What Are Things You've Heard That Made You Facepalm?

[_Augustus_]

This guy on YouTube talking about the Saturn C-8:

"That is INSANEly huge, it would have been a nightmare if it had fallen over when landing on the moon. OMG 1.5 bigger than Soviet N-1 !!!"

Or:

"Haven't people already been to Mars and Saturn?"

......

These people are stupid. And the first guy doesn't understand staging...

[Kinglet]

This makes me want to come up with scenarios what would be needed to make this happen. A couple of moons tag teaming each other? A Simpsons style sun blocker? A huge box with a cat that is both dead and alive?

The sun moves behind earth.

[Columbia]

Some people will make up anything to get the gullible to "like and share" stuff, no matter how impossible and without the least semblance of fact checking:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/KSP/Misc/15days.png

Also from the same source:

https://newswatch33.com/science/dont-miss-this-once-in-a-lifetime-viewing-of-mars-on-august-27-mars-will-be-as-large-as-the-moon/

[KerbMav]

Reading the high school stories remembers me of my own school times (in Germany and a regular German school, no US-military for a change )

In the 90's there was a TV commercial for a perfume for men, Galileo - and as it seems to be an unwritten law for perfume commercials to show anything unrelated to perfume at all, it was simply a guy dressed like a church official stating that the earth is a disc and an oh-so-manly other guy hammering his fist onto a table shouting "No!".

Classroom, history lesson, teacher asks about Galileo (the person) and one of our less sharp mates basically retells the commercial's story, complete with emphasizing it by bumping his fist onto his desk!

He did not say anything "wrong", yet ... *sigh*

Edited September 28, 2015 by KerbMav
other user's suggestion

[Bill Phil]

1. They completely ignore the fact that the shuttle is under continuous acceleration

2. That being said, how do they forget that free falling objects fall in a parabola?!! NOT A SEMI-CIRCLE!!

Things in freefall follow circles or ellipses. But good luck getting a circle. Parabolas and hyperbolas are followed when the object is at or above escape velocity.

[Val]

At work, I had an issue connecting to a SFTP server. One account was able to login successfully, the other account was got an Access Denied message. Both accounts connected from the same IP. And both accounts were able to successfully login from other IPs.

I suggested that maybe the account had an IP restriction, but the guy managing the SFTP server, kept insisting that it was a firewall issue on my end.

Took a week of back and forth mails before his colleague finally found and removed the IP restriction.

[Mister Dilsby]

Last night my family and the neighbors were all out on the sidewalk looking at the eclipse. Four adults, four kids, and two big cameras (one on a tripod) all staring at the moon. Two college-age girls parked at the curb and walked by. I asked them if they'd seen the eclipse, which at that moment was about half total.

"Eclipse?" said one, "Where?!"

[UnionPacific1983WP]

snip

You might want to change the wording of that before this thread gets locked.

Edited September 28, 2015 by UnionPacific1983WP

[KerbMav]

You might want to change the wording of that before this thread gets locked.

Better?

And, you may want to delete your quotation then?

[wx7]

This guy on YouTube talking about the Saturn C-8:

"That is INSANEly huge, it would have been a nightmare if it had fallen over when landing on the moon. OMG 1.5 bigger than Soviet N-1 !!!"

2069: Conspiracists find out that Saturn C-8 was actually a SSTO.

Yep, I'm done here.

EDIT: Hey, remember the YT comment I mentioned?

Note the curved path of the rocket, describing a semi-cicle; it will soon get to the apogee of it and then redescend towards earth, falling in the ocean, diving nose first. No witnesses around, noone to see the scam...Look at the trajectory, it OBVIOUSLY ain't going into space. It's all a HOAX.

Well, he replied to me when I attempted to what gravity turns are and how they work.

Yeah yeah yeah, just stick a word on it to make it better, like your mommie stuck a band aid on your scratched knee when you were 5.

cringe

Edited September 28, 2015 by wx7

[RainDreamer]

Just don't involve in comment threads. They kill your brain cells.

[Hcube]

Just don't involve in comment threads. They kill your brain cells.

I love to feed the trolls actually. And sometimes i realize not all of them are trolls... Aaaaaaand facepalm. That also raises metaphysical questions such as "why don't people raise their children properly so that they dont insult the first person that tries to teach them something ?"

The worst place is the flat Earth society forums. THOSE kill your brain cells. With fire.

(I'm thinking about that guy who was convinced that atoms didn't exist and that there was no proof of their existence, and that everyday life would be the same if matter wasn't made of atoms.)

[Robotengineer]

I love to feed the trolls actually. And sometimes i realize not all of them are trolls... Aaaaaaand facepalm. That also raises metaphysical questions such as "why don't people raise their children properly so that they dont insult the first person that tries to teach them something ?"

Because to them, education and modernity are evil, and ignorance is precious. If we had a time machine, I would send them back to the middle ages. Or maybe somebody did send them back to the middle ages and thats why the middle ages where so bad.

[Bill Phil]

Because to them, education and modernity are evil, and ignorance is precious. If we had a time machine, I would send them back to the middle ages. Or maybe somebody did send them back to the middle ages and thats why the middle ages where so bad.

Not really bad, just not unified. Travel was difficult, and people were subsistence farmers for the most part. So of course scientific development would be slow.

[wx7]

My Geometry book had "the Hubble telescope taking pictures from Earth" as an example, with full-size Earth picture.

I thought out loud "The Hubble telescope doesn't take pictures from Earth, it also couldn't take that picture".

My classmate then said "Of course it can't, it's on Mars."

argh.

[JetJaguar]

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but I just discovered Literally Unbelievable. It's a site dedicated to the social media posts of people who think Onion articles are actual news.

[mythbusters844]

A while ago, we were having a discussion on the discovery of the atom, and our chemistry teacher described how early scientists believed that the atom couldn't be split, giving rise to the name "atom". Obviously, and as most everyone in the class knew as this was an Honors Chemistry class and it was previously explained, it could really be split in the process of fission. Unfortunately, one very conceited and arrogant individual thought that nobody knew this, and while pecking away at his fingernails in the most egoistical manner, he said, stuttering, "Well, technically, you can split it". The entire class looked at him and facepalmed. The worst part is that he does this stuff much too often, and he never learns.

My Geometry book had "the Hubble telescope taking pictures from Earth" as an example, with full-size Earth picture.

I thought out loud "The Hubble telescope doesn't take pictures from Earth, it also couldn't take that picture".

My classmate then said "Of course it can't, it's on Mars."

argh.

Are you sure he wasn't being sarcastic?

In any case, that's simple ignorance, and I'd educate him about his error in the most modest way possible.

[Bev7787]

Those old cigarette ads from the 70s saying smoking is good for you

[ChrisSpace]

Those old cigarette ads from the 70s saying smoking is good for you

They are technically eco-friendly since they kill the biggest environment-destroying species.

[Endersmens]

They are technically eco-friendly since they kill the biggest environment-destroying species.

That's a depressing philosophy.

[adsii1970]

Here's one from a conversation with a college student yesterday. Just for the sake of smoother reading, I will give the student the name of "Jill" because of legal reasons.

Jill: "Dr. Simmons, I didn't get a chance to go on-line last weekend. I missed class last week, too. Did I miss anything important?"

Me: "Yes, besides the normal assignments listed on the course calendar, you also missed completing the second exam, which was also listed on the calendar..."

Jill: "Oh, I really don't worry about on-line exams. I mean, it's not like they're really important. If they were, you'd give them in class..."

Ugh. Yeah.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a depressing philosophy.

Yes, you're right. It is.

[monstah]

Jill: "Oh, I really don't worry about on-line exams. I mean, it's not like they're really important. If they were, you'd give them in class..."

LOL. You mean, the class she also missed??

[adsii1970]

LOL. You mean, the class she also missed??

I know... right? [HIGHLIGHT]My very first thought was "Oh, God, keep me from laughing; I can't wait to share this one with the forum..."[/HIGHLIGHT]. Yeah, she really considers class important as well. Our college allows us to set our own attendance policy as long as it is in line with the federal financial aid requirements (which means I must take attendance). As of yesterday, she has not only missed the maximum number of days before she begins to put her financial aid in jeopardy but...

My attendance policy is really simple. Each class is worth five points; an excused absence gets you 2.5 points (all it takes is to email me up to an hour before class to get an excused absence). Once you have missed 30% of the total number of classes with unexcused absences, you forfeit all your attendance points earned and yet to earn. It roughly prevents you from earning anything higher than a C in my class. (so easy a caveman can understand it... )

At this point, there's not even enough extra credit for her to make a high F...

[Drunkrobot]

"Red sauce tastes like tomatoes, but brown sauce doesn't taste like anything."

- Drunkrobot

I've said some pretty stupid things in my time, but that one takes the cake for it's sheer non-informativeness.

Edited October 2, 2015 by Drunkrobot

[JetJaguar]

I know... right? [HIGHLIGHT]My very first thought was "Oh, God, keep me from laughing; I can't wait to share this one with the forum..."[/HIGHLIGHT]. Yeah, she really considers class important as well. Our college allows us to set our own attendance policy as long as it is in line with the federal financial aid requirements (which means I must take attendance). As of yesterday, she has not only missed the maximum number of days before she begins to put her financial aid in jeopardy but...

My attendance policy is really simple. Each class is worth five points; an excused absence gets you 2.5 points (all it takes is to email me up to an hour before class to get an excused absence). Once you have missed 30% of the total number of classes with unexcused absences, you forfeit all your attendance points earned and yet to earn. It roughly prevents you from earning anything higher than a C in my class. (so easy a caveman can understand it... )

At this point, there's not even enough extra credit for her to make a high F...

My wife is a college math professor and she comes home with stories like these all of the time. This one reminds me of a student of hers from fall semester last year.

For a little background, my wife has a policy where she withdraws students from her classes if they haven't shown up for class by the withdrawal deadline. She does this to help them out, because a withdrawal doesn't count against their record like an F does. There are a few no-shows every semester.

Well, last year a guy she didn't recognize showed up for the final exam of a lower-level college algebra class. She looked up his name on the class roster and he wasn't there, so no, you're not in this class. He insisted, so she went online and checked her records and sure enough, he was one of the no-shows she withdrew.

Turns out he thought he knew it all already and could just show up for the final, ace it, and be done. His excuse was that he learned it all in high school, so he didn't need to go to class. No attendance, homework, tests, nothing. The final counted (IIRC) a third of the final grade, so even if he got 100% on it, it wasn't possible to pass the class. The department has a minimum attendance policy, and that alone meant he would've got an automatic F anyway. He was furious he was withdrawn and ended up going to the department head, who backed up my wife and told him she did him a favor by withdrawing him.

(BTW, this was a low-level remedial algebra class that could've been skipped had his HS math grades been high enough, or if he tested out of it when he enrolled in the college. So no, he didn't learn it all in HS or he wouldn't even be there.)