"Who here is bad at geography"
half of the class puts their hands up
"Really bad"
most of the hands go down
"Who's the worst of the five of you? Come up to the map"
girl walks up to the pull-down map
"OK, point to Europe"
"uhhhhhhhhh ... ummmmmmm ..."
ten seconds later
"oh, there it is"
Then there's a classic, and every time I tell the joke, there are a few people who think the heavy boots answer makes perfect sense. I don't know if it started as a real anecdote or a joke, but people actually are that dumb.
Quote:
About 6-7 years ago, I was in a philosophy class at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the teaching
assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to show how things
don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that,
while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just
float away if you let go of it on the Moon.
My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" Looking around the room,
I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked confused
by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at me like
"What's your problem?"
"But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more
slowly." I protested.
"No it wouldn't." the TA explained calmly, "because you're too far
away from the Earth's gravity."
Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on
the Moon, didn't you?" I countered, "why didn't they float away?"
"Because they were wearing heavy boots." he responded, as if this made
perfect sense (remember, this is a Philosophy TA who's had plenty of
logic classes).
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