Light laffs

[Warren]

Heh. Good one.
She should have dreadlocks though.


ETA
#$@&%*! new page

ariel black.jpg

[dbcooper]

[Warren]

You're giving me a headache DB

[dead_elvis]

Miss Teen South Carolina would have known these things.

[D.A. Ridgely]

You're giving me a headache DB

It doesn't matter. They're all engineering students.

[Painboy]

Scenes like that really shouldn't exist in this day and age. All three of those girls almost assuredly have smartphones. Google it. You don't even have to type anything. Just speak into the information machine and it will give you the answer.

[Aresen]

Scenes like that really shouldn't exist in this day and age. All three of those girls almost assuredly have smartphones. Google it. You don't even have to type anything. Just speak into the information machine and it will give you the answer.

I think the ignorance is a product of reliance on smartphones. The reliance on external memories or computations means there is less internalization of knowledge.

[D.A. Ridgely]

Scenes like that really shouldn't exist in this day and age. All three of those girls almost assuredly have smartphones. Google it. You don't even have to type anything. Just speak into the information machine and it will give you the answer.

I think the ignorance is a product of reliance on smartphones. The reliance on external memories or computations means there is less internalization of knowledge.

It's at least in part a function of how the craftsman uses the tools. Those girls don't use their smartphones for what was once disparagingly called "book learnin'." If anything, they've been discouraged in school from relying on search engines' capability to answer such questions in the classroom, so why would they think to use them at the bar?

My wife is reasonably well educated in the sense I continue to make fun of Warren for not being, but no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory, so when she can't remember or never knew in the first place, say, what river runs through which states (a question that happened to arise at home recently), her first instincts are to grab an atlas from our dead-tree library because books have been her reference source far longer and more dependably than Google. It's just the other side of the current generation gap. She's so old fashioned, she uses her smartphone mostly to talk on the phone.

[Ellie]

I will confess I have trouble at times remembering if Rome is a city. I think because my brain also has the concept of "Roman Empire" rattling around in there somewhere. I do know that Barcelona is not in Italy, but I bet if you named ten European cities I wouldn't know for sure which country at least three of them were in. This is not so much to defend these women as to express how very bad I am at geography!

If anything, they've been discouraged in school from relying on search engines' capability to answer such questions in the classroom, so why would they think to use them at the bar?

This is a really, really good point.

[Andrew]

no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory

Just wait until I finish my project to memorize the entire internet.

[Warren]

no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory

Just wait until I finish my project to memorize the entire internet.

What are you up to so far?

[Eric the .5b]

Scenes like that really shouldn't exist in this day and age. All three of those girls almost assuredly have smartphones. Google it. You don't even have to type anything. Just speak into the information machine and it will give you the answer.

I think the ignorance is a product of reliance on smartphones. The reliance on external memories or computations means there is less internalization of knowledge.

Nah, it's an old gag from decades of pre-web TV to ask random people on-camera "common knowledge" questions and laugh because they flub them.

It doesn't matter to these girls where Rome or Barcelona is, any more than it matters to Italian or Spanish girls which states Chicago, Houston, or Miami are in. So, while they learned it, they don't remember it.

[dhex]

Trivia is trivia and capital cities are trivia.

The real thing is that no one says "I don't know". There is nothing wrong with not knowing trivia.

[dead_elvis]

Trivia is trivia and capital cities are trivia.

The real thing is that no one says "I don't know". There is nothing wrong with not knowing trivia.

My wife's pet peeve is people not admitting when they don't know something. I hadn't noticed it before I met her but once you think about it it's shocking how often this happens, people would rather speculate than admit they don't know. It was so disappointing how Gary Johnson was pilloried for doing the smart thing ("what's an aleppo?").

When we were in Bolivia the book said (and our experience bore it out) to be careful that people will give you directions even if they don't know the answer, in an effort to appear helpful. It's the opposite of helpful, but I guess this isn't a phenomenon unique to the US, even if the motivations are different.

[Mo]

Trivia is trivia and capital cities are trivia.

The real thing is that no one says "I don't know". There is nothing wrong with not knowing trivia.

My wife's pet peeve is people not admitting when they don't know something. I hadn't noticed it before I met her but once you think about it it's shocking how often this happens, people would rather speculate than admit they don't know. It was so disappointing how Gary Johnson was pilloried for doing the smart thing ("what's an aleppo?").

When we were in Bolivia the book said (and our experience bore it out) to be careful that people will give you directions even if they don't know the answer, in an effort to appear helpful. It's the opposite of helpful, but I guess this isn't a phenomenon unique to the US, even if the motivations are different.

When I was interviewing for a job for on campus tech support when I was a student, there was an interviewer who would ask progressively more difficult and esoteric questions. Once you got beyond a certain point, where you demonstrated sufficient knowledge to get hired, he did not care if you answered the question, he just wanted you to say, "I don't know." That filtered out the more people than the sufficient knowledge part.

Re: Bolivia, the same is true in Egypt. The advice is to wait until you get two people who have matching answers because it is unlikely that two people would make up the same wrong answer.

[lunchstealer]

no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory

Just wait until I finish my project to memorize the entire internet.

What are you up to so far?

All of Jezebel, Cringely's blog, about 75% of Time Cube

[dbcooper]

no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory

Just wait until I finish my project to memorize the entire internet.

What are you up to so far?

All of Jezebel, Cringely's blog, about 75% of Time Cube

Make sure you get Feministing's searing expose on jeggings.

[Jasper]

Scenes like that really shouldn't exist in this day and age. All three of those girls almost assuredly have smartphones. Google it. You don't even have to type anything. Just speak into the information machine and it will give you the answer.

Well, to be fair, the white girls are named Siri and Alexa.

[Warren]

no one has an encyclopedic, let alone a search engine fast knowledge or memory

Just wait until I finish my project to memorize the entire internet.

What are you up to so far?

All of Jezebel, Cringely's blog, about 75% of Time Cube

Make sure you get Feministing's searing expose on jeggings.

Ha ha. Well played both of you.

[dead_elvis]

Poor Rob Schneider. If you have to tell people you're a bona-fide comedy star...

Screen Shot 2019-07-09 at 7.06.58 PM.png (843.97 KiB) Viewed 1867 times

[Dangerman]

Whereas Arlo Guthrie needs no qualification, lol. Speaking as one of the dozen millennials who knows who he (or his father) is.

[dead_elvis]

Whereas Arlo Guthrie needs no qualification, lol. Speaking as one of the dozen millennials who knows who he (or his father) is.

This is the little theater in downtown Plymouth NH- I’m actually disappointed he plays the day after I leave to go back, I’d be curious to see him.

[Dangerman]

That's funny, I'm only a few hours from Plymouth, and I'll be closer that weekend because I'll be back home visiting friends in the White Mountains.

[Hugh Akston]

Standup comedy is generally not funny, but I still kick myself for not seeing a Dave Coulier set at the Burbank chuckle hut when I had the opportunity.

[Jasper]

I'm guessing below Arlo Guthrie is Tab Benoit, a really good delta-blues guitarist. If you're local and like the blues, he'd be worth seeing.

I'm trying to convince my wife to go to his show in Hartford on Aug. 7.