What are some things we continue to do or hold onto even though they have little or no usefulness now?
How about handwriting tests for kids? While everyone needs to be able to read and write; is cursive even needed any more? Most people I know only write down their personal information, telehone numbers, or occasionally short notes or doodled maps. E-mails and telephones have pretty much demolished the need for advanced foofy handwriting.
Let’s also get rid of the Suit and Tie. Are we incapable of creating something that looks nice and is comfortable to wear? How about a little variety in menswear.
For the ladies, pantyhose can also be banished to the tomb of history.
What else are we clinging to that can be relegated to the closet?
**Balancing checkbooks **- if you use the electronic age the way it is supposed to be used, routine checkbook balancing is completely unnecessary. This comes from a person that does detailed electronic reconciliation of multi-million dollar accounts as one part of my job. Trust me, if you are balancing a checkbook, things have gone horribly wrong for you in the modern age. Please note that this isn’t an invitation to be financially irresponsible. It is quite the opposite in fact. People need to look at the big picture more than checking that the bank’s computer know how to subtract $19.95 from $504.24. The tools and ideas have moved well beyond this simplistic practice.
Okay, as for handwriting tests, I wish they did them more regularly. Not just with script, though; it’s more important that people learn to write legibly in print and cursive. Print is definitely more important. Bad handwriting is the bane of my data entry existence; it’s only second to people who cannot communicate well enough in written English to be understood.
The tie part should be optional, or they should come up with a less restricting alternative. A cravat?
Pantyhose are evil. I muchly prefer stockings and garter belts, which are older. Pantyhose in the form of tights are only acceptable because they serve the purpose of showing off my legs while making them slightly warmer.
They are not designed to fit short stocky men with no necks; or really tall lanky guys, or fat men, or anyone else who doesn’t have a somewhat tall, tapering body shape. Not only do I find them uncomfortable and encumbering to wear, but I look awful in them. I’d like an alternative.
Here in Tucson, nobody wears pantyhose. In fact, if you do wear them, you are mocked. Mocked!
And I haven’t balanced my checkbook in years. A lot of people are shocked (shocked!) to hear me say that, but really what’s the point when you can go online and everything’s right there in front of you?
As for me, the medical office that I work in really needs to make our paper charts obsolete. Everyone else has electronic records- we are still using charts made of index cards, just like back in 1946 when the office started.
Couldn’t agree more on the suits in hot weather. Last summer I was clerking at a law firm; driving to and from work, wearing a suit and tie every day in the Memphis summer, in a truck with no air conditioning, was not a pleasant experience.
Another surviving anachronism is the chains used to measure first downs in (American) football. This could be measured more quickly and more accurately by optical devices on the sidelines.
One more: Do judges in English countries (and current/former colonies) still wear those white wigs, or do I just watch too many movies? A quick Google search suggests that they do. Surely this could be dispensed with in 2007?
Not in Canada. Lawyers still have the black robes with the white collar tabs, and the appellate court judges have their robes, of course. But nobody has the wigs. We did away with those years ago.
Yes. There’s a lot more room to personalize your signature in cursive than in print; it’d be appallingly easy to find two people who would write your name the same way in print, but much more difficult to do the same in cursive.
That said, writing anything other than my name in cursive would be difficult for me–and I prided myself on my performance in handwriting tests at the time.
And I believe the suit-and-tie outfit has its place. It has a nuanced connotation of professionalism and conveys a calm, collected sense of power when worn right. And the tie is symbolic of male power, anyway.
I don’t wear them at all these days, but I look smokin’ in a suit and tie. (Or at least, I did when I was on my high school basketball team; my more sedentary lifestyle of the last three years may have changed that.)
Those are so cool. I want one.
A guy I knew in Arizona would beg to differ. He wore a suit (or at least, a snappy sport coat) and tie every day. And he put a lot of product in his hair, too. How he could stand that is beyond me, but he pulled it off and he was (literally, I suppose) the picture of cool.
No, and it never was. I spent nine years forced to write in cursive in school. The moment they stopped forcing me, I stopped doing it. So did everyone else. I’ve never done it since. Never seen any reason to either. Never seen anyone else write in cursive outside school. Probably the most useless bit of training I ever had.
Are you saying that when you have to hand-write something, you print every letter separately? That must take forever! Why on Earth would you stop writing normally just out of spite?
BTW put me as another one that has no clue what is meant by “balancing a chequebook”. I only ever use my chequebook about two or three times a year, everything else is paid with cash, debit card or online.
