The following is a summary of my senior thesis for the Political Science Department at Haverford College. In the 1980s the then mayor of Burlington, Vermont, championed a novel non-public sector approach to affordable housing and concerns about gentrification called a community land trust. That mayor, Bernie Sanders, is now a senator and the […]
Continue readingMore TagThe growing legality of extrajudicial execution
A different body of law applies to police officers and everyday citizens. If a non-cop inadvertently breaks the law they cannot claim ignorance of the law as a legal defense. The onus is on every citizen to know what is and isn’t legal no matter how bizarre, and then follow those laws. Police officers (and […]
Continue readingMore TagJourneys in Spam
I receive a lot of spam comments on this blog. I moderate (e.g. delete) them to keep things clean here. Most are advertisements for payday loans or inane comments followed by a link, but sometimes there are real gems. Here are a few of my favorites. Formatting is preserved and usernames are in bold. I simply couldn’t leave […]
Continue readingMore TagExpected Value: a crash course
When analyzing politics I think largely in terms of expected value. This is a really useful tool I recommend for anyone interested in logical thinking, and it comes up in how I write on this blog. This post is a crash course in the subject. In mathematics, specifically probability, the expected value of something is […]
Continue readingMore TagDefending Free Speech; or ‘why hate speech is antidemocratic’
This article is written primarily targeting white people, though the principles in question are universal. CW: racial slurs, and their discussion. There has never been, and never will be, a democracy that does not have freedom of speech. Obviously this doesn’t mean there cannot be any regulation on speech—social shaming for screaming at everyone […]
Continue readingMore TagFiring McCabe: A thought
For more specific details of what is going on, check out Lawfare’s wonderful piece on what we do, and don’t, know about this event. Last Friday the political world was rocked, a weekly occurrence these days, by the surprise firing of former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe. Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions […]
Continue readingMore TagFoodprint Optimization: A start
Depending on who you ask I am a vegetarian, flexitarian, freegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian, broke, and/or someone who overthinks their diet. With the exception of the last one, all of these descriptions are technically inaccurate. I don’t eat meat, unless the food will otherwise be thrown away and my consumption of it will not create an […]
Continue readingMore TagSocial Physics; how good ideas can be reviewed
Throughout this book I have argued that we need to think about society as a network of individual interactions rather than as markets or classes. To accomplish this, I have presented a social physics framework that outlines how the flow of ideas from person to person shapes the norms, productivity, and creative output of our […]
Continue readingMore TagSocial Physics: The Syllabus
Social Physics by Alex Pentland is a valuable book. That does not mean it is a good book. It would be a decent at translating academia to the general public if Dr. Pentland weren’t a compulsive self-promoter who seems to use “I” or “me” in every other sentence. (Un)fortunately there is a lot of value […]
Continue readingMore TagUncanny politics
Alternative facts are near and dear to the heart of this blog, but I am afraid we may remember today’s debates over reality fondly in two decade’s time. I am going to pose a problem, prediction, and question. In the midst of a presidential campaign that has become almost synonymous with fake news, PolitiFact […]
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