Of all the David Frosts, I am the David Frostiest.
Today I was reminded of the halcyon days of my youth. My college years — like the college years for many others — were constituted in part by the heady atmosphere of “Theory.” Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Barthes, Benjamin, Adorno, Nietzsche, Kojève, Bataille, Kristeva, Butler, Spivak. (I will merely list names rather than attempt a shoddy …
There’s been some buzz after Nate Silver criticized some opinion-makers and pundits as being essentially non-empirical and, therefore, no better than bullshitters. Leon Wieseltier, of The New Republic, seems offended: [Silver] does not recognize the calling of, or grasp the need for, public reason; or rather, he cannot conceive of public reason except as an …
People are talking about Alexis Madrigal’s excellent investigative piece into Netflix’s content ontology and architecture. You know those super-specific genre categories that Netflix recommends to you? I watch “Bowling for Columbine” and Netflix recommends to me other “Critically-acclaimed Fight-the-System Documentaries” such as “Gasland.” There’s “Cerebral Foreign Horror Movies,” and “Witty Dysfunctional-Family TV Animated Comedies,” for …
Some in the blogosphere are wondering about the evolutionary origin of shyness. Why are some people shy and others not? Is there an evolutionary benefit? Maybe it’s a “spandrel” (that is, a by-product of another fitness-making trait). One study I read somewhere said that shy people as kids have over-active pre-frontal cortexes, which caused them …
Here’s what I wrote about that kid with so-called “Affluenza” and “Bat Kid” (remember him?) earlier this year.