The Amalgimated Brain Trust

[Lawrence Duckworth]

Well if 3.2 bushels is 160 pounds per your earlier post, and at $0.25/pound per the OP, I'd say $40.

Good job Doug!!

[Doug Garson]

Good job Doug!!

Do I win a prize? I'll take a bottle of the Vodka.

[Patty Hann]

Do I win a prize? I'll take a bottle of the Vodka.

Since all of us learned our multiplication tables in third grade I thought the question was a joke.
Now if the question had been "Integrate the volume of the bushel basket in terms d/dx of f(x)", well, that might have been a bit of challenge to do in one's head

[Bill Dufour]

1895 Kansas eighth grade graduation test. I can not do #2,3 and 7 on the math test.

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, KS, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal. 8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895

---

Grammar (Time Limit - one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no Modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of lie, play and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
   

Arithmetic (Time Limit - 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at 20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
    

U.S. History(Time Limit - 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.
   

Orthography (Time Limit - one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the
   sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
    

Geography (Time Limit - one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

---

Also notice that the exam took six hours to complete.
Bill D
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_...ghtgr_test.htm

[Bill Howatt]

Maybe we can do an analog of the using calculators, spell-check, and other modern tools.
How about:
Don't use a planer; use a hand-plane, don't use a table (or other powered) saw; use a hand saw, don't use a router; use specialty hand-planes, carving knives and sandpaper.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Almost 30 yrs ago, I went to a big amusement park outside of Cincinnati Ohio. I was warned by a person, to watch every cashier closely. All day long, at nearly every register at nearly every concession, the totals were wrong. Sometimes low and about 60% of the time, too high. Toward the end of the day, I was getting very tired of it. My kids wanted a drink and I went to a stand and ordered a single medium coke for them to share. Price on the board was $1.70. The cashier rang it up and asked for $7.72. I said no way, for a single soda could the tax be 6 dollars. His response, "that is what the register says." I said get your supervisor. cashier suddenly says there is no reason to be hostile and says he will call security, that there is a line and I am holding things up. I said I am not moving, get your supervisor. The supervisor =, another kid, maybe a year older comes over and says what is the problem. I explained that I ordered a medium soda which according to the menu board is $1.70 plus tax and that the cashier wanted me to pay $7.72. There is no way that there is $6.02 tax. He looked at the register receipt and said the same stupid thing. I said call a security guard. A middle aged guy in a uniform shows up. The cashier says I refuse to pay or move. The supervisor says I am creating a scene and disrupting business. The guard comes to me and I explain using pencil and paper to show the math. Tell him these guys are obviously in business for themselves and should be arrested for theft. The guard laughed and said, "they aren't that smart" He goes back to the supervisor at the register and tells him to void the sale and ring it up again. This time the register totals $1.93 with the tax. The supervisor gets all apologetic. Guard asked my name, address and number. Two weeks later I got a free family pass in the mail with an apology from the park. Never used it.

two years ago, my wife and I were Christmas shopping at Walmart. They had plush blankets with Halloween designs on them marked 25 cents each in the clearance aisle. Dirt cheap for the dogs to use so we got 4 of them. Went to the check out and my wife noticed as they were rung up, the little screen said 4 for 25 cents. She tried to tell the cashier that they were 25 cents each. The response, that is not what the register rings. OK

So back in August a windstorm knocked a tree down against the house. There was some roof damage and ceiling damage in the master bedroom from the leaky roof. I called the insurance agent the next day to put them on notice. Expected the tree, the roof and drywall work and possibly replace insulation in the crawlspace would be a few thousand. So I took photots and texted them to the agent. The tree guy took down the tree, cut it up and removed it for $200. The roofing company crew of 3 guys came out at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon and had it fixed in an hour, using shingles that were left over when the house was built. Got the bill a few hours later in an email. - $400. A dry wall company sent two guys to do the dry wall and check the insulation. They pulled down the damaged drywall. Told me I was lucky because the way the house was constructed limited the damage to a narrow area. no insulation problem, all bone dry now. They fixed the dry wall and painted. looks like new. Four days later I got a bill for $360. So I have bills totaling $1,060 and a deductible of $1,000, so I tell the agent to forget about the claim and explain it was almost exactly the deductible which I did not expect. well last week I got a check in the mail from the insurance company for $4,400 for storm damage. I took the check to the agent. She said she called the company and told them to stop the claim. She gets on the phone and called the adjuster. Adjuster says, once they open a claim, they have to pay it and cannot close it. Keep the money. HUH? Where id they get the dollar figure. Oh that was based on our in house adjuster looking at the photos. The agent hands the check back to me, shrugs and says, take a vacation. I looked up the President of the company, called his office and got the address and sent the check, along with an explanation to him. Asking him to look into such a goofy outcome.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Some states have strange and varied sale taxes. No tax on unprepared food in PA, no tax on paper plates, but there is a sales tax on regular reusable plates. In PA there is no tax on candy, when my ex wife ran a retail store in DC, the sales tax differred according to what the item was. There was a special higher sales tax on candy, (10% as I recall. When in Virginia, there was sales tax on restaurant meals and carry out, but some counties had additional sales taxes on such food. So if I purchased a meal at the McDonalds a few blocks from my house there was a 12% sales tax, but across the intersection at the Popeyes (another county) the tax was only 5% In Virginia, IRRC, there is a general 5% sales tax, but towns can have add on sales taxes, so on Chincoteague island the minimum sales tax is 10%, higher for restaurants and motels. So folks who live there go off island to buy big ticket items.

[John Stankus]

Almost 30 yrs ago, I went to a big amusement park outside of Cincinnati Ohio. I was warned by a person, to watch every cashier closely. All day long, at nearly every register at nearly every concession, the totals were wrong. Sometimes low and about 60% of the time, too high. Toward the end of the day, I was getting very tired of it. My kids wanted a drink and I went to a stand and ordered a single medium coke for them to share. Price on the board was $1.70. The cashier rang it up and asked for $7.72. I said no way, for a single soda could the tax be 6 dollars. His response, "that is what the register says." I said get your supervisor. cashier suddenly says there is no reason to be hostile and says he will call security, that there is a line and I am holding things up. I said I am not moving, get your supervisor. The supervisor =, another kid, maybe a year older comes over and says what is the problem. I explained that I ordered a medium soda which according to the menu board is $1.70 plus tax and that the cashier wanted me to pay $7.72. There is no way that there is $6.02 tax. He looked at the register receipt and said the same stupid thing. I said call a security guard. A middle aged guy in a uniform shows up. The cashier says I refuse to pay or move. The supervisor says I am creating a scene and disrupting business. The guard comes to me and I explain using pencil and paper to show the math. Tell him these guys are obviously in business for themselves and should be arrested for theft. The guard laughed and said, "they aren't that smart" He goes back to the supervisor at the register and tells him to void the sale and ring it up again. This time the register totals $1.93 with the tax. The supervisor gets all apologetic. Guard asked my name, address and number. Two weeks later I got a free family pass in the mail with an apology from the park. Never used it.

I don't know what the Ohio sales tax was but $7.72/$7.10 (transposing the 1 and the 7) gives about 8.7 %, the $1.93/$1.70 would be about 13% (which seems a bit high). Digit transposition in a fast paced spot is a reasonable explanation. Now the response to pointing out the error...well that is another thing. Considering that a single soda would not be an uncommon order, after the first hundred or so you would think they would know the price with tax. I recall a quote that went something like "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

John

[Brian Elfert]

The sales tax on restaurants in downtown Minneapolis is now over 12%! The city of Minneapolis added an additional 3% sales tax in downtown years ago knowing that the majority of diners in downtown don't live in the city. Before COVID, there were probably 75,000 people eating lunch out every weekday downtown, and most did not live in Minneapolis.

[Curt Harms]

I think there's a big misunderstanding about "No Child Left Behind". I've heard many people say that means students are promoted to the next grade with no consideration for their abilities. As I understand it, No Child Left Behind is a federal governmant program where students are regularly tested and if the test scores are consistently low, the federal government takes over the school.

I'm not saying students who are promoted to the next grade have actually mastered all the skills from their current grade. I'm saying whether or not students are advanced to the next grade has nothing to do with No Child Left Behind.

Personally, I attribute most of our country's current problems to perpetually underfunded public education, but a detailed discussion about that would not be permitted here.

More funding !=! better education in my observations. You're right though, that would turn political in a heart beat.

[Jim Koepke]

There have been a few times when I have given a cashier a $10 bill and they gave me change for a twenty. Some would give me an argument about how they would give anyone the wrong change. They were very reluctant until I said something about their drawer coming up short at the end of the day.

I remember the old days when a cashier would count change back to a customer. Most of the time now they just hand over a few bills and coins and don't say anything.

jtk

[Mel Fulks]

Before everyone had credit cards the big on street thefts were often from people who called themselves “ quick change artists”.
They always seemed so nice, in a bind and in hurry to do something important. ‘‘twas credit cards that stopped that”.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Before everyone had credit cards the big on street thefts were often from people who called themselves “ quick change artists”.They always seemed so nice, in a bind and in hurry to do something important. ‘‘twas credit cards that stopped that”.

I googled "quick change artist".Léa Kyle came up.Thank you very much for a very enjoyable hour!

[Stan Calow]

The last quick change artist I encountered was at the Fenway Park ticket office. Shorted me a ten in change. I will never forget the smirk on his face.

I believe merchants are more concerned about their employees stealing than customers. When I worked fast food (cash days), if someone had an overage in their drawer, it was because they were building up a "bank" to be skimmed later. I sometimes saw owners doing the same thing in small shops (not ringing up sales) to avoid taxes. Computers and credit cards help cut down on that.

[Jim Koepke]

I googled "quick change artist".Léa Kyle came up.Thank you very much for a very enjoyable hour!

In one of his movies W.C. Fields had a way of making it look like he was giving back too much change when he was short changing people.

Once, at a dinner stop, while traveling by Greyhound a cashier was short changing everyone. People ahead of me were catching her and sure enough, she tried to get me. She would have likely done better if she held up for a few in the line and then restarted.

jtk