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from the just-need-bigger-books-held-further-away dept.
New research led by scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Bristol found that people who spend more time in education are more likely to develop near-sightedness. Specifically, researchers found that for every year a person spends in education — where they are likely to spend more time reading and typing on computers — there is a rise in myopic refractive error of 0.27 diopters, a diopter being a standard measure of the optical power of a lens. An estimated 68,000 participants were examined using the "Mendelian randomization" (MR), approach which is often used to examine causal effect of a disease in observational studies.
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/1199570-study-suggests-education-causes-short-sightedness
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/07/theres-a-scientific-reason-nerds-have-bad-eyesight/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 09 2018, @01:19PM (1 child)
I also was thinking of the Khmer Rouge when I posted this story. They used glasses as a shibboleth. People who wore glasses were thought educated and smart, and were executed.
Have you seen Altemeyer's book about the sort of people who follow cult leaders? https://theauthoritarians.org/ [theauthoritarians.org] He tries not to call them stupid, but that's the simplest summary of his findings. A kinder way to put it is "uneducated", and there is some hope in that education does make a difference even with them, can make them smarter. They have "poor reasoning skills", and "highly compartmentalized minds" that can be comfortably oblivious to incredibly blatant contradictions and hypocrisies in their positions which allows them to do things in all sincerity such as thump the Bible about sexual morality and yet support known, unrepentant adulterers for political office. They find that thinking is hard work and would rather someone else do that for them. That doesn't mean any charismatic bozo can get them to accept any crazy position whatever, they do have expectations.
Fear is their big motivator, and a major fear is outsiders. Anyone who does things differently, acts different, or looks different is potentially an outsider. And, oh yes, intellectuals and intelligent people are very much outsiders. Deep down, they know they aren't good thinkers, and pine for a Great Leader to arise and organize them, and perhaps lead them into a war with those outsiders who they see as competition for resources, land, jobs, and mates.
I have come to see university exclusivity, the practice of screening applicants to determine whether they are capable of learning at the post secondary level and rejecting those deemed incapable, as a mistake. It wasn't so bad when a high school education was good enough to live a good life, with a decent job with adequate pay. But now that college is flogged so hard as the key to a good job and good life, and a high school education sneered at as inadequate (to say nothing of high school dropouts!), and at the same time money has most unfairly become one of the top requirements to obtain this advanced education, things have to change. The student loan and the private, for-profit universities are bad for society. We must forever doubt that for-profit universities are not putting money ahead of all else, cutting education so thin (to save on expenses of course) that their programs and degrees are suspect. See Corinthian Colleges, Inc. Not that public, non-profit universities are immune, far from it! Why else is college football so big?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:40PM
Before I got very far at all into your post, I dropped The Authoritarians into my Reading List Bookmarks Folder.
I'll read it when I get back to the office this evening. No. I'll climb up to the top of the office tower where I now work, then shout it down to the people on the busy street below. :-/
It happens that I've had some close friends who were from such places as the once-prosperous steel mill city of Youngstown, Ohio, from rural Alabama and from a "dry county" in Tennessee. (Prohibition was _not_ repealed; rather, it left the regulation of alcohol up to each state.)
It happens that I have about forty really close friends who never ever complain that I'm an unrepentant spammer. I'll send them all the links in this evening's email blast. ;-?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]