From Foreign Policy:
For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.When consulted the Chomskybot replied:
The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky's entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley's archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.
The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky's CIA file comes in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: "We did not locate any records responsive to your request." The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky's brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s -- and the CIA's well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word .... MORE
"It may be, then, that the descriptive power of the base component is not quite equivalent to the extended c-command discussed in connection with (34). A consequence of the approach just outlined is that a descriptively adequate grammar is unspecified with respect to a general convention regarding the forms of the grammar. Nevertheless, the theory of syntactic features developed earlier is rather different from a descriptive fact. In the discussion of resumptive pronouns following (81), the systematic use of complex symbols is, apparently, determined by the system of base rules exclusive of the lexicon. So far, the natural general principle that will subsume this case is to be regarded as the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar...."For students the Chomskybot can give you the same leg up in linguistics that postmodern literature aficionados (and Richard Dawkins!*) have enjoyed via the Postmodernism Generator:
Derridaist reading and Lyotardist narrativeHere's Dawkins writing for Nature:
Stefan N. H. Geoffrey
Department of Politics, Oxford University
1. Textual appropriation and subcultural desublimation
If one examines Derridaist reading, one is faced with a choice: either accept Lyotardist narrative or conclude that sexual identity, ironically, has objective value. If Derridaist reading holds, we have to choose between subcultural desublimation and the textual paradigm of context.
It could be said that the main theme of the works of Joyce is the role of the reader as participant. Lacan uses the term ‘Lyotardist narrative’ to denote the difference between society and narrativity.
However, in Dubliners, Joyce deconstructs subcultural desublimation; in Ulysses, however, he denies Derridaist reading. Several theories concerning the role of the writer as reader may be discovered.
2. Expressions of stasis The characteristic theme of Werther’s[1] essay on Lyotardist narrative is not narrative, but subnarrative. Thus, the example of textual theory depicted in Joyce’s Dubliners emerges again in Finnegan’s Wake, although in a more self-referential sense. The primary theme of the works of Joyce is the role of the observer as writer.
However, the premise of subcultural desublimation holds that narrative must come from the masses, but only if art is distinct from truth; otherwise, Marx’s model of Lyotardist narrative is one of “prepatriarchial situationism”, and hence fundamentally elitist. Any number of deappropriations concerning Derridaist reading exist....
Postmodernism DisrobedHe has pretty sharp eye, that whole review/essay is worth a read.
