There are plenty of pieces of information that I hear told over and over again, and each time the person saying it apparently seems to think that what they’re saying isn’t well known.
For example, one I hear all the time is, “What we (Americans) call Canadian bacon is called back bacon in Canada.”
I had another example, but I’m blanking now. What are your examples?
My mother does this all that time and while I’m blanking at the moment, I can almost always predict when she’s about to do it in the course of a conversation. I expect it’s because she only sees me every few months and she forgets that she tells me the same thing every time she sees me.
My husband will do it, too, explaining things that are going on at his office. I hate to be rude and interrupt him, but when he starts telling the same thing for the third or fourth time, I have to stop him.
“It is incorrect to refer to all sparkling white wines as champagne. The only wine that can properly be referred to as Champagne must be produced withing the Champagne region in France.”
A couple weeks ago in the grocery store, I overheard a woman explaining this to her friend and her explanation was phrased in almost the exact same wording as used by Rob Lowe’s character in the movie Wayne’s World.
Hey, lady, no matter how factually accurate you are, don’t try to pass yourself off as a great scholar when you’re mining trivia from Wayne’s World!
Not quite the same thing, but equally irritating:
In every state I’ve lived in or visited I hear “Well, you know what they say about [state], right? If you don’t like the weather, just wait [time period], it’ll change! Har har har!!”
Only correct if you think laws are what define what a food is or is not, which is kind of a strange position to take.
Also, everyone knows whales are mammals.
And that peanuts are not nuts.
Not strange in the least. Many countries have laws that specify what a food can be called. In France, at least, it’s against the law to call something Champagne when it’s not made in the Champagne region, and most wine drinkers go by that even if they’re not in France. Here in the US, the term Hatch can only refer to chiles grown in the Hatch valley of New Mexico. Similarly, onions can only be called Vidalias if they are grown in an area of Georgia.
No, they don’t.
They have laws specifying whether the seller of a food or beverage can use a certain name.
The rest of us are free to call your mother’s wig a Vidalia onion, if that’s what flicks our Bic.
I doubt it. I’m sure far more Americans drink champagnes not from France than drink champagnes from France, and I’d bet that few of them call those non-French champagnes by any name besides ‘champagne.’
I’m a singer so my voice is my instrument.
The onset of the holiday season will no doubt bring forth numerous dissertations on the pagan roots of various nominally “Christian” festivities which are brand new and in no way came from a couple of History Channel shows airing annually since 1996.
Then we get a couple month break before the same scholars present their groundbreaking research into the origins of Easter.
I’m calling a cop.
“The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”
Thanks Dad.
My Dad can still tell me stuff I don’t know about WWII aviation, but everything else I’ve heard, let’s just say, before.
Yeah, it’s illegal to flick your Bic with family.
Tomatoes are actually fruit.
As for Champagne, technically Scotch Whiskey falls in to the same category. Only whiskey made in Scotland, blah, blah, blah…
But you can come back and say the Supreme Court of the United States declared them to be a vegetable.
You may think it is “well known”, but I think it is wrong.
I am fairly sure Canadians would regard what USAians call “canadian bacon” to be a type of ham. I am British, and that is certainly how I see it, and I think I have seen Canadians saying as much online.
Back bacon, in Britain at least, is something different again: it very like what USAians just call bacon (which in Britain is called streaky bacon, and regarded as the cheapest, lowest quality form of bacon), but with a much higher proportion of lean meat in it. Here is a picture of some. I do not know for sure, but I suspect that is also what Canadians would understand “back bacon” to be.
What USAians call canadian bacon, by contrast, is almost entirely lean meat. It is sold pre-cooked (like ham) and is not greasy like bacon. It may be that US “canadian bacon” is the same bit of the pig as the larger lean region of British back bacon, but, if so, it has been quite differently prepared.
The mystery is why USAians ascribe this type of cured meat to Canada, which, as I understand it, lays no particular claim to it, and does not recognize it as anything distinctively Canadian.
Anything about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
“Evolution doesn’t have a goal”, e.g. answering every GQ “Why didn’t evolution…?” with what amounts to “Because it didn’t.”
And a month ago, they were telling us about the Druidic origens of Halloween.
Every last human being on earth, from 80-year old grandmas in New York down to newborn babies in isolated Amazon tribes, has heard all of those stories about 100 times.
I used to go around telling everyone that… then I took biology and learned what the technical definition of a fruit is. Yeah, tomatos are scientifically a fruit- so are zucchinis, peppers, wheat, peas, eggplants, and a whole lot of other stuff. Tomatos are nothing special.
