Not only can I fix a steam engine, I can build them
Then again, I'm odd - I started my work life as a machinist, moved on to being an electronic tech, and then became a programmer
"I believe that now, immediately, there should be national sterilization for certain dysgenic types of our population who are being encouraged to breed and would die out were the government not feeding them."
-- Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood
Another ignorant Westerner projecting her own values on a foreign society. Being paid "peanuts" in Western currency is actually quite a lot in Chinese yuan. It's certainly more than they could make back on the farm. Maybe we should actually talk to these people instead of assuming that we can hold opinions on their behalf?
Workers are mobile and they know it. Wages are up across the board in China, and not going down anytime soon. The workers will move across the street to a new factory at the drop of a hat. "We are holding a knife to their throats"? WTF? Are we in Bizarro World? Have you even been to China, or talked to a single worker? Who is "we"?
I'm curious: did anyone ever notice how Chile is a modern, safe country while the rest of South America is stereotypical? What happened in Chile that was different?
More importantly, what do Chileans think? Would they rather have followed the tide into far-left government and shared the fate of the rest of the continent? Or is the attitude, "Well, Pinochet was bad, but the alternative was much, much worse." Hmmm....food for thought. On second thought don't think - let's just uncritically parrot what we read somewhere, because it MUST be right.
-- James Maliszewski, Grognardia.blogspot.com
Don't forget that a lot of old answering machines would cut you off without warning after something like 30 seconds. People got used to talking quickly.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. - Edmund Burke