OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Mike Schwartz (PC Support)]

> On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Fairlight wrote:
> >
> > Amen.  What's up with the hostility, folks?  :)
> 
> I'll admit to being overtaken with irony, at least, if not hostility, by
> people grumbling about what "kids these days" are being taught, or not,
> while botching up punctuation usage.
> 
> Regards,
> ....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

     Jesting aside between Bob and I and others who like to catch each other
with an occasional error, it's disheartening for me to have to work with a
lot of these young people who have no excuse for not getting enough
education to be able to write a half way intelligible business email or memo
to their customers.  I'm not talking about inner city ghetto kids or
learning disabled kids.  These are all medium size Midwestern towns where I
know that they had ample opportunities to get a good education.  

     Math is even worse.  A few years ago, a co-worker's 20 year old sister
came to me with a question.  She worked 40 hours and earned $580.00, but the
paycheck stub didn't list her hourly rate and she couldn't figure out how to
calculate it.  I told her she had to take 580 and divide it by 40.  I wrote
the problem on a piece of paper but she couldn't do the math!  She had to go
get a calculator!  

     The saddest part was that she came to me because her sister and a
couple of her friends couldn't figure it out, either!  I asked her how she
got through high school without being able to figure out a problem like this
and she told me that division never seemed to be very important to her, so
she never really learned it!

Mike Schwartz