846 karma · joined November 27, 2011
There are lots of confounding variables in this article. It's a shame they didn't tell us what the "high-fat" diet consisted of. Some fats are basically safe. Some oils go rancid during the production process and need to be "refined".
1869... 1913... These years were not high-points in the development of medicine. Bloodletting was a standard treatment until at least 1850. The first wonder-drug, Asprin, was over-used in 1913.
See this comment for my comments on the NPR show I heard after posting my mildly-inflammatory comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15738275
John Gatto and John Holt have both written extensively on the corrupt nature of compulsory schooling. I linked to some of Gatto's works in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760
I'm sorry if my comment above was too inflammatory - I meant to point out that both teachers & students are put in a difficult situation. The comment was specifically worded to target the 'education industry' (the profiteers who take advantage of student loans, which the submitted link is about), not the country's individual schools. 75 days ago I commented about an excellent teacher I had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15181176
After I posted my little comment this morning, I took off on a road trip. NPR was rebroadcasting last Friday's show on the Ted Radio Hour. This week's episode was titled Simple Solutions [0]. Part 2 was "Sam Kass: Can Free Breakfast Improve Learning?" [1]. Part 3 was "Wendy Troxel: Does High School Start Too Early?" [2].
Apparently little things like improving the odds that all students are fed and rested can dramatically improve students' school experiences. But that doesn't fix the structural problem, which is...
> For the majority, you really have to force them to learn algebra and the 'boring but important as hell' stuff.
No no no no no. My dad's high school friend taught shop class. Some of his students loved his class, others would have rather been anywhere else ("Baking"), but shop was the only class that fit in their schedule. Forcing children to take "important" classes that they don't care about is a good way to elicit apathy.
I think John Gatto said "nothing of value to the individual happens through force." Gatto has some good insights. See my earlier comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693047 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760
> Third, classroom time is not prison for children. If your kid thinks it is, find another school or talk to the teacher and the admin.
School was a prison for me, and I was good at it.
Thanks for your post.
[0] https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/564577402/simple...
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_kass_want_to_teach_kids_well_f...
[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_troxel_why_school_should_sta...
Children are learning machines. I've no doubt that kindergarten radically changes learning, but I don't think this is in a good way.
> Or what is the replacement?
For parents who need kindergarten as day-care (so they can work), some sort of structured activities might be appropriate. I don't have children, so my interest in this topic stems from being punished with boredom for my entire school experience. Some of the alternative education systems might be better, but I've no experience with those. Someone replied to my earlier comment, "Sudbury and Montessori schools offer a model that seems to encourage students to learn at their own pace" [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15693370
To quote myself, "John Gatto says it's better to skip as much of the early years of schooling as possible: some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference. I met a man a few months ago that was traumatized by not being able to "read" on the teacher's schedule when he was in 1st grade. He learned to read eventually, in spite of his school's efforts to force him to read before he was ready." [1]
"Really just screw public school in general. The whole place was 95% waste of time followed by a 'congratulatory' piece of paper." -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047919
If a politician was courageous, and didn't care about getting re-elected, they'd point out that the system could be fixed by getting rid of Kindergarten, replacing 1st and 2nd grade with structured activities instead of 'classroom time' (prison for children), replacing high school with something more like community college, and allowing the remaining years to be much more flexible - conducted for the learner's benefit, rather than the system's...
But school has been transformed from an important social institution into a jobs project. Children & teachers are both trapped.
The Screwing of the Average Man [0] said that college used to be something the upper-class sent their children to so they'd have a leg up on the "uneducated" masses. Then the congress provided the GI Bill to subsidize college for WWII veterans. This kept disgruntled veterans occupied while the economy retooled to peacetime production. Thus began the college price spiral.
My great-grandmother played prohibition well, and sent all 4 of her children to teh college during the great depression. After WWII, the one grandfather didn't need any more college degrees and used the GI Bill to learn to fly small planes. My other grandfather had no interest in any college, so he didn't utilize his tuition credits... He certainly would've done better financially if he had...
[0] https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0553129139
The only class I enjoyed in my public school experience was my 8th grade "technology" class. This semester was broken up into woodshop, welding/metal working, "computers", photography, and (don't remember). 45 minutes of appreciated learnings, 5 days a week, for one semester. Everything else was busy work. I learned a few things, here and there, but not enough to justify the countless hours of boredom.
College was kind of a scam. I have an expensive diploma that doesn't mean anything. I learned a few things, here and there, but not enough to justify the $100k+ spent on my behalf.
John Gatto [1] says it's better to skip as much of the early years of schooling as possible: some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference. I met a man a few months ago that was traumatized by not being able to "read" on the teacher's schedule when he was in 1st grade. He learned to read eventually, in spite of his school's efforts to force him to read before he was ready.
Allowing young children to have experiences in the real world instead of more classroom time would be much more valuable than giving young adults a choice of a trade school vs. more academics at age 18.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760
edit: clarification
Human operating temperature is much closer to a cow (or coconut) than to an artic fish.
Inflation? "[...] despite the amount of inflation that has occurred since 1969 (a $500 bill is now worth less, in real terms, than a $100 bill was worth in 1969)." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_...
The $500 bill pictured in the article is a gold certificate: "Redeemable In Gold On Demand at the United States Treasury"... Looks like all $500 gold certificates were printed in 1928, as the 1934 high-denomination bills were only used for intra-federal reserve transfers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_...
A HN comment set me looking for some blue-blockers for night driving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170975
My locally-owned sunglass shop stocks yellow blue blocker safety goggles that fit over my glasses. They turn obnoxious blue headlights green. I give them a 'blue headlight obnoxiousness reduction factor' of 85%.
The orange safety goggles ("uvex") I ordered from Amazon first were better (95%), but they block out too much green to be safe for night driving.
http://cocoonseyewear.com/find_a_dealer/ - overx.com (imprinted on my yellow glasses) redirects to this site, but what I have isn't shown on their site...
It's not just that other professions pay better: teaching is a sort of "mission impossible" that breaks everyone but the most dedicated and enthusiastic.
My high school biology teacher was an excellent teacher. Everything about his style was enthusiastic. He retired at 55 years old and became a real estate agent. I saw him a few years later, and asked why he gave it up. He said he wanted to go out at the top of his game. He didn't want to become one of those teachers who goes to work because they need the money. All students are apathetic about some of their classes. I think it bothered my poor high school geography teacher that no one actually cared about her class.
I don't think many people realize that "traditional" public schools are themselves an experiment that was never evaluated. This article talked about the first public schools, but doesn't comment on the actual details: these were one-roomed schoolhouses with a single teacher. This is a 'traditional' public school, not the factory schools the industrialists gave us [1].
[1] my comment on the myth of the superiority of age-segregated classrooms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760
Estrogen should be considered 'teh shock hormone' or 'the cancer hormone', NOT 'the female hormone'. Most doctors aren't trained to think of the steroids in context.
Japan has recently been using its bank to capture more of the interest payments on its debt:
"Japan has found a way to write off nearly half its national debt without creating inflation. We could do that too."
Sovereign Debt Jubilee, Japanese-Style - https://ellenbrown.com/2017/06/27/sovereign-debt-jubilee-jap...
FDA approval is an important step for marketing drugs that don't actually work very well.
I wish the climate change alarmists could realize that 90% of what they're freaking out about is a non-problem. It'd just take a small amount of focused investment (cogeneration and AC time-shifting tech, etc) to make the energy industry obsolete.
> During the Age of Trump, Year One, a single word has emerged to capture the essence of the prevailing cultural mood: resistance. Words matter, and the prominence of this particular term illuminates the moment in which we find ourselves.
Are there any responses to the points raised? I'm thinking about breaking my personal protocol and asking something on facebook. I've a few friends who fashion themselves members of 'la resistance' [1]...
Someone I respect pointed out that greenhouse gas alarmism started on March 29th, 1979.
There's much more to weight than calories.
"Vegetable oils" are extracted from seeds, usually with the assistance of the petroleum distillate hexane. The polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) portion of these oils is very unstable, so the producers use steam to remove the rancid odor from their "food-grade" product.
The PUFA's in vegetable oil are cluster bomblets that destroy people's health. IMHO, vegetable oil should only be used as biodiesel.
It used to be that education was something people did for themselves. Parents or a teacher would help children learn what they wanted to learn, when they were ready to learn it. Modern schooling forces children to learn on the teacher's schedule.
John Taylor Gatto wrote extensively of the corrupt nature of institutionalized schooling 15-20 years ago. I guess it's not polite to point out that the system is rigged against children, so Mr. Gatto's insights into more effective teaching have been successfully ignored in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis
"Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and Why" - http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com
Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"... several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.
It'd be even better to end institutionalized racism, institute a mass pardon program, and pay reparations to the victims of Nixon's stupid escalation of the war on plants:
At the time [1994], I was writing a book
about the politics of drug prohibition. I
started to ask Ehrlichman a series of
earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently
waved away. “You want to know what this was
really all about?” he asked with the
bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace
and a stretch in federal prison, had little
left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968,
and the Nixon White House after that, had two
enemies: the antiwar left and black people.
You understand what I’m saying? We knew we
couldn’t make it illegal to be either against
the war or black, but by getting the public
to associate the hippies with marijuana and
blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing
both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders,
raid their homes, break up their meetings,
and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about
the drugs? Of course we did.”
edit: John Taylor Gatto [1] points out in one of his books that black families were pretty stable post-civil-war, until the governments started sending black men to prison for teh ganja. Children do better when they have a father around.
Thanks for the idea. I can't stand blue headlights, so I'm going to add orange safety goggles to my shopping list.
John Taylor Gatto (and John Holt, and many others) say "wasting time" is the whole point of compulsory education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis
"Against School: How Public Education Criples our Kids, and Why" - http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com
Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"... several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.
Edit: favorite'd your earlier comment, as I like how your teacher was good at teaching physics in spite of not having a congratulatory paper from a "higher education" establishment.
Patients are the victims in the trench warfare between doctors and payers.
There is criticism of the Gates Foundation too: http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critiq...
David Rockefeller certainly did some good things with his influence. But he was also a globalist, which has had the effect of allowing 1st world companies to replace expensive workers through offshoring.
Some people do good work with their foundations. But a lot of it is cover for tax planning.