On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:47:33 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "H.C.
Minh" quickly quoth:

Too_Many_Tools wrote in
roups.com:

In an accompanying aritcle to the PM's list of 25 skills every
man should know!
a discussion of whether Americans are losing their DIY skills.

Are they or are the skills needed just changing?

Your thoughts?

I suspect it is a bit of both.

TMT

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home...o/4221637.html

SNIP

I have a much more subversive opinion.

There are now 150 million more people in the US than in 1950. This
is double.

"Social" competition has become intense.

Everyone is trying to steal from someone else. You may call it taxes
or fees or dues or premiums or whatever but it's still trying to get
someone elses money for something they can't decline.

I'm transporting my 90 y/o neighbor down to court next Wednesday to
fight his other neighbor who is trying to steal his back lot out from
under him. I had no idea that homesteader laws still existed with the
prices they get for land nowadays.


The mental and physical effort to navigate the new society does not
leave people with as much energy to develop skills that are not
directly relevant to their primary vocation.

Ah, interesting theory. That might explain why my DIY tendencies
flourish. I'm a bookish man, a recluse by nature, who simply ignores
most of society. With noone constantly around me, I do everything
myself, if at all possible, and I love doing that.

--
If you turn the United States on its side,
everything loose will fall to California.
--Frank Lloyd Wright