A few of these are kinda iffy.
Black holes can be described as holes in the four-dimensional fabric of space-time.
Caffeine may not dehydrate you but drinking caffeinated beverages is not an efficient way to stay hydrated, so that seems kinda nitpicky.
I seem to recall reading that the Great Wall myth may have started as speculation, in the pre-moonshot days, about what human-made objects may be visible from the lunar surface.
Lots of things are visible from âspace,â depending on how high up you place the boundary.
Cecil covered it, of course: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/417/is-the-great-wall-of-china-the-only-manmade-object-you-can-see-from-space
I remember reading an article posted here last week about how the debunkers are wrong, as often as not.
So there.
not completely off-topic: a few days ago I learnt that the commision has a nice blog about Euromyths. sure, they are biased - but some of the entries are fascinating, e.g. all the ones about bananas, cucumbers and condoms (sadly no myth is about all 3 together)
Well, I do know for a fact, for I have been there, you CAN see the moon from the Great Wall of China.
/ no, not really, Iâve never been there.
// Isnât, like, yâknow, everywhere âspaceâ, man?
I did link the data. Short version: You can see the Great Wall from orbit with the naked eye if you know what to look for and where to look. You can also see hundreds of other man-made features, particularly at night.
Humanity is still overlapping with dinosaurs - birds are theropods.
I guess this is a very sensitive topic in the US but⌠isnât well established amongst epistemologists that human knowledge stops at the theory level?
So, how is it possible for evolution to be more than a theory?
Even if itâs a well proven, solid theory?
The kind of theory that you have to be a little nuts to shun without very solid evidence?
(can i use shun this way?)
It may be well established among epistemologists that human knowledge stops at the theory level, but to the lay man, from my experience, theory is taken to mean, an idea. Basically âtheoryâ is just the short word for âhypothesisâ when in reality they are two different steps. This misconception is thoroughly practiced in Christian schools. It isnât till someone is a âtrue believerâ that they can accept that God merely put all that evidence there to confound the âwiseâ.
Yeah, Iâve seen other variations of this âmyths debunkedâ list, and it needs, if not some debunking, at least better qualifiers. The Great Wall can be seen from space - but so can a number of man-made constructions. The myth is that itâs the only man-made thing that can be seen from space. Viking helmets used for ceremonial purposes may have had horns and/or similar protrusions, but the helmets worn by your standard Viking warriors didnât - as far as we know. That is, weâve found no archaeological evidence to suggest that any non-ceremonial helmets had horns. The idea that all Vikings wore horned helmets does seem to originate, entirely, from the costumes of a particular 19th century opera.
Also, bananas do grow on trees - the plants they grow on are called âbanana trees.â Itâs just that technically speaking, from a botanical perspective, they donât qualify as âtrees.â But from a botanical perspective, almost everything we call a âberryâ isnât one (and what are actually berries arenât called that), roses donât actually have thorns, a number of nuts arenât âreallyâ nuts, etc.
And I find it strange that the âSatan doesnât rule Hell - it doesnât say that in the Bibleâ bit is in there. Thereâs a lot of the modern Christian faith that isnât supported by the text (and bits of the text that are widely ignored). Is the Bible the arbiter of whatâs a myth? âThe Earth is flat - itâs in the Bible!â
I looked at it again. Why did I look at it again?
There is no globally recognized precise taxonomic definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. Trees are so designated through historical usage, and thus Joshua trees and palms are both trees, and bananas and papayas grow in trees. Because thatâs what they are called, and the only real the distinction of what is & isnât a tree is common usage.
Oppa, I see @Shuck scooped me on the banana trees!
After promoting this split brain explainer, repeatedly, over the past month, now youâre gonna tell me itâs a myth?!?
Yeah, although botanically speaking itâs an âherbaceous plant,â itâs not a tree if only using the most narrow botanical definition of tree. The banana fruit is also a berryâŚ
Taxonomy is always controversial.
The Great Wall of China - a miracle of Chinese engineering. So big, you can see it from anywhere in the world.
Botanically speaking, the word âtreeâ is not part of any recognized formal taxonomy I know of. This is not a particularly controversial statement; I canât find any disagreement with it anywhere on the Intertubes, for example, despite searching longer than it was really worth.
Therefore, since there is no accepted definition of tree other than folk categorization, which clearly names the banana tree a tree, itâs pretentious and absurd to retroactively declare that bananas, papayas, palms and Joshua trees arenât âreallyâ trees.
Whatâs happened here is that some chucklehead, possibly Linnaeus, tried to make a scientific description of trees, and the definition was invalid because it does not include the trees I just mentioned, and instead of accepting that this definition of tree was simply wrong and trying to make a better one, sycophantic admirers of the previously postulated chucklehead doubled down and declared that anything that didnât fit their broken definition wasnât a tree.
Itâs as if Plato had proclaimed Diogenesâ chicken to be a man because he couldnât bear to contradict Socrates; pseudo-intellectual claptrap.
It says âAdding a sprinkle of salt to fresh water makes no differenceâ, and that is correct. As it also correctly notes, it takes sea water levels of salt to get a change in boiling temperature. Even there thatâs changing the boiling point to 102 degrees centigrade, an increase thatâs unlikely to affect cooking times.
Thanks to Google Maps, the same is true of my house.
well⌠iâve heard it affects the taste. 
Like I said, bad wording. But the text to the icon says: âSalty water boils quicker - Adding a sprinkle of salt to fresh water makes no difference, huge sea level amounts doâ This kind of implies that huge sea lever amounts actually make water boild quicker - and this is not the case.
