Y'all, "Tom Paine University" is supposed to be a "radical" project to facilitate delivery of a more radically oriented program of "internal education" in the LP, but its motto is the Paine-ism "it is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."
So: - I'm beta-testing the facility (an installation of Moodle on my own server) and running a pilot course of a "nuts and bolts" rather than ideological variety, and am looking for up to 10 course participants. - The pilot course is "Letters to the Editor 101."* To get the full benefit of the course, I estimate a time commitment of ~2 hours a week for 5 weeks, and I think students will find it a good investment of time ... but it's a non-graded course with no actual minimum commitment. MY goal with this iteration of the course is to acquaint myself with operating the facility. - It's free -- just register at the site and enroll in the course using the enrolment code "LTE101PILOT." The site is located at: http://tpu.rationalreview.com Once the pilot course has allowed me to work out any operational kinks, I'll be looking for teachers of both "nuts and bolts" (writing, campaign techniques, fundraising, etc.) and "ideological" (Survey of Rothbard, Basics of Public Choice theory, whatever) courses. Regards, Tom Knapp * It may occur to someone to ask whether or not I'm qualified to teach a course on writing letters to the editor, so: I stopped counting after my 100th published LTE/op-ed in a mainstream newspaper under my own name (including but not limited to the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Times). I think I'm somewhere around 150 at the moment. I started writing community notices for my small-town local daily at age 12; moved on to become a staff writer for my high school and college newspapers, as well as for a high school magazine; and sat as a community representative on the editorial borad of a 60k+ circulation city daily (the Springfield News-Leader -- which remains libertarian-friendly to this day and serves a city which recently finally elected its first Libertarian city councilman). A few years ago, I wrote an e-booklet ("Writing the Libertarian Op-Ed"), and received positive feedback from several of its 100 or so purchasers, including at least two who had never successfully submitted LTEs before, but who had had LTEs published after applying the rules. That e-booklet is the course text, and may be freely downloaded and distributed (without enrolling in the course) at: http://www.rationalreview.com/pdf/writingthelibertarianoped.pdf So, yes, I think I'm reasonably qualified. I have no doubt there are libertarians who have published more, and better, LTEs and op-eds than myself, but I suspect I'm well to the right side of the bell curve's center in both quantity and quality. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
