People who will just never get what you're talking about. Never.

In My Humble Opinion
21

I recently had a discussion with a colleague about the quality of a scanned image.

We wanted to scan an original page with a signature on it (among other things). The objective was to get the best possible quality. It was on slightly colored paper.

The colleague suggested “scanning it onto brighter white paper.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just scan it onto plain white paper.”

“What are you trying to achieve?” I asked.

“See how it’s on slightly colored paper? That will make the scan slightly colored. Scan it onto plain white paper,” she tried to clarify.

“Uh, I can’t ‘scan it onto paper.’ I guess I could scan it and then print it out onto white paper, but what would the purpose of that be? The slight color it now has would also print onto the white paper anyway.”

“You could scan that copy,” she suggested.

“But…scanning it twice won’t improve the quality of the image – it will degrade it.”

“Well, print a new one from the MS Word file onto white paper and scan that,” she countered.

“That won’t have the signature on it AND if it’s bright white, it won’t match the other pages unless we rescan the whole thing from new white pages.”

“Then do that,” she said, with a smile, showing how simple it was.

“But then we won’t have the signature,” I pointed out.

Eventually she went away and I scanned the existing, off-white page, stuck it into the .pdf, and no one could tell the difference.

22

Let me preface this by saying I love my mother dearly and she has many good qualities. However, and I don’t judge her for this or think I’m better than she is or anything, but she’s not very bright. That sounds terrible, I know. But there are many many things about the world that she just cannot understand no matter what you say or how many diagrams you draw.

The first thing that immediately comes to mind is this – I used to live with her in an apartment when I was in grad school, so I was home for most of the day while she was out. In the summertime, every day without fail, we’d get into an argument about the air conditioning. She’d come home and, because the air conditioning had been on all day, it would be cool in the apartment. So she would turn the air conditioning off. Why? “Because it’s cool in here – we don’t need it on.” And every single day, with varying degrees of patience, I would explain that it was cool in here BECAUSE THE AIR CONDITIONING IS ON. If you turn it off, it will become hot in here, and then we’ll have to turn it on again! Amazing how this works! She never could make this connection.

Now extrapolate that kind of failure to grasp basic facts and principles, and apply that to all sorts of complicated social or psychological situations, and you can imagine the kind of difficulty she has.

23

My ex-husband used to do the same thing, but in the winter. We had a woodstove in the living room, which did a good job of heating the whole house. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, so when it was cold, I was able keep a fire going in it all day. Not a huge roaring fire, just a few logs at a time, to, you know, maintain the temperature in the house.
He’d come home from work, comment that it was plenty warm in the house and shut the intake vents on the sides of the woodstove, which made the fire go out. When he realized it was getting cold, he’d stuff it full of wood and get a huge fire blazing away. Which made it get unbearably hot in the house. I swear, he never did understand the concept of keeping a smallish fire going to keep it comfortable.

24

I posted this years ago, but it still amuses me in a slightly stabby way.

I used to work for a video store. We had a system where if you rented 10 videos, you’d get one for free. You didn’t have to rent them all at once, they’d just accumulate. When you got to 10, a credit would show up in the computer. When the 11th video was rented, we could just instruct the app to use the credit.

One customer came in one night and wanted a movie. I saw that she had something like 4 unused credits.

Me: You have 4 credits on your account. Would you like to use one?

Her: Oh no, I’m not getting into that credit thing!

Me: You can get this movie free right now.

Her: No! I don’t do the whole credit thing! That’s a scam!

Me: No, you’ve earned these. You have 4 free movies.

Her: No! I know how credit works! That’s something I don’t want to get into!

Me: But…

Her: La la la, I can’t hear you!

I think she thought it worked like credit cards, and she’d have to start paying interest or something.

25

And another one…

When I worked at a movie theatre, there was a movie called Oh God, You Devil. A customer came in with a small child and saw the poster.

Her: In “You Devil”, who does the “you” refer to?

Me: It’s the sequel to Oh God, starring George Burns. In that he played God. In this he plays both God and the Devil.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: George Burns, I guess.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: Um, the Devil? As played by George Burns?

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: It’s a play on words.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: It’s about how God and the Devil are fighting over a man’s soul. George Burns plays both roles.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: The Devil. Satan. Lucifer. Ol’ Scratch.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: :smack::mad::confused::dubious: It’s a comedy and it’s rated PG.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: Can I interest you in a Woody Allen movie perhaps?

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

Me: I’m going to shoot you now.

Her: But who does the “you” refer to?

BLAM!

26

I’ve spent the last few years doing supplemental instruction for a self-paced online symbolic logic course (self-paced but with a time limit on completing work by finals week). It’s not the easiest course for most people (which is why I exist, additional help above and beyond the professor, TAs, online help, and copious other resources that no one ever taps). It’s got prerequisite courses in introductory logic and finite math, warnings in the course catalogue that familiarity with standard truth tables is necessary and that most folks will find it more difficult than the math courses that it can replace in degree programs, etc. Of course, this means that all the math-phobes who never have taken a single logic course in their life jump headfirst into the course, then immediately procrastinate for 12 weeks and panic. The course historically had a 75% drop/withdrawal/failure rate, and we’ve gotten it down to around 60% DWF, with students who actually seek help having ~5% DWF.

Anyway, in those last four weeks of class, I get a lot of students who have obviously not gotten the course material, and I end up having to cover basic deductive logical principles, and it usually goes over well. This last semester, I had an evening session that went something like this:

Her: “I don’t get this ‘and’ thing. What does ‘and’ mean? Give me an example.”

Me <gesturing outside, where it was dark and raining>: “‘It is dark outside and it is raining outside.’ Would you agree with me that it’s a true statement?”

Her: “I don’t know, I don’t get it.”

Me: “Is it raining outside?”

Her: “I don’t know. Stop it with all of this ‘true’ and ‘false’ shit, I just don’t get it.”

Me: “Look out the window, for real. Is it raining?”

Her: “Yeah. I don’t know. No. True. False. I don’t know.”

This went on for a while, and I finally grabbed her computer chair, wheeled it over to the window, then pointed outside, and finally got her to agree that it was indeed raining, then dark outside. I wheeled her back, then wrote “It is raining and it is dark.” She agreed with me that it is true.

Me: “Okay, so we agree with this. We looked outside. It’s raining AND it’s dark.”

Her: “Right.”

Me: “So we know that both parts are true, that it’s raining outside and that it’s dark outside, right?”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “So, we can then point to those two parts individually as being true. If it’s both raining and dark, then the statement ‘it is raining’ is also true…”

Her: “I don’t get it.”

Me: “You just looked outside and saw that it was rainy and dark. If you then came inside and someone asked you if it was rainy outside, you’d say…”

Her: “Yes? No? I don’t know! Stop telling me things about ‘true’ this and ‘true’ that! Find another way!”

sigh

27

This comes from a series of conversations I have had with customers at work (well, except for the last bit–that was what I said in my head), but for the sake of brevity I sort of rolled them up into one:

“Sir, please don’t touch that artifact.”*
“Why?”
“Because the oils in your fingers will etch themselves into the artifact and wear it away.”
“But it’s metal!”
“It doesn’t matter, sir. Oils and grease from human fingers can and will cause damage if touched long enough.”
“I don’t have oil in my fingers!”
“If you didn’t, sir, you wouldn’t be alive.”**
“…So I can’t touch it?”
“No.”
“Pleeeease? Just this once?”
“No. If I let you touch it ‘just this once,’ I’d have to let everyone touch it, ‘just once,’ and the artifact would get damaged.”
“…But it’s metal!!”
“I have nothing but contempt for you.”

*I also get pissy at exhibit developers who think it’s even remotely a good idea to put artifacts out where they’re within easy reach, but at least one of these artifacts was A) situated far enough away where it WAS out of easy reach (but people tried anyway), and B) too big to put in a case anyway.

**This I’m not actually sure about, but I’m quite certain that having skin without natural oils would be a very uncomfortable and itchy existence indeed.

28

Senseless waste of human life.

29

I blame Peckinpah.

30

Thanks.

31

I’m convinced my wife becomes deliberately obtuse when I have to talk to her about stuff she doesn’t want to think about, like how computers work, or taxes. She’s very sharp otherwise, but on those subjects :smack: She doesn’t want to understand, she’s convinced she can’t understand, so by gum she’s not gonna understand.

I’m sure there are some doper husbands who have their own quirks, of course.

32

This happened over 30 years ago when I was 12. Before that I’d suspected that many adults were dumber than a bag of hammers, but this really cemented it.

I’d had a paper route for a couple years back in the days when kids delivered papers and went door to door collecting money for them each week. We had a book with little cardboard tabs in it representing each week and when the people paid for that week we tore out the tab with the correct date printed on it and handed it to them as their receipt. Some people would pay a month or two in advance and get all those tabs at once.

I had to pay for my papers once a week. If people paid in advance I had to make sure I held on to the money to pay for their papers when the time came.

When I quit and turned over the route to a new kid I figured out how many tabs were missing for future dates where people paid in advance, multiplied it by the weekly rate for each of those houses, and gave the kid the money.

He wanted to know what the money was for. I explained that some people paid for their papers in advance, and since he would be delivering those papers he should get the money for them.

He didn’t get it.

I showed him the book with the tabs, and explained that some from the future were missing. This was the money for those tabs.

He didn’t get it.

OK, the kid was probably 12 or 13 like me. However, then it got fun. I told him we should talk to his parents. I went to his house and sat down with his mother. I explained to her that some people paid in advance and this was the money they paid.

She didn’t get it.

I showed her the tabs and explained each one represented a week of paper delivery. Each time her son was paid for delivering a week of papers he had to give the customer a tab as a receipt. The fact that some were missing that should be there meant people already paid. This was the money they paid.

She still didn’t get it.

I said, forget the newspapers, people pay me for the tabs in this book. I sold some tabs that her kid should have sold so I’m giving him the money.

She still couldn’t figure it out.

Meanwhile his father is sitting on the back porch drinking beer and shooting their dog with a BB gun for amusement. I just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

I think I ended up saying that once he delivered the papers for a few weeks and collected the money he’d figure out what it was for.

Later on I heard from other paper carriers that he was telling everyone I’d stolen tabs from the book. :smack:

33

OMG I think I married his brother. Not only that, but the colder it got outside, the hotter he felt it needed to be inside. Its 0 degrees outside and its 85 in the house. If it got any colder, we would have died of heat stroke.

34

Student Driver, do you think that if you locked her outside without an umbrella, she’d get a more visceral feel for “true”?

35

tdn, what was the eventual fallout from you allowing people to enter both ranges and negative numbers (and ranges of negative numbers!)?

36

My boss’s head exploded and there were bits of blood and brains all over the wall.

Just kidding. There were no brains.

37

Wasn’t she just trying to get you to admit that “you” in this case refers to God, as a prelude to some kind of blasphemy-denouncing tirade?

38

Just reading these anecdotes is making me all tense and frustrated.

39

I’m pretty sure this is what was going on.

40

Probably. But I wasn’t going to get into it with her.