Author: Larry Sanger
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Reading Bear: Rave Reviews
Reading Bear has enjoyed excellent preliminary reactions from a wide variety of online sources. The following is just a selection, most of this in reaction to our 2011 launch, not to the full set of 50 presentations that we completed in August 2012. Our Favorite Endorsements & Mentions Larry Ferlazzo added us to three “best…
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“Infant Intelligentsia: Can Babies Learn to Read? And Should They?”
There’s a very good article about baby reading in the latest issue of Pacific Standard, which is what Miller-McClune Magazine is now called. (The magazine is pretty cool–it was described to me as the Pacific Coast version of The Atlantic.) It starts as follows: THE VIDEO CLIP [refers to this] on Larry Sanger’s website shows the cofounder of…
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Reading Bear is complete! Why it works.
After many months of development, I can finally announce: Reading Bear is complete! Reading Bear now has a full set of fifty presentations, with an average viewing time of about 15 minutes each. I haven’t added up the time, but it’s around 12 hours total. It covers a huge number of phonics principles, systematically. Over 1,200…
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On the moral bankruptcy of Wikipedia’s anonymous administration
I announced, named, and launched Wikipedia way back in January of 2001. My originating role in the project was acknowledged by Jimmy Wales later on in 2001, when he wrote, “Larry had the idea to use wiki software…” Virtually all of the news articles about the project before 2005 identified me as one of the two founders of…
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The Saga of Wikimedia UK and its Chair
The following story is very instructive about the sort of people in the Wikipedia universe, and what sort of people actually run things on the sixth most popular website online. In case you didn’t know, there is an organization, Wikimedia UK, that is legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation headquartered in San Francisco. Wikimedia UK has a separate…
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Is it time to establish Internet user unions?
Since everybody and his grandma have gotten on the Internet in a big way in the last few years, the social influence of giant Internet companies has skyrocketed. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, Twitter, and many more wield enormous power over us. We have given them that power. Their success is built on participation, and we…
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Wikimedia Foundation Board Officially Rejects Porn Filter
Last Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation board quietly voted, in person, 10-0 in favor of repealing the “personal image hiding feature”–in other words, a very weak, opt-in porn filter. “Quietly,” I say, because the resolution was not posted publicly until the middle of the weekend. Note that the page mistakenly states that Jimmy Wales voted against…
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Your Baby Can Read closes up shop
The companies behind Your Baby Can Read have, faced with daunting legal costs, gone out of business, according to this Facebook post and, now, the text on YourBabyCanRead.com: FROM ALL OF US AT YOUR BABY CAN READ!THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOYAL SUPPORT AND BEING SUCH GREAT CUSTOMERS! For more than 6 years, Your Baby Can Read!…
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Dad & Junior find porn via a Wikipedia “Schools Gateway”
I thought I’d illustrate one of the “what could possibly go wrong?” scenarios, for people who (1) don’t want to click on the nasty links and/or (2) lack imagination. Script: Opening shot: article about unfiltered porn on Wikipedia Voiceover: The adult imagery is blurred in this video. Still, don’t watch it with your kids. Man…
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Update about the boys, part 1 – June 2012
I’m due to give you an update about H.’s education. (I guess E. will be in a separate post, as before.) He has turned six. I’m looking forward to his being in the first grade (or that age), so I don’t have to defend or make excuses about the amount of educational stuff I do…