There’s a lot of bull out there — but how much exactly, and of what form?
The purpose of our first assignment is for you explore this question by taking a “falsehood inventory” of all of the bull you encounter over the course of three to five days. Record at least 5 different types of bull you experience. The idea is to make note of each bit of bull that see or hear, and to record some information about it. While the assignment is open-ended and we want you to be creative, you might consider keeping track of:
Bull that you are exposed to
Bull that you produce yourself
Bull that you debunk or try to debunk (optional)
Many people try to be carbon-neutral in their daily living, and we admire that, but are you bull neutral as well? That is, do you debunk as much bull as you produce? It’s not so easy to do. Are you at least bull-average, creating no more bull than you are exposed to.
To do this assignment, you’ll have to figure out a few things, including:
What constitutes bull, in your mind? Does a deliberate lie count, for example? Does the bullter have to be aware that he or she is bulling? And so on.
How are you going to measure this bull? Are all instances of bull—a 10 page term paper or a 140 character tweet—equivalent? Should we measure bull in terms of the amount of time that one spends dealing with it? Are some kinds of bull more significant than others?
How are you going to track your daily encounters with bull? There’s so much bull out there that you may not want to sit down and try to remember it all each evening. Maybe it would work better to have some way of recording your observations as you go through your day.
How much information do you feel comfortable providing? Personally, we’d rather not write things down at the level of “9:15 AM. Ran into Dr. Smith in the elevator and had to listen to him brag about his recent appointment as vice chair of the university’s Interdepartmental Committee for the Reduction of Unnecessary Administration.” You never know when these things might get out. So how will you anonymize the data enough that it won’t get you in trouble on the down the road?
Submission requirements
Submit one or more graphic(s) that visualize the data however you see fit. Take some inspiration from Dear Data. http://www.dear-data.com/theproject/
