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Home » Open thread 8/8/22

Open thread 8/8/22

The New Neo Posted on by

This is hard to watch, if real. Of course, those who knew the answers were edited out. But just to find anyone this ignorant is horrifying. I don’t even think these people are especially dumb. I just think they were allowed to sleep through school.

I think it’s real. And if it’s real, it explains a lot:

Comments

Open thread 8/8/22 — 79 Comments

  1. Better computers and faster correct answers based on the internet will allow folk with less and less “factual knowledge” to act like they’re, if not “well educated”, at least “about as well educated as average”.

    The key issue is whether or not True Facts, if inconvenient to The Narrative, can be suppressed and replaced by False Facts, in order to buttress lousy opinions and decisions.

    Ignorance doesn’t bother me nearly as much as censorship of True Facts, like H. Biden’s laptop sex-porno, drugs, and illegal guns, not to mention bribery.

    I just used smart navigation (WAZE) to go thru some little villages, and was reminded I used to know more about how to go places where I knew, yet how easy it was to get somewhere with the computer telling me when to turn left or right. More and more folk will be living more and more of their In Real Life time under the direction of their chosen app.

    Very glad so few folks here at Neo are at all ignorant.

  2. Educating people means putting them in a position to dispute the narrative pushed by those in control. If you want power, it is so much easier to keep people ignorant.

    This is hardly the first video of this kind to be produced. On the other hand, it is quite easy to find people who know everything there is to be known about many popular TV shows.

  3. When operators were taking reservations for tickets to the Atlanta Olympics, some of them refused patrons from New Mexico, telling them that only American reservations were allowed at that time.

  4. I don’t even think these people are especially dumb. I just think they were allowed to sleep through school.

    No wonder the military can’t find qualified volunteers, voter fraud is easier than ever, and colleges can get away with indoctrinating kids rather than educating them.

    Question for Neo: how much do you think the school lockdowns of the last two years contributed to the interviewees’ lack of general knowledge? Many of them talk as if they’re coming out from under general anesthesia.

  5. I remember not long ago non mainstream social media was laughing at an American medical doctor in some social media or news comment that seemed to think that Africa was a single country. Instead of tunnel vision, she seemed to have tunnel knowledge. How many are out there now, like that?

  8. I will have to admit that I could not remember how many Continents there are. I could not name the Kardashians though, never ever could do that.
    Wonder if I could give them 6 Dimes in return for a Dollar?

  9. Its not only general knowledge, it’s basic math too.

    For the second time in a few years I again ran into someone behind the Deli counter at my local chain supermarket who was flummoxed by my request for “a third of a pound of lunch meat,” and had to ask an older co-worker how much this was.

    Co-worker’s reply–“between a quarter and a half.”

    Dumb bewildered Deli then asked another co-worker again to confirm how much one third of a pound was, as if she didn’t believe the first answer.

  10. Just a few days ago I mentioned to my husband that I trace the deterioration of education in America back to the advent of hand held calculators. The first time I heard “Why memorize the times tables when everyone is going to use calculators from now on?”, I knew we were going down the wrong road. Then came “Who needs Geography classes? Everyone has access to computers!”, and so on and so on…. I’m still waiting for the great leaps in education that were supposed to be realized when our children were given access to computers in the classroom. I am involved in K- 8 religious education and have seen hundreds of kids from typical urban public schools over the past 16 years. It doesn’t take an expert in childhood education to know that we are in deep trouble.

  11. Many of them talk as if they’re coming out from under general anesthesia. — PA Cat

    Yes, a general anethesisa called social media or to a lesser extent cable TV.

  12. sdferr–

    These days the Scouts need to be prepared for monkeypox, assuming the CDC would give them accurate information.

  13. Janet,
    Do they even do vocabulary word list in public schools anymore? When I was in grade school, you would be given a list of words and their meanings. The words were generally beyond grade school kids vernacular. You were required to be able to spell the words and match them to their meanings. Seems there were about 15 words on each list and after testing for one list, you were given a new list. Maybe one new list per week.

  14. Depressing. I considered sharing this with others, but would probably be called racists as most of the respondents were black; but then as far as intersectionality points, the interviewer was part black, so maybe that offset that? Lol, my brain hurts even more after thinking about this-I am already getting subliminally trained by the progressives. I should NOT even have to notice what race the interviewer and respondents are-the race of the ignorati should not matter. I’m sad/disgusted with the level of ignorance shown on this YouTube, and sad/disgusted on how my varied reaction to it. I think it was Zerohedge over the last couple of days which highlighted that the wokesters are starting to devour each other. That maybe true, but their propaganda onslaught over the last 5+ years has certainly affected our society, possibly permanently.

  15. Its not only general knowledge, it’s basic math too.

    For the second time in a few years I again ran into someone behind the Deli counter at my local chain supermarket who was flummoxed by my request for “a third of a pound of lunch meat,” and had to ask an older co-worker how much this was.

    Co-worker’s reply–“between a quarter and a half.”

    Dumb bewildered Deli then asked another co-worker again to confirm how much one third of a pound was, as if she didn’t believe the first answer.

    Apparently this was a problem that affected a burger chain as well. No idea if it’s really true though.

  16. yes they don’t know anything, how about our supposedly more enlightened governing class, that believes the most ridiculous things, with religious fervor,

  17. The first time I heard “Why memorize the times tables when everyone is going to use calculators from now on?”, I knew we were going down the wrong road.
    — Janet

    An Asimov short story, The Feeling of Power, from 1958 that I probably read in 1965 or thereabouts.
    https://urbigenous.net/library/power.html

    I like the element of the “artist’s stylus” implying that penmanship has evaporated entirely. It’s very whimsical.

  18. Its not only general knowledge, it’s basic math too.

    In addition to problems with basic math calculations, a lot of kids (and adults) have trouble with converting commonly used temperature, weight, and volume units, assuming they’ve even been taught that unit conversions are sometimes necessary. I copy edited an internal medicine handbook for a medical publishing company some years back, and discovered to my horror that the author had used the abbreviation for degrees Celsius instead of degrees Fahrenheit in one chapter even though the body temperatures given in the running text had to be Fahrenheit in order to make clinical sense. A body temperature of 98C is equivalent to 209F, which would be a crisis not only for the patient but also for the health care team.

    Another example of the kind of problem that can arise when measurement units are confused is the 1983 Canadian incident known as the Gimli Glider, when an Air Canada flight had to make an emergency landing at a former RCAF airstrip in Gimli, Manitoba, as a result of fuel exhaustion. The aircraft was carrying only 45% of the fuel it should have had because the flight crew had entered the fuel quantity into the aircraft computer in pounds per liter rather than kilograms during the refueling process. Fortunately, the captain was able to land the plane safely because he was an experienced glider pilot.

  20. Sad. I could only take about 4 minutes of it. I am somewhat amazed by people who simply have no desire to understand their surroundings or the world around them. I understand laziness and/or hedonism, but I simply cannot comprehend not having an interest in understanding one’s surroundings. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. These people are sincerely interesting to me. I don’t understand how you bread curiosity out of humans.

    One nit. The “7” continents always seemed a bit arbitrary to me. No real way to intuit that or figure it out. It’s just something someone created out of thin air centuries ago. It has no real meaning, nor practical use. Why isn’t Greenland a continent? New Zealand? Japan? North and South America touch. So do Europe and Asia. Where does Europe end and Asia begin?

  22. 1. As with Leno, how many people are there who answered correctly but whose responses you did not broadcast?

    2. Remember that there’s a place called Eutaw, Alabama.

  23. Rufus T Firefly…” I am somewhat amazed by people who simply have no desire to understand their surroundings or the world around them.”

    People of that sort seem especially prevalent in the Education world, especially among administrators. They are strongly lacking in curiosity, also in aesthetic appreciation. See my post Classics and the Public Sphere:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67753.html

  24. David Foster: Precisely. Looking things up on a computer only works if you know there is something to look for.

  25. Only two of the people he interviewed are white and all but one of the people he interviewed qualify as overweight and / or unattractive. (The pretty girl is at 00:53).

  27. Rufus T. Firefly, I also think the definition of “continents” is a little odd. What separates Europe and Asia appears to be the ethnic composition of their populations rather than geography. But this is a quibble, because I can list the canonical seven.

  28. While most conservatives agree the Inflation Reduction Act won’t do much to reduce inflation in the short term (or ever), the increased debt load from bills that spend the money up front and collect the revenues later needs to have people up in arms.

    The national debt, now just over $30 trillion doubled in the last 11 years. It was $16.7 trillion in 2013. It seems like the deficit spending is accelerating, but it isn’t. Congress has found excuses to spend more than taxes bring in for some time.

    I’m looking at deficit spending since 1975, and noticed that the national debt doubled in just seven years between 1977 and 1983, from $700 billion to $1.4 trillion. Then it took just another 7 years to double again between 1984 and 1990 from $1.6 trillion to $3.2 trillion.

    Surprisingly, it took 14 years to double again, though I should say not surprisingly when a budget conscious Republican congress focused on our increasing debt. Between 1991 and 2006 it went from $3.7 trillion to $7.4 trillion.

    Then the big recession of 2008 hit and deficits ballooned doubling the debt in just 8 years, from $7.9 trillion to $16 trillion in 2013.

    And now it’s doubled again. What should make every American angry– angry to pitchforks and tar levels is the burden we’ve passed on to future generations. We’ve taken the benefit and passed on the burden.

    Here’s what makes this even more disturbing, is during this period when the debt increased over 40 times, tax revenues has only increased 12 times, from $355 billion in 1977 to $4.2 trillion in 2022.

  29. it’s worse than that, we’re spending hundreds of billions on energy schemes, we proved won’t work, and just delivering a choke hold to those that do, its a high crime that even obama couldn’t pull off, with 60 seats, kruschev is singing loudly in the etherm

  30. BrianE The scariest part of the national debt is the interest payments to service the debt. With a $30 trillion debt, a one percentage point increase in the average interest is $300 billion a year additional interest payments. To put that in perspective, the budget of the defense department is $700 billion per year. Of course the national debt does not include unfunded liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare payments.

  31. I see this lack of general knowledge in my own daughters (22 and 20). But, their depth of knowledge in the subjects they are interested in or need every day is amazing. There is so much added to the knowledge base every day, it’s no wonder that people today curate what they learn. I also learned the 7 continents and to diagram sentences. Have I ever needed that knowledge? Can’t say that I have.

  33. I think my kids, who are older than those in the video, could answer most of the questions. I’m not so sure about grandkids who are teens. I agree the calculator and the internet have been a lot of the problem. Another problem is public school teachers. They are drawn from the lowest quintile of college students. When I was in college, smart young women got teaching credentials and taught elementary school until their husbands’ careers took off. A different time. My ex-wife went back to teaching second grade after she got laid off in a bank merger. She was appalled at what she saw with the teachers. That was in the 1990s. She was a big advocate for public schools but said, if she were raising our kids again, she would home school them. After 6 months teaching she got another job as a bank VP.

  35. IT’s RAAACIST!!!

    Clearly, most of the people he asked weren’t white. Or “Asian”….

    😛

    LOLZ.

  36. Those old enough to remember, our calculator was a slide rule.

    Now even middle school students are using TI scientific calculators.

    But they can’t do simple math. I’ve noticed when checking out at a store, especially fast food places, you give the cashier, say a $5 bill for a $3.20 purchase. Then give them the .20 after they’ve entered the amt. tendered of $5. 90% of the time they don’t know how to give me the correct change. The cash register/computer tells them how much change to give and after they’ve entered the amount, any deviation is too much for them to actually figure out.

  37. }}} There is so much added to the knowledge base every day, it’s no wonder that people today curate what they learn.

    What, like knowing the name of all five Kardasian sisters?

    I didn’t even know there were five, FFS.

    Or not knowing who the “guy” is that is Veep?

    That’s not “curation”. That’s clueless fuckwit-level ignorance.

    😉

    But these people are openly encouraged to vote, giving them equal franchise with me, despite the fact that they cannot answer questions I could answer when I was **10**.

  38. Rufus and Kate; I think the geologists have it pretty much figured out as regards to the 7 continents.
    “Where does Europe end and Asia begin?” Geographically we know the physical dividing lines are the Urals, the Bosphorus, the Agean and the Mediterranean Sea to the east. But where does that place Georgia – firmly to the east of Turkey? The Georgians consider themselves to be European and would be deeply offended to be labeled as Asians. The definition of Europe vs Asia also has a cultural meaning.

  40. Bob Wilson,
    Yes, even making the interest payments, let alone ever paying down the debt is going to require tax hikes. The CBO is estimating interest payments will by $1 trillion annually by 2032– and if the fed gets serious about controlling inflation, it might be sooner.

    Tax receipts are just over $4 trillion, which is the amount of manadatory spending right now. Everything else just adds to the debt– which includes defense spending.

    Here’s the conundrum the fed has. Traditionally inflation is controlled by raising interest rates and slowing down the economy. But we’re in a non-traditional recession. The traditional solution was to lower interest rates and the government spend more money.

    So for all their protestations, it appears Democrats fear a prolonged recession more than inflation– considering the Inflation Reduction Act appears to be more stimulus spending than inflation fighting.

  41. }}} I don’t even think these people are especially dumb. I just think they were allowed to sleep through school.

    I won’t argue they are especially dumb.

    I will repeat, however, that they should not be allowed to vote. Not sure if I want it to go that far legally, I admit — but it might not be bad to require that someone who wants to vote needs to, say, name five people on the ballot, and/or recite a generally accurate statement about a ballot measure — e.g., “One of the ballot measures is about how lottery money will be allocated” or “One of the ballot measures is about using voting machines”

    This seems like a reasonable requirement. You have to familiarize yourself with the ballot, know at least some of the people on it (an abject minimum for actually having learned anything about the candidates, and not having voting be done as in Eddie Murphy’s The Distinguished Gentleman) and/or read a ballot measure and get the basic jist of what it is about.

    None of that even requires real comprehension, just enough interest in the process to do some small measure of due diligence, and enough mental capacity and determination to be involved to commit some stuff to memory if you think you’re likely to forget. Hell, I wouldn’t even outlaw crib sheets. :-/

    }}} I’m still waiting for the great leaps in education that were supposed to be realized when our children were given access to computers in the classroom.

    I got news. That happened to kids with good parents.

    Of course, most of them saw the writing on the wall and Home Schooled.

  42. PA Cat – I remember the horrific crash of the Ukraine airliner Aerosvit Flight 241 into Mt Olympus in northern Greece on 17 December 1997. It was initially reported that the crew mistakenly thought that the given flight altitude was 3000 feet not 3000 meters which resulted into crashing into the mountain as they flew at the lower altitude. It seems that the actual cause of the aircraft was more complicated than that.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerosvit_Flight_241

  43. Griffen suggested recently we focus on inflation– the real danger to the economy, rather than any potential or real recession.
    Unfortunately, the federal government will gladly tackle a recession, since that means more stimulus– more government largess, at the expense of future taxpayers.
    Tackling inflation, not so much. In fact, tackling inflation is one of the three mandates given to the federal reserve.
    And only in the doublespeak of Washington does the Fed mandate of stable prices mean 2% inflation forever.
    From the Fed:
    “The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is firmly committed to fulfilling its statutory mandate from the Congress of promoting maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”
    “The Federal Reserve’s longer-run inflation objective remains 2 percent….By seeking inflation that averages 2 percent over time this will help ensure longer-run inflation expectations do not drift down and remain well anchored at 2 percent. For these reasons, following periods when inflation has been running below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time.”

  45. They all seem to be aware that they SHOULD know the answers to these simple questions but they have no basis for answering or even for knowing why this information might be important. They have been completely betrayed and are happily marching in the streets at the behest (strong suggestion) the people who betrayed them. They’ve been identified and classified as collateral damage. They will not be our leaders. They will be the ones following the orders of our leaders.

  47. Xylourgus,

    Regarding the 7 continents, is there something I’m missing? You state that the geologists have it figured out. Have what figured out?

    How, exactly, are the Urals different from the Rocky Mountains? Or the Himalyas? There are 15 – 20 tectonic plates. Some correspond with continental boundaries, some do not. Australia contains New Zealand and New Guinea, but not Indonesia, although parts of Indonesia are closer to Australia than New Zealand?

    The number 7 is arbitrary. The term continents is arbitrary. Same with oceans and seas.

  48. Xylourgos–

    It sounds as if the 1997 accident in Greece involved communication problems between the flight crew and the ATC as well as instrument malfunctions and the flight crew’s fixation on the faulty instruments. There are so many links in the chain of events leading up to an aviation disaster.

    If you want a really horrific example of what can happen due to human factors (on the part of several humans), there’s Aeroflot Flight 3352 in October 1984. It was a Tupolev Tu-154 airline flight on a domestic route from Krasnodar to Novosibirsk with an intermediate landing in Omsk. While landing at Omsk Airport, the aircraft crashed into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and 4 on the ground. While a chain of mistakes in airport operations contributed to the accident, its major cause was an air traffic controller falling asleep on duty. Sentenced later to 15 years in prison, the ATC committed suicide.

    Details of the accident at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_3352

    You can watch a 14-minute computer simulation of the accident here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNzOyQhOfQ8&ab_channel=TheFlightChannel

  49. I think I may have given this example here before, but it’s very relevant so, here goes.

    A dozen or so years ago my wife and I went to the local chain grocery store and tried to buy chicken when it was on a particularly good sale. They were out, so we got a “rain check.”

    Went back a week or so later and bought some chicken–which was already on sale–and then presented our rain check for the additional discount.

    We calculated what the final price would be in our heads, no problem.

    But this calculation–of a percentage off on an item which was already a percentage off– was apparently quantum mechanics for our checkout person, so she called in the shift supervisor and, then, when she was stumped as well, she called in the store manager, and the three of them all stood there for several minutes–calculators in hand, comparing each other’s figures–and tried to puzzle out just exactly what the price for our package of chicken should be.

    In the end, they gave us not the lower discount we should have gotten but 70% off.

    I wonder how much revenue is lost by establishments these days because the people who work there simply cannot do simple, basic mathematical calculations?

    P.S.–I remember picking up my daughter at her Montessori school and watching as they drilled the young children–they made it fun but, still, it was done over and over again–in numbers and fractions.

    P.S.S.–I was kind of shocked when I read that Maria Montessori developed her method of teaching so that she could turn out people–adept in basic mathematics and other skills–who would then have the skills to be good factory workers.

  50. PA Cat: That ‘video de chat’ is a riot. Shared it with daughter Lola, currently sojourning in the Dordogne with husband plus Iggie and Biggie, their two alienesque Sphynx cats. Merci bien.

  51. I live near a small town in the country. When the kids were little, they’d ride with us to one of a dozen other towns, many many times, to do stuff. When the kids got their driver’s license, I was surprised that they often didn’t know how to get to those places.(My snarky friends said it was genetics.) Of course — since they hadn’t had the steering wheel, they didn’t have to pay attention to the landmarks along the way.

    You could say that they hadn’t reasoned their way to the destination. In order to solve a new problem, we need a memory of analogous items to draw upon. To reason from. Otherwise, we’re just guessing.

    I fear that is happening on a very large scale. Kids with cell phones know how to just look up any answer; they never have to think it through. They have the answer, but they don’t know how to reason. They don’t have data to draw upon. They will become utterly reliant upon the cloud.

    And the government can rewrite the cloud whenever it wants.

    “We’re not in a recession.”

    And I just now saw THIS

  53. Kids these days… SMH

    Before high school, I read through the dictionary, the encyclopedia set we had, the bible, and every bit of fiction I could get my hands on.

  55. Eighty years ago, today, the USMC landed on Guadalcanal.

    Tonight, it will be 80 years since Savo Island, when the Japanese Navy sank four Allied heavy cruisers, USS ASTORIA; USS VINCENNES; USS QUINCY, and HMAS CANBERRA.

    Fortunately the Japanese never knew how close they were to the transports and cargo ships, so they left. The landings could continue the next day

  56. Chilling.
    I watched it with my wife, who teaches in high school; she intends to show it to her students, as a warning.

  57. And these kids vote.
    And their ignorance today will remain with them well into adulthood; and they will still be voting.

    The incredible ignorance of so many voters / citizens is one reason that Biden, the MSM, and demonkrats in general keep lying and obfuscating; enough people are too ignorant to know they are being lied too and believe anything they hear as long as they “like” that person.

    This nation is rapidly heading into the shitter, and it’s hard to believe it will be getting better when you hear these young folks (tomorrow’s leaders !!) demonstrate their ignorance of the most basic facts.

    What is really ironic is that probably all of them could tell you without hesitation how to define a female or male, unlike the newest member of the SCOTUS, Kentaji Jackson and many other highly educated “intellectuals.”

    Geez, I wonder if Jackson knows the gender of her kids, husband and parents or even of herself.
    Too bad nobody at those Senate joke-of-a-confirmation-hearings asked her that.

  58. Seems like an unusually large amount of well known people have died the last couple weeks or maybe it’s just people that I have really admired.

    Bill Russell (the most famous person I have actually met and spent time with), the broascaster Vin Scully, the historian David McCullough and now today I see Olivia Newton-John who was a pretty large part of the youth of people my age.

  59. Middle school teachers should show this to their students and say, “Please, please, please, don’t end up like this!”

  60. Xylorgous,

    I just re-read my comment. It was meant in sincerity, not snark. If there is some underlying component of geography that makes a continent a continent I am sincerely curious. It has always seemed arbitrary to me, but maybe there is a level other than tectonic plates or natural dividers (water, mountain ranges) I am unfamiliar with, or ethnic divider?

  61. Chicago math. If your Glock has 17 in the mag and one in the pipe how many children and elderly can you gun down in one weekend?

  62. @Watt: Better yet— show it at a faculty meeting, with the admonition to stop turning out people like this.

    The most disappointing thing (of the video) was that those kids –they were all under 50 so I can call them kids — showed no concern that they did not know the answers, how quickly they just tossed out “I’m so dumb..” or “I don’t know…” with no sign of embarrassment. When I get caught without the answer I know I should have, I end up thinking which teacher, from back then, would be upset that I didn’t know it…..

    The continents: Its just general knowledge. It gives a frame of reference as to what part of the globe someplace might be found. As an added bonus, the thought process of why, or where’s the line, or why not Greenland as well as why is one body of water a sea and another a lake, or creek v. stream. river. Lots of that stuff around.. It all exercises one’s thinker by forcing possible answers while also working to debunk them and find a real reason.. exercise is exercise is good for the brain as well as the muscles.

  63. Snow on Pine. There’s math. There’s arithmetic, and there’s which coupon reduces the cost of the item after some other coupon–which is applied first because….reduces the cost and if you invert the process, is the result lower or higher.
    My wife and daughter shop at Kohls whose come-on combos of coupons and Kohls Cash and just-today make my head hurt. Turns out, I’m told, the cash registers do the work.

    You can usually get a petition signed on any college calling for the banning of dihydrogen monoxide.

  64. Add Judith Durham to recent deaths of note. She died Friday. Lead singer of The Seekers, the great Aussie folk rock group. Her bell-like voice, winsome presence and, later in life, her personal courage, made her an icon among her countrymen and beyond. She’ll be given a national funeral. Hope ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ and ‘Georgy Girl’ make it into the service.

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Judith+never+be+another+you&t=ffab&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwZf41UudAbI

    https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=georgy+girl+youtube&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DoPalzSqBXbk

  67. From the link: Europe has distinct historical, cultural, and political identity which are different from Asia.

    Geographically, Eurasia is one huge continent.

  68. }}} One nit. The “7” continents always seemed a bit arbitrary to me. No real way to intuit that or figure it out. It’s just something someone created out of thin air centuries ago. It has no real meaning, nor practical use. Why isn’t Greenland a continent? New Zealand? Japan? North and South America touch. So do Europe and Asia. Where does Europe end and Asia begin?

    Size. Greenland really isn’t all that large, it just looks that way on the map, due to Mercator distortion… Ditto (“size”) for New Zealand and Japan, also Madagascar.

    And I would generally concur that Eurasia should be one, not two, continents.

    The admittedly arbitrary dividing line is the Ural mountains.

    I think part of that is just inertial maintenance of the listing of continents from before they really had good maps of Europe-Asia that made it unquestionably one large body.

    }}} North and South America touch.

    Not really, the Panama Canal divides them 😀

    Joking aside, it is a very narrow divide, and even twists far more than most think — there are places there within a 100 miles of one another where the sun sets on the Pacific side before it sets on the Atlantic side.

  69. We’re into Banana Republic territory with the raid on Mar a Largo.

    The excuse for the raid was The Presidential Archive act. Cmon, man. They might have well charged him with unpaid parking tickets.

    If the Rs can managed to overcome the margin of cheating and take over both branches in 2024, the Clintons, Obama, and Biden should receive the same courtesy.

  70. As others have said – there may have been a whole lot of correct answers that ended up on the editing room floor; but, it is the giddy pride in not knowing the answer that is amazing.

  71. There’s a “Friends” episode where Ross (the paleontologist prof) scoffs at the challenge of enumerating all fifty states. Then he gets stuck at 47 or 48 and loses his mind.

    I’ve tried that a few times myself and similarly couldn’t quite reach the Full Fifty. However, I was close.

    But I never would have thought New Mexico was a separate country.

  72. I’ve run into my share of twenty-something cashiers Who Could Not Make Correct Change.

    Good thing I’m not depending on them for my Social Security benefits.

  73. Thanks for the correction Rufus. From my earlier school days I thought the 7 continents were based on Alfred Wegener’s plate theory. I now see that the number of continents is far from settled.

  74. Yes ObloodyHell, there are places on the Atlantic coast of Panama that are further west than some areas on the Pacific coast which are located further to the east of the Atlantic regions.

  75. The lack of knowledge of basic facts is disturbing and a condemnation of the quality of our education system in many parts of the country. On the other hand, I question the need for or value of the memorization of vast amounts of knowledge (Boris Johnson’s ability to recite Homer (?) in ancient Greek comes to mind). Once, when discussing a vexing problem involving human behavior with one of my colleagues, he commented that I am a “conceptual thinker.” It was somewhat of a revelation to me at the time. While I certainly do value having memorized a great deal of important information, my tendency is to evaluate newly discovered facts and ideas, check them against my internal conceptual framework, adjust that framework as appropriate, and move on. Whether I can recite those facts or ideas at some future date does not trouble me as we now have the ability to easily look them up when necessary. I do recall, however, that there are seven continents. Am I right?

  77. Middle school teachers should show this to their students and say, “Please, please, please, don’t end up like this!”

    The middle school teacher doesn’t know the answers either.

  78. Supposedly one purpose of education is to learn how to think, to reason, as well as learn important basic facts.

    But knowledge of basic facts informs (or should) inform one’s opinion of issues or topics du jour.

    In theory, anyway, it’s possible to be a totally ignorant genius, and these types are the most dangerous because they know they are geniuses and in their arrogance they are 100% confident that their decisions, views, etc., are correct.

    A normal not-so-educated (these include many grads of high school and college) person devoid of much factual knowledge, KNOWS they do not know, and are more apt to just admit it. I have a good friend like this; he doesn’t know squat, and he readily admits it.

    Of course, there are many post-college-grad educated people who are both just plain dumb, stupid and ignorant of facts.
    Kamala Harris is a prime example.
    I guess we can toss into this bowl of dog excrement AOC as well.

    If I was as stupid and ignorant as either of them, I would know enough to keep my mouth shut and never even consider pursuing any elected position, including one for the town dog catcher.

    More common are the fairly / really smart folks who have a good knowledge of facts and are very well educated, and yet make incredibly stupid decisions.
    Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Deutschland Uber Alles, comes to mind.. She actually has a PHd in quantum chemistry .

    I guess she thought that history “ended” when the USSR imploded in 1991.
    Maybe she bought into the BS in the book, “The End of History,” by Francis Fukuyama, published in 1992. I am sure Fukuyama is a really bright guy, but his smarts led him totally astray.

    Let’s not forget the Stanford Professor (ret.?) Paul Ehrlich; he has a 1000% perfect record over the last 40 years of being totally wrong; and he STILL !!! does not keep his mouth shut.

    Thinking people ask questions; why? how come? says who? how do you know? is this true? how is this possible ?? etc., etc.

    Any normal person can ask questions, but many just do not bother.
    Many are voters, and this is a really big problem.
    And propaganda, done well, works most effectively when the people are ignorant. The demokrats / progressives know this and take full advantage of this.

  79. @ Art Deco > “The middle school teacher doesn’t know the answers either.”

    Indeed.

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