Is Social Science a Joke?

Richard Biernacki exposes fatally sloppy sociology, covered up with fake science. Are quantitative methods hopelessly compromised in social science?

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of Symbols

In The Stupidity of Computers, I discussed how computers require rigidly defined ontologies, which are then enforced on us. What happens in the collision between slippery life and a fixed ontology? Here is a case ...

Dennis Ritchie Tribute Part 2: Obfuscated C from Brian Westley

After looking through all that Quicksort code, I was sent back to the Obfuscated C Code Contest. (Some of the highlights over the years.) Many of the entries go for obfuscation and complexity over all ...

Cultural Illogic: David Golumbia and The Cultural Logic of Computation

David Golumbia does not like computers. Toward the end of The Cultural Logic of Computation, after lumping computers and the atom bomb into a single “Pandora’s Box” of doom, he observes: The Germans relied on ...

Hugh Kenner on Louis Zukofsky, Canadian Proofreading, the MLA, the OED, and Everything Else

Hugh Kenner was a very sharp, eccentric critic best known for his work on James Joyce and Ezra Pound (two writers whose critical apparati seem to welcome eccentrics more than most), but he also was ...

Iannis Xenakis: Free Stochastic Music By Computer