Re: Salinger's Problem with Westerners?

Anti-theory sentiment almost always relies on setting up academics as
vain, sequestered ideologues who are agressively obscure in the way they
write and talk. Reading pieces like Morningstar's, one wonders whether
there will be any straw left over to feed all the high horses.

There are at least a half-dozen or so internet-circulated lampoons in
the same tradition. They all appeal to a simple world in which people
can trade in plain commodities like Truth and Fact, and they're all
fairly righteous about what's simple and obvious. The implication
usually is that theory has no practical application and no appreciable
effect on the Real World.

Such sentiment sounds silly to me in the context of what is often a plea
for common sense. Moreover, I'm struck by the way arguments like
Morningstar's make such studied use of rhetorical subtleties like the
dismissive-agressive "I must be stupid" gesture, which is a disguised
way of saying just the opposite. A case of the sly calling the clever
cunning

Incidentally, I would have given the guy an "A" on his deconstruction of
the Kennedy statement.

--
"Engineers and physicists 
don't make 
value judgements,
except when 
they make value judgements,"
Matt
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