A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

Antarctic ice core sample. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart. February 2012.

Sunday Top Five and this week I am mythbusting. Thus, I present My Top Five Common Misconceptions That Both Get My Goat And Frustrate Me Inordinately (This Week)!

Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. Proven. Done. And. Dusted. Double-blind trials people. There is no difference in behavior between children given sugar-full or sugar-free diets. This is true even in those studies specifically looking at children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or those considered sensitive to sugar. So please, other parents, stop saying this over and over and over and over again. Your kids behaviour has more to do with getting hyped up by other kids at the party than it does with the fairy bread...

Napoleon Bonaparte was not short. Actually, he was a little bit taller than the average Frenchman. of his time. He actually stood 168.6 centimetres tall (5 feet 6 inches). The average height in the eighteenth century was something like 5 feet 5.5 inches. Napoleon actually stood an inch taller than current French President Nicolas Sarkozy...

Bulls are not fussed by the colour red. Cattle are dichromats, that is, red does not stand out as a bright colour. It's the dicking about by the matadors that irritates the bull and gets it to charge.

Eating before swimming does not increase the risk of experiencing muscle cramps. There is no evidence linking stomach cramps and the consumption of food prior to swimming. Now, there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and drowning, but did you really need to be told that...?

Vikings did not have horns on their helmets. There is no known archaeological evidence that Vikings ever wore them. Now, there are some clues that priests adorned their hats with this kind of gear, but even then it was rare.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Some good mythbusting! I love posts like this!

Thanks for coming by my place as well...

19 March 2012 at 06:02

Roddy said…

For a brief moment I thought it was someones DNA, or the tapes inside a printer.

20 March 2012 at 19:33

Kris McCracken said…

No problemo!

Roddy, kind of like DNA, only ice.

25 March 2012 at 16:44

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Mad as hell

So there I was, arm hooked up to the machine, watching my plasma swirl away into a bag while the morning news dribbled across the screen like a bad fever dream. And what were they showing? A "riot" in Melbourne, allegedly. The sort of riot where the real thugs wear body armour, carry pepper spray and look like they just walked off the set of RoboCop. The people they were beating? A ragtag crew of teenagers and old hippies—probably fresh out of a drum circle, still smelling of patchouli. But sure, let's call it a riot. Now, here's where it really gets good. I mentioned this spectacle to a few people later, thinking maybe they'd share my outrage or, at the very least, give a damn. But no. What did I get instead? A smirk, a chuckle, and—oh, the pièce de résistance—"You should really just let it go." Let it go? Yeah, let me uncork a nice, overpriced cup of coffee, sit back with my legs crossed, and soak in the latest reality TV trash. Why bother caring when ...

This will hurt me...

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