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Shocking stupidity

tech77

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

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Sangre

darkskol wrote: »

Well on the next question she was asked how many countries make up britain and she said one!

I saw this on the ads as an example of someone being stupid.

In fairness a lot of people don't classify Scotland or Wales as countries, the latter for example is a principality. You'd have an arguement to say that the UK is just one country.

Terry

SumGuy wrote: »

No, an adverb describes the manner in which the action was performed, e.g. 'quickly', so I think 'hard' is the adverb.

EDIT: 'Really' is also an adverb, so there are two adverbs in the sentence.

tech77 wrote: »

No.

Seriously though this thread was not meant to be about spotting niceties of punctuation on internet posts.
It was simply about a woman who didn't know what a bloody verb was.

janeybabe26 wrote: »

'Worked' is a verb in the past tense. The adverb is 'hard', in that an adverb in this case describes the manner in which the verb was conducted.

Or an adverb describes a verb. (And does many other things but this is the most common.)

God, now I know how my students feel. This is boring!

Yeah, but was it an adverb?

tech77

Slow coach wrote: »

Funniest thread ever. Thanks for starting it.

P.S. I would never have watched "Are you thicker than a ten year-old?" up to this, and thanks to this thread, I'm never going to.

P.P.S. Incidentally, you left a comma out of your final sentence above just after incidentally. Someone who is smarter than a ten year-old and can instantly recognise verbs (when under no pressure) would be smart enough not to leave out an important piece of punctuation like a comma. Have you ever been on a TV quiz show? Has anyone else in this thread? I have, and I humiliated myself. I got 11 out of 12 questions right, but it's the easy ONE you get wrong that nobody ever forgets. And I mean never. 20 years on I still get ribbed over it.

For the record, the question was, "Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smyth and Kate Jackson appeared in what show as private detectives?"

I know i did.
I said in a previous post that i am not concerned with punctuation, capitalisation etc in my internet posts..
Doesn't mean i don't know about it.
I use proper punctuation in formal writing, believe me.

So:
It's an internet post.
I'm lazy.
It's a typo.
Take your pick.

Also FWIW i also highlighted your own grammatical/punctuation mistakes (which include a misplaced comma before Farrah Fawcett-Majors).

Man this is ridiculous.

Sinfonia

Slow coach wrote: »

For the record, the question was, "Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smyth and Kate Jackson appeared in what show as private detectives?"

Shouldn't it be "appeared in which show"

:):rolleyes::o:mad::(:eek::cool:

This thread needs locking.

2 stroke

So what is the moral of this thread?
I can't believe that nobody has taken my sentences apart. Surely I've made a mistake somewhere.

pretty-in-pink

I think they are only picking on each other. Can you feel the love here?

2 stroke

pretty-in-pink wrote: »

eachother

You might want to edit that, pinky.
Love? Haven't felt that for a while.

AlmightyCushion

Terry wrote: »

Yeah, but was it an adverb?

I'm pretty sure it describes the verb e.g. I walked quickly. Quickly is the adverb because it is describing how you walked (which is the verb).

pretty-in-pink

He he, oh correcting my post. I feel so educated now.....

phantom_lord

what's that got to do with the price of onions op?

Pherekydes

tech77 wrote: »

Also FWIW i also highlighted your own grammatical/punctuation mistakes (which include a misplaced comma before Farrah Fawcett-Majors).
Man this is ridiculous.

You need to brush up on your grammar.

Neither are mistakes.

Lump

I don't what a verb is, and DOES IT ACTUALLY MATTER?!

Laslo

It's a matter of terminology and has nothing to do with intelligence at all really. This thread is utterly void. The OP should probably be aware that there are a lot of people out there that are considerably more intelligent than he/she is. They might even consider him/her to be stupid!

The fact is that we can't all be Albert Einstein and we should respect other people regardless. There are different kinds of stupidity. Not knowing what a verb is isn't stupid. Watching Big Brother or thinking that Gordon Ramsey is anything less than a disgusting, obnoxious a$$hole - now that's stupidity.

Archeron

Perhaps a better measure of intelligence is how much time you spend/waste sitting around watching dumb ass gameshows which are aimed at the lowest common denominators of society.
And bonus points to anyone who gets that involved with it that they go and rant about it online.

tech77

Slow coach wrote: »

You need to brush up on your grammar.

Neither are mistakes.

The comma after the word "was" and before "Farrah Fawcett-Majors" is indeed unnecessary and misplaced:

Slow coach wrote: »

For the record, the question was, "Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smyth and Kate Jackson appeared in what show as private detectives?"

As for using the conjunction "And" at the start of a sentence that's no longer a big deal grammatically but shouldn't be overdone.

Pherekydes

tech77 wrote: »

The comma after the word "was" and before "Farrah Fawcett-Majors" is indeed unnecessary and misplaced:

As for using the conjunction "And" at the start of a sentence that's no longer a big deal grammatically but shouldn't be overdone.

I'm not sure now about the first point. Are you objecting to the comma before direct speech or quotation generally or just in this specific instance. I'll stand by my usage, ergo it is not a mistake.

Starting with a conjunction is no longer a big deal grammatically? Does that mean that's not a mistake, either? And how would one calculate overdoneness? Have you gone through all of my posts, plus my academic writings? Or is it a cumulative thing amongst all posters/writers?

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

Sangre wrote: »

In fairness a lot of people don't classify Scotland or Wales as countries, the latter for example is a principality. You'd have an arguement to say that the UK is just one country.

wow - "a lot of people don't classify Scotland as a country". Who doesn't classify Scotland as a country? I'm guessing the answer is either (a) dumbasses, or (b) people with the geopolitical knowledge of a moron?

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

im_invisible wrote: »

think thats bad? i still dont know what a tracker mortgage is

FTW

Jumpy

Roundtower2 wrote: »

wow - "a lot of people don't classify Scotland as a country". Who doesn't classify Scotland as a country? I'm guessing the answer is either (a) dumbasses, or (b) people with the geopolitical knowledge of a moron?

FREEEEEEDOM

nice1franko

tech77 wrote: »

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

I find it shocking that people confuse stupidity with ignorance.

thebman

I can't remember what a verb is, well I can after reading this thread. It doesn't really matter if you can remember what the definition of a verb is. Most people can structure a sentence without remembering the definition of a verb.

Same with maths. You can make a good estimate about the force you should throw an object at to get it to someone but can you do the math to work it out in your head?

walshb

tech77 wrote: »

This follows on a bit from the -5, -6 thread below.

I was just watching "Are you smarter than a ten year old" on sky one with Noel Edmonds.

A contestant, a grown woman was asked what was the verb in this sentence "The man worked really hard" and she couldn't answer it.

I was literally shocked that
1) an adult could be that stupid
2) that that adult would then appear on national tv exposing this stupidity.

I'm constantly amazed by depths of ignorance/stupidity and yet these people it would seem function perfectly normally in society.

I'm thinking to myself maybe dumb IS the new world order and the way to go.

Incidentally that show is annoying in so many ways I don't know where to start...

To be quite honest, I don't see that as a particularly easy question. I consider myself to be well read and quite good when it
comes to grammar and spelling and tenses etc etc etc, but I didn't
know for certain what the verb was. I had an idea, but it's probably been 20 years since I was told what a verb was and according to the definition of a verb, it's not all that clear cut....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verb

Snarler

Its clear from everybodies responses that the OP himself is a a bit of a tard for misjudging the situation so badly.

Topic over, lock this Terry.

Dinxminx

The verb is "the DOING word" - that's what I learned at school!

And the second verse of Jack and Jill goes something like...

Up Jack got and off he trot as fast as he was able
Went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.

Or something.

Still remember from reading it off the wall of the creche when I was miniature!

Latchy

Archeron wrote: »

Perhaps a better measure of intelligence is how much time you spend/waste sitting around watching dumb ass gameshows which are aimed at the lowest common denominators of society.
And bonus points to anyone who gets that involved with it that they go and rant about it online.

Like what i said below,wouldent you need to watch these programmes a few times to to form an opinion ?

It's like that horrible Jeremy Kyle show were al these dysfuctional familys / people are paraded on stage to air there dirty laundry , like the mental patients on view in victorian times , in front of an audience (usually middle class student types ) , and what's annoying is creepy jeremy is up for a ' best programme' award soon.The programme targets the lowlifes and the weakest in society for entertainment

Stupidty in society indeed ....

L31mr0d

The OP needs to get off his high horse for a minute. I took the mensa test and scored in the top 1% of the population but I had to think for a second what the verb in the sentence was.

Had I been under pressure, on a TV show, with Noel Edmunds scraggy beard in my face my brain would of probably gone blank. They use psychological stimulae on quiz shows like this to make it harder for people to concentrate. I remember watching a documentary about how the set of "who wants to be a millionaire" was specifically designed to make people feel uneasy, along with the tense music playing constantly in background, so that they wouldn't be able to concentrate. Which is why people always say these gameshows are a lot easier when you answer the questions at home.

On top of this, I haven't even HEARD or READ the word "verb" since secondary school. I excel in spatial relations and mathematics. In college we usually worked in teams and the guy who was good writing would write up the reports. For my thesis I mainly used diagrams and graphs along with bullet point explanations.

I will be the first to admit I have a loose knowledge of languages. But i've accepted that isn't my strong point.

Citing something as irrelevant as not knowing what a verb is as "shocking" is like myself scoffing at the OP for not being able to calculate the result of a discrete fourier transform

tech77

nice1franko wrote: »

I find it shocking that people confuse stupidity with ignorance.

Who's confusing stupidity with ignorance?

Just because i have them separated with a slash doesn't mean they're synonymous.
I even alluded to the distinction between stupidity and ignorance in 2 previous posts.
I said that this woman was ignorant (because ignorant basically means "not knowing") but i also felt this amounted to more than mere ignorance (ie stupidity or lack of intelligence because of the intrinsic link between linguistics and intelligence).

Slow coach wrote: »

I'm not sure now about the first point. Are you objecting to the comma before direct speech or quotation generally or just in this specific instance. I'll stand by my usage, ergo it is not a mistake.

Starting with a conjunction is no longer a big deal grammatically? Does that mean that's not a mistake, either? And how would one calculate overdoneness? Have you gone through all of my posts, plus my academic writings? Or is it a cumulative thing amongst all posters/writers?

OK see point 7 under grammar here if you don't believe me about this.
Basically, a comma is only used to set off quoted material that is the grammatical object of an active verb of speaking or writing (said, replied etc and not "was" as you have written).

Hrududu

Brilliant thread. I saw this show for the first time the other night. A guy went out because he didnt know that Jack, from Jack and Jill used vinegar and brown paper to fix his broken crown. Hardly a measure of his intelligence.

I didnt see the verb one but its likely I would have gotten it wrong. I'm reasonably well educated but I have no memory whatsoever of even learning sentance structures. Its something I've always assumed we didnt get taught in Ireland but from reading this thread I'm obviously wrong.

Latchy

L31mr0d wrote: »

Had I been under pressure, on a TV show, with Noel Edmunds scraggy beard in my face my brain would of probably gone blank.

My son has a t-shirt with noel edmonds face on it and a caption underneath saying ' I Hate Noel Edmunds ' .

r3nu4l

To be honest a lot of people seem to delight in not knowing about anything. These people are wilfully ignorant and that is the shocking thing! They deliberately avoid educating themselves any further. :rolleyes:

I have no problem with people who are genuinely a little slow but still try but I do have a problem with the "I is keepin' it real man, I don't have no time for readin' an sh1t!" types.