Regarding the grandma question - I’ll let Olives tell her own story, of course, but she might be a grandma by marriage, you know.
I’d be terrified to find out what percentage of Americans believe this.
Then again, many don’t believe man has walked on the moon either.
:eek:
I’ll also add that I’ve been in many history classrooms where the teacher says, “Only one President has been impeached, and it was over 100 years ago.”
I’ve found it’s not worth even correcting this error anymore.
I’m aware of that.
So, the most ignorant thing Kricket has ever witnessed is someone who (1) didn’t immediately know what an army engineer did, and then (2) when someone else made up a VERY PLAUSIBLE explanation, believed it? It just seemed like there had to be more to it than that.
Risking embarassing myself in this thread yet again… wasn’t this true up until 1998?
I’ve been in history classrooms where the teacher said that, too, except when I heard it, it was true (of course, the teacher always went on to point out that Nixon would have been, had he not saved them the trouble). Perhaps you might want to be a bit more specific? 
Here in the Dominican Republic, and probably in most other Latin American countries, “Christian” is synonymous with the non-Catholic evangelical protestant sects, so you are either a Catholic or a Christian.
What is really ignorant though, is that when many people speak of “all religions” they actually mean what I understand by “all Christian denominations”. If you say “what about other religions?” you often get a look that says “there are other religions?”
Fear not, I shall explain everything.
My Grandma is indeed a grandma by marriage… she became my Grandpa’s second wife when she was 22 (and he in his 40s.) My Mom is only 2 years younger than her. They didn’t always hate each other, but they sure do now. I don’t discern between relatives by marriage (If I did, I wouldn’t have very many “true” relatives left!), and I’m super close to my young Grandma Brenda, she and my grandfather for all intents and purposes have been like parents to me and I wasn’t even alive when my maternal grandparents were married… so though there is a closeness in age between her and my mother, it doesn’t seem odd to me.
So no, no eleven year olds having babies. 
The coolest part is my Grandma’s Mom had her when she was 16… so I have a great-grandma who is 63!
And though I do live in and around the oh-so-civilized town of Ann Arbor, where I grew up, in or around Jackson, MIchigan, was a pit.
Yes, and that irritates me about 90% of the religion vs atheism threads even on the SDMB: most of the religious people, and many of the atheists too, are arguing about “God” (Yaweh,/Allah), and not “gods” in general. The argument takes different routes if couched in the latter terms, and (IMO) is where the atheists should be coming from, even if their religious counterparts aren’t playing all.
One of my staff was chatting with me about the political situation in Nigeria and we couldn’t remember exactly where it was in Africa.
So I googled up a map of the area and the conversation carried on. Other salesman walks over, looks at the screen and goes: “hehe… there’s a country called nggr!”
After a brief pause I punched him on the arm and carried on talking to other dude.
Two examples. One pitiful, one astounding.
First, I was TA during college. Simple enough. I had one freshman kid who simply believed that the situation in Nicaragua (this would be the 80s) was caused by Ronald Reagan’s deeply held support for the Sandinistas. Nothing I could do convinced him to change that paper.
Second, a girl I knew (in many ways) back in college. Turns out she believed that ‘doggie style’ sex was anal. She believed this because she believed that dogs, um, coupled and birthed through that back passage, God help me. She thought nothing of it because many of her girlfriends had talked of doing it ‘doggie’ style and therefore it was her belief that all of them were going ‘back door’ as it were.
I could only gape in wonder.
So did you demonstrate? 
Thanks for the explanation!
And… 
[/hijack]
When on the Metro in Paris some time ago I was bemused to hear two girls (with North American accents) proclaim loudly that “The great thing about being a foreigner in Paris is that nobody can understand a word we’re saying!” … I didn’t correct them.
Around the time that the U.S. 9th Circuit Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, and specifically the phrase “under God” therein, a retired oncologist tried to convince me that the ruling was “ridiculous” because “everyone believes in God, so no one feels excluded by that phrase.”
MeL “I have some polytheist friends who believe in both gods and goddesses, and aren’t very comfortable with it.”
Him: “Well, they still believe in one.” (note: not “at least one.”)
Me: “What about atheists?”
Him: “No one is really an atheist, even if they say they are. I know.”
Me: “…”
Him: “I was an oncologist for xx years, and every time I told someone they had cancer, you better believe they started praying to God.”
Me: “My atheist grandmother died of lung cancer, while my mom and I cared for her at home, and she never once prayed or asked for divine intervention. Nor did my atheist uncle who died of a nasty lingering illness.”
At least he then had the good grace to shut up, although I could tell he remained unconvinced.
Actually, Mr. Caricci wasn’t that far off. What we learn in grade school as “long” and “short” vowels aren’t really that at all. Linguists use “long” and “short” to mean just what the words sound like they should mean – the same sound, but taking more or less time to say it. This distinction has phonemic significance (for some vowel pairs) in many languages – in Maya, for example, “kak” and “kaak” mean two different things. This almost never has phonemic significance in English, however.
What most of us learned in grade school as “long” and “short” vowels are really just pairs of phonemes that have been picked out for some reason (at random?) from the list of English vowel sounds. There’s nothing special about the vowel in “mate” (it’s really two vowels!) and the vowel in “mat”; there is, for example, another vowel sound commonly spelled “a” in English – the “a” in “father”. I’m sure there’s some historical reason why some of these have been at times labeled “long” or “short”, but technically they’re nothing of the kind. They’re just different phonemes.
According to Reader’s Digest (I think), long vowel sounds do indeed take slightly longer; not noticeable to the casual listener, but if you’re careful you’ll hear it.
For some reason, this reminds me of Homer Simpson staring at a globe and believing that “Uruguay” is pronounced “U-r-gay.” (But really, your story isn’t really that unusual- both words are spelled similarly, and both come from a foreign word meaning “black.”)
Thanks, I didn’t know that! Still, the point remains that the main difference between “mat” and “mate” is not that one has a “short a” and the other a “long a” – it’s that they have two completely different sounds (one of which does happen to be spoken longer than the other, but you could say that about many other pairs of vowel sounds).
I knew this guy who truly believed that the Nazi’s genetically engineered la chupacabra. I think he might have read it in the Weekly World News or something similar, but he seriously thought it was gospel. All I could say was, “Why would they do that?” He didn’t know.