Really? That’s damn good to know. Are the meat pie pasties pronounced pass-tees?
Not half an hour ago, my boyfriend and I were discussing the circumstances under which war is justified, and I bad-mouthed the appeasement policies of Wilt Chamberlain. My boyfriend quickly began speculating on the basketball career of Neville Chamberlain.
A tourist threw me for a loop today. He asked me where the Père Lachaise was, I gave him quick directions. He then asked me if Joan of Arc was buried there.
And the worst part is, for a good five seconds, he got me to wonder about it myself :smack:
I’m not convinced they teach Classical History at High School in Queensland… the number of co-workers and people I’ve known of the years with a complete ignorance of anything to do with the Greek or Roman world besides “Julius Caesar was that guy in a Toga” and maybe- maybe- “Weren’t they in the Asterix comics?” is both disturbing and appalling at the same time.
Yep, with a short a like in cat.
Of course I’m now picturing old Neville on the court bobbing and weaving round the team, still with his grey suit and tiny moustache.
This thread has made me feel very smart!
I once worked with a girl who made the comment: “Did you know there is no chicken in a Chicken-Fried Steak!? Why do they call it that if there’s no chicken in it?” I think we just ignored her and left her to her cluelessness.
I lived in AR (That’s Arkansas for the abbreviationally-challenged, pronounced “ar-can-saw” for the pronunciationally-challenged) for a time, and when I moved there I was told that winters are very mild. Of course the first winter I lived there, a horrendous ice storm hit, and temps were frigid for several weeks.
I recall going to the store one day and noticed an employee using a shovel to try to break up a large patch of ice. I stood there watching him for several minutes, then I walked over and told him that sprinkling some salt on the ice would get it to melt making it easier to clear away. It had never occurred to him that salt would melt the ice, which was baffling to me.
And Catalina.
I’ve had college students who think that TV was invented very early in the 20th century and that people got through the Great Depression by watching it a lot.
I’d never heard of chicken-fried steak until an episode of Leverage where the British character had also never heard of chicken-friend steak and was as disgusted by it as I am. Course, if you’re from a place where it’s common then that’s as daft as not knowing what a pasty is where I’m from.
This thread makes me feel like people have very skewed perceptions about what things everyone should know. But then, threads like this always do.
Actually, it wasn’t. It was my fault.
One time I was visiting Canterbury Cathedral and overheard a middle aged woman ask one of the guides whether they had any of the dishes from the last supper in there. My friend and I looked at each other as though to ask “Did you hear that, too?” while the guide, completely unfazed, explained to the lady that while they did have the implements to celebrate the sacrament, none of the original dishes survive …
And while I was in college I once presented a paper on illustrations to the Book of Revelations. I was using the terms “Revelations” and “Apocalypse” interchangeably, as one does in German (“Offenbarung” and “Apokalypse”, respectively). All through my paper two students kept whispering to each other. At first I discounted this as normal rudeness until one of them raised her hand and asked “You keep speaking of the Apocalypse. What is that?”.
I truly do not understand how one can make it into college without knowing this.
I have come across someone who thought that a crescent moon really is crescent shaped and that you can see stars between the two horns.
Today, they know even less when arriving in college. Below is a sampling of some of the sentences I’ve come across while assessing essays from incoming students:
Other countries such as Africa, Iraq, and Alaska, etc. do not have access to a TV as Americans do.
Kennedy and Reagan had the first presidential debate.
In Rome we went up a stony hill where Jesus was walking up to meet Pontius Pilate.
At the Gettysburg museum in L.A., my whole life changed as I sat with my dad and stared at Picasso’s Mona Lisa.
John Locke was the founder of the Declaration of Independence.
Julius Caesar was a Greek God.
Alexander the Great was a famous magician.
VCRs are so nineteenth century.
Were these statements made before or after the speaker had a full-frontal lobotomy?
Yep. They’re very popular in parts of Michigan, incidentally - lots of Cornish miners up there.
Well, that’s not that dumb - the ashes of cremated people are buried sometimes. I would have assumed her ashes were interred in a cathedral or somesuch; I didn’t know they were just tossed into the Seine until I looked it up just now.
I was thinking that this one wasn’t that bad, since Kennedy and Nixon did have the first televised debate, and then I realized it said Reagan. :smack:
This one’s not that bad - except for the “founder” part - since the Declaration of Independence used much of Locke’s work as its theoretical underpinning.
I just figure it’s the result of a steady diet of sugary drinks and snack chips over a period of 18 years, give or take.
She was burned as a heretic, by people who hated her guts in any case. Preserving her ashes in a church probably wasn’t high on the list of priorities 
Two things really stand out to me, one being my own stupidity…
The first story, I was visiting NY and was boarding a bus in Long Island to get back to the city. The lady at the counter asked me where I was from, and I told her I was from Illinois. Her response: “Wow, I don’t think I could even locate that on a map!” … Perhaps being born in the Midwest makes me more aware of it, but really, who doesn’t know that IL is at least towards the middle of the U.S.? At least for those of us who live in the U.S. that seems no-brainer.
Ah, and the second story is one of my own “Doh!” moments. A friend was making a comment about the old age joke, “What’s black and white, and re(a)d all over”. Without skipping a beat I go “but newspapers aren’t red” and then “…nevermind” while the entire table of friends erupted in laughter.
This is 2010; they aren’t read much, either.
I went to Catholic school until I hit junior high. One day when I was in 6th grade, I asked a friend what she was doing Friday night.
“Oh, I have to go to temple.”
“What’s temple?”
“It’s like church, but for Jewish people.”
“What’s Jewish?”
It’s true - I didn’t know what “Jewish” meant. I’m sure I’d heard the word before, but I didn’t know it was a religion. I didn’t even realize that other religions EXISTED. I thought Catholicism was the only way to go.
So I can usually find a way to forgive people if they don’t know whether a bird is an amphibian or a reptile. I myself have learned a few new things today from this thread. Thanks, Dopers!
One thing I couldn’t forgive was a med student who didn’t understand diabetets. While recovering at a well-known Chicago hospital after I got my appendix out, I told the intern I needed to check my blood sugar and give myself some insulin. She told me that because I couldn’t eat anything, I didn’t need insulin. I tried to explain to her that as a type 1 diabetic, I would always need insulin, even if I couldn’t eat. She didn’t buy it. My mother “kidnapped” me from that hospital 12 hours after my surgery so I could come home with her and receive some life-sustaining insulin.
Sweet, sweet insulin…