Oh, and the same guy I mentioned below
thought that in a combustion engine, the cylinders fill up with fuel on each stroke. When I told him that this would empty the tank so quickly it would implode, he then conjectured that a small amount of fuel is ignited, then topped up.
"So it more or less acts like a reservoir, holding the fuel before it is ignited"
"Yeah"
"Makes you wonder why they bothered, there's a perfectly good reservoir in there already in the form of the fuel tank. Besides, how would the piston go up and down? Liquids aren't compressible"
"Well they must be, otherwise it wouldn't work"
"If liquids could be compressed, then hydraulics wouldn't work"

And so on, with him coming up with ever more ridiculous ideas to explain away the colossal chasms in his arguments.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 18:50, Reply)

When in a pub with an ex-mate
And the discussion moved on to when the first motorway was built and how the planners probably never considered tailbacks and constant roadworks. Then one of them piped up:
"When they opened the first motorway, do you think they called it the M1, or do you reckon they waited until the M2 was opened and thought 'we better give them numbers'?"
"Eh? The M1 wasn't the first motorway, it was a bypass that became the M6" I told him.
"No, the M1 was the first motorway"
"What, and then the M2?"
"Yeah of course"
"So the M18 was built before the M62 then?" I asked.
"Yeah"
"So it was a fucking dead end then, that was bad planning seeing as it now connects the M1 to the M62".

Jesus wept. Anyway it turned out he'd been nonceing up his 14yo brother in law and he got 4 years, so all's well that ends well.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 18:36, Reply)

What time is midday?
I invited a friend over for lunch, and he said he'd be there at midday.

He turned up at 1pm on the dot, and I commented on the fact that he was late.

"No, I'm not!" he countered, "I'm right on time! It's midday! 1pm"

I then spent the next ten minutes explaining that midday was 12pm, while he insisted that I was mistaken, and only conceded that I might be right when I pointed out that midnight was 12am, not 1am, and similarly for midday.

He was 42 at the time.
( biscuitbiscuit is in ur garden, watering ur plantz, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 18:35, Reply)

A real one!
I was talking to a friend about a month ago about what my parrot eats, and mentioned that he likes a bit of cooked egg. She was horrified and said 'that's cannibalism!' Turns out she though the yolk of an egg was what eventually developed into the chick, and the white was what the chick ate while in the egg. I corrected her. We laughed.

However, as it turns out virtually everyone I've asked since, and virtually everyone she has asked since was of the same opinion - that a living, breathing creature could somehow develop from a bag of yellow gooey stuff that's nice to dip fingers of bread into once heated (but not too much). Virtually everyone.

I live in Devon.
(iwrite4u, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 17:25, 10 replies)

Rockets
I once had a long, protracted argument with my father in law and (it pains me to admit it) my father about rockets.

Neither could be moved from their collective assertion that rockets worked because the exhaust gases exert pressure on the ground which forces them up.

So what if you launched a rocket from a tower a mile high?
So what about launching a rocket horizontally, in the sky?

After getting them to reluctantly accept that (using their theory) as a rocket climbs higher, the force it exerts upon the ground should diminish, my final gambit of suggesting that a climbing rocket, in their universe, will find a state of equilibrium where the rocket would just hover was just met with blank faces and me being asked 'why would you want a rocket to hover'?

My FIL is a bit of a div, but quite frankly I expected better from my dad. And no, they weren't winding me up.
(mersault, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 17:20, 3 replies)

When I was about 8
My eldest brother (who was a bit of a science nerd) told me that gravity works because the Earth is really big, and when they went to the Moon they weighed less because the Moon is not as big as the Earth.

So far, so Newtonian.

A few days later playing in a mate's garden, I was trying to explain this to him when his dad overheard us.
"That's not right" he interjected.
"My brother said it.." I said but was interrupted.
"No, it's because of the weight of all the air pushing down on us." he said, somewhat posturing with his apparently superior knowledge.
"But my brother.."
"No, it's the air. That's why bigger things are heavier because there's more air pushing on it, and why do people float about in space? Because there's no air in space". He was adamant.
"Is that right?" said a neighbour over the fence.
"Yeah, if it wasn't for the air, we'd all float up high into the sky" and he looked straight upwards in case we didn't where the sky was.

I didn't have the wherewithal to point out his claims had more holes than the plot of Gremlins, such as why is a cricket ball heavier than a balloon, or why things don't change weight if you turn them on their side, or how astronauts managed to walk about on the Moon even though there's no air, or how you don't float about when you go indoors because there's only about 2ft of air above your head pushing down instead of 60 miles or so. Notwithstanding that Gremlins wouldn't be released for at least another 5 years.

He dropped dead of an brain aneurysm 10 years later, so every cloud.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 14:15, 4 replies)

i used to think 9/11 wasn't an inside job

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 13:34, 5 replies)

when I was about thirteen and a half my evil older brother told me that men could only cum 100 times in their life, so it was better to save them up
And I mostly believed him, I really did. However by the time I'd turned fourteen I'd conlusively debunked his theory by applied science.
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 12:00, 4 replies)

My wife was for a while a vegetarian.
She ate fish though. Haddock, plaice, mackerel, cod... salami.

For a depressingly long time in the eighties I thought David Bowie and Iggy Pop were the same person. I was pretty sure they were Mott out of Mott the Hoople, too.
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 5 Feb 2016, 9:32, 6 replies)

I used to think you were all real people,
but I recently realised you're all messages from the government written in a code I don't understand.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 21:49, 3 replies)

The
But
(A small damp ball of cotton, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 19:41, 2 replies)

Until half an hour ago I was ignorant of the fact that I FUCKING WON LAST WEEK YOU WORTHLESS CUNTS

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 19:28, 1 reply)

You don't bring me flowers...
anymore
( GeordieJay Bummers are deaf, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 17:10, Reply)

When I watch Saturday night takeaway, I'm a celebrity get me out of here, Britains got talent etc....
I only ever pay attention to Dec.
( Muns, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 16:27, 2 replies)

I thought........
.........that this was a humorous site.
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Thu 4 Feb 2016, 15:19, 2 replies)

Cheers

( $$ ✅, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 14:13, 3 replies)

i used to think eugenics was immoral, but i now see that it would be for the greater good

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 13:21, 6 replies)

Up until my mid-twenties, I thought goats were just male version of sheep.

( Slippery Mick ‏, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 12:40, 1 reply)

For the first couple of years on b3ta
I genuinely believed rachelswipe was just pretending to be thick.
( Peej, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 12:25, 5 replies)

I was surprised to see the supermarket selling red, orange and yellow pepper seeds
I thought that they started off green and ripened into the other colours
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 11:17, 2 replies)

I discovered very recently...
...that the line is "the papers want to know whose shirts you wear", not "the papers want to know who shot you where".
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 10:24, 2 replies)

My uncle was an engineer, a very intelligent man...
...who in his time had worked on some impressive projects mainly in the production industry (the guy who builds the machines that builds the machines)...anyhow once he came over for tea when i was about 16...he was walking around our garden crushing the empty snail shells when I asked him why he was doing it he said "so the slugs couldn't use them as a bigger house". I thought he was having a joke at my expense...but it turned out he wasn't.
( transparenttown Dead to worse..., Thu 4 Feb 2016, 10:23, 1 reply)

I refuse to acknowledge the existence of eusocial insects of the family Formicidae.

( broadsword w⚓, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 10:23, Reply)

I don't know what a "balkan" is.
I do know that "balkans" are a thing, and that other things can undergo "balkanisation", but those words are bereft of meaning for me.

With the internet at my fingertips, no doubt I could look it up, but I doubt that by life would be appreciably enriched.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 10:00, 7 replies)

Ignorance plus power
On a family holiday a few years back we'd stopped into a supermarket in Somerset to pick up some provisions for the week so along with enough food for six people, we'd also got a crate of beer and a few bottles of wine on the checkout. The operator insisted on seeing ID for everyone present despite the fact that none of us were under 30 and some were over 60. So with some grumbling, driving licences were produced for her to scrutinise and she seemed satisfied with them until she got to my partner's, which appeared to cause her some confusion. She looked up at us both and asked, in all seriousness, "Is Canada in Europe?"

I was about to answer sarcastically, but she went on to say "...because I can only accept European driving licences as valid ID."

"Yes," I said with a straight face. "Canada is in Europe."
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 9:08, 3 replies)

I didn't realise taps needed to be cleaned until I left home
I suppose I assumed that they cleaned themselves
( Two Hats I saw someone eating M&M's with a spoon, Thu 4 Feb 2016, 8:56, Reply)