(01-31-2014 01:51 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:36 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:34 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:30 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:24 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  Or just didn't want to. Perhaps there were other things to be focused on. I don't know about you, but I don't really like buying something brand new and it being out of date 6 months to a year later with a totally new model released. Take the 1988 to 1998 Chevy pickup truck. Same body style every year, never changed. Then it changed from 1999 to 2003, from 2003 to 2007, from 2008 to 2012. You can't even have the thing paid off before a brand new model is released unless you pay a lot per month.

Had other things to focus on? Magnavox, Phillips, RCA, etc had nothing else to focus on but advancing technology. They had the best engineers available and still couldn't move very fast.

Because they were designing the technology that we still use today. Everything that we have today was built on what came from their minds.

Not to mention today's average young man would be clueless on a farm.

They were and we're designing the technology that they'll still use years from now.

The average young man would be clueless on a farm because he probably doesn't live on one, not because he couldn't learn to do it.

which leads to today's young man having less problem solving skills than a young man in the 19th and early 20th century.

This conversation has been had since near the beginning of time. It was common around the 19th and early 20th century to say that young men weren't as prepared for life as those of the 18th century.

There are different problems to solve.

(01-31-2014 01:59 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:51 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:36 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:34 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:30 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  Had other things to focus on? Magnavox, Phillips, RCA, etc had nothing else to focus on but advancing technology. They had the best engineers available and still couldn't move very fast.

Because they were designing the technology that we still use today. Everything that we have today was built on what came from their minds.

Not to mention today's average young man would be clueless on a farm.

They were and we're designing the technology that they'll still use years from now.

The average young man would be clueless on a farm because he probably doesn't live on one, not because he couldn't learn to do it.

which leads to today's young man having less problem solving skills than a young man in the 19th and early 20th century.

This conversation has been had since near the beginning of time. It was common around the 19th and early 20th century to say that young men weren't as prepared for life as those of the 18th century.

There are different problems to solve.

We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

(01-31-2014 02:01 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

I don't think anyone is knocking the advancements of the late 19th and early 20th century or their importance. Yet even in America, without the intricate systems of today, more than half of the population would be dead within a year.

(01-31-2014 02:10 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:01 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

I don't think anyone is knocking the advancements of the late 19th and early 20th century or their importance. Yet even in America, without the intricate systems of today, more than half of the population would be dead within a year.

I think you are backing up my point in another way. Surely people would suffer. But having the latest smart phone app is small potatoes compared to our infrastructure.

(01-31-2014 01:58 PM)mlb Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:51 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  If you took one of us back to their time and said "function", we'd be lost. We'd haul water ok, and maybe start a fire. But, we wouldn't know how to bake bread, we wouldn't know how to milk a cow, we wouldn't know how to hitch horses, we wouldn't know how to plow, plant or reap (depending on the season) we wouldn't know how to mend a shingle or a shirt. We might be trained on some of those w/in a half-hour, but we wouldn't be proficient.

Fair point... as society we've grown enough to take those things out of the equation for a regular person which frees them up to do other jobs. That isn't a bad thing... it has allowed for us to do more science and entertainment innovations.

In 1895 it took days for news to get around the country. They didn't know when a hurricane was approaching the coast. They didn't have submarines that could stay under water for 6 months at a time without surfacing and resupplying. The world is just different... I think in today's world the most important thing a kid needs to know is how to get an answer.

I think most kids could do the story problems provided you told them what a bushel is (which, admittedly, I did not know). I could have done the rest of the problem but I had no idea it was 1.244 cubic feet. I don't remember a lot of my physics equations, but if you gave me a list of equations and enough information to plug in the numbers I could do it. It is basic algebra for most of the work... until you get to the engineering physics with the calculus background of course. :)

Tell me one thing, mlb, how would you survive after a solar storm? And they're very possible.

(01-31-2014 02:01 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:59 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:51 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:36 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 01:34 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  Because they were designing the technology that we still use today. Everything that we have today was built on what came from their minds.

Not to mention today's average young man would be clueless on a farm.

They were and we're designing the technology that they'll still use years from now.

The average young man would be clueless on a farm because he probably doesn't live on one, not because he couldn't learn to do it.

which leads to today's young man having less problem solving skills than a young man in the 19th and early 20th century.

This conversation has been had since near the beginning of time. It was common around the 19th and early 20th century to say that young men weren't as prepared for life as those of the 18th century.

There are different problems to solve.

We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

The same will be said a hundred years from now.

(01-31-2014 02:15 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:10 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:01 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

I don't think anyone is knocking the advancements of the late 19th and early 20th century or their importance. Yet even in America, without the intricate systems of today, more than half of the population would be dead within a year.

I think you are backing up my point in another way. Surely people would suffer. But having the latest smart phone app is small potatoes compared to our infrastructure.

It's not like they could keep our infrastructure up either.

(01-31-2014 01:22 PM)AngryAphid Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 11:39 AM)200yrs2late Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 11:30 AM)AngryAphid Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 09:40 AM)200yrs2late Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 08:23 AM)AngryAphid Wrote:  Wagon boxes just 3 feet wide were advantageous in the fields, but they would hold no more than 60 bushels…
the way Obadia stacked them, you could get a couple more coomb.

A bushel is 1.244 cubic feet, but 1.25 cubic feet is used for easy math. In the problem you reference it would only hold 48 bushels. Your assumption that the width alone would limit capacity is incorrect. You didn't account for varying heights and lengths.

It's amazing how you can tell how and in what manner most kids were raised by the questions on the tests.

The question wasn’t about math as much as it was about common sense.
Stack them high, make less trips.

Don't know where you get that from. You can't stack loose grain any higher than the container you are putting it in. Seemed like a math problem to me seeing as how it gave the volume of the wagon and the number of material going into the wagon. The only piece of information needed was the conversion factor for bushels to cubic feet.

Obviously you have never took part in harvest.

Place a piece of plywood on top of a bushel (as to make a flat surface), put a bushel on top of it…. it’s hillbilly easy to do.

I grew up on a farm, still farm, and currently have 8 tractor trailers hauling grain and fertilizer on a daily basis for half of eastern NC.

You miss the point completely in the question. It was asking how many bushels the wagon would hold, not how many bushel baskets. Seeing as how it is a math question they were looking for the conversion factor and the solution to the basic math problem 60 cubic ft / 1.25 cubic ft per bushel = 48 bushels in the wagon.

Obviously you weren't too good at word problems.

(01-31-2014 02:23 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  Tell me one thing, mlb, how would you survive after a solar storm? And they're very possible.

LSU, we already know that society as a whole is going to crumble should something come and take out the basics we have come to expect (electricity and food in supermarkets).

While I garden, I certainly don't produce enough food in Dayton, Ohio to survive a year.

Honestly, what will happen in the case should an EMP or solar storm happen is that we will end up with gangs of people pillaging others for food and water. Whoever has the biggest guns will win.

Hopefully it never comes to that...

(01-31-2014 02:15 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:10 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:01 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  We could live without our technological advances. We could not live without theirs.

I don't think anyone is knocking the advancements of the late 19th and early 20th century or their importance. Yet even in America, without the intricate systems of today, more than half of the population would be dead within a year.

I think you are backing up my point in another way. Surely people would suffer. But having the latest smart phone app is small potatoes compared to our infrastructure.

Probably, especially since I believe you're limiting your critique to late 20th/21st Century innovations. Take for instance the Internet. While a fantastic invention I'm sure no one could imagine living without, most of us on this board (and our families) probably functioned just fine without it as we grew up. That is because of an underlying telcom network, extensive radio/TV communications as well as a robust library and university systems.

(01-31-2014 02:26 PM)mlb Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:23 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  Tell me one thing, mlb, how would you survive after a solar storm? And they're very possible.

LSU, we already know that society as a whole is going to crumble should something come and take out the basics we have come to expect (electricity and food in supermarkets).

While I garden, I certainly don't produce enough food in Dayton, Ohio to survive a year.

Honestly, what will happen in the case should an EMP or solar storm happen is that we will end up with gangs of people pillaging others for food and water. Whoever has the biggest guns will win.

Hopefully it never comes to that...

Good answer... Just seems like you're too reliant on 21st century technology... Speaking of which, do you know what the most popular phone was at the turn of the century? It was a long open faced Nokia with an antenna. In just 13 years, look where technology has taken us. It's because with one advancement, another is just an upgrade away. Minus a contact lense that doubles as a phone, what could they POSSIBLY think of next in the mobile phone lineup? What was the average HD for a PC in 2000? A couple hundred MB? Now you can get laptops for $600.00 that have a 17" screen and a TB of hard drive. That's just 13 years... Once the tech was found, they never stopped updating and upgrading.

Personally, I appreciated things more in the 90's.

Since I work in IT I appreciate technology to the fullest extent. I know that I am essentially addicted to my smart phone... have an answer to any question I could possibly have at my finger tips all the time.

I also recognize the issues we've created with all of this technology... specifically the issues we would have with a massive solar storm or EMP. I love how we hear about upgrading the electric grid to "smart grid technology" to help cut down on the lost electricity due to the inefficiencies in the grid. The thing about it is the more efficient the grid becomes, the more at risk it is to solar storms. The grid needs places to ground the power and not pop the transformers. By making our grid more efficient we are quite possibly setting up mankind's failure just based on the solar storm risk (which I think ultimately is society's greatest risk outside of nuking ourselves through a dumb war).

Does anyone remember when you paid $0.25 for a text message, or when you only got like 50 per month? That's because their original purpose was to be used for sending a quick message to someone when they didn't have time to make a call. Now people have gotten so dependent on it that the laws have had to be changed because people were so concentrated on the screen of their phone that they couldn't even have enough common sense to watch the road.

I didn't use text messaging at first due to the cost, but I emailed and used AIM/ICQ to stay in contact with all my friends before the days of Facebook. Us engineers usually aren't big on talking on the phone... I know I never have been big on it.

(01-31-2014 02:40 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  Does anyone remember when you paid $0.25 for a text message, or when you only got like 50 per month? That's because their original purpose was to be used for sending a quick message to someone when they didn't have time to make a call. Now people have gotten so dependent on it that the laws have had to be changed because people were so concentrated on the screen of their phone that they couldn't even have enough common sense to watch the road.

I read somewhere that text messaging cost a service provider 2 or 3 times as much as talk time does and the majority of your phone bill is based on text usage if you have text messaging. I don't know if it's true or not but sounds plausible at least.

(01-31-2014 02:39 PM)mlb Wrote:  Since I work in IT I appreciate technology to the fullest extent. I know that I am essentially addicted to my smart phone... have an answer to any question I could possibly have at my finger tips all the time.

I also recognize the issues we've created with all of this technology... specifically the issues we would have with a massive solar storm or EMP. I love how we hear about upgrading the electric grid to "smart grid technology" to help cut down on the lost electricity due to the inefficiencies in the grid. The thing about it is the more efficient the grid becomes, the more at risk it is to solar storms. The grid needs places to ground the power and not pop the transformers. By making our grid more efficient we are quite possibly setting up mankind's failure just based on the solar storm risk (which I think ultimately is society's greatest risk outside of nuking ourselves through a dumb war).

IMO the inefficiency of the US Electrical Grid is why it's so resilient. And I think the question of EMP or Solar Discharges is slightly overrated. If it's an EMP (which is currently still a nuclear weapon), unless its dropped directly over a city, its effects will be diffused (inverse square law).

And while any Solar Discharge will definitely disable satellites, one massive enough to effect T&D lines and Comm Line will have a whole host of other problems far more daunting to deal with. (Radiation exposure specifically)

(01-31-2014 02:49 PM)200yrs2late Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:40 PM)LSU04_08 Wrote:  Does anyone remember when you paid $0.25 for a text message, or when you only got like 50 per month? That's because their original purpose was to be used for sending a quick message to someone when they didn't have time to make a call. Now people have gotten so dependent on it that the laws have had to be changed because people were so concentrated on the screen of their phone that they couldn't even have enough common sense to watch the road.

I read somewhere that text messaging cost a service provider 2 or 3 times as much as talk time does and the majority of your phone bill is based on text usage if you have text messaging. I don't know if it's true or not but sounds plausible at least.

Just the opposite. Texting uses far less bandwidth than voice. It's a huge cash cow for telecoms. I heard the other day that 97% of profits were derived from texting (that may have been for European telecoms). It's been a win-win for them, they LOVE it.

I had texting w/ a company phone. Now that I'm paying my own again, I have a simple flip phone and cheap coverage. To me, just having a cell phone is a huge tool.

(01-31-2014 02:54 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  IMO the inefficiency of the US Electrical Grid is why it's so resilient. And I think the question of EMP or Solar Discharges is slightly overrated. If it's an EMP (which is currently still a nuclear weapon), unless its dropped directly over a city, its effects will be diffused (inverse square law).

And while any Solar Discharge will definitely disable satellites, one massive enough to effect T&D lines and Comm Line will have a whole host of other problems far more daunting to deal with. (Radiation exposure specifically)

From what I've read, the more efficient we make the grid the more susceptible it is to a solar storm. The last major one that caused problems on the ground happened in the 1800's and caused telegraph operators to be shocked. When something like that happens again I think we will have major issues on our hands. The good news is that with the satellites we have watching the Sun we will have some sort of advanced notice to hopefully protect any vulnerable systems.

(01-31-2014 03:08 PM)mlb Wrote:  

(01-31-2014 02:54 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  IMO the inefficiency of the US Electrical Grid is why it's so resilient. And I think the question of EMP or Solar Discharges is slightly overrated. If it's an EMP (which is currently still a nuclear weapon), unless its dropped directly over a city, its effects will be diffused (inverse square law).

And while any Solar Discharge will definitely disable satellites, one massive enough to effect T&D lines and Comm Line will have a whole host of other problems far more daunting to deal with. (Radiation exposure specifically)

From what I've read, the more efficient we make the grid the more susceptible it is to a solar storm. The last major one that caused problems on the ground happened in the 1800's and caused telegraph operators to be shocked. When something like that happens again I think we will have major issues on our hands. The good news is that with the satellites we have watching the Sun we will have some sort of advanced notice to hopefully protect any vulnerable systems.

8.6 minutes isn't a lot of time to turn stuff off.

(01-31-2014 02:39 PM)mlb Wrote:  Since I work in IT I appreciate technology to the fullest extent. I know that I am essentially addicted to my smart phone... have an answer to any question I could possibly have at my finger tips all the time.

I also recognize the issues we've created with all of this technology... specifically the issues we would have with a massive solar storm or EMP. I love how we hear about upgrading the electric grid to "smart grid technology" to help cut down on the lost electricity due to the inefficiencies in the grid. The thing about it is the more efficient the grid becomes, the more at risk it is to solar storms. The grid needs places to ground the power and not pop the transformers. By making our grid more efficient we are quite possibly setting up mankind's failure just based on the solar storm risk (which I think ultimately is society's greatest risk outside of nuking ourselves through a dumb war).

The solar superstorm of 1859 killed the telegraph service and shocked anyone using one... If it were to happen to us today? Some say we've entered into the solar storm era.

What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?