+1
Something as common as a pool should not pose a lethal threat. Learn to swim.
[sub]learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim, [/sub]
By staying out of the water my risk of drowning dramatically decreases.
To quote Harry Callahan in Magnum Force: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” But, alas, most people don’t and end up looking foolish.
Turning to specifics, everyone should know basic facts about the universe in which we all live, like it’s 13.7 billion years old, our sun is one star among hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and there are hundreds of billions of other galaxies!
I learned this the hard way. Except it was with habanero chicken wings. :smack:
Wash your hands before eating. Don’t eat the pretzels from the bowl at the bar because the previous patrons probably did not wash their hands.
After the age of 45, never assume it is a fart.
Presidents and Presidential candidates are not magical wizards. They can not simply wave a magic wand and make gas $2 a gallon again. There are a whole bunch of other things the President can not do but this one sticks out in my mind the most.
Also, your local elections matter too ya know.
Who their real father is.
Not sure you should give one to a CAT, though. Might relate to the size issue as posted by Sister Vigilante, but I don’t know. My mother gave one to a cat once, and it went all foaming, spitting crazy for awhile. Poor thing got better, though.
/She also gave us spoonfuls of Vick’s vaporub when we were kids. Don’t do that.
//My sister got old enough to read and told her it says not to do that on the bottle.
///We survived to adulthood anyway. Somehow.
That the average starting price of winners of a particular past horse race is no guide to the winners of the next running of the race.
(You may/ may not be surprised how often this is used on professional racing shows).
I think it would probably be more useful to know that Facebook will evolve or be replaced by something that serves a similar purpose, but does it better. I don’t think think social networking is a fad any more than TV or telephones.
However, I do agree that it will have to change to keep up in the coming decade or so.
Agreed.
Continuing on that theme: correlation is not causation. Also, a basic understanding of cognitive biases would go a long way.
One does not always end up in the water on purpose.
Everyone should know CPR (and how to properly perform a Heimlich, for that matter). And everyone should know how important it is to do it early and do it right.
Everyone should know that deaths do not “come in threes”. Well, they do if you divide them up that way. To me, for example, deaths come in seventeens.
mmm
Everyone who works with MS Excel beyond just looking at output should understand at least how VLOOKUP works, and preferably OFFSET and MATCH.
I figured that out, but how do I open the gorram petrol cap?!
Well that is not the same situation that I, or many other people who are Carers are in. It’s not all about sitting listening to someone reminiscing about the good old days. I have to contend with my mother persistently trying to get me to make tea for her hallucinations, as well as picking her up off the floor when she falls - and she thrashes about when I’m trying to lift her, so she’s fucking my back and shoulders up.
I know a woman who’s Caree was ‘twice the size of her’ and she had to lift him in and out of bed without a hoist for several years, before she was finally given a manual hoist that she had to jack up and down herself. He got bedsores and she used to have to turn him over every two hours for months to prevent them getting infected.
Have you seen an infected bedsore?
Or how’s about the woman who’s father had Dementia and thought she was his girlfriend and tried to sexual assault her?
Or perhaps you find the idea of cleaning up after an elderly person who’s doubly incontinent a delight?
Or the elderly person who shits in any receptacle they can find as long as it’s not the toilet?
Or the incontinent elderly who hide their soiled clothing and you can’t figure out where the smell is coming from?
Or the elderly dementia addled old man who got lost coming home from the shop and was found dead in a field a mile away? They must have been such fun searching for him.
:mad:
Often in those cases, floods and tsunamis for example, ability to swim is meaningless.
I also stay away from the edges of cliffs, from burning buildings, and from lions. But one day they may be the cause of my death. Oh well, gotta die of something.
The basics of a computer, and the basics of working with a computer. The different between “logging off” and actually rebooting, what click and drag means, such things like that.
Hell, I think it should be a mandatory class for Jr. High kids.
Ok, so you missed the *Tool * reference, but some day the water may come to you. Hence the Tool reference.
Not intentionally going into water does not preclude you actually being immersed in water at some point, by choice or not. Flooding happens to the point where non-swimmers may die, pools are everywhere, and any international travel usually involves being over water at some point.
Learning to swim is a basic survival skill, regardless of when or if you may ever use it. I personally find it shocking when people say they can’t swim.
Can you expound on this? I use Excel every day, but I never get deep into complicated formulas or any of the other super-user features. I’m pleased enough when I can truncate a number, or use a keyboard shortcut to insert today’s date.
I think most of us already know that, but the question is, what kind of american is he?
Is he a god-hating Muslim communist from the northern People’s Republic of Canuckstan
or
Is he a Drug pushing gangster from the southern Narcorepublic of Mexico, who spends his every waking minute trying to work out how to nanny away hard-working true Americans’ booze and tobacco.