Pedometers for Dummies

Classic pedometer design

Pedometers are hot right now – well, actually, "wearables" are hot – so you can expect a lot of incompetents to come out of the woodwork and blather about step counters. We're talking folks like SuperJenny at Seekyt.com, a worthy who inflicted the rubbish called "A Pedometer Using for Weight Loss – How a Pedometer can help you to Lose Weight" on  unsuspecting readers. As a public service, Jenny's next post really should have been about "How to Relieve Headaches Brought on by Tortured Prose"...

If there was any question at all that Jenny (or should we call her[?] "Super"?) is another of the non-native English speakers who routinely spin some article they found somewhere else and post the results at a content farm, that question disappeared in the first paragraph:

Basins, the Dummy Version (Geology Week 6)

What would be worse: someone who doesn't know jack misinforming the public, or someone who should know the topic screwing up royally? Admittedly, we don't see the second very often (except perhaps coming from the mouths of presidential candidates), but we were astounded to come across a classic example in some recent research for Geology Week. You'd think that a writer who claims a PhD in geology would know simple stuff about the science, but apparently Alexandra Matiella Novak was playing hooky the day they discussed hydrocarbons in Geology 101. How else could she have written something as dumbass as her contribution to suite.io, "Major Oil and Gas Reserves in the United States"?¹ Novak's executive summary of her post says,

"The Unites [sic] States contains vast hydrocarbon reserves of oil, coal and natural gas. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve also maintains over 700 million barrels."

Troubleshooting Your Suburban for Dummies

Chevrolet Suburban

Got a problem with your car? Won't start? Never fear, Amelia Allonsy of eHow.com is here to tell you all about how to diagnose your problem. Assuming, of course, you can manage to gloss over the misinformation and downright stupidity characteristic of "help" from the crew at eHow.com. Let's troubleshoot Amelia's expertise as was displayed in her piece "My Chevy Suburban Won't Start."¹ Don't worry if your ride's not a Cowboy Cadillac, Amelia reprised her advice for several other makes and models (always, of course, rewording everything to avoid getting nailed for "plagiarizing" herself). Here's what Amelia says to do if your Suburban (FourRunner, Miata, Silverado, Starion, Millennia, Integra, Maxima, Spectra...) won't start.

Austin, Texas, for Dummies

Welcome to the Live Music Capital of the World

Come summer; it's vacation time. Once you've chosen a relaxing destination, you will of course – this being the information age – google things to do once you've arrived at your destination. People like Isabelle Esteves of WritEdge.com long ago figured that out. People like Izzy are happy to share their broad experience of the destination with you - the chief problem being that their experience consists of googling the destination and doing a copy-and-paste job. Take, for instance, Ms Esteves' recent advice about "Things to Do In Austin, Texas In the Summer"¹ [grammatical error in original].

Geometry for the Dummy Eighth Grader

Oil drum (cylinder)

The late Emily Litella (aka Gilda Radner) was often forced to say, "Never mind!" when she had a particularly dumbass moment. You know, such as thinking people were talking about necklaces and bracelets when she heard them say "Save Soviet Jewry." Online freelancers rarely if ever do so, leaving the evidence of their obtuseness for all to see; and worse, for the uninitiated to take at face value. For an example, take eHow.com's (yes, them again!) Matthew Anderson writing on "How to Convert Oil Drums to Volume."¹

Matt's problem? He didn't read the question! Matt goes completely off the rails in his very first sentence:

Buying Batteries for Dummies

CR2032 Batteries

Could there be anything more ridiculous than wasting a reader's time imparting information the average twelve-year-old should know? We've already seen instructions, and not very good ones, at that, about how to change light bulbs (information also made available by member aronnax at InfoBarrel.com). But we're done with dumbasses and light bulbs, at least for right now. Today's recipient of the Dumbass of the Day, InfoBarrel class, is Poster: good old Poster, who, for reasons of greed, we must assume, found it necessary to explain "Where to Buy a CR2032 Battery."

Power Tools, the Dummy Version

Natural stone floor tile

We find little or nothing on the internet more vexing than "content" that's just thinly-disguised advertising. Sometimes it's not even disguised... such as the InfoBarrel.com content posted by Braxton Bragg, cleverly titled "How to Properly Care for Your Power Tools."

Wouldn't you expect to find some sort of instructions – however ill-written and incomplete – about cleaning, maintaining and repairing power tools if you were to come across this in your search? Sure you would. Instead, you're the victim of a bait-and-switch. Instead of how to care for power drills, circular saws, and other common items found under a DIYer's workbench; Bragg's little ditty is all about the diamond blades used for cutting granite for floors. Guess what: "Braxton Bragg" is in reality a Tennessee-based company that sells tools for cutting and polishing concrete and stone. That's why "Braxton" informs his readers,

Remodeling, the Dummies Version

Suspended Ceiling

While eHow and HubPages have been responsible for enormous portions of the online dumbassery we find, there certainly have been other outlets for greedy freelancers to ply their trade without pesky fact-checking. A small but not insignificant site is Vancouver, BC-based InfoBarrel.com. We spent an evening not long ago wandering though the site's archives and came up with some winners for our readers. InfoBarrel week's first dumbass is 44tracyann44, who treated readers to some monumental stupidity in "Suspended Ceiling Reducing Heating and Cooling Costs."¹ 

We're not sure what psychedelic substance Tracy Ann had been taking when she told her readers,