At 06:56 PM Tuesday 6/27/2006, Dave Land wrote:
On Jun 27, 2006, at 5:27 AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
At 09:26 PM Saturday 6/24/2006, Robert G. Seeberger wrote:
http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/16866/Top_5_Myths_About_America
[snip]
MYTH 4. The US doesn't need improvement compared to other countries;
it is the greatest country in the world.
TRUTH:
Wrong again. I'll only cite the statistics here.
USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD
<<double-snip>>
So much for those "socialist" Europeans and those "backward" Asians,
hm?
We can do better than this.
Yes, we no doubt can. And hopefully will. However, one thing that
strikes me about most of the countries the author cites as #1's and
#2's is that they are and have been for a long time pretty much
monocultural and monoethnic. If the health and life expectancy and
literacy and such rankings of middle-class and above Americans of
northern Eurpoean ancestry are compared to those of frex Norway and
Sweeden and Iceland (who descended from pretty much the same gene
pool as the former), how does the former group rank? IOW, lets
compare apples to apples, not apples to a fruit salad.
Must be nice to imagine that you live in a country where a huge
majority of the population just doesn't count. Fsck the poor! They're
dragging us down! Kill 'em all and we'll have a rich people's paradise!
Apparently my writing skills are deficient at getting my message
across. The main point was that on health and longevity, which are
significantly affected by heredity, it is unsurprising that a study
would find different results between a homogenous population and a
heterogeneous population one part of which shares the ancestry of the
other population. When it comes to those things (iow, other than
genetics, which for the moment we can't do much about after an
individual is born) where the most significant changes can be made in
health and lifestyle is in areas like proper nutrition and good
medical care, and the access to those is and always will be greater
the further up the socioeconomic ladder a person is. (Regardless of
the implementation of any system of national health care: there are
always going to be things the rich can afford that the poor cannot.)
-- Ronn! :)
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
