Kinda sad...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:uMQLf.796783$_o.760340@attbi_s71...
The CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) that all of the tree huggers rave about caused the majority of the Farmer's
Co-ops to go under.

What's the "CRP" do?

type "Conservation Reserve Program" in Google. You'll get all of the "positive" points of view.



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On 2006-02-24, Jay Honeck wrote:
I'm always amazed at the level of service we once expected, yet can
(for some reason) no longer afford. Some examples:

Hey, if I call our local weather briefing number here, I get to speak to
the actual *forecaster* :-)

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

On 2006-02-25, Tom Conner wrote:
You haven't seen anything yet. Because of the advances in computing,
communications, and genetic engineering, society in 40 more years will be
completely different than today. Assuming the stupid people don't destroy
everything first.

A couple of months ago, there was soemthing on the radio about Britain's
oldest man dying (he was 109, IIRC it was especially notable because I
think he was the last WWI vet in Britain).

Consider this. He was born in 1896, and as a child in the early 1900s,
his household would probably NOT have had:
- a car
- central heating
- washing machines or vacuum cleaners
- electricity
- an inside toilet
Television wasn't invented. Recorded music was a strange thing and was
so poor quality it really wasn't worthwhile. The first transistor was
still 50 years away. Aeroplanes hadn't been invented.

In 1956, this man was of pensionable age. The transistor was a brand new
invention, and the idea of an integrated circuit still hadn't been had.
The world had already massively changed: most people had cars or
motorcycles, hot water, indoor toilets, at least a radio and possibly a
television. Everyone had electricity, city streets were brightly lit by
low pressure sodium streetlights. Most people had telephones - but long
distance dialing was still done by calling an operator who connected
trunk calls manually.

When he died in 2005, anyone could cheaply publish music, writing,
photographs and video on the Internet. Supersonic passenger travel had
been and gone. Computers had gone from gigantic house sized things
stuffed with vacuum tubes to something you could put in your pocket.
Your telephone was now something you could put in your pocket, too, and
use all over the world, and you could do things like send photographs.
Travel across the Atlantic was cheap enough that a working class person
in Britain could afford a trip to Disneyland with the family. The Soviet
Union had risen and fallen. Between hitting retirement age and passing
away, entire generations of jet aircraft had come and gone. Even as an
old man, he saw tremendous change.

The changes this man saw in his lifetime were tremendous.

Now think of where we are now. Where will we be when you are 109?

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

Now think of where we are now. Where will we be when you are 109?

....Probably still waiting for Lowrance to come out with XM weather for my
2000c...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
I began flying in the days when FSS were scattered all across the
country.

I've heard that there were Flight Service Stations at virtually every
medium-or-better-sized airport in America at one time. True? I
know Iowa City had one.

Just curious: What paid for them? Gas taxes? Were they eliminated by
technology, or did they just price themselves out of existence with
high wage demands?

El Dorado AR (ELD) had one through the mid '80s and it is a small airport.
They were great. The next best thing to having a tower. For someone learning
to fly they were better in a lot of ways. You didn't have to follow their
instructions but they were more than happy to give you traffic that had
called in and their approximate location and would warn you if there was
someone they knew was NORDO in the pattern or on the ground. They also had
DF equipment so the young student pilot who misplaced themselves while
practicing maneuvers could quickly, request a practice DF and be headed back
in the general direction of the airport. They also took all the weather
reports and posted them.


Uncle Sam paid for them the same way he pays for the FSS now. And technology
is what killed them it just became cheaper to consolidate them. In El Dorado
it was a done in phases. First the briefers went away and they hired guys to
come in and do the weather report duties then they did away with them and
replaced them with automated equipment.

ELD's switch to automation was accelerated by a year or two when the 23 year
old kid that was doing the night shift got caught with a cooler full of beer
and 6 friends, 3 of which were underage females in various states of
undress, in the "tower."

Now think of where we are now. Where will we be when you are 109?

Considering how networked computers are so effective at deliniating our
options, I'd rather not think of the next 50 years.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
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