There are variations of the “elephant test,” usually built around the dictionary definition of an elephant not having enough information to actually draw an elephant, in part because they are difficult to clearly and concisely describe… but you know an elephant when you see one. The “Elephant Test” I came up with recently was way […]
Author Archives: howlingpuffin
Review and summary of “The True Believer: thoughts on the nature of mass movements” by Eric Hoffer
It is an easy book to read, with generally simple language, good organization, short chapters, concise insights, clear ideas, thought-provoking insights, good end notes, and it weighs in at only 168 pages. I found that it ties in well with a number of other books I’ve ready that talk history and psychology, including but not […]
QofD: J. Katzman, the left’s game
For the longest time, I wondered “why can’t they just leave me the heck alone?” I figured a major part of tolerance was the understood reciprocal agreement to not bother one another. I’m OK, you’re OK. Good fences make good neighbors. Live and let live. That sort of thing was frequently said by the left, […]
Quote of the day: Eric Hoffer – Doctrine
(From part 56. page 79) “It [ self sacrifice] cannot be the end product of a process of probing and deliberating. All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. The do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied […]
Destroying Western Civilization’s History, one guilt trip on sin at a time.
Genghis Khan is a name most people in the world easily recognize. Most also know of Attila the Hun (a.k.k “Scourge of God”), who famously invaded the Roman empire from the eastern steppes and turned back at the gates of Rome, and Alexander the Great. If you are well-read, you might recognize Tamerlane “Prince of […]
Education when school closes
So. School – and just about everything else – is shut down. Everything but vaguely defined “essential services” are told to have their employees stay home and chill, unless they can work from home remotely. Teachers are getting an unexpected pause, or break, as are the kids, while the ossified bureaucracies across the globe try […]
What if Zinn was right?
I just put together a short video speculating on what the logical consequences of Howard Zinn’s depiction of the Native Americans and colonists was right are. I can’t possibly be the first to think of this, but it makes sense to me. Certainly it wasn’t mentioned by my kid’s AP US History teacher after they […]
Zinn and the Rhetorical Question
One of the problems with Howard Zinn’s People’s History is his insidious use of rhetorical questions. He is a very good writer, and makes excellent use of the his rhetorical skills to hide his poor scholarship in order to push his hard-left views. Most students reading this book (or excerpts from it) are going to […]
Podcast test
Checking out the viability of sound files for podcast thoughts while I learn video editing for posting things to youtube. How’s this one work? The learning curve for picking up totally new things is brutal. I’m an experienced speaker, but learning to figure out what video and audio tools to use to do basic capture […]
The Problem
School ≠ Education ≠ Learning. The problems with our current school system are many, too many to list in detail. Expensive, poorly matched to the needs of today’s work force, overtly political and hostile to the more traditional half of the population, inefficient, ineffective, horrible for boys, philosophically incoherent, and generally an illustrated example on […]