# It frightens me that people don't know these things **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 25, 2003, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207 "2003-06-25T03:02:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/21 "2003-06-25T05:37:16Z")
Another lover of mine went through _training_ as an executive secretary. Her (admittedly) antiquated word processor at Stanford Research Institute was difficult to operate. She complained about how complicated it was to find out the contents of a given diskette she was reading from or writing to. I assured her that all she need do was press CONTROL D to access the disk’s directory file. She expressed extreme doubt as to this being the case. I asked her to please try this the next morning when she got to work and then call me with the results. Early the next day, I received a call from her at my office. She was utterly astonished that my suggestion had worked so easily. She wanted to know how I was so sure it would be the solution. I calmly tried to explain how any company which did not provide such a feature in their operating system would soon, if not already, be out of business. I still wonder if she really understood why I was right. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/22 "2003-06-25T05:39:57Z")
I didn’t know that about octupuses and squids. And I didn’t know Pentecost was a Jewish feast. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/23 "2003-06-25T05:42:19Z")
I didn’t know about the origins of Pentecost, but then, I’m an atheist and I sometimes make a point of not knowing stuff like that. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/24 "2003-06-25T05:52:56Z")
I’ve always loved dogs, but I only learned about “puppy teeth” when I was in the third grade–my dog, Snoopy, would let me touch her loose teeth. We found most of them (I’m assuming she swallowed the rest), and Mom saved them in the same box as my baby teeth. Awwww. And I knew about squid beaks, too. My next door neighbor does not understand why I move my Jeep onto level ground to check fluid levels and tire pressure. In freshman chemistry class, I was shocked at the number of people who thought it was funny to pour hydrochloric acid on other people’s lab manuals. During this past winter’s ice storms, there were a number of local news reports about people who didn’t understand the importance of proper ventilation when operating a generator. There were also quite a few people who decided to heat their homes using charcoal grills. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/25 "2003-06-25T05:55:12Z")
A while back, when _Titanic_ came out, a co-worker and I were discussing the historical events (rather than the movie _per se_) within the hearing of the then 18 or 19 year old receptionist. Her comment? “It sinks?!” :eek: ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/26 "2003-06-25T06:14:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Maureen \* > \*\*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? \*\* Try Googling it. It’s not a terribly uncommon word, even if it’s not supposed to be a word: “Conversate” is what is called a “back-formation” based on the noun “conversation.” But the verb for this sort of thing is “converse.” ---
**Author:** ![Nichol\_storm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Nichol\_storm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nichol_storm)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/27 "2003-06-25T06:30:50Z")
Well, hell, I didn’t know squids had beaks until now. Granted, I never thought to wonder on it, not being a big fan of squid, but anyway. I hate cursive on principle, and in the many years since elementary school have managed to forget all of it except what letters I need to write my name. I don’t know what temperature water boils at either – never needed to know. Place a pot filled with water on a stove, turn the knob to “High” and voila! boiling water. I also didn’t know about Pentcost, but, like **Marley23** I’m an atheist and hence never had a personal stake in learning about it. Pentecostals, Catholics, whatever – you all believe in the same invisible man who lives in the sky. So there. I didn’t know about formic acid in ants but that may be because I’ve never tried to eat any. I tend to avoid ants if I can. It frightens me when people don’t know that “neptis” is a Latin word that could mean either niece or granddaughter. On the other hand, you’re not likely to know or care about that unless you’re interested in medieval European genealogy. It frightens me when people don’t know that Theodoric the Great’s real name was Thiudareikhs, which meant “Ruler of the People”. On the other hand, you’re not likely to know or care about that unless you’re interested in Ostrogothic onomastics. It frightens me when people don’t know Quechua is an agglutinating language with a three-vowel system. On the other hand, you’re not likely to know or care about that unless you’re interested in Peruvian linguistics. .:Nichol:. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/28 "2003-06-25T06:48:50Z")
> [@](#): > > It frightens me when people don’t know that Theodoric the Great’s real name was Thiudareikhs, which meant “Ruler of the People”. I loved Steve Martin in that role. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/29 "2003-06-25T06:50:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BuckleberryFerry \* > \*\*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!” \*\* Meh. I never learned to write cursively-- My sister taught me to read when I was three, and by the time I was four I’d taught myself to print – by “drawing” the letters the way they appeared in my books. I was pretty set in my ways by the time frustrated educators were charged with teaching me the usual way a couple of years later. As a consequence, my printing is now merely a tidier version of my four-year-old approximation of the Roman typeface, and any attempt at script looks like the work of a lobotomized monkey who’s deep in his cups. People also tell me that when I make the “loops” for letters like “o”, “p”, “d”, and “g”, I make them “backwards.” (Clockwise instead of anti-clockwise.) Whatever. One thing’s for sure, my printing is more easily legible than the hand of anyone else I know, so they can all just bugger off. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_B.Goode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Johnny\_B.Goode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_B.Goode)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/30 "2003-06-25T07:13:49Z")
This has just become a showcase for poxy bits of trivia that certain people take for granted or skills that some people think, for whatever reason, should be innate even though it seems perfectly reasonable that some people don’t have certain skills. The only thing that I can think of at the moment that sort of amazes me is that the so-called “leader of the free world” and the man who has the executive power to launch enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over thinks that the word is “nuculear”. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/31 "2003-06-25T13:20:19Z")
In case people are interested: [This site](http://zapatopi.net/cephnews.html) has a picture in the top-right corner of a marine biologist examining the beak of a collosal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) that was caught off Antactica last year. And [here](http://www.tonmo.com/phpBB/download.php?id=109) is a close-up of the beak. ---
**Author:** ![lachesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@lachesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lachesis)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/32 "2003-06-25T13:53:35Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Thea Logica \* > \*\* > 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. \_\* um, i’m Catholic too. and your Pentacostal friend is correct, not you. Pentacost is indeed the feast day celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit, which occurred 50 days after EASTER (which originally happened to have fallen shortly after the end of Passover, about 2000 years ago). in fact, the reason that the Holy Spirit was able to find the disciples all together there at one time is because they were hiding out _ **for fear of the Jews** _. (direct quote from the Gospels, as i recall). Jews of that time would never have heard of any such observance – for that matter, neither would present-day ones who don’t interest themselves in Christian observances. Pentacost is considered pretty much on the order of the “birthday” of the whole Christian movement. but i’ll agree with you that his lack of knowledge regarding Martin Luther is fairly astounding. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/33 "2003-06-25T14:03:52Z")
I am a dog lover and have raised several puppies and I had no idea until today that dogs had baby teeth. :: shrug :: I once met a guy who had never heard of the Black Plague. ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/34 "2003-06-25T14:04:42Z")
I didn’t know squid had beaks. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ringo \* > \*\*Many a stupendous gap appears from time to time. > \ Our idle chit-chat revealed that she’d not heard of World War II, … > 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? \*\* I never learned about WW1 or the Korean War in high school. Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW2 and Vietnam, yes, but nothing about WW1 or Korea. I don’t know why such gaps happened, but they did. Pretty much all I know about the Korean War comes from M_A_S\*H reruns 😉 and the WW1 knowledge I gained later in college. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/35 "2003-06-25T14:08:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Johnny B. Goode \* > \*\*The only thing that I can think of at the moment that sort of amazes me is that the so-called “leader of the free world” and the man who has the executive power to launch enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over thinks that the word is “nuculear”. \*\* Big deal. So did Jimmy Carter and he’s probably a bit more of an authority on things nuclear than you are. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/36 "2003-06-25T14:12:05Z")
One thing I think all people need to know, and I let them know whenever the opportunity presents itself (like this thread): Never, never, never mix chlorine bleach and ammonia! Do not do it!! Bad bad idea! We nearly lost 3 young sailors because an idiot officer sent them to clean an interior, poorly ventilated men’s room with a mixture of bleach and ammonia. One of the three was a brand new daddy who nearly left a widow because of this. ---
**Author:** ![Parallax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Parallax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Parallax)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/37 "2003-06-25T14:25:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Larry Mudd \* > **…any attempt at script looks like the work of a lobotomized monkey who’s deep in his cups.** That is exactly how my script looks! Unfortunately I don’t have a nice explaination of why - maybe I just lack fine motor control or something. My printing is exactly stellar either - but I can type pretty well. 😃 Back in my high school history class I had a special exemption from the cursive rule. After the first essay test of the year I was told that I **must** print on future tests. The only thing I write in script now is my signiture and that isn’t even legible. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/38 "2003-06-25T14:31:13Z")
It’s quite common to find people who don’t know the moon is often visible in daylight. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/39 "2003-06-25T14:33:30Z")
A few weeks ago, Airman and I were talking about something, and the subject of how chicken eggs get fertilized came up. (I swear, I don’t remember how it came up, just that it did.) He had no idea of how that process worked. I mean, I learned it at the old baby-chicks exhibit at the California Museum of Science and Industry, and in the context of “where do babies come from”. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just part of what you learn as a child. I guess Airman gets to come with Aaron and me when we go visit a farm this summer. 😉 Robin ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207/40 "2003-06-25T14:39:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Nichol\_storm \* > **I also didn’t know about Pentcost, but, like Marley23 I’m an atheist and hence never had a personal stake in learning about it. Pentecostals, Catholics, whatever – you all believe in the same invisible man who lives in the sky. So there.** I think the OP’s point was that for a Pentecostal you’d think it _would_ be relevent enough to know a little bit about it. I mean, when my little cousin was THREE we got into a debate because I said he lived in America and he insisted “No, I don’t! I live in the United States!!!” The OP’s Pentacostal was doing the equivalent. The difference is my cousin was three-years-old at the time and when we explained that “U.S.A.” stands for “United States of _America_” he was enlightened a little. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-frightens-me-that-people-dont-know-these-things/184207.md?page=3)