Some interesting facts I learned this week: In North America, one in eight people admit to having an alien encounter. In any free-standing home, there is an average of six snakes living inside. Of the top ten selling non-organic granola bars, nine were found to contain potentially harmful amounts of aluminum. No astronaut that has ever been to space has been an earth sign (Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn). A ‘smoker’s cough’ is not actually the result of damaged lungs, but rather the consequences of the lungs trying to adapt to non-oxygen gasses.
Ok, so not all of these are actually true. Can you pick which ones?…. All of them you fucking morons! I made them all up. You people will believe anything you hear, let alone read.
Lately I’ve realized that I’m constantly repeating things that I hear off hand, often from people I don’t even know. (In the real world, I bartend for a living and have whole conversations with lots of random people.) It could be something as immaterial as the results of a U.S. opinion poll, or something more immediately significant such as how many calories are in the cocktail I just mixed. I’ll recite these figures as if reading from my lecture notes. Problem is, there is absolutely no reason for me to believe anything I’ve heard. In most cases, the people who I heard it from, just heard it from someone else. We are all a bunch of bullshit zombies, staggering around aimlessly, eating each other’s mouth poo.
Well, I don’t want to be a bullshit zombie. So, I’ve challenged myself. I shall immediately stop speaking when I realize that I’m repeating something I heard from someone else – whether they were friend or foe or just a random person. At this point I will either look the shit up (no pun intended) or apologize and go silent. I challenge you to do the same. You’ll be surprised at what a filthy mouth you have.
On that note, consider the Internet – it is not a wholly misleading place when it comes to looking stuff up. It’s just like anything else: consider your source. “The Printing Press: How it shaped the modern world,” Kelly McIntyre’s final paper for her History 100 class, is NOT a good source. And believe me, these kinds of things are online and people actually cite them. On the other hand, a study on hypertension found in the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, is a good source. Even Wikipedia ain’t half bad, because for all intents and purposes it’s peer reviewed.
The Skeptics Society (people dedicated to the eradication of bullshit zombies) tout Wikipedia as “among the most important public sources for almost any scientific, pseudoscientific, or paranormal topic.” This group of ‘myth busters’ are assisting in the editing of the site, in hopes that will help rehabilitate – because in the wrong hands, it could very well hinder – all us hearsay junkies.
I’ll leave you with this: As you go out there in the world, determined to swallow the mouth poo before it spews forth, armed with an iPhone and freshly installed Wikipanion app, please consider that the articles on review2akill.com are perhaps a little less well researched than Ms. McIntyre’s History 100 paper.
– A. Vice
that’s cool. i never believe your shit anyway