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30-4-2016 23:35:18  #11


Re: What Do You Feel That You've Done to Make the World a Better Place?

I have not saved a life in the dramatic fashion you did, but I did witness a car/electric bike collision which left the victim lying in a traffic lane in a busy avenue at night, and I stood over him waving off traffic until help arrived. On the other hand the driver stopped and I took it on myself to wave him over and he followed my direction - whereas traffic could have been blocked much more safely and effectively by his car. So I merely undid my poor call of the first instance and he was not hit a second time by dumb luck. I can't feel proud of that. But if I made a mistake I merely partially cancelled by putting myself at risk I at least took action, whereas I remember clearly a number of men standing around and staring stupidly. Though at least they didn't make my first mistake so you can see why passivity is so popular in emergencies. If I had it to do again I would still take action rather than watch stupidly, and hopefully learn from my error the last time.

And who was Horace Mann? According to a supposed historian supposedly quoted in Wikipedia:

"No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends."

So we have him to thank in part for the idea of universal literacy which in fact promoted the creation of failed literates where before there was no pretension of literacy! <cynical emoticon here>.


That was the statistical fallacy I was looking for. I knew it was lurking around somewhere: when a significant fraction of the population could not read and write at all it might be natural to implicitly exclude them from our sample when gauging how well people could read and write in the past. But with so-called universal literacy that segment is now taken into the implicit literacy test, so the level of literacy apparently goes down. The fallacy is we were discounting them in our mind when the contribution to the average was a string of zeros, now including them when the contribution is less than perfect positive numbers! Putting the zeros back into our rosy past, language skills have been improving. But if Mann thought this large pool of non-zeros would therefore become well informed and rational citizens able to promote sound and rational policy, well sir I think he was mistaken.

And now back to typewriters... I have a few somewhere.


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
 

18-5-2016 17:44:31  #12


Re: What Do You Feel That You've Done to Make the World a Better Place?

I am not sure just what could be done with the beveled glass panels from a Model 10 Royal typewriter outside of their original purpose.  I guess anyone could do what they wanted, but, as a typewriter collector, it just wouldn't be the same, anymore than the keychopping business.  For my part, I can only mourn for the old typewriters that didn't get a chance at anything other than to be cut up in the name of "art," and to resolve to, wherever I can and if I can afford it, rescue as many of these beautiful machines as I can.  I have kept one such machine, a 1916 model, operational for over 22 years.


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
     Thread Starter
 

18-5-2016 17:56:57  #13


Re: What Do You Feel That You've Done to Make the World a Better Place?

Repartee wrote:

I have not saved a life in the dramatic fashion you did, but I did witness a car/electric bike collision which left the victim lying in a traffic lane in a busy avenue at night, and I stood over him waving off traffic until help arrived. On the other hand the driver stopped and I took it on myself to wave him over and he followed my direction - whereas traffic could have been blocked much more safely and effectively by his car. So I merely undid my poor call of the first instance and he was not hit a second time by dumb luck. I can't feel proud of that. But if I made a mistake I merely partially cancelled by putting myself at risk I at least took action, whereas I remember clearly a number of men standing around and staring stupidly. Though at least they didn't make my first mistake so you can see why passivity is so popular in emergencies. If I had it to do again I would still take action rather than watch stupidly, and hopefully learn from my error the last time.

And who was Horace Mann? According to a supposed historian supposedly quoted in Wikipedia:

"No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends."

So we have him to thank in part for the idea of universal literacy which in fact promoted the creation of failed literates where before there was no pretension of literacy! <cynical emoticon here>.


That was the statistical fallacy I was looking for. I knew it was lurking around somewhere: when a significant fraction of the population could not read and write at all it might be natural to implicitly exclude them from our sample when gauging how well people could read and write in the past. But with so-called universal literacy that segment is now taken into the implicit literacy test, so the level of literacy apparently goes down. The fallacy is we were discounting them in our mind when the contribution to the average was a string of zeros, now including them when the contribution is less than perfect positive numbers! Putting the zeros back into our rosy past, language skills have been improving. But if Mann thought this large pool of non-zeros would therefore become well informed and rational citizens able to promote sound and rational policy, well sir I think he was mistaken.

And now back to typewriters... I have a few somewhere.

Not every action to help others is dramatic.  The fact that you cared to wave traffic off of the person who was down is a testament to the action you preferred to take over just looking on, like you said others did.  You helped another person, however it began or ended.  And as for Horace Mann--I didn't do an in-depth study on who or what he was--it was just a quote I saw on a "Twilight Zone" episode.  I liked it, so I thought I'd use it.  But again, I don't really think that even Horace Mann thought everyone should be a superhero.  I certainly am not.  Like I have said before, good deeds can take the form of sheltering a little bird from the cold, petting a dog, and yes, helping little old ladies across the street now and again.
 


Underwood--Speeds the World's Bidness
     Thread Starter
 

19-5-2016 20:31:48  #14


Re: What Do You Feel That You've Done to Make the World a Better Place?

TypewriterKing wrote:

 And as for Horace Mann--I didn't do an in-depth study on who or what he was--it was just a quote I saw on a "Twilight Zone" episode. I liked it, so I thought I'd use it. 

This gives me new respect for the creators of the Twilight Zone.


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
 

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