Jumping and running more than flying, but yeah
I would not be at all surprised if my in-laws didn’t know who OJ Simpson was. They’re both remarkably intelligent, but also utterly clueless when it comes to pop culture. They have no interest in professional sports of any kind, hardly watch TV or see movies, and it seems their sole source of recreation is (or was, until my FIL’s health prevented it) ballroom dancing. They both have advanced degrees, and I think he’s got two masters, but even in retirement, they pretty much stuck to their individual stovepipes. For him, it’s civil engineering. For her, accounting. Man, are they boring people.
How many technoparades can the average American name?
Well, taking the long view Chou En Lai style, the jury’s still out on that one.
Back to the Hiroshima Day question - of course I know about Hiroshima, but haven’t been aware that the anniversary was treated as a specifically commemorative Day. But then, the further away we get from historical events, the more formalised and solemnised the commemorative events become. I don’t always keep up - and as for pop culture, I consciously stopped trying thirty years ago.
Then you can really blow his mind when you tell him “oaks come from acorns”
I’m generally really not very good at identifying plants and trees, but oaks also have such characteristic leaves that I can identify them immediately.
An oak is just an acorn’s way of making another acorn.
I know about WBC but I would be clueless with your reference to “the Phelpses”.
* Not in Kansas so maybe he isn’t as big of a name here.
Are you Sullying sulking over otter corrupt?
You kidding? It’s the Grateful Dead, of course!
My boss thought of me as the company’s botanical expert. Once someone sent her flowers and she asked me (in front of a co-worker) to identify them. “Roses,carnations, alstroemeria, and baby’s breath.” She proudly declared that she knew I could do it!
I’m always amazed by how many folks have never heard of the Spanish Flu—the 1918 influenza pandemic. An event that swept through the world in three brutal waves, infecting ~1/3 of the planet and killing tens of millions (50–100 million: more than WWI; possibly more than WII). And yet, it barely gets a footnote in most history books.
Some say it faded from memory due to psychological repression—it was simply too horrible to remember. It hit during the final stretch of World War I, when people were already grieving, exhausted, and shattered by loss.
And unlike war, there were no heroes, no medals, no noble cause. The Spanish flu was an invisible, indiscriminate killer that killed in a matter of hours or days. No villains, like Hilter or Stalin. No battlefields. Just mourning. Something societies chose to forget, I suppose.
Many high school students have never heard of The Holocaust? How? Just how?
I never saw the movie. But she was telling me about this incident she just learned about in which a pilot landed on the Hudson River.
Those (maybe not alstromeria, although everyone has SEEN it, if not knowing the name) otherwise have gotta be the easiest in Western florist bouquets to identify.
Who TF can’t point to a rose, and say, “That’s a rose!”?
Well, I believe you. But is there anything wrong with him or the hair stylist or anyone saying, “Whoa, you’re losing me! What’s ‘Creedence’?” and then listening to the answer?
The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Travels With Charley are all stock on standard reading lists for high school and introductory college literature courses and yet you’d be shocked at the number of people who have no earthly idea who John Steinbeck was or why he should be celebrated in the history of American literature. Despite the relevance to the current economic and environmental state of things, I would bet that no more than three out of ten people could accurately summarize the plot of Grapes of Wrath even at the blurb level.
The United States of America is a largely collection of Celebrity Jeopardy contestants who have little comprehension of their own history much a broader context of world events.
Stranger
Understood. Amazing that she hadn’t heard of that
Easy. Too much to cover and too little time to fit it all in. You really have to prune to be able to get to the 20th century, and everybody thinks their particular fetish should be Required By All. Add to that the rather too common feeling in people that if it didn’t happen to their monkey-sphere, it didn’t happen at all or isn’t important if it did.
During covid I would mention it was exactly like 100 years ago, even the 6 foot rule. People had no clue what I was referencing.