I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be rude. An American colleague of mine pointed out that I shouldn't have used the word 'ignorant', which is a bit offensive.
Apparently, there's a rule in English: 'I before E except after C'; although I don't know how to explain the spelling of 'height', 'their', 'weigh', 'neither', et cetera.
I should have googled 'wierd' and it is explained quite well here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wierd
However, this site: http://www.wierdrecords.com made me ask the question in the first place...