> > Never say never, but usually advice from the ignorant is not worth much.
>
> Differentiate between the ignorant and the inexperienced. That's what I'm talking about here. That's what I find so incredibly insulting. People assume that inexperience IS ignorance, and it's not. It's really weird that you're taking this position after starting the thread.
>
> > As far as I know, nobody has ever even tried to jump Grand Canyon on a motorcycle.
>
> Evel Knievel tried, but he couldn't get permission from the government. So he bought a piece of property at the Snake River Canyon (which is as wide as the piece of the Grand Canyon he would have presumably jumped, had he gotten permission) and jumped that instead. He broke his collarbone and three of his four limbs.
>
> But that was the Snake River Canyon, and, hey, it wasn't me that did it, so what do I know? Maybe jumping canyons on motorcycles is safe after all!

Gosh, Sam, I'm not really taking a position. I thought this was just an informal discussion. But I looked in my dictionary, which is one of those old-timers with paper pages, and it said, as I expected, "Lacking knowledge about a particular subject or fact." So Albert Einstein was probably ignorant about lots of things he never cared about. We are all ignorant about something, but that doesn't make us stupid or a sterotypical ignoramous. Inexperience is a form of ignorance, at least it is using my definition.

Evel was somewhat ignorant when it comes to physics. He often overestimated the capability of the human body and machines. He was somewhat lucky to have survived all of those stunts. But his survival means that nobody has ever been killed jumping canyons, so statistically, it's a reasonably safe sport. I go through an intersection every day that has been statistically deemed safe because nobody has ever been killed there. That's the reason officials give for not providing a traffic light.Somehow I find it hard to think of it as "safe" when so many accidents happen there.

Just to be honest, I have to point out that my dictionary gave four definitions of "ignorant" and I quoted number two. It was the one that defined the word as I was using it.
Howard