I heard this, said in all seriousness as part of an explanation to somebody, not as a joke:
“Do you know how the Hubble Space Telescope works? It can take better pictures of other galaxies because it is so much closer to them than telescopes on the ground.”
And this met with no disagreement from 3 other college-educated individuals. (Liberal arts majors, mind you, but still…)
I tried to explain that perhaps it was because it’s above most of the earth’s turbulent atmosphere, and that it’s not significantly closer to anything, but I don’t think I convinced them.
I teach travel. I was quizzing some new students on geography by naming states and having them point to the state on a map (which lacked the states’ names, of course). I asked one person to point to Ohio. She pointed to Iowa. I said, “No, that’s not it,” but she insisted it was. When I asked why she was so sure, she said that it was due to pronunciation…some people called it Eye-Oh-Wa and some people called it Oh-High-Oh, but it was the same state.
Which a moment’s thought will tell you won’t work, since though she can’t be tried twice for the same crime, the new murder would be a different crime. Something the people who made the movie freely admitted, by the way.
But people don’t really rely on the movies for their legal knowledge anyway, right…?
Right and right.
They shouldn’t rely on techs for their legal knowledge either. At work, I think I’ve finally realized that unless it’s about the machines it’s just not worth arguing about.
When I was in travel school on the first day they handed out a basic geography test. 50 questions. Pretty lame. I only hestitated over the usual “Is it in North Carolina or South Carolina” answer.
When we got our test back I was the only one in class who got them all right. The girl right next to me got one, and it WAS NOT
" What is the capital of Michigan" (where we live.)
The early bird gets the worm but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
In fourth grade, my brother had occasion to mention the Aurora Borealis in class. Not only had his teacher never heard of it - when he explained what it was, she accused him of making it up.
I was rather creeped out but tried not to display shock when a woman with her teen-aged son quite pleasantly wondered out loud whether the (American) Indians were really from India.
My co-worker was discussing plans with a friend about making a trip to England. She was lamenting the expense of the tickets and our resident idiot said, “Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to drive?” This woman was serious!! Even after she explained it was an island country, she still did not understand why she could not just “take a ferry or something.” Eventually she gave up and told her that it sounded like a good idea and that she would look into the “ferry” idea.
Born O.K. the first time…
If you are born again, do you have two belly buttons?
Oh, for the love of Pete. To leave a confederation of states is to SECEDE. While I’m at it, to misplace something is to LOSE it.
That rant being over, I’m really sorry I eavesdropped on one of my co-workers. That awful “dinner party” pyramid scheme is going through the Northwest like wildfire, and I was reassuring myself that only the two least intelligent people in my office were known to be participating… until I overheard the new software sales manager recruiting people on his cell phone. The guy just got promoted to a $110K job, bought a new house, got a new company-leased Explorer… and he’s not smart or ethical enough not to participate in an obvious and simple pyramid scam. Hey smart fella! IT’S A FUCKING CRIME FOR A REASON !
One thing that kind of got to me…A few years ago, I was teaching a freshman calculus class at a university. I gave a test, and to make everything nice and even, I graded it out of 80 points. Several students came up to me and asked how to calculate their percent score on the test. I was nice and straightforward about it, but inside I was thinking, “What the hell are you doing in this class if you don’t know how to do that?”
A lot of those politics Government questions I think are hard. I know I’m not from the US, so those don’t specifically apply, but I don’t know much about my own country’s Governmental make-up either. It’s not something you really need to know.
And a couple of you also seem to be overreacting to some fairly unsurprising ignorance in other matters too.
Not everyone needs to know some stuff, especially obscure things unrelated to daily life. Okay, some may be laughable or shocking, but it’s not always bad! My Mother, who is a very intelligent insightful woman, didn’t know what stars were. I had to explain. I was surprised, but not shocked. It was just something she never needed to know.
Having said that, the rest of you have some scary tales there.
The point is not that people are often astonishingly ignorant - but that so many of them never hesitate to lecture and pontificate on topics on which they are completely clueless.
I’m reminded of an old story I read about a Philosophy T.A. who - as a type of an analogy for some principle (don’t remember what) stated that on earth, if you dropped a pencil it would fall to the ground, but if you were on the moon it would fly off into space. Of course 20 of the 22 students didn’t even blink, but one called him on it. He asked the T.A. why Neal Armstrong didn’t ‘go flying off into space’ and the answer was ‘heavy boots’. This satisfied the T.A. and the other students.
Also, I don’t care what you say, you cannot blame it all on public schools. If a person can live through 20 years in this country - school or no school and not know that WWII happened, or that the moon has gravity then they are an idiot. A complete idiot. They are qualified for disability.
Hmmm… this is reminding me of a conversation I had with my girlfriend:
Her: “When I was in Indianapolis, the sun set a lot later in the winter.” (as opposed to when it sets in Chicago, not as opposed to when it sets in the summer)
Me: “Well, then it would of set sooner in the summer, because it all evens out in the end.”
Her: “No, it set later in the summer too.”
Me: “Wait… then Indianapolis is getting more sunlight than darkness per year. That’s not possible.”
Her: “Well, that’s how it was. the sun set later in the day and rose earlier in the morning in both the summer and winter than it does her.”
Me: “But no matter where you are, by the end of the year you have an equal amount of light and dark. Even if you have one of those six week Artic nights, you get a six week Artic day at some point. Unless Indianapolis surries across the face of the Earth, trying to keep warm, it’s not possible.”
At which point she got very mad at me, accused me of calling her a liar. I gave up (but secretly know I’m right).
Not so much eavesdropping, but at lunch I end up hearing endless discussions about beer and brewing. I’ve heard these for 3 years and forgotten most of it. There’s a major division into two categories and one is lager (yeast)and…mumble…something. Then there’s bocks,ales, stouts porters steam etc etc and I’m lost. I like ales as far as I can tell.
I guess a lot of these guys started brewing when stores had one kind of beer:american.
If Indianapolis uses Daylight Savings Time, it’s entirely possible that your friend was correct. Indiana is nominally in the western part of the US Eastern time zone (“nominally” because they play some funny games with DST). Chicago is in the eastern part of the US Central time zone.
Imagine a town straddling the border between two time zones. The sun would set at about the same “time” in both halves, but the clocks in the eastern half would read an hour later than the clocks in the western half.
This doesn’t mess up the amount of daylight each half receives, because the sun also rises an hour later in the eastern half according to the clocks.
Oh, wait, she says it rose earlier and set later all year around.
In which case she’s just flat wrong, unless she doesn’t consider it to have “risen” until she can see it over the horizon, which in downtown Chicago consists largely of extremely tall buildings.
I didn’t overhear this, and it wasn’t a coworker, but…
I was at the grocery store the other day. All I bought was a drink. With tax, it came to 84¢. When I got to the cashier, I pulled out a dollar bill, then realized that I had a whole buttload of pennies in my pocket, and decided to get rid of a few. So I gave the cashier one dollar bill and four pennies. She took the dollar bill, but didn’t notice the pennies. By the time I pointed them out to her, she’d already rung it up.
I gave her the pennies, she frowned at them, looked at the display saying I was due 16¢ change, looked at me and said, “So, how much change do I give you?”