My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.
The following is a “Guest Contributor” post.
“I hate technology.” If I had a dime . . . oh wait, we are in a recession. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that declaration, I would be a millionaire. In my profession, I work 
with a lot of people who despise technology. Some, but not all, are Baby Boomers. They come to me for assistance and I do my best to help them. In so doing, Ive noticed some trends when working with “tech-haters.”
One thing I have noticed is that some people dislike technology because they had a bad experience or simply don’t understand it. I believe that there are two things wrong with that attitude. The first is, technology is likely reducing operating costs at some corporations on some levels, so you can best believe you will see more and not less of it in the future. Secondly, you should not hate something until you have taken the time to learn about it. Generally, once a person learns how to use a technical product or service that they once professed to hate, you can’t stop them from using it.
The Internet is loaded with resources to teach you just about anything you want to know about technology or anything else. Providing you have an Internet connection and some time, the sky is the limit. A simple search query at Google.com may reveal very specific instructions to help you with the problem you are having.
Other good resources that you may or may not be aware of are:
In light of the tragedy and ongoing crisis in Japan, I doubt if I am the only Baby Boomer having flashbacks of Duck and Cover drills held in grade school. Duck and Cover was a regularly practiced exercise of civil defense taught to school children during the 1950s and 60s. It was based on the probability that a nuclear attack was a clear and present danger that could occur in the United States at any time. There was even a film produced about Duck and Cover that used an animated turtle to show kids how the exercise would protect us in the event of a nuclear attack. Our instructions were that if we saw a bright flash of light we should immediately get beneath a table or huddle against a solid wall and cover our head with our hands.
Perhaps the whiz kids had it all figured out, but I doubt if I was the only average student in class who disbelieved that such an apparently insignificant action would save our lives during a nuclear attack. Theoretically, ducking and covering would provide protection from flying glass and falling debris, but we were also told that the radiation resulting from the nuclear bomb could incinerate us. What the hey? If a bomb was powerful enough to blow to smithereens our school or any other building, how would merely cowering on the floor in a fetal position save us?
The government purported that Duck and Cover was an essential procedure for saving our lives. Certainly some preparation is always better than none at all. But to this day, as much as I remember the drills, what I remember more was that whenever our class practiced or even discussed Duck and Cover, for days afterward I had terrifying nightmares and disturbing daydreams.
As I watch the continuous broadcasts about the explosions at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, not only do I imagine, but I also feel the desperation and fear engulfing the people in Japan. When it gets to be too much for me, I turn off the television. I’m sure that the people who live in those areas devastated by last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami probably wish that they could turn off their present reality just as easily. They have already lost so much; family members and friends, their homes, and now they are facing the threat of a nuclear meltdown. It is a calamitous situation that is too disturbing to consider feasible, yet too plausible to deny. And it is not only the people in Japan, but people in other countries who are now looking for – and hoping not to see – a daunting radioactive cloud. Duck and Cover and Pray.
Boomers, pretend for a moment that you are back in the free-spirited era of the 1960s and wiry-haired, soloist Tiny Tim is on television strumming his ukulele and singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” (If you are having a senior moment, revisit Tiny Tim on YouTube.)
Return now to the present, and instead of a floral field of colorful tulips imagine a societal landscape filled with landmines labeled PC. The explosive devices are buried haphazardly, but because you are familiar with some of the hot spots you side-step intuitively and proceed with caution, but then suddenly you hear “click.” And before you can jump back — KABOOM! You are blasted for violating PC protocol.
The practice of political correctness (PC) was started in the 1980s to minimize offenses based on race and culture, occupation, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disabilities, and the list grows on. PC changed words, terms, and procedures in nearly every sector of society. For example, people previously referred to as retarded or crippled are now described as mentally or physically challenged. Gender specific occupations are gender neutral. Mailmen and airline stewardesses are now postal workers and flight attendants. Housewives are homemakers, and babysitters are child care providers. Religious factions also did an about-face from the previous norm. “Mankind” became “humankind” and the “sons of God” converted to “children of God.” Not to be outdone, nonbelievers endorse eliminating the word God and barring religious symbols from public venues. Enough already!
For the record, I do not trivialize the seriousness of discrimination or prejudice, and I believe that everyone deserves to be treated with decency and respect. However, I also believe that many people practice PC grudgingly, because they fear that one misspoken word – one misstep in the minefield – could cause them to be unfairly regarded as racist, sexist, homophobic, or just obsolete. PC requires self-censorship, but inhibiting free speech does not alter a person’s thoughts nor change their heart. Case in point — In 1987, Oprah, produced her show in Forsyth County, Georgia, in a town that at the time had no black residents. The all white audience, apparently without fear of repercussions, candidly spoke their minds about why they did not want blacks living there; and as far as I know no one was burned in effigy.
What are your thoughts on PC, has it gone too far? Do you openly voice your opinion about the issues with which you disagree or hold your tongue instead, pretending to go along to get along? Human beings are all imperfect, be they black, white or brown; Christian, Muslim or Atheist; straight, gay or bisexual. As long as their actions do not intentionally harm others, people should be free to be who they are, think what they think, and say what they want to say without being made to feel like trespassers on Old Macdonald’s PC farm. Here a trap. There a trap. Everywhere a trap, trap.
Life seemed much simpler in those bygone days when Tiny Tim, in his high falsetto voice sang, “Tiptoe through the tulips with meee.”
Boomers, pretend for a moment that you are back in the free-spirited era of the 1960s and wiry-haired, soloist Tiny Tim is on television strumming his ukulele and singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” (If you are having a senior moment, revisit Tiny Tim on YouTube.)
Return now to the present, and instead of a floral field of colorful tulips imagine a societal landscape filled with landmines labeled PC. The explosive devices are buried haphazardly, but because you are familiar with some of the hot spots you side-step intuitively and proceed with caution, but then suddenly you hear “click.” And before you can jump back — KABOOM! You are blasted for violating PC protocol.
The practice of political correctness (PC) was started in the 1980s to minimize offenses based on race and culture, occupation, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disabilities, and the list grows on. PC changed words, terms, and procedures in nearly every sector of society. For example, people previously referred to as retarded or crippled are now described as mentally or physically challenged. Gender specific occupations are gender neutral. Mailmen and airline stewardesses are now postal workers and flight attendants. Housewives are homemakers, and babysitters are child care providers. Religious factions also did an about-face from the previous norm. “Mankind” became “humankind” and the “sons of God” converted to “children of God.” Not to be outdone, nonbelievers endorse eliminating the word God and barring religious symbols from public venues. Enough already!
For the record, I do not trivialize the seriousness of discrimination or prejudice, and I believe that everyone deserves to be treated with decency and respect. However, I also believe that many people practice PC grudgingly, because they fear that one misspoken word – one misstep in the minefield – could cause them to be unfairly regarded as racist, sexist, homophobic, or just obsolete. PC requires self-censorship, but inhibiting free speech does not alter a person’s thoughts nor change their heart. Case in point — In 1987, Oprah, produced her show in Forsyth County, Georgia, in a town that at the time had no black residents. The all white audience, apparently without fear of repercussions, candidly spoke their minds about why they did not want blacks living there; and as far as I know no one was burned in effigy.
What are your thoughts on PC, has it gone too far? Do you openly voice your opinion about the issues with which you disagree or hold your tongue instead, pretending to go along to get along? Human beings are all imperfect, be they black, white or brown; Christian, Muslim or Atheist; straight, gay or bisexual. As long as their actions do not intentionally harm others, people should be free to be who they are, think what they think, and say what they want to say without being made to feel like trespassers on Old Macdonald’s PC farm. Here a trap. There a trap. Everywhere a trap, trap.
Life seemed much simpler in those bygone days when Tiny Tim, in his high falsetto voice sang, “Tiptoe through the tulips with meee.”