School Uniforms / Human Life

School Uniforms: I came into the office today to find people talking about school uniforms and how they thought they were a good idea.
1) They're cheaper than having to buy lots of other outfits
2) They reduce "mean girl syndrome" and "make everyone equal".

To 1: They're cheaper if you wear expensive clothing. You can get a lifetime supply of black t-shirts and cargo pants for a very reasonable fee.

To 2: Yes, let's make kids even less prepared for reality. The reality of the situation is that poor people get made fun of. The reality if the situation is that if you don't have what the cool kids have then the cool kids will mock and reject you. At some point one must face this reality and suck it the fuck up. When better to learn the lesson? When you are a child, protected by your parents and supported by them? Or when you go off to college and your parents aren't around? Attempts to make human beings equal are asinine because, newsflash, people aren't equal.

Human Life: Last night on the Colbert Report the guest was some guy who runs a group which tries to get better information on food packaging. They're also the people who got KFC to use a different sort of oil for frying chicken. A few times during the interview they guy said things like, "If we do X we can save 10,000 lives."

I was thinking about it, and I can't remember ever being presented with an argument for why saving lives is a good thing. In yesterday's rant we learned that if we start to run out of people we can make more. So why is it good to keep alive the people we already have? Have you driven in Indy during rush hour? Would it hurt for half of those people to be dead? Have you been to the food section of Wal-Mart? Would it be harmful to the planet if half of that food was not there, because half of the customers didn't exist?

I don't think so.

And forgetting that argument, do we really need better labels on food? Is there anyone who actually thinks that eating at McDonalds is a good thing? I mean, forgetting anyone who thinks McDonalds is healthy AND thinks there is an invisible man living in the sky. If we start putting calorie counts on McDonalds menues are people going to realize, "Holy shit! These things are bad for me!" Probably not. You can inundate people with information all you want, but they still aren't going to come home and snack on carrot sticks.

The problem is not that we need to supply more information. The problem is that some people don't pay attention to things. Providing them with more information to ignore isn't going to help. It's the same problem that exists with the idea that putting a bigger warning label on a pack of fags will accomplish anything. Instead of making things bigger and using more words that no one will read how about we get people to read the words that already exist?