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Arizona 9/11 Memorial

October 14, 2006, 5:30 pm

I haven't really commented much on the local brouhaha over the Arizona 9/11 Memorial.  In short, critics argue the memorial does little to honor the actual victims, and spends too much time with irrelevant trivia and "America asked for it" messages.  The whole kerfuffle just reinforces my point that it takes time to gain a historical perspective on anything, and rushing to change building names or build monuments or put people on currency can often lead to decisions that are embarrassing given a bit more time for historical perspective to develop.

That being said, I thought this was a pretty good investigative report on the influences behind the memorial design (you may or may not be non-plussed by the alt-weekly writing style).  Of course, since it is impossible to get any real reporting out of our main paper, the story comes from our alternative free weekly, which runs rings around the Republic in terms of investigative reporting.

Tags: ,
Category: Arizona

2 Comments

  1. MesaEconoGuy:

    I have no idea what this guy (?) is saying, other than (apparently) Noam Chomsky was a resource for the 9/11 Memorial, which is about to be “renovated,” with good reason. And he (?) spelled “funyon” wrong.

    Noam Chomsky couldn’t even get his Chinese box right.

    This idiot is the height of academic arrogance:

    “QUESTION: Do we genetically inherit this knowledge?
    CHOMSKY: Yes, we must. In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.
    QUESTION: Does it mean that this genetic basis of language is universal?
    CHOMSKY: Yes, that's right. But we are only one species. You can imagine a different world in which a number of species developed with different genetically determined linguistic systems. It hasn't happened in evolution. What has happened is that one species has developed, and the genetic structure of this species happens to involve a variety of intricate abstract principles of linguistic organization that, therefore, necessarily constrain every language, and, in fact, create the basis for learning language as a way of organizing experience rather than constituting something learned from experience.”

    He obviously knows this from first-hand experience on the planets "Dumbass 2" and "Gullible Freakazoid Prime.

    October 18, 2006, 7:51 pm

  2. Jack Benway:

    The architects behind this memorial are the sister and brother-in-law of a childhood friend of mine. His reaction to 9/11 was to re-enlist at age 35 to go fight in Iraq. His sister spat at her country.

    One can't illustrate the divisiveness of this issue better than that.

    October 22, 2006, 3:03 am