Fings ain't what vey used to be - they're a lot better

My latest Tezzy nomination (for the meaning of Tezzy see this blog, passim) goes to this paper (and the site that it links to). The paper is called

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it

– a bit of a misnomer (as to its shortness), if you click on links within the paper, which takes you to more detail. For example, one of the first links is to a paper on Working Hours which itself is liberally spattered with thought-provoking stuff such as this:

Come on, chaps, could do better: 100 years ago, men  did about 10% as much as women did (productively) in the home. The balance is much better now, but still about 1:2. What's more, both the blue and the pink curves (see what they did there?) look pretty assymptotic: the women's "NO LESS" is droned  (sic?) out by the men's "NO MORE". But there is an irony here: are male bloggers more common than female ones?

Sadly, the

...and why it matters that we know it

bit gets short shrift. There are only four short paragraphs, none of which contains a link. Here's a taste:

For our history to be a source of encouragement we have to know our history. The story that we tell ourselves about our history and our time matters. Because our hopes and efforts for building a better future are inextricably linked to our perception of the past it is important to understand and communicate the global development up to now. A positive lookout on the efforts of ourselves and our fellow humans is a vital condition to the fruitfulness of our endeavors. Knowing that we have come a long way in improving living conditions and the notion that our work is worthwhile is to us all what self-respect is to individuals. It is a necessary condition for self-improvement.

(Come to think of it, that was quite a long paragraph. It just should have been shorter. I ran it through the text analysis tool at UsingEnglish, and here are the results:

Not bad on word-length, but not very readable; it almost qualifies for a FOGGY [see this blog, passim {again :-)}  – Average Sentence length a shade under 20, Lexical Density a shade under 60, Fog Index over 14).

So if you want some more palatable auto-back-slapping, try this video from Bill Gates.

But about that productive effort...

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