Top Ten Most Common Myths of America
There are all things we are told as a child, and even as an adult, that we sometimes believe. Yet some of the most common conversation subjects are myths. A myth you say? What is that? Why what an excellent question. What we think of a myth can be many things. The first is mythology i.e. Greek Mythology. This kind of myth is something we know is not true and is in the form of a story, fable, paragraph, etc. The second is lies. Lies, lies, lies, the opposite of the truth. This type of myth is often times disputed between two sides, then there’s the one when someone is lied to and the person finally realizes it’s a lie. The final is an unproven or falsified belief. Ok now you’re starting to say that I’m just bashing organized religion, but you’d be believing a myth.
Now that that’s cleared up, the topic for my first week’s blog is the top ten most common myths of America, ten to one.
10. Low fat is better than regular. Surprised? Low fat is basically saying that the product has less fat than the original high fat product. If you actually look at the label, the low fat has more calories than the regular. With regular diets, you’re probably getting just a little less fat from the lower fat food, but not much.
9. Staying out in the cold will give you a cold. Most of you probably know the answer to this, but hey that’s you. What we call a “cold” is actually the acute viral nasopharyngitis. This virus is quite contagious, but being out in the cold just increases mucus production, which mothers confused with the cold virus.
8. The rich don’t pay fewer taxes. The average family with a $300,000 income will actually pay 34% income tax; over one third of their income goes to taxes.
7. Ethanol is better than regular gas. The new green gas ethanol is seen as the future fuel for your cars, since regular gas is not only expensive, but harming the earth. Ethanol would be more expensive than the gas we use today. Ethanol costs a lot more to make than gasoline does. Not only that, ethanol creates smoke like gas. It would still cause the harmful effects like gasoline, but not as fast.
6. Teachers are underpaid. I myself believed this one until watching 20/20. Teachers in the U.S. earn more money than fire fighters and police do. Not only that, teachers have better benefits than people with higher paying jobs.
5. We are running low on trees. The demand for lumber has slightly risen and has led to the belief that the world is running low on trees. We actually have the highest number of trees since the 1800s. We plant more trees than we cut down.
4. Republicans shrink government. We’ve all heard someone or another from the Republican Party say that they will shrink government. This means they will cut down on government spending. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. President Bush has actually spent nearly four times as much as President Clinton.
3. Guns are bad. We are all scared about guns, but believe it or not felons in jail are more afraid of threatening an armed citizen than the police. More and more states are creating laws that let their citizens carry concealed weapons.
2. Teens are sexually active earlier and earlier. You would think this is true with what we see on television now days, but actually fewer teens are even considering sex. More and more teens are standing up on their morals and saying no.
What’s #1? Find out next week.
If you have a lie, myth, or falsified fact you want to see de-bugged e-mail me at nickmantzios@yahoo.com
-Enitocin
Obviously, I have peeves with a few of these so-called myths. Nicely done article (though a bit similar to abc’s…), but I disagree, particularly with numbers 3, 5, and 6. So I’ll start with teachers being underpaid. Yes, it depends on the state, etc. My mom’s a teacher, and my dad is actually a fire fighter. Not only does he get more pay that her, but he receives much better benefits. In my city, teachers get no dental care. I’ve read the abc articles, etc, on the issue, and none of their “facts” seem to even make sense. The fact that teachers are paid more than the average working american is NOT saying that they are paid enough; it simply further proves the point that america is a country made up of a small percentage of extremely wealthy people, and many of those who add to our society who have to take on extra jobs and loans to even get through the year. Teachers are, I would argue, the single most important workers in the world. They go through years of education and training, unlike some other occupations, and good teachers end up working many extra unpaid hours on lessons and more. In the end, underpaid is completely subjective. But if our teachers feel that they are underpaid, I don’t think that’s anything to argue against.
Simply statistically, their is a net loss of forest in north america, and the net loss is increasing yearly. Their are no majour plans of afforestation in the USA, and more and more of our essential forest land is being turned into pastures and lumber. Even with forest regeneration, the biodiversity of trees decrease rapidly and the environment suffers.
Guns aren’t bad? Give me a gun that makes people happy, a gun that doesn’t kill, a gun that blows bubbles and rainbows, and I’ll believe that. Creating laws allowing people more freedom of arms does give a select few protection. It also allows the crimes that those citizens need protection from. It increases accidents and yes, promotes violence.
And so on and so forth.
Thanks for the questioning (keeps me on my feet). To start with the teachers are underpaid question, what do we consider enough for someone who doesn’t work for 3 months? This is basically an average of america, not each state. The myth was that they are underpaid, not they aren’t paid enough. If teachers aren’t paid enough why is there not a shortage of teachers? It doesn’t matter how important the job anymore, I mean actors make more money and for what? I think teachers are very important, and sometimes money isn’t the reward for hardwork.
Not all trees are in forests, not can all trees be seen at a distance. I myself have successfully grown 2 trees in my yard. I know “What an accomplishment”, but the point is there are more trees, not forests. This is a worldwide deal, not just north america.
Yes, yes the main purpose of the gun was to kill, but no, we don’t have to use guns for crime. Most criminals, believe it or not, biggest fear is not the police, it’s the fear that whoever they hold up has a gun. Guns aren’t bad, people are. We don’t have to make guns bad, it’s what they’re used for. We perceive them as bad because in most cases they’re used for criminal activities. I believe we need laws to prevent anyone with a criminal history from even seeing a gun.
Thanks for not citing particular research and making broad statements like this because you are helping to create myths. Lets say some things change and your Web page is no longer up to date. Then your information is helping to spread false ideas. This reminds me of those email messages that perhaps continue to go around about a boy that is sick… He’s no longer sick, you know, but those messages circulated for a long time afterwards. You aren’t doing much of a service here. You didn’t even mention the Christian myth. My god…
Not sure what your getting at here sport. I write things that a fair amount of people read, and to not get facts write hurts the sites credibility. Yeah I wrote it a long time ago, and if people have common sense like I hope they do they will know it would’ve changed by now. I don’t regulate the site, ponine and TDec do. So I have to write a whole new thing. Real jounalists don’t do that in the same year.
And where did this Christian myth come from? God isn’t a myth? There’s no proof. I would hope you’d have the common sense to know that it’s probably change by now, and attacking me won’t change that.
…just a little disclaimer from your friendly site mistress. We (or, actually, I now) only edit for grammar, the content of the posts are not reresearched, we (err, I) just assume the writers are checking their facts. Even though I admit this isn’t the wisest idea. If you disagree with anyhting and wish to write a rebuttal piece… that would be cool.
I research my stuff friendly site mistress. Having a myths, lies, and falsified facts feature kinda forces me to. I meant that I can’t post it myself, I have to e-mail it to you. That’s what I meant by regulate. Lucky you get to write opinion pieces.