From the Associated Press comes this story:
Ten children at an Arkansas day-care center drank windshield wiper fluid after the owner served it from a container mistaken for Kool-Aid and placed in a refrigerator, authorities said Friday. The day-care owner voluntarily surrendered her state license Friday.
The ten kids who were served the wiper fluid all survived. Only one remains in the hospital and is expected to be released soon. So that’s good.
BUT, what I find most shocking is that there are day-care facilities in this country who still think its okay to serve kids Kool-Aid! Don’t get me wrong; I was raised on the stuff. But I was also raised in the 70s and 80s. We thought shit was going to blow up in a nuclear holocaust, so who cared about health?
Stories like this make me realize the profound health divide that exists between regions–and within segments–of the United States. There is a divide between (most of) California and (most of) Arkansas, as there is a divide between urban and rural America. Economic class filters how people receive and manage health information (I once lived in a poor neighborhood where fruit punch was often called “juice”); and cultural preferences often shape the results even further (Lord knows they loves them some Kool-Aid in the South). But I don’t think that’s all of it.
Is there a difference in the way regional cultures in the U.S. value knowledge itself?
LATINO LIKE ME 
Well, sure. Look at the way insults like “nerd,” “smartypants,” “know-it-all,” and so forth get used. And not just regional cultures — all subcultures, in various ways.
The thing that got me about the version of the article that I saw was the name of the guilty caretaker — Caroline Bynum, just like the famous historian!
I totally missed that. HI-larious.