Another beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact.
On the taxonomy of pandas, it should be noted that bears and raccoons are pretty closely related in the first place (closer than either is to, for instance, cats or dogs), so it’s not like the classification was ever all that wrong.
Wait a minute. Are you including things that were taught “in good faith” but later superseded by fresh discoveries and inventions?
By “in good faith” I mean that the teaching folk were up-to-date on their science and tech, and were communicating it clearly enough.
Indeed. I’m trying to get an idea how our knowledge of the world has changed since I was a kid (i.e. the time when my only job was to be soak up what teachers told me and pour it all back into tests).
Yeah, Chronos, I’ve wondered about that one too.
I’d like your specific take on the endlessly repeated meme about five physical senses that we have in common. - Jack
Now and then, you can probably make a few dollars by betting people on how Galileo died. There are loads of people (including, I’d wager, some SDMB regulars) who believe he was beheaded or burned at the stake.
In reality, he died of old age while living under loose house arrest.
I’ve heard the “We only use 10% of our brain” when I was in school. Actually, isn’t that true in a way? It was my understanding (layman’s understanding of neurology) that our brains consist of many types of cells. The cells that do the “thinking” are the neurons and they make up about 10% of the brain if you go by cellular count.
I can add a few more that I heard in school for anybody that cares.
Edison brought electricity to the masses. (Of course leaving out Westinghouse and Tesla.)
The reason we use AC and not DC is if we used DC it would take several minutes after you flipped the light switch for the light to come on. (Note, actually this was said in a presentation given by the local electric company. For anybody that cares both parts of it are wrong.)
The Mongols were basically a bunch of uncivilized, undisciplined, marauding savages. (Come to think of it that’s how the barbarians were portrayed as well. It’s amazing to think of that and then realize the Mongols produced a guy like Subutai)
I went to a fairly crappy elementary school back in the 70s, and I was never taught that Chris C. set foot on North America. It was always clear that he was basically confused and lucky; he got credit mostly for setting the European colonization/conquest of the Americas in motion rather than accomplishing much his ownself.
Well, it was thought that pandas were more closely related to raccoons than they were to bears, which was (later found to be) wrong. And even with the modern classification, raccoons, et al., are still closer to, say, pinnipeds, than they are to bears (and bears and raccoons are both fairly close to dogs, really…).
The generally-accepted cladogram for these groups looks something like this (excluding fossil groups):
Caniformia
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±-----Canidae (Dogs)
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±-----Ursidae (Bears)
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±-----Pinnepedia (seals, etc.)
|
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Musteloidea (red pandas, skunks, weasels, raccoons)
So yeah, bears and raccoons are fairly closely related (I personally wouldn’t go so far as to say “pretty closely”, though, since, to me, that implies a sister-group relationship). They are all arctoid caniforms, after all!
According to my runner-coach brothers, one “old bad idea” that’s still in full display is the idea that stretching before exercise helps prevent injury. They tell me it’s been basically proven that what you want is warmup before and stretching after. Yet when I went to my work-HS’s basketball game, the opposing team counted off stretches before hand, none of which would have worked anyway. Hey coach! You can’t adequately stretch your leg muscles in ten-second half-baked positions, with some of the kids bouncing through them. Even from my little knowledge, it was a complete :smack:
Chronos said:
You seem to be looking at how a wheel acts as a conveyance, and ignoring the element of the axle. That is the component that allows the wheel to remain attached to the structure and still rotate fully. A round object will roll, but it is the axle that makes it what we consider a wheel.
AClockworkMelon said:
Fine by me.
Blake said:
Interesting. Is that a function keeping it from going away completely?
Tethered Kite said:
I was taught that dove was the past tense of dive. Then I was taught that dived was the correct word, and “dove* is not a word”. Then I was confused.
*Dove, not the bird or the bar of soap that are pronounced “duv”, but “dohv”, as in “he dove into the pool”.
Pleonast said:
I’d argue they don’t even know that “fire burns” means combustion with oxygen.
Tethered Kite said:
You want to explain what you are alluding to here?
They’re more five categories of senses, rather than distinct senses per se. In particular, a lot of different things are lumped together under “touch”. And not much attention is paid to the internal senses, like the sense that tells you that your elbow is bent, or that you need food, or the like.
Darwin’s Finch, I didn’t realize that about the pinnipeds. Thanks for the new information! Where do cats fit in?
Irishman, I’m not sure I understand your objection re: wheels, since I did indeed mention the axle, and a wheel used just for rolling a vehicle isn’t even a “machine” at all.
Our brain consists of gray and white matter, CSF, and structural things like meninges. I assume you’re talking about gray matter. The ratio of the two is very close and depends on age (and having certain disorders), but you usually have more gray matter. Say a 1.3:1 ratio, a bit far from 1:9. Also, gray and white matter are BOTH the neuron, just two different parts of it (the soma and the axon respectively).
Edison was a dick. He was rather belligerent to Tesla and Westinghouse. He was so convinced that DC was superior that he electrocuted an elephant to death using AC because he could.
I think this is what I was thinking of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glial_cells#Numbers
Well Westinghouse kind of got his revenge. He probably laughed when they took Edison’s name off the company:) (Got to say screwing over Tesla was one of the stupidest things Edison ever did.)
Cats would be in Feliformia, which is the sister clade to Caniformia, both within Carnivora. So, taking the cladogram back a couple steps gives us this:
Carnivora
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±------Feliformia (civets, cats, hyenas, mongooses)
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Caniformia
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±-----Canidae (Dogs)
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±-----Ursidae (Bears)
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|
±-----Pinnepedia (seals, etc.)
|
|
Musteloidea (red pandas, skunks, weasels, raccoons)
Before plate tectonics was widely accepted, I remember a science text book and a movie(elementary level) that said the mountains on Earth were created because the planet was once all molten, and as it cooled, the surface wrinkled. In the movie, they demonstrated this by baking an apple, then setting it on a table. As it cooled, ridges form, akin to mountains. :rolleyes:
My dad, a government geologist who graduated in the 1940’s, still is sceptical about plate tectonics.
We actually use AC because it’s dangerous. 
you’ll get your puddle much faster if you put the bottle on mercury.