IN my Amazon genre bestselling book, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859 — I lay the foundations for my “Philosophia Psychís Empeiría” which I expand in the upcoming sequel PROPHECY, which is nearing completion. In essence, the “soul” is the sum total of one’s life experiences, and acts as the “guide” to the next universe. Not simply another world in space/time, but an entirely different universe of worlds, each accord...

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SHADES of Houdini! In the tradition of Thomas Edison, Mae West, Queen Victoria, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Todd Lincoln — https://www.history.com/news/spiritualism-communication-dead-figures — and my own works, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859 — and its yet to be published sequel PROPHECY there’s a first inkling of such! In these two books, I explore the idea that birth and death constitute an entrance and exit from our...

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LET’S face it: The split in politics that strongly divides us is being reflected in government, foreign affairs, legislation, health care, transportation and, yes, education. But what’s with the extreme splitting at the expense of the quality of our lives? I’m going to take a big leap and say it’s not really politics (the “pop” explanation) or COVID (the shot across the bow) as so many claim, but simply lack of an effective future infrastructure from which to develop. This is, in ...

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BLOODSPORT is the term for events of spectacle involving violence to the point of bloodletting. While violence and bloodletting are probably as old as humanity, they are said to have became a spectacle with the ancient pre-Roman Etruscans in or around 600 BCE — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi7673 and http://thespectaclesofapuleius.weebly.com/gladiatorial-combats.html#.YrSwcy-B3Fc — and later the Greek Olympics begun in 770 BCE — https://olympics.com/ioc/faq/history-and-or...

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A doctor of philosophy degree wherein one knows more and more about less and less. The key is the word philosophy, meaning “love of wisdom,” whereas doctorate simply implies the highest degree (of). But seriously, what is wisdom? Or knowledge (shouldn’t all degreed individuals possess knowledge)? And where do information and data fit in?

In my experience, the lowest form of education involves the memorization of data. Having a storehouse of data at one’s fingertips used to be a major...

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I’VE been wondering lately what is it that makes morality so important, perhaps even essential, to humans, but not as far as we know, to other animals? It’s always been my opinion that morality is a sort of mental barbed-wire fence to keep what I consider the eighth deadly sin, hubris, in check, though hubris is commonly regarded as synonymous the first deadly sin, pride. Personally and as an author, I make a distinction between the two, pride being about about unnatural self-aggrandizeme...

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Well, I'm back on my academic soapbox again, and this issue, in particular, is one close to my academic heart. Something happened -- subtly shifted -- in the 1960's with the advent of computing and the widespread application of statistics as a way to "prove" that something is valid ("true"). Stress within academic institutions, especially "higher" learning institutions, began shifting towards acquiring a working memory of data (raw numbers) and information (numbers with attached units, e.g. d...
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I promised in my last entry to talk more about student assessment, especially as it applies to transformative (knowledge and wisdom oriented) verses traumatic (data and information oriented) learning. 

First, whether there are in fact two different major learning pathways is not really a question much anymore.  In my book, "Unlock the Genius Within" I explored this issue not from an ideational perspective (gosh, that's a good idea) but rather from the perspective of neurobiology (how does suc...
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