Dumbed Down Society

[hunter63]

The government and lawyers are taking natural selection out of society.

....and 911 is sealing the deal....

[WolfVanZandt]

Well, sure. The reason people have to be so paranoid about food pathogens is that they're not exposed to them enough to develop an immunity. Antibiotic hand soaps are killing the beneficial bacteria that live on our skin that kill off disease fungi. Sedentary lifestyles with modern medicine are making for longer, more miserable lives. The government preaches about eating well and subsidizes junk food.

And Highhawk is dead on. Things like economy, government, morality, and good sense run on natural laws, and the more we divorce ourselves from nature, the less well all those things work.

[Rick]

I turned on my digital television this morning and selected one of 27 news channels while my coffee maker was making my coffee for me. I checked my bank accounts online to see how much money moved in and out overnight (mostly out....big sigh) and noticed my clock had reset itself for the time change automatically. None of these things were even possible 10 years ago...some not even 5 years ago. Those things don't get designed and built by themselves. Young men and women are hard at work, right here in the USA, building "stuff". I see signs in every hardware store that assembly is available so someone still knows how to do it. Me thinks we are lamenting a loss that hasn't quite happened.....yet.

[Eastree]

I like the one over the urinals is some saloons I have been in......
"Caution: White things in the bottom are disinfectant, not breath mints, Do not eat"

And have you noticed the urinals that are now being made with aiming points? They're usually a (printed image of a) fly, or a simple cross hair ("plus mark" to most folks), because apparently some folks can't figure out correct usage, either. Maybe they go off course while reaching for the mint?

[hunter63]

One saloon had a sign above the urinals, says "urinals use 10 cents".....but the dimes started piling up......

[randyt]

urinals? urinals? Some of the establishments I frequented, ya just went out back. There was a little bar across the tenn/ky line in tenn. ( cause it was a dry county back in ky) It was a little south of tomkinsville. It was like that. On sunday mornings there would be a huge pile of beer bottles out front. After drinking the bottles were thrown out the front door. By sunday afternoon it was all, cleaned up though.

[kyratshooter]

Usually it was the other way around Randy!

In the old days a lot of the TN border counties were dry while KY was the wet zone.

Several of those areas had towns were the state line went down the center of Mains Street. Bristol TN/VA was the most famous of them but there were a lot on the KY/TN border..

[Power Giant]

Humans are becoming "specialized". They know how to do one thing really well. Like a heart specialist that only does one specific operation. He saves people's lives on a daily basis, but he can't change the motor oil in his car. A comparison is the cheetah, a specialized hunter, that has a relatively low hunting success ratio. The cheetah is endangered because of it being so specialized.

[hunter63]

I has been my experience that because of the amount of stupidity, that instruction/direction, in any of 15 languages they are printed in are of no use whatsoever any longer, as they are warnings, caution and stuipid people protections, with no trouble shooting info at all.....other than "don't touch it".

Example: on most any furnace, boilers, a/c units, gas, oil, etc....have circirt boards these days that control most every operation, with many safeties built in.
Flashing LED's will flash a code to give a an idea of where the problem.......Service guys helper.
Sooo.....The doors of the unit, manuals, every thing....has sticker, decals and instructions......reading "Number one, SHUT OFF POWER and Fuel....which re-sets everything......No lights!
You have to wait till the problem happens again to find a problem....might happen right away, might happen next year/, don't know.

The only thing that helps out a service guy........People won't read or follow all those instructions either!....allow you a chance to get right to the problem.

[Sarge47]

I would have posted sooner but I didn't read the instructions on how to do it...my bad!................

[welderguy]

I would have posted sooner but I didn't read the instructions on how to do it...my bad!................

Here ya go Sarge http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+post+%20...age+on+a+forum

[randyt]

ahh yes Ky, I'm familiar with Bristol. Can't remember the excavate percentages but the sales tax in virginia was a lot less than tenn so a lot of folks slipped into va and bought their groceries, big ticket items and such there.

The counties in ky where I lived were dryer than a bone. It was metcalf, adair, monroe and barren counties mostly. I could have went to bowling green as they were wet but in those days I couldn't be dragged into a city much less go willingly.

[Englishpacker]

Warning signs take away from natures learning curve (and population control) of survival of the fitest...
If you have to be told "caution: contents may be hot" on a cup of coffee or that a gun is "not a toy" then maybe certain people should not have access to such things in life.

[finallyME]

Warning signs take away from natures learning curve (and population control) of survival of the fitest...
If you have to be told "caution: contents may be hot" on a cup of coffee or that a gun is "not a toy" then maybe certain people should not have access to such things in life.

Banning things from certain people would also "take away from natures learning curve".

[hunter63]

Banning things from certain people would also "take away from natures learning curve".

I beginning to have an adversion to the "B" word,........

[randyt]

Ya know Hunter, a lot of circuit boards these days have fault code recall. Some of them will even display the fault code on the thermostat and it gets better some will even call the service mans smart phone with a fault code.

[hunter63]

Ya know Hunter, a lot of circuit boards these days have fault code recall. Some of them will even display the fault code on the thermostat and it gets better some will even call the service mans smart phone with a fault code.

LOL, I glad I retired when I did.....bad enough to have people call you at O-dark thirty telling ya the unit is down....but to have the machine call you?....insane.

Actually one account was a groups of banks branches,......each had a computer that would call you if you were on call,.. as well as the 'night area manager" of the banks.....Then you had to get on-line and see where the fault was....no heat, blower running/not, and different areas temps.

Pass word protected I could only check it out if the area manager gave me that days pass word....then we would discuss if it was nessessary to get up and drive over to meet the guy with the keys, and try to fix it right then.

Most of the time if something was really screwed up,.... I couldn't get parts to fix it any way in the middle of the night.....so we would just drive over there and nod and smile till the part stores opened in the morning or order it as there was a lot of OEM stuff...on O.T.

Some of the roof tops were the size of a semi trailer, and the doors were 6ft high....fun at 10 degrees and a 30 MPH wind.....could beat ya to death...LOL

They were cheap so mostly "We" decided to fix it on straight time, not O.T. so I could go back to sleep.....

[randyt]

ya gotta love rooftops, I often thought about a tarp and a kerosene heater. As far as parts go if I don't have it, it's a 45 mile trip and hopefully they have it, good chance they don't especially if it's a OEM part that a generic won't replace.

[hunter63]

We actually made a 'tent' with cardboard and a tarp/w duck tape when changing out a cracked heat exchanger on a below zero day, and a plumbers pot for heat.
Was pretty comfortable....LOL

[gohammergo]

It's a fact, and a sad one, that people are in getting dumbed down. My dad taught me so much just in the course of living. He could fix most anything. A woodsman, hunter, fisher, could weld, mechanic, carpenter, garden, and so much more that he did and I learned just by being with him and doing it too. As I grew older and passed much of that down to my son, I realized that many (not all, but seems like most) of the youngsters I run into or have dealing with are fairly clueless about "things". How to work on a small engine, how to put gas in a chainsaw, set a trap, put a shelf together, etc. It seems foreign to me not to know how to figure something out. Back when I was younger and the cb radio thing was going big, I was fixing radios for people from all over, figuring it out as I went. No training at all. Probably couldn't fix them now though . Seems like people just want to have someone else do the fixing/figuring for them.

Had some neighbors up the road with a 16 year old son and a big yard. Instead of him doing the grass cutting and snow shoveling, they hired someone to do it for them. How is a kid going to learn if someone does it for him?