Turkeys voting for xmas

[Pandora]

Oh so you like money bebing spent on war rather than the people of the US.

You really have swallowed it.

BTW none of the countries in Europe that I refer to are socialist countries.

That is more US brainwashing.

You have been suckered into believing that countries that look after their poor well are socialists or commies and are therefore evil.

They aren't and this argument is spun to you so that the Rich don't have to give you any of their money.

It's like turkey's voting for xmas

I never said I liked the Iraq war, why do you want to put words in my mouth?

I certianly am against borrowing money from China for any reason. I think we should do zero business with China. I also think the government spends to much money on far to many things. We should never borrow money from other countries and we should never spend more than we have, and we should always have a surplus for EMERGENCYS like Katrina or 911

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

I genuinely feel sorry for you and not in an insulting way.

You have been sold this American dream **** but you do not have much money.

If you believe that people should look after themselves and they are where they are because of the choices they make why don't you make some choices that make you rich.

Go on. wouldn't you like to be rich?

 

[BigRob]

Making drugs legal is probably the only way of sorting out the problem.

I would have thought that even you would know that prohibiton doesn't work.

Or is alcohol still illegal in the US.

Yes, since people use illegal drugs the solution is to then classify all those drugs as legal, therefore the problem is gone.

Further, your 90,000,000 adults are illiterate claim is bogus. That basically says a little less than 1/3 of all of the US is illiterate. Given that our literacy rates are well above 90% how do you account for the difference?

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

Ok so my figures come from a government document and yours come from you.

Hmm, the agony of choice

 

[BigRob]

Ok so my figures come from a government document and yours come from you.

Hmm, the agony of choice

The Census Bureau, which puts the US at 99% literacy.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

Oh dear.

 

[Dawkinsrocks]

Keep going, it will be 110% soon

 

[BigRob]

Keep going, it will be 110% soon

Well, as long as you know your 1/3 of Americans are illiterate claim is bogus.

 

[Pandora]

Well, as long as you know your 1/3 of Americans are illiterate claim is bogus.

Perhaps he was confusing his own countries illiterate rate with ours

 

[Not Amused]

Yes, since people use illegal drugs the solution is to then classify all those drugs as legal, therefore the problem is gone.

Further, your 90,000,000 adults are illiterate claim is bogus. That basically says a little less than 1/3 of all of the US is illiterate. Given that our literacy rates are well above 90% how do you account for the difference?

Big Rob.

I'm sorry but you are being a little disingenuous here. The US literacy rates are actually 99% according to the CIA The World Fact Book ; but what both you and they fail to admit, is that the US definition of literacy is also somewhat disingenuous.

In the US individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school are classed as literate.

In 1993 the government ran a five year study, The government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information.

There is nothing to suggest these stats have changed for the better as in 2006 another study albeit using smaller numbers suggest there has been no significant improvement in literacy rates. In fact these studies assert that 46% to 51% of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn "significantly" below the threshold poverty level for an individual.

Here are a few facts for you, they are quite stunning actually;

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

I am not saying the literacy rates in other countries are perfect; but I do think a disservice is being done to the people of the US by pretending the rates of literacy are better than they actually are.

You will find that by comparison, when the scale of the problem is not covered up using disingenuos methods; that many other countries actually fare better re: literacy, than the US.

 

[Pandora]

I genuinely feel sorry for you and not in an insulting way.

You have been sold this American dream **** but you do not have much money.

If you believe that people should look after themselves and they are where they are because of the choices they make why don't you make some choices that make you rich.

Go on. wouldn't you like to be rich?

If the government would get the holy crap out of our ways, many of us would.

I turn down over time because they tax the hell out of you and what you finally get back is not enough to cover day care costs. If the government would get out of our ways and let us succeed, I would be doing great!

my state is addicted to taxes, we cant make it because they are always taxing more more more.

the feds give me back at the end of the year more than I paid into it, by robbing the rich. Its sad but I do cash the check. But if I could vote for a fair tax where we all paid 5% I would do it in a heart beat,

I dont like class warfare

 

[BigRob]

I'm sorry but you are being a little disingenuous here. The US literacy rates are actually 99% according to the CIA The World Fact Book ; but what both you and they fail to admit, is that the US definition of literacy is also somewhat disingenuous.

The CIA World Fact Book does their own methods to try to classify literacy worldwide. Their definition is 15 and older I believe who are able to read.

In the US individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school are classed as literate.

It is the same in other countries if you go by the CIA methodology. That said, the Census Bureau does their own methodology which backs up the CIA figures for the most part. Every group that does a study will have their own definition of literacy... who is right and who is wrong?

In 1993 the government ran a five year study, The government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information.

There is nothing to suggest these stats have changed for the better as in 2006 another study albeit using smaller numbers suggest there has been no significant improvement in literacy rates. In fact these studies assert that 46% to 51% of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn "significantly" below the threshold poverty level for an individual.

I would be interested to see these studies before I could really comment on them. At first glance, I would want to know how they define literacy, etc etc..

Here are a few facts for you, they are quite stunning actually;

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

Nothing you have just pointed out has anything to do with literacy... not buying a book and not being able to read it are two very different things.

I am not saying the literacy rates in other countries are perfect; but I do think a disservice is being done to the people of the US by pretending the rates of literacy are better than they actually are.

You will find that by comparison, when the scale of the problem is not covered up using disingenuos methods; that many other countries actually fare better re: literacy, than the US.

I disagree at this point. I think you can set the parameters of literacy wherever you want to, but to actually compare nation to nation to you need to set parameters such as the CIA, Census Bureau etc have done in order to set a legitimate comparison across the world.

 

[GenSeneca]

BTW none of the countries in Europe that I refer to are socialist countries.

The Socialist apologist has spoken...

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Please, follow along with Dawkins Plagiarism....

According to a recent US government report, The State of Literacy in America, released by the National Institute for Literacy (NIL), there has been a significant growth in illiteracy in America. Over 90 million US adults, nearly one out of two, are functionally illiterate or near illiterate, without the minimum skills required in a modern society.

Here's the article he copied and pasted from, without so much as acknowledging the author or site:

By Larry Roberts
14 October, 1998

According to a recent US government report, The State of Literacy in America, released by the National Institute for Literacy (NIL), there has been a significant growth in illiteracy in America. Over 90 million US adults, nearly one out of two, are functionally illiterate or near illiterate, without the minimum skills required in a modern society.

His source? WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE

Dawkins is a full blown Socialist.... Feel free to laugh out loud when he tries to deny that sad fact.

And then...

The prevalence of obesity in the United States has been greatly underestimated. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) analyzed data from health surveys, which are used to estimate obesity levels in states. Because people tend to provide incorrect information about their weight and height, especially in telephone surveys, the researchers concluded that estimates of obesity in individual states have been too low, by more than 50 percent. Their study, which corrects for misreporting in those surveys, appears in the May 2006 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

What we have here, is a failure to articulate - but an ability to copy and paste as if it were his own:

For immediate release: May 01, 2006

Boston, MA – The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. states has been greatly underestimated. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) analyzed data from health surveys, which are used to estimate obesity levels in states. Because people tend to provide incorrect information about their weight and height, especially in telephone surveys, the researchers concluded that estimates of obesity in individual states have been too low, by more than 50%. Their study, which corrects for misreporting in those surveys, appears in the May 2006 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Source? Where else... Harvard

And then...

In that regard, the drug war has had a mixed record, at least superficially. The percentage of the population reporting past-month use of some illicit drug declined by half between 1985 and 1992. Since then, however, drug use by that measure is up by about a third. Furthermore, current use of marijuana by teenagers increased substantially in the mid to late 1990s; in 2003, 21 percent of 12th-graders reported having used marijuana or hashish within the previous month.

I have been to the US

First... I don't think Mr. Mouthpiece for Socialism has ever been to America, probably copied and pasted that too... As for "his" statement:

In that regard, the drug war has had a mixed record, at least superficially. The percentage of the population reporting past-month use of some illicit drug declined by half between 1985 and 1992. Since then, however, drug use by that measure is up by about a third. Furthermore, current use of marijuana by teenagers increased substantially in the mid to late 1990s; in 2003, 21 percent of 12th-graders reported having used marijuana or hashish within the previous month.

As could be expected, he leaves off things like: Copyright © 2005 RAND Corporation

Why is it all the Socialists have a pension for copy and paste without citing their source or crediting the original author but instead try to pass off statements as their own?

Answer: This is how Socialists are trained to behave - Cheat & Lie to push the Socialist agenda. After all, the ends justify the means when you're fighting something as evil as capitalism and its minions, the Conservatives.

 

[Not Amused]

Here are a few facts for you, they are quite stunning actually;

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

Nothing you have just pointed out has anything to do with literacy... not buying a book and not being able to read it are two very different things.

I strongly disagree BigRob.

When one considers the true definition of Literacy, then book reading becomes an extremely important factor, reading actually drives literacy.

Have you taken a look at the comment sections for video's within You Tube, along with Facebook, blogs, forums etc. recently?

I think it fair to use You Tube and the others as an example here. When one considers the number of people worldwide using such websites I feel a strong, unbiased assumption can be genuinely made, regarding the utterly deplorable state of literacy in the US and even in the UK (although in the UK, at least the percentage of people still buying and actually reading books is much, much higher than the US, British families alone bought 338 million books last year, re: Publishers Guild).

You dismiss the above, even though book reading is a crucial aspect of literacy (reading does NOT equate to being able to detect the one thousand recognisable words that set the standard of defined literacy in the US),

Reading books affects ones overall capacity, mental aptitude, writing, spelling, language and creativity (hugely important for the expansion of technology in all spheres).

To blithely dismiss the stats I posted as irrelevant is a big mistake on your part I feel.

 

[GenSeneca]

To blithely dismiss the stats I posted as irrelevant is a big mistake on your part I feel.

Your stats don't mention Newspapers, Magazines or anything other than Books... I see that as a problem. If Americans all went out tomorrow and bought Dr. Suess books - the stats you cited would skyrocket but Americans would be no smarter than they were the day before.