(OT) Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people...

[Henry]

OK, Eosin has convinced me that it's not just in the field of computers that brain shutdowns happen.

My own personal experience was a woman who could not understand why CD's do not work if shoved into the slot on a 5.25 inch floppy drive. Try explaining this to a person's face, without smiling.

I have found that in certain fields, such as computers, medicine, car repair, and finance (I will admit to ONE of these), some human minds absolutely shut down when faced with working within these fields of knowledge, to the point of missing things that even deductive reasoning will solve. I have personally experienced doctors and lawyers that have lost all basic reasoning and grasp of terminology when confronted with the Windows or Macintosh operating system.

However, my experiences lead me to conclude that most human beings have one field in which they have a "blind spot," possibly from a previous experience in their lives, or even a complete lack thereof.

I myself will admit ignorance on automotive repair. It took three years and a blown transmission before I learned about the wonders of checking your transmission fluid... Brain Farts are not just for non-geeks.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Stupid vs. Ignorant

I am an astronomer teaching in a physics department, and as such, I teach a lot of classes that either have material that is entirely new, or a level of mathematical rigor that is new to the student. As such, I see a lot of perfectly excusable ignorance (After all, if they weren't ignorant, why take the class?), and some desparate lying from students aught cheating that sounds like stupidity, but I have one story that takes the cake.
When working with a physics textbook, most will have 50-100 problems at the end of each chapter. However, since half the answers are typically given in the back of the book, and since each teacher emphasizes slightly different material, when one examiones the end of the chapter to choose homework questions, there is a tendancy to choose problem sets that somewhat overlap. (This may well have been an instance of foolishness on my part.)

At any rate, a homework assignment that I had given shared four out of ten problems with a homework assignment I had given the previous year. A student had a friend who had taken the class before and she copied her friend's homework completely.

Absolutely completely. Down to the half-finished problem diagrams that the previous student had to stop and redo. How did I realize this, you may ask? (Or perhaps you don't, but that hurts the story so I'll pretend you do.) Sure, my suspions were partly aroused by the fact that the student did four problems on the homework -- and six problems *not* on the homework -- while leaving out six problems that *had* been assigned that year that weren't the year before, but the kicker was that the cheating individual turned in the assigned she had cheated from along with own!

As far as that goes, though, my mother worked for a long time as an emergency room nurse on the midnight shift, so she picked up a lot more stories in this line than I have.

Harry

 

[RenoOfTheTurks]

Barsoomcore and Dr. Harry, you've got style.

Excursus in vocabulary:

Main Entry: com·prise
Pronunciation: k&m-'prIz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): com·prised; com·pris·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French compris, past participle of comprendre, from Latin comprehendere
Date: 15th century
1 : to include especially within a particular scope <civilization as Lenin used the term would then certainly have comprised the changes that are now associated in our minds with "developed" rather than "developing" states -- Times Literary Supplement>
2 : to be made up of <a vast installation, comprising fifty buildings -- Jane Jacobs>
3 : COMPOSE, CONSTITUTE <a misconception as to what comprises a literary generation -- William Styron> <about 8 percent of our military forces are comprised of women -- Jimmy Carter>
usage Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.

 

[barsoomcore]

Re: Stupid vs. Ignorant

As far as that goes, though, my mother worked for a long time as an emergency room nurse on the midnight shift, so she picked up a lot more stories in this line than I have.

Hey, I'm related to about a thousand nurses. Did your mom ever work too many shifts in a row and mistakenly get on the main hospital elevator instead of the service elevator to take a severed leg down to the morgue just as visiting hours were ending?

"My brother grew a foot since I last saw him."

 

[barsoomcore]

Barsoomcore and Dr. Harry, you've got style.

RenoOfTheTurks, you've got taste.

 

[magnas_veritas]

My own personal experience was a woman who could not understand why CD's do not work if shoved into the slot on a 5.25 inch floppy drive. Try explaining this to a person's face, without smiling.

I'm occasionally one of those people.

First time I got my ATM card, I nearly slid it into the cracks around the receptacle. It was only when it didn't fit that my cluons rubbed together. I may've borrowed some from people behind me in line.

Just 20 minutes ago I was trying to fix my closet door, and bend it down to get the little rubber wheel on the track (and wondering how it'd stay on), when I finally (after 10-20 minutes of grunting, using a screwdriver, and so forth) realized that, wait, no, you *lifted* the door onto its little track. Sigh. Of course, I didn't think to look at the other door, and I didn't remember how I fixed it the last time it got off the track.

Brad

 

[Enforcer]

First off, see my sig (the 2nd quote, thickie...).

My personal favorite moments of utter stupidity are those that involve a risk to my physical well-being. Since I teach archery and riflery at an all boys overnight camp during the summer, I've seen plenty of those.

There's the kid who thought he could draw and aim a bow at another kid because, "bows made from plastic don't hurt." Uh huh, maybe the bows won't hurt, but the arrow travelling at high speed certainly will cause a ding or two. I bet he'd love me to aim my nice Browning 70 pounder at him, that'd be hilarious...

There's another kid who didn't like locking the bolt all the way on the .22 rifles we use because, "it made it too hard to open up again." Yeah, that's okay, I like seeing you get blown up...

Yet another one asked me if we would be having dinner that evening. No, it's a POW camp, welcome to hell... The kicker to this kid was, he's the only camper to ever beat me at chess. Go fig.

Note, if the above makes me sound as if I hate working there, that's entirely untrue. Camp has been the best two months of my year, for eleven summers. Some kids do really dumb things though.

 

[Hypersmurf]

You would be amazed how many people have never heard or seen a 5.25" floppy.

Those are those new-fangled little ones that are smaller than an 8" floppy but store more, right?

-Hyp.

 

[tarchon]

Main Entry: com·prise

1 : to include especially within a particular scope <civilization as Lenin used the term would then certainly have comprised the changes that are now associated in our minds with "developed" rather than "developing" states -- Times Literary Supplement>
2 : to be made up of <a vast installation, comprising fifty buildings -- Jane Jacobs>
3 : COMPOSE, CONSTITUTE <a misconception as to what comprises a literary generation -- William Styron> <about 8 percent of our military forces are comprised of women -- Jimmy Carter>
usage Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.

It's singled out because it's an inconsistent usage. People use "comprised of" as a fixed phrase in the "composed-of" sense and don't usually use comprise itself to mean compose (OK, most people don't use it outside the fixed phrase at all, which is partly why the usage persists). I agree it's a common usage, but it's a careless and inconsistent one, like "irregardless."

For example, the synonyms of "comprise" can't subsitute in the comprised-of phrase: "Embraced of," "encompassed of," and "included of" are clearly ungrammatical. If you substitute the suggested synonymous phrase from 2 you get the odd construction "is made up of of."

The basic sense of comprise is to embrace, encompass, or include. Styron's usage as quoted here does in fact in accord with this idea, and so the example above does not support the implied contention that the composed-of usage is widely accepted among prominent authors like Styron. A class comprises its membership: Styron - "[a class that] comprises a literary generation." You could read Styron's usage as a synonym for "constitutes," but that reading is not necessarily the correct one. The ambiguity lies in whether "what" refers to the members of the literary generation or the literary generation as a whole.

Carter's usage on the other hand is unambiguously not consistent with the use of comprise outside the fixed phrase, and note that Carter is in fact using the fixed form "comprised of."

Plus, if you have a feeling for the component morphemes - prise means "grasp" or "hold" in French - the sense of their compound "comprise" becomes obvious.

 

[Ukyo the undead]

Re: Re: Idiots...

Sorry to make a such big quote, but...

Dr. Harry, I completely agree.
**Political content removed.** - Henry