Profit and education aren’t mutually exclusive
Ian Lindquist, American Enterprise Institute, 2016/08/02

I think that the people arguing for the privatization of education are going to have to come up with better arguments. Writing for US News & World Report, Ian Lindquist says, "Education is not the only sector that provides public goods. Indeed, there are many public goods handled by private companies: hospitals, prisons and transportation systems operated by for-profit providers ensure public health, public safety and public transportation." These examples prove quite the opposite. The privatization of hospitals, prisons and transportation has proven to be to the detriment of all three services, resulting in lower standards (sometimes verging on abuse) and higher costs.

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Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece, The Second Sex, in Rare 1959 TV Interview
Dan Colman, Open Culture, 2016/08/02

It has always puzzled me what writers mean when they label a video "rare" as in this case. Is there only one copy (now a billion copies on the web)? Is it a subject that doesn't come up a lot? Whatever. Get out of your comfort zone. Watch this video. Ponder life, existence and death. And what it all means. (RIP Seymour Papert)

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In Memory: Seymour Papert
MIT Media Lab, 2016/08/02

Seymour Papert passed away on Sunday and the web is - not surprisingly - full of tributes. I remember him most as an artificial intelligence researcher, and colleague of Marvin Minsky, but he is more widely recognized as an education innovator and theorist. I met him only once, back in 2003 or so, at a conference in Quebec City. These last few days the web has been full of tributes, not surprisingly.

From Paulo Blikstein, some links:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/seymourpapert/
• This is the video of a tribute to him in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=588Tyv827b4
• And the introduction to the tribute, “You cannot think about thinking without thinking about what Seymour Papert would think:” http://bit.ly/2aqiJkJ
• http://papert.org
• http://dailypapert.com
• His collected works: http://dailypapert.com/the-collected-writings-of-seymour-p…/
• An amazing debate with Paulo Freire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V-0KfBdWao
• A great talk by Gary S. Stager about Seymour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-dFTmdX1kU
• Logo Foundation

Tributes and such:

• Will Richardson, RIP Seymour Papert
• Steve Wheeler - Papert - in his own words
• Philip Greenspun - Remembering Seymour Papert, Pilot
• Audrey Watters - Photos
• Donald Clark - Seymour Papert – Logo, Lego and constructionism - RIP
• Derek Wenmoth - RIP Seymour Papert
• Mark Guzdial - Seymour Papert has died and leaves a lasting legacy
• New York Times - Seymour Papert, 88, Dies; Saw Education’s Future in Computers
• Educating Alice - R.I.P. Father of Kids’ Coding, Seymour Papert
• Hacker News - Seymour Papert has died
• Fortune - AI and Computer Learning Lion Seymour Papert Dies at 88
• Motherboard - Seymour Papert, a Pioneer of Artificial Intelligence and Kids Coding, Has Died
• Ars Technica - Seymour Papert, theorist behind One Laptop Per Child, dies at 88

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Why ontologies are best left implicit (especially for credentials)
Doug Belshaw, Ambiguiti.es, 2016/08/02

This is exactly right: "the attempt to define what ‘exists’ within a given system is usually a conservative, essentialist move. It’s often concerned with retro-fitting new things into the current status quo, a kind of Kuhnian attempt to save what might be termed ‘normal science’." What follows this promising start is an interesting and useful discussion of Richard Rorty and "dead metaphors". I agree with Belshaw's scepticism of ontologies. And as Douglas Rushkoff says, "It’s this automatic acceptance of how things are that leads to a sense of helplessness about changing any of them."

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