I’m just trying to get started using WordPress to put all my ramblings and meanderings in one place. This page will list most of them, especially those that have been completed. Some of the ramblings are stand-alone pieces, while others, I hope, will end up being part of something more broadly conceived. By putting links to them here, I can give people a single link (berheide.org) to access all. Why care? Well, II still get requests from former students, faculty—and even friends—for some of these, and it would be nice to gather them all in one place.
I only recently figured out how to prevent WordPress from placing a copyright notice at the bottom of each page, and I can’t guarantee that I rid myself of it forever. But, I assure you, I mean for none of this to be copyrighted. In fact, the reader is free to use it all without attribution. I’m too old to care about that anymore. If there is something I don’t want to be used that freely, I’ll simply restrict access myself.
Methodology and Metaphysics: Karl Popper and the Practice of Political Science
My Ph.D. Dissertation. Click on it . . . if you dare!
Various Short Pieces
“Pennies From Heaven.” Musing about the difference between randomness and meaninglessness. With an account of how I acquired a very special penny.
“Safe Leads in College Basketball.” How to figure out when the lead is “safe” in men’s college basketball. A little riff on Bill James’ famous article.
Stuff I Wrote for Classes
General Advice on Studying, Writing and Speaking
“Taking Notes”— Something I wrote very early in my career. Recent research seems to support it.
Guidelines for Writing Papers for Berheide’s Classes — Some of this was written way before word processors and the internet, but it generally still applies.
Natural Science
Berea College used to have a “General Studies” requirement that included a course in “Natural Science.”1The course went through several design and name changes since I first started teaching it, but that’s how I’ll refer to it.. I began teaching it sometime in the Nineties, and continued doing it until I retired in 2023. I might have been the first person outside of the “Natural Sciences”2You know, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and all that to do it, although I’m not sure.
Anyhow, I’d been a fan of “Natural Science” all my life, and considered myself a fairly-up-to-date dilettante, so when I was approached to teach the course, I did so gladly. Over the course of 25 years or so, I wrote many pieces for my students, most of which I no longer have any use for. But I’ll still put some of them up here, just in case others teaching similar courses find them helpful.
I haven’t completed converting many of them yet, but, as I do, I’ll post them here. Stay tuned. I suppose I should also figure out a way for people to somehow “subscribe” to this site, to be automatically informed when updates occur. Don’t hold your breath.
Common Misconceptions About the Big Bang — A piece I used for class, but not my own work. So you don’t get to use this one without proper citation.
Does A Cause B? — I used this in several classes. And, it turns out, so have several others. Anyone may use this without any citation or crediting.
Elemental Particles and Fundamental Forces
Introduction to the Study of Politics
Creating Good Arguments: Logic and Rhetoric
Does A Cause B? — I used this in several classes.
Levels of Data — I used this in several classes.
Research Methods
Does A Cause B? — I used this in several classes.
Levels of Data — I used this in several classes.
Grasshopper
When I was a little kid (shortly after the Earth cooled), my older cousin Karl taught me a game to play, involving a brick and short piece of tree branch, and a longer piece of branch. As far as I know, the game has been handed down through the countless generations since the dawning of H. sapiens. It was great fun! Difficult, but satisfying. The kids in our family used to play it down in “the bottom,” next to the creek.
Much later, when I was teaching at Berea College, I taught my boys how to play, and then some students. Things got rather crazy after that, and the whole thing ballooned into what we called “Grasshopper,” with all the requirements of a major sport: difficulty, coordination, mental acuity, daring, a non-zero chance of injury, its own impenetrable jargon and stats, tournaments, championships, records (including an asterix or two!) and a Hall of Fame.3Plus alcohol, of course.
We even had our own “website,” as the new lingo designated. I set it up using Netscape and located it on my faculty webpage.4Even bought a domain name for it: arsd.org. Do NOT search for it using that name! Once the College retired all those faculty pages (without telling us, btw!) I dropped the domain name, and now it’s pretty much a scam page. Don’t go there. I recently registered “societyofdogs.us” to use to get it back up, instead. ARSD stood for “Ancient and Royal Society of Dogs.” You’ll have to look at the site to understand why. Of course, things were different back then, on Web 1.0. But I’m used to becoming superannuated: I once was a whiz with the punch-card machine. So I’m going to try to convert it all to WordPress, and present it here.
For now, here is what I have sort of imported from the old site. I will be updating and modifying it whenever I feel like it.5Did I mention I’m retired?. Click below to find the home page for that site (http://societyofdogs.us). I’ll be adding to the site from time to time.
How to Play the Greatest Game in Explored Space.
The Thing
This is a very long term project, and it is very incomplete. The working title was originally something like “What You Should Know Before Opening Your Big Fat Mouth About Politics,” and it was meant to contain all the matters I thought a real student of politics should be conversant with, before settling in on a set of policy opinions. It’s mostly based on my old Introduction to the Study of Politics course, with a smattering of other things larded throughout.
I’m still working on it, of course, and likely will never completely finish, but I’ll have a bit of a rabbit hole for readers to go down any time now.
Notes
- 1The course went through several design and name changes since I first started teaching it, but that’s how I’ll refer to it.
- 2You know, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and all that
- 3Plus alcohol, of course.
- 4Even bought a domain name for it: arsd.org. Do NOT search for it using that name! Once the College retired all those faculty pages (without telling us, btw!) I dropped the domain name, and now it’s pretty much a scam page. Don’t go there. I recently registered “societyofdogs.us” to use to get it back up, instead. ARSD stood for “Ancient and Royal Society of Dogs.” You’ll have to look at the site to understand why.
- 5Did I mention I’m retired?