Unfortunately, my natural approach is didactic, though well-intentioned. That hasn’t worked out well, but that’s another ball of wax. Cute story, though: when she was six, she complained because it was dark, and I woke her up too early for school. “It’s the same time as always, Honey. In the winter, the sun comes up later.” Her response: “No it doesn’t.” So there might be a bit of a problem with clashing personalities.
Don’t quit your day job.
Wow those two are shockingly ignorant. I knew a moon was a natural satellite that orbited a planet when I was like 10 years old! How could grown adults not know this grade school knowledge?
I felt I was watching Haley Dunphy’s future.
This is surprising. Mizrahi is actually pretty smart. He does really well on Celebrity Jeopardy!
Hmm…what if the Elizabethans didn’t drink beer because of bad water but just because they also had terrible taste in beer? :-0
I used to think the moon and the sun were the same body, and that during the daytime volcanoes on the surface of thing erupted and made it shine. Later I learned to read, and started kindergarten.
I suppose we could try to find some forgiveness, some allowance for basic ignorance of science and technological jargon among those who are not primarily interested in such things… But really? How do these people find their way home every night?
I was once almost physically assaulted for suggesting that the moon rises about an hour later each day[1]. The group of people involved Seemed to be of the opinion that no one could possibly know such things in advance and that I should perhaps be burned as a witch. Eventually I gave up and moved on. I can imagine a similar outcome to a conversation with these nice people.
1: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=642
It’s more like a 28th of a day, and I’m not sure if there are differences due to latitude (In the manner that the days don’t uniformly change in length before and after the solstice) or whatever, but these people were not being pedantic about the number of minutes and seconds, they were angry that I even suggested it was a simple regular procession.
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This is all anyone has to know about the moon:
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Why do you think Aldrin and Armstrong had to land there at night??
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I had a similar argument in high school with a classmate. My assertion was that the moon could sometimes be seen in the sky during the day, along with the sun. He was adamant that such sightings were mutually exclusive.
A lack of thinking is appalling, but in this case? Jesus… you only have to look and pay attention!
I’ve come to think that with some people, certain obvious truths are simply not important to them, and that they don’t so much deny as ignore them.
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Been ages since I have seen the milky way… I wanted to be an astronomer and used to go lay in the middle of our field from ~ grade 2 on…
Always wonder if inner cities would be a bit different if they could really see the stars…
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How can anyone grow up to be an adult and NOT know what the moon is? There’s something wrong with the education if such basic facts are not known by the 2nd grade.
Even sadder is that she seemed so sure of it. It sounded like she was willing to bet her life on the fact that moon is a star,
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There’s no double or treble “like” button. Not my fault. And I’m speaking after 5:52. Smooth and eyebrowless is unfathomably not connected with credibility. Cheese.
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That’s no moon. It’s a space station.
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I’m pretty sure Haley Dunphy is smart enough to know when she’s outclassed. She did have to grow up with live-action Lisa Simpson as a little sister, so I’d expect that she developed at least a little intellectual humility. Enough to realize that she’s not going to win arguments about anything scientific.
Sure, but “satellite” really doesn’t get to the meat of the issue.
I think the word Mizrahi would have searched for, if he were but slightly less self-satisfied and slightly more intelligent than his co-host, was: planetary body.
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What I find baffling is that the basic solar system facts weren’t imprinted by their social groups. That’s what’s really scary. That they ran in groups of people so intellectually vapid that they were never called idiots, or corrected by their peers for not knowing what the freaking moon is. That means there’s a whole bunch of people out there that either don’t care about the basic parts of the world around them, or believe stupid crap about things they should have learned in school.
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It really is unfair to criticize her for calling the moon a star. She knew (kind of) that the Sun was a star!
This isn’t a half moon waning situation, this is a half moon waxing!
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Thanks for sparking some wonderful memories of my own childhood. We were lucky to have fields and driveways where it was dark enough to see stars, planets and the occasional orbiting artificial satellite.
I lived in a pretty flat part of Iowa and my friend and I would sometimes lay down on his driveway, which was slightly inclined, and if we looked straight up it was easy enough to feel as though we were suspended in space, with stars going to the edge of our peripheral vision.
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All I need to know is whether the moon and mars are conspiring against me by lining up when I have my big date planned.
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