On Being Civilized

Until we accept that we are not a civilized people, and that it matters, we have little hope of becoming one.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

I’m leaving tomorrow for a trip to CA during which I will be creating videotapes of The Lost Tools of Writing. That’s the idea. Now the application: I’m very busy and shouldn’t be blogging right now.
But sometimes my emotions get the better of me, so I have to tell you all something – both negative [...]

Favreageddon II

I only post expectations for football games that look like they could be close or interesting, so this is only the second time I’ve bothered posting about the Packers this year and the other was when they played the Vikings too.
So far, I’ve picked the winner in every Packer game, but was off when they played [...]

Practicality and Prudence

I do a lot of teacher training and one thing I have to do is meet the request by teachers for practical help. People want practical instruction from me.
They tend to show great confidence in me, as though nothing could be easier than giving sound practical counsel. They don’t realize how frightful a thing it is to attempt [...]

The Ravings of a Proud Father

2009 has been an extraordinary year at the CiRCE Institute. The low point came around April for me when I ran out of energy and had to take a two month vacation where I only worked 40-45 hours/week. But ever since the summer conference things have been moving on an upward trajectory.
See that’s the problem [...]

Fall Listing

My younger readers especially will appreciate this post by my favorite music critic/album reviewer, he who is called David Kern. He describes five albums that suit the fall season.

Packers Vikings

Favre outperformed my expectations, the Packers O-line did a little worse than I thought they’d do, and the Packers defense seems to be a little off.
And Aaron Rogers played like a second year quarterback with a lot of talent having an experience unlike what almost any other quarterback ever goes through.
I was very impressed by [...]

How to Read, Write, and Think

The Lost Tools of Writing teaches the Deep Logic of every subject.

You can see this if you watch how it teaches students to reason through an essay.

I have always tried to emphasize how the essay question should come from the student and that it doesn’t really have to be all that brilliant a question. The [...]

Cato reviews health care

You can’t get a detailed discussion through the media, but if you are taking this health care debate seriously (and God help America if you aren’t), this ABC news bit does a nice job of framing some of the key points. I found 2:35-3:16 particularly important.

As one who is gravely concerned [...]

What is a totalitarian state?

In general I don’t like to comment on political developments because there is so much smoke and so much heat generated by so much media that it is counterproductive to add to it and because it is too hard to figure out what is actually going on.
Politics is political so almost everything everybody says or [...]