I twice came across someone who was unaware of Lord of the Rings, both Jackson’s film and original novels, which is fair enough, but they were self-proclaimed geeks. I remarked how the dragon/wyvern picture he was admired looked remarkably like a Nazgul Mount; nothing. Later a lady made a sculpture that was obviously an Ent; again, nothing.
The mind boggles!
Two cow-orkers were talking about some reality show person attending school, saying he is going to a brick & mortar school. The other cow-orker thought, for a good five minutes of conversation, that he was attending a trade school and learning how to lay bricks.
mmm
That shouldn’t matter. It’s the owner’s manual of the religion! If you don’t know how it works you shouldn’t be allowed to operate it!
mc
I once had a colleague ask me which came first, the American Revolution or the American Civil War?
Okay, I understand not everyone has a good knowledge of history. But how could you not be able to figure out that the Revolution had to be before the Civil War?
Sure, but Joseph’s story is one of the big ones. It’s what gets Israel into Egypt so that Moses can get them out and back where Abraham was. And, if you know about the “coat of many colors,” shouldn’t you also know where that led? You know he had the coat, but not that it made his brothers jealous, got him sold into slavery, but that leads to him becoming a rule in Egypt and saving his family (and the country) from a famine?
It just seems an odd one not to know. Otherwise, you’re left wondering “why do they have to come back to where Abraham already was?”
I was raised a Catholic and in every Mass I attended, there were two scripture readings; one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.
Nah, as mentioned, there’s an OT reading, a NT (non-Gospel) reading, and a Gospel reading. And it Easter Vigil, four or five OT readings if you’re lucky, two or three if not.
I’m always shocked by what people don’t know about Judaism. There are too many examples for me to list.
Another one is when people name a kid something, and it sounds like they’ve named him after a famous person, and then it turns out they’ve never heard of that person.
I met a little kid named Frank Wright, and I asked his mother if his middle name was Lloyd. She asked why, and it turned out she’d never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Another time, I read an article in the paper about a couple whose preemie had survived some disaster in the nursery. The father was a junior, but had declined to make his son a III, because he wanted him to have a name “all his own.” The fantastically unique name they’d chosen? Zachary Taylor.
This used to come up at my son’s preschool where I worked at lunch. People were always putting hot food into containers, and then sticking them into the fridge. Not so bad if it was Tupperware-- although a couple of times I had to use pliers-- but if it had a screwtop, you were never getting that sucker off. The only safe way was to let it sit in a pan of hot water for like 15 minutes. The unsafe way was to try microwaving it for 30 seconds, and hope it didn’t blow up. The amazing thing was that a number of these parents had Ph.Ds. I guess a Ph.D in Comp. Lit. doesn’t mean you remember anything from 8th grade physics.
Then, there’s my bone-headed friend who was convinced that the reason that insurance companies try to get your car and house/renter’s insurance, is that they think the odds that something bad happens to your car AND your house are pretty low. No matter how many times I tried to explain to her that the guy who rear ends you has no idea whether or not you’ve recently had a house fire, and besides, what if your car is in the garage when your house catches on fire? I could not shake her of this belief.
This seems like the least “stunning” thing in the thread so far.
Like Ford Prefect?
Depends which things. I wouldn’t expect Bob Q. Goyguy to know, say, the thirty-nine melachot of Shabbat. On the other hand, I thought “pork isn’t kosher” was sufficiently diffused into pop culture that it went without saying, but apparently that’s not entirely true.
Well, yes, that seems to be the whole point of confusion. Who, who is familiar with catalytic converters, would think someone is talking about the non-existent “Cadillac converters”?
It all has to do with the way they kill the pig.
Isn’t that the Matrix of Leadership
I’ve now met multiple people who didn’t know that a temporary password ceases to work after you pick another password. They’ve all been convinced you could continue to use the temp as an alternative to your real password.
In the Army I had a Military Intelligence officer unsure why he couldn’t see video when he called his wife on Skype. So I went over all the settings on his laptop 3 times trying to figure it out, then I went over his call log and it turned out he’d been calling her voice line on her cell phone.
Such as Gordon, Clive or Stanley?
Commercial banks create money when they make loans and and destroy money when the loans are repaid. 97% of money is created this way.
The following is about an “Oh-so-not-Christian” – nonetheless, was amazing to me to hear. My brother (aged 60 – a die-hard atheist; and a very intelligent and, mostly, well-informed guy) claimed to me a few months ago, not to know – and to be surprised to be hearing, as for the first time – that the Old Testament (of whose general existence, he was aware) was part of the Bible. He had seemingly thought hitherto, that the Bible was just the New Testament. He claimed also, not to be familiar with the word “Testament” in this context. Per his assertion, all this stuff was new and surprising to him.
(I rather suspect that he was bullshitting – feigning ignorance of these matters, in order to underline his contempt for religion of any stamp.)
I have a friend, American, who once commented that Italians weren’t “white” (Caucasian). She hadn’t got past Gr 9 and was raised in a pretty redneck family, but she’s actually quite intelligent.