somebody wrote a perfect thing
And it was Alex Balk! Doesn’t happen very often, you guys.
Continue reading →Month: December 2013
I always assumed the purpose of writing was to be alone
I have always known that writing is a selfish activity. For me, it’s just a method to become more fully myself, and I take it as self-evident that you become yourself through the rejection of others. I know people will find that pretentious. But, again– it doesn’t matter what other people think; it’s for […]
Continue reading →why Twitter is not for me, personally
So here’s a really good example of why Twitter is not for me. This is in response to a piece by Malcolm Gladwell on Tom Scocca’s smarm piece. Now, like all decent people, I have savaged Gladwell in the past, and I generally think that his work leaves people with a worse understanding of the […]
Continue reading →Dear Purdue: Don’t Rebuild. Retreat.
I have written a (futile, naturally) please to my university to get out of the football business. Check it out.
Continue reading →ecological validity and authentic tests
Validity, as you likely know, typically refers to how well a given experimental or test instrument actually measures the given construct it is meant to measure. If an experiment is meant to test vocabulary knowledge, for example, then its validity is dependent on how well it actually assesses and reports the vocabulary knowledge of its […]
Continue reading →if it were easy to get out of, nobody’d be in it
So probably my best instinct is just to point out that this long post by Tom Scocca on smarm was followed, just a few posts later, by a post titled “Monkey Teaches Man to Play His Favorite Game.” It’s a perfect argument in and of itself, and if I were smarter, I’d just leave it […]
Continue reading →eyes on the prize
As I’ve written many times, the plight of the adjunct in American colleges and universities is a true nightmare, and a profound stain on the character of those colleges and universities. You could read all about it in more detail and at greater length than I can present here, so it’s enough to say that […]
Continue reading →minimalism is not the cure
I disagree with Matt Yglesias on many things. (I would say “we disagree on many things,” but I’m sure he doesn’t spend any time thinking about me at all.) I’m also not a fan of his writing as writing, as craft. So I might be expected to be the natural audience for this takedown of […]
Continue reading →some links for AI skeptics
It’s not unusual for me to feel exasperated by things I read online, but reading this piece on “sentient code” from VentureBeat had me throwing my hands in the air. It’s everything wrong with popular writing about artificial intelligence: filled with hype, vague where specificity is needed most, and generally credulous in a breathless, gee-whiz […]
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