What took me by surprise about both world wars and especially WW1 was that the wars had started long before America got involved and in the case of WW1, was going on a 3 full years before we came in in the last part of 1917.
You see here in the US they really build up how the US lead the world in the wars and how the US basically by themselves, beat Germany and Japan when in reality we were latecomers in both and our allies did the majority of the fighting and dieing. In WW1 that would be the UK, France, and the others while in WW2 that would be the UK and Russia.
More to the point, the “best by” date is not the “poisonous after” date, and many people seem to think it is. I know lots of people who automatically throw out anything if they’ve kept it after the “best by” date, believing it will make them sick.
>> The term yellow dwarf is a misnomer, because G-type stars actually range in color from white, for more luminous types like the Sun, to only very slightly yellow for the less massive and luminous G-type main-sequence stars. The Sun is in fact white, but appears yellow through Earth’s atmosphere due to atmospheric Rayleigh scattering.
Well, I always think the speaker means 1974–the date of the coup in Chile.
As for not not knowing the Revolutionary War came before the Civil War, as a Canadian I could imagine people first trying a civil, polite war, and if that didn’t work, well, maybe as a last, revolutionary resort, it could go gloves off.
The portion you have referenced has already been discussed repeatedly. I could’ve left it out of the quote, but I left it in, just because it reinforces the idea.
I guess it comes down to how pedantic a person really wants to be. I, personally, would choose to be pedantic enough to say that our Sun emits white light, which is why snow and other white things appear to be white rather than some other color. This fact is not unreasonably complex or demanding. The full spectra and the effects of our atmosphere and so forth are well illustrated in the graphic I linked earlier. Other people are welcome to represent the Sun in whatever manner they choose. I would be content with those people understanding that their representations are artistic choices.
I am reminded of a quote from Futurama in which a bureaucrat says, “You are technically correct! That’s the best kind of correct!”
I guess the issue I have with a lot of these posts is this attitude that these people are so stupid, they don’t know <fill in your favorite pedantic trivia>.
If I kid draws the Sun as Yellow, I don’t need to go into the physics of the color spectrum, or the chemistry of the Cones of the eye, or the Astronomy of the Classification of Stars to explain to him that he’s wrong - the Sun DOES appear yellow! It also appears White and Red and Purple, and a myriad of other colors. Just look at a sunset sometime.
The same with the machinist tolerance issue. If the part has a dimension of .350-.360, .3603 is out of spec. Period. No amount of “I took high school Math and learned about significant digits” is going to change that.
There are a lot of posts in this thread that fit the criteria for the OP, but those two (and probably the stupid Map one, too) don’t.
Sometimes, people like having a little more than a basic understanding of the world around them. Sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes, “God did it.” is enough. Sometimes, taking a moment to explain about light spectra or significant digits really will open a person’s eyes to a larger world.
The word “stupid” carries a lot of baggage that is unfortunate here. There aren’t all that many stupid people. However, there are many willfully uninformed. For this thread, we’re probably more interested in the inadvertently uninformed.
Not me. It was usually an excerpt from an epistle (usually Paul, but sometimes Peter), and a reading from one of the gospels. Both MRT (Most Recent Testament. The so-called “New” Testament is actually pretty old).
That seems odd to me. You didn’t have two readings before the gospel? And you’re Roman Catholic, not some other denomination? I thought it was fairly standardized. OT first reading, responsorial psalm, NT second reading, alleluia, gospel. (Although the two readings may change depending on time of year, but in ordinary time, that was the sequence.)
I googled. There’s an official schedule (it’s true; you can find anything online) of what passages are to be read in Catholic Masses. Here’s a current list:
June 11: Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9
June 18: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16
June 25: Jeremiah 20:10-13
July 2: 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16
July 9: Zechariah 9:9-10
July 16: Isaiah 55:10-11
July 23: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 (Just to remind everyone they’re Catholics)
July 30: 1 King 3:5, 7-12
I feel like these kinds of threads are about as pedantic as the board gets. People are always arguing about what constitutes ‘‘stupid’’ and seem to take issue with every other offered example. I’ll confess with a lot of these examples I’m usually in the ‘‘stupid’’ boat, or at least the ‘‘I could theoretically have not known that,’’ boat. I don’t always have the best common sense.But it doesn’t really bother me because I know that on the whole, I am not stupid. I’m just limited in certain areas.
[QUOTE=susan]
The sun rises in the east. Yes, that’s true in other states, too. Also: other countries.
[/QUOTE]
Here are a few examples of things that I did not know for far too long (probably because of my hearing problems).
“card sharp” - someone who is very good at card games… I had always heard this as “card shark”, and I still actually prefer “shark” in this context because it gives that sense of predator and prey that can be present when the skill sets at the game are unequal.
“shot caller” - the ranking member of a particular gang in a given prison yard. I’ve always heard this as “shock collar”. And… I’m still partial to my version… It conveys the hard, sharp shock that violence is meant to communicate in prison. “shot caller” is bland - might as well call the guy “leader”. Joy. But, if Jim was the shock collar, I would stay away from Jim, I promise you that.
