Showing posts with label Posts with polls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Posts with polls. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

More Medieval than Modern?

 Heavily idealized depiction of farm family, circa 1874.

A couple of days ago I posted this item:
Lex Anteinternet: Are Robert J. Gordon and George F. Will reading my...: Okay, up until this morning I'd never heard of Robert J. Gordon.  I now know that he's a Professor of Social Sciences at Northweste...
This quote is contained with in it:
In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.
That's a very thought provoking statement.  More medieval than modern. . . in 1870.

Keep in mind that by 1870, we already had trains and heavy industry.  We'd fought the Civil War.  The Industrial Revolution was well on its way.  Newspapers and telegraphs spread the daily news.

Are Will and Gordon right? I'm not saying they are or are not.  Rather, it's an interesting question. What do you think?

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Lex Anteinternet: Boy Scouts of America--Merit Badges from 1911

Lex Anteinternet: Boy Scouts of America--Merit Badges from 1911:

This is an older thread here, but I'm bumping it up as last Sunday was apparently Scouting Sunday.  The Boy Scout Troop associated with St. Anthony's Church acted as servers for Sunday Mass, and I saw a sign on the First Christian Church noting the same.

I have to admit that I didn't even know that St. Anthony's had a Boy Scout organization, even though I probably should have known that.  My guess is that it might be associated in some fashion with St. Anthony's Tri Parish School, although I don't know that for sure.  I knew that it had one at one time, as a co-worker of mine told me that he'd first met a late co worker of mine when they were both in Boy Scouts, with my living co worker having been in the St. Mark's Episcopal Church troop, while my late partner was in the St. Anthony's troop.  My late partner was a strong supporter of the school, so my supposition is that he attended it.  I should have been aware that they still had a Troop, but never having been a Boy Scout, I did not.  I did know that the First Christian Church had one, as a co workers of mine is a Scout leader there.

 World War One era Boy Scout Liberty Load poster.

Anyhow, I guess that demonstrates the extent to which Boy Scout units were once associated with churches, which is still somewhat true.

Still, I've heard that Scouting has suffered in popularity over the last several decades, which doesn't surprise me.  For one thing, it's probably suffered as Americans have generally moved away from organizations of all types.  As we've covered in prior posts, Fraternal Organizations have really declined in popularity.  But this trend, with some exceptions, goes on beyond that.

Still, I also wonder if Boy Scouts have declines as they've strayed from their original mission, which ironically may be nearly as relevant now as at any time in the past.  Scouting was created by Lord Baden Powell as an English movement.  He'd been a British career soldiers, served as an unconventional scout in the Boer War, and went on to be the chief of British cavalry.  Based upon his Boer War experience, he'd come to believe that British youth had become sort of sissified by city living, and he sought to correct that through exposure to life in the wild and what used to be called "woodcraft".

Scouting, in its heyday, as highly outdoorsy, sometimes agriculturally oriented, highly patriotic and it emphasized Christian virtues.  It can still be very outdoorsy, but hat emphasis started to wane in the 1970s, it seems to me.  It's also still patriotic and it still emphasizes Christian virtues, but in an age when relativism is the rule of the day, its singular approach to that can draw criticism pretty readily, while at the same time any effort to alter its traditional core values will likewise tend to weaken it a bit.  I have to wonder if it still was as rurally oriented as it once was, if it would have declined less, as I suspect that the appeal of that aspect of it is as strong as ever.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Note:  Were you a Boy Scout or Girl Scout?  Answer our poll!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Standard Transmission

U.S. Army mechanic servicing a transmission on a heavy truck, during World War Two.

My son recently obtained his "regular" driver's license and therefore is now competent, in the eyes of the state to operate conventional motor vehicles on the public roads.  The vehicle that we own that he's generally allowed to drive is a 1997 Dodge D1500 4x4 pickup truck.  For some reason, over time, this locality has become Dodge central.  We have three Dodge pickup trucks, and they're all standard transmission trucks.  We also have a Chevrolet Suburban, and its an automatic.  Maybe all newer ones are.  Anyhow, the topic of driving came up the other day and he mentioned that a friend of his asked him about how to drive a standard transmission, which is a question I don't think I'd have thought to ask anyone when I was 16 years old.  I knew how to drive a standard transmission.  I think that all the boys I hung out with did.

Which isn't to say that we all drove standard transmissions all the time when we were first driving.  Thinking back, at age 16, I'd owned a vehicle, a Jeep, that had a standard transmission for a year by the time I obtained my license.  But my next vehicle, a Ford F100 (yes, F100, they don't make a "light" half tone any more, but in 1974, the year mine was made, they did) was an automatic transmission.  So was the next vehicle I owned after that, a 1974 Dodge D150.  But since the D150 I've never personally bought another automatic.  I prefer manual transmissions.  I have owned two, sort of.  I inherited a 1973 Mercury Comet, a great car, that was an automatic, and the car that we bought a decade ago for my wife is the aforementioned Suburban.

But I've owned a lot more standards and the only times I've actually purchased a vehicle new, they were standards.  I've owned just about every type as well, from "three on the tree" types, now a thing of the distant past, to the once very standard four speed transmission, to the current six speed.  As most of my vehicles have been 4x4s as well, I've also always had, on my vehicles, the manual shifter for the transfer case.  On one older 4x4 I once had, I had three levers, one for the transmission, one for the high and low range of gears in the transmission, and one for the transfer case, a once very common arrangement that  even those who drive modern standard transmission 4x4s would probably be baffled by at first.

I can't say really why I prefer standards, but I do.  I guess I like the ability to determine what gear I think I should be in, rather than have hydraulic pressure determine that for me.  And most more work like trucks were standards. But that's soon to be a thing of the past.  My guess is that within the next decade a person will have to be driving a very heavy truck in order for it to be purchased with an automatic. When electric vehicles come in, and they will, standards will be irrelevant completely, as they work differently.

Even within the past three decades this trend has been pretty evident.  At the time that I was getting ready to leave the National Guard for law school, thinking that I wouldn't have time to be a Guardsman and a law student (an erroneous decision that, hindsight being 20/20, I would have made differently, staying in the Guard while in school and after) the Army was acquiring automatic transmission heavy trucks to replace the old standard transmission trucks.  Training time, and lack of soldier familiarity with standards, was the reason why.  Since that time I think it's become almost impossible to acquire a manual in a pickup truck except if it was made by Chrysler, and the end of that day is in sight.

Gear shift and Transfer Case shifter, for my (rather obviously dirty) Dodge D3500.  A view of this type will soon be a thing of the past for new vehicles, I suspect.

This is not to say that I'm lamenting this.  I do think manual transmissions are a better option for folks who know how to really use them for trucks, but most people no longer learn how to drive a standard transmission. Shoot, most people don't even call them "standard transmissions" and automatic transmissions really are the standard today.  When electric vehicles come in they won't feature a transmission of this type at all, and neither the current automatic transmission or the manual transmission will remain, although to most drivers of automatics the difference will not be noticeable.

But what a difference it makes in regards to some people's ability to drive.  Back when standards were the norm, there were some who had problems driving simply due to that. My mother barely learned to drive an automatic, I can't imagine what driving a standard (if she ever did) was like for her.  And today, many people simply can't do it. They don't know how.

 Note:  We've added a poll on this topic off to the side.