Wow. What surprises me about that one is they believed it into adulthood.
I had a classmate in high school (both of us were in Honors level classes) who believed the same thing. We grew up in the same rural area so it wasn’t a matter of being unfamiliar with animals.
Me: Meat is just the muscle if an animal (or something like that. I don’t remember how it came up).
Her: Eww! No it’s not!
Me: Yes it is.
Her: Mommy! (yes, she really still called her that) Sodalite says meat is animal muscle!
Her Mom: Of course it is.
Her: EEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!
Me: What did you think it was, then?
Her: I dunno. I thought there was skin and muscle and somewhere down in there was meat.
I wish I could say it was the most bizarre conversation I ever had with her. She was also quite certain that women had three “buttholes” and that was what they were supposed to be called. All those other words were dirty.
For me, nothing beats the 9-11 Truthers. The deluxe version is particularly entertaining: the Jesse Ventura spin, that years before the attack, painting contractors actually covered the walls with thermite-laden paint, thus prepping the WTC for the future implosion. And that it was impossible for building 7 WTC to have been brought down by falling debris, conveniently ignoring the diesel storage tanx in the building. And that there were smoky trails in the sky right before the attax, which ‘could only have been’ missiles. And so on.
Yeah, that takes the cake. The same type of people with different political beliefs are who makes up the “birther” crowd. I have to admit that I wondered why Obama wouldn’t just show people his birth certificate and end the matter, although I never believed he wasn’t a citizen. But since he finally did, the issue is settled. I don’t understand how some people are still pursuing this non issue.
I had a friend in high school who believed that all dogs were male and all cats were female and when they mated, half of the litter were puppies & the other half kittens.
One of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard, though, came from my aunt after my nephew was born. She was actually my great aunt, my grandmother’s sister, so this must have been some kind of old wives’ tale - when you clip an infant’s nails for the first time, the mother has to eat the clippings or…something will happen. This was about 20 years ago and I can’t remember the penalty now. I do remember the entire room staying uncomfortably quiet for while after she dropped that pearl of wisdom.
I had a conversation with an adult woman once who stated quite soberly and certainly that planes stay in air solely because of passengers belief that they will do so.
I just wonder why Obama released his birth certificate at all. He had to have known that the birthers wouldn’t have been satisfied, since nothing would, and birthers are already a bunch fringe conspiracy theorists so I really don’t get why he bothered. Everyone that mattered knew he was eligible to be President.
Hell, even if he was somehow proven to be ineligible to be POTUS, I don’t see what the birthers could do about it. It’s not like Congress is going to impeach him over it now.
That’s what I love about the DKs. Other political punk bands us ridiculously over the top song titles and lyrics. They layer it in a whole bunch of sarcasm. That song is told from the perspective of a government official or similar, not Jello. And Police Truck isn’t saying that cops are awesome for beating people.
He is from my hometown. I didn’t hear about him until several years after I moved away, and he hit the news with his last prediction. I’m thankful for that.
Oops, my contribution. It’s a little too recent to say much, let’s just say that I encountered someone previously seemingly normal who went on about the pharmaceutical companies, cancer cures being held back, etc. The real doozy was that depression and bipolar can be cured by purely environmental means like exercise and forcing socialness, but the drug companies don’t want you to do that.
But it wasn’t the long form birth certificate. And then last year, when he finally released the long form, it didn’t have a picture of his mom in the stirrups, with the governor of Hawaii standing next to her. So what are people supposed to think?
Same here, with my sister. She has a degree in engineering, and there was nothing in our environment growing up that hinted of any tendency toward mysticism, so I was really shocked when we were having a conversation one day, and she gently “corrected” me after I had lumped astrology in with other forms of pseudoscience.
My father believes he can, and has, cured cancer. ALL cancer. All you need to do is follow his dietary guidelines, which involve an ever-changing series of supplements. It started with shark cartilage, but he’s now on something like 50 capsules a day with various substances, including selenium and cayenne pepper. Oh, and some magic activated water he buys for a fortune from some back-blocks crank.
For himself I don’t care so much, but he peddles this crap to everyone he meets, including his fellow retirement home residents, and his older sister (now dead).
This shocked me when it first happened, because he was a perfectly level-headed, science-based guy. A chemical engineer in his youth. He’s still a flight and space enthusiast, but on the subject of health and cancer in particular went completely off the deep end.
He also believes that, if we were to sequester carbon dioxide effectively, we would also sequester enough oxygen in it to alter the amount in the atmosphere and make it hard to breathe.
I have a friend who takes at least 30 different suppliments at least once a day [he arrives for dinner with a pillbottle with the pills he slams down before, during and after dinner in what I guess is some particular order.
That’s what he did. He released his birth certificate in June of 2008, which was right about when the controversy started.