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bennett

8/17/2022

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I use William J. Bennett’s The Book of Virtues. It contains poetry and stories, mainly raw classics, many translated, suitable for K-12, with sections titled: Self-Discipline; Compassion; Responsibility; Friendship; Work; Courage; Perseverance; Honesty; Loyalty; and Faith. One student is homeschooled, and his parents are able to take their California school funds into the charter school that monitors his homeschooling and the markers set for him by the school, his parents, and himself!
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screenplays

8/16/2022

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​Alexander’s father loaned me The Godfather Notebook by Francis Ford Coppola for help with the screenplays Alexander (8) is writing under my tutelage. The book is cyclopean.

Mr. Coppola co-wrote the screenplay for The Godfather (1972) while living in San Francisco and sent parts of it as it was written to Mario Puzo, the novel’s author and co-writer for the movie. At the time, Puzo was living in New York City. Coppola’s film company 
was in the Sentinel Building, built 1906, above the bistro, Café Zoetrope, which is on the ground floor and was created for his office staff to have a place to eat.

I have driven by the building a million times cluelessly.
Picture
​photo courtesy of wheretraveler.com
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climate change

8/16/2022

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Per the New York Post, there is a mysterious fund called, “Resources Legacy Fund”, headquarters in Sacramento, CA, a dark money group that dishes out money, $5.2 million from 2017 and 2020, to law firms to file climate change nuisance claims nationwide.
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affirmative action

8/14/2022

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Scotus will hear a key affirmative action case, report dated August 12, 2022, by Robert Ayers

“Fox News reports that the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have decided to hear a case that could lead to the end of affirmative action admissions practices by universities.

“The case is Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College.


“This case goes all the way back to 2014. At the time, SFFA sued Harvard for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which ‘prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.’

“The overarching claim is that Harvard made it more difficult for Asian Americans to be admitted because they did not want their student body to have too many Asian Americans.”

https://www.patriotnewsalerts.com/scotus-will-hear-a-key-affirmative-action-case/

I hope the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, SFFA.
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homeschooling basics

8/11/2022

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I am not endorsing TabletClass. My aim is to let the TabletClass creator show how a homeschooling program for middle and high school math works. I view his math videos as needed and use a variety of other resources for tutoring. Over time I developed a reading and writing course, but it is not on the market. The TabletClass creator is a certified teacher; I am a certified tutor: same grade levels. Have a listen...
benefits (spelling correction) ​😉
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student in spain

8/8/2022

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​Altan (14), one of my students, spent 14 days in Spain with 10 days of training. His soccer team trained at a soccer field in Valencia, all conducted in Spanish with daily lessons. They lived in dorm rooms. His parents got to watch him play games against local teams. Soccer is big in Spain; his mother tells me. They sent me pictures of the countryside, castles, and Sagrada Familia. She told me that walking or hailing cabs is the way to get around and that Spain is cheap overall and sophisticated. Altan stands at 6' and is a very intelligent young man and a great athlete, yet humble.
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density

8/8/2022

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Density tells how heavy something is, no matter its size. Just by looking at the weight numbers, one can get a better picture of what’s heavier and by how much? Even if a block of iron is the same size as a similarly sized piece of cotton, the iron is denser and, in fact, five times heavier than cotton. Density is the degree of compactness of a substance. I think this applies to bone density. The formula for density ρ when m the mass and V the volume are known is ρ  =  m/V.

Mass is a measure of the amount of matter in a substance or an object. The basic unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). For an approximate value in pounds, multiply the kg by 2.205.
Volume is a measure of how much space an object or substance takes up. The basic unit of volume is the liter (l). For an approximate value in gallons, divide the l by 3.785.
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american stem

8/8/2022

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follow-up to War College
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school recommends

8/6/2022

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Exemplar of education UK. Teaching is focused on seven key subject areas: Catechism, English, Mathematics, Music, Science, Latin, and French. The Saint Benedict Academy is an Education Centre, not a school, providing an integrated program of lessons in key subject areas, while the rest of the teaching is given at home. I would add Greek, German, art, and history. The center prepares students for the General Certificate of Secondary Education Advanced Level (GCE A Level) leading students to direct university entry. To obtain qualification, students undertake a 2-year course normally starting at age 16.
https://icksp.org.uk/saintbenedicts/

My California recommendations
ART - Academy of Art San Francisco
STEM – Caltech Pasadena, Stanford Palo Alto
LIBERAL ARTS – Thomas Aquinas Santa Paula
MUSIC – San Francisco Conservatory of Music


“At Thomas Aquinas College, there are no majors or minors, no textbooks or classroom lectures. Students carefully read straight from the greatest works of Western civilization, the texts that have shaped how we view the world today: Aristotle, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Jane Austen, Albert Einstein, among many others.
 
“Rather than the ordinary approach of isolating technical knowledge into specialties, Thomas Aquinas College unifies the principal arts and sciences — philosophy, theology, mathematics, the natural sciences, history, literature, and music — into a single, integrated curriculum, culminating in a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal arts.”
​
Note: other schools are safe for STEM, but Aquinas is the only safe school for Liberal Arts, free of indoctrination and hatred.
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Alexander the Great

8/4/2022

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​Well, it happened again. Today, I was schooled by Alexander, who is eight. He told me that Aristotle (384BC-322) tutored Alexander the Great (356BC-322) when Alexander was 13. Aristotle taught Alexander and his friends about medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Under his tutelage, Alexander developed a passion for the works of Homer. Aristotle gave him an annotated copy of Homer, which Alexander later carried on his military campaigns. Aristotle sounds like the perfect tutor, and my Alexander is the perfect student.

It was shortly after Plato died that Aristotle left Athens at the request of Philip II of Macedonia to tutor his son in 343BC. He succeeded his father to the throne in 336BC at age 20. By age 30 he had created one of the largest empires in history, from Greece to India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history’s greatest and most successful military commanders. Strange that Aristotle taught Alexander religion, but in modern America we should have to exclude religion from the curriculum of any school.

Together for one and a half years, we did Lesson 67 today.

                                                    Be quiet! Loyalty is speaking...
That's my boy.
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econ 1a

8/4/2022

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s&p/tiktok

8/4/2022

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S&P Dow Jones Indices removed Tesla from its Indices because, as stated, Tesla’s score on environmental, social, and governance standards (ESG) has remained “fairly stable” over the past year, but it has slipped down the ranks against improving global peers. Can you believe it? Said Musk on May 18, 2022, “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

According to Parler, to reach a younger audience, Democrat members of congress are posting on the Chinese social media platform, TikTok. While some acknowledged privacy concerns, most felt the need to use the increasingly popular site. None of my current students use the communist platform, which steals and indoctrinates.

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Young people

8/2/2022

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A little advice received from a retired cop: “Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may not have the same ideas as you, but they are the future and will take the world in their direction. Give advice, not criticism, and try to remind them that yesterday’s wisdom still applies today.”
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taiwan strategic ambiguity

8/2/2022

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From Wikipedia –
​

“The oldest and longest running of the United States’ deliberately ambiguous policies was whether and how it would defend the Republic of China on Taiwan in the event of an attack by the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China). This issue is at the cornerstone of United States–Taiwan relations and a central sticking point in United States–China relations. This policy was intended to discourage both a unilateral declaration of independence by ROC leaders and an invasion of Taiwan by the PRC.

“The United States seemingly abandoned strategic ambiguity in 2001 after then-President George W. Bush stated that he would ‘do whatever it takes’ to defend Taiwan. He later used more ambiguous language, stating in 2003 that, ‘The United States policy is one China.’

"In October 2021, President Biden announced a commitment that the United States would defend Taiwan if attacked by the People's Republic of China. But then the White House quickly clarified: ‘The president was not announcing any change in our policy and there is no change in our policy.’ In May 2022 Biden again stated that the U.S. would intervene military if China invaded Taiwan, though a White House official again stated that the statement did not indicate a policy shift.”
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unschooled

7/28/2022

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China threatens US.
Biden and company are unschooled in governance,
which is learned by studying history and the history of war. 
Oderint dum metuant. ​Let them hate, so long as they fear.
Marcus Aurelius, AD121-180, emperor, Roman Stoic philosopher, the last of the Five Good Emperors and the last of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27BC to AD180.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, 4BC-AD65, Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and satirist, raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy and was influenced by Plato.

Epictetus, AD50-135, Greek Stoic philosopher, born into slavery, lived in Rome until his banishment, his teachings written down and published by his pupil Arrian in Discourses and Enchiridion.

From Patriot Mom Digest:

“This month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Facebook platform is shifting resources away from its News Tab and news distribution, and towards a “creator economy”, meaning that news will be featured less frequently to users, whether they ask for it or not. A way of preventing unwanted narratives from reaching the public, this will be effective at a time when news coverage of the failures of Democrat rule in D.C. will be building….”

The Wall Street Journal story is by Alexandra Bruell and is dated July 28, 2022, at 11:39am ET.


Epictetus: If we wish for nothing, but what God wills, we shall be truly free, and all will come to pass with us according to our desire; and we shall be as little subject to restraint as Zeus himself.
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christ the teacher

7/26/2022

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Socrates was born in Athens and lived 470BC-399. Accused of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, he was sentenced to death. Choosing not to flee, he spent his final days in the company of his friends before drinking the executioner’s cup of poisonous hemlock. This was not a suicide.

In the dialogue, written by Plato, Crito visits his friend, Socrates. Crito tries to persuade Socrates to escape. Socrates refuses to break the law by escaping and suffers death for it.

This is a discourse by Plato on civil obedience and disobedience.

Socrates was Plato’s tutor. Plato was born in Athens and lived 428BC-347. Plato was Aristotle’s tutor. Aristotle was born in Stagira and lived 384BC-322.

Aquinas lived AD1225-1274. He recognized the Christ-like wisdom of the three great Greek philosophers. These three tutors resembled Christ, the Teacher.
​
Plato’s discourse informs us on obedience to a pope … and disobedience.


Phthia is a reference is to Homer’s Iliad and Achilles’s home. Who is the lady?
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-2 Q & ?

7/22/2022

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Picture
Picture
         Chi Phi Fraternity                                                        Chi Rho Alpha Omega Christ
                    Since 1824                                                            courtesy of Leo Reynolds on Flickr
​
Picture
The inscription in three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews - was nailed to the cross.


Notice the first letter of the inscription. I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn’t until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Once he distinguished the soft J sound, as in “jam” (probably a loan sound), the current phoneme for J was born. Source: dictionary.com

The letters missing from the Greek alphabet are Q and J.

We see the Latin inscription, INRI, on the cross, instead. In the inscription above, all the words are run together. Find INRI by picking out the first letter of each word: I for Iesus, N for Nazarenus, R for Rex, and I for Iudaeorum. No J's in there, and the confusing v is u. U dig?

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prime meridian

7/21/2022

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Did you know that earth has four sections? They are man made. The hemispheres divide the world. The equator separates the Northern and Southern hemispheres at zero degrees latitude. The prime meridian separates the Western and Eastern hemispheres at zero degrees longitude. Any line of longitude could serve as the zero-longitude line. However, earthlings agreed that the meridian that runs through Greenwich, England, would be, and is, the prime meridian.
Allie the Alien did not bone up on her Latin before she was contacted. Ergo, she will spend one Earth hour in detention at undisclosed coordinates. The equator (noun) comes from the Latin verb, aequare, “to make equal”.
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electronics

7/19/2022

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My television went into the closet several months ago. There was too much on television that demeaned people, especially men, especially in commercials. It was all very subtle. None of the boys or young men of St. Stephen, and I know about 30, ages eight to 29, have a TV in the home. They would rather spend time with each other and family. The boys under 18 aren’t walking around with phones attached to Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snapchat, Zoom, Messenger, CapCut, Spotify, or TikTok. Josh, 16, is working this summer as a rancher. He’ll have some money in the bank. We got a pig roast coming up in August.
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cannibalism

7/18/2022

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Critical look at the ultra-left bickering, eating each other up, in San Francisco -

“San Franciscans are now saying: We can want a fairer justice system and also want to keep our car windows from getting smashed. And: It’s not white supremacy to hope that the schools stay open, that teachers teach children, and, yes, that they test to see what those kids have learned.”

Nellie Bowles, June 8, 2022
​

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/


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economics class

7/16/2022

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Here is an economics class with Jacob Rees-Mogg who is on his way out as a Conservative leader in the House of Commons. I am sad to see this brilliant man go. For half of an hour, the interviewer put questions to the Tory skeptic about classical economics theory.

Born in London in 1969 and son of William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981, Jacob was educated at Eton and read history at Oxford, where he graduated with an upper second-class honors degree in 1991.

Six children later, he attends the Latin Mass.

He was criticized for crossing tiers, whatever that is, by going to a Benedictine church not far from his home. How easily cowed into thralldom the critics of his church choice were.


Here is the interview:
​www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPzEkahwOqU

Mark R. Royce wrote a piece about him in 2018. The Acton Institute for the Study for Religion and Liberty is an interdenominational thinktank. Conservatives do cogitate.
https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/04/09/rising-scion-jacob-rees-moggs-economic-and-religious

The British have an intimate, theatrical humor that is superior to Americans. From Royce’s article: “‘Profound reactionary,’ raves the New Statesman’s Martin Fletcher of the MP, ‘whose views are preserved in prehistoric amber,’ according to Nesrine Malik of the Guardian.” Nesrine is one of Jacob’s closest friends.

on eating cake - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNZY8O4Z3bU
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why so much latin?

7/13/2022

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Why is there so much Latin in your blog?

The answer is that things evolved over time.

It began when the only church that was open in 2020 was a Latin Mass parish. No authority on earth can tell a church when to shut down.

It began way before 2020 when in high school at age 14 the first non-English language I studied was Latin. Two Jesuits, 25 or 26, did their duty: Alvernaz, a Spaniard Marlon Brando look-alike, for Latin I, and Henning for Latin II. They say that one’s first experience with something new is the one that remains the most impressive. It did.

The same thing happened when I began reading the classics at 14. Every new American or English novel made a lasting impression.

Over the last two years, gradually, my Latin improved.

One of the reasons given for eliminating Latin from the Mass was that no one understood it.

This is insulting and condescending. It is akin to lowering educational standards. One parent tells me that standards are lower. This is not something I am making up. I am doing my small, small part to raise the standard.

One might ask, “Why is language so important?”

I claim to be a writer, perhaps, a franken one, and I tutor it.

What do you expect?
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classroom

7/11/2022

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A Greek Orthodox student who expressed pro-life views in a class GroupMe chat was exonerated of violating American University Washington College of Law’s “Discrimination and non-Title IX Sexual Harassment” policy. The chat issued by the other side was quite vulgar. One time I investigated an incident of teacher/student vulgarity in the classroom. www.thefire.org/cases/american-university-law-students-investigated-disagreeing-pro-life-classmate/
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handwriting

7/11/2022

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From wordgenius.com –
“We may not need to pass a penmanship test to get a job today, but it’s still a valuable skill to cultivate outside of school. Research shows that handwriting notes activates multiple brain regions associated with optimal memory, much more so than digital devices. Taking notes by hand or writing a to-do list on paper will preserve that memory a lot longer than typing into a laptop or phone.”
Believe it or not?

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nea

7/10/2022

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National Education Association
Reading is fundamental. It precedes writing and mathematics. I receive tutoring requests almost every day from parents of elementary and middle school students, and most requests are for reading. The mother of my homeschooled, very gifted 8-year-old student tells me that I can continue with the plan we have for him, which, as the plan has evolved, allows him to co-direct himself in reading and writing. He has a new math tutor who is in his twenties, and that seems to be working well.
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