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Hau muC tym dew kids wayst lerning tew spel ingliS? Sudent we 3ther standerdeys 0n a simplifeyd speling sistem or just ubandun speling cunvenCins oltewgether? And hau muC tym is lost lerning to r3d? I caym ucross the Spelling Society wiC advocayts speling r3form and 0lso Wyrdplay wiC arcayvs a number of simplifayd speling sistems raynjing frum the totul3 fonetic tew sistems wiC are intended tew bey incrementul steps toword r3form. This wun I am yewsing is just mayd up bayst 0n luking at a few uf them.
- Dont thinc that deveyces will mayk the pr0blem mewt. Yes my iPhone pr3dicts wut I am reyting but onl3 b3cus I spel the furst few letters curectl3.
- The pr0blem with fonetic sistems is that BritiS and Umericun werds wud be speld diferently.
- I expect that informul speling cunvenCuns wil 3merj sewn withaut a t0p-daun iniSitiv. Instunt mesujing is the furst big r3sun for kids to reyt tew 3C uther. Til nau, kids talct to 3c uther but rot onl3 tew thayr t3Cers. Thay develupt informul spocen layngwij ul0ngseyd the formul layngwij. This is hapening nau with reyting. Just as informul spocen layngwij perm3ayts the formul, this wil hapen with the ritin langwij. 3ven morso b3cus uf the 3fiSens3 gayns.
- This wud b3 a thing uf the past.
(C0nversaySin with Wolfgang and Tomek acn0lijd.)
A game-theorists’ term derived from the commonplace admonishment “Talk is Cheap.” To say that “talk is cheap” is to suggest that words have no meaning because they don’t raise the stakes. “Actions speak louder than words.” Or, to quote the game theorist Yogi Berra “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” Our casual understanding that the meaning of words derives solely from their ultimate consequences demonstrates that we have deep game-theoretic instincts.
But game theory is useful because with careful study we arrive at insights one or more steps beyond our instincts. And indeed, upon further reflection, just because talk is cheap does not imply by itself that words have no meaning. In fact “cheap talk” can and often does matter because it enables credible exchange of information provided such communication is consistent with self-interested motives. Even though talk is cheap, when upon landing at O’Hare, I phone my taxi dispatcher and tell him I am ready to be picked up at the curbside, he believes me and sends a cab.
Moreover, cheap talk is credible even when there is substantial conflict of interest between the talker and the listener. Despite my claims to the contrary, the dispatcher knows that I am actually calling from inside the airplane and I am not at the curbside yet and he delays the dispatch long enough so that the driver arrives at the curbside after me and not before.
Suprisingly, talk can be credible sometimes only because it is cheap. If instead of me, it is an uninterested third-party who calls the dispatcher to send a cab, the dispatcher knows that she has no reason to say anything other than the truth, and the dispatcher sends the cab immediately.
A final digression on the genesis of the phrase “cheap talk” as a term of art in game theory. It is tempting to suppose that the popularity of the phrase derives from the irony that the logic of incentive-compatible communication turns the idea that “talk is cheap” on its head. But the origin of the phrase is something of a mystery. The first game theorists to demonstrate the role of communication in strategic interactions were Vince Crawford and Joel Sobel in their hugely important paper “Strategic Information Transmission” Interestingly, a quick search through the text of that paper reveals that neither “cheap” nor “talk” appears anywhere in the paper.
(dinner conversation with Dilip, Tomek, Stephen and Sylvain acknowledged.)
“Even when used as an expletive, the F-word’s power to insult and offend derives from its sexual meaning,” Scalia said.
No, it derives from the fact that they can’t say it on television. Thank you Justice Scalia for preserving its power and reserving it for the little guy.
What’s your favorite crisis euphemism?
In trying to rebrand dodgy financial instruments, treasury secretaries like Paulson and Timothy Geithner are continuing a recent tradition. So much of the finance sector’s innovation in the past 30 years, it turns out, wasn’t developing new stuff, but rather developing new ways of talking about pre-existing stuff. In the 1980s, labeling risky debt offerings as junk bonds was an intentionally ironic feint (pros knew that the instruments possessed real value). But as junk bonds went mainstream in the 1990s, they evolved into “high-yield debt”—their liability became an asset. Frank Partnoy, a reformed derivatives trader who teaches law at the University of San Diego, recalls that at Morgan Stanley in the 1990s, “we were constantly coming up with new acronyms” to describe similar financial instruments. The goal: to present products, some of which had been discredited, in a more favorable light.
I like “distressed assets.” Clearly the poor damsels need to be rescued from those nasty banks. Or is the image rather one of “gently used” furniture?
The article is “Bubblespeak” and it’s at Slate.com. (nod to Language Log.)
Scrabble point revaluation in the works?
“Za,” “qi” and “zzz” were added recently to the game’s official word list for its original English-language edition. Because Z’s and Q’s each have the game’s highest point value of 10, those monosyllabic words can rack up big scores for relatively little effort. So now that those high-scoring letters are more versatile, some Scrabble aficionados would like to see the rules changed — which would be the only change since Alfred Butts popularized the game in 1948.
Let’s kill two birds with one stone. Eliminate the role of chance in scrabble by having players buy their letters rather than draw them at random. Whenever a player needs to replenish his tiles, a tile is turned over and put up for auction. Players bid for the tile with points. A player who already has seven tiles who wins the auction selects one of his tiles to replace and puts that tile up for auction. This continues until all players have seven tiles.
This removes chance from the game and also eliminates the need to revalue the tiles because that will be taken care of endogenously by competitive bidding.
Update: Free Exchange at http://www.economist.com makes fun of me.
Obama gave an interview yesterday on TV where he was asked about nationalizing banks. His response is an interesting look into the way the administration thinks about things, comparing the US to Japan and Sweden. You can read a transcript here.
What caught my eye was his use of the word “like” in the following excerpt (second sentence.)
So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks.
This is the so-cal “like.” It stands for “about” or in this case “not many more than.” It lends an informality to the sentence which adds to its comical and therefore rhetorical punch. On top of that it brings the President further down to Earth even when talking about something esoteric like bank nationalization.
I like it. Is this the first occurence of the so-cal “like” in Presidential prose?
Be wary though, this mild version is the gateway “like” to more serious transgressions such as “We were discussing TARP and Geithner is like, ‘No way Larry, I am the Treasury Secretary and I say no caps on executive pay’ and then, like, Summers is all ‘Whatever.’ “
Suppose you are going to say something that is literally true but you know in advance that your listener will misinterpret you and be led to believe something false. If you say it anyway, are you lying?
Conversely, is it a lie to say a falseshood if you know that, because you will be misinterpreted, this is the only way to get your listener to believe in what is actually true?
Cheap Talk 