[AT] Truth on the Internet and elsewhere

[Larry D Goss]

LOL!  That's one of the pitfalls of the Internet -- you can't tell anything 
about the truth of the material that's on it.  Wikipedia is particularly bad 
about allowing myths and mis-information to be propagated.  I ran into this 
nearly 10 years ago when trying to verify what material Gutenberg used when 
he invented moveable type.  There are thousands of websites on the Internet 
devoted to the supposed documentation of that invention, but if you examine 
them closely, you'll find that a majority of them have been generated by the 
students in middle school classes as part of a science project.  Somehow, I 
find it hard to trust a group of 12-year olds to accurately report the 
facts.  After several days of searching, I finally found a website sponsored 
by Gutenberg's home town in Germany that has it right.  They are doing the 
only thing they can do in the face of the mountains of mis-information that 
is out there -- they are sponsoring their own site that tells the story the 
right way, including the legal problems he ran into because the authorities 
found him hording lead and accused him of alchemy to turn lead into gold. 
Sixty years or so ago, it was even stated in textbooks that Gutenberg's 
original invention used hardwood for the letters.  That's not so, but it is 
an example of how far stories can veer from the truth.

So when people, including some on this list, hold to myths and old wives' 
tales that fly in the face of the laws of physics, chemistry, other 
sciences, and history, there are others of us who will cry "foul" very 
loudly.  It's the only way we have of trying to assure that the threads we 
produce have any credibility.

When "The DaVinci Code" was published, we had a dinner guest who is an 
historian.  He got very worked up over the inaccuracies and blatant lies 
that are in the book and was ready to take on the world to correct them.  I 
stopped him as he was getting ready to leave after an evening of dinner and 
conversation and I said, "Dan, it's a NOVEL!"  He thought about it for a 
moment and then finally said, "Oh."

We're always very close to gross mis-representations.  I understand that a 
movie opened this weekend across the country that had a very poor showing at 
the box office.  It is now predicted that the movie will not ever make 
enough money to pay off the $300 million that it took to produce it. 
Apparently, the public saw the premise as so bizarre and unbelievable that 
they aren't even bothering to go see it.

Larry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JTakemoto at wildblue.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Carburetor Icing (Off Topic)


> Well its been fun but lets get on with something new.
> The funny thing is all of the stuff that I have posted in the last few
> days has come from Websites that I have copied and pasted, so you you guys
> are not arguing with me but with the experts who post all this stuff on
> the Web.
>
> One thing that I can't understand is why the wind can freeze water in your
> hand but not in a radiator. Hey I got this from the websites its not my
> words but theirs.
> J.
>
>
>
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