September 23, 2020 All of Us Are Smarter Than Any of Us By Alfie Kohn The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively against both other such wholes and against its social and ... Read More
Reading
I have read a book review by Steven Pressman in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (JPKE). The book he reviewed is “Rethinking the theory of money, credit, and macroeconomics: A new statement for the twenty-first century” by John Smithin. I am sure the book is just as interesting as the book review, but I […]
The Guardian recently featured an article produced by ‘GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator’. It’s an essay intended to reassure us humans that AIs do not want to take over, still less kill all humans. GPT-3 also produced a kind … Continue reading
Any Australian who has paid even cursory attention to this country’s poisonous politics over climate change these past two decades will be familiar with this long and sorry story, but to see it all laid out in sequence, in every depressing detail, is breath-taking. In ‘The Carbon Club’ (Allen& Unwin), […]
Suggesting Britain could sign the withdrawal agreement with its fingers crossed makes perfect sense for a government of liars
Everybody knows Boris Johnson can lie for England. To his supporters, it was one of his best assets. They believed he could bamboozle the European Union into giving him the only Brexit deal that is really acceptable – one that gives Britain all the advantages of being in the EU without any of the botheration of being a member. The problem is that congenital mendacity isn’t just for foreigners. If you lie for England, you will also lie to England.
This week, these two streams of fabrication finally became one. In openly admitting that it signed the withdrawal agreement with the EU in bad faith, Johnson’s Vote Leave government also implicitly confessed that it lied wholesale to the electorate in December’s general election. The cross-contamination of domestic politics by the deceit that is Brexit’s DNA is now complete.
BOSTON GLOBE September 6, 2020 Is Learning “Lost” When Kids Are Out of School? By Alfie Kohn Para leer este artículo en Español, haga clic aquí. Anguish and even anger are entirely appropriate reactions to the fact that Covid-19 infection rates are still too high in most areas to permit the safe reopening of schools. Not only do many of ... Read More
The phrase ‘money printing’ is shorthand for ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about’
US-born former TV journalist and news producer Gerald Stone in his biography of Sydney advertising man John Singleton describes Singleton’s seemingly unlikely friendship with the Reverend Bill Crews: ‘John hates to admit it but in a funny way, he is quite religious,’ Crews smiles. ‘He reminds me a lot of King David. We’re told David […]
Encouraged by a recent return of energy, I have recklessly started a second blog, Seen and Done, where I will talk about creative stuff I have either experienced or produced. Please check it out!
Demonstrating how the Job Guarantee precisely offsets the drain to savings
The long lost classic Fury from the Deep is set to return with a three disc Blu-ray release containing all new animation set to the original audio track. The set will contain the surviving clips from the original 1968 production as well as full colour and black and white versions of the animated story. Three of the original cast members, Frazer Hines, June Murphy and Brian Cullingford, revisit the filming locations with production assistant Michael Briant, assistant floor manager Margot Hayhoe and helicopter pilot Mike Smith in a special feature about the making of the show. There are also archive… Continue reading
While the short-lived tenure of Christopher Eccleston’s much loved Ninth Doctor has been revisited in comics, audios and even on the small screen through cameos in The Name of the Doctor and The Day of the Doctor, the man himself has thus far resisted the invitation to return to the role. Until now! “After 15 years it will be exciting to revisit the Ninth Doctor’s world, bringing back to life a character I love playing,” Eccleston commented as the news broke that Big Finish would be releasing twelve full-cast audio adventures across four audio box-sets. The first box-set is due to be… Continue reading
Why the UK tax and benefits infrastructure is ready to implement a full Job Guarantee for all.
Adding a Job Guarantee to the peer reviewed mainstream agent model
Algorithm changes required to the Baseline Model to support a Job Guarantee
What would it take to make an app that would work like Uber, but without the corporate entity? And without the high percentage that goes to Uber. Hum… Let’s take some of the needed parts… Hailing a driver: a … Continue reading
EDUCATION WEEK August 19, 2020 The Pandemic Pivot Turning Temporary Changes into Lasting Reform By Alfie Kohn You know you really should walk or bike more often, but the car is just so darned convenient. Then one day it breaks down and the replacement part won’t be available for quite awhile. The fates have conspired to get you some much-needed ... Read More
In his 2015 interviews with Kerry O’Brien, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating describes being approached by Canadian newspaperman Conrad Black, who told him in 1992 that Kerry Packer had acquired 23.5 per cent of the Fairfax Media organisation, owners of the Sydney Morning Herald, despite being restricted by media ownership rules to 14.9 per […]
The international theological journal Concilium has recently published, open access, a special issue "Masculinities: Theological and religious challenges", tackling the old problem of the connections between religion, men and patriarchy. There's interesting material in it, even for the theologically challenged! Among other things discussions of sexual abuse in the church, Putin's regime in Russia, masculinity & race, clerical masculinities, and more. I wrote the lead article, about social-scientific approaches to the issue. You'll find it all here: https://concilium.hymnsam.co.uk/issues/20202-masculinities-theological-and-religious-challenges/.
Vitamin D and Covid 19 personal experiment
In a series of 2015 television interviews, veteran ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien probed former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating – who had always insisted he would never write an autobiography – on what made him and how he governed. Born in Darlinghurst in 1944 and growing up in Bankstown, he left school at 14 and […]