My apologies if this has been posted already.

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com...kes-sense.html

This just in--even more people think the "truth" movement is totally bogus!

Oh, don't get me wrong--having Noam Chomsky side against his apparent devotee is great. But I'm not really surprised.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

A very, very wise comment from the above site:

I agree with Gillian. It would have been surprising if Chomsky had jumped onto this bandwagon. He's been accused of many things, but not stupidity.

What more notable things has this Chomsky person done? I've never heard of him.

He does make good point about 9/11 CTers, IMO.

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I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid...and I went ahead anyway. - Crow T. Robot

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

It just goes to show that you can be a member of the radical left without being a complete lunatic. I'm not as familiar with the radical right but I'd like to believe the same is true of them.

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

What fun is it to be a member of the radical anything if you can't be a complete lunatic?

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

There are radical members of the right who believe that Bill Clinton was personally killing people pretty much at will, on evidence every bit as strong as the 9/11 "truth" people have. However, not all radical members of the right believe it, I'm sure. It's just that the farther you slip into radicalism in anything, the more likely you seem to be to believe things that support your side without objective examination.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Some blurbs from the web links above:

On language
His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English, written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). Though extremely influential in its day, this work is considered outdated (though it has recently been reprinted), and Chomsky does not publish on phonology anymore.

On behaviour:
Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83-99). This and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties; consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors.

To his credit:
Chomsky has also commented on critiques of "white male science", stating that they are much like the anti-Semitic and politically motivated attacks against "Jewish physics" used by the Nazis to denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the Deutsche Physik movement:

In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics".

Chomsky has made connections between his linguistics research and more political topics. An example is a 1971 debate with French philosopher Michel Foucault on the question of human nature, where Chomsky used the idea of innate linguistic capacity to criticize the idea that all human values and knowledge are entirely conditioned by societal conditions. However, Chomsky makes such connections only rarely, and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields.

So he is no Derrida, at the very least.

When I looked at the blog entry linked above, all I saw was "Noam Chomsky makes sense... four words I never thought I'd put together" and a bunch of comments. So what exactly did he say in this case?

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

I can't actually comment on Noam Chomsky without getting banned for either a) politics or b) swearing.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

When I view the page, there is a video clip from youtube where you have your ...

I haven't watched it (dial-up, don'tcha know).

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

So what exactly did he say in this case?

basically that the 9/11 crowd are wrong and that OBL ordered the attack and that his operatives carried it out.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

While Chomsky is no doubt quite intelligent, I... well, I don't care for him, let's leave it at that. But he evidently retains some connection to reality, as opposed to the 9/11 CT crowd.

A much milder analog to this is U. Maryland physicist Bob Park's dismissal of the Apollo hoax notion. He thinks manned space flight is an enormous waste of time and money. But he also points out that we certainly did walk on the Moon. James Van Allen also came to think of manned space flight as wasteful, but also refuted the HB crowd directly.

It just goes to show that whatever your political leanings, it doesn't help your cause to believe in things that simply aren't so.

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

wiki is an even better friend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_chomsky

He's a very smart guy. I don't agree with every he says though. I think his fundamental mistake is to assume that all people are rational. He's so intelligent, he just can't imagine that there are people on Earth who behave irrationally.

When I read Chomsky giving advice on politics, I feel like I'm reading an adult giving adult advice - but not realizing that the advice is being given to children. To me, Chomsky often sounds like this: "of course everyone will want to brush his teeth three times a day, because nobody wants to get cavities." That's great advice. I mean, I can't form a logical argument against that. It's just that it doesn't work if your audience is children. It turns out that they don't want to brush their teeth and they don't think about the future and getting cavities.

That's the only way that I can explain it. Remember how everyone acts in Kubrick's 2001? Remember how Floyd sits politely, legs crossed, and exchanges pleasant banter with the Soviets on the space station? Everyone is so reserved, so enlightened. Sometimes I just get the impression that Chomsky writes for the people of that world.

He should hang around here for three days. That'd cure him. It sure cured me.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Who is brave enough to post that link on the Loose Change forum? It's sure to get you banned.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

Very true.

They take offense to anything that doesn't agree with their world view.

As a lark, maybe someone should write out the link as "newest supporter for the truth movement!", and see the reactions.

The post itself is likely to be deleted as well.
And they say they want the Bill of Rights reinstated. Yeah right, they can start with themselves first.

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I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid...and I went ahead anyway. - Crow T. Robot

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

How many moderators do they have there?

He stated that the finds the WTC/911 conspiracy impossible to believe. The appearant reason that this is news is that he stated "many people on the 'left' will be suprised at this" (paraphrased).

I think that should have full and clearly said his intented meaning of "based on the emails I get from people who claim to be on the 'left', many of them would be suprised..."

Since, many Americans on the left, right, and center are constantly suprised to learn that evolution is a real effect, that the earth is not resting on some infinite series of stacked turtles, or that you can't see Heaven from your 737 cabin window (oops, was that an angel that the engine just ingested?), I find it of no real import that Chomsky has noticed that loonies are everywhere.

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The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

I'd like to see him debate Christopher Hitchens