Telephones

Quick article about how the US senate almost banned rotary phones - https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Considers_Banning_Dial_Phones.htm

An old boss of mine had an amusing anecdote about somebody years ago saying that with the enormous growth of telephones in the US everybody would be employed as a telephone operator.  The amusing part of my boss' anecdote was that this person was actually right.  Since we type in phone numbers when we want to talk to somebody, we are in effect working as a phone operator.

Of course in good old 2019, we pretty much have contact apps universally available so we aren't likely to have to type in phone numbers any more.  Unless it's from the menu of the new restaurant that opened and we want to get takeout.

Statistics, lies, whatever.

Every now and then I hear the oft repeated $verylarge% of drivers consider themselves to be above average.  Ha ha, stupid drivers, you suck, you are really bad drivers, you just don't know it or worse don't want to admit it.  After all, being bad is one thing, but being unaware that you are bad, that means you are a general moron as well.

But, if we have a sample of drivers, one rates at a 2, three rate at a 10, the average rating is 3.2.  This would mean that the three scoring at 10, or 75% of the drivers are above average.  Waaaaay above average.

What am I missing here?

On Poverty

Interesting post - https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/why-do-so-many-americans-hate-the-welfare-state-1.4057860

US culture based on Protestant ethics.  European roots were later changed by various world wars to be more supportive of welfare whereas US was largely unaffected by those wars so the ethics lived on.

Professor Elizabeth Anderson notes:

“You know,” she says, “America was so dominantly Protestant for such a long time. We have a substantial number of Catholics but the culture was really shaped by Protestants – in term of their total cultural domination of the United States at its founding, and really continuing.”

One aspect of this, she highlights, is the adoption of a Protestant work ethic as a core value in society. This has a positive side – in honouring human labour – but it also has a negative side.

“There is a profound suspicion of anyone who is poor, and a consequent raising to the highest priority imposing incredibly humiliating, harsh conditions on access to welfare benefits on the assumption you’re some kind of grifter, or you’re trying to cheat the system.

“There is no appreciation for the existence of structural poverty, poverty that is not the fault of your own but because the economy maybe is in recession or, in a notorious Irish case, the potato crop fails.”