Everyone has to be rich now??

[lowfreqgeek]

I'm not going to read the thread, but my daughter just got married this weekend. She and her husband just graduated from college 2wks ago with degrees in Chemistry and Computer Science (respectively). They finally got job offers within the last 2wks and will start as soon as they return from their honeymoon this week. Both worked their own way through college, had full scholarships, and took less than $5000 combined in student loans through all 4 years.

They will start with a combined salary nearly 2.5-3x what my wife and I started at 25 years ago, and I'm happy for them (we've always been a single-income family). Their rent is more than double what mine was. You can't buy a driveable car for under $1000. Groceries and gas are many times more expensive than they were 25yrs ago.

For the wedding, we were in a small town where my wife and I have dreamed of owning a cabin since college. We couldn't afford it then, and we can't afford it now. Cabins that sold for $65k 25 years ago are now selling for $300k. Such is life.

 

[GretschWretch]

My life goal as a teen and young adult was to be the next Chick Corea....all I wanted to do was practice piano, write music, and gig. My Dad convinced me to get a music ed degree, "just in case." After a few years of doing pretty well playing full time, my wife and I decided we wanted to have kids, so I applied for and got a teaching gig "for a few years" to offer my family some security from the financial vagaries of a not-household-name musican's up and down times. Never liked the job....having to get up at 5:30 AM, getting home at 5pm, clueless administration who had no idea what music education was for, demanding unreasonable parents, students who never practiced...just a constant assault on the music that meant so much to me. Then .... 31 years later, I retired. So much for "...a few years." You know what? It was a great life, despite the things about job I hated. I had some GREAT students, met a lot of wonderful parents and families, did a lot of good for a lot of kids, and even had a few great administrators! Not the life I had planned, but managed to keep a good performing career, that still continues, going throughout the whole time.

Sounds like you were living "Mr. Holland's Opus." (Sorry about the italics. For some reason my cursor won't admit me to the "Reply" gray.)

 

[/\/\3phist0]

Science fiction becomes science fact.
2 entertainment products come to mind that seem closer to a near future reality than I was comfortable in accepting a decade ago, but now feels inevitable.

Wall-E and Idiocracy

 

[MJ5150]

Growing up, the only two places I wanted to be was in the woods or in a library. I’m almost certain it was because there were no other humans in the woods, and in a library one must communicate in low tones which discouraged such interactive nonsense of the small variety; and the world was literally at my fingertips.

Nice!
The Internet is neat and all. I use it everyday like the rest of y'all so I'm not complaining about it. However, on a quest for knowledge, there is nothing quite like being in a library and turning the pages of a book one by one, perhaps stopping occasionally to wet your finger tip.
Yes, the world is at our finger tips with the Internet, but as you pointed out it's also at the library. That experience can't be replicated on a keyboard.

-Mike

 

[MJ5150]

Okay; a couple of things here. One: I took typing in college. Made a D.

Regarding libraries, if you were in Cambridge you probably were visiting private university campuses. Mine was/is a state university -- public. And citizens of Alabama can use our library in-house. One does not have to be a student; a person off the street can use it. But they cannot check out materials. To do that one must get a for-fee Friends membership.

And one brag I will claim, derail though it is (and because I do not have a pre-CBS Fender to boast about) regarding the intellectual stimulation libraries can provide. Before me, in the dozen years of my library building's existence before I came, a succession of four librarians were responsible for my floor. I had it for thirty-six years. I built that collection; that collection was MINE.

A few weeks before my retirement I got to give a tour of my floor (the "literature" floor) to a new hire as the English Department's Shakespeare specialist and his wife. The Specialist had his Ph.D. from Purdue. I showed them Shakespeare circulating and the Shakespeare reference, at which point the wife said we had more material on Shakespeare that what Purdue did.

I glowed inside.

We were at Harvard.
They do have libraries open to the public. Anyone off the street, even a chump like me, can walk in and read until they close. We found out from our wandering the campus that a few are not open to the public in that way. We can still access those libraries, we'll just need to be with a Harvard student or faculty. Seems fair enough to me.

-Mike

 

[/\/\3phist0]

Nice!
The Internet is neat and all. I use it everyday like the rest of y'all so I'm not complaining about it. However, on a quest for knowledge, there is nothing quite like being in a library and turning the pages of a book one by one, perhaps stopping occasionally to wet your finger tip.
Yes, the world is at our finger tips with the Internet, but as you pointed out it's also at the library. That experience can't be replicated on a keyboard.

-Mike

Ooh, wet your finger tip? For one damage to the book, two, post pandemic

 

[fhm555]

Science fiction becomes science fact.
2 entertainment products come to mind that seem closer to a near future reality than I was comfortable in accepting a decade ago, but now feels inevitable.

Wall-E and Idiocracy

What? Not even a dash of “A Clockwork Orange” or “The Poastman”?

 

[MJ5150]

Ooh, wet your finger tip? For one damage to the book, two, post pandemic

Yes.
I carry a small jar of my saliva with me on all trips to the library. If I don't feel like dipping my finger in the jar, I'll dip the corner of the page into the jar instead.
I also keep a small cloth made from the eyelashes of kittens that I'll use to dry the page or my finger tip if I use too much.

-Mike

 

[GretschWretch]

We were at Harvard.
They do have libraries open to the public. Anyone off the street, even a chump like me, can walk in and read until they close. We found out from our wandering the campus that a few are not open to the public in that way. We can still access those libraries, we'll just need to be with a Harvard student or faculty. Seems fair enough to me.

-Mike

Probably those limited-access libraries were departmental special libraries like vet school or law school, for example. Branch libraries, not the main library.

 

[MJ5150]

Probably those limited-access libraries were departmental special libraries like vet school or law school, for example. Branch libraries, not the main library.

Yes indeed. The folks we spoke to were nice enough and welcoming. They were happy to let us return with a student or faculty member.

-Mike

 

[/\/\3phist0]

What? Not even a dash of “A Clockwork Orange” or “The Poastman”?

I like to keep my perspective on the coming horrors to a lighthearted view. Unrealistic?
Sure.
Much of the Twilight Zone forward looking stuff rings true TODAY
With all the plastic surgery, and influencers literally painting features in their faces?

Number 12 Looks Just Like You - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Eye of the Beholder (The Twilight Zone, 1959) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Ai and robotics:

I Sing the Body Electric (The Twilight Zone) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[J Wilson]

I left college after one year in the Summer of 1974, wanted a job and a place of my own (you know, chicks, drinks, all-nighters just wouldn't fly at my folks' house . . . . ). I got an entry level job as a buyer for a petroleum industry construction company. I had a '68 Fairlane 500, got a small apt, paid utilities and groceries, and I'd have a little money left over to go be a young single man in that time after the pill and before AIDS. Yessir.

All I can tell you is that would be impossible today in Metro Nashville. Rents (much less buying a house in this boomtown) are very expensive, entry level jobs would barely keep you in gas and baloney sandwiches, and like everywhere else the price of almost everything keeps climbing every day. Without a workman journeyman trade or a solid job from your degree, you are in trouble here.

 

[fhm555]

Yes.
I carry a small jar of my saliva with me on all trips to the library. If I don't feel like dipping my finger in the jar, I'll dip the corner of the page into the jar instead.
I also keep a small cloth made from the eyelashes of kittens that I'll use to dry the page or my finger tip if I use too much.

-Mike

That was how you knew you were in a popular book when I was a kid. I never touched the corners when they showed evidence of wet finger syndrome.

 

[hbarcat]

I’d like to think there was more to it than the invention of the steam engine that brought about the end of chattel slavery.

Certainly there were multiple factors that brought about the end of the slave trade in the west, but I'm merely asserting that the industrial revolution was the most important factor, without which, Emancipation would have never happened.

 

[WG Plum]

Certainly there were multiple factors that brought about the end of the slave trade in the west, but I'm merely asserting that the industrial revolution was the most important factor, without which, Emancipation would have never happened.

It’s an interesting thought.

 

[turf3]

Certainly there were multiple factors that brought about the end of the slave trade in the west, but I'm merely asserting that the industrial revolution was the most important factor, without which, Emancipation would have never happened.

Before steam powered machinery, basically every developed society depended on slaves, indentured servants, serfs, convicts, or other forms of near-destitute bound labor to do the backbreaking work of building and feeding.

When you see a Gothic cathedral, or an elaborate US colonial building with all the woodwork, keep in mind that before about 1850 every detail in those buildings was made BY HAND. All those moldings in Colonial Williamsburg? Made one by one by a guy with a molding plane, shoving it through the wood over and over. Carved stone? Yep, chiseled with a hammer by someone. (No safety glasses, no hearing protection, no dust masks.)

 

[hbarcat]

Before steam powered machinery, basically every developed society depended on slaves, indentured servants, serfs, convicts, or other forms of near-destitute bound labor to do the backbreaking work of building and feeding.

When you see a Gothic cathedral, or an elaborate US colonial building with all the woodwork, keep in mind that before about 1850 every detail in those buildings was made BY HAND. All those moldings in Colonial Williamsburg? Made one by one by a guy with a molding plane, shoving it through the wood over and over. Carved stone? Yep, chiseled with a hammer by someone. (No safety glasses, no hearing protection, no dust masks.)

I want to make it clear that I'm not proposing that there was a clear and simple relationship between the industrial revolution and Emancipation, as if there was a proliferation of labor saving machinery in the mid 1800s whi h automatically resulted in freedom for slaves.

In fact, with the invention of the cotton gin (a machine that separates the cotton from the plant), there was an enormous increase in the demand for slave labor. The cotton gin made cotton production so profitable that they needed many more laborers to pick the cotton from the fields, which had to be done manually because cotton harvesters wouldn't be invented until the 20th century.

History is about the details.

 

[Major Seven]

Okay; a couple of things here. One: I took typing in college. Made a D.

Regarding libraries, if you were in Cambridge you probably were visiting private university campuses. Mine was/is a state university -- public. And citizens of Alabama can use our library in-house. One does not have to be a student; a person off the street can use it. But they cannot check out materials. To do that one must get a for-fee Friends membership.

And one brag I will claim, derail though it is (and because I do not have a pre-CBS Fender to boast about) regarding the intellectual stimulation libraries can provide. Before me, in the dozen years of my library building's existence before I came, a succession of four librarians were responsible for my floor. I had it for thirty-six years. I built that collection; that collection was MINE.

A few weeks before my retirement I got to give a tour of my floor (the "literature" floor) to a new hire as the English Department's Shakespeare specialist and his wife. The Specialist had his Ph.D. from Purdue. I showed them Shakespeare circulating and the Shakespeare reference, at which point the wife said we had more material on Shakespeare that what Purdue did.

I glowed inside.

I hope they appreciate that.

 

[Major Seven]

Maybe. But before Amazon even existed publishing houses were infiltrating college bookstores. Barnes and Noble already had a firm hold on my daughter's college bookstore. This was in 1993.

On a side note, we actually have not one, but TWO moderators regularly participating in this thread. How cool is that?

My favorite reads were from 1940s or so Dover Press.

 

[Major Seven]

Before steam powered machinery, basically every developed society depended on slaves, indentured servants, serfs, convicts, or other forms of near-destitute bound labor to do the backbreaking work of building and feeding.

When you see a Gothic cathedral, or an elaborate US colonial building with all the woodwork, keep in mind that before about 1850 every detail in those buildings was made BY HAND. All those moldings in Colonial Williamsburg? Made one by one by a guy with a molding plane, shoving it through the wood over and over. Carved stone? Yep, chiseled with a hammer by someone. (No safety glasses, no hearing protection, no dust masks.)

Where I live in PA, local mines were responsible for most of the slate roof materials. They had children 8, 9 10 years old working because they could fit into small tight spaces.