Compare the '60's

Ya gotta wonder what is happening here with nostalgia.
Did people even have backyard telescopes in the '60's that can barely hold a
candle to what's happening now?

We do live in a better world but it's just too bad not many can bring this
into focus. Ya still have all the pansies wanting "better" whatever better
is. So really, what is better?

Ariva Sativa wrote:
Ya gotta wonder what is happening here with nostalgia.
Did people even have backyard telescopes in the '60's that can barely hold a
candle to what's happening now?

There will still be people willing to shell out hundreds for some
crummy old refractor just because it's
an antique. But the cold reality sets in when they compare it with
their current scopes. You can't recapture seeing Saturn or M-42 for
the first time. The only thing worth bringing back from the "old days"
are darker skies.

Ariva Sativa wrote:
Ya gotta wonder what is happening here with nostalgia.
Did people even have backyard telescopes in the '60's that can barely hold a
candle to what's happening now?

We do live in a better world but it's just too bad not many can bring this
into focus. Ya still have all the pansies wanting "better" whatever better
is. So really, what is better?

Why do people look back on the 1960s as a time when we were wealthier
than we are today?

In 1969, IBM came out with a computer whose CPU cost $2,000,000. It ran
at 16 MHz, and it could have up to 4 megabytes of RAM. It had 32 Kbytes
of cache, and it was pipelined, its first computer to combine both
features.

Although the earliest Pentium chips only had 16 Kbytes of cache, they
had the top-of-the-line IBM 360/195 beat in some other ways. (But a
360/195 had good peripherals, enabling it to do more useful work than a
desktop PC for other reasons.)

Telescopes haven't improved to that extent, but they certainly have
improved. When the Questar first came out, you couldn't *buy* a
telescope that did what it could at a cheaper price. Now, although its
high quality does justify its price to many people still, if what you
want is a small Maksutov-Cassegrain scope, or especially if you'll
settle for a small Schmidt-Cassegrain scope, you can get one quite
affordably.

And we have flat-screen and even flat-panel color TV sets. We may not
have the flying cars, but we *do* finally have the flat-panel TV sets.

So why do people moan and say that we were richer in 1960?

Well, life isn't all about electronic gadgets. It doesn't matter how
cheap *they* are if people can't afford basic things like food and
housing.

Hey, wait a moment. The United States is a rich country. Nobody's doing
without basic food and housing in the U.S.A. - and if we do look at the
very few people who are, there were more of them, and they were worse
off, in 1960 as well. We aren't neglecting the poorest forgotten people
now the way we did then.

So this nostalgia for the 1960s is all a hoax, right?

Well, no.

For ordinary working-class Americans, it's a lot harder, for example,
to leave high school and get a job at union wages at an automaker, or
in a steel mill, than it was in 1962.

It's a lot harder to own a home in a neighborhood that's relatively
crime-free than it was in 1962.

Car insurance and gasoline are harder to afford on a working-class
paycheque than they were in 1962.

A house and a car are the next level up from food, clothing, and
shelter. It's important for people to be able to afford these, not in
middle age, but in early adult life.

And there's something else about the 1960s. That was the leading edge
of the baby boom. So if you turned 21 in 1962, the number of Americans
who were your age, also turning 21 in 1962, was smaller than the number
of Americans who turned 19 during 1962.

What's important about that? Typically, on average, when people marry,
the man is two years older than the woman. Since the older women are
now already married, it's hard for this age difference to suddenly be
altered in successive years.

At birth, 105 male babies are born to every 100 female babies.

If you visit a cattle-farming operation, you will note that you can
safely walk among the unmodified female cattle (cows) but unmodified
male cattle (bulls) are kept in pens because they are violent and
dangerous. This is not generally believed to be the result of harmful
sexist socialization due to negative role models on TV. So men *do*
have a potential tendency to be pushy and overbearing.

Not every woman, therefore, gets married. Some have been victims of
sexual abuse, and some just put a higher priority on a career than on a
family. The greater equality of women now gives women more choices,
they aren't as economically dependent as they were back in the 1960s,
before many laws protecting the equality of women that exist now were
passed.

Basically, therefore, we were richer in the 1960s than we were
afterwards - in the 1970s, in the "boom" of the 1980s, and right up to
the present - because the level of *male reproductive success* was
higher then than it is now.

That's what's important to men - a wife and a family. Not flashier
toys. And the competition for the important things in life, those that
distinguish between success and failure, is tougher now.

Since the overwhelming majority of men still *are* happily married,
though, is this a big problem? But even they had to work harder to
attain that status and wait longer. And it doesn't take many men pushed
out to the margins to send the crime rate skyrocketing (women who can't
find husbands don't go around selling drugs or holding up convenience
stores: see the note on cattle operations). This is the fundamental
root of the ongoing social malaise. And it isn't easy to look it in the
face.

John Savard

wrote:
Ariva Sativa wrote:
Ya gotta wonder what is happening here with nostalgia.
Did people even have backyard telescopes in the '60's that can barely hold a
candle to what's happening now?

We do live in a better world but it's just too bad not many can bring this
into focus. Ya still have all the pansies wanting "better" whatever better
is. So really, what is better?

Why do people look back on the 1960s as a time when we were wealthier
than we are today?

In 1969, IBM came out with a computer whose CPU cost $2,000,000. It ran
at 16 MHz, and it could have up to 4 megabytes of RAM. It had 32 Kbytes
of cache, and it was pipelined, its first computer to combine both
features.

Although the earliest Pentium chips only had 16 Kbytes of cache, they
had the top-of-the-line IBM 360/195 beat in some other ways. (But a
360/195 had good peripherals, enabling it to do more useful work than a
desktop PC for other reasons.)

Telescopes haven't improved to that extent, but they certainly have
improved. When the Questar first came out, you couldn't *buy* a
telescope that did what it could at a cheaper price. Now, although its
high quality does justify its price to many people still, if what you
want is a small Maksutov-Cassegrain scope, or especially if you'll
settle for a small Schmidt-Cassegrain scope, you can get one quite
affordably.

And we have flat-screen and even flat-panel color TV sets. We may not
have the flying cars, but we *do* finally have the flat-panel TV sets.

So why do people moan and say that we were richer in 1960?

Because they are stupid? Wealth has more to do with the allocation of
money and not how much you make.
In 1960, you didn't have pre-teens begging their parents for $200
iPods, cellphones that cost $40/month to run, $150 running shoes, etc.
In fact, spending that kind of money on anything related to childhood
was unheard of then compared to now. The average family's spending on
this stuff is FAR higher as a percentage of income than similar
products (which of course didn't exist) in 1960. Families need two
jobs today to afford luxuries, not basic items like food and housing.

wrote:
Ariva Sativa wrote:



Who cares what Ariva Sativa wrote?

But then John Savard suddenly and fantastically opined (and I became
interested):

Basically, therefore, we were richer in the 1960s than we were
afterwards - in the 1970s, in the "boom" of the 1980s, and right up to
the present - because the level of *male reproductive success* was
higher then than it is now.

Jaysus, man, that's it! A generation of modernist discontent squeezed
into a ball and rolled toward the overwhelming question! We're not
getting laid regularly enough, and that's the root of society's problems!

Good on you, John. Best thing I've read in days. - Chris

wrote:
If you visit a cattle-farming operation, you will note that you can
safely walk among the unmodified female cattle (cows) but unmodified
male cattle (bulls) are kept in pens because they are violent and
dangerous. This is not generally believed to be the result of harmful
sexist socialization due to negative role models on TV. So men *do*
have a potential tendency to be pushy and overbearing.


Funny,funny,funny !.

I know you are dead serious because if you happen to be a lawyer or
some other guy who makes a living out of this nonsense you will be
nodding your head like crazy.

" It is better to live in a corner of the roof Than in a house shared
with a contentious woman"

http://bible.cc/proverbs/25-24.htm

You empirical guys have lost your balls,you turned a very ancient piece
of wisdom into a social norm and allowed a few guys to make money out
of it.I know,cut off their balls hand them a telescope and send them
out to the backyard where they can pretend to be astronomers.






Not every woman, therefore, gets married. Some have been victims of
sexual abuse, and some just put a higher priority on a career than on a
family. The greater equality of women now gives women more choices,
they aren't as economically dependent as they were back in the 1960s,
before many laws protecting the equality of women that exist now were
passed.
John Savard

Ah,everything got packaged to suit the politics and ideologies of an
era and your views are definitely from the last few decades,as I have
found,most men and women now have developed softer views as opposed to
the hardnosed finacially profitable endeavor the
'vulnerability/equality' card.

"For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!"

Oscar Wilde

The package of 'astronomer' now amounts to magnification and a
software program based on celestial sphere geometry,it has an audience
of people who never really reach the level of the great men who once
took to that isolated pursuit of astronomy and the very real struggle
to extract accurate geometric concepts from observations.Today,none of
you can give the correct correlation between clocks and axial
rotation,the correct approach to retrogrades and their resolution and
any other astronomical insight which once graced the lives of men.

Ariva Sativa wrote:

Ya gotta wonder what is happening here with nostalgia.
Did people even have backyard telescopes in the '60's that can barely hold a
candle to what's happening now?

We do live in a better world but it's just too bad not many can bring this
into focus. Ya still have all the pansies wanting "better" whatever better
is. So really, what is better?

Its a very mixed bag. The one huge improvement is in computers,
software, internet, communications, and all of the opportunities
the home computer has given. Nothing inthe 60's compares to
that and computers are cheap in relative terms - a LOT cheaper
than quality scopes, then and now.

We lost Criterion and nothing has replaced that! It's a huge
void nothing and nobody has or can fill due to economics.

If you could take some of today's technology and go back to the
living and housing and environmental conditions of the 60's that
would be ideal, unfortunately that is NOT the case. Todays world
is very cruel and harsh with over population everywhere and everyone is
suffering for it.

In the 1960's thousands of amateur astronomers were being
made. Today thousands are being lost with a whole new younger
generation which may be more technically informed and sharper,
but with far less opportunities and far less time than was the
case in the 60's.

Somehow you didnt have to be a Superman in the 60's just to
survive and have something of a life. Today anything is possible
and most of it is very negative and life threatening for ordinary
people, who didnt have the 70's and 80's and 90's to build up
a portfolio .... on stealth in artficial economies post Nixon and
Carter! Today too manypeople are plain crazy and viscious with
no law and order at the top.

How amateur atsronomy fits into that ... ask Rich and Rod Mollise!