Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Dumbing-Down of America

Another example of what our education system (or the destruction thereof) is wreaking on the country is given by Old NFO in his post We're getting old:
I'm on the road again, putting stuff on a boat to go test it and I'm looking around and other than the geeks, everybody else has gray or white hair (if they have any hair left)...

Ages are 68, 67, 66, 66, 63, 61, 59, 58, 58, 56, 53 and 51, or an average of 60+ years; and all of the scientists were over 60 too (one is 79 years young). Two guys were lured back out of retirement to come work on this stuff. We were in at 0630 every morning, worked until about 1900, and did it again and again till we were done. And some of the stuff was 'designed' on the spot to get things done...

--

But a problem (or at least my perception), is there are NO younger people in training for any of our jobs. I literally went around to the various organizations represented and asked! The consensus was when we all retire (I think ALL of us will be gone within 5-6 years), there will literally be no one with the capability to build/integrate/assemble/deploy/retrieve systems like this; much less anything larger.
RTWT.

I'm an engineer, working for a not-small engineering company. In my department we have several engineers past retirement age working part-time to supplement their incomes (and because they have the experience, knowledge and judgment that younger engineers lack). Read what Old NFO has to say about the younger members of his "team." This is not atypical in my experience. And it's a for-real problem.

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