Desire without innovation only results in nothing - or rape.

We had shop class in my highschool. In fact we had Metal shop, Wood shop, Auto shop, and a Photography Shop. Each had a separate huge bay at the end of the school. It was pretty cool. It was a great place for the kids to go concentrate and be exposed to different traditional trades if they were not going to go on to college. I am sure they are long gone by now.

I rocked when we got to take shop in Jr Hi. Got an A on my trivet. ;) Sewing, not so much...

I guess I'm in a good place: I don't think jobs in higher education will go away, but I also have years of experience in electronics and other things, mainly for defense contractors, and skills such as mil-spec high reliability soldering, testing, building, and supervising and teaching such skills.

When the machines take over, I'll be in a good spot.

I just got back from a tour of the middle school my daughter will be attending next year.

She will have a choice of joining their band, which is a really very good program and well known in the area, or participating in the "Admiral's wheel" where she gets to have a bunch of rotating electives like shop and home economics and a bunch of other similar stuff. (Except they don't call them that.)

The shop, or technological arts, as I think they call it, is pretty cool. I saw 1 table saw, 2 drill presses, a small CNC router, a table top wind tunnel!, numerous PCs, some sort of presses for maybe doing t-shirts, and some other stuff that I can't remember now. When we poked our heads into the room, the students had a bunch of cheap looking cameras set up on tripods and connected to the PCs. It looked like they were playing with the cameras.

I wish it wasn't an either/or scenario. The band would be really good for her, since she enjoys playing the trombone, but I think the Admiral's wheel would teach her more life skills.

:eyebrow:

t-dub, imma let you finish, but seriously, rape is about violence, not desire.

kthxbai

How does one be violent without desiring to be violent? And how does that violence create productive jobs?

Desire does not create the jobs. Innovation does. One can desire to be innovative. But only those who actually are innovative create jobs (not to be confused with the Pink Panther who was innovative).

A trivet? A three legged stand? What is that? What does that do?

The artificial bubble. The markets are being artificially proped up by the bailouts.

From the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/displayStor...ry_id=15211520

You have access to Google, right? A trivet. Something you put a hot plate or pot on. But mine was handcrafted from wood, no hot plate or pot saw the surface of my trivet. Ethan Allen himself could not have constructed a finer trivet. (I stole that last line from a TV show, I admit.)

I was in 8th grade, dude, getting to work with saws and things. I found I had a knack.

I'll see if my 'rents still have my trivet (bet they do) and I'll photograph it for you, in all its fine workmanship. :lol:

I was in high school when The Knack released that god-awful My Sharonna.

With age, it is sometimes interesting to pull out something I built so many decades ago that I hardly remember it. In some cases (only some) I am impressed by how good I did. A response that goes, "I did that? ... Oh. ... Yea."

Faux Recovery


continues:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ery_99868.html

I guess it is safe to assume that you dont want to address the issue of the "lost decade" or offer a better solution to long-term economy recovery.

They still existed in my middle and high school. A shop class was required in 6th and 7th grade, and then optional in 8th, 10th, 11th, or 12th.

We also had cooking, sewing, personal finance, and other classes like that. My high school has gone to complete shit since I left so I don't know what they still have nowadays.