of Pearl Harbor to suggest that al Qaeda’s attack may mark the moment when the guns were finally turned around and trained on the real aggressor. Now, as throughout his long career, America’s peril is Noam Chomsky’s hope.

Chomsky spends his time pondering the vagueries of grammar.

Several questions arise:

1.What possible contribution does this practice of being a "professional grammarian" make to society?

2.How does this,in any way,translate into Chomsky being a political expert?

3.How did this contrarian become so respected?

4.Have the likes of Chomsky,
OsamaObama,Hillary,et al caused modern leftism to become nothing more than a "cult of personality"?

Don't bother answering,I'm just practicing my rhetorical questions.

#261 Beagle:

Chomsky = Hitler

Nicht vahr! Der Fuehrer vas better looking zen Chomsky... he vas a better dancer zen Chomsky...

#262 zuckerlilly:

Was werden sie sich als nächstes ausdenken, diese verrückte Studenten? Dass ein Professor sich ausschließlich zum Lehren (und nicht dem politischen BElehren) genötigt sieht! Ich verschluckte mich fast an der Laugenbrezel, als ich das las!

O, die verlorene akademische Freiheit!

#267 TotallySirius

"1.What possible contribution does this practice of being a "professional grammarian" make to society?"

Have you ever used a word processing program (such as Word) that identifies ungrammatical sentences? They're not perfect, but they're pretty good at it. I've avoided many mistakes because of them. That's one example of how Chomsky's theories have been applied.

Going home now. See y'all on the flip side.

Speaking of grammatical vagueries:

[Link: www.engrish.com...]

#262 zuckerlilly

Fraulein Zuckerlilly, congratulations again on what serious & independent-minded fellow students you have at your university. Thank you for your courage in helping a Bush-bashing American guest professor get over it & stick to his lecture! Vielen Dank!

Yanqui in Europe maintains:
A) His linguistic theories are wothless [sic]
and
B) They're not "worthless"

Only from the mind of an avid Chomsky reader.

269 Cato the Elder 10/18/2005 02:01PM PDT

;-)) Genau darum ging es den Studenten. Ihre Meinung wollen sie sich selbst bilden.

Da zitiere ich Johann Nepomuk Nestroy und sein Couplett:

Die Welt steht auf keinen Fall mehr lang....;-))

#266 uptight

You're right, we have to "know the enemy," no matter how moronic. If only to combat it by any and all means--linguistic, etc.

Remember the words of the real journalist recently murdered in Iraq (Steven Vincent?) who said "words matter." He advised we call insurgents the paramilitary death squads they are in fact.

#269 cato the elder

Hey, germanic linguistic speaking academics need not apply to choke on their pretzels. That's only permissible for subintellectual bushitlermcchimpyhalliburton!

#271 rightymouse

All your grammar are belong to us!

I love that site.

Sogar ein Nestroy-Zitat kann einem hier auf dem LGF-Supergehirn-Forum begegnen!

"Da wird einem halt angst und bang..."

Get Chomsky to explain this one.

Hee hee.

/love that site.

#273 Terp Mole

If you don't understand that one word can be used in many different meanings, then you have no business speaking or writing.