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Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson's book
The Book of General Ignorance is certainly an eye-opener. Consider the
subtitle: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. That news is certainly
great news for a man who has spent seventy-five percent of his life and thousands
of dollars getting what he thought was knowledge, only to be told it ain't so.
The entries come in three general categories for me. One is those entries that
are entertaining and I can live with. The second group includes those entries
that I must ask the question, "What am I going to do with this information?" And
the third and most painful category are those entries about information I proudly
presented to my students and now run the risk of being asked for a refund for
dispersing false information.
The answer to the question "How do moths feel about flames": They're not
attracted to them. They are disoriented by them. What about "which metal is
the best conductor?" Silver—that seems right so no complaint there.
Those are two things I might not have know and can live with the up-to-date
information.
Then come those entries that I simply don't know where or when I can use the
knowledge. For example, part of the answer to the question "Which animals are
the best-endowed of all?" has this priceless bit of information: The blue
whale's male member is 6 to 10 feet in length and 18 inches in girth and the
whale's ejaculate is estimated to weigh 150 pounds each. Can you imagine Alex
Trubek on Jeopardy saying, "Under the category big....no it ain't going to
happen.
Sometimes the authors give a question and answer to it that would be best left
out. For example, to the question "which way does the bathwater drain", the
answer in not clockwise or counterclockwise. The answer is it depends. Sounds
like some of my answers to students' questions when I didn't know what I was
talking about.
Now the serious ones. The authors might as well have told me there is no
Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is greatly exaggerated and the Tooth Fairy is
propaganda for the American Dental Association.
To the question: "What's interesting about the birth of Julius Caesar," the
authors bluntly come out and say he was not born by C-section. They don't fully
answer the question and get off on a Caesar salad, which also has nothing to do
with Julius Boy.
The authors go too far when they deny that Abner Doubleday invented baseball.
They tip toe through the answer and come up with: "Abner Doubleday didn't invent
baseball, baseball invented Abner Doubleday. What a cop out.
Read the book and see what misinformation you are carrying around. If you happen
to be one of my students, I never told you any of that stuff that is not true. |
