The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
Alz.org says that sometimes using the wrong word is not a symptom of Alzheimers but having difficulty carrying on a conversation is. I don't notice either of you having that difficulty. :)
I've started the FSF story on your recommendation. It's good, so far.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 31, 2017, 03:27:56 pm ---Alz.org says that sometimes using the wrong word is not a symptom of Alzheimers but having difficulty carrying on a conversation is. I don't notice either of you having that difficulty. :)
--- End quote ---
Yes, but here we're writing. We have time to think about what we "say," so word-finding difficulty isn't quite so apparent as it is in actual conversation.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2017, 09:16:04 am ---I don't know, but--I'm not kidding--the same thing is happening to me. Frequently. :(
--- End quote ---
Good to know it's not just me.
--- Quote ---I've been chalking it up to a combination of two things, normal aging (at least, I hope) and also the effect of so much typing on a computer keyboard. I can type so much faster on a computer keyboard than I ever could on a typewriter, and it appears that I can type faster than I can think. :(
--- End quote ---
You're lucky you can type! Despite all the typing people do these days, I'm not sure it's being taught in schools. I know neither of my sons ever took it as a class. They seem to get around a keyboard OK, writing papers in some sort of self-taught manner.
I work with a guy who's a writer and uses a kind of multi-fingered hunt-and-peck method.
Typing at a certain rate was a requirement to get into journalism school where I went. And to do that, you'd have to be able to type the real way. I noticed over the years that it was not a requirement at one of the local private schools that also offered a journalism major, because I worked with some of its alumni, and they couldn't type.
And yesterday, this woman at work who's maybe 56 but grew up in Duluth said that in her high school all the girls were required to take typing. I could hardly believe it -- in the late '70s the were still that sexist??
Well, at least some of those boys from Duluth may now be regretting having been excused from taking it.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on April 01, 2017, 11:40:45 am ---And yesterday, this woman at work who's maybe 56 but grew up in Duluth said that in her high school all the girls were required to take typing. I could hardly believe it -- in the late '70s the were still that sexist??
--- End quote ---
When I was in junior high (it may have been ninth grade; I forget for sure which grade it was), all of us, boys and girls, had to take a class called "Business Education." Not only were we taught to type, we were also taught things like how to write checks and keep a checkbook. To this day I still keep my checkbook the way I was taught in that class. (I think there is, or was, a name for the method of typing when you don't look at the keyboard while you're typing, but I forget that, too. We were required to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard.)
The sexism in my junior high, in the early Seventies, was that girls took Home Ec and boys took Shop.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2017, 12:01:07 pm ---Not only were we taught to type, we were also taught things like how to write checks and keep a checkbook.
--- End quote ---
I still type, but I quit keeping my checkbook years on years ago. In fact, these days I only write a check or two a month, if that.
That's what I'm thinking of, I guess -- not exactly hunt-and-peck typing, where you'd use just your index finger and look around for each letter, one by one. But I know people who are actual writers who, though they use multiple fingers, have to look at the keyboard and don't use the right fingers for the right keys or keep their hands in the "home" position or anything.
--- Quote ---The sexism in my junior high, in the early Seventies, was that girls took Home Ec and boys took Shop.
--- End quote ---
In mine, I think both genders (there were only two genders back then) had to take one class in each, but could go further in either if they wanted. I remember boys taking the cooking class -- we made ice cream and root beer, so who can blame them? But I don't recall any boys in the sewing class, where we made elastic-waisted dirndl skirts. :laugh: I took a shop class where we made a little wooden shelf, which my mom put up in her kitchen, and a picture or design that we hammered into I piece of brass and affixed to a piece of wood that we had sanded and stained. I don't even remember what my picture was! That's all I took of either one, though in high school I took graphic arts, which skewed slightly male.
Mine must have been kind of a cutting edge junior high, I guess. We even had an English class on the poetry of Bob Dylan. I was so young I barely knew who Bob Dylan was! The teacher was probably at least in her 50s, so I'm pretty sure she didn't live to see him win the Nobel Prize. :-\
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