It is not. It's quite complex actually. And I'm betting what most people who believe they have a clue think of "REST" is actually "RPC over pretty urls".
But that's just because of a general ignorance of how HTTP protocol works. If someone were to be explained, how it should work from the beginning, I'm sure they'd have no problem with grasping the subject.
Actually some Google engineers do a very good job of explaining how AtomPub and GData APIs work just with short Youtube videos.
It is not. It's quite complex actually. And I'm betting what most people who believe they have a clue think of "REST" is actually "RPC over pretty urls".