This year PayPal founder and visionary entrepreneur Peter Thiel offered a new class at Stanford called “Computer Science 183: Startup.” It was intended to provide entrepreneurs with a high-level strategic overview of the challenges they face and must overcome, to succeed not only in business but in advancing human progress - in an era when real ( Read more... )

This moving message just landed in my inbox, from friend Ross Barlow.

Honoring “The Chosin Few” in the Korean War from 27 November 1950 on into December 1950. The battle of Chosin Reservoir. It was intensely brutal combat in temperatures sometimes down to minus-35 degrees in the mountains. A frozen Hell.

Honored warriors there were from the US ( Read more... )

This Thursday, September 24th, The John Stossel Show on Fox Business Network will air a show with the theme “What if Libertarians Were in Charge?”

The last seven minutes of the show will include a segment featuring Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, discussing how Free Cities will reduce poverty and create jobs, hope, and prosperity in the ( Read more... )

An outstanding video for anyone who truly cares about the quality of life of poor individuals from around the world. Or, for that matter, about their own quality of life.

Click to view

Originally published at Mudita Journal. Please leave any comments there.

See the article “How to make a nuclear reactor that can’t have a meltdown” for fascinating information about how nuclear power generators can be built - and have been built - that have zero chance of a meltdown, even in the worst case scenario.

This part is particularly relevant to our conversations today about the dangers of nuclear power:

To put ( Read more... )

I just submitted the following question on Peikoff.com.

It’s a question I’ve had for many years, and the answers I’ve gotten from various Objectivist thinkers have varied considerably. It seems like a pretty important question, particularly for a philosophy that aspires to be internally consistent:

Ayn Rand taught that we have no unchosen ( Read more... )

Another outstanding offering from Bill Whittle.

I notice he’s no longer working under the “Fireball” title, which I think is a good call. There was something gimmicky about that, and distracting about the associated visuals.

Click to view

Thanks to Marsh for the link.

Originally published at Mudita Journal. Please leave any comments there.

I just discovered these this morning. (Thanks, Marsh!) I haven’t had time to watch them all, but I’m so blown away by the quality of the first one - and I’ve found Bill Whittle to be so outstanding overall, in the past - that I’m going to go ahead and post the full series here.

What do you think of his presentations?

Click to view

Read the rest of this entry »

( Read more... )

I just ordered a copy of The Singing Revolution, a documentary about how the Estonian people organized themselves in the 1980s and cleverly used the cultural power of songs to overthrow their Soviet occupiers.

An entire nation was freed from Soviet occupation, without a single person being killed. (Think about that for a moment... Why haven’t you ( Read more... )

This is a conversation from Facebook. My philosopher friend Stephan Pernar joined the group called “Corporations are not people.” In response I asked:

What essential difference does it make whether corporations “are” people, when they are composed of people? Seeking insight into the basis of your position. I’m probably neutral on the subject itself ( Read more... )