Cosma

I'll Put Down What I'm Doing

Stuff I put on my home page back when the Web was quite new (i.e., 1994). I'm not prepared to stand by any of it, but I hope they're not all completely worthless.
``On Chomsky: A `Study in Total Depravity'. ''
Why Chomsky, while deservedly extremely eminent, is not as towering a figure as many people think. (My subtitle is stolen from Veblen's classic book on The Higher Learning in America.) Responsible for more irate mail than anything else I've written.
The Four Post-Modernizations
A mercifully-failed attempt at prophecy.
Jesus Cthulhu
``Cthulhu saves, in case he's hungry later.''
Oblivion Her Poppy
Interlinked, almost free-associated pieces of prose about drugs and development and corruption and violence, memory and history and family and decay. An attempt at being hypertextual and poetic, from a pretty linear and prosaic person.
William James at CERN: Some Examples of Selection in Minds and Compters
``Sing, Ye Countinghouse Muses''
A term paper on musicians, commerce, aristocracy and the uses of myths in ancient Greece.
The Story So Far
An attempt at spinning out a deliberately absurd conspiracy theory. A failed specimen of the genre: not vicious enough.

I should say something about that awful noise those of you looking at this with Internet Explorer are hearing. It's William Shatner (yes, him) singing ``Mr. Tambourine Man.'' It will play over and over again while you view this page. You can thank Microsoft's meddling with the HTML standard for this pleasure. Well, and me of course, but they actually regard it as a feature. (If you have another browser and feel left out, by all means list to the song as a .wav or .snd file.)