Marc Sheffner (sheffner)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

I am interested in education,literature,reading,blogging,music,Austrian economics,libertarianism. My favorite music are Carl Orff,Beethoven's 4th piano concerto,almost anything by John McLaughlin. Movies: Back to the Future. My Heros are Walter Block.

Member since Jun 15, 2008, follows 1 people, 1 public groups, 1362 public bookmarks (1621 total).

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Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Rand on IP, Owning "Values", and "Rearrangement Rights" - Stephan Kinsella - Mises Economics Blog on 2009-11-17
- The alternative view - that one could be the owner of the value or price of scarce goods - is indefensible. While a person has control over whether or not his actions will change the physical properties of another's property, he has no control over whether or not his actions affect the value (or price) of another's property. This is determined by other individuals and their evaluations. Consequently, it would be impossible to know in advance whether or not one's planned actions were legitimate. The entire population would have to be interrogated to assure that one's actions would not damage the value of someone else's property, and one could not begin to act until a universal consensus had been reached. Mankind would die out long before this assumption could ever be fulfilled.
The Case for Revisionism (and Against A Priori History) - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Institute on 2009-11-11
- The greatest deception of the American (and the British) State, then, is its allegedly defensive and pacifistic foreign policy. When Revisionists maintain, therefore, that the major guilt for war and imperialism in the twentieth century belongs to the United States and to Great Britain, they are not necessarily maintaining that the various enemies of the United States have been domestically and internally less dictatorial or aggressive than the United States government.
- Furthermore, as indicated above, it is precisely the use of war and war mythology that has led to the acceleration of domestic statism in the U. S. and in Great Britain in this century.
Models - January 2004 - Access to Energy - Pro-Science, Pro-Technology, Pro-Freedom on 2009-09-24
- men who can think are tolerated, so long as they keep in their place and do not seek political power.
- These models are far more valuable than the facts themselves. They must, however, be verified by means of further observations.
- 4 more annotations...
- - A good scientist requires an excellent model and a well-developed ability to, by thinking, organize new facts into additional models or meld them with existing models.
    
    This is the reason that problem solving is a substantial part of a scientific education. From the simplest problem in arithmetic to the most complicated problems in physics, problem solving is the organization of facts into useful models.
    
    Most teachers and students do not understand this. They think that problem solving consists of "getting the answer." They seek solutions manuals that show the student how to work each problem. Newtonian mechanics, the principal subject of first-year high school and college physics, affords an excellent example.
    
    Most high school texts provide a formula that allows a student to calculate the length of time required for an apple to fall from a specified position in a tree to the ground .The student plugs numbers into the formula and computes the answer.A properly educated 8-Year-old child should be able to do this just fine -which is about the level of math skills of many tax-financed high school students.
    
    This is not problem-solving.
  - The school must provide 1) a good study environment, 2) good study habits, and 3) a superb course of study that is appropriate for all students and also for the best of students. Not even one of these three requirements is met in today's tax-financed schools.
  - Education programs are often advertised as means for teaching the student to "think," but one rarely sees a definition of "thinking" in this context. A reasonable definition of such a program may be as follows:
    
    First, it imparts to the student an extensive set of excellent mental models - models of mathematics, science, history, economics, personal affairs, ethics, morality, and other essential subjects.
    
    Second, it provides the student with a sufficient body of facts with which to test these models and to conduct his own initial verification of them.
    
    Third, and most importantly, it teaches the student to derive new conclusions from old models, to create new models, and to continually and intuitively move back and forth between mental models and facts in order to check the accuracy of both.
    
    How are these skills taught? They are best taught in the way that most students learn - by example. The student will emulate the study environment, study habits, and mental methodology of his teacher. In addition, the student will follow the example of the person he knows best - himself.
  - Every human mind acts in accordance with a set of learned mental models. The mind chooses among the presented models by comparing them to the available facts. The ability to make this comparison effectively is an acquired skill. This skill can be learned by a process of directed self-help problem solving.
College Preparation - Robinson Self-Teaching Homeschool Curriculum on 2009-09-24
- I believe in extended families; having two, three, and four generations living near each other and working together when possible during their entire lives.
Donald Trump vs. The Mandarins by Gary North on 2009-09-10
- For
  a thousand years, China was administered by Mandarins. These bureaucrats
  swore loyalty to the emperor. Then they were granted enormous control
  over the entire society. From the days of the Pharaohs until the
  twentieth century, the Mandarin class was the world’s most powerful
  bureaucracy.
  
  To
  enter the ranks of the Mandarin class, a young man had to pass a
  rigorous written examination. The examination covered Chinese classical
  poetry. What did a knowledge of Chinese poetry have to do with ruling
  a vast empire? Directly, very little. Indirectly, a great deal.
  
  A
  student needed five things to pass the exam: (1) advanced literacy;
  (2) enough leisure to study for the exam; (3) a very high IQ; (4)
  a teacher; (5) the ability to endure intense boredom for many years
  under a nearly absolute master.
  
  The
  teacher was a man who had failed to pass the exam.
  
  Had
  he passed, he would not have become a teacher.
  
  This
  system, or something very close to it, has very nearly conquered
  America. At the gates, one man now stands as the representative
  agent of the resistance: Donald Trump.
- In
  implicitly or explicitly rejecting the so-called trade-school
  model, business schools gained respectability and approval on
  their campuses by conforming to the norms and behaviors of arts
  and sciences departments.
  
  If
  there is a kiss of death for entrepreneurship, it is the outlook
  of the liberal arts departments of an American university. This
  has lowered the market value of an MBA from all but the most prestigious
  schools.
The Mises Review: Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance by Deepak Lal and and on 2009-09-10
- Countries attempting to impose economic controls will provoke a flight of capital.
- Unfortunately, Lal embeds this excellent point in an elaborate and forced distinction between shame and guilt cultures. As he says, many anthropologists, and some philosophers such as Bernard Williams, have made a great deal of this supposed distinction; but I am unable to see that there is much to it.
AP News : National : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri) on 2009-09-06
- The Democrats say their proposal to give families $275 a month per child through junior high school is meant to help consumer spending and encourage women to have more babies.
CULTURAL CONUNDRUMS / Figuring out what can’t be helped on 2009-09-03
The ugly secret why tuition costs a fortune | ajc.com on 2009-09-02
- At the same time, the degree of interaction between teachers and students has declined. While 43 percent of two-year public college students and 29 percent of four-year public college students require remedial course work, costing $2 billion annually, one national survey reports that 37 percent of first-year arts/humanities students “never” discuss course readings with teachers outside of class, and 41 percent only do so “sometimes.”
Self-Inflicted Confusion and Paralysis: Thinking About the Economy Without Understanding Economics on 2009-09-01
- If called upon to outline the arguments of each position, they could not do it. They have no idea of what they have read. They are utterly confused.
  Why? Because they do not read books on economics. They read only websites.