Of course, people who frequent game shows, aren’t too high up on the evolutionary chain anyway.
Thanks to Warner
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
F-ing morons.
How can you be an adult in a western nation and not know the answer immediately? Do they allow persons with IQs greater than 80 on these shows? Un-Frakking-Real.
It’s only a theory. Teach the controversy.
OK first of all, why was that question worth more than 1500 Euros? That’s like one of those easy starter questions they ask like “What color is Red?” Is the expectation of the scientific knowledge of the average Frenchman that low that the producers thought it was such a hard question?
Second of all it really makes me feel better about the stupid “Man on the street” interviews and reports that “60% of high school students can’t point to their own asshole” you see in the paper all the time, if fully half of the average french populace thinks the sun is rotating around the Earth.
Is Sophie his wife? I’d like to rotate around that la lune.
I loved this one! Everyone always posts embarrassing videos of American’s who can’t find Iraq on a map, etc. Remember miss South Carolina?
Well, now we can clearly see it’s not just Americans – it’s the French too! What could be better? France! People just love to hate us, but we are definitely not alone!
I loved that so many people decided to f with the guy and say B on the ask the audience, and frankly I’m disappointed that anybody even tried to help him.
At least I’m assuming they messed with him, dear god I hope so. Anyway, its what I would have done.
This video has been on the Web for quite some time now and is hardly a best-of choice of stupidity.
And anyway, is it really justifiable to condemn people who are under a spotlight in front of a crowd of strangers? The man was probably hyperventilating and dizzy at the time. For real stupidity, look at the Darwin Awards.
Finally John, the correct French is “Vivez les idiots”. Singular would be “Vive l’idiot”.
[Duplicate comment deleted. – ed.]
…but you can be sure that everyone in that room speaks perfect French and can conjugate 3000 verbs. It’s all a matter of priority – when your own culture, language and history is more important than everything else you teach what matters.
The Sun rotates around the Earth if L’Acadmie Francais says so.
Don’t be so hasty to criticize the French. Most conservatives in the US would agree that “B” is the answer.
Good thing croissant wasn’t one of the choices.
hey i’d act as stupid as that so I could win a couple thousand.
Dumb Frogs!
If Sophie is his wife either he’s quite a sugar daddy or she’s in his IQ range. Anyways, I’m sure she’s embarrassed.
The producers probably throw a couple morans in the mix to make the at-home viewers feel smart.
Well, what a shame for us Frenchies 🙂
We definitely have our under-educated masses…
I’d say it also tells alot about the public in these TV games…
And, by the way, the exact title should be “Vive les idiots”. “Vivez les idiots” is not correct, if it was, it would means something like “Live as idiots do” ( uses the verb Vivre=to live as a transitive verb, which it is not).
[Fixed, thanks for the French lesson- ed.]
Sure, he’s an idiot – but at the end of the day he gets to go home with Sophie.
Both groups are right. Only the 2% that said Venus is wrong. The sun does rotate around the earth.
#17
Yea! If Bush says so it does.
#8, 56% of the audience also got the question wrong. Were they nervous too, being on TV and all?
Anyway, unless I’m wrong, the moon doesn’t “rotate” around the earth. It rotates around its own axis. What the moon really does around the earth is “revolve”.
#16 – Yea, but he ain’t gettin none for a while.
I’m sure it is taught in school but the truth is not knowing may be shameful if somebody finds out but it has almost no practical usefulness in daily life and is the kind of data the web can hand you in an instant if you actually want to know.
I’m sure you can blow away a lot of people by asking them which is the biggest planet in the solar system. Saw in done on “are you smarter than a fifth grader”. The woman ran a successful real estate agency but she’d forgotten this because it just didn’t come up.
People forget what doesn’t come up or get used in 10 to 40 years. Sure, I should be able to name all the countries in the western hemisphere but I’ve never been outside the states and other than a few the names just don’t come up. If I need a map. I can Google one. I would recognize the names of all of them I think but there are a few smaller ones it might take me a second to find. They do change the names of some countries and that does throw me off when one of those hits the news and I need to do a fast check.
I recall them asking one woman which was larger and the answers got down to the moon and an elephant. She picked the elephant, it was probably because she was that size.
Einstein taught us that all motion is relative. Without being given a designated point of reference, we are free to think of ourselves as being stationary with the whole universe revolving around us, making all the possible answers correct. The question was flawed. Give the man his money.
Oh, please someone tell me this video is fake…LOL!!!
#19, re revolve vs rotate, this was my first thought too. Was “lost in translation” part of the problem. I don’t speak French, but rotate & revolve are often confused in English.
Would a wording of the question something like “What goes around the Earth” have produced different responses?
Well, at least we now know that French schools aren’t any better than American ones…
FAIL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMriTkE3igY
It is always so much easier when you know the answer. I’m sure most people learned binomials in High School. How many could do a simple binomial today?
One question, even one subject, does not determine a person’s intelligence.
Uh, not to not bash the French but have you ever seen the Tonight Show segments where Jay goes out and asks people questions like who is the president and such?
What if the US version asked the question “when did dinosaurs live? Half the country would get it wrong because they want to believe it was 4000 years ago.
This guy could have won really big money on the 15th century edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.