# Questions people are convinced of the answer, but are wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 11, 2022, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721 "2022-11-11T00:29:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/121 "2022-11-12T21:28:36Z")
But MRIs do use radiation. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/122 "2022-11-12T21:37:37Z")
Yeah, yeah, but I knew what they meant, and so do you. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/123 "2022-11-12T21:59:11Z")
I think we have a thread winner! ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/124 "2022-11-12T23:43:21Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Mother Superior of a convent would disagree. > > But that is not 'anti-democratic". The Church is Patriarchal. Mother Superiors are inferior in power to any priest. I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings watching nuns who have run everything in a parish for decades defer subserviently to the petty whims of the appointed parish priests. The Church is patriarchal AND anti-democratic. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/125 "2022-11-13T01:03:45Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Race used to be coded in South African ID numbers. Well, still is, in my case, but not new ones. That is fascinating. Has there ever been an attempt to offer people with old ID numbers with that history the opportunity for a new number? Also, thank you for inserting your national perspective into topics like this. The internet is so US-centric (the SDMB not as much) that things like this are very eye-opening to a lot of people (or at least me, which I appreciate). ---
**Author:** ![pmwgreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@pmwgreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pmwgreen)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/126 "2022-11-13T01:45:54Z")
Gaily decorated with small children and dogs stuck to it by their zippers and dog collars. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/127 "2022-11-13T06:19:04Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Has there ever been an attempt to offer people with old ID numbers with that history the opportunity for a new number? Yes, if I were to get a new ID (I still use the one I had since before the end of Apartheid), it would differ by one key digit. The race coding used to be the second-last digit of a 13-digit number, with a code from 1-7. Then it became 8 for everyone after 1994. > [@Munch](#): > > Also, thank you No problem. Glad it’s appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/128 "2022-11-13T10:53:20Z")
Yes, you are correct. I did the math and commented above. From the top of the tower (186’), the 50lbs ball lands more than a second before the 20lbs. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/129 "2022-11-13T12:04:13Z")
“Buffering is a bad thing, in watching videos online.” This is a misconception promoted by some advertising. The advertising shows people trying to watch online video and the video pauses while the download tries to catch up, which they refer to as “buffering”. This specifically isn’t wrong. What’s wrong is creating the impression that, when things are going right, the hardware isn’t buffering. It spends much of the time buffering, when it’s working as intended. The problem is that, sometimes, if the transmission speed isn’t high enough, the system sometimes buffers while pausing the video. In other words, buffering is fine, the problem is when the system is ONLY buffering and not displaying. “Buffering” means downloading more video and filling the “buffer”, an area of memory holding a smallish amount of video still to be displayed. It’s needed because the momentary progress of downloading will never exactly match the momentary need of displaying. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/130 "2022-11-13T18:15:53Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > I haven’t been able to convince my nephew that South America is not directly south of North America. Honestly even I’m not sure how far to the east it is. I live a few miles East of Cleveland (Ohio, not Tennessee or elsewhere) and, fooling around on Google Earth, I discovered that the Western most point on South America was a bit East of me. One cannot get to South America by going due South from Charleston, WV, Atlanta, GA, Disneyworld (although one may from parts of Orlando, FL), or any places West of those. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/131 "2022-11-13T20:15:48Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > Buffering is a bad thing, in watching videos online That made me think of this other computer related one: “It’s good to have lots of free memory.” No, not at all. It’s best for the computer to use all of the memory available. Any that isn’t needed by running programs should be used for caches, buffers, and similar. That is an oversimplification, and managing memory is a hard problem, but the idea that “free memory”=“good memory” is wrong. Of course, programs using more memory than necessary is bad, but that’s not what I’m talking about. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/132 "2022-11-14T19:21:01Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > “It’s good to have lots of free memory.” No, not at all. It’s best for the computer to use all of the memory available. That would be true in an ideal programming world. One that doesn’t have memory leaks. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/133 "2022-11-19T07:57:12Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > > [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > > > I was in med school studying nutrition at that time, and we were taught one did NOT need all the essential amino acids in the same meal. > > My father was a doctor teaching metabolism in a medical school at that time, and he told me the same thing. No, experts didn’t ever believe that, as far as i can tell. I became a vegetarian in 1986, and everything I read, plus the common wisdom of people who were vegetarian or vegan was that you more or less needed to eat your essential amino acids in the said day, but not at the same meal. You didn’t really need to count them, though-- kind of like how we need, more or less, about 50g of protein a day, but that’s an average to shoot for, not something to hit or exceed daily. Now, non-vegetarians were constantly telling me I was doing it all wrong, and I needed to be eating my beans and rice together, or I was going to die. But non-vegetarians were always sure I was going to kill myself with “that diet.” ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721/134 "2022-11-19T08:06:46Z")
Yeah. Ex-cathedra would be your old desk chair that is now in the garage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-people-are-convinced-of-the-answer-but-are-wrong/974721.md?page=6)