My Education Was All Wrong

(Art stolen from this lady)

Okay, I get it: everything I learned in school about history is WRONG.  Columbus, Balboa, Cook, Vasco da Gama, Custer -- all miscreants with God complexes, I know, I know.

Probably half the science I was taught in school is WRONG.  Protons and neutrons?  Not the smallest particles.  Einstein's Theory of Relativity?  Not yet skewered, but that's only because there are only about 17 people who understand it, and they're all busy people; that theory can stand a while longer.  Dinosaurs?  Cousins of Cher the birds.

The English grammar rules that were pounded into me were, apparently, WRONG, if common usage is any indicator.  We can all say "where at" now without any fear of eyebrows rising.  I can now use "only" in a sentence without worrying about where to put it.  (I'm absolutely sure that someone out there will tell me where to put it, anyway.)

In the face of all of this disinformation filling my brain, it's really comforting to have new learning streaming in via the internet.  I learn great new stuff every day.  Maybe you get the same bulletins?

• Pigs have thirty minute orgasms
• The ocean liner QE2 burns a gallon of fuel for every six inches traveled
• The average person swallows eight spiders per year while sleeping
• Always wash your canned goods or you'll die a horrible death from mouse pee

I really don't need to waste any time wondering whether or not any of it is true, because there will be brand-spanking new factoids coming along any minute to take their place.  My question is, right or wrong, who figures out all this stuff?  Who spent part of his or her career to determine that if your poop floats, you're eating too much fat --  how was that determined, or do I really want to know?  No, I don't.

If the pig orgasm guy turned his attention to the relativity theory, maybe someone could debunk it and I could stop worrying about how much Earth time has passed when I get back from my speed-of-light trip through time and space.  On the other hand, time is all relative anyway, and that pig has given me an idea . . .

Comments

[MommyTime]

Yes, the changing punctuation and grammar rules totally get me down. I liked the way I learned it, thank you very much. To add to Bob's story:

New guy at Harvard stops an upperclassman wearing a letter sweater and says, "Pardon me, can you tell me where the library is at?" Upperclassman sneers and says in an acculturated East Coast accent, "Pardon ME, but at Hah-hvahd we do NOT end our sentences with a preposition." New guy says, "Okay, can you tell me where the library is at, a$$hole?"

See, I'm all for grammar rules but only for clarity's sake, not just in the name of snobbery. How exactly are they "rules" then? I don't know. I've just been at work for 13 hours...

[Bob Cleveland]

OK.

A dad wanted to read to his son out of a certain book, at the table before dinner. The kid said no.

About bedtime, dad's lounging in the bedroom upstairs in the bedroom and the kid brings him the book to read. Dad says ...

(clearing throat here) ...

"What did you bring that book which, before dinner, you did not want to be read to out of up for after?"

Now for my next trick, I have a sentence with the word "and" in it, five times consecutively.

:)

[foolery]

Yes, please, Bob! ". . . up with which I will put," or something like that.

[Bob Cleveland]

Laurie: I note, with some sense of appreciation, the fact that you used "it's" correctly. I seldom see that in blogs.

Well .. that's about the only topic in this post upon which I can comment, that won't get "Wanted" posters printed up about yours truly.

Incidentally, Laurie, if you'd like a sentence that ends with SIX consecutive prepositions, just let me know.

[Ok, Where Was I?]

No you didn't...that pig gave you an idea. And here you were trying to suggest you were a pollyanna. Pah!

I heard once that you're poop floats if you're healthy. That was years and years ago, and even though I never really bought it, I still, all this time later, wonder why it never floats. TMI?

[Kyddryn]

I bet it's the guy pig who gets the thirty minutes, though. Heh...brings new meaning to the gripe "Men are pigs", doesn't it?

Want a good physics read? "Faster That the Speed of Light:The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo kicks relativity in the pants. Also, it makes smoke come out my ears as the wheels in my brain spin 'round and 'round.

Shade and Sweetwater,
K

[Ride My Poots]

Actually, isn't that pig researcher dude the same guy that got kicked (and died) by the horse in Seattle whilst triggering and timing the equestrian Big O?

O, and Jessie Baby. Doesn't that just show to go that ya gotta make bacon to make bacon?

[Jessica K]

Wow. Thirty minutes? Really? I guess they deserve something like that since they know in the end they're just gonna be bacon.

[faux]

ratfarts!!! and we got schooled together in the same stable! (heh heh, i started a sentence with "and").

oddly enough, i ended a sentence with the same offending conjunction.

BFF
faux