Paul Ibbotson & Michael Tomasello at Scientific American: ‘Evidence Rebuts Chomsky’s Theory Of Language Learning:’

‘But evidence has overtaken Chomsky’s theory, which has been inching toward a slow death for years. It is dying so slowly because, as physicist Max Planck once noted, older scholars tend to hang on to the old ways: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”

Worth a read.

As posted:  Caitlin Flanagan reviews Tom Wolfe’s new book ‘The Kingdom Of Speech.‘ Jerry Coyne, ecologist, writing in the Washington Post, was not impressed:

“Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian”

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Theodore Dalrymple takes a reactionary position to tattoos in ‘Exposing Shallowness.‘

‘What is striking about these “tattoo narratives” (as the author calls them) is their vacuous egoism. The interlocutors speak, and appear to think, in pure psychobabble, that debased and vague confessional language that allows people to imagine they are baring their souls when in fact they are exposing their shallowness’

My Curmudgeonly Tattoo Theory– It used to be like carving a lover’s name into a tree (go ahead you anti-photosynthesist), except on your arm. Or maybe you were in prison or hanging in a gang.  Maybe you were in the armed services and went through some stuff together and made it out the other side.

Now, the ‘transgressive’ and forbidden aspect of tattoos has become quite predictable:  Go ahead, Mom!

Of course, your face, your body, your eyes will all announce what you’ve been up to lately and where you’ve been…to some extent.

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In a similar vein, Ross Douthat argued that even though organized religion is on the decline, people still need all the stuff it can provide, they just find it elsewhere.

People can come to believe in secular ideals as though they provided transcendent purpose (addition: or at least imbue those ideals with a faith people reserve for that which is presumed universally true):

‘…what is the idea of universal human rights if not a metaphysical principle?  Can you find universal human rights under a microscope?‘

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An 11:00 video on what may remain of Obama’s legacy via The Future Of Capitalism, from a generally Right-Of-Center perspective.