Greening the Desert
July 2nd, 2009Behind the Crosshairs
July 1st, 2009Just finished
“Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam” by Col. Michael Lee Lanning
I came across this book at random and decided to read it. It was super interesting. Reading about the evolution of the equipment, training, and operations of these outstanding marksmen kept me turning pages. The reality is absolutely nothing like what you’ve seen in the movies.
The Ethics of Liberty
June 22nd, 2009I just finished
“The Ethics of Liberty” by Murray N. Rothbard
There is a long tradition of books like Plato’s “The Republic” where the author starts with a central tenet and then constructs an entire model of society based on that simple kernel. “The Ethics of Liberty” is such a book–centered on a libertarian ideal.
So what would the world look like if you had strict Crusoe-like homesteading, Austrian-school laissez-faire economics, all rights based on private ownership (and when I say ownership, I mean allodial title), and sound money? Well, you’d have anarcho-capitalism.
Reading a book like this is a great because it pushes you to really explore your convictions. There were many places in this book where I found a flawless, logical build-up of laws that perfectly match my social ethics, yet violate my personal morals. Soul-searching time.
Rothbard is a great writer and I highly recommend this book. Even if you don’t agree with his ideas, they might cause you pick some new directions for exploring your own.
Writing your congresscritters
June 18th, 2009Last night I took the time to really get to know my word processor and create a mail-merge template for letters and envelopes to my congresscritters. I also set up groups in my address book with all of their addresses.
So, now I can write one letter and trivially have it, and an envelope, formatted for my representative, my senators, or all three of them.
I plan to do similar setups for letters to the mayor, governor, and state representatives.
When you can do it easily, it sure removes a lot of barriers to sharing your mind, and sharing it often. I sincerely hope that my representatives come to learn my name, and look forward to and/or dread the next letter that they know is coming.
Moleskine templates
June 17th, 2009I have created a bunch of templates for use with large (5×8.25″) Moleskine plain notebooks. Print them out, cut them out, keep them in the expandable pocket. Place them under a blank page and you can turn your blank book into a journal, a note-taker, a fashion design studio, and iPhone UI design center, whatever you want.
If there are more templates that you think would be cool to see, leave a comment on this entry and let me know.
The Latin-Centered Curriculum
June 13th, 2009I just finished
It’s no secret that I’m a proponent of classical education, latin, and homeschooling. Unfortunately, unless you attended one of a select few private academies, you’ve probably never had any exposure to classical education. How on earth do you teach this stuff to your own children? This book covers the whole process a-z.
Park I opens with a brief history of classical education–or neo-classical education, as we should rightly call the modern reconstruction. It then goes into a pretty good discussion about why there is value in learning greek and latin in this modern age. Part I finishes up with a guiding principle: quality, not quantity (or in latin, multum nōn multa).
Part II outlines a complete curriculum from age 5-6 all the way through high school. Good details are provided on all the subjects: phonics, greek/latin, math, composition, literature, religion, history, geography, nature/science, logic/philosophy/rhetoritc, modern languages, and the arts. The discussion of each subject includes what the author feels are the best primary materials, but numerous alternatives are described too. There are also lists of supportive materials, study guides, internet resources, etc.
If you are like me and have children who didn’t homeschool from the beginning, then Part II has an added feature for you. There is a nice section discussing how to adapt this program for older students who are starting late.
Part III lists schedules. There are yearly week-by-week sequences, and daily time breakdowns from kindergarten through high school. I think you’ll be surprised by how little time is actually needed.
I’ll digress for a minute. Before I pulled Primo and Secondo out of school and started homeschooling I spent a lot of time volunteering in their classrooms. As I became more and more dissatisfied with things I started taking a stopwatch with me and running it during all the periods of actual instruction. I omitted announcements, getting in/out of seats, walking to/from the board, specialists interrupting to shuffle kids in/out, bathroom/water breaks, etc, etc, etc. It averaged out to about 20 minutes of each hour. If your child is in school for a typical six hour school day, that’s only three hours of instruction. Shouldn’t that other three hours be spent playing, learning an instrument, swimming, or anything else that is fun and/or useful?
There is a web site to support this book: www.latincentered.com. The mailing list/forum has hundreds of active parents. Part III of the book includes some advice from many of these parents on how to manage a program like this when you have multiple children to teach, especially when there is a large spread of ages.
One thing that I really liked about this book is the author’s urging, over and over again, throughout the whole book, to work at the student’s pace. This is obvious if you really do believe in quality over quantity. It’s ok to start greek/latin later if the child needs more time to become a fluent reader in english. It’s ok to have a book take three weeks to get through instead of one. It’s ok if you can only get 20 minutes of math done per day. Really understanding the lessons in just The Odyssey is better than having a mere cursory knowledge of a dozen additional books. You won’t break your kid if you don’t follow the schedules exactly. The whole point of homeschooling is to do what is best for the child, so take whatever time he needs.
Even if you’re not particularly motivated to implement a classical liberal arts program in your home, I would recommend reading this book anyway to balance out your own education about homeschooling, and because of the excellent resource guide.
Omnibus: The Odyssey
June 12th, 2009Primo and I finished
We’ve been going through a great books program together and this was our most recent book. This was a fun one because some of the activities we did involved working with maps, doing some current events comparisons, classical rhetorical writing exercises (an encomium themed on Odysseus’ virtue of self-control), and a lot more.
Next up is Herodotus. I last read his “Histories” 25 years ago in Mr. Eckert’s class. I think this time I’ll enjoy it more.
Book complete: What has government done to our money?
June 8th, 2009Just finished
“What Has Government Done to Our Money?” by Murray N. Rothbard
This book is a highly detailed account of how things like pounds stirling, francs, marks, and dollars went from being units of weights of gold/silver to being, well, just names that don’t stand for anything. If you’re curious about how the process of going off of the gold standard happened in the western world, how inflation started, how we moved to centralized banking, etc. then this is a great book to read. Also, at $5 it’s a bargain.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
May 27th, 2009I just finished
“The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
I’ve already told you that everything you know about economics and capitalism is wrong. Why should I think you’ll believe me when I tell you that a lot of what you think you know about American history is wrong too?
Only two?
May 25th, 2009Think and think hard. Try to come up with as many examples as you can of government reducing its control, increasing private ownership, and increasing personal liberty. I’ve been thinking about it all day and I can only think of two policy changes:
1. Increased freedom to homeschool over the past 30 years
2. Increased freedom to keep and bear arms over the past 3-5 years
Can you think of any others? Every other policy area out there has seen more government regulation, less private ownership, and less personal liberty.
Update: the real irony here is that these two changes haven’t actually been to provide new liberties. They’ve merely reinstated liberties that used to be taken for granted but were progressively stripped from us throughout the 20th century.