A Stunning Senior Moment

[Kevin]

Yeah it's basically one of those things that people e-mail to everyone else, but I've not seen it in an e-mail

A self-important college freshman walking along the beach took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen resting on the steps why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation. "You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one" the student said loud enough for others to hear. "The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon. We have nuclear energy, ships and cell phones, computers with light speed...and many more."

After a brief silence, the senior citizen responded as follows. "You're right, son. We didn't have those things when we were young..so we invented them. Now, you arrogant little sh*t what are you doing for the next generation?

The applause was amazing!


I'm sure it's not even remotely close to an actual conversation but I got a chuckle out of it, mainly because I could see my grandpa saying just that to someone. :) He was actually involved in some of the military research that led to some of the things that are taken for granted today too. Nothing amazing just figured I'd pull the print out down and type it up and share. :)

The real meat is do you think the younger generations are contributing to the "advancement" of humanity and of course is the mostly technological progress of the last couple of centuries really an advancement?

I'd have to say that the younger generation is still doing lots. The gentleman who figured out how to use the enzyme from fireflies to speed up genome decoding a hundredfold, is younger than I am. That has led to a several other advancements in medical science. I can't say progress is stagnating. Though I'm not sure I can pinpoint a revolutionary change in the last couple of decades either.

Again nothing much. I was mainly sharing a chuckle, but this is the lounge so I decided to go a bit further. :)

[Jester]

We stand on the shoulders of giants, but it's still us doing the looking.

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

I'm sure it's not even remotely close to an actual conversation but I got a chuckle out of it, . . .

Good story, probably apocryphal, but I, too, got a chuckle out of it.

The real meat is do you think the younger generations are contributing to the "advancement" of humanity . . .

Of course they are. Look in any of the scientific periodicals that show pictures and you'll see many young researchers. Thing is, Brittany humps someone today, it's front page tomorrow. Some scientist finds a cure for AIDS, it takes years of testing, etc., before it even becomes common knowledge. Then it ends up on page 6 of the Sunday supplement.

. . . is the mostly technological progress of the last couple of centuries really an advancement?

The technological progress is always an advancement. The use to which it is put is not. But the use is not technology -- more often then not, it is politics or business.

I was mainly sharing a chuckle, but this is the lounge so I decided to go a bit further. :)

Besides, you need to live up to your signature:)

--Pete

[Kevin]

The technological progress is always an advancement. The use to which it is put is not. But the use is not technology -- more often then not, it is politics or business.

--Pete

I sometimes wonder a bit about advances in art and "culture". The commercialization of a lot of human creativity, while not new; Shakespeare wrote plays to make money and not as high art, does sometimes seem to drag some stuff down. You can look at classical orchestral music and see the same thing, there was commercialization of art for a long time. Heck I believe that evidence points to the Romans doing mass produced decorative 'art' on buildings too.

I guess I'd just like to think that a measure of humanities progress can be made by looking at artistic expression at that there will be something from my generation that will stand the test of time.

I just see the canned formulaic stuff that comes out of Hollywood at times and wonder. Of course then I can look at modern authors such as say Tad Williams and realize that there are still some great minds doing some great thinking and producing on that front as well. There are also movies and music that come out that really do speak volumes as well. The signal to noise ratio just gets me wondering about what will survive.

The ability to self publish and self create certain types of art now means that you get more crap. I realize it also means that some of the wonderful things that might have never had a chance to be created in the past happen now too but there is just so much muck around them. Some of it stems from the sheer mass of humanity now too.

Oh well, I'm not really producing any great new insights with this post or thread either. :)

Sometimes I just like to think aloud. :)

[Taem]

My mom sent me this in the email about a month ago. I figured everyone has already read lists like this, so I didn't bother posting it, but since you started it, I suppose it's fitting; as you might say, I got a chuckle out of it:

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!



If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what
with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning


Uphill... barefoot... BOTH ways

Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way

I was going to lay a bunch of bull like that on kids about how hard
I had it and how easy they've got it!


But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but
look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a
Utopia!


And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've
got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to
know something, We had to go to the library and look it up
ourselves, in the card catalogue!!


There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a
pen!


Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the
mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10
cents!


Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a
matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to
kick our ass! No where was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to
hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!


Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd
usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!


There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our
favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come
undone 'cause that's how we rolled; dig?


We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone
and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your
school, your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a
collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and
take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Play Station video games with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You
actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels
or screens, it was just one screen forever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder
and faster and faster until you died!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off
your rear and walk over to the TV to change the channel!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday
Morning.. Do you hear what I'm sa ying!? We had to wait ALL WEEK for
cartoons.

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had
to use the stove ... Imagine that!


That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too
easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980
or before!

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

[Kevin]

My mom sent me this in the email about a month ago. I figured everyone has already read lists like this, so I didn't bother posting it, but since you started it, I suppose it's fitting; as you might say, I got a chuckle out of it:

Yeah I had seen that one. And I did get a chuckle out of it. :)

Oh and "but since you started it", what's up with that? Trying to tell old man Bolty it's not your fault? "But GG started it Bolty!" Bah. Kids these days always trying to blame someone else for the crap they post!:P

[kandrathe]

Yeah I had seen that one. And I did get a chuckle out of it. :)

Oh and "but since you started it", what's up with that? Trying to tell old man Bolty it's not your fault? "But GG started it Bolty!" Bah. Kids these days always trying to blame someone else for the crap they post! :P

When I was young I always reflected on how different things were for my parents. For entertainment, they would play music for each other, listen to radio shows or records, read books, or occasionally go into town to the movie theater. There was no TV at all, both of them lived on farms that used draft horses for some farm work, but also had a tractor (model A, or B John Deere). Both experienced threshing parties, and the camaraderie of getting together with the other neighbors to help bring in all the crops on time. One of my uncles took classes at the U of M from John Bardeen. After WWII, my uncle went on to be a metallurgical chemist and he worked for a local company that does electro-plating for the government.

When I was a boy, we had a black and white TV which we used an antennae to pickup five channels. Computers needed a huge room, and huge air conditioners. There were no electric ignitions on cars, and they would barely start when the temperature was under 10F. When I was ten we bought that new crazy video game system called the Odyssey for our new huge 20" color TV. I think most of the change I've seen in my life can be attributed to; a) the transistor, resulting in explosive growth in computing, b) bio-technology, resulting in new treatments, and understanding in medicine, and c) materials sciences (i.e. NASA) which have improved all fields by miniaturizing and improving the qualities of precisions equipment.

I remember school being that terror between torture by my peers, or torture by the teachers. For example, one teacher, if you were caught with a squirt gun would have you hold it in your hand while he smashed it on his desk embedding shards of hard plastic into your flesh. I think he was the same one who would have students stand 3' from the black board and then have to lean over to prop yourself up by finger tips only. The teacher I had in 5th grade would regularly pick students up and hurl them against the wall. The students were more cruel, until about 10th grade when we banded together for safety.

I lived in a semi-rural area, and it was common to have a few kids die each year to accidents at home/on the farm, on the roads, or helping with the family business. A good friend of mine died at age 15, buried alive while helping to dig out a septic tank. Suffice it to say, that I was not the only person to be glad to survive long enough to move away from there, never to return.