Promoting a ridiculous sit-com based on an insurance commercial is bad enough, but I almost can’t bring myself to give a shout out to that stupid show with the idiotic women who spend each day carefully destroying anything feminists have achieved to date. BUT, this is too good.
A few weeks ago, Sherri Shepherd (a “comedian” and the newest co-host of The View) answered, “I don’t know” to Whoopi Goldberg’s question, “Is the world flat?” Sherri explained that she had never really thought about it, attempting to justify her ignorance by saying she was too busy trying to feed her son. Barbara Walters pointed out that she could do both, while viewers at home wondered about the truth of that statement considering the evidence at hand. (Video here.)
The next day, Sherri explained that she was caught off guard by the question, and that she actually had known that the world was round. I’m a bit skeptical of that, though — I think that what actually happened was that on her way home that evening she gazed out over the ocean and wondered why she couldn’t see the bottom of ships in the distance, eventually concluding that the most probable reason was due to the curvature of the earth. Though she briefly hypothesized that perhaps this was simply a grand test God created just to ensure her faith was intact, she then walked past a Planet Hollywood and noticed for the first time ever that their logo consisted of a giant orb representing the planet Earth.
So anyway, she now says that yes, the Earth is round (we’ll let her go on that instead of harping on the old “not perfectly spherical, actually an oblate spheroid” thing). But, she does still say that evolution is not, you know, a real thing.
So all that comprises one part of what you need to know to enjoy the following clip. The other part you need to know is that there are these commercials for auto insurance that star guys dressed up as cavemen living among present-day humans. They’ve been given a sit-com that should be debuting any day now, something that ordinarily would be considered a sign of the apocalypse. BUT, the cavemen are played by actors who are actually pretty fricking smart and funny.
So, here we are. Click here and find out what happens when Sherri meets a caveman.
Best line: “San Diego.”
To give her credit, Sherri was laughing harder than anyone, and she looked genuinely tickled over the whole thing. I think this is a mervelous case of two absurd and mediocre programs colliding to create a moment, just a moment mind you, that actually has merit. Thanks for sharing that!
~Wordplayer
Yikes. That should have been "marvelous," not "mervelous." I'm sure Mr. Griffin had nothing to do with either production.
~Wordplayer
Well, it is really hard to tell whether the world is flat. You know, it is not easy to measure the metric tensor, especially if you can not get far from your little planet.
If we assume some "tiny" restrictions on the geometry of our universe, like homogeneousness, isotropy…. it can be flat, spherical (3D surface of a 4D sphere) or a pseudosphere.
Of course just kidding:)
Nah, that just means we have to get creative with our measurements to be able to measure the metric. With our best creative measurements so far, it looks like the universe is too close to flat for us to be able to make a call any way (if it's indeed perfectly flat, we never will be able to). (By the way, a pseudosphere won't quite work for negative curvature, as though it has constant negative curvature, it isn't homogeneous.)
But all this actually does play into the problem of the shape of just Earth. Because, if the universe isn't perfectly flat, than Earth can't be a perfect sphere in any case (or even an oblate spheroid as we think of them). It would be slightly distorted by the curvature of the universe, so for now, the proper answer to the shape of the Earth is "There is not enough evidence as yet to make a definitive answer."
I think WordPlayer hit the nail pretty squarely on the head, as they say. A clip definitely worth my time, thanks for sharing.