h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sloshing around? Sloshing around?
Speak for yourself 26199!

As far as neutrinos go ..well let me ask.
How far do they go?


~jwf~

I feel for these people. They will wander through life ordering a glass of "Cabaret" instead of cabernet and wonder why Liza Minelli is sitting at their table. They will inquire as to the Amtrak rail status to Hawaii. Also will they need a passport? Face it, some bipeds simply should not breed

My spousal unit told someone at work the other night that I needed to take my old Turkish Mauser to the gunsmith to have it "dry-fired"...

I think the answer to your question is: An Ignoranus! (er... can I say that here?)

Word usage gets me, but what I find most irritating is the mis-pronounciation of everyday words.

Foliage, not foilage.
Library, not liberry.
Nuclear, not nukular.
Escape, not exkape.

It's "ask" not "axe". It's "Look at...", not "Lookit". It's "taken", not "tooken". My wife's notorious with: "Where were your pictures tooken?" I forgive her, as her family IS from Oklahoma. Not that I'm much better. My syntax, spelling, and dangling participles leave much to be corrected. I do try to be concise and correct. Loquacious, yet brief. Yes, some Americans do love language. We're just not quite sure as to which language we love. In a misguided effort to appease our preconcieved notion of a cosmopalitan lexicon, we do tend to incorporate the social pablum of our day. You know the words. If you don't, well, then hum along...

There are some things that are just things you should know. I don't blame someone for not knowing the difference between neutrinos and neutrons. But if they are not aware that the Earth goes around the Sun I will think them ignorant.

Well - the difference between neutrons and neutrinos is pretty elementary particle physics. And if you don't know any particle physics, you don't know what anything in the world is actually made of...

Seems pretty basic to me.

Same applies to not knowing any chemistry, really...

I personally know very little chemistry

Hmm... and the number of people who use computers without knowing a thing about them is just scary...

Who gets to decide which knowledge is required to stop you being 'stupid' or 'ignorant', and which is just incidental?

Well, if someone didn't know what atoms were then I'd be worried.

I also know very little about chemistry

The artificial value we put on knowledge has led to some confusion between the terms 'intelligence', 'information', and 'knowledge'.

We have an innapropriatly high regard for those who seem to 'know' stuff, or have access to information but we seem to forget that what got us here is intelligence, reasoning and problem solving. The details and intricacies of arcane knowledge and obscure information are pointless without the intelligence to manage them.

Understanding the principles and working applications of the lever and the screw will always be more important to me than the supposed (imagined) internal workings of the atom, which, until they develop an atomic engine for my car, has no direct bearing on my transport needs.


~jwf~

Comparing someone not knowing any Elementary Particle Physics and someone not knowing the difference between Australia and Austria isn't, i don't reckon, a particularly pertinent argument.

I have x GCSEs, x A-levels and an honours degree but I couldn't tell you what the difference between a neutron and a neutrino is even if my life depended on it. I can tell you what the highest navigable lake in the world is, and the difference between Ionic and Doric columns. I can spell Mississippi, I know that Ulan Bator is the Capital of Mongolia. I know that 40% is the rate of Inheritance Tax in the UK and that Penguins don't live in the Arctic whereas Polar bears do. I also know that the Alps are in Australia where they wear Lehderhosen and that the Austrians wear hats with corks dangling from them, say "G'day" alot - or is it the other way around.

I'm not sure what this is trying to say but I hope you've understood all the same!

Bring Back Borstal.

John, it's not an artificial value but a sign of pragmatism, because for any society knowledge is unquestionably more important than intelligence. There have always been intelligent people around but the same cannot be said for knowledge: during the so-called Dark Ages Europeans didn't spend a millennium spawning morons, they just didn't have any giants' shoulders to stand on.

Yes society, civilisation, almost by definition depends upon collective knowledge (even if that knowledge is inaccurate) ritualised into its innerworkings. I am not arguing history.

What I am saying is that today, the word 'intelligent' is too often wrongly applied to those with access to information, especially obscure information - whether that information is true knowledge or merely a collection of imagined theories and psuedo-religious systems doctrines and social/political dogma.

Claiming a knowledge of Quantum Physics is a sure way to gain reknown as 'intelligent' without ever having to (or being able to) prove it.
The same can be said of 'financial advisors', 'military experts' and most of the 'social sciences'.

I only meant that intelligence (an active working system) and information (cold data) are not synonyms, as many today would believe. Nor is even genuine 'knowledge' the same thing as intelligence, although it does at least imply an understanding of information and not just rote learning or handy access and retrieval skills.

~jwf~

It seems to be that same line whereby many people couldn't tell the difference between the Indonisian flag and the Monacan flag, while others couldn't tell it from the Polish.

Some people just don't know how to pay attention.

Um, apparently some databases can't tell the difference, either.
The one I just looked at showed the Indonesian and Monacan to be identical in pattern...

I still have trouble with the Texas and Chilean flags...

http://www.flags.ndirect.co.uk/

sorry about that

That's one of those websites you bookmark because you just know it will come in handy one day!

No, I'm not joking - I bookmarked a page giving world time zones a few weeks back, and forgot all about it. It also synchronises your PC clock with an atomic clock somewhere or other.

Today, a colleague assured me that if you look at your watch upside down (the watch, not you, you silly rotating person) it gives the time in India. My immediate reaction was, 'No it doesn't.' Thanks to my foresight in bookmarking that page, I now KNOW it doesn't. I also now know that it acutally gives the time halfway between Thailand and Vietnam, although there doesn't seem to be a time zone for that.







Errrrm...







D'you think perhaps I should get out more?

Why are you asking me? I have to be pried out of the house.
I was on the highway much more than I usually am yesterday and I was in fear for my life the whole time. People going way too fast and passing on both sides and tailgating at seventy...and eating and drinking and talking on the phone and kids and dogs running around...no seatbelts...pieces hanging off vehicles...
Plague of metal locusts...

But it was worth it.
We went to the mall and ended up coming home with a book on Aikido, a small 'bountiful' Buddha, and a living stick of bamboo which the daughter wants to plant in the yard.

I bookmark all kinds strange things, like sites for Nixi tube clocks and oversize slide rules...

If I'm forced to go to a mall I insist that I should come back with something interesting. The stuff you described sounds exactly like the sort of thing I reward myself with for spending dreary hours trooping around the shops.

I don't mind driving - I just don't like shopping.

Aha - I wasn't going to admit that I didn't know what a Nixie tube clock is - thank heaven for Google!