# Cultural Idiocy That's Amazed You **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 15, 2000, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974 "2000-02-15T21:25:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/121 "2000-02-18T06:36:00Z")
When we heard Abbie Hoffman had committed suicide, some friends wondered why. I piped in, “He couldn’t trust himself anymore.” Rather dark comedy, but everyone laughed. * * * The word is no. I am therefore going anyway. ---
**Author:** ![SwimmingRiddles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SwimmingRiddles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SwimmingRiddles)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/122 "2000-02-18T06:38:00Z")
I’m really close to my older sister, who is currently 28. She was whining about turning 30, at which point I said “Yea, and, of course, Hope (my little sister) and I won’t be able to trust you.” It took a moment to register, and then she socked me. * * * Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth ---
**Author:** ![Sweet\_Basil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Sweet\_Basil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sweet_Basil)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/123 "2000-02-18T06:51:00Z")
About three years ago, I was a telemarketer for the state Republican Party “I needed the money…” I had a co-worker who was of drinking age but had no idea who the current vice-president of the US was, or what the capitol of New York is. We would quiz her endlessly with innane questions, and she would miss a startling number of them. She went on to work for a road crew, holding the stop sign for traffic. We all prayed someone she called would start asking her questions… Sweet Basil ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2000, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/124 "2000-02-17T19:11:00Z")
Netherlands nomenclature, for what it’s worth (Coldfire please correct): “The netherlands” is the generic term for the three little countries in the wedge between France and Germany. Of them, the northern half is an independent kingdom named The Netherlands. It has about 15 provinces, of which two are North Holland and South Holland. They used to be one county (as in what a count rules) named Holland, and were divided for administrative ease because it was so big (populous) vs. the rest of the country. People from Holland are indeed Hollanders. People from the Netherlands are Netherlanders – change the TH to D to get the spelling in their own language. The short-form informal adjective is Dutch, which comes from the old name for Nederlands, the local tongue, a local variation on Plattdeutsch (Low German) that became a separate language in the Middle Ages. The whole low countries were autonomous pieces of the Holy Roman Empire until a bunch of marriages brought them together under the House of Burgundy. When the last Duke of Burgundy died off, they were inherited by the Hapsburgs, who were on a roll, marrying the heiresses to about half of Europe over a few generations. They lived happily under the Hapsburgs until the Reformation, when the north half became Protestant while their kings, Charles V and then Philip II, stayed Catholic. They revolted and fought a bunch of wars with Spain, with the net result that the north became an independent republic while the south remained Spanish – and passed to Austria when the Spanish Hapsburgs in turn died off. The chief honcho of the Dutch Republic was the Stadtholder, which became hereditary in the House of Orange. After Napoleon, the southern half was united to the north and the whole thing made a kingdom under the House of Orange. About 20 years later, the Belgians revolted and set up their own kingdom. Luxembourg peeled off somewhere around 1890 in one of those inheritance squabbles that even the best families have. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2000, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/125 "2000-02-17T19:31:00Z")
The head of our church Sunday School once called Mrs. Kunilou and asked her, since she was Japanese-American, if she could talk to the students about Japanese traditions for Christmas. She replied that the Japanese didn’t have Christmas traditions, because they weren’t Christian. The Sunday School head (a dear lady, by the way) wasn’t getting it. My wife explained that Japanese culture was primarily Buddhist/Shinto, and Christian missionaries had only been there for a few generations. “Yes but how do they celebrate Christmas in Japan?” “However the missionaries taught them to.” ---
**Author:** ![Daniel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Daniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daniel)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2000, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/126 "2000-02-17T20:19:00Z")
(blowing the dust off an old joke from years ago) hm, were any of these people considered to serve on the jury for the O.J. trial? 😛 * * * Mayor of [Snerdville](http://fathom.org/snerdville), the home of Mortimer Snerd “I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.” –Wayne Knight ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2000, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/127 "2000-02-17T21:01:00Z")
This isn’t so much “cultural ignorance,” but “cultural difference.” I worked with a very intelligent gal from NJ who thought that peanuts grew on trees. ---
**Author:** ![SwimmingRiddles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SwimmingRiddles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SwimmingRiddles)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/128 "2000-02-17T21:14:00Z")
What defines culture? Merrium-Webster gives this: > [@](#): > > acquaintance with and taste in fine > arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills So by not being aware of arguably the most influential artist of the modern art movement, I’d say that can be classified as ignorance of fine arts, and according the definition above, ignorance of culture. Peanuts, on the other hand, are agricultural, which is vocational, and therefore not cultural. * * * Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/129 "2000-02-18T01:15:00Z")
Ok, I _had_ no idea who Andy Warhol is. Obviously Swimming Riddles thinks I suffer from cultural ignorance, but I thank her/him for telling me a bit about him. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle. 🙂 * * * “Life is hard…but God is good” ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/130 "2000-02-18T05:37:00Z")
Just a few quick ones: 1)A friend of mine, whom I love daerly, once looked up from her class notes and said in a shocked tone: “China is communist?” She is a junior in college, mind. 1. An education professor I suffered thru two terrible classes with had some gems: a)Plato thought that “ignorant people were no better than people that lived in caves.” b) All babies have 2 x chromosomes at conception, but for boys one little bit of the X breaks off and it turns into a Y. (This is in a HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT class). c) You can preselect the sex of an infant with 99% accuracy by timeing copulation and ovulation correctly. When pushed for a souce, she angrily declared it was from JAMA. I could go on and on about this woman, but I am trying to move past it. The scary thing was, she was training TEACHERS. I have enough other resources to be protected from much of that sort of blatant misinformation, but many of my fellow students do not–many will always believe anything without question that has been handed down from such an “authoritative source” as a university professor. ---
**Author:** ![Baraqiyal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@Baraqiyal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baraqiyal)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/131 "2000-02-18T06:55:00Z")
I remember a news story before the Atlanta Olympics about the difficulty New Mexico residents were having getting tickets. Not only did the operators not know that New Mexico was a state, but their supervisors didn’t know either. They were told to contact their country’s ticket agency. ## About the Jay Leno moron on the street interview, Jay never mentions how many half-way intelligent people he has to go through to find the morons, so it may not be as bad as it seems. It’s also possible that they’re intentionally giving goofy answers to get on T.V. No sig yet. ---
**Author:** ![Lexicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ac8455/32.png) [@Lexicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lexicon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/132 "2000-02-18T07:31:00Z")
Oh yeah, it’s about time someone mentioned the new mexico thing… Living here, I guess I just got used to it. I take calls from all over the country, and every time I hear someone say something like “Oh you’re from new mexico. You don’t have much of an accent. Have you ever been to America?” I want to tell them “No. That’s why I’m working here for 16 hours a day in a tech support sweatshop. I need to make enough money to get my family to America before the local government sells any more of my sisters or executes any more of my brothers.” ---
**Author:** ![Milossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Milossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milossarian)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/133 "2000-02-18T16:55:00Z")
I’ve got two: - Back in high school in the 1980s, a girl I knew thought television soap operas were real, that the people agreed to have cameras mounted in their homes. (I don’t think she was kidding!) - Just a year or two ago, I and a couple of my fellow reporters at the newspaper I worked for at the time took our new intern from Japan out for dinner and drinks. We got to talking about her culture, and she mentioned that Japan in general isn’t a very religious country. One of my colleagues piped in, “Is that because of the communism there?” We had a great laugh at her expense after she left. I told the intern, “It must have been tough, scaling that Great Wall of Tokyo.” * * * “You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks ---
**Author:** ![Milossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Milossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milossarian)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/134 "2000-02-18T17:00:00Z")
I’ve got two: - Back in high school in the 1980s, a girl I knew thought television soap operas were real, that the people agreed to have cameras mounted in their homes. (I don’t think she was kidding!) - Just a year or two ago, I and a couple of my fellow reporters at the newspaper I worked for at the time took our new intern from Japan out for dinner and drinks. We got to talking about her culture, and she mentioned that Japan in general isn’t a very religious country. One of my colleagues piped in, “Is that because of the communism there?” We had a great laugh at her expense after she left. I told the intern, “It must have been tough, scaling that Great Wall of Tokyo.” * * * “You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks ---
**Author:** ![Milossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Milossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milossarian)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/135 "2000-02-18T17:05:00Z")
I’ve got two: - Back in high school in the 1980s, a girl I knew thought television soap operas were real, that the people agreed to have cameras mounted in their homes. (I don’t think she was kidding!) - Just a year or two ago, I and a couple of my fellow reporters at the newspaper I worked for at the time took our new intern from Japan out for dinner and drinks. We got to talking about her culture, and she mentioned that Japan in general isn’t a very religious country. One of my colleagues piped in, “Is that because of the communism there?” We had a great laugh at her expense after she left. I told the intern, “It must have been tough, scaling that Great Wall of Tokyo.” * * * “You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks ---
**Author:** ![AlliKat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@AlliKat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlliKat)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/136 "2000-02-18T17:23:00Z")
Then there’s always the great story of the lady who was sitting in her car in a parking lot. She was about to get out of the car when she heard a gun shot. When she reached up to cover her head, she felt her brains oozing out. Frantically, she began holding her brains in. When a passing customer noticed the woman in her car with her hands over her head, she stopped to find out the reason. The passing lady opened the door, aware that the driver was not removing her hands. Plastered all over the back of the lady’s head was the contents of a can of pilsbury dough that had exploded. Thus while the lady was holding her brains in, she was actually kneading dough. p.s. She was a blonde. * * * “Life is too short and too long to be unhappy.” ---
**Author:** ![AlliKat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@AlliKat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlliKat)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/137 "2000-02-18T17:27:00Z")
Then there’s always the great story of the lady who was sitting in her car in a parking lot. She was about to get out of the car when she heard a gun shot. When she reached up to cover her head, she felt her brains oozing out. Frantically, she began holding her brains in. When a passing customer noticed the woman in her car with her hands over her head, she stopped to find out the reason. The passing lady opened the door, aware that the driver was not removing her hands. Plastered all over the back of the lady’s head was the contents of a can of pilsbury dough that had exploded. Thus while the lady was holding her brains in, she was actually kneading dough. p.s. She was a blonde. * * * “Life is too short and too long to be unhappy.” ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/138 "2000-02-18T17:40:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Bricker: > \*\*Remembering this now because he’s been in the news… and in one of my quiz questions… I remember reading someone ask in Parade Magazine’s Q&A column how Secretary of State Schultz had time to draw the _Peanuts_ cartoon every day when he had such an important job. > > Parade’s editors calmly explained that the Peanuts author was _Charles_ Schultz, and the man at the helm of our foreign policy was _George_ Schultz. > > - Rick\*\* Back when the story came out a bunch of friends and I were discussing it. After the discussion moved on I thought of the perfect wise-ass response comment, but it was too late. So thanks, Rick, for allowing me to finally give my response after all these years: Well the Schultz thing shouldn’t be so surprising, after all Trudeau had been drawing Doonsbury for all those years he was Prime Minister of Canada. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/139 "2000-02-18T20:52:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by Polycarp: > Netherlands nomenclature, for what it’s worth (Coldfire please correct): Well, since you ASKED 😉 > [@](#): > > “The netherlands” is the generic term for the three little countries in the wedge between France and Germany. No, _de Lage Landen_ or _the Low Lands_ would be the generic term you are looking for. But if we go back in history, _Neder_ used to be as common as _Laag_. It’s not the generic term these days, though. > [@](#): > > Of them, the northern half is an independent kingdom named The Netherlands. It has about 15 provinces, of which two are North Holland and South Holland. Twelve provinces, to be precise. > [@](#): > > They used to be one county (as in what a count rules) named Holland, and were divided for administrative ease because it was so big (populous) vs. the rest of the country. People from Holland are indeed Hollanders. Absolutely correct. > [@](#): > > People from the Netherlands are Netherlanders – change the TH to D to get the spelling in their own language. The short-form informal adjective is Dutch, which comes from the old name for Nederlands, the local tongue, a local variation on Plattdeutsch (Low German) that became a separate language in the Middle Ages. That’s one part of the explanation. The truth is, noone really knows where the name _Dutch_ comes from. It is either the reason above, or it is a sloppy translation of the first sentence of our national anthem. _Wilhelmus van Nassaue, ben ick van Duitschen bloedt_: William of Nassau, am I, of common blood. The fact is, that even most Dutch people wouldn’t know that “Duitschen” actually means “of the people” as it is almost similar to the modern Dutch word for “German”, _Duits_. This might be an explanation, but as stated before, noone really knows anymore. Maybe a bit of both. > [@](#): > > The whole low countries were autonomous pieces of the Holy Roman Empire until a bunch of marriages brought them together under the House of Burgundy. When the last Duke of Burgundy died off, they were inherited by the Hapsburgs, who were on a roll, marrying the heiresses to about half of Europe over a few generations. > > They lived happily under the Hapsburgs until the Reformation, when the north half became Protestant while their kings, Charles V and then Philip II, stayed Catholic. They revolted and fought a bunch of wars with Spain, with the net result that the north became an independent republic while the south remained Spanish – and passed to Austria when the Spanish Hapsburgs in turn died off. > > The chief honcho of the Dutch Republic was the Stadtholder, _Stadthouder_, old spelling. _Stadhouder_ now. Or Head Honcho, whatever pleases you 😉 (The title does not exist in practise anymore, BTW). > [@](#): > > which became hereditary in the House of Orange. After Napoleon, the southern half was united to the north and the whole thing made a kingdom under the House of Orange. About 20 years later, the Belgians revolted and set up their own kingdom. Luxembourg peeled off somewhere around 1890 in one of those inheritance squabbles that even the best families have. Luxembourg was actually swapped against the current province of Limburg. And the Limburgians have been a weird bunch ever since. Very impressive work, Polycarp. All off the top of your head, eh? You must have a great interest in history - fantastic. Oh, and I think it was missydavis who started about the yellow bikes? They are rentals from a company called **MacBike**. No, they’re not government supplied, and you certainly may not steal them 😃 I think Geneva has white bicycles though, which do seem to fit the “government supplied bike” description. Did you ever think the hisory of such a small country could be **so damn complicating**?? * * * **Coldfire** * * * _ **"You know how complex women are"** _ - Neil Peart, **Rush** (1993) ---
**Author:** ![Milossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Milossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milossarian)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2000, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974/140 "2000-02-18T22:06:00Z")
At the last newspaper I worked for, a couple of my reporter colleagues and I took our new intern from Japan out for dinner and drinks. During conversation, the intern noted that people back in Japan generally don’t practice religion all that much. One of my co-workers then asked, “Because of the communism?” We had a good laugh at my co-worker’s expense after she left. I told the intern, “It must have been tough, making it over that Great Wall of Tokyo.” The intern wrote it up in a magazine back home that she continued to be a correspondent for, so a few hundred thousand Japanese could laugh at the misinformed American. * * * “You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cultural-idiocy-thats-amazed-you/13974.md?page=8)