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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

> James, did a fat person fall on you when you were a small child?  Did your
> parents threaten you with a fat person sitting on you?

There weren't all that many fat people when I was a small child.  Do you 
understand the significance of that statement?   Widespread obesity is a 
very recent phenomenonl.


> So, using your theory, then the 24.7 mortality rate of Lake County, TN 
> would
> be because all those mothers were fat?

ALL?  Do you want to engage in such absolutism?  Any time you make an 
observation,  are we free to put the quantifier "All" with it and say it 
represents your views?

> I'm thinking perhaps you should be ranting about cigerette smoking

Of the direct behaviors that cause a person's death, cigarette smoking is 
still number one but only by a  very slim margin.  The thing is that it 
generally need not be mentioned because now of days everyone recognizes that 
it compromises one's health and they also recognize that it is a choice. 
The direct behavior that is second leading cause of death is obesity due to 
overeating and under-exercising.  The difference between that and smoking is 
that the recent epidemic of obesity is dismissed.   When was the last time 
you heard an obese person say frankly that their physical condition was due 
to their choices?  It's always genetics, rare disease, the drugs they are 
on, etc. etc.    Let me remind you of my first observation in this  post, 
when I was a child, obesity was quite rare.  Our human genes have changed 
that much in 50 years?


> AND, state rankings in education aren't based on spending UNLESS you go 
> the
> specific chart based on spending.  *Most* rankings are by test scores for
> reading and math.

They absolutely are not.  There are no test scores for reading and math that 
can be compared because all states do not administer the same tests.  Not 
many years ago there was a list of official statements from state 
departments of education in which every one of the 50 states said that 
standardized tests showed their children above the national average in 
reading and math ...... of course this is a mathematical impossibility.  The 
phenomenon occurs because states have no motivation to purchase expensive 
tests that are going to show their students are below average.  So test 
publishers sell a specific version of their test to each state normed in 
such a way to ensure that the students in that particular states score above 
average by those norms.   This state (Tennessee) is ranked as 46th in 
education and yet the recently published standardized tests results showed 
the state as a whole almost exactly at the 50th percentile (ranging from 
47th to 53rd from system to system).  This would mean that there are only 4 
states that could possibly be below the 50th percentile if the 46th mean 
anything ..... which is doesn't.  It is only the per capita spending that is 
46th.


James