Things that you've thought that were in fact absurd

[Pacificplaza]

Inspired by another current thread: what things have you thought to yourself, and accepted as true, which on telling someone else have quickly transpired to be completely ridiculous?

E.g: I always thought that when drinking a hot beverage, that the misty effect observed should you happen to glance down into the cup was your EYEBALLS getting STEAMED UP in the manner of a pair of glasses. When I casually mentioned this at work everyone kindly pointed out that I was just... seeing the steam.

My car is an old banger with no air con, just the air blower. For my entire life until my ExDP corrected me, I thought you had to 'run' the hot air until it turned from cold to hot eventually in the same way you do the tap. Rather than just turn it on once the car's warmed up. The hours I must have spent grimly tolerating a stream of freezing air in winter .

I'm not normally a simpleton by the way, I've got degrees and stuff and mostly manage to function.

So please tell me I'm not alone!

@don'tcallmecharlotte - ha ha! No, not Scandinavian but we have got a pond and at one time a heron used to land in our garden so I did have to make sure I said heron rather than herring!

damn! failed to tag properly @dontcallmecharlotte.

As a child I thought that all the references to guerilla wars on the news were about battles fought by actual gorillas trained as soldiers. Like a sort of planet of the apes thing.

I am always surprised that Dunkirk isn't in Scotland. And that Pontefract is not in Wales.

I thought the internal light in the car was illegal too, didn't know that about the chicken joke or that we all have the same number of ribs. Have learned more than I ever need to know about cow insemination and chicken sex - great thread!

I still refuse to believe that narwhales are real creatures

Right. Thanks to THIS thread I had a dream last night I was on Alexander Armstrong's farm artificially inseminating his herd of prizewinning Jersey cows.

I've not read the rest of the thread yet but the post about women having less ribs.

Is that really not true????

MIND BLOWN.

Muscle does sort of weigh more than fat if you're going by volume. Obviously a pound of fat weighs the same as a pound of muscle (or a pound of lead, or a pound of feathers, or whatever). But one litre of muscle weighs more than one litre of fat.

I had the similar explanation which included a pound of feathers as well; are they the standard pound measurement in these cases? Lol

The example I saw used stones and feathers, a pound (WEIGHT) of feathers is a huge MASS, a pound of stones is the same WEIGHT, but is a much smaller MASS. Made perfect sense when I thought of it.

She had four puppies and has nine nipples so no difficulty getting access.
Nine? I thought there were an even number?

My dog has eleven I've just checked, there's 2 on one side very close to each other, I've just found she has 2 more than I thought as there's 2 flatter ones on her chest where human's nipples are

The example I saw used stones and feathers, a pound (WEIGHT) of feathers is a huge MASS, a pound of stones is the same WEIGHT, but is a much smaller MASS. Made perfect sense when I thought of it.

???

Or a pound in weight of any 2 items in the world is going to be the same weight, as they're both ONE POUND IN WEIGHT

Well exactly wash. Pound by pound every thing weighs the same. Pound for pound, I weigh the same as a newborn baby, by that logic.

Mrs james on the thread I was on people were seriously saying they weighed the same. They may do but "a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat" does not further t he argument

Mrs james on the thread I was on people were seriously saying they weighed the same. They may do but "a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat" does not further t he argument

But it does weigh the same

However, if you were to say that a cup full of muscle weighs more than a cup full of fat that would be correct.

But a pound of me weighs the same as a pound of newborn baby. It doesn't help us establish if I weigh more than a newborn.

The example I saw used stones and feathers, a pound (WEIGHT) of feathers is a huge MASS, a pound of stones is the same WEIGHT, but is a much smaller MASS. Made perfect sense when I thought of it.

That's not mass. Mass is the weight without the effect of gravitational pull. Density is the mass per volume unit. Muscle has a higher density than fat.

The example I saw used stones and feathers, a pound (WEIGHT) of feathers is a huge MASS, a pound of stones is the same WEIGHT, but is a much smaller MASS. Made perfect sense when I thought of it.

You're confusing mass/weight which are a similar thing with volume. A pound of feathers is a huge volume compared to a pound of stones because the density of feathers (kg/cm3) is much less than that of stone.

I nearly choked at Peruvian birthing helmets omg grin

Me too!

@TitilatedOcelot Definitely agree about Dunkirk (I had to think about it when you said it as I couldn't think where it actually is out of context!). After all it's a cross between Dundee and Falkirk!

I was signed up to a mailing list for gig tickets and the email address they cane from was donotreply@blah.
For years i thought they were being sent by a person called Don O'Treply.

stealthpolarbear

Right !!!

Imagine 2 people, the same height who both weigh 15 stone, one is very muscular the other has no muscle at all just fat.

The muscular person will be a lot slimmer than than the fat one, despite them weighing the same, because a smaller amount of muscle weighs the same as a larger amount of fat.

One that my 17 year old pointed out to me the other day that I was never aware of even though I've been driving 30 or so years. Next to the fuel pump symbol on your dash, there's a little arrow. That arrow points to the side of the car that has the fuel cap. Who knew?

This isn't the case for all cars, especially older ones. Some cars have arrows pointing the other way, or no arrow at all.

But most of the newer cars I've seen do have the arrow pointing in the right direction and I wonder if manufacturers are making use of this urban myth because people are expecting to see an arrow pointing the right way.

Ref all the haggis farmers didn't the Goons do a sketch about wild haggis creatures? Maybe that's where people got the idea from?

MrsJamesAspey exactly!

my car dosnt have the arrow symbol i checked it

i used to think skegness was in scotland it just sounded scottish to me

also though the sam ab out uni challenge that they were sitting upstairs!

I thought the lyrics to the Music Man were "I am the music man, I come from Talywain" which is a small village in South Wales. I believed this until I was about 16 when it dawned on me that it was a really well known song and it was unlikely such a character would've come from Talywain.

I also thought, until last year, that the lyrics to Take My Breath Away were "Julio Iglesias I saw you" and not "through the hourglass I saw you". My husband thinks this is hilarious.

And I'm another that thought the world used to be black and white!

And that Pontefract is not in Wales

Isn't it?