It frightens me that people don't know these things

In My Humble Opinion
1

There’s a woman in my massage therapy class who didn’t know before yesterday that octopi and squid have beaks. I thought everyone knew that.

Well, OK, maybe that’s not all that scary, but…

I was watching some late-night documentaries on MSNBC Saturday night. One of them concerned a woman who, apparently in a state of postpartum psychosis, had murdered her two-week-old son. The family was interviewed, and the woman’s mother said that yes, for a few weeks just prior to the birth, and continuing until after the child was born, her daughter had been acting strangely. For one thing, she began plucking out her body hair with tweezers. After giving birth, the new mother seemed listless, this normally vibrant woman didn’t smile anymore, seemed distant… but she had never heard of something called postpartum depression (which, in its most sever form, can become a psychosis). If she had, she would have gotten her daughter some help, possibly saving her infant grandson’s life. WTF? Hadn’t heard of postpartum depression? The murder happened in 1998, postpartum depression has been widely publicized in the media since at least 1985. Did this woman never read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the TV or radio and watch/listen to the news? How can a person be that insulated?

I used to work with a guy, devout member of the United Pentcostal Church, didn’t know who Martin Luther was. Insisted that he wasn’t a Protestant, he was a Christian. I had a helluva time trying to relate a brief history of the Protestant Reformation. I told him he needed to study up on church history, and he said, “I went to school to learn history. I go to church to learn about the Spirit.” He also didn’t know that the event for which his denomination was named was a Jewish feast that took place fifty days (or seven weeks) after the Passover. I told him the root word “Pente” means five, five times ten is fifty, because of the fifty days after the Passover (I needed to do some research of my own, and did) and he said, “It can’t mean five, or fifty, because there are two million Pentecostals.” After a bit more argument, he finally said, “Well, it might mean that in your Bible but it doesn’t mean that in my Bible”. I’m Catholic, and since, in his view, Catholics aren’t Christians, “You’re using a Catholic Bible, I’m using a Christian Bible.” Also, he insisted that “The Pentcost wasn’t a Jewish feast, it was when the Holy Spirit came down.”
Now, I wouldn’t expect your average non-Jew or non-Catholic/Orthodox Christian to know what the feast of Pentecost is, since it isn’t really a well-known holiday outside of those circles. But for someone who claims to know the Bible (but he doesn’t know how many books are in his Bible, much less in the Catholic Bible), and who is a member of a denomination named for that very feast to be ignorant of this particular fact is pretty scary. And it’s really scary for anyone who claims to be a Christian after about 1500 or so not to know who Martin Luther was. Hell, it’s pretty scary to know that anyone in the Western world after about 1500 or so not to know who Martin Luther was, his little revolt having such a massive effect on the subsequent history of the world.
I have recently run into other people who didn’t know some pretty basic information. Can’t think of any more examples offhand, but there are some things you’d think a person would have to be living holed up in a shack in the Ozarks somewhere with no access to television, radio, newspapers, magiznes, and maybe the occasional book not to know. But then I run into these people, and they don’t live in a shack in the Ozarks…

2

I’ve been in a room with quite a few people who don’t know that when instructed “write, don’t print,” they must write in cursive. Once told this, they exclaimed “but I don’t know cursive!”

3

I’ve been in a room with quite a few people who didn’t know that when instructed “write, don’t print,” they must write in cursive. Once told this, they exclaimed “but I don’t know cursive!”

4

Octopi and squid have beaks?? I am sorry, but if you think everyone should know that then your idea of what people should and shouldn’t know is warped.

(or does everyone know that squid have beaks? Or have I been whooshed)

5

Beaks? Bird-like beaks?

It frightens me that people think that Hong Kong is part of Japan.

6

Maybe I’m a freak, but the only time I use cursive is when I fill out checks. Haven’t used it regularly since grade school. I’m sure the skills are still there in the back of my mind somewhere, but I just tried to write out a simple paragraph, and it was slow and sloppy.

7

Oops. I didn’t know that Pentecost was a Jewish feast. I thought the thing (the Holy Spirit’s coming down, the tongues of fire, and all that) just happened to occur 50 days after the Resurrection, hence the name. I thought what Christians call the Feast of Pentecost dated to after the Resurrection, and no further back. How embarrassing.

However, I did know that octopodes and squid had beaks. Why, everyone knows that! :wink:

8

I knew (know) this and would figure most people would. An octopus is a particularly weird creature that I’d figure would grab most people’s attention for a few minutes at some point in their life sufficient to cause them to gain a bit of knowledge about them. Lots of arms, suction cups and beaks seem to be basic enough stuff to gather in the moment of interest but maybe it’s just me. I do watch a Animal Planet a lot.

I was playing Trivial Pursuit (or some trivia game…this was a long time ago) and the question was asked of me, “At what temperature does water boil?” I answered 212[sup]o[/sup] and my friend’s wife responded that only I wold know something like that. I was shocked…I figured everyone knew that (or 100[sup]o[/sup] celsius for you metric folks).

9

Conversate. A doctor A DOCTOR actually used that word the other day. I thought my jaw was going to dislocate it dropped so fast. How can someone with an advanced education NOT know that “coversate” is not a word?

10

When I see an octopus I see lots of tentacles, and a jelly like body. I do not see an orange ridgid triangular mouth.

I define a beak in my head as an orange ridgid triangular mouth. So, not having seen an orange triangular ridgid mouth on an octopus I came to the conclusion that octopusses do not have beaks.

excuse spellingf, need toiulet…

11

Yes, beaks. Sharp, curved, parrot like beaks, with which they rend the flesh of their prey…

12

Out of curiosity, where would one find such instructions? I don’t recall seeing any document that required you to write in cursive.

13

My last lover did not know that ants tasted bad due to the formic acid in their bodies. I tried to explain that without such a natural defense, ants would be the popcorn of the animal world.

My fundamentalist neighbor (who is homeschooling her daughters) expressed amazement when I told her about saving Zen’s baby canines. She was totally unaware that dogs had baby teeth.

How can someone not know that non-skeletal creatures like squid and octopi possess a beak. Fer Chrissakes, how are they supposed to eat? Osmosis?!?

Don’t get me started, you know how I get.

14

OK so squids have beaks.

I’ll file that into the useless knowledge folder.

15

I didn’t know that about dogs because I don’t like or care about dogs so it’s not something I ever pay attention to.

I’m homeschooling my kids and if the subject of canine teeth came up, then we’d research it. Just like ordinary teachers, homeschooling parents are allowed not to know every esoteric or irrelevant fact that’s around.

Knew about squids and octopi though as P the Elder is devoted to giant squids.

16

I once was talking with two administrative assistants who had been using computers to do word processing for several years. When in the course of our conversation I mentioned the “Save As” button, they asked me, “Yeah, I’ve never used it. What’s it for?”

I mean, there’s a REASON so many people voted for Bush.

17

Many a stupendous gap appears from time to time. Several years ago I had an office manager who seemed bright enough, and she was quite capable at running the office. She was a high school grad and a Junior, and doing well, at the University of Houston.

So, you’d think, reasonably well-educated. Our idle chit-chat revealed that she’d not heard of World War II, and had no idea that we’d actually fought a bitter and bloody war with both Japan and Germany. Much less, that we’d prevailed militarily.

Let me stress that this woman was not stupid - she picked up on things quickly and well - but her ignorance was astounding. All she knew about Hitler was that he was some kind of ancient Republican ;), as was Stalin (Left? Right? Kill’em all and let Deity sort’em out! sigh)

She had never heard of the Korean War, and once, as our discussions evolved, asked me about the relative chronology of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Hell, she lived through the last one - how’d she miss that?

Another thing I notice as a general trend is that those who are sub-30 (and I definitely do not mean all of y’all, as we’ve got some pretty aware younger posters here) are often unaware of how real the Cold War was. We didn’t just arbitrarily decide to go push some Vietnamese around - there was a big-time global chess game going on in which we’re really glad we’ve prevailed.

One big difference between the OP’s primary character and mine is that Jackie (office manager) drank willingly and heavily of the honey of new knowledge as she was exposed to it. That was gladdening, but it was disheartening to find a 21 year old college student who needed to be informed about one of the most significant historical events of, if not all recorded human history, at least the last 100 years.

18

Yeah well, Protestants are Christians too.

19

I have a friend with a temp job who just made the same complaint last night. She’s working in a position with the school district, and many of the secretaries in the office - who work with computers every day, and have done so for years - had no idea the button existed and did not know how to change the name of a file. She found this quite disconcerting as well.

20

What do you mean that you’ve never heard of the SDMB?

Oh, wait.

In this case, better that you don’t know about it!
:smiley:
Yeah, yeah, I had to go witty because there are just too many examples of dim bulbs and clueless wonders out there. Then again, if it were not for these mindless folks, many of us would not have a job. I kid you not!