A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter : The New Yorker

The article described the extreme simplicity of the tribe’s living conditions and culture.

The Pirahã, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition.

via A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter : The New Yorker.

Non-English-based programming languages – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Non-English-based programming languages are computer programming languages that, unlike better-known programming languages, do not use keywords taken from, or inspired by, the English vocabulary.

Non-English-based programming languages are computer programming languages that, unlike better-known programming languages, do not use keywords taken from, or inspired by, the English vocabulary.

via Non-English-based programming languages – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Does Your Language Shape How You Think? – NYTimes.com

if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about.

via Does Your Language Shape How You Think? – NYTimes.com.
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Structuralism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically.

Structuralism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (written by Saussure’s colleagues after his death and based on student notes), the analysis focuses not on the use of language (called “parole,” or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called “langue”).

 

This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a “signifier” (the “sound pattern” of a word, either in mental projection—as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves—or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act) and a “signified” (the concept or meaning of the word).

structuralism: art as not autonomous

Structuralists view society and its rules as expressions of deep structures, often binary codes, that express our primary natures.

structuralism: art as not autonomous.

Structuralists view society and its rules as expressions of deep structures, often binary codes, that express our primary natures. A systematic study of such codes is semiotics, which was later hijacked by Poststructuralists as evidence that language alone provides a true reality.

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Litany Against Fear

The only completely dynamic pattern is Consciousness itself; other structures are static to a variable degree.

via Litany Against Fear.


I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
– Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear


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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The relationship between the two groups is simple: the System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The narrator is a “Calcutec,” a human data processor/encryption system who has been trained to use his subconscious as an encryption key. The Calcutecs work for the quasi-governmental System, as opposed to the criminal “Semiotecs” who work for the Factory and who are generally fallen Calcutecs.

The relationship between the two groups is simple: the System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it, although it is suggested that one man might be behind both. The narrator completes an assignment for a mysterious scientist, who is exploring “sound removal”.