They are using nothing but democratic measures and democratic weapons. You can’t fight for power unless you’re ready to use all possible weapons and to fight hard and cruelly. - Boris Sokoloff in The White Nights The first time I read The White Nights, I was convinced that Boris Sokoloff's book was great fiction. At best, it …
Elon Musk wants direct democracy on Mars. Will it work?
At SXSW today, Elon Musk suggested that direct democracy might be the best way to govern on Mars. Direct democracy isn’t a bad place to start, and it’s encouraging to hear one of the gods of Silicon Valley voice a commitment to democracy (here’s looking at you, Mr. Thiel). But direct democracy probably isn’t enough …
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The state of immigration policy research
This week, immigration officials in Texas arrested a 10-year-old girl en route to the hospital. Rosa Maria Hernandez, who also has cerebral palsy, has been in the US since she was three months old, but is an unauthorized immigrant. After the ACLU filed suit against the Trump administration, she was released to her family, but …
A summary of a reading of a rewriting of Heidegger
Bottom Line Up Front All propositions are relative, and history matters more than truth. Wait, what? This is a summary of the introduction to Joel Weinsheimer’s book Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method. That book is a reading of Hans-Georg Gadamer's 1960 book Truth and Method, which according to Wikipedia is in turn …
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Open Borders in Argentina: A major policy shift (?)
The short version of this post for the time-crunched? Five lessons for policymakers based on the example of Argentina's open borders policy: Sometimes the most effective framing of a policy change might be to frame it as no change at all in order to preclude resistance. Framing an issue as a reversion to an old value …
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On Frank Underwood, Zen and philosophical pragmatism
In Season 2 of House of Cards, our Congressman and anti-hero Frank Underwood pulls into his office Jackie Sharp, an ambitious younger representative. On his computer, he pulls up the opposition research he has on every other member of Congress--including her. As I watched that episode of House of Cards, I knew in a flash what …
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Consciousness and Congress; Policy Networks and Entrepreneurship: January reading and reflections
Should an academic write non-academically? I’ve gotten both of these pieces of advice in my first semester of graduate school: Don’t have a blog. When you look for academic jobs, people will wonder why you wasted your time writing a blog instead of publishing papers. Have a blog. Writing publicly is the only way to sharpen …
How to save and invest in line with your values (Or: Who Owns Private Prisons, Part III)
(This is the third post in a three part series. For the curious, here are Parts I and II) If you're like most Americans, you have less than $1000 in savings and have a lot of debt. If you're one of the lucky few, you have some cash saved up somewhere: A six-month emergency fund, perhaps, or a growing retirement …
Despite all our rage
During my first semester of grad school, I sat in on a presentation at UT's psychology department. It was a "job talk," a part of the academic hiring process where an applicant gives a public presentation. Imagine a job interview, but with 40 people in the room, and no guiding questions. Just "show us you." In that presentation, Columbia professor and FiveThirtyEight author James Curley shared his work on …
The 7 papers I’m most nerdily excited about right now
Over the course of my first semester of grad school, I collected (/people sent to me) something like five dozen academic papers that I didn't have time to read during the semester. In pursuit of ultimately personifying the nerd emoji 🤓 , I spent the last two days reading the first two pages of each of those papers. The ones …
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