Most people down here in Florida don’t know how the civil war started…not that I can really blame them. I don’t think they even teach it in schools down here. Florida does have the second worst education system in the country…and it shows. I remembered asking my moms friend “What was the civil war about anyways?” and he just looked at me shocked. For the next 2 hours or so, he gave me a pretty good history lesson. Up untill then, I had thought the war just had something to do with slavery. A lot of people down here think the confederat flag is as bad as the nazi flag. It’s ridiculous. It’s even banned in some schools down here.
Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster, but I had to reply to this.
Recently I was in a local bead store admiring their wares. This store specializes in larger glass beads and has them displayed in little glass bowls. I noticed the price on the bead I was considering purchasing was 0.05 cents (they marked the bowl c0.05, I don’t have the cent symbol on my keyboard, so just bear with me). I didn’t believe it at first, so I looked again, then showed it to my friend, and she agreed it read 0.05 cents. Imported glass beads are not outrageously expensive, usually ranging from a nickle to a dollar apiece when bought loose like that, but what they had marked was an amount that was less than a penny. I then checked the prices of some of the other dishes in the store and sure enough, most of the other items that were supposed to be under a dollar were actually marked as being under a penny! Perplexed I went to the counter where the teen-age girl employees (not a manager or adult in sight) were busily marking more little dishes and told them that their pricing was incorrect and tried to explain to them their mistake. They blinked at me in confusion. So I tried to explain to them that according to their pricing I could buy x amount of beads for a penny. They STILL DIDN"T UNDERSTAND! Apparently they had been told by the manager/owner to mark the prices that way and they had no idea it was completely wrong. I left the shop in disbelief and exasperation and haven’t been back since. I also strongly resisted the urge to buy out their entire stock for less than $500.00 because it would have involved trying to explain to them that c0.05 is not the same thing a $0.05.
Thanks for this thread!
TEDF
Sorry to turn this back on you, dear, but the Mayflower pilgrims weren’t the only group of pilgrims ever to take a trek. The Crusades were partly motivated by the fact that Muslim administrators in Jerusalem were unhappy letting Christian pilgrims into the city.
There have been pilgrims travelling somewhere pretty much since the dawn of religion. The people on the Mayflower didn’t make up the word, nor was it coined for them.
A lot of people across the country think the confederate flag is as bad as the Nazi flag. Might have something to do with the fact that it represents the half of the nation which fought a war for the right to keep other humans as property. I’m not sure what book your friend was teaching you from, but I’d say you had a better grasp of the Civil War beforehand.
Also, Florida schools certainly do teach the history of the Civil War.
A while back I was working in a warehouse which shipped construction materials for houses. I was working with this one guy, loading trailers. We started speculating on where all this material was going (it being the middle of January and afaik, not exactly prime construction season). This guy pipes up and says “We’re probably shipping this stuff to China, or Japan. They’re in the southern hemisphere, so it’s still summer down there.”
Not wanting to sound too condescending, I suggested that they were both north of the equator. He reconsidered, and declared that “maybe China is in the north, but that Japan definitely wasn’t.”
:rolleyes:
I also used to work with a kid from the states. Last October he was looking calender; he turned and asked me “Do you celebrate Halloween up here too?”
Yeesh.
Well he read from documents by people from that era by people whos names I can’t remember…but I do remember that I had heard of them before. Anyways, the way he explained it was bassicaly that slavery wasn’t the main cause, but was more like “the last straw”. The south had given the north certain rights that were being abused…aww hell my memory is fuzzy 
.
I hate this! I can never stand up for what I believe in because I can’t remember a damned thing. Ugh. I’m taking a class involving the civil war as soon as possible this doesn’t happen again. It sucks not being able to argue your point 
.
I suppose not being able to remember the how the war started is just as bad as not knowing huh?
My roommate said he knew some one who believed Mt Rushmore was a natural phenomenon.
When I was realy young (like first or second grade) I didn’t know the difference detween Washington stat and D.C.
Spelling and grammer subject to change without notice.
Primary school teacher, 1970s - “evolution isn’t still happening. It’s not as if the monkeys in the zoo will become humans one day” or words to that effect.
Classmate age 17, December 1980 - “John Lennon? Who’s that?”
Fellow student, early 1980s, recently arrived at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK (looking down at the view of the cathedral in the mist from the campus) “Hey, what’s that spooky castle thing?”
Work colleague, 1990s: “Who was Che Guevara?”
Sister in law, degree in accountancy, who doesn’t know the 24-hour clock, or that Jews and Muslims don’t eat pork.
…and many more…
I’ve got some prize dummies myself. First, I had an English teacher in middle school, who did not know what the word “forbade” meant. I’m 31 years old, must have been about 12 at the time, think he was in his 30’s.
Then, my brother in law, at the age of 12, did not know that people in England spoke English. Here’s his quote, I heard him say it myself “I’d like to visit England, but I don’t know if I could learn to speak the language.” (He was a late life baby.)
Finally, I actually met a guy SHUDDERS VIOLENTLY who thought that women had an extra vaginal opening, located where the naval is! I know this, because he was talking to my boyfriend, and drawing “dirty pictures” showing “which hole he liked to put it in best”. I stole a peak of them. I NEVER went near the guy again.
My mother-in-law and uncle both thought, until recently, that ‘misled’ was 2 words, one being pronounced ‘mis-led’, as it should be, and the other being pronounced ‘my-zld’, though they both had the same meaning. They thought that when they read the word misled, it was pronounced ‘my-zld’, but of course they also heard & knew the real pronunciation. Consequently, they also believed that you could ‘misle’ (pronounced ‘my-zl’) someone.
I teased my mother-in-law about this recently:
Me: So, didn’t you realize that misled and ‘my-zld’ were both spelled the same way?
Her: Yes, but there are a lot of different words that are spelled the same.
Me: That also MEAN the same thing?
Her: Well, no. (laughing at herself)
Oddly enough, they are both very intelligent, well-spoken, and well-read people. Apparently they formed the idea of misled being ‘my-zld’ before anyone taught them the correct pronunciation, and then never caught their mistake.
We’re wondering off the point of the thread here. And the causes of the American Civil War is a topic that has been debated several times on this board, as well as other places.
But most credible historians agree that preserving slavery was the predominant reason for the Confederate secession. Contemporary statements and proclamations from Confederates said so.
But in recent decades there has been a revisionist school that argues that slavery was a minor issue. In my opinion this is because nobody is willing to advocate slavery, so it’s necessary to seperate the CSA from slavery in order to glorify the CSA.
Er, at the risk of sounding like an idiot who stays at the bottom of the well in a deserted isle upon the Pacific Ocean…
Aren’t there only the two atmosphere?? Yes, usually Asia is refered to as the East, and Europe as the West, but isn’t that dependent from which country you are talking about? Astronomy books I read never mention east/west hemisphere…
Enlighten me!
This is a great thread.
First post also, here, but I couldn’t resist sharing. My father was in the Air Force and our family was sent overseas to Germany when I was 5. We stayed over there for the next 10 years until they finally kicked him back to the States with an accusation of homesteading. It was something of a culture shock for me, my brother and my two sisters. We’d never had more than one TV channel, we hadn’t been exposed to anything but military recruitment and security commercials on the TV and we were unused to the relaxed environment of the civilian world.
The biggest shock for us came when my parents decided we were going to drive from Georgia to North Dakota for my uncle’s wedding. Everything was going great until my dad announced we were coming up to the Georgia border, and were about to leave the state. We kids all panicked, telling my parents that we had to turn back because we’d forgotten our passports.
Yes, after a number of roadtrips from Germany to France, we’d become used to having to show our passports while passing between countries. It seemed perfectly natural to us that you’d have to show them while passing between the states, too.
My youngest sister also believed that Europe was a part of the United States, and when she decided she didn’t like Georgia, she kept nagging my parents to drive us back to Germany.
My parents still laugh at us about that passport thing, all these years later.
I’m going to assume you mean hemispheres . Obviously, at any one time you can only discuss two hemispheres, but four exist as descriptive terms.
The western and eastern hemispheres are divided by the Greenwich Meridian, Turkish/Iraqi border, International dateline, or really, whatever’s east of you and whatever’s west of you.
The northern and southern hemispheres are bounded by the Equator, naturally.
The U.S. government maintains a Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs within the State Dept.: http://www.state.gov/p/wha/
Martha, when I saw this thread, I was planning on posting a similar “creationism” story from my youth regarding a primary school teacher, my fifth grade math teacher, whom even then I suspected to be somewhat daffy.
A friend of mine were debating (childlishy arguing) about how to classify human beings in the whole “scheme of things” … that is to say, are we really animals? Being as logical then as I am now, I essentially narrowed down life into three groups: animals, plants, and minerals. Interestingly, though not of any real significance, is the fact that many children do not see human beings as animals. While this is not a huge shocker, what follows is. We decided to ask our teacher to settle it for us once and for all, and her answer still disturbs me to this day: “Humans are people, we aren’t animals.” Taking that quote out of context, you’d think it was just that: out of context. But she said it in such adamantly condescending opposition to the thought that we be lumped into the animal kingdom; “people”, as she put it, were “different”. Better, superior, endowed by our “creator” perhaps? At least she didn’t preach creationism, which based upon her answer, she obviously advocated (without saying so directly). At that age, I had supposed that she meant to suggest we are all either plants or minerals. She changed the way I looked at teachers, and taught me never to trust everything they say.
Um. I only have a very vague idea of who that is, and no idea why I should care. Sorry.
Ahem. My own stupid person story.
I was trying to adopt a cat from the SPCA. Remember, these are people who are supposed to know something about animals.
I mentioned that I was slightly involved in reptile rescue, and currently had 4 Ball Pythons (at the time).
“Are those poisonous?”
[decided to deal with just one of the big issues in that sentence - snakes aren’t “poisonous,” they’re “venomous.”]
“Um, no. Pythons are constrictors.”
“So they squeeze their prey.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“So, they could eat a cat?”
“Well, maybe if they got to be 10 feet or so. But Ball Pythons max out at 5. No way they could eat a cat - the cat would easily kill a 4’ ball python.”
[I go on to explain Prey Imprinting and snake physiology to her, but I won’t bore y’all with that.]
“Let me call you back.”
Hmmm.
She calls a few days later. Apparently, she had called animal control (who are suprisingly well-infomed about snakes around here).
“Well, Animal Control agreed with you that no ball python could ever hurt a cat. But we still feel that that would be too dangerous of a sorrounding for a cat. So, you don’t get to adopt him.”
[Morons.]
“Thanks anyway.”
I don’t understand everyone to know as much as I do. But someone who deals with animals should, I think. Or at least believe what animal control has to say on it.
Expect. I don’t expect people to know as much as I do.
As someone who lives in Washington State, I can attest there are a lot of people who still don’t know the difference. It also doesn’t help that my hometown is has the same name as a well-known Canadian City.
Person:“Where do you live?”
Me:“Vancouver, Washington”
Person:“Canada?”
Me:“No, it’s in Washington”
Person:“Washington DC?”
Me:(getting annoyed)“No, Washington is a state”.
What really annoys me is that there are people from Portland, Oregon who make this mistake, despite the fact it’s right across the state line(and the Columbia river).
There’s a shirt I’ve seen that I’m really tempted to buy that says “Vancouver(Not Canada), Washington(Not DC)”.
Guess again. Although a cat could take a small or even medium ball, I wouldn’t put good odds on a kitty that had a coil or two from a four and half footer on him.
In my second year of nursing school (community college… have to have a Grade 12 and some specific science courses to get in) I am tutoring first year Anatomy and Physiology to an 18 year old fresh out of highschool woman, lets call her “Annie”
I knew from my last year that the teacher asked some questions people had trouble with. For example… in what order does your sip of coffee pass through your system… then multiple choice with the order mixed up, etc. A lot of my classmates got baffled by these questions, so I was reviewing this with Annie, so she would understand the concept when she got to these questions on an upcoming test.
Juji_–Okay what order would AIR go in when you breathe?
Lets see. External nares, internal … blah blah blah… got it right up until the bronchus.
Then she paused. She couldnt think of the right word for it.
Juji–Okay, how about in your own words?
Annie–Ummmmmm… tummy?
This woman was 18, smoked, and had NO IDEA she breathed air into her LUNGS. The thought it went into her stomach. (And she couldnt remember the “right word” for stomach and settled for TUMMY.
For the sake of public health and safety I was glad to discover that despite my utmost efforts at tutoring… she flunked out of nursing altogether.