Yes. I’m a big fan of cracked, and think some of the articles and podcasts are really insightful and well-researched (the recent podcasts on getting away with murder and moral panics were excellent, for example).
But it is primarily a humour / entertainment site. So as well as the “one study” disease, there are situations where A can sometimes be caused by B, so the mind-blowing title becomes “A is caused by B”, which is technically right but misleading.
And I can think of some cases where it does look like they are outright wrong. Like when they had a podcast where they repeated referenced the fact that screws were invented 300 years before screwdrivers. AFAICT from googling, they were invented at the same time (and the word screwdriver appears in german texts at the same time), but few screwdrivers of that period have been found.
Great point Grrr! Very little of the ‘gunslinging’ that occurs in westerns ever actually happened. Pistols, at least in southern Arizona were not readily worn, and if they were, caused suspicion. I’m using the example of Tombstone Az., in the late 1800’s as an example.
Here’s another one: that major successes in combat, crime and spy stories come down to a very small team of heroic visionaries battling against hidebound convention on their own side as much as the nominal enemy. As in, for example, the story of WW2 code-breaking at Bletchley. Quite apart from the extent to which other countries had their own code-breaking successes, every new story focusses on this one person or event as the Thing That Won The War. Whether it’s the notion that the capture of one U-boat code-book was enough to break Enigma, or Turing’s insights and bloody-mindedness, or Flowers’s computer engineering, or whatever.
I can see the practicalities (cheaper on the acting payroll, easier dramatic focus), but I suppose there’s also an echo of the old verse “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost”, and so on. It’s easier to grasp stories of individual achievement rather than organised mass elbow-grease.
It might be a myth that POWs had a duty to escape, but a lot of them apparently believed that they did have such a duty:
I’m surprised from that link that 2/3 of POWs didn’t want to escape. As Paul Brickhill put it (author of [The Great Escape, and himself an inmate at Stalag Luft III) "Life in camp wouldn’t be so bad if only
1.) The Germans didn’t keep dropping hints that they might shoot you anyway, just because.
2.) You got enough food to feed your belly, just once. (Thank god the Red Cross parcels started coming after the first year)
3.) It wasn’t such an indefinite sentence. Sometimes it seemed as if the war would go on forever."
Under those circumstances, I think I’d certain participate in an escape program. Heroism and duty wouldn’t really have that much to do with it.
One of the characters in Crossing Lines is a retired NYC cop (now working for a sort-of-pan-European group sponsored by the International Criminal Court). His right hand doesn’t work, and he’s right handed: he can’t shot for shit. There’s a scene where he does shoot the pistol off some other guy’s hand and when another cop is impressed, the American says “:rolleyes::pI was aiming for his head!”
The one that gets me the most is the (incredibly common) scene where a dark, shadowy, low-resolution security camera image can be miraculously “enhanced” to show details like a license plate number or a small identifying mark on a body. Those movie people can apparently extract non-existent detail from within single pixels. :rolleyes:
I know it’s gauche to talk about wages, but what the heck. I had the impression that Cracked paid peanuts for the articles, and (even having one published say, weekly) it wasn’t enough to take the place of a day-job. I figured that the only people actually making enough to survive where the like 7 or so regular editors (the O’Briens, Bowie, Swaim, the New Guy, etc). I figured most people took the time to write articles because they enjoyed writing, and the $200 they got was just icing.
An IMHO “ask the Cracked writer” would be really awesome
That cops will have their guns drawn and say “Drop the weapon now.” (Pause) “I said Drop the weapon now.” (Longer pause) “Drop that weapon or I will shoot.” Another pause and person drops weapon.
IRL it’s “Drop it,” and you get two seconds before the cop shoots.
And two cops do not walk up the house shoulder to shoulder on the walkway. That makes them both an easy target. They walk up from opposites of the lawn in a V-shape, with their guns out. It the perp hits one, the other can shoot him.
Probably the biggest misconception about CPR is that it makes the subject recover: You see someone get zapped, or have a heart attack, or whatever, and falls over. The rescuer pounds on their chest for a few minutes, until suddenly the poor sod gasps loudly, wakes up, and gets up, ready for more ass-kicking. In reality, that recovery only comes with specialized equipment (if you’re lucky, at least a defibrillator, and possibly much more). The only purpose of the CPR is to keep the person alive until the defibrillator can get there, and it has to be continued nonstop until that time.
It’s also not consequence-free. Do it right, and you’re probably breaking ribs.
This. I have been doing digital photography professionally for over a decade. Even with great modern cameras, no amount of pixel massaging is going to extract information where there’s none.
It won’t replace anything other than a minimum wage job, especially as it takes about 10-20 hours to research, pitch and write the article. But find another place online that gives you $200 and access to 350 million page views per month. The there’s the monthly bonus. If your article is in the top 10 for traffic in a given month, you get an extra $100 per article.
Like you say - it’s great for writers to learn their craft and to work with very demanding editors in a nurturing environment, AND get decent cash. Many frequent writers end up getting offered other freelance work, occasional tv spots, OR the opportunity to work full time as an editor or regular contributor (which earns more than enough to quit your job).
Anyway, back on topic…
I think this thread weaves in and out from the original premise of stuff that happens in movies that people BELIEVE to actually exist in real life, and those just listing things that always happen in movies… which is not what I was looking for - but saying that, there’s been some cool stuff in this thread so far, so thanks to everyone.
And this thread is on the Straight Dope front page… so there’s that too
Another thing people tend to believe always happens in real life because they’ve seen it in movies, is that falling in quicksand will kill you. It won’t. You can even pull your limbs out if you relax and do it slowly. I think it was on Mythbusters.
And this one is something I always believed (to be honest, I never thought about it until I did, and I looked it up…)… In the US, I’ve seen literally hundreds of scenes from movies and tv shows whereby someone is drinking alcohol while driving a car. I genuinely believed the rules were slack over there compared to the UK, but obviously it’s as illegal as it in every civilised society. I just find it bizarre so many guys swig a beer while driving. It just doesn’t happen in British movies/shows (that I can recall).
I actually wince when watching a movie and I see someone’s plan A be:
“We’ll do X to me, which will stop my heart. You drag me around in whatever forbidden terrain unprotected people can’t survive in, then bring me back into habitable surroundings. Then restart my heart so I can get back to fighting monsters.”
If we’re talking video not single photos, my understanding is that at 20-30 frames per second, if you have a second or more of footage of almost the same view, the frames can be compared and extra information extrapolated from the pixel-to-pixel differences between frames. Some improvement, but no you’re not going to get the Hubble-level resolution typically shown.
The movies I’ve seen this in used it precisely to show what yahoos the drivers were.
Setting a flame to one ceiling sprinkler in a building will set off all of them in a building. Ain’t true. Insurance companies would go berserk if that were true. Only the sprinkler(s) feeling any heat will set off.
