"running dogg" wrote in message
...
craigm wrote:

Lucky wrote:

Hi Peter

Our society has become so dumbed down by terrible public
schools and mass
migration of 5th grade educated aliens. So, they don't have the
capacity nor
the comprehension to be even remotely interested in SW.

It is so easy to place the blame on the schools. Much of the blame
also
goes to the parents who don't/won't instill the need for
education.
People need to take responsibility and not look for the easy
scapegoat.
Parents have a responsibility to their children. The school system
is
not a means to escape that responsibility.

Agreed, but the parents are part of the problem too. All they care
about
is getting the easy A, getting the kid into Harvard so they can put
pressure on the poor professors to hand out A's because that's the
only
acceptable return on their investment, and then making sure the kid
gets
an MBA so that he/she can go straight to the top.

I've been employed at three companies over the past
10 years, and what I've seen is that companies are less
willing to hire grads right out of college without some
internship time (aka co-op time) first. The reasons for
this are numerous, but two big ones a

-Grades aren't worth much in the real world,
especially with grade inflation.
-Whether the person can do the work is not
necessarily reflected by the college experience.

The teams I've been on in the past have been
burned in by new grads coming in, expecting the
world, and then finding out that they actually are
expected to work. 5 out of 6 grads then get
jaded and leave because "they don't pay me
enough for what I do." Usually by the time they
leave, they are enough of a drag on the team
that we're happily showing them the door.

It's all part of the culture of instant gratification.
Getting an actual education has been
kicked to the side in favor of getting an easy degree in order to
get a
high paying job. It's the high paying job that's important, not the
actual education. 35 years ago, college students said in surveys
that
the most important reason for a college education was to become a
better
person, to broaden one's horizons, and all that "hippie stuff".
Today
all the kids care about is getting in and out as fast as possible
and
getting to the corner office as fast as possible, along with the
Lexus,
the hot secretary, and the mansion. The whole culture has become
coarsened, and the only thing that's important is making a lot of
money,
not becoming a better person.

I'm a big believer that your first job out of
college should teach you humility, so that you
can appreciate where you came from when you
land a better job.

I know you don't have to be the most intelligent to operate a
receiver, but
to know about it and be interested in it you must have some
decent education
and culture.

Does that mean some elite requirements to be a shortwave listener.
I
would t hink that all that is needed is a radio, the knowlege of
what
might be out ther (to listen to) and the desire to listen.

SW radio can be a vehicle to provide some education, however
education
need not be a requirement.

SW radio tends to have more intellectual programming than say
network
TV. In America, the breakout TV hit of the summer is an abomination
called "Dancing with the Stars", where washed up celebrities pair
off
with professional dancers in order to win a multiweek dancing
competition. The costumes are titillating and the set looks like it
came
out of a disco hall.

I've seen some ballroom dancing events (my sister-in-law
used to compete), and that's pretty much what they
typically wear in those events. Not to defend a show
that I've never seen, but the fact that a wide demographic
tuned in to watch it is actually an anomaly these days,
especially where the old "family hour" on television
is about as dead as a doorknob.

A culture that makes "Dancing with the Stars" a hit
is not one that is interested in crackly, fading radio broadcasts on
Ethiopian culture and news broadcasts that lack car chases and
murders
du jour. All of American culture caters to the lowest common
denominator, and SW radio tends to set its sights higher. That's why
hardly anybody in America listens to SW. People have been dumbed
down by
many different factors over the past 30 years, and they're simply
not
interested in SW's highbrow fare. It's a tragedy, and it may yet be
the
end of us.

It all has to do with what is desired. There are so
many choices out there these days for entertainment
and information that it's hard for one medium and
one thing to stand above all the others and attract
your attention, particularly a "low tech" medium
like SW.

What goes around, comes around. Who'd have thought
that swing and jump band music would have made
a comeback in the 90's?? Or Celtic music in the 90's??
Stranger things have happened.

--Mike L.