Perhaps, but education in the U.S. was much better when the salary of teachers relative to everyone else was much less than it is today (I am not suggesting we should go back to paying teachers that way). Which suggests that the problem is something other than how much we pay teachers.
Except that you spend all of your first post talking about spending more money on education. Perhaps before we spend more money on education, we should spend some time figuring out why the money we already spend isn't getting us results we like. The failure of our education system has nothing to do with not spending enough money on it. It may be that once we address the problems with our current system, we will need to spend more money on education (although I have my doubts), but it is clear that spending more money on education without first fixing what is wrong with it will not accomplish anything useful.
In my opinion, you guys started demonizing and drastically underpaying your teachers.
I have a question for you, why was education better when the relative salary of teachers was lower than it is today? The armies that fought the U.S. Civil War were the most literate armies in history (as evidenced by the many letters and journals that they wrote), yet at that time school teachers were generally paid a pittance. As best I can determine the average wage in the U.S. in the 1850s was somewhere around 80-90 cents a day, which works out to between $24-$27 a month. The average teacher's salary at the same time was $4-$10 a month. If the estimate of average monthly salary in the U.S. is correct, teachers today do much better relative to the general population (teachers today with a bachelor's degree earn a pro-rated salary that is slightly above average for a person with a bachelor's degree) than they did in the 1850s, yet the evidence suggests that students received a better education in the 1850s.
I don't foresee a future where the infrastructure can match demand. As capacity grows, people will demand more data services from more mobile devices and saturate the capacity unless pricing prevents them from doing so, and prices in a free market would normally be be set such that they fall a short of saturation.
Another, related, reason why infrastructure will not, and cannot, match demand for wireless data is that there is only so much spectrum. Actually, there is a way that wireless infrastructure could match demand. That would be for it to be priced out of the reach of the average person.
I do not know if it was in this article, but I read an article just a week or so ago in which an atheist* argued in favor of circumcision of infants on the basis of the fact that evidence shows that the impact of the health benefits is significantly greater when the circumcision is done when one is an infant. The timing suggests that that article was written in response to early reports on this study.
* relevant because it indicates that the person's support of circumcision was not based on their religious beliefs (I am unaware of any atheistic religions--there are several--that contain circumcision as part of their rites).
Except that the evidence suggests that the health benefits are greatest for those that have the circumcision done as young children (I do not recall if they quantified the age in the studies I saw).
However, those things happened because people accepted the idea that the government can do these things. Actually, they more than accepted it, they came to expect it. We see it on here on many issues. Take network neutrality. Tell people that the FCC does not have the statutory authority to implement it and they respond, "They're the Federal Communication Commission. If they don't have the authority to regulate that, who does?" It never occurs to them that Administrative bodies only have the authority that Congress delegated to them, let alone that there might be powers that the government does not/should not have. As I said parenthetically at the end of my comment, the U.S. population have become subjects, they are no longer truly citizens.
The purpose of a constitution is to expressly grant certain powers to the government and to deny it any powers not so granted. I fully understand that politicians have been working for years to suppress such an understanding among the general public. The existence of such a constitution is what distinguishes between whether the people are citizens or subjects (I am currently unaware of any countries where the people are not subjects).
From your first link: "When cattle are fed grain, productivity is increased, but fiber-deficient rations can disrupt physiological mechanisms," which supports my comment that the problem is a lack of fiber.
From your second link: "When carbohydrate supply is increased abruptly (i.e.,
following grain engorgement or during adaptation to
high-concentrate diets), the supply of total acid and
the prevalence of lactate in the mixture increase.
Normally, lactate is present in the digestive tract at
only low concentrations, but when carbohydrate supply is increased abruptly, lactate can accumulate;" which supports another one of my comments that the problem is adaptation to the change in diet, not the diet itself.
My original comment was based on resources designed to help farmers raise healthy cattle. I personally know quite a few farmers and while those I know are interested in maximizing their profits, they also understand that their long term economic viability (which includes their sons and/or daughters taking over the family farm someday) relies on raising healthy animals not just getting the most bang for the buck next year. That means that the resources they rely on tell them what they need to know to do that successfully. None of the resources I found which were designed to help farmers raise healthy livestock suggested that cattle had trouble digesting corn (or other grains commonly used as cattle feed). Instead they all suggested that there were issues in transitioning the diet and that it was necessary to maintain sufficient fiber in the diet after making such a transition.
Ok, that might work. Except of course for the fact that HR676 is an expansion of Medicare and more and more doctors are choosing not to accept Medicare patients.
That time it was Democratic leaders who made those decisions, while the Republican President was practically begging the Democratic governor to issue the orders that would allow the President to take action.
His subject is "We need health care, not health insurance!" then he links to a proposal to expand Medicare to cover everyone. Are you not aware that the majority of doctors are not accepting new Medicare patients?
More importantly, how exactly does expanding Medicare actually deliver health care unless, to go along with it, the government is going to conscript health care professionals and require them to treat people?
Compromise with whom? The Republicans were not even invited to the table. Actually, I would like to know who wins with Obamacare (besides bureaucrats and politicians). There may be some good things in there, but I mean the whole package. The taxpayer does not win because taxes go up. The consumer of healthcare does not win because costs go up and choices go down. I guess pharmaceutical companies win, they at least seem to think so. There may be other winners, but I'm not sure who.
You do know that the healthcare industry almost unanimously backed Obamacare, don't you? I have not seen the numbers recently, but early numbers suggested that they were also betting heavily on Obama's re-election by donating to his campaign (so it is possible that their donations have balanced out or even swung the other way).
No, it isn't even that. It is a "tax you a little extra if you don't buy it" plan. That way those who do plan ahead get to pay for those who wait until they get sick to buy health insurance. Of course, it's not like anybody wants to go with a rational plan whereby people have an economic incentive to manage their healthcare costs, and providers have an economic incentive to keep costs down so that people can actually afford what they charge.
The funny thing about your comment is that the only thing that you think looks modern and not from the 1980s is the part they kept from the logo they adopted in 1987
Actually, it sounds like NYC or Chicago, possibly New Jersey. I know I have heard of several locales with laws like that although I do not remember which ones fit his specific listing.
No, 0.08 was chosen because MADD knew they could never sell their real goal, which is a 0.02 BAC limit (and if they ever get that it may become 0.00). The fact of the matter is that the originally common 0.10 BAC limit was chosen based on studies that showed a consistent, verifiable impairment of driving ability when adjusted for other variables (including adjustment by the individual to compensate for reduced reaction times). I have never seen a study of the 0.08 BAC limit that I was comfortable with as an unbiased study of level of impairment.
Going further, the excuse for tightening the limit was to prevent alcohol related fatalities and injuries. The problem is that every study I have seen indicates that the overwhelming majority of those are the result of a driver who is well over the old 0.10 BAC limit (often with multiple DUI convictions in the past). If that is true, then lowering the BAC to 0.08 had absolutely no impact on alcohol related injuries and fatalities.
As I suspected, a little research shows that what you stated is untrue. The problem with a grain diet (whether corn or other grains) occurs when the transition is made too rapidly. Antibiotics are used to allow a herd to be transitioned more rapidly to a corn fed diet (although even the use of antibiotics does not allow for a sudden change over). The problem with changing from a roughage (grass and other similar plants) diet to a grain diet (and back) is that there are different kinds of bacteria in the rumen that help cattle digest what they eat. Some of those bacteria process fibrous food (such as grass), different bacteria process starchy food (such as grain). If a cow is eating primarily grass the overwhelming majority of the bacteria will be those which digest fibrous foods and if the cow is switched to a primarily grain diet there will not be enough bacteria to process the grain before it ferments. In addition, there are problems if there is insufficient fiber in the diet. However, the only problem with feeding cattle a diet that is majority corn is the lack of fiber in the diet, not a problem with digesting the corn. Antibiotics do not have any impact on that.
The mouse study actually sheds some useful information (not much, after all it was only a mouse study and there is a long way from a conclusion on mice to the same conclusion on people) in that it showed that mice given antibiotics experienced an increased adipose (fatty) tissue over those that were not given antibiotics. However the second linked article only linked to a study that found that children given antibiotics weighed more for a given size than those that were not. In the second study, we do not know if that increased weight was a result of increased bone mass, increased muscle mass, or increased fat. The first one of those might be good or bad, more study would be needed to determine that. The second would almost certainly be a good thing. While the third is probably bad. I am very aware of that second one since my BMI says that I am distinctly obese. When I was in close to the peak shape of my life the BMI calculators wanted me to lose 1/6 of my weight, yet at the time I had a body fat percentage of 4% which was already borderline too low.
Of course by doing so you are killing off the bacteria which are beneficial to you along with the ones that might be harmful. The beauty of your plan is that while you are killing significant numbers of beneficial bacteria every time you use an anti-bacterial agent to wash your hands, you will rarely be killing harmful ones (because they usually are not present, or at least not in sufficient quantity to be a threat). Oh yeah, that's the other thing, by killing off the beneficial bacteria you make your hands (or other body part) a more hospitable environment for the pathogens.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, but education in the U.S. was much better when the salary of teachers relative to everyone else was much less than it is today (I am not suggesting we should go back to paying teachers that way). Which suggests that the problem is something other than how much we pay teachers.
Except that you spend all of your first post talking about spending more money on education. Perhaps before we spend more money on education, we should spend some time figuring out why the money we already spend isn't getting us results we like. The failure of our education system has nothing to do with not spending enough money on it. It may be that once we address the problems with our current system, we will need to spend more money on education (although I have my doubts), but it is clear that spending more money on education without first fixing what is wrong with it will not accomplish anything useful.
In my opinion, you guys started demonizing and drastically underpaying your teachers.
I have a question for you, why was education better when the relative salary of teachers was lower than it is today? The armies that fought the U.S. Civil War were the most literate armies in history (as evidenced by the many letters and journals that they wrote), yet at that time school teachers were generally paid a pittance. As best I can determine the average wage in the U.S. in the 1850s was somewhere around 80-90 cents a day, which works out to between $24-$27 a month. The average teacher's salary at the same time was $4-$10 a month. If the estimate of average monthly salary in the U.S. is correct, teachers today do much better relative to the general population (teachers today with a bachelor's degree earn a pro-rated salary that is slightly above average for a person with a bachelor's degree) than they did in the 1850s, yet the evidence suggests that students received a better education in the 1850s.
I don't foresee a future where the infrastructure can match demand. As capacity grows, people will demand more data services from more mobile devices and saturate the capacity unless pricing prevents them from doing so, and prices in a free market would normally be be set such that they fall a short of saturation.
Another, related, reason why infrastructure will not, and cannot, match demand for wireless data is that there is only so much spectrum. Actually, there is a way that wireless infrastructure could match demand. That would be for it to be priced out of the reach of the average person.
I do not know if it was in this article, but I read an article just a week or so ago in which an atheist* argued in favor of circumcision of infants on the basis of the fact that evidence shows that the impact of the health benefits is significantly greater when the circumcision is done when one is an infant. The timing suggests that that article was written in response to early reports on this study.
* relevant because it indicates that the person's support of circumcision was not based on their religious beliefs (I am unaware of any atheistic religions--there are several--that contain circumcision as part of their rites).
You say that in a discussion of an article that says that there are proven health benefits to being circumcised (in particular as an infant).
Except that the evidence suggests that the health benefits are greatest for those that have the circumcision done as young children (I do not recall if they quantified the age in the studies I saw).
The solution is to make the consumer of healthcare responsible for the cost of healthcare. Any other solution leads to ever expanding problems.
However, those things happened because people accepted the idea that the government can do these things. Actually, they more than accepted it, they came to expect it. We see it on here on many issues. Take network neutrality. Tell people that the FCC does not have the statutory authority to implement it and they respond, "They're the Federal Communication Commission. If they don't have the authority to regulate that, who does?" It never occurs to them that Administrative bodies only have the authority that Congress delegated to them, let alone that there might be powers that the government does not/should not have. As I said parenthetically at the end of my comment, the U.S. population have become subjects, they are no longer truly citizens.
The purpose of a constitution is to expressly grant certain powers to the government and to deny it any powers not so granted. I fully understand that politicians have been working for years to suppress such an understanding among the general public. The existence of such a constitution is what distinguishes between whether the people are citizens or subjects (I am currently unaware of any countries where the people are not subjects).
From your first link: "When cattle are fed grain, productivity is increased, but fiber-deficient rations can disrupt physiological mechanisms," which supports my comment that the problem is a lack of fiber.
From your second link: "When carbohydrate supply is increased abruptly (i.e., following grain engorgement or during adaptation to high-concentrate diets), the supply of total acid and the prevalence of lactate in the mixture increase. Normally, lactate is present in the digestive tract at only low concentrations, but when carbohydrate supply is increased abruptly, lactate can accumulate;" which supports another one of my comments that the problem is adaptation to the change in diet, not the diet itself.
My original comment was based on resources designed to help farmers raise healthy cattle. I personally know quite a few farmers and while those I know are interested in maximizing their profits, they also understand that their long term economic viability (which includes their sons and/or daughters taking over the family farm someday) relies on raising healthy animals not just getting the most bang for the buck next year. That means that the resources they rely on tell them what they need to know to do that successfully. None of the resources I found which were designed to help farmers raise healthy livestock suggested that cattle had trouble digesting corn (or other grains commonly used as cattle feed). Instead they all suggested that there were issues in transitioning the diet and that it was necessary to maintain sufficient fiber in the diet after making such a transition.
Ok, that might work. Except of course for the fact that HR676 is an expansion of Medicare and more and more doctors are choosing not to accept Medicare patients.
That time it was Democratic leaders who made those decisions, while the Republican President was practically begging the Democratic governor to issue the orders that would allow the President to take action.
His subject is "We need health care, not health insurance!" then he links to a proposal to expand Medicare to cover everyone. Are you not aware that the majority of doctors are not accepting new Medicare patients?
More importantly, how exactly does expanding Medicare actually deliver health care unless, to go along with it, the government is going to conscript health care professionals and require them to treat people?
Compromise with whom? The Republicans were not even invited to the table. Actually, I would like to know who wins with Obamacare (besides bureaucrats and politicians). There may be some good things in there, but I mean the whole package. The taxpayer does not win because taxes go up. The consumer of healthcare does not win because costs go up and choices go down. I guess pharmaceutical companies win, they at least seem to think so. There may be other winners, but I'm not sure who.
So, the government is going to start conscripting medical professionals under your plan?
You do know that the healthcare industry almost unanimously backed Obamacare, don't you? I have not seen the numbers recently, but early numbers suggested that they were also betting heavily on Obama's re-election by donating to his campaign (so it is possible that their donations have balanced out or even swung the other way).
No, it isn't even that. It is a "tax you a little extra if you don't buy it" plan. That way those who do plan ahead get to pay for those who wait until they get sick to buy health insurance. Of course, it's not like anybody wants to go with a rational plan whereby people have an economic incentive to manage their healthcare costs, and providers have an economic incentive to keep costs down so that people can actually afford what they charge.
The funny thing about your comment is that the only thing that you think looks modern and not from the 1980s is the part they kept from the logo they adopted in 1987
Actually, it sounds like NYC or Chicago, possibly New Jersey. I know I have heard of several locales with laws like that although I do not remember which ones fit his specific listing.
No, 0.08 was chosen because MADD knew they could never sell their real goal, which is a 0.02 BAC limit (and if they ever get that it may become 0.00). The fact of the matter is that the originally common 0.10 BAC limit was chosen based on studies that showed a consistent, verifiable impairment of driving ability when adjusted for other variables (including adjustment by the individual to compensate for reduced reaction times). I have never seen a study of the 0.08 BAC limit that I was comfortable with as an unbiased study of level of impairment.
Going further, the excuse for tightening the limit was to prevent alcohol related fatalities and injuries. The problem is that every study I have seen indicates that the overwhelming majority of those are the result of a driver who is well over the old 0.10 BAC limit (often with multiple DUI convictions in the past). If that is true, then lowering the BAC to 0.08 had absolutely no impact on alcohol related injuries and fatalities.
As I suspected, a little research shows that what you stated is untrue. The problem with a grain diet (whether corn or other grains) occurs when the transition is made too rapidly. Antibiotics are used to allow a herd to be transitioned more rapidly to a corn fed diet (although even the use of antibiotics does not allow for a sudden change over). The problem with changing from a roughage (grass and other similar plants) diet to a grain diet (and back) is that there are different kinds of bacteria in the rumen that help cattle digest what they eat. Some of those bacteria process fibrous food (such as grass), different bacteria process starchy food (such as grain). If a cow is eating primarily grass the overwhelming majority of the bacteria will be those which digest fibrous foods and if the cow is switched to a primarily grain diet there will not be enough bacteria to process the grain before it ferments. In addition, there are problems if there is insufficient fiber in the diet. However, the only problem with feeding cattle a diet that is majority corn is the lack of fiber in the diet, not a problem with digesting the corn. Antibiotics do not have any impact on that.
Perhaps you were unaware that grains are evolved from what is essentially grass seed?
The mouse study actually sheds some useful information (not much, after all it was only a mouse study and there is a long way from a conclusion on mice to the same conclusion on people) in that it showed that mice given antibiotics experienced an increased adipose (fatty) tissue over those that were not given antibiotics. However the second linked article only linked to a study that found that children given antibiotics weighed more for a given size than those that were not. In the second study, we do not know if that increased weight was a result of increased bone mass, increased muscle mass, or increased fat. The first one of those might be good or bad, more study would be needed to determine that. The second would almost certainly be a good thing. While the third is probably bad. I am very aware of that second one since my BMI says that I am distinctly obese. When I was in close to the peak shape of my life the BMI calculators wanted me to lose 1/6 of my weight, yet at the time I had a body fat percentage of 4% which was already borderline too low.
Of course by doing so you are killing off the bacteria which are beneficial to you along with the ones that might be harmful. The beauty of your plan is that while you are killing significant numbers of beneficial bacteria every time you use an anti-bacterial agent to wash your hands, you will rarely be killing harmful ones (because they usually are not present, or at least not in sufficient quantity to be a threat). Oh yeah, that's the other thing, by killing off the beneficial bacteria you make your hands (or other body part) a more hospitable environment for the pathogens.