I’m trying to count the number of things wrong with that statement.
Yeah, it’s a shame. It’s also a shame about all the PEOPLE who were killed and injured. And the property damage that was not confined to stores.
I’m not sure if she was excluding stores that were not big boxes “like Sears and Ralphs,” but did she miss the prominently displayed “BLACK OWNED” signs on smaller stores? And the photo of the very African-American guy weeping in front of the blazing strip mall that contained his privately owned business? I wish I knew what happened to him, although I probably don’t want to.
Even if the government did “run all the stores,” the money to replace government property comes from guess where. The taxpayers’ pockets. I do not know the young lady, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that her parents earned their livelihood instead of being subsidized by the government. But in that case, shame on them for not imparting that knowledge to her.
“Just put them back.” Yeah, poof, there’s a supermarket. Poof, there’s a laundrymat. Was she also unaware of how slowly construction can progress, and how much disruption it can cause?
There’s also the matter of the regions which suffered the most damage being the regions to which the goverment was loath to contribute in the first place, which is part of what led to the deep resentment that fueled the unrest, but that would have been way beyond her comprehension.
Happy Wanderer, I see that you were not a Doper at the time. If you had been, you would have heard of Wal-Mart, all right.
I don’t know if this was truly dumb, but a few years ago, during the NBA finals, I heard a co-worker say, “But the Lakers can’t always win!”
Well…if one team consistently plays better than the other teams in the league, then they’ll keep winning. It’s not an awards show, where people vote and factor in who deserves it more and who will have other chances. If other teams are inspired to improve so that they outperform the multi-championship team, then one of those teams will win. In sports, the race generally is to the swift.
Back in the day before it was popular for disillusioned teens to wear big, puffy jackets, the fad was to wear no jacket at all. One winter day I was waiting at the bus stop with two such youthful trendsetters when one said to the other…
…Wait for it…
…“Man, it’s cold!”
while doing radio within ten miles of the People’s Republic of Bezerkeley, home of UC and its’ women’s studies program, I got a (female) caller who said in all seriousness…
“Women can’t be sexist!” :smack:
Similar to the lightbulb anectdote, I had a friend who led a very sheltered pampered “daddy’s girl” existence.
When she was around 25, she bought a mountain bike, wanting to learn how to ride one. She hadn’t ridden a bike since she was 8 or so, little pink one with training wheels.
She called me over in panic after buying it, because the tires were soft (the inner tubes came separately). So I showed up with bike tools in hand to put her tubes on.
Upon removing the front wheel, she freaked out, thinking I had broken her new bike, and the store would never take it back now that the wheel was off! I had to lengthily explain the concept of bolts, screws, and wrenches, and that the wheel comes off by design. I also tried to demonstrate the topological concept necessitating the removal of the tire when she insisted that I could insert the tube into the tire without removing the wheel. All of this I did nicely and patiently, smirking inside of course, but being careful not to insult her naivete.
After a couple of hours, we had a nice new functional bike. She returned it to the store the next day without ever riding it, saying it was too much of a hassle for her to own one.
Oh god, you just reminded me of the stupidest thing I ever heard someone say. It was on MTV years ago, some special show about race relations, and some black guy said, “I can’t be racist because I’m black.” Even at the age of 16 I knew that was about the stupidest thing I was ever likely to hear.
We bought our first home 10 years ago. It was a pretty modest place… single story, no basement, small yard. Just a typical ranch.
Soon afterwards my cousin came over for a visit. She had never owned a home. When I gave her a tour, she kept saying, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you’re so lucky, you’re so lucky…”
I thought to myself, “Luck? Luck?! Luck had nothing to do with it. I worked my ass off to buy this place.”
**Pochacco ** is correct… contrary to popular belief, lift is not due to the differential pressure (due to Bernoulli’s Principle) between the top and bottom surfaces of the wings. An airplane stays aloft due to the wings’ positive angle of attack. When the plane moves forward, the wings force air down. Because air has mass, there is an equal and opposite force on the airplane in the *upward * direction.
That’s a case of redefining a word: some academics use “racism” as the term, but they mean “institutionalized racism”: that which is part of a society. Thus, if you’re an outsider, it’s not racism.
So, it’s true as far as it goes, but they’re talking apples while everyone else is talking cardboard.
One of my girlfriends, many moons ago, showed some interest in a staff member where we both volunteered that I had previously known. (He was a year ahead of me in HS.) This was before we decided to date exclusively. But I ventured the opinion that he was an unlikely candidate to respond to her interest, based on my recent impression of him at that point, many years after graduation. (Don’t hit me, folks, this was a LOOONNNNNG time ago and I’m more cautious about what I venture these days. Also, I’m more careful not to stereotype people.)
I ventured the opinion that he probably was gay.
:o :smack:
Essentially true paraphrase of what she replied follows:
<<That can’t be so. He was in a (Roman Catholic) seminary for a while.>>
The missing part in understanding all of this is that there is a tree in Hawaii, called the “screwpine”, which has fruits that look very much like pineapples. In fact, the locals sometimes call it the “haole pineapple”, because it is often mistaken for a pineapple by “haoles” (white folks).
So if you’re sitting on your horse, looking right at a tree with “pineapples” on it … you might be inclined to think that your guide is just having a little fun at your expense.
I tend bar at Molly’s at the Market, New Orleans. About a week ago, a fireman came in around 3am and ordered a drink. After several minutes of small talk in which I divulged my recent decision to quit graduate school back in Virginia and move to New Orleans to rediscover my talent as a drummer, a scholar, and an all-around blue-collared schmuck, this anonymous fireman proceeded to impress me with a rather eloquent speech about how I wasn’t living up to my potential and that the only way for me to do so is to go back to school and become a professor/academic (which is what I thought I wanted to be until my thesis advisor informed me that joining the academy is about proving that I know how to “play the game” and that until I do so I “won’t go anywhere”).
Anyway, the fireman concluded that I’m “missing out on life” because I abandoned the pursuit of truth in favor of, to use my own words, “helping people out through understanding myself first and foremost.” To which I replied, “So because my mother, a rather intelligent woman, chose to pursue her passion for parenting rather than her passion for forensic pathology, she’s missing out on life?” He said, “Yes.”
Wait, it gets better…
After a bit of back and forth in which I completely disagreed with his assessment of life, the universe, and everything, he spit the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a very long time: “People who dedicate their lives to belief rather than The Truth miss out on life.” I replied, “And you know that for a fact?” And he said, “Yes.”
Well, at least I can sleep soundly knowing this fireman is living up to his potential.
Bill Cosby: “When my wife was pregnant I was worried about what the baby’d do all day. Nine months! That’s a long time, man! I tried to get her to swallow a ball or something…”
My boyfriend’s roommate is a complete idiot, which I normally don’t mind as it would be entertaining if he weren’t also an arrogant jerk who talks down to everyone, especially me since I am a female physicist, and that is somehow “funny” to him, because women cannot be “real physicists.” That is only moderately stupid compared to the episode I am about to describe…
While I was hooking up the cable from the first floor to all three rooms of their second floor apartment (the three grown men who live there do not have the faculties to do this, or programming universal remotes, or looking up things on the internet, or peeing IN the toilet…) the moron says “Be sure to ask me before changing the channel in your room, since it will change the channel on my TV, and I might not want to watch what you are watching!” I then explained that this will not happen, but he felt the need to warn us again for the next three nights in a row! :smack:
