A friend of mine was talking to some women she worked with about the Lorena (or is it “Loreena”?) Bobbit case. (This was not too long after the incident, BTW.) Another coworker, a woman about 40 years old, asked what they were talking about. After telling her that Bobbit had cut off her husband’s penis with a pair of scissors, the woman asked, “How did she cut through the bone?”
I’m shocked som people don’t know how to free stuck toast from a toaster.
UNPLUG. Then use that fork you are so afraid of.
My worst was when I was ordering from a computer company in New York. I carefully went through my order with the girl on the other end of the line, knowing she wasn’t the brightest bulb. Finally we get to the mailing adress part, and I say I live in Denver, Colorado. She polietly explained that they don’t ship outside the country, and hung up on me.
You know, ignorance of facts doesn’t bother me. That can be changed by reading and studying. I have friends who do not watch television and do not go to the movies. That is their choice and right.
What bothers me is plain ignorance.
I had a guy tell me that all Republicans are communists and he was not joking.
I have had people tell me that all Mexicans are lazy. I believe this myth is from their siesta time. But I explain to them that these are the people get up before dawn to do work, put in a long morning, then nap at the hot time of the day. When they awaken they will go back to work until the late hours of the evening. That is not lazy.
I have had people tell me that blacks are not as intelligent as other races.
I have had people tell me that all whites are racists.
I have had people tell me that all Asians are cheap and stingy.
I have had people tell me that interracial marriages are not right. I even had someone tell me that a white girl marrying a black man is just trying to get back at her parents.
These are the people I do my best to educate, but if I cannot I just let them continue in ignorance without me.
My sister, who is 24, entered my conversation with me and my Dad. It was during these past Olympics and we were discussing physically demanding sports. Naturally we turned to water polo as being the most physically demanding team sport.
My sister got a puzzled look on her face and asked “Aren’t the horses only in a couple of feet of water?”
I waited tables in Yellowstone National Park several summers during my college years in the early 80s. These are some of the honest-to God questions I was asked:
“When do the deer turn into elk?”
“What time does the glacier erupt?”
“Are there any undiscovered geysers?”
“Where do you put the animals at night?”
“Where are the presidents’ faces?”
“What time do you turn on Old Faithful?”
“Where can I buy some bear jam?” (“A bear jam” is when the appearance of a bear on a roadside causes people to stop their vehicles in mid-traffic and take pictures, causing a traffic jam. Hence, “bear jam.”)
And everyone knows that’s the Democrats!
(Is this where I duck and run?)
I don’t know about this one. It’s not a terribly common construction, so unless the professor specializes in networking or has done some web page construction, I’m not terribly surprised that they don’t know what it means. I’ve got a doctorate in computer science, and I have only the vague idea that it has something to do with ports. But it’s not in my area of concentration and frankly I don’t really care very much.
Remember that computer science is a pretty big discipline and that many CS professors did most of their programming and got their degrees long before the web became prominent in the mid to early 90’s.
I once discovered my landlord’s assistant didn’t know what a mammal was. I told him, “Well, it’s…it’s a warm-blooded animal that bears its young alive,” and he looked at me like I was spooky, Einstein-smart.
My clique in college included a Filipino girl who was badly confused about basic sexual information: she thought an orgasm was when the egg leaves the ovary. I can understand if your family or culture is squeamish about the facts of life, but wouldn’t you pick up on the stuff that doesn’t match (both men and women can have orgasms but only women have eggs and ovaries)?
We had a student worker in my office years ago who was excited that she had gotten a summer internship in Australia: she was talking about shopping for swimsuits and so on. Someone mentioned that it’s winter there when it’s summer here, and would it be warm enough for swimsuits? Okay, I don’t know where in Australia she was going or how far away from the equator, say, Sydney and Melbourne are, but she had no clue what we were talking about. It wasn’t like she forgot and then remembered, with embarrassment. It wasn’t like she didn’t know, and then we explained it to her, and then she did know. It was like, she thought we were telling her some kind of a joke and she didn’t get the punch line.
Years ago Harlan Ellison wrote an essay about a speech he was giving at a college campus. He mentioned Dachau, and a student raised her hand and asked him what that was. Big, tragic reaction from Ellison about how Young People Today Are Stupid (don’t know how long ago this occurred). Well…in defense of that stupid student, I thought it could be a) people forget that there are babies being born all the time who don’t know anything about the world and have to be taught this stuff eventually, or b) some stuff is so big and so awful that no one wants to talk about it.
PLEASE! Don’t Do This!
True, you won’t get shocked by your toaster while removing toast if it’s unplugged. The problem is, toasters have fragile, exposed electrical heating wires inside those slots. It is easy to dislodge one while fishing that errant piece of toast out with a fork (or knife).
That loose wire can electrify the entire case, giving you a nasty shock the next time you make toast.
Look in the manufacturer’s instructions – they doubtless tell you to never place any object like a fork into the slot. They will tell you to unplug the toaster, and turn it upside down to remove a stuck item.
Ever wonder why modern toasters don’t toast as well as the old ones? Especially near the top? They had to make the slots bigger because too many people were stuffing too large items (like bagels) into them, then getting hurt when they tried to get them out. They also placed the elements farther away from the opening. Now the heating elements are too far from regular toast to do a good job.
So you’re saying it’s not really “international”? The lying bastards!
All I can think of offhand are two pieces of “stereo ignorance” from a girl I know. First one’s not so bad: when I went to her house once, her stereo was blasting away. She told me not to turn the volume down, because she was copying her CD to a tape so that she could listen to it in her truck. I demonstrated that the volume level doesn’t matter when taping from a CD, and that it’ll even record with the volume on zero. She was embarrassed.
But not nearly as embarrassed as the next time I saw her. I’d given her a CD of a standup comic. This CD had no program stops, it was just a single 60-minute long track. She liked a part near the end, so she started the CD playing so that I could hear it. She had no idea that she could fast-forward by holding down the button; she thought we had to just sit there and listen until it got to the good part.
True, ignorance of pop culture/music (like a couple of my previous examples) is not an earth-shattering problem. I guess we are all just a little surprised from time to time that things we thought were SO obvious were obvious only to us (or to people with similar experiences/interests).
But ignorance that leads to prejudical thinking isn’t the only sort of “plain ignorance” that should be combatted, IMHO. The degree of ignorance that lots of people display with regard to history, geography & science disturbs me greatly, and that ignorance might have just as much of a negative impact on society. Lack of knowledge about history and geography can fuel prejudicial attitudes; lack of scientific knowledge can lead to ridiculous and/or costly government policies and courtroom judgments, where the cost gets passed on to Joe and Jane Taxpayer. And the truly ignorant will not know that they need to read or study in order to change…
My $0.02. ::steps down off soapbox::
Besides, Dachau is not the most well known Nazi concentration camp. I’ve had conversations with friends who had heard of Aushwitz (usually from seeing Shindler’s List or something like it) but not Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, or Dachau. They thought Aushwitz was where the entire Holocaust took place.
Actually I myself would recognize other names if I heard them, but the above are the only ones I can recall from memory.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Danalan *
**
(CONTINUED) …not in the back of the throat"
I’ve had members of both political parties tell me thought members of the other were evil, and would go to hell when they died because of their political beliefs. They were totally serious.
I’ve met Americans unaware that we pronounce it “zed”.
Also, the MS Word Canadian English spell check thinks that Canadians spell everything the same as Britons. We do not. We do spell it “colour,” but we spell it “plagiarize”, not “-ise”.
My brother’s wife doesn’t know the Three Stooges are supposed to be funny.
I can think of three shockingly stupid comments/actions I’ve heard/seen:
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In high school, during history class, the teacher was well into his lecture about the Protestant Reformation, specifically he was talking about Martin Luther. One bright young man raised his hand and asked how “Martin Luther” could be alive “all the way back then. Didn’t he free the slaves in the south in the sixties?”
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A girl once tried to “debate” me about homosexuality. Typically, she insisted it is wrong because it “says so in the bible.” I start arguing the point that Leviticus is a long list of commandments and rules that nobody outside of the hasidic community makes any effort to keep up with. But she testily interrupted me saying “What book are you talking about?” “Leviticus, of course.” I replied. She rolled her eyes and chortled in an exasperated way and said “I was talking about the BIBLE! You know? The book that Jesus wrote?!?”
the argument stopped at that point. The girl assumed she’d won it. I didn’t bother to dissuade her. -
I 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.)
Which reminds me, I have this great Marx Brothers tie. All four (no Gummo) faces down the length. Subdued hues, very tasteful. I just want to slap silly every sub-human who comes up to me and says, “Great tie! I love the Three Stooges!”
But didn’t the Marx Brothers PLAY the Three Stooges?
Just kidding! Geez! No need to throw things!