Are people really getting dumber

[Not A Hog]

Well, I WAS talking about the green monster, but if that truly is your sis on the red monster, she really has nothing to worry about!!!
I bet the back tire weighs more than she does.
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Lynn

[DaPeach]

[Not A Hog]

Still like the old thing, put a bigger knob on the shifter, remember the eight balls, T handles, tiny little steering wheels.

As Duke said, tho, there was no fore thought as to consequences of putting a stupid beer can on the end of the shifter, physics or legalities.

How many brain cells die for each can consumed??
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Lynn

[DaPeach]

meh...it's a dead horse


I was the proud owner of one of these:



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[Duke]

Ah-- I see.

I missed that about the beverage, I suppose. I mean-- I'm not unknown to have a barley cola when I'm bending a wrench It was just the image I got in my head: a 'crow's nest' of sort!
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Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian

[degoba]

[Duke]

Though really,

not just what happens to the beverage--

what happens going down the road with a twelve ounce wieght on your shifter?


_________________

Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian

[degoba]

[Axman]

MR, after going to John Anderson's website and searching through all of his recordings, I can't find it on his discography. Joe Diffie does kinda sound like John Anderson on that particular song so maybe that's where you got it.

[MillenniumRebel]

... lyrics john deere green

thats where I got it
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[Duke]

[Shadow Shack]

The guy could be a poser. Perhaps he simply wants people to believe it's for a beer can but he truly intends it to hold a soda can instead...

Besides, any professional drinker knows that slinging beer via a suicide shifter is alcohol abuse.

[MillenniumRebel]

no - she has it just exactly right ...

as I've always defined it ... stupid is willful ignorance

simple ignornance is not knowing something

stupid is knowing it - but ignoring it anyway


ignore and ignorance spring from the same root - yes
but they are different words and as such mean different aspects of the common root




. . . . .
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[Duke]

Actually,

the proper definitions, if we're getting all technical:

Ignorant means "uneducated" or "unaware." The most modern proper use is in law, with the expression we all know: "ignorance of the law is no excuse for violation." In newspaper speak: Just because you "didn't know" it was the law doesn't mean you can break it.

Stupid, properly, refers specifically to an inability to learn, and is actually an old word (whose roots I have forgotten) that was once used to mean "retarded" or "learning disabled." It was used up through the 1800s actually, to refer to anyone with an obvious intellectual slowness that prevented them from learning a great deal or functioning on a 'normal' level: very litterally, retarded. In the 80s, it became "learning disability" and in today's PC speak, it's "challenged."

In common usage today-- the conversational vernacular such as being used in this thread,

Ignorant still means "uniformed" or "uneducated" or "unaware." It still makes no assumptions about a person's mental faculty, only his body of knowledge. Or, as-- oh, who was it? American philospher / inventor / teacher. Can't remember his name: "If a man is ignorant, he can be helped through teaching. If he refuses that help, then he is merely stupid, and there is no help for him."

A modern deviation of ingorant-- "ig'nant" has sort of blurred the line between 'ignorant' and 'stupid' because it is often applied to cover rash decisions, poorly-thought-out-action, or socially unacceptable behavior, or any activity that is guaranteed to result in negative consequences for the doer. In short, things you'd likely have to be very much old-world "stupid" to willingly do


Stupid, in the vernacular, means pretty much what "ig'nant" does, save that as opposed to applying to a single event, it indicated an individual who can be characterized in general as typically succumbing to ig'nant decisions, to the point of appearing to prefer them. In short, someone who would rather act completely without thinking in every situation, regardless of a long history that suggests this is the worst possible thing he could do.


Now we all know.

"And knowing is half the battle!

Go, Joe!"

(you're welcome, Shack and CdB, who I am going to assume probably also gets that joke )

So in the case of the guy who wants to hang a beer holder onto his suicide shifter,

well that person is being assumed to be stupid, because you'd just have to be stupid to do something that ig'nant.

Granted, he might not be stupid. He might just be ignorant of the physics he's playing with.

We'll know for sure after he does it, and see how he reacts

If he does something else ig'nant, then he's probably just stupid.




I love words. I really, really, really do.

And dice.

Words and dice.

Ohh-- I should find some dice with words on them!
_________________

Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian

[MillenniumRebel]

[Duke]

I've got pass the pigs, actually.

I collect dice
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Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian

[barbarian_rat]

Interesting thread.

While I find myself in some agreement with what y'all say, I don't see safety advocates as "safety nazis", kinda the same thing as "politically correct".

Sometimes they bring up good points, sometimes not.

But no matter if politics are left or right there is always some group dedicated to imposing their views on everyone else. Middle ground is something not to be attempted.
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"It takes more skill to ride a motorcycle than it does to fly an airplane"
USAF Sgt. S.B.

[Duke]

Allow to explain, rat--

hyperbole is my friend For all the types of humor out there, Americans have perfected, more than any others, hyperbole and sarcasm. Sarcasm only works face to face. In text, it comes off as just being a schmuck. Sometimes I get on a roll and forget that, then I spend the next two or three weeks answering PMs asking "why are you being a schmuck?"

I guess it goes to cultural differences:

Americans do hyperbole and sarcasm, the French do slapstick and sarcasm, the English do cross dressing.

Go figure
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Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian

[Shadow Shack]

Suffice to say, one does not need to look far to see how stupidity has grown. Watch an old WW2 film and note how the oscilating desktop fans are open metal blades. Today they're enclosed in a safety cage and made of plastic. Why? Because back when they were open metal someone was stupid enough to stick their fingers into the moving blades. (ironically the WW2 airplanes never recieved thesimilar upgrades on their airplanes. The military simply allowed the stupid ones to weed themselves out of the gene pool!)

Look at the frozen pizzas, they all say "Do not eat before cooking" because someone was stupid enough to eat a frozen pizza (and got sick, and sued due to their own stupidity). Same thing with those silicate packets that come in your pool chemicals to prevent humidity and clumping, "Do not Eat". Because never mind the fact they have been residing in toxic powdered chlorine or bromine for their entire shelf life prior to purchase, someone was stupid enough to eat one. Just waiting for the day when said chlorine/bromine container carries the similar message.

The list goes on and on...
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"Ride Safe, Chop Safer"

http://shadow-shack.20m.com
97 Shadow VLX, 96 Rebel, 95 VLX chopper, 92 VT-600 low dragger,
88 VT-600, 85 250 Rebel chopper, 88 VT-600 clunker

[Duke]

I think Brent summed up the "do not eat" warnings on the silica gel the best:


"You know, because right after I get a new pair of boots, the first thing I do is rummage around the box and eat whatever's in there."
_________________

Duke
"Skills must be Learned"
------ Herb Christian