Stupid people, news, etc.

[Jetranger]

Ummmmmmm , hey,,, I just noticed my 1 Special Bullitt ain't in my Shirt Pocket ????

where could it be ??

Ohhh, I washed that Shirt in the washing machine the other day, bullitt and all.

Then, I hung that shirt up over the Wood burning stove to dry out, with the Bullitt still in the shirt pocket - Ohhhh No !!!!!

it may go off any moment !!!!!!

they should Ban all those wood burning stoves , their Dangerous, they could cause bullitts to explode !

[OldAirmail]

Careful what you wish for.

It seems that all those people with wood burning stoves are destroying the environment.

Federal Wood Burning Rule Prompts Rural Backlash

Some manufacturers contend the EPA's proposed standards are so stringent that the higher production costs would either force them out of business or raise prices so high that many consumers could no longer afford their products.

"There's not a stove in the United States that can pass the test right now — this is the death knoll of any wood burning," Reg Kelly, the founder of Earth Outdoor Furnaces in Mountain Grove, told Missouri lawmakers during a recent hearing.

I know, I know. That the BIG BAD BUSSINESS wood burning industry crying crocodile tears all the way to the bank.



And what is the government going to do about the massive deforestation in Africa, and other parts of the world, where wood is the ONLY source of energy for heating & cooking?

Nothing.

USA = always Bad.
Third World = always Good

[OldAirmail]

Everyone has an opinion about a whole bunch of stuff that's outside our field of expertise.

And that's fine.

I have plenty of stupid opinions, and I like to give others the opportunity to spout theirs (unless their stupid opinion disagrees with my stupid opinion).


Often people or groups will try to be all inclusive. They'll ask for an opinion or vote on a matter that is simply stupid.

Something like "Will the Perseids meteor shower be better six months from now than they were last year? Vote now!!!!!"

I don't want my surgeon asking for my opinion about how he should go about my heat transplant.

I also don't want the pilot of an A380 asking the passengers to vote on the altitude or airspeed for the aircraft to take.

There are a great many things in this world where asking for an "opinion" or "vote" on a subject is totally asinine.


I NOW VOTE THAT WE SHUT DOWN NASA - they've become idiots.

NASA asks public to vote on Z-2 spacesuit design



VOTE NOW!!!

[logjam]

O come on OM, that's the latest design for 9 year olds PJ's.

[OldAirmail]

Oooppps.

They can't use PJ's in space. Inside it'd be OK though.

Let me see if I can contact NASA mishun control.


How about this one?




I kinda like it cause ....... ummm.... mmmm....

I don't know, I just kinda like it. But I think that they need lights shining in the guys face to, like on TV, so you know who you're talkin to. Right?

And if NASA and the Russians play a game in space, each team would have glowing colors, an you could see people in the dark, an it'd look cool. An you gota have a glowing ball to.

Yeah, I'm gona vote for that one.


HEY EVERYBODY! Call up NASA and vote for this one.


This is so much better when they ask us to vote. Like if they had asked us to vote on that moon trip we goulda voted no, an we coulda gone to the Death Star.

That'd be real cool, but I think that it blew up didn't it?

[H]

OK, now I see we're contemplating space suits to protect us from external stupidity... or to keep it in?

In grade school we were corrected on the confusion between "ignorance" and "stupid" usages. "Not knowing" is the basic meaning of ignorance and "the inability to learn" is the basic meaning of stupid. There are other terms like assinine, foolish, foolhardy, etc., that often are more appropriate to what we apply the word stupid.

Of course, by this definition of stupid as stated: one who is truly omniscient (knowing everything) has an automatic inability to learn...
um, on a sideline, it's good to know I'm not stupid...

P.S. Why has our old 'cool' smiley lost his sunglasses?

[Rich Sawasdee]

Needs facial hair... like Boiler... from Dark Star ... then it'd get my vote ... maybe

[OldAirmail]

Stupidity

I think that it's fine to have a definition for "stupid", but in day to day usage "stupid" covers a very broad range of human activity.


I have a relative (now dead) who couldn't read, but was otherwise quite competent. Ignorant only of the written word.

Thirty odd years ago I worked in a hospital for "crippled" children. My favorite kid had Cerebral palsy. Ignorant? Stupid? No, he was too happy and sweet to be called anything like that.


I have visual Dyslexia. Reading and writing was a major problem for me. Around 10 or 11 I started to use a mental shorthand to speed up the writing process for long writing assignments in school. Rather than writing out each word and trying to spell it right, I wrote only the first letter of the word (for some reason I NEVER transpose the first letter). After the report was written, I only had to recall the first word to write out the entire report. Unfortunately, I then had to compare the appearance of each word to the appearance of that word in a dictionary.


Needless to say, I didn't enjoy reading. At that time, I timed myself reading from the top of one page to the bottom of the back of that page. Ten minutes. I kid you not.

Rather than trying to read each letter of each word, I turned the book upside down, and taught myself to read the ENTIRE word. It worked.

Although I will still make mistakes writing/typing, I can now read rapidly through word pattern recognition. Both right side up or upside down.


To me, stupid/stupidity is harder to define than reading what's in the dictionary.

I've known very intelligent people to do stupid things.

I've meet relatively uneducated people that were smarter than the average person.

In the end, I'll go along with this - to paraphrase the US Supreme Court's Justice Stewart - I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.



End note - Wikipedia has an example of how a visual dyslexic sees the word teapot.

[logjam]

Len was a popular student at our school, trouble was he was useless at math. Nice enough kid, but doomed to failure because of his absence of mathematical skills. Well guess who turned up at our 25 year re-union in a swanky Mercedes? Len of course. Everyone wanted to know his secret to success, after all wasn't he the class duffer? "1%" he said, "I charge 1% for everything." No body would believe that this likeable but dumb student of 25 years ago could make his fortune on 1%, so we asked him to explain. "O it's easy" he said, "Just buy it for $1.00 and sell it for $100, that's 1%.

[OldAirmail]

You win Mr. logjam.


AND you're right!

People CAN succeed by putting forth just a little bit more effort than those around them.

[OldAirmail]

Airmails Quote

" ONE QUARTER of the people polled don't know what the word "revolve" means "

Well, I do, I do,, yes I doooooo

I know what "Revolver" means, here, i'll show you !

this is my Taurus .357 Magnum 8 shot "Revolver" that has a barrell that "Revolves" !

Ummm. Mr. Jetranger.

I don't know how to say this......

It don't revolve.

[logjam]

Duh!

[Webb]

Is it really that less intelligent not to remember the difference between rotation and revolution?

I don't use these words every day so I have to visualize them - the moon rotates and is revolving around the earth. The earth is rotating and it is revolving around the sun. It's not that easy.

[OldAirmail]

I'm just pokin' fun at Jetranger.

I don't get to do that too often.


Actually, now that I think of it, that barrel COULD revolve if he were playing Russian Roulette.

[logjam]

A gatling gun has a revolving barrel