The GabCast (A podcast about BellGab)

[GravitySucks]

Praise be to Donald. And MV. In all seriousness, you should do a weekly podcast about Donald and news surrounding his campaign.

Incorrigible Bitch can be the cohost.

[BC]

If MV is still collecting ideas for a new non artbell forum name I suggest "gabfest"

I like your suggestion!

[sampson2625]

Ive now listened to the download of last night's entertaining gabcast.
If MV is still collecting ideas for a new non artbell forum name I suggest "gabfest"

How about the Noory Punchers?

[henge0stone]

how about paragab? I think most art fans are paranormal fans.

[Auslandia]

I think what they all missed was that changing out the shitty president won't really change much with the shitty congress.  The whole system is ridiculous.  It's a game for the players.  I quit that shit a long time ago.

[MV/Liberace!]

I think what they all missed was that changing out the shitty president won't really change much with the shitty congress.

i was going to come back to this during the show, but got sidetracked with another line of conversation.

reagan, through the force of his personality and the electoral mandate he brought to the white house, managed to secure numerous policy victories with a democratic house and senate.  i would expect a similar dynamic with a trump administration.

[BobGrau]

"Kids today don't know xyz etc" is just such a lazy, boring thing to say.

[Auslandia]

i was going to come back to this during the show, but got sidetracked with another line of conversation.

reagan, through the force of his personality and the electoral mandate he brought to the white house, managed to secure numerous policy victories with a democratic house and senate.  i would expect a similar dynamic with a trump administration.

Depends who he appoints to his cabinet.  I think massive campaign finance reform is really the only first step to changing the system in a meaningful way. 

[henge0stone]

Depends who he appoints to his cabinet.  I think massive campaign finance reform is really the only first step to changing the system in a meaningful way.

I agree. I think if you look at the people financing the candidates you can see how rigged the game is. Hilary Clinton for example says we need to be tough on the wallstreet yet you can see the top contributors to her campaign are the same banks that caused the whole crisis in 2008, Goldman, Morgan Stanley ect. It's also no surprise that immediately after the first Democratic debate she was declared a winner given all her support from the top.

[wr250]

"Kids today don't know xyz etc" is just such a lazy, boring thing to say.

[Element 115]

Back in my day we had to walk 9 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways.

[GravitySucks]

I think what they all missed was that changing out the shitty president won't really change much with the shitty congress.  The whole system is ridiculous.  It's a game for the players.  I quit that shit a long time ago.

He did it by taking his message to the public on television and I thought he did a really good job talking to the American people... Well until he did that whole "I've ordered a nuclear attack on Russia -  just kidding' bullshit.

Do you think he was in the start of his dementia at that time, or just thought he was making a joke that seemed funnier in his head?

[GravitySucks]

Depends who he appoints to his cabinet.  I think massive campaign finance reform is really the only first step to changing the system in a meaningful way.

Term limits - an a fraud indictment to every politician that votes contrary to a campaign promise.

[Inglorious Bitch]

"Kids today don't know xyz etc" is just such a lazy, boring thing to say.

It's a trend that I've noticed and it bothers me. Maybe I did not articulate it well, but here are some examples of what I was referring to:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america

from article:
There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason (link is external), says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dumbing-down-of-america-by-design/5395928

The most obvious example of how Americans have been dumbed down is through this nation’s failed public education system. At one time not that long ago America reigned supreme as a leading model for the rest of the world providing the best quality free public K-12 education system on the planet. But over the last many decades while much of the rest of the world has been passing us by, it seems an insidious federal agenda has been implemented to condition and brainwash a population of mindless, robotic citizenry that simply does what it’s told, and of course the brainwashing commences early in America’s schools.


The oligarchs are counting on a dumbed down population too busy addicted to their video games or watching sports or Kim Kardashian’s latest wardrobe malfunction to even notice that a longtime oligarch eugenics plan is already well underway.


and

http://www.infowars.com/newly-discovered-eighth-grade-exam-from-1912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become/

ust check out some of the questions from the eighth grade exam that was discovered.  Do you think that you could correctly answer these?…

-Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?

-How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body?

-How long of a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40 feet high to the ground 30 feet from the base of a building?

-Compare arteries and veins as to function. Where is the blood carried to be purified?

-During which wars were the following battles fought: Brandywine, Great Meadows, Lundy’s Lane, Antietam, Buena Vista?

A copy of the exam is posted below.  Today, it would be a real challenge for many college students to correctly answer most of these questions correctly…

(click to enlarge)








Most kids today (teenagers through millenials) have the attention span of a gnat. They are obsessed with their iphones and video games. I say most, because of course not all are like that, but sadly enough of a majority. I see a trend that I predict will get worse, if it ever rectifies itself. I don't know how many people saw this, but about a week and a half ago, the Kimoji (Kim Kardashian's app for iphone) broke sales records and almost crashed the Apple store. That's how popular with today's kids the queen of dumb is. What does that say about them?

[henge0stone]

Most kids today (teenagers through millenials) have the attention span of a gnat. They are obsessed with their iphones and video games. I say most, because of course not all are like that, but sadly enough of a majority. I see a trend that I predict will get worse, if it ever rectifies itself.

What I want to know is what is this generation going to be called? Kids and teenagers now (through millennials as you said) aren't part of the same generation as the millennials. Growing up now with iphones facebook and all that jazz is nothing like growing up in the 90s where maybe you had a computer but cellphones and facebook and online social media didn't exist at all.

[Inglorious Bitch]

What I want to know is what is this generation going to be called? Kids and teenagers now (through millennials as you said) aren't part of the same generation as the millennials. Growing up now with iphones facebook and all that jazz is nothing like growing up in the 90s where maybe you had a computer but cellphones and facebook and online social media didn't exist at all.

Generation Z is anyone born mid to late nighties to today.

[Walks_At_Night]

What I want to know is what is this generation going to be called? Kids and teenagers now (through millennials as you said) aren't part of the same generation as the millennials. Growing up now with iphones facebook and all that jazz is nothing like growing up in the 90s where maybe you had a computer but cellphones and facebook and online social media didn't exist at all.

Generation Z- have also heard  "iGen"

If you are interested in the strengths and weaknesses of each generation and how they interact check out:

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/

[GravitySucks]

Generation Z- have also heard  "iGen"

AndroidGen may be appropriate.

[Auslandia]

It's a trend that I've noticed and it bothers me. Maybe I did not articulate it well, but here are some examples of what I was referring to:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america

from article:
There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason (link is external), says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dumbing-down-of-america-by-design/5395928

The most obvious example of how Americans have been dumbed down is through this nation’s failed public education system. At one time not that long ago America reigned supreme as a leading model for the rest of the world providing the best quality free public K-12 education system on the planet. But over the last many decades while much of the rest of the world has been passing us by, it seems an insidious federal agenda has been implemented to condition and brainwash a population of mindless, robotic citizenry that simply does what it’s told, and of course the brainwashing commences early in America’s schools.


The oligarchs are counting on a dumbed down population too busy addicted to their video games or watching sports or Kim Kardashian’s latest wardrobe malfunction to even notice that a longtime oligarch eugenics plan is already well underway.


and

http://www.infowars.com/newly-discovered-eighth-grade-exam-from-1912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become/

ust check out some of the questions from the eighth grade exam that was discovered.  Do you think that you could correctly answer these?…

-Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?

-How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body?

-How long of a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40 feet high to the ground 30 feet from the base of a building?

-Compare arteries and veins as to function. Where is the blood carried to be purified?

-During which wars were the following battles fought: Brandywine, Great Meadows, Lundy’s Lane, Antietam, Buena Vista?

A copy of the exam is posted below.  Today, it would be a real challenge for many college students to correctly answer most of these questions correctly…

(click to enlarge)








Most kids today (teenagers through millenials) have the attention span of a gnat. They are obsessed with their iphones and video games. I say most, because of course not all are like that, but sadly enough of a majority. I see a trend that I predict will get worse, if it ever rectifies itself. I don't know how many people saw this, but about a week and a half ago, the Kimoji (Kim Kardashian's app for iphone) broke sales records and almost crashed the Apple store. That's how popular with today's kids the queen of dumb is. What does that say about them?

That's an interesting argument to make but I don't really think it would hold up to scientific scrutiny. One obvious hole  that came to mind is that comparing the average child's intelligence today compared with the average child's intelligence, say, 100 years ago isn't really apples to apples.   I think you're  missing the obvious point that it's an issue of adjusting what intelligence actually means.  Comparing their intelligence with that of someone living 100 years ago is really like comparing Einstein to, say Stephen Hawking. 

Just because someone doesn't know which bodies of water would take you from England to the Philippines via the Suez Canal  isn't really a measure of intelligence. Maybe it's a matter of the difference in general knowledge today versus 30 years ago or something.  I'm a firm believer that there is a sort of hard drive size to each person's brain. The kid that doesn't know all of these geographical locations might have an encyclopedic knowledge on how to construct the most fantastic Minecraft world anyone's ever conceived of. Does that make him less intelligent?

[GravitySucks]

That's an interesting argument to make but I don't really think it would hold up to scientific scrutiny. One obvious hole  that came to mind is that comparing the average child's intelligence today compared with the average child's intelligence, say, 100 years ago isn't really apples to apples.   I think you're  missing the obvious point that it's an issue of adjusting what intelligence actually means.  Comparing their intelligence with that of someone living 100 years ago is really like comparing Einstein to, say Stephen Hawking. 

Just because someone doesn't know which bodies of water would take you from England to the Philippines via the Suez Canal  isn't really a measure of intelligence. Maybe it's a matter of the difference in general knowledge today versus 30 years ago or something.  I'm a firm believer that there is a sort of hard drive size to each person's brain. The kid that doesn't know all of these geographical locations might have an encyclopedic knowledge on how to construct the most fantastic Minecraft world anyone's ever conceived of. Does that make him less intelligent?

Simple answer?  Yes

[Inglorious Bitch]

The kid that doesn't know all of these geographical locations might have an encyclopedic knowledge on how to construct the most fantastic Minecraft world anyone's ever conceived of. Does that make him less intelligent?

One could argue about the definition of intelligence, but to me there is something wrong with not knowing basic history like who we fought in the war of independence or not knowing how to multiply unless you have a calculator in hand.

[LadyFish]

One could argue about the definition of intelligence, but to me there is something wrong with not knowing basic history like who we fought in the war of independence or not knowing how to multiply unless you have a calculator in hand.

My frustration is in not being able to receive the correct change at the drive thru.

[Auslandia]

One could argue about the definition of intelligence, but to me there is something wrong with not knowing basic history like who we fought in the war of independence or not knowing how to multiply unless you have a calculator in hand.

That may be true but other more practical knowledge  is what most people would need to exist in society today.   And this is a pretty small sample size but I know the generation above me in their 80s  are pretty fucking dumb in general. They may have some general life knowledge that comes with experience but in terms of facts and figures, most people I encounter of that age bracket are wise but generally dumber than the following generation.

That was a major generalization I know lol.

But seriously, there is just more to know today. If you think about the general knowledge pool 200 years ago compared to the general knowledge pool today, there is no comparison. It was probably pretty easy to memorize facts and figures when you don't really  have reason to learn about electronics, or global climate change,  International terrorism, etc. I would be willing to bet that most people 200 years ago couldn't name 25 countries outside of their own,  let alone point them out on a map.   Scientific knowledge was limited to fairly basic biology & chemistry.   Are you saying that an engineer in 1800 could tell me how to construct a modern skyscraper? Hell no. Aside from structural engineering knowledge, the rest of the electrical, hvac, seismic, etc hadn't even been conceived of.   My viewpoint is closer to something like… The girl who wrote Lincoln a letter had far less to learn or be distracted by and was able to focus on a singular skill like penmanship or grammar.  She may well have been intelligent to boot  but that doesn't mean she was more intelligent than the average 12-year-old today.

[GravitySucks]

One could argue about the definition of intelligence, but to me there is something wrong with not knowing basic history like who we fought in the war of independence or not knowing how to multiply unless you have a calculator in hand.

I totally agree. I see it in my own daughter who is 19 and attending Texas A&M.

She had 3 years of French in 8th grade and High School and if I ask her what a word means in French she has no clue. Or maybe she just likes to mess with my mind.

I love her to pieces, and even though she is intelligent, she does not demonstrate critical thinking skills. I have tried my best to help guide her, but the framework in the public schools is all geared towards teaching the test and not the underlying concepts and problem solving skills.

She is struggling now in college and has to have tutors for some of her classes. I have faith that she will endure, but it makes me sad.

[Yorkshire pud]

I think modern children's state (you call public in the US) education here is a bit of a paradox; Yes, I hear and see (and worked with) young adults/graduates who are frequently perplexed at what I'd say was common knowledge/common sense-mental arithmetic being one, constructing sentences without prefacing it with 'so', using 'like' as punctuation, and finishing with a question inflection. Not knowing recent history, geography, how to wire a plug, how to do basic stuff in fact...Yet; Some of the exam papers that are sat by kids at the schools they attended are impossible! I was never good with maths until I left school and that was because I had to know, but the stuff I've seen is baffling.

And then the other side (again!)..I briefly worked with a post grad who was coming to the end of a part time job before moving away from the city (where she attended uni) and I asked her what she'd studied.. English Literature. Two year course..fair enough. Yes, she'd passed, got a 2:1. Which is pretty good. However she then told me what it had entailed; and it was almost exactly the same books and requirements that I'd done studying for my Eng Lit O level course from 77-79 at secondary (High) school.

I think it depends which side of the spectrum we look; Common sense and common knowledge is giving way to high academic box ticking, whereby everyone knows what is 'correct' because the box says so, so there.

Don't get me started on the staring at cell phones when walking along the street to the disregard to all else! 

[Walks_At_Night]

One could argue about the definition of intelligence, but to me there is something wrong with not knowing basic history like who we fought in the war of independence or not knowing how to multiply unless you have a calculator in hand.

I wonder what effect Google and the internet will  have long term.  It is certainly wonderful to have the world's knowledge at your finger tips [as a kid I had to ride my bike to the library if I needed to write a paper on Haile Selassie - now I can pull up much more information in seconds]. That's a great thing but has it's issues as well.

When I was a young engineer  and had an issue to workout you had a few books, your brain and the old guy down the hall.  That was it.   You'd use your brain first, use a book if need be, come up with a solution and then go see the old guy for review.  In my case I was fortunate in that most of my old guys worked on the Apollo program and were some sharp cats.  Their mantra was elegance - the solution not only had to work it had to be elegant.  Granted elegance takes time - we probably shipped stuff out every 18 months or two years but there was pride when doing so.  They also didn't mess around - I often heard "If you can't get this figured out and working, I'll find someone who can".  I didn't like hearing that but I didn't get butt hurt over it either. I developed tenacity which was the point.

25 years down the road and now I'm the old bugger down the hall.  Things have changed a great deal.  If a young guy has an issue the first recourse is Google, the second option is me with their own brain being a distant third.   "Can you look at this?  I'm stuck - I looked on Google and didn't find anything" - I hear it all the time.  It's so tempting just to look the answer up in Google and move on but what happens when the answer isn't there or more likely hard to find?   So I teach them the old way - put down the iPhone, stop looking at snapchat, take out the earbuds and try and figure it out.  Then look at Google and then come see me.    I certainly can't tell them "if you can't figure it out - I'll find someone who can" because they will just quit so no tenacity is developed.   They just don't care.

Thing is I've only got about ten years left before I'm done - what happens then?  By "I" i mean guys that were educated and broke in pre-internet.   I guess it will be okay but I do worry.   What happens when the right answer isn't in Google then?

[Yorkshire pud]

  What happens when the right answer isn't in Google then?

They'll find and use the wrong answer..The rest of your story is genuinely fascinating stuff. I have deep admiration for engineers; I know one or two and my grandfather was one, sadly I never met him.

[FightTheFuture]

I wonder what effect Google and the internet will  have long term.  It is certainly wonderful to have the world's knowledge at your finger tips [as a kid I had to ride my bike to the library if I needed to write a paper on Haile Selassie - now I can pull up much more information in seconds]. That's a great thing but has it's issues as well.

When I was a young engineer  and had an issue to workout you had a few books, your brain and the old guy down the hall.  That was it.   You'd use your brain first, use a book if need be, come up with a solution and then go see the old guy for review.  In my case I was fortunate in that most of my old guys worked on the Apollo program and were some sharp cats.  Their mantra was elegance - the solution not only had to work it had to be elegant.  Granted elegance takes time - we probably shipped stuff out every 18 months or two years but there was pride when doing so.  They also didn't mess around - I often heard "If you can't get this figured out and working, I'll find someone who can".  I didn't like hearing that but I didn't get butt hurt over it either. I developed tenacity which was the point.

25 years down the road and now I'm the old bugger down the hall.  Things have changed a great deal.  If a young guy has an issue the first recourse is Google, the second option is me with their own brain being a distant third.   "Can you look at this?  I'm stuck - I looked on Google and didn't find anything" - I hear it all the time.  It's so tempting just to look the answer up in Google and move on but what happens when the answer isn't there or more likely hard to find?   So I teach them the old way - put down the iPhone, stop looking at snapchat, take out the earbuds and try and figure it out.  Then look at Google and then come see me.    I certainly can't tell them "if you can't figure it out - I'll find someone who can" because they will just quit so no tenacity is developed.   They just don't care.

Thing is I've only got about ten years left before I'm done - what happens then?  By "I" i mean guys that were educated and broke in pre-internet.   I guess it will be okay but I do worry.   What happens when the right answer isn't in Google then?

Behold -- the future is here!

http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4

[wr250]

Behold -- the future is here!

http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHcsIHshhs

[Catsmile]

It's a trend that I've noticed and it bothers me. Maybe I did not articulate it well, but here are some examples of what I was referring to:   ...

So... reading and writing is like... for fags... and stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wJpdA-LE3o