[lbo-talk] U.S. working class: functionally literate

[snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com]

At 08:40 PM 3/3/2005, Matthew Snyder wrote:
>Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> > I am not talking about "behavior problems"
> > but about general interest in learning new things - which seems to be
> > vanishing.
>
>joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
> > The current coming-of-age generation has grown up in a virtually
> > content-free world. It has all been about filling in the form, attending
> > the right school, knowing the right people, mirrorring the right stuff.
> > There is no there there.
>
>Seriously, and with all due respect, WTF?  This is just insulting.

Frankly, I seriously doubt people are that much dumber than they used to 
be. The narrative of decline is present in every damn generation.

As grad students, we'd sit around bitching about our students and how 
standards are shot to hell. You know, at your ripe old age, we thought the 
Young Ones just weren't up to par! :) Then, one day, I listened to the 
older faculty talk about how standards are just shot to hell and this 
year's current crop of grad studs (us), well, it was just too much for my 
mentor to bear. :)

I smiled to myself, remembering the reading I'd been doing about my discipline.

You see, his profs had been saying the same thing about him and his 
graduating cohort. And the profs before that about the grad students before 
that, who grew up to complain about how their grad studs just weren't as 
good as the Old Ones.

s.s

"The setuid bit allows a program to execute with root privileges.
Suppose MeatPuppy needs access to root control in order to run
the Pope.  When Satan Himself runs it, it doesn't need root,
since Satan *is* the Root of all Evil, having user ID 0."

                      --Woodchuckery's UNIX tutorial