Sometimes I forget....
 

Many of you probably thought this was a thread about my journey toward Alzheimers, however, while just as boring, it is not todays topic.

Sometimes I forget how uneducated about the world many people are. Hanging out with the cool kids at GD causes me to lose track of the fact that many young people have no concept of history, even fairly recent history.

After lunch I was talking with a young man and I was going to make a remark about the genocide of Armenians by the Turks at the begining of the last century.

I thought I would lead into this by putting it in perspective as not the numerical rival of Hitler or Stalin but quite horrible none-the-less.

When I made that remark, I was astounded when he replied, "Stalin? I've heard that name before, who was he?"

I then began to explain that he had been the leader of the USSR. He responded that he thought that was Marx.

I explained that, no Marx was a German theorist upon which communist theory was based.

He asked if Marx came from East Germany. I stuttered and spent another several minutes explaining that the country of East Germany did not exist until after WWII. That the country of Germany didn't exist as a unified state until 1871 or so.

Lennin and the whole bolshevik-menshevik thing were a complete mystery.

The more I talk to people, the smarter the folks on GD seem.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

Wasn't Marx the guy that made those films like "The Big Store" and "A Day at the Races"? How could he not know that?!

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

Well thank god we have people like you putting those people in jail.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

He had a brother who couldnt talk either but had a super :cool: whistle.


"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."

\o/

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

we'll get dda to emigrate yet!

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

If anyone's ever watched The Tonight Show with Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" bits, you'd know he's tapped into this 'ignorance' a long time ago.

It does sadden me that the American education system really sucks. I've also noticed people around the age of about 22 or younger seem to have no concept of spelling or grammar. I think I have a conversation that an ex sent me of her sister taling to her bf, and it makes me even more certain that I need to get some scientist to invent a ray gun that will effectively sterilize anyone you shoot it at, we could call it the darwin gun.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

usually i get this same awakening when i walk through glasgow and hear

"here, yuu got a shot o 20p fer the phone"

and see burberry, tracksuits, ripped jeans, ribbed t shirts, gelled hair to go to get a packet of crisps


There are always surveys that show that something like 10% of britons dont know who tony blair is and other such ****ing lunacy. Sometimes i wonder how its possible. Other times i'm surrounded by rangers fans and 10% seems very low.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

It depresses me when things like that happen too and I wonder how people can go through life not knowing certain things. However, I'm not sure there's a terribly strong incentive to know things like that. Out of all my friends, the one who earns the most (and has been generally most successful in their career) is someone who thought Jamaica was in Africa.

Having a breadth of knowledge is good for boring people on internet forums, but I'd imagine for a lot of jobs it's not terribly useful.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

It`s surprising how ignorant some people are about history these days, (excluding computers/internet/new technology etc). I live in a shared house where most ppls are quite a few years younger than myself, and know little about the "poll tax riots" here in the UK during the 80`s, or anything about the English Civil war.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

There's a tower near Akron, Ohio next to this restaraunt (I forget the name), this guy had started construction and it was going to have one of those revolving restaraunts at the top, but he ran out of money, so it's just like a 200-250 foot tower. Anyway, we're going to the restaruant next to it after my grandma's funeral, and my brother tells his wife that the tower was used by snipers during the Civil War. She actually believed him.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

My home town of Stockton actually sent a delegation to Akron a few years back to learn, from Akron, how to renovate downtown. The Akron mayor also came to Stockton to help explain how this was all done.

Evidently we learned the lessons as we gave a developer, who claimed to have been involved in numerous projects in other cities, a lot of incentives to redevelope certain areas of our central core. After a year of nothing happening the developer vanished and the newspaper discovered that the other cities he was supposed to have helped build up had never heard of him.

\o/ for governmental stupidity.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

A number of years ago (1950's) a U. S. SENATOR, on the floor of the Senate commented that he didn't understand why the Jews and Arabs couldn't settle their differences in a Christian manner.*


*note to Nantoz: I have never disputed the accuracy of your signature.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

dda's life, the inspiration for every episode of the simpsons!

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

Sometimes I forget how ignorant some people are of just how much knowledge there is in the world, and how so many people seem to think that just because soemone doesn't happen to possess the same little gems of trivia as them, it somehow makes them uneducated.

People will stand around, painted utterly incredulous, remarking on how terrible it is that someone who calls herself educated hasn't even read Hamlet.

And then I wonder aloud if they could tell me what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is. Of course they can't. But they don't seem to think that their lack of knowledge of one of the most simple, basic ideas in science is anything to worry about, and will quite happily admit to not knowing something scientific of a level so basic that it's pretty much equivalent to knowing the difference between 'there', 'their' and 'they're'.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

I always love people who put "no" for "know", and another favorite is people putting "ya" or "yeh" in place of "yeah", seriously, how hard is it to put into effort the extra letter or two to spell it correctly.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

Certainly there is a lot of snobism in the area of knowledge. However, it is true that there are things which are of greater common knowledge than others and thus the absence of that knowledge is more shocking.

If the young man had not heard of Lord Nelson, say, I wouldn't have been surprised. However, Stalin was such a monumental historcal figure only a short while ago that I was surprised that he had 0 idea who he was, where he was from, or what he did.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

princess go and see hamlet!

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

Do you know any one who does it well?

I went to see a fabulous midsummer night's dream last year by these lovely people in oxford. It was at headington hill park. This year they're doing Robin Hood as well as some of Will's stuff. But they aren't doing hamlet, unfortunately.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

back in the days when i was in school, a girl seriously claimed hitler founded tha NATO.

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

I might know about Cipriano Mera and the sacrifices of the 70 Brigade, but no way can I do simple math equasions without a calculator :(

Re: Sometimes I forget....
 

RSC usually do a good production. Its all the better if they do it in the Swan as its rather small and intimate a setting as opposed to the RST itself.
However I do not know if its currently 'on' or not or when it will be again.