Author Topic: We're doomed.  (Read 21828 times)

Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #100 on: March 17, 2017, 05:13:25 PM »
Hardly records of importance. In fact, those "records" were trashed once the comments contained therein were addressed. There wasn't some huge room at Navy Federal were those notes were kept for posterity

At last the two places I've worked, we've had boxes upon boxes of dead-tree files going back to the 90s. I presume thousands and thousands of other businesses have the same. Obviously, most of that will be machine-printed, and only a fraction will have cursive writing.

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Both Chris and I have provided concrete observations about the lack of use of cursive writing in today's workplace.


That the two of you don't recall seeing it is hardly concrete. It's not a detail anyone would expect you to remember, if you had seen it.

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You've been able to provide no tangible examples where cursive writing is an ongoing and important part of the workforce, any job sector, any company, or any job other than the highly specialized role of a caligrapher....but its manifest necessity and vitality in the smooth functioning of today's business world is NOT one of them, no matter what you theorize, and no matter how little to no evidence you provide to the contrary.

I never said anything about it being manifestly vital, and I actually said that education is not just about the work place. We learn to read and write so we can communicate with family and friends as well, and I've referred to cursive's role in that.


They would still be literate.  They read English just fine.  We're not talking about language, but script.  What if those letters were written in shorthand (real shorthand as it used to be taught...in schools)?

I didn't say they wouldn't be literate, but there are degrees of literacy.

I don't know much about short-hand, but how valid a comparison do you really think it is? Compared to cursive, how generally was it taught, and for how long a period of time? How many important documents were (are) written or preserved in short-hand, compared to cursive? Short-hand serves basically one purpose (transcribing or summarizing speech), while cursive is for general purpose writing, so it's more useful, and might show up just about anywhere.

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Also, one can find cursive charts and transcribe the letters.  The letters aren't lost.

I don't think anyone's saying they're lost. But let's say there's a situation in which an older person, during a business meeting, writes a quick note, and hands it to a younger colleague, who wasn't taught cursive. Maybe he's telling him to go out and get the such-and-such file, or to employ negotiating tactic #503, or whatever, so he just dashes off a note. And he just happens to use cursive, because that's how he writes. You can say, "In my decades of business experience, I've neither seen nor heard of any such thing." Or you can say that's what texting is for, or that the old dude should have known to just print. Meanwhile, Joe the Recent College Grad is googling a cursive chart. It's not a far-fetched scenario, but I think it's an absurd one, that should be avoided by fully teaching the poor kid how to read and write.


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Without using cursive, I can read the language of our culture just fine.  We're reading this, right?

 ??? This is in print.

 
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You're assuming the records in question were written in a standard script, correctly, and still legible.

No, I'm not. Some cursive will be easier to read than others. Some print will be easier to understand than others. By way of "tangible examples," I submit this photo of a pick ticket I "tanged" this afternoon.



Someone tried to scribble in a job name or PO number, which the millennial in accounts receivable will need to enter into the computer. That's not cursive, and I'm not sure whether it's letters, numbers, or both. The one thing I'm sure of is that I've never seen a sample of cursive more difficult to decipher than that mess.

And since Mike is so rigorous about concrete examples, I wrote some cursive on another pick ticket today. WHERE IS YOUR BLOCK PRINT GOD NOW?!  :P
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RoadKingLarry

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #101 on: March 17, 2017, 05:28:53 PM »
In this remarkable bastion of libertarian-ism I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, to see so many rugged individualists lamenting the government schools not teaching something they see as important.
If you feel strongly that your progeny need to learn something that the government schools do not teach I would suggest that you pull up your big boy or girl pants and undertake to instruct your get yourselves.
=D
 
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Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #102 on: March 17, 2017, 05:58:41 PM »
In this remarkable bastion of libertarian-ism I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, to see so many rugged individualists lamenting the government schools not teaching something they see as important.
If you feel strongly that your progeny need to learn something that the government schools do not teach I would suggest that you pull up your big boy or girl pants and undertake to instruct your get yourselves.
=D
 


Ohhhhhhkay, if you wanna go down that road, I'm all for the school districts deciding their own curriculum, with minimal guidance from the state, and none from the Feds. And, no, I'm not saying the states should dictate cursive instruction.
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230RN

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #103 on: March 17, 2017, 07:43:28 PM »
Question about the atomic clock... specifically the time signal.

How do they adjust for the time lag between a clock 10 miles away receiving the signal vs a clock in, say, Eastport, Maine, about 2,300 air miles away?

Even though the signal travels at 186,000 miles per second, there's still a measurable lag.

And, if it's used to establish time for the GPS satellite network, that's even more of a signal lag

WRT the Eastport Maine, question, basically, the WWV time signals define the time for any place it is intended for.  Precise corrections are attainable by the user, if that much precision is involved.  It takes about 1/8 of a second for a radio signal to circle the globe, but the bouncing of the signal back and forth from the ionosphere to earth must be taken into account.

I know that when I used to set the time on my legacy computers, the government system would test the time for it to send the "ticks" and get an echo, sort of like pinging a website.  It would then apply the appropriate correction.  (That's the way I remember it, anyhow, and IIRC, essentially the same method is used to correct for the delay between the clock itself and the transmitters in Fort Collins.)

Keep in mind, this is sort of like the question of "how many decimal places of pi do you need to use?"  If you "need" pi to 84 decimal places, that information is either available or deriveable.  For time, high precision is probably only necessary to confirm relativity theory and the like, for example.

WRT to the GPS satellites, I do not know for sure, except that the very lag you speak of results in phasing differences between satellite signals and these phase delays are used to derive your position.  So presumably, the times on each satellite are preset to be identical through all of them or reset from the ground after a stable orbit is achieved.

I do know for sure that they don't use pendulum clocks to keep accurate time in the GPS satellites. :D

Terry  (Comments and corrections are invited)
« Last Edit: March 17, 2017, 08:17:18 PM by 230RN »

Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #104 on: March 17, 2017, 09:07:06 PM »
I do know for sure that they don't use pendulum clocks to keep accurate time in the GPS satellites. :D


Only in those steam-punk satellites.
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MechAg94

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #105 on: March 17, 2017, 09:07:21 PM »
If cursive lapses into history, I'll count that as a win on many fronts. The biggest being while print can be not legible, cursive is RARELY legible to anyone other than the writer. Even then, it can be iffy. 

I think if it lapses, general English skills will also lapse and nothing will be legible.
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230RN

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #106 on: March 17, 2017, 09:26:25 PM »
I've got several correspondents who use cursive.

I'm still wondering what "pfbibxly" meant in in one recent letter.  I'm sure that's an "i" because of the dot.  At any rate, her pfbibxly is fine, according to her Doctor.

Terry, 230RN

Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #107 on: March 17, 2017, 09:45:00 PM »
I have this crazy idea that, if cursive were so thoroughly illegible to anyone other than the author, people would not have been using it to communicate with each other for hundreds of years. Unless we're to believe that all those letters back and forth were just gazed at uncomprehendingly.
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230RN

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #108 on: March 17, 2017, 10:25:59 PM »
^ "Unless we're to believe that all those letters back and forth were just gazed at uncomprehendingly. '

Ayup.  I gazed at "pfbibxly" pfbibxly.

Adjectivial form: pfbibxic.

freakazoid

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #109 on: March 17, 2017, 11:19:38 PM »
I think the main purpose of cursive I'd to be able to write notes for yourself quickly, sounds like a pretty useful skill to me.
Unless in remembering incorrectly, I'm pretty sure that I learned cursive very early on in elementary. Exactly what "important" classes are being skipped over because they are teaching cursive at that time?
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Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #110 on: March 18, 2017, 12:10:00 AM »
Exactly what "important" classes are being skipped over because they are teaching cursive at that time?

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mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #111 on: March 18, 2017, 08:11:32 AM »
At last the two places I've worked, we've had boxes upon boxes of dead-tree files going back to the 90s. I presume thousands and thousands of other businesses have the same. Obviously, most of that will be machine-printed, and only a fraction will have cursive writing.
 
That the two of you don't recall seeing it is hardly concrete. It's not a detail anyone would expect you to remember, if you had seen it.

Actually, I know because most large corporations have document retention and security policies that would preclude 20yo documents from being kept.  If said documents were so critical they needed to be retained, they would have been converted to electronics records, for among other reasons, to ensure they remain usable over time.  Physical storage is expensive and difficult to manage.  Physical documents are prone to damage, loss, fading, etc as well.  Handwritten documents of importance just aren't a thing anymore.

Exactly what "important" classes are being skipped over because they are teaching cursive at that time?

I'm looking at it more broadly.  If you consider a student has N educational hours in their public school "Career", then by removing cursive, you free up minutes for other instruction.  Obviously you don't need to teach 3rd graders how to manage finances, but maybe there are other subjects or topics that could be taught to them or teach things that would have otherwise been delayed till a later grade.  When those items are moved back, you move yet other delayed subjects into the newly freed slot, creating a knock-on effect giving you more time when the students are older.

Chris

Neemi

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #112 on: March 18, 2017, 12:24:41 PM »
I'm looking at it more broadly.  If you consider a student has N educational hours in their public school "Career", then by removing cursive, you free up minutes for other instruction.  Obviously you don't need to teach 3rd graders how to manage finances, but maybe there are other subjects or topics that could be taught to them or teach things that would have otherwise been delayed till a later grade.  When those items are moved back, you move yet other delayed subjects into the newly freed slot, creating a knock-on effect giving you more time when the students are older.

I remember learning cursive in 2nd grade. We spent a few weeks on it, learned how to write it, and then never went back. 4th grade we revisited it so we could learn to write checks. We had a whole little classroom economy - and that's where I learned how to balance a checkbook.

On the other hand, I remember in 10th grade economics we were each assigned a career - then told to buy houses, cars, and other things based on what we could afford. Every other student based their purchases off of monthly payments, because that's what was taught. My teacher was confused that I, assigned a well-paying career, chose to buy an inexpensive, used car and live in an apartment to save up for a down payment for a house. If we're going to teach finances, we've gotta start higher up. Or hire my 4th grade teacher.

KD5NRH

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #113 on: March 18, 2017, 02:06:31 PM »
I think the main purpose of cursive I'd to be able to write notes for yourself quickly, sounds like a pretty useful skill to me.

Erm...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_shorthand

Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #114 on: March 18, 2017, 03:19:36 PM »
All shorthand systems are approximations. Ever read the first draft of a trial or deposition transcript, generated by a certified court stenographer?
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Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #115 on: March 18, 2017, 07:35:59 PM »
Actually, I know because most large corporations have document retention and security policies that would preclude 20yo documents from being kept.  If said documents were so critical they needed to be retained, they would have been converted to electronics records, for among other reasons, to ensure they remain usable over time. 


You know what? That businesses don't have boxes of old paper files in storage? The ones I've worked for do, so I'm not sure what you're saying here.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #116 on: March 18, 2017, 10:10:56 PM »
Actually, I know because most large corporations have document retention and security policies that would preclude 20yo documents from being kept.  If said documents were so critical they needed to be retained, they would have been converted to electronics records, for among other reasons, to ensure they remain usable over time.  Physical storage is expensive and difficult to manage.  Physical documents are prone to damage, loss, fading, etc as well.  Handwritten documents of importance just aren't a thing anymore.

But the electronic copy may be (and probably is) nothing more than a scan of the paper document. Just a slightly more modern variant of a microfiche. Scanning a document written in cursive obviously doesn't make it unnecessary to read cursive if someone needs that document down the road.

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Perd Hapley

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #117 on: March 18, 2017, 10:14:04 PM »
But the electronic copy may be (and probably is) nothing more than a scan of the paper document. Just a slightly more modern variant of a microfiche. Scanning a document written in cursive obviously doesn't make it unnecessary to read cursive if someone needs that document down the road.


The handwritten comments may have been typed into the new, electronic record. Which still means that any cursive has to be read and understood by someone.

Perhaps there's a third way.
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MechAg94

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #118 on: March 18, 2017, 11:22:45 PM »
Actually, I know because most large corporations have document retention and security policies that would preclude 20yo documents from being kept.  If said documents were so critical they needed to be retained, they would have been converted to electronics records, for among other reasons, to ensure they remain usable over time.  Physical storage is expensive and difficult to manage.  Physical documents are prone to damage, loss, fading, etc as well.  Handwritten documents of importance just aren't a thing anymore.

I'm looking at it more broadly.  If you consider a student has N educational hours in their public school "Career", then by removing cursive, you free up minutes for other instruction.  Obviously you don't need to teach 3rd graders how to manage finances, but maybe there are other subjects or topics that could be taught to them or teach things that would have otherwise been delayed till a later grade.  When those items are moved back, you move yet other delayed subjects into the newly freed slot, creating a knock-on effect giving you more time when the students are older.

Chris
As others said, cursive is taught fairly early in elementary school.  At that time, there are few other things you would be teaching youngsters that aren't just basics.  Most kids are still learning basic words, spelling, and sentence structure at that time. 

IMO, the failing is not teaching cursive.  It is that they fail to teach basic writing and reading comprehension and force kids to learn it or fail and retake the grade.  If someone mangles their letters a little when writing, but they write good sentences with correct spelling and grammar, you can still read it. 

A couple other thoughts:
1.  How much print style writing was done before the printing press was invented?  I figure this is hard to know since literacy was also probably less common.
2.  Was cursive an easier way to write with the ink quills available in past centuries? 
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freakazoid

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #119 on: March 19, 2017, 12:02:08 AM »
Forgot that when you sign your name, you use cursive. Your signature is kind of important.
"so I ended up getting the above because I didn't want to make a whole production of sticking something between my knees and cranking. To me, the cranking on mine is pretty effortless, at least on the coarse setting. Maybe if someone has arthritis or something, it would be more difficult for them." - Ben

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Hawkmoon

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #120 on: March 19, 2017, 12:04:37 AM »

The handwritten comments may have been typed into the new, electronic record. Which still means that any cursive has to be read and understood by someone.

Perhaps there's a third way.

There is: OCR -- Optical Character recognition. It's maybe 85% effective at getting printed text more or less correct. Good luck using OCR on cursive handwriting.
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mtnbkr

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #121 on: March 19, 2017, 08:14:41 AM »
But the electronic copy may be (and probably is) nothing more than a scan of the paper document. Just a slightly more modern variant of a microfiche. Scanning a document written in cursive obviously doesn't make it unnecessary to read cursive if someone needs that document down the road.
I suspect that transitory period passed a decade or more ago.


The handwritten comments may have been typed into the new, electronic record. Which still means that any cursive has to be read and understood by someone.

Perhaps there's a third way.
Again, the period where cursive was transcribed to electronic means is long past.  Nothing official in the last 3 companies I worked for was captured via handwritten means.  Certainly nothing 20 years old has been kept without a very specific reason.  It certainly wouldn't have been kept in its original format.  This is due to the various internal and regulatory frameworks in which we operate.  Between documents needing to be on the correct template and stuff not being kept for more than N years without a waiver, there simply aren't "old" docs sitting around in boxes, waiting to be read.  This may be a very different business environment than you're accustomed to.

2.  Was cursive an easier way to write with the ink quills available in past centuries? 
I strongly suspect this is the root of cursive.  Not so much that it was easier, but it presented less opportunity for "drips"?

Forgot that when you sign your name, you use cursive. Your signature is kind of important.

That is probably the first legitimate and contemporary use of cursive mentioned in this thread.  However, law doesn't stipulate how a signature is scratched out, so nothing stops a person from printing their name if that's their signature.  I've used all sorts of non-standard marks on supermarket credit card machines. :)  Also, does other nationalities or languages have "cursive" writings?  Working where I do and working with many nationalities, I haven't noticed (then again, nearly all our written comms are via computer).  I know Kanji has a cursive variant, but based on what I've read, it is more calligraphy-oriented and not used in daily life.  I note this from another forum:
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Full cursive (草書) is really hard to read and I don't think that people use it in daily life (I could be wrong though).

Chris

French G.

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #122 on: March 19, 2017, 08:29:11 AM »
My mom spent a lot of time as a secretary back when that was an acceptable name. She knew shorthand. Perfectly happy to leave Christmas lists out in plain sight. Cursive is cruelty.

I learned cursive but never held a pen correctly and was schooled by a left hand exorcist of an old teacher. My fingers always hurt so by high school I had largely converted back to print. The military and eight million pointless logbook entries finished cursive off for me.
AKA Navy Joe   

I'm so contrarian that I didn't respond to the thread.

Firethorn

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #123 on: March 19, 2017, 08:37:43 AM »
That is probably the first legitimate and contemporary use of cursive mentioned in this thread.

Real signatures are becoming a lot less common, and I know a lot of people who have a random squiggle for a signature, not anything actually readable.

I mean, back in the day we signed checks with our signature, how often is that today?  My check register has slipped back behind the year.  Nearly everything I pay for is electronic.

Mostly it's just electronic signature for credit card purchases these days, and even that's being seen less.

Being back in college, I mostly use cursive to torture teachers who assign in-class writing assignments.

RoadKingLarry

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Re: We're doomed.
« Reply #124 on: March 19, 2017, 09:15:16 AM »
Yesterday I went through a checkout line at a grocery store. When the time came to "sign" the credit card doohickey it came out as a scribble. Older lady (older than me, had the air of a retired school teacher) commented somewhat condemningly, that you couldn't read my signature. I looked her dead in the eye and told her I had legally changed my name to "Illegible Scrawl". Older gentleman behind her snorted, she just went blank, kind of like she had locked up.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

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