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This is Part 3 in a series (n=?). Part I: Getting Started is here.  Welcome back! If you've completed the setup tasks in Part I, you've created your very first Jupyter notebook. Cool. From here on out, we'll be working from within Jupyter Notebooks, rather than this blog. If you haven't done it already, head to GitHub …

Continue reading "Python for Beginners, Part III: Almost There, Stick With It"

This is Part 2 in a series (n=?). Part I: Getting Started is here.  You did it! You've opened up your very first Jupyter Notebook. Before we do anything interesting with it, let's take a step back: What are we doing here? If this guy is right, chances are that you're either into making websites, or …

Continue reading "Python for Beginners, Part II: A Little Bit About Machine Learning But Don’t Panic"

In December 2018, I started trying to understand Python. It has been--to say the least--a messy process. Here's what I learned, hopefully laid out simply enough that you can follow even if your understanding of code is basically the same as a middle schooler who hears about drugs for the first time: You're intrigued, and …

Continue reading "Python for Beginners, Part I: Getting Set Up"

There are three weeks left in the semester, and your group project is off the rails. One person's grandmother got sick, and all her data went back home with her. She was the only one keeping the peace between two other people in the group that can barely be in the same coffeeshop together. Your …

Continue reading "5 tips for how to make graduate school group projects hurt just a little less"

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 …

Continue reading "On the fragility of democracy"

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 …

Continue reading "Elon Musk wants direct democracy on Mars. Will it work?"

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 …

Continue reading "The state of immigration policy research"

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 …

Continue reading "A summary of a reading of a rewriting of Heidegger"

  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 …

Continue reading "Open Borders in Argentina: A major policy shift (?)"