[geeks] Education (was: Mainframe on eBay)

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>Date: Thu Sep 22 11:07:29 CDT 2005
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Education (was: Mainframe on eBay)


<bit about using oven burners for discipline>

>This all sounds like country mythology to me.
>
>Most rural areas aren't like that.
>
>Where you see things like this for real, it is usually the product of
>isolation, which occurs just as often inside large metro areas.  

Not to disagree with you, but I have another datapoint:

My folks lived in Newfoundland for a couple years (company assignment), and while there they learned that many of the locals left a "kettle on boil" which they used to rend various fats and greases into a bubling ooze that was somehow used in their daily cooking. They would leave these pots on 24x7. Sometimes the pot would fall, and the house would bun down.

They also learned that there is such a thing as "center cut bologna", and actually heard on the news about a man who held up the local "quickie mart" by wielding a big stick.

A big stick.

Of course, living on the island all his life, it wasn't hard for the police to capture him.

Newfoundland is isolated, but it is a large city with it's own culture...