An article combining exotic travel and a debate on linguistic theory: “The Interpreter,
Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?”
An article for historically minded nerds on an ancient Greek brass machine: “Fragmentary Knowledge”.
From the July 2, 2007 issue: “Hedge Clipping” (an exploration of hedge funds and whether it is possible to replicate their results without paying 20 percent in fees). Also, an analysis of Barack Obama’s undergraduate poetry by Harold Bloom, who says the poetry is “not bad”. Looking at Jimmy Carter’s 1994 book of poems, Bloom says that “Jimmy Carter is in my judgment literally the worst poet in the United States.”
Thanks for the link Phil. That first article was great and further reinforces what a great mag The New Yorker is.
It made me think of the following piece from another fine mag:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200203/mann
I discuss linguistic relativilty in my anthropology intro course every semester and this article came out the same week we discussed it this semester. I was impressed by how well the artilce summarized all the different things that I wanted to cover. I decided I would just assign this artilce next year instead of the “for” and “against” pieces I have been using to stimulate debate. Still, there are alot of questions that remain about this language that will require reading Everett’s journal articles.
“Monkeys go to the jungle” (not upriver, or downriver). This comment made by the Piraha man to the Chomskyan experimenter (in the first article) made me laugh out loud. Why? Because of the “immediacy-of-experience principle”? (It seems to me there is some generalisation in there.) Would the Piraha man understand why his comment is funny to me? Linguistics is fascinating stuff. What does it have to say about humour?