Infoporn: Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-07/st_infoporn?rss
~~Pro-Lick http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (Wikia supported site since 2006)
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On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:01:18 -0700 (PDT), Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed
It's the English language Wikipedia. The fact that one side of the pond spends its time reading Pokemon and porn doesn't mean we who drive on the correct side don't use it to look up something meaningful...
Guy (JzG)
It doesn't matter how much I like it to be true, but unfortuntely, it's not just an American thing. People in general are ill-informed. You wouldn't believe how much urban legends are believed to be true and how much info is misconstrued.
Examples: 1) You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She takes away the sword. What does she say afterwards? 2) What are lemmings known for? 3) What form are raindrops? 4) What do dolphins drink?
On 7/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:01:18 -0700 (PDT), Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed
It's the English language Wikipedia. The fact that one side of the pond spends its time reading Pokemon and porn doesn't mean we who drive on the correct side don't use it to look up something meaningful...
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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- You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She takes away the sword.
What does she say afterwards?
"I dub thee, Sir Thomas"?
- What are lemmings known for?
Jumping off cliffs. A theory which was meant to explain the regular and sudden drops in their population. Those drops were later discovered to be caused by interactions with predator population numbers.
- What form are raindrops?
Slightly flattened spheres.
- What do dolphins drink?
I imagine they are the same as whales and get their water from the food they eat.
How did I do? (That's without looking anything up)
On 7/1/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
- You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She takes away the sword.
What does she say afterwards?
"I dub thee, Sir Thomas"?
- What are lemmings known for?
Jumping off cliffs. A theory which was meant to explain the regular and sudden drops in their population. Those drops were later discovered to be caused by interactions with predator population numbers.
- What form are raindrops?
Slightly flattened spheres.
- What do dolphins drink?
I imagine they are the same as whales and get their water from the food they eat.
How did I do? (That's without looking anything up)
Dolphins are whales.
KP
Dolphins are whales.
I've just looked that one up, actually, and according to Wikipedia, the term "Whale" is ambiguous. It can be a general term for all cetaceans (which includes dolphins) or it can refer to just those cetaceans which are not dolphins or porpoises. You learn something every day...
On 7/1/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Dolphins are whales.
I've just looked that one up, actually, and according to Wikipedia, the term "Whale" is ambiguous. It can be a general term for all cetaceans (which includes dolphins) or it can refer to just those cetaceans which are not dolphins or porpoises. You learn something every day...
In the Wikipedia vernacular, oftentimes anything can be anything once compromise has removed knowledge.
The article then goes on to discuss cetaceans, which dolphins are, as well as whales.
Dolphins are whales, and in spite of the crappy, useless, and knowledge-less introductory sentence, this article is about whales, including dolphins, not about the Mysticeti and non-dolphin, non-porpoise families of whales in the Odontoceti.
That's a taxonomic boondogle of rare form for Wikipedia, here, we're going to talk about a group and it's two big subgroups in their entirety, except for in one subgroup we're going to declare some member groups different from all other member groups.
I don't like what I learned here.
KP
On 7/1/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I don't like what I learned here.
{{sofixit}}
Yeah, I added 'em to my watch list, when I drop out of life and adopt Wikipedia full time, I will get around to it. We do have excellent species articles on various whales, though, so this was rather surprising. None of the species articles I've read fall into this morass of incomprehensible compromise. Rather suprising.
It's not what do dolphins drink, but how do they get their water that's at issue with living in the ocean.
KP
On 7/1/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, I added 'em to my watch list, when I drop out of life and adopt Wikipedia full time, I will get around to it. We do have excellent species articles on various whales, though, so this was rather surprising. None of the species articles I've read fall into this morass of incomprehensible compromise. Rather suprising.
It's not what do dolphins drink, but how do they get their water that's at issue with living in the ocean.
Whales do not exclusively inhabit saltwater. Belugas, for example, have been sighted 600 miles up the Yukon river in interior Alaska, and 1,240 miles up the Amur river in Manchuria (present day Russia/PRC border).
—C.W.
On 7/1/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/1/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, I added 'em to my watch list, when I drop out of life and adopt Wikipedia full time, I will get around to it. We do have excellent species articles on various whales, though, so this was rather surprising. None of the species articles I've read fall into this morass of incomprehensible compromise. Rather suprising.
It's not what do dolphins drink, but how do they get their water that's at issue with living in the ocean.
Whales do not exclusively inhabit saltwater. Belugas, for example, have been sighted 600 miles up the Yukon river in interior Alaska, and 1,240 miles up the Amur river in Manchuria (present day Russia/PRC border).
—C.W.
There are even exclusively freshwater species, like river dolphins.
KP
On 7/2/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
- You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She takes away the
sword.
What does she say afterwards?
"I dub thee, Sir Thomas"?
My, likely completely silly guess would have been: "Arise, Sir Cimon."
- What are lemmings known for?
Jumping off cliffs. A theory which was meant to explain the regular and sudden drops in their population. Those drops were later discovered to be caused by interactions with predator population numbers.
Being very irritable when their population density rises significantly, and chasing each other rather aggressively.
- What form are raindrops?
Slightly flattened spheres.
Oscillating spheroids.
- What do dolphins drink?
I imagine they are the same as whales and get their water from the food they eat.
No idea whatsoever.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
People in general are ill-informed. You wouldn't believe how much urban legends are believed to be true and how much info is misconstrued.
Examples:
- You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She
takes away the sword. What does she say afterwards? 2) What are lemmings known for? 3) What form are raindrops? 4) What do dolphins drink?
I'm equally concerned that you think that knowing the answer to that question constitutes anything more than trivia that's even less useful than knowing cartoon characters. Utterly useless even to the knighted who already have what they came for.
Was it an attempt to make some other point? Maybe that even the Queen is painfully ill-informed?
The point of the article, however, is that current-event knowledge has gotten worse. It's a relative measure. I.e., not that someone feels that knowledge in general is lacking based on an arbitrary point, but that it has dropped since the Internet (including Wikipedia) has become widely available.
Maybe the problem isn't the Internet, but in the schools teaching reading comprehension.
~~Pro-Lick http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (Wikia supported site since 2006)
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On 7/2/07, Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
People in general are ill-informed. You wouldn't believe how much urban legends are believed to be true and how much info is misconstrued.
Examples:
- You've just been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She
takes away the sword. What does she say afterwards? 2) What are lemmings known for? 3) What form are raindrops? 4) What do dolphins drink?
I'm equally concerned that you think that knowing the answer to that question constitutes anything more than trivia that's even less useful than knowing cartoon characters. Utterly useless even to the knighted who already have what they came for.
Was it an attempt to make some other point? Maybe that even the Queen is painfully ill-informed?
The point of the article, however, is that current-event knowledge has gotten worse. It's a relative measure. I.e., not that someone feels that knowledge in general is lacking based on an arbitrary point, but that it has dropped since the Internet (including Wikipedia) has become widely available.
Maybe the problem isn't the Internet, but in the schools teaching reading comprehension.
~~Pro-Lick http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (Wikia supported site since 2006)
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I don't know what article the questions are from, but only two are actually trivial knowledge. I've seen a lot of so-called measures of people being misinformed where the measurement is itself misinformed.
American schools no longer teach reading comprehension, in fact they are doing away with novels in high schools, so that the schools can teach the kids how to pass tests. Maybe it's part of this generation that made this quiz.
KP
I'm equally concerned that you think that knowing the answer to that question constitutes anything more than trivia that's even less useful than knowing cartoon characters. Utterly useless even to the knighted who already have what they came for.
I think the point was that people think they know the answer when actually they don't. Not knowing something isn't a problem, you can just look it up if you need it. Not knowing something but thinking you do is a serious problem because you never think to look it up.
On 7/3/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I'm equally concerned that you think that knowing the answer to that question constitutes anything more than trivia that's even less useful than knowing cartoon characters. Utterly useless even to the knighted who already have what they came for.
I think the point was that people think they know the answer when actually they don't. Not knowing something isn't a problem, you can just look it up if you need it. Not knowing something but thinking you do is a serious problem because you never think to look it up.
Oh, I didn't catch that, but I was more intrigued by the questions than the reason for them. But thanks for being explicit about the point.
KP
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:01:18 -0700 (PDT), Cheney Shill wrote:
Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed
It's the English language Wikipedia. The fact that one side of the pond spends its time reading Pokemon and porn doesn't mean we who drive on the correct side don't use it to look up something meaningful...
When I plug in "porn" in Google trends I find that the top six cities in the world for such searches are all in the United Kingdom, but fact do not bear out the notion that your side of the pond reads as much about Pokémon.
Ec