Saturday, February 25, 2006

Mind in wander mode

Back from vacation, but still to mellow to rant.

As most of you know, I now use the Sovereign Speculator to display my most venomous rants, thereby saving my other sites like
BFU and the new business e-learning site from my mental depredations.

I did come across an idea while perusing the
Dilbert Blog that caught my attention, and I would like to fine tune it.

" Leadership is a form of evil. No one needs to lead you to do something that is obviously good for you."

The difference I would point out is that there is no evil in a leader we pick for ourselves to improve our effectiveness. The key of course is the ability to quit following when any advantage derived from the leader dissipates.

A corresponding principle is that if I do not have a right I can not delegate it to a leader, even if I am in the majority. If it is evil for me to take your money, it is evil for me to chose a leader to take your money.

If I have made this concept confusing - you might enjoy this
short flash presentation at the Bastiat Free University on-line campus.

enjoy life,



Allan

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Sunday, February 12, 2006

Educationists Are The Morons

Educationists are the morons, not our children.

A note from the Opinion.Telegraph in merry old England.


Educationists are the morons, not our children

A Cambridge don told me a few years back that even those lucky enough to get into our top university were so incapable of learning once there that he wanted to start a sandwich course for them. Of course, it is not our young people who are thick; it is the "educationists" who deem what they are taught. For decades basic grammar has been spurned as elitist, so even those with four A-levels are illiterate. Basic numeracy was discouraged once the electronic calculator was invented.

And general knowledge - indeed, any form of reading outside the curriculum, or spirit of independent inquiry, curiosity and thought - was squashed by schools focusing on what does well for the league tables. Add to that parents being dissuaded from having an intellectual life with their children - not that many need much dissuasion - and you have a nation of morons in the making. What have our children, many of whom could be very clever, done to deserve this treatment?


A fine rant, and a scathing indictment of public education.

For a bit more balanced look at what a teacher encounters- stuck between educationists and students the Right Wing Nation blog takes a shot at the final result of the avoidance of absolutes, even in math studies.

Myself I rather favor what C. F. Bastiat had to say:

" We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles."


If you want your kids to be mindless cogs in a bureaucratic machine - leave them in public schools. Public schools are very good at their job - indoctrinating compliant future citizens and bureaucracy employees.

Separate school and state.

Your kids will have more and better options
in carefully selected private schools or with home schooling.

That and when they grow up you can have interesting conversations with your kiddos.

If you went to public schools - maybe you can get a home schooled kid to teach you how to converse.

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Thursday, February 09, 2006

On Vacation

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I should be back about February 20.

Enjoy life.


You will probably enjoy my prior post - take a look.



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Of Cosmic significance - Of Comic Significance

In primitive cultures the word for stranger and enemy can be the same word.

In the west, led by a sensationalist media looking for customers rather than truth, we have become myopic.

What is deemed important by media is last night's political protest or family murder. We demand no real news and analysis - the media provides none.

Public schools teach worthless blather, and ignore history and its lessons. I talked recently with a public school teacher - he teaches junior high history. World history in his class is limited to ancient Egypt. His students are building him a burial chamber. He said that will give them a love of history.

While I might have enjoyed building a burial chamber for a teacher - a whole course dedicated to that construction is less than worthless. The students have studied no great minds, no conflicts, no principles that separate the ignorant from the civilized.

These students have learned - as fact - vague guesses on an ancient "acceptable" religion. That is their world history course. They are more ignorant than prior generations - reflecting their society slowly reverting to its primitive roots.

I received a subscription e-mail from Bob Bauman today. He writes well, he understands civilization, he has a wide view of history. He talks of the fourteen centuries of battle between some parts of Islam and the West.


Put simply, certain Muslims don't like us, not because of what we do, (which is provocative enough; Iraq, oil, Israel) but because too many Muslims reject the West's love of freedom and perhaps because they have been on the losing side for 300 years. Muslims' refuse to be ruled by infidels and to many of them all non-believers are infidels. Read history and you will understand why these street riots are another stark symptom of a much deeper, chronic problem that will torment the world for a long time.


That battle will not end as long as the west prefers freedom. As we can see from the reaction to a few cartoons - that battle is not going to end this century.

As we also can see in Iraq - even the conversion of the world to Islam would not stop the violence. Different flavors of Islam are more than willing to blow each other up.

This is not primarily a religious issue - this violence against "others" or strangers is a primitive cultural reality.

I saw a placard held up by one of the rioters for the media to record; the placard read something like: "behead the enemys of Islam."

You are likely an "enemy of Islam" to this person. You believe in liberty - you are a stranger. They will not be satisfied until you are beheaded.

That person will probably not change their view. If their children are raised the same way - their children will probably think you need to die also. The west is becoming more primitive, large parts of the world are not advancing from the primitive, we are all becoming more wary of strangers.

I can remember a time when Lebanon was a land of peace and prosperity. Jew, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, and others were treated well by each other. An element entered the country that was violently divisive. Lebanon is now a primitive war zone.

Because you are comfortable today - does not mean the dark ages won't re-start tomorrow. Perhaps we have never really left the dark ages.


We are strangers.


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Saturday, February 04, 2006

Elliott Wave International - Reports and Tutorial - No Charge

The Elliott Wave International market forecasting group will be offering a full week of free access.

They will not always be right, but their projections can have great value.

I have moved most of my finance posting over to Speculation Rules, but many of you may not read that journal. Some of you that don't read Speculation Rules may benefit from the information that Elliott Wave International provides.

You won't know if you don't look.

You might not know to look if I didn't tell you.

To get the free week you will need to sign up for
Club EWI - it is free also. There are many benefits to Club EWI - one of the more important for an investor is their free tutorial. An example of other Club EWI tools:

Five Keys to Spotting Trade Setups: A Free Trader's Classroom Video

It's a rare and
valuable gift to learn trading lessons without the hard knocks of the markets.

We'd like to present such a gift to you. Five Keys to Spotting Trade Setups discusses the ways in which you can accurately recognize corrective or countertrend price action in order to identify high probability trade setups.

Produced by Senior Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy, this Trader's Classroom video seeks to simplify the often difficult lessons to be learned in real-world trading.

As Jeffrey Kennedy puts it: "I began my career as an independent trader, so I know firsthand how hard it can be to get simple explanations of methods that consistently work. In more than 12 years since then, I've learned many lessons, and I don't think you should have to learn them all the hard way."



The Elliott Wave International tutorial is the best available way on the Internet to explore investing using Elliott Wave theory.

As you know by now -- I always recommend reading the book before you buy the investment. Now you can review the free tutorial before buying the book.

Start the free tutorial - get the free week of reports - then maybe buy the book(s).


Allan

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