See my post above about how if you SHOW that you don't trust your children, it works against you. Trustworthyness is itself largely generated by showing that you trust your child to do the right thing.
I swear there's a Stupid Gene that gets turned on when people have kids, that makes them forget how much it sucked to be a kid -- to have NO privacy, to have NOTHING of your own, the sense of being OWNED by your parents, the sense that NO ONE TRUSTS YOU, and that YOU DON'T MATTER.
The most important thing you can give your kids isn't love, or security, or a good life, or even an education. It's PRIVACY. The sense that they are a REAL PERSON, with their own inviolate "space", and with needs that matter -- everything else good in a kid's life follows from that, as it tells a kid they are a real person in their parents' eyes, not just property.
And if a kid doesn't get that critical need from their home life, they'll go looking for it elsewhere, usually in all the wrong ways.
Tracking your kid 24 hours a day tells the kid in no uncertain terms that he is both property and untrusted. And nothing you TELL your kid can counteract that. To a kid, actions speak louder than words.
True, but... too often, kids already suffer from the feeling that no one trusts them. Now they'll know FOR SURE that their parents don't trust them. And what happens then? The kid says "Fuck it, if they don't trust me anyway, I might as well do what I want and lie about it."
"The only effect advertisements have on me is in raising my awareness of the existence of a product"
In that case, the advertising has succeeded in its goal. MOST advertising is not aimed at selling you something this instant; it's aimed at generating brand-recognition, so that when you finally DO buy something, their brand will at least be considered.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I've heard about that trick with PowerMacs! The Macs I've had my hands in had Quantum HDs, and in my experience older Quantums do indeed tend to stiction if they sit idle for very long (and soon after, develop hordes of bad sectors). Dunno about the power issue, but never let it be said that there was one watt wasted by a Mac's PSU:)
I didn't particularly like MacGyver (the series or the character) and hadn't cared for RDA at *all* -- until Stargate. I didn't even *recognise* him at first, he was SOOOO much better -- really inside the character, instead of just wearing it, as I always felt was the case with MacGyver.
But MacGyver was mostly just a trick-of-the-week series. Conversely, Stargate's people have ongoing lives, and are handled as real people. When the series does stutter, it's usually because of either a filler episode, or the dreaded "planet of the week" syndrome (which has plagued all the Treks, other than DS9).
It's the difference between event-driven and character-driven, and the actors benefit from it too. SG is essentially character-driven.
DS9 writers used to use random stuff off a mailing list I was on back-when (the listmom was in thick with some of the DS9 cast and crew). Frex, the name of the writing academy in NZ that Jake went off to, was from the surname of the listmom -- who lived in New Zealand. There were other examples, but that's the one I remember.
One of the online dog pedigree sites, which relies largely on user-supplied data, deals with the problem by "locking" entries once the data therein is complete and has been verified. After that, no one can alter the record, tho you're still free to send further info to the maintainers.
I've wondered if such a system might be applied to Wikipedia: have a peer review system by folk with expertise in whatever field, then once the existing entries are "satisfactory" for content, they could be "locked", and any changes submitted by users would be sent to these maintainers, who would then decide whether to include the new data or not.
Alternatively, new user info could be *appended* to each entry until reviewed, rather than instantly incorporated, which would at least provide an on-the-spot changelog (thus cluing in users that perhaps there is some wrong info present).
I've got a horrible blurry old 15" CRT on the workbench that only knows one brightness: FRY. It's good for watching DVDs, which therefore is a large part of its mission in life!
Heat from plasma wouldn't be so much of an issue (help heat this place in the winter, it could!) but a mere 2 power-on years lifespan? Eeeep... I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy one even as a TV (I expect a TV to last 20 years no matter how much it's on). -- 12" monochrome monitors had only about a 2yr PO lifespan (as I learned by running my 286 24/7 for 7-8 yrs), but replacements were a dime a dozen, and increasingly cheap/free/please-take-the-damned-thing!, so not a big deal. Far different if starting with a $3000 unit!!
I'm not sure if I'd want flat or curved in a really big display... maybe one that could "creap" back and forth, so I'd never have to turn my head?:)
I learned the term Canuck from a Canadian friend, who routinely applied it to himself and his countrymen. But that was back in the 1970s. My Canuck friends through the 80s and 90s also used it without a second thought.
But I've noticed that over the past 10 years or so, "Canuck" has somehow become a "racial slur" and horribly un-PC to use, especially by a Yank!
Not that it's the first word to suffer such a demise... but it sure seems stupid, eh?
(Yes, I caught saying "eh?" from a Canadian friend. It's a pefectly good and useful way to end a sentence, for which there is no true equivalent in Yank English.:)
Yeah, I've seen some recent LCDs that are really BRIGHT, even compared to CRTs, but it's not a fair comparison unless you've reset them so a black desktop is really black, as compared to an unlit part of the screen. -- Most monitors of any species now ship with everything turned up to FRY. It used to be standard to ship 'em with contrast at 100% and brightness at 0%. It's amazing how many people still don't get that such things are adjustable!!
I can still see ghosts on modern LCDs... I wonder if plasma displays are better for that? Plasma TVs are certainly clearer. But priced way outta MY ballpark, too (the only one that looked good enough for my purposes was around [*cough*gasp*choke*] $3000 even at Costco price!) Ideally I'd like to have a flat display around twice the size of a standard 21" monitor, that would still do very fine resolution. Even on this 19" monitor, my desktop is NEVER big enough!:(
And bigger monitors are probably better since they make you move your eyes around more. -- There is a medical theory that the reason why we lose near-focusing ability with age is because the muscles that work the lens get "stiff" and tired, and can't do their job anymore. Probably like any other muscle, the more it's stuck in one position (here meaning staring at a screen), the less well it works overall.
As I point out above, modern CRTs are *BRIGHT*, at least at typical settings. As someone else points out, our eyes aren't designed to stare at a light bulb. LCDs have far less waste light output.
Solution? if you have a CRT, set your desktop to black, then adjust it so that you can't tell the black "nonfunctional" area from the black "lit up" area, and do your adjustments IN A DARK ROOM. At that point, the monitor is not significantly brighter than the surrounding light sources, and will be far more restful to your eyes when viewed in normal room light. With my big ViewSonic, the "restful" settings are around 75% contrast, 0% brightness.
Also, if there are overhead lights, or a white ceiling, WEAR A VISOR. You'd be amazed how much glare originates from overhead lighting and reflective room surfaces... and how much more restful it is to your eyes if they don't have to cope with that.
I don't think it's the electron stream. I think it's the excessive brightness and just plain glare. My eyes are light-sensitive to begin with, and I noticed it immediately, but most people don't.
My eyes complained when I went from an amber-mono screen (where the unused part of the screen is truly BLACK, that is, unlit) to VGA. If you look at a VGA screen in the dark, and set your desktop to plain black, you'll see that even the "black" is *bright*. Well, no wonder VGA tires the eyes more than mono!
When I have to use someone else's computer, it always makes my eyes hurt. Using my own doesn't. The difference? Most people leave theirs at the factory settings for brightness, that is, "FRY". Conversely, my big ViewSonic is turned down as far as it can be and still see the screen (contrast 75%, brightness 0%). Everyone complains that my monitor is too dark, but it's a lot easier on the eyes this way. And I have the desktops I see all the time set to dark, eye-soothing colours.
The REAL difference between LCD and CRT? LCD isn't nearly as bright. Compare how much waste light each produces, by having each screen as the only light source in a dark room.
As to eye changes, after 12 years or so of heavy computer use, I've only noticed the normal ones that come with age -- at 49, I no longer have close focus at all, and have lost most distance focus. (That is, I can see everything at any distance, but I can't resolve text.) But I do a fair amount of physical work every day, I don't have glaucoma-predisposing factors like diabetes (nor obesity), and I didn't have unusually bad eyes to begin with.
Considering how many vision-impaired and unsocial people have become heavy computer users, especially since they can now "safely" socialize via the Net (and how many of these types then become obese through an increasingly sedentary lifestyle) and the correlation between obesity ==> diabetes ==> glaucoma, I suspect this is a case of correlation being mistaken for causation.
Re:Why you stick a hard drive in the freezer....
on
Creative Data Loss
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I have HDs in the same age range that still work -- the two MFMs in the XT are now 18 years old. The only way an IBM deathstar will still be around at that age is as a clock or a wind chime:)
My oldest IDE is a W.D. dated 1991, still 100% perfect. It used to be in my test box which lived in an unheated space... during cold weather (in SoCal meaning 30F-ish), it spun up just fine, but the first message on the screen was "cannot find hard disk". After 10 minutes or so, this progressed to "cannot find boot sector". And after another 10 minutes, by which point the HD was finally fully warmed up, it would finally boot up normally. Methinks if it had problems, freezing it would be counterproductive at best:)
Which reminds me, I gotta go plug in my bed heater...
Re:Been freezing harddrives for years
on
Creative Data Loss
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· Score: 1
Hey, that's clever -- using a towel and a DoNotEat packet to minimize condensation on the drive itself.
I know someone who had an XT with a ST225 (a notoriously hot-running Seagate MFM hard disk) that would only run until the HD got fully warmed up, then it seized up. At first he solved the problem by putting a bag of ice on top of the HD. Which worked fine until the ice melted and began dripping onto the motherboard... (he was only 11 or 12; not a bad solution for a kid to think up all by himself.) After that he started keeping the HD in the freezer instead, which gave him a bit more running time before it overheated and seized up again.
Re:Why you stick a hard drive in the freezer....
on
Creative Data Loss
·
· Score: 1
The "newest" HD I've personally seen stiction on was a 6GB Maxtor. (It has other issues too, but the stiction was obvious: Tap-tap-TAP-TAP-spinup.)
In my observation, stiction is mainly an issue with middle-aged drives (4-5 yrs or older) that have run for several years but were then allowed to sit idle for several months. I suspect once our current HDs are middle-aged, and are therefore in machines not running 24/7 anymore, we'll see some stiction in what are now "modern" HDs too.
[blink] "partition boundaries not aligned with cylinder boundaries" was the message I just got from Partition Magic re a client's ancient Compaq. I would have liked to repartition its HD, but didn't quite dare after that... not being sure if it was munged on purpose to make it get along with a braindead old BIOS, or what. (AFAICT from the aged data thereon, and by the presence of an inaccessable hidden 3mb partition, the HD was still set up exactly how it came from the factory. If it ain't too broke to use....)
One day way back in the era of early desktop PCs, Jerry's home machine failed to boot up. His son (Alex, IIRC) was called upon to fix it. Which he did by picking up the whole machine and dropping it on the desk a couple times.
Jerry complained, "I didn't spend thousands of dollars to send you to college to learn how to drop computers!"
Son retorted, "Yeah, but they taught me how FAR to drop it!"
[Actually, this trick was commonly done in the XT/286 era, to quickly reseat stuff that was suffering from "chip creep".]
Don't tap the corner -- that produces an unbalanced shock that is more likely to result in a head crash. Just tap the center, where the spindle is. Works better, and is unlikely to further harm the rest of the drive. And often once unstuck, the drive will continue to work forever-after.
I have one old HD (now used as a Q&D instant OS for general hardware testing) that was acquired in "stictioned solid" condition... the spindle-tapping sequence went like this:
tap-tap-tap... rrrrr_rrrrr_rrrrr (dies again) TAP-TAP-TAP... RRRRR_RRRRR_RRRRR (dies again) **!WHACK!**... spun right up, and has worked fine ever since!!
Haha, yes, not exactly the kind of "free software" we had in mind;)
However, a question not yet answered, far as I saw -- did M$ generate these WAVs themselves, or did they snag 'em from some public archive, or ??
I don't remember this link I saw being to a 30 day trial. But I don't seem to have downloaded it, so hard to check. (Was probably a bit large for my connection anyway:(
Oh, yeah, Poplar, I totally forgot about that one. (Wolf Point, most notable for having an annual temperature range from +114F to -72F.) I'm more familiar with the murders, beatings, muggings, and family violence around Billings/Hardin. My sister lived for a year on "Ambulance Row" in Billings... it was the main drag between the slum on the SE side of town (kinda the dribblings from Hardin that had flowed northward and stuck there) and the hospital. Any hour of the night, you could see at least one ambulance racing up the street. -- I once attended a convention on the edge of that neighbourhood (emphasis on "hood"), and the hotel made a point of warning people NOT to go out alone after dark, and most definitely not to leave the hotel grounds by yourself at ANY hour of the day or night.
The common factor here? it's another detritus of the welfare state. And if the dole works so well at helping people rise above poverty, why are there so many consecutive generations still "enjoying" its purported social benefits??
Slashdot Mirror
[reads] No wonder they were willing to spend $180,000 on an RFID system, rather than on the four or five new teachers whose salary it would have paid.
See my post above about how if you SHOW that you don't trust your children, it works against you. Trustworthyness is itself largely generated by showing that you trust your child to do the right thing.
I swear there's a Stupid Gene that gets turned on when people have kids, that makes them forget how much it sucked to be a kid -- to have NO privacy, to have NOTHING of your own, the sense of being OWNED by your parents, the sense that NO ONE TRUSTS YOU, and that YOU DON'T MATTER.
The most important thing you can give your kids isn't love, or security, or a good life, or even an education. It's PRIVACY. The sense that they are a REAL PERSON, with their own inviolate "space", and with needs that matter -- everything else good in a kid's life follows from that, as it tells a kid they are a real person in their parents' eyes, not just property.
And if a kid doesn't get that critical need from their home life, they'll go looking for it elsewhere, usually in all the wrong ways.
Tracking your kid 24 hours a day tells the kid in no uncertain terms that he is both property and untrusted. And nothing you TELL your kid can counteract that. To a kid, actions speak louder than words.
True, but... too often, kids already suffer from the feeling that no one trusts them. Now they'll know FOR SURE that their parents don't trust them. And what happens then? The kid says "Fuck it, if they don't trust me anyway, I might as well do what I want and lie about it."
"The only effect advertisements have on me is in raising my awareness of the existence of a product"
In that case, the advertising has succeeded in its goal. MOST advertising is not aimed at selling you something this instant; it's aimed at generating brand-recognition, so that when you finally DO buy something, their brand will at least be considered.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I've heard about that trick with PowerMacs! The Macs I've had my hands in had Quantum HDs, and in my experience older Quantums do indeed tend to stiction if they sit idle for very long (and soon after, develop hordes of bad sectors). Dunno about the power issue, but never let it be said that there was one watt wasted by a Mac's PSU :)
LOL!! Now why doesn't it show up in my atlas? Maybe if I find one from before the end of the Empire... ;)
I didn't particularly like MacGyver (the series or the character) and hadn't cared for RDA at *all* -- until Stargate. I didn't even *recognise* him at first, he was SOOOO much better -- really inside the character, instead of just wearing it, as I always felt was the case with MacGyver.
But MacGyver was mostly just a trick-of-the-week series. Conversely, Stargate's people have ongoing lives, and are handled as real people. When the series does stutter, it's usually because of either a filler episode, or the dreaded "planet of the week" syndrome (which has plagued all the Treks, other than DS9).
It's the difference between event-driven and character-driven, and the actors benefit from it too. SG is essentially character-driven.
DS9 writers used to use random stuff off a mailing list I was on back-when (the listmom was in thick with some of the DS9 cast and crew). Frex, the name of the writing academy in NZ that Jake went off to, was from the surname of the listmom -- who lived in New Zealand. There were other examples, but that's the one I remember.
TV is full of in-jokes like this.
One of the online dog pedigree sites, which relies largely on user-supplied data, deals with the problem by "locking" entries once the data therein is complete and has been verified. After that, no one can alter the record, tho you're still free to send further info to the maintainers.
I've wondered if such a system might be applied to Wikipedia: have a peer review system by folk with expertise in whatever field, then once the existing entries are "satisfactory" for content, they could be "locked", and any changes submitted by users would be sent to these maintainers, who would then decide whether to include the new data or not.
Alternatively, new user info could be *appended* to each entry until reviewed, rather than instantly incorporated, which would at least provide an on-the-spot changelog (thus cluing in users that perhaps there is some wrong info present).
I've got a horrible blurry old 15" CRT on the workbench that only knows one brightness: FRY. It's good for watching DVDs, which therefore is a large part of its mission in life!
:)
:)
Heat from plasma wouldn't be so much of an issue (help heat this place in the winter, it could!) but a mere 2 power-on years lifespan? Eeeep... I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy one even as a TV (I expect a TV to last 20 years no matter how much it's on). -- 12" monochrome monitors had only about a 2yr PO lifespan (as I learned by running my 286 24/7 for 7-8 yrs), but replacements were a dime a dozen, and increasingly cheap/free/please-take-the-damned-thing!, so not a big deal. Far different if starting with a $3000 unit!!
I'm not sure if I'd want flat or curved in a really big display... maybe one that could "creap" back and forth, so I'd never have to turn my head?
(Yeah, I saw the fixpost, but this was funnier
I learned the term Canuck from a Canadian friend, who routinely applied it to himself and his countrymen. But that was back in the 1970s. My Canuck friends through the 80s and 90s also used it without a second thought.
:)
But I've noticed that over the past 10 years or so, "Canuck" has somehow become a "racial slur" and horribly un-PC to use, especially by a Yank!
Not that it's the first word to suffer such a demise... but it sure seems stupid, eh?
(Yes, I caught saying "eh?" from a Canadian friend. It's a pefectly good and useful way to end a sentence, for which there is no true equivalent in Yank English.
Yeah, I've seen some recent LCDs that are really BRIGHT, even compared to CRTs, but it's not a fair comparison unless you've reset them so a black desktop is really black, as compared to an unlit part of the screen. -- Most monitors of any species now ship with everything turned up to FRY. It used to be standard to ship 'em with contrast at 100% and brightness at 0%. It's amazing how many people still don't get that such things are adjustable!!
:(
I can still see ghosts on modern LCDs... I wonder if plasma displays are better for that? Plasma TVs are certainly clearer. But priced way outta MY ballpark, too (the only one that looked good enough for my purposes was around [*cough*gasp*choke*] $3000 even at Costco price!)
Ideally I'd like to have a flat display around twice the size of a standard 21" monitor, that would still do very fine resolution. Even on this 19" monitor, my desktop is NEVER big enough!
And bigger monitors are probably better since they make you move your eyes around more. -- There is a medical theory that the reason why we lose near-focusing ability with age is because the muscles that work the lens get "stiff" and tired, and can't do their job anymore. Probably like any other muscle, the more it's stuck in one position (here meaning staring at a screen), the less well it works overall.
See my other posts about brightness vs eyestrain.
As I point out above, modern CRTs are *BRIGHT*, at least at typical settings. As someone else points out, our eyes aren't designed to stare at a light bulb. LCDs have far less waste light output.
Solution? if you have a CRT, set your desktop to black, then adjust it so that you can't tell the black "nonfunctional" area from the black "lit up" area, and do your adjustments IN A DARK ROOM. At that point, the monitor is not significantly brighter than the surrounding light sources, and will be far more restful to your eyes when viewed in normal room light. With my big ViewSonic, the "restful" settings are around 75% contrast, 0% brightness.
Also, if there are overhead lights, or a white ceiling, WEAR A VISOR. You'd be amazed how much glare originates from overhead lighting and reflective room surfaces... and how much more restful it is to your eyes if they don't have to cope with that.
I don't think it's the electron stream. I think it's the excessive brightness and just plain glare. My eyes are light-sensitive to begin with, and I noticed it immediately, but most people don't.
My eyes complained when I went from an amber-mono screen (where the unused part of the screen is truly BLACK, that is, unlit) to VGA. If you look at a VGA screen in the dark, and set your desktop to plain black, you'll see that even the "black" is *bright*. Well, no wonder VGA tires the eyes more than mono!
When I have to use someone else's computer, it always makes my eyes hurt. Using my own doesn't. The difference? Most people leave theirs at the factory settings for brightness, that is, "FRY". Conversely, my big ViewSonic is turned down as far as it can be and still see the screen (contrast 75%, brightness 0%). Everyone complains that my monitor is too dark, but it's a lot easier on the eyes this way. And I have the desktops I see all the time set to dark, eye-soothing colours.
The REAL difference between LCD and CRT? LCD isn't nearly as bright. Compare how much waste light each produces, by having each screen as the only light source in a dark room.
As to eye changes, after 12 years or so of heavy computer use, I've only noticed the normal ones that come with age -- at 49, I no longer have close focus at all, and have lost most distance focus. (That is, I can see everything at any distance, but I can't resolve text.) But I do a fair amount of physical work every day, I don't have glaucoma-predisposing factors like diabetes (nor obesity), and I didn't have unusually bad eyes to begin with.
Considering how many vision-impaired and unsocial people have become heavy computer users, especially since they can now "safely" socialize via the Net (and how many of these types then become obese through an increasingly sedentary lifestyle) and the correlation between obesity ==> diabetes ==> glaucoma, I suspect this is a case of correlation being mistaken for causation.
Yeah, I have HDs in the same age range that still work -- the two MFMs in the XT are now 18 years old. The only way an IBM deathstar will still be around at that age is as a clock or a wind chime :)
:)
My oldest IDE is a W.D. dated 1991, still 100% perfect. It used to be in my test box which lived in an unheated space... during cold weather (in SoCal meaning 30F-ish), it spun up just fine, but the first message on the screen was "cannot find hard disk". After 10 minutes or so, this progressed to "cannot find boot sector". And after another 10 minutes, by which point the HD was finally fully warmed up, it would finally boot up normally. Methinks if it had problems, freezing it would be counterproductive at best
Which reminds me, I gotta go plug in my bed heater...
Hey, that's clever -- using a towel and a DoNotEat packet to minimize condensation on the drive itself.
I know someone who had an XT with a ST225 (a notoriously hot-running Seagate MFM hard disk) that would only run until the HD got fully warmed up, then it seized up. At first he solved the problem by putting a bag of ice on top of the HD. Which worked fine until the ice melted and began dripping onto the motherboard... (he was only 11 or 12; not a bad solution for a kid to think up all by himself.) After that he started keeping the HD in the freezer instead, which gave him a bit more running time before it overheated and seized up again.
The "newest" HD I've personally seen stiction on was a 6GB Maxtor. (It has other issues too, but the stiction was obvious: Tap-tap-TAP-TAP-spinup.)
In my observation, stiction is mainly an issue with middle-aged drives (4-5 yrs or older) that have run for several years but were then allowed to sit idle for several months. I suspect once our current HDs are middle-aged, and are therefore in machines not running 24/7 anymore, we'll see some stiction in what are now "modern" HDs too.
[blink] "partition boundaries not aligned with cylinder boundaries" was the message I just got from Partition Magic re a client's ancient Compaq. I would have liked to repartition its HD, but didn't quite dare after that... not being sure if it was munged on purpose to make it get along with a braindead old BIOS, or what. (AFAICT from the aged data thereon, and by the presence of an inaccessable hidden 3mb partition, the HD was still set up exactly how it came from the factory. If it ain't too broke to use....)
Jerry Pournelle tells this story on himself:
One day way back in the era of early desktop PCs, Jerry's home machine failed to boot up. His son (Alex, IIRC) was called upon to fix it. Which he did by picking up the whole machine and dropping it on the desk a couple times.
Jerry complained, "I didn't spend thousands of dollars to send you to college to learn how to drop computers!"
Son retorted, "Yeah, but they taught me how FAR to drop it!"
[Actually, this trick was commonly done in the XT/286 era, to quickly reseat stuff that was suffering from "chip creep".]
Don't tap the corner -- that produces an unbalanced shock that is more likely to result in a head crash. Just tap the center, where the spindle is. Works better, and is unlikely to further harm the rest of the drive. And often once unstuck, the drive will continue to work forever-after.
... rrrrr_rrrrr_rrrrr (dies again) ... RRRRR_RRRRR_RRRRR (dies again) ... spun right up, and has worked fine ever since!!
I have one old HD (now used as a Q&D instant OS for general hardware testing) that was acquired in "stictioned solid" condition... the spindle-tapping sequence went like this:
tap-tap-tap
TAP-TAP-TAP
**!WHACK!**
Hmm. Wonder if Sony has some old versions available as free teasers. Oh well, probably not important anyway.
;)
Unless you're M$
Haha, yes, not exactly the kind of "free software" we had in mind ;)
:(
However, a question not yet answered, far as I saw -- did M$ generate these WAVs themselves, or did they snag 'em from some public archive, or ??
I don't remember this link I saw being to a 30 day trial. But I don't seem to have downloaded it, so hard to check. (Was probably a bit large for my connection anyway
Oh, yeah, Poplar, I totally forgot about that one. (Wolf Point, most notable for having an annual temperature range from +114F to -72F.) I'm more familiar with the murders, beatings, muggings, and family violence around Billings/Hardin. My sister lived for a year on "Ambulance Row" in Billings ... it was the main drag between the slum on the SE side of town (kinda the dribblings from Hardin that had flowed northward and stuck there) and the hospital. Any hour of the night, you could see at least one ambulance racing up the street. -- I once attended a convention on the edge of that neighbourhood (emphasis on "hood"), and the hotel made a point of warning people NOT to go out alone after dark, and most definitely not to leave the hotel grounds by yourself at ANY hour of the day or night.
The common factor here? it's another detritus of the welfare state. And if the dole works so well at helping people rise above poverty, why are there so many consecutive generations still "enjoying" its purported social benefits??
"Do you see descendants of the original colonies whining about the various British massacres? "
No, but obviously, we should!! After all, it works for everybody else...
"Title to every parcel of land ultimately goes back to an act of violence." -- Jack Vance