About This Site
This website is dedicated to a certain lifestyle of mind. I call it intellectual buccaneering. I call myself a buccaneer-scholar.
Just as the original buccaneers would not submit to authority in their pursuit of worldly riches, neither do us modern buccaneers yoke ourselves to authority in the pursuit of a rich education. We construct truth and meaning for ourselves.
About Me
I am the second son of author Richard Bach. I've been on my own since 14. I quit school at 16. I taught myself computing, and became a software testing expert.
I have made my way among educated people as an educated man, but I have shunned institutional education. I developed methods of teaching myself what I need and want to know. So can you.
I've done all this while suffering from a mild disability: I have almost none of what my teachers used to call "self-discipline." Instead of discipline, I am driven by passion. Now that I'm in my forties, I want to share what I've learned about learning.
I also like to play chess (though, I'm not yet very good). Challenge me to a game on chess.com. My user name is "satisfice".
About the Book
Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar describes how I found success in a highly technical field without the benefit or burden of a conventional education. It will be published in September, 2009.
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Latest Top (10) News
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Helping People to Read?
Amanda Enclade (@aenclade) is one of the unschooling lights on Twitter. She posed a problem: How do you help young adults who can’t read, learn to read?
Approaching this problem as a buccaneer, first I remind myself:
Neither I, nor anyone else, can “educate” someone against their will or inclination. Where it appears that this has successfully [...]
Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:10:22 +0000
My eBook is Available!
Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is now available in electronic form. You can get it from Simon & Schuster, or less expensively on the Kindle from Amazon.com.
It will be available in hard cover starting in September. It’s being translated into Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and Chinese, that I know of. Also possibly other languages that I was [...]
Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:53:56 +0000
Interviewed on Ken Ludwig’s Radio Show
I had a fun time being interviewed by Ken Ludwig on Co-Creator Network.
I talk a little about my rebellion against school and how I had to learn to treat my mind more like a beloved pet and less like a slave or a machine.
This is the first radio interview I’ve ever done. Ken made it [...]
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:29:43 +0000
No Money, No Problem
“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week [...]
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:00:03 +0000
Bumpersticker
“Self-educated people are in a class by themselves.”
(I googled it. No hits. I’m the first to think of it.)
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:58:50 +0000
Stone Video Progress Report
Brother Jon came by this weekend to help me work on part 2 of “To Describe a Stone.” The project has grown into a beast. I keep wanting to do more research. I may end up writing a book out of this.
We shot more video footage and produced the actual stone description. Now I’m creating [...]
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:48:33 +0000
Reclaim Your Personal Method
(Since this pertains to both self-education AND technical work, I’m posting this on both of my blogs)
Randy Ingermanson has an interesting approach to writing fiction. It’s called the Snowflake Method. It looks interesting, but I won’t be following it in my work.
First, Don’t Follow
I only use my own methods. That is to say I’m happy [...]
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:32:52 +0000
In Praise of Quitting
In the famous Milgram experiment people were forced to choose between obedience to authority and following their conscience. Obedience won most of the time. It’s scary. See also the Stanford Prison Experiment and the BBC Prison Experiment.
With that background, I’m going to take a long leap: goals. I think one cause of the world’s ills [...]
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:17:10 +0000
My Dinner with Helen
My friend Helen Lowe just won an award for her book Thornspell, which is a novel showing the Prince’s side of the Sleeping Beauty story.
This is cool because not only is Helen a great writer, she’s quite a buccaneering thinker, too. I have had dinner at her house a couple of times, along with her [...]
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:14:38 +0000
“Let’s begin with level flight.”
Dad left the family when I was four. I would have almost no contact with him for another eight years, and not much contact through my adulthood. Mom was there every day until I left home, and she deserves credit for coping with the angry and willful child that I became. But even so it [...]
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:28:28 +0000
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