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* BFU Weekly Journal *
documenting creation of a
Visionaries Learning Center

Bastiat Free University offers internationally accessible and actionable student-directed learning to visionaries and entrepreneurs.
Your BFU resources are now available without cost.

Start Today
Rediscover the pleasures found in self directed learning.

BFUniv, BFU college, self-directed e-learning, Bastiat Free University


Friday, September 29, 2006

At Bastiat Free University We Do Have Our Limitations

In fact we have a lot of them.

If you want to be a doctor, or a rocket scientist - Bastiat Free University can only offer advice before we send you off to a school that specializes in your chosen discipline.

Realize we are all still in the dark ages.

The science based schools may well be the last to abandon the educational structures of the industrial age. Yes they will continue to evolve, but expect no great and rapid transformation as will hopefully be seen in some of the other disciplines.

One reason is that the entrenched methodologies have worked well for centuries. Another reason is
the prestige associated with archaic organizational structures. Finally those profiting from leadership positions will fear and resent any new and liberating procedures.

Try to picture the American Medical Association (AMA) willingly giving up patients to specialized non- physician practitioners without a fight. If midwives have trouble - what of more technological threats to their medical monopoly?

What will be the AMA reaction to a surgeon in Beijing operating on a patient in Des Moines using satellite images and robotic manipulation at (gasp) - an inexpensive price?

The AMA will of course rally, and bribe politicians, to protect us from reasonably priced medicine foreign threats. At heart they are no different than union workers in Detroit protecting us from inexpensive and better built cars.

Every scientific discipline has their elite guild equivalent of the AMA.

I'll leave you with a thought from Max Planck, a pioneer of Quantum Theory. Nothing has changed since he said:

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out."

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Finally - Released To Do Your Best

Happily the industrial age is ending.

The days when the bell shaped curve defined the actions and efforts of humanity are almost over. The frustrations of a job that defined you as a machine part with specific tasks can now be put behind you.

The industrial age reveled in creating efficiency through large economies of scale - one size fits all. We all have learned through experience that one size fits no-one well. The products produced, and the workers producing them, were all forced into a general shape for mass allocation.

Yuck!

You can now escape the frustrations of a job that would not let you do what you do best, a job that limited your options to a few overly-limited tasks. You may however have to re-train yourself to do your best.

It is time to reignite the fire of youth where the joy of discovery and accomplishment lead to total commitment to that moments action. If it was playing a game, exploring unknown knowledge, or planning to build a club house - everything you were went into that project.

You have now been
trained to do what is required - no more. In fact in many jobs creativity and extra effort will be punished.

No More! Escape the deflating and imploding bureaucracies of the industrial past.

Many have started at Bastiat Free University - and quit. Some with good reason to pursue better or more appropriate opportunities. Many have quit because there is no stick to beat them into production, and they have to create their own carrot to motivate themselves. They are sadly part of the past age - and have been conditioned to have uncaring others direct their lives.

If you are, or want to be, responsible for your own life, now is the time to start. Get going before the collapse of the industrial age forces a decision upon you with downsizing, right sizing, and capsizing. Learn once again to constantly do your best.

Start your own business. Learn how to make a difference in your life and in the lives of others.

Re-learn how to do your best.


It is your life to improve. Why not do your best?


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Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Spiral Model - For Software And For Life

You could probably go back to Pythagoras, certainly to Fibonacci, and get the ratios defined within a spiral.

A current financial tool, Elliot Wave Analysis
, acknowledges its debt to a spirals functionality.

Since the spiral is a natural shape - you should probably go back to creation to further define its utility.

Because it is a natural shape the spiral model helps create an intuitive aspect to descriptions of processes that are too complex to easily define.

That works just fine for many types of large software projects -- and for life.

As a
parenthetical comment; there are those that believe in the circle of life - the cycle of birth, maturation, death, and rebirth. Most of these religions focus on the unpleasant aspects of rebirth as an atonement to be escaped. Modern religious salesmen and Hollywood package reincarnation as a renewed chance at being powerful and lovely, or having once been such. They purposely overlook the unpleasant aspects of having been a roach, or next time being a starving rat.

To have such a enclosed cycle within your current life would be tragic. All of your prior experience should assist you in expanding the experiences, skills, and knowledge that comprises your being. In other words - your current life experience can be a spiral.

The next time you come by this juncture in life - you will be better prepared to handle it as you will have greater experience from which you have extracted learning.

In a specific case if you wish to become an entrepreneur you can go through the six year birthing labor of a university entrepreneur training regime -- or you can start small at the beginning of the spiral and build your entrepreneurship as you expand.

You can do formal and spiral education together at the start - but expect at some point the real spiral learning of expanding experience may squeeze out time for completing overly structured formal education. There are many entrepreneurs that attended college for a year or two while they built a business. Their business college courses were subsequently dropped to make way for their entrepreneurial success.

The learning spiral will take less time and money - and potentially yield far greater results than structured classroom learning. Yeats wrote "Education is not filling a bucket - but lighting a fire."

To direct the fire of your passion to know - consider trying a spiral learning methodology.

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Friday, September 15, 2006

Internet Web Site Marketing 101

Internet Web Site Marketing is very different from standard marketing.

Where do you go if you want to use internet web site marketing to move forward an existing business or to create a start-up web business?

There are professionals web marketers available - and many are worth their high fees.

Bastiat Free University is trying an experiment. Going outside of our LMS (,earning management system) we have created what we feel is a college level learning experience in a quick reading . pdf format.

If you want to earn money on the Internet. If you want to understand Internet marketing. If you want to expand an existing Internet business - this new course will show you how.

Expect BFU to offer Internet web site Marketing 101 at our school for entrepreneurs. In the meantime you can be the first to look at our rough draft for the course.

We would appreciate any feedback - especially point out errors.

But rough or not - I can guarantee you there is great value in this internet marketing course. You will get the straight scoop - no hype - and a chance to learn how to make real money on the Internet.

Download the college class Internet Marketing 101 right now.

and read it


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Monday, September 04, 2006

Unleashing The Idea Virus

Unleashing The Idea Virus is a fun and useful book by Seth Godin.

Sounds a bit like a junior high school book report.

I'll tell you what this book really is.


Unleashing The Idea Virus is a revolutionary marketing argument put forth by an imaginative business genius.


Its a book I've had on my shelf for years and have read several times.

You can buy the book on Amazon, but to prove his point on viral marketing, Seth Godin also released it for free as an e-book. If you are sitting at home wondering what to do, down load the book and start reading.

Most e-books follow a simple idea and are over within thirty pages or so. Some like the free Entrepreneurial Business Ideas book that are aimed at
starting a new internet businesses have value. However most are worthless or worse. And there seem to be millions of e-books, some free - others sold.

Unleashing The Idea Virus is a real book. It will take time to read it, there will be frequent pauses while you absorb a fresh insight into an old truth.

And there will be lots of new insights also.

So why are you still sitting here reading this. If you only have time for a quick introduction to Seth Goodin's ideas - look at this from Fast Company.

But your real, long term, imagination growing profit will come from this -

get your own free copy of Unleashing The Idea Virus right now.

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Saturday, September 02, 2006

Power Of Passion vs. Curse Of Competency

There are few things more frustrating than dealing with a competent bureaucrat.

Frustrating for you, and for them.

The boredom of life as a mid level wage slave can be a painful existence. Sacrificing your free time and energy as a cog in someone else's machine is a waste of life. No wonder they so often try to enjoy abusing the little power they posses.

Contrast that with a life of creativity and passion pursuing your dreams. There have been times when I was immersed in a project twenty hours a day - and loving it. At other times I have been able to enjoy freedoms, friends, and family with surplus energy because the work I was committed to was energizing, not draining. That joy provided a spark that allowed me to spend more time in relationships because my profits and production were high.

With a great deal of insight into the curse of competency, here is a link to an essay by a creator of one of BFU's masters courses, Doug Casey.

If you can, find one of his out of print best selling books and read it. Another way to profit from this remarkable man is to subscribe to one of his Doug's letters.

You will learn a lot about a lot of different things.

Doug Casey is a Renaissance man.

He is far beyond competent.


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Toward A Prettier Bastiat Free University

You can take a look at prettier by clicking this posts title.

It is a long way from done, but it has the same elements as the main online college section. This pretty stuff is not a priority, but I know some of you have been waiting for a bit more orthodox site. Give it a few weeks and we will clean it up a bit more. This will continue to reside at our bfuniv.org domain.

Don't worry, we are not giving up our true blue sincere college site - you can still shortcut to it by typing bfuniv.com . If you are linking please cut and paste the full URL - its long and ugly, but it is direct. http://www.silentpc.org/university/simple.php

Feel free to toss some links to inner pages if you like them better, http://www.silentpc.org/university/
or perhaps
http://www.silentpc.org/university/quickinfo.php
are good examples. Even registration entry could be a good link page.

For those of you in our blogging courses, or those of you already using blogs, check out the earners forum. They have good free material for anyone seeking to make money on the internet, and a special section on blogs. I've just registered as "bastiat" - go figure.

Speaking of making money on the internet, I put new posts at The Sovereign Speculator and Speculation Rules on that theme.

I'm in a hurry, forgive any slight formating problems. That reminds me of the difference between a good blog post and a bad blog post -

two weeks.

By then I will have hopefully written enough good material to bury the rushed.

enjoy


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