I’ll start with a remark my wife’s pastor made. He was talking about a local scandal. The Memphis Sexual Assault Resource Center, formerly national model, has, for several months, not been properly funded and staffed; as a result, in a single women, two different women (girls, actually) who had been brought in to have evidence collected were told they would have to wait until after the weekend to be examined. Full story here.
Horrifying, no? Well, it’s horrifying to me, anyway. But I am not a moron. The pastor is. My cite is that his opinion that the true scandal here is that the MSARC is an independent entity. In his view such exams should not be done only at ERs, and should not be performed at public expense–because, in his words, rapes don’t happen every day and are not common enough to justify the public expenditure.
You may think that italicized sentence is the dumbest thing I have heard this week. Sadly you would be mistaken. Because, you see, when I pointed out that the pastor didn’t have enough information to make such a policy choice, he replied, You don’t have to have information to make a decision! All you have to have is wisdom!
But that’s just the dumbest thing I have heard this week. I’m sure somebody can top it.
I was out to lunch with a few coworkers. One guy, when I asked where in India he was from said “Bombay.” We all proceeded to chat a bit about that city.
Meanwhile, one of our operations moved to Mumbai several months ago. My other coworker, M, has a direct report over there who had moved with the office. So while we were on the subject, I said, “So how does P like it in Bombay?” (I said Bombay instead of Mumbai because we had just been talking about the city using that name.)
M said, “She’s not in Bombay. She’s in Moo-am-bye.”
I said “It’s the same place.” (Knowing that she meant Mumbai because she can’t pronounce anything.)
M looked totally baffled. “What do you mean?”
The Indian guy said “What is Moo-am-bye?”
I said “She means Mumbai.”
The Indian guy looked baffled.
So I said to M, “It’s pronounced like it looks–Mum-bye.”
M couldn’t get it. She almost got a “Mumbai” out there, but kept sticking that “am” in the middle.
So I gave up and the Indian guy explained why Mumbai ended up being called Bombay, but wasn’t called that anymore.
M didn’t get it.
And I don’t think she had any idea that cities can change their names–or at least change what we call them here in the U.S. I could understand forgetting which “new” city name equalled which “old” city name, but she had no clue that some cities in India were called by different names now.
Did she think a huge city like Mumbai had just sprung up out of the land fully formed?
The next time I go out for Chinese with her, I’m totally gonna order the Beijing duck.
Customer tried to insist that because he was using a wireless mouse and keyboard with his computer, this automatically created a “wireless network” and he didn’t need a router.
No matter how many times I tried to tell him otherwise.
A co-worker, who is six-sigma certified, boasted that his Black Belt coach had shown him a great foolproof betting system when they were on their certification retreat in Europe - yeah, the Martingale. In the end I had to concede that the majority of the time you would indeed walk away positive, but he just couldnt get it through his head that the tiny chance that you would lose everything more than makes up for it.
This despite his whole job is to improve quality using statistics.
When someone pointed out that cap and trade might double the price of utilities in some places, a guest on a politcal show I could hear from the bathroom said “Well, that doesn’t mean there aren’t good things about it!” then failed to name any.
That thread’s in the Pit, thanks! (And several months old.)
The pastor’s argument is considerably more odious, though. I think Governor Palin was guility of, at worst, being niggardly. The pastor is (a) asserting that his view of things is so correct because of his connection to God that he needs no actual facts or research to validate his opinions; and (b) implictly saying that most accusations of rape are not serious enough to warrant police intervention.
I’m renting out a two bedroom apartment and every prospect this week asked the same stupid question “So the bedrooms are the same size?” No, the one you are standing in is the master bedroom, twice the size of the guest bedroom you just looked at.
Yeah, the same guy described several extra characters on his wireless keyboard that he couldn’t figure out, such as an upside down question mark and an ‘n’ with an accent mark over it. When I said that it sounded like he’d gotten a Spanish language keyboard (note to lissener: Not Basque), he dismissed it out of hand.
Repeatedly.
Kept bringing it up, I kept giving the same answer. You have a Spanish language keyboard. “No, that can’t be” was his response every time.
You know, why do people like this bother calling for assistance if they can’t accept any answer they’re given, no matter how bleeping OBVIOUS it should be?
[slick announcer voice] Congratulations, you’ve been chosen Dumbass of the Month!
[/sav]
I had the dumbest conversation I’ve ever had in my life today at work… details here. It involves teleporters, banks, and a lady driving backwards through the drive through…
Oh, I think that Palin has her own serving of dumbassery, but you’re right, this pastor has more than his share of both dumbassery AND arrogance AND he has no clue as to just how much of a dumbass he is.
:eek::mad::rolleyes:
:p;):D:o:dubious::(:smack: