PRE-RELEASE SALE – Save 15%! "I Smell a Rat – An anti-Federalist Interpretation of American History". Challenges Christian Constitution Thesis.
This long-awaited documentary on the anti-Federalist/Bible Covenant interpretation of United States history and Constitution is only about a month away from release. This documentary is a bombshell. Produced by a team of Evangelical Christians, it seeks to demonstrate that historical revisionism is a more serious problem among Christian authors than among secularists.
Readers of most contemporary authors on American Christian history are in for a shock. The video challenges almost everything they've been taught about the meaning of American history. The documentary takes issue with the “baptized Federalism” which is common to many, if not most of today’s “Christian America” authors. Too often strong Christians have allowed their patriotism to cloud their biblical discernment on this vital issue.
Approximately 35 minutes in run time, this DVD challenges the prevailing opinion among Christians that the U.S. Constitution represents the epitome of biblical civil government. It explores why Patrick Henry and other strong Christians of the founding era opposed ratification of the Constitution so vigorously. The legendary Patrick Henry argued almost single-handedly against ratification for 23 days in the Virginia Ratifying Convention. Many of his prophetic warnings have transpired: an imperial Supreme Court, two levels of oppressive taxation, a bloody civil war.
Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is expensive. Ignorance is deadly.
And now another anti-Federalist prediction fulfilled – Muslims in the U.S. Congress and maybe our next President. Discover why Patrick Henry explained his rejection of James Madison's invitation to the Constitutional Convention with the pithy retort, "I smelt a rat." What was the rat that Patrick Henry "smelt"? Get the truth now -- don't let them pull the wool over your eyes one more minute! Includes interviews with radio personality Larry Pratt, author Dr. George Grant, Author Dennis Woods, and Dr Bartlett of the ND Home School Association and Biblical Concourse.
Order before December 10th and save 15% off the $17.50 retail price -- only $14.85 with free shipping. Mail check or money order to the Biblical Concourse, 1854 107th St NE, Bottineau, ND 58318. Makes a great Christmas gift and or home school/college reference.
FREE BONUS DVD: The book Discipling the Nations – The Government Upon His Shoulder analyzes the theme of the Ismellarat documentary in great detail. Dr. George Grant has stated that, “Dennis Woods has done us all a great service by writing this balanced, comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and intensely practical handbook to the subject of civil government from a Christian perspective.”
Purchase a copy of the Ismellarat documentary ($14.85) and Discipling the Nations for $19.20 (reduced 20%) and you'll get a second copy of the DVD absolutely free!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
A Minority View Walter Williams Colleges' intellectual thuggery
A Minority View Walter Williams Colleges' intellectual thuggery
By Walter Williams, Ph.D. [a black professor]
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58176
Wednesday, October 17,
The average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen online.
"Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which applies not just to sociology classes but math, physics, ornamental horticulture and other classes whose subject material has nothing to do with race, class and gender issues.
Professor Noel Ignatiev, of the Massachusetts School of Art, explains that his concern is to do away with whiteness. Why? "Because whiteness is a form of racial oppression." Ignatiev adds, "There cannot be a white race without the phenomenon of white supremacy." What's blackness? According to Ignatiev, "Blackness is an identity that can be plausibly argued to arise out of a resistance to oppression." Bucknell professor Geoff Schneider agrees, saying, "A lot of our students, I think, are unconsciously racist." Both Ignatiev and Schneider are white.
(Column continues below)
The College of William & Mary and Tufts and Brown universities established racially segregated student orientations. At some universities, students are provided with racially segregated housing, and at others they are treated to racially separate graduation ceremonies.
Under the ruse of ending harassment, a number of universities have established speech codes. Bowdoin College has banned jokes and stories "experienced by others as harassing." Brown University has banned "verbal behavior" that "produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement" whether "unintentional or intentional." University of Connecticut has outlawed "inappropriately directed laughter." Colby College has banned any speech that could lead to a loss of self-esteem. "Suggestive looks" are banned at Bryn Mawr College and "unwelcomed flirtations" at Haverford College. Fortunately for students, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, has waged a successful war against such speech codes.
Central Connecticut State College set up a panel to discuss slavery reparations. All seven speakers, invited by the school, supported the idea. Professor Jay Bergman questioned the lack of diversity on the panel. In response, two members of the African Studies department published a letter criticizing Bergman, saying, "The protests against reparations stand on the same platform that produced apartheid, Hitler and the KKK." Such a response, as professor Bergman says, is nothing less than intellectual thuggery.
For universities such as Columbia and Yale, military recruiters are unwelcome, but they welcome terrorists such as Columbia University's invitation to Col. Moammar Gadhafi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yale admitted former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi as a student, despite his fourth-grade education and high school equivalency degree.
On other campuses, such as Lehigh, Central Michigan, Arizona, Holy Cross and California Berkeley universities, administrators banned students, staff and faculty from showing signs of patriotism after the 9/11 attacks. On some campuses, display of the American flag was banned; the Pledge of Allegiance and singing patriotic songs were banned out of fear of possibly offending foreign students.
Several university officials refused to be interviewed for the documentary. They wanted to keep their campus policies under wraps, not only from reporters but parents as well. When college admissions officials make their recruitment visits, they don't tell parents that their children will learn "whiteness is a form of racial oppression," or that they sponsor racially segregated orientations, dorms and graduation ceremonies. Parents and prospective students are kept in the dark.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has published "Choosing the Right College," to which I've written the introduction. The guide provides a wealth of information to help parents and students choose the right college.
By Walter Williams, Ph.D. [a black professor]
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58176
Wednesday, October 17,
The average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen online.
"Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which applies not just to sociology classes but math, physics, ornamental horticulture and other classes whose subject material has nothing to do with race, class and gender issues.
Professor Noel Ignatiev, of the Massachusetts School of Art, explains that his concern is to do away with whiteness. Why? "Because whiteness is a form of racial oppression." Ignatiev adds, "There cannot be a white race without the phenomenon of white supremacy." What's blackness? According to Ignatiev, "Blackness is an identity that can be plausibly argued to arise out of a resistance to oppression." Bucknell professor Geoff Schneider agrees, saying, "A lot of our students, I think, are unconsciously racist." Both Ignatiev and Schneider are white.
(Column continues below)
The College of William & Mary and Tufts and Brown universities established racially segregated student orientations. At some universities, students are provided with racially segregated housing, and at others they are treated to racially separate graduation ceremonies.
Under the ruse of ending harassment, a number of universities have established speech codes. Bowdoin College has banned jokes and stories "experienced by others as harassing." Brown University has banned "verbal behavior" that "produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement" whether "unintentional or intentional." University of Connecticut has outlawed "inappropriately directed laughter." Colby College has banned any speech that could lead to a loss of self-esteem. "Suggestive looks" are banned at Bryn Mawr College and "unwelcomed flirtations" at Haverford College. Fortunately for students, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, has waged a successful war against such speech codes.
Central Connecticut State College set up a panel to discuss slavery reparations. All seven speakers, invited by the school, supported the idea. Professor Jay Bergman questioned the lack of diversity on the panel. In response, two members of the African Studies department published a letter criticizing Bergman, saying, "The protests against reparations stand on the same platform that produced apartheid, Hitler and the KKK." Such a response, as professor Bergman says, is nothing less than intellectual thuggery.
For universities such as Columbia and Yale, military recruiters are unwelcome, but they welcome terrorists such as Columbia University's invitation to Col. Moammar Gadhafi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yale admitted former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi as a student, despite his fourth-grade education and high school equivalency degree.
On other campuses, such as Lehigh, Central Michigan, Arizona, Holy Cross and California Berkeley universities, administrators banned students, staff and faculty from showing signs of patriotism after the 9/11 attacks. On some campuses, display of the American flag was banned; the Pledge of Allegiance and singing patriotic songs were banned out of fear of possibly offending foreign students.
Several university officials refused to be interviewed for the documentary. They wanted to keep their campus policies under wraps, not only from reporters but parents as well. When college admissions officials make their recruitment visits, they don't tell parents that their children will learn "whiteness is a form of racial oppression," or that they sponsor racially segregated orientations, dorms and graduation ceremonies. Parents and prospective students are kept in the dark.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has published "Choosing the Right College," to which I've written the introduction. The guide provides a wealth of information to help parents and students choose the right college.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Mortimer Adler - A Transformational Marxist
Mortimer Adler is known by many as the author of "How to Read a Book" (1940) which he coauthored with Charles Van Doren. It is considered the classic guide to intelligent reading. I have read the book recently and was recommending it as helpful preparation for home based college studies. My reasons, and the reasons other Biblical minded people recommend this book is based on its practical ideas for getting the most information and learning out of a book. "How to Read a Book" also includes a list of the classic works considered the foundation of western civilizations, which is helpful to the Christian toward understanding our times.
Last Friday, Dean Gotcher (AuthorityResearch.com) and his wife Karen were having supper at our home when I mention this as a book that I found helpful. Dean then pointed out that Mortimer Alder is a Transformational Marxist, which I later learned is a "slow march through the institutions" as a strategy for changing the world, popularized by Marxist Antonio Gramsi.
Dean also pointed out that Mortimer Adler founded the Aspen Institute
According to the Apen Institute website: Paepcke created what is now the Aspen Institute. He was a trustee of the University of Chicago, and his participation in its Great Books seminar, led by philosopher Mortimer Adler, inspired the Institute's Executive Seminar. The seminar is a forum based on the writings of great thinkers of the past and present. Through reading and discussing selections from the works of classic and modern writers, leaders better understand the human challenges facing the organizations and communities they serve. "The Executive Seminar was not intended to make a corporate treasurer a more skilled corporate treasurer," said Paepcke, "but to help a leader gain access to his or her own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and more self-fulfilling."
Understanding the history of western civilization does give people the tools to help transform society, toward their preferred worldview. Mortimer Adler apparently viewed having a Great Books understanding of western civilization as important for slowly implementing Marxism. Many Christians today see some of that same historical body of knowledge as valuable for Biblically discerning the times clearly enough to implement Biblical truths where errors have dominated.
I therefore see a need for someone, perhaps a home school or home college student interested in writing and worldview issues, to analyze "How to Read a Book" to discover and list any of its Marxist features and redeem the value of the book by taking its thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.
Here is the entire book free online: How to Read a Book
Last Friday, Dean Gotcher (AuthorityResearch.com) and his wife Karen were having supper at our home when I mention this as a book that I found helpful. Dean then pointed out that Mortimer Alder is a Transformational Marxist, which I later learned is a "slow march through the institutions" as a strategy for changing the world, popularized by Marxist Antonio Gramsi.
Dean also pointed out that Mortimer Adler founded the Aspen Institute
According to the Apen Institute website: Paepcke created what is now the Aspen Institute. He was a trustee of the University of Chicago, and his participation in its Great Books seminar, led by philosopher Mortimer Adler, inspired the Institute's Executive Seminar. The seminar is a forum based on the writings of great thinkers of the past and present. Through reading and discussing selections from the works of classic and modern writers, leaders better understand the human challenges facing the organizations and communities they serve. "The Executive Seminar was not intended to make a corporate treasurer a more skilled corporate treasurer," said Paepcke, "but to help a leader gain access to his or her own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and more self-fulfilling."
Understanding the history of western civilization does give people the tools to help transform society, toward their preferred worldview. Mortimer Adler apparently viewed having a Great Books understanding of western civilization as important for slowly implementing Marxism. Many Christians today see some of that same historical body of knowledge as valuable for Biblically discerning the times clearly enough to implement Biblical truths where errors have dominated.
I therefore see a need for someone, perhaps a home school or home college student interested in writing and worldview issues, to analyze "How to Read a Book" to discover and list any of its Marxist features and redeem the value of the book by taking its thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.
Here is the entire book free online: How to Read a Book
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Regarding the Tension between Home Schoolers and Public Schoolers
Home schooled parents and children sometimes feel a tension or unspoken resentment when in the presence of public schooled parents or children. If words were put to the thoughts occurring, the public schooled parents and children think: “You poor home schoolers just don’t know what you are missing with all the academic and social opportunities that are free at the local school! Your children are going to be social misfits and not be able to get good jobs. Who are you to think you can provide a real education when you haven’t even been to teacher’s college? You say you want freedom to teach your children, so you must be hiding something evil, because I’ve heard about child abuse and besides there is no other reason you could have for wanting such freedom.”
If you are familiar with 2 Corinthians
For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. 2 Corinthians 10:12
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. 1 Corinthians 8:1
By pride comes nothing but strife, But with the well-advised is wisdom. Proverbs 13:10
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Proverbs 25:11
If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. 1 Peter 4:11a
With pride revealed as a cause of the tension between public schoolers and home schoolers, then the first step toward resolving this tension becomes personal repentance and humility before God. The truth is that one’s educational choice does not make one person better than another. In fact, the truth is that we are equal in God’s eyes and have nothing to boast about except our infirmities and Christ (2 Corinthians 12:9).
The philosophies operating in the government school system are satanic at the root and destroying our country, which is an expected curse on a nation which has forsaken God. This has happened repeatedly in history as illustrated in 1 Kings and 2 Kings. It is the responsibility of Christians to understand our times, speak this truth in love, expect persecution if living godly, make disciples to Christ, and pray for Christians to awake to righteousness, which will necessitate home or Christian schools and an exodus from the public schools.
Home schoolers don’t need to compromise their convictions, they simply need to let Christ live through them, mind their own business and watch God answer their prayers. There will always be a tension and unspoken resentment between God and Satan as well as those following them and their agendas. As Dean Gotcher (AuthorityResearch.com) pointed out, the natural desire for peace between people with conflicting positions is understood by social engineers and is being deliberately used as a technique to lead Christians to compromise.
There will be true peace only when all people are in Christ. In the meantime, we have a secret to personal peace in the midst of the cultural conflict. That secret is to simply reckon our selves dead to the sin of comparison or other evil thoughts. The tension between home schoolers and public schoolers in the churches or the legislatures won’t bother any such “dead” homeschoolers as they teach and live the truth in love and allow their light to shine.
Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:11
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Brotherhood of Darkness
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2866704516923817439&q=The+Brotherhood+of+Darkness Google Video
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Ron Paul epiphany
Posted: September 10, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Vox Day
© 2007
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57545
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Judging by the sounds of the laughter of the other Republican candidates directed at their rival, Ron Paul has now reached the second of Mohandas K. Ghandi's four stages. It is still unlikely that he will win the nomination of a party which has proven it doesn't deserve him, but it is far less unlikely than it was back when Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain were still considered "electable" by most political observers. The candidates, never a particularly bright lot, may be laughing, but as the neocons and party leaders turn to Fred Thompson in desperation, more intelligent observers are not.
Why is there so much cheering for Ron Paul?
– Andy McCarthy, National Review, Sept. 5, 2007
The reason there is so much cheering for Ron Paul is that he is the only Republican who has staked out popular positions on the two most significant issues of the 2008 election cycle. He is anti-occupation and pro-border control. No amount of Bush administration spin is going to change the fact that "the surge" is strategically irrelevant, that the neocon's Democratic World Revolution is a total failure and that Mexico is being allowed to invade the United States. In short, Ron Paul is the only Republican whose positions on the two primary issues are different than Hillary Clinton's stance on them, and, more importantly, are more credible and more popular than Hillary Clinton's. He is the only Republican whose nomination can realistically be considered a potential impediment to what otherwise looks like a Democratic landslide.
The Gay Old Party's leadership, which is far more interested in propositioning interns and policemen than the Constitution, hates Ron Paul and quite rightly feels threatened by him. But their incessant spreading of fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding his candidacy is no more believable than a Microsoft treatise on Linux. In fact, I surmise that most of the top Republicans would prefer a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton presidency to a Paul one. This may be why they have drafted the sluggish, uncharismatic Thompson; Giuliani, Romney and McCain are so obviously unelectable that none of them can even manage to put themselves in a position to get run over by Hillary in November.
When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something's going on.
– Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2007
What's going on is the same as in 1976 and 1980, the Republican peasantry is rebelling against the choices that their lords and masters have laid before them. This is not merely a threat to the Republican leadership, but to the very concept of the bifactional ruling party that rules America in a "bipartisan" spirit. Ron Paul threatens the notion of politics as a team sport; his focus on actual constitutional principles makes him equally appealing to anti-occupation, pro-border Democrats as to anti-occupation, pro-border Republicans. That's why he is the only candidate in either party whose support ranges from devout Christian conservatives to gay, peacenik Ralph Nader fans.
Between now and November 2008, many Americans will experience the Ron Paul epiphany, in which the scales will fall from their eyes, and they will suddenly realize that they do not want the nation to continue in the direction that George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, Hussein Osama and Rudy McRomney all intend on taking it. At this point, a 1976 scenario looks far more likely than a 1980 one, but then, few pundits thought Ron Paul would still require consideration at this point in the campaign.
The choice is simple. If you want to live under an EU-style regime that is intent on invading and occupying other countries in the name of democracy for the forseeable future, vote for any of the so-called major candidates. It doesn't matter which one. There is no significant difference between President Bush and Sen. Clinton, or between Sen. Thompson and Sen. Obama. If, on the other hand, you wish to live in a nation where the United States government is governed by the Constitution, you had better support Ron Paul. This may be your only opportunity, for it is entirely possible that this will be the last time such a choice is presented to you.
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Vox Day
© 2007
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57545
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Judging by the sounds of the laughter of the other Republican candidates directed at their rival, Ron Paul has now reached the second of Mohandas K. Ghandi's four stages. It is still unlikely that he will win the nomination of a party which has proven it doesn't deserve him, but it is far less unlikely than it was back when Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain were still considered "electable" by most political observers. The candidates, never a particularly bright lot, may be laughing, but as the neocons and party leaders turn to Fred Thompson in desperation, more intelligent observers are not.
Why is there so much cheering for Ron Paul?
– Andy McCarthy, National Review, Sept. 5, 2007
The reason there is so much cheering for Ron Paul is that he is the only Republican who has staked out popular positions on the two most significant issues of the 2008 election cycle. He is anti-occupation and pro-border control. No amount of Bush administration spin is going to change the fact that "the surge" is strategically irrelevant, that the neocon's Democratic World Revolution is a total failure and that Mexico is being allowed to invade the United States. In short, Ron Paul is the only Republican whose positions on the two primary issues are different than Hillary Clinton's stance on them, and, more importantly, are more credible and more popular than Hillary Clinton's. He is the only Republican whose nomination can realistically be considered a potential impediment to what otherwise looks like a Democratic landslide.
The Gay Old Party's leadership, which is far more interested in propositioning interns and policemen than the Constitution, hates Ron Paul and quite rightly feels threatened by him. But their incessant spreading of fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding his candidacy is no more believable than a Microsoft treatise on Linux. In fact, I surmise that most of the top Republicans would prefer a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton presidency to a Paul one. This may be why they have drafted the sluggish, uncharismatic Thompson; Giuliani, Romney and McCain are so obviously unelectable that none of them can even manage to put themselves in a position to get run over by Hillary in November.
When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something's going on.
– Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2007
What's going on is the same as in 1976 and 1980, the Republican peasantry is rebelling against the choices that their lords and masters have laid before them. This is not merely a threat to the Republican leadership, but to the very concept of the bifactional ruling party that rules America in a "bipartisan" spirit. Ron Paul threatens the notion of politics as a team sport; his focus on actual constitutional principles makes him equally appealing to anti-occupation, pro-border Democrats as to anti-occupation, pro-border Republicans. That's why he is the only candidate in either party whose support ranges from devout Christian conservatives to gay, peacenik Ralph Nader fans.
Between now and November 2008, many Americans will experience the Ron Paul epiphany, in which the scales will fall from their eyes, and they will suddenly realize that they do not want the nation to continue in the direction that George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, Hussein Osama and Rudy McRomney all intend on taking it. At this point, a 1976 scenario looks far more likely than a 1980 one, but then, few pundits thought Ron Paul would still require consideration at this point in the campaign.
The choice is simple. If you want to live under an EU-style regime that is intent on invading and occupying other countries in the name of democracy for the forseeable future, vote for any of the so-called major candidates. It doesn't matter which one. There is no significant difference between President Bush and Sen. Clinton, or between Sen. Thompson and Sen. Obama. If, on the other hand, you wish to live in a nation where the United States government is governed by the Constitution, you had better support Ron Paul. This may be your only opportunity, for it is entirely possible that this will be the last time such a choice is presented to you.
Sustainable Stealing
How specifically the United Nations is slowly stealing your private property on purpose through "sustainable development." - Free Video Click HERE
"For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light." Luke 16:8
Appropriate for every home college curriculum!
Monday, August 20, 2007
Old MacDonald Had A Farmers’ Market
Old MacDonald Had A Farmers’ Market –
total self-sufficiency is a noble, misguided ideal http://www.incharacter.org/printable.php?article=87#
By Bill McKibben
Generations of college freshmen, asked to read Walden, have sputtered with indignation when they learned that Henry David went back to Concord for dinner with his family every week or two. He’s cheating; his grand experiment is a fraud. This outrage is a useful tactic; it prevents them from having to grapple with the most important (and perhaps the most difficult) book in the American canon, one that asks impossibly searching questions about the emptiness of a consumer economy, the vacuity of an information-soaked era. But it also points to something else: Thoreau, our apostle of solitary, individual self-reliance, out in his cabin with his hoe and his beans, the most determinedly asocial man of his time — nonetheless was immersed in his community to a degree few people today can comprehend.
Consider the sheer number of people who happened to drop by the cabin of an obscure eccentric. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society,” he writes. Often more visitors came than could sit — sometimes twenty or thirty at a time. “Half-witted men from the almshouse,” busybodies who “pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out,” a French-Canadian woodchopper, a runaway slave “whom I helped to forward toward the north star,” doctors, lawyers, the old and infirm and the timid, the self-styled reformers. It’s not that Thoreau was necessarily a cheerful host — there were visitors “who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness.” Instead, it was simply a visiting age — as most of human history has been a visiting age, and every human culture a visiting culture.
Until ours. I doubt if many people reading these words have had a spontaneous visit from a neighbor in the past week — less than a fifth of Americans report visiting regularly with friends and neighbors, and the percentage is declining steadily. The number of close friends that an American claims has dropped steadily for the last fifty years too; three-quarters of us don’t know our next-door neighbors. Even the people who share our houses are becoming strangers: The Wall Street Journal reported recently that “major builders and top architects are walling off space. They’re touting one-person ‘internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and-her offices on opposite ends of the house.” The new floor plans, says the director of research for the National Association of Home Builders, are “good for the dysfunctional family.” Or, as another executive put it, these are the perfect homes for “families that don’t want anything to do with one another.” Compared to these guys, Thoreau with his three-chair cabin was practically Martha Stewart.
Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else; with a credit card, you can harvest the world’s bounty from the privacy of your room. And we’ve built a culture much the same — the dream houses those architects build, needless to say, come with a plasma screen in every room. As long as we can go on earning good money in our own tiny niche, we don’t need a helping hand from a soul — save, of course, from the invisible hand that cups us all in its benign grip.
There are a couple of problems with this fine scenario, of course. One is: we’re miserable. Reported levels of happiness and life-satisfaction are locked in long-term one-way declines, almost certainly because of this lack of connection. Does this sound subjective and airy? Find one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t belong to anything and convince them to join a church, a softball league, a bird-watching group. In the next year their mortality — the risk that they will die in the next year — falls by half.
The other trouble is that our self-reliance is actually a reliance on cheap fossil fuel and the economy it’s built. Take that away — either because we start to run out of oil, or because global warming forces us to stop using it in current quantities — and our vaunted independence will start to lurch like a Hummer with four flat tires. Just think for a moment about that world and then decide if you want to live on an acre all your own in the outermost ring of suburbs.
The idea of self-reliance is so deep in our psyches, however, that even when we attempt to escape from the unhappy and unsustainable cul-de-sac of our society, we’re likely to turn toward yet more “independence.” The “back-to-the-land” movement, for instance, often added the words “by myself.” Think about how proudly a certain kind of person talks about his “off-the-grid” life — he makes his own energy and grows his own food, he can deal with whatever the world throws at him. One such person may be left-wing in politics (Ã la Scott and Helen Nearing); another may be conservative. But they are united in their lack of need for the larger world. Not even to school their kids — they’ll take care of that as well.
Such folks are admirable, of course — they have a wide variety of skills now missing in most Americans; they’re able to amuse themselves; they work hard. But as an ideal, especially an economic ideal, that radical self-reliance strikes me as being almost as empty as the consumer society from which it dissents. Consider, for instance, the idea of growing all your own food. It’s clearly better than relying on food from thousands of miles away — from our current industrialized food economy, which figures “it’s always summer somewhere” and so orders take-out from that distant field every night of the year. Compared with that, an enormous garden and a root cellar full of all you’ll need for the winter is virtue incarnate. But if you believe in many of the (entirely plausible) horror stories about what’s to come — peak oil, climate change — then the world ends with you standing shotgun in hand above your vegetable patch, protecting your carrots from the poaching urban horde.
Contrast that with another vision, one taking shape in at least a few places around the country: a matrix of small farmers growing food for their local areas. Farmers’ markets are the fastest-growing part of our food economy, with sales showing double-digit growth annually. Partly that’s because people want good food (all kinds of people: immigrants and ethnic Americans tend to be the most avid farmers’ market shoppers). And partly it’s because they want more company. One team of sociologists reported recently that shoppers at farmers’ markets engaged in ten times more conversations per visit than customers in supermarkets. I spent the past winter eating only from my valley; a little of the food I grew myself, but the idea of my experiment was to see what remained of the agricultural infrastructure that had once supported this place. And the payoff was not only a delicious six months, but also a deep network of new friends, a much stronger sense of the cultural geography of my place.
Or consider energy. Since the 1970s, a particular breed of noble ex-hippie has been building “off-the-grid” homes, often relying on solar panels. This has been important work — they’ve figured out many of the techniques and technologies that we desperately need to get free of our climate change predicament. But the most exciting new gadget is a home-scale inverter, one that allows you to send the power your rooftop generates down the line instead of down into the basement. Where the isolated system has a stack of batteries, the grid-tied solar panel uses the whole region’s electric system as its battery: my electric meter spins merrily backward all afternoon because while the sun shines I’m a utility; then at night I draw from somewhere else. It’s a two-way flow, in the same way that the internet allows ideas to bounce in many directions.
You can do the same kind of calculation with almost any commodity. Music doesn’t need to come from Nashville or Hollywood on a small disc, for instance. But you don’t have to produce it all yourself either. More fun to join with the neighbors, to make music together or to listen to the local stars. A hundred years ago, Iowa had 1,300 opera houses. Radio doesn’t need to come from the ClearChannel headquarters in some Texas office park; new low-power FM lets valleys make their own. Even currency can become a joint local project — all it takes is the trust that underwrites any system of money. In hundreds of communities, people are trying to build that trust locally, with money that only works within the region.
Thinking this way won’t be easy. We’re used to independence as the prime virtue — so used to it that three quarters of American Christians believe the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible, instead of Ben Franklin. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is harder advice, but sweeter and more sage. We don’t need to live on communes (though more and more old people are finding themselves enrolling in “retirement communities” that are gray-haired, upscale versions). But we will, I think, need to figure out how to stop relying on both oil and ourselves, and instead learn the lesson that the other primates and the other human cultures never forgot: we’re built to rely on each other.
.....
Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and the author of many books, including Enough, Wandering Home, The End of Nature, Hundred Dollar Holiday, and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.
total self-sufficiency is a noble, misguided ideal http://www.incharacter.org/printable.php?article=87#
By Bill McKibben
Generations of college freshmen, asked to read Walden, have sputtered with indignation when they learned that Henry David went back to Concord for dinner with his family every week or two. He’s cheating; his grand experiment is a fraud. This outrage is a useful tactic; it prevents them from having to grapple with the most important (and perhaps the most difficult) book in the American canon, one that asks impossibly searching questions about the emptiness of a consumer economy, the vacuity of an information-soaked era. But it also points to something else: Thoreau, our apostle of solitary, individual self-reliance, out in his cabin with his hoe and his beans, the most determinedly asocial man of his time — nonetheless was immersed in his community to a degree few people today can comprehend.
Consider the sheer number of people who happened to drop by the cabin of an obscure eccentric. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society,” he writes. Often more visitors came than could sit — sometimes twenty or thirty at a time. “Half-witted men from the almshouse,” busybodies who “pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out,” a French-Canadian woodchopper, a runaway slave “whom I helped to forward toward the north star,” doctors, lawyers, the old and infirm and the timid, the self-styled reformers. It’s not that Thoreau was necessarily a cheerful host — there were visitors “who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness.” Instead, it was simply a visiting age — as most of human history has been a visiting age, and every human culture a visiting culture.
Until ours. I doubt if many people reading these words have had a spontaneous visit from a neighbor in the past week — less than a fifth of Americans report visiting regularly with friends and neighbors, and the percentage is declining steadily. The number of close friends that an American claims has dropped steadily for the last fifty years too; three-quarters of us don’t know our next-door neighbors. Even the people who share our houses are becoming strangers: The Wall Street Journal reported recently that “major builders and top architects are walling off space. They’re touting one-person ‘internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and-her offices on opposite ends of the house.” The new floor plans, says the director of research for the National Association of Home Builders, are “good for the dysfunctional family.” Or, as another executive put it, these are the perfect homes for “families that don’t want anything to do with one another.” Compared to these guys, Thoreau with his three-chair cabin was practically Martha Stewart.
Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our Little House on the Prairie heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else; with a credit card, you can harvest the world’s bounty from the privacy of your room. And we’ve built a culture much the same — the dream houses those architects build, needless to say, come with a plasma screen in every room. As long as we can go on earning good money in our own tiny niche, we don’t need a helping hand from a soul — save, of course, from the invisible hand that cups us all in its benign grip.
There are a couple of problems with this fine scenario, of course. One is: we’re miserable. Reported levels of happiness and life-satisfaction are locked in long-term one-way declines, almost certainly because of this lack of connection. Does this sound subjective and airy? Find one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t belong to anything and convince them to join a church, a softball league, a bird-watching group. In the next year their mortality — the risk that they will die in the next year — falls by half.
The other trouble is that our self-reliance is actually a reliance on cheap fossil fuel and the economy it’s built. Take that away — either because we start to run out of oil, or because global warming forces us to stop using it in current quantities — and our vaunted independence will start to lurch like a Hummer with four flat tires. Just think for a moment about that world and then decide if you want to live on an acre all your own in the outermost ring of suburbs.
The idea of self-reliance is so deep in our psyches, however, that even when we attempt to escape from the unhappy and unsustainable cul-de-sac of our society, we’re likely to turn toward yet more “independence.” The “back-to-the-land” movement, for instance, often added the words “by myself.” Think about how proudly a certain kind of person talks about his “off-the-grid” life — he makes his own energy and grows his own food, he can deal with whatever the world throws at him. One such person may be left-wing in politics (Ã la Scott and Helen Nearing); another may be conservative. But they are united in their lack of need for the larger world. Not even to school their kids — they’ll take care of that as well.
Such folks are admirable, of course — they have a wide variety of skills now missing in most Americans; they’re able to amuse themselves; they work hard. But as an ideal, especially an economic ideal, that radical self-reliance strikes me as being almost as empty as the consumer society from which it dissents. Consider, for instance, the idea of growing all your own food. It’s clearly better than relying on food from thousands of miles away — from our current industrialized food economy, which figures “it’s always summer somewhere” and so orders take-out from that distant field every night of the year. Compared with that, an enormous garden and a root cellar full of all you’ll need for the winter is virtue incarnate. But if you believe in many of the (entirely plausible) horror stories about what’s to come — peak oil, climate change — then the world ends with you standing shotgun in hand above your vegetable patch, protecting your carrots from the poaching urban horde.
Contrast that with another vision, one taking shape in at least a few places around the country: a matrix of small farmers growing food for their local areas. Farmers’ markets are the fastest-growing part of our food economy, with sales showing double-digit growth annually. Partly that’s because people want good food (all kinds of people: immigrants and ethnic Americans tend to be the most avid farmers’ market shoppers). And partly it’s because they want more company. One team of sociologists reported recently that shoppers at farmers’ markets engaged in ten times more conversations per visit than customers in supermarkets. I spent the past winter eating only from my valley; a little of the food I grew myself, but the idea of my experiment was to see what remained of the agricultural infrastructure that had once supported this place. And the payoff was not only a delicious six months, but also a deep network of new friends, a much stronger sense of the cultural geography of my place.
Or consider energy. Since the 1970s, a particular breed of noble ex-hippie has been building “off-the-grid” homes, often relying on solar panels. This has been important work — they’ve figured out many of the techniques and technologies that we desperately need to get free of our climate change predicament. But the most exciting new gadget is a home-scale inverter, one that allows you to send the power your rooftop generates down the line instead of down into the basement. Where the isolated system has a stack of batteries, the grid-tied solar panel uses the whole region’s electric system as its battery: my electric meter spins merrily backward all afternoon because while the sun shines I’m a utility; then at night I draw from somewhere else. It’s a two-way flow, in the same way that the internet allows ideas to bounce in many directions.
You can do the same kind of calculation with almost any commodity. Music doesn’t need to come from Nashville or Hollywood on a small disc, for instance. But you don’t have to produce it all yourself either. More fun to join with the neighbors, to make music together or to listen to the local stars. A hundred years ago, Iowa had 1,300 opera houses. Radio doesn’t need to come from the ClearChannel headquarters in some Texas office park; new low-power FM lets valleys make their own. Even currency can become a joint local project — all it takes is the trust that underwrites any system of money. In hundreds of communities, people are trying to build that trust locally, with money that only works within the region.
Thinking this way won’t be easy. We’re used to independence as the prime virtue — so used to it that three quarters of American Christians believe the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible, instead of Ben Franklin. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is harder advice, but sweeter and more sage. We don’t need to live on communes (though more and more old people are finding themselves enrolling in “retirement communities” that are gray-haired, upscale versions). But we will, I think, need to figure out how to stop relying on both oil and ourselves, and instead learn the lesson that the other primates and the other human cultures never forgot: we’re built to rely on each other.
.....
Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and the author of many books, including Enough, Wandering Home, The End of Nature, Hundred Dollar Holiday, and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.
Friday, August 17, 2007
I Don't Like Math
I have heard the phrase “I don’t like math” from both young and old people, people with no college education and from people with doctoral degrees. I’m just now starting to understand how the enjoyment of mathematics or lack thereof, is influenced more by a person’s perspective on mathematics than their God given interests or intelligence.
Our culture has been seriously secularized into thinking that subjects can be productively taught and used apart from acknowledging God. This separating of the Christian faith from mathematics is the root cause for the epidemic dislike for mathematics. So the good news is that there is hope to enjoy mathematics by reuniting mathematics with the Christian faith!
But how do we begin reuniting mathematics with the Christian faith? One place to start is to read a good book on the subject such as “Mathematics: Is God Silent?” by James Nickel published by Ross House books. The Mathematics chapter in “Advancing the Kingdom” by Donald Schanzenbach and published by River City Press is my favorite briefer treatment of the subject.
Loosening our grip on mathematics curriculums may be another key to reuniting the Christian faith and the leading of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14) with mathematics. I have been a bit suspicious of how mathematics is taught, knowing that the secular motivation for mathematics achievement is for the global competitiveness of multinational corporations and managing of big government projects.
After reading 1 Thessalonians 4: 11-12 to our family this morning and discussing the Biblical commands to study, live a quiet life, mind our own business in both senses and work with our hands, we discussed how mathematics helps us do these things.
Mathematics is not merely the manipulation of numbers, letters and symbols. I explained to our boys that making their bed is doing mathematics because the essence of mathematics is simply organizing things. Likewise organizing their desks, baking a cake, troubleshooting a mower and operating a market garden are all organizational and therefore mathematical activities.
We then discussed how God rewards diligence and how getting organized in a record keeping way leads to a greater understanding of the status of an activity, better decision making, and motivates productivity in the kitchen, shop, market garden and beyond. From there it was easy to show how mathematics, from the simple physical organizing of space and things to the mathematics for optimizing manufacturing and social systems gives Christians a tool for taking godly dominion of the physical and social world (Genesis 1:26). Somehow, after this devotion we were all motivated to get our respective areas better organized so that we could be more productive. I found the joy of the Lord and the Holy Spirit leading as I organized our storage area and later watched the boys use mathematical manipulations to calculate how much money mom could make selling her raspberry jam this weekend.
Later in the day, our 16 year old came by my desk reading the “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, which taught how to garden with less water and less time with more organization. Our son was comparing our current row method with the square foot method, which was a nice example of how increasing the use of mathematical organization in gardening can increase productivity!
So, with regard to the dislike of mathematics, it probably isn’t the mathematical activity itself, that is connected to a real Christian life that is distasteful, it is the secularized, disconnected (from real life, history, philosophy, creation, and God’s word) textbook mathematical manipulations that cultivate the dislike of and even fear of math.
Implementing Christian thinking in mathematics simply keeps mathematics connected to daily reality while encouraging the student in their knowledge of God, experience in being led by His Spirit (Romans 8:14), and discerning the times through illustrations of history and philosophy and truth in mathematics. Catching onto the mathematical wonders of creation and the cultural implications is not boring but very exciting!
Dr. James Bartlett is an engineer by training and teaches Christian Thinking in Mathematics for the Biblical Concourse of Home Universities. Dr. Bartlett and his wife Lynn homeschool four boys in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota and can be reached at 701-263-4574 or by visiting www.biblicalconcourse.com .
Our culture has been seriously secularized into thinking that subjects can be productively taught and used apart from acknowledging God. This separating of the Christian faith from mathematics is the root cause for the epidemic dislike for mathematics. So the good news is that there is hope to enjoy mathematics by reuniting mathematics with the Christian faith!
But how do we begin reuniting mathematics with the Christian faith? One place to start is to read a good book on the subject such as “Mathematics: Is God Silent?” by James Nickel published by Ross House books. The Mathematics chapter in “Advancing the Kingdom” by Donald Schanzenbach and published by River City Press is my favorite briefer treatment of the subject.
Loosening our grip on mathematics curriculums may be another key to reuniting the Christian faith and the leading of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14) with mathematics. I have been a bit suspicious of how mathematics is taught, knowing that the secular motivation for mathematics achievement is for the global competitiveness of multinational corporations and managing of big government projects.
After reading 1 Thessalonians 4: 11-12 to our family this morning and discussing the Biblical commands to study, live a quiet life, mind our own business in both senses and work with our hands, we discussed how mathematics helps us do these things.
Mathematics is not merely the manipulation of numbers, letters and symbols. I explained to our boys that making their bed is doing mathematics because the essence of mathematics is simply organizing things. Likewise organizing their desks, baking a cake, troubleshooting a mower and operating a market garden are all organizational and therefore mathematical activities.
We then discussed how God rewards diligence and how getting organized in a record keeping way leads to a greater understanding of the status of an activity, better decision making, and motivates productivity in the kitchen, shop, market garden and beyond. From there it was easy to show how mathematics, from the simple physical organizing of space and things to the mathematics for optimizing manufacturing and social systems gives Christians a tool for taking godly dominion of the physical and social world (Genesis 1:26). Somehow, after this devotion we were all motivated to get our respective areas better organized so that we could be more productive. I found the joy of the Lord and the Holy Spirit leading as I organized our storage area and later watched the boys use mathematical manipulations to calculate how much money mom could make selling her raspberry jam this weekend.
Later in the day, our 16 year old came by my desk reading the “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, which taught how to garden with less water and less time with more organization. Our son was comparing our current row method with the square foot method, which was a nice example of how increasing the use of mathematical organization in gardening can increase productivity!
So, with regard to the dislike of mathematics, it probably isn’t the mathematical activity itself, that is connected to a real Christian life that is distasteful, it is the secularized, disconnected (from real life, history, philosophy, creation, and God’s word) textbook mathematical manipulations that cultivate the dislike of and even fear of math.
Implementing Christian thinking in mathematics simply keeps mathematics connected to daily reality while encouraging the student in their knowledge of God, experience in being led by His Spirit (Romans 8:14), and discerning the times through illustrations of history and philosophy and truth in mathematics. Catching onto the mathematical wonders of creation and the cultural implications is not boring but very exciting!
Dr. James Bartlett is an engineer by training and teaches Christian Thinking in Mathematics for the Biblical Concourse of Home Universities. Dr. Bartlett and his wife Lynn homeschool four boys in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota and can be reached at 701-263-4574 or by visiting www.biblicalconcourse.com .
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prized Economist
PBS TV Series "Free to Choose" by Economist Milton Friedman is now available free on Google Video via the links below.
Milton Friedman Quotes:
- "The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."
- "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."
- "Governments never learn. Only people learn."
- "So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not"
- "The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom."
- "Most economic fallacies derive - from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."
- "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
- "What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system""History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition."
- "The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both."
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The 1902 Anti-Usury League and Advancing the Kingdom
For folks interested in Biblical Economics, the book titled, USURY: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View, by Calvin Elliott may be something worth taking a look at. Could the truth about usury have implications for our college and career decision making?
Quotes from 1902:
"The object, the purpose and work of the Anti-Usury League is to expose the evils, the oppressions, the fraud and the sin of usury or interest, by publications, by lectures, by conventions and by every other practical method."
"There is coming forward a great army of intelligent, virtuous young people. They are made intelligent by our high schools, seminaries and colleges. They are made students of the Bible and stimulated in righteousness by Sunday Schools, Christian Associations, Endeavors, Leagues and Unions. From these there shall rise up defenders of the truth, free from the burden of debt and unbiassed by life-long association with conditions familiar to those older. The reformers in all ages have been young, and this reform will be no exception. There is a rashness in youth that needs direction, but there is also a dash and hope and confidence that is necessary to break away from old customs. One generation of intelligent, virtuous young people could give this evil its fatal blow." Reference Calvin Elliott, USURY: A Scriptural, Ethical andEconomic View, (Millersburg, OH: The Anti-Usury League, 1902), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21623/21623-h/21623-h.htm, 7 August 2007.
FEATURED COURSE: ADVANCING THE KINGDOM IN NORTH DAKOTA
TEACHERS: Dr. Bartlett with occasional questions answered by Mr. Schanzenbach
MODE: 16 one hour lectures, quizzes, Power point presentations, email and or phone communications. Runs with one or more students.
REQUIRED STUDENT RESOURCE: Donald W. Schanzenbach, Advancing the Kingdom: Declaring War on Humanistic Culture (Minneapolis, MN: River City Press, 2001). $29.95 + tax, shipping, and handling. Call 701-263-4574.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course prepares believers to defend the Biblical foundations of our nation in many influential subjects. The student completing this course will be transformed in his or her knowledge of the Kingdom of God, Theology, History, Biology, Philosophy, Authority, Civil Law, Education, Government, Mathematics, Geography, Sociology, Language Skills & Literature, Psychology, Economics, and the Arts.
NUMBER OF CREDITS: One credit as described. A two credit version of this course is available for an additional $50 which requires oral presentations and written articles from each student.
DUAL CREDIT: High school students may take this course as part of their college curriculum.
QUOTE TO PONDER: "A correct study of history drives home the importance of living a righteous life. "
COST: Advancing the Kingdom course - one credit $150; two credit $200, textbook $29.95.
CALL 701-263-4574 TO PURCHASE: After purchase, you will be contacted by email or phone to schedule a phone call to finalize the meeting time and communication mode(s) to fit your schedule and technology.
Quotes from 1902:
"The object, the purpose and work of the Anti-Usury League is to expose the evils, the oppressions, the fraud and the sin of usury or interest, by publications, by lectures, by conventions and by every other practical method."
"There is coming forward a great army of intelligent, virtuous young people. They are made intelligent by our high schools, seminaries and colleges. They are made students of the Bible and stimulated in righteousness by Sunday Schools, Christian Associations, Endeavors, Leagues and Unions. From these there shall rise up defenders of the truth, free from the burden of debt and unbiassed by life-long association with conditions familiar to those older. The reformers in all ages have been young, and this reform will be no exception. There is a rashness in youth that needs direction, but there is also a dash and hope and confidence that is necessary to break away from old customs. One generation of intelligent, virtuous young people could give this evil its fatal blow." Reference Calvin Elliott, USURY: A Scriptural, Ethical andEconomic View, (Millersburg, OH: The Anti-Usury League, 1902), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21623/21623-h/21623-h.htm, 7 August 2007.
FEATURED COURSE: ADVANCING THE KINGDOM IN NORTH DAKOTA
TEACHERS: Dr. Bartlett with occasional questions answered by Mr. Schanzenbach
MODE: 16 one hour lectures, quizzes, Power point presentations, email and or phone communications. Runs with one or more students.
REQUIRED STUDENT RESOURCE: Donald W. Schanzenbach, Advancing the Kingdom: Declaring War on Humanistic Culture (Minneapolis, MN: River City Press, 2001). $29.95 + tax, shipping, and handling. Call 701-263-4574.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course prepares believers to defend the Biblical foundations of our nation in many influential subjects. The student completing this course will be transformed in his or her knowledge of the Kingdom of God, Theology, History, Biology, Philosophy, Authority, Civil Law, Education, Government, Mathematics, Geography, Sociology, Language Skills & Literature, Psychology, Economics, and the Arts.
NUMBER OF CREDITS: One credit as described. A two credit version of this course is available for an additional $50 which requires oral presentations and written articles from each student.
DUAL CREDIT: High school students may take this course as part of their college curriculum.
QUOTE TO PONDER: "A correct study of history drives home the importance of living a righteous life. "
COST: Advancing the Kingdom course - one credit $150; two credit $200, textbook $29.95.
CALL 701-263-4574 TO PURCHASE: After purchase, you will be contacted by email or phone to schedule a phone call to finalize the meeting time and communication mode(s) to fit your schedule and technology.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wright Patman on the Federal Reserve via Scott Haley
Wright Patman (1893-1976) was a Democratic representative from Texas, who served in the U.S. Congress from 1929 to his death on March 7, 1976. He was chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency for 40 years. For 20 of those years, he introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913.
Here are excerpts from what he said on September 29, 1941, as reported in the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives (pages 7582-7583):
“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... I am saying to you in all sincerity, and with all the earnestness that I possess, it is absolutely wrong for the Government to issue interest-bearing obligations. It is not only wrong: it is extravagant. It is not only extravagant, it is wasteful. It is absolutely unnecessary.
“Now, take the Panama Canal bonds. They amounted to a little less than $50,000,000 — $49,800,000. By the time they are paid, the Government will have paid $75,000,000 in interest on bonds of less than $50,000,000. So the Government is paying out $125,000,000 to obtain the use of $49,800,000. That is the way it has worked all along. That is our policy. That is our system. The question is: Should that policy be continued? Is it sane? Is it reasonable? Is it right, or is it wrong? If it is wrong, it should be changed.
“Now, I believe the system should be changed. The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks.
“I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study.
We have what is known as the Federal Reserve Bank System. That system is not owned by the Government. Many people think that it is, because it says `Federal Reserve'. It belongs to the private banks, private corporations. So we have farmed out to the Federal Reserve Banking System that is owned exclusively, wholly, 100 percent by the private banks — we have farmed out to them the privilege of issuing the Government's money. If we were to take this privilege back from them, we could save the amount of money that I have indicated in enormous interest charges.” (End of Patman's 1941 speech.)
End the unconstitutional Fed Reserve System. It enriches central bankers at our expense. Inflation of the money supply, along with obscene deficit-spending (done by Congress, BUT FACILITATED by the Fed Reserve), is the direct cause of price inflation.
Scott Haley's Blog (http://individualsovereignty.blogspot.com/)
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Media Reform Information Center
"In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation."
The Media Information Center links could provide some important complementary studies for people pursuing careers in writing and journalism. Also important for the rest of us to know too, else we be blinded by the media spin. Ref. http://www.corporations.org/media/
The Media Information Center links could provide some important complementary studies for people pursuing careers in writing and journalism. Also important for the rest of us to know too, else we be blinded by the media spin. Ref. http://www.corporations.org/media/
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Indoctrinate U Trailer
Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney's devastating exposé of American college campuses, tells the stories our nation's professoriate doesn't want you to hear.
At colleges and universities across the nation, from Berkeley and Stanford to Yale and Bucknell, the charismatic filmmaker uncovers academics who use classrooms as political soapboxes, students who must parrot their professors' politics to get good grades, and administrators who censor diversity of thought and opinion. With flair and wit, Maloney poses tough questions to America's academics and university administrators -- who often call campus security rather than give him straight answers. And Maloney gives a voice to those whose stories of harassment, intimidation, and censorship make our nation's universities, supposed bastions of impartiality and free inquiry, seem mere mainstays of groupthink and indoctrination.
But Indoctrinate U can tell only representative stories from some campuses. Every day, at colleges and universities across the nation, professors and university administrators continue to scorn their students' academic freedom and belittle the once-lofty goals of "liberal education." This page will complement the film by presenting more stories of the American university's unconscionable abuse of the public's faith and of its educational mandate.
http://indoctrinate-u.com/pages/welcome.html
Academic Freedom for Me, But Not for Thee
Via Bruce Shortt
Just a reminder about how thoroughly even colleges and universities in the heartland have been captured by the anti-Christian left:
An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe....
Dr. Gonzalez, who fled from Cuba to America as a child, earned his PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington. By academic standards, Dr. Gonzalez has had a remarkable career. Though still a young man, he has already authored sixty-eight peer-reviewed scientific papers. These papers have been featured in some of the world's most respected scientific journals, including Science and Nature. Dr. Gonzalez has also co-authored a college-level text book entitled Observational Astronomy, which was published by Cambridge Press.
According to the written requirements for tenure at the Iowa State University, a prospective candidate is required to have published at least fifteen peer-reviewed scientific papers. With sixty-eight papers to his name, Dr. Gonzalez has already exceeded that requirement by 350%. Ninety-one percent of professors who applied for tenure at Iowa State University this year were successful, implying that there has to be something seriously wrong with a candidate before they are rejected.
What's wrong with Dr. Gonzalez? So far as anyone can tell, this rejection had little to do with his scientific research, and everything to do with the fact that Dr. Gonzalez believes the scientific evidence points to the idea of an intelligent designer. In fact, as World Magazine has reported, at least two scientists in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the Iowa State University have admitted that intelligent design played a role in their decision. This despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in any of his classes, and that none of his peer-reviewed papers deal with the subject. Nevertheless, simply because Gonzalez holds the view that there is intelligence behind the universe, and has written a book presenting scientific evidence for this fact, he is considered unsuitable at Iowa State.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KenConnor/2007/05/27/academias_assault_on_intelligent_design
Just a reminder about how thoroughly even colleges and universities in the heartland have been captured by the anti-Christian left:
An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe....
Dr. Gonzalez, who fled from Cuba to America as a child, earned his PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington. By academic standards, Dr. Gonzalez has had a remarkable career. Though still a young man, he has already authored sixty-eight peer-reviewed scientific papers. These papers have been featured in some of the world's most respected scientific journals, including Science and Nature. Dr. Gonzalez has also co-authored a college-level text book entitled Observational Astronomy, which was published by Cambridge Press.
According to the written requirements for tenure at the Iowa State University, a prospective candidate is required to have published at least fifteen peer-reviewed scientific papers. With sixty-eight papers to his name, Dr. Gonzalez has already exceeded that requirement by 350%. Ninety-one percent of professors who applied for tenure at Iowa State University this year were successful, implying that there has to be something seriously wrong with a candidate before they are rejected.
What's wrong with Dr. Gonzalez? So far as anyone can tell, this rejection had little to do with his scientific research, and everything to do with the fact that Dr. Gonzalez believes the scientific evidence points to the idea of an intelligent designer. In fact, as World Magazine has reported, at least two scientists in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the Iowa State University have admitted that intelligent design played a role in their decision. This despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in any of his classes, and that none of his peer-reviewed papers deal with the subject. Nevertheless, simply because Gonzalez holds the view that there is intelligence behind the universe, and has written a book presenting scientific evidence for this fact, he is considered unsuitable at Iowa State.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KenConnor/2007/05/27/academias_assault_on_intelligent_design
Getting out of the College Rat Race - Interview: Dr. James Bartlett
Kevin Swanson - Generations Radio, Colorado
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Higher Education and More Reading Linked to Nearsightedness
via Mercola.com
Researchers in Singapore have found that nearsightedness, or myopia, is more common among the highly educated and those on the academic fast track.
Educational level and academic achievement seem to be predictors of myopia. These factors could be closely related to reading and other "near-work" activities performed at a close distance.
Nearsightedness is on the rise in developed nations, particularly Asian countries. In the Singapore army, for example, the rate of myopia in new recruits has increased from 26% in the 1970s to 79% in the 1990s.
Although genetics are thought to be important in determining who becomes nearsighted, the rapid increase in myopia during the past century suggests that other factors besides heredity play a major role, the researchers point out. They suggest one possible explanation is that near-work activities, such as reading, increase the risk of myopia.
The investigators found that the odds of being nearsighted were increased nearly fourfold among soldiers who had been enrolled in gifted or accelerated programs in school. Having finished 2 years of pre-college courses also quadrupled the odds of nearsightedness. Likewise, the risk was more than doubled for soldiers who had participated in extra lessons after school.
The investigators believe that educational attainment can serve as a "marker" for a person's amount of near-work activities. Children enrolled in extra lessons after school, for instance, spend additional time reading, writing and completing homework assignments.
British Journal of Ophthalmology July 2001;85:855-860
Researchers in Singapore have found that nearsightedness, or myopia, is more common among the highly educated and those on the academic fast track.
Educational level and academic achievement seem to be predictors of myopia. These factors could be closely related to reading and other "near-work" activities performed at a close distance.
Nearsightedness is on the rise in developed nations, particularly Asian countries. In the Singapore army, for example, the rate of myopia in new recruits has increased from 26% in the 1970s to 79% in the 1990s.
Although genetics are thought to be important in determining who becomes nearsighted, the rapid increase in myopia during the past century suggests that other factors besides heredity play a major role, the researchers point out. They suggest one possible explanation is that near-work activities, such as reading, increase the risk of myopia.
The investigators found that the odds of being nearsighted were increased nearly fourfold among soldiers who had been enrolled in gifted or accelerated programs in school. Having finished 2 years of pre-college courses also quadrupled the odds of nearsightedness. Likewise, the risk was more than doubled for soldiers who had participated in extra lessons after school.
The investigators believe that educational attainment can serve as a "marker" for a person's amount of near-work activities. Children enrolled in extra lessons after school, for instance, spend additional time reading, writing and completing homework assignments.
British Journal of Ophthalmology July 2001;85:855-860
Dumbing Us Down through College
On the way home from the recent Iowa home school convention, my son Jonathan was reading to us from "The Creature From Jekyll Island," by G. Edward Griffen (1994, American Media). This book details the very interesting history of the Federal Reserve System, but the point which grabbed my attention was "the programmed decline of the American economy."
On page 110, Griffen introduces the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and its influence through our cultural and political leaders and the goal of building world government "for the greater good of all." The weakening of America is an essential step toward building world government, they figure. Richard Gardner, advisor to President Carter explained that
In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up...An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more that the old-fashioned frontal assault."
Griffen documents, "As for the programmed decline of the American economy, CFR member Samuel Huntington argues that, if higher education is considered desirable for the general population, then a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education." CFR member Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says: "The standard of living of the average American has to decline...I don't think you can escape that."
Homeschoolers understand how the public school system has dumbed down America, but this tidbit is helpful to realize that this dumbing down is also happening at the college level, towards eroding national sovereignty such that the United States will better succumb to one world government domination.
Therefore, decentralizing college education to the family level to bring glory to God and His truth to the culture is an important contribution to keeping America free and returning its position of a light on a hill.
On page 110, Griffen introduces the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and its influence through our cultural and political leaders and the goal of building world government "for the greater good of all." The weakening of America is an essential step toward building world government, they figure. Richard Gardner, advisor to President Carter explained that
In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up...An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more that the old-fashioned frontal assault."
Griffen documents, "As for the programmed decline of the American economy, CFR member Samuel Huntington argues that, if higher education is considered desirable for the general population, then a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education." CFR member Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says: "The standard of living of the average American has to decline...I don't think you can escape that."
Homeschoolers understand how the public school system has dumbed down America, but this tidbit is helpful to realize that this dumbing down is also happening at the college level, towards eroding national sovereignty such that the United States will better succumb to one world government domination.
Therefore, decentralizing college education to the family level to bring glory to God and His truth to the culture is an important contribution to keeping America free and returning its position of a light on a hill.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
How to Prove You Are Qualified
Charles Hayes in his book titled, “Proving You’re Qualified” discusses keeping a portfolio (pp. 109-111) as a means of demonstrating competence. Toward that end he states, “It’s as if you were building a case for a courtroom, trying to convince a judge and jury of your learned competence. Better yet, think of it as one of those television commercials where the competitor’s product gets blown away. That’s essentially what you need to do. Prove your learning beyond doubt.”
This is good advice for the person pursuing higher learning in the home education mode and not difficult to accomplish. The main ingredients are a well formatted list of accomplishments and an orderly presentation of the actual evidence. To bring a bit more formality to the portfolio, one could use the curriculum vita style with an accompanying file of evidence, which is exactly what professors use to demonstrate their accomplishments and competence.
The book is otherwise full of helpful perspectives on the modern learning and credentialing systems which undermine both the quality of learning and the effectiveness of businesses. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
Regarding portfolio acceptance by employers, “I have discussed this issue with personnel managers who admit to being extremely impressed with candidates who present such material for consideration during an interview. As you can imagine, the candidate who can furnish a life’s worth of documented accomplishments compared to the one who just sort of shows up to be interviewed is likely to blow the competition away. Documented accomplishments gives a prospective employer precise reasons to consider the candidate and to be confident that hiring this person would be less of a risk than hiring someone with potential by no track record. p. 111
“Experience can be documented and presented in a way that can be more convincing than paper certificates or diplomas from institutions.” p. 100
“People who learn to write well do so, in large part, by reading. People who learn to speak well do so by talking. The passive nature of traditional education is one of the greatest tragedies of the system.” p. 91
“If people obtain credentials without genuine interest in their subjects, they will not remember what everyone else assumes they already know.” p. 84
“Given spotlight attention, genuine competence has a way of showing itself…” p. 81
“American business organizations would be far more efficient, effective, and dynamic, if the educational histories of all employees were expunged from personnel records immediately upon hire and were never spoken of again. Then, if an individual’s schooling had in reality conferred a practical advantage, that person’s superior performance should prove it beyond doubt.” p. 79
“…almost no time in traditional education trying to discover our own individual talents and how they differ from the talents of others.” p. 76
“To squander an education for the sole purpose of acquiring credentials is equivalent to eating for the sole purpose of gaining weight.” p. 76
“… higher education’s external push to qualify people for jobs often inhibits they very learning necessary for enabling knowledge and developing competence. Knowledge, not college, is what we need in the workplace and in our personal lives.” p. 75
“The acceptance of cheating by so many students in order to pass in college appears to be supported, in part, by the unconscious belief that many tests, and maybe even some of the courses, are irrelevant…the concept of “cheating” reveals a fundamental flaw in the way students are “taught.” p. 70
“…being motivated by grades is not related to a thirst for knowledge. Moreover there is little doubt that extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic satisfaction. In effect, grades have become the purpose of education. People search for approval instead of knowledge; when the grades stop, so does their inquiry.” p 69
“Occupational regulation has served to limit consumer choice, raise consumer costs … deprive the poor of adequate services, and restrict job opportunities for minorities – all without a demonstrated improvement in quality or safety of the licensed activities.” p. 68
“There is a significant amount of malpractice which is exacerbated by the very structure of our system of qualification: the license to practice medicine grants a physician the right to engage in malpractice until he or she dies.” p. 65 “ I would rather see a statement providing evidence of a surgeon’s success ratio of operations performed than a framed medical license on the wall. p. 64
“Modern studies of primitive people and evidence left behind indicate that hunter-gather societies sustained themselves nicely on about four hours of what we would call work each day.” p. 40
“Indisputable competence is becoming important, really important, perhaps for the first time in the history of American business… The new bottom line is going to demand that we recognize competence regardless of its educational source.” p. 36
“People who might have naturally been [dominant in personality] … can be held to the roles of subordinates in today’s organizations because of the arbitrary natural of credentials.” p. 33
“Drucker argues that the emphasis is changing ‘from teaching to learning’ and that ‘learning is as personal as fingerprints; no two people learn exactly alike.’” p. 23
The benefits of a decredentialed society would include:” ..classroom theory would be better balanced with hands-on experience…actual performance would fall under the scrutiny of many associates, providing significant feedback …the time required for and therefore the cost of, formal education would be greatly reduced…there would be no reason to hoard knowledge…the public would view working people with much more respect…could achieve what Abraham Maslow called the ideal college which would be a place of essential self-discovery…having fewer people trapped in jobs they hate…pp. 21-22
“There is nothing you cannot find out and learn on your own, if you desire to know is strong enough. Nothing.” p. 19
“It is not surprising, then that educational credentials are most heavily emphasized within organizations stressing normative control – that is, cultural socialism.” p.17
“Credentialing tends to devalue inquiry…Credentials act as barriers to thinking." p. 13
Quoting from Ivan Illich, “Certification now tends to abridge the freedom of education by converting the civil right to share one’s knowledge into the privilege of academic freedom….The right to teach any skill should come under the protection of freedom of speech.” p. 11
“The vast majority of the so-called research turned out in the modern university is essentially worthless.” p. 8
“Meanwhile educational institutions, both public and private, continue to promote passivity among students even though self-directed employees are what businesses really need.” p. 8
Pondering these quotes and what the Scriptures teach about credentials reminded me of Paul's word in Philippians 3...
Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Philippians 3:4-11
Monday, May 21, 2007
Christian Parent-Directed Engineering Studies
Where does a person begin learning engineering?
There are some core subjects that every engineer needs learn such as statics, materials, chemistry, calculus, manufacturing processes, and product development. It is also important for young folks with a gift for engineering to get hands on experience with both mechanical and electrical hardware. Owning their own equipment and developing their own shops and laboratories is ideal to promote learning and entrepreneurship. A Christian-minded young person will also benefit greatly from Biblical and Philosophical studies that relate to engineering. Where questions arise or wise counsel and direction is needed, a tutor with experience in engineering can be valuable.
The cost of engineering education today is about 95% higher than its value as demonstrated by the development of the Biblical Concourse Freshman Engineering Kit. The cost to attend an in-state university for one year is $11,244 plus textbooks along with the worldview, peer influences and cultural accommodation versus aiming a young person toward Biblically improving the engineering profession and building the family workshops, laboratories, and libraries. This is more than $10,000 over the cost of the books plus a tutor, meaning that it is possible to save 95% financially on the first year of engineering college by choosing the home study method.
You could design your own curriculum for this purpose based on the example provided here or simply purchase the kit via the Biblical Concourse, which was designed to help families get started for the lowest cost while providing the highest quality materials and tutor service.
There are some core subjects that every engineer needs learn such as statics, materials, chemistry, calculus, manufacturing processes, and product development. It is also important for young folks with a gift for engineering to get hands on experience with both mechanical and electrical hardware. Owning their own equipment and developing their own shops and laboratories is ideal to promote learning and entrepreneurship. A Christian-minded young person will also benefit greatly from Biblical and Philosophical studies that relate to engineering. Where questions arise or wise counsel and direction is needed, a tutor with experience in engineering can be valuable.
The cost of engineering education today is about 95% higher than its value as demonstrated by the development of the Biblical Concourse Freshman Engineering Kit. The cost to attend an in-state university for one year is $11,244 plus textbooks along with the worldview, peer influences and cultural accommodation versus aiming a young person toward Biblically improving the engineering profession and building the family workshops, laboratories, and libraries. This is more than $10,000 over the cost of the books plus a tutor, meaning that it is possible to save 95% financially on the first year of engineering college by choosing the home study method.
You could design your own curriculum for this purpose based on the example provided here or simply purchase the kit via the Biblical Concourse, which was designed to help families get started for the lowest cost while providing the highest quality materials and tutor service.
Here is an introduction to the kit:
RC Hibbler thoroughly teaches you the principles and applications of engineering statics and mechanics of materials with student friendly photorealistic figures.
Raymond Chang beautifully illustrates and animates the mysteries of chemistry in practical action with easy to grasp explanations of theory.
Frank Blume applies calculus to science and engineering with historical, philosophical and practical examples.
Mikell Groover shows you to select and design materials, manufacturing processes, and production systems to make anything and everything.
Karl Ulrich introduces you to the characteristics of successful products and the processes used to design, develop, patent and sell them profitably.
Vincent Gingerly teaches you practical design and fabrication principles along with the history and thought of Nikola Tesla in the context of building a small turbine.
David Gingery provides you with the ideas needed to build your own machine shop to build anything, including a Sterling cycle engine.
Tom Peruzzellis presents everything you need to build your own electronics workshop.
James Nickel connects the Christian faith to mathematics and thereby engineering.
Neil Postman demonstrates how technology can inadvertently enslave families.
The Calvin Center provides Biblical guidelines for engineering design decisions.
Peter Allison converses on neutrality and learning engineering.
Charles Chick brings practical and Biblical thought to the invention process.
James Bartlett provides students with personal tutoring and progress reviews.
Biblical Concourse membership provides a support group and system to enable and encourage efficient progress and helpful, likeminded peers and encouragers.
What do I do with these books, projects, and resources?
Since you are a home educator, you have the freedom to do anything you like with these books, projects, and resources. But if you are looking for some direction and accountability to ensure that thorough learning is happening, here are the recommended ...
Textbook Problem Sets : Solve at least one problem of each type throughout the text. For one problem from each chapter, type a professionally styled short publishable article with sections titled: Introduction, Problem Statement, Solution, Proof of Correct Solution, Discussion, and Conclusion. Aim to be proud of your accomplishment versus simply “doing the assignment.” Publish this on your blog and submit a summary with link to the Concourse blog to enable feedback.
Subject Notebook: For each book studied, neatly keep a three-ring notebook for quick reference during future studies, exams, and professional work. Include chapter summaries that will enable you to teach or be quizzed about what you learned. Aim for understanding versus simply “getting through a chapter.” Be prepared to answer questions about what you have learned by other Concourse students and or be quizzed on your learning by your review board and others.
Project Displays: Create a Power Point slide show with audio to present your project efforts. Remember to take photographs and video along the way to document your work. Schedule a time to present your project to both a local home school group and the Concourse global community using video/web/teleconferencing technology.
Subject Completion: After the above assignments are completed for each subject, send a paper copy of your work products to your review board for their reference and comment. This work is intended to demonstrate your level of competency in the respective subject area to the review board. Review board members may ask for additional evidence of your competency in any manner they desire before they concur that you are sufficiently competent.
Note: Review boards typically consist of the student’s parents, pastors, and subject professionals.
To view the kit contents and or purchase the kit or any portion of the kit visit: http://biblicalconcourse.com/freshmanengineering.php
Friday, May 4, 2007
How to save $123 per text book!
Home university students have a great advantage when purchasing their text books. They don't need to be using the same book as their classmate and can usually learn the content with a previous edition just as well as with the latest edition.
As soon as a new edition of a book becomes available, the price of the previous edition drops significantly. For example, The Principles of Statics by Hibbler is a great book for engineering students to learn from. The 11th edition is now $139 as a new book from the publisher (prenticehall.com). Amazon.com sells this new book from $97.92 to $165.47. The same book can be obtained from Amazon used for $80 to $149.45.
However, to save additional money, it is helpful to know that the same statics knowledge can be learned from many or any of the previous editions of this same book. The 10th edition is available used on Amazon for $16 to $94.08 used and new from $23.50 to $130.64.
For this particular book the savings would be: $139 - $16 = $123.
Other less popular statics books would also serve the educational purpose at an even lower cost. Engineering faculty who taught statics may even be willing to give away older editions that were given to them as review copies, which cannot not be legally sold.
If I were a new home university engineering student, I'd buy the $16 ( plus $3.49 shipping) used copy via Amazon for the convenience, use it thoroughly, and keep it in my permanent family library.
If you like to shop, simply type "textbooks cheap" into a Google search and you will find many more used textbook options. About.com also has a helpful article to inform your used text book shopping at: http://distancelearn.about.com/od/managingyourwork/a/cheaptextbook.htm
To make textbook selection and purchase the most convenient, efficient for the lowest cost, the Concourse is developing scope and sequences with Amazon.com hyperlinks to the exact textbooks recommended, which provides both new and used book buying options. To see the engineering example visit: http://biblicalconcourse.com/bookstore/engineering.php
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Naaman story
I wrote this short story several months ago; based on the Biblical account of the healing of Naaman. I'd appreciate feedback!
The house of Naaman had been in uproar all that hot day. Now, in the cooler evening, a slave girl stood behind her mistress' chair and combed her long hair.
Earlier, the wife of Naaman had wept, but now she sat dry-eyed, staring ahead with the tear-tracks still on her face. Today, while first dealing with the reality of her husband's leprosy, she had had no one attend her but this Israelite slave girl, who had become a favorite during her two years of captivity. The thin dark girl combed gently without speaking.
They said the king was beside himself. The commander of all his armies would soon be unfit to lead; and it was said Naaman had the blessing of the Hebrew God, for through him came the greatest victories Syria had known. Already the city's eminent physicians had been summoned, and one by one dismissed in disgust. Naaman, one of the most powerful men in Syria and the king's trusted general, was destined for a life of disease and loneliness.
The young slave girl had been shocked, along with the other servants, when the news reached them. Naaman was often gone from home, but none could call him cruel, and there were far worse fates than to be a slave in his household. She wondered with the others about the future. She also pondered other things.
Though, as a terrified captive, the girl had first hated her new owners, two years had softened her resentment to resignation, and finally to affection. She had always been a resiliently happy girl. After the fright of her first month of captivity, the girl could always find something to sing about; and her gentle joy endeared her to Naaman's wife, who appointed her a personal handmaiden. It was this bond, as close as could ever come between a maid and mistress, and concern for her intense grief that made the girl speak out.
More
Friday, April 6, 2007
Traditional Values v. Modern Humanism
A founder of Gun Owners of America (GOA), Senator Richardson wrote a book titled, Confrontational Politics. The following review by Ron Lisy (Lakewood, OH) captures Richardson's point that more conservatives and Christians need to be confrontational in order to be effective against humanists."Former Senator H. L. Richardson discusses his theories that the major conflict in modern politics and public policy is based on a fundamental battle between traditional values and contemporary humanist dogma. Richardson writes that the tendency of one who is rooted in the traditional views of courtesy, civility and directness is to be reluctant to challenge a political adversary in a confrontational manner. This allows them to be turned around into a defensive position during an exchange with a humanist, who has no such reluctance. He states that the old Marxist postulate of "the ends justify the means" fit firmly into the philosophy of most humanists. He states that the traditional American avoids and repels from conflict, while a humanist is drawn to it as a necessary means for change and enacting their agenda. This difference puts traditionalists at a competitive disadvantage. Richardson continues that he believes conservatives must accept the premises of confrontational politics to successfully battle the political left and abandon the desire for compromise, as compromise is simply moving the world to the left in smaller increments."
Speaking of reading and politics, Morton C. Blackwell http://www.leadershipinstitute.org has some good encouragement!
"Some people bluntly say they don't read. Others offer an excuse: They would read if only they had the time. I will also be blunt: People who don't read cheat themselves. By not reading, they limit what they can achieve, make mistakes they could avoid, and miss opportunities that could improve their lives. Finally, as the gaps in their knowledge become apparent, they must reconcile themselves to not being taken seriously.
Before going any further, I must make clear that I do not urge you to spend the rest of your days nestled in a cozy spot at the local library. Far from it. Actively involved in politics since the early 1960's at the local, state and national levels, I understand the importance of action. Nothing moves unless it is pushed. Political activists elect candidates, pass or repeal laws and determine public policy. But while boundless energy and enthusiasm are essential in activists, something else is necessary. To be successful leaders, activists must also be well-informed."
What is Disabling about the Professions?
"Why do we put so many resources into medicine, education and law with so little apparent benefit? Why do we hold the professions in awe and allow them to set up what are in effect monopolies? This fascinating and controversial collection of essays challenges the power and the mystique of the modern professions. "
Illich stated that, "The disabling of the citizens through professional dominance is completed through the power of illusion. Religion finally becomes displaced, not by the state or the waning of the faith, but by professional establishments and client confidence. The professionals appropriate the special knowledge to define the public issues in terms of problems. The acceptance of this claim legitimatize the docile recognition of imputed lacks on the part of the layman: his world turns into an echo-chamber of needs."
Dr. Bartlett's Comments: This is an excellent book because it reveals the reasons why the pursuit of the modern college degree, pointed toward a modern job or career, displaces Christianity through subtle philosophical manipulation. In essence, the professionalization of law, medicine, engineering, education and the trades has made them alot like the politically correct public schools. This disabling issue with the professions also explains why reforming a profession from within its establishment is highly unlikely. I pray that many home school families will read this book and begin reforming their profession of interest, to bring glory to God and genuinely serve mankind in simplicity godly sincerity!
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
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