I’ve come to realize, more and more, that I’m always rushing. I rush from one task to the next, rush through eating my food, impatient for meditation to be over, rushing through reading something, rushing to get somewhere, anxious to get a task or project finished. What’s the deal?
Tag: reading
May It Please The Crown, Let Our Children Go
One of the most viral posts this year involved a parent humbly begging the Crown for permission to take their child on an educational trip without risking the threat of force. The post reproduced a letter to a parent. The principal who signed that letter thought this highly unfair, since her goals were allegedly aligned with the parents.
Pedants: Converting Good to Bad
Bureaucrats thrive on tidiness and regularity. The variations of real children are far too diverse and confusing for bureaucrats and pedants and certain economists. This zombie argument for the government provision of education should be nuked wherever it arises.
Begging To Be Enslaved
“Unmoored”? Being chained to an aggressive thief makes people feel steady and safe? Can a person like that even be considered a person? Human, yes. I can see that, but without apparent “personhood”. Pitiful.
How To Approach Math Learning
Behind every math prodigy is a child who has spent lots of time playing with numbers, making friends with them. Today’s schools often spend far too much time with formal testing, leaving too little time for just having fun with numbers.
Words Poorly Used #77.1 — Impeachment
Isn’t “(legal) impeachment” a redundancy? Aren’t “hinder” and “impede” obvious? Oh, oh, oh! Maladministration??? Never!!!
The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games
Video games have been under attack by the fear-mongers ever since they first appeared, and the attacks have not diminished. If you Google around the Internet using harmful effects of video games as a search phrase, you will find all sorts of frightening claims. If you look into the actual research literature, you find very little if any evidence supporting the fear-mongers claims, and considerable evidence against those claims.
Letting Go of Distractions
Today I deleted several apps from my phone: Twitter, Reddit, Feedly, Snapchat, the N.Y. Times app, and more. I’m letting go of distractions, or at least learning to. In fact, I made a list of things I’m letting go of.
A Brief Response To The Critique That Capitalism Is A “Zero-Sum” Game
“A zero-sum game is a game where if the total gains of the participants are added up and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Poker and gambling are popular examples of zero-sum games since the sum of amounts won by some players equals the combined losses of the others.” So does capitalism fit this definition?
If Men Were Angels
Although I admit that the outcome in a stateless society will be bad, because not only are people not angels, but many of them are irredeemably vicious in the extreme, I conjecture that the outcome in a society under a state will be worse, indeed much worse, because, first, the most vicious people in society will tend to gain control of the state and, second, by virtue of this control over the state’s powerful engines of death and destruction, they will wreak vastly more harm than they ever could have caused outside the state.