Don’t know if its been mentioned previously in this thread or not, but I am amazed at how many people these days still can’t program a VCR.
This post inspired by my wife, who:
A. Is frustrated at my recent decision to buy a new fully-featured cordless phone.
B. Perplexed by our new universal TV remote. (“the old one was easier to use”).
C. Incapable of operating the VCR except for play, REW, FF, Stop. The DVD player? forget about it…
I recently had to explain in great detail to the rest of my 12th grade Latin class the existence of Sikhs. Then, after mentioning that, I had to explain again that they were NOT a sect of Islam.
My American aunt-by-marriage once visited us when we were in London, and asked how far it was to drive from Scotland to Ireland.
When I first moved to America, I had to explain to a group of kids around my age (I was like 11 at the time) that there ARE non-white people in the UK.
The said aunt-by-marriage had never heard of the film Amadeus, or of Mozart himself.
The said aunt-by-marriage had never heard the tierm ‘its a riot,’ before, and when we explained that some English TV show was a riot, said something to the effect of “It can’t be THAT bad!”
I have more stories from her, I just have to think. I AM, however, questioning my uncle’s state of mind when he got married…
Dear Nemo,
OK, I give up. You’ve convinced me, you’re a gambling genius! Now, why not cash out your entire life savings and go whoop Las Vegas for all it’s worth? You could go down in history as the “Man Who Beat Las Vegas”!!!
And be sure to use the Martingale betting method! That’s where you double your last bet every time you lose, and return to your original betting unit when you win. You’ll always come out ahead when you use this clever ploy, which the casinos aren’t aware exists!
throwing my useless brain away and sitting back down and shutting up
-Hosiah
Two things… While Sikhism is not a sect of Islam, it is descended from it (it is a mixture of Hindu and Islam, among other things). If someone has not grown up around Sikhs, or has not taken, say, a world religion class, they most likely would not know this, and would only notice the similarities between the two religions.
Second, most Americans tend to think of the UK as one big landmass, much like the continental US. Blame that on our public school system 
We were doing a college art project where we had to reference famous paintings or photographs. For one of the pictures I did a pastiche of the famous black on red, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara picture. I heard once that it was the most reproduced image on the planet. The girl sitting next to me asked “Who the hell is that guy?”. And I said who it was. She hadn’t a clue. She wasn’t even familiar with the image. However, another few of my classmates came over and saw the pictures and said “oh, cool, Che Guevara” and the original girl turned round and said “You’ve heard of that guy???”.
Well, I can symptahize because I’m a college student and didn’t know who he was until a couple years ago. I still don’t know much about him other then the fact he was apparently a big(and sucessful) guriella leader and was invovled in the Cuban revolution of the 1950’s.
I feel like I’ve posted this before but I can’t find any evidence I did…
Years ago I worked one summer in a department of a large computer corporation (cough cough IBM cough cough) that handled paperwork associated with billing. To pass the long boring hours I used to glance at some of the paperwork that I was filing. One time I saw the bill for the shipping of a small package from the Research Lab in Yorktown Heights NY to Dr. Carl Sagan, Cornell University.
This was in the mid 1980s when Carl Sagan was probably at the height of his fame. His Cosmos series and books reached a huge popular audience. He was well known enough that Johnny Carson could make jokes about him during his monologues (“Billyuns and Billyuns!”). He was also the butt of some gags in Bloom County and other comic strips. He was easily the most famous scientist, at least among laypeople, in the world. At least as famous as Stephen Hawking is now.
So I mentioned to my then girlfriend (NOT the current Mrs. Lagomorph) that I had seen this bill from a package sent to Carl Sagan.
Her response was “Who’s Carl Sagan?”. (Insert smacky smiley here).
I described the incident to my mother, in a can-you-believe-this-happened sort of way. When I got to the punch line my mother said: “Errr, who IS Carl Sagan?”.
(Insert two smacky smilies here).
I know who Che Guevera is but I am not familiar with the image you are talking about.
Just poking my head back into this thread to say…
Mine had squid in it!
Having enjoyed this thread immensly, I feel I must now contribute.
This one is not quite true to the OP; it’s more of a “How did she come up with it?” type of thing. In college, I knew a woman who, well, was not as “bright” as us engineering students (that being my roommates and I). One day we somehow got to talking about her clocks. She apparently had an expensive alarm clock which was running more slowly than her wristwatch.
Her explanation for this discrepancy, based on the fact that her alarm clock was high quality, was that Relativity was causing her watch to run more slowly than her alarm clock.
I give her an A for effort, and am glad that she wasn’t an engineering student.
(And yes, we explained to her the difference between atomic clocks and quartz crystal clocks, and how changes in time experienced due to motion were essentially not measurable at her walking or driving speed - unless she walked really fast).
Another thing that continues to surprise me is the idea that because someone is college educated they should know certain things. My guess is that 8 out of 10 psychology doctoral students would be at a complete loss to describe an interesting atronomics or physics problem (relativity, why the sky is blue, etc.).
This coming from an engineer who just looked up the location of Switzerland and Sweden on a world map and was surprised (really!) by the location of Sweden. (I was haunted by the previous poster who said 8 out of 10 people on the street would know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.)
Now you HAVE to tell us where you expected Sweden to be. Just outside Flagstaff, perhaps? 
Well, between the US and Mexico, really, just north of New Mexico.
Actually, I had no idea other than somewhere in Europe, maybe near Germany. I didn’t think it was right by Norway up there on the Scandinavian Peninsula.
Is there or isn’t there a planet(oid) past Pluto, that revolves around our star, and whose designation is X?
As in “Planet X”, which may or may not corrolate to the Roman Numeral for 10, since it would be the tenth rock of our solar system.
END HIJACK
And curiously… back in (Nov 2000),
A lot of people do not know the difference between “Revolve” and “Rotate” when it comes to our solar system. And forgive me if i’m F’d up, since it’s 3:20AM (local):
revolve is when “A” goes around / about “B”
rotate is when “A” spins on it’s axis (like a toy top)
So, to clarify, the moon does not rotate since we only see one angle of it, it does, however, revolve around the earth.
The sun rotates, BTW, and our solar system might be thought of revolving around the center of the Milky Way… i digress
I know that this is an old post, so please forgive me for not wading through 14 pages to see whether this notion has been addressed. My apologies if it has.
Anyway, sorry, but “forte” is pronounced “FOR - tay”, directly from the Italian (like “pianissimo”, “allegro” and many other musical terms). I don’t know where the “fort” pronunciation came from, but it is plain wrong. This just goes to show that “the power of the masses of idiots to popularize and legitimize a mispronunciation” goes deeper than one might think.
Heh. You’re forgiven. The moon does rotate. Once per month, in fact. Link to sci.astro faq. Or you could organize a little “walk around the Red Matrix” demonstration…
OK, OK, after having read a few more pages, I see that the “forte” question has already been addressed. My apologies for piling on.
So as to add something constructive to the thread, I’ll relate the following:
When I quit my law clerk job, many years ago, before moving to Italy, I informed the judge I worked for of my impending move. His comment was “… Italy, do they have banks in Italy…?” I was taken aback. This judge was otherwise a pretty sharp guy and, in my opinion, an excellent judge. I answered that, to the best of my knowledge, the Italians had INVENTED banks. I guess that wasn’t completely true (I think it was the Templars that came up with the system that most nearly reflects modern banking practices), but it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment without offending the guy.
I hadn’t seen this thread is a while. I forgot how fun it is.
In my junior high school Health class we were discussing the female reproductive organs. The teacher mentioned ovulation and asked the class if they could tell her what it was. The girl who was called on said, “Isn’t that when people stand up and clap at the end of a performance”.
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and join in the standing ovulation.
Someone I know had never heard of Malcom X.
I thought this was bizarre. maybe I’m wrong? She’s British, and about 17 years old.
That’s funny, Mogwei22. And every so often in Biology class, somebody was bound to turn “organism” into “orgasm.”
