Hi, James!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

JB>  The theory to a Ukrainian dish, was, the stockpiles
JB>  were so depleted one year, that there was wheat,
JB>  poppy seed, and honey left one Christmas, so they
JB>  cooked it all together, and: Kotcha (Not having a
JB>  Cyrillic font loaded, nor the skill to wield it...)


           Yum, yum!  Necessity is the mother of invention....  :-))



JB>  Naturally, your cajoling made me less 'presbyopic'
JB>  (I'm taking your word on the term, and *not* looking
JB>  it up. ;-) about the other branches of service.


           Ah... good!  You got me thinking, too.  I realized somebody else
we know who is near-sighted makes his living fixing commercial aeroplanes. 
And I began to understand why, in many echoes, I seem to be the only
participant who actually uses a dictionary.  While others my age are
becoming far-sighted I am becoming less near-sighted.  My first optometrist
predicted that... [chuckle].



JB>  Your dad was already trained, (I think it was
JB>  navigation you mentioned?) then found "unfit
JB>  for active duty" but that didn't preclude him
JB>  from "service" in an instructional, or
JB>  administrative roll.


           Before he joined the air force he was a ham radio operator...
built his own gear & used Morse code fluently.  He was also an
electrician by trade. There was lots of work available with various ground
crews for folks who could put wiring together in a confined area, as Dallas
& I did some time later when we replaced the wiring harness on the
family car!  If you want to know whether one teensy little wire matches
another... it runs in the family, I guess.  :-)



JB>  I'm sure that was quite a disappointment for him, until
JB>  he saw a roster sheet and calculated the roll-over.


           Basically, yes.  He'd know which aircraft never returned....  :-/



JB>  So, now there has to be a study why there are offspring
JB>  of myopic, trained, air force personal from the mid
JB>  Twentieth Century, compared to 20/20 visioned aviators?


           The armed forces probably have records indicating who they
assigned to what & why... their offspring may not know that.  I imagine
people who were far-sighted or who had perfect vision were also more likely
to be given duties in the direct line of fire.  You shoot, you risk being
shot at....  :-)



AH>  He says people tend to prefer activities which they find
AH>  relatively easy & comfortable.

JB>  "The path of least resistance."


           Uh-huh.  If the kids in my PE class groan loudly and/or make fun
of me because I can't hit the broad side of a barn, while I can read rings
around them, I'll choose activities where the chances of success are
greater....  ;-)



JB>  I've read, and heard about a self remedy to near-
JB>  sightedness. Tantamount to focusing on a distant
JB>  object, then deliberately blurring your focus on it.
JB>  (As if comparing colour chips.) Then, force your
JB>  focus toward clarity. With exercise, you can obtain
JB>  a clear, long range focus.


           Well... it may work for some people.  Years ago, a former
neighbour who had moved to the interior of BC told us she'd been learning
to spot things like the coyote on the hill a mile or so away.  But we all
have our limits.  A near-sighted friend who was instructed to do eye
exercises when he was a child found them useless.  I didn't realize how
near-sighted he was until he dropped his glasses in the Chilliwack River. 
And the young lady who's far-sighted can force herself to read
optometrist's charts whenever she has her appointment in the early morning,
but *not* after doing pretty much the same thing all day at school.  Seems
to me a lot may depend on the amount of force required....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+