The Old Ones (Found On A Private Forum, Probably Not Exclusive Buit Cool/Kewl)

Yeah and also my father's first wife fell ill with polio in the early

1950s and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair paralyzed from the waist down. She eventually was able to get a modern motorized wheelchair but surely a Real American would've stuck with the old-fashioned kind and just pushed. What a complainer.

Your generation dumped old car batteries and industrial wastes anywhere. Raw sewage went into rivers and streams and oceans. Drinking water was full of lead and sometimes sewage and the mentioned industrial runoff. Miners dumped their tailings into waterways, full of heavy metals like mercury. Power plants belched unfiltered coal smoke into the air and dumped coal ash anywhere. Cars and trucks and ships had no pollution controls and stank and turned the air yellow in big cities. Asbestos, heavy metals, trans fats, insecticides, lead, particulates, diesel fumes, bacteria were in our air and food. Doctors and shoe salesman used xrays for no good reason. Atmospheric nuclear tests gave kids bone cancer. Soap contained carcinogens. Milk gave people TB.

The good old days.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

You were probably around, what. 20 circa early 1970s, you had plastic shopping bags and 30 inch TVs with remote controls and disposable Styrofoam cups, and drink cans, and razors, escalators and healthclubs with treadmills and avocado green washer-dryer combos and all that shit.

This reads like a story from someone who lived in 1900 you didn't live in 1900, don't even front.

This "what we had" tale reads like something from 1900 not optimistically late 1960s when OP was likely still in his 20s. You had supersonic transports and Styrofoam cups and plastic trash bags in 1969 nobody was using fountain pens and streetcars and the horse and buggy when OP was still a kid, good grief.

torsdag den 31. maj 2018 kl. 19.13.27 UTC+2 skrev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't g ood for the environment.

in my earlier days."

not care enough to save our environment f or future generations."

store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized a nd refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely recycled.

or numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ens ure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) wa s not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our book s on the brown paper bags.

nd office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a

300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

way kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine bur ning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back i n our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sist ers, not always brand-new clothing.

day.

m. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them? ), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blende d and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everyt hing for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used w added up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap . Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pen s with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade go t dull.

o school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi servic e. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to rece ive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to f ind the nearest burger joint.

plastic bags are not bad unless they aren't disposed of properly, it takes lots of energy and water to make paper and paper bags can't be reused as ma ny times. If the plastic end up in an incinerator making heat the oil used to make it just took a detour before getting burned.

here we have a ~$0.15 deposit on cans and bottles, so 90% get recycled or r eused

an, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

ck in my earlier days."

id not care enough to save our environment f or future generations."

he store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they real ly were truely recycled.

for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was th e use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to e nsure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our bo oks on the brown paper bags.

and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

waway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine b urning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or si sters, not always brand-new clothing.

r day.

oom. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember the m?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blen ded and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do ever ything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wr ap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut th e lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by worki ng so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that opera te on electricity.

a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing p ens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi serv ice. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to re ceive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

wrinper You assume a lot. I remember when our family got it's first clothes washer . It was not exactly automatic. It had a tub with an agitator. As I rememb er you washed the clothes , then ran them thru a wringer to get most of the water out and drained the tub. then agitated them inwrinper clean water and rang them thru the wringer again before hanging them on the clothes lin e. We never had a dryer. wrinper We had a car. A 46 Ford. All Fords were manual transmission at that time. Oldsmobile introduced the Hydromatic in 1948.

No plastic bags at the grocery. But we did have a Super Market built some time after the war. We didn't get a TV until about 1wrinper953 shortly aft er there was a TV station in town. I think it was a 15 inch model. I do n ot think it had a remote. 21 inch was as big as they got. Did not have a c olor TV until about 1968.wrinper

No disposable razors when I started shaving , No Styrofoam cups. No air co nditioning until sometime in the Fifties. Did have canned beer. No health clubs.

Dan

We have lots of streetcars here, and fountain pens are cool again.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Toronto never got rid of its streetcars.

And I assume Pocket Protectors are back in style for us too?

John ;-#)#

1950s and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair paralyzed from the waist down."

Sorry about her luck. I don't mean that sarcastically. Are you sure modern medicine would have saved her though ?

but surely a Real American would've stuck with the old-fashioned kind and just pushed"

You read that where ? Even if I really cared, she did not get it from eating too many HOHOs, there is a valid medical reason. I have no problem with that.

anywhere. "

Guilty as charged BUT - we had no choice. And this abuse created wealth fro m which you still benefit today. Nobody WANTED to hurt the planet, there wa s just no other way for certain things.

Well, it wasn't me. I won't even dump motor oil into a sewer. They did real ly get out of hand. People who do that shit have no connection to their lan d or anything. They figure they can wreck the place and just move on with t heir money. The American way.

You know about that ? I am nearly impressed. You have any idea what percent age of the population of the world has even thought of this ?

***For those uninitiated, they used to have "floroscopes" at some shoe stor es which were mini Xray machines. There were purported to find your correct shoe size more accurately. they got banned I think because of the radiatio n exposure or whatever. Damn I would like to find one of them, can you imag ine what it would be worth on Antiques Road Show ? ***

How much do you know about the propagation of waves in a gaseous, liquid or semisolid state ?

I surmise that all these underground nuclear tests have turned parts of the land into a giant subwoofer. Speakers work by interacting with air. You ne ed a larger radiating area for a longer wavelength.

If the ground over an underground test flexes, it affect climate because i t interferes with the normal air flow around the planet. They say CO2 is a big thing but this isn't ? Who said that ?

in 1900, don't even front. "

Yeah ? I personally remember being around for the tin can squishing. You ha d the lid off, now you took the bottom off. Smash the can and put it in the big paper bag next to the refrigerator.

People took their scrap steel for free. For a time there was a war on. I ne ver claimed to live in the time of fountain pens being prevalent, if I did quote it. I put this forward because I thought it might spur on some though t and get interesting.

I am 57. In the "old days" we had paper, not plastic. There were no microwa ve ovens. There were no computers in cars until the THM400 tranny came out with its fluid run, analog computer in the valve body. Study it, it is fasc inating, what they did with so little.

Pretty damn sure.

Gosh you're not much more than 15 years older than I am. Of course you didn't have a microwave oven in the "old days" you were a teenager in the 70s not many teenagers own cutting-edge technology!

The situation changed quickly though I'm pretty sure my parents got their first microwave oven around 1985, a big brown GE beast the "Spacemaker II" I remember it well, looked just like this:

I'm sure it lasted well into the 1990s, it was reliable as anything. By

1990 everyone had them.

I suppose even 15 years makes a certain difference, I don't really remember this "simpler time" very well (or much of a time where we didn't have a home computer or microwave oven.)

We had to use fountain pens at one school. I could never see why though, there was no real upside to them, and an inky mess was fairly frequent.

NT

Sydney got rid of its, and now is building one again. It's taking forever because the process is unionised and/or corrupt; dedicated to maximising harm and the wastage of resources.

Exactly. The OP's tale is an example of extreme cherry-picking - taking examples that he thinks were good, exaggerating them, and ignoring everything else. Of course modern times have lead to many new environmental problems - but the older times had more than enough of their own.

One of the ironies in his post - and modern "green" ideas - is that these "return to the old ways" thoughts are often worse for the environment. The better way is to use modern technology and techniques, but do so in a more responsible way.

For example, he thinks paper bags are better for the environment than plastic bags. This is wrong - making paper bags is /more/ costly in total environmental prices than making plastic bags. Paper bags are very rarely reused for anything (despite his claims), and have limited reuse when recycled. Plastic bags /do/ get reused a lot more, and can be recycled (or burned for energy). The only problem with plastic bags is when they are thrown out in nature rather than handled responsibly.

Even in the most car-crowded cities like London or New York, the level of pollution is a fraction of what it was in the days of horses and buggies - where horse manure and dead, decaying horse carcases were a huge source of grim, disease, and above all, smell.

Organic farming is all the rage as supposedly "environmentally friendly" farming. Yet the cost in land is much higher than for normal modern farming, thus leading to loss of natural habitats, forest burning, etc. And some of the fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals approved as "organic" are vastly worse pollutants than the usual artificial stuff. Again, the best way for the environment is modern techniques but used responsibly - modern fertilizers, but not so much that it washes into the rivers.

Writing from a fountain pen looks far nicer than writing from a ball-point pen. Fibre-tip pens are just as good, however, but they weren't as common.

But there is something satisfying about using a fine quality fountain pen. It doesn't do a better job than a fibretip, but it /feels/ higher quality.

In all those BBC shows set in Victorian times, why do they never show the horses, well, being horses?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

The first company that I worked for had their own PCB fab shop. Just double-sided, not plated boards, hot solder coated. They dumped all the waste into a big puddle behind the building. They certainly had a choice.

The upside is that all the chemicals killed some of the ragweed.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics