Free Republic

I see comments on the Internet, especially on the conservative side, that might be summed up this way: “Public schools are a disaster. They should be shut down. Homeschool your kids, that’s the only way.” It’s not the specifics that bother me. (Some very smart people have proposed privatizing the public schools.) It’s the idea that you can turn away, or that you can turn inward, and thereby avoid all that unpleasantness over there, on the other side of town. Homeschooling seems to me a wonderful option, as are private schools, charter schools, etc. Together they can save about 10%...

Okay, it’s official. Educationally speaking, the sky IS falling. Public schools across the country are actually hiring “constructivist consulting firms,” at your expense, to help teachers get on “protocol” with a total acceptance of “teachers as facilitators rather than teachers.” Do you have any idea how dumb and dumber this is? No one will know whether teachers are good or bad, because teachers won’t be allowed to teach. They will stay in the back of the room as children try to reinvent the wheel, create science, and discover their own new knowledge. Roger, a teacher in Connecticut, sent me an...

It is foolish to take inflexible stands on positions of dubious merit. I don’t know whether the Earth is warming, cooling, doing both, or doing neither. Nor, if it is doing one of the first three, do I know whether or to what extent it is caused by changeable human behavior or, if so, what if anything can or should be done about it. The law of unintended consequences suggests that any cure may be worse than the disease, if both the disease and a cure for it actually exist. If the disease does not exist, the results are likely...

Attorney General Jerry Brown made it official this morning that he's running for California governor, putting to rest months of speculation about his political intentions. Brown, who served two terms as governor from 1975 to 1983, said in an online video posted on his Web site, "At this stage of my life, I'm prepared to focus on nothing else but fixing this state I love." He pledged in the video that under his leadership, "there will be no new taxes unless you the people vote for them." He also said the state could not take a risk on "an outsider...

The sum of true wisdom, viz., the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Effects of the latter. Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious,...

We expect those in government to know how to get things done. They need to understand organizational and political behavior, effective administration, and how to comply with the law. We do not expect or want elitists and moral supremacists who believe that they know so much more about justice, the market, and how we should live. In his recent book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell explains how the "anointed" believe that their advanced education and depth of knowledge in one field automatically makes them an authority on any field in which they wield an opinion. Thus Noam Chomsky, a noted...

Making the World's Knowledge Computable Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing...

The world’s most prestigious universities have begun posting entire curricula on the Web—for free. Is there such a thing as a free higher-education lunch? I enrolled to find out. I was not screwing around. When I took the first physics class of my life, at age 35, it was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and my professor was Walter Lewin, one of that institution's most respected instructors. Lewin is a man so comfortable with his vectors that he diagrams them in front of a classroom audience while wearing Teva sandals. OK, I wasn't really "at" MIT. And "took" the...

Posture is and must be absolute before me now in that as I am your pinnacle of attention all things fall away that are not of me or come through me alone , for I AM THAT I AM in you " predestined " and " Absolute " , so allow me to be and come to you in an absolution and I then shall become your filter to which all your words and life's song shall become " YES AND AMEN " in accordance to The Word of My Will That IS " JESUS " for he IS True...

The laws of nature are survival of the fittest, and of adapting to the surrounding environment, and human beings are better at adapting than any other species on earth. The laws of God and of humankind however have to do with the knowledge of the nature of good and evil.

"No matter how much money is spent, literacy rates plunge and SAT scores fall. General knowledge throughout the society becomes more scant. Our better students can’t compete against better foreign students. The depressing statistics are all around us. Everyone admits the public schools are doing a lousy job. The question is, why can't we do more to improve them?"

Many of the sneering comments about the participants in last week’s hundreds of tea parties across the nation were premised on the idea that these people didn’t know much about public policy. The hostile CNN reporter (Rush Limbaugh might call her an infobabe) who told tea party attendants that they were going to get tax rebates was an example of that. It was also an example of the condescension of so many in the media: ordinary people should be satisfied with getting a few extra bucks now and shouldn’t worry about the long-term effects of huge increases in government spending...

Men who drive expensive cars really are more attractive to women, according to a study by university researchers. Psychologists proved what car-dealers have boasted for generations the car one drives is key when it comes to turning a woman's head. The university team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars - a £70,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta. The women, who were aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford. Dr Michael Dunn, of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff,...

Prague, March 5 (CTK) - Former U.S. vice-president Albert Gore allegedly feared a direct confrontation with Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a conference on global warming, and this is why Gore's presentation was rescheduled for another day, Lidove noviny (LN) writes Thursday, referring to Klaus's spokesman. Klaus will take part in the two-day international conference in Santa Barbara, the United States, on Friday, March 6 when he was to get involved in polemics with Gore, one of the main supporters of the global warming theory, which Klaus is sharply challenging. However, Gore, a Nobel Peace prize winner, will speak at...

In ‘The Vision of the Anointed’(p.254), Thomas Sowell powerfully observes that the msnufacture of the lowly pencil is vastly beyond the capability of a single person. There are those who select, harvest and prepare the wood; those who find, extract, and prepare the graphite; those who shape and assemble the parts; those who package, transport, sell, etc. Each works within a limited “circle of knowledge.” The sum of these circles cannot possibly be invested in a single individual; further, the participants must must all work, autonomously, and voluntarily as a team. They probably work within a web of trusting relationships...

CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C., May 16, 2008 – The road to Hollywood is rarely paved with combat boots and camouflage, but a Hollywood of sorts is exactly where one soldier landed. Army Capt. Gavin McCulley hugs his TV “wife” while playing an extra in Lifetime Network’s top-rated "Army Wives." Typically, McCulley can be found making sure all the extras are accurately portraying Army life. Defense Department photo by Samantha L. Quigley   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Army Capt. Gavin McCulley, assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, out of Fort Bragg, N.C., thought he’d use...

This animated video is of a Rhode Island red hen, that professes a daily scripture from the New Testament bible, Philippians 4:8; Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. The background sounds are of a R.I. red rooster crowing and cackling hen.

This is an animation of dragonflies being eaten by bullfrogs and they get their revenge by a clever well planed attack. The dragonflies know they can’t eat the bullfrog but they have knowledge of the Hawk that it can and they have wings.

Concepts—Simple Basic Principles and Nature of Concepts by Reginald Firehammer In the brief introduction to concepts I explained that a concept is a complex consisting of two components, a word and a definition, and that its only function is to identify something which is isolated or indicated by the definition. What a concept identifies are existents, and existents can be anything: entities, events, qualities, relationships, or other concepts; concrete or abstract. Our simplest, and earliest, concepts identify existents we can directly perceive, things we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel both externally and internally. Such existents include objects, events, qualities,...

Introduction to Concepts The Building Blocks of Knowledge by Reginald Firehammer Not all our knowledge is absolutely certain, but much of it is, and all the knowledge we must have to live successfully and happily in this world we can know with absolute certainty. One barrier to knowledge is not knowing what knowledge itself is. The purpose of this introduction is to clear up from the beginning one major problem with all attempts to understand the nature of knowledge which is the confusion that surrounds the terminology that must be used in any discussion of knowledge or epistemology. It is...