"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:14:24 -0600, "Pete C."
wrote:


Jim Stewart wrote:

Michael Koblic wrote:
I saw an interesting event on Jay Jeno last night: Memebrs of the five
armed
services were trying to open a can of cranberry sauce using a Swiss
army
knife. It was horrible. None of them seemed to have a clear idea how
to use
the can opener attachment, in fact I am pretty sure some of them used
the
wrong attachment. Four of them managed eventually at a cost of some
injuries
and the cans were mangled. One failed to empty the can in the alloted
time.

I wondered about the implications: Is this a reflection on general
population's unfamiliarity with a can opener? Is this a reflection on
basic
training? Is it because the knife was *Swiss*? It cannot be because
the
knife was *Army* as I believe it was the Army guy who failed. I
hesitate to
cite stress affecting the performance of members of fighitng forces.

Would members of the Special Forces have done better? One of the guys
made a
creditable effort to rip the can open with his bare hands but with a
minimum
result. How would the US Armed forces stack up against, say, the Brits
or
the Russians?

Is this something to be concerned about? Do I have too much time on my
hands?

We all probably have too much time on our hands
so I'll let that slide.

Any pre-gulf war vet would have used a P-38 to
open his/her C-rations and would be able to
figure out the knife. I hope.

I was shocked to learn that some of my daugher's
high school friends were never allowed to use
kitchen knives.

I'm guessing that the whole concept of tool-using
is slowly bleeding out of a large portion of the
population. Cars neither need nor are easy to
repair. Most products are cheaper to throw away
than to fix. How many *hundreds* of old collected
sets of tools end up at the flea market, presumably
because their new owner had no use for them.

For example, most people used to at least have
a clue as to how a television works. I think
that if you asked most young people, you'd get
a one word answer, LED or LCL or plasma.

The military is having a hard time attracting
enough smart and educated recruits. This is not
meant to disparage our troops, but OTOH, there's
not a lot of kids going into the military to learn
a civilian trade any more.

Oh well, just means us old farts will have some
value in the next 20 or 30 years.

The biggest issue this points out is the lack of basic mechanical
aptitude and problem solving skills. Even if all these troops have seen
are tear to open MREs, they should be able to look at the can, look at
the options on the knife and use basic mechanical problem solving skills
to figure it out.

The sad fact is that a large portion of our volunteer troops come from
backgrounds where religious indoctrination took precedence over basic
education - not unlike the enemy they are currently fighting.


You are confusing something..most of these kids are conservative and
largely from rural areas..so they are head and hands smarter and better
educatied than city kids.

Are you saying that the kid that just put the carby out of a 72 Poncho
into his 89 Poncho cant figure out how to open an MRE?


Why would a smart kid want to take the fuel injection off a car and put a
carb on it? I think the smart ones are putting FI where a carb used to live.
Steve