This happened in Australia in the 80s? Your wife should have played this song for him:
“This happened in Australia in the 80s?”
The guy who didn’t know what war was going on in 1943 was attending a midwestern American university.
As attributed to Will Rogers:
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Twain said “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot…”
I interpret that to mean you know by observation and experience.
Which I’m not sure I can agree with. Some things you need to get your hands on, others you can learn from studying and reading.
Just gotta be careful who you’re reading.
I take Twain to be criticizing someone who has an advantage to learn (ie by reading), but chooses not to, thereby giving up an important tool and putting themselves in the same class as illiterates.
…but to further quote Twain (well, paraphrase): We must be careful to take out of an experience only what we should. A cat that tries to lie on a hot wood stove will never make that mistake again, but will never lie on a cold wood stove either.
That sounds like a better way to interpret it. Thanks.
It’s really important to factor in opportunity though. If you have not had adequate opportunity to learn a thing, you probably just didn’t get to learn it. That perhaps puts you at a disadvantage, but people automatically treat it like it’s a character flaw or moral failing.
Nitpick: I used to have a cat who disproved that.
He landed on a hot stove once, his first winter; he was running across the room and jumped up on it, presumably moving too fast to realize the heat before it was too late. He came back off that stove even faster (and unhurt; I went after him, caught him, and inspected paws. He must not have been in contact long enough to get burned through calluses and fur.)
In the summer, the top of that stove was one of the coolest places in the house. And he used to lie down on it sometimes –
This went hilariously viral in 2017. I bet more of Teh Kids know it now than at any other point in the past 91 years.
You buried the lede!
The first early evidence of parody being written online is an allusion to a thread that existed on the “Straight Dope” message board, but was deleted in 2002. [
I missed that, and don’t remember the deleted thread. (Damn you, Winter of our Missed Content!)
That’s wonderful, and OF COURSE we did it first. How could we not have.
No one cares, but youse (the generic youse) definitely should care because the touch-typing many of us learned as children transfers over to computer keyboards. I learned it because I loved typewriters, but today it allows me to type in seconds what a hunt-and-peck typist would take minutes to accomplish. When I type on a computer keyboard, text flows across the screen like the rapids in a raging river! 
My wife had me explain what was meant by “Pythonesque” last night, having never heard of Monty Python before. I showed her some clips she would enjoy (philosopher’s playing football, the Communist quiz show, “Biggus Dickus” from Life of Brian) and she now wants to watch LoB tonight.
Good job!
I’d like to watch Life of Brian, but my wife thinks it mocks God. I have the complete TV series on DVD, as well as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Meaning of Life, and Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (my wife couldn’t make it past the first King Bruno scene). I have Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl on VHS (adding the DVD to my shopping cart), and I might have The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball on VHS.
ETA: I’ve just ordered the DVD of Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and the DVD boxed set of Pleasure At Her Majesty’s (1976), The Secret Policeman s Ball (1979), The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball (1981), The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball (1987), and The Secret Policeman’s Biggest Ball (1989). (There was only one left, so I ordered it.)
Of course it does! That’s the beauty of it!
Yes. But she takes her religion very seriously.
And LoB ist the best anodyne for anyone taking religion too seriously.
His wife is neither American, Canadian, nor from the UK. I forget where she’s from, but not 'round here. And IIRC, a rather recent immigrant to the USA.
Well, it did say “Jehovah.”