19:19 UTC:

I asked Arnia recently whether he'd write up a couple of essays for me, one on the recent advances in linguistics, and the other on magic and science. Much to my delight, he's published one on the former subject, Approaching Human Understanding with Cognitive Science: “In this essay I have introduced four of the most important elements of cognitive theory at this present time; image schemata, generalised metaphor, radiality and narrative.” This is very handy because although it's clear that all of these sorts of things are going on in the field at the moment, it's difficult to get to grips with which are the most important and how they all interact. Arnia's essay makes all that clear, and links off to background reading should you need it. Thanks Arnia!

19:44 UTC:

Whereas I wondered recently how we're supposed to go about “creating new myths in a period when science tends to drown myth out”, I should note that this simply doesn't seem to apply to music at all. You can make up new folk songs just fine and, if you're good enough, nobody knows whether they're new or old, or, at the least, doesn't particularly care. The first example that came to mind was Farewell, Farewell by Richard Thompson, on Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief. An album of gems, some historical and some by the band; very much a concept album, as Swarb calls it.