Tag: rhetoric

  • Deliberative Democratic Theory and Debate

    What gives? I am reading Deliberative Democratic Theory for the first time – never really been much of one to have faith in democracy other than a rhetorical commonplace that really comes in handy – perhaps more than any other commonplace out there, even family (Sorry Vin Diesel). But this is some good stuff. It’s…

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  • Backfiring Facts

    There’s a new format of student excuse that I’m getting these days that relies on credibility but really doesn’t do a great job of audience adaptation. It’s worth talking about because I have been seeing it so often and it is an outcome of a facts-only reasoning epistemology, where the only reasons one can give…

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  • Evaluating Biden’s Farewell Speech

    I thought I’d do a play by play of Biden’s farewell speech. I didn’t think it was great, but the devil is in the details. See what you think of it after watching my commentary.

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  • The Mathematics of Rhetoric

    This is a conference presentation by Dr. Lisa Piccirillo, a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. This video is remarkable for many different reasons. Many of these reasons will have to do with math and her research on fourth dimensional objects. I have nothing to say about that so this is…

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  • How To Survive the Thanksgiving Political Arguments

    Happy Thanksgiving, readers! Tomorrow is Turkey day and if the Northern State Parkway was any indication on Monday, stress is high. I’ve never seen so many accidents. Perhaps our minds aren’t where they should be because we are dreading that Uncle or Aunt coming to dinner and trying to start fights about Trump or Harris…

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  • What Else would the ICC be for?

    The ICC indictment against Netanyahu is getting a lot of attention in the media as being out of line. U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham has said that if an ally arrests him, the United States will tank their economy. Joe Biden has said the charge is “outrageous.” But what other method or manner should be used…

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  • Archiving and Backup

    Finding some pretty striking and pretty sad draft posts in my Google Drive, which honestly I haven’t looked at in many years. I started using OneDrive and Word exclusively a while ago and cleaned out my Google Drive to save money. I put everything on my NAS and deleted it from Drive except for the…

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  • Bernie Sanders, X, and Essentialism

    Why is Bernie, or any other left-leaning person still using X or Twitter? This makes little sense to me. I guess this is just another example of people not realizing how their daily actions impact their politics. We need actual dialectical analytical folks out there with the political commentary, not just professional politicians with a…

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  • Spotify and Driving

    Last time I drove regularly I had three options: FM radio, AM radio and a CD player. I would move between them depending on the drive, the trip, the feeling, the attitude – to use a Burkean word. I felt like I should be able to find something good I’d want to hear in my…

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  • Three Takes on the U.S. Presidential Election

    Take 1: The difficult rhetorical lesson – if there is any perception that one’s economic situation is not as good as it once was, that belief cannot be engaged with any claims about human rights, rights to live how one wishes, civil rights protections or any such claim. This perception can be very minimal. For…

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