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 [ BACK]  [NEXT]                       Issue #301 - 05/19/2002

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR REALITY CHECK BOUNCES

More Lies We Learned

Greetings fellow seekers of enlightenment and truth,
     This Internet thing is great...  We can stay in touch with
our friends all around the world while we shop, visit interesting
virtual places, and, at the same time, having the ability to hear
all sorts of interesting facts.
     Most of which are wrong.
     Not quite everything is wrong, of course (Modesty prohibits
me from...  Well, you get the picture.)  But enough of the
dubious data passed around on the Net is so full of opinion,
shaky scholarship, political punditry, hearsay and even heresy
that it isn't to be trusted any further than you could throw Rush
Limbaugh.  (Not very far, I'm afraid, being that ole Rush is the
veritable definition of portly short).  Consider the source is
the prime directive of anything you may read on the Web of
deceit.  It is worth noting that you can find the exact same list
of dumb political quotes attributed to both ex-vice presidents
Dan Quayle and Al Gore.  A few of those quotes are even real, but
that's not the point - two people can't have said exactly the
same silly things.  (I'll leave it to you to dig out which ones
are ringers.)  While many people are not all that taken with Al
Gore's politics or personality, even his worst enemies have to
admit that it's Danford Q. who takes the "open mouth, insert
foot" dunce cap.
     But even this dubious data isn't bad if you have a serious
knack for research, know where to look and are skeptical by
nature, but many people are taken in by these legends of the net,
or by those with political or economic axes to grind.  When so
much of what you've heard is wrong, it's hard not to be cynical. 
Be sure to keep that in mind when the next "great 'work-from-home
deal" or "virus warning" shows up.
     Thanks this week to our hardy band of fact checkers, who
provide enough material for this weekly whistle.  Thanks this
time to:  Jerry Taff, R.J. Tully, Caterina Sukup, Yasmin
Leischer, Bruce Gonzo, Carol J. Becwar, Tim McChain, Jan
Michalski, Charles Beckman, Dan & Barb Butler, Arlen Walker, and
Kerry Miller.  As silly as this SUNFUN thing is sometimes, we try
hard to get the story right - more than I can say for a number of
the other sources out on the Wild Wild Web.
     Have A Factual Week,

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AUTHOR, AUTHOR!!
--------------
     At least once a month, I get a copy of the little list of
modern proverbs that starts:
          "People are illogical, unreasonable, and
          self-centered.  Love them anyway."
     Most of the time, the list is attributed to Mother Theresa,
said to be based on a poem tacked on the wall by the saintly nun
in a Calcutta orphanage.  Other distributions say the list is
work of rocker Ted Nugent(!).  It even appears on Nugent's
official website [ http://tednugent.com/about_tnusa/anyways.shtml
], as if the wild man of rock wrote those beatific thoughts
himself.
     Neither is true.
     The inspirational proverbs, properly called "The Paradoxical
Commandments of Leadership" were written by Harvard sophomore
Kent Keith in 1968, when he was 19.  They were part of a booklet
aimed at high school student leaders titled "The Silent
Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council."  Keith,
now a YMCA executive in Honolulu, is regularly amazed to hear his
own inspiration words quoted as the work of others, so much so
that he re-published his own original version this spring (ISBN:
0399149457 from Putnam Publishing).


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ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS AXE...
-------------------------
     Most everyone has heard the playground rhyme:

          Lizzie Borden took an axe
          And gave her mother forty whacks.
          And when she saw what she had done,
          She gave her father forty-one.

     Because this ditty is so well known, you might think it a
sure bet that the patricidal Ms. Borden was found guilty of
offing her parents.
     That's not what the jury said.
     Actually, the trial was such a mess that, as in the case of
the Simpson case, the real story will never be known.  Similar to
the case a century later, 30-year-old Lizzie Borden was wealthy
and prominent in society, and was able to hire an 1890's version
of a legal dream team, including a future congressman and cabinet
member.  Also, both cases were seriously affected by media
coverage and local sentiment.
     All that is known for certain is that Lizzie's miserly
father and step-mother turned up hacheted one hot August morning
in 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts.  Besides the parents, only
Lizzie and the maid were in the small, two-story house at the
time.  The highly dysfunctional family also had a habit of
locking many of the house's doors - even doors connecting inside
rooms - making it practically impossible that an outsider had
committed the crime.  Lizzie was later witnessed burning a dress,
which she claimed had a paint stain on it.  To the shock of her
society friends, the police arrested Liz and charged her with the
double murder, figuring that dad's new will leaving most of his
money to the step-mother was likely the motive.
     Instead of the race card, Ms. Liz's lawyers played the "good
girl" card.  Working on the theory that "if she's a Borden she's
got to be good," Liz's legal brain trust attack the slipshod
police investigation and even suggested that the police were
corrupt.  Appearing quiet and demure at her trial in June of
1893, Lizzie listened while her lawyers portrayed her as a
church-going, Sunday-school-teaching, respectable, spinster-
daughter who was absolutely incapable of such a horribly bloody
crime.  She spoke only a few quiet words during the entire trial. 
Of course, no mention was made of an alleged incident where the
quiet miss had taken an axe to her older sister's cat when it
disturbed her visitors at tea.  Clearly Liz was not quite the
delicate flower she seemed in court.
     Regardless of testimony, and with the women's movement most
of a century in the future, the middle aged, all-male jury bought
her good girl routine, taking just over an hour to find her not
guilty.  Within days, Lizzie got her inheritance and moved into a
fancy house in a nice area of Fall River, where she was mostly
ignored by her neighbors for the remaining 34 years of her life. 
Just as in the O.J. case, most folks - even her prior society
friends and supporters - figured she had done the deed, even if
she was never convicted in court.
     Today, the little house on 2nd Street is - believe it or not
- a bed and breakfast where you can stay the night.


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MANHATTAN FOR $24 BUCKS...
----------------------
     It is pretty commonly known that in 1626 Dutchman Peter
Minuet paid the Indians on Manhattan $24 in beads, trinkets and
other trade items for the island of Manhattan, the urban core of
New York City.  This is regularly cited as a prime example of the
white man cheating the poor Indians because Manhattan is now
worth around $50 billion bucks more than the Dutch paid for it. 
Considering that it is New York City, there are those - mostly
Republicans - who figure that anything more than a dollar was too
high a price.
     This $24 thing is one of those legends that keeps getting
passed along through the centuries until it acquires the patina
of history by having appeared in book after book, even though
patina is just a fancy, artistic way of saying rust.  That $24
calculation was made in the mid-1800's, by the way.  A better
modern fix for the 60 guilders in trade goods that Minuet paid
for Manhattan is $72, which still sounds like the bargain of the
millennium - until you look at it in 1600's terms.
     Minuet saw the future New York as commanding the river to
the inland north and west, making Manhattan a swell place for a
trading post.  On the downside, the isolated, rocky location was
nearly unfarmable, had relatively poor hunting and very little
fresh water.  Everything in the city would have to be imported,
raising costs of living there.  Just as today, only the fact that
the place is a center of trade, communication and transportation
made it economically viable.  Except for that, it is - and was -
a rotten place to put a city.
     On the Indian side, the Dutch were offering what they
considered at the time to be a fair value in rare goods the
Indians could not manufacture for themselves.  If an alien showed
up and offered you a time machine, how much would you be willing
to trade?  The thing may be cheap as a pocket calculator where he
comes from, but, since you can't make one yourself, it is worth
far more to you.  For the Indians, these trade items were
usually, in turn, traded by the local tribes to other, more
distant Indians at a substantial profit.  It is worth noting that
both the Indians and the Dutch thought the price for Manhattan
was a fair deal at the time; the Indians got to unload a mostly
useless island in trade for goods they could re-sell at a good
profit and the Dutch got a useful trading post in a defensible
position.
     Nor is there reason to believe it was the best land deal
ever in America, even though Minuet only paid about half a cent
per acre.  The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 - about 23% of the land
area of the continental US - was far better, with the US slipping
Napoleon $15,000,000 for about 500,000,000 acres France had
decided it could do without.  This included the entire drainage
area of the Mississippi River and all or part of about 15 US
states.  One calculation puts the value increase on that land
averaging better than 5.5% per year over 201 years.  Since land
in Manhattan has only increased an average of 5.3% in the 376
years since Minuet closed the deal with the Canarsie tribe, the
inevitable conclusion is that the Dutch didn't cheat the Indians,
but that the dimwit Minuet paid too much for the land.
     It's probably not a good idea to ask the Indians for a
refund, though.


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CONFEDERATE FLAG...
----------------
     Always a source of controversy, the Confederate flag issue
has polarized the south in new ways over the same old problems.
     One problem is that the Confederate States of America were
around as a country for such a short time that some of the things
we'd normally associate with countryhood never quite got sorted
out.  Among those, of course, is the flag since known as the
"Confederate Flag."
     Designed by Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard mainly as battle colors
for cavalry, infantry, and artillery units, the red, white and
blue "stars and bars" was never used during the war of Northern
aggression, A.K.A. Civil War, in its current, rectangular form,
except as battle colors by the Confederate Navy (called the
"Naval Jack").  Military units used the square version of the
battle flag, while the rest of the CSA used a white, rectangular
flag with the battle flag in the upper corner (where the blue
field is on the US flag) for most of the war, with a vertical red
stripe added to the white early in March, 1865.  This was
supposedly done because the mostly white national flag had been
mistaken as a flag of surrender on the battlefield.
     The current, rectangular form of the battle flag came about
only when flag companies in the 1800's began producing souvenir
"Confederate" flags that matched the dimensions of the U.S. flag. 
It was those irregular flags that were picked up and used by
racist groups like the KKK, which helped to turn the proud flag
of a failed rebellion into the controversial symbol it has become
today.
     The United Confederate Veterans Association was upset enough
about this inaccurate flag that they attempted to set the record
straight at their 1904 convention, issuing a document on
Confederate flag history and usage that true sons of the South
have spent almost a century ignoring.  You can still find the
incorrect, rectangular Confederate (Naval) Flag at any truck
stop, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has ever seen
the three national flags that the CSA actually used, even in the
South.
     In one of the most contentious recent debates about flying
the Confederate flag, that in South Carolina, where the
incorrect, rectangular Confederate flag was traditionally flown
over the capitol dome.
     A tradition that began in 1962.


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KWAI NOT?
--------
     Great movie, the "Bridge On The River Kwai."  So good that
people actually believed the events as depicted where 100% true.
     They're not.  At least, not quite.
     In the 1957 film, the construction of the Thailand to Burma
"death railway" was depicted, showing the struggle and hardship
of the Allied POW's and the determination of the Japanese. 
Fascination with the movie has made the rail line a major tourist
attraction in Thailand's Kanchanaburi Province.
     There are a few problems with this.  Of course, why do you
think I brought it up?
     The biggest one is that the famous "Bridge on the River
Kwai", didn't originally cross the River Kwai at all.  The
tourist scam being a world-wide phenomenon, the Thai authorities
renamed that particular stretch of the Mae Klong River, in
Kanchanaburi, to the Khwae Yai River (Big Kwai), after the
success of the film.  And, in a true irony, the rails that were
laid on the original rail line have been pulled up and used as
safety railings on the current Kwai River bridge.


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THE BIG 7 AND U-P AFTERWARDS...
----------------------------
     One of the weirdest of net stories is the story of how the
popular soft drink 7-UP came to have a red spot on the label. 
The Net story says it was because the inventory of the drink was
an albino (!), so the spot is in memory of his red (pink?) eyes.
     Whoever came up with that apparently figures we'll believe
anything.  "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda," was the drink's
original name(!) and Charles Leiper Grigg of the Howdy
Corporation invented it in October of 1929.  The jawbreaker name
didn't go over very well, and was changed to 7Up Lithiated Lemon
Soda, and then to just 7UP in 1936.  Original 7-up bottle labels
featured only a white 7UP on a red background until the 1990's,
when the spot appeared as part of an advertising campaign. 
Pictures of Grigg show that he had dark eyes and black hair, and
was by no stretch of the imagination an albino.


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DO YOU CARROT ALL...
-----------------
     Then there's the one about Mel Blanc, the cartoon voice of
Bugs Bunny for all those years and how he was allergic to
carrots.  Ironic, isn't it?  It would be if it was true, anyway. 
Blanc was not allergic to carrots.  What's odd is, people would
often rather believe the fake fact than accept Mel's word denying
that he was allergic.  Here's the real scoop from Blanc's 1988
autobiography, "That's Not All Folks":

     "I don't especially like carrots, at least not raw. 
     And second, I found it impossible to chew, swallow, and
     be ready to say my next line. We tried substituting
     other vegetables, including apples and celery, but with
     unsatisfactory results.  The solution was to stop
     recording so that I could spit out the carrot into a
     wastebasket and then proceed with the script.  In the
     course of a recording session I usually went through
     enough carrots to fill several."


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EARLY TO BED
------------
     I can't begin to count the number of TV trivia lists that
give these two "facts":

        - The first married couple shown sharing a single bed on
          TV was Fred & Wilma Flintstone.

        - Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was
          only used once, on the never-aired pilot show.  His
          first name was Willy.  It was mentioned once in the
          first episode on their radio's newscast about the
          wreck.

     Neither of these is true of course, though Sherwood Swartz,
creator of "Gilligan's Island" did admit that they would have
used the name Willy IF they had ever needed for the character to
have a first name.  In the pilot episode, which could never be
used because of changes in the cast and characters that didn't
fit the later series, the radio announcer only calls the
character a "young first mate named Gilligan."  He never mentions
the famous first mate's first name, though he gives the full
names of all of the other characters.  I suppose this is where
the story came from.
     As far as the Flintstones being the first TV couple in bed,
that's wrong by at least a decade.  The first married couple
shown to be sharing a single bed was in the 1947-50 TV show "Mary
Kay and Johnny" which debuted November 18, 1947 on the Dumont TV
network.  Being the very dawn of television, that pre-historic
sitcom had a microscopic budget that only allowed for one simple
set.  You get the impression that the reason there was only one
bed is simply that they couldn't afford two.  Like all early TV
shows, it was all done live like a stage play, and not even a
kinescope of the show has survived.  But the record here is being
first, and that they were, by about ten years any way you look at
it.


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COURTING DISASTER: THE MC DONALD'S COFFEE SUIT...
----------------------------------------------
     I recently received a list of stupid lawsuits under the name
"The Stella Awards" being named after Stella Liebeck, the woman
who sued McDonald's after being burned by their coffee.  Besides
the fact every one of the lawsuits on the list were made up as
part of a well-known hoax, it is clear from the name that not
many people know the real story of the McDonald's Coffee suit.
     Stella Liebeck was a passenger in the front seat of a car
driven by her grandson when they stopped at a McDonald's
restaurant in February 1992.  After receiving the coffee in a
styrofoam cup, the grandson pulled the car forward and stopped
momentarily so Liebeck could add cream.  (Most of the pundits go
far off the mark here, insisting that the woman was driving and
shouldn't have been drinking the coffee while the car was in
motion.  Neither is true.)
     Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to
remove the plastic lid from the cup.  As she removed the lid, the
entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap.  This was not
just a minor inconvenience, as usually portrayed by people who
have only heard about the case.  The coffee served by McDonald's
at that time was held at a scaldingly high temperature between
180 and 190 degrees (about 90C), far hotter than comparable
restaurants which averaged around 155 degrees F (70C).  The
dangerously hot coffee caused painful third degree burns over 6
percent of Liebeck's body, and she was hospitalized for eight
days during which time she underwent debridement and repeated
skin grafts.
     Amazing how the folks telling the story for it's anti-lawyer
effect never mention that part, isn't it?  They also leave out
the fact that Liebeck attempted to settle with McDonald's for
just her medical expenses, about $20,000, but the company blew
her off as a nuisance.
     That's when things get really interesting.  Liebeck's
lawyers discovered that McD's had a record of over 700
substantially similar burning cases, and that Ronald McDonald had
been quietly paying off burn victims for at least ten years prior
to the 1992 incident.  McD's admitted in testimony that their
coffee was not fit for consumption as served because it would
burn the mouth and throat.  The quality assurance manager
admitted that burns would occur, but testified that McDonald's
had no intention of reducing the "holding temperature" of its
coffee, even though the company's own research showed that many
people intended to drink the coffee immediately and were often
burned.
     The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. 
This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found
Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill.  The jury also awarded
Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages - just about equal to
two days of McDonald's coffee sales at the time.  The trial court
subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000 - three times
compensatory damages - even though the judge in the case called
McDonald's conduct reckless, callous and willful.
     As part of the settlement, McDonald's lawyers made Stella
Liebeck sign a stipulation that she wouldn't talk about the case,
which is part of why it has been so easily distorted in the media
- much to the benefit of Big Mac.
     A post-verdict investigation found that the temperature of
coffee at the local Albuquerque McDonald's had dropped to a far
safer 158 degrees F, which makes you think that they might have
finally gotten the message.
     And that, as they say, is the rest of the story...


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JUST MORE CRAP...
--------------
     One of the problems with telling a subtle joke is that you
have trouble with people who take it seriously and believe it as
serious history.  Some people will believe anything.
     One that falls into this category is the famous story of the
invention of the flush toilet by Victorian-era English plumbing
contractor Thomas Crapper.  While the amazingly named Crapper did
actually exist, and even held patents for improvements to what we
may euphemistically call sanitary technology, he didn't invent
the process, even though his name can still be found on manhole
covers around London.
     Ancient Rome and Greece already had water powered latrines
2,000 years before Crapper was born, and China's Han Dynasty
(206BCE to 24AD) had a similar model that even included an
armrest around the same time.  The Chinese also claim the
invention of toilet paper, by the way.
     John Johnny-come-lately Crapper apparently invented the
modern plumbing trap, to prevent smell and gas backup into the
house from city sewers.  Most of Crapper's fame comes from the
vague remembrances of American World War I veterans who thought
finding the name CRAPPER on plumbing fixtures was a hoot and from
a 1969 book by one Wallace Reyburn, "Flushed with Pride: The
Story of Thomas Crapper."  Reyburn's serious research into the
history of the can can be surmised based on his famous later
works, 1972's "The Inferior Sex: A Treatise on the Inferiority of
Women", and his 1971 masterwork, "Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of
Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra."
     Otto Titzling?  It had apparently occurred even to Reyburn
that some folks didn't get the joke the first time around, so he
had to be far more obvious.
     Some folks still don't get it.


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© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.