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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.

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    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
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