Your Roundup I'm Listening, by Tom Garrett
Another reason I get angry with the TV news media.
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28 March 2009 at 12:58 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
They said it again. The same dumb thing they say at least twice every year.
“Blacks are failling behind in earnings again this year.”
The implication?
We need to do something about it because blacks are being treated unfairly in getting jobs.
Let me preface my answer with my usual disclaimer regarding prejudice.
Don't have any. Never had, never will.
Lost at least two promotions in the Air Force because I fought for the rights of blacks.
Okay, having forestalled the usual, “Oh, but you're prejudiced, you rat faced fink.”
Here's the reason blacks are falling behind. They have an average IQ of 83 instead 100. That means they take blue collar jobs more often than whites.
And don't give me the old “cultural differences on the test” baloney either. Research clearly shows that to be untrue.
So what should we really be doing?
Pay those who can't get a job wearing a gray flanner suit the amount their labor is worth.
In my opinion, one man's labor is one man's labor. Maybe he can't polish a chair with the seat of his pants, but if he is doing an important job, and doing it well, he deserves to be paid for it.
That goes for women too, of course.
At this point in time the earnings curves for the desk polishers is going straight up (remenber those AIG million dollar bonuses?), while the earnings curve for blue collar workers is going down.
28 March 2009 at 2:01 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
How does the media know how much anyone is being paid or what color they are?
SWAG: someone's wild a— guess?
What kind of jobs are they doing?
I am sure the black Drs and nurses are getting the same pay as other medical people.
Same with any other employment. Do your job and do it right and you will get what you deserve, not what you think you are worth.
Statistics can be turned anyway you want them if you put a little thought into it.
28 March 2009 at 3:56 p.m.
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Pat (Pat Johnson) says…
I'm curious to find out what research “proves” that a person with black skin has an average IQ of 83 instead of 100. Who has the IQ of 100? People with white skin? Yellow skin? Brown skin? I didn't know IQ tests were administered according to the color of one's skin, and if they are, we are in a much sorrier state than I thought. How very sad.
p.s. Don't tell Colin Powell or Condeleeza Rice!
28 March 2009 at 4:42 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Pat Johnson
Skewed statistics again.
Pat Randall
28 March 2009 at 5:22 p.m.
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Pat (Pat Johnson) says…
Pat Randall: Here's the only statistic I believe: 50% of all doctors, lawyers, etc. graduated in the bottom half of their class. That one can't be skewed! :-)
28 March 2009 at 5:49 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Pat J.
I'll go for that.
Pat R
28 March 2009 at 8:09 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Pat J.
Since we are on schools here is something I read recently.
Medical schools teach 2 things. To prescribe drugs and cut out parts of a person's anatomy which is surgery.
28 March 2009 at 10:18 p.m.
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Pat (Pat Johnson) says…
I agree, Pat, that most primary care physicians only learn how to diagnose and treat most illnesses through medication and surgery.
However, in the past four years that I have been treated for breast cancer, I have found amazing specialists (right here in Payson) who were taught how to kill every fast growing cell in my body and still keep me alive and functioning. I have been poked, prodded, cut on, radiated 37 times, had 58 chemotherapy sessions and Lord knows what else, and I'm still here, working every day of the week, thanks to them.
My secret is that I see my physician not as a god figure, but as my “body mechanic”. If he or she is not doing a good job, they get fired, just like I would fire a mechanic who won't fix my car the right way. I may be a “patient”, but I'm still a consumer!
29 March 2009 at 7:50 a.m.
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Goldplay (Dean Shields) says…
Pat J, was Doctor Kasper your Oncologist?
29 March 2009 at 10:30 a.m.
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Pat (Pat Johnson) says…
Hi Dean!
Yes, Dr. Kasper is my Oncologist.
29 March 2009 at 10:41 a.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Pat J
It isn't only primary care.
Since the seventies with all the things that my husband has had, we have been at the mercy of a lot of so called specialists. The last 4 years were the worst.
I found the smarter and better the Dr. was the more down to earth they were. Would take time to talk in real language so we could understand. They weren't trying to impress us with all their knowledge.
Stanford University Medical in Palo Alto and St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco had the most wonderful, drs and staff of anywhere.
Stanford had one of only two sleep centers in the US for sleep apnea when my husband went there in 1977.
They sent my husband back to Ariz for surgery for a trach. with about 10 pages of diagnosis and what to do. They thought it would be better for a Dr. near home to do it so we wouldn't have to keep making trips back to Calif.
Good Sam. Drs in Phx said there was nothing wrong with him because they had never heard of sleep apnea, got him out of there took him to Mesa and the Dr. there did it wrong, Back to Stanford with his throat swollen out larger than his head.
Took the Dr. there 10 minutes to fix it.
When Stanford found a new way to help his sleep apnea without the trach. we went back there for his surgery and no problem.
My husband was in the first 100 people to have an angioplasty done in the US. and it was done at St. Mary's in San Francisco.
I would write a book but it would be placed in fiction as no one would believe what he has gone thru with medical people.
29 March 2009 at 11:32 a.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
“How does the media know how much anyone is being paid or what color they are?”
Labor Department statistics.
“What kind of jobs are they doing?”
The people who have on the bottom of the work pyramid, the people who really can't get a better job because they don't have what it takes or don't want one, get the low paying jobs. Doesn't matter if they are white, black, or charteuse.
Go to the Amazon warehouse in the valley, where people stand all day packing boxes. About a third to half of them are blacks.
” I am sure the black Drs and nurses are getting the same pay as other medical people.”
Sure they do. Why shouldn't they? You missed the point, Pat. Because the average IQ of a blaxk falls seventeen points below that of whites, they are more likely to be in low-paying jobs. And over the last thirty years the wage curve for blue collar jobs has not risen along with that of other jobs. It used to be that every generation earned more than the one before it. It NoT trye now. The money that used to go to people who actually work is now siphoned off by the people at the top.
” Do your job and do it right and you will get what you deserve, not what you think you are worth.”
Pat, you have obviously never worked for a large corporation.
“I'm curious to find out what research proves that a person with black skin has an average IQ of 83 instead of 100.”
Pat, you can pick up Lord only knows how many books that will provide you with those statistics. And you can go to Lord only knows how many sites on the web that will provide them for you too. Shoot! Any good encyclopedia contains that data. Try looking in—say—Wikipedia on the web. I'll bet you dollars to dougnuts you'll find it there.
Furthermore, if you don't mind me pointing it out, the statistics on blacks is not the point here, not really. The point is the fact that EVERYoNE on the low end of the pay scale is getting less than he or she should get. And I don't mean minimum wages jobs, either. I mean skilled laborers.
Don't take my word for it. Go look it up. It is a wrong thing. It should not be.
The statistics are correct, and they are beside the point. We are talking about corporate America changing the way our wages are structured.
29 March 2009 at 12:23 p.m.
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Pat (Pat Johnson) says…
Tom,
I Googled the question “Are Blacks intellectually inferior to Whites?” and I couldn't find one source that had any statistics to prove your point. So, let's agree to disagree. But I hold fast to my opinion that intellect can't be judged by the color of one's skin.
29 March 2009 at 2:11 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Tom,
You know I get into trouble when I argue but here goes.
Have all blacks, browns, pink and white had thier IQ tested? NO !
So a few of each were tested and WOW whites are smarter than blacks.
I don't think so.
It is an individual thing and what you want to do with your life.
Maybe some whites are smarter, some of them don't even work and get more money and benefits than people that go out and bust their butts everyday.
I have never had mine tested. I never cared what it was.
Don't even think of making a remark about that (:
I was smart enough to run 2 different small corp. and then sell them for way more than they were worth.
I think IQ testing is useless anyway. What does it prove? Has anyone done IQ tests on all drs. and lawyers?
My husband never finished the 10th grade and was much smarter than a lot of people with several college degrees. No, he couldn't do brain surgery but most everything else he could figure out. He could calculate in his head faster than most people can run a calculator.
Repair or build almost anything.
The only problem he had was spelling and that was because he spelled like the word sounded.
He could never understand why there was an e at the end of blonde, or why pnuemonia started with a p, but it wasn't because he had a low IQ.
Statistics are crap. I hate it when I fill out a form and it has the question, Black, Caucasian, or whatever else is on there. I either ignore it or put an x somewhere it doesn't belong. If it is a mail in form no one knows the difference. So much for statistics.
If statistics on black IQ's is not the point and the reason they earn less money, why did you put it in?
30 March 2009 at 12:17 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Pat,
IQ testing is one of the most useful measures we have of success. It is done much more widely than you may think. The reason you don't know that is because most places that give IQ tests change the name to avoid problems with people that have a hard time with the idea that some people are just naturally brighter than others.
For example, the tests given by the military at recruiting stations are IQ tests. They just give them another name. ASVAB, for example.
And many, many tests given by governmental agencies and private businesses are IQ tests. Tests given by universities are sometimes IQ tests.
What you are saying about some people doing better than others because they are hard workers is absolutely true, but it doesn't change the fact that if you take two people who have the same work ethic and put them in a job that requires intelligence, an IQ test will accurately predict which one will do better.
I don't know why it is, but many people look upon facts about intelligence as threatening or elitist, when all they are is facts. Facts are facts. You can't argue with facts.
The simple truth is that people are born with a wide range of differences. Some are tall, some short. Some are naturally stronger, some weaker. Some have great patience, some have little. Some have athletic ability, some have little or none. And so on….
You want the bottom line?
Not a single one of those people did a dang thing to earn those traits. They were born with them. You can be as thick as snot or a bright as the sun, but you, yourself, did absolutely nothing to earn it.
You start with what you are born with, and you go from there. Some people do a lot with what they were given; others do almost nothing.
“If statistics on black IQ's is not the point and the reason they earn less money, why did you put it in?”
I put it in because it was what NBC News said about blacks that got me stirred up. That's what this whole string is about. Their report implies that blacks constantly lose ground in wages and salaries because of some kind of great secret conspiracy against blacks. The truth is that all wage earners are losing ground in comparison to upper level white collar workers. It's been happening for 30 years, and its wrong! That's what riles me up.
I'm going to answer Pat's comment in my next post. Read it. It will help you to understand.
30 March 2009 at 12:20 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Pat,
Believe me, I would never post a statistic on the forum that wasn't a fact, nor am I trying in any way to put blacks down.
Try this and it will work for you: Just go to Google and enter “average black IQ.”
You'll get 4,000,000 hits.
If you read carefully and stick with the authoritative studies you'll find that the statistics I quoted are accurate, proven, accepted, and common knowledge among those who deal with human intelligence.
And by the way, if you are interested in learning more about such things as IQ, bell curves, standard deviations and the like, you could do worse than to click on the suggested allied references at the bottom of the Google page.
Intelligence is a fascinating study. You could spend some great hours getting into it, if it interests you at all.
I got into it for two reasons:
One is that before I took a degree in chemistry, physics, and biology after retiring from the Air Force, with intentions of changing my teaching field from education to the “hard” sciences, I used to teach people how to teach. Understanding intelligence and learning is central to that field.
The other is that I toyed with the idea of taking a degree in psychology, and so I took something like 60 hours in psychology and sociology. (Decided I liked hard core science better in the long run.) In any event, one of the facets of psychology that I studied in several courses was human intelligence, so I really do know what I'm talking about.
Sadly, blacks do have a lower average IQ than whites, and that forces those at the bottom of the curve to take lower paying jobs. Because of that they get the dirty end of the salary stick, not because they aren't just as “good” as anyone else, or because they don't work as hard, or do as well, or produce as much, but because of something entirely beyond their control.
My gripe with the electronic news media is that they tout the salary and wages numbers every doggone year, making big voodoo references to “blacks losing ground,” when what they should be doing is pointing out that corporate America, and the grab-the-money-and-run attitude of our time, is cheating a lot of good people, both black and white, out of their fair share of the wealth this nation creates.
I tell you all that, not because I am trying to win an argument or prove a point about black IQ, but to make sure you don't think I'm some kind of closet bigot.
Trust me; I'm not. I take people one at a time, and I don't try to make myself seem bigger by making others seem smaller.
I hope that clarifies what this string is all about. It's not about black IQ. It's about wages and salaries, and the fact that the working men and women of this country are not getting a fair shake.
30 March 2009 at 12:41 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Oh, and it would be nice if someone would comment on the fact that we are seeing the first generation since this nation was settled during the 1600's where hard working wage earning people cannot earn more than their fathers or mothers did. No matter how hard they work. No matter how faithfully they meet their employer's needs. No matter how they try. No matter how well they do. No matter how much training they get. No matter nothing!
While at the same time the curve for the salaried class has turned abruptly upwards, and people who do literally nothing get $5,000,000 dollar a year bonuses.
There is something fundamentally wrong with what is going on.
Thirty years ago, a hard working person, who stayed in his job long enough to earn a top wage could make ten to fifteen dollars an hour. In rare cases he or she could even make twenty to twenty-five dollar an hour.
The same person, doing the same thing, can only earn a few dollars more now, even though the cost of living has nearly doubled.
We are creating two classes: A wealthy class and a permanent underclass.
That's not America. That's what we came here to get away from. We don't want a nation of haves and have-nots.
If a man or woman is doing all he or she can do with what he or she has got, then that person has a God-given right to expect his or her labor to be treated with respect. And respect equates to a fair wage.
Anybody care to comment on that? That's what this string is all about.
30 March 2009 at 1:17 p.m.
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Ruby_Finney (Ruby Finney) says…
Tom,
As one of the underpaid workers of the “lower class” jobs (i.e. a woman employee who did identical work as male employees but was only allowed to earn one half the wage of a male worker) I have a couple of comments about your statements regarding the IQ factor. As a point of honor, I have to claim better than a “low IQ” but statistics even on today's labor scale prove that women doing the very same jobs are paid an average of 25% less than men are paid. Therefore, I have to agree that because they are black, many low wage workers, but not all, are indeed discriminated against.
Second, having been in business yourself at one time, I believe you have to agree that any given job is worth a certain amount of wages. This is true whether it is applied to a dishwasher, a plumber, a salesman, a supervisor, or even the CEO of a corporation. Therefore, when one has reached the top pay scale for their specific job, why should an employer be expected to keep on giving raises perpetually? Other than cost of living raises, of course. And the CEOs who are being paid such tremendous amounts as “severance pay” or “bonuses” are simply sucking the money from the very companies which have paid them well to do a job they agreed to do when hired.
There are some very talented people who are successful in bringing big corporations back to life and to a money making situation and who are certainly worth top money - Lee Iacoca and Mitt Romney come to mind - but the records of most of the CEOs I read about in the current bailout companies are not even near the class of the capable ones.
That is my opinion.
31 March 2009 at 1:10 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
I wonder what Joe Kennedy's IQ was. Jack, Bobby and Ted's dad.
Think it was his IQ that made him all his money? Probably not.
31 March 2009 at 1:46 p.m.
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Ruby_Finney (Ruby Finney) says…
Pat,
As you and I both know, the Kennedy fortune was made by rum running during prohibition. Which was definitely illegal. But if you are a Kennedy, that is accepted. The old man did know how to use the money he acquired and was able to help his children to successful carreers.
Should have given some of them swimming lessons.
31 March 2009 at 3:02 p.m.
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Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…
Which Kennedy drowned?
Was PT 109 a fabrication ?
Are we talking about Teddy?
Teddy was an adequate swimmer but a miserable failure as a rescue swimmer!
31 March 2009 at 5:15 p.m.
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SantaBerry (Bernice Winandy) says…
Tom, I am way behind on this string. However, I take exception to the statement that high IQ guarantees success. There are many things that determine success and there are many different types of success.
After all some would say that Madoff was highly intelligent because of the success of his Ponzi scheme. While I would have to admit he was a success at duping people out of their money I would not judge him a successful human being because he misued his intelligence.
Maybe we should talk about what determines success?
31 March 2009 at 8:19 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Ruby,
Yes I knew how he made his money just wondered what his IQ was, and if you needed a high IQ to be one. I think we have all heard of dumb luck.
Shovelhead, two of them drowned.
Joe Jr. went down in an airplane during World War 2, I don't think he was ever found.
A sister also went down in the ocean in an airplane.
Pt 109, don't have a clue.
Teddy swam out and left the girl to drown in the car. Chappaquidick ?
Joe SR. had a lobotomy done on one of his daughters. Ever wonder why?
What does any of that have to do with anyone's IQ
Bernice,
I agree. I think everyone determines success in a different way.
Is it money? If it is why do you need more than a few million?
Money can't buy happpiness , long healthy life, a loving family or respect.
Try to be happy with what you have. That is success.
Of course that is only my opinion.
31 March 2009 at 8:28 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
For some unknown reason, the next post, which belongs right after Ruby's “30 March 2009 at 1:17 p.m.” post, did not make it onto the forum.
It should have. I posted it and the site came back and asked me if I wanted to read it, which means it was received. But looking at the string, I don't find it.
I'll post it again. It should be dated: 31 March 2009 at 11:55 a.m.
31 March 2009 at 8:29 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Ruby,
It's always refreshing to read your posts.
You are dead right.
What you are saying reinforces the point I have been trying to make. The people at the top in corporations are siphoning off the profits, essentially stealing from wage earners.
Just as bad is the fact that they pay themselves so much they endanger the company itself. Look at how many fine companies have gone under for no apparent reason: Lots of manufacturers, and retail giants like the A&p, woolco, Montogomery Ward, and many others.
We need federal regulation to protect corporations.
The problem is this: In a wholly owned company—say one of the ones Pat owned—the owner watches what is going on, making sure that costs stay down, profits stay up, wages stay at current rates to attract good workers, workers have decent working conditions, and the company has assets to run for a while if there is a temporary downturn in business (which has to happen, after all.)
But in a corporation, people are playing with money someone else invested, so they do whatever they want. They pay themselves too much, gouge the workers, turn out crappy products, and do all kinds of things for immediate profit.
I'm not in favor of government interference in business, but think of it: Who else can act to regulate what upper level employees do?
And think of the investors, all those thousands upon thousands of people who have put their money on the line, expecting a dividend, especially people with retirement accounts. They are really getting taken!
What happens now is that the high level employees siphon off most of the profits, leaving just enough dividends to keep people investing.
And the poor wage earner gets the crappy end of the stick. He needs a job, so he's stuck. Can't go somewhere else because (unless it's a private company) the same thing is happening everywhere.
And even the employees in private companies are hurt. Their wages stay low because company owners, looking at what the current wage scale is, pay the going rate.
Our gross domestic product numbers grow and grow, but the people doing the actual labor are no longer participating in the growth curve.
As for the treatment of women, that's as evil as it gets. Women who work often have to work to support a family. They are trapped even more than most men, making them even more vulnerable. And since wages are often deliberately kept hush-hush, they sometimes don't even know they are being taken.
We need regulations, laws that impose prison sentences, not fines, on greedy businessmen. Fines just hurt the company. Treat criminals as criminals. Put them behind bars. That's the only way to stop so-called white collar crime.
And we could also use an occasional ball peen hammer applied to the solid bone head of some anchor person who mouths statistics without ever thinking about them.
Care to volunteer to operate the hammer? :-)
31 March 2009 at 9:19 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Tom,
I thought you liked statistics. (:
1 April 2009 at 9:31 a.m.
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Ruby_Finney (Ruby Finney) says…
Regulations are always good in moderation, but Tom, you are old enough to remember the mess that came about when the order to break up Ma Bell was enforced. We had a “benevolent” corporation, well run, with well paid employees and stockholders who were getting a good return on their money and customers who were given very good service. Deregulation produced a great big mess. At that time I was involved with income tax preparation and saw the problems many of the employees encountered with their retirement pensions - most of them had invested in company stock to be held toward retirement pensions.
In any case, some regulation is good, but when congress gets involved, the lobbyists seem to run the show and regulation becomes a money situation all its own.
We do need regulation which is actually enforced to prevent unethical business practices, employment standards and monopolies by huge conglomerates i.e. AIG which should never have been allowed to exist. Oh well, hindsight is always 20-20!
What we do need to do is regulate installation of both professional lobbyists and congressmen who retire to become lobbyists and of course government officials who are appointed in spite of not paying their income taxes –- until caught!
1 April 2009 at 9:44 a.m.
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Ruby_Finney (Ruby Finney) says…
Shovelhead,
Didn't answer your comment about the swimming lessons. However, the comment was not aimed at the PT109 crew as you know.
Although we came from a depression income family and could not afford anything other than Red Cross swimming lessons, my intermediate swimming class at age 12 required that I pass the Red Cross Junior Life Guard test to be accredited. (I thought the instructor was going to drown me on one of the tests!) So I would think that with the Kennedy money they could afford to do at least as well.
But on reflection, I guess some people never learn to do the right thing and money can't really buy everything, can it?
1 April 2009 at 12:29 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Bernice,
“However, I take exception to the statement that high IQ guarantees success.”
I take exception to that too!
But if you are saying I said it, you are (for a change) VERY wrong.
What I said was, “..if you take two people who have the same work ethic and put them in a job that requires intelligence, an IQ test will accurately predict which one will do better.”
That's very different! The words “… who have the same work ethic…” make all the difference.
Not only that, but this comment should tell you my attitude toward people.
“The simple truth is that people are born with a wide range of differences. Some are tall, some short. Some are naturally stronger, some weaker. Some have great patience, some have little. Some have athletic ability, some have little or none. And so on….
“You want the bottom line?
“Not a single one of those people did a dang thing to earn those traits. They were born with them. You can be as thick as snot or a bright as the sun, but you, yourself, did absolutely nothing to earn it.”
Pat,
Your comment about IQ tests being useless just doesn't fly. Did you know that the SAT is an IQ test? Most people don't. That's why it's useless to study for it. The GRE is an IQ test too.
In truth, if a job requires someone with brains it's no more wrong to test for it than it is to test a wanna-be fireman to see if he or she can handle the tough physical needs of the job. Tests don't prove that anyone can do something, but they do show who has the greatest potential in a given area.
And this string is not about IQ or tests. It's about wages. We need some practical way to keep white collar employees from grabbing all the money and leaving the blue collar worker, who actually does the work, with nothing to show for it.
Left to me I would pass a law that in a corporation no one could earn more than ten times the lowest paid employee. What happens in wholly owned companies is a different matter. If you own the place, do what you want. But if you're just an employee, like a CEO, you need to be stopped from raiding the company coffers.
1 April 2009 at 3:51 p.m.
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Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…
Ruby, I received my swimming lessons at the YMCA.
I was just teasing with you and Pat about the swimming lessons. I was pretty sure you were talking about the Teddy and Mary Jo incident. :)
2 April 2009 at 12:21 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
That business with the drowning accident was just about the biggest load of tripe (read that as “coverup”) I have ever seen. Can't imagine how the people of Massachusetts ever elected that guy to office. He doesn't even stand knee high to Jack.
Ruby,
“Regulations are always good in moderation, but Tom, you are old enough to remember the mess that came about when the order to break up Ma Bell was enforced.”
That, oddly enough, was pushed by Republicans, which makes no sense when you first look at it. I think what happened was some Greedy-Gus characters saw a chance to cash in on the hard work of a fine company and had some of their cronies do a job for them. So a law that supposed to protect the best interests of the people was used to do the exact opposite.
What else is new?
I've never been for that particular law unless it could be proven, not just that there was an apparent monopoly, but that it was actually damaging the country in some way.
As for monopolies, I often wonder why nothing has been done about the very worst of them which has ever arisen in this nation.
Obviously, I'm speaking of Microsoft, which has used attrocious practices to claw its way to the top and stay there. And what kills me is the fact that their operating system, even though they tried to steal the best that Apple had, is still a load of crap.
I owned a PC long before I owned a Mac, but it only took one glance to tell me that here was the future of computing.
Trouble is, with the butt heads now running Apple, the new Macs are nowhere near as good as the one I'm sitting at right now.
I own a nice new Mac laptop, and use it as a laptop; eg: a portable machine, but I have gone far out of my way to maintain my two old Macs (G3's) and their accessories. I will continue to user them as long as I live. There are no comparable machines.
2 April 2009 at 1:03 p.m.
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Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…
Some people swear by the beta video machine but where do you get a beta movie today?
2 April 2009 at 1:06 p.m.
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Ruby_Finney (Ruby Finney) says…
Not only that, but Microsoft is the absolute worst offender of using outsourcing plus the special provision of importing cheap labor to the USA claiming they can't get an adequate supply of trained labor here. What a load of crap ! Bill Gates has poured enough money into political campaigns to own half of congress and is always called on to testify on the inadequate supply of trained people to work in his money mine. Shame on him.
I would buy the Mac, but my pocket book yells no, so I am stuck in the Gates owned rut!
2 April 2009 at 3:57 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Shovelhead,
Is a beta video machine one that has movies that are like records in a cardboard cover and you push it in the player and pull the cardboard back out then watch the movie?
2 April 2009 at 4:25 p.m.
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Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…
You know Pat, I've only seen one and that was many years ago. I don't remember what they were like but VHS is the way the worm turned so beta is almost extinct today.
2 April 2009 at 4:28 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
Shovelhead,
I have a player and some movies. Want them?
2 April 2009 at 9:15 p.m.
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Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…
You have a beta player! Those are almost like a typewriter, obsolete!
If they need a home, bring them over.
2 April 2009 at 9:41 p.m.
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patrandall (Pat Randall) says…
I had two typewriters until about 2 yrs ago one was the big tall one, a Royal I think. It was first used about 1924 and the other was a Smith Corona portable that I had in the 9th grade.
I also have an 8 track player and tapes.
3 April 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
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Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…
Pat, reminds me of our cellar when I was a kid.
Down there we had two old phonographs that played the old cylindrical records. We also had a couple of upright radios, circa 1920 or so, that looked like tall, thin legged desks. We also had a regular, hand cranked phonograph, a huge stack of thick old 10 inch shellac records, and two huge boxes of cylindrical ones.
All that stuff worked fine. I used to go down in the cellar as as little kid and mess with it all. And with Daddy's old rowing machine too.
Even though I was only ten years old when we moved from that house in 1942 I was shocked that Mom had left it all behind. Even then, that stuff had antique value. Now, it would be worth enough to buy a small house.
Mom, God love her, was long on love and caring but short on brains.
The reason we had all that stuff was that Daddy was a pro-golfer at one of the three or four golf courses in New York City. Quite well to do. Died of pneumonia without having saved much. Mom had to go out and scrub floors to keep four kids eating. My two oldest brothers had to drop out of high school (but both went nights to finish up.)
The result of all that was having to move into a different place when I was very little. I don't remember it, and had no idea what had happened, but all that stuff down in the cellar was the last remains of a house full of good stuff.