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*My husband forwarded this to me in an e-mail:
People over 35 should be dead. Here's why:
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors
or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts
or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
Horrors!
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes
a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day,as long as we were back when the street lights came on...
No one was able to reach us all day.
NO CELL PHONES!!!!!
U n t h i n k a b l e !
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surroundsound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends!
We went outside and found them.
We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
They were accidents.
No one was to blame but us.
Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.
Horrors!
Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
Our actions were our own.
Consequences were expected.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good !!!!!
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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My dad 62, Iam 21, I dont know a lot of old people over 35 besides my parents. But every one gets old in time so it does not realy matter how old you are, but how you live.
I love plants!
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No truer words were ever spoken, Cindy.
How many times has the 'older generation' expressed these very sentiments? The younger generation has been raised to be self-centred, interested in nothing but their rights and largely unfamiliar with the meaning of personal responsibility. If anything bad happens, there has to be someone else to blame and/or, better yet, to sue. They must never be allowed to suffer disappointment in case it affects their minds adversely - assumed mental resilience level: ZERO. We're all created equal, so any disparity in talent or potential achievement must be wallpapered over - it can't be allowed to exist.
We're all turning into the worst kind of wimps where no risk factor is acceptable and safety is always paramount. No disrespect to Bill White, a self-confessed lawyer ( ), but it's the lawyers who've either brought about or actively encouraged this social disaster. Here in Australia we're going the same way. There used to be small town fairs and fetes, where money was raised for local voluntary works and charities by, among other things, the sale of cakes baked by ordinary people (mainly women) giving up their time for free to help. Now the food regulations are so stringent, and the possibility of legal action in the unlikely event of food poisoning is so great, that insurance costs have risen beyond the reach of local organisers. Result: No fairs, no money-raising, no money for local volunteer works and charity works!
Bill Gates touched on the problem with how today's society has affected kids and added his advice. If this is common knowledge I apologise for boring you with it but in case you haven't read it ..
BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, CA.
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how "feel-good", "politically correct" teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: 'Flipping burgers' is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for 'burger flipping' - they called it "opportunity".
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's NOT your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, LEARN from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away "winners and losers", but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you "FIND YOURSELF". Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs!
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Smart man, that Bill Gates!
[There's no question in my mind that the political Left must bear more than their share of the blame for this undermining of personal resourcefulness - them and the monstrous army of lawyers who bedevil our every move these days.]
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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While I've yet to live long enough to qualify, I'll offer my comments anyway.
I'm prone to speaking out of turn.
The fact that a list of common childhood occurences is so at odds with our present social... I hesitate to use the word "norms" to describe these "cover-ass, feel-good, no-foul" ideas we are presently saddled with; it's an illustration of how far into wacky-land we've ventured.
Of course even when I was a kid anyone who wore a helmet while riding their bike was liable to get whupped on general principle and being shot at with bottle rockets was all in good fun.
Now we have a majority that wants to be protected, even from themselves. People who value safety above all, what one feels is of greater importance than whether one commands a capacity for rational thought and action. A people of dependent sheep, raised that way from infancy. And we wonder why our cherished democratic process is crumbling around us.
We're succeeding in the creation of a nation, of a world that wants not to be free, but to be benevolently ruled.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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Shaun:
BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, CA...
*Excellent. I agree with every point he made. Too bad it wasn't an address to junior high schoolers (truth can never come too soon). Especially #2, 4 and 5. (Of course, probably lots of those kids' parents are morons who still haven't "gotten it" either...)
But then we all have a few classes to attend in the School of Hard Knocks...well, at least most of us.
Cobra: I'm prone to speaking out of turn.
*Oh, that's okay sonny boy (::glances around for ruler to smack Cobra's knuckles wi--:: ! whoops, ha ha ha...just kidding).
Cobra: Now we have a majority that wants to be protected, even from themselves. People who value safety above all, what one feels is of greater importance than whether one commands a capacity for rational thought and action. A people of dependent sheep, raised that way from infancy. And we wonder why our cherished democratic process is crumbling around us.
We're succeeding in the creation of a nation, of a world that wants not to be free, but to be benevolently ruled.
*Yes, that seems true.
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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There are still people who raise their children this way.
There are still people who realize that allowing eight hours of television & video games a day is a form of child neglect.
There are still people who realize that building the balance and stamina needed to climb a tree requires climbing it in the first place.
There are still people who realize that children must sometimes be punished as well as rewarded.
There are still people who realize that creativity and deviancy are different things in spite of equal risks for both.
And there are people who turn those realizations into action.
They just learn to hide it. :;):
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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And then there are people under 35 like me (26) born who have such little regard for risk that they will rollerblade down a steep hill with a suitcase rolling behind them. Or bike when the street is covered in snow and have many people tell me I am crazy.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
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And then there are people under 35 like me (26) born who have such little regard for risk that they will rollerblade down a steep hill with a suitcase rolling behind them.
Well yes, John, but we're talking about people expected to live long enough to have adult children. :laugh:
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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There's no question in my mind that the political Left must bear more than their share of the blame for this undermining of personal resourcefulness - them and the monstrous army of lawyers who bedevil our every move these days.
The Left is responsible for some of it, but so is the Right. After all, the conservatives are the ones who are screaming that we need the government to expend huge resources and take away many of our rights in order to protect people from terrorism.
Much of the blame also rests on the news media. In order to increase ratings, the various news channels spread fear and try to convince people that many very minor risks are actually very large.
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You know who is responsible for the state of things?
People over 35. :laugh:
Sorry, but someone had to say it.
Then again, if truth be told, I had to walk 15 miles, in a blinding snow storm, uphill, both ways, draging a dead mule to get to school, where Sister Mary (Bloody Mary we called her) would beat my left knuckles raw with an oak ruler till they were bleeding and I could hardly move the fingers, all so I would learn to write with my right hand.
Good times, yeah, sure. :laugh:
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CC:-
We're succeeding in the creation of a nation, of a world that wants not to be free, but to be benevolently ruled.
I should have known CC would bring the subject around to his dream of world domination somehow.
( I can faintly hear the "Mwuh-ha-ha-ha" in the background as I type this! :laugh: )
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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*My husband forwarded this to me in an e-mail:
People over 35 should be dead. Here's why:
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors
or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts
or air bags.Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
Just wait till I'm over 35. Then my generation will finally put you old jabberers in your place.
I know articles like this are supposed to be tounge-in-cheek, but they really jsut make me feel sick. So the previous generation (previous from my perspective anyway) grew up with a slightly lessened emphesis on safety. So what? How many children in the 60s and 70s died in accidents that could be prevented by seat bealts? Probably not very many, but there are people who did. A good friend of mine was recently in a very nasty car accident, had she been in a car without seat bealts and airbags she would have had virtually zero chance of surviving. We set the bar high on safety because it saves lives. Seriously.
Fyi, in Arizona there is no law against riding around in the back of a pickup truck. If you want to raise your kids with a disregard for these kinds of laws, come on out here, Arizona has some of the most lax laws of any state in the union. Be advised however, you WILL be pulled over if you put a refrigerator in the back of a truck without securing it properly. Thats right, we have laws to protect your outsized appliances in the event of an accident, but none to protect people. I see people (I hate to be racist here, but at least 95% are hispanic, apparently overall apathy is a cultural thing) riding in the backs of trucks all the time, and all I can think is "Dang, I wish these guys regarded human life a little higher."
We did a problem in physics a few days ago where we calculated that a seatbelted person in an airbag-equipped car undergoes almost 50 g's of acceleration for a split second while hitting a tree at 40 mph. Under the best of circumstances, I'd put a person's odds of surviving at 75%, sitting the back of a truck, if you survive a crash like that you should be on Ripley's Believe it or Not!
So what if we protect our children from harm now, is that a crime? In case anyone with a warm feeling of nostalgia hasn't realized, the world of 35-ers still had smallpox, polio, rampant amounts of chicken pox, and a whole host of diseases we never get today. There was no Osama bin Laden, but there was Khruschev, Breznehev, communism, and the threat of nuclear war. Americans were waging a brutal war with themselves for equality between the races, the sexes, and the sexual orientations. Maybe eventually they'll all realize that they're of the same species. Maybe not.
The world of today is far, far better than the worlds of 1954, 1964, and 1974. For some reason, most people suffer from the perpetual feeling that the grass is always greener where we just were, and yearn for it again. Nobody seems to want to live where they are, when they do, and how they do, I can't fathom why. Sooner or later everyone has to face it, the world isn't perfect, but it's the only one we have and for all intents and purposes a pretty dang good one. C'mon, can't you just enjoy where we are now!
Sorry if I spoiled the mood.
A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.
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Gonna put ush old Jabberersh in our plashe, eh?!
Jusht typical o' you juvenile delinquent typesh to get the wrong end o' the ol' claypipe. Hell! We ain't talkin' 'bout shafety ya danged ornery li'l whippershnapper ... we're talkin' 'bout a little common shense! :rant:
I'd whip shome o' that shense into your hide if I got the chanshe, you dishreshpec'ful l'il varmint.
:angry:
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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*Mad Grad: When you're 35 you'll be facing challenges from the teenagers of that generation -- particularly your own and those of your family/friends. You may find yourself identifying more with folks in their 40s and 50s (I'll be in my late 50s when you're 35)...
Time has an interesting way of changing perspectives. You'll see; all in good time.
As for smallpox and polio -- for my generation, no; those really weren't issues. And today we are battling the AIDS epidemic WORSE than ever.
And I wouldn't trade my memories of the 1970s for anything, and particularly not July 1969. Sure, there are benefits of today over things in the past (goes without saying as astronomy and science go!!), but there are still elements of "back there" which are...well, you'd have to have lived then to know the benefits of then as well. But I can't relate to the 1950s and 1940s -- wasn't around then -- except what I've read and seen, so...(discussion gets fruitless at this point).
Of all things, I miss the optimism of the late 1960s/1970s the most.
--Cindy
P.S.: Actually, I think including people over 35 is a stretch (as the article I quoted goes). Youngest age should center around 40...maybe; 45 definitely. I always liked the folks who were teenagers when I was little. My babysitter, Rita, would be pushing 50 now. She and her friends were so cool; my favorite memory of her was 1970 or 1971; she was dressed in the bright "mod" clothing of the time, talking on the phone to a friend and saying something was "groovy." She was like a goddess to me. They were the Cool Generation for sure; would be impossible to outline all of my impressions of them and how unique they were, etc. I was born too soon; I wish I'd been of their generation. Oh well.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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I can see MadGrad's perspective here, we do have a greater emphasis on safety that is in many cases perfectly reasonable. But sometimes it goes to the point of absurdity.
I'd frame it this way: If some kid sticks they're arm in a snowblower and cuts their hand off it's a horrible thing. At present, this willful action on the part of the "victim" leads us to sue the manufacturer of the machine and after a big payout all future models have a big warning with pictographs so even the illiterate get the message and some two-handed switch installed to prevent accidents, with the byproduct of making the device generally more irritating to use and expensive, often followed by restrictions on the sale, service and use of the older models as though they contain rabid devil hounds clamoring to escape and ravage the populace. There was a time when the same incident would result in something to the effect of "damn boy, you stupid or something?" Maybe we need a little more of the latter. Some responsibility, some sense.
As for riding in the back of a pickup truck, sure it isn't the safest way to travel. But on a warm summer day with a group of friends you can't beat it. How safe is safe enough, anyway? Driving or riding in a motor vehicle is inherently dangerous, regardless of what straps and padding you surround yourself with. Living is dangerous, it's dirty and sometimes people get hurt. It seems to me that the freedom to decide what constitutes an acceptable risk to oneself precedes most others.
I should have known CC would bring the subject around to his dream of world domination somehow.
Just working with what the world gives me.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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"See Lisa, because of Daddy there's a warning." - Homer Simpson. :laugh:
Time to go run on the freeway with some rusty scissors.
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It is all about values. One part of the civilization feels a need to impose its values on another part. I think the seet belt one is interesting. If someone doesn’t where a seatbelt and he/she gets into a car accident. Should the other driver be able to argue if he was wearing his seatbelt he would have been all right? Or perhaps in a case of vehicular homicide should the defense be able to argue that it wasn’t vehicular homicide because if the other guy was wearing his seatbelt he/she would still be alive?
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
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As for riding in the back of a pickup truck, sure it isn't the safest way to travel. But on a warm summer day with a group of friends you can't beat it. How safe is safe enough, anyway? Driving or riding in a motor vehicle is inherently dangerous, regardless of what straps and padding you surround yourself with. Living is dangerous, it's dirty and sometimes people get hurt. It seems to me that the freedom to decide what constitutes an acceptable risk to oneself precedes most others.
Granted, there is no way to be absolutely safe in a moving vehicle, but the more protection there is the better. Riding around in cars without seat belts regularly would be acceptible for the 1960s because there were no cars with seat belts (or at least vey few, I dunno). Today that's simply irresponsible to put yourself in a position like that when the alternative (car with seat belts) is easy to obtain.
I completely understand the argument about frivolous lawsuits, it's a danger to this country in a sense. But what about the lawsuits that aren't frivolous? Sometimes prodcuts are used that simply have an unacceptible level of unsafetly, and alternatives will be required. Hence the snow blower example would be negative, but regarding the lead paint from the original e-mail, that's good that we don't have it anymore.
It just seems to me that many people are too quick to either jump to the defense of every doom/gloom scinerio that is made (meteors, cell phone radiation, etc), or are too quick to say that all saftey/protection improvements are superfluous. There's a middle ground here, somewhere hard to find, but there. The middle ground is usually the best place to be. :;):
A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.
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