Tag: free

February 26: The day the Communist Manifesto was published

These are some of the most used words in The Communist Manifesto
“WordCloud” of some of the most used terms in The Communist Manifesto

26 February, 1848: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, a political theory that has become one of the modern world’s most influential documents and a source of inspiration for most of our political leaders.

The Communist Manifesto changed the face of the twentieth century beyond recognition, inspiring millions to revolution became an ideological source for millions of deaths (at least 94 million people according to Werth et al. Margolin‘s The Black Book of Communism).  This book has become the basis of political systems that dominate countless lives and continues to ignite violent debate about class and mixed systems of economic and political government today.

If you have never read this book (as most of its advocates have surely not done so) I encourage you to read it and study it attentively.

communist manifesto karl marx book cover

“In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced …” – Manifesto

Table of Online Contents for the Communist Manifesto:

Preamble
I:   Bourgeois and Proletarians
II: Proletarians and Communists
III: Socialist and Communist Literature
IV: Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Other Free Versions for Download: Audio, Word, epub, prc, PDF, Kindle.

Free Online Education on Objectivism, the philosophy founded by Ayn Rand

I am happy to learn that more online Free services are been made available for those interested in studying Philosophy.  The news was sent by the Atlas Society,
“The Atlas Society is launching a new video education series, theAtlas University. And we need your input as we get the first units ready for public launch. This is your chance to get an inside, first look at one of our biggest initiatives for 2012.

Atlas University is a video course series offering accessible, engaging, and enriching courses on Objectivism, the philosophy founded by Ayn Rand.  Our primary target audiences for this particular course are students interested in an “Objectivism 101” course and adults interested in an introductory continuing education curriculum focused on Objectivism.  If you are familiar with The Teaching Company’s Great Courses (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/) imagine this as an addition to their catalog.

The first Atlas University series is going to be a 10-part course called “Reason,” a survey of Objectivist epistemology. The instructors are TAS founder and chief intellectual officer David Kelley, PhD, and TAS director of programs William R Thomas, MA.

The planned ten parts of the “Reason” course are:

  1. What is reason? I (Speaker: David Kelley)
  2. What is reason? II The Conceptual Faculty (Speaker: William R Thomas)
  3. Volitional nature of reason (Speaker: William R Thomas)
  4. Objectivity I: Objective reality (Speaker: David Kelley)
  5. Objectivity II: Objective Knowledge? (Speaker: David Kelley)
  6. Reason and Emotion (Speaker: William R Thomas)
  7. Certainty (Speaker: David Kelley)
  8. Religion, God, and the supernatural (Speaker: David Kelley)
  9. Reason vs. mysticism and subjectivism (Speaker: William R Thomas)
  10. Conclusion: Living by Reason (Speaker: William R Thomas)

The first two 30-minute videos in this course are now ready for viewing.

In lecture 1, “What is Reason,” David Kelley introduces the course by considering what reason is and what role it plays in human life and civilization. Kelley surveys the history of modern philosophical thought to offer the viewer a grasp of how reason is viewed in the culture today and what challenges a defender of reason faces.


Lecture 2,“The Conceptual Faculty,” with William R Thomas takes up the most essential of these challenges, giving the distinctively Objectivist view of reason as the human faculty that allows us to mentally grasp universal terms via abstraction from the particular existents that we experience. Thomas presents Ayn Rand’s “measurement-omission” theory of concepts in an accessible, fresh manner, showing what makes it possible for our words to have objective meaning. Objective concept-formation is key to clear thinking.


We’re looking for individuals willing to preview these video programs and give us feedback on the content and the production values and general advise us on how make this course, and the Atlas University as whole, the best it can be.

Would you like to participate?

Just send an email to atlasu@atlassociety.org and enter “Atlas U” into the subject field of the email.

If you are accepted to take part, we will give you free access to these videos over a ten-day period (July  13-23).

You will be sent a link to two surveys, one relating to each video. You can use these surveys to offer your feedback. But please complete the surveys by Monday, July 24.

We will consider your feedback as we revise these two videos for full public release and as we continue creating videos in this and other Atlas University courses.

We would very much appreciate your participation.

Thanks,
The Atlas Society

Past and present of the globalization of knowledge

Globalization of knowledge is what I define as the process by which actors conceptualize and interconnect ideas in a global scale.  In the past, the globalization of knowledge required initially an extensive research in books, magazines and other print resources of ideas that could be connected in order to create a larger image of the field being studied.  Later, these ideas were linked and related one to another in the creation of conceptual maps that looked very similar to the nets of spiders in whiteboards.  Later, these ideas were interconnected and global conclusions, hypothesis and thesis arised from the evaluation of information.

However, with the advent of technology these complicated and extenuating research process have been shortened and made much more efficient.  Now, these interconnections and global images of our research are almost done automatically by computers.

The following video has a great example on how the past and present of the Globalization of Knowledge looked like.  I hope you will enjoy watching it as much as I did,

2012, Early Summer Reading List #Books

I am reading all day long specialized non-fiction books and journal essays.  That is how life is like when you want to be an Academic in a world in which competition is getting harder and harder.  However, I also find some time to read good non-fiction from other specialties or great fiction and poetry that allows me to romanticize.

Choosing good non-fiction is very hard for me since the offers are so many and the time to read is so reduced. Plus, the new offers in the market are huge and I learned when working as Collection Developer for my college library that even reviewing the best book review magazines takes a lot of time.

I found this list of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winners that will surely help me choose the best non-fiction to read this summer when traveling for holidays.  I hope you will also find this list helpful!  Also, I add some other fiction books from my ongoing list of “pending to read” that may be also helpful for you!

PULITZER WINNERS 2012

MORE FICTION Recommendations

If you have some recommendations please share them with me! I’d love to have them in my reading list! 😀

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Free ebook: The Morality of Capitalism by Tom G. Palmer

Today I finished reading a great book titled “The Morality of Capitalism” written by Tom G. Palmer.

The book is the result of a project done by the US based think tank “Students for Liberty“. As explained by the think tank leaders, the book was written as a “new tool in the fight for liberty, a new book on The Morality of Capitalism, What Your Professors Won’t Tell You.”

About the book by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods

The book can be downloaded for free in the following website: full PDF of The Morality of Capitalism, What Your Professors Won’t Tell You or can be bought at only $0.99 in a Kindle format via Amazon.com

About The Book

“Love and friendship are the fruits of mutual benefit through cooperation, whether in small or in large groups.  Without such mutual benefit, society would simply be impossible.” – Tom G. Palmer

The book combines the writings of various philosophers, economists, Nobel Prize winners, and entrepreneurs to make the case that not only do “markets deliver the goods” as Vernon Smith says, but that a true free market system is a prerequisite for a just, prosperous, and cooperative society.

More resources like videos, websites, and similar works in Arabic, Chinese, French, and many other languages can be found in this link.