Common misconceptions universally accepted

k-man

me_right_one wrote: »

Apparantely the Neil Armstrong "One small step..." speech is wrong!?! He's supposed to have said "thats one small step for A man.....", but people just say "for man"

Armstrong himself actually got this line wrong. Search for the recordings on Youtube and have a listen. Also, wikipedia has a note about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#First_Moon_walk

grenache

delricyo wrote: »

Sitting close to the tv harms your eyesight

It certainly harmed mine.

Namlub

mmmmwah wrote: »

hate how commonly 'disabled person' is used, as if that's who the person is, it should be person with a disability!!grrr!:mad:

I'd hardly call that a misconception, more misuse...

irish_bob

was most likely already mentioned but i cant be bothered reading every page


that frankenstien was the creator and not the monster

newmills

That masturbating makes you go bli can't seem to find the other letters........goes to get glasses

ballsymchugh

Cool Mo D wrote: »

Vitamin supplements are good for you.

In reality, they are a poor substitute for healthy eating, as vitamins are better absorbed from food rather than in pill form. And if you are getting all your required vitamins from your diet, taking vitamin pills will have no positive impact on your health, and taking very large doses may actually be harmful.

Also, taking extra vitamin C does nothing for you, excess vitamin C just gets pissed straight out into the jacks.

Also, there is not a shread of evidence that getting plenty of antioxidants in your diet helps your health. Antioxidants play an important role is your cells, but you don't get them there by eating them!

There's a whole load of similar mumbo jumbo about diet out there.

i passed my biochem pass/fail oral exam years ago because i knew that vitamin c was an antioxidant that prevented the oxidisation of a copper (or was it iron?!) ion that was necessary for the integral structure of collagen. i only found it out the day before mind you, and it's all i really remember from biochem now. either way, it's why people who eat oranges don't have scurvy, but shyte teeth. now if this is wrong, take it up with the fat dude that lectured us in biochem. better you than me!!

Neamhshuntasach

Being vegetarian saves the rainforests. I'm sick and tired of hearing that shít. Especially from hippie backpackers.

A load of bollix since tofu comes from soybeans and brasil has had a 40% increase in deforestation due to the demand from these non meat eaters.

Gone West

Wazdakka wrote: »

The lamp is a lie

>_>

Earthhorse

javaboy wrote: »

The other really well known space sentence is almost always misquoted too. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Houston, we have a problem.

They were meant to say "Houston, we have problem".

Diego Smartly wrote: »

Everything these days is a misconception.

Actually, that's a common misconception.

Midnight_EG

Not once was the line 'beam me up scotty' said in the Star Trek series


I think


:eek:

sweetie

can't be arsed reading back but RTE never turned down father ted.

squod

Euro_Kraut wrote: »

'Columbus discovered America'

Nope. There natives who 'discovered' long before him. As regards the first European to see it, it was probably a Viking or maybe even St Brendan.

Plus he didn't discover the 'US' but the small part of the contient.

Well turns out the asians dicovered america. Probably Chinese people many, many years before Columbus.

dresden8

Quote:
Originally Posted by faceman

The Great Wall of China can be seen from space. -No it cant, no matter what the weather conditions are.

Joycey wrote: »

Actually it can,depending on where in "space" you are. It cant be seen from the moon, say, but if you go just outside the atmosphere of the earth it can

How come I can't find it on google earth then?

Popple3

That MTV plays music

kincsem

Michael Jackson moon walked.

Tigger

Wazdakka wrote: »

Jesus.
God.
Heaven.
Tony Danza.

None of them really exist

pmsl


tiggers heads are not made of rubber i just like a drink

DazMarz

Cold showers and/or copious amounts of caffeine rich products will help you sober up/sober up more quickly.

All that happens is you get a more alert and/or wetter drunk.

Fact.

Popple3

That you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

http://xkcd.com/357/

asdasd

That the French never wash.





They occasionally wash.

Professey Chin

asdasd wrote: »

That the French never wash.





They occasionally wash.

in poo

tech77

eman66 wrote: »

Civil servants are servants.

Gran Hermano wrote: »

Civil servants are civil.

That civil servants are civil servants.

Woah, trippy...

Euro_Kraut

Neamhshuntasach wrote: »

Being vegetarian saves the rainforests. I'm sick and tired of hearing that shít. Especially from hippie backpackers.

Really? People claim that? I have never come across that one.

I have heard however that vegetarianism reduces CO2 emissions as cattle as one of the main source of harmful carbon gases. Not 100% sure about that claim.

Euro_Kraut

tech77 wrote: »

That civil servants are civil servants.

That servants are civil!! So hard to get good staff these days.

hullaballoo

Charles Darwin didn't coin the phrase, 'survival of the fittest'. In fact, his theory didn't surmount to survival of the fittest because he believed evolutionary changes were random. (Think that was in QI once as well.)

Another one is that there is some law that states that you can go into a pub and get a glass of water/use the toilet for nothing. There is no such law. There is, however, a law that states that you cannot charge for tap water.

Capt'n Midnight

The Virgin Mary had a misconception.

indough

hullaballoo wrote: »

Charles Darwin didn't coin the phrase, 'survival of the fittest'. In fact, his theory didn't surmount to survival of the fittest because he believed evolutionary changes were random. (Think that was in QI once as well.)

honestly i personally thought thats how 'survival of the fittest' worked

creatures were born with random 'mutations' (i dont know if thats the correct word) and the ones that helped them deal with their environment better were the ones that went on to become the norm amongst the species

hullaballoo

indough wrote: »

honestly i personally thought thats how 'survival of the fittest' worked

creatures were born with random 'mutations' (i dont know if thats the correct word) and the ones that helped them deal with their environment better were the ones that went on to become the norm amongst the species

Yes, that's how it appears to work all right. I was just saying that Darwin wasn't the one to make that extrapolation.

Also, someone said that the theory of evolution does not seek to explain the origins of life on earth. The title of Darwin's seminal work was, 'On the Origins of Species', which is probably where the confusion arises. Darwin, of course, wrote at a time when language was more accurately used so what he was proffering was an explanation for the differences between living things on earth.

Riddle101

Common misconceptions universally accepted:

That Eamon DeValera wasn't executed because he was American. He would have been executed either way, but by the time they got to him, the public outcry over the executions beforehand caused for the British to stop the executions.

indough

as in the reason for the existence of different species rather than for the existence of life itself

javaboy

That the opening jangly chord of A Hard Day's Night is a G7sus4. It's actually an Fadd9.

Gary Coleman never actually said What you talkin bout Willis.

That if the wind changes while you're sitting really close to the telly, the ghost from 3 men and a little baby will carve your eyes into squares. In reality most tellys especially modern ones have an aspect ratio of more than 1:1. So your eyes would actually end up rectangular.

That the expression "throwing shapes" on a dancefloor refers to the energetic nature of the dancing. It actually dates back to medieval times when potential suitors would literally throw hoops and other objects with gaps in them at a woman they wanted to court. If they successfully "hooped" her, she was obliged to dance with them.

stepbar

That you can see the Great Wall of China from the Moon. It's a myth.

ballsymchugh

Riddle101 wrote: »

Common misconceptions universally accepted:

That Eamon DeValera wasn't executed because he was American. He would have been executed either way, but by the time they got to him, the public outcry over the executions beforehand caused for the British to stop the executions.

jaysis even neil jordan got that wrong then.
but someone said that gary coleman never said 'what you talkin about willis'... erm, tis all over yootoob and i could swear that it's him, or a pretty good ventriloquist!

netwhizkid

stepbar wrote: »

That you can see the Great Wall of China from the Moon. It's a myth.

But can you see the moon from the great wall of china?

m@cc@

Hitler was German.

Reindeer

Cool Mo D wrote: »

There is an absolute ton of research on vitamin C - taking extra vitamin C does not help your health one bit, nor does it shorten colds.

There is evidence it does shorten colds, and it is partially based on the previous tons of research to boot:

http://www.harvardhealthcontent.com/health-news-reviews/vitamin-c-and-colds.php

Whether it makes a huge difference? *shrug*

Also bear in mind that much of your foods nowadays are already vitamin and mineral enriched; many brands of Milk and Breads/Cereals follow an enrichment process, salt is almost always iodized. Etc. etc.

Executive Steve

serendip wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but ...

"The exception proves the rule".

This is almost universally misunderstood.

In fact, the original meaning is that an explicitly-stated exception (e.g. a "no right turn on red" sign at a US traffic light) implies the opposite general rule (e.g. if there's no such sign then it must in fact be ok to turn right on red). It's a very elegant idea and comes up frequently.

Here's an example from Wikipedia:

"Special leave is given for men to be out of barracks tonight till 11.00 p.m."; "The exception proves the rule" means that this special leave implies a rule requiring men, except when an exception is made, to be in earlier. The value of this in interpreting statutes is plain.

I'm afraid you are actually 100% wrong on that one.

"The exception proves the rule" means that things which don't abide by rules weaken them slightly, but the rule is still a good one.

The word "proves" is there used in the exact same meaning as it is in "proving grounds" - "the exception tests the rule" in other words.

Ro: maaan!

Just because you can't distinguish the wall of China from all the surrounding crap from space doesn't mean it's not right there in your line of sight on a clear day. Surely.

mawk

its well believed that the celts were real. we were taught it in primary school as fact.

turns out they never existed and it was just a social tool to make us feel different to the brittish

Elliemental

Another big misconception is that stress causes somach ulcers and that eating sweets causes diabetes.
Ulcers are caused by a bacteria in the stomach. Diabetes is caused by the body`s inability to create insulin. Common in obese people, but no brought on by the sugar, apparently.

In terms of historical figures being misquoted, Marie Antoinette never said `Let them eat cake` (mores the pity).

me_right_one

mawk wrote: »

its well believed that the celts were real. we were taught it in primary school as fact.

turns out they never existed and it was just a social tool to make us feel different to the brittish

Total and utter bull. "Celts" is a mispronounciation of "Gaels", started by victorian english romance writers. And worse, people who dont know any better sometimes pronounce it as "Selts".

Most of Europe was once covered by the Celts, with France even being named "Gaul" once. The Romans fought them, their archeology and art can be found all over Europe, and the language the spoke was the ancestor of modern-day Irish. Yea thats right, IRISH.

Over thousands of years, cultures and societies evolved, and the main bulk of Celts got pushed more and more west. Which is why isolated little Ireland is where the language survived. But most placenames from Brittany across to Connemara have Celtic connotations.

The arguement that we were taught that we are "Celtic" to make us less british doesnt make sense, cos any caucasain human being has Celtic/Gaelic genes, especially our nearest neighbour, no matter how evil to us they are!

m@cc@

mawk wrote: »

its well believed that the celts were real. we were taught it in primary school as fact.

turns out they never existed and it was just a social tool to make us feel different to the brittish

The Celts were around a long time before the 'brittish'.

Elliemental wrote: »

Another big misconception is that stress causes somach ulcers.

I'm afraid this is wrong. Bacterial infection is the cause of ulcers in 80% of cases. However it does not appear to explain all ulcers and researchers continue to look at stress as a possible cause, or at least a complication in the development of ulcers.

me_right_one

Elliemental wrote: »

Another big misconception is that stress causes somach ulcers and that eating sweets causes diabetes.
Ulcers are caused by a bacteria in the stomach. Diabetes is caused by the body`s inability to create insulin. Common in obese people, but no brought on by the sugar, apparently.

Yes, but too many sweets means too many calories. Too many calories means excess fat. Excess fat means obesity. Obesity plus too many sweets puts a strain on the bodies ability to produce insulin. Already strained obese insulin producing body plus too many sweets means you entirely fcuk up the bodies insulin producing capabilities - hence diabetes.

Namlub

Guards are legally obliged to give a pregnant woman their hat to pee in if you need it.
A guard can't arrest you if you take his hat.
Well, I say 'common', most of my friends believe them...

Bandit12

Barrack Obama is black.

Joey the lips

Naos wrote: »

You eat 8 spiders per year in your sleep.

The amount of times I hear this one is astounding.

True bear gryllis eats 8 in one sitting

me_right_one

That cork has, or ever had, a right to call itself the real capital. The real capital of Ireland is Tara

Joey the lips

me_right_one wrote: »

That cork has, or ever had, a right to call itself the real capital. The real capital of Ireland is Tara

Well done, you have said this twice i think your point is noted oh a politically speaking Dublin is the true capital. Tara is a hole which they should put a road on never mind through

yousername

humans evolved from monkeys.


The irish national anthem was written in irish.



Pencils are made with lead.

chameleons change colour to match their surroundings.

dlofnep

yousername wrote: »

humans evolved from monkeys.

True. We evolved from apes.

yousername wrote: »

chameleons change colour to match their surroundings.

Some do.

Jev/N

Magnus wrote: »

No-one ever said "Play it again Sam" in Casablanca.

No-one ever actually said "Beam me up Scotty" in Star Trek either

This may have been mentioned already but didn't have the chance to read 14 pages