Ignorance to Make You Gasp

Roberta, The wish when you throw a coin (backwards) is to return to Rome for another visit. The second coin is for a "personal" wish.


Fountain facade.
Trevi fountain is actually a facade of a building and the fountain is so enormous that it fills almost the entire square, leaving only a street. First throw a coin over your shoulder and make a wish (there is only one wish to make actually: to return to Rome someday) and second get yourself a San Crispino ice-cream around the corner (Via della Panetteria) and eat it at the steps of the Trevi fountain. Life can be so beautiful....

Yeh, but it was stuck onto that building hundreds of years ago...





Those pink balls were available at the drugstore which was between our place and 231st Street...

I/we only lived in New York a year. Thus, the year of the pink balls..

schniff.

ah,

I have this feeling of being off topic.. while sounding lascivious.

This came into mind when reading the thread before it got derailed into currency talk.

I was seeing the mexican version of Family Feud and the question (if you can call them that) was:

Name a rich country in the northern hemisphere.

1st Answer: United States
2nd Answer: Brazil
3rd Answer: Denver, Colorado

Can't remember the next answers, I was too busy laughing.

Thanks, Pantalones, for getting us off pink bouncing balls and back onto gasp-making ignorance. Your example is a doozy.

Here's another example of my own ignorance in a nonurban environment. I was spending a week with friends in a suburb. My friend was gardening. I asked if I could help. She said, "Sure. Why don't you weed?" I said, "OK, which are the weeds?" She sighed and said, "Why don't you just work on the dandelions. They're easy to spot." I said, "Dandelions? Aren't they flowers?" She may still be sputtering over that one.

Like I said before, I'm a city kid.

Perhaps we need to make a distinction between things we are expected to know (Denver, Colorado, is not a country) and things we aren't expected to know. Two kinds of ignorance. One causes gasps. The other causes amusement or minor frustration or irritation.

Also a different kind of ignorance comes to mind. One that results when technology takes over for our own human knowledge or consciousness. Checkout clerks no longer have knowledge or understanding of the stock in the stores they work in. In the past an actual human being had to look at what you bought, find the price marker, and enter the price--all by hand. They eventually became familair with what the store was selling and how much everything cost. Now they barely have to look at what you're buying. They just pass it under the scanner. Faster, yes. But when there's a problem, these people are clueless. Are they or should they be expected to know the merchandise and the prices? I don't think so. A friend at dinner tonight disagreed with me.

This is an interesting thread, Roberta (including all the twists and turns it's taken!!).

I don't know if he still does it, but Jay Leno used to have a sort of "ask-the-man-in-the-street," segment on the Tonight Show. He'd go out and ask passersby some basic questions about politics, current events, history.

Some of the answers were pretty scary!

You'd think that with radio, television -- and now computers -- people would be more well informed than ever. Maybe too many people use these outlets for entertainment and not much of anything else. And when it comes to entertainment, they seemed to have forgotten all about things like....books!

Roberta, for one, has not forgotten books.......

I agree, I could tell just from reading her posts!

I haven't read a book in a long time, in the traditional sense. I'm too busy editing and proofreading them.

But I used to read a lot of books.

Stray cat, your post reminded me of a gasp moment from a long time ago. On Jeopardy, the "answer" was, "He said, 'Demember 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy.'" The question was, "Who is Howard Cosell?"

In the words of my mother and grandmother, "Oy."

This thread puts me in mind of a secretary I had many years ago. You can tell it was a long time ago because the word "secretary" is no longer politically correct. And because I haven't had a corporate job for many years. She was a very bright young woman. Her ignorance was mind-boggling. We started many conversations that didn't get very far. She would get a blank look, and I knew that I had lost her. I said something, and she didn't know what I was talking about. I would ask. She would tell me what she didn't know. She never seemed concerned about what she didn't know. We discussed that. She didn't understand why she needed to know stuff. At one point, I responded--so that she and I would be able to have a conversation from beginning to end. This made no impression at all. I added that knowledge is power. The more you know, the more you are. She didn't see it that way. This was clearly a matter of values. She didn't value knowledge and wasn't interested in knowing any more than she needed to. It saddened me. From my perspective, it was a waste of a wonderful mind. From her perspective, I was a pain in the ass.

Why did they call the irish currency "The Punt"



Cause it rhymes with Bank Manager!!!!

You are SUCH a bad Roo!

bm

That's hilarious, Fbaezer--sadly, though, it sounds like the joker in Rome wasn't young, but my age. Too, too sad to note the commonality of ignorance . . .

Wow. That is a great story. I've known people like that, I think we all have. It makes me wonder what exactly they DO value. I mean, how can you value anything unless you know something about it?

Just curious, what kinds of things was she able to converse about?

Do you think that perhaps her lack of interest was simply a consequence of her then youth? It seems to me when you find something that DOES spark you, you'll learn about that, then because everything is interconnected, as a by product you learn about other stuff too. Does that make sense? Maybe she hadn't found her spark yet.

Democratic voters, who continue to be unable to properly cast a ballot, even in victory.

Ha! Now that's pretty bad. That definately deserves an "Oy" or two. Btw, I love Jeopardy!

Speaking of ol' Franklin Roosevelt, I once got the chance to visit his family home Springwood.



It's right on the Hudson River (in back of the house). I visited there in the fall, and seeing the trees with all the leaves changing color -- it was breathtaking. I also got a chance to see Eleanor's place, Val Kil.

cj's post about Democrats made me remember that, especially seeing Eleanor's place. She was someone who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk. She had a modest cottage at Val Kil, although she could have easily afforded something much bigger and more "impressive."

The guide there told us that Eleanor like to "collect people." She'd take the train into NYC, and if she met you -- and thought you were interesting -- she'd haul off and invite you to lunch! You could be a bank clerk and suddenly find yourself lunching with Eleanor Roosevelt. Across from you might be a senator, next to you might be a prince from a far away country, on the other side of you might be a news reporter. Eleanor liked to mix things up!

She had pictures on the wall of presidents, royalty and various other "big names" that she'd met in her life. Then there was a picture of some kids. Everyone asked who they were. Turns out, it was her cleaning lady's kids. Their picture had a place of honor on her wall, right along with the illustrious names.

But back to the main point of this thread! Setanta's and LE's posts about mathematics reminded me of something. When I was a kid, if a teacher caught you with a calculator, they'd take it away from you. You couldn't get it back until class was over.

From what I've heard, kids are now allowed to use calculators, and any other electronic "assistance" they have available.

IMO, this is robbing them of two very important skills involved in mathematics. Learning to use basic logic and problem solving skills -- figuring out for yourself how to get from point "A" to point "B." Now, however -- it's good enough if you can just come up with the right answer, never mind how you got there.

Is is any wonder that the store clerk is flummoxed without their scanner and the register that calculates everything for them?

Squinney is right, you are a very bad marsupial.

You know what's really scary? Voters who DO know how to cast a ballot and they STILL vote for Republicans!

First, please let's keep politics out of this thread.

Chai Tea, I have no idea what her interests were. All I know is that if something happened before she was born and she didn't hear about it personally, it was of absolutely no relevance to her. I don't know whether her lack of interest was a matter of youth. I believe it was an issue of values. It seemed to me that no one in her life had put a value on knowing things. She got enough education to get a job. And she was wonderful in that job. I don't think she understood that her natural intelligence made her excel. I think she thought everyone was the way she was. Not so. The other thing we need to keep in mind is that I was her boss. How much would she be willing to reveal? No matter how fond I was of her of she or me, there was a natural barrier. We kept in touch after out corporate division was "downsized." She got another job and was happy. I guess that was enough.

Stray Cat, I visited FDR's home in Hyde Park when I was a kid. Loved it.

I agree that allowing kid to use calculators robs them of basic skills and understanding. Coming up with the right answer seems more important than learning how to arrive at that answer. This may be the result of all the standardized testing these days. Great pressure is applied on schools and educators to keep those scores up.

I'm reminded of something that happened to me in my college statistics class. I'm terrible with numbers, horrendous at math. I was not doing well in the class. I thought I might fail--a first and only for me. On the final exam, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the answer on the big question to make sense. I finally wrote an essay saying that I thought my answer was wrong and why I thought so. I explained what I thought the answer should be near and why. I passed.

A European friend of mine told me about an American student of hers who wanted to know which bridge she took (across the Atlantic) to get here. Thud. And gasp.

It's my feeling (and just a feeling) that kids in generations that preceded ours had more basic information and were forced in school to learn things. Even the not-so-bright students were force fed basic stuff. Not so anymore. And more's the shame.

My ex was terrible in math and excellent in literature et al. The Brothers at Mount Carmel gave him assignments re the history of science, and he not only did well with those, but retained an interest in science for the following decades and retained an ability to explain basic concepts and their development coherently.

I've run into people in the landscape business that don't know what two feet in length looks like, and can't divide to make equal spaces. My dumbfoundment now is not that they don't know, but that I don't foresee their not knowing.

I had quite the rote education, memorizing capitals of countries and the rivers in them, and multiplication tables, and spelling words. Indeed a lot of the grief about that kind of education was correct: I wasn't taught to question until I got to my college years, and then I was exhilarated that I could do that. Still, there must be some kind of happy medium possible for general education.

Ignorance is not national exclusive. In Italy, the mother of a friend, when told I was from Mexico, asked me: "How many hours does it take the train to come from Mexico to here?"