They also don’t interfere with hospital equipment - unless you count the nurses. It’s a pain in the ass to try to save the life of some patient while their asshat relative is blithely unaware and chatting away and won’t get out of your space. But they don’t interfere with the machines.
Well, the latter ‘legend’ is at least partially true, some colleges require swim tests. Here’s a story from the Boston Globe last year, complete with names and a picture.
Not so many from what I do now, but plenty from the courtroom, where bizarre Q&A’s in transcripts (true or not) have circulated for a while.
Q: What is your brother-in-law’s name?
A: Silverman.
Q: What is his first name?
A: I can’t remember.
Q: He’s been your brother-in-law for twenty-five years and you can’t remember his name?
A: No, I’m just too nervous, I tell you, I know it, I just can’t think of it. [Rising from the witness chair and pointing to Mr. Silverman]: Seymour, for God’s sake, tell them your first name!
Q: Officer, was the defendant obviously intoxicated when you arrested her?
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection, calls for conclusion.
THE COURT: Sustained.
Q [BY THE PROSECUTION]: Officer, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue overheads flashing?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: What, if anything, did the defendant say?
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection, calls for hearsay.
THE PROSECUTION: It’s an admission, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Overruled.
Q [BY THE PROSECUTION]: What did she say?
A: “What disco am I at?”
Q: Now, earlier in this deposition, ma’am, you claimed you lost the tip of a finger in a blender accident some years prior to the events in question?
A: Uh-huh, yes.
Q: May I ask which finger?
A: (Witness indicates)
Q: You thoroughly enjoyed that, didn’t you, ma’am?
I work in market research. At a typical focus group, the discussion is held in a confernce room that has a one-way mirror on one wall, behind which is a room with the interested parties watching the discussion. Everyone has heard a story where a participant walks into the empty conference room, sees the mirror, and uses it to do some sort of embarrassing grooming (such as lifting up her skirt to smooth down the shirt that is tucked into it), not knowing that there are 10 people behind the glass who can see her quite plainly. I don’t know that I have ever run into anyone who has actually seen this happen, though.
Broadcasting: Radio host Uncle Don saying “There, that’ll hold the little bastards” over an open mike.
Robin
It’s true that compasses don’t point directly north, though. The planet’s North Magnetic Pole doesn’t coincide with the northern pole of its axis of rotation. That’s why maps are marked with “True North” and “Magnetic North”.
A bunch of these stories are floating around in the Navy.
After reading that line, I’m forced to say no pun intended.
Anyway, the guy getting sunburnt was supposedly written up for damaging Government property.
Another alleged a cook was upset with the Weapons Officer on a Frigate. The menu that night was meatloaf. The cook’s supposed to have taken a crap in the ground beef, cooked it up, and served it to the wardroom.
The Officers raved over the meal, with many asking for (and receiving) seconds. The cook is called to the wardroom, to receive hearty congratulations, and a Bravo Zulu as well.
“Well Sir, (wiping his hands on his apron) how did my shit taste?”
The story ends with the WO chasing the cook around the boat with a .45, and the cook’s eventual departure in a helicopter.
Well, there IS a very strong magnetic anomaly near Hudson Bay. US pilots are warned that the weaker ones north and west of the great lakes can cause navigation problems.
Early M-16s were made with 1 in 14" twist rifling. This was inadequate to stabilize heavier bullets at range, because they WOULD tumble.
Even with current issue 1-12" twist barrels, .223 bullets still tumble after hitting their target.
Civilian .223 barrels sometimes use 1-9" or even 1-7" twist barrels to insure stability of heavy bullets.
They do rise in the same sense that a baseball rises when an outfielder throws to the catcher…but not in the sense that a ping-pong ball rises with backspin. Sights are normally adjusted so that the barrel is aimed upward relative to the sight line. This allows the bullet to cross the sight line twice in it’s flight.
Yes, but try explaining that to people who have been taught by their Drill Sergeant that “The needle is pointing to an iron ore deposit in Hudson Bay. And the reason the difference between them changes every few years is because they’re mining all that ore and it’s making it weaker.” ARGH!
We actually have three Norths on a military map: True, Grid, and Magnetic. Just more shit to confuse them.
The first question I ask when giving a map class to soldiers is “Ok, whose ever heard…” and about half always raise their hand. They’re shocked to learn otherwise.
Civilian maps have that too, at least those produced by our Ordnance Survey.
You get many recruits ask why they don’t just calibrate compasses to point to Grid North? 
Freshman comp instructor gives the students their first paper topic: Write a step-by-step set of instructions explaining how to do something.
Student comes to see the instructor during office hours: “I don’t know what to write about.”
“Well, what did you do over the summer?”
“Worked in my uncle’s funeral home.”
“Great, why don’t you write about how to prepare a body for burial?”
Student turns in the first draft of his essay: In today’s ever-changing society, death is a very important topic…
Instructor beats head on desk, then diplomatically suggests the student make the opening less general.
Second draft: Ever since the dawn of time, people have been dying…
Instructor beats head on desk again, scribbles some much-less-diplomatic suggestions.
Third draft: Dictionary.com defines “dead” as…
Instructor calls student into office for a personal conference, rips the paper into shreds, and sets it on fire.
Fourth draft: First, put the body on a slab…
Do you think it effects pilots all over the world? Do you think it effects a compass in Florida or freaking Korea?
A design “flaw”. Not a design “purpose”.
I believe the “current issue” rifles are 1:7. But either way, the bullets do not tumble in flight. The weapon is not designed to cause bullets to tumble in flight. There is no benefit of having a bullet tumble in flight. And for fucks sake, the engineers have been making improvements since it’s initial release half a century ago to PREVENT bullets from tumbling in flight. If the weapon was designed to cause bullets to tumble in flight, they would be trying to improve on the tumbling ability, not trying everything to prevent it.
And there’s certainly no part in the barrel called a “tumbler”. :rolleyes:
So do military rifles. And you admit yourself that the purpose is to insure the stability, not to encourage tumbling. Are you just trying to be argumentative, or what? I dont need the reasons why people are misinformed. I’m just pointing out that they are.
So what you’re saying is “In a sense, it doesn’t rise.”
Just like any thrown object that lacks loft capabilities or some kind of airfoil will not rise when you throw it. That’s what you’re saying? Yea, I said it too. A paper airplane sometimes rises when I throw it. But not a rock. Or a baseball, or a bullet.
What the hell is your point? You think this gives people an excuse for spreading their misinformation? Does it give people an excuse for believing it? Yes, the correct answer is that your barrel is pointing UP, so your bullet goes UP. It does not “rise”. It goes straight out of the barrel and is immediately acted on by gravity and makes a parabola. So what was your point again? Are you trying to say that these people are “kinda not wrong” or something.
They’re completely wrong. It’s a total misunderstanding of the concepts at work, and it’s freakin annoying. Not to mention frustrating having to dispell all the nonsense.
A lawyer arguing before the Court of Appeal is beating a simple point to death. Finally, in exasperation, one of the appeal judges says "Counsel, don’t you think that you can trust us to understand a basic point of law?’
The lawyer responds immediately “No, sir, that was the mistake I made in the trial court.”
Mainframe computer programmer here. I don’t know whether this is a UL or just a common revenge fantasy. My whole career I’ve heard programmers talk about some guy, somewhere, who coded the HR system to wreak some sort of IT havoc if the guy’s social security number or employee ID is removed from the system. In other words, if he gets fired, all data is lost, everything shuts down, the world comes to an end, you name it.
In insurance claims circles there’s always a story about somebody who hid so many files in the ceiling that the tiles eventually gave way.
I work in medical research. Our biggest UL is: “You have a cure for cancer/heart disease/cooties, but you’re making so much money on the treatments/medicine the cure will never be used.”
In my general field (developmental disability, though I don’t actually work with the Special Olympics), I would have to say the famous emailed glurge about the race where all the runners linked arms and crossed the finish line together.
That one annoys me, for the reasons explained well by Snopes. One of these days I’ll come up with a succinct response for when people tell me, “Wouldn’t it be great if we were all more like ‘them’?”
Indeed, that is how the rumors get started. I first heard this as a freshmen when friends were discussing the genuine, it’s true, not-an-urban-legend swim test at Washington and Lee. It was the reason for the swim test that was the urban legend. I have since heard the same story about other colleges which have genuine, actual, gotta-have-it-to-graduate, not-an-urban-legend swim tests.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
My husband’s ex-BIL got some sort of nonjudicial punishment when, as a young airman assigned to Guam, he got such a bad sunburn he had to be hospitalized. So that one’s not entirely an UL.
I see true excerpts from transcripts regularly in a court reporting firm’s monthly newsletter. Most of them aren’t quite as good as the UL ones, but there are still enough doozies that it’s always easy to believe almost anything you read about what people say in court.
Chemistry: There are probably more, but I’ve always liked this one.
New grad student orders a chemical that comes packed in vermiculite. The student opens the box and sees the packing material covering the bottle. (If you’ve ever opened a package from a chemical company, you’ll know how true this is.) Anyway, the student puts the packing material into the reaction and later asks his advisor why the reaction doesn’t work.