I can not tell a lie: I love misconceptions lists – I love writing them almost as much as I love reading them. Therefore, I have put together a third list on the topic! Regular readers will know that we have already presented two such lists. They can be found here and here. Enjoy the list – and if you have any misconceptions of your own to debunk, feel free to do so in the comments!
Common Misconception: Humans use only 10% of their brain
This is utterly false. No one really knows how this myth started – but what we do know is how it has been perpetuated for so long. When people first began making this false claim, psychics “decided” that this explained why some people had paranormal abilities and others didn’t: paranormal powers were unleashed in people who had developed the use of more than 10% of the brain. They believed that some region of the brain, if tapped, could provide psychic abilities. This certainly helped their bottom line as thousands of books have since come out aiming to “teach” people how to develop this power. So, the truth of the matter? Humans use 100% of their brain – that is why it is there! Here is a case in point: a hemispherectomy – this is the surgical procedure that removes an entire half of the brain. When this surgery is performed, the patient becomes paralyzed in half of their body.
Common Misconception: Shaving makes hair grow back thicker or coarser
The reason that so many people believe this is that uncut hair ends up developing a taper – or split ends – both of which feel softer than freshly cut hair. It is for this reason that a man’s beard feels soft, but stubble feels rough. Of course, if this myth were true, every man going bald would simply get a hair cut in order to make his hair grow back thicker – true also for women with thinning hair. It is surprising that so obvious a myth (when you really think about it) is believed by so many!
Common Misconception: You can extend your penis or widen its girth with special devices or medications
This is patently untrue and the source of millions of spam emails sent around the world every day. Vacuum pumps, pills, stretching techniques: none of them make one iota of difference to the size of your manhood (and consequently the engine size of your car). The only way to enlarge your penis is to have enhancement surgery. This is, obviously, extremely expensive, extremely painful, and extremely gruesome – or so I am told!
Common Misconception: Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is evil and must be avoided at all costs
First off, MSG is a naturally occuring substance found in things like tomatoes, mushrooms, and seaweed. It was first isolated and presented in pure powder form in 1907 and 1909 respectively. MSG is a flavor enhancer that excites the fifth taste sense umami (the others being salt, sweet, sour, bitter). MSG is to umami, as sugar is to sweet. Another term for umami (and a relatively good description of it) is “savory”. When you add MSG to a bland soup or stock, it can greatly increase the flavor and add a roundness that can not be obtained elsewhere. Most fine chefs will use natural MSG when possible – through the inclusion of tomatoes or mushrooms, but many will also use the powder directly. It is a myth that MSG makes you ill – thanks to media scares around the world, people have an great horror of MSG, but those self-same people have no problems scoffing chips and other fast-food and pre-packaged foods, almost all of which contain it. The English “ready-made” gravy granules “Bisto” contains a large amount of MSG, as do many seasonings and sauces that are available at the supermarkets of the world. MSG is E number E621 and is labelled as “flavour enhancer 621″ in Australia and New Zealand. Australian study on “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” – showing no link to MSG: “[R]igorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.” Enjoy MSG!
Common Misconception: Half, or more than half of all humans ever born, are alive today
This is a myth – probably perpetuated by eugenicists and other people who believe the planet should be saved by population control of the human species. This is not a new myth either: in 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would surpass the world food supply by the mid 1800s. The Population Reference Bureau estimate that the earth has held over 106 billion humans throughout history. With a current world population of over 6 billion, that means that roughly 6% of people ever born are alive today. A significantly lower number than that given by population explosion alarmists. What is perhaps more frightening, is the fact that many nations today are not producing enough children to replace the population with no growth at all, in other words, many countries are suffering negative birth rates (see chart above).
Common Misconception: Plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen
I suspect this will come as a surprise to most people, but while plants do produce oxygen, they do not do it by converting carbon dioxide. The process by which this all happens is called photosynthesis and is a relatively complex process, but to put it simply, plants convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrate precursors and water (fuel for the plant). This is a light independent process – it doesn’t need light to perform this task. So how do plants make oxygen for us to breathe? It uses a light dependent process – this requires light. It takes the light and converts it to potential energy – the byproduct of this process is oxygen.
Common Misconception: The North Pole is north and the South Pole is South
Actually, in terms of physics, the North Pole (while geographically in the north) is actually a south magnetic pole, and the South Pole (geographically in the south) is a north magnetic pole. When your compass is pointing north, it is actually pointing to the south pole of Earth’s magnetic field. 780,000 years ago, this would not have been the case, as the magnetic poles of the earth were reversed (this is called a geomagnetic reversal). Oh – and just to complicate things further, the poles drift around randomly – they are not in a fixed spot. This is most likely due to movements in the molten nickel-iron alloy in the Earth’s core.
Common Misconception: A mirror image reverses left and right
When we look in a mirror, our left and right sides appear to be reversed – left is right and right is left. In fact, what has really happened is that the mirror has inverted us front and back. The reason that we think it is a left-to-right reversal is that we are used a person’s left and right being reversed when they face turn to face us. So what is the mirror doing? Imagine a person with their back to us doing a hand stand to face us, rather than turning around – their right and left remain the same but their top and bottom swap. Looking in to a mirror has the same effect: nothing reverses in the mirror – not bottom and top, not left and right.
Common Misconception: Glass is actually a very slow flowing liquid
First of all, this is not true. Secondly, the reason many people believe it is due to the nature of old panes of glass in which the bottom appears to be thicker than the top – suggesting that the glass is “melting” and pooling at the bottom. The reason for this distortion in the glass is the method of manufacturing in the past. You will notice that you don’t see this “melting” behavior in modern glass windows. Glass is actually an amorophous ceramic.
Common Misconception: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves
In fact, it freed little or no slaves. Why? Because the emancipation proclamation (1862) declared the freedom of all slaves in the confederate states – that is, the states over which Lincoln and the Union government had no control. Furthermore, it did not free slaves from any of the states that were already under union control. This would be (in a sense) like Australia trying to declare a law binding on New Zealanders – when they are two separate nations. The emancipation proclamation was, effectively, worthless. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment (December 6, 1865), that slavery was officially abolished in full.
Contributor: JFrater
Another one that always gets me?
“Pitbulls are vicious, vicious animals. If you scare them or annoy them, they will attack.”
Seriously?
It’s not the dog thats vicious, it’s the conditions in which it is raised. If you raise one in a loving, caring environment, it’ll be friendly. If you hate it, it will hate.
Goddamn, a little itty-bitty dog could be turned into a killing machine if it’s abused or treated badly.
Wrong. Pitbulls are dogs who have been bred to be violent, vicious, dangerous dogs. Wolves were originally bred to be tame and domesticated (not just nurture–nature, too, even if coerced). Pitbulls are dogs that have been both bred *and* trained the other way. Goes with the animals who usually own them.
wow now i don’t know what to believe. a book about myths and misconception that i read once said that glass IS actually liquid. and now you’re saying it is untrue.
the world is so full of know-it-alls…
We just finished discussing the emancipation proclamation in my U.S history class, so i already knew it didn’t do anything, but its still nice to read stuff like this.
Callie (78) I hate those ads too. Completely inane.
Talanic (90) Food shortages? We grow so much food here in the states they pay farmers NOT to grow it because the market will bottom out. We send food all over the world but the people in charge (the illustrious leaders) trade the food for weapons etc and let their people starve. We do grow enough food to feed the world. We just cannot get it to the people who need it.
Then what the **** am I allergic to, then? Because I am not imagining the rash or the vomiting, and neither is my mother who also suffers from it. The reaction also varies according to the amount of MSG in the food. A lot of MSG will create a rash that goes from my face down to my chest and violent vomiting. A little MSG will only give me a slight rash on my jaw/face.
So all these years, when I’ve eaten at a restaurant and forgotten to tell them “no MSG” and gotten a reaction, while eating at that same restaurant but specifying “no MSG” and I get NO reaction, what then? Psychosomatic? In both my mother and myself? Shared hysteria?
Just because thousands of people cried wolf about their allergies to MSG, does that mean no one on the face of the planet can be allergic to it?
Does my post even matter since apparently “every person who claims they are allergic to MSG is a liar”? What if I am allergic to something else but all these years have thought it was MSG? I’m a liar? Or just didn’t know? Sheesh!
ok for those who think glass is a liquid or is confused about that read this:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.html
.126 dofnup
“Psychosomatic? In both my mother and myself? Shared hysteria?
It happens during church services all the time.
Bye STFU FAGS. See ya
BTW STFU FAGS What is a “looser?”
Regarding the liquid v solid question for glass, a liquid can be classified under the broader heading of “fluids”. A fluid is a substance that deforms continuously when acted on by a shearing stress of any magnitude (i.e. flows). Note: fluids can be liquids or gases. In contrast, while a solid may deform slightly under a shear stress it will not be continuous.
Applying this definition, for a glass to be liquid (and hence a fluid) it must continuously deform under shear. As twister implied (127), the timeframe for deformation must be taken into account. Unfortunately it is impossible to accurately examine the deformation of glass over millions of years (for obvious reasons). Examining the deformation of ancient glass samples today is irrelevant unless they have the same chemical composition as window glass.
The link provided by mollym (127) is quite interesting and after a bit of thought I am comfortable in calling window glass a solid. If a couple of million years from now someone were to bring me a sample of window glass from 2008 that had deformed significantly I would graciously acknowledge my error and buy that person a coke
One final point – of course the difference between solids, liquids, and gases is also dependent upon temperature and pressure. I have assumed that these parameters are constant (heat glass up hot enough and it will definitely become a liquid!).
Apologies, twister’s post was actually 113 not 127. My bad.
Great list by the way…I was already aware of most of these and don’t find it very hard at all to believe those I did not know. The MSG issue is probably the most controversial to me, especially after reading through the comments.
I hope that next year when I’m on tour in Europe my tour guide will tell everyone that the old glass windows are “melting”. Then I can smugly correct him/her, make myself look like a smartass, and lower my tour buddies’ opinions of me. I can’t wait
@dofnup: The problem isn’t MSG, the problem is your body. JFrater never said MSG wasn’t dangerous to anybody, he said the danger to the average person has been exaggerated because a few people have had severe allergic reactions. MSG is no more dangerous on average than peanuts or shellfish, by which I mean it’s dangerous only to a select few who happen to be allergic.
Is it true that MSG messes up your taste buds so you cant taste as well after eating it? Also if I can remember psych class correctly when you have half your brain taken out you can still do things sort of normally. I believe Florence and Lashley are the researchers who looked into that
GTT: I couldn’t find the original study, but I did find this article among others that stipulates “in salt sensitive individuals”. I can’t remember the exact percentage, but it wasn’t very high. That said, being on a low salt diet is prudent if you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure or heart disease. Even if you’re not salt sensitive, in order to keep within the sodium guidelines you’re going to have to cut out most processed foods. It’s a win – win situation.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4650
The point I was really trying to make is that if you actually cook your own food, from fresh or frozen, and eat proper portions, you can salt your food and make it taste good without guilt or worry.
(btw – I’m a sea salt convert; it has better flavor/you use less overall)
Wow I was just skimming over the latest comments and noticed Vera Lynn’s #131 comment and was shocked to see a comment like that from her and thought wow she must be really having a bad day or something. Then I was pleased to notice she was addressing the previous commenter’s name.
I wonder if that guy acted the same way when he was a kid and found out there was no tooth fairy?
At least he wished us all “peace” in his final comment so maybe he’s just having a bad day.
Yun: The problem isn’t MSG, the problem is your body. JFrater never said MSG wasn’t dangerous to anybody, he said the danger to the average person has been exaggerated because a few people have had severe allergic reactions.
“exaggerated” and “few” are questionable.
I think it is his simple explanation that MSG can be found naturally, that makes it ok.
As I have said before, because sugar is found in rice. Does that make sugar not bad?
Blogball (136) His postings have been deleted. He was acting the fool. You’re right; I’m not normally so flippant.
Tommy (137)
sugar is not bad. Alot of sugar is.
moderation is the key. but this could be the same for msg.
Oh, and in my rant I forgot to mention one thing about MSG that I agree on: it’s not only in Chinese food. A lot of the fast-food cheap mexican food places use it, too. My unscientific way of finding out is, you guessed it: if I have a rash the next morning.
Oh, and Yun, jfrater’s comment (#3) specifically states “MSG is in so much food eaten by people these days that any person who says they are allergic is a liar.”
That’s what made me post without reading any other comment, mostly because I really love this site and this is the first time I read anything that gets my goat … being called a liar gets my irish up … which is odd, because I’m mexican >_>
Tricia:
I must say Alton Brown is one hell of a culinary genius, but don’t take his word without a grain of salt. Another famous chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, published a recipe that reccommended Henbane as one of it’s ingredients. Henbane is a green leafy flowering plant that also happens to be toxic. Once this error was discovered a correction was sent out to all readers of the magazine. Luckily nobody had died from eating this herb yet though.
Number one is quite interesting. Great list!
Jackie, (120) & Jamie, (118),
Sounds like the ultimate emergency thirst when remedy adrift on the high seas might indeed be to drink your urine, failing all else. You certainly wouldn’t be likely to become addicted to any more than the minimum needed to survive, methinks! Presumably one could go on recycling, but with a gradual attrition of the vital water content via dehydration.
The best solution to pee rotation is not to get shipwrecked. Second best: get shipwrecked with enough fresh water to reach land from any point. Third option: be somewhere where rains are frequent, but not as storms strong enough to capsize you. Fourth best is liquid obtained from pelagic sea dwellers such as turtles and fish.
See ‘Survive the Savage Sea’, Dougal Robertson, pp. 201-204. Urine is not considered by Robertson, but he advises drinking any amount of sea water to be dangerous and useless. However, to avoid dehydration, he recommends constant soaking of the skin with sea water (when conditions are not too cold).
Callie, my friends and I make fun of those commercials all of the time! While I don’t think we can directly blame corn syrup for obesity, I find those commercials annoying and just plain misleading. The fact that corn syrup has the same calories as sugar and honey isn’t the point. The point is (1) it has a different sugar makeup, and is worse for diabetics and people in general than other sweeteners and (2) there is no reason, other than companies trying to save money, to dump corn syrup into products to make them sickeningly sweet.
Sorry about garbled first sentence .. . emergency thirst remedy when adrift …
re: Lincoln not freeing any slaves. That’s a common misconception, but in fact the Emancipation Proc freed hundreds of thousands of slaves. It just took awhile to take effect. The EP meant that whenever the feds reconquered any rebellious territory, all the people they found living there were already legally free. The troops didn’t have to return runaways, or reimburse masters for using their slaves, or stand aside when masters punished their slaves. The local blacks could be taught or hired just like real people. Reconquered southern states often tried to reenter the union with slavery intact — a compromise many northerners were OK with — but Lincoln wouldn’t let them. He said the EP was law, and all those slaves were already legally freed. He made a promise and stuck with it.
The EP only applied to the CSA because the president doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally change the law in law-abiding states (like Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky) but he has that authority in a war zone. The 13th Amendment only freed the slaves in the areas that remained loyal to the union.
From number 3 – …we are used a person’s left and right being reversed when they face turn to face us…
The theory is hard enough to understand as it is without the grammatical errors ha ha
Great list though
)
Too much MSG is probably no good for some people ,but there`s no need to further damage your health with so much passion dofnup.People who own American Pit Bulls are not animals Bob, but your right there born and bred to kill other dogs. A responsible owner is paramount ,but you always have to be on the lookout.Personally I wouldn`t own one.
About the EP, generally and practically speaking J F is correct. Stragically and legally STL Mo is correct. My take.
good work j, good work.
Re item 9: I suspect that this misconception arises in part because when adolescent boys start shaving, their facial hair does grow thicker and stronger, but purely as part of the maturation process.
#22 Yeah, those of us not from Australia or New Zealand would never be “educated” to know or find out about anything about those two countries if it were not for Listverse.
Give us a break. Thanks.
#7 I thought the problem with MSG was that you consumed a lot more sodium this way than by using only Table Salt by itself. Allergic reactions are beside the point to the misconception pointed out by the author that “people think that using MSG in even small quantities is necessarily a deadly proposition”.
#5 I think the author’s point is well made that the O2 from plants does not come out of the “O2″ in CO2 but is a by-product of photo-synthesis (maybe it could have been better explained whether it actually comes from the H2O taken up from the plant’s roots or wherever).
#4 The North Pole was named because the north poles of a bar magnet pointed towards it. Magnetism was only understood better in modern times and what was discovered was that north and south poles attract each other. Hence, the north pole of a bar magnet actually points towards the South Magnetic Pole.
#3 The author’s point maybe better understood by making a drawing of a figure with some water paint and labeling the left and right hands. Now, take another piece of paper and place it immediately on the drawing. Place the original and copy next to each other. Notice where the right and left labels are on the copy as opposed to the original. Now, remind yourself of what the orientation of the two sheets of paper (the one with the original and the new one with the copy) was relative to each other when you were copying the drawing.
#1 Lincoln rocks and he did as much as could be done by any one person towards some altruistic objectives. From College History lessons it seems that his over-riding concern was actually the unity of the nation and maybe his own political career. However, at a time when not many cared a fig for the enslaved portion of the population, he did a mighty lot to set their emancipation rolling. It is a shame he was shot and it actually took 145 years for true emancipation. The ghettos of Camden and Trenton still remind me of the injustices meted out to millions in the US over the last 300 years.
Wow! Can’t wait to tell people about the brain! Awesome!
Wow! I’ve actually heard ALL of these, except the North Pole/South Pole thing. nick’s explanation makes sense, except that the North Pole of the earth must have been named that because north has always been in that direction, and the north pole of a magnet was named after it. Once they realized that south poles attract north poles, shouldn’t they have changed the names of the magnets’ poles?
The 10% of brains thing was always a shocker. You can really say the same about computers, about 90% of the circuitry is inactive at any one moment. Or put another way if you have a byte and store the number 26 in it you are not using the upper three bits. The ten percent thing can probably be applied to any computing system.
Great on the mirrors, and photosynthesis and other things, at least one I didn’t know and two or more were confirmations of hunches. (photosynthesis / and poles, ‘liquid’ glass, and MSG)
The only one I really disagree with is the population one – the simple truth is that the population explosion has already happened. The earth is well beyond its long term carrying limit for people. Look at the fish populations crashing around the world and over 60% of the land is in use in farming. But add to this the rising wealth of the third world and our food demand is set to double in the next decade or so. And if thats not enough climate change is slowly turning large parts of the USA and Australia and elsewhere into dessert.
BTW I agree Australia is the centre of the world, and since its underneath I assume it must be the umm anus?
Nobody is answering the question I posed early on in the comments. Dofnup, If you and your mother are so highly allergic to MSG, does that mean you break out when eating tomatoes, mushrooms, parmessan cheese, oysters? All of these naturally contain MSG (or at least glutemates, which are MSG without the salt).
Nick-Actually, if you were to cook using MSG, instead of salt, you would reduce your salt intake. The umami stimulates your tastebuds enough that enough flavor is present that the sodium in the MSG would be enough, no additional salt would be needed.
Lucien- Ive never been there but large parts of Australia is already a desert.A large part of the U.S is also desert. I was not aware either was growing. I would be interested to read about it though,any suggestions ?
Well I never said we were HIGHLY allergic; the reaction varies according to the amount of MSG, at least that has been my understanding.
Do we get it from tomatoes, etc.? Not that I have noticed, and we basically devour tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan cheese and oysters like nobody’s business. However many times we have gotten the reaction and not had any idea which exact food we consumed triggered it, and i didn’t know MSG was naturally occurring in anything other than beets (which also don’t make me react BTW). So who knows? Does it have to do with amount? Naturally-occurring versus the additive? No idea. It wasn’t until yesterday when I read this list that I ever gave it this much thought. I’ve mostly been specifying “no MSG” at places that I assume add it or where I’ve had a reaction before, and other than that, whenever I get the reaction, I just check ingredients after the fact and don’t consume that brand of whatever it was.
Not very scientific, but again, I never thought I’d have reason to doubt it or defend it … very odd business, this. I should probably confer with my mom, after all she’s had it longer than me!
I don’t know thats its growing or not, but in both the dessert is much bigger than it was ten or fifteen years ago – and its due mainly to lack of rain. My main source is usually New Scientist which is the Gen Scientist’s paradise.
Very nice list, again, Jamie! Your comment #3 is so very true, fats and cholesterol are necessary dietary compounds for body to function properly…just that a lot many people freak out in the name of these two.
Lucien,
I’m not mocking your very thoughtful comments, but can’t resist telling you that if the world’s desserts are growing, there will at least be more food for the overloading population!
Dessert is the sweet: desert the often sandy stuff you can’t eat.
Most, if not all, of the planet’s desert and mediterranean areas are influenced by the occasional Southern Oscillation phenomena, popularly known as El Niño and La Niña. In fact their effect on climate is far wider still than the deserts. The problem with monitoring these major changes in ocean currents and their consequences is their randomness. There is no regular pattern (in human records) to refer to for anlysing long-term change (or lack of). Although there have been cumulative changes over the last century or so, we don’t know whether they are natural fluctuations, or else fit in with human activity. The aggregate result of those records is not constant either. Notably more rain has fallen in some sensitive areas such as the east coast of South America. Other regions, for instance Chile where I live, have experienced notably less, particularly in its Atacama desert. The same is true for the Sahara. In fact, over the long term both the Australian and North American deserts have recorded above-average rains. However, there is another critical factor: the gaps between the El Niños and La Niñas. If long enough these can produce a side-effect every gardener knows. Even the most drought resistant plant will die if water is withheld for long enough. The amount of water applied on either side of the drought is then irrelevant. You end up with the Monty Python parrot syndrome! Wild desert plants have adapted to the Southern Oscillation over hundreds of thousands of years. It would therefore be a pretty good indicator that something was seriously different if they began to die out naturally at an abnormal rate. These are the sort of specialised data the world’s involved scientific disciplines are attempting to assemble into a unified overview.
#100 DK
I understood that the claim that half the people that ever lived are alive today is false, but Jfrater uses this misconception as a way to say that population size declining is a bad thing. on the contrary, it is healthier for the economy and for the future of humans in general if we stop growing now. declining populations are a good thing, and jfrater saying the opposite is a blatant misconception. the “half of all people” fact is just as untrue as his thoughts. just ask any biologist, anthropologist, historian, or ecologist. the human population boom is a very dire situation, and its great to see some countries are dealing with it.
I HAVE THE GREATEST SON-N-LAW EVER AND YOU CAN TAKE THAT TO THE BANK FOR SURE!!!!!!!!!! I STILL LOVE ALL OF YALL…
130. Vera Lynn: BTW STFU FAGS What is a “looser?”
****
A “looser” of course, is a retart.
segue-
so cool we now have our own lingo ..think ‘retart’ is the first. one prob..
every time i see it, i think ‘poptart’. then of course the fantasy ensues..
frosted brown sugar cinammon poptart, toasted, slathered in butter w/ a mug of hot chocolate w/ marshmellows ofc…
*drool*
so now any time someone sees ‘retart’ here…they’ll think POPTARTS!
& yes, i am de ebil. ROFLMAO!!!!
Yeah, I was told the 10% brain thing meant 10% used for thinking, etc., not processing input, regulating body functions, etc. And this doesn’t explain how some hemispherectomies actually RECOVER and fully function despite losing half their brain. Take into account the amount of redundancy in the brain and the 10% makes sense as long as you add the part about “used for thinking/emotions/personality”
Although I am not an expert whatsoever, I believe the statement “patients will become paralyzed on half of their body” is a bit less than accurate. As far as I know, the right side of the brain controls the spacial/language (speech development) and the left is more *****ytical (actually being able to understand what is being said) Therefore, half of the body will not become paralyzed. In fact, you will lose some abilities, but physical movement might not be severely affected. Correct me if I am wrong…but I have studied these what seem like useless things in the past…who knew I would have to use it for an arguement on List Universe =P.
Linc Allen, (164),
Please consider my post 96 above. While we are in total theoretical agreement, population reduction presents equally negative side-effects. As yet this situation remains unresolved. That isn’t a statement of pessimism, it’s realism: a fact. We still have time, but if we can’t resolve the dilemma ourselves, a solution will *imposed* on us one way or the other eventually. This is one of the least addressed themes of this topic, but without doubt the most critical for our descendents, if not for ourselves.
Hang on, I recant my last comment. Now I’m really confused though. I know that the right side of the brain controls the left side’s motions, and vice versa…so I am trying to figure out how you wouldn’t be paralyzed on one side. However, I saw a video of a girl who had a hemispherectomy and only lost language and memory abilities….I didn’t see any significant paralysis! Anybody have any ground-breaking answers??
I kind of agree with you. The function of the brain is so complex that trying to determine what would happen is guesswork. I do not think that total paralysis would occur for one half of the body, an individual’s brain would try to correct the trauma and and repair it. This is not a conscious choice and would probably different for every person involved.
actually concept of list number ten is totally wrong… ¨WE¨don use hundred % of our brain power…only our body does.. autonomic nervous system u like duh….
n msg is dangeours unless u use it in moderation.. tats y high class chefs tries to extract it out from the natural vegetables n fruits…n avoid the powder form as much as possible.. but in moderation there is nothing wrong.. this list is a complete *****
debunker: In regards to your statement about msg, that is true of ANYTHING…even water is deadly if not drank in moderation.
Kreachure & JFrater: #5 Oxygen comes from water like many have stated. The misconception was that oxygen gas came from carbon dioxide because they didn’t know the source of oxygen in photosynthesis.
Water + carbon dioxide + light E = oxygen + sugar
An experiment was done to determine whether O2 gas came from the oxygen of CO2 or H2O, and it was found that it came from water. Trust me on this, I am doing a bio major and have seen this equation more times than I ever wanted.
#10: We do only use 10% of our brain, or a samll portion at any given time. We use 100% of our brain but not all the time, if we did it would require tremendous amounts of energy and you would constantly be eating.
#6: The population of the world is growing, your explanation is biased and doesn’t show the whole picture. And for those of you who think we won’t run out of food, WE WILL! The nutrients in soil are being used up and are not replaced fast enough with plant decay especially with declining forest land. There will come a day when crop won’t grow because there is not nutrients in soil.
JFrater: As much as I love this site and all I’ve learned from it, it makes me cringe when I think of misinformed people learning something false and spreading it. Can you please look into some of these and fix them?
Kroll.
Right though you are on point 6, I think we shall be overtaken by other population problems long before nutrient (or general soil) erosion becomes the major issue. Arguably water supply, at least, stands above it. Sea water conversion looks the most likely potential solution there, but even that would only hold the overall problem at bay for a time.
Saying MSG is fine to eat isn’t necessarily true for everyone. In my case, I get terrible migraine headaches that often are directly linked to MSG. For instance if I eat some potato chips flavoured with MSG, or any food with a high content of the stuff I’ll have a migraine the next day without fail. I used to get them regularly until I started monitoring my food intake and checking ingredients and I find them much less frequent these days. Aspartame and other artificial sweetners do it to me as well. If I eat some MSG laden potato chips and drink some artificially sweetened pop right now, tomorrow I’ll wish I were dead.
Not good, so for some of us MSG is in fact bad, bad, bad.
There are two versions of MSG, so hence there is confusion.
The ‘good’ MSG is the natural stuff. The bad MSG is the synthesized stuff. The natural one if found in tomatoes, and I can eat alot (six average sized ones – love it!).
However, I eat the ‘bad’ MSG and I wish I were dead.
Just like Glaffery (above #178).
The natural MSG is no problem for me whatsoever, but if the artificial MSG is an ingredient then is becomes a major headache (LOL Pun!), moreso since the crap foods (salty bisuits, chips, fast-food grease-traps etc.) usually contain the bad MSG.
With country’s food standards which have mandatory labelling, Australia calls it E621. I call it E666.
The glass one is the talk of a politician, CO2 goes in O2 comes out , end of story, its like saying when you eat and excrete that is not true, we all know it is, nothing is instant it all goes through a number of phases. Sorry do not buy that one.
The glass one sorry also do not buy that because glass IS a liquid, you can compare it to Ice which again as we all know is composed of water, all liquids are fluid and change their shapes over time.
Now to throw the wolverine into the elephant coup, so do all solids with I believe one exception, dimond, which has no structural mobility untill subject to heat or pressure or a combination of both.
Something to think about, a human being is fairly solid, not regarded as a liquid, changes it shap all the time and is composed mostly of water.