# When otherwise intelligent people stun you with their lack of knowledge. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 16, 2002, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025 "2002-04-16T22:15:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![moe.ron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@moe.ron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moe.ron)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/21 "2002-04-18T05:49:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Goo \* > \*\*Ummm, me. All the time. > > I’ve always been considered fairly intelligent (in some areas) but I have next to no common sense, and often come out with doozy’s. The latest one was this weekend, when I said "How long does 60 Minutes go… " > > O.K, I didn’t finish the sentence, but it was too late, and the damage was done. My friends were still laughing about it when the credits of the show rolled, and I’d asked about half an hour before the show was to begin. (insert embarrassed smiley here) \*\* You could have gotten by in the fact that most shows are only 22 minutes long, allowing 8 minutes for commercial break. 16 minutes per hour, 24 minutes per hour and a half. Rounding a 66 minute show, down to 60 minutes and telling them that they still have a few more minutes to go. But hey, we all have 20/20 in hindsight. I saw something on Leno tonight (I don’t like any of them but Conan), which were trivia with college students. I don’t know if this is a regular feature on the show, but my jaw dropped on so many occasioins. 1st- “When was the civil war?” One answer was “the 20’s”, and the next was “the 1960’s to 70’s”??? One of them was then asked who the president at the time was. The answer: “Reagan.” 2nd- “What was the iron curtain?” “you know those chastity belts for girls? I think they were what guys have for the same purpose (paraphrasing).” another- “Wasn’t that the Pittsburg Steelers in the 70’s?” 3rd- “When did Columbus discover America?” Okay, this has been drilled in your head since the 3rd grade, right!? Her answer- 1942. I know this may have been a dislexic mistake or something, but when she tried to correct herself, and said 1842, I became scared. She eventually took a que from someone in the audience, and gave the right answer, but my god, “A long time ago” would have been a better answer than that. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/22 "2002-04-18T10:23:53Z")
Flatmate of mine, in her second year of a music degree, once asked me, “How many stars are there in the solar system?” (Yes, we were talking astronomy, not Hollywood…) ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/23 "2002-04-18T10:48:46Z")
Count me in as someone who sometimes displays bizarre ignorance. I’m not TOO bad, but sometimes… I have a friend who is quite brilliant. A genius, I am sure. She’s nice, and all, but she sometimes likes to “rub in” how ignorant I am, compared to her. I don’t appreciate it. However, I remind myself of some of her own flaws, one of them being rather delusional about what is and is not appropriate behavior. (She sometimes is a borderline stalker. Not _really_ stalking, but enough to make everyone around her cringe and say "You did _what?!?!_ You followed him _where?!?!"_ Yikes.) I also know a co-worker who I would not consider educated, but she manages to function in society pretty well, and all that. I was trying to explain to her that I was a vegetarian, and I didn’t eat animals. She said “But fish aren’t animals!” I was astonished. She just wouldn’t believe that fish were animals. I mean, when you think of the categories of “animal, mineral or vegetable”, what other category would fish belong to? Mineral? Vegetable? Come on! When I tried to explain this to her, she still furrowed her brow and I could tell she wasn’t buying that fish were actually an animal of some sort. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/24 "2002-04-18T10:57:46Z")
I know someone who honestly thought that Princess Diana was American. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/25 "2002-04-18T11:02:02Z")
Oh, just remembered. I also know someone who thought that period dramas were filmed in the era they were based in. She couldn’t understand how, when she saw the actors in other movies/tv shows, they hadn’t aged. This person is now studying law. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/26 "2002-04-18T11:29:51Z")
I’m told that one professor in my department pointed to a dandelion and asked what kind of flower it was. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/27 "2002-04-18T11:33:06Z")
When I was in grammar school I was frequently appalled by the ignorance of our Science Teachers. No joke. Here are a few of their gems: – You get malaria by mosquitos laying their eggs i your bloodstream. – A robin redbreast has a red breast because its skin is so thin you can see their blood through it. – An airplane flies by floating on a cushion of air. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/28 "2002-04-18T12:21:50Z")
The guy I work with is very sharp about work issues and lots of other stuff, but was completely unaware that modern car tyres do not have inner-tubes. ---
**Author:** ![11811](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/9d8465/32.png) [@11811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/11811)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/29 "2002-04-18T12:39:34Z")
Had to change a flat tire for my boss (why I did this is another story). This woman was head of a large editing department and had done most of the coursework for an MBA, IIRC. She couldn’t understand why you couldn’t/didn’t take the donut tire off the spare rim and put it on the big rim. We tried to explain, but I don’t think it took. ---
**Author:** ![Caught\_Work](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@Caught\_Work](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caught_Work)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/30 "2002-04-18T13:03:07Z")
When having our house built, Mrs. Caught@Work (Caught@Home I suppose), asked me the question as to why they were laying the bricks from the ground up. She thought it would be easier to start at the top. She is not a dumbo. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/31 "2002-04-18T15:02:08Z")
Once in high school I was working on a paper and my mom asked what it was about. I said “euthanasia” and she said “Oh? What about them?” I love to tell this one about my husband, who is a physicist currently working for NASA. One xmas as a gift we’d gotten a set of those glass candles you fill with oil and I’d lit a few one night. I was preparing to go to bed and told him “Don’t forget to put out the candles” and he walked around them a couple times scratching his head and said “How do I turn them off?” ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/32 "2002-04-18T16:20:50Z")
Back in college, I lived in the Foreign Languages Theme Dorm, and we had a house advisor who was German, and finishing up his Ph.D. in German lit with a specialization in film criticism. Being very fond of beer he was naturally proud of his homeland’s proud brewing tradition. One day he said, “Gemany has a thousand-year brewing tradition, and America has Prohibition”. Considering that most Americans, especially in those days, were descended from immigrants who came from various Northern European countries, I’d say we had a claim on that thousand-year thing too. Or maybe he thought we just sprang out spontaneously from under Plymouth Rock. [Aside] The rural center of the country, where Prohibitionist sentiments were strongest, positively pullulated with German descendants and immigrants! Go figure…[/aside] ---
**Author:** ![jlzania](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jlzania](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jlzania)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/33 "2002-04-18T18:03:01Z")
Uh… **Caesar’s Ghost** …your bio teacher is not a gullible as you may think: [http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/blackhat/021501.html](http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/blackhat/021501.html) When I was a travel agent, I was absolutely astounded by the geographical ignorance of otherwise intelligent professionals. Examples follow: 1. The client that wanted to cruise to Las Vegas 2. The client that wanted to drive from Ireland to England 3. The client that wanted to know if they needed a passport to get into New Mexico. 4)The client that complained that there were too many Mexicans in Cancun. I could go on and on and on but you get my drift. I also taught travel school at night for a while and was floored when one of my students asked me who had won WWII. She had an excuse however-she was the product of a Rio Grande Valley high school education. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/34 "2002-04-18T18:16:05Z")
I have a co-worker (who claims to be an expert in pool care & maintenance) who tells customers that their pool could have a negative pH. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/35 "2002-04-18T18:42:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jlzania \* > \*\*Uh… **Caesar’s Ghost** …your bio teacher is not a gullible as you may think: > [http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/blackhat/021501.html](http://www.capitol-college.edu/troxler/blackhat/021501.html) \*\* Nope, gullible: [http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm](http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm) ---
**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/36 "2002-04-18T18:44:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JillGat \* > Ed Zotti had never heard of the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska. Jill: Iditarod. Ed: You did a what? Jill: You know, sled dogs in Alaska. Ed: O…kay. Jill: The record is finishing in 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 2 seconds. Ed: Yyyyyeah. ---
**Author:** ![jlzania](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jlzania](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jlzania)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/37 "2002-04-18T18:53:29Z")
[hijack] My favorite T-shirt says “Alaska where men are men and women win the Iditarod again and again” [/hijack over and out] ---
**Author:** ![Atrael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Atrael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atrael)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/38 "2002-04-18T19:04:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by kferr \* > \*\*The guy I work with is very sharp about work issues and lots of other stuff, but was completely unaware that modern car tyres do not have inner-tubes. \*\* Well, to be fair, in some European countries, inner-tubes are still used…I know when I got my tire replacement in Sicily, they installed an inner tube in the tire. In fact, you can order them [Here](http://www.tirexusa.com/tubes/tubes.html) ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/39 "2002-04-18T19:16:58Z")
My wife’s of “average” intelligence – nice gal, very competent, but fairly average all-around in terms of smarts. While on a family trip to Disneyland, we went to get our picture taken with Mickey Mouse. For those who haven’t “done” Mickey at Disneyland lately, the way this works is that you go to “Mickey’s House,” get in line, and eventually the part folks divvy you up into small groups. Your group goes into a room with a “movie set,” wherein you get your picture taken with Mickey. Anyway, after we got home, I commented on how clever that setup was, since it allowed Disneyland to have five or six “Mickeys” all working in parallel and taking pictures (while your group is getting your photos, another group in another room is getting theirs). My wife, bless her heart, blurted out, “Then how do you know you’re taking your picture with the **real** Mickey Mouse?” :eek: 😃 Of course, I had to mention that there wasn’t a “real” Mickey Mouse, since Mickey’s a celluloid critter. She retorted, “If there’s not a real Mickey Mouse, who’s doing the ‘Fantasmic!’ light show in the evening?” I guess the idea of an actor (or actress) in a mouse suit is too much for her to grasp… ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2002, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025/40 "2002-04-18T19:26:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JillGat \* > \*\*Ed Zotti had never heard of the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska. \*\* I guess that settles the old “Is Ed really Cecil” question. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-otherwise-intelligent-people-stun-you-with-their-lack-of-knowledge/104025.md?page=3)