Goodbye Brains
I want to mention something and get your take. I do a lot of business...meaning - I work a lot, rely on a lot of different people to work with me. This is above and beyond the waiter we all deal with who screws up our order, and the accountant who fills out the forms wrong, etc. Over the past few years I have noticed that almost nobody does their job right anymore. I actually wonder if people are just getting dumbed down, poisoned by something in the water, generally just pissed off, or if there's something else going on. I work with another business our office has done work with for several years. As I'm learning what this office does I'm now forced to ask them, "What do you do for us?" Because, it appears that they don't do anything. They just have a contract with us (that I'm requesting today so I can read it). I mean...I actually find business arrangements like that which have just degraded into nothingness (with nobody able to say why). Hard to explain (as I just have a few minutes and need to jet). But, in the professional world and general public I'm seeing this mass incompetence. What the hell is going on? Anybody else see this?
Before I came on board with the Atlas team, I made a living doing freelance digital marketing. When I decided to start working with Atlas, I had to do something with those clients. Some had been working with me for years so I couldn't just say "see ya!".
I took a look around and realized there was no one I felt comfortable referring them to. I thought "okay, no problem, I'll just train someone to do what I do."
Easier said than done. I basically just needed a solid writer. I can teach any of the other skills. Unfortunately, even the people I found that had strong writing skills were unreliable and inconsistent. The level of incompetence topped with a layer of irresponsibility is something I see more and more often.
I don't know what the cause is. As jbrenner said, "Who is John Galt?"
the incompetent actions, not the competent!!! -- j
.
There are many.
Semi-short story (as usual) from me...
Maybe 20 years ago, my department manager came to me on a Friday Afternoon and said, "Alan, I really appreciate your maturity and ability to solve problems we run into in our department and with our Sales Rep customers and their customers. But I don't see that kind of thinking in many of the others in our group. Can you please tell me how to hire 'more people like you'? What should I look for?"
I replied that that's a tough question... give me the weekend to think it over, ok? He agreed.
Monday morning he walked over and asked me if I'd figured out the answer. I replied,
"Yes... Don't hire anyone under 40 years old."
I've been trying to figure out "what changed" ever since and have come up with several possibilities but no clearly Root Causes.
That's probably why, in MY retirement, I focus so much on blog sites where bitchin' is the Way of Life, trying to teach Critical Thinking as a potential Way Out.
Good luck to us all. Recent developments on college campuses and in political circuses have been very discouraging to me. Probably why I like to sleep alot, though turning 70 may have had some impact, too.
:)
Several years ago, our public school system---which indoctrinates 80~90% of our nations kids---stopped teaching writing. The theory being, if one pushes kids to read and read a lot that grammar and writing skills will be picked up through osmosis.
I.e., good luck getting a writer.
I have had to buy grammar books (among other subjects) for my own kids.. and am constantly wondering why the heck I even let them go to public schools nowadays. We spend a good deal of time at home going through extra work.
The public school system is dwindling fast, irregardless of Common Core infiltration. The Department of Education must be closed, quickly. State and Federal levels. Our kids are not taught to think at all now.
Kids are no longer taught to conjugate verbs. Heck, they don't even know what a preposition is, much less can they tell you what 'past participle' means. They do not graph sentences. Grammar, which used to be a year long endeavor in 7th grade is now nothing but reading, reading, and more reading. No reports are required until at least the 9th grade when its apparent that those 9th graders, like you say, cannot write worth a the price of the sheets of paper provided. Those with signs of some writing skill are permitted to proceed on to 'Advanced Composition' in my kids' district. That's 25-40 kids for a 700-person class size. (~4-6% of the students)
The current generation of Millennials has hardly had to lift a finger to graduate, either. Grade inflation has become the norm as teachers are ghastly afraid to fail any student regardless of ineptitude. They graduate high school with the expectation that effort is not required; that life will just provide stuff. I.e., that the government will give them whatever subsistence they believe they are entitled. Fervor for work, accomplishment, achievement, setting goals are all concepts as foreign as old-folks talking about days sans smart phones.
As a nation, we are in grave danger. You think finding a writer is hard... wait until you need to hire a Millennial.
Grammar, which used to be a year long endeavor in 7th grade is now nothing but ...
When I was in school in the 1950s and 1960s, Cleveland Public had a 30-year history of "tracks" for general, business, and college-bound students. For all of us, one semester 7 through 12 was grammar and one semester 7 through 12 was literature. For most of it, the literature was general, but specialized to American in the 11th grade and English in the 12th, including options for "academically talented" as well as "advanced placement" for college credit. Grammar followed similar lines of development from easy to sophisticated.
I work as a professional writer. At a used book store, I found our 12th grade grammar book, and was happy to pay the discount price. I mean, I have Chicago, and Columbia, and all those, but styles guides are not grammar books: why it must be that way; just so you know...
I learned traditional English the diagrammed sentence led from left to right. I don't give a fig about what followed. I do adjectived and adverbs not modifiers and intensifiers whatever the hell those are.
It is my job to learn definitions. If you don't use a real dictionary meaning tough. I will interpret what you or anyone else wrote and react to it in pre PC English. It's not my job to memorize thirty million different other versions. If it doesn't come across as intended I can always check to see if there were meanings 2, 3,4, If not....tough.
I don't do reality tv definitions, I don't do definititons of the so called news casters none of that. I don't do pop illliteracci or glitteratti.
If you tell me I suck I punch you out. Plain and simple. And that has happened.
I have a rather large vocabulary and still use a dictionary. It taught me that the redefiniiton goes back fruther than I thought. such as is common with liberal, conservative socialist and capitalist and decimate.
Consequently I have taken a page from non grammatical of Mr. Lenin and the current crop of leftists. I don't use their definitions at all.
When I say left wing extremists I am referring to both the national and international version of socialism.
When I say center I mean the Constitution not the center of the left.
when i say left I include the Republican party as the right wing OF the left
It's the only way I've found to make any sense of it.
If you don't like it ...I do not care.
If you dangle a participle I conclude you forgot to finish the pancake and wonder was it boxers or briefs? Obviously if you didn't care then ....why should I?
Is this a conservastive of a liberal failing? BOTH. For none of you use those words with any discernible meaning either. ...Very few. perhaps three...
You sure you aren't confusing it with a particle? You know, those tiny parts of atoms that scientists say everything is made from? Sometimes I think they just make that stuff up in order to get it to fit their math.
I have a Belgian friend named Guy. He is almost as cucu as us. I should get him involved, but he is probably smart enough to avoid the entire conversation.
I hate to have to say it, but your anti-intellectual attitude is just the other side of their coin. And this is not unusual for you or to you. You have expressed those sentiments before, and other conservatives do, too.
Me? Anti-Intellectual? Nonsense.
I am, however, anti pretentious intellectual. Perhaps it's my writer's training . I follow the Hemmingway school. When interviewed by an adoring female she said, "Your books are so full of...." Hemmingway interrupted, "Short sentences." Plus, if you can demonstrate to me how knowing what a participle is and does will help a writer put together a coherent thought, I'd love to see it. In summation: Anti intellectual thought and behavior on my part depends entirely on the supposedly intellectual expressing it.
One further thought, Mike. Perhaps you don't have a sense of humor.
I made my comment before I saw above that in a previous life you were a publisher. I had time to edit the original slight, but I let it stand so that we could have this conversation.
"Non-conceptual" would have been better than "anti-intellectual." Among the great insights provided by Ayn Rand was that an individual is the summation of their ideas. Most people, apparently, do not construct consistent systems of thought from examination and introspection. I could say, colloquially, that you have good instincts. Your heart is in the right place. But you are not a philosopher.
The physical law of cause-and-effect cannot be avoided. You complained that the writers who came to you could not tell a story. Worse, they could not communicate a coherent idea in a single sentence. I loved the semesters devoted to grammar, and suffered through the half-year of literature. The only exception was the 10th grade when the literature included more exposition, even technical writing. It was worth reading. It was as much fun as diagramming sentences. The ideas were crisp and certain. The points made were unarguable. You did not have to agree, but you knew what you were disagreeing about. The kids who came to you unable to write suffered from a lack of that in school. That was the point made by Sp_cebux. You dismissed it with a quip.
Sorry if I don't write up to your standards. However, I have been published, been a publisher and editor. I'm afraid that I don't understand your use of "non-conceptual." Everything must be conceptual or it is just gibberish. Since most people seem to understand what I write, there must be a concept of some sort hidden there somewhere. Perhaps the subject? I'm trying to sew your comments together in order to understand them. Are you implying that I somehow violated cause and effect? I understand your school experience as it was quite a bit like mine.
Remember that when you try to quote your non-existent Constitution and I laugh at you. Or as did happen someone says it's a forgery because they failed to learn proper punctuation. Iis even now using it to legitimize changes in the Constitution.
So dangle your participle and when it's chopped off ...don't come complaining to me.
You are getting what you deserve.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/...
used to backup secular progressives use of ACLU to make constitutional changes in the courts and without amendments and quoted in George Lakoff's hand book for the advancement of Secular Progressivism.
All because Professor Allen failed to apply one conceivable angle...that of punctuation and grammar. All because people think the language is unimportant. Cost you the Bill of Rights so far...
It took me fifteen minutes to correctly identify the source of her complaint ..It will take Danielle Allen a lifetime and she will still be a dangling participle of a failed education system.
I'll give you fifteen minutes to identify the problem and the solution or what the helll take an hour or a day or two.
Good lord, she'd need to change her name in my high school. Although we had an English teacher named Miss Wilson and I got the kids to call her Woodrow. No doubt you realize by now that I was in the principal's office regularly.
And Mike -- I like you, or should I say as you represent yourself since we've never met. You're quite erudite, and a sharp mind. You might be aware, however, that at my age, I have accumulated enough insults and clever put-downs to fill a pocket dictionary, but I never use them here.
It seems that in talking past each other, we have made a mountain out of a mole hill.
Run- ons are one of the plagues of the poor writings that I was referring to. I was startled in a sad way to note supposed sentences without subjects and subjects sans predicates. The easiest time we had was when we decided to do a horror comic book and put previously published stories into graphic form. We were able to use the author's actual copy which had already been edited.
On the other hand, I trust that your graphics people were good at that. Your problem was that they could not tell stories. They taught themselves how to draw, admittedly, in many cases with the help of good teachers who also were artists. My experience in school is that the art teachers were better artists than the English teachers were writers. English teachers are readers. It would be like finding an art teacher who enjoys the museum but does not draw or paint.
Graphic novels were never encouraged in school, of course. In my day, teachers hit kids who were caught with comic books. However, I confess that i got through literature classes by relying on Classics Illustrated.
In our case, we primarily did biographies which required research as well as writing ability. Writing a comic book or graphic novel is very akin to writing a play, or a screenplay. Each panel must carry forth the narrative, the actual words spoken if any and a description of the panel. The panel descriptions are often altered by the artists whose imagination in terms of visuals is in most cases, superior to the writer's.
To get the education she provided her high school students back then would take a Masters Degree now IF such a curriculum were available.
Given your comment that and a result of her work called the Poet's Pack should be of interest.
MEM
MEM
He rocks, in so many ways!
For example... https://www.prod.facebook.com/Astrono...
Labor as we might the use of that which I rail against seems to pop out in moments of, usually, late night sessions when the brain is tired and the fingers work as if on auto pilot. Muscle memory has a mind of it's own.
Think declares a state of hesitation in the value of the observation. Believe is a much stronger and based on personal ability to examine the value of something. Know - although much misused as if it were of no value - is a positive word and a strong one. "You know" is slang and implies the second person with an ability that may or may not be true. Worse is 'You know what I meant or mean with out a question mark."
Feel completely free to treat me the same. I probably deserve it although it's in the interest of accuracy and not pedantic EXCEPT when it's humor!!!!! All the above relates to Maritimus comment not Abaco and I would hate to cross verbal swords with DHalling or MMarotta. Both of whom have yet to confuse clip with magazine.
In high school, the kids spend school time on projects to "help" losers, further instilling the notion that it pays being a loser. Then they graduate illiterate and with no useful skills, but the college gives them a couple of years of remedial arithmetic. And after a happy childhood like that (lasting at least until they're 26), what do you expect of them?
Home construction is particularly blatant evidence of this. Try demanding that the contractor use 6-8 inches of gravel fill under any concrete work (more for high water table) instead of 4" and they will gripe and moan. Asking them to backfill against a foundation (to prevent cracks, etc.) with gravel (instead of the clay dirt in my area) will get you another dirty look. The building companies when they buy the land strip off all the topsoil (and sell it), then when the landscapers come in to lay sod or other plants, they never bother to properly prep the soil so the sun doesn't fry the roots and kill the grass and plants outright. Another easy place to check for shoddy workmanship is on the doors and whether or not they are hung properly so they open without rubbing and don't swing. Or whether or not the plumbing lines are 1-3/4" or 2-1'2" pipe (the bigger pipe clogs less frequently).
Look at appliances! I bought a used freezer (ten years old) and I've had it more than 15 years since and it still runs great (though the door seal is shot). Yet I've had friends who had to purchase new refrigerators to repair or replace ones only a few years old!
Furniture is another major offender. Everything is built out of hardboard, making it very cheap, but also very heavy and very destructible. Nothing is built out of hardwood anymore to last - unless you want to spend a fortune.
Why? I largely blame the forced inflation of the government which forces companies to continue to sell new products every year at higher prices. With a stable monetary value, companies could put out quality products knowing their values would be stable (rather than decreasing) and decreasing the pressure to continue to sell products at higher and higher prices just to stay in business.
I also blame the mentality many in the US have that says that everyone should tolerate people who don't provide the best products and services. I used to work for Hewlett-Packard back when they still built hard disk drives. At the time, they had the best drives in the world and they were backed by a five-year warranty. And the people there took pride in their work - a lot of pride. They also got paid with quarterly profit-sharing bonuses based on the profitability of that quarter, so everyone had a direct financial incentive to work hard. That whole division of HP unfortunately got shut down (I can tell the whole story as my father was right in the middle of it) and along with the products went those five-year warranties and the pressure on other manufacturers to compete. It was that year that IBM dropped their warranties back to one year (and everyone else followed suit) and that's where we've been since then.
We need to get back to a business model which encourages the individual producer so as to provide direct incentives for people to do their best. We also need to get rid of the notion perpetuated by the government that any level of inflation is acceptable - let alone a yearly target of 2%.
My engineering work has exposed me to a lot of this. Incompetence in the construction field has been very present for decades, I think. In order to get a house built right you need to oversee the entire process yourself or hire a very good, expensive general. A lot of homes built around here in the boom of the 90s were slapped together by labor picked up at the corner by Home Depot. Zero skills. Everything was built wrong. Every builder has gotten sued, and a lot of the homes will either be completely collapsed in another 15 years or strapped together with chicken wire.
I have designed over 200 projects and have never had one design change order on my work. Not one. That's BOTH lucky AND good.
One of the results of WW II was that the US was one of the few manufacturing centers still left in the world - which is why the 50's and 60's were so prosperous for us. But after that initial startup period was over and all our generosity to other nations got them back to providing not only for themselves but manufacturing for the world, their newer plants, technology, and processes quickly put US manufacturing at a distinct disadvantage. The steel mills are the quintessential example. Most of our steel mills were built in the run-up to WW II and used extensive, megalithic footprints and processes. The Japanese (and many others) rebuilt in the 50's using mini-mills, which had a smaller footprint (lower overhead) and could turn out steel of very high quality quickly.
It's in areas like this that I think there is a case for government to go to businesses to offer them guarantees to rebuild a critical manufacturing industry like steel. There is just simply too much initial capital outlay involved and steel production is too critical to too many industries. Our primary sources for steel now are overseas. Can you imagine how construction would grind to a halt if we got into a major war?
“I am a man of math and science, a pilot, engineer, father, and sportfisherman. Oh ... and a geek.” plus:::
he used to fly aerobatics – does engineering by day; finance by night
he's involved with lotsa incompetence. -- j
.
having studied for it for 30 years, I aced the PE ... and
worked it for 30 more, then retired. . back off when you
can, sir;;; it's fun! -- j
.
and keep your options open! -- j
.
Thinking back I just do not believe that it was always like this. The people who (average American) in the class of being two paychecks to the gutter...Almost every damn one is horribly incompetent. I know a couple young ones, early-mid twenties, who want to claw their way up.
I was just thinking about this driving in this morning, over a stretch of Interstate 80 that has been under construction for at least a decade now. I will be able to really scale back my work in 4 or 5 years where I don't really have to rely on anybody other than me. Can't quite do it yet.
much of it is true, or how much just your subjective
opinion. I have tried to do my jobs properly. (When
I was18, I was fired from a maid's job because I was no good at it and was too slow, although I tried. I was on it 2 days. I was dreadfully a-
shamed. I never blamed the man for firing me.
I think I probably would have done the same).
But after that experience, I did not want to be
too slow on a job. The next job I got (carhop), I
worked to be very fast on it, and this was noted
very much. I worked very hard, often volunteer-
ing to do extra time. Once I went 90 days (at
least) with no days off. I loved that job, until it
was ruined for me by the manager's repeatedly
telling me to slow down. I gave a week's notice,
and when it was done, stayed around another 7
days, on a day-to-day basis, and then the other
manager said he had somebody, and then I left.
I was on that job about a year and a half,and
about 4 days later got a job in the furniture fac-
tory.
I noticed something about that carhop's job.
The cashiers didn't want to make change as
they were supposed to. I was given $10 to make
change with, at the beginning of the shift, which
$10 I was supposed to turn in at the end of the
shift, and any other money I had (being tips) I was supposed to keep.
The cashiers didn't want to accept a lot of
change when I paid for the order; they wanted
paper money. The customers wanted to stick me with chicken s%1t out on the Curb; if the
order was $1.25, for instance, they would want
to pay me with a five or a ten, and instead of
letting me get rid of the change,, like normal,
decent people, they would want to pay me the
quarter overtop of the five, and get an extra
paper dollar, and leave me with another dollar in
chicken s%1t, which the cashiers would not
want to accept from me at the window when I
paid for the next order. So I would get more and
more chicken s%1t, and less and less paper.
The boss told me not to give them a lot of change when they were busy. An old cashier,
long in the place, said any time they had an
order, "That's busy." However, they were ex-
tremely uncooperative about changing into
paper during slack periods, between orders. And
then the Boss-man had the utter chutzpah to
mouth off to me about turning in a lot of change
at the end of the night when I turned in the $10,
for him to count. I told him once, (but this was
some time after I quit, when I was hanging a-
round the place; he mentioned it) "You de-
served to have to count it, for making me car-
ry it all night! I wish now I had taken it
into the kitchen and heated it up on the grill and
made you count it while it was hot! I wish I
could have melted it in a cauldron and poured it
molten down your throat!" He seemed some-
what taken aback, although somewhat amused,
but when I told him he was the one who didn't
make the cashiers turn it into paper during the
shift, he didn't really seem to have much to say.
---However, some years ago, an old co-worker
buddy of mine told me that that boss had sold
his share in the place to his brother-in-law (who
had been the other manager). And since that
time, the counter has been broken open; the
carhops go from the Curbhouse into the Inside,
and go to the cash register, and use it them-
selves.
I can't claim that these remarks are super-re-
levant; but sometimes people seem not to be
competent on their jobs, when the real cause
may lie in the incompetence or careless of man-
agement.
I consider the service at Walmart fair-to-middling at
best, and awful at worst. But those places sell a
lot of Communist crap (which I don't buy, of course;I look over the merchandise very care-
fully before purchasing it). I consider dealing
in that stuff supporting slavery. But people who
don't mind doing that are likely not to treat their
employees very well, and then it is not surpris-
ing if employees in that situation are not very
nice to the customers.
money.
I don't see that China is "the worlds [sic]num-
ber one capitalist country; I've read a lot about
China. Although the USA is definitely deteriorating.
Why?
We can't afford made in the USA anymore.
This is why when I first coached a youth soccer team several years ago (it was about five years after I first saw the data) and I saw how much trouble the boys were having paying attention to any input we had for them...I'll be honest, I was almost driven to tears. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At the same time, I was pretty sure I had seen the smoking gun. Very troubling for this Objectivist...
other "chemical straitjacket". That could do more
harm even than an unjust spanking. (Of course, I
am not against corporal punishment, judiciously
administered, but control by chemicals seems to
me to be dystopian).
I've heard them called out for sloppy work but it keeps happening again and again. We try to put measures in place but they won't use them. It's more work.
The title is perfect. Zombies. And, worst of all, the people who care are turning into them because they're burning out from the abuse. Yep. Who is John Galt?
I remember only a few years ago, the 80’s and 90’s that people had their stuff together; sure, some didn’t but the vast majority did. There were people everywhere wanting a piece of the pie and working hard to get it, now it only seems they come running for cherry pie.
Secondly I think most jobs aren't intellectually challenging today. Follow the rules, push buttons on the computer, give out the change the cash register tells you to. A lot more of these jobs need to be automated or done by robots
The first of them to be automated is fast food ordering. The clerks are notoriously bad at just listening while customers are talking. Bring on the robots !!!
I have been studying cycles for a while now, climate, civilizations, sociological, astrological...funny thing, they seem to line up!
We very well might be going through a time much like what happened in the end days of Noah, the fall of Sumeria, Babylon, or Rome and Greece. Looking back upon climate, upon the cycles of our sun and solar system.
What's happening now?...we are entering a grand solar minimum which not only brings climate chaos, but a general cooling trend, at the same time, our magnetic shielding is weakening rapidly and our atmosphere is shrinking. These trends are associated and inter related and YES, these events play havoc with your brain!!!...especially upon the "Unaware"...those that do not rely or use their minds to control their brains. (and there are more of these people than you might imagine)-[awareness is key].
PLUS! something that usually, as far as we know, doesn't happen simultaneously with these events...our magnetic poles are wandering rapidly and seem to be heading toward each other...we have no idea how that fits into the whole picture. But we do know this: With weakened shields, we are even more vulnerable to cosmic radiation and relatively weak solar radiation and at best, it causes a distraction to our concentration and at worst...pushes one over the edge. (what ever psychological edge they might tending).
Now add all this to the recipe of culture and political chaos and all hell seems to be letting loose. Hence, no one gives a damn, there is no use to anything we do...especially when compared to the incompetent creatures in government, in business and other segments in society that have everything they need, (and don't appreciate nor share that abundance)-[a conscious human trait] .
Someone called the outcome...cognitive dissonance...I call it apathy and it is, my friend, at least partially, due to the progressive progressively dumbing down of society.
As I have said often, Stalin's and Wilson's useful idiots have become "Useless idiots" and they all reside in high positions in society, in business and low and behold...governments.
I actually don't see people doing a bad job at work, at least not in my little corner of the economy.
I see people who are doing well, making decent money, and living good affluent lifestyles saying they would like just a little help from the gov't here and there in funding their lifestyles. This may or may not be related to what you see.
Furthermore, a cartoonist (I read he DOES have experience in the business world) named Scott Adams felt moved to create a strip called Dilbert.
I believe we all know what Dilbert is about.
Old Dilbert strips happen to be my 2016 desk calendar.
I met some when I was a security guard at a Wachovia data center.
Two dim Dems in particular really could not stand it when I watched Fox News when I ate a meal in the break room.
I remember one hovering over my back while I sat and ate while wearing a holstered .38.
Guess the weapon may be why he finally left without even saying anything.
Heck, I was eating in there by myself. My wannabe intimidator just came in for a Coke or something.
My wife recently gave me a Camacho for 2016 campaign tee shirt. I wear it all the time...
I have seen two trends
1) a much larger percentage of job applicants have college degrees. About 1/3 (and usually the best ones) were self taught.
2) The percentage of those with College degrees that worked in the field prior to completing the degree had declines from about half to none over this time period.
3) People with the degree before they get any experience often cannot seem to think through a problem and come up with a solution. There are some exceptions.
This has made it so a major element of what I look for on a resume is did the person have experience in the field prior to getting a degree?
How does this relate to your question.
I not only find that many are full of excuses but find the cause if it is getting the education solely from the school and not from work experience.
Those that learned in school that the result is the code is done, not that the code works and works correctly.
Meanwhile those with job experience as part of the education process learned that a badly written chunk of code does not mean job done, just because the code is written.
To put it into school terms. A paper is done regardless of if you get a D or a C+ or A. It should be you did D work, do it again, repeat until its c+ work or do not pass the class. Perhaps B+ work, or even A required on key projects, papers or even a class. This would teach get it done right rather than get it done to pass.
I believe this to be a major factor on the source of the lazy work I see very often from people.
Yes. I see it all the time. My company must constantly work to make our tools "fool proof." Forty years of improving tools and trying to do so and try as I might, I have never been able to keep pace with their ability to be foolish. It seems impossible for one with competence to imagine the levels of incompetence possible. The companies that I supply move people with a modicum of ability and intelligence into supervisory positions and struggle to fill the openings with anyone competent.
Yes, jbrenner is right; who is John Galt?
Respectfully,
O.A.
It sounds quite similar to the complaint of Pliny the elder, you know.
There are more goofs - but there are also more people.
I suspect that one good EMP will sort it all out.