2013-10-24 speech at a high school in Nowon

There is an old saying: "The threat of execution sharpens the mind." The students at a high school I spoke at today proved that. I had been wondering why they were paying such close attention to my speech. I think I found the answer: Their teachers closely listened to my speech, took notes, and let the students know there would be a quiz! All 150+ of the students there were focused.

My speech lasted more than an hour, but it seemed to be engaging enough to keep them interested. I think I am getting better at mixing humor, information, and lessons into my talks.

I got very good feedback from the teachers. They were all shocked that the students were asking questions, they said they NEVER ask questions in class and that they have remained silent when they have had other guest speakers. So the teachers will study my speech to get tips to figure out how they can get the students to ask questions in the future!

I tested to make sure they could hear me in the back by asking the ones in the back, "So put your hands in the air, and wave 'em like you just don't care."

She's one of the English teachers at the school. Like most Koreans teaching English, she told me in fluent English that she can't speak English.

Because she is the best English speaker at the school, she was stuck with the assignment of managing this event.

He was the main organizer. Hilarious guy!

I knew they would do the rabbit ears on me.

One of the kids kept telling me that he loved me.

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By Casey Lartigue, Jr. Is the sky blue? Is the ocean water? If you suspect those are trick questions, you are right. The sky isn’t always blue ― it is reddish at sunset, dark at midnight, gray on an overcast day. The ocean isn’t water ― there’s also fish, plant life, submarines, dissolved minerals, surfboards, sunken ships, even people swimming in it sometimes. As Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell wrote in his 1996 book ``The Vision of the Anointed,” people who use “all-or-nothing” reasoning can deny a statement because it is not 100 percent true in every circumstance. Such word games might be fun for college students or debaters, but there are some distinguished people who are respected for making such childish arguments about serious issues. In his book ``23 Things They Don’t Tell you About Capitalism,” Cambridge University economist Chang Ha-Joon argues that 1) “[T]here is really no such thing as a free market” and 2) “The free market doesn’t exis...

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