Michael Giberson Will Wilkinson points to a post by Joshua Knobe discussing a philosophy experiment conducted by U. of Arizona philosophers Chris Freiman and Shaun Nichols. Here is how Knobe describes the experiment: Subjects were randomly assigned either to receive [an] ‘abstract’ question or a ‘concrete.’ Subjects who had been assigned to receive an abstract …
Fairness Reasoning in the Abstract and the Concrete Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I found the juxtaposition of two recent articles (found via Arts & Letters Daily) on language quite interesting. Wine writer Colin Bower is frustrated with the use of simile and metaphor in wine writing: why can’t we describe the experience of tasting a wine in a direct, factual way, without the use of …
Michael Giberson Just like some people enjoy comic books with the same formulaic story line issue after issue, I never get tired of stories in which lawyers play the supervillain. Virginia Postrel blogs about her latest Atlantic article — about superhero glamour — and includes a kicker about how IP lawyers for DC/Marvel blew a …
Aggressive Ip Lawyers Trump Smart Business Strategy Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I love $10 words; my favorite is concatenation, as in “an unforeseen concatenation of circumstances”. I know I used it in my dissertation, and I think I lifted it from P.G. Wodehouse (out of the mouth of Jeeves, naturally). Thus I particularly enjoyed Jack Shafer’s Slate column from Friday on Martin Peretz’s use …
Michael Giberson Elsewhere in the econ blog world, Tyler Cowen notes a new paper, Poetry in Economics, by Emory University’s Hugo Mialon. Mialon examines the effect on citation counts of employing rhetorical figures in the titles of economics articles. He finds, among other things, that adding a rhetorical figure to the title of an empirical …
Low-hanging Fruit for Economists Chasing Citation Counts? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling That is how much I like him, that I am willing to break from KP title protocol … I’m putting the whimsically allegorical poem that Kurt Elling read on Wednesday after the cut, if you are interested. Here’s the first stanza as a teaser: here is little Effie’s head whose brains are made …
Lynne Kiesling Last week while I was in nose-to-grindstone mode (and traveling too), Russ Roberts had a very nice post on the difficulties of the word “spontaneous” in “spontaneous order”, and in general the challenge that we dynamic, forward-looking, spontaneous order folks have in communicating our ideas clearly and persuasively. Like Russ, I have changed …
Lynne Kiesling Adam over at Arthur’s Seat has announced a mini saga contest: A Mini Saga must be exactly 50 words. A Mini Saga must tell a story. The story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The title may have no more than 10 words, and is not counted as part of …
Lynne Kiesling Today’s word from A Word A Day is one of my favorites: execrable (EK-si-kruh-buhl) adjective Detestable; wretched. [From Middle English, from Latin execrabilis (accursed), from execrari (to curse), from ex- + sacrare (to consecrate). Ultimately from Indo-European root sak- (to sanctify) that is also the source of other words such as saint, consecrate, …
Lynne Kiesling Today the Wall Street Journal had a story about students writing poetry inspired by WSJ stories (subscription required) for Emily Farrell’s English class in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The story included excerpts from some of the poems. My favorite: The thing about technology is A public with mobile cellphones That is Internet based and Googles …
Wsj’s Risky Proposals And Sweetheart Deals For Valentine’s Day Read More »
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