Domain: snopes.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to snopes.com.
Comments · 4,476
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Re:Hmmm.
If you're going to troll, you could at least site properly.
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Hermann Goering, not Hitler.
This one has been quoted (and misquoted) a lot these days. Snopes -
Re:Hmmm.
Hitler did not say that, one of his right hand men, Hermann Goering said it at Nuremberg. That is a good quote if you use it correctly. Read more here.
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My bad, it's Marilyn Chambers, not LL.See this link for more info.
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Re:Hmmm
The R&D on the space pen thing is an urban legend.
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Re:An image of the chart.
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Quick! Time to re-sticker those Disney movies too
After all, some things that weren't obvious on the first viewing are clearly harmful to children on closer inspection and slight modification of usual use. Fucking censorship morons. I just love the fact that in this county it's ok to show graphic images of people being killed, but not people being fucked. This is pathetic.
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Re:this is what gates thinks about education:this is what gates thinks about education
I believe you meant to say Charles J. Sykes?
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Are they talking about my MOM??
Oh My gosh, This is my Mother! She has been like this since she was a child in the early 1930's! She hears some off hand comment on the radio, and she is immediately thinking she has this disease. Heck when I was a kid we were not to be out on the weekends past 5 Pm because the "Evil Spores" would come out and infect us. haha!!
Heck the doctor appologized to my dad that it was costing us so much for her visits.(Doctor is a long time friend of my dad, they grew up best friends).
I brought the movie Joe Somebody, over to her house to watch a year or two ago, and She thought she had some of the symptoms that the drug that they were manufacturing caused! Heck, she even believes ALL email Urban Legends! And that is even after showing her the reality of them in sites like http://www.snopes.com/ -
hook, line and sinker"Meanwhile, some dubious theory from the Internet will be swallowed hook, line and sinker nine times out of 10."
I agree. I have many relatives who are online but not really technology savvy. Not a month goes by that I do not get CC'ed on some ridiculous email. I always go look it up on Snopes and do a reply to all with a link the Snopes article discrediting it. The thing that really gets me though, is a couple of times a year I will get one of these from someone who knows better. When I call them on it, I usually get the same response, "Well I figured better safe than sorry." Some how they just do not understand that by forwarding unsubstantiated false information they are perpetuating the problem.
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Actually, they did recall "The Rescuers"...
...and it was on VHS, not DVD. There is no Disney film called "the adventurers." Disney found the scenes before anybody else did, the public didn't know about them until after the recall. Disney claims they were added by the post house.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rescuers.htm -
working link
working link:
http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm -
Re:SugarcaneThen they said that you shouldn't put sugar in your gas tank. And now...
Bah--sugar in the gas tank won't hurt your engine.
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Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USAThat is why in the early 1980s the soft drink manufacturers started to put corn syrup in your Coke instead of cane sugar
By 1980 half the cane sugar in Coke had been replaced by corn syrup. Knew Coke Corn syrup had been used as a substitute for cane sugar in World War Two.
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Re:Here they come.
This isn't true, according to Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm/ -
Re:Already Taken?
And Darl McBride award for truth in reporting goes to
... the stella awards!
I can forgive someone being a credulous dumbass, but being so persistent in it really deserves a bigger smackdown than I can adequately convey in text. -
Same tired knee-jerk comment...
1) The article isn't about the invention of the Internet, it is about the invention of the World Wide Web.
2) How many times do we have to hear the joke about Al Gore claiming to invent the Internet? It's a myth that Al Gore ever claimed to have anything to do with the technical design of the Internet. He did indeed, however, have a large role in providing the environment in which it became the "Information Superhighway" that it is today.
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Re:need to fix spolight tooBasically I see these posts boiling down to Spotlight being really inconsistent.
I'm running a 800MHz iMac G4 that's really feeling its age in other places, but spotlight is neither noticeably sprightly nor decrepit. I've seen people with slow computers posting good and bad and people with fast computers doing the same.
My guess is that faster computers tend to belong people with more ancient junk to search through, but whatever it is, Apple really ought to figure out a way to get some consistency out of their revolutionary, folder-ending idea. I wouldn't mind giving up some features in it to speed it up. Call me old fashioned, but I really don't need to remember an email I wrote a few years ago about the world's ugliest dog, and if I decide to find it, I can search for it with Mail.
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Re:Irony meter!
Lemmings aren't really suicidal.. that was just a Disney stunt.
And just when you thought you were exempt from the exploding head phenomenon... -
Re:Patent Issues?
"Does anyone have any concrete info on Thomson enforcing their patents?"
Sorry no, but I do have concrete info on removing a gerbil from Richard Gere's butt.
http://www.snopes.com/risque/homosex/gerbil.htm/ -
Re:Media coverage matters
Right. Basically, the only things that make it into the news about the legal system are things that piss people off. Nobody cares when the system works, they only care when it seems to be broken. Just like the story of the law students who supposedly failed a bar exam because they helped a 50-year-old man who suffered a heart attack while taking the exam with them, people devour and pass around news that pisses them off; but they entirely ignore the happy endings to those stories (in the bar exam case, the students' scores were adjusted almost immediately by the State Bar of California; source).
The same applies to all areas of the media and popular culture. The nightly news doesn't report on the Iraqis who are glad to be rid of Saddam, or those who went to vote earlier this year despite threats that they would be killed if they did; it focuses on the suicide bombings and setbacks, instead.
And, just like spam, it's our own collective fault that it is this way. There are enough of us who buy the crap to keep those who provide and filter it in business. -
Media coverage mattersThe reason you have a bad impression of the legal system is because it never generates news when any of the following happens:
- A legitimate victim is compensated for his loss
- A frivolous claim is dismissed and the lawyer who filed it sanctioned (read: fined and disciplined) by the court
- A major lawsuit makes sense if only they'd tell you one more key fact
A sibling to this comment links to an article which its own child comment points out is very helpful in understanding that not all lawsuits are bad. In fact, very few lawsuits are frivolous, and most of the frivolous lawsuits you have heard about are either debunked by snopes or quietly dismissed.
Since I normally don't buy into conspiracy theories, and because I agree with some of his policies, I won't call it anything more than a coincidence that President Bush is pro-tort-reform and there is a widespread occurrence of annoying forwarded e-mails telling lies that, if believed, would convince anyone that tort reform is necessary.
Tort reform is nothing more than big business trying to save money. Watch Fight Club and understand the business logic behind product recalls. If the legal system is "reformed" in the way that big business (and its supporters in the Republican Party; too bad I hate the Democrats more - they're hypocritical and bad, while the Republicans aren't as hypocritical but are just plain bad) wants it to be reformed, the lawsuit side of the inequality "L > R" (where L is the cost of lawsuits and R is the cost of a recall to make the product safe and avoid those lawsuits; and where L > R represents the condition where a recall will be performed to make the product safe) will always be zero, and 0 > R is never true. It just makes business sense.
Don't buy into legal reform. 99% of the time, the legal system works just fine. It just isn't news when that happens. -
Re:The Stupidest Lawsuit since the World Began
Odd
... was the speeder in the currency exchange business? -
Re:Too Much Realism?
They need to unfreeze Disney
You'd think Slashdot would be free of such urban legends, but then again it is Slashdot. Snopes to the Rescue! -
Urban Legend
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
Favorite example:
Would you refuse to buy a dinette set called 'Notable' because, obviously, it says there is "no table"? -
Re:Political pandering and spotlight stealing
Adding a topless woman in a frame of The Rescuers (Disney)
I'd not heard of that incident, and thought it sounded very dubious, so I had a quick google around, and lo and behold, Snopes confirms it as true. here, if anyone's interested. Quality stuff ^_^ -
Re:How about..
This comes from a famous urban legend. The situation is true, and the user is dumb enough to warrant the line, but the tech in question never said it, they just said they wished they had said it. See here for more details and a good laugh.
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Re:Mitch Hedburg said it best
This seems appropriate.
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Re:so you're the scientific authority?
here's a link to support what the parent poster was referring to http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.htm
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Re:Militant?
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Re:Columbine? Jon Katz is calling!
Dear Mr. Katz. I am 10. My parents took my computer away today, because of what they saw on television.
And yet he still sends email to Katz, on his computer. Maybe he should meet up with the boy with a burlap sack for a body, and they can share each other's pain. -
Re:Population is a very deceptive measureThere are over 6 billion people on earth right now. In fact, most of the people who have EVER lived are alive right now.
"But if we consider modern humans to have emerged around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, estimates about the number of dead in human history vary widely anywhere from 12 billion to up to 110 billion. However, most demographers peg the number of dead at approximately 60 billion"
Granted, the Snopes article points out that your statement is accurate over the last 5000 years or so, but you yourself emphasized "ever"
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Re:Ask commercial divers who work in the Mississip
Not so. I'd heard that around here, about catfish at the bottom of Gavin's Point Dam, from my dad, who says an aunt told him, back in the 60's, and an uncle. However, Snopes says otherwise.
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Re:holy moly
Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
Urban Legend - GOLF isn't an acronym
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/golf.htm
Neither is FUCK
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm -
Re:holy moly
Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
Urban Legend - GOLF isn't an acronym
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/golf.htm
Neither is FUCK
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm -
They didn't start off as acronymsSecondarily, Short hand speech, and the various amorphisms that have entered popular culture are not to be discounted as simply "mangling" the language. Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
Are you honestly claiming both of those words were actually acronyms? If so you've fallen for some very common, but incorrect, stories. While the origins of both words are a bit muddy they're certainly not what you're most likely claiming.
This is what the wise people at snopes.com have to say about golf and fuck
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They didn't start off as acronymsSecondarily, Short hand speech, and the various amorphisms that have entered popular culture are not to be discounted as simply "mangling" the language. Prominent words such as FUCK and GOLF were once simple slang words (acronyms both) along with a host of other words which we take for granted today.
Are you honestly claiming both of those words were actually acronyms? If so you've fallen for some very common, but incorrect, stories. While the origins of both words are a bit muddy they're certainly not what you're most likely claiming.
This is what the wise people at snopes.com have to say about golf and fuck
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Here are some links.
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Redefinition of Pi
I know you're just making a joke, but it was Indiana that proposed making pi equal to 3 and that was in 1897.
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Re:More famous sayings...
There's no evidence that Bill ever actually said that. Go on, find the quote.
Interesting challenge. I did a small amount of research, and couldn't find anything.
Snopes doesn't even have a 'true' or 'false' on it... perhaps that'd be a good project for them? :) -
Re:Here's the scene...
The whole deal with yellow 5 is just a fallacy, as seen here.
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Catapoultry?A joke comes to mind that has to do with a gun for firing birds at high speed trains...
You mean this story?
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Re:Don't hold your breath
Will this myth ever die???
Here is the truth. -
078-05-1120Why not? 40,000 other people have used it.
/Canadian
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Re:Agreed, it's unjust without context
False. While many states in the US have "Romeo and Juliet" laws withdrawing or lessening the penalty for sex for those within a certain age -- Tennessee, where I live, requires a > 4 year difference in age before a sexual act is statutory rape -- many states do not. An example that hits close to home is the case of Marcus Dixon, a (at the time of the incident) 18 1/3 year old guy who had sex with a 15 3/4 year old girl and was convicted of aggrivated child molestation and statutory rape. The aggrivated sexual molestation charge was later overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court. For more information, check out this Snopes article. For information on the age of consent in both the US and abroad, check out Age of Consent.
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Stoooopid
From the review: "Having defined a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, the authors then define a megabyte as 1000 kilobytes. They also claim not to understand why it is 1024 rather than 1000."
The authors don't understand that both 1024 and 1000 are used, but never (by knowledgeable people), and claim not to understand why 1024?
The reviewer also noted that the URL given in the intro isn't accurate.
To check a little on my own, I clicked on the link to Cisco Press and skimmed through the sample chapter. They mentioned http://www.scopes.com/ as a urban legend debunking site. (instead of http://www.snopes.com/)
Not only would I not check it out of the library, but if they mailed me a free copy I'd probably chuck it in the trash. -
Re:jsut a question
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The Full Scoop on The Write Stuff
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RubbishSorry to burst your bubble but in 2003 some Russian astronaut or another was asked about this urban legend.
There are space pens.
They weren't created by the American government
The Aremicans originally used pencils as well.
Bits of the pencil can break of.
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Re:Ya think?
http://www.snopes.com/religion/jedi.htm Snopes if your friend...
;o) -
Re:GTTREAAiP
GUI is what happens when you swat a theif with a semi.