Yeah, but you have to remember that when you and I learned to drive, every car got a couple of flats every year or so. I changed more flat tires between the ages of 12 and 17 (when steelbelt radials were introduced) than I have in the ensuing 39 years (and I’ve had at least two cars on which I never changed a flat tire).
(a) I’m a dude
(b) thanks for understanding my ponit
(a) :smack: Usually I scroll back and check the user name to make sure, but this time for some reason I was sure I remembered you were a woman. No idea why. Sorry.
(b) You’re welcome. 
People who are into sports have similar thoughts regarding me, I’m sure. It is a rare year that I can tell you who made it to the superbowl for example.
Superbowl? Some kind of special at the Bowlarama, idn’t it?
The ever-increasing slide away from any kind of “common culture” is both sad and a bit frightening. Before too long, we won’t be able to talk to each other effectively because none of us will have had any shared experiences to relate through.
I doubt it. The TV we will have always with us.
I met a programmer the other day who didn’t know that people still wrote code in languges other than Java or C. For you non-programmers out there, this is like thinking that English and Mandarin Chinese are the only two languages still spoken by living humans.
Really? I know that. Like every other RN, I had to take both organic and inorganic chemistry. Even though I learned that in 8th grade science.
None?
I’m appalled.
Yeah, all 300 channels of it. There was some news blurb a couple weeks ago about how the viewership numbers for the most popular television event of the year has been falling precipitously for years. With so much to choose from, there are precious few TV shows that even qualify as real national points of reference.
Exactly. Niche-programming just accellerates the factionalization. Never again will the whole country be watching Uncle Milty on Tuesday night. Even on 9/11 we all chose different stations for coverage.
None. I understand that your average citizen has no need to walk around knowing that light travels around 186,000 miles a second, but it really blew me away that RNs wouldn’t know the freezing and boiling points of water in Celsius, at least.
What about people who live where personal auto transport is the norm, but who choose not to follow the norm? I know that cars have spare tires, pretty much where they tend to be located. I admit I wouldn’t know much about how to change them??
And exactly what’s the significance of the 16 block square??
[Futurama]
Leela: “I’m worried about him, he didn’t come back with the group.”
Fry: “He didn’t?”
Leela: “No, and with wind chill, it’s twenty degrees below absolute zero. I better go find him.”
[/Futurama]
This is not the Pit; let’s not have Pit attitudes.
Lust4Life, your post verges on unacceptable as well. Your point would have been just as clear without the attitude.
A city block can, obviously, vary from city to city, some cities having as many as 20 blocks to a mile (as in Manhattan, as noted in the link) to 16 blocks to a mile to 8 blocks to a mile (as in much of Chicago). People who have some familiarity with cities where “blocks” are a unit of distance often use them in that manner.
My guess would be that Gus spent some time in a city with either an 8 blocks to the mile or 16 blocks to the mile grid so that he meant persons who never left the immediate neighborhood of their house (walking no further than the area bounded by a sixteen block square).
Two good friends of mine from school both told me they never read books. :eek:
Had never read a book just for enjoyment in their life. Granted we studied a lot and when I was going to school I didn’t have a lot of time to do a lot of reading either. But never read a book?? Both have their masters and they’re knowledgeable in their field, but still.
When I met my husband, he didn’t have a TV and had never owned one. Talk about someone not plugged into mainstream culture. He got two newspapers a day and read and that was it. When we were dating he reluctantly got a TV & VCR so we could watch movies (it was that long ago) but insisted on keeping the TV in the closet and dragging it out each time we watched a movie.
I’ve corrupted him and now we have a TV in practically every room.
Hey, buy Canada. That’s not a bad idea.
Canadians, what’s it to ya?
Hmm… Worth considering. On the one hand, our beer has improved to the point where Canadian is no longer worth seeking out, but global warming might make all that tundra worth something in a few years.
From '83 to '93 I did not have a functioning TV and read two daily papers. Then we brought home the kids and I had to get a TV and VCR so that they could see Thomas the Tank Engine, Sesame Street, and a couple others and watch kid movies. (We even dabbled in cable for about a year.) Beekman’s World was pretty much worth the hassle.
But with the kids limited to 1 1/2 hours of TV a day and a couple movies each weekend, I still didn’t catch up on popular culture until they got into high school and began pushing the time limit when they didn’t have homework.
Oh I’m sure we could find some bit of pop-culture trivia or current events that you (or anyone) “should know” but don’t. How about stepping down from your high horse for awhile?
High horse?
Neither person is exactly obscure.
Rush Limbaugh has about 13 million listeners a week and Gorbachev opened the Soviet Union and was Time Man of the Year. It does seem a bit odd not to know at least one of them. It’s not like the question was what was the dark haired girls name on Three’s Company.