used to work at a bookstore with two levels. One day, a customer wanted to take the elevator. she walked over to it, then pulled the fire alarm that was on the wall near it. The alarm sounds, emergency lights begin blinking. Customers began looking dismayed. Yet the woman stood in front of the elevator looking blissfully ignorant. As soon as the commotion died down,one of my co-workers asked the woman “Why did you pull that alarm?” The woman, looking as innocent as a sheep, replied "But it reads “Pull here!” (she thought it was the call-button for the elevator.)
Yes I am often surprized a what some people don’t know. But remember we are all ignorant, but in different areas.
A young woman told me she was a Christian because the Bible was the first book ever written and Christianity was the first religion.
A man asked me why the moon was not in the same place in the sky every night.
A man in the mountians, learning I was from the coast, asked me if the summer drought had effected the water level in the ocean near my home. I said yes, twice a day.
A friend commented that, “Jerry is very articulate.”
My sister replied, “Yes and he talks real good too.”
My college roomate told me that the followers of Hitler were called communists.
I have known several men who have no clue where the clitoris is located. Or any reason that they should care. But that is a long story and a short relationship!
A while ago while in an American History class we were taking a multiple choice quiz. Every question had three answers. One of the questions read:
Who was the president when yadda yadda yadda?
A. Harry Truman
B. Grover Cleveland
C. Franklin D. Roosevelt
The answer of the girl next to me:
D. Roosevelt
Don’t worry, I wasn’t cheating. We graded the papers aloud in class.
Something ripped right from this weeks headlines (and the SDMB)
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=58027
This is a thread dealing with an issue that is near and dear to all of us…Money! Specifically “a Fool and Dairy Queens’ money are quickly parted” A Cashier at a DQ drive through gave $198 in change from a bogus $200 bill.
How could some one who is responsible for dealing with money not even have the basic knowledge of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100…That’s it!!!
(Yes I know there are legal tender denominations that are higher but they are no longer in circulation)
Like I always say: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
Next time, send the person here: Build a Solar System Model | Exploratorium
It lets you put in the size of the Sun, and then it tells you the relative distances and sizes of the planets. Assuming a beach ball is 2 feet across (yegads, I hate English units) the Earth would be 0.2 inches. A small pea.
I love being the answer guy. 
In my junior year of high school, the music dept. put on a production of Man of La Mancha. I was in the orchestra. After the first night, my girlfriend at the time came up to me, puzzled and asked what the big deal with the donkey was.
“Donkey?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “the Donkey Hotey.”
When I was at the University of Arizona, I took a comm class focusing on group interaction. One project was a group presentation and part of your grade came from the professor, the other part came from your groupmates. We had flakey people in our group and horrible interaction (versus other groups that just gave each other 100s). I wound up getting a B from the group and a B from the professor. So I was surprised when I got the total score back from the prof. and had a little over 70%. The prof explained that he multiplied the two scores to get the total. I argued that this was retarded and that he should’ve averaged them- “you thought I got a B, the group thought I got a B, so I get a C?” He finally agreed that he would change the grading if I could convince everyone in the class to go along with it and gave me 10 minutes to present this to the class. I think this is cake, tell them that the prof multiplied the 2 scores instead of averaging them. I’m met with hostility- “sounds like someone got a bad grade!” “why should we go along with you?” After some arguing, I’m about to toss my hands in the air when my roommate points out to them what I thought was obvious from the get-go- “your grade can only go up if you average the numbers instead of multiply them.” People in the class then ask me “why didn’t you say that to begin with?”
I work at the public library, in the religion department, so I get all kinds of stupid questions every day, natch.
One of my favorites involved a woman who called wanting to know the difference between the two different options available for some snake oil mind enhancement audiotape set. You could get the “Superfast” package for $19.99 and increase your brain power by 5%, or order the “Stealth” package for like $29.99 and get a whopping 10% smarter. I had a helluva time trying to convince her that the word “stealth” does not mean “really really fast.” The company selling that garbage is partially at fault for perpetuating the incorrect definition, but I’ve run into more people than I care to count who assume that because the Stealth Fighter is fast, the word “stealth” denotes speed.
I work in technical support, and you would be surprised at how many people do not know how to minimize a window, and how many don’t know you can open up a second window while you already have one open.
Had a student in my Sex Ed class (Back in HS) who brought up the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard someone say. He was completely scared of this. Alright. He was masterbating, and it shot off in his eye (I did not ask him how he accomplished this, and personally I don’t want to know). He was completely scared that he might have gotten AIDs from that (Well, HIV but he called it AIDs in general). Now then, aside from the obvious jokes thrown his way by all the kind classmates (I threw a very harsh one myself, which was in reply to another joke, anyways), my teacher commented that it was impossable for him to get HIV from himself. Well, then the fool proceeded to ask something along the lines of ‘Why’ to the teacher. Amusing at how he did not know anything about how STDs are given (High School, my senior year too).
My wife’s uncle was relaying a story about how he was trapped at the Denver airport on Sept. 11 because of the grounded flights that day when my sister-in-law (The College student) asked “Is Denver near New York?”
I have a friend who:
a) thought birds where mammals, had no idea what makes a mammal a mammal; and
b) thought Islam was the most ancient of religions (older than Hinduism and Judaism) she had no sense of its origins, this is a woman who works in international development in the Islamic world.
i am friends with a pair of highly intelligent 18 year old twins who scored almost as highly as it is possible to score in their GCSEs and A Levels. However, their ignorance astounds and appauls me on an almost daily basis. They do not know the words plinth, quilt, lecherous, morbid, and many others. They had never heard of rabies, Boudicca, Tolkien or Hadrian’s wall (they LIVE near the damn thing). They cannot cook bacon, use the London underground or sew on a button. They do not understand simple figures of speech. They live in a cupboard!
Sorry, I have to comment on statement B:
- “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
That is why your statement A is so critical to our survival as a nation. Hell, as a species.
Several times, I have had to tell people that, while I do live in South Arkansas, I am not a “hillbilly” and I have indoor plumbing. Some people also talk to me as they would a three year old when referring to things like “electricity” and “computers,” as if they were unheard of where I am from. And lots of people pronounce it incorrectly as Are-can-saz, like Kansas.
There’s a girl on my cross country team that just amazes me with what she doesn’t know. A day or so before the most recent election I was giving her a ride. She saw a campaign sign and sais “Oooh and election, I wonder what it’s for?” The campaign sign was for Jeb Bush. This same girl asked if gallons of gas in cars were the same size as gallons of water. Generally she spews something like this at least once a day.
I once had a roomate who thought that David Bowie fought at the Alamo 
I once had a teacher who tried to tell me that stagecoaches were what put the Pony Express out of buisness.
My mother has asked me (TWICE) where to put the floppy disk in the computer. And she was dead serious.
:smack: