Recently I went to a local outfitter of camping gear to look for Coleman Lantern Mantles. As I was scanning the shelves a cherubic faced clerk came up to me and asked if I needed help. I said I was looking for lantern mantles.
When we arrived to the endcap where they were hanging, I asked him if they were still making radioactive mantles. He looked at me as though I were a bit of a loon. When I pressed the question, he balked and summoned his manager.
The manager, another youngster who was much more of an alpha male, scoffed at my question and tried to assure me that such a thing was absurd. Why in the world would mantles be radioactive? I tried to assure the youngster that, yes indeed, mantles were radioactive at one time because they contained thorium. At this point the manager was becoming visibly annoyed at his time lost addressing the questions of an obvious crackpot.
I recognized the patronizing tone he took and turned and left the store. As a child of cold war science, I have witnessed mantles sitting in a cloud chamber with ionized cloud streamers zipping every whichway from the innocent looking woven bag. Today, schools are terrified of chemicals and radiation science. Mr Manager missed out on a real experience by being born into the post-cold war world of bland science education.
So, my GM counter sits in my office clicking from the occasional background radiation piercing the GM tube. Eventually I’ll find a source to give it something more interesting to detect.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
So they’re not radioactive anymore???
See below. They’ve moved across the periodic table.
The bag burned to ash so sweetly because it was nitrocellulose. It was perfect in every way. Modern mantles are yttrium-oxide based and only 80% as efficient as emitters (e.g., US Pat. 4533317)..
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2482/are-camp-lanterns-radioactive
Thanks for that. I was too lazy to look up the current composition.
“The bag burned to ash so sweetly because it was nitrocellulose. It was perfect in every way.”
It is a shame that such clever things are so under appreciated.
My impression is that Gen Y believes access to unlimited information (the web), makes them by default always the smartest people in the room. It’s gotten progressively worse as consumerism pushed credit cards on the kiddies and tv expanded into the several hundred channel range.
TV channels are very hungry little monsters.
You could get the kids to buy more, and plunge further into debt if they were assured their future was bright, and they possessed all the answers by virtue of youth alone.
Most college students today probably think that companies are founded by 20 year olds working out of a garage. I see the myth of the dot com wiz who made millions pushed like heroine to the youngins. The reality is most of those founders were from wealthy families with pre-existing relationships which enhanced their prospects. It feeds a sense that anything is possible and a wealthy future is right around the corner.
So spend spend spend!
I went into a computer store a few weeks back in a major city. Every assistant was dressed in trendy skin-tight clothes with hip haircuts. Average age = 21. None of them could answer a single question. They appeared to be posing for each other as they chatted and dismissed the customers.
What disgusted me was the ease at which these aspiring debtors were convinced that personal opinion was the same as fact.
Here is what you do- when they flash the attitude or are unhelpful, just ask if a “grownup” is working that day and stand there silent until they do something. You still may not get what you want, but chances are you’ve clearly made your point.
I think they learned the “my personal opinion is the same as/better than fact” from people before them, both because we aren’t original enough to come up with it and because we’ve seen this dance in action before. W for eight years, Reagan and North earlier, and I assume even earlier than that (intransigent stupidity/evil doesn’t usually mix well with originality). In addition, attitude (which I seem to have about issues that move me beyond my ability to argue and provide information and justification) is much more photogenic than cold reality, and people behave in ways that make them feel good and give them power.
Given a choice between desirable dreams and the actual consequences of our actions, we prefer the dreams, and have voted accordingly. I hope O won’t continue the trend (we know we should accept the consequences of our actions but also don’t feel like actually accepting them), but I fear he will.