Diffusionistic Fantasies

Part VII

Sauna Diffusion

Or Steamed Off

Exterior of Finnish Sauna

Sometimes respected Anthropologists etc., go off the deep end. The following is a slightly expanded version of a posting I did c. 7 years ago in response to an article written by an Anthropologist who seemed to want to shock people with her daring and boldness.1

Remembering

9/11

Ground Zero

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the attacks in New York City and in Washington D.C. that killed c. 3,000 people.1 This event has had and will continue to have a large and significant effect on life, politics and culture in our world. Here I will simply talk about my own recollections about and thoughts concerning 9/11.

Stupid Grammar Tricks

No Caption Needed

This short little note about grammar is not about the basic rules of language that regulate how language is structured so that what we say makes sense. It isn’t about Noam Chomsky’s idea about transformative grammar and so forth. It is not about the basic, apparently hardwired rules that make “The cat sat on the mat”, different from “The mat sat on the cat”. Those are actual grammar rules governing exactly how people express themselves in speech and language.

No what I’m going to talk about are what are called prescriptive language rules. These are rules created, supposedly to avoid, vague, and incoherent ways of expressing yourself by avoiding certain uses of speech.