What well-repeated urban myths annoy you?

[battleknight24]

I'll start it off...

The Titanic was NOT the first ship to send out an SOS. And SOS doesn't stand for Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls. It doesn't stand for anything. It was chosen because it was simple and distinct: dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot. SOS was decided on by an international committee, which featured several members from non-english speaking countries, so it is unlikely that they would have all chosen an abbreviated phrase significant only to english speaking people.


Peace,

[AwakeAtLast]

Madeline Murray O'Hair

is going to get religious programming removed from the airwaves. Call your congressperson! Write letters! Call the T. V. stations! Give me a break!

[PartyPooper]

1. John Kerry's wife owns Heinz ketchup!

She is only a shareholder.

:grr:

[BurtWorm]

2. "Gore/Kerry's" dumb as dirt quotes

which are actually almost all Dan Quayle's. The remainder are Bush II's.

[olddem43]

3. Hot water freezes faster than cold water

this physical impossibility is widely believed by dumb people. I've even heard people try to explain how this works - the hot water gets a "momentum" of cooling and is able to thus overtake the cold water's rate of cooling.

[TXlib]

14. Rate of cooling is proportional to temp difference

I've had to explain that to my physics students before.

[sir_captain]

17. maybe, maybe not

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. That Shrubbie McFuckWad was elected and is "legitimate"

[ProfessorGAC]

35. That "Everything Changed On 9/11"

The only thing that changed is that now dumbasses realize how much some people hate america.

For those of us who had been paying attention for the last 30 years, and already knew that, nothing changed on 9/11.
The Professor

[MrSandman]

5. Ollie North put in a security sytem....

because of OBL.

[onebigbadwulf]

6. Carbohydrates are essential

Tired of dispelling this one.

[HawkerHurricane]

7. FDR knew.

The liberal media covered up Clinton's real crimes, and the Republicans didn't impeach him for it because of blackmail.

Clinton sold weapons secrets to the Chinese in trade for campaign contributions. Which is funny, since the Chinese got ahold of the weapons around 1982, when Clinton was a nobody.

[MrSandman]

26. FDR knew....

Never thought of it as an urban legend, but yeah.

I always considered it wishful history.

But yeah, that is a biggie.

[olddem43]

8. Nixon was cheated out of the '60 election

Mayor Daly fixed the Illinois election which cost Nixon the presidency. Even better, Nixon declined to contest the results "for the good of the country." This lie was started by Nixon himself in one of his books. The truth is that Kennedy would have won even without Illinois. You can look up the EV results rather easily.

[ChoralScholar]

9. that birds explode when they eat rice...

all from some stupid Ann Landers column... completely unfounded.

[BlueHandDuo]

15. I had to debunk this one the other day...

...when I caught my own daughter perpetuating the "birds explode when they eat rice" myth. The shame!

[Xithras]

41. It's a convenient myth to cover a liability issue

When my wife and I were married we wanted to throw rice, but the owner of the hall told us that rice throwing was banned because it "kills birds". When I went on a rant about how wild birds eat rice all the time, and about how people have been throwing rice for centuries without ONE confirmed bird death, he chuckled and told me the REAL reasons that churches and halls don't want rice thrown anymore: Liability and cleanup.

I had never thought about it, but rice on the ground acts like ball bearings, and rice in the eye can be hazardous. There have been numerous injuries over the years from rice striking eyes, getting inhaled, or causing falls down steps, and an increasing number of married couples were suing the halls or churches, claiming that they'd created an unsafe situation.

The only problem was telling people that they had to abandon a centuries old tradition over the threat of lawsuits...people invariably got mad and blamed the halls. When the exploding bird myth arrived, it gave the hall operators an excuse to ban rice while citing more altruistic reasons...after all, you'd have to be pretty inhuman to WANT birds to explode.

We ended up releasing butterflies at our wedding :)

[barackmyworld]

10. you eat 7 spiders a year

also "your hair grows faster if you trim it"

[Shananigans]

33. I still believe both of them...

In your sleep you eat seven spiders on average a year.

And your hair doesn't actually GROW faster if you trim, but it prevents the minscule breakoffs at the end, thus resulting in longer hair overall than if you had not gotten cut.

[maveric]

11. Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs, wearing diamond jewelery

and living better than working folk.

[PartyPooper]

12. Masturbation causes you to wear glasses.

And, frogs give you warts. Eeeewww!

:D

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. The one about Dumbyass winning the 2000 election

...

[AgadorSparticus]

16. There's no nutritional value in mushrooms.

[VOX]

18. That Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet.

this has been set straight again and again, but no one can actually put a stake through its heart.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/goreinternet.htm
This comes from a television interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that was aired on March 9,1999. TruthOrFiction.com has a transcript of the entire broadcast. Vice President Gore was not yet a formal candidate for the presidency, but was clearly setting the stage for it, and Blitzer's questions focused on his potential campaign. At one point, Blitzer asked Gore why the Democrats should support him over rival Bill Bradley. Gore answered, "Well, I will -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins, and it'll be comprehensive and sweeping, and I hope that it'll be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
<snip>

[Squeegee]

19. Bush, the Compassionate Conservative

n/t

[Piltdown13]

20. That the library designers forgot to factor in the weight of the books

So the library is currently sinking at a rate of up to an inch per year. There must be quite a few such architects out there, because I've heard some version of this myth at each campus I've attended.

[put out]

21. Lifesavers candies were not invented

because the manufacturer wished to avoid deaths from inhalation of hard candies.

Here is the myth: someone, probably a child, died or nearly died from choking on a hard candy. So this manufacturer of the hard candies decided to make one with a HOLE IN IT!!!! and thereby would save the life of anyone choking on the candy because they COULD BREATHE through the hole.

No, the guy liked the shape of lifesavers and thought it would be novel and it might sell more.

Sad, here. I teach CPR and all that, and still some person comes up with that gem (and sometimes they're instructors, shit). It doesn't seem very social to say "what sort of stupid head taught you this silly ass stuff?".

I don't say stupid head. I refer them to Snopes.

[UdoKier]

22. "Rod Stewart had gallons of semen puped from his stomach"

Also - "Richard Gere crams gerbils up his butt".

Not only are they homophobic and ugly, they smear (at least primarily) hetero performers who have done no harm to anybody...

[Swamp Rat]

23. Bush was ELECTED

This pisses me off to no end.

[Blayde Starrfyre]

24. "There is a liberal bias in the media"

"Gore said he invented the internet" close second.

[truthspeaker]

25. There is a correlation between full moons and human behavior.

You can spin uncooked eggs on their ends on the Spring Equinox.

Bumblebees are aerodynamically unsuited for flying.

Chinese-Americans don't have to pay taxes because it's against their religion.

Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

27. Brazil speaks Spanish

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[YellowRubberDuckie]

34. I think they're mixing Brazil up with Belize.

Because Belize does in fact speak English.
Duckie

[truthspeaker]

36. Er, no the misconcpetion is that Brazil speaks Spanish.

Brazil speaks Portugese, not Spanish.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

38. I learned that the other day in spanish.

[Mizmoon]

28. The Muslim family that knew about 9/11 in advance

I have heard this multiple times because I live in a suburb of NYC. It goes something like, "My friend in whateverville was working in his yard on 9/10 and saw his afghan muslim neighbors were moving ..." They give some cryptic warning of what is about to happen and disappear forever. It's only the next day that Joe Whitebread realizes what they meant ... (insert Twilight Zone music here)

[BiggJawn]

29. "This Nation was created as a CHRISTIAN Nation!"

Yeah, OK, if it makes your masturbation more fun to believe that...

[regularguy]

30. Razor blades in apples...Aids needles in phone booths...

Why do people like to panic their fellows?

[Burma Jones]

31. That Domestic Violence peaks during the Super Bowl

I do believe that the Holiday Season enjoys that distinction.

[patcox2]

32. People who are smart and work hard get ahead.

The poor fail because they are lazy.

There is equal opportunity for all in america.

The "invisiible hand" of the market will regulate business better than government regulation.

All government programs are inefficient and wasteful.

Social Security is going broke.

That dumb slogans like "if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life" should be the basis for government policy decisions.

Our taxes are too high.

High taxes discourage people from earning money.

Our taxes are high because we pay too much to the lazy people on welfare.

Diplomacy and negotiation are weakness.

The USA can kick any country's ass with one had tied behind its back, and therefore anyone who disagrees with us can go to hell.

Essentially the entire beleif system of the republican party is based in urban legends.

[AmandaRuth]

39. public schools

teach homosexuality

public schools and child protective services won't let you discipline your own child - they want to take your child away and teach them homosexuality

PETA and the humane society want to outlaw private ownership of pets

the anti-choice movement is not a war against women, we are only gonna go after the doctors providing these services

[flvegan]

37. Fox is "fair and balanced"

[truthspeaker]

40. Students are not allowed to pray in school.

The exact opposite of the truth.