Which misconseption annoys you more?

[AMAZED]

that all american conservatives are rush limbaugh imbecilles, some of us are actually fairly sane individuals,

a lot of us its just the looneys that get all the press

 

[Ilke]

A. Friggin. Lot.

The most annoying one atm is probably how academic circles didn't know the Earth was round during the Middle Ages. Colomb or Magellan didn't discover it was round, Magellan just gave physical evidence of it.

Also, part of a greater list on misconceptions of Turkey ("joo Arab spiking fundamentalists trololol") "lololol Turkeh iznt in Yoorop so it cant joinz Yooropean Union trolololol". There's a whole lot more in Turkey's EU membership bid than geography. There is no official clause which defines the European Union as a geographic entity besides the name, that's like saying Albania shouldn't join NATO because it doesn't have a North Atlantic coast.

 

[loc978]

The second is that daddy long legs are the deadliest spider in the world; but their fangs are too small to stick through your skin. This is just absolutely false. They're not even technically spiders, partly because they have no fangs! Therefore, they have no venom. therefore they have no poison. Therefore, they cannot be the most poison spiders!

Daddy long legs actually chase down their prey, like an eight legged tiger, and contain a type of jaws but THEY DON'T HAVE FANGS.

ummmm...

Spoiler: they have fangs about a quarter of a millimeter long, and about 2 billionths of a liter of venom apiece... and their venom is basically harmless to humans.

Spoiler: snip

anyway, OT: I'm more annoyed with the misconception about state law, but only because I live in the US again... and I constantly have to argue about the legalization of certain things, and how it's already happened many places in the states. Even places where it's legal to own "assault weapons". Go figure.

Yea, I' mgonna trust my Bio 208 text book which I payed $250 for over a wikipedia entry, thanks.

...you didn't even click the spoiler, did you? that wasn't a wikipedia entry. it was a Mythbusters clip, closeups of fangs included. I trust practical experience over textbooks.
...though I admit I don't know what the scientific classification of "daddy long legs" is, the term is a mere colloquialism, and may be different breeds to different people.

**edit...3, I think**
just looked it up.
basically, you mean these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvestman

I mean these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellar_spider

Both are "daddy longlegs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy_longlegs]", colloquially... but only the actual spider lives in my basement... I had never even heard of the "harvestman"... I'm pretty sure they don't live around here.

 

[Wintermoot]

American,s think that due to the sheer size of the USA and the fact allot of countries are united under the European Union

 

[AMAZED]

I hate the people that try to use society as an excuse for criminal, or otherwise inappropriate behavior

 

[Tomster595]

I don't think I've ever heard someone say that Europe is one country.

 

[Wicky_42]

It really is - do you seriously think that you get a better idea of the whole of France, say, by visiting Paris - let alone a completely different country - than you do of the US by visiting, say, Chicago? And that the US alone has more variation than the 50 countries in Europe? Honestly I'm offended that you could think that - amazing display of arrogance.

The US has more diversity than the 50 countries in Europe? Surely that's got to be wrong??
Are you aware that London alone has more than 300 spoken languages?

That was my point... quote fail -_-;

 

[undeserving]

That was my point... quote fail -_-;

sorry, it was a quote in a quote in a quote... i misunderstood.

 

[Wicky_42]

That was my point... quote fail -_-;

sorry, it was a quote in a quote in a quote... i misunderstood.

No hard feelings

 

[mduncan50]

That canadians say about "aboot" I have been all over Canada and I have never heard a Canadian say "aboot"

Ask them what they wear on each foot when they go out in the winter.

 

[The Funslinger]

Just thought of another one:

I hate when you're trying to have a debate with someone, and they're being a stubborn ass, either just saying "no, it's not!" or using the same two defeated points over and over, and then they say "you always have to be right! That's your problem!" No, I don't "always have to be right" but we're debating something, and there's an obvious hole in your argument, I'm going to point it out. Especially if you keep saying the same things over and over.

 

[Rottweiler]

Me? I despise the misconception that all bad ideas, actions, and decisions have the excuse of outside reasons.

Someone got shot? It's the weapon's fault. Someone on a cell phone drives off a bridge? Car's fault.

When we lost the idea of personal responsibility, it was all downhill.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Having gone to public school, I am quite familiar with the lowest bar of intelligence this nation (America) has to offer and I've never met anyone who thinks Europe itself is a nation. I've seen people who consider the EU a country, but not the landmass.

Also In my years of lurking, I've also never seen anyone from outside the U.S. who didn't know that. -shrug-

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

The one I hate the most is that people only use 10% of their brains, probably because I did believe it at one point (when I was 13). Looking back on it, I never ever should have, and I hate seeing that myth pop up in fiction, and take an immediate dislike to anything that helps to spread it: the two most prominent examples I can relate are the movie Limitless (a pile of dung), and the show Heroes (a character states it about 20 seconds into the pilot episode, at which point I turned off the TV and avoided that show like the plague).

 

[Duffy13]

For me, I'd have to say the misconception that Ignorance/Education has anything to do with intellectual ability.

An uneducated/ignorant person isn't necessarily stupid, it would be a mistake to assume so.

An ignorant person is stupid, an uneducated person does not necessarily have to be stupid.

I hate people that don't think for themselves.

Ignorance by definition is uneducated, it can be related to stupidity, but being ignorant does not imply stupidity. Granted use of the word 'ignorance' has been slowly becoming the 'nice' way of calling someone stupid; at least in the US. Ignorance can be fixed, stupidity cannot.

Adding my own: I hate when any media pulls the 'it takes x mins to trace the call'. If you are talking to someone on the phone you already have a direct link to them, their location is known; or ball parked in the case of cell towers. Hell, wiretapping stuff is built into most phone systems. Even if you don't have access during the call, law enforcement agencies can very easily request it from the phone company who by law store call history for a set period of time.

 

[deus-ex-machina]

As a British person, I thought Britain - in saying that, I mean England, Ireland and Scotland - hated 'Europe' more than they hated each other? At least we all speak the same language. Somewhat.

I see the UK as European, but reluctantly so. Look at the Eurovision Song Contest. We have nothing in common with the rest of Europe and it is pretty much a mutual agreement. Travelling into Europe is a foreign venture. It is both brilliant and disgusting.

As for US State Laws? Couldn't care less. Get over it. There's only like... four states anyway.

 

[Darkgoosey666]

my friend ( a geography student no less) once asked me whether Mexico was a city or a state.

yeah.

 

[Grygor]

Ahhh let me guess, another one who votes conservative simply because of issues like abortion while ignoring their extreme corporatism, refusal to increase taxes under the crisis, destruction of the social services and social nets as well as pushing for the commercialization of every governmental sector.

You do know they don't care about issues like abortion at all right? When they were in power there wasn't a single bill passed or suggested to address the matter, they just pick the rhetoric up in between presidential sections to harness votes, then promptly forget it exists.

Still you haven't answered my question.How do you rationalize all they are doing? Look at the U.S., salaries for middle and lower class have remained stagnant for 30 years while the top 5% flourish, the worst health care and public transport of all the developed nations and every single legislation passed is done with disregard to the middle to lower classes (ban obamacare, support for removal of minimum wage, the Wisconsin fiasco, cuts to science and arts departments, citizens united ruling,endless war support with the exception of people like Ron Paul, etc).

Hey now, one could just as easily criticize liberals and progressives for supporting policies that have unintended but foreseeable consequences that hurt the very people they purport to help, enacting economic regulations that ultimately give greater power to the large corporations they claim to restrain, conflating opposition to their policies with opposition to their stated goals, being completely ignorant of economic reality by simultaneously viewing wealth and income distribution as zero-sum while otherwise ignoring the fact that all choices involve trade-offs, refusing to admit the trade-offs implicit in the policies they support, falsely assuming that science is capable of making value judgements and that therefore scientific facts necessarily imply specific courses of action, and for their deep abiding faith in centralized planning and concomitant distrust of organic development.

In short, put the kool-aid down and step out of the echo chamber, because conservatives are not the source of all that is bad in American politics, nor is the left the sole locus of good.

To wit:
Obamacare is a deeply flawed policy, sold to the public as health-care reform even though it only reforms health coverage. As a community-rated, guaranteed-issue, forced-participation system, it is effectively a tax on young and healthy people to subside older and unhealthy people (and while one can make arguments in support of that, it's simply not possible when the bill's supporters refused to even admit that inconvenient fact). Furthermore, by expanding medical coverage, the bill necessarily increases demand for medical services - but since the bill does nothing to address the limited supply of medical care in this country, medical costs will have to go up, and if they are not allowed to, the net result will be a shortage of medical care.

Research has shown time and time again that the minimum wage ultimately reduces employment, particularly youth employment, and in the long run also reduces the wages paid to unskilled laborers.

Citizens United v. FEC is widely and almost willfully misunderstood by the American left, who seem to impart an almost magical power over elections to money, far in excess of it's actual influence.

As far as "endless war", need I point out that Obama has continued Bush's wars and added one of his own, and continues essentially all of Bush's wartime policies? That Clinton had has own wars? That the overwhelming majority of wars the US has fought since the start of the 20th century have been fought by Democratic administrations? That the power to wage war ultimately resides in Congress, which has been controlled by the Democratic party for most of the last 100 years?