\”Seriously bad ideas, I’d argue, have a life of their own. And they rule our world.” Paul Krugman, from Seriously Bad Ideas “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical […] … learn more→

Summer has begun in earnest, and quite a few college students are sitting at home, wondering why they don’t have a real job, and trying to figure out how to start paying off the student loan. I bet many of them are starting to think education was a bad idea. Allow me to start by […] … learn more→

With global water scarcity trending upwards, conflicts over access to the world’s supply are springing up – a trend we can expect to worsen in the not so distant future. Water wars: It may sound more like a working title for a sci-fi flick than a legitimate concern, but in today’s increasingly dry climate, they’re […] … learn more→

Barbara and I are now on final descent with our new writing book, Detox your writing. We’ll have it to the publisher sometime next week. Yippee. Our process of final revision and proof-reading has been in several stages. About three weeks ago I amalgamated all of our ten separate chapters into one text. I put […] … learn more→

The summer I was 20, I hatched the insane plan of riding the moped I’d purchased at my job in France through England and Scotland and over to my mother’s ancestral home in Ireland. Various near-disasters ensued, not the least of them occasioned by my ignorance of a war that was then raging directly along […] … learn more→

I teach in, and coordinate, a General Educational Development program at a community college just south of Chicago. Every week I say hello to a student I had in a class and who has been taking classes with us for the past year and a half. This student knows exactly what he wants to do: […] … learn more→

I once went for an interview at a fancy “new media” agency, in the City of London, for an e-learning author job. I was at the top of my game then, and was able to recite the recipe, I’m about to give you, off the top of my head. On hearing my method, my interviewer […] … learn more→

Here’s an easy task: choose between the following two schools for your child. School #1 provides high-quality instruction and strong supports in order to academically accelerate students and challenge them to take difficult courses. School #2 provides high-quality instruction but doesn’t push students to do more than what is normally expected. If you’re an actual […] … learn more→

There’s a reason no one can agree about climate change, and on some level, it’s the same reason you curse the gods on rainy days when the forecast said sunny. Meteorology and climate science, in general, are complicated and speculative — reliant on mathematical models that aren’t always fully accurate to paint pictures of yesterday, […] … learn more→

The call for papers came at a particularly fortuitous moment. I was procrastinating over a thesis chapter and relished the opportunity to distract myself with something more legitimate to my PhD guilt-ridden mind than trawling lolmythesis or PhD Comics. So I wrote an abstract. It was really rather straightforward – I just strung together some […] … learn more→