Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: history

  • Teaching the Conspiracies

    Teaching the Conspiracies

    This week on January 31, 2024, I’m excited to start facilitating a six week online course for educators titled, “Teaching the Conspiracies.” This “anytime learning course” is offered as part of the 2024 MediaED Institute by the Media Education Lab, with whom I’m an affiliated faculty member. The course description is: In this 6 week…

  • Understanding Rising Populism, Warfare and Authoritarianism

    Understanding Rising Populism, Warfare and Authoritarianism

    We should not only be teaching “traditional courses” like history and social studies in our U.S. schools today, we should be explicitly studying warfare and the multitude of ways nation states as well as non-state actors wage war with each other across at least five dimensions: In extra-terrestrial space, in cyberspace, in the air, on…

  • LISTEN Carefully to his Words

    I’ve never previously recommended on my blog that anyone watch an official video from the National Rifle Association / NRA, but I am tonight. Today after school and following an evening school event, I watched the entirety of our 45th President’s recorded address this afternoon at the “NRA-IRL Leadership Forum.” He was the last speaker…

  • Learning About Russia

    The Russian-initiated war in Ukraine is continuing into its second year, and it’s hard to believe not only the harsh and cruel realities of that conflict which are ongoing, but also the dismal prospects for both regional and global peace at this point in human history. (March 2023) It’s a good time for all of…

  • Putin and Christian Nationalism

    Whether or not you are a follower of Jesus and publicly profess “Christianity” as your faith, it’s important to pay attention what many “Conservative Christians” have been saying and continue to say about Vladimir Putin and his cultural / political agenda. I want to recommend two recent articles and OpEds on these topics. First, check…

  • 10 Favorite Podcasts (December 2021)

    It’s Christmas Day and 2021 is rapidly drawing to a close, so I’m doing a bit of reflecting on the past year as we look forward to 2022. In this post, I’ll share 10 of my favorite podcasts, which I’ve listened to often in 2021. I LOVE both listening to and creating podcasts, and continue…

  • Amazing #STEM Animated Visual Notes by Dominic Walliman

    I agree and resonate with many of the things Jaron Lanier shares in the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” but I disagree with his advice on YouTube’s “recommended videos.” Jaron advises we should never click on “recommended videos” on YouTube, since that furthers the dystopian economic model of “surveillance capitalism” upon which many of Silicon…

  • The Fragility of Democratic Institutions – Memories of Cairo in November 2017

    On November 16, 2017, I had the privilege of dining in my Cairo hotel restaurant with Ahmed Ragheb, a long-time friend of my parents who I first met in 1978 when we lived in Columbus, Mississippi, and my dad was a T-37 squadron commander. Ahmed had an amazing military career in the USAF as a…

  • Behold: The Power of the Spotify Playlist During COVID-19

    We’ve been in “remote learning” mode for about four weeks now at our school, as we “shelter in place” because of the neo-coronavirus / COVID-19 global pandemic. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has had some trouble falling asleep some nights, as I’ve adjusted to a ‘new normal’ of working entirely from home…

  • Polar Extremes on NOVA – Behold the Reality of Higher Carbon Dioxide Levels

    Thanks to Mike Sharp, one of the members of our Sunday School class this year (“Curiosity and Questions: Jesus and Science”), I learned about the new NOVA PBS Special, “Polar Extremes.” Here’s a 3 minute preview of the full episode I watched tonight, which runs just under 2 hours long. I watched it on AppleTV…