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Very amusing. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this one Frenchman doesn't represent the intelligence level of the entire country. I'm sure they'd do the same for us, right?

For the record, my 6-year old daughter knew the correct answer.

Also for the records: 56% of the audience thought the sun rotates around the earth!

"I'm sure they'd do the same for us, right?" -- Scott

How many "R's" are there in Fat Chance?

what the ...
is this the local french chapter of answers in genesis comprising the audience?

holy s***, put down that bible.

Lars, no offense intended, but I don't recall a single passage out of the Bible in general or Genesis in particular that could be interpreted as "the Sun orbits the Earth" -- even if that was a pre-Galileo official church position. So I don't necessarily like your attempt to insinuate that someone who reads / believes the Bible is therefore stupid. Might be better to keep theology out of this argument... just admit it: The individual in the video, and apparently the supporting studio audience haven't got the sense that God gave a boiled potato ... but there I go getting God involved again. Sorry about that.

Possibly a bad translation, but the Moom doesn't rotate around the Earth, it revolves or orbits.

My favorite along these lines is "why does the Moon have phases?". I tested a group of graduate students in computer science at one of the top ten universities in the USA and half of them didn't know the correct answer.

@ scout

well, i attended a private catholic school led by nuns, so please just allow me to nag about a few weirdos. i'm not suggesting that someone who reads the bible is dumb. i said local chapter of "answers in genesis", and didn't mean christianity as a whole (maybe "creation science association" would've been more precise, who knows).
you're aware that many creationists propagate geocentrism, are you? those people preach scientific analphabetism. i don't know if this is an example of wacky christian fundamentalism or just plain stupidity.

nearly one out of three germans think genesis is correct, figure that.
creepy, ain't it?

@Lars
what the ...
is this the local french chapter of answers in genesis comprising the audience?
=holy s***, put down that bible.

This is a case of being Ami-centric. Anyone with a minimal awareness of the differences between Western Europe and the US knows that church affiliation in Western Europe is much lower than in the US. From minimal research, we find out that only 5 % of the French own a Bible. In addition, church attendance in France is only 12%.
The French have already put their Bibles down, and very few of them attend church, so you can’t blame church affiliation on their apparent scientific ignorance.

In my opinion, 56% from a random sample is a fairly good sampling- of the kind of people who comprise the audience of a TV quiz show.

My guess is that French "intellectuals" and government types would blame this example of scientific ignorance on American TV, American movies, and from too many visits to McDonalds'. The Germans would shout to the rafters that "American conditions" have taken over the French educational system.

"The Germans would shout to the rafters that "American conditions" have taken over the French educational system."

Spot on, G.T. Any little piece in the NYT (ptooi) that mentions a "failing" of the system in the US will be translated and plastered all over German news, e.g. many HS graduates couldn't find Iraq on a map, how many HS graduates don't have 9th grade reading skills, and so on and so on. However, I'll bet Dollars to Doughnuts that a criticism of the French educational system will never appear in German news unless the Americans could somehow be blamed. The Germans have a standard distraction tactic, anyway. If, for example, the news starts really tearing into the American Social Security System as being shameful and inadequate -- you can bet that they are just "conditioning" the Sheeple before they raise the Rentenversicherungsbeitrag again. If they paint the bleakest picture of the American health system for weeks on end (and you know how they do it...) then that means the Sheeple are going to have to endure another increase in the health insurance premiums soon. I've seen this sort of thing happen far too often to believe it is only coincidence.

Scout, I agree with what you said, I see it the same way: politics and media working hand in hand over here. I only wonder why native Germans don't see it.

Now, back to 'Medienkritik': This cartoon on Readers Edition is something Germans obviously consider funny. I can't get used to that sort of 'humour', to me it's just sick and repulsive.

nearly one out of three germans think genesis is correct, figure that.
creepy, ain't it?

Many more than that think that anthropogenic global warming is correct. Alarming, ain't it?

I see it the same way: politics and media working hand in hand over here. I only wonder why native Germans don't see it.

It's been said before, but do fish see water?

@ gringo

This is a case of being Ami-centric.
not really. while i have a few relatives living in the us - milwaukee, great neck (ny) and ann arbor - i myself live in germany.
don't take my initial post all too seriously - just venting my displeasure with religious idiocy.
btw: although church attendence is declining in france and most other parts of europe, more french citizens than you might imagine think what the bible says is litterally true. traditional religion is gradually replaced by a much more dogmatic style of believe (well i'm getting more and more ot, sorry).

@ doug

Many more than that think that anthropogenic global warming is correct. Alarming, ain't it?
alarming? not really. scientific evidence confirms that human behavior indeed has an impact on the climate. it's contested how big this impact is. some might say that the human factor is negligable but i don't know anyone thinking that mankind has absolutely no influence whatsoever.
please don't mix up religion and science.

"...please don't mix up religion and science."

I'll try very hard not to, Lars, but to be fair, you started it by suggesting that the ignorance displayed in the video was owing to religious beliefs.

"it's contested how big this impact is."

You can say that again. And that is precisely the issue. The Ecofascists completely ignore the mountain of evidence that suggests that human impact is so small as to be insignificant _when compared to other factors_. Moreover, they scream anyone down who dares challenge their very non-scientific approach to this problem. And unfortunately, even this has something to do with religion -- on the part of the Ecofascists. Global Warming is their religion, since they apparently have no other.

@ scout

I'll try very hard not to, Lars, but to be fair, you started it by suggesting that the ignorance displayed in the video was owing to religious beliefs.
as i said, don't take my first response too seriously.
on a side note: were did i start mixing up science and religion? i was just joking (i know, i know, "us" germans shouldn't even try ;)) that the audience might be filled with creationists.

The moon revolves around the earth. It rotates about its own axis.

Climate Audit. O/T but germane.

amusing that 56% of the audience thought it was the sun.
technically the moon and the earth revolves around a point not at the earth core but off. the moon and the earth are nearly twin planets. never the less, the best answer to the question was the moon.

Of course they were confused: the French are taught from birth that the universe revolves around Paris.

I thought this was too ridiculous to be real, so checked it out at the urban legends site (http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/gameshows/millionaire.asp).

It's real. But I tend to agree with their explanation:

"a common assumption is that many of them deliberately chose the wrong answer as a way of poking fun at the seemingly hapless contestant for being unable to answer the question on his own"

Maybe he can get a job hosting the next Miss Alabama contest. We also know he wasn't cheating.

I just came across another fun piece of "Stupid Bush" reporting here. The gist, for those who don't speak German, is that Bush's UN speech had the pronunciations of a number of foreign names spelled out phonetically, and this draft of the speech showed up on the UN web-site.

The gist of the article is an obvious "Look how stupid Bush is! He can't pronounce these things correctly and needs them spelled out for him." Problem is, I worked in radio in college, and I can tell you this was standard practice in AP wire stories.

Think I should tell the SZ how to pronounce my surname? :-)

Scout, do you think we are buffalowed by your irrelevant comment about the translation of revolve/rotate? Please. Do you think we are too stupid to see the vast difference between simply knowing what revolves around what and being able to explain the phases of the moon? Please.

This Frenchman is stupid as a stick. Ignorant. Uneducated. And 56% of the audience is no better!

I wouldn't pretend I don't know what that means if I were you.

That is precisely why they accuse US of being stupid and ignorant.

Virtually all the stones they throw at us are projection. Sometimes it isn't as obvious as this or as when Germans are so fond of making the US out to be a Nazi state. Sometimes the projection is beneath the surface only in the moral sphere of action. But it's always projection.

Just smearing themselves off. We do have faults, but they don't even see them: all they see is THEIR OWN faults in us. It's a collective case of malignant narcissism.

@kathy.... uuhhh.... that wasn't me. The names of the posters come after the comment.

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