"We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation..."

Hilarious.

Listening to the bit about people complaining about their flights, it's a good time to point this out: http://warrenkinsella.com/index.php?entry=entry081215-194723

...ah, I miss the days when one just had to memorize 4 digit phone numbers only.

"We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation..."

He’s got it! Store clerks text messaging as they’re trying to “serve” you; the person at the next copy machine, who’s taken up all the counter space for two machines: one asks for a small amount for one’s own materials: no apology from this person, just, “Well YOU could have used a different copier”; Johnny says “F*** off” to the teacher (two days ago), who phones the parents: response, with no sense of irony at all--they have no sense of irony!--“You obviously said or did something to upset him.”

Yup, what a generation: spoiled brats in adult bodies. Be scared!

don't know who the gent is but he is bang on with his observations.

Last week I was going down the highway from Toronto to Buffalo in a van with a guy and his college student daughter at night.

She goes, "Dad! Oh my God! That whole building over there is on fire!!"

It was Stelco.

If a generation is "crappy", whose fault is it? The so-called "greatest generation" raised the most self indulgent one we're likely to see in some time, who in turn raised many of the muttonheads on example in this thread. So who screwed up? If it was the greatest generation, why were they such crappy parents? How did their parents screw up? etc., etc., ad infinitum - this is pointless.

Ideas shape "generations". Some ideas are crappier than others. We just need to disseminate the right ideas and the crappiness will subside.

I like the story about the internet on the plane.

This being the season to be reflective and being old enough to have seen significant change and yet young enough to understand the speed to which you embrace things I agree with this guys sentiments. It is an amazing time.

Innovation continues everywhere, I recently had to go to Dr after an unfortunate Garage Door opener incident, don't ask. And now they have gauze that doesnt stick to the wound. Pretty amazing materials science going on.

And then I think back to may parents talking about the horses pulling the ice truck for the ice box...not a fridge but an ice box, my Dad remebering Rogers Batteryless (god bless the ROgers) This was in the 30's and you had to have a car battery in the house leaking acid on the floor to listen to the radio, then Ted sr invents a tube to use AC. That's only 70 years ago and now my kids flip back and forth between the TV and you tube to watch stuff they like.

Space Travel is commonplace, not an event anymore. Ensuring a premmie baby as young as 20 weeks (20 weeks) has a decent chance of making it. Incredible.

I don't think you need a depression to appreciate it, I think its attitude and knowledge. But all we get is how bad huanity has made this world, a culture of self loathing.

Too bad, we live in a time and in a place that is the envy of almost all who came before and almost all who exist now. Maybe we should learn to appreciate, defend and foster the values, traditions and systems that made these things possible.

Ya, of course blame it ALL on my generation. It's not the like the baby boomers are responsible for forcing a whole bunch of socialized programs on our shoulders and massive amounts of debt. No, it's all our fault!

I'm going to spend the rest of my life working to pay off the debt you guys built up.

Phil, not only are you going to pay off our debt, you'll also pay for our health-care costs, our pensions and our funerals!

(Does any politician in this country realise the boomers are about to hit the shrinking younger population of this country with HUGE bills?)

His comment about how the world somehow owed something to this guy that he only discovered 5 minutes ago crystallizes the whole thing.

Never lose the wonder, people.

Thing that bothers me most about the current generation, and all this stuff was present in my own generation as well, but the thing that bothers me most is the lack of respect. Yesterday I was driving through my neighbourhood and three teenagers were meandering down the middle of the street (where there were sidewalks). Nobody moved nobody attempted to get out of the way or even look behind where there was obviously a vehicle trying to get by. Its the me generation, everything is about me. Don't care that someone else might be trying to carry on an existance as well.

Stephen--couldn't agree more--this is a rather long quote from my book that, I think, expresses a similar sentiment.

At one time, we were a much more optimistic society, given to celebrating human achievement, and making positive predictions about the future. Our forebears had tamed the wilderness, and fought off oppressors in two wars. Medical research was developing vaccines and procedures to all but eliminate diseases that had previously killed millions. Scientists developed technology that provided us a lifestyle unimaginable as recently as the beginning of twentieth century.
Our cultural story was one of inner strength, self-reliance, and great individual and collective achievement—a story that emphasized human successes at overcoming personal, medical, and environmental hardship. There was a shared confidence that our social, political, and religious institutions would carry us successfully into the future—a confidence that we had the stuff necessary to make true Wilfred Laurier’s early twentieth-century assertion that “Canada… is only commencing…. Canada will fill the twentieth century.”
Early in the twenty-first century, most people would scoff at Laurier’s claim. Many see our political, social, and religious institutions as incapable of shaping the future. Conspiracy theories—concerned with the evil intentions of business, government, and religion to strip us of our rights, and control every aspect of our lives— abound. We have revised our story so it no longer celebrates human achievement, but emphasizes the environmental and social damage done as we’ve moved forward in history.

Simple truths -- it's amazing how easily we forget how much more well off we are than much of the developed world.

Remember having to beg for an internet account from the university because there were no other providers?

Remember having to buy an "internet directory" in order to find the various Gopher servers?

Remember the thrill of logging onto & viewing an over seas server for the first time and thinking "WOW! the world is getting very small!"?

Anyone hear that wants to degrade the current generation is IGNORANT! As ignorant as your parents were for not wanting you to listen to Elvis because it would corrupt society.

You guys are massively stereotyping a whole generation based on either your lack of understanding or interaction with that generation or your willingness to draw conclusions about a whole group from a few bad apples.

Out of curiosity, the young men and women serving in Afghanistan. Do you also consider them disrespectful and having a "me first" attitude?

Ultimately I suspect this all ends back in fascism. How? Entitlements. If this depression is really bad, people will demand governments bail them out, continuously voting themselves shiny new baubles from the public treasury (not my words), until one day the money's all gone, and generations have been grown who depend entirely on the public treasury to finance their lifestyles.

When those current muttonheads hit their late twenties and all the shiny new goodies stop rolling in (as they must after we basically treat the current level of wealth as an asset in liquidation, living off what our forebears built for us), when that happens, CHAOS. And who stops the chaos? Big Brother...

Phil, for the most part I agree..especially the young men and women in Aphganistan currently,,,it is more a commentary on society as awhole, and the older generation can appreciate the change...thats all

Phil, heh, what bothers me about the current generation is the HORRIBLE SPELLING! "hear" for "here" and don't get me starting on "there", "their" and "they're" or "your" and "you're". (sorry Kate)

"Out of curiosity, the young men and women serving in Afghanistan. Do you also consider them disrespectful and having a "me first" attitude?"

I think you've cherry picked the a few of the good ones. How many from the current generation actually respect what our soldiers in Afghanistan are doing? Yeah I thought not, they "respect the soldiers, but not their mission" and usually they have no idea how freedom is maintained.

DON'T FORGET THE RAP MUSIC;(

Wow, who would have known that so many of you were self-righteous holier than thou types.

"My generation is so great. We're wonderful. This generation is so bad. They're terrible. I'm older than you therefore I can tell you how bad you are and get away with it. And btw, respect your elders you whipper snappers!"

Please, do tell me how the view is from your ivory towers. I'm just dying to know.

Put this clip on in the city square at noon every day. Do that until we all get it.

I've never seen this guy, is he a standup comedian? The piece was funny, but his idea of hardships he endured were actually luxuries to people a little older.

Dial telephones were a hardship? When I was small, our neighbours had no phone. Their son was being shipped to Cypress, and they came to our place to talk on our phone before he left. It was a crank phone, on a party line, so the whole community got to listen in. A friend of mine had the first private line in the community. His number was 1. Easy to remember.

I don't blame today's generation for any of it. They're just working with what's available. They need a little slack, times are going to get tough for a while. I have 3 boys who are just starting their adult lives. I don't plan on being a burden to them, or any other young person. No retirement to Florida for me. I'll keep plugging away, and helping them stay above water 'til I drop.

Some of this technology will dissappear, I think. There won't be enough money blowing around to sell it to everyone, so research will come to a standstill. Sort of like the space race.

Best line was

"You're sitting in a CHAIR.........IN THE SKY !!!"

And dp misses the point by a country mile. Rotary phone service wasn't the point -- it was how far we've come that the rotary phone was an archaic beast already.

Research and development will never stop. You sound like that old urban legend about shutting down the patent office because everything has already been invented.

Every generation thinks the next generation is dumber and less respectful than the previous. It's horse crap.

This bit was linked about two months ago on the tips thread. Louis also had a sitcom, maybe it was called "Lucky Louis" I'm not sure. The show was very funny. Louis was on Leno plugging the show when he said that his daughter was an "a$$hole". Predictably the crowd was shocked and his retort was "what? You guys don't know her". Right there I new Louis was a hilarious, and I try to catch most of his stuff.

Loved it!!

I didn't miss any point, because I wasn't trying to make a point. It was just a story.

That was the theme of my post. Every generation thinks they are superior to the last. It's a perpetual generation gap.

There is one constant in life, though. Yellow flesh potatoes are not fit to eat.

The comedian is Louis C K. He recently had a show on HBO called Lucky Louie, but it was canceled after one year.
He hits the mark with his comments. Too funny!

Phil,

Dont take it personally, because it never is meant that way. I am not a boomer, missed it by a year or two, I am more a Gen X guy in attitude if not age.

The point is pretty simple, and pretty understandable. It is an amazing time. I recognized it when these things came along. Shoot I remember seeing videophones demonstrated in the 70's...technology was spoken about breathlessly and there was a significant belief in the future.

There was some of the you guys trashed the planet, but not much. More of a comparing Live aid to Woodstock, one was indulgent the otehr tried to acheive an end. But even then it is all stereotypes.

Simple point is, any understanding of the context you are in should give people an appreciation that a lot has been acheived in a short time frame. the comedian is essentially saying maybe we need to take that away to have people appreciate it.

Innovation and advancement is considered such a norm today that to see it is to see the expected. Humans are geared to notice the exception not the rule, you notice the tiger not every tree. Maybe thats a good thing, if people expect innovation then that helps it happen, how many inventions died on the vine in the past because they didnt get embraced quickly enough.

The fear expressed hear, other than a lot of "get off my lawn", is that innovation and the systems that support them will be seperated. In other words innovation gets taken for granted and not that it is a product of certain conditions, economic, political and social.

Now get Off My Lawn You Whippersnapper :->

I remember when we used crystal radios, when most people didn't own a car, when TV sets were on store windows, and that's where you went to watch the hockey game. When you owned one suit, when you darned your socks if they developed holes.
You didn't buy anything until you could afford it. When banks said no to loan applications more often than they said yes. And when you saved for years for a down payment on the house, and that rotary phone was the only one you owned. And when my children were born there was no Medicare. If it was tough, we didn't know it was tough. Happiness was a state of mind, not a material thing. And when taxes went up, the MSM took shots, today they cheer.
Progress. But I do love the Internet, jet planes and my Iphone.

Kate,
He clearly hasn't heard of the hope of the future - these fine young examples earning their "carbon neutral volunteer credits"!
Honestly, I wish I were only making this up. One question, though: why, when I see "mass volunteerism", do Jim Jones and Chairman Mao spring to mind?

PRESS RELEASE:

Carbon Neutral Volunteers Launches Drive for First Carbon Neutral School in the World

Okemos, Michigan U.S (MMD Newswire) December 18, 2008 --
Carbon Neutral Volunteers (CNV) launched its drive to make Okemos High School, Michigan the first Carbon Neutral high school in the world. The initiative aspires to attain this goal through energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon offsets through mass volunteerism. Given the enormous challenge of global warming and climate change Dr. John Lanzetta, Ph.D, Principal; Okemos High School said "This program has been conceived by the students with a very ambitious and noble goal of making Okemos High School the first carbon neutral high school in the world."

Hemi Gandhi, Founder and President of www.carbonneutralvolunteers.org developed the idea of Volunteer Carbon Credits(C) while working closely with Professor Brian S Thompson, Outreach & Engagement Senior Fellow of Michigan State University on his research in the field of sustainability and alternative energy...

SEE ENTIRE PRESS RELEASE, PHOTOS AND CONTACT INFO
HERE: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/carbon-neutral-school-4360.html

@ Stephen,

Thanks for the post. I personally thought the skit was funny. I also see the point of it. It's the responses that are written that really grind my gears. A sort of smugness about oneself that really smacks of ignorance.

I know a lot of upstanding young Canadians and we should try and avoid characterizing them through stereotypes. The same goes for any group.

Ghost, you forgot that you walked to school up hill both ways!:-p

i'm not sure that gererations are good, bad or ugly. there are more boomers as a result of ww2. there are fewer in later generations because prosperity (believe it or not) prompts people to have fewer children. as an old guy i remember ice, coal and milk being delivered by horse drawn carts/vehicles. when i worked the most enjoyable part of the week were the four plus flights i had to take covering canada. i still get pissed off if i can't bring up sda in less than a minute.see.

Heck, I still have an old black Nortel rotary phone. It's hilarious watching the neighborhood kids try to use it. In a pinch it's also heavy enough to use as weapon if anyone tries to break in.

Indiana
Right on. But I really couldn't walk to school. Too much snow. I had to ski uphill both ways.

Bjorn Lomberg talks about this concept in his book, "The Skepitcal Environmentalist". People think back and feel that things were better in the past.

How much nostalgia has there been for the 50's and so on?

He makes the very valid point that in every measurable way, life is not only better now, but incredibly so than even 50 years ago. Standard of living, life expectancy, convienence and the list goes on. If you never read anything else, read the first chapter of this book.

Fair enough, dp.

I'm a war baby, (WWII, that is), and it's my observation that young people are pretty much the same from generation to generation.

My wandering into the distant past were not meant to be critical of the present. That's why I ended with my comments about the internet, jet planes and my Iphone. And I don't believe all of today's generation have it all wrong. I have grand children and they're all good kids with good values. And Phil makes an excellent point. I simply believe there were "good old days" and today there are "good new days." I love technology. If I see a new toy, I'll get it. But only if I can pay for it.

" Its the me generation, everything is about me. Don't care that someone else might be trying to carry on an existance as well."

So very true. However, it's not just the younger generation that indulges in this behaviour. Some small things, but good examples .... Idiots that insist on having the store clerk check 30 lottery tickets when there is a perfectly good machine available for self-checking the tickets and a lineup a mile long of customers waiting to pay for something.

Lazy morons at a Tim Hortons drive-thru ordering a complete meal, changing their minds frequently while ordering, not having their money ready at the window and then, taking 5 minutes to stow their change and store their goodies.

Cretins tying up an ATM making numerous deposits, withdrawals, investments, bill payments and enquiries and then taking forever to put everything back in their purses rather than moving aside to let others use the machine.

Rockets scientists who insist and drying and detailing their vehicles in the car wash when the signs specifically state that doing so is prohibited.

Brain surgeons emptying their vehicle ashtrays in a parking lot and dumping their McDonald's bags at the same time.

The list of selfish, "me-first", fck everybody else activities is endless.

"I had to ski uphill both ways."

We couldn't go sleigh riding when I was a kid. We were so poor, the city turned off the gravity.

Yeah, the creation of all these gadgets certainly increases the conveniences of life, but I think that to refer to them as "advanced" would require a lot of definition.

Charley Daniels had a song called "The Same Old Me."

"I ain't livin' in some New Age plan...
I'm gonna keep my guns
And have my fun
And call it just the way I see
Because it's a brand new world,
But I'm still the same old me. "

I would consider "advance" to be a population swelled with more intelligence, courage, patriotism, insight into human nature, a diminishment of the need for psychiatric attention, and some idea of just why in the heck we're spinning around down here on this 3rd rock from the sun.

Some contemporary thinkers have been discouraged by the realization that today many define themselves by the gadgets they own and the brand labels they wear. "The Gossip Girls" and "The Clique Girls" series are all about this. Training all the little munchkins to take their place as consumers trading up to more expensive brand labels.

So I'm all about an appreciation for the gadgets that make life more convenient, but I reserve the idea of "advancement" to some inner corollaries of development that work in coincidence with material possibilities.

(You know, when Kate brought down that last buck, she pretty much did it the old-fashioned way. And often the old-fashioned way builds character.)

"Hemi Gandhi, Founder and President of www.carbonneutralvolunteers.org developed the idea of Volunteer Carbon Credits(C) while working closely with Professor Brian S Thompson, Outreach & Engagement Senior Fellow of Michigan State University on his research in the field of sustainability and alternative energy...

SEE ENTIRE PRESS RELEASE, PHOTOS AND CONTACT INFO
HERE: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/carbon-neutral-school-4360.html
Posted by: Truth Seeker at December 18, 2008 5:19 PM"

I just gots to know: Does a Hemi Gandhi have a smaller carbon footprint than a Wedge Gandhi?

Common courtesy seems to have faded. Nothing annoys me more when I hold a door open only to have somebody storm through it without an inkling of appreciation.
Remember when you could drive down the highway and see an oncoming vehicle flashing it's lights at you? You immediately slowed down because you knew that a speed trap was just up ahead.

Every generation has their share of crap and good.My wife,who is a boomer,couldn't tell you the difference between there,their,and they're if her life depended on it.But then she was brought up with that phonetic crap.On the other hand,give her a problem to solve using common dog,and I'll pit her against anybody here!(except maybe Kate.they seem to be of the same cloth,except different gens).
You know what they say...youth is wasted on the young!
And Phil...not to worry.The mud hut for your kids will be cheap to maintain when the eco-freaks get their way.Might be a problem making candles out of beeswax though,seeing as all petroleum production will be shut down..heh.

The guy reminds me of Dennis Miller, one of the main reasons I watch O'Reilly regularly. He can be funny without having to be bleeped out, something you don't often find with stand-up comedians these days.
I remember when I was a kid we had board sidewalks, and we used to try to hop to school stepping only on new planks. I went to see "Passchendaele' recently and noticed that one of the scenes filmed in Calgary with concrete sidewalks had wheelchair ramps at the intersections, something I don't think they had in 1917 (or even 1945). I have mentioned this to several people who saw the movie and none of them noticed. I guess wheelchair ramps are another one of those things that everyone takes for granted.

Corrr. . . .we used to dream of living in a corridor.

Fair enough, dp.

Posted by: Yukon Gold at December 18, 2008 5:46 PM

I actually don't mind yellow potatoes. I had a very obnoxious girlfriend, who insisted on eating nothing but, even after they had 6" sprouts on them. Unfortunately, your nic reminds me of her. You aren't "her", are you?