Oh, and that wasn’t spamming - sorry - please don’t go if you don’t want to - didn’t realize it would automatically parse the URLs.
Although if you do go there, and win, you damn well better give me a cut.
P.S. That last post should have read “by not going.”
Your teacher is correct. Picture the Middle East, with southwestern Asia to the east and northern Africa to the west. There are many cultures, languages and religions in this area, many of which are related in their origins, despite their eventual growing to be very different from each other. Some very old Semetic cultures include Phonecians, Arabs and Hebrews, and some current Semetic religions include Judaism and Islam. (Ever wonder why the Old Testament of the Bible is used in Judaism, Islam and Christianity? It is because these religions all have the same Semetic roots.) Many of these cultures even have languages that share the same roots, and are known as Semetic languages.
Confusion arises because of the term anti-Semite, which is used to indicate hostility or prejudice toward Jewish people specifically, and is not used to indicate hostility or prejudice to other Semetic peoples, such as Arabs. It leaves a lot of people thinking that only Jewish people are Semetic, but this is incorrect.
I’m amazed so many people think everyone can ride a bicycle, drive a car, use a skateboard, ski, swim, etc.
These are all learned skills, and in any group at a cocktail party someone will be deficient in each of those categories and more.
Not to nitpick, but the OT is not used in Islam. The Qur’an has a great many OT stories and people, and they’re similar enough that they can easily be called the part of the same (Abrahamic?) tradition.
I heard a similar gaffe about the District of Columbia, I heard some saying that the reason DC had no Senators or fully-voting Representatives was because nobody lived there except members of Congress, who voted in their home districts. I wonder who he thought drove all taxis (and filled all the schools, and staffed all the museums, and …).
Quite right. I failed to be precise. Thanks for the correction.
Well, sure - it looks just like all the Roadrunner cartoons, right?
My brother lives in Mesa. He sent me a photo of his new house when they settled in…and gosh! They have green lawns and sidewalks and stuff, just like here!!
Don’t bank on it!
I had a science teacher who insisted that there are NOT four hemispheres (North, South, East, West). She said that there could not be because there could only be two at once, since “hemi” means “two”. I tried to explain that there is a reason why Asia, etc. is called the East and America, etc. is the West. She said that since there is already a North and South hemisphere, there CANNOT be an East and West hemisphere. This woman is now the principal of the school I attended. Oh god.
You think THAT’S bad–right down the street from my house is “Harry S. Truman Elementary School.” Now, I wouldn’t expect your average Joe Doofus to know that the S is not abbreviated in the ex-President’s name, but–silly me–I DO expect a school board to know it. At least one person on that board should have caught the mistake. Sure, my kids will be in great hands when they start school. Scary.
Also, I had the following conversation with my roommate when I told her I was going to go live in Japan for a while:
Her: Oh, that means that, like, when it’s winter here it’s summer over there? Cool.
Me: No, because Japan and the US are both in the same hemisphere.
Her: Nu-uh! Japan is, like, WAY on the other side of the earth!
I had never heard of the grunion running until I moved to San Diego (from MI) at the age of 18.
My first husband and I once got into a fierce arguement because he insisted that Georgia was landlocked. Despite my insistance that I had actually visited a beach in GA, he refused to believe it until he saw a map.
Well, I wouldn’t bank on 8 out of 10 being able to locate the two countries on a map, but I do think they would grasp the fact that they ARE two different countries. (As Cecil says, I have to believe there’s some hope).
Actually, Truman used the period. It was in a biography of him by – I’m drawing a blank on the author and don’t have time to dig it up, but I do recall clarifying this point elsewhere. His daughter Margaret confirms it. Here’s further confirmation from the Truman Library Web site.
D’OH! NOW who’s the doofus? That’s right–my high school AP history teacher is. 
Two friends were helping me move once. I was 18, they were in their early 20s. During the drives, we were playing some sort of trivia game to pass the time. They didn’t believe me that Egypt was in Africa. They thought I made up Sri Lanka.
[pedantry]
NASA is an acronym. FBI is not an acronym. NATO is an acronym. CIA is not an acronym. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letter(s) of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term. FBI and CIA are abbreviations, while snafu, scuba, and radar are acronyms. (radar is derived from radio detecting and ranging)
[/pedantry]
I don’t know how to change a tire. I’m relatively clueless about cars- if something went wrong, I’d get off to the side of the road and call AAA, then be appropriately embarrassed. (Oddly enough, when I see ‘AAA’, I think ‘anti-aircraft artillery’ and not ‘Automobile Association of America’.)
You said a mouthful, bub!
Hmmmmmm…
I knew a girl who was expaining a nightmare she’d had the night before about some war.
She said, “I’m pretty sure it was World War Four…”
Think about that for a moment.
Also, a local company has a big sundial in front of their headquarters, which can be seen from the highway. My girlfriend’s mother passed by it everyday on her way to work, and she told us one day, in all seriousness, that it was broken. “It’s been stuck in the same position for weeks.”
I can never understand people on the El who don’t know there are schedules and signs to show what train is next. They block the door and refuse to move when it’s not their train, so they can be first in the next line.
A few years back I had mentioned to a woman that it was Beethoven’s birthday.
“Oh really? He’s old now, isn’t he – about 70 or 80, right?”