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dave · August 5th 13, 03:23 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

On 08/04/2013 11:09 PM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
wrote:

This is probably the biggest problem in most advanced countries today-
young people cannot do /make anything . Very disturbing, to say the least...

It's not just young people. Once the Apollo program was canceled NASA,
and the entire aerospace industry started to fold. By the 1980's there
no longer existed in the US the capability of putting another man on
the moon.

Now, the US has no capability of launching a person into orbit and have
to rely on the Soviets ^H^H^H^H^H Russian Federation to do so.

There still is the capability of using a missile to launch a satellite,
but the trick of using the space shuttle to catch one, and bring it
back for repair is done.

Along with this decline the 1959 rush to get everyone in the US a college
education, along with the cheap student loans, subsidized tution and
government funded expansion of colleges and universities is gone.

The only thing that is left is the much more competivie admission polices
and the restuctured college boards.

Around the turn of the century, the tests were "re-normed" to lower the
standards (raise the scores by 100 points on each test). That did not
do very well, so an essay was added. The thing about essays is that
they are all scored by people and are very culture dependent.

So a mathematical genius with communications issues will fail misserably,
along with a child who has had a different education than what they
are looking for.

But don't lose hope, things have changed. Children no longer live in isolation
with only newspapers to find out what has happened. As my parents learned
about the world via radio, I learned via television, my children learn
through the internet.

My oldest son does not live with me, he's married and off with his own
family, so I don't keep track of him. He is a "world class" (i.e. published)
expert in data visualization, something did not exist on the TTY that I
had in my bedroom (with modem) in high school.

His brothers have high speed internet, cellular phones, pocket devices
(both have iPods touch, one has an android phone, the other an android
tablet), and see the world a lot differently than we did.

When I was a teenager, you could feed a family of 6 at the local burger
joint for the cost of a one minute phone call between New York and LA.

We all have unlimited cellular plans with international calling in 26
countries and they use text voice chat everyday to communicate with
people around the world. The only continent they don't regularly
communicate with is Antartica.

Making things is a problem, yes, they have no interest in what we
called "shop". I had wood, metal, ceramic, and auto in high school, I did
not have electrical shop so I went into computers instead of becoming a
ham radio operator, something I did in my 40's.

We shall see what happens as 3d printers are coming down in price, and
I think all the stuff they used to make from Legos, paper and scotch tape
will in a few years be made on them.

Eventually they will design things on the computer, print them out
in plastic on their 3d printer and have them made in metal if needed.

Geoff.

There are people with EE degrees who can't draw a 3 phase rectifier, let
alone the transmission and distribution system upstream.