because an enormous part of the problem is the percentage of our food today that is processed, and the percentage that contains vast amounts of sugar (and particularly high fructose corn syrup).
Processing can't really add much to the energy content of a food. Modern stores have many significantly more energy dense foods at low cost though which may be part of the problem.
I realize that on Slashdot, where people tend to be highly math-oriented, it's a popular fallacy to believe that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. However, studies like this one have been coming out for years now showing that that's simply not true.
If you're talking about this particular study. It wasn't calorie restricted so it doesn't make your point. Calories can still be calories and two people on different diets can have different results IF they get to eat different amounts of food. Like they did here. If you read the study. Which you didn't.
Some kinds of energy are easier for our bodies to extract from food than others.
Midly but not terribly significantly. If there was a large degree of variability you wouldn't be able to do things like construct BMR tables by age, weight. The larger your sample you feed your regression the larger your error would be.
Some kinds of food make our bodies feel more full than others.
This isn't about a calorie being a calorie. The calories are the same. I realize that you are a little math-challenged but do try to keep up.
healthy, unless the toppings on that pizza are very carefully selected to provide the nutrients that our bodies actually need.
You've now moved to goalposts far, far away from a "calorie is a calorie" to some vague idea about being healthy. I've personally 10 lbs almost exclusively eating Kit Kat's and Ice Cream bars.
It would be nice if nutrition were a simple formula, where you could just calculate calories in minus calories expended and come out with a nice, pleasing mathematical formula.
Evidence suggests that for the vast majority of people you can do this to a pretty high degree of precision. When I use high-precision means (scales for all food, highly regular diet, highly structured weigh-ins and exercise). I can predict my weight to a margin of 5-10% a week out. When I talk to people who have trouble losing weight and I ask them about their diets. Most of the time they lack enough rigor to easily include their results. I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to be this rigorous but to understand that their confusion comes from not understanding exactly how much energy they are taking in.
If you teach a 10 year old to write "code", that won't help them in 8 or 10 years time when they try to apply for a job. The "code" technology will have moved on in that time, so the stuff they learned a decade ago will be obsolete. The knowledge that a professional programmer has, has a half-life of a few years: maybe as long as 5 years in some areas - possibly as a short as 1 or 2 in rapidly developing fields of work.
This seems incorrect. A simple back of the envelope regression analysis between 12 programming languages I used in school/work and the jobs available on monster.ca. Gave a R of about -0.1. So programming language age and jobs available appear to be uncorrelated. Now you will probably be tempted to drop back and punt. That is to make your argument way more specific (Oh I meant that Business knowledge W + Language X + IDE Y + Framework Z wouldn't be useful in 2025) however clearly, if you had been educated in logic you would realize that doesn't mean that teaching language X is of little or no value. Knowing Lisp a language almost as old as CS itself has helped me in evaluating products and understanding problems just in the last five years.
Since nobody can tell what skills will be needed in the next decade, learning a particular coding language, the "learning to code" is almost certainly teaching the wrong language to children.
The argument of someone who doesn't understand the need to clarify your premises. If nobody has any information on what is needed in 2025 then no premise should be privileged (i.e. learning current languages is of almost no help). If you are asserting that we only have enough information to determine that learning languages people use today is of almost no help. Then you are either wrong (by my regression above) or just begging the question.
It would be far better to teach them basic maths, basic logic and how to think in abstract terms - rather than focusing on tangible, here and now, stuff that will produce children who can blink an LED on a Raspberry Pi today, but will have no clue about hw to deal with the "AI on a chip" they might be faced with when they start their professional careers.
The assumption here is pretty ignorant. Learning to program is of almost no value because there will be nothing in common between programming languages now and whatever people use in 10 years. Well the Church-Turing thesis begs to differ. Unless the "AI on a chip" (*snort* *chortle*) is not a Turing machine then clearly any programming language would have something to teach them and would at least be potentially useful in instructing them on the nature of computer science.
When I started my first job after graduating, the job description didn't even exist when I started my university course. So what is the chance that teaching 5 or 10 year children a specific computing skill will be relevant to their career prospects in 10-15 years time?
Again a correlation coefficient of -0.1 seems to say "not nearly as bad as a moron like you thinks"
She herself feels the local schools would not serve her well, concluding this after taking with age-peer friends at gymnastics practice, track club, and orchestra, just three of the activities that provide social interaction for our daughter.
How do you know those activities provide a good model of the breadth of interaction you would get at school? Assuming a large enough body and a sufficiently diverse population at said school. I rather suspect that these don't compare. Perhaps it's related to how parents often confuse extra-curricular activities with social experiences.
Thirdly, you'll never convince me that the socialization of a typical public school with all of it's dysfunctional cliques, dysfunctional fashions, and bullying is somehow better.
Well it's good that you're being rational...oh wait...you're actually being the opposite. IMHO the parents job wrt their child and the outside world is to provide them with skills to thrive in it. Socialization is one of these and it's one of those things that people who don't do it well tend to be oblivious to. Considering how many people I know who are stuck in middle management at least partially because of a social skills problem. I'm rather persuaded that a lack of social ability will curb your success.
I do agree that public school can be a socially challenging situation - this is *why* being there is, in and of itself a social education. Removing a child from a challenging situation if they stand to benefit (gain the ability to cope with socially challenging situations) and are not likely to fail in a damaging way, is irrational. So far my child has shown an almost flawless degree of judgement in pursuing a course of action which is healthy for her. I do understand if you think your child who can (allegedly) take a total derivative at age 13 might not be capable of making those decisions. However I suspect that you're short-changing her or perhaps she's short-changing herself.
I can only imagine the kind of severe bullying that my daughter would have to endure at the typical high school, just because she is a girl that likes math and science. Go read "They Sibling Society" by Robert Blye and then try to tell me the current public school system is good for kids' socialization.
You really like books that are far more narrative than research. While it would be sad if your daughter got bullied because of those things. I'm not sure avoiding something simply because it has some (entirely unquantified) probability of happening is really the right thing either.
I really get tired of people who haven't thought deeply about the problem,
I'd put you in that category.
haven't read widely about the issues,
Dude. So far you have mentioned two books and both are, in my opinion only mildly above works of fiction when it comes to rigour.
and don't face the problem in their own life somehow thinking they should be able to dictate to me.
You're making a logical fallacy here. Maybe you should ask your daughter.
I did not use the term "most" at all,
What do you think "probably" means? If something probably works it will, over a sufficiently large population work for most people . Are you sure you should be teaching your son math?
I do not speak for everyone,
I didn't say you were. I said you attempted to speak generally and that you attempted to talk about most cases. I think you've retreated from this point but it's interesting that you can't admit you possessed it.
I'm simply relating my own experiences.
Not if you are saying something is "probably the best thing to do".
There IS only one simple point to my post; home schooling works for MY kid and MY family.
So now what? It sounds like you've retreated from "It's probably best if you do things yourself" - to that there is no generality to your claims?! Doesn't that mean there was no point in sharing your experiences? Don't you realize that's what the *generality* implies? You can't have it both ways either you believe that it's likely something in your post applies to someone else or it doesn't.
You have an idea in your head and you have bent my words to fit your assumptions,
Dude. Take a stats class. I haven't bent anything. Either you misspoke when you said "probably" or you've changed your position. Figure out which it is and get back to me.
We had many trips to the school, visits and phone calls with teachers, heads of departments and the principal, this took place over nearly two years
Seriously? Over two years you couldn't, even after escalating all the way up get permission for your son to quietly read a book after all needed work was completed? This was true for every teacher in the school and every school in the district? Unlikely. I suspect you aren't telling us the real story.
You have warped my words to fit your preconceived idea of who I am and what motivates me.
...and that was done where exactly? You don't seem able to say. I don't know what motivates you but I can tell you what "probably" means.
You even filled in the gaps in your argument with your own words where mine won't do.
Again, where did I do this? Again you can't seem to say. What is the gap in my argument? Oh, hey you're not saying that either. I hope you're not teaching logic as well.
Contrary to your belief my child was quite capable of doing the work he was given at school, he had (and continues to have) an active social circle.
You said that, his own attempt to manage this conflict left him "sullen, sat at the back of the class doing the bare minimum to avoid trouble". So let's just translate this to the work world shall we? If I told a report to add functionality to an application and they do the absolute minimum amount of work (which makes me unhappy) and they're bad tempered while they're at it. Is it really so hard to see how such a person would be considered incapable of handling their job. Blame it on whatever you want. You are in a job, you are not doing very good work (by my standards) and you are bad tempered and you are not doing anything productive to change your situation. I wouldn't expect to get promoted or much job security.
he was just doing "very well" by the school's standards
Wait! What? You said he started "doing the bare minimum" and was "sullen" when he was refused extra work from the school. How can you be doing all of the work consistently and perfectly and still be doing the bare minimum? Either you have again changed your argument and didn't tell me or between two adjacent sentences in the same paragraph you changed from talking about the schools workload to some arbitrary, and previously undisclosed standard of work. If the later I hope you're not teaching English.
That was the crux of the problem,
Oh so the real, REAL problem wasn't him being kept down by his teachers, or unhappy or unable to get something to do to keep him from getting bored. I'll assume that quietly reading was allowed and probably other activities like doing an ISP were also allowed - as these are pretty ubiquitous techniques for handling people who are ahead of the lesson or class. So what this is really about is some arbitrary, poorly defined and possibly irrelevant standard of yours. That is much clearer - at least in answering the question why a rational group of people might be resistant to it.
I didn't want him to quietly read a book at the back of the class to keep him content, I wanted him to use his brain and get stretched, challenged and tested by his educators.
Again this really isn't about him being able to do more challenging work when he is ahead. Reading quietly could easily accomplish this. I could easily give him a math text that would take him five years to finish. I could probably give you one too. The only thing you've added here is testing. Which sounds like you're reaching. You could just as easily give him work to do when he has spare time at school and then look at it when he gets home.
They were not capable of this as individuals or as an institution.
Not capable of what exactly? Designing a test for curriculum defined by you? So far you haven't told us exactly what you were asking for. So it hard to know if they are right and you are wrong. However we do know that your original objections were deceptive oversimplifications. I really have no idea what goes on in a head such as yours but from what you say I suspect this is more about you dealing with something than you attempting to meet your sons needs - or at least the ones you clearly stated. In your situation, adding curriculum to your son's education seems easily done both in school and without and likely more easily and efficiently than building a school from the ground up. Not to mention that you are teaching your child that it's other peoples responsibility to keep them stimulated and probably not giving very good lessons about conflict management or socialization.
The trouble with "peers" is that they are few and far between. My kid interacts too intellectually for a lot of kids, that's one of the problems with being at the edge of the bell curve, he starts wittering on about the latest crazy-assed thing he made his raspberry pi do and a lot of kids just look at him like he's got a tentacle growing out of his head.
Putting aside your ridiculous bigotry for a moment. Your child has an intense interest in something that he is impaired or incapable of bridging to other people his age and you think he doesn't have a social problem. What do you think communication IS?
He doesn't have any social hang-ups and he can get along with other kids OK,
But can't relate to them. Your words.
I've done a lot of research
Probably not.
healthy psychological development kids need
Did you ever ask yourself what overall problem space studies like these are concerned with? Mostly they are trying to find things that lead to impairment, and usually there are so many confounders in this kind of research that the impairment has to be pretty severe (i.e. increase RR of disease X). That's light years away from what you're trying to do which is about trying to make your child successful. A public school is a way of experiencing your environmental that you will simply not be able to emulate. There is simply too much data on gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status that they will be absorbing just from having to interact with them and resolve conflict with them. If your son is, by your own words impaired from relating a complex subject that he is knowledgeable about to a group of people who aren't. How do you expect him to lead at the C-level. Make presentations to C-level management, apply for research grants, be a doctor who can successfully explain outcomes to a patient or even just work with other non-specialized but intelligent people? Bigotry is not a very good solution to being socially impaired. Occasionally it succeeds - sometimes spectacularly (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates) but mostly people just tell you to fuck off.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand