Walking while social distancing
In order to stay healthy while social distancing, we need to go outside and get some exercise. In even moderately populated areas, however, there is a conflict between maintaining social distance and moving through the outdoors. Many I have spoken with have been frustrated by encounters in which they believe someone else has behaved antisocially.
A DDOS attack on the mind
The recent media and news cycle has gotten so short that we no longer have time to process the goings on in the world and respond to them before something else happens. We are effectively paralyzed by the amount of incoming activity demanding our attention and we can no longer act as citizens to ensure
The outsize societal influence of judicial selection processes
The specific meanings of the language of the law are not solely determined by the language itself, but by the precedent of the judges who have interpreted that language in the past. The relationship between the law and the judges’ understandings of the law constitutes a huge portion of the effective meanings of the laws
Visualizing communicative dynamics: introduction
In the winter of 2016, I asked a particularly awesome undergraduate–Alex Ouyang–to build a D3-based visualization suite to help me communicate about communication. I promised him that it would be used in a series of interactive essays illustrating some dynamics in a particular abstract model of communication that is both pedagogically useful and intellectually interesting. I