"what makes the desert beautiful..."

It should also be pointed out that, a priori, the proposal of innately prespecified parameters of variation in a cognitive skill is an extremely implausible biological mechanism. To my knowledge, no one has proposed anything remotely similar for any other cognitive or social skills that human beings possess. For example, such skills as music and mathematics are, like language, unique to humans and universal among human groups, with some variations. But no one has to date proposed anything like Universal Music or Universal Mathematics, and no one has as yet proposed any parameters of these abilities to explain cross-culturaldiversity (e.g.,+/- mathematical variables, which some but not all cultures use in such things as algebra – or certain tonal patterns in music). Perhaps these empirical and logical problems with parameters are the reason that many contemporary theories (e.g., Minimalism; Chomsky 1995) no longer make use of them. So parameters as theoretical constructs have not worked empirically, and the immediate prospects for progress do not seem promising.

I fear my anger. So I displace it, attach it to peripheral places or people. The real problem is what to do with the anger. I have stifled it so long that I have packed it like dynamite, I have stored it and now it threatens to come out in explosions I fear.

For tens, and perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years, people regarded language as a holy instrument that let them look out upon the world… Only in the last few decades have people suspected that their window on the world has a glass that gives a distorted view.

Holding on to anything is like holding on to your breath. You will suffocate. The only way to get anything in the physical universe is by letting go of it.