Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Young FRANKenstein]

The only great thinkers I know:

Two Healthy Incomes, No Kids, Early Retirement

[Moldy Rutabaga]

To be more specific..

C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (a masterpiece) or The Problem of Pain (more difficult)
Camille Paglia - Break, blow, burn (it's about literature and not politics, but it does sound like a porn title, doesn't it? )
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel (already a classic)
John Kenneth Galbraith (there's a new compilation)
Alvin Toffler - The Third Wave
Harold Bloom - The Closing of the American Mind
Nicolas Ostler - Empires of the Word (fascinating history of languages with a sort of philosophical argument behind their spread)

Ken:>

[Zoobot]

Slavoj Zizek: analyzes popular culture with a nod to both Freud, Marx, and Lacan. Wrote the finest analysis of 9/11 to date "Welcome to the Desert of the Real." He was nominated to be Croatia's minister of culture and the arts, but he refused the post, claiming he'd rather be in charge of the secret service. He is also a Hitchcock aficionado.

[Satori]

I like Carl Jung. Things have moved on and he now seems a bit waffly and airy fairy. But at the time it was important to have a serious way of talking about the "soul" in a non religious context...

[Woland]

Let me throw out some more:

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner is a neat introduction to how paradigms from economics can be used to look at a lot of everyday situations. Learn why swimming pools are more dangerous than guns and why most drug gang members live with their mothers. Go here for an introduction to see if you are interested in the whole book: http://www.freakonomics.com/

Similar to it, but less lively and more interested in teaching economic principles is The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I'm in the middle of it now.

Anything by Steven Pinker. The Language Instinct and Words and Rules look specifically at linguistic questions. How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate explore broader areas of cognitive psychology.

Lastly, if you interested in languages and how they are similar to and different from one another in structure, try Mark Baker's The Atoms of Language. It explores in detail the parameters of Chomsky's Universal Grammar, arguing for a classificatory hierarchy of parameters that would let us make sense of the similarities and differences. You'll learn a lot about Mohawk and why it may be a particularly tough language for us English-speakers to learn.

[Rteacher]

The greatest thinker of modern times was A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada. Through his many books, lectures and letters he delivered the highest Vedic transcendental knowledge that constitutes the science of self-realization ...
http://www.prabhupadaconnect.com/
http://www.iskcon.com/about/parampara/srila_prabupada.html

[Satori]

[Fat_Elvis]

Thich Nhat Hanh is pretty good on Buddhism. Pick up just about anything by him and it'll have some good insights. D.T. Suzuki's writing on Zen isn't new but is interesting too.

I'd second however's call on Foucault too. His History of Sexuality is amazing, as is Discipline and Power.

Gilles Deleuze is good too, not terribly accessible though I find. Derrida even more so.

[spliff]

Foucault and Spliff...my undergrad major was 17th&18th century Modern European Intellectual History.

[ChopChaeJoe]

Paglia is funny, but she's more about being provacative and developing a following than actually making sense. I dig the part about women ruling men though. Timothy Leary said something to the effect that women trying to be equal to men was the ultimate in laziness, or lack of ambition or something. A friend of mine didn't get it. It's because you're a sexist a-hole, I told him.

Mark Leyner is pretty funny and his satire is suprizingly precise.

[Zoobot]

I am also a huge Foucault fan. Discipline and Punish is one of my favourite books. He participated in a televised debate with Chomsky (I personally think he whooped Chomsky's ass, but I'm a fanatic).

And while he isn't quite contemporary (a better word than modern), his impact on contemporary thought is unignorable and massive, so I have to bring up Nietzsche. His book on the presocratic greek philosophers (I think it's called Tragedy in the time of the Greeks) was one of the best mind-fucks I've ever had.

And Walter Benjamin's "Theses towards a Philosophy of History" is also one of the best mind-fucks ever crafted.

Pinker's a solid choice for Linguistics, I like James Clifford on Ethnography. I could go on and on because I'm such a nerd...

[hiua25]

I think Rteacher must be trolling Satori.

[the_beaver]

[ChopChaeJoe]

[The Chewbacca Defense]

Hunter S. Thompson

Terry Pratchett has a good grasp on things,