General

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Brutus — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 03:07:24 GMT

God damned government doesn't know when to quit. If only our Founding Fathers would have listened more carefully to Patrick Henry.....

The government is a damned snowball, growing and growing. What if they outlawed breathing? They can do it, you know. We'd all be working the farms or die if they decided to. Thank God for the Bill of Rights. At least it keeps them at bay like the anti-federalists intended.

As for the lunches...well...is it that surprising, really? Yes, it's wrong, but it's certainly not surprising. The public education system is socialism at its finest. Stealing society's money to fund mediocre education by teachers that have reached tenure and don't feel a need to work is capitalism in reverse. They incentivize laziness. You don't work yet you get paid. F-ing brilliant way to grow the government.

The good part is people still have the option to not go to public school. Now when that right is taken away...we'll have something to deal with.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

DD5 — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:30:30 GMT

Bohemian:
sue the school and the authority figure involved for theft.

....in their own court. Not a very promising strategy if you ask me.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Bohemian — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:13:40 GMT

I am of the same persuassion.

Give your kid their lunch anyway. Force the school the make the first move and steal the child's lunch. There are likely a few sympathetic caferia monitors who will simply look the other way. If they steal the child's lunch and do not return it at the end of the day, sue the school and the authority figure involved for theft. Do this for every single offense. Eventually, things will change.

Like mentioned by others in this thread, it seems to me that beyond the standard big brother aspects of this, it is just another attempt to grab at federal money.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

DD5 — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:00:48 GMT

Sieben:
Some parents feed their children poison

They lose guardianship rights

You are aware that guardianship rights are a part of libertarian theory right?

I don't know how in the world this has anything to do with anything I've said.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Wibee — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 01:36:56 GMT

I dont see the force? Can the child choose not to eat until he comes home?

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

limitgov — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:30:18 GMT

"Off topic."

[over the top radio/game show host voice]

and there is a penalty for that. minus 5 points.

OK, lets get back to our other contestant,

now remember, we're about to hit the bonus round where each successful answer will be worth double

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

DD5 — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:09:25 GMT

Ultima:
Or you can lose weight by eating a diet of Twinkies, but you'll likely die of a young age nonetheless.

Off topic.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Sieben — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:57:43 GMT

DD5:
Red herring?? You are talking about logical fallacies when you have yet to even present anything that even remotely resembles a valid attempt at an argument. Nothing but bare assertions and personal value judgements. It's an emotional outcry, not an argument. I'm not going to play the "I'll be your shrink" game. Thank you very much.

If you feed your children poison, you lose guardianship rights

Some parents feed their children poison

They lose guardianship rights

....

You are aware that guardianship rights are a part of libertarian theory right? They're not just emotional "what about the children" pandering. See here for Block applying the homesteading principle to children.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

DD5 — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:40:16 GMT

Sieben:
This is a red herring. My thesis is that GIVEN parents are feeding poison to their children, they forfeit guardianship rights. Maybe some kids can be fat and healthy idk/c

Red herring?? You are talking about logical fallacies when you have yet to even present anything that even remotely resembles a valid attempt at an argument. Nothing but bare assertions and personal value judgements. It's an emotional outcry, not an argument. I'm not going to play the "I'll be your shrink" game. Thank you very much.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Zephyr — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:26:25 GMT

DD5,

Health and metabolism is so much more complicated than that, you're being ridiculous.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

limitgov — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:21:29 GMT

"How's the catering contract?"

If its a title I school in texas, the school gets federal money based on how many lunches they need. More free lunches = more federal dollars.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Kakugo — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:09:09 GMT

I'd really like to get a better look at this. If a principal has nothing else to do but watch what students have for lunch it means the school has tackled all other problems successfully: no drop-outs, no absents without justification, good grades, a balanced budget, satisfied teachers etc. Or perhaps there's something else at work. How many students in the school bring lunch from home? How's the catering contract? How much is a lunch? In short can the school get a better deal with the catering contractor if more lunches are served? Can the contractor make more money if more lunches are served? I wouldn't be too surprised if under the nutrional patina there's good ol' money involved.

I have very unpleasant memories of school cafeterias. Food quality was abysmal to say the least. Salad was often poorly washed (soil may have good nutrional value but pesticides do not), chicken had small bits of bone in it because it was poorly butchered etc. I can only assume things have stayed the same if not worsened in these decades. We used to joke they wouldn't have problems serving use "winged rats" (feral, disease carrying pigeons) if only catching them hadn't taken so much effort...

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

limitgov — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:56:57 GMT

"There are about 100 Calories in a medium sized banana. If you need, say 2000 Calories per day to maintain your current weight, then eating 21 bannanas will make you gain weight."

You're looking at this through a very narrow, unrealistic way. Who in the world would just eat bananas all day? Who says that is a good thing to just eat bananas all day?

There are plenty of people who have gone to a mostly plant based diet and have lost all their excess weight, and have reversed diabetes type II.

You don't just look at calories. in fact, there is no need to do that at all. You look at where those calories come from.

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Paul — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:06:10 GMT

I sometimes imagine myself confronting parents with shopping carts full of sugary snacks and sodas. "You're fat. Your kid is fat. You're both going to get diabetes and heart disease and die at age 50. This is child abuse. You're a terrible parent and you need to change right now".

Kinda reminds me of this:

CONGRATULATIONS TO MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 40's, 50's & 60's

We survived being born to Mothers who sometimes smoked and/or drank Sherry, while they carried us, and lived in houses which included asbestos . . .
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with brightly-coloured lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
Take-away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't actually starve to death ! ! !
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner shop and buy toffees, gobstoppers and bubble gum.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, milk from the cow and drank soft drinks with sugar in them, but we weren't overweight, because we were always outside, playing! ! !
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we had forgotten the brakes.
We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have PlayStations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/dvd films, or colour TV, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms. . . . . but
We had friends and we went outside and found them ! ! !
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears ! ! !
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time . . .
We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th. birthdays !
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them ! ! !
Mum didn't have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Joneses ! ! !
Not everyone made the football team. Those who didn't had to learn how to deal with disappointment.
Imagine, . . getting into a team that was based on merit
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard eraser at us, if they thought we weren't concentrating.
We can string sentences together, spell and hold proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law ! ! !
Our parents didn't invent stupid names for us kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned how to deal with it all ! ! !

And you are one of them ! ! ! CONGRATULATIONS ! ! !

Re: Public School Bans Students From Bringing Lunches from Home

Sieben — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:38:18 GMT

EIT:

On the other hand, if people want to stuff their own face with crap. So be it, people have different preferences we all have our own vices, I smoke to much and drink too much beer, even if I otherwise live a relatively healthy lifestyle.

Its not so much about the child's right to choose. Maybe some children have the capacity to decide for themselves what to eat. Its about the parents and guardianship rights. They forfeit their right to "guard" the child once they feed it poison, and the child becomes available for non-abusive guardians to claim.

Its a bit of a reductio calling it "poison" but that's the simplest way to sidestep the obvious grey area that comes with developmental nutrition. IRL its a case by case basis, yada yada...

But obesity is very common where I live. As far as I can see, it is a totally undocumented life-experience. There's just no awareness of the issue. If I had to guess, I'd say that heart disease and diabetes pale in comparison to the daily problems of being obese. The self image/depression effects alone could be catastrophic, not to mention the havoc it plays with your thyroid and HPTA axis.