Greed, lies and wilful ignorance
'Stupid man' adverts. Yes, maybe women make the larger percentage of purchasing decisions, but that's no reason for every Y-chromosome possessor in advertland to act/react like he's the recipient of a major lobotomy and/or drug overdose.

Indian call centre operatives pretending to have English names. Your accent is so thick I can barely understand you, but respect is due, because I can't speak a word of Hindu, Punjabi or Urdu, so you've got me beat there, pal! You're doing a shit job, for probably shit wages, and I don't like to be rude to you. But why the fuck do you have to pretend that your name is Steve, or Sarah? I can pronounce Sanjeev, or Seema, it's not a problem. This is the U.K. - we have all kinds of people here, and we can pronounce non-European names. It's not going to make me want to buy your product anyway, but just don't start the phone call with a blatant lie.

Anyone with wilful ignorance of the amazing world/universe we inhabit. Especially those who think that either science-fiction is stupid, or that liking it has somehow rendered me completely clueless. I have a picture of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/) as my desktop backdrop at work. Whenever I get frustrated because I can't get the code to do what I want, or I'm having rounding errors in the 5th decimal place that are screwing up fund/unit calculations, I just call it up, and gaze at 10,000 galaxies for a few seconds, to get a bit of perspective on the situation. When a co-worker asked me what the image was, I tried to explain that it was a picture of a tiny, tiny slice of the night sky.
"So are they stars?"
"No, they're galaxies."
"Are they like stars?"
".........well, they're made of stars...."
"Well, I've never seen anything like that in the sky!"
"...no.... you wouldn't, really..."
"So it's not real then? You've just grabbed that off some Star Trekkie website! You must think I'm stupid!"

Almost as bad was the one who saw the photo of Neptune taken by the Voyager probe, which is another of my 'perspective' pictures. It's just a couple of crescents - Neptune and Triton, but this photo was taken looking back towards Neptune. Here's this tiny spacecraft, still taking pictures and sending signals, as the probe left the solar system and headed out into deep space.
"What's that - abstract art or something?"
"No, it's Neptune and Triton, taken by Voyager as it was leaving the solar system."
Moment of puzzled silence as he looks at me, waiting for the leg-pull. When it doesn't come, he responds, quite slowly and carefully, like he's about to shatter my dreams:
"It's a TV show. It's not real."
"No, it's real, I got it off the NASA website."
"Yeah, but NASA went to the moon. Voyager's just a TV show.

Sometimes I just have to say "Go away now, please." because otherwise I'm going to hit someone, or they're going to see me cry.
(Leo Sasquatch hates being the grown-up, Fri 2 May 2008, 11:35, 3 replies)

And the really cool thing is
Some of those dots of light are the ghosts of dead stars, some are millions of years newer, and they're all in the same picture. Its a four dimensional map of points in space-time. And you get it from looking at the sky with the lights off.

*gets coat*
(Foxinsockssir, Fri 2 May 2008, 12:13, closed)

Oh Christ
I felt rage.

You poor, poor bastard.
(oneltrchardonnay, Fri 2 May 2008, 12:15, closed)

he actually said voyager is just a t.v show?
Kill this person immediately for the good of humanity. Please.

You've hit the nail right on the head with the Indian call centre thing. I was called by one of these chaps just the other day. With an accent that wouldn't be out of place in a Calcutta marketplace, he said "hello, my name is Richard."
I simply responded with "no, it isn't. Go away." Then I hung up. I know it was rude, but i'd had a bad day and he called at precisely the wrong moment.
(LIMES, Fri 2 May 2008, 12:59, closed)