“Have you ever wondered why sociologists still study Marx if he was wrong?” (Erik Olin Wright, “Analytical Marxism”) This fragment grew into a series of YouTube videos: Rationalism and Socialism The time has come for socialists to reconsider Spinoza. As Macherey put it in his 1979 book Hegel or Spinoza, “the entire problem is that […]
Spinoza constitutes such a crucial point for modern philosophy that we might say in effect that there is a choice between Spinozism and no philosophy at all. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, as translated in Pierre Macherey, Hegel or Spinoza (2011) What is truth? Spinoza says a true idea is an idea that […]
Maps made with Mathematica Slideshow High-res (PDF) Low-res previews:
The following is a hasty transcription of a short (4:40) speech I gave this morning as an icebreaker to my Elementary Statistics class. The speech was inspired by, and is intended as a continuation of, discussions held at Perimeter College Faculty Development Day, 2022. Transcript
First publication
Robert’s Rules are a way to run meetings democratically. They work a lot like a turn-based RPG. This post is for Dunwoody SAGA. The attached slideshow (PDF) shows how to “play”—that is, how meeting attendees can bring about action and make themselves heard. Robert’s Rules are meant to protect five rights (screenshot from slideshow attached): […]
The linked PDF is a Workbook for a semester-long course using Tannenbaum’s Excursions in Modern Mathematics. I used them as lecture notes at Austin Community College. The general approach is that of “discovery learning”. I’m a recovering fan of the Moore method (see rant below). Topics: Voting theory/Arrow’s Theorem (1 chapter) Fair division (1 chapter) […]
Slideshow put together for the Perimeter College Math Department’s Open Educational Resources Committee, Jan. 2022.
You absorb more philosophy than you realize when you study math. Choices, commitments to specific philosophical doctrines, were collectively made long before our modern textbooks were written. As I attempt a transition to social science research, I feel I should revisit some of these choices. This document is a repository for reflections—basically diary entries—undertaken for […]
“Don’t wait for [a] great moment. The right moment arises only through failed attempts.” —Slavoj Žižek