Nungali Posted August 21, 2021 On 20/08/2021 at 8:32 PM, freeform said: As someone that grew up with pretty unsafe play areas, I can concur with the video above 'Uncle Lewi' has the 'best' of these stories , I doubt his unsafe playground can be topped ; Back ground ; when rounding up the Aboriginals and incarcerating them in areas , it was thought they would give them a better situation ; at Baryugal they built them houses ( little asbestos fibre boxes with tiny windows ) and supplied them with work to do ( at the newlt opened asbestos mine, coincidentally, just next door . Thats where Lewi grew up . They used to go to the 'playground' , the asbestos tailings dump and turn an old car bonnet over and use it as a sled to ride down the huge hill if asbestos tailings . In more modern times , not to be outdone , they made real playground ( construction pipes)....... by flattening moving that big hill over to the school house, flattening it out and sticking some play equipment on it . Asbestos worker in 'protective clothing ' ; " We didnt know what it was , we even made 'pancakes ' out of it and ate it . " ; https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-08/man-with-mesothelioma-from-asbestos-cant-sue-james-hardie/7823308 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 22, 2021 A tangent on the playground stuff: (and happening more with older kids and some adults) is the question of when is it enough in testing your limits against the elements or made man obstacles? For instance we have a lot of dare-devil activities or sports that can be risky to deadly, thus is tempting death to feel alive a needed or wholesome experience and when does it become another form of egotism? I'm kind of biased against death defying mountain climbing (but not hiking) since what purpose does it serve other than being able to save someone that gets stuck on a mountain? Is it or can it be fun, is attaining a panoramic view worth it? Apparently so to some. I remember going up the side of glacier in Alaska many years ago when I was single and in my 20's. There was an older married guy hiking and climbing along with us, (we didn't have any kind of climbing gear nor were we trained to use such) at one point he got stuck on the side of a steep drop off and started to panic in a major way. He told us that he didn't want to die because he had a wife and kids at home and had to get back to them! We talked his panic down while at our safer position and told him to keep holding on while we then lowered ourselves down to him in a chain where he could reach and grab onto our boots and legs to pull himself up to a safe position, which he did. I guess part of the equation is calculated risk (which makes sense) versus some level of reward factor... Reflections on this anyone? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted August 22, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, old3bob said: Reflections on this anyone? My personal take: unnecessary manmade risks -- and there's hardly any other kinds left -- are undertaken by people who have been starved since childhood for exploring and gradually learning to master the natural ones. For a million years or more, people lived in their ecological niches and mastered them just as successfully as any animal masters its natural habitat. Children were held very close early on -- which is no longer the case -- spending a lot of time on the mother's body while she went about her normal life-sustaining tasks -- and were internalizing gravity, balance, distribution of forces in motion, eye-brain and eye-body and hand-brain and brain-body coordination etc., developing faculties that would serve them for a lifetime --naturally, without going to a teacher of this or that movement art or sport. For developing these faculties to the fullest there's no other method, and the window of acquisition is narrow -- they can never fully develop in anyone kept alone in a crib for most of their infancy, the window closes. Later, children who didn't miss out on this acquisition of natural mastery of their bodies in the environment never had to be supervised as closely and shielded form mishaps as vigorously as modern "civilized" people are forced to supervise theirs -- because our children are, generally, equally developmentally incompetent ('learned helplessness") in natural environments and in unnatural ones. Besides, for unnatural environments there's no evolutionary/genetic memory as to how to handle them with innate competence. Anyone who had children remembers (unless they were an absentee parent) how much of a death trap an ordinary modern home is for a toddler who doesn't know and can't possibly know about electricity and what it does if you stick a pin in the outlet or try biting through a yummy-looking wire, drugs in the medical cabinet and Drano under the sink, furniture that doesn't grow firmly into the floor like trees do and can overturn when you climb it, pots of boiling water on the stove above your head so interesting to pull down to investigate, glass coffee tables so inviting to jump onto from the sofa, and so on. It's an incessant stream of "no, honey, don't touch that/go there/run/jump/hit/eat" and so on -- and the exploration hunger grows, only to manifest later in life in all kinds of reactive ways. What those ways might manifest as -- fear of everything or mindless dangerous risk-taking, or a counterphobic combo of both -- is anyone's guess. Edited August 22, 2021 by Taomeow 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 22, 2021 (edited) A lot of good points Taomeow, thanks for your analysis or take. I agree about there being lots and lots of manmade (and household) risks. I worked around them at an industrial site for several decades and fortunately never got hurt badly, which is another major tangent off of "unnecessary" risks. I would say that if one gets out in nature or the elements that there are still lots of risks or dangers that lots of people need to learn about. For instance something as simple and painful as frostbite caused by not taking precautions to protect from it. I've been in 50-70 below zero temps before where one better be very careful about exposure since at that temp. injury or death can occur very quickly! Also if one takes a temp of say 20 degrees for granted that can do the same just over a longer time period. I lived in an easy and moderate southern Calif. climate until I was 18, although we had the nearby ocean (where I spent a lot of time in various ways) to learn from when it came to elemental type challenges along with playing in and building forts and chasing lizards as boys tended to do in the once nearby canyons which are now mostly filled in for housing sub-divisions. (with fewer places for kids to play or explore as you said) The subject of innate competence via "evolutionary/genetic" imprint is a very interesting! How much of that humans get or have compared to most animals would be or is a major study...humans are so helpless when young but are open and eager learners. To see the world through your childs eyes is refreshing compared to us often taking things for granted as we get older! Edited August 22, 2021 by old3bob 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 22, 2021 the term "adrenaline junkie" crossed my mind, hadn't heard the term spoken of for awhile...so in some cases there could be a chemical connection besides related phycological ones on the subject of dare-devils taking risks to point unnecessary danger... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nungali Posted August 22, 2021 Retro adrenaline junky ; for some reason, men did it in their underwear ; 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 23, 2021 and for money and some kind of fame... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 23, 2021 (edited) a calculated (fast and futuristic type of) risk that worked...(bicycle beats car) Edited August 23, 2021 by old3bob Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nungali Posted August 23, 2021 ^ I think his cap might blow off .................... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 24, 2021 (edited) 17 hours ago, Nungali said: ^ I think his cap might blow off (I think he could put wings on that thing and fly a long ways ) . Is this a hydrogen or helium filled one? (we know what happened to the hydrogen filled ones!) Edited August 24, 2021 by old3bob Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 24, 2021 a long video of mechanical interest with some nice restoration techniques... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 31, 2021 (edited) (for those who missed out on the joys and pleasures of using dos commands...but don't try these at home without a book telling what they are for - lol) List of DOS commands From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article presents a list of commands used by DOS operating systems, especially as used on x86-based IBM PC compatibles (PCs). Other DOS operating systems are not part of the scope of this list. In DOS, many standard system commands were provided for common tasks such as listing files on a disk or moving files. Some commands were built into the command interpreter, others existed as external commands on disk. Over the several generations of DOS, commands were added for the additional functions of the operating system. In the current Microsoft Windows operating system, a text-mode command prompt window, cmd.exe, can still be used. commands used at prompt APPEND ASSIGN ATTRIB BACKUP and RESTORE BASIC and BASICA BREAK CALL CD and CHDIR CHCP CHKDSK CHOICE CLS COMMAND COMP COPY CTTY DATE DBLBOOT DBLSPACE DEBUG DEFRAG DEL and ERASE DELTREE DIR DISKCOMP DISKCOPY DOSKEY DOSSIZE DRVSPACE ECHO EDIT EDLIN EMM386 ERASE EXE2BIN EXIT EXPAND FAKEMOUS FASTHELP FASTOPEN FC FDISK FIND FINDSTR FOR FORMAT GOTO GRAFTABL GRAPHICS HELP IF INTERSVR and INTERLNK JOIN KEYB LABEL LINK4 LOADFIX LOADHIGH and LH MD or MKDIR MEM MEMMAKER MIRROR MODE MORE MOVE MSAV MSBACKUP MSCDEX MSD MSHERC NLSFUNC PATH PAUSE PING POWER PRINT PRINTFIX PROMPT PS QBASIC RD or RMDIR RECOVER REM REN REPLACE RESTORE SCANDISK SELECT SET SETUP SETVER SHARE SHIFT SIZER SMARTDRV SORT SUBST SYS TELNET TIME TITLE TREE TRUENAME TYPE UNDELETE UNFORMAT VER VERIFY VOL VSAFE XCOPY Edited August 31, 2021 by old3bob Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nungali Posted August 31, 2021 The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark.[1] It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" due to its shape and means of operation; its superficial resemblance to a certain type of hand grenade also earned it the nickname "math grenade".[2] Curtas were considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970 .... a small, but significant number of buyers returned their Curtas in pieces, having attempted to disassemble them. Reassembling the machine was more difficult, requiring intimate knowledge of the orientation of, and installation order for, each part and sub-assembly, plus special guides designed to hold the pieces in place during assembly. Also, many identical looking parts, each with slightly different dimensions, required test fitting and selection as well as special tools to adjust to design tolerances . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
old3bob Posted August 31, 2021 (edited) never have seen one of those, interesting.... here is one using fingers and visualization at an astounding pace: Edited August 31, 2021 by old3bob Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
