Facts People Take for True (That Totally Aren't)

I was going to make a 9/11 post until I realized I had other things to do besides argue with Austin for a few hours. So, I decided to finish this post instead.

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This post has been about a week in making (assuming I do as I planned and finish this on May 17) (Well, guess not -Jason)

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There are a lot of statistics/psychology/common sense facts people will quote to make themselves feel good, or to prove their point, or just to be total [kensored]. However, some people are so desperate for cool things to say that they'll just pull it right

out of their ass. These usually "scientifically backed" facts are, like most "science" to make it into our pop culture, are sometimes so wrong that they borderline of insanity, but it they sound so awesome that people can't help repeating them. I guarantee you that you've heard all of these before, and now I'm going to prove why they make it onto the list of [kensorship].

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"If you let your anger out, you'll feel much better afterwards"

You always hear how liberating it is to vent your anger, and how "If you bottle it all up, one day you'll snap!" Things like squeezing stress dolls, screaming into pillow

s, working out until your body screams bloody mercy, and strangling a kitten are all offered as healthy alternatives to, say, going ballistic and bringing a sawed-off shotgun to school and murdering everybody except that guy who gave you the Snickers. Makes sense, right? Why set an orphanage on fire when a duck pond will do?

Too bad it's a load of crap. In fact, research says it only makes the problem worse. You see, we have things called habits, and grossly simplified, it's when we do something that makes us feel good and we want to do it again and more often. The rush of anger is more addictive than crack, and when you rage and rage and rage, you feel so good about it afterwards that you start unconsciously finding things to be angry about. Lashing out to control your anger is like shooting heroin to control your addiction to crack. This is the same reason you don't see Buddhist monks beating into submission everything on the path to enlightenment.

Now don't get me wrong, bottling up your emotions is just as unhealthy, but at the same time, you don't see that guy on Hell's Kitchen mellowing out as each season passes.

"You Only Use 10% of Your Brain"

This has probably slipped into a few textbooks at some point, maybe been fed to you by elementary school teachers. I seem to recall Eric telling me about this in 7th grade. The fact that you only use 10% of your brain probably appeals to 1st grade teachers who have kids complaining that they just can't finish the 30 problems in their Mad Minutes, because if they really focused they could do 300 problems in 60 seconds if they wanted to, implying that we could set the teacher on fire with our minds if we just wanted to enough.

While not completely untrue, I can also tell you why it's a load of crap. Try reading this post ten times faster right now. Having trouble? That's because the other 90% of your brain is specialized, and don't actually have anything to do with the ability to read. The part of your brain you're using right now is not the same part you'll be using when you, say, murder a kitten with the sheer power of your anger, and the bottom of your shoe, later today. If you paid attention at all these last two weeks in Bio assuming you're taking general Bio at AHS (side note: my time spent learning about the nervous and immune system in preparation for Monden's final- 3 hours. Number of related questions on the final- one multiple choice problem, two true-false problems. Amount of rage- ^9000), you'll know that each part of your brain has a different function governing your body. There's even a part of your brain that keeps you from becoming a total dick(Austin was probably born without one BAM!). Don't tell this to Psychology Today, however, who wrote an article in a 2006 issue about accessing the lazy 90% of your brain. One of the suggestions is get plenty of nutrition, but that's probably covered by the spiders you eat in your sleep every night.

"You Eat About 8 Spiders In Your Sleep A Year"

Well, this is a kick in the nuts to the intellect of spiders everywhere. Not only does your epithelial tissue (found everywhere the sun doesn't shine) secrete enough mucus to ensure that you'd wake up with a mouthful of dead spiders, but shouldn't it be a given that spiders have enough inte

lligence not to go spelunking into the dark, wet mouth of a heavily snoring giant?

Apparently not, because back in 1993, a PC Professional columnist named Lisa Holst decided to prove that people will pretty much believe anything they read on the Internet. So, she published a bunch of made up facts, including this spider myth, in a series of chain mails and at the very end wrote the equivalent of "Hah! Fooled ya, douchebag!" Problem is, these "facts" became so popular that they were reworked into tons of other chain emails, with the writers just "happening" to forget to add the "douchebag" line. Who was stupid enough to believe this, you ask? Well, this supposed entomologist(well technically he's asking), this Yahoo! Answers frequenter(is she being sarcastic or not, I can't tell), this douchebag all do.

"Backmasking"

This article says it all, really. Basically, our mind isn't actually able to pick up messages backward when played forward, and even when played backward, it's mostly just a product of your own imagination or someone telling you what it is. (Example, when someone tells you Hotel California backwards is a Satanic message: You go home and try it. Now, since you're already looking for a Satanic message, you and your imagination fill in the otherwise garbled blanks and create one.)

"Men think about sex every 7 seconds. It's scientific fact!"

(If you are a seven year old, an elderly senior, easily offended by innuendo (in your end-o!) or Kat, skip this next bit)

The culprit for spreading this bullshit is a) a bunch of housewives angrily ranting about their husbands, b) feminists (not the equal rights for women kind, the "men suck and caused every war known to man ever women never caused any war" kind, which by the way is bullshit (bullshit x2)), and c) Ms. Diaz, who ranted about how men only care about sex to us while teaching Per. 4 Eng H Romeo and Juliet.

"Puhleeze, sister, we all know what's going on up there"

If you're a guy and reading this, I can prove to you right now that this is false. When you were reading about spiders just now, were you imagining a giant spider orgy? No? If you took more than seven seconds to read that bit, then you just proved "science" wrong. If yes, then get help. As a matter of fact, 30% of men don't actually think about sex at all.

What about men who work in a cubicle doing mind crushing work for eight hours straight? Do they come home and then suddenly start thinking about boning every second for the rest of the day including when they're sleeping just to make up for lost time? How would they even measure this statistic anyways? Hook up a bunch of electrodes to a guy for a week and count how many boners he gets? Need more proof?

Think about sex. Go ahead. Right now. I dare you.

About half of us believe this, according to this poll. So what about some guy who just got off the phone from deciphering a 2 hour session with the Indian guys at Dell's tech support? Does he then think about sex every two seconds to make up for time lost? Does his brain suddenly turn into a kaleidoscope of naked women for the rest of the day? (originally, that said "giant kaleidoscope of" something that started with a ti and ended with a tty, but then I decided not to piss of Kat any further)

"Wait 30 minutes/1 hour before getting into the pool after eating or else you'll drown"

You've heard this if you've ever had food in your hand near a pool. The implication was that you'd get a cramp, drown, and die if you didn't listen. You see, water, unlike air, has a magical property that makes bananas explode unless past a certain point in your digestive tract. And, since if you're anything like me, you went in anyways and found out that holy shit mom was lying.

Now why is it that this is a load of crap? Because you aren't a Gremlin (hey, remember that movie?). Water has no more effect on your body after eating than going for a walk does. Granted, if you're going to go for a rigorous swim in the pool right after eating an extra large pizza, you're also probably about to go chumming for sharks with your mouth.

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Okay what the hell, according to Blogger, I've been procrastinating on this article for like two months.