6 posts tagged “ignorance”

I have to admit I did get stumped once when watching Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? when the question was on the different levels of sky, something I never learned about at school. And when I learned that the kids on the show swotted up prior, I lost interest in it: if I swotted, I could beat their sorry asses.
   But every now and then, I impress myself. I knew when Herbert Hoover was the US president, for example, and the contestant didn’t (nor did the kid). Occasionally it’s not hard to impress yourself, when you have contestants like these (found on Snowy’s blog):

This is a call that came in at 2.20 a.m. today:

Caller: Hi, may I speak with Jack Yan, please?
Me: Speaking.
Caller: It’s Jim *** from Madison Who’s Who. How are you?
Me: Jim, it’s 2.20 a.m.
Caller: What was that?
Me: It’s twenty past two in the morning.
Caller: Oh, Jesus Chr … [hangs up]

   Tell me, what is worse?
   1. Not realizing that not everyone on the planet lives in US eastern time, not even after dialling 011.
   2. Using the Lord’s name in vain.
   3. Hanging up on someone to whom you’ve told all your info and not apologizing for doing something stupid.

080422 Dominion Post p 1 on Hillary Clinton

A lot of people call George W. Bush a dumbass, because they say he is ignorant about foreign policy and the names of leaders.
   Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is smart and experienced, even if she has memory and “misspeaking” problems caused by sleep deprivation.
   Here’s the latest one that made the front page here in Wellington, New Zealand, in the Australian-owned Dominion Post newspaper. Sen. Clinton called Helen Clark the ‘former prime minister of New Zealand’ even though she’s still in office.
   If she gets in, Americans are still going to get comments about a dumbass, ignorant president from us. So much for restoring America’s international prestige—when she makes mistakes like this.
   No doubt it was caused by sleep deprivation again.
   If you can read the article, the latest Clinton “misstatement” managed to remind the New Zealand press about her gaffe that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, something later revealed to be complete fiction. The Bosnian sniper-fire incident is also in there.
   She’ll say anything, it seems—and in my book, that’s not presidential. The anti-Bush types say that if the world could have voted a US president, he would not have got in. It seems that if New Zealanders could vote in anyone into the White House from here, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look like our pick.

The news that Journeyman fans did not want to hear has come: there will be no more after the 12 episodes that have been made. NBC has not asked for more, and the chances of the show’s return in 2008 are tiny.
   I wrote on the unofficial Journeyman Blog today:

This news sucks big time. This is a consistently well written show and what American networks do not realize is that it discourages us foreigners from getting suckered in to US-made series. As a result, I never slavishly followed the US into Lost, Heroes or many of those so-called “hits” after consistent disappointments surrounding premature cancellations or network tinkering. Journeyman managed to break that for me because it truly was excellent.
   I know NBC must look at its domestic market first, but I would have thought the prospect of strong international sales would be considered. In the US, 10 p.m. is probably a tad late, but you can totally have seen this airing at 8.30 p.m. in Britain, Australia or New Zealand. (It probably won’t now, because it’s been labelled a flop and programmers in other countries will be too scared or lazy to determine otherwise.)
   So thanks, NBC, for building an audience for an excellent show despite its lousy timeslot, and for being so daft that you don’t see that this does the network’s credibility some damage. After all, who gets the blame? Fox, for making it, or NBC, for not having the intelligence to see there were other factors at play with the poor ratings?
   The only consolation is that I only have to buy a single season’s worth of DVDs rather than the seven I plan to fork out for Mission: Impossible. Ah, remember those days when networks stuck with shows?

   An American (I assume) fan called Wes wrote on the official blog and makes an excellent point about Seinfeld:

NBC are you listening (or at least reading)? You have to give Journeyman a chance and give it time to find an audience. This could be a great show for years. It may have been mentioned here already, but several of the past "best TV shows ever" were almost canceled and took time to find an audience. Seinfeld sound familiar? How much money did it make for NBC? It's not just the about the money either. It takes time for word of mouth to spread the news and maybe a little luck for a TV show to jump up to the top 20 in weekly ratings. People will stop watching serial type shows all together if every time one doesn't instantly become a barn burner, you cancel it. And the networks wonder why viewership is down. Maybe you should take cue from HBO and Showtime. Make a good show (you have) and people will come, it just takes time.

   Even the writers’ strike could not save it. The ratings were actually beginning to head north after people stopped watching The Bachelor, but not enough to get NBC to see sense.
   I certainly won’t be in a hurry to start watching any other new American series of this ilk and have successfully stayed away from Heroes and The Nine after disappointments with The Pretender, John Doe and others. I watched maybe 10 episodes of Lost despite the addition of Elizabeth Mitchell, a Lucire interviewee. You just never know when they disappear. The Brits may do fewer shows, but at least they see them through to a natural conclusion more often. The British networks respect their viewers.
   The networks no longer remember how The Dick van Dyke Show was cancelled, was brought back, and lasted for years—and from memory, JAG went through the same thing. If the writing is as good as it is on Journeyman, a second season is all a show needs to become a long-running classic. Killing Journeyman is a way of covering up NBC’s own inadequacies of putting it into a too-late timeslot.
   I will watch the new Life on Mars when or if it starts, based on the goodwill of the British original, and because I know the secret behind Sam Tyler, so I won’t be as hurt if it’s pulled. 

Low res NZ PM with RM Gull E10

Some Americans already think that PM Helen Clark is Ms Photo Op, without the substance. That was the first thing that came to mind when this pic came through from the Ford Motor Company today.
   Considering that New Zealand had natural gas-powered cars when I was a youngster in 1980 (until the National government thought they might be bad for us in the mid-1990s and really pushed us toward good, healthy and cheap petrol) and Todd Park was experimenting with a methanol-powered Mitsubishi in 1983, you can see why I am not terribly impressed with news that we have this revolutionary, new biofuel pump serving E10.
   Little compares with our having a 20-plus-year lead on the rest of the world with LPG and CNG, something this country fails to acknowledge time and time again. Probably to cover up its own inadequacies and lack of vision.
   E10, phooey. Sure it’s a step in the right direction, but such a little step compared to the advances we were making against OPEC in the late 1970s. We should be crying about how our lead and knowledge have been flushed down the toilet, and how no one other than regular citizens gives a toss.

Just because I’ve been defending my friend Jen on the SFist blog, I have been accused of working for her boyfriend’s office and now, someone tells me on my main blog that I have spelt defence wrong (the writer thinks it is defense) and, therefore, I must have gone to Stanford University. Can’t quite see the logic there.
   Lesson: when you don’t have a decent argument in return, since mine has still not been countered much in substance, then attack the person on something else that’s personal and off-topic. Clever. Not.
   It’s just too easy to strike back, but it would be like Einstein battling the third-grade science prize winner. Cripes, I wish dumbasses would just keep their mouths shut, go back to picking their noses, watch Survivor and wish that they could be Richard Hatch. Or whatever idiots do.
   And haven’t some folks in California, supposedly a cosmopolitan, progressive state, ever heard of English English—you know, the type used by a billion people in India, 60 million in the UK, and God knows how many in Her Majesty’s former colonies? This is not the first time I have had these so-called “educated” Americans have a go at us. No one in the movie theatre during Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery stood up and accused the American studio of spelling Ministry of Defence with an s. We simply know that there are 300 million people who do, and accept that as a minority usage. America is about celebrating those differences, not slamming someone who uses English in a different way. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of Americans get it (percentage evidently lower on the coasts).
   I’d hate to think how the anti-Jen camp deals with English speakers who have a different accent. God help the ignoramuses.