Yoohoo, Mommies!

lucretia borgia wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:00:19 -0400, "Lucille" lzoltynospam@now at
comcast..net opined:


Your data intrigued me because it's so opposite what I know from my friends
and neighbors that looked a bit further and came up with this article from
The New York Times. It certainly tells another story, doesn't it.

http://tiny.cc/UQnvz

This is more what I know.

Lucille


Good link, it's sure more the way I know seniors, I particularly liked

"the ranks of Americans over 65 who use the Internet have jumped by 47
percent since 2000, making them the fastest-growing group to embrace
the online world. "

47% is a VERY convincing quantity.

Yes, darling, but jumped *by* 47% is different than jumped *to* 47%, as
I'm sure you realized on the second reading.


Elizabeth
--
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~living well is the best revenge~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate
and expand her sense of actual possibilities. --Adrienne Rich
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Jangchub wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:35:17 -0400, "Dr. Brat"
wrote:


Jangchub wrote:



It's nothing personal about who watches it. I am commenting on the
content of a show. I don't have to watch it to make this comment.

It's one thing to coment that the show contains cheating. It's another
to claim that the show *promotes* cheating. And no, you don't have to
watch it to make a comment, but it sure would help your credibility if
you'd seen it even once.

Elizabeth


I will watch the first show of the season. Is that fair enough?

I've actually stopped watching it, but I do hope it makes you laugh. It
did me.

Elizabeth
--
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~living well is the best revenge~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate
and expand her sense of actual possibilities. --Adrienne Rich
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On 8/18/08 3:37 PM, in article
, "lewmew"
wrote:


I do note that every one of you who's claimed they're the hottest things
since Beanie Babies is along the Eastern Corridor. *Not a peep about
them from any of our Western correspondents, which is where I'm going to
be selling the stuff. *And I can tell you that people in California have
never given a hoot about what's trendy on the East Coast; we create our
own trends.

Here in the Midwest they are big, big, big. The local convention
center/hotel even advertises that they carry them on their outside
board. They are available at most airport gift shops. Webkinz also
are not a Toys R Us toy, but one, like Beanie Babies, that tends to be
found in independent shops.

Linda


Maybe Webkinz aren't as in in urban areas.

Cheryl

lucretia borgia wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:28:14 -0700, Karen C in California
opined:

Think about it, Sheena... It's cold and snowy where you are. The old
folks here are never housebound or isolated by winter weather, because
we never have snow or icy roads. They're out and about and doing
things, not home with only their computer for company. The local bus
company gives free lifetime passes to people over 80, so there's no need
for anyone in this town to sit home alone just because they've given up
driving, and weather is never an issue.


I have to break my word to say nothing more - MY LIFE IS NOTHING LIKE
WHAT YOU ARE DESCRIBING ~ I go out pretty much regardless of weather,
it's a VERY rare day I am in 24/24 - very rare. Your picture of
seniors is terribly warped.

You're wasting your breath, Sheena. Once Karen gets it in her head that
the world is a certain way, it's useless to argue with her. And it's
not just her picture of seniors that's warped.

Elizabeth
--
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~living well is the best revenge~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate
and expand her sense of actual possibilities. --Adrienne Rich
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Karen C in California" wrote in message
...
Lucille wrote:

It certainly tells another story, doesn't it.

http://tiny.cc/UQnvz

This is more what I know.

Lucille

Actually, it tells exactly the story I've experienced:
"Despite the increases, this age group still has a long way to go. Only 22
percent of Americans over 65 go online, the study shows, compared with 75
percent of those ages 30 to 49."


If 22% are online that means nearly 4/5 are not. Hardly the overwhelming
majority you claim in your neighborhood. Much closer to the percentages
in Mom's neighborhood, where only one of the five older people on the
block owns a computer.


"the ranks of Americans over 65 who use the Internet have jumped by 47
percent since 2000, making them the fastest-growing group to embrace the
online world"

Well, sure, because if 75% of younger people are online, it's impossible
to increase that by 47% (do the math). Whereas if 2 older people are
online, adding just one more is a 50% increase.

My aunt readily admits that the only reason she does e-mail is because all
her relatives are in Europe; the e-mail account is cheaper than airmail
postage. If her relatives were just a local phone call away, she would
have no interest in it at all. And that may be why it's so popular in
your area -- because the grannies have all moved to Florida and left the
kids and grandkids behind in Brooklyn. In this area, we have a lot of
fifth- and sixth-generation local families; the grandkids are a local
phone call, so there's no need for granny to learn to use a computer to
communicate with them.

When her son set up my aunt's e-mail account, he had her send a test
e-mail "hello, this is my new address". 10 of my next 10 contacts with
her were either by phone or snail mail. The 11th was by e-mail only
because I was stumped on a translation, and when I called to read it to
her she admitted it might make more sense if she saw the convoluted
sentence in writing; then she phoned to tell me how she'd translate it.
She's only now reaching the point where she will e-mail me instead of
calling or snail-mailing.

Like with my parents, she has a house and garden to keep up, a husband who
needs to be driven to multiple doctor appointments, doctor and physical
therapy appointments of her own; she doesn't have the time to play on the
computer every day.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Since you decided to insult me by intimating that some seniors "play" at the
computer I'll keep this up. You seem to know people who are satisfied just
to garden and drive to therapy appointments and that is enough for them.
Some other seniors I know aren't satisfied with just that and look for
activities that will keep them busy and active with more intellectual
pursuits and/or less housefrau activities, and a computer is one way to
provide that kind of stimulation.

In my case my husband died so it's unlikely I'll be driving him anywhere and
fortunately most of my friends drive so we can share that chore. If your
family gets its jollies by doing what I consider to be everyday chores, more
power to them but most of the people I know aren't happy with doing the same
thing now that they have more leisure time and want to do something
different and more stimulating. There's also the fact that if you live
alone it's easy to keep your home neat and clean, unlike when you live with
an active group.

There's also the fact that I can't imagine how spending time driving someone
to a doctors appointment can possibly take up that much time. Even when my
friend broke her wrist last month and needed me to drive her all over the
place, including even the supermarket, it didn't take up enough time to make
it interesting and meaningful. The only saving grace was that we both
caught up on some reading while waiting at the doctors office. I even saw
people sitting around with their laptops to use the time in an interesting
fashion.

Since you quoted your statistic and I think it's not 100% accurate, here's
another article that shows another senior use of computers.

http://www.lrs.org/documents/fastfac..._computers.pdf

You know that numbers can be manipulated and if we dig further we can surely
find studies that will show whatever we decide we want them to show.

lucretia borgia wrote:

I see you still feel, even at
your oh so clever age, you need to stay with aohell because god knows
what fate would befall you if you handled the internet first hand.


I stay with AOL because too much advertising for my business is out
there with my AOL e-mail address. I don't want to lose customers
because I've changed addresses. I recently had a client come back to me
after 2 years, which he would not have done if I had a new address.

Furthermore, as I have said repeatedly, I need my internet connection to
be fully portable. Having cable at home will not do me a damn bit of
good when I need to go take care of my parents; they don't have any form
of internet, therefore, I need a company that I can dial into from their
house as needed. Or from the home of the elderly/single/childless
relative who is also likely to need someone to look after her for a
while. This house has stairs and is not wheelchair-accessible, so I
can't bring them back here to care for them.

I have seen you go on vacation and not get online for days or weeks on
end. I'm running a business; I have to get online every day regardless
of whether I'm at home or vacationing at the South Pole. Even if I tell
the clients to send current work to my backup, there are often questions
about what I did last week or last month, which my backup could not
handle because she's not the one who did that job.

Your use of the internet and easy disposability of your e-mail address
is vastly different from my use of the internet for business purposes.
You know who is likely to e-mail you and can give them your new address;
I don't know which new customer might see old advertising, and I can't
go back and have old magazines reprinted. It is bad enough that I lost
my former websites when my webhosts got divorced and the husband
spitefully shut down the sites that the wife had worked on; best I can
hope for is that I can buy them back when the current URL registration
expires, and integrate them into my new website. Meanwhile, anyone who
sees the advertising from that era is a customer lost to me because they
can't contact me with the outdated information.

I *have* handled the internet first-hand; I'm not too stupid to do it.
I choose to stay with AOL for continuity of my business, for the same
reason that many businesses keep the same telephone number for decades,
even when they have to pay extra because they've moved from one town to
another.

However, no matter how many times I've explained it to you, you
stubbornly continue to insist that I have no reason other than imaginary
fear of the real internet to stick with AOL regardless of the valid
business reasons I've expressed.

Tell you what -- you track down every single person who has any old copy
of the various publications, every website that has my contact
information (they don't all come up on google ... I've tried, and do see
some glaring omissions from the list), and make sure that all of them
are updated with my new address, and then I'll make the change to some
other ISP. I don't have time to locate and update all of those
people/websites and I don't have the money to buy old mailing lists and
send postcards to catch those people who have an old magazine but have
let their subscription lapse because they don't have time to read the
magazine every month, but keep the old ones for the ads.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

lucretia borgia wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:00:43 -0700, Karen C in California
opined:

Actually, it tells exactly the story I've experienced:
"Despite the increases, this age group still has a long way to go. Only
22 percent of Americans over 65 go online, the study shows, compared
with 75 percent of those ages 30 to 49."



Well let's just leave the subject as you not understanding that your
relatives are a minority


I understand that the NY Times says that internet users among the
over-65 set are a minority, and that my relatives almost exactly reflect
the percentage found by the Times.

What's so difficult to understand that 22% is a minority? And not just
a "quibbling about margin of error" minority, either.

The statistics quoted by Lucille in attempting to support HER argument
have, in fact, proven that her stance is wrong and that the statistics
that I see among my friends and relatives are in line with what research
shows, that the vast majority -- 4/5 -- of elderly people are not online.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

lucretia borgia wrote:

leave the insult lie here for all us
seniors that you clearly feel we are pretty damn stupid in our dotage.



I never said "all seniors are stupid". I said that in my experience,
the majority of those I know and on my parents' block are not online and
have no interest in going online.

The statistics bear me out that 4/5 are not online. Kudos to those who
are, but that doesn't change the fact that if 22% of seniors are online,
78% are not, and that 78% is a pretty sizeable majority.

I'm sorry if you feel that the Times and the authors of that study think
that seniors who are not online are stupid. I personally think the
issue is not stupidity but lack of interest, or, in my mother's words "I
don't have time to waste playing on the computer" because she has too
many other things to do in real life.

My elderly friend who was given a computer and never used it was
extremely active, performing with local musical groups, attending
classes, volunteering with the library, putting out newsletters and
publicity for his musical groups ... he could get the newsletter out on
his manual typewriter without the learning curve required to do it on
the computer, which to him seemed more efficient, and therefore, no real
reason to use the computer. His elderly friends didn't e-mail, no
grandkids to e-mail, not the type to sit around and just surf the Net to
fill empty hours, because he didn't have any empty hours. Just why
exactly do you think someone who is out of the house from 10 AM to 10 PM
every single day, running from meeting to meeting, needs the internet in
order to socialize?

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

Dr. Brat wrote:

Karen C in California wrote:



Plus, the original question was specifically about Barbie clothes,
which we can produce at no cost just to fill out a corner of the table
so it looks like we have a little more stock.


LOL! If you're going to insist that people stick to answering only the
exact question you ask, you really need to find another place to post
your questions. This is Usenet: "you posts in public, you takes your
chances."

Elizabeth


As the lawyers in my court cases always say, "please just answer the
question that he asked! Don't answer questions that weren't asked."

If I'm asking about the reliability of a Ford vs. a Honda, that doesn't
mean that I want to hear about a goat cart. Which may be cheaper and
user-repairable, but I can't take it on the freeway.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/

Cheryl Isaak wrote:

Maybe Webkinz aren't as in in urban areas.

Cheryl



That could be. Mom certainly gets out enough to different malls, and
although the "sold out" sign in their area was on the door of the card
shop, the stores where I buy my greeting cards don't carry them.

--
Karen C - California
Editor/Proofreader www.IntlProofingConsortium.com

Finished 7/27/08 - MLI Christmas Visit

WIP: Oriental Kimono (Janlynn), MLI The Teacher (gift to
the library), Bethany Angel (Marbek)
Retrieved from UFO pile: Marbek's Snow Angel, MLI Farmers Market

CFSfacts -- where we give you the facts and dispel the myths
Myths, with research cites: http://www.aacfs.org/images/pdfs/myths.pdf
Newest research blog: http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/