Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

This fight is for everything.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Books are my comfort food!

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

We will not go back.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Respite Open Thread: S-M-R-A-T, Smart

Respite Open Thread: S-M-R-A-T, Smart

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121Comments

  1. 1.

    evodevo

    Sabertooth cats? Say…she wasn’t one of those homeschooled creationist fundies, was she? According to that lot, there have been no extinctions lol

  2. 2.

    phein60

    We had Mbute poison arrows in a display, and a man asked if they were safe for him to touch.

    I didn’t know the real answer — they may have been, 20 years after accession –, but I knew my answer.

  3. 3.

    jl

    ” some guests asked if the Vikings were in some sort of reservation these days. ”

    That’s easy: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They have active colonies in the US Midwest.

  5. 5.

    Jerzy Russian

    I guess the common theme here is that some (many? most?) people are  few French fries short of a Happy Meal.

  7. 7.

    Spanky

    My usual response to these vignets; “Half the population has below average intelligence.” Unsurprisingly, about half the time that surprises someone and I get asked how I know that.

  10. 10.

    Nicole

    A friend worked at a zoo and overheard a 3rd grade teacher telling her class that crocodiles are mammals. He attempted to gently correct the misinformation and she got MAAAAD. She loudly announced there were two classes of animal, “predators” and “mammals.”

  12. 12.

    Luciamia

    Ehhhh, to be a tiny bit fair to the Sherlock Holmes lady, there’s pretty detailed descriptions of his rooms in the books alone.

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    Since this is a respite thread, what do people think of “Picard”? We watched the first two episodes and I think I like it. It’s more of a science fiction mystery show than a traditional “Star Trek” show.

    Also, we’re finally caught up with “Schitt’s Creek” so we’ll be able to watch the big wedding in real time.

  16. 16.

    opiejeanne

    There was a young man, a co-worker at the public library, and he hadn’t been out in the wider world much even though he was now 19. He had attended a religious school his mother ran (she was also a preacher), and the things he was unaware of surprised us on a daily basis. We worked in the media section with newspapers, magazines, and archives of same so he would sometimes read a headline and express his lack of understanding what he had just read, and ask us about these things.

    The only specific question I remember was when he asked what my husband did and I told him he was a Civil Engineer, and that he built roads, bridges, sewers, storm drains, dug wells, etc. He said, “He’s an engineer? So, is he licensed to drive a train?”

  17. 17.

    Redshift

    After Halley’s Comet was mentioned in a trivia question, my coworker told the story of how he met someone who turned out to be a Flat Earther, and asked him how he explained Halley’s Comet, which went around the sun and whose path was predicted decades in advance.

    He had never heard of Halley’s Comet.

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    @opiejeanne

    Have met at least one person who went through the public school system here and swore he had never heard of the Holocaust until well after graduation

  26. 26.

    Kent

    I lived for about a decade in Juneau Alaska.

    Old duffer walks off a cruise ship that he boarded in Seattle.

    “Hello son…what’s the elevation here?”

    And then is wife asked:  “Honey…do you think they take American money here?”

  27. 27.

    Peale

    I think I’ll set up the hotline to take Sun complaints. I’ll defend the Sun and blame it on the moon.

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    @NotMax: I’m pretty sure I didn’t, and I went to a good suburban school system. But that was likely because my American History teacher didn’t pace herself very well. I remember rushing through the most recent several decades near the end of the school year.

  30. 30.

    Dan B

    @NotMax:  BSA bankruptcy all over the LGBT blogs especially since the usual suspects, Cough Tony, cough cough Perkkins, cough cough, are blaming it on the predatory homosexuals.  Many comments are about the “straight” married scoutmasters grooming boys and then molesting them for years, many stories.

    It’s still disturbing that people assume the predators are single.  The scouts wouldn’t let single men be scoutmasters because th hey assumed they would be more likely to be gay.  The issue was predatory behavior not orientation.

  31. 31.

    waspuppet

    At the newspaper I used to work at, we would get a call every couple of years from someone who was mad because we’d changed the night of their favorite show.

    Because, y’know, we printed the schedule, so …

  32. 32.

    Peale

    @Dan B: I guess it was fear of the all powerful gay terrorist lobby that prevented the Scouts from turning over the names of known pedophiles to the police.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    We basically had an anti-fascist and anti-Nazi lesson plan, but (A) the Chicagoland area has a large concentration of Holocaust survivors and (B) the Holocaust was still very much in the public arena thanks to the miniseries that put Meryl Streep on the map.

  37. 37.

    barbequebob

    @Nicole:

    Speaking of mammals, overheard by a co-worker on a Cape Cod beach a few years ago, as curious beachgoers crowded around a young seal that had been basking on the beach and now had it’s escape route back to the water blocked by the crowd, “How can it breathe out of the water?”

  38. 38.

    Tenar Arha

    I honestly don’t think the kids cared. I find that kids usually don’t care about that stuff. Now, a Roman urn covered in anthropomorphic dicks with chicken feet… That is something kids can get in board with….

    Kids are utterly blasé & fascinated by the oddest things. I read the above thread & all I could think was how fascinated I was by the mummies in the local museum, the hours I spent visiting them, and that in 4th/5th grade I did a class report on mummification. (It included detailed descriptions of pulling out the brain via the nose, removing the internal organs, & bathing the corpse in natron salts before the body was even wrapped). And when I took my young cousins to visit the mummies in the Egyptian wing,  they were only interested in the naked statues, & the boats of the dead.

  40. 40.

    randy khan

    @jl:

    Ahem.  I think the Danes would tell you that all of the real Vikings actually are in Denmark now.  Although, in my experience, modern-day Danes are very nice and quite polite, so they might only think it and would not say it out loud.

  42. 42.

    Amir Khalid

    That Roman urn — man, that’s weird. I never knew that the ancients had chicken-footed phalluses to pull their chariots. It’s just sad how much biodiversity we’ve lost since then (he said earnestly).

  43. 43.

    randy khan

    @Dan B:

    In retrospect, it’s become obvious that probably the best and nicest Assistant Scoutmaster for my Boy Scout Troop was gay.  He never came within 1,000 yards of doing anything remotely inappropriate.

  44. 44.

    oldgold

    I was at family burial ceremony at our local cemetery when a visiting cousin mentioned the Father (pronouncing it with a hard A) family must be enormous in the community.

    Yes, damn near as large as the Mother family.

     

    y

  45. 45.

    BellyCat

    @Dan B: Sad situation. Horrific for those assaulted. Great damage has been done to many innocent, trusting young adults.

    Actual Eagle Scout here and our troop leader was Single (was not aware this was prohibited?). Scouting, at its best, inspired inquiry and developed skills and a love of nature. Never a questionable moment for me, personally, but I ran across a lot of “odd ducks” who were in charge of other troops. Easy to see how abuse could propagate. Very few checks and balances (late 70’s and early 80’s).

    Glad to see efforts today to modernize and integrate young women  Also glad to see the hetero leadership requirements dropped by many  troops. Many more checks and balances today, I’m told, but the future for the organization is uncertain, that’s for sure.

  47. 47.

    eclare

    Yeah, I used to volunteer as a docent at a zoo that had a silverback gorilla exhibit.  I cannot tell you how many people came up and said, “see, we ain’t related to them!”  I wanted to tell them, watch them and you will see you are.  But zoo policy prohibited that.

    But the most ignorant question inevitably came about when I took the ball python out on display.  Everyone asked, “Is that thing poisonous?!” Yeah, I have it trained just not to bite me.

    And it is venomous, not poisonous.  One of my pet peeves from volunteering at a zoo.

  48. 48.

    Tenar Arha

    @Jerzy Russian:

    @Mnemosyne:

    Either of you watching Altered Carbon, The Expanse or For All Mankind?

    I’m watched most of them all & enjoying them thoroughly. (For some reason I’m waiting to watch Season 4 of The Expanse; probably saving it for when I need a major distraction). I read a review that called For All Mankind “NASA fanfic” & turns out that is an accurate description.

  49. 49.

    Juju

    I was substitute teacher for a high school American history class and I was to show “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson. Various students asked questions while the movie was playing, such as, why didn’t they call the fire department or 911 when the house was on fire, where was the refrigerator and who won the war?  These were not joke questions, they were serious, however this was not an honors or AP class.

  51. 51.

    K488

    An adult acquaintance was visiting my family at my parents’ home on the coast of Maine some years ago. She decided to bake a recipe that had instructions to alter certain proportions of the ingredients in case the baking was taking place more than a mile above sea level. She asked me if I thought we were, so I said I’d walk down to the shore to see if the tide was out. 40 years later I’m still giggling, and I don’t think I’ve been forgiven.

  53. 53.

    eddie blake

    @Tenar Arha:

     

    the book ‘altered carbon’ comes from was a good read.

    not familiar with ‘the expanse’s’ source material but i REALLY liked seasons 1-3.

     

    have yet to watch the fourth.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    @Tenar Aha

    YMMV, of course. The newest season of The Expanse stretched the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. I don’t mind extrapolating from the laws of physics in the interest of a ripping tale but do recoil at treating them as being innately suggestions, to be ignored or jettisoned only for the duration of it being convenient to do so.

    Not to say am disappointed I watched it, just didn’t care for some of the choices made for the sake of expedience.

  57. 57.

    Quiltingfool

    I remember being shocked when an older friend announced that “birds aren’t animals.” My response? “Well, what are they? Plants? Fungi?” (I didn’t mention Monera or Protist as I figured he wouldn’t know those terms). I really think the guy meant that birds aren’t mammals, but he just equated mammals with animals. That guy really needed to be in my 7th grade Life Science class, heh.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Naturally no sooner did I press Post Comment than the pithy version occurred to me.

    The newest season, for me, traveled an Einstein-Rosen bridge too far.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    That whole thread on Twitter is hilarious. Makes up for all the toxic stuff that is on there.

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    We had to give a guest their $ back because the “Dinosaurs Alive” exhibit didn’t have any live dinosaurs. I feel your pain.

    It is actually possible for a museum to include living dinosaurs in a dinosaur exhibit. A flock of hens would do the trick.

  62. 62.

    thalarctosMaritimus

    @Mnemosyne: Must-see TV in our house!

    By coincidence, I had just binge-watched TNG even before I learned of the Picard series, which just heightens the story and its texture.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    @evodevo:

    Yahweh files down their teeth at the moment they’re born, because they used to be too naughty, see, so nope, no more sabertooth cats.

  65. 65.

    lowcountryboil

    Years ago, I waited tables for a summer at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. Tourists would ask questions like these every once in a while.  My favorite:  “So where do they put all of the animals at night?”

  67. 67.

    Eric S.

    I toured Gettysburg once. Or fior guide told the story of a “young man” that asked if anyone had recorded Lincoln’s address. Iover the years I’ve mostly assumed it a comical old wive’s tale. But…

  69. 69.

    trollhattan

    @lowcountryboil:

    Lassen Volcanic Park for some reason had a mostly young Russian crew staffing their food facilities a few summers ago and it was a hoot listening to them field tourist questions about critters and volcanoes and lightning and fires and such. Also, “Where can we golf?”

  71. 71.

    joel hanes

    @Kent:

    Juneau

    I spent a couple days exploring Juneau on foot, and pretty much everywhere you can drive from Juneau.  Some of the obviously-owner-built homes on the outskirts are … interesting.

    The elk hash over hashbrowns in the coffee shop at the Baranof was one of the best breakfasts I ever had.

    And I could pretty much live on fresh halibut fish and chips, at least for a while.

  72. 72.

    noncarborundum

    … they all turned out to be members of the Trump family.

     

    And now you know the rest of the story!

  73. 73.

    pattonbt

    @Kent: I made that exact same mistake (as the old duffer, not the wife).  I was there for business.  I got off the plane, looked away from the coastline to the mountains jetting up from the water.  I turned to my co-worker and said just that “I wonder what the elevation here is” (FYI I am also from Colorado).  I got this, rightful, dumbfounded look from him and he said “look left”. Duh.

  74. 74.

    Kent

    @joel hanes:

    Juneau

    I spent a couple days exploring Juneau on foot, and pretty much everywhere you can drive from Juneau.  Some of the obviously-owner-built homes on the outskirts are … interesting.

    The elk hash over hashbrowns in the coffee shop at the Baranof was one of the best breakfasts I ever had.

    And I could pretty much live on fresh halibut fish and chips, at least for a while.

    I think I ate at the Baranof once for a date.  But it wasn’t where locals usually went.  I spent nearly a decade working for the National Marine Fisheries Service in the big Federal building next to downtown Juneau.  I could see mountain goats out my office window from time to time and once in a while icebergs would float up the channel.  Sometimes also orcas.  You don’t get that from every office window.

    Yep, some creative living arrangements everywhere in Alaska.  My brother still lives there on a boat in Aurora Harbor near downtown.  Old wooden yacht that was built for a Japanese timber company executive in Seattle.

  75. 75.

    a lurker

    Not really a question someone asked me, but one time at a party some people were talking about how they kept plants in their bedrooms to give them more oxygen while they slept. I piped up with the fact that at nighttime, plants respire the same way as everything else: oxygen in, co2 out. This would make their plan somewhat countereffective.

    There was a young-age kids teacher there who simply refused to accept this. Argued at length with me about it for basically the rest of the night.

    I hope it bothered her enough that she looked it up later from somewhere reliable.

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @pattonbt: Heh.  I would have told you.  “Go jump off that pier and I’ll time you on the way down.”

    At least you didn’t arrive by cruise ship!

  77. 77.

    Kent

    @a lurker: Plant cells respire during the daytime too.  Every living cell does respiration all of the time.  That is how they convert chemical energy into all of the normal living functions of the cell, which are constantly on-going.

    Of course photosynthesis only happens during the day.

    As for the plants in the bedroom.  As long as the plant is physically growing then on net it is producing more oxygen than carbon dioxide, as some CO2 from the air is being sequestered in the plant’s tissue.  Although there is still a daily cycle of course.

  78. 78.

    joel hanes

    @lowcountryboil:

    I was once on the resort staff of the Lake Hotel Chiemsee (the former Rasthaus am Chiemsee).

    So I was standing next to the circular driveway, and a car rolls up, the window rolls down, and the lady asks me “Excuse me, young man, can you tell me how to find the Chiemsee Lake Hotel?”

    “Well, ma’am, if you turn right on that blacktop at the end of the driveway entrance and go about five kilometers toward Rosenheim, you’ll be able to get on the autobahn headed toward Salzburg.  Get off at the first exit, and turn left.  You’ll be looking for a big white building right on the lakeshore, like the one behind me, that has a sign on the roof that says Lake Hotel Chiemsee.”

    And they did it.

  79. 79.

    patrick II

    @Spanky:

    Once I told a psychologist friend that since 100 is the median IQ on a Bell Curve, it  means that there are as many people with IQs from 80 to 100 as from 100 to 120.  She asked: Are you sure?

    Pretty sure, yeah.

  80. 80.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    A common question from Texans when I worked at Keystone in Colorado was, “Where do y’all store the moguls in the summer?”

  81. 81.

    a lurker

    @Kent: Well yes, obviously. That was the concept I spent the entire night trying to convey. We are apparently wrong: Everyone knows that for plants co2 goes in and o2 goes out.

  82. 82.

    Tommy D

    I volunteer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It is a fabulous museum offering guests a broad and fulfilling experience. But occasionally a home schooled child or MAGA adult will challenge me on the age of the Earth. Or whether dinosaurs coexisted with homo sapiens. Or whether the Earth is flat. To which I say “If the Earth was flat the cats would have knocked everything off the edge.” Fortunately most local and visiting guests are just blown away by the learning opportunities at DMNS. Makes it all worthwhile.

  84. 84.

    piratedan

    @Kent: mother used to reside in the Lemon Creek Area and was fond of reminding me that not every state capitol has its own glacier in it.  For me, it was dining at The Hangar and watching the sea planes come in as an excellent way to enjoy both the harbor and the food.  Although I will admit that the Glacier Gardens tour was also a great distraction…but catching fresh salmon to be shipped home to Arizona was always a treat….

  85. 85.

    Kent

    @piratedan: Lemon Creek is the name of the correctional facility in Juneau.  So if someone says they are “in Lemon Creek” that’s like saying they are in San Quentin or something.   Hope that wasn’t the case with your mom!

    I had a whole series of boats during the time I lived in Juneau and spent much of my spare time fishing and diving.  More diving than fishing.  Exploring the historic shipwrecks in the area and diving for scallops, king crab, and Dungeness crab.  I had to buy a whole full size chest freezer for my garage to store all the crab I caught diving.  Good times.  Now I have kids and live in the Portland suburbs.

  87. 87.

    oatler.

    Advise the doubters to visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. They’ll see some real dinos,  yeah that’s  the ticket!

  88. 88.

    Juju

    @eclare: actually, I think they did listen and understand and enjoy what we talked about during and after the movie. The same students who asked those questions wanted to visit Bennett Place, a reconstructed  farmhouse and site of Civil War surrender in NC to see if life for a yeoman farmer was really as hard as I described.  That class ended up being nicer than I’d have ever guessed when we started the movie and our few days together.

  93. 93.

    Kent

    @Spanky:

    @Craigie:

    Yes, average vs median is one of the most common sources of confusion for those not schooled in statistics.

    If Jeff Bezos walks into a room full of 100 teachers, the AVERAGE wealth of all the people in the room will go up to over $1 billion per person.  However the MEDIAN wealth in the room will  remain unchanged at $50k each…or $100k, or whatever it was before.

  95. 95.

    Dan B

    @Peale: It seems like a demotion to being just the “all powerful gay terrorist lobby”.  Heck, we used to guide hurricanes towards conservative enclaves like New Orleans and New York.

     

    Sigh.

  96. 96.

    Kraux Pas

    @Luciamia: my favorite rebuttal to a Flat Earth is…..if the Earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything over the edge years ago.

    Per my flat-earther sister that would be impossible. The earth is surrounded by an ice wall of such vast height nothing can surmount it.

  97. 97.

    Kraux Pas

    @Redshift: But that was likely because my American History teacher didn’t pace herself very well. I remember rushing through the most recent several decades near the end of the school year.

    My American history class was similar. We breezed through the 80s like all of us who were no older than 6 or 7 by the time 1989 rolled around should’ve known all that stuff and had appropriate context to understand at the time just what was going on.

    The only relevent concept I remember from that part was “backlash” as in the 80s had a conservativrle backlash to horrible liberal overreach in the 60s like, erm, the civil rights act.

  98. 98.

    Mel

    @Mnemosyne: I managed a small bookstore years ago. Arrived one day to see one of the part-time, high school aged employees nearly in tears, with a red-faced, angry -looking customer loudly exclaiming  how the employee “knew nothing about nothing!” (already a clue that this would be a doozie).

    My conversation with the customer was… enlightening (?)…

    Me: Ma’am, is there a problem?

    Customer: Darn right there is!! What kind of store is this? I want to buy the Bible!!

    Me: Well [upset employee] has brought you to the correct spot. The Bibles are right here, fourth shelf down {pointing to shelf packed with bibles}.

    Customer, speaking loudly and v-e-r-y slowly, because clearly we are stupid beyond comprehension: Noo, The Bible. I…want…to…buy…a…real…BIBLE, not this kind.

    Me, befuddled: We have the KJV, the NKJV, the Revised Standard Version, and we can order the Roman Catholic Version or the Eastern Orthodox Bible. Which version do you need?

    Customer: These are not the real ones, though. I can tell. They’re just NOT!

    Me: I’m not sure what you mean. Those are the standard editions, They’re not just collections of psalms , or just an excerpt.

    Customer, really getting worked up: No, no, NO!! I want to buy a real Bible!! One they wrote!! Not one of these cheapie new ones!!!

    Suddenly, it dawned on us. She seriously thought she could waltz in and casually pick up an ancient manuscript for $19.99 plus tax. (Maybe $29.99 if encased in gen-u-ine goat fur dust jacket and autographed by Moses or a prophet or two, bonus Dead Sea Scroll with any five item purchase?)

    We just stood there, gobsmacked for a very long minute, and then she said, “Well, I am DONE with you all. I’m going to the Waldenbook place. THEY’LL have real Bibles..”

  99. 99.

    Kraux Pas

    @Kent: I thought that the median and mode were both forms of average, the other being the mean (the one people are best acquainted with).

    Mel: Customer, really getting worked up: No, no, NO!! I want to buy a real Bible!! One they wrote!! Not one of these cheapie new ones!!!

    Christ Almighty

    Did this customer want it in Aramaic or Greek?

  100. 100.

    Sloane Ranger

    It’s everywhere. The BBC did an adaptation of Les Miserables recently and people were complaining that, although it was OK, they’d left out the songs!

  102. 102.

    Mel

    @Kraux Pas: After the initial shock wore off, we spent days inventing  “REAL Bibles!!” that we wished we had offered to faux order for her.

    ”Ye Olde Lindisfarne Editione, in Originalle  Pigge Latin”, was our racy and daring modern entry, competing against such venerable classics as “God for Gladiators; Blood and Sand! First Edition”, personally autographed by Spartacus and  with an introduction by Lucy Lawless, time travelling Roman matron / Warrior Princess.

  103. 103.

    Morzer

    @Mel:

    “Every Bible Includes the verified true confessions of Edward the Confessor and comes with a coupon valid for 1 head-first full immersion baptism by John the Baptist.”

  104. 104.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mel: That’s pretty damn funny.

    The Bible, in the sense she was asking, wasn’t even a single document. And is millenia old. Is it too much to ask people understand their own faith? Or that ancient things are rare and not just for purchase?

  105. 105.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Kraux Pas: Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows that the real, genuine, original bible was written in English. Maybe old fashioned Shakespearean English, but still English. Next you’ll be suggesting that Jesus was some goddamned brown skinned foreigner!

    Seriously though, is it possible that your customer was looking for a 2nd hand, distressed copy they could pass off as a family heirloom for some reason? Our local auctioneer’s always has a number of these they get from house clearances.

  106. 106.

    Mel

    @Sloane Ranger: Sadly, she was not in search of anything but “the real deal” as she expressed it to my stunned teenaged employee. Before I arrived on the scene, said employee had offered to contact several specialty / antiquarian book dealers to see if they had any heirloom bibles from the 1800s in anywhere from fair to excellent condition.

    Mais, non – angry lady stated that she “wasn’t about to go buying somebody’s old fake junk”, it was go scrolls or go home! But clearly she didn’t even have any concept about any actual form of ancient documents, or any clue about world history time frames.

    This store was not more than a 35 minute drive from where the infamous “ Ark Park” was later built. That pretty much says it all.

    ”Bookstore Bonanza Friday!! Certificate for Free ride on Mary Magdalene’s trusty dinosaur steed wihen you sign up for our Frequent Reader Discount Club!”

  108. 108.

    donnah

    My husband and I were attending a group event way back when, shortly after the Bud-Wise-Er talking frog commercial came out. One of the women there marveled about how they were able to train those frogs to talk.

  109. 109.

    boatboy_srq

    @opiejeanne:  One of the things my SBC-backed university afflicted us with was two semesters of religious studies. One semester could be any introductory class from the Theology department. But the other had to be what I am sure the SBC and the trustees assured themselves was Bible Study for College Students – and what Theology wisely taught as The Book as Cultural and Historical Document.

    There was one day’s session that began with a verse from Kings. I forget the exact verse but the construct was ” And then [person] went to [place] and [did specific thing].” I remember this particular construct because about five minutes into the lecture – which was a discussion of Judean politics of the time – a hand went up amongst the students, and a classmate much like the lad you describe asked the paused professor, “Why?”

    The professor, dumbfounded, responded, “Why, what?”

    “Why did he do that? [rereads verse from the start of the lecture]”

    “Well, we really don’t know. All the text tells us is that he did it.”

    “Well, then, where is it?”

    There followed five whole minutes of the lad riffling through the entire OT insisting there had to be chapter/verse reference to explain why that person went to that place and did that thing, and the prof basically telling the young’un “look, kid; it just ain’t in there.”

  110. 110.

    Searcher

    @Kent: 

    I’m now intensely curious if more or less than half of people have a below average intelligence, ie, do more people have 150 or 50 IQs?

  111. 111.

    low-tech cyclist

    @boatboy_srq: The prof should have shown him one of the passages with a bunch of ‘begats,’ and asked him whether he thought the Bible had verses that gave the reasons why each participant in each begetting decided to engage in that act.

  113. 113.

    lethargytartare

    lol, this takes me back to my days working in Yellowstone National Park, where it was not unusual to have people ask “Is there a place where we can pet the buffalo?” or “When do they turn on Old Faithful”

    Had more than one aggressively complain that Old Faithful didn’t start on time, or started too early and they missed it, and it was the Hotel’s fault.

    We semi-affectionately called these people “tourons”

  114. 114.

    retiredeng

    “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

    ― George Carlin

  116. 116.

    opiejeanne

    @lethargytartare: We saw people at Yellowstone who were not wary of buffalo, not at all, and got too close to them.

    Look where the kid is in this photo:  https://flic.kr/p/WSHjF8

  118. 118.

    retiredeng

    I grew up near the White Mountain National Forest. One of my buddies used to work at the Franconia Notch State Park as a visitor trail guide. He describes the glacial erratics (very large boulders) as originating many hundreds of miles to the north and dragged to NH by the glaciers. When asked where the glaciers are/went he would say they went back for more rocks.

  119. 119.

    J R in WV

     

    When we lived in Key West, our apartment was on the 3rd floor of the Dr Porter house, built in 1835 of salvaged ship material. There was a big brass historical plaque out front. Wife was coming home, tourons standing around reading the plaque, after she walked past them and opened the gate, someone said “Look, it’s open to the public!” and she had to tell them, no, not open to the public, I live here, now go away.

    Sadly when we visited Key West last, the Dr Porter house had fallen prey to the touron business and was no longer in the original condition it was back in the 1970s.

  120. 120.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @Kraux Pas: No, no, no! Ever’un KNOWS the real Bible is in English, ’cause that’s whut Jeee-sus spoke!

    I always wondered- a six feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed man speaking King James English in Roman occupied Palestine? No wonder he was crucified.

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