I don’t want to hijack that thread, and the subject isn’t hateful enough to make a Pit thread, so here I am.
What things have you heard people say, about factual knowldege, that are so totally wrong/stupid/ignorant, that your mouth hangs open in disbelief?
I had a friend who moved from Alaska to Texas. When she went to the Texas DMV to get a new driver’s license, she had trouble from the clerk, who told her she’d have to take all kinds of tests, and present other documentation, because “We don’t accept driver’s licenses from foreign countries.”
My son’s father was born in Hawaii.
When we went to the Dept of Vital Records to get a copy of his birth certificate the clerk told us we had to go to DC to get a birth certificate for a foreign birth.
I worked with a woman who thought rabies came from rabbits.
I dated (briefly) a man who would not eat fresh produce because it was dirty and came out of the ground. When I asked him where he thought canned veggies came from he said a factory. He thought canned food was manufactured in a factory.
Overheard from a customer at my office: “I don’t know why we even have these goddam fire codes. Not a single business I go to has even ever had a fire.”
I know people who are afraid to go to a city where they have heard that the crime rate is higher than in their own city, because they actually believe there is a palpable danger that they will be murdered while they are there. Most people’s ignorance of statistical analysis is even deeper than their ignorance of geography and history.
I have mentioned on this board, that I have a disorder in one leg, caused by a vein that isn’t doing its job. A former neighbor said I should try chelation therapy. I found out that is used to remove heavy metals. This man is older than I, and should know better.
It’s been a dozen years so I don’t recall what was said but we were on vacation in the Chicago area during the Beltway Sniper attacks. We were having dinner at a Ground Round where someone at the next table was making light of the attacks and some supremacist words may have been used.
I had a vegetarian roommate who got extremely upset with me for having rabbit in our shared freezer. It was Welsh Rarebit. She also voted for Bill Clinton because “he’s cute” and that having her boyfriend live with us meant she did not have to pay more than half the utilities, despite his two-shower-a-day habit.
Cow-orkers at a suburban office who wouldn’t go downtown to see a play or musical because there were gangs wandering the streets of downtown. (Not.)
A friend and I were discussing her plans to go hiking in Denali, when a neighbor of hers said “I think you are very brave to hike in Africa.”
Even IF you take the Bible as a serious history text, Esau was not the purported ancestor of the Arabs. Abraham’s son Ishmael (or, as Arabs call him, “Ismail”) was. Esau was supposedly the ancestor of the Edomites.
Paraphrasing a friend of a friend: “There’s no such thing as ‘mixed race’, only the mother’s race matters. If the mother is White, so is the kid.” Even if the kid is the color of burnt umber.
I mentioned to a bank cashier many years ago that I was going to work in Belgium for a couple of years. “I hope that’s not near Iraq,” she chirped.
While living in Anchorage, I called a company in San Francisco to order a wreath with berries on it for Christmas. “We don’t ship outside the US.” “Alaska IS part of the US.” “They won’t let it through customs because of the berries.” “Are you trying to be stupid or is it natural for you?” Click.
I met a tourist in Alaska who asked me for directions to the inter-island bridge so they could visit the Aleutian Islands. I told him to drive to Kenai and ask somebody there for directions.
Also while living up there I had a buyer on eBay ask me how much my item cost in US dollars. :rolleyes:
A conversation I had more times than I can count over the years:
“Where are you from?”
“Anchorage, Alaska.”
“Oh, do you know Sam Jones? He lives in Anchorage.”
“It’s a big place. . .”
“He’s tall and skinny and has a mustache. . .?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Oh, everybody knows Sam!”
Usually, my patience would wear out somewhere in there and I would have to explain that there are a half-million people scattered over an equal number of square miles, and that Anchorage has about half that population. I still get that question on occasion, from otherwise intelligent people.
A young lady I once worked with declared it was unsafe to look directly at a *lunar *eclipse. When I asked her if she knew what caused a lunar eclipse, she said, “Isn’t that when the sun gets between the earth and the moon and casts a shadow?”
My sister lives in New Mexico, and collects stories about people who should know better (banks, for example) insisting that it is a foreign country.