Some Famous Urban Myths, Legends and Misinformation.
Posted: Wednesday, June 27, 2007
by Ben Jones
Too-Write!
There are many so called "facts" which simply aren't. You've no doubt heard them at parties, from friends, family or had them forwarded to you via email. Here are a few of the more popular.
Eating carrots improves your night vision:
A duck's quack does not echo:
Of course it does. All sounds echo if they are loud enough and if they occur near an area (i.e. a chamber) that provides the right acoustical properties. A duck's quack is relatively short and tends to be quiet, making it hard to hear as an echo; however it does echo and various tests have been conducted by universities to dispel this urban myth.
Mixing Pop Rocks and Soda can be dangerous or even deadly:
It has been claimed that people's stomachs have exploded by mixing these "volatile" substances together. However, both Pop Rocks and soda rely on carbon dioxide gas to produce their fizzing and the very process of drinking Soda actually causes carbonation (release of carbon in the form of fizz and bubbles). This means by the time you drink your Soda and then swallow the pop rocks there's nothing left to react with it, this is also true of mentoes with Soda. The real danger might be to your teeth and long term health if you eat too much sugar on a regular basis.
Chocolate causes acne:
Not so. Chocolate does not cause acne in healthy individuals. Perhaps started to entice children to eat healthy food rather than just confectionaries, this old wives tale associates a negative effect to eating chocolate that is undeserved and has been clinically disproved. Very rarely, some individuals can have a skin reaction (such as a rash) to specific ingredients in chocolate but it is uncommon and of course this isn't acne.
Chewing gum, if swallowed, remains inside your body for seven years:
I guess who ever came up with this one, figured they'd have seven years before anyone caught on. Chewing gum is excreted like any other undigested piece of food or stray object swallowed, generally within a day. However chewing gum does take a long time to break down which may be why this myth was and is so readily accepted by people and why it so often ends up stuck to the bottom of our shoes.
There are many more including old folklore like the existence of vampires and werewolves and newer urban myths such as gangs in cars waiting for people to flash their high beams or that you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat and so on and on.
I think the success of these and other such myths is rooted in our trusting nature (some might call it naive gullibility). People tend to believe what they see and hear and rarely question information that is provided from a basis of authority. This fact has long been relied upon by many media outlets and publications (take tabloids and popular magazines for example). As long as someone tells us it's that way with conviction then we will tend to believe them unless we already know that the information is wrong.
A game that my family often played actually relied upon misinformation. We'd each select five words we thought the other players wouldn't know and then everyone would create a false definition on a slip of paper and try to make it as convincing as possible.
These new definitions and the original would be drawn from a hat at random and each player would vote on which they believed to be correct. Players were then awarded points corresponding to the number of votes their false definition received.
Here's an example for the word "narcan"
Definition 1: a ruler or member of the royal family in the Incan empire
Definition 2: a potent narcotic drug used with morphine
Definition 3: a space between an arch and the lintel of a portal or window
Definition 4: a state of anxiety or distress, generally associated with infants
So what's your vote?
As you can see it certainly created some convincing false definitions and was a lot of fun to play. Not only did it help to broaden our vocabularies (once we learned the actual definition) but it also honed our misinformation radar and allowed us to develop a healthy dose of scepticism. Something we could all use in this day and age!
Not completely on topic, but as requested by a reader below, I've written an article on the origins of The Three Wise Monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil for those of you who are interested.
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)Great article, topic and format. I like the game your family played, brilliant teaching tool. Everyone should have a BS filter, lol.lol Cari, sounds like a great name for the game: the BS filter. Thanks for your kind comments and rating!
Ben Fascinating. Great article. I like the idea of calling that great game the BS filter! HannahThanks for your comment Hannah, it was a lot of fun researching and writing it! :)
I am looking for the myth,folklore or what ever it would be called for the 3 monkeys, see hear speak no evil.. I saw something on Twilight Zone or Outer Limits years ago.The monkeys were sinister..It's a little rough marking my article the lowest you can, 1 out of 5 stars, then going on to ask me a question about something I didnt even discuss in the article and expecting a response. However, (since I’m a nice guy) it sounds like you are mixing fiction with fable. I'm sure the good folk at “The Twilight Zone” took some creative liberties with the original fable/proverb of the three monkeys to create a good story. I must admit I don't recall the episode that you mentioned. I doubt that the "sinister" representation you mentioned is something they researched, but rather created. The actual story of the three monkeys, revolves around the maxim of “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil”, represented by one monkey covering his eyes (Mizaru), one covering his ears (Kikazaru) and one covering his mouth (Iwazaru). In fact in some depictions there is actually a fourth monkey (Shizaru) who "does no evil", symbolized by a monkey crossing his arms or covering his abdomen. The first depicted represenatation of the three monkeys enacting this maxim is a 17th century carving over a door of the Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Japan. However the original source of the fable is more likely Chinese in origin from a Confucius phrase: “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety”. This phrase was written in the “Analects of Confucius” around the 8th century. It is easy to understand the origin of the monkeys when you look at how the phrase was translated into Japanese and the obvious play on words that was combined with the saying. “Mizaru”, “Kikazaru”, “Iwazaru” and “Shizaru” literally translate as “don’t see, don’t hear, don’t speak and don’t do”. In Japanese, “zaru” an archaic verb conjugation in the negative (ie don’t) is vocalised in the same way as the suffix for “monkey” (saru). As to the exact meaning of the phrase, well that is a point often argued and debated. I tend to think it was meant to represent a state of innocence, thus if we do not see, hear or talk of evil then we will in turn be spared evil. If only it was that simple!
Do you know any famous myths like Bermuda Triangle or anything else that's geographical?One very famous geographical myth springs to mind: Atlantis.In fact there is a relatively recent theory that postulates that Antartica (similar in name) could in fact be the lost continent of Atlantis.Antartica was not always where it currently is (continental drift meant significant rellocation over time) and was not always covered in ice.In fact if you discount the polar ice caps then Antartica is actually a very close match to the size of Atlantis put forward by Plato.Of course this doesn't explain all the references to Atlantis sinking, still...
Narcan is "none of the above". It is actually another name for Naloxone, a medication given to counter opiate-based medications in the event of an overdose. As a "narcotic antogonist", it binds to the receptor sites in the central nervous system that would ordinarily be affected by the narcotic and blocks the medication from binding to those sites. No binding means to effects.Indeed, I left out one (important) word. It should have read:Definition 2: a potent narcotic "antagonistic" drug, often used to treat morphine and heroin overdoses.Thanks for pointing this out and for your comment. :)
Great Article, nice to read something actually interesting!
Great Article, nice to read something actually interesting!
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