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generational markers (was "Disney's Man In Space")



 
 
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  #11  
Old May 26th 04, 10:41 PM
Sam Seiber
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Pat Flannery wrote:
All the late 1950's-early 1960's newsgroup crew starts doing math on the
back of an envelope; all the late 1960's-early 1970's crew starts doing
math on a electronic calculator; all the late 1970's-early 1980's crew
asks "Pearl what?" Mary Shafer starts figuring out how old that is in
dog years on an abacus; Stuff 4 starts haranguing us about Pearl Harbor;
Bob Haller will still not answer Scott Hedrick's question. :-)

Pat


Pat, Somewhere in there you missed a reference to a slide rule. I
recall
using the beasties in high school.

Sam
  #13  
Old May 26th 04, 11:35 PM
Andrew Gray
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On 2004-05-26, Pat Flannery wrote:

I was born 10 years and 1 day after the Pearl Harbor attack.


All the late 1950's-early 1960's newsgroup crew starts doing math on the
back of an envelope; all the late 1960's-early 1970's crew starts doing
math on a electronic calculator; all the late 1970's-early 1980's crew
asks "Pearl what?"


I spent a million pounds of taxpayers money validated by
back-of-the-envelope calculations the other day... fun realisation.

(and all the late-1980s-early-1990s crew asks "Perl attack? Huh?")

--
-Andrew Gray

  #14  
Old May 27th 04, 12:19 AM
Terrell Miller
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"Mike Flugennock" wrote in message
...

My wife claims the generational marker between "early Boomers" and "late
Boomers" is that "early Boomers" saw "The Wizard Of Oz" for the first time
in a theater instead of on TV.


late Boomers were alive the day JFK was assassinated. Gen-Xers weren't born
yet.

HTH,

--
Terrell Miller


"At one point we were this Progressive edgy group and we can't really equate
that with Brother Bear so I don't know really."
-Tony Banks


  #15  
Old May 27th 04, 12:23 AM
Andrew Gray
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On 2004-05-26, Mike Flugennock wrote:
In article , Rick DeNatale
wrote:

On Wed, 26 May 2004 14:34:11 +0000, Doug wrote:


Hmmmmm... I was born in October of 1955, about two years "even" before
Sputnik. I don't recall Sputnik's launch, but I was alive then.

I *do* recall Mercury.


I can't remember personally seeing coverage of the Mercury 7 selection
press conference, but I vividly remember discussions of the event among my
fellow scouts...


I just barely remember Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn; I really started
paying much closer attention to the first Gemini shot, in about the third
grade, at an age where it was a little easier to get my head around what
was happening.


I remember, hrm, Helen Sharman. Don't remember Challenger. Was born
about twenty-four hours after STS-5 landed.

(Does that mean that between the time I was born and the time I was old
enough to vote, drink (even in tinpot little foreign places), &c &c,
there were officially no 'experimental' manned spacecraft? Worrying...)

Gee, you is all old... ;-)

(That said, I do remember a friend having a big poster of... oh, you
know, That Picture of the chap in the MMU. Always was jealous.)

--
-Andrew Gray

  #16  
Old May 27th 04, 03:08 AM
Allen Thomson
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Rick DeNatale wrote

Doug wrote:


Hmmmmm... I was born in October of 1955, about two years "even" before
Sputnik. I don't recall Sputnik's launch, but I was alive then.

I *do* recall Mercury.


I was born 10 years and 1 day after the Pearl Harbor attack.


OK, I'll play too. I was born 1945-09-23, and, for whatever
reason, grew up reading the science fiction of the time:
Astounding mag and others; Heinlein, Anderson, Asimov,
Leinster, Clement, Piper, a couple of Norton books, the
Collier series, Boy's Life, etc. were what conditioned me
for Sputnik.

But it was Sputnik that was the transforming event. It
demonstrated, at least at the time, that this stuff might
actually happen, got me studying Russian, steered me more(*)
away from the youngsterish ambition of becoming an MD toward
physics. I still remember talking about Sputnik with some
other excited grade-schoolers on the playground of Greenway
Elementary in Warren, AZ.

Most of the rest followed from that.

(*) I was drifting away from that anyway, for other reasons.
  #17  
Old May 27th 04, 03:53 AM
Mike Flugennock
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Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
Mike Flugennock wrote:


So now, I'm wondering what the generational markers are for those of us
who were school kids pre-Mercury, as opposed to post-Mercury -- between
the kids who could only look at books and imagine what rocket ships looked
like, and the kids who had TV's wheeled into the lunchroom so we could
watch the Gemini launches and who knew _exactly_ what a _real_ rocket ship
looked like.


In my case (born same year you were) the markers would be:
1.) Did you demand to your parents that the barber give you a crewcut,
because that's what the astronauts had?


Damn. My dad took me for crew cuts because that's what _he_ had
(Sergeant, USArmy). I wanted to look a little more like Paul
McCartney.

2.) Did you habitually use the term "AOK" when talking?


"AOK" was a bit before my time. By the time I was into it, we were all
replying to the teacher with stuff like "Affirm", or "copy that". My
buds and I knew damn' near every 3-letter abbreviation and acronym
there was. You should've heard us in the lunchroom, a bunch of junior
FIDOs, EECOMs, GUIDOs, and FLIGHTs, we were.

3.) Was your school pencil sharpener a plastic Mercury capsule?


Nah, it was all either Gemini or even Apollo stuff by then, especially
Thermos kits.

4.) Did you develop a real fascination with tubes of toothpaste, because
there were tubes just like that that contained _food_ rather than
toothpaste?


The toothpaste tubes never held my interest much, but I loved stuff
like Chunky bars and Hershey Miniatures because they were uniform
shapes wrapped in foil, like the Gemini crews' "power bars".

5.) Did you ever own a plastic Col. McCauley helmet with a "microphone"
that had a sheet of plastic in it that gave your voice a buzzing sound?


I had a real cool helmet, which I remember wearing while watching the
Friendship 7 launch, but it was long enough ago that I'd never
remember if it was _the_ Col. McCauley. I do remember it looking like
a cross between the old-style jet pilot's helmet and the Mercury
helmet. I remember one of the things I especially lusted after,
though, was those little ear-clip interphone headsets used by MC and
the Gemini/Apollo crewmen (without the "Snoopy"). I thought those were
the coolest damn' things around.

6.) Were rubber buckle-up snowshoes a really cool thing, because they
looked like part of a pressure suit?


Now you're talking. They were especially good in new, fresh snowfall,
because you could mash a foot down into the snow and pull it away, and
have it look like Aldrin's first boot print at Tranquillity.

7.) Did you ever think that Sister Linda, your fifth-grade
teacher....might be a lot of fun in the sack?


You mean, while you were in the fifth grade? Actually, I went to
public schools myself, but I thought my sixth-grade teacher was cute
as hell -- _while_ I was in the sixth grade.




..
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, the Sinkers, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org
  #18  
Old May 27th 04, 04:06 AM
Mike Flugennock
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Sam Seiber wrote in message ...
Pat Flannery wrote:
All the late 1950's-early 1960's newsgroup crew starts doing math on the
back of an envelope; all the late 1960's-early 1970's crew starts doing
math on a electronic calculator; all the late 1970's-early 1980's crew
asks "Pearl what?" Mary Shafer starts figuring out how old that is in
dog years on an abacus; Stuff 4 starts haranguing us about Pearl Harbor;
Bob Haller will still not answer Scott Hedrick's question. :-)

Pat


Pat, Somewhere in there you missed a reference to a slide rule. I
recall
using the beasties in high school...


In my eighth-grade Algebra class, around '71 or so, we learned how to
use a slide rule -- it was where I first learned the term "cursor" --
at the same time we were being introduced to the first electronic
calculators. Our teacher brought one in and, looking back, it was real
big honker, an H-P about the size of this Maxtor FireWire drive in
front of me, with an extremely cool amber nixie-tube display which
looked to me, of course, like the Apollo DSKY controls.


..
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, the Sinkers, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org
  #19  
Old May 27th 04, 04:46 AM
Rick DeNatale
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On Wed, 26 May 2004 15:41:55 -0600, Sam Seiber wrote:

Pat, Somewhere in there you missed a reference to a slide rule. I
recall
using the beasties in high school.


I've still got my trusty K+E Log-Log Decitrig from my college days within
arms reach. Still in it's nifty orange leather scabbard.

  #20  
Old May 27th 04, 04:58 AM
Doug...
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In article ,
says...
Sam Seiber wrote in message ...
Pat Flannery wrote:
All the late 1950's-early 1960's newsgroup crew starts doing math on the
back of an envelope; all the late 1960's-early 1970's crew starts doing
math on a electronic calculator; all the late 1970's-early 1980's crew
asks "Pearl what?" Mary Shafer starts figuring out how old that is in
dog years on an abacus; Stuff 4 starts haranguing us about Pearl Harbor;
Bob Haller will still not answer Scott Hedrick's question. :-)

Pat


Pat, Somewhere in there you missed a reference to a slide rule. I
recall
using the beasties in high school...


In my eighth-grade Algebra class, around '71 or so, we learned how to
use a slide rule -- it was where I first learned the term "cursor" --
at the same time we were being introduced to the first electronic
calculators. Our teacher brought one in and, looking back, it was real
big honker, an H-P about the size of this Maxtor FireWire drive in
front of me, with an extremely cool amber nixie-tube display which
looked to me, of course, like the Apollo DSKY controls.


My Dad sold office equipment. You know, typewriters, mimeographic
machines, spirit duplicators (remember those purple spirit machine
copies?), that kind of thing.

And calculators.

Now, of course, Dad could (and did) borrow demonstrators and bring them
home. I learned how to type on a 1967 Royal typewriter, and got really
fast at it on a 1969 Royal Electric. But the most fun thing was the
1970 HP calculator. Exactly like you described, Mike -- with the nixie-
tube display. Only did the basic functions of a calculator (I think it
was a four-function), but it was really, really kewl to use.

And yes, I really thought it looked a lot like the DSKY display, too.

Doug

 




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