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molecular and cell biology almost makes it possible to grow muscle cells

Why not? KFC has been doing it for years.

Not so?! But who watches the watcher watchers?

As much fun as the urban myth about the kangaroos shooting the helicopter down cos they forgot to remove the stinger missiles from the infantry models that were converted to kangaroo figures???

Acording to snopes, the core of this story actually happened, but the story has been elaborated extensively. The programmers did re-use the "infantry" models in the simulation for kangaroos. As a bit of fun early in the project they intentionally left the ability of the kangaroos the kangaroos to fiure back intact, but the kangaroos did not fire stinger missiles. They fired beach balls at the helicopters.

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Uh Mods, this dude is making up obvious bull shit and he just gets passed along with the bonus points? check it out

Someone do the right thing with their remaining points please...

...a friend's kid got snatched. They closed the mall and found the guy- in less than five minutes he'd changed the kid's clothes and dyed his hair

Really? I'm sure snopes would like names and dates for this event.

I can beat this down like a UT noob playing Tacops. Once, and only once, I have had a two dollar bill. Where do I take it? McD's. Only to be told that it is counterfeit because - can you see this coming? - there is no such thing as a two dollar bill.

I've never had anybody doubt the authenticity -- a couple of times the cashier tried to give me three bucks too much change (thought it was a five).

One more note on two dollar bills: strippers like them.

ObSnopesLink:

Claim: The Chevrolet Nova sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because its name translates as "doesn't go" in Spanish.

Status: False.

...deep linking.

Go here, follow the right path, and you would know it was true before you read the story.

Yes, there is.

Snopes is your friend

Brief summary: believed to be true, regarding George B. Dantzig.

Click.

Legend: A student arrives late to math class and finds two problems written on the chalkboard. Assuming they're homework problems, he jots them down in his notebook and works on the equations over the next few days before turning his solutions in to the instructor. Several weeks later, the professor turns up at the student's door with the student's work written up for publication. The two problems were not a homework assignment; they were problems previously thought to be unsolvable which the instructor had used as examples in his lecture that day.

Origins: This has to be one of the ultimate academic wish-fulfillment fantasies: a student not only proves himself the smartest one in his class, but also bests his professor and every other scholar in his field of study.

As far as we know, this legend is based upon a true incident. (That is, a version of this legend that antedates a known true incident has not yet been discovered). George B. Dantzig, then a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a statistics class one day and found two problems written on the board. Not knowing they were examples of "unsolvable" statistics problems, he solved them as a homework assignment. Dantzig, who later became a staff mathematician at Stanford University, recounted his solving two "unsolvable" problems in a 1986 interview for College Mathematics Journal, and his solutions to the two problems can be found in the journal articles listed in the Sources section below.

That never happened. click

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you should have clicked the link at the bottom of the page you linked to - the one that says "More information about this page". To cut it short, you fell for a page that is a spoof. ;)

Since noticing the article on Snopes about Mister Ed actually being a zebra, I found it hard to believe their explanation behind it was valid.

A simple google search reveals that the horse was a zebra only sometimes.

Maybe this is the album cover they were thinking of?

Here's all the info about it a Snopes.

Of course, the day after Thanksgiving isn't the biggest shopping day of the year.

Nit, meet Pick

There are a whole host people replying and stringing along the thieves and potential kidnappers - the Lads from Lagos have some great stories and images, Scamjunky (be kind, he's on geocities), and the obligatory Snopes link. There are also tons of links at Google Directory.

(From a snopes.com case)

SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY Cape Girardeau, Missouri 63701

Enclosed is an announcement of a tenure-track position in philosophy at the rank of assistant professor. We hope to fill this position rapidly; the target date for our final decision is June 13. We are more interested in looking at candidates with real teaching experience than in newly minted Ph.D's, who might have unrealistic expectations about the possibilities for academic growth at an institution such as ours. Southeast Missouri State University is a regional university which serves students in the southeast portion of the state including St. Louis. Our students tend to be poorly prepared for college level work, intellectually passive, interested primarily in partying, and culturally provincial in the extreme. We offer a major in philosophy. but do not usually have more than two students officially declared as majors at any given time.

There are a few good students, however, and we are proud to say that our current graduating major, William Knorpp, won the 1985 Analysis competition and will be undertaking graduate study in philosophy at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill next year. Mr. Knorpp's upper level work was mainly accomplished through independent tutorials; and prospective candidate must understand that there will be virtually no opportunity to teach upper-division seminars in philosophy. We also offer a religious studies minor; most of the students who declare this minor are shocked to learn that Moses might not have written the Pentateuch and regard higher criticism as secular humanist propaganda. The 12 hrs/semester teaching load is devoted mainly to general education courses at the freshman/sophomore level. In another five years, if the general education curriculum is revised as promised, there may be seminars which are to "capstone" the G.E. program.

The academic environment at SEMO is distinctly non-intellectual -- somewhat like a Norman Rockwell painting -- and the candidate cannot expect to attract students by offering courses that assume innate curiosity about ideas and books, or intellectual playfulness, or independence of moral and political thought. Nevertheless. in order to earn promotion and tenure it is necessary to be involved in curriculum development and to sustain an interest in research and publication. It has occurred to me that the best candidate would be someone who has held the Ph.D. for more than two years, has taught at a community college or a rural state institution, and who would like to continue in somewhat the same vein but at a slightly higher level.I will be interviewing at the Central Division Meetings in St. Louis. If you have an questions, you may call me at my office

Favorite line from the article: "It is much harder to fool people with a website." If only that were true.

not to nag, but it's actually "just deserts"

No, it's not! Even Bill Gates had to admit that people needed 640k...

Sorry, had to say it. Though the "quote" borders on urban legend...

No, that's not a Snopes link. This is.

Put a frog (alive) into a pot of cold water. Put the pot on low heat. If you heat the water slowly enough, the frog will not jump out, even when it eventually boils to death.

I used to use this analogy until I realized that it is not true...

This is an urban legend- a frog will try to jump out if it's possible for it to do so as the temperature increases. See snopes entry.

OT, I know, but this is an urban legend. Check here to verify.

uh no, that's just an urban legend.

When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind" statement, but followed it by several remarks, including the usual COM traffic between him, the other astronauts, and Mission Control. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, [they found] there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.

Over the years, many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant. On July 5, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26- year-old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorksy. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

For more details: snopes.com

doesn't mean it's not funny (and/or telling).

From snopes:

The scam works because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) requires banks to make money from cashier's, certified, or teller's checks available in one to five days. Consequently, funds from checks that might not be good are often released into payees' accounts long before the checks have been honored by their issuing banks. High quality forgeries can be bounced back and forth between banks for weeks before anyone catches on to their being worthless, by which time victims have long since wired the "overpayments" to the con artists who have just taken them for a ride.

here.

Basically, you get the check, you think it's cleared, release car and money, find out too late that the check was fake.

Insightful? The parent was insightful? "I will always be a student. I will graduate life when I am dead, and perhaps move on to post-graduate work," is insightful? Guideposts is more insightful. See this compendium of real deep thoughts, I suppose.

I suppose that Hallmark cards now count as Buddhist koans and Chicken Soup for the Soul is an example of a deep philosophical treatise.

I await the author's Prologomena to Any Future Hackonomy or Tractatus Hackaticus.

(Yes, yes, I know. My tortured attempts at big-sounding words using "Hack" is worse than the glurge of the parent. Oh well.)

It's a neurotoxin, just like Asparthame (Nutra-Sweet), only more people are affected by MSG than Asparthame.

I call Shenannigans! Shenannigans!

The whole bit about Aspartame being a neurotoxin is an internet urban legend. It has absolutely no basis in science. In particular, the claim about methanol poisoning from digesting the stuff is just wrongheaded since you get far more from drinking an equivalent amount of fruit juice or beer.

Furthermore, the G in MSG is glutamate, an amino acid and is pretty safe. This is the component that people claim is a neurotoxin. It is true that glutamate can do nerve damage in high doses, but consuming MSG in food will not bring blood glutamate levels that high. You get a good amount of the amino acid from just breaking down proteins from plant and animal sources in the body. By the way, the reason that MSG works as a "flavor enhancer" is because the tongue actually has a fifth chemical receptor beyond those of salty, sweet, sour, and bitter -- one that bonds to glutamate.

Why would this be different?

Because Alabama never changed the value of pi, and Indiana's bill was defeated in the state Senate 106 years ago. In other words, the whole "tomato is a vegetable" declaration actually happened.

Considering that a large portion of people are constantly dehydrated

Sorry, this is incorrect. Snopes link.

Actually thats called a URL, here is a link.

'Lemmings were induced into jumping off a cliff for this Disney nature film'

...surely there's SOMETHING else more worthy of study.

According to some urban legend, the film makers induced lemmings into jumping off a cliff to "document" this behaviour. Interestingly, according to Snopes, this appears to be actually - true!

I guess the credits didn't include the claim "no animals were harmed during the making of this movie"... :-(

Lemmings jump because of Disney

More info on the Nigerian scam at Snopes.

my question: why does he need my physical address and phone number? it's obvious at this point he will let me know about some snag and that i need to send him some money for whatever reason.

Nope, that's not how it works. You get the cheque (check, for you leftpondians), you pay it in, it clears, someone comes round and picks up the car, then a few days later the bank calls you up and tells you the cheque is a dud, and they want their money back. Check it out at snopes.

Now I'd be suing my bank if this happened, but I'm assured that I wouldn't get very far.

Anyway, my point was that they don't ask you for any money, so it's quite a good sucker trap. It's basically exploiting the Average Joe's misconception of how banks and cheques work (ie, not like they *should*).

They could have just checked Snopes

Because you like flagrant falsifications?

Yes:

http://www.snopes.com/spoons/noose/balloon.htm

Or maybe not. [snopes.com]

There is no .sig, there is only ZUUL

Now I'm going to have to find somewhere else to hide my stash.

Don't worry, you can always hollow out a baby and stash your drugs there. :)

If you're interested in the actual laws and ordinances governing emergency vehicle operation, do some googling for "code 3 driving" or similar.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp /

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp /