Misinformation
I’m at work and kinda bored right now. So I was reading through old entries on my personal blog. I came accross something which could be posted here!
So here it is:
I was at dinner with a fair few friends, at my table I was seated with some people I am not that close to. However, we talked, as you do, about various things. I was talking to Wen-May about what food we were going to order, and I saw a picture in the menu that looked like parsnips, so the conversation shifted to parsnips. Cynthia, who was also on my table, remarked that she had never eaten a parsnip. So then one of the other chaps on the table (I won’t name him because I’m not a dick like that) pipes up and says:
“Have you eaten McDonald’s fries?”
At this point I cringe, I know where this is going. Basically the gist of this conversation is that this chap convinced everyone at my table (excluding me of course), that McDonald’s fries are “about 70% parsnip” because “it is cheaper”, and you can’t tell because “all you taste is oil”.
This is a prime example of people not thinking for themselves and just spreading “facts” without validating their authenticity. There are, of course, far worse examples than this, I doubt that thinking McDonald’s fries are made of parsnips (which they are not) will have a huge impact on anything.
The thing that annoys me the most, though, is how painfully easy it is to authenticate things now days. Let’s take the parsnip example:
2 seconds with the Google machine and it is clear that McDonald’s fries are not parsnips.
It’s pretty amazing how stuff like this spreads. Obviously the guy at my table had heard this from someone, who had heard it from someone etc, etc, and now all the people at my table will (potentially!) tell it to someone else! I mean, at some point did some guy think “Hrm, I’m going to spread a rumour about McDonald’s fries, yes, this will be hilarious”.
While I’m ranting about dumb shit… here’s something else that annoyes me.
I recently-ish, shaved off the small whispy bits of hair on top of my head. If you’ve seen me recently you would have noticed an epic bald patch.
I did this for a few reasons, but mostly because those bits of hair got in the way of my ITG playing, so off they went.
Now here’s what annoys me. Several people have told me that my “hair is growing back thicker”.
NO IT IS NOT!
Shaving off your hair does not make it grow back thicker, how can you even think that it does?! Why do so many people have this bizarre misconception?
Let me ask you, if you cut all the hair on your head to half of its current length, does it magically become thicker? NO!
When you shave hair, you are doing the exact same thing! Just cutting it far lower. It is not possible for more hair follicles to magically spring into existence because you cut your hair, nor is is possible for the shaft of your hair to suddenly double in thickness! Stop thinking that this is what happens.
I can offer, perhaps, one explanation of why people think hair grows back thicker when you shave it. The base of your hairs is a lot thicker than the tip, so when you shave it right down to the base, it may feel as though the hair is much thicker.
Come on, if shaving really did make hair thicker, imagine how thick most men’s beards would be!!
Yeah.
