Semantisaurus?
Thanks to Bruce I. Kodish for alerting me to this fan-art episode of Dinosaur Comics. T-Rex discovers general semantics and embraces his abstractions.
A brief look at things for people interested in Language and the Brain
"Facts as we see them are little more than quick glimpses of a ceaseless transformation..."
--Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries
Thanks to Bruce I. Kodish for alerting me to this fan-art episode of Dinosaur Comics. T-Rex discovers general semantics and embraces his abstractions.
Posted by Nora Miller at 1/14/2008 0 comments
I rarely watch 60 minutes because when I do, I almost invariably hear or see something so patently glib or glossy that I nearly explode. Last night, the TV ended up there for the last 10 minutes of the show, so I turned on the sound for Andy Rooney. He sometimes makes amusing comments amid his laconic meanderings. What I heard literally made my jaw drop.
He said, and I believe this fairly summarizes his words: "Jefferson" and "Roosevelt" were obviously presidential names, but what kind of a name is "Barak Obama" or "Mike Huckabee"?
Even if played as humorous, this amounts to a shameful glorification of Word Magic at its worst. Knowing that a goodly percent of his audience won't get his humor, I find it amazing that CBS allowed him to blather on like that. I hope they get a boatload of emails and letters, but I wonder if anyone else even noticed how stupid it sounds to say, in effect, "Washington and Lincoln had names that sounded presidential, but who would name an airport or a high school after somebody named 'Mitt Romney'?"
Posted by Nora Miller at 1/07/2008 0 comments