{"id":35563,"date":"2005-05-24T08:57:03","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T08:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2005\/05\/24\/boil-first-then-mash\/"},"modified":"2005-05-24T08:57:03","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T08:57:03","slug":"boil-first-then-mash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20050524-03\/?p=35563","title":{"rendered":"Boil first, then mash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sky.com\/skynews\/article\/0,,91059-13233508,00.html\"> British schoolchildren (ages six and seven) went to a farm and were baffled by the long, pointy, orange things<\/a>. (Those who specialize in plant biology have a special term for these strange objects:  carrots.)\n Their older siblings don&#8217;t seem to be faring much better. A three-year study revealed that <a href=\"http:\/\/news.scotsman.com\/uk.cfm?id=21112005\"> modern Scottish schoolchildren lacked skills such as understanding clothing care instructions, sewing a button, and knowing that you boil the potatoes before you mash them<\/a>.\n Okay, but let&#8217;s look at those clothing care instructions. Do you know what it means if you have a square with a solid circle inside and two underlines? What about a triangle with two diagonal stripes? I don&#8217;t know either. (They mean &#8220;Tumble dry, gentle cycle, no heat&#8221; and &#8220;Use non-chlorine bleach as needed&#8221;, respectively. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.textileaffairs.com\/lguide.htm\"> More symbols deciphered here<\/a>.)\n And while it&#8217;s true that I can sew a button, I am unable to sew a straight line or with constant tension.\n I&#8217;m sure every generation bemoans lost skills. Our ancestors probably shook their heads in disappointment when their grandchildren demonstrated themselves unable to churn butter, wash clothes by hand, or operate a mangle.<\/p>\n<p> On the other hand, you really ought to know what a carrot looks like and that you boil first, then mash. I doubt carrots and mashed potatoes are going to go out of style any time soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, British schoolchildren (ages six and seven) went to a farm and were baffled by the long, pointy, orange things. (Those who specialize in plant biology have a special term for these strange objects: carrots.) Their older siblings don&#8217;t seem to be faring much better. A three-year study revealed that modern Scottish schoolchildren lacked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-35563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Last year, British schoolchildren (ages six and seven) went to a farm and were baffled by the long, pointy, orange things. (Those who specialize in plant biology have a special term for these strange objects: carrots.) Their older siblings don&#8217;t seem to be faring much better. A three-year study revealed that modern Scottish schoolchildren lacked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}