The scientific metaphor is dangerous. We get it all the time though, so it’s something we don’t pay much attention to. But the scientific metaphor of knowledge isn’t going to work unless you have some stable quantities at some point in the operation. So a debate laboratory seems like a bad metaphor, the sort I…

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This trip to Italy has been great if unexpected. Just goes to show you that you should reach out to any random academic emails you get if you think that the person on the other end shares your ideas or area even a little bit. I speak tomorrow at the University of Padua as a…

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For those of you who know me, or read the blog regularly, you know of my deep and abiding love for Chromebooks. There has always been deep desire, really deep passion and attraction to one Chromebook above all the others, which is the Google premium Chromebook, now called the Pixelbook. It’s a Chrome OS device,…

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Good morning! here’s the sunrise we’ve been getting in Queens the last few weeks. It’s been really great, and I post this today because we have nothing but grey skies and cold rain today. At least I have no plans in going outside. Stayed up late tweaking and finishing my lecture for Italy this week.…

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Thanksgiving was spent in a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn where 18 people sat down at the same table and enjoyed a huge amount of amazing food that was prepared by a variety of those same folks. It was really impressive to me. I had a great time talking to people who had all sorts of…

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It’s morning of day 2 of the National Communication Association annual convention, and I’m happy to be here. I didn’t do much yesterday except the thing that I think NCA is about – catching up with people who you know, who you care about, who interest you and you them, and seeing old friends and…

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Spent most of today wondering about how Democrat friends are going to handle two pieces of contradictory information coming next week: 1) Voter turnout, particularly among young people, will be at exceptional levels and 2) the Republicans will control both houses of Congress. Naturally, they will find some group of young people who are just…

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Midterm exams are overhyped, stupid, and a mode of social control to remind students that they are in the “to be disciplined” category by a group of people (professors and such) that know more than them and will always know more than them. It’s such a waste of time. Midterm elections are quite similar here…

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Got back a little less than a week ago from the Center for CSPAN Scholarship and Engagement conference at Purdue University and it was super cool. Brought my new GoPro7 along and shot a few videos. There’s one more coming but I don’t want to edit it tonight. Vlogging is a pretty hard thing to…

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