Another "Common Knowledge or Fascinating Anecdotes... that unfortunately aren't true" Thread

[Spice_Weasel]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Then you had the hang of the game. Rescuing them wasn’t nearly as satisfying as getting them to fly across the screen using a chain explosion.

Whenever something unfortunate happens, I can’t resist… well, let me demonstrate…

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I remember when this first happened it was lampooned by comedians and commentators and water cooler pundits, none of whom mentioned the fact that she had to have skin grafting…
[/QUOTE]

… on her vagina!!! :eek:

tiny Lemming voice ‘‘Oh, no!’’ POP

[RandMcnally]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Not to hijack, but what’s the dance for, then? I mean, it does indicate how far food’s away, and in which direction – right? Why go through all that trouble?

And is there any compelling reason why bees couldn’t use both methods (I don’t have time to read the PDF right now)? I mean, flowers do emit some rather strong scents, along with having flashy colours, so that that’s a way for bees to identify food sources probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

If I remember correctly (it’s been about a month since I heard the lecture), the dance does tell correct information, but it is wholly coincidental. The bees which surround the “dancing” bee aren’t watching its movements but taking in the scent of the nectar.

Just because the bee is dancing doesn’t mean the other bees are interpreting it.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@olivesmarch4th

There is, of course, no way to ‘‘waste time’’ playing Lemmings the game. The true time wasted is time not spent playing Lemmings. (I’ve beat every level of the original, including the Sunsoft levels! My greatest life accomplishment.)

Heretic! There are no Sunsoft levels in the original!

[Kamino_Neko]

@Heart_of_Dorkness

Me too! Every time I see that phrase, I hear it to the tune of the Toreador Song:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
Do not forget! Stay out of debt!
Think twice, and take this good advice from me…

Me too! Fun episode.

Oddly, I always picture Phil Silvers as Polonius, although he was the producer in the episode, and Mr Howell played Polonius… Funny the way the brain works.

[Freudian_Slit]

@Tengu

Me too! Fun episode.

Oddly, I always picture Phil Silvers as Polonius, although he was the producer in the episode, and Mr Howell played Polonius… Funny the way the brain works.

Heh–it’s kind of awesome that so many of us remember this episode.

Didn’t the Skipper play Polonius? Though at the end, the producer comes to watch their rehearsals and gets pissed at them for not doing it well, and then he takes over and performs all the roles himself. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of?

I think Mr. Howell was playing Claudius and Mrs. Howell Gertrude. Ginger was Ophelia, Mary Anne was Laertes, Gilligan was Hamlet, and the Professor got to crank the coconut phonograph.

[kidneyfailure]

Ask any member of the so-called “Free Tibet” crowd and they’ll tell you that the Tibetan language is going extinct. The Dalai Lama himself even claimed as much:

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/dalai-lama-warns-near-extinct-tibetans-to-prepare-for-the-worst_100164845.html

However, that doesn’t seem to be the case when the facts are examined:

http://eng.tibet.cn/bibliotheca/tsp/t20061011_166345.htm

Barry Sautman is one of the best authorities on this subject:

Sautman also sought to rebut charges by Tibetan exiles that the Tibetan language is devalued and being replaced by Chinese. “92-94% of ethnic Tibetans speak Tibetan. The only exception is places in Qinghai and Amdo where the Tibetan population is very small compared with the broader population. Instruction in primary school is pretty universally in Tibetan. Chinese is bilingual from secondary school onward. All middle schools in the TAR also teach Tibetan. In Lhasa there are about equal time given to Chinese, Tibetan, and English.” In contrast, Soutman said, “Tibetan exile leaders in India used English as the sole language until 1994 and only became bilingual in 1994. Schools in Tibet promote the Tibetan language more than Indian schools do in ethnic Tibetan areas–in Ladakh, India, instruction is in Urdu, with a high dropout rate from Tibetans, but India is never accused of cultural genocide against Tibetans.”

http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=2732

Anyone who needs video proof can watch the first episode of the PBS documentary “Eye on China” and see Han Chinese officials struggling to communicate with their Tibetan employees through translators or the cameraman asking a Tibetan woman to read a very simple Chinese billboard and she admitting that she has no idea what it says.

Try to argue that with a patchouli-soaked college kid with a ticket to the Tibetan Freedom Concert, though. You might as well be talking to a brick wall.

[needscoffee]

1.) This is one that I believe to be false, but have no proof. That indoor/outdoor cats only live 3 - 5 years, and if you let your cat roam outdoors you have given it a virtual death sentence. Simply not borne out by any of the dozens of cats of mine, friends and neighbors I have known. I proclaim it to be FALSE.

2.) That stretching before exercise serves any beneficial purpose whatsoever (unless your exercise consists of stretching, as in ballet or contortionism). Every time I see a jogger warm up by stretching against a tree I mentally mock them.

[Dallas_Jones]

@Tengu

Me too! Fun episode.

Oddly, I always picture Phil Silvers as Polonius, although he was the producer in the episode, and Mr Howell played Polonius… Funny the way the brain works.

“Heavens to Hecuba!”

Harold Hecuba, that is.
That was the name of the Phil Silvers character.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Freudian_Slit

Didn’t the Skipper play Polonius?

Hmm…Probably. I can’t picture anyone but Silvers (and Gilligan as Hamlet), and haven’t seen the episode in something like 20 years, so I could easily be confused about the actual cast.

(And he did sing it eventually? Ah, I’m not confused then, just forgot part of the plot!)

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@AndrewL

According to the minority of researchers who don’t believe that the dance is used to tell other bees where to find nectar, the dance is merely an avoidance behavior as the bee tries to prevent other bees getting its nectar, and the correlation between the dance movement and distance/direction to the nectar source is a completely coincidental, non-purposeful side effect of physiological changes on the bee during flight. These researchers ignore the large amount of experimental evidence supporting the idea that the dance is a purposeful communication, including the experiments where bee mockups on the ends of robotic arms could be used to direct bees to specific locations through dance communication. This was all pretty well hashed out here.

Ah, thanks for that. I haven’t had time yet to review the thread in any depth, but boy, the OP doesn’t really do her cause any favours with her presentation…

@StrangeBird

“Humans only use 10 percent of their brains.”:mad:

Sure they do.

Actually, I’m beginning to think it’s probably true for those that still buy into this notion…

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

@needscoffee

2.) That stretching before exercise serves any beneficial purpose whatsoever (unless your exercise consists of stretching, as in ballet or contortionism). Every time I see a jogger warm up by stretching against a tree I mentally mock them.

I’ve heard this before, but doctors and instructors (army, no less) constantly warn me about the need to stretch for at least 15 minutes before running. What’s the straight dope on this?

[Vihaga]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Actually, I’m beginning to think it’s probably true for those that still buy into this notion…

Heh. Even for them it’s not true; 90% of your brain consists of glial cells- even the people who aren’t doing much thinking need 'em.

[Isamu]

@Malthus

My favourite are those scientists who allow venemous creatures to sting or bite them in order to rate how painful their attacks are.

Schmidt sting pain index - Wikipedia

Reads like a description of a particularly hellish sort of fine wine.

I wonder where the platypus sting would be on that list?

Platypus venom

[Small_Hen]

@bup

“You should drink 8 glasses of water a day.”

Roughly true. A person should have between two to three liters a day, unless they’re on fluid restrictions (dialysis patients). If the glass contains 12 ounces (and your average glass of water probably doesn’t) then 8 glasses would put you in at about 2,800 ml, or 2.8 liters.

Obviously you don’t HAVE to - you can live happily on much less, and if you drink a coke, you’ll still get some fluid. It’s just a health thing - keeps you from getting constipated, and helps fatigue.

[Sternvogel]

@Freudian_Slit

I think Mr. Howell was playing Claudius and Mrs. Howell Gertrude. Ginger was Ophelia, Mary Anne was Laertes, Gilligan was Hamlet, and the Professor got to crank the coconut phonograph.

This source agrees with your memory.

[AndrewL]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Ah, thanks for that. I haven’t had time yet to review the thread in any depth, but boy, the OP doesn’t really do her cause any favours with her presentation…

Yep. Fundamentally the opposition to the bee dance language theory is based on a theoretical school that claims that behaviors cannot be genetically encoded. As this is a philosophical belief rather than one based on evidence no amount of actual evidence of genetically predestined behaviors in animals, such as dance communication in honeybees, can change their mind.

[don_t_ask]

@RandMcnally

The bees which surround the “dancing” bee aren’t watching its movements but taking in the scent of the nectar.

I have to ask, how the hell do the researchers assess what the bees are “really” doing? It’s not like catching high school students talking, “hey you, the drone down the back. What did I just dance?”

[needscoffee]

@Small_Hen

Roughly true. A person should have between two to three liters a day, unless they’re on fluid restrictions (dialysis patients). If the glass contains 12 ounces (and your average glass of water probably doesn’t) then 8 glasses would put you in at about 2,800 ml, or 2.8 liters.

Obviously you don’t HAVE to - you can live happily on much less, and if you drink a coke, you’ll still get some fluid. It’s just a health thing - keeps you from getting constipated, and helps fatigue.

Roughly NOT true. Plus, you’ve just upped the required amount to twelve 8-ounce glasses a day. “Helps stop fatigue”? “Keeps you from getting constipated?” What does that even mean? If you’re not fatigued or constipated, it must be because you drank your water? This drinking 8 8-ounce glasses of water a day is a myth that people have been parroting like idiots for years. Trying to kill a myth like this seems nearly impossible, maybe because people feel so self-righteous spouting it.
Junkfood Science: Wellness water — the 8x8 myth Sorry this is so long, just read until you get the message:

The 8x8 recommendation continued, rarely questioned, until Dr. Valtin’s seminal investigation in 2002, trying to find any scientific justification for drinking so much water. This was followed by other critical papers and the 2004 National Academy of Sciences recommendations. Still, the scientific evidence hasn’t caught up with some health writers, nutritionists and healthcare professionals…
The science of 8x8
Conventional wisdoms, despite their popularity, aren’t always true. Dr. Valtin conducted a 10-month review of the scientific literature and historic documents, and interviewed medical experts, to find any supportive evidence at all for this long-standing adage. He also looked for any evidence behind the most cited claims about the our water needs and water’s health benefits. “I’m talking about randomized trials published in peer-reviewed journals,” he said. Not opinion pieces and anecdotes. He also tried to uncover a definitive science-based origin for the recommendation.

His major undertaking found that “the universal advice that has made guzzling water a national pastime is more urban myth than medical dogma and appears to lack scientific proof.” His search results, published in the American Journal of Physiology, said:

*No scientific studies were found in support of 8 x 8. Rather, surveys of food and fluid intake on thousands of adults of both genders — analyses of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals — strongly suggest that such large amounts are not needed because the surveyed persons were presumably healthy and certainly not overtly ill. This conclusion is supported by published studies showing that caffeinated drinks (and, to a lesser extent, mild alcoholic beverages like beer) may indeed be counted toward the daily total, as well as by the large body of published experiments that attest to the precision and effectiveness of the osmoregulatory system for maintaining water balance. *

His review of lay press found that the rationale for 8x8 typically goes something like this: “Our bodies consist mostly of water and our blood, muscles, brain, and bone are made up mainly of water. Therefore, 1) we need water to function and survive and 2) we need at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day.” The second conclusion, he said, besides being unproven is a nonsequitur. “It is akin to arguing that our homes run on electricity, and that, therefore, every house needs at least 1,000-ampere service.”

Dr. Valtin specifically investigated the research evidence behind the most popular myths about our fluid needs.

All fluids count. The popular papers left “little doubt” that most advocates of the 8 glasses of water a day mean to convey that people should drink water per se, and specifically exclude caffeinated or sweetened drinks from the daily count. But this is a misperception, he wrote. He found strong scientific evidence that all fluids count, including water, coffee, tea, soft drinks, milk, juices and beer.

Dehydrating caffeine myth. Similarly, he found that recent experiments have “cast serious doubt on the often asserted diuretic role of caffeinated drinks,” he said. Caffeine had no significant effects on any of the variables that measure dehydration in one such study conducted at the Center for Human Nutrition in Omaha, for example, and the investigators concluded that “advising people to disregard caffeinated beverages as part of the daily fluid intake is not substantiated.” The diuretic effect of caffeine in drinks and moderate alcohol is trivial compared to the amount of water they contain.

We need less than we think. Among most adults, he found, caffeinated and alcoholic beverages constitute half or slightly more of their daily fluid intake, meaning the average adult drinks a respectable 1,700 ml and this doesn’t include the water from foods and metabolism, which also count. Yet, the medical research indicates that even 1,700 ml may be as much as a full liter more than what sedentary adults actually need to maintain physiological homeostasis, he said.

He couldn’t find any article where 8x8 was recommended on the basis of scientific evidence. The idea seemed to appear out of nowhere. He did, however, find one possible source for a misinterpretation that may have been repeated, like urban legends often are. The 1945 Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences had written in its Recommended Dietary Allowances:

*A suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters daily in most instances. An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods. *

Dr. Valtin believes this last sentence may have been ignored, leaving the incorrect interpretation of these early dietary guidelines that eight glasses of water to be drunk each day.
Thirst doesn’t mean dehydration. The scientific evidence also debunks the popular myth that by the time you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. A number of scientific studies have confirmed there is no support for this fear. Quite the opposite. Thirst hits long before we’re near risk for dehydration. Our thirst kicks in when the osmolality of our blood plasma is less than 2%, whereas dehydration begins at osmolalities of 5% and higher. In fact, our bodies even adjust fluid balances moment-to-moment by changes in the plasma concentrations of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, and subsequent changes in urine flow, far earlier than thirst plays a role. “Osmotic regulation of vasopressin secretion and thirst is so sensitive, quick, and accurate that it is hard to imagine that evolutionary development left us with a chronic water deficit that has to be compensated by forcing fluid intake,” he wrote…Two years after Dr. Valtrin’s famous paper, the latest 2004 Food and Nutrition Board recommendations for water were issued, reinforcing his findings and defusing the myths of 8x8…
The latest debunking
In the June issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, doctors Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb at the Renal, Electrolye and Hypertension Division at the University of Pennsylvania, further examined the science behind water myths. “There is what I call an urban myth that drinking a lot of water is a healthy thing to do and it leads to people toting around plastic water bottles all day drinking water,” said Dr. Goldfarb. “The source of this is the complementary and alternative medicine worlds.” Not science.
Water doesn’t reduce appetite. Among the additional myths they reviewed was the belief that drinking water before and during a meal will help people eat less and help manage obesity. They found surprisingly little evidence to support such rationale or even biological plausibility. “Because you absorb water so quickly and it moves through the GI tract so quickly, it probably doesn’t fill you up the way people have proposed, nor does it lead to the release of hormones which suppress appetite,” he said.

Water doesn’t detoxify. Another myth is that filling up on water flushes toxins from the body. “In fact, that is not how the kidney works,” said Dr. Goldfarb. “When you drink a lot of water you end up having a larger volume of urine but don’t necessarily increase the excretion of various constituents of the urine.”

[needscoffee]

@CrazyChop

I’ve heard this before, but doctors and instructors (army, no less) constantly warn me about the need to stretch for at least 15 minutes before running. What’s the straight dope on this?

See http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/health/new-thoughts-about-when-not-to-stretch.html I have found that fitness pros are the worst when it comes to updating what they’ve been teaching. They learned one way, and it’s hard for them to change what they’ve been taught and what they’ve believed for so long. My philosophy (NOT scientifically) is that if you like how it feels to stretch, do it, but not because you need it before a run. However, If you are performing exercise where stretching is a part of it, such as ballet or gymnastics, then do it.

[Sampiro]

@JohnT

Mozart didn’t die broke and forgotten, doomed to be buried in a paupers grave because he had no money to pay for a “decent” funeral.

4. The “paupers grave” was a commoners grave. Also, burial space inside the city was pretty much eliminated via an edict of Joseph II in his effort to combat the plague (Vienna had an outbreak in, IIRC, 1789) and prevent its recurrence.

Also mass graves were considered hygienic; dump them in, thrown on the lime, cover them up.

To this day Vienna cemeteries are exorbitantly expensive and usually rent graves instead of sell them. John Banner- who played Sgt Schulz in Hogan’s Heroes and died fairly well to do- was buried in his native Vienna for a few years then removed to another cemetery. There is a marker that attests this was where he was buried (picture).