This article will make you smarter. We guarantee it. Sure, it’s a big claim to make. How can one article guarantee to improve your intelligence? What are we going to offer you if we can’t? Well—not much, really. It’s not like we can reimburse you for the time spent reading this, but trust us on this one.
Reading through this article just once—even just skimming it—will completely change the way you think about certain things. Why? Because here we are going to present to you the list of the most common misconceptions many people hold, and how to correct them.
After reading this article, you can go out and cut people down to size during friendly bar conversation, becoming the rationalist curmudgeon people always knew you were! But even if you don’t impart this information to anyone else, keep this in mind—we only use 10% of our brains, we should be sure that what we add to them is actual, verifiable information.
What You Thought Was Once True Might Not Be.
That’s right, it’s time for some myth-busting, some balloon-deflating, some general puncturing of sorts. It’s very, very likely that at least one of the misconceptions on this list is currently in your head as a true fact, and therefore having it debunked or corrected is a demonstrable increase in your intelligence. Let’s go!
#1: Columbus Didn’t Believe the Earth Was Flat.
That’s right. It wasn’t that he thought the earth was flat and there was some kind of risk of falling off, he was just trying to find a passage to India. From about Ancient Greece onwards, it was generally known that the Earth was actually round.
#2: Napoleon Wasn’t Short.
Probably the main myth that still surrounds Napoleon, the idea that he was really short figures in a lot of fast evaluations of his character. Surely many short people have taken some kind of solace from all that Napoleon was able to pull off, and others have taken his lack of height as a motivation behind his striving for power. Turns out he was actually 5 feet, 6.5 inches, or 1.686 metres, so there goes that idea.
#3: Scottish Clans and Much of Its Famous History are Largely a Myth.
A huge amount of Scottish history was simply worked out after the fact, and a great deal of mythical Scottish connections to various tartans and clans has been built up, over the decades, on some pretty dubious history. A lot of it was chronicled here, recently.
#4: Cooking With Alcohol Means You Will Be Consuming the Alcohol.
Although everyone likes to say that the alcohol burns off during cooking, this isn’t the case. Some of it does, but there’s no way 5 minutes in a frying pan will somehow ‘eliminate’ the alcoholic strength of a cup of white wine. No problem, really, but if you’re ever serving dinner to a recovering alcoholic, pay attention.
#5: We Use More than 10% of our Brains.
Whoops, pure myth, the idea that 90% of our brains are just sitting there. This one gets repeated plenty. When you read it at the top of this article, did it seem like something you’ve heard so many times that it just seems acceptable? It used to be the same for me.
#6: We Don’t Lose Most of our Body Heat Through the Head.
So that episode in Seinfeld where George is wearing the big Russian hat and no jacket in the middle of winter? If you were using that as a reliable guide to how to dress in December, stop it now.
#7: Eating Late at Night Does Not Make You Fatter.
Nope. Doesn’t happen. It’s based on some kind of idea that, because we’re sleeping, our body is going to convert that just-ingested food into fat, whereas during the day, when we’re awake and using more energy, our body is going to… what, exactly? Decide to use the food for something else?
When you exercise, you are burning fat that you probably took in days or weeks ago. Same goes for storing fat: your body isn’t fast enough to convert a heavy, late-night meal into an instant belly. It’s all much slower and more complicated. The Spaniards eat at 10PM or later. Are they the fattest people in the world?
#8: The Daddy Long Legs Spider Isn’t the Most Venomous in the World.
The idea that it somehow ‘can’t bite you’ but if it could, it would kill you, isn’t true. First of all, it can bite you, and second, if it does, it won’t kill you. You’ll probably barely notice it.
#9: The Inuit Don’t Have Dozens of Words for Snow.
There are more words in English that define snow (or snow-like conditions) than there are in English. This one gets pulled out in every lazy article about languages.
#10: Being Cold or Wet Doesn’t Suddenly ‘Give’ You A Cold.
This is one of the biggest medical misconceptions ever. Being cold or wet can weaken your immune system, which can make you more susceptible to the cold virus. That’s it. Wind and cold air do not have a magic reaction with our skin that suddenly gives us a cold. We don’t suddenly catch a cold from a gust of air or some water.
This one, above possibly all other misconceptions, is possibly the hardest to shake. The amount of people who will insist that they’ve gotten terrible colds directly from gusty days or some rain is absolutely legion.
There are about 100 strains of cold virus out there, so weakening your immune system can certainly make you susceptible to them. But that’s it. Want to prevent colds properly? Every time you’ve done something that could make your immune system weaker, or something that could give you a virus (been out in the cold, shaken hands with someone, all that stuff), wash your hands with soap and warm water.
Doing this a few times a day instead of worrying about magic cold-winds will prevent more colds than putting on 20 jackets ever will.
Take This Precious Information and Spread It.
And now, go out into the world and arrogantly correct every instance of these misconceptions you stumble upon! You will be hailed as the smartest, wisest sage the 21st century has ever seen, or told to shut the hell up because you’re ruining everyone’s fun. Hey, either way.
(with thanks to wikipedia.)
March 27th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
another myth in this article itself:
washing your hands gets rid of germs on it…
even if you will use soap with alcohol or something, the germs well mostly be removed, but in a few seconds will be back on your hands by turning the water off and tuching the same place you placed the former germs
March 28th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Ooooh…. very precious information…. but Eating Late at Night Does Make me Fatter.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
good one Aline… that part of the article gives the wrong idea of whats really going on:
“bladie bladie.. more energy, our body is going to… what, exactly? Decide to use the food for something else?”
- Yes, and that else is more energy expenditure. At day you need more energy because of “active”(relative to sleeping) lifestyle, so less will be in excess resulting in less fat to be stored. It makes much sense that if you sleep you need less food because of less activity. Less foods you really burn up during sleep, so more will be stored.
“When you exercise, you are burning fat that you probably took in days or weeks ago.”
- Depends on level of obisity.
“Same goes for storing fat: your body isn’t fast enough to convert a heavy, late-night meal into an instant belly. It’s all much slower and more complicated.”
- Depends of the ammount of fats in the meal. Eating yoghurt or something will not make you fatter, and is in fact good for your health.
- Ofcourse the food in excess is not simply put in the belly. But it is fast enough done to see within days. Though this suggests that 1 meal is consumed, but the “Myth” is about “Eating at night” so more chronic. All these meals eaten when not needed get will adventually add up and make you fatter.
“The Spaniards eat at 10PM or later. Are they the fattest people in the world.”
This statement doesn’t make any sense because of many variables not included, like fat-load meals, energy expenditure, meals taken in rest of the day etc…
do not use such unsupported statements to attack other statements
April 10th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Here’s the article I was using as a source for that one (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3263249.stm).
I’m not going to include every variable about the Spaniards in a light-hearted article. They eat meals extremely late and aren’t fat in general. Therefore just eating late at night (on its own) doesn’t make you fat. Of course it depends what you eat, etc, but everything depends on more than just one variable.
The point is that the statement “don’t eat at night, you’ll get fat!” is almost always based on some vague, unconfirmed science and repeated as an urban myth. I used the Spanish as examples to show that you can eat late at night and not gain weight. Obviously other factors are always in play, in every situation. But the idea that eating late is inherently bad helps contribute to an unwillingness in certain places (mainly North America) to eat after, say, 8PM.
If it were just a cultural custom, fine, but a lot of people insist on eating early because they’re convinced that any piece of food consumed after a certain hour will instantly become fat. That’s the myth.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Yeah I appreciate the article, but it would have been a lot better if you’d referenced where you were getting your info for each point or some supporting evidence. For each point you were pretty much saying…
This is a myth because I looked into this and found out that it was, take my word for it.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Have a look at “Nocturnal feasting makes you fat”:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec17_2/a2769
I got that straight from the wiki page that you linked.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Napolean WAS short. Like YOUR article says, he was only 5 foot 6.5 inches. In other words, SHORT.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Dear Ryoni,
I`d like to attend you that alcohol evaporates at 78 degrees Celsius. So if you put alcohol in a frying pan for five minutes a lot of the alcohol will evaporate. This of course depends on the amount of alcohol used and the concentration used. The only person that will get a lot of alcohol in his/her blood is the chef because inhaled evaporated alcohol enters the blood stream at a very high rate.
I`d also like to address that by my dutch standards Napoleon is short. I`m 1.88 meter so I would be a whole head longer then Napoleon. In the Netherlands he would certainly be seen as a short person.
Greetings, Willem
November 1st, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Yogurt, you’ve got to consider the fact that napoleon lived during the 18th and 19yh century and that average heights were a lot lower back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
At the very end of this article they list average heights of troops during the mid eighteenhundreds and as you can see, the average is somewhere around 165 centimetres.