Chocolate milk and brown cows

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Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
If you do the mathematics, that works out to 16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people. The equivalent of the population of Pennsylvania (and then some!) does not know that chocolate milk is milk, cocoa and sugar.

But the most surprising thing about this figure may actually be that it isn’t higher.  For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have complained that many Americans are agriculturally illiterate. They don’t know where food is grown, how it gets to stores — or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what’s in it.  As one expert in the field commented, “We are conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point.”

One Department of Agriculture study, commissioned in the early ’90s, found that nearly 1 in 5 adults didn’t know that hamburgers were made from beef. Many more lacked familiarity with basic farming facts, like how big U.S. farms typically are and what food animals eat.

People who live in agricultural communities tend to know a bit more about where their food comes from, as do people with higher education levels and household incomes, but otherwise nothing much has changed.   Today, many Americans only experience food as an industrial product that doesn’t look much like the original animal or plant.  The USDA says orange juice is the most popular “fruit” in America, and processed potatoes — in the form of french fries and chips — rank among the top vegetables.

” Nobody knows nothin'” when it comes to food and its origins.  But the past 20 years have seen the birth of a movement to reverse this situation, with agriculture and nutrition groups working to get agricultural education back into classrooms to teach kids how to eat healthfully, an important aid to tackling heart disease and obesity.  (An edited and summarised version of an article by Caitlin Dewey,  food policy writer for Wonkblog, tinyletter.com/cdewey.)

My comment: And the article doesn’t even mention sugar, an agricultural product that causes widespread bad health and which, in the US is even added to ready- made soup (sold in shops owned by Whole Foods, which claims to be a health food purveyor). It’s hard to avoid either sugar or salt or the sort of gunk put in Big Macs, which has been scientifically devised to trick your brain into thinking you are getting tasty nutrition.

Higher education no longer considered good value

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The Student Academic Experience Survey, from the Higher Education Policy Unit and the Higher Education Academy, tracks the views of students about their time in higher education, based on a sample of about 14,000 current students. Levels of satisfaction with university “value for money” have now fallen for the fifth year in a row. Five years ago, 53% of students across the UK thought university was “good” or “very good” value – but this has now slumped to its lowest level of 35%.

Students from England, who have the highest tuition fees in the UK – rising to £9,250 in the autumn – had the lowest opinions of value for money. Perceptions of value for money have continued to fall, the number of students saying their university was “poor” or “very poor” value almost doubling since 2012. In England, only 32% of students thought their university represented good value. The report suggests that improving teaching quality is an important factor in whether students believe they are getting value for money.

The annual study also examines wellbeing and happiness – and this has fallen to only 14% of students saying they were satisfied with their lives.There are also negative outcomes for students’ sense of happiness and anxiety – with students having lower levels of wellbeing than young people not university. Young women and gay university students are particularly likely to feel unhappy.

The study also shows a wide variation in the number of teaching hours – with subjects such as history having an average of eight hours per week, while medicine had 19 hours plus many more working hours outside of the classroom. (BBC News)

When I first read this I thought, “too many people chasing too few dedicated and competent teachers/ lecturers/ professors owing to the huge expansion of higher education”. On second thoughts, there is another point of view: life is what you make it. If you really want to learn and you are dedicated to getting a good degree, then you will spend time reading round the subject and insisting on face time with the teachers. Proactivity, in other words. If, on the other hand, you are there on a jolly, for the sport and the booze, no doubt you will end up thinking it was all a giant waste of time. Is there an element of being spoiled, of having no work ethic, hidden away in this Student Academic Experience Survey? I would like a critique from a genuine student.

I was so concerned about failing at university that I worked like a dog, drank little, and avoided the playboys.  Forty years later, at an event in the French Embassy in Washington DC my favourite tutor (European History), who was there promoting a book, looked at me and instantly remembered my name. Could it have been due to his belief that my time at university had been worthwhile?.  Oh, and something else: it’s obvious that medicine, which is  scientific and complicated needs more hands- on experience and instruction than history, which involves more reading and personal interpretation. The surveyor ignores the processes of learning.

America – land of the giant monopolies

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In an article entitled “The problem with profits” The Economist of March 23rd virtually agrees with American protestors who say that the whole American political and economic system, once so vibrant and competitive, is broken (amazing, but refreshing, coming from the rather right- wing Economist).

The article does, however, add something which gets little comment (except on this blog, which has frequently protested the monopoly power of corporations and the spinelessness of the anti-trust department of the US Government).

The Economist article says that in former times a very profitable company would eventually have its profits competed away. Now there are monopolies everywhere you look. Ten trillion dollars worth of mergers since 2008 have increased concentration. The attendant promises of savings seldom, if ever, materialise.  As a result the excess cash being generated domestically by corporations is running at $800 billion a year, over and above investment budgets. This represents 4% of GDP, and it is not being re-invested but is either hidden away in other countries, something the tax system encourages, or it is paid to the bosses. Monopoly means artificially high prices, which, were they at normal levels, would reduce consumers’ bills by 2% or more.

And then you have regulation. The Economist hates regulation, but regulation of companies and banks prevents fraud and cheating and theft from consumers. Unfortunately, regulations are a big cost to companies and are complex. This means that only the big companies have the resources to handle them, and this blocks the entry of smaller competitors. Neat, isn’t it? They complain, but actually the rules  help the big corporations to stay monopolies.

TTP or TTIP had little to do with trade and everything to do with extending patents and copyrights overseas, plus other dubious benefits and boondoggles, in order to further entrench the big rent-extracting monopolies. The lobbyists have seen to that.

The system is a self-perpetuating fraud. We need more small companies and more competition.

Why does this blog repeatedly focus on these economic and political boondoggles? Well, there may have been other issues that reduced the opportunities for ataraxia and a pleasant life in ancient Greece, such as famine and disease that simply had to be put up with. In modern life we don’t have famines (in the West,snyway). And we have prolonged and protected lives with modern medicine. Our modern problems are mostly man-made and with determination could be corrected. It is hard to have peace of mind under our corrupted system. All we can do is highlight the unjustnesses of the system so that we can dwell peacably in the Epicurean Garden of the mind, assured of social fairness and pleasant lives for both the rich and the poor.

Best of the Week #3

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/16/15810524/senate-ahca-explain-please. If anyone ought to be able to explain the American Healthcare Act, it should be senior Republican senators. Vox asked them what the bill is meant to do. Their responses are wildly varied and totally lacking in detail. An important and frightening story!

http://www.conservativehome.com/highlights/2017/06/outsiders-are-not-always-good-and-governments-are-not-always-bad.html. A book review of the rise of the outsiders, and why being ‘anti-establishment’ is necessarily a good thing. But the increase in populism reveals the failures of the established political class across the developed world, particularly in France. Unfortunately the book is unlikely to have much of an impact, as the people most likely to read it are those mostly likely to already adhere to its message of compromise and thoughtfulness.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/the-great-myth-of-the-global-warming-pause/. Probably the best debunking of climate change scepticism I’ve read. Williamson challenges the myth that the recent ‘pause’ in global warming is evidence that climate change isn’t happening.

http://exepose.com/2017/06/15/coral-reefs-the-canary-in-a-coal-mine/. Staying on the subject of the environment, an excellent overview of the decline of coral reefs- why is matters, and what can be done to stop it. Written by a highly intelligent and thoughtful friend of mine.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/06/grenfell-tower-latest-sign-britain-undeveloping-country. This sums up my thoughts on the Grenfell Tower tragedy succinctlyy. Rampen also contextualises the fire in a country which seems increasingly undeveloped. The declining quality of infrastructure and public services, the government’s neglect of people’s concerns, and the exploitation of low-paid and migrant labour- are all signs of a society far less civilised than it pretends to be. Like Rampen, I don’t believe the UK is a developing country, but I accept her overall point that our wealth makes events like the Grenfell Tower inexcusable.

The fire disaster in North Kensington

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A tower block  caught fire and was totally destroyed near where we are staying, killing an unknown (17 so far). number of poor people in the middle of the night.

Residents of the building, which was constructed in 1974, had long warned of potential fire hazards even though it was renovated just last year. “It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organization will be found out and brought to justice!” a residents organization, the Grenfell Action Group, wrote in a blog post last year. The KCTMO runs public housing on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the west London area where the fire broke out.

On Wednesday morning, the Grenfell Action Group’s website was updated, with a post on the fire. “All our warnings fell on deaf ears, and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time,” the post read.  Residents said they had been instructed by management before the blaze to stay in their apartments (!) in the event of a fire and to wait for emergency services to arrive. They said they had been told that their units were fireproof for at least an hour.   Nick Paget-Brown, leader of the borough council, promised  “a thorough investigation into “why the fire started and why it spread so quickly.” He acknowledged that residents had expressed concerns before the fire.   “There are always concerns about fire safety in high-rise buildings,” he said. (Washington Post)

The story of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is a good example  of what happens when you have a self- selecting elite with safe seats who are voted in without having to lift a finger . From personal experience they ignore residents, sit on their hands, refusing to answer letters or emails , and are indifferent to ordinary constituents. Their only concern seems to be to keep the local taxes , modest by most standards, down for the rich.   James Wood, a graphic designer is quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “Anyone who earns below 10 million pounds a year is not human in this borough,” he said. “They don’t care about fire safety.”

The Establishment has not had a good time in this part of the world in the last few days. A hopeless MP voted out,  now this.  Birds are coming home to roost?