In 1917 the US army made all their draftees complete an IQ test one of the first mass exercises of this nature. The results showed that black men from northern states scored higher than white men from southern states. Needless to say the results were suppressed so as not to upset the southern white politicians.
Deggesty In the past several years, my experience in diners has been that I am asked to write my name and indicate the space I occupy in a sleeper--the atendant takes my order and marks it on the form.
In the past several years, my experience in diners has been that I am asked to write my name and indicate the space I occupy in a sleeper--the atendant takes my order and marks it on the form.
I remember writing it down in Amtrak diners and probably also did it in a Penn Central diner. There are other people on the train that would have had written down information - conductor and engineer would have train orders. Many people that settled the west according to books I have read were illiterate. Are we coming back full circle? Kids today can not read and write. They can read and print. Many cannot even write their own signature.
wjstixBTW re the military...I know someone who tried to join the Marines a few years ago, and before being allowed to enlist they had to take a general intelligence test. They were shocked to find out that the Marines couldn't accept her, because her test score was too high! Apparently if you score over a certain mark, you can only join the Navy.
Also, I might add to what was stated already. The ASVAB (which I took as well) is commonly misrepresented as a intelligence test. It is a placement test NOT an intelligence test. You have a range of jobs in which require various skills and ability to learn. The ASVAB - Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test measures your ability to do specific jobs that each service offers.
Further, yes in the past the military recruited illerate and under educated people but since Vietnam the recruitment has been conditional that they take remedial grade school and high school courses over time to reach the level everyone else that had a HS degree is at.
Now I don't think they admit people that are marginal anymore as they now require either a HS diploma or GED plus a semester of college. They require a semester of college (accredited instutions only) from the GED holders now because of some fly by night GED firms so they used the semester of college to evaluate if the GED is really worth the paper it is written on. Internally the Army has the BSEP progam (Basic Skills Education Program) for people that score lower on the ASVAB but want a higher score for a different job. They can go through the BSEP program and hence raise their ASVAB score and qualify for the higher rated job. This is how they ensure that nobody that lacks education is stuck down at a specific level and that anyone can move up.
Just wanted to clear that up because some folks think the military is a refuge of dumb people, in the past maybe some skated by but no longer. If you want to reach the higher enlisted ranks you need a Bachelor Degree or at a very minimum an Associate Degree. If you ever want to be a Four Star General you need a PhD or a very highly rated Masters. Full Bird Colonel needs at minimum a Masters Degree, most will not make it to LTC without one.
Also the former "Join the Army or go to Jail" practice is now prohibited, they banned it in the 1990's sometime. If they find any court judgements with that as part of the adjudication they will not even talk to you about enlistment. Even if you plead to the judge to cut you a break as your about to enlist in the Armed Forces..........that plead is an immediate disqualification from service now.
My late father worked for the Pullman company before the war, served in an operating railway battalion in France during the war and rejoined the PC after the war as a conductor. From Chicago, he ran the "name trains" on the UP, GN, SF and RI to Seattle, San Francisco and LA for 30 some years until Amtrak put him out of work. I was lucky enough to begin traveling with my family when I was five to SF and over the course of the next twenty plus years to all of the other cities multiple times.
All of the dining car servers were black with some small exceptions, the dinning car Steward was white and was the manager. I fondly recall getting to fill out my meal card and always figured it was a convience for the staff and an accounting proceedure. The waiter always read it back out loud and made and corrections or changes as needed.When I traveled alone with my father, I got to "pay' for my meal by sorting the checks into numurical order, as he ate what I ordered giving the head cook a few dollars for the extra meal and sleeping the dining car steward in the Pullmans instead of the domitory car with the crew.
This is a long way to telling you that everyone of the porters and dining car waiters were educated and worldly and enjoyed what they were doing, most were from the south coming to Chicago on the IC and finding what would have been a unique opportunity for a black person in the '50's/60's, traveling to top flight cities on a luxury mode of transportation serving, at the time, an upscale white audience who tipped well.
I remember some of the crew on the City of Los Angelos (nothing like breakfast in a dome diner at 90 MPH across Wyoming) actually doing a sort of "show" duing service trading trays as they walked past each other as sort of majic act, some times there was even a little harmony singing. They were great people and it really offered me an insight into understanding the different cultures.
Pretty impressive Woody9. 30 + years riding Pullman's on fine trains out of Chicago, before and after WWII. Must have seen it all. What a great life.
Its always been my experience that you write your own order on a ticket and the waiter reads it back to you aloud.
KEN G MARXNot to put too fine a point on it, but Marines are Marines, not soldiers. The Army has soldiers.
For what it's worth (not much), Navy SEALs refer to them as "candy-ass Marines" in their take on the Marine Hymn.
So far on this trip I have noticed one change in the procedure that I seen followed since Amtrak more or less standarized its fare from train to train--on both the Cardinal and the Crescent,(only one sleeper out of New York yesterday) the attendant asked only that the patrons sign their name--after asking what room was occupied. The stasndard form was used on the Crescent, but, apparently because the Cardinal has different offerings, a different form was used.
Of course, on the trains with the "let us get rid of the passengers" idea, the attendant does it all.
Johnny
TandP RR All Wrong: I wondered about this as a college student and then figured it out. It's purely a safety issue. Due to the dinning car swaying and moving, the waiter could easily A.) stab the customer in the neck with the pencil during a particularly hard jolt and B.) or lose his balance and fall into the customer's lap [if he's holding the card with one hand, and writing with the other, the waiter will surly lose his balance. We all use our hands for balance, not writing food orders.]
All Wrong: I wondered about this as a college student and then figured it out. It's purely a safety issue. Due to the dinning car swaying and moving, the waiter could easily A.) stab the customer in the neck with the pencil during a particularly hard jolt and B.) or lose his balance and fall into the customer's lap [if he's holding the card with one hand, and writing with the other, the waiter will surly lose his balance. We all use our hands for balance, not writing food orders.]
You don't need to use your hand for balance when walking on a moving train, all you have to do is walk with your feet slightly farther apart than normal, that keeps you balanced as well. Also, if you ever noticed, they sometimes actually lean up against the table with their legs at very imperctible angle to help them stand up. Safety has nothing to do with it at all.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR TandP RR All Wrong: I wondered about this as a college student and then figured it out. It's purely a safety issue. Due to the dinning car swaying and moving, the waiter could easily A.) stab the customer in the neck with the pencil during a particularly hard jolt and B.) or lose his balance and fall into the customer's lap [if he's holding the card with one hand, and writing with the other, the waiter will surly lose his balance. We all use our hands for balance, not writing food orders. You don't need to use your hand for balance when walking on a moving train, all you have to do is walk with your feet slightly farther apart than normal, that keeps you balanced as well. Also, if you ever noticed, they sometimes actually lean up against the table with their legs at very imperctible angle to help them stand up. Safety has nothing to do with it at all.
TandP RR All Wrong: I wondered about this as a college student and then figured it out. It's purely a safety issue. Due to the dinning car swaying and moving, the waiter could easily A.) stab the customer in the neck with the pencil during a particularly hard jolt and B.) or lose his balance and fall into the customer's lap [if he's holding the card with one hand, and writing with the other, the waiter will surly lose his balance. We all use our hands for balance, not writing food orders.
All Wrong: I wondered about this as a college student and then figured it out. It's purely a safety issue. Due to the dinning car swaying and moving, the waiter could easily A.) stab the customer in the neck with the pencil during a particularly hard jolt and B.) or lose his balance and fall into the customer's lap [if he's holding the card with one hand, and writing with the other, the waiter will surly lose his balance. We all use our hands for balance, not writing food orders.
Don't forget waiters carry large trays with the orders for each table from the kitchen on the diner to the table being served - carrying various hot and or liquid items that could be more easily spilled than any waiter stabbing someone with a pencil or pen accidently.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
charlie hebdoAfter all, dinning (sic!) cars were really noisy.
Tsk, tsk. Sic is usually italicized and always surrounded by brackets to indicate that it was not part of the original. FYI [sic]
"Aways clean your own house first, before criticizing your neighbor's house."
243129Tsk, tsk. Sic is usually italicized ...
... and never capitalized; it is short for a Latin phrase (sic erat scriptum) and should have been put in quotes when mentioned in a sentence.
Apparently an enormous number of people use 'sic' in parens rather than the 'correct' square brackets as noted. I am of course opposed to tolerating this, but it does have to be said you really can't mistake what it is meant to mean...
I confess I never appended the exclamation point, but it is not semantically wrong as far as I can tell... and i can see the value in emphasizing a particularly apt malapropism or egregious Freudian slip when called out.
sic is also from the Latin sicut = just as. Should not be italicized since it has become a part of our language. Parentheses have become nearly interchangable in usage, and the exclamation mark is also common.
In any case, Joe appears to have totally missed the point of my comment regarding those noisy 'dinning' cars. I suppose my error is once more a function, ad nauseam, of poor training, supervision and vetting?
charlie hebdo poor training, supervision and vetting?
Now you're getting it!
243129 charlie hebdo After all, dinning (sic!) cars were really noisy. Tsk, tsk. Sic is usually italicized and always surrounded by brackets to indicate that it was not part of the original. FYI [sic] "Aways clean your own house first, before criticizing your neighbor's house."
charlie hebdo After all, dinning (sic!) cars were really noisy.
"After all, dinning (sic!) cars were really noisy."
You should heed your own advice, Joe? The sorta humorous, play-on-words sentence in which I used the Latin term in question was my totally own except for the misused word 'dinning' and was not the original, so parentheses are quite correct, not brackets.
Whatever makes you happy Chuck
I know my dad enjoyed his job and was quite good at it keeping track of each "space' as it was refered to with a little Pullman pencil. Sounds like a romantic job but consider he was up for every stop to off load or take a new customer aboard. He was gone every other five days so we always joked that I only knew him for half of my early life, lots of missed birthdays, Christmas and so forth. He was not a rail fan as I don't think he saw any plaesure in it, but always accomidated me in my pursiut. I was remided of his shinny shouldered uniform jackets as we brushed side to side in the sleeper walk ways of the Canadian last fall.
243129 Whatever makes you happy Chuck
Perhaps in your new life you could benefit from training and supervision from Overmod and even myself.
charlie hebdo 243129 Whatever makes you happy Chuck Perhaps in your new life you could benefit from training and supervision from Overmod and even myself.
Perhaps in your 'new life' you could acquire some maturity.
243129 charlie hebdo 243129 Whatever makes you happy Chuck Perhaps in your new life you could benefit from training and supervision from Overmod and even myself. Perhaps in your 'new life' you could acquire some maturity.
How high is the urine Momma! Four feet high and rising.
BaltACDHow high is the urine Momma! Four feet high and rising.
Now we have another 'one'. Desk jockey chimes in.
In hopes of keeping the urea in the forum discussions squarely in DEF
charlie hebdosic is also from the Latin sicut = just as. Should not be italicized since it has become a part of our language.
Brings up another can-o-worms grammar-pedant controversy.
The use of 'sic' seems more like the use of a foreign word or phrase that is normally italicized in streamed text (like 'ad hoc' or 'pro rata') than a common unitalicized foreign-word abbreviation (the poster child probably being "etc." which no one pronounces as anything but 'et cetera' even though slaughtering other Latin-derived terms like "Ibid" (yes, I'm guilty of this).
I'm tempted to introduce an artificial distinction between [sic] or [sic] as a formal indication of original source material and (sic) as calling attention to something in the quoted phrase.
In either case, when charlie hebdo used it, it's pretty clear what he meant (and amusing in context) and far from a sharp stick in even a grammar Nazi's eye.
All this discussion of [sic], [sic], (sic), &c. is fun, but compared to the slaughter of grammar and spelling of regular english...?
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Paul of Covington All this discussion of [sic], [sic], (sic), &c. is fun, but compared to the slaughter of grammar and spelling of regular english...?
"English" is always capitalized! And the ampersand is a ligature which counts as italic so you should have used an italic 'c' after it! You should have been vetted better before participating in the slow-motion train wreck this thread has become!
Overmod Paul of Covington All this discussion of [sic], [sic], (sic), &c. is fun, but compared to the slaughter of grammar and spelling of regular english...? "English" is always capitalized! And the ampersand is a ligature which counts as italic so you should have used an italic 'c' after it! You should have been vetted better before participating in the slow-motion train wreck this thread has become!
+1!!!
OvermodIn either case, when charlie hebdo used it, it's pretty clear what he meant (and amusing in context) and far from a sharp stick in even a grammar Nazi's eye.
This discussion would never have happened had charlie not felt the need to point out a spelling error in the thread title, incorrectly I might add.One should have their 'ducks in a row' so to speak before they criticize (incorrectly) others.
I keep rememboring, Rodney King saying "CAN'T WE JUST GET ALONG"
Come on guy's, give it a rest. Youi don't HAVE to have the last word.
Electroliner 1935 I keep rememboring, Rodney King saying "CAN'T WE JUST GET ALONG" Come on guy's, give it a rest. Youi don't HAVE to have the last word.
Now you've stepped in it. I was going to warn you that someone would claim a misquote, but I decided to check it out first. Though the captions have the word "just", I just don't hear it. There is a little hesitation there, but I don't hear the word "just". Granted, my hearing in my old age is not what it used to be, but I hear the rest of it OK. How long can we keep this up?
Paul of Covington Electroliner 1935 I keep rememboring, Rodney King saying "CAN'T WE JUST GET ALONG" Come on guy's, give it a rest. Youi don't HAVE to have the last word. Now you've stepped in it ... How long can we keep this up?
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