[AccessD] Error trying to install MzTools

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Tue Nov 27 11:09:13 CST 2012


Reminds me of a very old joke or three, and before you reply to this, let's
start a new thread on the subject. The old joke (or more accurately,
T-shirt or license-plate sticker, is this:

*Real programmers don't use compilers; they write compilers.*

Which excludes me and most of the people on this list, I suspect. But come
next U of T semester, now that I have discovered that U of T allows senior
citizens free tuition, I plan to enroll in a course in compiler
construction. I have a bold old concept for a programming language.
Tentatively it's called Chomsky, and it does what you meant, not what you
wrote. Tough nut to crack, I admit, but as I grow Older I also grow Bolder,
just like a waving flag! (A song by a Canadian called K'naan, which became
the last World Cup (football) song; see
https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&tbo=d&q=k%27naan+wavin%27+flag&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAGOovnz8BQMDgw4HsxCnfq6-gVmRkUmlEheImZZtYWKYqyXoW1qcmexYVJJZXBKSH5yfl_5eM8j0pObbpfcbNhtxWcw-9pNpzwEAdRfLXUkAAAA&sa=X&ei=lfG0UI_kHKaFywGehoDACQ&sqi=2&ved=0CMMBEMQNMBU&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=6048e1ecd4849dfb&bpcl=38897761&ion=1&biw=1007&bih=834to
hear it.

For those unacquainted with Noam Chomsky, at the tender age of 26 he
revolutionized the study of linguistics, and a part of that project was to
issue the death-blow to Sknnerism. Historically, J.P. Sartre did it first,
on a different level, in The Phenomenology of Mind, but his proof was
widely ignored due primarily to its imprecision, and it remained for the
young Chomsky to utterly demolish and leave devastated a
philosophy/psychology that ruled for decades, but was a stack of cards
erected upon falsehood after falsehood after falsehood.

I think that in the current situation, virtually no one gives even the
slightest credence to Behaviorism, but occasionally I do stumble upon
vestiges of this arcane dogma. The feeling is rather akin to stumbling upon
someone who actually subscribes to Scientology or Astrology. The baffling
thing is that now and then these people otherwise exhibit a modicum of
intelligence. Go figure.

A.


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