The Best Family Feud Answer Ever is applicable here.
Know I’ve seen some spectacular examples of ignorance online on this board and elsewhere, but I’d never really seen anything special in real life. This post, however, triggered a memory.
In a high school physics class, some officer from the Navy came in to give us propagan, err, excuse mean, I mean a lecture on the multifarious benefits of nuclear energy. Right at the beginning he tried to convince us of the wisdom of nuclear energy by ruling out all other possible sources of energy. Thus I learned that, “The only place where you can get energy from a windmill is on top of a mountain, and it has to be less than minus 150 degrees.” And this guy is probably the captain of a nuclear submarine or something of that nature.
A conversation I had with my pregnant sister:
sis: I hope, hope, hope I have a girl.
me: why?
sis: so I can bond with her, you know how moms and daughters have a special bond with each other.
me: yes, but boys have their own special bonds with their moms too.
sis: (disgusted) what?? If I have a boy there’s no way I’m going to BOND with him!
me: huh?
sis: that would make him gay.
I was actually relieved that she miscarried.
I forgot my favorite episode of ignorance - Went to the post office to get some interesting stamps and they had Cesar Chavez ones hanging up behind the register. I asked for them and the older guy behind me said, “I forget, what team did he play for?” After my stunned moment, I told him the grape pickers.
I think he was trying to pick me up, the creep.
And here’s where I eat crow. Told you I’m not an expert. 
Seriously, I hope my words didn’t contribute to your depression. Many Buddhist texts are written in Sanskrit, which is actually how I discovered Sanskrit’s existence. I was not aware that the language is still used in temples today, or how prevalent it is in its use. I hope you didn’t take any offense to me calling it a “dead” language. Latin is considered a dead language but is obviously sacred to Catholicism… so it truly wasn’t intended as a value judgment. In fact, the reason I got the tattoo in the first place was to honor the language, and honor the roots of Buddhism, which is my religion. It was either that or Pali… I settled on Sanskrit specifically for the sacred connotations.
FWIW, I had a new job once and when I told the guy I was a Buddhist he asked me in all seriousness if I worshiped the moon. This absolutely floored me, because he was a Muslim, and one of the frequent ignorant attacks I have heard on Muslims (a la Jack Chick) is that they worship the moon… shocking to hear such ignorance perpetuated by the original targets of said ignorance.
Anyways, I hope you feel better. I may be ignorant, but not willfully so. 
I’d think that would be closer to today’s truth. As the daughter of two United Church of Christ/Congregational ordainees, I always learned as a child that there was no devil. This is not a brand new denomination by any means as it evolved from the Pilgrim’s brand of faith. They, I’m pretty sure, believed there was a devil.
I love how they’re arguing between “Europe” and “Africa”. But can I say that my heart was in my throat as I contemplated the possibility that 4% of the people surveyed really would have named Europe as a country they admire?
I keep my hair cut short.
I don’t wear makeup to work.
I have a wallet in the back pocket of my jeans.
One student I worked with said that all of these things made me a lesbian. I was just in denile about my sexuality. :rolleyes:
There is nothing wrong with being gay, but I just happen to be a boring straight chick that is very practical (and lazy).
This summer I was down in North Carolina for my uncle’s funeral. I was staying at a cousin’s house and one of his middle aged male neighbors came over.
Him: [Motions across the street to where a black family is moving in] I’m not prejudiced or anything but if they move in I’m moving out
My cousin and I were left speechless.
I’m amazed by the number of people who, upon finding out that I have two sisters who are gay, ask “With each other?” :rolleyes:
I occasionally do this during lunchtime discussions at work. It has earned me the nickname Wikipedia.
Was she perhaps involved with Russian arms smugglers?
Fancy another creationist one?
This guy (who claimed to have a Yale PhD) was making some inane cosmological argument, when he came out with “The number of atoms in the whole known universe is ‘only’ 1080”. (presented as part of an argument of the improbability of evolution).
Thinking he had just made a simple mistake, someone asked “Don’t you mean 10^80?”
But no, he argued on and on in post after post, adamant that there were only 1080 atoms in the universe. Other posters had correctly surmised that he had copy/pasted 10[sup]80[/sup] from somewhere and the superscript hadn’t been preserved. they said as much, but nope, he insisted it was 1080, even dragging up some citations where someone had made the same dumb mistake as him.
Another poster - himself a YECreationist - tried to gently correct him, and was told “Most of this has to do with planetary atoms, and not the atoms in the universe”
‘Planetary atoms’? Bwuh?
He got more and more dismissive and aggressive towards people trying to correct him, then realisation finally dawned, he very suddenly started using the term ‘10^80’, but later said the fuss was pointless as it was the same number anyway, and again later tried to pass it off as a rounding error.
Quite the most astonishing combination of brute stupidity, followed by spectacular backpedalling, that I have seen for a long time, maybe ever.
I currently work for a production house for elementary school ancillaries and I wanted to point out that just today I was editing some lessons that use this as a way to teach greater than less than. They (our client, a big name textbook publisher) have a horrid looking duck with his beak open to resemble < and teach that the “duck likes to eat what is largest.” That was the first time I’ve ever seen this example used, it seems like it could breed a lot of confusion.
Back OT I have to say that the most ignorant thing I’ve heard was the girl I worked with at a bookstore in high school. We were giving her the tour of the store and getting her used to finding the sections by asking her “if someone wanted a book on ____ where would you show them?” and used the example of the holocaust. She immediately replied “Well, they’re not sure that actually happened.” As if she was teaching us about history. I was appalled.
Then there’s my future sisters (2 of them) and brothers (2) in law discussing how a high school acquaintance came out of the closed and “OMG thank god they didn’t catch THE GAY!”
Ugh…
When I was in sixth grade, we were all asked to name a mammal during science class. I said the platypus.
My teacher insisted that wasn’t an animal, and eventually went to get an encylopedia from one of the other teachers to *prove *me wrong. She didn’t apologize when she found out the truth, either.
That is wonderful. I simply had to Google it up… and here it is in all its glory:
http://www.creationtalk.com/message-board-forum/about1082.html
:smack:
Wow. I am truly stunned at some (most) of these. Mine doesn’t hold a candle (but it is funny, so I am going to tell it).
Picture it. Anchorage, Alaska (USA), February, 1991. I go with a tour group. We enter a shop. Middle aged woman (why is it always a woman?) at the top of her lungs. Do. You. Speak. English? Do. You. Take. American. Money?
:smack: oh God.
Needless to say, no more tour groups for me for the rest of that vacation.
Also, I hear a lot of people proudly proclaim that they don’t “waste their time” reading. (Usually the same people who watch a ton of reality TV). That just makes me sad.
BBBZZZZ. I’m so sorry. The answer we were looking for was “cow”.
Yeah, I just learned that < is like a slanty L, as in “less.”
A former coworker believes Hillary Clinton must be a lesbian because she didn’t divorce President Clinton for cheating on her.