Making It Up As He Goes: Trump’s Improvisational Rhetoric and the Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency

On Discourse Relations, Rhetorical Relations And Rhetoric

Discourses are the collaborative activities of (human) agents who have purposes for communicating. Discourse structure includes the purposes of those agents, which I take, following [GroszSid86], to be formally expressible as intentions and beliefs. While the theory of discourse structures has influenced how many computational linguists think about discourse processing, it does not preclude car...

ICRP comes up trumps.

Story-Making with Improvisational Puppets and Actors

Improvisational actors create engaging vignettes in real time, without detailed planning, and often working within constraints provided by the audience. We are exploring the possibility of creating intelligent computer agents that can be embodied as animated characters, can perform in a manner loosely resembling that of human improvisors, and can tailor their performances to abstract directions...

What Goes up Must Come Down. . . but Is It Reversible?

Introduction Reversibility is of concern to every conservator, and it may not be an exaggeration to say that it is the most basic of all of the concerns that conservators have. The reasons for this concern need not be discussed here, as they are well known in the profession. In fact, the general concept is one that can be readily explained to an intelligent lay person. What is perhaps less appa...

CDHPs: as enrollment goes up, a time to tune up.

One of the clearest findings of Mercer's annual National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans is that more companies are thinking of adopting a consumer-directed health plan (CDHP) approach, and more employees are enrolling in CDHPs at the companies that offer them. The authors discuss the advantages for organizations that offer CDHPs, as well as outline key considerations for companies lo...