billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: _isms as filter, not blinker
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/isms-as-filter-not-blinker.html
Monday, January 01, 2007. Isms as filter, not blinker. Learning theory, like politics, is full of isms: constructivism, behaviourism, cognitivism and now a new one, connectivism. What should we do about these isms? Are they a useful guide to what to think and do? In October I wrote this on the home page of the learning evolves wiki. Should we stick to -isms or should we be more pragmatic and just cherry pick different useful ideas out of the various theories? It remains puzzling that so much of the instr...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Capital is a social relation, not a static thing
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/04/capital-is-social-relation-not-thing.html
Saturday, April 18, 2015. Capital is a social relation, not a static thing. This is intended as an introduction to the philosophy of internal relations as developed by Bertell Ollman, 1935 -. Capital is not just a thing but a dynamic, living social relationship. My essay on Social Forms. Ricardo made a similar mistake. He regarded Capital as “accumulated labour”, as something purely material, a mere element in the labour process. (Marx, Theory of Surplus Value. In other places Marx refers to money and co...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: the future of Islam
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/03/ayaan-hirsi-ali-future-of-islam.html
Sunday, March 22, 2015. Ayaan Hirsi Ali: the future of Islam. But this is not a work of theology. It is more in the nature of a public intervention in the debate about the future of Islam. The biggest obstacle to change within the Muslim world is precisely its suppression of the sort of critical thinking I am attempting here. If my proposal for reform helps to spark a serious discussion of these issues among Muslims themselves, I will consider it a success. Not all of this violence is explicitly motivate...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: a new inconvenient truth
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-inconvenient-truth.html
Sunday, March 22, 2015. A new inconvenient truth. President Obama is wrong when he links climate change to extreme weather events. Roger Pielke jnr gave expert testimony to the US Senate that hurricanes have declined by 20% since 1900. In response a Democrat senator, Raul Grijalva, has launched an investigation into him as a paid dupe of the oil and gas companies. Pielke's new book, The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change. The witch hunt against Pielke jnr is documented here. I’...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: social forms and the individual
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/03/social-forms-and-individual.html
Thursday, March 26, 2015. Social forms and the individual. All the things you don't know you don't know. I thought I had understood capitalism, that the bosses owned the means of production and the workers had no option but to sell their labour to the boss. There were rich people, poor people and class struggle. But I didn't know about Value as a social form and so my real understanding of capitalism was deficient. 8220;No scientist to date has yet discovered what natural qualities make definite proporti...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Judith Curry's evaluation of the climate change debate
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/04/judith-currys-evaluation-of-climate.html
Sunday, April 19, 2015. Judith Curry's evaluation of the climate change debate. Judith Curry's testimony to The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology Full Committee Hearing about The President’s UN Climate Pledge: Scientifically Justified or a New Tax on Americans? Here is the [ link. For the hearing, which includes link to all of the testimonies and also the webcast. Judith Curry ( blog. The slow down in global warming since 1998. We have made some questionable choices in d...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Charlie, limited
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/01/charlie-limited.html
Wednesday, January 14, 2015. Rather than funny, that cartoon to me seems violent and colonialist, an abuse of the fictitious and manipulated western freedom of the press. How would people react if I were to design a magazine cover bearing the following text: “Slaughter in Paris. Charlie Hebdo is shit: it doesn’t stop bullets” and made a cartoon of the deceased and gunned-down Jean Cabut holding a copy of the magazine in his hands? José Antonio Gutiérrez D. 7 January, 2015. Billkerr (at) gmail (dot) com.
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: remote hopelessness
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2015/05/remote-hopelessness.html
Tuesday, May 12, 2015. I watched Remote Hope. On 4 Corners. In some respects it was quite a good expose about how bad things have become but it still didn't drill down deep enough into the fundamental basis of the problem or interview those who have thought deeply about it and grappled with a solution. Was delivered in 2000. Why didn't the ABC interview these people? I thought some of the people interviewed were very good in describing the problem:. The Broome mayor, Graeme Campbell. Karl O'Callaghan, th...
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Scratch challenges update
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/02/scratch-challenges-update.html
Saturday, February 21, 2009. The way I have introduced scratch. This year to students (years 10 and 11 in my case, but it might work with younger students as well) has been to:. First ask them to complete the scratch cards. Provided at the Scratch MIT site. Then to complete the following challenges. 1) Make 2 different balls move around on the stage. A) the first ball moves in straight lines but bounces randomly whenever it hits the edge. B) the second moves randomly, changing direction all the time.
billkerr2.blogspot.com
Bill Kerr: Indigenous violence and its enablers
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2014/09/indigenous-violence-and-its-enablers.html
Sunday, September 21, 2014. Indigenous violence and its enablers. I have bought Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence. By Stephanie Jarrett. It has been the subject of disagreement between John Van Tiggelen in The Monthly. And Gary Clark in Quadrant. Speaking out on Aboriginal Violence. Here is an interview with the author. Stephanie Jarrett spoke of her research and the book it produced, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence. Q: Why did you write this book? I am committed to the liberal-democr...
