-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
Meta
Blogroll
Monthly Archives: November 2010
The joys of analytic philosophy: A paradox
No comment really required, except that I found this amusing.
Posted in miscellany
Leave a comment
Friday Music: Thisbe’s Choice
In honor of my daughter’s first birthday, I’m posting one of Thisbe‘s favorite performers, Aretha Franklin. This is a nice performance of Rock Steady (from Soul Train, circa 1971): The whole time Jennifer was pregnant, we had a running joke that … Continue reading
Cheap Talk
Game theorists spend a lot of time thinking about signaling in situations where there is asymmetric information. These are cases where one player knows more than another player; the first player may want to signal something (for strategic advantage) or … Continue reading
Posted in game theory, linguistic meaning
Tagged Erving Goffman, Game, Game theory, Nash equilibrium, Pareto efficiency, Prisoner's dilemma
1 Comment
Entrenchment: “Befriend” vs. “friend”
In “Old words, new meanings,” I talked a little about how words can come to occupy semantic niches; really, this is just the question of how words can come to express the meanings that they express. The idea is that … Continue reading
Posted in linguistic meaning
Tagged Dictionaries, Emergence, Etymology, Facebook, Friendship, Language, Linguistics, Nelson Goodman, Social network, Social Sciences, Word
1 Comment
Stephen Fry on language
A nice oration by Stephen Fry, illuminated with kinetic typography.
Posted in miscellany
1 Comment
Old words, new meanings
In 2009, the Oxford English Dictionary made “unfriend” the word of the year. The word is so new, in fact, that my electronic dictionary doesn’t have it. The entry it gives for “unfriended” is: without friends : murder left … Continue reading
