I am sometimes surprised by the things my girlfriend says.
A classic one when I mentioned i was going to get some diesel for the van was “oh, I thought diesel was just for taxis”
Today’s was talking about being in the engine room of a paddle steamer as a 3yr old “Only I dismissed that as a real memory on the basis it’s a paddle steamer and wouldn’t have an engine”
What? Turns out it’s just the wheels on the side making it move, like an underwater hamsterwheel🙈
.
She’s got a first class law degree so clearly isn’t daft but I do wonder how some people see the world.
Is it just me or…?

There’s two sides to every story, are you sure she’s not dumbing down conversation to your level?

😉

I talked to a girl with a lurcher the other day.

Me: “What is it, greyhound cross deerhound”

Her: “No, its a Lurcher”

She was really surprised when I explained what a Lurcher is….

To be fair, I’m not sure it was actually her dog

I won’t tell you view how Mrs D thought brakes on a car worked but let’s just say if she was right tyres would be bald pretty quickly!

She’s probably on a law forum right now asking why people can’t wrap their minds around simple concepts like….I dunno, power of attorney(?) or ….erm probate? Is that a law thing?

People are not interested in all things. If you had no interest at all in car engines why would you know or even care which cars had a diesel engine. Typically taxi’s did always have diesel engines in the past and are strongly associated with them.
My wife probably would not know the differences between bikes (even high level differences) because she has absolutely zero interest in bikes.

Do women still choose bikes/cars etc by colour?

51.89%

Yep, my partner has zero interest in say: Aeroplanes, but will happily school you in 18th C English Literature

Do women still choose bikes/cars etc by colour?

i know I do

I know two educated middle-aged men who have literally never cooked a meal. They never learned how to cook anything beyond making toast. Their wives have to rush home after work every day to cook for them.

I won’t go into details about how my friend thought that a photo booth worked, but suffice to say it would need to involve a quite small and not-claustrophobic employee.

My sister, who’s no duck egg, stood with me on the banks of the river Dee near West Kirby boating lake.

“Tide’s out” says I. “I’d love to make a crossing as far as I can on foot, swim the channel and then get out on the Welsh side”.

“You couldn’t do that”, says she.

“Why not?”

“Tide’s in on the other side”…

If you had no interest at all in car engines why would you know or even care which cars had a diesel engine.

In which case, I am not sure they should be allowed to drive.

I was taught that, to be a driver must also include knowing something about the thing I was driving, if only to have more respect for the power of the vehicle.

I am of a mind that we don’t have to be an expert vis-à-vis the tools we use, but we should at least know enough to respect them.

Case in point: I am not a ‘device’ guy, but I use them all the time. My kids may still have to point out to me that I could this or that task more efficiently on my device, but I think it is up to me to at least understand enough to then apply what they are saying to me.

To not know the most basic ideas about cars is, more than likely, to not be able to use them properly either.

I can’t count the number of times I have witnessed people doing damage to their own vehicles because they don’t have the slightest concept of how they work.

I know people who can’t use quote functions on forums.

In which case, I am not sure they should be allowed to drive.

Why would not knowing how car engines work effect someone’s driving?

She’s probably on a law forum right now asking why people can’t wrap their minds around simple concepts like….I dunno, power of attorney(?) or ….erm probate? Is that a law thing?

Theres an entertaining thread on Lawtrackworld at the moment called “things I can convince my partner that I don’t understand’

I’m going to encourage the OP on that thread to convince their hubby that they don’t know who’s job it is to fill cows up with milk. Lets see what happens.

My fiancee has three postgraduate degrees and my favourite quote of hers is “isn’t the moon closer than most stars?”.

TBF I say some pretty stupid stuff too.

How many people don’t know how things work?

Probably more of a mix of disinterest, not caring or not needing to.

Had a laugh at DOD mother yesterday as she explained how they weren’t used to emails/texting on mobile phones, I may have pointed out that they weren’t exactly a thing when I grew up.

Anyway I was actually thinking on this education thing in a dream this morning and the perception that education == all round smarts probably is vastly overrated.

Do women still choose bikes/cars etc by colour?

i know I do

we get more than enough conversations on here about ‘colour ways’ and reminiscences about purple anodising to suggest pretty much everyone makes choices based on colours as much and anything else. Guys will have read a whole bunch of stats and convince themselves they’ve made their choices on more empirical measures but they won’t admit to themselves that this is basically a fashion business. The people selling bikes know that it is – they wouldn’t change the colours of bikes, components and clothing every year otherwise – but buyers are very uncomfortable in admitting that to themselves.

I had to explain to my 46 Year old girlfriend that only female cows have udders the other day.
I’m right aren’t I?

Why would not knowing how car engines work effect someone’s driving?

Clutch abuse 🙂
Unless it’s Tesla land.

I think flying planes are more interesting as they require you to understand how flying works.

She was really surprised when I explained what a Lurcher is…

Why did you not just call it a lurcher? That is after all, what it is. Or were you trying to be clever?

I talked to a girl with a lurcher the other day.

Me: “What is it, greyhound cross deerhound”

You must have to carry round a shitty stick to beat them off with 😊

My fiancee has three postgraduate degrees and my favourite quote of hers is “isn’t the moon closer than most stars?”.

I can’t believe she still believes the moon is real

I had to explain to my 46 Year old girlfriend that only female cows have udders the other day.
I’m right aren’t I?

Sounds like bull to me.

Why would not knowing how car engines work effect someone’s driving?

The effect of engine braking, stalling, what happens if you put the wrong fuel in, there are safety issues too like oil leaks. Yes you can get away with knowing nothing but it’s not ideal

Why would not knowing how car engines work effect someone’s driving?

Clutch abuse 🙂

Know how to work something and knowing how the thing works are two different things. Theres no need to know how a clutch works to operate it properly.

Being pedantic a deerhound / greyhound cross isn’t a lurcher. A lurcher is, classically speaking, a sight hound of any breed crossed with a non-sight hound of any breed.

Both greyhounds and deerhound are sight breeds so fall at the first hurdle

Do women still choose bikes/cars etc by colour?

i know I do

Yeah, I paid an extra £100 for my bike to not have one of the two standard colours offered.

Do women still choose bikes/cars etc by colour?

Wait, am i doing it wrong?

Yep, my partner has zero interest in say: Aeroplanes, but will happily school you in 18th C English Literature

Are you seeing my wife?

A friend borrowed my van this week as his car is dying. He didn’t know you should wait for the curly orange symbol to go off on the dashboard or that diesel engines don’t have spark plugs.

His dying car is a diesel.

While I know minimal stuff about cars, I found out these things through curiosity – whereas my friend stumbles blindly through life with his head up his arse.

I’m still confused about how the 3 seashells work

I find that if you know how something works, everyone else assumes you know everything about similar things.

For example, I use computer applications for work on Apple Macs and everyone assumes I know everything about Windows though I know very little about Windows.

Same thing with the TDF. People who know I ride bikes think I know everything about the TDF but I’ve never watched it.

I also assumed a colleague who is really into Formular 1 knew about cars. But when they were looking for a new car they asked me what torque was.

Well I’m an electrical engineer and at (very recently) 52 have only just learned how a turntable works (LPs not loco’s).

And its both amazing and fascinating how the stylus converts the “data” in the grooves into a tiny electrical signal (~5 mV) via its moving magnets and two coils in the cartridge. Incredible stuff.

I’m still confused about how the 3 seashells work

You hold two of them like chopsticks and use the third like a melon baller.

That tide one up there reminded me of an overheard snippet on a Cornish beach.
Couple arrive and she says in a very disappointed voice “oh. The sea was much closer last year”
.
I worked in a bank years ago. It was announced on the news that there was going to be an eclipse that day. Someone said “I wonder how they know that?” Cue a thirty minute discussion before they all decided that it was probably ‘because of science’
Former housemate had never heard of Napoleon and another former housemate didnt know who had won the Falklands war. “It was before I was born!” Turns out they didnt know when it was either… And yes, I know it technically wasnt a war

I had to explain to my 46 Year old girlfriend that only female cows have udders the other day.
I’m right aren’t I?

You could ask her to milk a bull the next time you go past a farm. Might not be the type of thing to video and put on YouTube though!

As with most things there are levels of understanding: do I need to know the algorithms used in the EMS of my car in order to be able to drive it? Not really – day to day useful knowledge is limited to how to manipulate the controls in the correct combinations in order to drive it in accordance with the law (beyond quite a few people it would seem) and to be able to refuel it and top up washer fluid, etc. It’s when things go wrong that I’d need a bit more knowledge – changing a wheel, fuse, that sort of thing. If I was a keen mechanic then I’d expect to have yet more knowledge.

Reminds me of a Daily Hate article bemoaning the lowering of education standards because a university had used the exact same question as an O-level, missing the point that it’s the depth of answer at the relevant level that’s what separates them.

converts the “data” in the grooves

Its not really data (at least not as I’d think of data) – On CD you have data. If you looked at the surface of a CD you’d see data – dots and dashes, zeros and ones – During mastering sound is transposed from a vibration into a code and on playback the CD player interprets that back into vibration and sound but the thing on the disk is not sound – its instructions for making sound in the same what that sheet music is.

The groove on a record is effectively frozen sound – it its a physical cast of the vibration. In modern recording there would have been several steps to get there involving one or more tapes – but those are still vibrations but in its most basic form – Eddison shouting at a wax cylinder – the groove is the sound. A friend of mine once flew a high power microscope through the landscape of a record groove – its definitely not ‘data’.

Conversely….

How many folk think they understand how things work….but evidently have very little fact based knowledge on how they work.