Archaeologica.org

You were lucky DB. All I got out of polio was weak muscles!
To be fair it did result in a lot of reading as I missed all the soccer and gym classes etc and ended up as school librarian, and stashed away in one corner of the library was a massive stack of National Geographic mags. I think I read every one of 'em!
Not a recommended procedure though I think you'll agree!

i agree. On my wish list is a CD copy of the entire Natl. Geo collection. It has been one of the few sources for my interest in Silk Road cities.

The Geo loves spectacular scenery enroute, and the mountains & deserts of Central Asia has a lot of that. One of my favorites is a visit to the Buddhist monestary at Sibushi, 12 miles north of Kucha.

Kuchi Coo? the place was notorious in its day. All run by women. So, there are bodhisattvahs in the Sibushi frescos. We all know what Buddhas look like, short little pot bellied bald fat fellows. And what do we have here?

Tall, broad shouldered thin waisted, with long black curly hair and adolescent whispy whiskers fingering their pearls. A buncha stud muffins. The meaning of that went right over the heads of the expedition.

There is so much of this kind of thing, where the archeologists dont really see what they are dealing with because the cultural consciousness that produced it was so different from the Christian values they grew up with.

If there is a prize for the dumbest education system I'd like make a claim.
I was watching a quiz show earlier and the question was,
'Put these days of the week in alphabetical order'.
There followed a list of four of the week's days.
Of the ten panelists nine got them wrong!

That would be tough!
They all end with a "Y"

There's a book out, I will have to checka the library for the exact title, but it's something like The Dumbing of America. I've been meaning to check it out but right now too busy reading two different books on "The First Americans" (one is Chris's and the other is by James Adovasio.) One's on my nightstand and the other is in my briefcase.

Digit wrote:If there is a prize for the dumbest education system I'd like make a claim.
I was watching a quiz show earlier and the question was,
'Put these days of the week in alphabetical order'.
There followed a list of four of the week's days.
Of the ten panelists nine got them wrong!

Small wonder. If they can't even put them in the correct time sequence, how can you expect 'm to be capable to put them in
alphabetical sequence.

NPR had a bit on lead exposure. There's some debate about the minimal tolerable level, but no doubt that different gene pools have different levels of tolerance and different responses to exposure.

Pres Carter spoke of the American malaise. Lead exposure levels peaked in 1976, altho with dramatically different exposure levels across communities. But clearly, lead exposure is one of the causes for the malaise.

The neurological data is compelling. And not only with lead, but organo-phosphates, mercury, and a host of other obscure compounds that are in the food, cleaning chemicals, and outgassing from cosmetic surface coatings on skin, furniture, walls, floors, and woodwork.

The mention that the lead level in the blood of primitive tribes still living in their home ecosystems is almost undetectable. Likewise, if you examine the yeoman farming villages across the last 10,000 years, you wont find the skeletons in their graveyards contaminated with lead.

You will find lead in the bones of the Roman Aristocracy. Not from the lead pipes of Roman plumbing. No, there was a famous fish sauce that stood on every aristocrat's table... in a lead bottle. With the acid leaching the lead. They also thot it was upscale in their kitchens to replace cheap pottery with lead pots.

So- we begin to understand why Augustus was alarmed at the drop in the fertility rate of the Roman Aristocracy. And, we begin to understand why so few of the competent Roman emperors grew up in Rome, and all of the really outstanding characters grew up in humble pagan villages.

And it goes a long ways twards explaining *why* Rome and the other cities were universally regarded as cesspools of depravity. Just as they are now.

Monoculture also had something to do with it. The Roman slave system, or the American illegal field hand system, both relied on monoculture to maximize profits. The land is worked by men who have no investment in the land, and could care less what its future fertility is.

And today, if it gets contaminated with spilled chemicals, that's not their problem. Their kids are not going to eat the food grown on it.

Among western cultures, the problems in education increase with the amount of agribusiness and petrochemical use. Education is not now going to solve what is a *neurological* problem. Moreover, you are not going to get anywhere arguing with those who enjoy the upscale lifestyle any more than you would have in Rome.

You mite just as well rant in an insane asylum. Group think and psychological denial prevent those- whose minds are not as rational as that of their rural pagan ancestors- from getting it. Moreover, they most definately do not want to think about what sugar cereals, junkfood, and soda are doing to their own kids.

No,. this will all go on getting worse until there is some economic or political crisis to concentrate the minds of the masses. The psychologists and educators dont want to admit that their behavioristic methods have been inadequate. Partly, this has come out of the understandable efforts to fight racism by saying that all races are the same. Which denies that some gene pools have different responses to nutritional deficit and contamination.

They want people to value diverse ethnic values; but if what I *WANTED*, was stupid kids, I'd raise them on soulfood. The corn that is in it today is contaminated with chemicals to produce 150 bu/acre. Back in the day when corn was still grown on Rockwellian farms, it was 45 bu/acre. Back in the day when the Indians grew it, it was 20 bu/acre. Back then, the plants had the time and the soil to pack in real protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Are you or I gonna get anywhere now trying to tell the communities that eat soulfood that they are poisoning their kids? Fuck no.

If you have any suggestions on what to do, I'd like the feedback.

daybrown wrote:
If you have any suggestions on what to do, I'd like the feedback.

I suggest to shut up and let evolution take care of it.

I'm less convinced that the problem is chemical. I see a cultural bias against education. In short, "dumb is in."

I never failed to notice that when schools were ranked in NY it was always the ones with large numbers of Asian immigrants who seemed to be at the top of the list. That's a culture which seeks to assimilate and which still values the idea of education. Their performance belies a whole number of urban legends, especially the idea that "immigrants are suppressing American school performance."

Ahem... Yes....
Smart people watch what they eat and what they feed their children.
Even Christ, whose main message was love and compassion, said "the poor will always be with us."
We may all have equal rights, but we sure don't all have equal abilities.

Well certainly, the class always hates the brain.

But if we can blame it on the chemicals, then all the politically correct drivel about the equality of the races can be put aside. And speaking of immigrants, it seems that the young black men from remote Carribean islands, who look virtually the same as the boys in the hood... dont have nearly the crime and drug abuse rates.

But now, in England, which now has 2nd and 3rd generation young black men there living in their ghettos, are having similar problems as those African American young men seen in he states.

It aint all chemical, and varies from individual to individual, but there is a synergy seen in the communities.

Robert Kaplan, "Imperial Grunts" reports that half the Green Berets grew up on family farms. What's with that, if not the biochemistry?

As for 'evolution', of course. But that kind of dismissive response is what you'd expect as a result of neurotic denial. The answers, whatever they are, are complex and laced with ambiguity. Neurotics dont like ambiguity. They want clear cut choices they dont have to think about.

The decline in education results in less skilled workmanship, which in turn results in defective infrastructure. And that tend to risk societal collapse. At which point evolution kicks in, its no longer so important who you know, but what you know, and how clearly you can think about managing your resources.

Another problem education has, is that the group think of the professionals in that field has blinded them to the changes, They teach people what they know, not what people will need to know.

I generally agree with what you have said DB, in terms of cultural collapse. Aside from environmental and nutritional toxins (you haven't mentioned mercury - yet), we could still go on at length regarding possible future collapse. The lack of education is a big one.

For myself, I'm mostly concerned with the dysgenesis that has been occurring for the last 40 yrs. or so. Evolution is ultimately about reproduction. Those groups least likely to provide proper nutrition, a sound education, and loving environment are the people with the highest birth rate.

Man is now in charge of his own evolution, but doesn't realize it, or doesn't care.

The hopeful sign Beagle, is a trend where highly successful women in their early 30's realizing that all the men they know who are of good character and talented enough to consider as husbands... are already married to sexy airheads who didnt wait for the college degree much less the career.

Some have also discovered how thankless it is to raise the stepkids of these stupid bitches. Dr. Laura always said "Well, you picked him honey." and now these women are realizing the pickings are kinda thin.

This in part due to the vulnerability of the male mind during development. Mother nature clipped the extremes of the bell curve for women to ensure that they would still be competent mothers. But lotsa the guys became autistic rather than creative geniuses.

So- they are moving in with each other, co-housing, and going to fertility clinics to select among thousands of far more promising Y chromosome lines.

The bad news, is that so few are doing this that they and their kids may be swept up in the chaos of revolution and/or social panic.

I have advised them in my postings to move to the southern Ozarks. There's better chance to be out of the way while the rest of the economy goes to hell in a basket. I actually only know 1 lesbian couple who did, but I dont know a lotta people.

I'm not a prophet, but I know they are happy with the school their boy is in. Nobody remembers the last time there was a violent incident there. These small hill town schools still work, and its creating a kind of synergy, where smart parents, looking for the areas that have the best schools, are moving in.

Note, I'm just talking about the hill towns. Go down to Little Rock, or out onto the agribusiness delta, and its all basket cases. You may find some places in the Rockies, but the mining has ruined the aquifers in many areas, and the kids have been exposed to high levels of dissolved noxious minerals. When you eliminate regions that have been exposed to mining, industrial pollution, and agribusiness, there's not a lotta areas left to look at.

Lotsa folks're moving to Alaska, but trying to have a setup to handle the winters without advanced infrastructure support, like chainsaw gas, looks troublesome. The over fishing is stressing the economies, and that stresses families, and that stress shows up in the schools.

Conversely, the southern Ozarks is seeing a net *increase* in manufacturing jobs, and the expanding economy gives folks more hope, and more patience in dealing with family issues.

I dunno that the education problems are going to lead to societal crisis or not, but LeBlanc in "Constant Battles" makes clear that when an empire implodes some areas reorganize independently; some didnt.