Their Daily LivesSo far we’ve mostly examined what these people left behind. But how did they live every day, and what did they think about? These are the more important questions.
There are several things that we can say about these people: Continue reading “Earned Knowledge: L1, P3”
Humans are moral obsessives. Anywhere you go, you’ll find people speaking in moral terms: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on. All of these are moral judgments. Even confirmed criminals will routinely say things like, “That ain’t right,” which is, again, a purely moral judgment.
On top of that, moral judgments vary fairly little between individuals. There are exceptions, of course, but nearly all of us will agree on the majority of moral judgments, staying close to the model of the golden rule. Continue reading “Our Moral Obsession”
What’s even more important about these people is that they brought farming all the way across Europe. People didn’t grow a great deal of food prior to this group (as best we can tell), and they brought wheat, peas, lentils, barley, plums, hackberries, pistachios, almonds, sheep, goats, and even cattle. They filled Europe with agriculture. Continue reading “Earned Knowledge: L1, P2”
Over the past few years, huge numbers of people have come to see Bitcoin as an investment… as a stock. That’s because a significant percentage of the populace – certainly a good percentage of the investing class – knows someone, at least a friend of a friend, who has done very well with Bitcoin. That’s the kind of thing that people notice, and not unreasonably so.
The truth, however, is that Bitcoin is more and better than an investment… much more and much better. Continue reading “Bitcoin Is Far More Than An Investment”
About 11,000 years ago, the last ice age on our planet ended. For a long time before then, much of our world was covered with ice and snow, and there were only about five million people on the planet.
We can tell how cold the world was, and when, by examining the ice at places that never thaw out, like most of Greenland. Since the ice and snow build up every year, and by examining the chemicals left behind in each layer, we can be quite sure of these things. We have other reasons to think so as well. Continue reading “Earned Knowledge: L1, P1”
I don’t recommend watching television, but I fell into one useful experience while watching it, some years ago:
It was well after midnight and I found myself in front of a TV, killing time. There wasn’t much on, but after some scanning, I found a rustic infomercial from a local church. They were offering prayer for the sick, depressed, and overwhelmed. My thumb was poised to move to the next channel, but instead I stopped and watched. I decided to look at the people in the pews—to really look at them. Continue reading “The Cure In Our Hands”
Welcome to our newest endeavor. Earned Knowledge will be a curriculum for teaching children, but not according to the standard model.
I homeschooled several children, beginning in the 1980s, and have additionally taught adults at several other levels. I’ve had a lot of direct experience getting knowledge into human minds, on top of all my writing, which seeks to accomplish the same thing.
So, this subject has been central to me for a long time. And over the past couple of years I’ve had a sort of rolling epiphany, by which I came to understand something that should have been obvious from the beginning: Continue reading “Earned Knowledge”
There are some points that need to be made from time to time, just so they remain in the world. To my mind, this is one of them.
Without a doubt Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most influential beings ever to walk this planet… perpetually influential. But I see him as greatly misunderstood. Most of the things people associate with Jesus are things he never said. Rather, they are things that other people said about him, and the two aren’t remotely equivalent. Continue reading “What Jesus Didn’t Say”
We’ll move to a new series of articles next Saturday, but in between, I’d like to give you a post from Bitcoin’s early days.
“OG,” for those not familiar, stands for Old Guard. Thus, Bitcoin OG refers to very early Bitcoiners.
This piece comes from those early days, no later than 2012, and posted by someone called the Old Radical. It’s fairly hard core, but not wrong. Continue reading “A Bitcoin OG Post”
This is a re-post from eight years ago. I still feel the same.
I see you standing here, asking for help, about once a week. You are always polite, and I respect that. I’d like to do something for you… something that would matter long-term. Giving you a few notes or coins now and then may be fine, but I’d really like to improve your situation more permanently.
In other words, I’d like to give you a job. Continue reading “A Frank Letter to the Homeless Man Under the Bridge”
