My “What Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us All About Life” was published in The Wall Street Journal. Here is a PDF version of the article: “We often think of entrepreneurs as larger-than-life characters. They take big risks. They make their own rules. They innovate and experiment, questioning things everybody else takes for granted. “It can almost seem […]
“What Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Life” [Wall Street Journal] Read More »
Important test case for universities: “A few years ago, a college student in Georgia stood on a stool outside a campus food court to talk about his Christian faith. He spoke for 20 minutes about human frailty and the possibility of salvation when school officials told him he had to stop or face discipline. “This
Robust free speech or islands? Supreme Court to decide Read More »
What does God think of human reason? In my courses, I like to emphasize that early in modernity the old and the new were in stark contrast. Here is Martin Luther, reacting against Renaissance Humanism and the more worldly Aristotelian direction of Christianity in the late Middle Ages: “In this whole matter the first and
Luther vs. Galileo on God and reason Read More »
We’re posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the tenth: OC10: Bhopal’s Chemical Disaster–Who Really Cares About the Environment. “Bhopal is a classic case of a mixed-economy, business-government partnership in the context of an overall socialist industrial policy. In such a corrupted business-politics environment, disasters are inevitable.” Audio versions of
Questions for August 2020 Q&A at thinkspot:SLAVERY1. What do you know about the abolition of slavery in Brazil? How did it happen?2. I doubt that your last presentation is anything like what has been taught in the American educational system. How can we stop the ideologically possessed from indoctrinating a dangerous one-sided narrative In our
Questions for August 2020 Q&A at thinkspot: Read More »
Five minutes on our culture of fear and the great importance of free speech: My subtitle: An excellent introduction to Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.
Listen to Ayishat Akanbi Read More »
Financial-market analyst Seth Levine on why understanding postmodernism matters to investors: “No matter how you slice it, markets are human. This even applies to the “algos” as it’s we who write their mechanistic marching orders. Thus, understanding human behavior can be helpful in assessing and anticipating market moves. There’s no choice in the fact that
Seth Levine on Reading the Market’s Postmodern Mind Read More »
At James Lindsay’s New Discourses site, check out Calum Anderson’s “A Postmodern Inquisition: Faculties of (Re)-Education?” Today, teacher training programs have embraced a secular orthodoxy in postmodernism, an ideology which exalts activism and social justice to the detriment of discourse and critical thinking. Ironically, today’s activists closely resemble Galileo’s inquisitors. While dissenting voices may not
Faculties of (Re-)Education: Training the Teachers Read More »
In preparation for my Saturday livestream lecture at thinkspot (Slavery: Who Deserves *Credit* for Ending It), here’s a sobering-but-fascinating three-minute animated video of where the slaves went. URL: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html Information about Saturday: The horrors of slavery get much deserved attention, and slavery’s legacy remains as an important lesson — as well as a contentious feeder
Where the Slaves Went — transatlantic animation Read More »
Paula Nedved reminds me of Tocqueville’s diagnosis in Democracy in America, Volume 2 (1835): “In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go beyond them. It isn’t that he has to fear an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed
Tyranny of the majority, New York Times version Read More »