tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33159158.post2251406356212351201..comments2024-02-25T20:07:56.114-06:00Comments on Mr. Verb: Colorless green ideasMr. Verbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04048931596146402872noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33159158.post-16337645836158323692007-02-23T09:37:00.000-06:002007-02-23T09:37:00.000-06:00Brilliant! (In several senses.) Thanks.Brilliant! (In several senses.) Thanks.Mr. Verbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04048931596146402872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33159158.post-45171406674849268222007-02-23T08:42:00.000-06:002007-02-23T08:42:00.000-06:00I think I know where Krugman (or his headline writ...I think I know where Krugman (or his headline writer) got the idea. See <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/review/Holt.t.html?" REL="nofollow">this</A> from last Sunday's NYT Book Review (Jim Holt reviewing Michael Frayn's <I>The Human Touch</I>):<BR/><BR/><I>Philosophers these days rarely write fat tomes taking on the whole gamut of philosophical themes: space and time, language and truth, determinism and free will, consciousness and the self. But this is what Frayn has done, with immense erudition (especially linguistic) and more than a dash of wit. Remember “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” the famous sentence Noam Chomsky offered as a paradigm of grammatical nonsense? Well, Frayn has no trouble figuring out what it means: “Uninspired ecological proposals, we understand after a couple of seconds’ thought, lie dormant in spite of the anger that gave rise to them.”</I>Ben Zimmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02927962158447853691noreply@blogger.com