The Hindu Business Line : The only stupid question is the one left unasked

WHICH of the following is not inside a car: accelerator pedal; brake pedal; clutch pedal; or speed breaker? If you don't know the answer, you can phone a friend, go for a flip, ask for fifty-fifty, or demand an audience poll, assures the Big B to the contestant in the hot seat, even as viewers bite their nails or shift in their seats, nervously wondering if the hapless contender would clear the speed breaker.

Come to think of it, asking dumb questions isn't easy. "So it's eight km away... is that in miles?" is just one of the many posted on http://bertc.com in a list titled All Time Dumbest Questions Asked by Banff Park Tourists. Another, by a distance-challenged person is, "Is that two kilometres by foot or by car?"

One of the questions included in `part 14' of `Dumbest Questions' on www.customerssuck.com is, "Do you have my size in this?" A comment explains: "In a shoe store... What am I, a mind reader? I get asked this at least five times a day." Another, in part 12, reads, quite painfully: "(in a tattoo/ piercing shop) I got my tongue/navel/ hoohaa pierced today, should it be swollen/bleeding?"

The first of Six Dumb PR Questions You Should Never Ask on www.morochove.com is, "Did you receive my press release, fax, invitation, software?" `Don't ask me to be your office boy and confirm the receipt of something I didn't ask for and probably don't give two hoots about,' protests Richard Morochove.

`The great-granddaddy of goofy questions' in interviews is "Where do you see yourself in five years?" announces Liz Ryan on www.businessweek.com. "Here's why it's dumb. No company will guarantee you a job for five years, much less a career path," explains Liz. "If you were an animal/a can of soup/some other random object, which one would you be?" is another `asinine' question, presumably to test `how people think.'

When silence follows your dumb question, wait it out, advises Geoffrey Colvin in The Wisdom Of Dumb Questions on www.fortune.com.

He begins with, "Has Enron become a risky place to work?" That was a dumb question to ask in August 2001, when the company was `apparently flying high'. Yet, that dumb question was the very first line in Enron accountant Sherron Watkins's famous memo to Ken Lay, adds the author.

Dumb questions are bad, but the worst kind of dumb question is one that's disguised as a profound statement, opines www.secret-passage.com, and gives an example: "If the world was going to end tomorrow and you only had one day to live and if you could only make one phone call, who would you call?"

Are such posers useless, after all? "Maybe dumb questions have their place with late night conversations over pizza about the meaning of life, but other than that, don't look for any insight, because ain't any," advises the site, offering some insight on dumb questions.

A recent posting, in honour of Ask A Stupid Question Day, on http://ask.yahoo.com declares that the only stupid question is the one left unasked! Three good ones that I spot on www.geocities.com are: "If a funeral procession is at night, do you drive with your lights off? If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked? If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?"

`What's dumb in show I'll plain with speech,' challenges the Bard in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and in The Tempest, speaks of `A kind of excellent dumb discourse.'

What can be unnerving, however, is this snatch from Hamlet: "O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise."

Too close?

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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