I lived down the hall from someone who came rushing to my room one day to tell me that Bill Gates would give five hundred dollars to everyone who forwarded the email that she just forwarded me, and that I should open it right away and forwarded it. I told her that was an urban legend and it was impossible to track an email. She came back five minutes later and said she had received a follow-up email confirming that Microsoft was sending her five hundred dollars. :rolleyes:
One of the UK lottery scratchcards was withdrawn from shops recently because players could not understand whether they had won.
You could win on the Cool Cash game if you scratched away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the given figure, but negative numbers proved too much to grasp for some.
“On one of my cards it said that I had to find temperatures lower than -8,” one woman complained. “The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7, so I thought I had won… I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I’m not having it.”
:smack:
Like some other posts in this thread, I’m not sure that’s so much “willful ignorance” as garden-grown “big stupidity”!
In that vein, I’ll post this:
Recently, hubby and I bought a trailer park in WV as an investment. The people who live in this trailer park are the kinds of people who give trailer parks their reputation! One of the residents is a guy we’ll call Larry, since that’s his name. Just to give you some idea of what kind of guy he is: His entire trailer is decorated in Dale Earnhardt, and when his daughter turns 13, she’s going to have to go live in foster care because he’s a convicted child sex offender and is not allowed to be around girls age 13-18! :eek:
Anyway, one of the draws of the trailer park (and not unusual in rural WV) is free natural gas. Well, last week, our property manager went into Larry’s trailer, and said it must have been over 100 degrees in there! So the manager asked him what was going on, and Larry said (thinking himself quite clever, no doubt!) “I don’t think that natural gas is gonna hold out all winter, so I’m usin’ as much of it as I can now!” :smack:
But is she the hen or the chicken?
A surprising update AIDS vaccine causes AIDS despite my beliefs.
I was at the local zoo with a friend walking through the primate building, when we saw a mother and her two sons standing in front of a lemur cage. There were half a dozen lemurs, jumping around on the large branches they had in it. We were standing behind them, watching the little guys go, when the mother says to her sons: ‘These are called hyenas.’ We actually had to leave the building so we could laugh. There was a big brass plaque detailing what the occupants of the cage were not 3 feet from this woman. I suggested we follow her around so we could learn more, as that would likely be much more entertaining. I felt bad for the kids though.
Did you ever followup with her? Just to see what kind of excuses she would build on why she hadn’t gotten the money yet?
One of my brothers-in-law is a successful doctor so one would think he would possess some basic knowledge. We were out in the countryside and spotted a very large bird. When someone remarked that it was a bird of prey of some sort, his son (10) asked what it was called and his dad said that it was “some kind of large pigeon”.
Another time, also with a member of my extended family, we were talking about some historical society that another relative belonged to. “Aren’t they very conservative?” someone remarked. “Yes, they look after things with great care”, said family member who shall remain nameless.
Based on Sunrazor’s description it sounds like strabismus which led to amblyopia.
The original muscular defect was strabismus and the resulting poor vision (in this case likely due to late correction of the muscular defect) is amblyopia.
That reminds me of an occasion a few years ago when I was at the beach in Devon. There had been quite a storm the day before, and lots of jellyfish had washed up on the sand. A man and his two young sons were walking just in front of me and one of the small boys started poking at one of the big dead jellyfish with his foot. “Dad, dad, what are all these?” he asked. “Well,” replied the father, in a thick West Midlands accent, “it’s blobs of stuff, innit?”
You realize that The Thornbirds took place in New Zealand, right? They’re in the southern hemisphere and winter there is mid June- mid September; during our summer. They also have a milder climate than we do, averaging 50-59F even during the winter. Sheep get sheared around here when the temperatures are similar - September.
I think I’ve got one that’s the essence of"willful ignorance". A year and a half ago, my former employer switched from one contact management software program to another. Our sole sales rep, a man who looked like he must have been in his 60s or so, wouldn’t use the new software. When I asked him about it, he said to me, “I can’t learn.” My jaw dropped. A month later, when he still wasn’t using the software, he said, “I won’t take a class.” We switched back to the old software.
Of course, this is the same guy who believed all the worst rumours about what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, then, when the newspapers reported there were a lot of exaggerations and distortions, told me that the things he believed really did happen and that the truth would come out. I walked back to my desk thinking, “It just did and you don’t believe it.”
Some people, when e-mail was first introduced at work, put up resistance.
- But I sent you an e-mail!
- I don’t use e-mail.
That’s like saying “I don’t check my pigeon hole/in tray or answer the phone when it rings”.
Around that time (mid 90s) there was at least one staff member who didn’t use a computer, and still had a secretary taking dictation, and wrote his reports in longhand.
The book starts in New Zealand, but the majority of it happens after the family moves to Australia. Just FYI. I don’t think they had sheep in New Zealand, but after the move, oy did they.
On the other hand, there are people so used to PCs and laptops that they can’t write a letter by hand. This is sad.
Hell, that assumes that they can even write letters! But you’re right–it is sad.
Recently, in one of my classes, the professor asked if there were people in the class who didn’t write in cursive script. The number of hands that went up was astounding! It’s been almost 30 years for me, but don’t they still teach you how to do that in grade school?
Damn whippersnappers!
:dubious: Cite? Or is this just a vacant This Modern World rant? Because Charlie Chaplin already did that.
Sure they do, but it’s a completely useless skill. Why should anyone remember it when there are so many more important things we need to keep headroom for?
Oops–I meant to include this in my post: ;). You know, to indicate that my tongue was planted–albeit none too firmly, I’ll admit–in my cheek. My bad.
Oh, and even though I realize that the internet is a poor conductor of inflection, I would’ve heard your snark loud and clear without the :dubious: . But thanks for the heads-up, anyway.
For those of us who are hoary enough to take pleasure in a thoughtfully and properly handwritten letter, it happens to be quite the indispensable skill. But you know, different strokes and all that.
And what? Will people’s brains leak out of their ears if they learn how to write in cursive? I mean, damn, it’s not Sanskrit.
Huh. I thought :dubious: was for expressing the feeling that a claim is dubious. Especially since it’s called : dubious :. I guess they should’ve called it :snark:.
Apparently. I suspect that you’re right in that it’s a generational difference, though, like how a Dutch man in 1635 would’ve paid as much for an interesting tulip as he would’ve for a house, but by 1650 nobody thought tulips wer all that interesting.
No, but many people in my generation used the energy they would’ve spent remembering cursive and devoted it to, say, Java programming.