A most depressing encounter

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2003-09-20 10:44pm

I decided to have a sandwich from Subway for supper. As soon as I stepped in I was dragged into an argument the teenage clerks were having. When I got to the counter, the boy asked me, "Is the moon a star?" Stunned, I could only assume they were talking about astrological terms, so I started to explain the difference between planets and stars, but I eventually realized he actually thought the moon was a star.

As I paid, I asked him what grade he was in. He said he was a freshman. Before I could sigh in relief, the girls piped up and volunteered that he was a freshman in college.

America's doomed.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-20 10:46pm

Liberal arts. Guarantee you.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-09-20 10:50pm

Community College. Has to be.

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2003-09-20 10:51pm

This guy never took earth science.........stupid fuck.~Jason

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2003-09-20 10:55pm

Huhn. I feel more stupid after reading that.

Darth_Fin · Post by **Darth_Fin** » 2003-09-20 11:00pm

Stupid fuck indeed...

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-09-20 11:03pm

What the moon is a star,silly me all this time i thought it was an alien starbase.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-09-20 11:09pm

I bet you he's a communications major.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-09-20 11:26pm

Speaking of the moon, I'm not sure how true this little story is, but let's just say I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true.

HEAVY BOOTS
About 6-7 years ago, I was in a philosophy class at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the teaching
assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to show how things
don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that,
while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just
float away if you let go of it on the Moon.

My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" Looking around the room,
I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked confused
by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at me like
"What's your problem?"

"But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more
slowly." I protested.

"No it wouldn't." the TA explained calmly, "because you're too far
away from the Earth's gravity."

Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on
the Moon, didn't you?" I countered, "why didn't they float away?"
"Because they were wearing heavy boots." he responded, as if this made
perfect sense (remember, this is a Philosophy TA who's had plenty of
logic classes).

By then I realized that we were each living in totally different
worlds, and did not speak each others language, so I gave up. As we
left the room, my friend Mark was raging. "My God! How can all those
people be so stupid?"

I tried to be understanding. "Mark, they knew this stuff at one time,
but it's not part of their basic view of the world, so they've
forgotten it. Most people could probably make the same mistake."
To prove my point, we went back to our dorm room and began randomly
selecting names from the campus phone book. We called about 30 people
and asked each this question:

1. If you're standing on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go,
will it a) float away, b) float where it is, or c) fall to the
ground?

About 47 percent got this question correct. Of the ones who got
it wrong, we asked the obvious follow-up question:

2. You've seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the
Moon, why didn't they fall off?

About 20 percent of the people changed their answer to the first
question when they heard this one! But the most amazing part was
that about half of them confidently answered, "Because they were
wearing heavy boots."

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-09-20 11:33pm

Damn where the fuck do they get these "teachers"since when Earth`s gravity control what hapen on the moon.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-09-20 11:43pm

Perhaps the guy in the origional story was told over and over again that the sun is a star, but was never told why. He then assumed that anything in the sky must be a star. His logic was probably: the stars are stars, the sun is a star, then the moon must be a star.

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2003-09-20 11:47pm

Frank Hipper wrote:Community College. Has to be.

Bingo! Floyd Junior College, to be exact.

LT.Hit-Man · Post by **LT.Hit-Man** » 2003-09-20 11:48pm

I don't know if I should laugh cry or put the dip shits out of everyone's misery.

I mean come on now the sun is a star everyone knows that if the moon was a star we'ed all be flame broiled.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 2003-09-21 12:19am

But look at it his way - at least he's working where he belongs; in fast food.

The really scary stuff is when dumb people are in positions where their stupidity has bad effects on their work.

Last week I was listening to a pair of computer store techs talking while trying to return a defective mouse.

They started out wanking about fiber optic cable then went to saying stuff like:

A: "I'm so gonna upgrade my LAN to fiber. It's so much faster than cat-5 cause it's like light speed."

B: "Dude, that's like 700 miles an hour."

A: "Yeah, that's as fast as sound travels. Can you imagine anything going that fast?"

B: "Well the nerve impulses go from your brain to your hand faster than the speed of light."

Then I watch them take apart a customer's PC without taking ESD precautions, then try to figure out why the CD drive won't work. (Hint: Master/Slave jumper improperly set.)

That's not even as funny as:
When it came my turn in line, I had to wait forever for them to find paperwork (what else is new), when they started talking about Star Trek vs. Star Wars. They were about to decide that the Empire would kick the Federation's ass due to the Death Star, when I told them... "Wait! Lasers have no effect on Star Trek shields! Remember that TNG episode?".

They remember the episode (quoting Riker verbatim!), then change their tune: DS fires at the Enterprise, which shrugs off the blast effortlessly then fires a torpedo into the thermal exhaust port.

The thought of such people touching your computer.
Don't take your PC to those idiot store techs!

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-09-21 12:53am

Suddenly I feel like a genius.

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2003-09-21 01:12am

Jesus Christ making a Hail Mary at a Saints game!

I've known that there was a fundamental difference between the Moon and the Sun since I was in second grade. I even remember Mrs. Gretch(sp?) talking about it. God dat boy's dumb.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-09-21 02:05am

Raven, let me guess--this computer repair place was Fry's Electronics right?

Astronomy is one of those subjects that people simply don't bother to learn anymore; heck, people that are knowledgable are singled out as "nerds". Jeez, do you have to be a nerd to try to understand that Earth is only a miniscule fraction of the known Universe? Aren't these shits just the least bit curious in what is beyond the McDonalds down the street?

This reminds me of a history class I'm taking right now. My teacher said the other day that during the Medieval period in Europe, peasants often didn't know what was beyond the next hill. In fact, stories of giant, man eating dragons helped to keep them in check. Now we have a new breed of idiots who get their knowledge of space from the movie Armageddon. Please God, deliver us from these jackasses.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-09-21 02:25am

Durran Korr wrote:Liberal arts. Guarantee you.

A respectable liberal arts school would never turn out a product like that. This has the stench of religious diploma mills all over it. I assume that this is either a religious fundamentalist school, or it's a local community college, or both.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-09-21 02:26am

Kinda sad that very smart people are looked upon as nerds, uncool, or just strange, like they're anomalies or something.

So if the general favorable trend among the general public are dumb people...............

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-09-21 02:38am

Frank Hipper wrote:Community College. Has to be.

Fuck you very much. I got my AA at a community college before taking part in a joint program at said college with a 4 year university. Community colleges are not idiot schools. They are primarily 100 and 200 level classes of equal standing to any university or 4 year college.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-09-21 02:39am

HemlockGrey wrote:I bet you he's a communications major.

And fuck you to. I just majored in communications and I still remember much of my science education. I took Bio 101 and I even took Forensic Science to get my science core.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-21 02:45am

Alyeska wrote:
HemlockGrey wrote:I bet you he's a communications major.
And fuck you to. I just majored in communications and I still remember much of my science education. I took Bio 101 and I even took Forensic Science to get my science core.

Chill out. A communications degree doesn't necessarily make you a moron, but you can be a moron and still get a communications degree. Tell me, how many people flunked out of your communications degree program?

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-09-21 02:51am

Darth Wong wrote:
Alyeska wrote:
HemlockGrey wrote:I bet you he's a communications major.
And fuck you to. I just majored in communications and I still remember much of my science education. I took Bio 101 and I even took Forensic Science to get my science core.
Chill out. A communications degree doesn't necessarily make you a moron, but you can be a moron and still get a communications degree. Tell me, how many people flunked out of your communications degree program?

After having taken some of the required classes for graduation, I would hazzard to guess they flunked a fair number of idiots. The MSU-Billings program does a fairly good job keeping the program online and preventing people from BSing their way through. Just comprehending the work and being able to write the essays takes reading the actual assignments and more to the point, it requires inteligence. If you just read the work, you aren't ensured a grade because you have to be able to figure out what it means. Some colleges might hand out degrees in communications or liberal arts, but not mine. Thats why it was a Bachelor SCIENCE degree.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2003-09-21 02:56am

The Kernel wrote:Aren't these shits just the least bit curious in what is beyond the McDonalds down the street?

There's something beyond my Mickey D's???!!!

*looks* Oh, yes, Pizza Hut.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-09-21 02:56am

What kind of communications degree are you talking about? Speech comm? Because I have a communications degree, but it's in Video and Television.