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51 Favorite Facts You’ve Always Believed That Are Actually False
Reader's Digest ^ | no date given | DAVID MCCANDLESS

Posted on 09/20/2016 1:03:23 PM PDT by Leaning Right

Napoleon wasn't short? Bananas don't grow on trees? Here, the world's most contagious myths and misconceptions debunked.

(Excerpt) Read more at rd.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: facts; false; myths
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To: Leaning Right

#15 - the reason isn’t presented as a fact.


61 posted on 09/20/2016 2:09:30 PM PDT by stylin19a
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To: T-Bone Texan

mythbusters has an episode where they do the bullet in the air test, straight up and at an angle. Fired straight up the bullet comes down tumbling at less than lethal velocity this is due to the bullet reaching zero velocity at apex and lossing its gyroscopic spin stabilization. fired at a 45 angle the bullet never looses gyroscopic stabilization and comes down nose first still aerodynamic and at very much lethal velocity.


62 posted on 09/20/2016 2:13:00 PM PDT by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici")
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To: T-Bone Texan

A bullet fired upwards at an angle will continue in a ballistic arc, and velocity lost and then gained to gravity will keep it lethal.

I forget what that angle is, and whether it varies by caliber or powder charge.

A bullet fired at a higher angle— or straight up— will come to a momentary stop before returning at terminal velocity, enough to cause pain and some damage, but not anywhere near just-fired-bullet speed.

This was tested on Mythbusters.

Note too that there are bullets that weigh more than pennies, and impact energy is a function of both speed and mass. To illustrate that latter point, a 50 pound child jumping on your chest from the back of the sofa (oof!) will hurt a lot less than a Chevy Nova falling the same distance off a wobbly jack, so use jack stands :)


63 posted on 09/20/2016 2:14:52 PM PDT by ExGeeEye (For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.)
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To: Buckeye McFrog; Leaning Right; treetopsandroofs
You seen Readers Digest lately? A sad shell of its former self.

The Road to Serfdom
(Reader's Digest Condensed Version - April, 1945)
. . . when The Reader’s Digest was The Reader’s Digest.

64 posted on 09/20/2016 2:17:51 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: MCF

MSG heavy food is a few hours trip to migraine town for me.

I have become very picky about anywhere I go out for a meal.


65 posted on 09/20/2016 2:20:05 PM PDT by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: TalonDJ

most bullets fired errantly are not truly vertical they all have an angle to the horizontal that angle is absolutely critical to the. bullet keeping its gyroscopic spin stabilization and therefore it’s velocity higher than it’s terminal falling velocity, which as mythbusters measured for 9mm rounds in still air well under the speed of sound, and under what would be necessary to penetrate the human skull, bullets fired at even a small angle to the horizontal maintain their spin and never reach zero velocity at apex there is always a forward velocity vector in the parabolic arc they have to follow. that forward velocity and the fact that they stay nose first and spin stabilized makes bullets in an arc deadly while truly vertical bullets are not. I personally have fired a 9mm straight up while on open water and when it hit about 50 feet away the spash was tiny. there was a good breeze that day we knew there was zero change a vertically fired bullet can return to the firing spot with a horizontal crosswind physics dictates we were perfectly safe.


66 posted on 09/20/2016 2:24:46 PM PDT by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici")
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To: rfreedom4u
I stopped after I read #1. When I noticed I had to click “next” to see the next one I didn’t want to click 52 times.

A.K.A. Click bait, in which revenue-generating ads are cleverly disguised as a 'Next' button.

67 posted on 09/20/2016 2:27:22 PM PDT by Ol' Dan Tucker (For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard., -- Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4)
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To: PLMerite

My Jr Hi library had bound RDs from 1935 to 1959 (my 9th grade year) and I read them all during library/study period. How many thousands of jokes! Pardon, your slip is showing. Hundreds of articles that became part of my dumpster-like brain.


68 posted on 09/20/2016 2:30:17 PM PDT by Boojum
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To: T-Bone Texan

Depends on the angle the bullet was fired. Straight up it doesn’t come down with enough velocity to kill, as it loses all that velocity going up and just comes down at terminal velocity. At at non-vertical angle though it’s a different matter, it loses much less velocity going up and (depending on the angle) still comes down at a “proper” bullet speed.


69 posted on 09/20/2016 2:33:05 PM PDT by discostu (If you need to load or unload go to the white zone, you'll love it, it's a way of life)
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To: Egon
Maybe it makes no difference in the boiling pot, but once you pour it into a strainer, it makes all the difference in the world.

Interesting. The only thing I found with adding oil to the pasta in the strainer or the pot after cooking is that the sauce doesn't stick to the pasta then. I just stir the pasta after cooking just as I did when it started to cook to prevent that.

Maybe it has something to do with when you introduce the sauce. If you put it into the pasta after draining it will not stick, but maybe it'll stick if you just plop it on top without incorporating it.

70 posted on 09/20/2016 2:34:16 PM PDT by mupcat
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To: Egon

Better way to keep the pasta from sticking is to put in a ladle of the sauce it will be served with. So boil it, strain it, dump it back in the pot, add sauce, stir. Keep it from sticking together without coating it (oil keeps the noodles from sticking together, but it also keeps the sauce from sticking to the noodles) AND gives the flavor a chance to soak in.


71 posted on 09/20/2016 2:38:20 PM PDT by discostu (If you need to load or unload go to the white zone, you'll love it, it's a way of life)
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To: Moonman62

http://www.newsweek.com/celebratory-gunfire-new-years-eve-los-angeles-410598


72 posted on 09/20/2016 2:42:06 PM PDT by Dr. Zzyzx (And)
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To: rfreedom4u

Did you see the VIEW AS LIST button?


73 posted on 09/20/2016 2:43:18 PM PDT by righttackle44 (Take scalps. Leave the bodies as a warning.)
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To: Sam Gamgee

I don’t think they made them up. They just passed them down. It’s the “old wive’s tale” syndrome. Somebody thought it was true, probably in the age before the scientific method was a big thing, told their kids, who told their kids etc etc. A few of them, like the autism/ vaccine thing, are full on malfeasance but most are just teaching what they were taught without ever actually finding out if it was true. And some are just how people think, like celebrities dying in threes, once you “decide” to see the world that way then your brain sees it in those clusters.


74 posted on 09/20/2016 2:44:28 PM PDT by discostu (If you need to load or unload go to the white zone, you'll love it, it's a way of life)
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To: TalonDJ; T-Bone Texan
The short version is the ratio between air resistance and mass.

Ratio of air resistance to mass is not relevant, short version or long. Mass actually factors out of the equations of motion, and all that really matters is the acceleration of gravity and the drag coefficient per unit of mass.

All of the equations of motion for objects falling through fluids (like air) involve fudge factors, and those fudge factors are usually quite complex, have to be measured, and are valid only over a range of velocities.

Newton himself used an equation of motion derived from the Third Law which had a drag term proportional to a drag coefficient and velocity. That equation works pretty well if the fluid is not too dense and the velocity is not too great.

An improvement that's still an approximation uses a term proportional to the square of the velocity. In that formulation, the drag term is: ½ρv2AeffCD. Aeff is the effective cross-sectional area, and CD is the drag coefficient. [This equation becomes wildly inaccurate if the body tumbles, because then CD and Aeff become highly complex functions of time.]

Please note though, that for "stable" falling bodies for which the equation applies, since ρ the density, is m/V, the mass term appears in both the accelerating and the drag force and can be divided out: mg-½(m/V)v2AeffCD = m dv/dt. So you are correct in involving density in the discussion, but mass, per se is not part of it. You basically have to solve a differential equation which does not involve the mass of the body at all.

75 posted on 09/20/2016 2:44:54 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: EQAndyBuzz
YOU MEAN THERE REALLY ISN’T 57 STATES?????/

If King Obongo says there are 57 states, then there are 57 states.

76 posted on 09/20/2016 2:47:57 PM PDT by Fresh Wind (Hillary: Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 2 billion dollars.)
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To: TalonDJ
Some people claim bullets don’t kill coming back down but that is clearly false as people die to errant vertically fired bullets all the time.

Well, technically, they're not fired directly vertical, but more often at an angle.

IIRC, a shot fired straight up, with no angle of deviation, will not likely kill you coming back down due to terminal velocity, because basically, once the energy going up dies, it's only subject to gravity coming back down

However, a bullet fired at an angle, even though it's fired "up", can kill because it would have gravity and propulsion working into the mix when coming back down.

77 posted on 09/20/2016 2:55:02 PM PDT by IYAS9YAS (An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees! - Kipling)
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To: Fresh Wind

“If King Obongo says there are 57 states, then there are 57 states.”

IIRC, King Obongo didn’t say there are 57 states. He said he had already visited 57 states and had only one more to go. So he believes there are 58 states.


78 posted on 09/20/2016 2:55:53 PM PDT by MayflowerMadam
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To: Leaning Right

I had a great aunt who had years and years of issues back in the late 60s.

My dad had died and my mom visited Aunt Faye one or two weekends a month and took me.

Beeing a young pre-teen/teenager I didn’t have much to do so I read most of those back issues.

When I grew up my mom bought me a subscription every year until she passed.

I now have my own subscription, but I am getting a little miffed because I have noticed RD going farther and farther left.

But like you I continue my subscription because it is a connection to my past.


79 posted on 09/20/2016 2:57:45 PM PDT by hirn_man (Today Levin started off his show)
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To: PLMerite

Oh. My. Gosh.

I remember that article.

It said NOTLD was pretty much the end of civilization as we knew it. It went beyond any of the bounds of decency and movies like that should be banned.

I was thinking about it when I wrote my earlier reply.

Funny how tame that movie seems now.


80 posted on 09/20/2016 3:04:54 PM PDT by hirn_man (Today Levin started off his show)
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