Friday Hodgepodge

Blog Roundup

1. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn reminds us of the meaning of Labor Day on the way to outlining how irrational anti-fossil fuel policies endanger the way of life we celebrate on that holiday:

Image by Bwag, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

On Labor Day (and every day) we ought to celebrate productive work and those who perform it because productive work makes our life possible and gives it meaning. However, governments everywhere have been undermining productive work, driven by a destructive climate change ideology that has developed into an obsession: stopping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, despite human suffering.

In the next sentence, Woiceshyn points to a piece by Rex Murphy titled, "Environmentalists' Biggest Triumph Was to Aid Vladimir Putin." Greens endanger not just our prosperity, but also our security.

2. Over at Value for Value, Harry Binswanger has made available a version of a post to the excellent Harry Binswanger Letter mailing list. Its title is "Why I'm Not a Republican," and here's an excerpt, in which Binswanger defends the Mar-a-Lago raid after noting an eerie similarity in the arguments that the right is making about it now -- and those of the left regarding the Second Gulf War:

[Y]ou don't do something as dramatic and theatrical and unprecedented to a man almost half the country already regards as a victim of governmental misconduct unless you either have to or you know what you are going to find.

As another voter who very reluctantly voted for Trump in the last election (and in part for the same reason), I recommend reading the whole thing.

3. The RSS feed of Alex Epstein's Center for Industrial Progress points to a very short excerpt from his recent interview with Mike Rowe, famed for Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, and other television programs.

I listened to the whole interview and highly recommend it.

I have always liked Mike Rowe's work and did not know he had a podcast. Rowe asks intelligent questions and there is a benevolent feel to the whole thing. It did me more good to listen to this than just reviewing Epstein's pro-energy arguments and knowing that this will help expose more active minds to them.

4. Brian Phillips discusses an interesting type of private school I had not heard of until recently:

As the name implies, microschools are small -- typically serving fifteen or fewer students. Often, the students are at different grade levels. Similar to Montessori schools, students can select which projects to pursue and proceed at their own pace. This allows each student to study topics that interest him.

Unlike government schools, microschools are individualized. Like all private alternatives to government schools, parents and students can choose a school that teaches the curriculum and values that the parents support. Because each student can study the subjects of interest to him, the student essentially has control over much of his education. Compare this to the regimented, "woke" curriculum offered at most government schools.

Within, there is a further link to a Forbes story about Josh Pickel, a teacher who became disenchanted with government schools and started a microschool of his own.

-- CAV