I would like to welcome you to Non-Sense with the words of Linguistics Expert Noam Chomsky;
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”
This sentence was written by Naom Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The sentence is grammatically correct, yet the result is still nonsense. Using the concepts of contradiction, irrelevance and immaterial characteristics, he would create a sentence with absolutely no meaning, utter nonsense.
Yet, the human will to find meaning and relevance is strong. We could say that ‘green’ refers to a political party and that colorless could also mean ‘see through’ or ‘transparent’. So maybe there is a reference there to a suspicious political party. Perhaps ‘green’ refers to an emotion, and ‘colorless’ is referring to the lack of that emotion. Either way, our urge to create some form of meaning from absolute nonsense is very strong. This sentence was written with the intention of creating something nonsensical, once it was written, it’s meaning is set. Yet we will always create our own meanings which will differ from the original authors.
For some reason our natural impulse is to find meaning in randomness and nonsense. This same impulse is what drives people to believe in omens and divination, to find luck in coincidence, to hear voices from spirits, angels or EVP’s and to see faces in pieces of bread or breakfast cereal.
This is what NONSENSE is!
That is what NON-SENSE is all about!
Nonsense has it’s time and place in childhood, but there comes a point in a persons life that fantasy and reality become very black and white. For some it is a grey area, no real definition between reality and fantasy. Non-Sense will look at the nonsense that people believe. I will talk about any relevant nonsense that I have heard or seen in the mass media and other online debates I have entered into. There may be things that you may not agree with, but I hope that it makes you think about things from a rational light.
LATEST NEWS UPDATE AND INFORMATION:
The official Nonsense Podcast is now available. Click on the link in the top menu to go to the syndicated feed. Please subscribe through this or iTunes. I hope we can entertain and educate people.
Bringing you some rationality out of the latest in Australian news and Media. Plus a variety of other segments including investigations, skepticism, atheism and some great chats with famous skeptics and scientists, getting to your skeptic a little better.
IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING T-SHIRT SALES:
I will be releasing a range of skeptical t-shirts very soon. You may notice some pages relating to the sales or giving information on them, feel free to have a look but the merchandise section is not technically open yet. The pages may appear and disappear constantly until I have the system set up completely. Once this is complete I will notify everyone of the availability of merchandise. The sales of the merchandise will be helping to fund the expense of running the website and for the upcoming podcast series I will be releasing very soon.
The Big Rip Fundraiser is finally getting off the ground. There is a new video in the videos link, that has a demonstration of how to tear a phone book. Grab a phone book and check it out. Check out the Learning Links website at www.learninglinks.org.au. For more information about it, go to the The Big Rip Fundraiser link above or click here.
