Top Lad Noam

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"This is a Bucket" "Dear God" "There's more" "Noam!"
A joke (that isn't even funny) I spent way too long figuring out how to make in photoshop.


Look at this man. This is Noam Chomsky. He appeared in chapter 8 of I'm Right and You're an Idiot in which he offered insight regarding the institutional nature of problems within corporations. He explained that companies are hyper focused on short term gains and are unconcerned with anything happening outside the market. Except, of course, politics. Companies will spend hefty amounts of money to ensure that laws and policies do not hinder them and/or directly benefit them. But I am not really here to talk about all that; I wanna talk about the man, the myth, the legend: Noam Chomsky. 

So here is the only first section: its all Noam.

"wait, its all Noam?" "Always has been"

This class marks the third time I have encountered Noam between my studies at BSU and Ivy Tech, and I sincerely doubt it will be the last. My first encounter with Noam was in an Anthropology course I took at Ivy Tech. Turns out Noam has a lot to say about how to ethically research other cultures. I think; that class was 3 years ago. . . Regardless, he was there, somewhere. 

My next encounter with him was in my Linguists for Educators course. This makes a whole lot of sense; Noam is heralded as "The Father of Modern Linguistics". He created the theories of Universal and Generative Grammar. Those two theories (more or less) make up the foundation for our current understanding of how people (especially children) learn and acquire language.

But that's not enough for this him! Now he is out here in this class spitting political theories about companies and how they function in our society! Where does it end!? Next thing you know, he is going to be making theories relevant to computer science! Chomsky Hierarchy  W h a t

Everywhere I go, I see [Noam Chomsky's] face

He really is just everywhere. Analytic Philosophy? Sure, he is a founder of cognitive science. Or, so an unsourced sentence on his Wikipedia page claims. Level with you though, I believe it. His more sourced appearances are as a cognitive scientist, philosopher, historian, social critic, and a political activist. What a list, the man gets around! He has more than 150 published books. If one could accomplish half the things Noam has, they would have lived a full life. Truly Noam Chomsky is one of the tallest giants whose shoulders we stand on. 

In awe of the size of these lads

I could go on listing things from his Wikipedia page, but I figure that's enough from me. What did you think of his words in chapter 8? Has Noam come up in your classes before? Am I nuts for spending close to an hour making these bad Noam edits? How does one even go about doing all the different shit Noam has done? What do you think of this last edit?

"Life from the Noam" a play on Magic the Gathering's "Life from the loam"

Thank you and Goodnight.

Comments

  1. SamApril 2, 2021 at 8:44 AM

    I'll begin by saying that you surely didn't waste your time with these lovely edits. In all honesty, I'd only heard the name Noam Chomsky maybe one or twice before this class, and I'd thought he was a guy who had already died a while ago... But he raises some good points--if corporations were each a person, that person would definitely be an a-hole in the least, and likely psychopathic as well. It's really a shame how much money factors into a business's actions these days, as individual employees may care about genuinely good service/products/charity but they just become another tiny, inconsequential amoeba in the giant multicellular organismic monster that is the corporation. Did that sound a little gross? I had meant it to be. I hold a disdain for those rich founders who could cure all of world hunger with only 1/16 of their money yet do nothing!

    But oops, I'm doing just what Chomsky said not to do: making the corp head the bad guy. But I sincerely believe that while not all of them are "bad", certain unnamed *ahem* ones are greedy and unnecessarily selfish, which is what provokes my disdain for them.

    But because modern society requires money for pretty much anything, I don't think corporations will change anytime soon, and the media's glorification of money and richness will push plenty of corp heads to just hoard "mY pReCiouSssSs" riches.

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    Replies
    1. LiamApril 2, 2021 at 12:49 PM

      You know, I totally forgot to mention in the post that Noam is still alive. He is 92 and only barely looks it.

      Delete
  2. mstemApril 4, 2021 at 10:57 AM

    Noam Chomsky has not come up from what I remember in my other classes. Though I have heard of him. This is mostly through reading books such as United States of Socialism (pretend all book titles in this post are italicized) by Dines D'Sousa and Debunking Howard Zinn by Mary Grabar (though this is more focused on Howard Zinn and Debunking his work 'The People's History of the United States). i can say I don't necessarily agree with his solution to the problem of corporate corruption. As we have seen in things like lobbying people find loopholes in laws to get away with what they want. While some regulation is good, it may be good to ask to what degree should corporations be regulated. If there is too little regulation (as Chomksy and Joel Bakan argue) this may very well lead to (or have led) to the corporate corruption we have today. On the other hand, too much regulation may encourage companies to go "offshore" and seek other markets with less regulation thus causing job loss in the Untied States.

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  3. Claire D.April 29, 2021 at 9:09 PM

    I think your photoshop skills are pretty good Liam! Definitely better than mine! Noam has funnily enough not been mentioned in any of my previous classes, this is the first time. I have heard of him though. I also do not agree with everything from Noam. We have to play the game of "we have to be firm but not too firm" when it comes to regulation. We need to have some so that corporations cannot go wild and do whatever they want at the expense of the American people, but we also cannot make their lives hard enough that they consider leaving the US and outsourcing for labor.

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