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Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

I'm intrigued. Strange how? Strange compared to the typical chemistry professor? Strange compared to the average, ordinary specimens one encounters on the Fedora Lounge?

How did this strangeness manifest itself?

I know he considered himself funny looking, and that this bothered him when he was a young man but I thought he got over it.

Or do you mean his opinions were strange because they were based on facts and scientific research not what he read in the papers?

As I said, I found his personality to be very strange...the way he interacted with people. Feel free to form your own opinions.
 
Messages
11,914
Location
Southern California
I was here before all the nuts came out here and I am not leaving until I get rid of all the hippies and nuts...In other words, I am not leaving until all of the people here agree with me.:p
Unless you've discovered the secret to immortality, it's not going to happen. :D

...The good weather will return without the people pollution...
I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Last night the low temperature here was around 78°F, and the humidity percentage wasn't much lower than that number. I don't know if we're (humans) causing it, if it's a natural cycle, or a combination of the two, but I'm convinced climate change/global warming/whateveryouwanttocallit exists.

The ability to make change...
Around here it's mostly the "kids" (i.e., under the age of 30) who have this problem...I blame New Math. lol

But seriously, my wife worked at a local McDonald's restaurant in her teen years, and counting the change as she handed it to the customer was mandatory then; these days you're lucky if the kid behind the counter puts it into your hand without dropping half of it on the floor. :mmph:
 
I personally think Ford's Panther Platform was the best one ever made. Anything from that era with an LTD or Crown Victoria badge on it is definitely worth having. Good picks for cars, especially in one's youth. Even if you wreck in one of those, you've got a lot of vehicle to protect you.

Let me be more clear here. lol lol I meant that car in brown is ugly. It is nowhere as ugly in general as many modern Hamster cars today. The Breadbox on wheels thing is getting old now.
 
Unless you've discovered the secret to immortality, it's not going to happen. :D

I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Last night the low temperature here was around 78°F, and the humidity percentage wasn't much lower than that number. I don't know if we're (humans) causing it, if it's a natural cycle, or a combination of the two, but I'm convinced climate change/global warming/whateveryouwanttocallit exists.

Immortality hahahahahahhaahh! Why yes, yes I have hahahahahhahahah! (evil laugh)

It is called global cooling. The ice age is returning. It hasn't warmed one degree in over 15 years now....:doh:
 
Messages
11,914
Location
Southern California
...The ice age is returning. It hasn't warmed one degree in over 15 years now....:doh:
Someone should tell the meteorologists. In my home town (Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles) every one of the record high temperatures for the "summer" months (June through September) has been set after 2003, average temperatures have been on a slow but steady increase since 1880, and humidity has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. You wanna' get warm? Come on down!!! lol
 
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Someone should tell the meteorologists. In my home town (Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles) every one of the record high temperatures for the "summer" months (June through September) has been set after 2003, average temperatures have been on a slow but steady increase since 1880, and humidity has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. You wanna' get warm? Come on down!!! lol

I got that from a meteorologist. Obviously our two have different conclusions. It sure has been a whole lot colder here---in summer and winter. Perhaps it is an overall temperature remaining static. I'll get the data when I get a chance.
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
Someone should tell the meteorologists. In my home town (Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles) every one of the record high temperatures for the "summer" months (June through September) has been set after 2003, average temperatures have been on a slow but steady increase since 1880, and humidity has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. You wanna' get warm? Come on down!!! lol

I live in Canada and I like Global Warming. Unfortunately it was a false alarm. We had a string of 3 or 4 mild winters in the 90s, now things are back to normal with the same old winters I remember as a kid 50 years ago. I had my hopes up but the whole thing was a fizzle.
 
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Gregg Axley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,125
Location
Tennessee
I live in Canada and I like Global Warming. Unfortunately it was a false alarm. We had a string of 3 or 4 mild winters in the 90s, now things are back to normal with the same old winters I remember as a kid 50 years ago. I had my hopes up but the whole thing was a fizzle.
I have some friends up there, near Kitchner.
There isn't any global warming from what I can tell, especially in the winter.
Negative 30? Are you kidding me?
And a few of these friends are women, that grow the hair on their legs out during this time to help keep warm! :)
No wonder they party hard when it warms up, they only have 8-10 weeks of the stuff.
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
Around here it's mostly the "kids" (i.e., under the age of 30) who have this problem...I blame New Math. lol:

Odd isn't it that "The New Math" was pretty much a dead letter in most American schools well before the end of the 1960's. It is really amazing how pernicious was its influence, that children who were not even born when it's use was discontinued have had their computational skills injured by it, a teaching method to which they were never even exposed.
 
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LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,085
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Last night the low temperature here was around 78°F, and the humidity percentage wasn't much lower than that number. I don't know if we're (humans) causing it, if it's a natural cycle, or a combination of the two, but I'm convinced climate change/global warming/whateveryouwanttocallit exists.

Our winters used to be simple and predictable: you'd be below freezing at night before the end of October, you'd see the first snow by the second week of November, there would be snow on the ground by Thanksgiving, and you wouldn't see the bare grass again until end of March. Snowstorms in April and even into May were not unheard of.

We haven't had that kind of a winter in a long time. We got essentially no snow at all the winter before last -- I had one 25lb sack of rock salt last the whole season for the sidewalk down at work -- and this past winter other than that giant storm in February, I didn't have to do a whole lot of shoveling.

I don't know what's going on, but it's freakish. And given humanity's talent for turning everything it touches into dross, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be to blame.

As far as humidity goes, that's *really* freakish. Usually it's sweater weather by the first of September, but lately we've had hot, humid weather right into early fall. The humidity is such that there's a gigantic patch of moss growing on my driveway, and I'm seeing slugs in my cellar the size of my fist.

We screened "Soylent Green" at work today. Seemed like a documentary.
 
Odd isn't it that "The New Math" was pretty much a dead letter in most American schools well before the end of the 1960's. It is really amazing how pernicious was its influence, that children who were not even born when it's use was discontinued have had their computational skills injured by it, a teaching method to which they were never even exposed.

Read about it again. There are areas that it went on well down into the 1980s. It didn't end by the 1960s. It was invented then. It took a while for some parts of the country to come to their damned senses. :rolleyes:
Even when it ended it got replaced with the even more stupid Outcome Based Education that was worse in some sense because they concentrate more on Feeeelings instead of getting the right answer. So we can say that it started with New Math and progressed downward from there. Blame New Math for taking us off of what worked for nearly a century as it was---yes!
 
Messages
11,914
Location
Southern California
I got that from a meteorologist. Obviously our two have different conclusions. It sure has been a whole lot colder here---in summer and winter. Perhaps it is an overall temperature remaining static. I'll get the data when I get a chance.
And that's part of the controversy over the whole global warming/climate change theory--even the so-called experts can't agree because they're analyzing the same data but drawing different conclusions. Sometimes I think meteorology is nothing more than a "dog and pony" show; if I had their "correct-to-incorrect" ratio when I was working, I wouldn't have been working long.

...We screened "Soylent Green" at work today. Seemed like a documentary.
So does a movie called Idiocracy. It's not a particularly good movie, admittedly, but it seems to be sadly prophetic.

I understand when you say your local weather patterns used to be predictable. In this part of southern California, 30-40 years ago it would start to warm up in June, stay hot until mid-October, then cool down with the occasional rainstorm until May, and start all over again. Granted, we never had the extreme temperature changes from season to season that much of the U.S. experiences (i.e., it hasn't snowed here in my lifetime), but we have our own version of "winter/summer wear" (one that most of the country would find laughable by comparison), and high humidity was a rarity. But over the years the temperatures during the summer months have gotten higher, the temperatures during the winter months have gotten lower, and the humidity during the summer months has rivaled that of the midwest. Until this past week, this summer has been ridiculously mild with temperatures in the mid- to upper-80s (°F) during the day. Then, overnight, we're hitting temperatures over 100°F and humidity in the 80-90% range. And, most unusual, we've had rain every month--only enough to dirty the windshields, but still extremely unusual for this area. Anyway, in this area the pendulum is swinging wider these days; hotter in the summer, colder in the winter. It's been a slow, gradual change to be sure, but noticeable.
 
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3fingers

One Too Many
Messages
1,797
Location
Illinois
Odd isn't it that "The New Math" was pretty much a dead letter in most American schools well before the end of the 1960's.
My youngest son, who is 12 is still being taught elements of it now. They change the name, but it is the same BS and the teachers still don't understand how to teach it any better now than they did when I was in school. It is maddening. I have talked to his teachers about why they don't teach the kids how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and they look at me like I am insane and say we are teaching the strategies that are in the book. So we teach it at home instead. Math is much easier for him now that he understands the point of doing it.
 

rene_writer

Familiar Face
Messages
82
Location
The Sunshine State
Odd isn't it that "The New Math" was pretty much a dead letter in most American schools well before the end of the 1960's.

I don't know what you would call the math they teach now, but I can tell you that I am only 22 years old and when I was learning long division, my class had the lowest grades in the district, though the average itself was very poor. Frustrated, the teacher went to the local library, found a work book from the 1950's and copied off pages for the class. Within one semester, the class had the highest average in the county. It was more than ten years ago, so I can't remember the exact differences in the instructions, except to say that one day it made no sense and the next day it was easy.

Furthermore, my algebra teacher was on his last year of teaching before retirement. He strictly forbade us to read the lessons in our Saxon math books. Instead, we were to watch him teach on the blackboard every day and complete the lesson every night. Of course, I did sneak reads of the book and the way that it was teaching the skills and processes was completely different from what the teacher was showing us.

So, I don't know what you would conclude from that, except that with the Saxon math books nobody (that is, the students, the parents, and the older teachers) knew what the heck was being taught.
 
I don't know what you would call the math they teach now, but I can tell you that I am only 22 years old and when I was learning long division, my class had the lowest grades in the district, though the average itself was very poor. Frustrated, the teacher went to the local library, found a work book from the 1950's and copied off pages for the class. Within one semester, the class had the highest average in the county. It was more than ten years ago, so I can't remember the exact differences in the instructions, except to say that one day it made no sense and the next day it was easy.

Furthermore, my algebra teacher was on his last year of teaching before retirement. He strictly forbade us to read the lessons in our Saxon math books. Instead, we were to watch him teach on the blackboard every day and complete the lesson every night. Of course, I did sneak reads of the book and the way that it was teaching the skills and processes was completely different from what the teacher was showing us.

So, I don't know what you would conclude from that, except that with the Saxon math books nobody (that is, the students, the parents, and the older teachers) knew what the heck was being taught.

You had what is now referred to as Outcome Based Math. They concentrate more on the process than getting the right answer. It confuses the students and frustrates the teachers----as you have seen for yourself. :p
 

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