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Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

I was struck by a concatenation of thoughts yesterday (honestly!). I had just finished reading a summary of Karl Popper’s thought (the greatest scientific philosopher ever, in my ‘umble opinion; a balanced synopsis appears here, with useful links to other sites), I’d just seen an article on psychological research into the basis for neurolinguistic programming (again, good summary in Wikipedia), and I was watching the dog dreaming on the sofa.

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As a linguist, I’m increasingly fascinated by the articulation of ideas – where do we get the words that we use so easily and effusively in our daily conversations?

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I was recently speaking with someone in a call centre about renewing our subscription to a weekly marketing journal. I was a little dismayed, because I had resubmitted our subscription three times previously – once by their web-enabled procedure, once using their pre-printed form, and once by fax. Apparently none of these methods had worked, so ‘phoning seemed to be the next route to explore.

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What with everybody celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th, I find myself musing once again on the mystery that is evolution. While creationism has always seemed ridiculous to me – the equivalent of holding a double-barrelled shotgun to your head and pulling one of the two triggers – I have to say that the randomist view of evolution that irritatingly self-satisfied men such as Richard Dawkins witter on about also offends me.

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