There are certain things we grow up believing or simply take as gospel truth without ever having questioned them. These are ‘facts’ handed down to us as tradition or wisdom; or it could just be the fact that we never really had these ‘facts’ disproved and hence continued to believe them. How many of these facts do you believe?
And then there is the mysterious extrasensory perception or our sixth sense, right? Wrong. we have many other senses: pain, temperature, balance, acceleration, proprioception (the sense of the position of our body and limbs), sense of time (circadian rhythms), sense of direction and many others.
Actually the Great Wall of China can barely be seen from space and then, only in favourable conditions. The Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah and the Greenhouses of Almeria spread out over a 200 square km area in Andalucia Spain are much more easily and clearly visible from space.
The rest is our subconscious. There are ways to ‘unlock’ the hidden potential or the other 90% of our brain whereupon we shall all become geniuses… all nonsense unfortunately. The actual fact is that pretty much all of our brain is active all of the time; so in effect we are using most of our brain.
Its mainly Hollywood and TV sitcoms that have peddled the myth about the sugar rush; about kids stuffing their faces with copious quantities of candy before embarking on a spree of hyperactive destruction. This is not true, however. The fact is that parents know that sugar is bad for their kids for a number of reasons and they tend to perceive the undesirable consumption of these refined carbs as causing even more damage than they actually can! In other words they are probably imagining the hyperactivity and destructive behaviour.
Drinking alcohol dilates blood vessels close to the skin and makes us feel warmer and flushed. It doesn’t really raise our temperature. In fact the opposite may be true; alcohol could actually lower the body's core temperature.
Millions of parents who get their child’s head ritually tonsured will swear that shaving results in a fuller head of hair. Many women refuse to shave their arms and legs; convinced that it will all come back thicker and coarser. Not true. Shaving simply blunts the ends of the hair so it grows out looking thicker.
Some traditions of bull fighting are predicated on this, so it must be true, right? Wrong. Bulls are colour blind. It isn’t the colour so much as the motion that makes the bull charge. Incidentally, dogs, mice, cats and rabbits also have rather poor colour vision.
No it doesn’t. If you swallow it, you will simply pass it in a day or two. In the rare event that massive quantities of the stuff are ingested, this may cause constipation and in rare cases, surgical removal may be needed.
So ingrained is this belief that blind as a bat is a commonly used phrase to indicate visual impairment. The fact however is that no bat is blind. Some depend upon echolocation and their eyesight may be a little weak. But several bat species can actually see really well at night.
No there is no mysterious remnant of life in a dead body that makes the hair and nails continue to grow after death. It is just that the dead body shrivels and the skin loses water and recedes so it appears as though the hair and the nails continue to grow for a while after death.
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