Fwd: Another Free eBook Coming -- Plus, My Most Personal Episode Ever....

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tom Woods" <woods@mises.org>
Date: Dec 22, 2014 12:00 PM
Subject: Another Free eBook Coming -- Plus, My Most Personal Episode Ever....
To: <mark@rauterkus.com>
Cc:

December 22, 2014 View this email in your browser LATEST NEWS My Most Personal Episode Ever -- Can It Teach You Something? In the process of doing my own 2014 year in review on my show last week, I shared some testimony about a serious personal failing -- my obsession with work. I shared it in the interest of honesty and to get it off my chest, but also because I know many people in our circles who have the same problem. The show notes page for this episode has a list of everything I did this year. You're going to like these new show notes pages if you haven't seen them already. I craft them myself in order to enhance your experience of listening to the show. Everything discussed is there -- links to articles and books mentioned, guest information, related episodes, and more. Whether or not you share my problem, I think you may find episode #309 interesting!   Coming Soon! Another free eBook coming for you guys in 2015! Woods Hiatus The last episode of my show for 2014 will be released tomorrow, December 23. Your refreshed and rested host will return on January 5, 2015! (This will give you a chance to catch up on episodes you may have missed....) Available Now -- Plus, Free Audiobook Offer Remember, the audiobook version of my new book Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion, with me reading it, is available for free via the link you'll find at RealDissent.com, the book site. It's also available in paperback and in a very inexpensive Kindle edition. I hope you enjoy it! Jan 24, 2015 Mises Circle in Houston Houston, TX April 9, 2015 American University Washington, DC April 25, 2015 Event in the works! Montreal, Canada May 22, 2015 Event in the works! Dublin, Ireland The Cops: Is It a Case of Bad Apples? Are the cases of police abuse we hear about caused by a few bad apples, or is the problem with the institution itself? Michael Malice offers a provocative answer.   Is $2 Gas the Worst Thing to Happen to America? Of course not. But it sure is fashionable to say so these days. Economist Bob Murphy joins us to overturn this fashionable view.   The Torture Report, and What It Left Out What are we to make of the Senate committee report on the CIA's use of torture? Scott Horton gives you the only briefing you'll need -- complete with the information the report left out. MUST LISTEN!   School vs. Education There's more to education than formal schooling. It's time to embrace better, more effective, and more humane models of education, says Brett Veinotte.   How the West Abolished Slavery When we consider the significance of the abolition of slavery, a ubiquitous and seemingly entrenched institution, it's surprising how little many of us know about how it actually happened. Jim Powell shares the story with us! Hillary Clinton: The Military-Industrial Candidate So the Democrats are for peace and the Republicans are for war, huh? Then why is the Democrats' leading candidate a consistent hawk? Kelly Vlahos and I discuss the real Hillary Clinton in this episode.   If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Tom Woods Show on iTunes or Stitcher so you don't miss an episode. I release a new episode every weekday!   Thanks for reading, Copyright © 2014 The Tom Woods Letter, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

Fwd: The Sony Hack: A move to war or something completely different

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Hemington

By now I'm fairly sure that most of you have heard about the hack of Sony Entertainment and the resulting pull of the unreleased movie The Interview.  If you have heard about this it is also extremely likely that you are now certain that it was the doing of the North Korean government.  How could you not.  Such authoritative sources as the FBI and the President have boldly announced that it is a certainty that North Korea is the villain in this nefarious plot to undermine the economic value of Sony Entertainment and that it is, according to John McCain and other Republican stalwarts, an effective "act of war".  It is, or certainly should be, somewhat concerning that a rather unsophisticated computer hack of a Japanese owned entertainment company is now of such a grave to the United States that some of our elected leaders favor declaring war on North Korea.

On the other hand, do we (including the FBI, the President and John McCain) really know who hacked Sony Entertainment and why?  Jim Kavanagh writing as The Polemicist believes that we do not and makes a very convincing argument that it is something far different from what we have been told.  I would argue that it is simply another excuse to expand and continue our never ending war on rationality not for the interests of the American people or the protection of national interests, but to insure that the fear level of the American people will not fall to a level sufficient to begin questioning the ongoing donations of our national treasure to private war contractors, national security consultants and financiers.  From what I've been able to learn, and Kavanagh confirms this, the hack was not at all sophisticated – it was a simple social engineering exercise (perhaps from inside) where a system administrator password was compromised using a commercially available malware product.  Furthermore, the issue of The Interview did not arise until there was speculation in the ever vigilant main stream media that this might have constituted a motive for the hack.  Sony Entertainment had previously been successfully hacked and still had failed to ramp up its security procedures because it would have been "too expensive" and not worth doing.

It appears that we are once again being duped into using government time, talent and treasure in order to backstop a corporate malefactor – in this case gross negligence – while at the same time stoking fear among the populace.  This charade long ago wore thin and the excuses are becoming ever more bizarre.  Since 9/11 U.S. citizens have surrendered virtually all of our Constitutional freedoms and protections, we have been forced to endure the mass indignity of being locked out of many if not most of the public facilities we pay for, enduring embarrassing searches at airports and other public facilities.  And all for what, so that a massive security apparatus can be sustained at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, most of which is wasted and/or lost with no accounting.  This is something which is well covered in James Risen's book Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War.  Before you decide that Kavanagh's take on the Sony hack is not accurate, you should first read Risen's excellent book and then give it a second thought.

John

Still want to read more? 

Obama Acedemy Varsity Swimming Calendar

Just changed the name to Obama Academy Varsity Swimming calendar from Girls 2014-15 in the name.

See you here!

Fwd: Woo Hoo! Exciting News from Summer Dreamers!

From: Cray, Christine <ccray1@pghboe.net>
Subject: Woo Hoo! Exciting News from Summer Dreamers!

 

Hello Past Summer Dreamers Academy Activities Providers!

 

It may be cold outside, but the past few days have been quite busy for the Summer Dreamers team! As you hopefully saw, on Tuesday some exciting news was released related to Summer Dreamers and our participation in the Wallace Foundation's Summer Learning Demonstration Study.

 

The first wave of findings, looking at student performance in the fall, just after campers attended the 2013 Summer Dreamers Academy and returned to school as 4^th graders, shows that children who attended SDA gained a meaningful advantage in math compared to their peers who applied but were not accepted. The impact was equal to about 20% of what 3^rd grade students learn in a year! These findings were consistent across all 5 participating Districts, and we had even greater outcomes in Pittsburgh! (More about our local results will be shared on January 22^nd.)

 

In ELA, the evaluation showed no meaningful advantage for children who attended any of the 5 district programs, based on assessment of reading comprehension and vocabulary skills; however it did identify a few key factors that correlated with positive outcomes. Specifically, grade-level teaching experience (having a Summer Dreamers teacher who had taught 3^rd or 4^th grade during the school year), instructional quality (as measured by an observation rubric developed by RAND), and site orderliness (having clear and effective plans for handling misbehavior, and minimizing bullying).

 

We're thrilled by the outcomes in math, and, while the ELA findings were initially disappointing, we are considering how we can most effectively connect our efforts with the District's early literacy work to hopefully make meaningful gains with younger students, whose fundamental reading skills are still developing.  Additionally, we are looking at other local level data, including DIBELS, in hopes of gaining further insight in to potential areas of impact.

 

THANK YOU for your hard work and involvement in Summer Dreamers.  You, along with your staff, played a key role in these results! We appreciate all that you have done to ensure that our campers benefit from a high quality summer learning experience.

 

You can learn more about these initial findings at www.wallacefoundation.org/readyforfall, and we look forward to the release of additional findings, including impacts on school year attendance rates, behavior, and state test scores, which will come out in the summer.

 

For those of you with whom we will be partnering again for 2015, I look forward to connecting with you throughout the spring as we think more deeply about how to utilize this information to further strengthen Summer Dreamers for this coming summer and beyond. In the meantime, please share this exciting news with your colleagues and staff, and feel free to reach out to me with any thoughts, questions, or ideas!

Insight Timer App by Brad

Swimmers Rule! Watch this video and see if you can feel the fluid connection too.

"When You Say You're a Swimmer" from Chris Shimojima on Vimeo.

Fwd: The Keynesian Toolbox Is Empty -- Plus, My Show Just Got Twice As Useful

Check out these podcasts.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tom Woods" <woods@mises.org>
Date: Dec 9, 2014 11:47 PM
Subject: The Keynesian Toolbox Is Empty -- Plus, My Show Just Got Twice As Useful
To: <mark@rauterkus.com>
Cc:

December 9, 2014 View this email in your browser LATEST NEWS My Show Just Got Twice As Useful The new TomWoods.com made its debut last week! No longer are we using that page on SchiffRadio.com for the Tom Woods Show. The show can now be found right on TomWoods.com -- and with full-fledged, helpful show notes for each episode! Please, do me a favor and click this link to see an example. Every single episode will look like this from now on. Enjoy!   Just Added Course #12! The great Gerard Casey, professor of philosophy at University College Dublin, and author of Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State, just submitted course number 12 at LibertyClassroom.com: The History of Political Thought, Part II. All the major thinkers, and some minor ones, from the sixteenth century to the present are here, from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and John Rawls. Click here for the lecture titles!   Jan 24, 2015 Mises Circle in Houston Houston, TX April 9, 2015 American University Washington, DC April 25, 2015 Event in the works! Montreal, Canada May 22, 2015 Event in the works! Dublin, Ireland How and Why the State Thrives on Fear Connor Boyack is the author of Feardom: How Politicians   David Stockman: The Keynesian Toolbox Is Empty The Keynesians have had their way, and the result is sluggishness, even retrogression, and a global bubble economy. David Stockman brings sanity to it all.   Income Inequality: Non-Solutions to a Non-Problem Nineteen ways income redistribution harms society.   The International Man on How, Where, and Why to Diversify It's not just for the rich -- the whys and hows of spreading your income streams, employment, digital presence, and more across the world!   Maximize Your Results, Minimize Your Time: Five Tips for Learning Liberty In this episode Tom talks about how to learn as much about liberty -- history, economics, philosophy -- as you can with the least expenditure of time.   Anarchy, History, Homeschooling, and More Tom talks to Jeff Berwick about history, education, homeschooling, how to win people over, and more.   Tom on the African-American Conservatives Show Tom discusses a variety of issues as a guest on African-American Conservatives.   If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Tom Woods Show on iTunes or Stitcher so you don't miss an episode. I release a new episode every weekday!   Thanks for reading, Copyright © 2014 The Tom Woods Letter, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences