Acute Angles - Things We Think We Know

by David Fidelman

Every so often we should pause for rest and reflection.

One of the things we should reflect about is how much we know that we really don’t know — the inaccuracy of some of our most cherished beliefs. We can start with “The exception proves the rule.” Most people have it wrong when they answer an objection with, “That’s the exception that proves the rule.” Do they mean their rule is not valid without the exception? If so, is it better to have more exceptions, and how many exceptions should a good rule have? The meaning of the word “prove” is to test, and what the statement really says is that all it takes is one exception to make the rule invalid.

No matter how many people have told you so, or how many times you’ve seen it demonstrated, water does not go down the drain clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere — or vice versa. For those readers who are looking for a difference between the northern and southern hemispheres, the sun travels across the sky from left to right in the northern hemisphere, and from right to left in the southern. Not because the earth is divided in half at the equator — the sun rises in the east everywhere and sets in the west. It’s just that in the northern hemisphere you look southward to see the sun, and east is on the left; in the southern hemisphere you look north to the sun, and east is on your right.

The warning “Beware of the Dog” is intended to frighten you away from the premises. That’s because both the writer and the reader of the sign don’t know what the phrase really means. It’s the translation of the old Roman “cave canem” which means “watch out for the dog.” In well-to-do Roman households, the lady of the house was likely to have a dog — usually a Maltese, about the size of a poodle — and the guests were being advised to be careful not to trip over the dog and possibly injure themselves or the animal.

There are collections of hundreds of facts that have been screwed up. A cold does not turn into pneumonia — one is caused by a virus, the other by bacteria. Horses do not sleep standing up — they can take light naps on their feet, but they have to lie down for a deep sleep. Frankenstein was the name of the doctor who created him, not of the monster. It is not illegal to remove the tag from your mattress. Quicksand does not suck its victims down — it’s water with sand suspended in it, and you can float in it. The hole is not part of the doughnut — it’s just an empty space in the middle. There is no rule in grammar that says a preposition is something you can’t end a sentence with. The purpose of the Boston Tea Party was not to protest taxation, but to steal the tea — none of the bales were axed open for seawater contamination, but rather were tossed overboard to be retrieved later. The Wright brothers did not invent the airplane or powered flight — what they invented was the aileron, which causes the airplane to bank so that it can turn without sideslip. There is no such fish as a sardine — it’s a term applied to any of various small fishes preserved in cans for eating. There is also no such fish as a scrod, which is usually a young codfish or haddock that has been split and boned for cooking as the catch of the day.

This is only a small sampling of the false facts we believe. Some of them are only of passing or academic interest. But others have direct and practical consequences. By making Americans afraid to fly, the September 11 terrorists will end up killing far more than the thousands who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There are over 40,000 automobile deaths in this country every year compared to about 1,000 airplane deaths, therefore by getting Americans out of airplanes and into cars for long trips, they increase people’s chances of dying by 40 times.

We used to believe that the increasing productivity caused by modern technology, that a steadily rising standard of living and increasing consumer spending would keep the stock market going up at a rate of at least 7 to 10 percent a year. If this column had been written a few years ago, some of its readers might have sold at the top instead of holding on until it bottomed.