Neither sweet nor adorable. With IE 5.x you can type cars.com into the address bar and get there no problem.
What kills me is when people type a perfectly accurate and complete URL into a search engine!
I work in the patent department of a law firm. One time, we had to send correspondence to the European Patent Office in Munich. One of the secretaries got all bent out of shape when she saw it was addressed to Germany. “What do you mean, Germany? Isn’t the European Patent Office in Europe?”
The same secretary worked for a while for an attorney with the same first name. One time, she picked up that attorney’s phone, answering with “Jane Doe’s office.” The caller said, “Hi, Jane, this is your Aunt Alice.” The secretary (remember, talking on someone else’s phone line) said, “You must have a wrong number; I don’t have an Aunt Alice.”
Ooh! Just remembered a good one! A person to whom I used to be married, as a much younger college girl (before I met her), once ended up involving the fire department in her breakfast when she tried to make French Toast… in the toaster. When the flames started shooting out of it, she knocked it off the counter to save the curtains, then didn’t want to soil the good sneakers she had on, and lost most of the rug. But, honestly, she is really really smart. 170 IQ and all that.
- Dave
Are you SERIOUS?!? Man, I have got to get my ass on that show…
Isn’t it duct tape? 
I’ve thought about tying out for it, but I’d probably lose on a question like “Who is so-and-so dating?” I’ve never watched the show, but someone told me that the easy questions relate to things most people can answer by simply watching teevee and the “hard” questions are the ones I could answer. But never having seen it, I don’t know.
OK, it seems obvious that everyone thinks this: “If I know something and someone else doesn’t, that person is an idiot.” In our own fields of expertise, there are basic things to know; in things we know nothing about, there are folks who are experts who would consider us idiots.
I have students (teens) who don’t know things I think they should know; they, in turn, are amazed that I don’t know about some things (computers, for example). It’s all a matter of what we think is important.
That being said, of course people should know about Hitler and the nine planets…
The other day, I was talking to this kid about varying formulae for the highest-average system of proportional representation, and he didn’t know that the Saint-Lague system used divisors which increase successively by 2! I asked, well, wouldn’t this make it just the same as the D’Hondt system, and he said, “I guess I just thought they were two different names for the same system.” Can you believe that?!
and the encyclopaedia britannica replieth
“The highland regions of extreme northern and northwestern Europe are marked by very old mountains and plateaus whose contours have been softened by prolonged erosion and glaciation. This region comprises much of Scandinavia, Iceland, Ireland, and Britain.”
here’s the whole article EUROPE
Your words confuse me, Sue. Your first sentence indicates that you think elephants do have four knees, but your second indicates that you realize they do not.
For those who are uncertain, elephants, like all other land-bound mammals, have only two knees. The ‘knees’ on the front legs are actually their wrists; the wrists just happen to be at about the same height as the knees, and bend in the same direction. Thus the confusion. If you look closely at the front legs, up near the body, you will see the bend for the elbow.
Well, the issue wasn’t whether or not Britain is part of Europe, the question was where is it at all. He truly had no idea.
My sister came home from college and complained because no one had explained to her that the round green things in fruit cocktail were grapes and she had made a fool of her self by calling them green cherries.
I had to explain to my first husband that he was, indeed circumcised and just what the difference was.
I can top that.
I’ve encountered more than a few people who believe that Northern Ireland is at war with southern Ireland.
The whole confusion about whether elephants have four knees stems from the fact that, unlike other animals, bends forward like a human knee. (It makes me wonder what the knee joint is called on animals where it bends backward)
It’s already been pointed out that the front “knees” are really the wrist joints.
As for my own story of shocking ignorance. I was talking to a fellow student who asked “what state is Las Vegas in?” It was no surprise that she didn’t know since she’s from Korea, but another student from Utah responded “It’s in California, I think.”
Also some interesting ignorance has been revealed by the recent election. I ran into someone who was convinced that it was a lie that Gore had won the popular vote since maps clearly showed that Bush had won most of the country. I had to explain the concept of vast, underpopulated regions going to Bush and Gore winning for the most part in small, densely populated areas.
Why is this obvious??? No one here has said that. Every post I have read uses the word ignorance. Ignorance does not mean stupid or idiot. It means “unaware, uninformed, or unkilled”. I think everyone here pretty much realizes this. Just because we find the level of some people’s ignorance unbelievably hilarious, does not mean we think all these people are idiots. (but some of them MUST be)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bear_Nenno *
**
Freudian slip? LOL! 
A friend of mine an I were enjoying an exquiste repast at Darryl’s. (I don’t know how far this restaurant chain extends-- in Raleigh, NC it is a restaurant similar to a Rock-Ola cafe or Fuddruckers or TGI Friday’s. By the way, the one on Hillsborough street got shut down b/c of the sanitation rating. It says “closed for remodeling,” but if you live in Raleigh, I wouldn’t reccommend eating there. But we were eating at the one on Capital Boulevard. I digress.)
The waitress had a slight accent. We asked her where she hailed from, and she replied that she was from Sweden.
So my friend says, “Well could you help me open up a Swiss bank account?”
The waitress and I stared at him like he was more retarded than Warren from Something about Mary.
The same guy didn’t know what Constantinople is now called, or even what country it is in.
I’ve started reading this thread pretty late, but I’ve got a great one:
A co-worker once told me about going to his sister’s college graduation (UCLA), and spending a few days with his sister and her friends. They went to the natural history museum, which had an exhibit showing skeletons from the smallest animals (tiny mice) up to the largest (dinosaurs), all in one big room. He said it was very impressive, and they were all talking about it during the ride home, when his sister’s friend piped up and asked why the museum had included fake mouse bones in the exhibit. “How do you know they were fake?”, someone asked. She answered: “Mice don’t have bones! What would they have, itty-bitty bones?” (My favorite part is that she was making fun of them for thinking mice could have skeletons.)
She had just graduated from UCLA and had no idea that mice had bones. I guess she just thought they were homogeneous all the way through, like a gummi-worm.
Of course, his sister had recently indicated that she thought that a car’s hubcaps held the air in, so her choice of friends is perhaps understandable…
You make a good case. I retract that story and present a different one in its place.
In junior high school, I had a foods class. The partner I was assigned to for the class was a complete idiot. One time, she took a very hot frying pan straight from the burner and starting running cold water over it (she wanted to get it washed right away, I guess). She just about jumped out of her skin when, as soon as the water hit the pan, it steamed like the gates of hell.
Not only that, when the teacher grabbed it from her and berated her for almost warping the pan, she gave the teacher her usual stupid look and asked what “warping” meant. She had never heard the term outside of Super Mario Bros.
I’ve actually had to explain this to two boyfriends and my husband. They never tell you this stuff in school. I guess they just never thought about it until the subject came up during a conversation. THey all were horribly embarassed that they didn’t know if they were “nipped at the tip” or not. They asked me later whether they were.
The worst I’ve ever heard was when my boyfriend and I were walking along the street at night and passed a group of people a few years younger than me (maybe 16-17). They were all dressed up to go clubbing. All we heard was:
“Of COURSE Paris isn’t in France!”
We exchanged horrified looks and then burst out laughing. =>