computers, modernity, earth hour, new dog

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Ali wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38972>:

<< who lives in terror at the thought of life without computers >>

Read STORM, which was a best seller in like 1940. I enjoyed it very much. In addition to having people and events and a happy ending, it is to me an alternate world, because people somehow do stuff even tho' they don't even know that they don't have computers, weather satellites, television...

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38973>:

<< I know teenagers and children who would rather play video games than read a book or play a board game. >>

Even in those days (I'm assuming 1960s, the earliest I remember), there were endless complaints about children and teenagers who didn't like to read and would rather watch television (despite only 6 channels, some of them useless), play pinball (which required going someplace with pinball machines), or just hang out. Even in those days, there were endless complaints that television was making children sedentary and overweight, not like that self-named 'greatest generation' who was doing the complaining. (Tom Brokaw didn't invent that name; he picked it up because it was already in use.)

<< I miss those days. I really, really miss those days. You could safely walk or ride a bike around the neighborhood then, and children could safely play outside. >>

It's just as safe to walk, bike, or play outside in nice suburban neighborhoods as it was then. It's just that modern parents are paranoid, partly due to intense news coverage of the same amount of child abductions as occurred in those days, and part of it is the psychology that the mom in the house was 'looking after' the child playing a couple of blocks away, so it felt safe, but the mom at a job an hour's commute away is not 'looking after' the child.

[It is the only the gang infested neighborhoods where there is significant danger of being  hit by a stray bullet. Those neighborhoods were were already gang infested in those days, but the gang members didn't have firearms then, only knives, razors, and baseball bats, so there were no drive-by shootings and fewer innocent bystanders accidentally killed. *** On the other hand, there was a lot more drunk driving in those days and fewer seat belts, so a lot more deaths in traffic accidents and pedestrians (children) hit by cars.]

Another thing the modern people are paranoid about is measles.

Steve bboyminn wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38976>:

<< Ahhhh! I need to learn to proofread before I post -
> If you really want to know what destroy, or seriously harmed,
> the work economy, ...
That should be...
"...what destroyED, or seriously harmed, the WORLD economy..." >>

In one of those two changes, your fingers were right the first time: "the WORK economy". That's the big new discovery that Adam Smith reported in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS in 1776, that a nation's wealth is not the amount of gold and silver locked up in the royal treasury, but the amount of useful and productive work done by its people. Two-hundred-some years after that was discovered, politicians hypocritically invoking the name of Adam Smith decided that a nation's wealth consists not of useful and productive work (and natural resources, which I don't recall Smith having mentioned) but of imaginary financial transactions. 

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38977>:

<< Did anyone celebrate Earth Hour and, if so, do you have any create ideas for how to spend an hour by yourself with the lights out (except for a candle and a flashlight) without going insane? (I assume it's okay to talk on the phone in the dark!) >>

I don't observe Earth Hour because I think that deprivation in the name of conservation is like observing the Yom Kippur fast in the name of healthy eating habits. However, I heard on the news that many restaurants were offering candlelight dinner specials.

I was at an frp game with some friends. We *could* have turned the lights off and played by candlelight (the Golds have ample supplies of candles and flashlights), or possibly by the light of the people across the street, who were playing a very loud basketball game in their driveway by FLOODLIGHTS.

md wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/38978>:

<< I adopted a shelter dog today >>

Congratulations! May you-uns have a long, happy, healthy life together!