Nights and mornings are times for me to both reset from long work days and prepare for long work days to come. As I grow further into my work, my evening recharge times have become precious. If you’re going for it during the work day, you’re going to feel that, too. If you’re reading this post, you might be wondering how you can build regular(ish) practices into your evenings to ensure that recharging happens.
Tag: class
Funding Higher Education Debate: My Opening Statement
Why should higher education receive government support? There are two main arguments. The first is the economic argument. Government support is allegedly economically beneficial not merely for individual students, but for society as a whole. The second is the humanistic argument. Economic effects aside, government support is vital for the promotion of intrinsically valuable ideas, culture, and values.
Freedom, Not Force, Creates Lifelong Learners
As author Ray Bradbury famously said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” If we want an educated and engaged citizenry, with a passion for reading and knowledge and ongoing self-improvement, then perhaps “free choice” should be the norm rather than the exception.
The Myth of Institutionalized Learning
This weekend conversation exposes the deep, underlying myth in our culture that children cannot learn unless they are systematically taught. Whether in school or school-at-home, children can only learn when they are directed by an adult, when they follow an established curriculum, when they are prodded and assessed. How could a child possibly know how to identify plants if it wasn’t part of a school-like lesson?
FinCEN Form 114—I’m Not the Criminal Here
You don’t need a Ph.D. in political science to realize what’s going on here. The Treasury is trying to track money related to drug trafficking, tax evasion, and other U.S. “crimes.” But its way of doing so is to impose a requirement on everyone with a foreign account willy-nilly—and that includes yours truly—and to threaten punishment of anyone who fails to cough up the required information.
Words Poorly Used #135 — Prediction
I am highly skeptical of humans who make predictions. The word “prediction” literally means to say something before it is true. If something is not yet true, it can be only in one other class — not true.
People of Color, Benefits of Wealth, & the Ruling Class (34m) – Editor’s Break 079
Editor’s Break 079 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: libertarianism and “people of color”; the benefits of being wealthy and how this either benefits or harms others; the essence of the ruling class; and more.
Why The Revolutionaries Are (Also) the Villains of Les Miserables
I recently rewatched the great 2011 film adaption of this movie, and I frequently dip back into the film’s excellent song soundtrack. But after some observation, I have a controversial opinion on the revolutionaries: while they are revolting against an unjust system, they’re not much worth our sympathy. There are a few reasons why the revolutionaries are also villains (of a sort) of this story. These also happen to be some of the reasons why in most wars, the revolutionaries are just as guilty as the state they’re revolting against.
The Essence of the Ruling Class
If you have government, you have a ruling class, by definition. No, I’m not talking about governance, the sort we see in managing property, a business, a charity, or any other private organization. A ruling class are those who calls themselves “government” or “the state”, or in some times and places “the church”, the organization(s) in society whose sole purpose of existing is to make and enforce rules, the first of which involve the generation of “revenue”. While that’s what the ruling class does, that’s not what the ruling class is. Here is the essence of what the ruling class is.
In Favor of Impetuosness
It’s not that impetuous action doesn’t have costs. It definitely does. It lacks precision, it’s sloppy, never perfect, and sometimes just wrong. But the cost of correcting an impetuous action is generally low, and the feedback you get is quick and clear. The knowledge gained from ten impetuous actions that fail is worth more than the marginal mental improvements you can make to one untaken action.