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Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

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Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#41
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you weren't forced to write with your right hand. I have been told that was fairly common a generation further back (At least, my dad claims so).

I have been lucky, not being punished for writing with my left hand. My mother was forced to write with her right hand. But even in the 1980s pupils in Germany were forced to write with the right (in both meanings) hand. We now know a lot more, about what this does to a child's brain, but then, teachers just believed to be right.

I knew a left-handed math prof who had had that treatment growing up in Holland. But he'd developed a party trick.

One day he told us about this. And said that the result was that he could write with both hands. Different things. He demonstrated. Wrote with both hands at once, different things, on 2 neighboring boards. Kept on writing. Got to the bottom of the boards. Then turned around, began lecturing from the first board, reached the bottom, and continued the lecture from the second. He had laid out the boards perfectly to do this.

It was a very impressive party trick.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happened to me in a UK school in the 1980s. I was told off repeatedly - and my parents told - about my poor handwriting, my tendency to "rush" work, and even that I went to the toilet too often. Of course, the reality was that I was bored and the teacher was a vindictive fool. I remember saying to my mum at 8: "I'm worried about my 's'es", and she said "it's hardly likely you'll be sacked from a job be…

yeah, i got the same, the school went on and on about my handwriting and spent far too long trying to improve it, wasting my time and theres. Not exactly an issue as I sit here and type this is it? Mind you, the one thing i did do when i got a chance, was to do a typing course meant for secretarys as I knew i'd have to type.

The thing is people attach too much artistic value to hand writing.

Think of it more like painting and drawing.

What makes it worse is the visual appeal and they way it can be preserved over the years.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happened to me in a UK school in the 1980s. I was told off repeatedly - and my parents told - about my poor handwriting, my tendency to "rush" work, and even that I went to the toilet too often. Of course, the reality was that I was bored and the teacher was a vindictive fool. I remember saying to my mum at 8: "I'm worried about my 's'es", and she said "it's hardly likely you'll be sacked from a job be…

yeah, i got the same, the school went on and on about my handwriting and spent far too long trying to improve it, wasting my time and theres. Not exactly an issue as I sit here and type this is it? Mind you, the one thing i did do when i got a chance, was to do a typing course meant for secretarys as I knew i'd have to type.

Not to sound rude ... but your typing isn't that great either.

theres instead of theirs, secretarys instead of secretaries and none of your I's are uppercase as they're supposed to be.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#44
post #12

Apropos of nothing, looking at the inscription on the outside of the package, I'm struck by how beautiful handwriting was in 1912. I'd like to get that back somehow.

Handwriting is an amazing thing. But please for heaven's sake do not consider great handwriting to be a sign of intelligence or greatness as a value in itself. This sort of thing destroys kids in their early days. During my days in school(In India). Good handwriting was considered a mandatory trait of good, brilliant and hard working students. Any body who didn't have good hand writing was automatically considered a…

  "Bad handwriting is a sign of imperfect education." - Gandhi
Ironically Gandhi's handwriting http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Gandhi_ha...

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#45
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember the full context, but once my uncle said: "It must be an old person, because the handwriting is so pretty." To which my grandfather replied: "you had to write like that with a fountain pen" I've never used a fountain pen, but I gather you have to maintain a fairly constant speed as the pen moves along the paper. If you want that handwriting back, I think you have to get rid of ball-point pens and pen…

I think even if your handwriting is crap a fountain pen just looks better, or at least more auspicious. Horrible for lefties of course, but very nice to use if you're right-handed.

If you're left-handed, handwriting proceeds best by mirroring what the right hand would do (ie. write 'backwards'). It's far more natural. Alright, so others will need a mirror to read it - but that ought to be society's problem, not yours! ("Equal rights for the Sinisterous!")

In a gradual shift toward ambidexterity, I've found that questioning society's insistence on 'right-ness' can be enlightening...

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, i got the same, the school went on and on about my handwriting and spent far too long trying to improve it, wasting my time and theres. Not exactly an issue as I sit here and type this is it? Mind you, the one thing i did do when i got a chance, was to do a typing course meant for secretarys as I knew i'd have to type.

Not to sound rude ... but your typing isn't that great either. theres instead of theirs, secretarys instead of secretaries and none of your I's are uppercase as they're supposed to be.

Don't be a pedant. It's distracting from the actual discussion.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#47
In my hometown in Uruguay we have this monument: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flodigrip/1510286707/ the sphere on top is meant to be open every 100 years. In 1992 it was opened and we could see what the people from our hometown 100 years ago left for us.

They had a letter to us, documents, different kind of money, pictures, etc. Very interesting stuff

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#48
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, i got the same, the school went on and on about my handwriting and spent far too long trying to improve it, wasting my time and theres. Not exactly an issue as I sit here and type this is it? Mind you, the one thing i did do when i got a chance, was to do a typing course meant for secretarys as I knew i'd have to type.

Not to sound rude ... but your typing isn't that great either. theres instead of theirs, secretarys instead of secretaries and none of your I's are uppercase as they're supposed to be.

And you've just lowercased the starting letter of a new sentence. If you're going to flag someone over something, make sure you double check what you've typed.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound rude ... but your typing isn't that great either. theres instead of theirs, secretarys instead of secretaries and none of your I's are uppercase as they're supposed to be.

And you've just lowercased the starting letter of a new sentence. If you're going to flag someone over something, make sure you double check what you've typed.

Yes I did and it was on purpose, because I was listing exact examples from his comment. Probably should have put them in quotes though, I'll give you that.

Re: Tomorrow, a 100 year old mysterious package will be opened in a museum in Norway

#50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound rude ... but your typing isn't that great either. theres instead of theirs, secretarys instead of secretaries and none of your I's are uppercase as they're supposed to be.

Don't be a pedant. It's distracting from the actual discussion.

How's this for the actual discussion: There have been cases of people dying because the pharmacist misread the doctor's scribbles and gave them the wrong prescription.
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