Talk-Polywell.org

[Jccarlton]

This form of indoctrination doesn't help our kids at all.This is a plain an example ofhow our schools have become indoctrination centers rather than places that equip children for the realities of life:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/education/11stuff.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&sq=Cautionary%20Video&st=cse&scp=1

As someone who has spent far too much time making "stuff" that makes lives better I find this just insulting. I just wish that the edcucation elite's image of how we do things could get out of the Nineteenth century. I would challenge any of them to walk through the industrial park where I work and figure what is inside each building.

[MSimon]

It is interesting to see people trashing their life support system based on nothing more than feel bad politics.
_________________
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

[chrismb]

The cartoons may or may not be 'legitimate' - I've not seen them, but plenty of industrial pollution accidents have killed.

What can surely be said is that unless there are other cartoons on what happens without industry, that balance these images, then it is clearly biased, e.g.;
a) Mother and little child choking over an open stove in a one room, dirt-floored hut,
b) the returning father, having spent a whole day picking a hand ful of grain out of parched, uncultivated soil,
c) the reality of the 30 year life expectancy this leads them to
d) a stream of travellers trudging along unpaved, muddy roads for 10 days to get 100 miles with all the possessions they want to take on their backs,
e) horse carcasses that have died en route decomposing by the road-side (used to be a big problem in London),
f) children dying of tetanus from a minor scratch,
g) massive mother/child mortality rates at birth,
h) frequency of house fires due to poor construction and people using candles,
i) starvation deaths from failed harvests,
i) ...basically, poverty and suffering on the scales you see them in undeveloped countries.

People seem to forget there are very very good reasons why we've ended up with the industrial infrastructures we've now got. Where we are now is the end of a long sequence of 'progression', we need to see how to further 'progress' NOT retrograde into mediaeval times.

I fully agree this sends a distorted message to children. My youngest was asking the other day which food had 'sugar' in them. He'd been told sugar was bad. As I loathe to tell 'white-lies' to kids I told him all foods have some sugars in, which promptly caused him to not want to eat anything - until I told him chocolate was mostly sugar.

These messages have to be very well tempered before release to kids. As adults, we instinctively understand that a 'message' usually carries some particular over-emphasis which is there to make the message clearer. Kids don't understand this.

[Helius]

Strange. This went viral among teachers and the educational community. For most of the rest of us, it's like a rodeo: How long can you last? If you're over 12 years old, it's really hard to watch the whole thing.

The fact that this went viral among teachers before being 'found' by the media is really sad, and illustrates where our collective interest in really dim energy sources comes from.

Minimalism Is ok when it comes to consumer products, but is really dangerous when it comes to energy.

[kurt9]

I can assure you that the Chinese are not indoctrinating their kids in the same manner as this.

[TallDave]

Ack, what horrible propaganda.

Good points Chris. People hyping this crap generally have no idea what privations and grinding monotony humans suffered through before commercialism. The poverty line today is about where the average income was in the 1950s. And the living standards at the poverty line of the 1950s were enjoyed only by the wealthy for the whole of human history through the 1800s.

But don't believe these reports that China and India are churning out far more engineering students than we are; over there, an auto mechanic is considered an engineer. Also, a survey of consulting firms finds them employable at a rate about a quarter of their American/European counterparts.

[EricF]

Good response to the propoganda, pass this around

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5uJgG05xUY

[MSimon]

[rj40]

The rebuttal video won’t work. A better rebuttal would be another 20 minute video presented in a somewhat similar manner but giving another side of the story. Perhaps it would touch on contradicting her points directly, but in the end it would have to stand on its own.

[djolds1]