How do words acquire meaning?

Philosopher Stephen Law examines how words get their meanings. He says that when I say “It is hot today”, it is at one level just a process by which sounds are articulated. A parrot saying the same thing is also just a process. But the difference is that when I say it, I am conveying meaning in a way that a parrot is not. From whence does this meaning arise? Law says that Ludwig Wittgenstein took a different view of this question than John Locke (1632-1704)
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How could he not realize that he had been pranked?

I have been invited to to give many talks to various organizations. Since I am not famous, it is not clear how many will turn up for the talk. It all depends on how much effort the hosts put into generating interest. Sometimes the audience has been as few as about five people and this can be a little disconcerting if you have traveled a long way to give the talk, especially if the venue is a large auditorium and you are looking out at a sea of empty seats. But the show must go on and I still give it my best shot. The few people who have taken the trouble to come and listen to me, even if it were just a single person, deserve nothing less.
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Socialist set to become mayor of Buffalo

An avowed socialist is poised to become mayor of the city of Buffalo, upsetting the four-time incumbent in the Democratic primary race held on Tuesday. The city is heavily Democratic, so much so that no Republican is even running for mayor so she is almost certain to win the mayoral election in November.

In her lifetime, India Walton has been a 14-year-old working mother, a nurse, a union representative and a socialist community organizer.

…

Walton’s platform outlines plans to tackle a local affordable housing crisis and declare Buffalo a sanctuary city for immigrants, which limits a local jurisdiction’s cooperation with federal enforcement o f immigration law. And also the intention to convert the city’s fleet of public vehicles to electric cars in an effort to address climate change.
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Disgraceful! Biden continues Cuba blockade

Joe Biden has demonstrated that when it comes to Cuba, he is continuing a cruel and outdated Cold war policy of blockading Cuba despite overwhelming opposition from the rest of the world. The increasing isolation is seen by 184 nations in the UN calling for an end, with only the US and Israel voting to continue it.


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The perilous allure of glamor

One of the mystifying things about the Jeffrey Epstein saga is how many well-known scientists were sucked into his orbit even after his conviction for pedophilia. Daniel Engber writes about what it was like to be a scientist in Epstein’s circle.

It’s summer 2010, and Jeffrey Epstein has just returned to New York City after serving out an 18-month sentence in Palm Beach, Florida, including parole, for soliciting prostitution from a minor. He’s hosting dinner at his townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. To his left is John Brockman, the literary superagent who seems to represent every scientist who’s ever written a bestselling book (Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Daniel Kahneman, and so forth). Brockman has brought along a client—a young professor whose line of research interests Epstein. Across the table, and to Epstein’s right, is an aspiring fashion model and her companion.
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When an unscripted interview goes wildly wrong

Some interviewers of authors have not read the books prior to broadcast and depend on the authors to drive the interview. In this clip from the comedy show Newhart, Bob Newhart plays Dick Loudon who runs a B&B with his wife in rural Vermont but also hosts a local TV show about books. We see an interview that goes wildly wrong because he and his staff have not read the book. But his guest would not be considered that unusual today.

How effective are voting restrictions in restricting voting?

It has long been conventional wisdom that having more people vote is good for Democrats while having fewer people vote is good for Republicans. How strong the empirical basis for this belief is is not clear but that seems to no longer matter because the Republican party especially is committed to this idea and Donald Trump’s loss has just cemented it further. As a result, Republican controlled legislatures across the country are changing rules and enacting laws that make voting harder. In particular, they are taking measures that are targeted towards making voting more difficult in areas that are predominantly minority.
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The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Recently there has been an upsurge of interest into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the one that causes covid-19, with speculation that it may not have originated by mutating spontaneously into a form that could transfer from animals to humans but that it may have been leaked from a research laboratory that does work on such viruses. Most proponents of the lab leak theory have suggested that the leak was accidental but a few have suggested a darker possibility of deliberate release.

I have been trying to make sense of the debate and found this article by Mara Hvistendahl to be helpful in sorting through the various claims. Hvistendahl had been in China when the avian flu virus broke out in 2013 and she had visited the lab of a prominent researcher and avian flu expert Chen Hualan who had been doing the so-called ‘gain of function’ research that is seen by some as an indicator that the covid-19 virus did not come about by accident.
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Alfred Hitchcock preferred suspense over shock

I do not like violent films with a lot of blood and gore but am a big fan of the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock was rightly called the ‘master of suspense’ and in this brief interview he explains the difference with what he tried to do and what one sees in some other films.

He said that he wanted the audience to use their imaginations about what is going on rather than telling them and so he did not actually show the violence. For example, in the famous shower scene in Psycho, one does not actually see the victim being stabbed and blood spurting all over the place. One sees her screaming, one sees the assailant in silhouette making stabbing motions, one hears the screeching music rise to a crescendo, and one sees dark fluid representing blood swirling down the drain. All that is more than enough for the viewer to imagine what happened.