A stimulating, 11:40-minute animated talk by Ken Robinson. I have qualms about some of Robinson’s intellectual-history-of-education claims, but his portrait of mainstream contemporary education (especially the repulsive cop-out that is the ADHD “epidemic”) and his prescriptions for reform are bang-on accurate. [Which reminds me of my extended series on the philosophy and history of education.]
Sir Ken Robinson on factory schools Read More »
A pair of striking excerpts from a discussion at CNN Money between motivational speaker Ken Blanchard and Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurship at Case Western. Here is Scott Shane on whether the government should encourage entrepreneurship or craft policies to divert resources to high-growth companies: “From a societal point of view, if you have a
Entrepreneurship, individualism, and collectivism Read More »
Stata Ventures is Kaizen interviewee Ray Stata’s venture capital vehicle. It recently provided funding to technology startup Lyric Semiconductor. Lyric is developing probability chip technology. Traditional chips use binary “yes/no” switches, but probability chips “can accept inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly representing probabilities, or levels of certainty.” Commercial applications
Ray Stata, Lyric Semiconductor, and probability chips Read More »
More fun with philosophy math, following up on two earlier posts: Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800 and Why life in America is 40 times better than in 1900. Focusing on innovations in music technology, Russ Roberts notes: “In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, the first portable music player. It weighed
Why the nano is 750 times better than the Walkman Read More »
The latest issue of Kaizen [pdf] features my interview with Mary Mazzio, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Olympic rower, and former law firm partner with Brown Rudnick. The theme of the interview is Documentary Filmmaking and Entrepreneurship. I hope you enjoy my wide-ranging discussion with the multi-faceted Mary Mazzio, including her latest project, Ten9Eight. Also featured in
Kaizen 14 — the Mary Mazzio interview Read More »
The Students for Liberty organization hosts conferences at colleges around the country. This year they’re having regional conferences at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Arizona State, and other campuses. I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Chicago conference on October 16 on the theme “What Is Liberty Good For? Political Activism and the Meaning of
My upcoming SFL talk at University of Chicago Read More »
This week we are starting Descartes’s Meditations in my Introduction to Philosophy course. One of the wonderful things about the Internet is its enabling us easily to see things like Descartes’s original handwriting. Here is a letter he wrote, dated 27 May 1641: The letter is in French and was written to Marin Mersenne about
A stolen Descartes manuscript Read More »
Should one be free to drive a taxi in Miami? Apparently not. The city government of Miami controls the number of taxi cabs and, as of 2002, had decided that only 1,856 taxi licenses shall exist. When a license becomes available, it is sold via lottery. But to participate in the lottery one must pay
Timothy Sandefur’s new book Read More »