On 5/6/17 10:52 AM, Joe Spinden wrote:
The talk of who went to what school seems beside the point.
The benefits of Pre-K seem indisputable to me.. As do the benefits of
reduced sugar consumption.
For those with limited access to the basics of modern education, I think
Pre-K is a great thing (under-literate parents with overwhelming
distractions like double-career or substance/behaviour/media
addictions). For children with an over-abundance of calories
(especially those from purified sugars/carbs/fats/alcohol!) reduced
sugar consumption is a "good thing". In sweeping societal/group
measures I suppose that increasing access to the former and reducing
access to the latter is a doubly good thing.
Whether I should exercise financial support for the former or
instigating regulation on the latter is a different thing. I am
*personally* willing to help make sure that pre-K (and K-12) is highly
accessible to all, up to and including paying more taxes, but am a
little reluctant to declare that *everyone* should do the same. I am
also of the mind that reduced sugar (and carbohydrates, and alcohol)
consumption in our culture is generally a "good thing" but I'm not sure
I am ready to bluntly interfere with those whose lifestyles and choices
includes consuming more of those items than *I* think is healthy.
I did not focus on the benefits of Pre-K vis-a-vis the proposed tax
because I was never convinced the administration could competently
determine how to administer the receipts. But, since Martinez is
trying to gut education in NM, anything would be better than nothing.
I think Conservative Politicians of the Susanna Martinez stripe are
likely to *mostly* do things I don't agree with, and feel even unlikely
to maintain a competent bureaucracy to do those things *even* if I
agreed with thm.
Nor do I consider it elitist to advocate for improved health. If some
reduced their sugar consumption because it cost more, that would not
be a bad thing.
I think advocating for good health is a great thing. The question is
what measures do we consider acceptable?
When Nicotine was declared the devil incarnate (I am not a nicotine
consumer myself) I found myself winding up my smoking-hater friends with
the idea that there is *another* extant evil with many of the same
qualities that *MUST* be eradicated for the general good as soon as
Nicotine was properly suppressed. I could get the whole room jumping up
in down with me in self-righteous resentment, right up until I declared
the devil himself to be "caffeine". After all, it is a strong
mood-altering substance, it has significant health risks (high blood
pressure at the forefront), it stains your teeth, it causes lost
work-time (coffee/soda breaks!) and to anyone who doesn't like the smell
is quite offensive (ew! I smell COFFEE brewing! Do you know how bad
your COFFEE breath is?).
Many here would condemn white sugar (or high-fructose-corn-syrup in
drinks) and nicotine (smoked or smokeless) or maybe even alcohol as a
social evil, but would still defend their cup of coffee to their dying
sip... "you can pry that coffee cup from my cold, dead fingers!).
I don't know how to argue elitism, but somehow I think there IS some
form of elitism in these arguments, or at least self-righteous judgement?
Separately, the idea that Michael Bloomberg spending $1MM of his own
money -- with no financial benefit to himself -- to support the tax
here is somehow equivalent to the soda distributors' spending large
sums to protect their own profits is ludicrous. Bloomberg is a genuine
billionaire who should be commended for his willingness to spend his
own money to advocate for causes he considers beneficial to all.
I do agree that there is some conflation between the two examples. I
don't know why Bloomberg has taken on sugary drinks as a crusade, and I
personally think that my own occasional consumption of sugary drinks is
not healthy for me, but I guess I don't know how to parse "genuine
billionaire"... and have to question why HE (or any billionaire) gets to
try to directly shape public policy? Sure the, sugar (or corn syrup,
or beet or ???) industry has NO business being allowed to influence
legislation, but that doesn't mean (to me) that Bloomberg or Gates or
Buffett or (OMG) Trump have an intrinsic right to use wealth to
influence public policy either?
I *happen* to agree that helping make pure sugar less
appealing/available might improve the collective health but that doesn't
mean I want to put sin/Pigovian taxes on it (whether we fund PreK with
it or not). I would *also* like to see a lot fewer deaths by firearms
in our culture and could suggest that if ammunition (or gunpowder or
primers or ??) were heavily taxed ($5/round for most ammo?), but am
loathe to try to impose a false-economy on top of the existing false
economies.
Carry on,
- Steve
Joe
On 5/6/17 9:44 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
Let's summarize. I said I wish people would focus on the benefits of
pre-K education rather than the economic impacts of the tax and the
effects on diet. I mentioned that my wife, who went to graduate
school at the Harvard Ed School, is a big proponent of pre-K. Merle
said that I missed the point and that Jeff Skilling and Jared
Kushner's father also went to Harvard. I said that Ted K went to
Berkeley to make the case that having alumni in prison is
irrelevant. Merle says it's not.
My wife hates being mentioned in this context. Let me tell you a
little more. When she was at Harvard she worked with Jonathan Kozol
to improve educational opportunities for Puerto Rican toddlers in
South Boston. In Pittsburgh she worked in a therapeutic Headstart
program as head teacher to offer pre-K education to high risk kids
whose mothers were schizophrenic. They were 3-4 years old and at
least one of them witnessed the murder of her mother. They were
mostly African American and arrived at school very hungry. They ate
at school. This was done under the auspices of the University of
Pittsburgh Psychiatry Department. There's more but...
Frank
Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918
On May 6, 2017 9:15 AM, "Marcus Daniels" <mar...@snoutfarm.com
<mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Frank writes:
"Which notorious person went to which university? Why?"
It’s a question of fairness and consistency relative to values,
not a question of correct vs. incorrect.
Here are two more personal experiences which I doubt I really
need to give but I will for completeness.
1. A disruptive technology is reported in a peer-reviewed journal
which I argue is worth considering. I provide background (cited
papers), and my colleague skims over the affiliations over the
authors of those papers rather than reading the abstracts.
2. Our team arranges a meeting with a possible funding source and
have a pitch prepared with preliminary results and working
prototype code. First thing the person does is flip to the
section with the staff bios to see which universities they attended.
I could give many more examples of this kind of authority-based
selection that I see every day. I'm not arguing that there is
nothing to this approach, or that it is complete ineffectual.
It depends on what the deciders are optimizing for. One thing
they could be optimizing is to ensure their collaborators are
presentable and demonstrate a baseline of intelligence, and
certain breadth and depth of knowledge.
However, when such a person that otherwise would passes muster,
puts out a document that starts from fairly common premises to
surprising conclusions, that chain of reasoning might be subject
to consideration. Sure, if there is more context, like knowing
in retrospect that the person was guilty of murder, then that may
or may not cause them to discard consideration of the argument.
For me, it makes me more interested in understanding the
motives and reasoning and to make sure I convince myself I have
an idea of where they lost it.
Marcus
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--
Joe
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