"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Another Demagogue -- with an M.D.

Just what we needed:


Tech site Gizmodo, which notes, "wi-fi has not been shown to harm humans in any way," on Monday posted this transcript:

Person from crowd: My school district is rapidly moving towards one-to-one computers. Can you speak to the health issues? [inaudible with clapping]

Jill Stein: Wonderful, health issues... social issues... you name it. But to be staring at screens... we already know that kids who get put in front of TVs instead of interacting, this is not good in all kinds of ways. And it’s just not good for their cognitive, it’s not good for their social development, I mean, that is incredible that kids in kindergarten... We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education, not moving into them. 

And this is another corporate ruse. This is another gimmick to try to make a buck. To make big bucks in fact. And education, and teachers, and communities suffer. So we need to stand up to that.

Person from crowd: What about the wireless?

Jill Stein: We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless—maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.

OK -- we do know that it's not good for kids' social development to park them in front of the TV. To go from there to "it's harmful to their brains to expose them to WiFi" is quite a leap.

The answer is not to get rid of computers (as if that were possible at this point). The answer is, Talk to your kids. Interact. Send them out to play with their friends.

It's hard to know whether this woman is an idiot or just pandering in the hope of -- what? She's sure not a viable candidate for President. (And all you pouting Sanders supporters, are you listening? This is better than Hillary Clinton?)




2 comments:

Pieter said...

She's an idiot. She's also an anti-vaxxer. From there, it's barely a long step to the dangers of Wi-Fi to the brain, along with cell phones causing cancer, and syrup fructose causing vaginal fungus infections.

Hunter said...

I'd love to hear her take on fluoridation of drinking water.

The only difference(s) between her and Trump is that she's not blatantly racist and she's not threatening to sue everyone who criticizes her.