What is better made, or more useable, now than in the years past?

[Brad]

Information is much more acessable.
Without the ‘net how many of us would be stuck in Lyman land shooting undersized bullets? We wouldn’t be shooting Marlin microgroove barrels over 1600 FPS and only with rock hard bullets. We would have no idea about things like measuring cylinder throats and enlarging them if needed. We would be using NRA 50/50 lube for everything and I hate the smell of that stuff.

How much information do you have at your fingertips right now? Compare that to even 30 years ago.

 

[Bret4207]

I think there are still plenty of young people interested in learning to make and fix stuff. What we lack is a will to admit not every kid needs, or wants, to go to college. Our schools do not prepare kids for a career.
We need tech schools. We need to teach kids a skill set and prepare them for a career.

AMEN! Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" fame runs a scholarship course for vocational training IIRC. An outstanding idea IMO. I wish that vocational school had been more of an option when I was a kid. As it was, vocational schooling was for the "dumb" or problem kids. Maybe 1 out of 15 or 20 students that chose vocational training was what my wife the special ed teacher would refer to as "typical". Many of the kids that went to vocational training did a heck of a lot better than the sports star prince and princesses that are found today sitting on the same bar stool they'd occupied directly after HS graduation in '78. These days vocational training is the choice of more than half the kids in out local high school. Part of that is because of the adiminstration in the school ('nuff said there) and part is because in a poor area like ours college isn't a given for a lot of people. It seems to be a decent decision for many of the kids.

Someone mentioned combining vocational training with all the other stuff in HS, turning it into a tech training course. My youngest son was involved for one year in a program like that. The whole class day was project oriented with all the various subjects worked into the project- math, english, science, history, art, athletics, etc., plus the hands on stuff. It was working splendidly for him and 75% of the other kids. Unfortunately, many of the participating schools used it a place to send their problem kids and that 25% turned it into a zoo by the end of the year. Not to get political, but as usual, the answer wasn't punishing the problem causers, but taking away the right of the good kids to have a chance at an alternative education option that was really working for them. It was a really good program that was screwed up by people looking for the easy way out. Sad.

GPS. Yes, I know it's a lot better than it used to be, but I'm still stuck remembering the countless people I found on what were little more than wagon roads or atv trails that were directed there by their GPS systems. Or the stolen car I was looking for that the on board GPS showed as being 300 yards directly in front of my location...which would have put it 300 yards out into the St Lawrence River in 50 feet of water. Or the people I'd find totally lost trying to turn left onto a road that hadn't existed in 40 years. I'm sure it works great in a lot of places, but the system itself tying all the "down to the millimeter" accuracy into the road map system is still wrong in many cases. Just 2 months ago the guy coming to pick up my lambs was doing his best to find my place and kept driving in a 25 mile circle because his GPS nav system insists the road which has been County route 7 since 1985 is still labeled as County Route 95. Garbage data in, garbage data out.

Bill, on being "Uncle Bill". Many, many cultures had the practice of taking boys entering puberty and sending them off to learn to be men with older relations or members of their tribe/group. That kind of removed the snot nosed angry kid from mom and dads house to give them all a break and gave the kid a chance to learn from someone who he didn't have that close relationship with, so rebelling wasn't as big an issue. Today we call it "mentoring". It ain't really a bad idea IMO.

 

[Ian]

AMEN! Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" fame runs a scholarship course for vocational training IIRC.

I recall that all started when he was home from the set for a couple of days and his toilet backed up. He couldn't find an available plumber anywhere, so he started investigating the trades and found that every trade was overwhelmed with work and unable to find enough competent or trainable help to keep up. Ultimately he found this to be a nationwide epidemic due to several generations in a row pushing only academic education for everyone and set about trying to raise awareness. It seems that if you failed at academics, you became a service wage slave. Few considered the trades unless they were basically born into it. A certain frame of mind had made blue collar work dishonorable and either you were educated or you worked a low-wage service job.

I went the academic route at first and found that the careers in my chosen field weren't for me, so I sought education in a skilled trade. I'm one of those people who gets along a lot better with practical, simple, down-to-earth people than with sophisticate, "educated" types. The work suited me better too. It all boils down to what you are able to do, what you push yourself to do, and what makes you happy.

 

[Bret4207]

I recall that all started when he was home from the set for a couple of days and his toilet backed up. He couldn't find an available plumber anywhere, so he started investigating the trades and found that every trade was overwhelmed with work and unable to find enough competent or trainable help to keep up. Ultimately he found this to be a nationwide epidemic due to several generations in a row pushing only academic education for everyone and set about trying to raise awareness. It seems that if you failed at academics, you became a service wage slave. Few considered the trades unless they were basically born into it. A certain frame of mind had made blue collar work dishonorable and either you were educated or you worked a low-wage service job.

I went the academic route at first and found that the careers in my chosen field weren't for me, so I sought education in a skilled trade. I'm one of those people who gets along a lot better with practical, simple, down-to-earth people than with sophisticate, "educated" types. The work suited me better too. It all boils down to what you are able to do, what you push yourself to do, and what makes you happy.

Bingo! As a retired business teacher told me once, "The world only needs so many rocket scientists." Good point. My wife maintains that the whole "Common Core" educations initiative is about making square pegs fit in round holes. Those that can't fit get tossed aside. She also refers to it as indoctrination based on her working within that system, but I don't want to delve into the political spectrum involved. Suffice it to say, she's not a big fan and yet she's also pretty liberal in many ways.

I'm better with the down to earth types too. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a skilled trade. There's also nothing wrong with working in a lot of other fields that don't require a degree. Sadly, that degree that once was proof you had something on the ball is now more like proof you can jump through hoops in many cases.

 

[Rick]

^^^^^^^^^ Bingo

 

[Ian]

Sooooo, I'm gonna say that we all pretty much agree that quality of education, both academic and vocational, is definitely NOT one of the things that has improved over the years.

 

[Hawk]

Where a college degree once said you were trained in a certain field, it now just means you're able to learn.

Not to dispute anyone, but as far as GPS is concerned, they older levels of accuracy were the normal many years ago. My survey department used Trimble equipment and with land based references, as well as satellites, , got repeatable accuracies to within +/- half an inch (0.04') five years ago. That level of accuracy is improving every year as they add more reference points and improve equipment.
Science is moving at an incredible pace, right now.

Only problem, most of our technology is based on electricity. A few EMP (eletromagnetic pulse) devices exploded over the USA and we will all be eventually starting our fires with a flint and steel again. A doomsday scenario that I think is possible, if not probable.

Also, the value of a college degree... I've got a niece with a college degree in economics and when told an EMP could knock out the electrical grid, her response was "Well, we will still have our cell phones, cause they run on batteries, so we will be okay!". I felt bad, because it really upset her when I explained reality to her. I still don't think she understood the underlying concept. She was more upset that her cell phone wouldn't work.

 

[smokeywolf]

When it comes to skilled trades vs. "professional positions", My oldest is in the skilled trade category. Runs the swing shift of the parts dept. at one of the largest Ford dealerships in the U.S.
College Boy wants to earn his MS in aerospace engineering.
17 year old is looking pretty hard at medicine. I'm encouraging him to not count out veterinary medicine with lower med school costs and little to no worry of socialized medicine screwing up his income and perhaps even forcing him to change careers later in life. Plus, he would not be looking at $40,000/yr in malpractice insurance premiums.

We've gone back to using what used to be my most often used means of navigation, as a backup to the cell phones, the Thomas Guide Map Books. Pretty much all patrol deputies/officers always kept Thomas Guides in their posse box.

 

[Rick]

When I was working I wouldn't leave the house without Thomas Guides for at least counties.

 

[Bret4207]

I have no idea what a Thomas Guide is, but at one time I had maps to 7 counties in my go bag, plus topo maps of most of 3 counties. I still have several Rand McNally highway atlas's that are still the go to's for me when I travel,which isn't often. And oddly enough, I know how to stop and ask for directions from police officers. That always works for me.

Smokey, might also point out to the kid that veterinaries pretty much never, ever work nights or swing shifts and if they do, there is always extra money for going out. OTOH, he won't have gold digger nurses offering him back rubs in the wee hours of the morning...

 

[Rick]

The Thomas Guide is a detailed street map book by county. Driving for a living in the studios and in a different place almost every day and 100's of sq. miles of solid city they were a way of life. GPS has today I'm sure replaced them but then today I am retired and a long way from SoCal.

 

[RicinYakima]

When I was working I wouldn't leave the house without Thomas Guides for at least counties.

I did drug lab raids all over the state and wear out one every couple of years. With state and county milepost maps and topo maps pin pointing labs. If you are getting crews by choppers into big pot grows ten miles from a road, that was our basic tool. It wasn't until about 2004 that GPS got good enough with the huge expansion for the war on terror. The only radio commo was Low Band FM in the basalt mountains.

 

[Rick]

The early GPS unit were a horrible waste of time. Lucky if they got you to your destination but if they did it was guaranteed to put you into the highest traffic route possible and never the shortest distance. They did improve though, just not for the high traffic thing.

 

[462]

An EMP would do to today's electronic knowledge storage devices what fire did to ancient Alexandria's library.

 

[Jeff H]

.......every trade was overwhelmed with work and unable to find enough competent or trainable help to keep up. ......................

I get mobbed at the local job fair - "we need more of this," "can't find enough of that," "workforce shortages, turn-over, baby-boomers retiring....."

My first question - what are you paying?

A lot of companies just can't get it through their heads that you have to pay for what you want and you get what you pay for. There ARE qualified people being educated, you just have to compete to get them. That's the nature of business, right?

 

[Jeff H]

........................patrol deputies/officers always kept Thomas Guides in their posse box....

I've never seen one, but I do still carry a DeLorme Gazetteer (for my state) in my Jeep. It doesn't take any specialized (expensive) batteries, has no USB charging cable and works where there's "no signal."

 

[Bill]

Watching my dad and my uncles mow grass in the late 40s and early 50s I would hate to go back to that

Bill

 

[462]

Somewhere East of Twin Falls, Idaho, I missed whatever highway/road that would connect with Highway 93, to take us to Wells, Nevada. My wife tuned her phone to a GPS station that got us through. For some reason, there weren't any maps in the car.

Used the Thomas Guides for five years. Kind of like Rand McNally fine tuned down to the neighborhood level.

 

[462]

Bill,
As a teen-ager, I pushed a push lawn mower round the neighborhood mowing lawns for a buck. Still have a pusher for the small patch in back. Additionally, I delivered the Monday through Friday evening paper for a buck per customer (90-95) per month.

 

[JWFilips]

No Experience here by any means: but I think I would have to say condoms....from what I have heard