Coin Toss Caucus (from Huffington Post)
The latest from Huffington Post… Those of you who managed to make it to Chapter 8 of Critical Voter are no doubt joining me in a chuckle over the controversy surrounding the Iowa Caucuses being decided...
View ArticlePolling the Golden Mean
More thoughts on numbers from my recent Huffington Post column: Before the New Hampshire Primary results were announced, I was getting ready to follow up that Iowa Coin Toss piece with another post...
View ArticleSerious Self Publishing – Goals
Part 2 in a series on self publishing. Success stories involving self-publishers hitting pay dirt with a best seller might leave the impression that wealth and fame are the primary goals pushing...
View ArticleThe Death of Scalia
From Huffington Post The passing of an historic figure like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia can trigger a series of events of interest to those who are trying to improve their critical-thinking...
View ArticleGoodreads
While I wait for the follow up to my Scalia piece to be published by Huffpo (and republished here), time to kick off a semi-regular series highlighting web sites, books and other resource that might be...
View ArticleWrite a Good Book
This week’s advice might seem fairly idiotic. After all, why would anyone go through all the effort to publish a book and make it available to the entire world if it stinks? But as a recent commenter...
View ArticleConsistency
Last week, I noted that the debate over who will succeed Justice Scalia on the bench is focusing not just on legal and political matters, but also on issues relating to consistency. It is hard to...
View ArticleCritical Voter Curriculum – Available Now!
It’s Super Tuesday so, as promised, the Critical Voter curriculum is now available for teachers to use to integrate critical thinking lessons based on material from Critical Voter and this Critical...
View ArticleThe Foundation for Critical Thinking
While others will try to help you digest what last night’s Super Tuesday results might mean, this seems like a good time to remember that civil society – including the thousands of organizations that...
View ArticleSelf-Publishing Ecosystem
Presuming you’ve come up with serious and well thought-out goals for your self-publishing project and are ready to put the work into creating a good book, your next decision is where to place yourself...
View ArticlePictures
A number of modern sources inform the construct of critical thinking that underlies Critical Voter (both the book and just-released teaching curriculum). Cognitive science, for example, demonstrates...
View ArticleVote Reason
While it’s tempting to focus our reasoning skills on each twist and turn in the primary, keep our mind that the critical thinking lessons being drawn from this election are timeless, meaning they...
View ArticleSelf-Publishing – Print
If the goals you have set out for yourself with your publishing project can be met entirely through producing printed books, the economics of decision-making are fairly straightforward. For instance,...
View ArticleThe Consolation of Philosophy
A coworker recently forwarded me this article regarding a study that seemed to indicate teaching grade-schooler’s some philosophy is the best way to raise their writing and math scores. Given that I’m...
View ArticlePredictability
One of mankind’s great passions (and fantasies) is the hope that we can both predict and control the future. And never does this belief become more fashionable — and expensive — than during a...
View ArticleAll Politics is Local
Taking a break from the usual Thursday series on self-publishing for a quick announcement that on from April 4th through the 8th, the Kindle version of Critical Voter will be available for free from...
View ArticleElec-Tech – Who Controls Who?
From The Huffington Post During the 2012 Presidential race, I wrote a story on the role technology was playing in election politics that pretty much boiled down to the claim that computers just allowed...
View ArticleIgnorance
This commentary from the last Presidential race still seems relevant in an era when dialog seems to be stuck at wondering why people we never met can be so dumb. There’s been a bit of hubbub about this...
View ArticleSelf-Publishing – Ebooks
In MOOCS: The Essential Guide, I used the rise of the ebook to illustrate something called “The Hype Curve,” a phenomenon that tends to repeat itself whenever a new technology (like ebooks or MOOCs)...
View ArticleContradicting Bernie
I realized that the last few weeks have been spent more on commentary than instruction. So today, let’s take a look at a campaign artifact (in this case, the statement of someone arguing in favor of...
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