ir - Regular Urban Survivors Started - 27th November 2000 Finished - 8th April 2008 Back to The Wookie

    Everybody in the modern world is bombarded with RE-GURGITATED DOGMA in the commercial media, magazines, newspapers, radio, television etc.. these people perpetuate stories and myth until they believe them as well documented history. Often quoting " well researched evidence " which turns out to be only a previous version of the self same story, which actually never happened at all!
    This phenomenon is far from new however, and goes back to the very root of human history. Such stories have existed for thousands of years, and might be said even to be an integral part of the human condition. Sometimes these stories start by someone showing off by exaggerating an existing rumour, or even an author who writes a fable which much later gets misrepresented as fact.

The War Of The Worlds
    There is a regularly trumpeted tale about the power of radio. Consisting of a weekly American radio programme, which was a book read as a radio play. October 30th 1938, they read the war of the worlds by H.G.Wells. And nothing happened. The people who liked listening to the intelligent book programme still listened to it. The Homer Simpson's who may have been stupid enough to get the wrong end of the stick, were watching the game on the tv, while sucking on a can of beer like the usually did!
    A week later, a local newspaper reported that people had switched on the radio and thought that aliens were landing, and had blocked the telephone switchboard at the local police station. This didn't happen, but It is constantly quoted and re-quoted ad-infinitum.
    The next time you hear someone on the radio pontificating about mass panic when the war of the worlds was read on the radio, ring in and tell them that the panic was made up by the newspaper, and there is no record of any hysteria in any police or emergency report logs at all.

Captain Pugwash
    An old, slightly silly children's programme from the 1950's and 1970's, which consisted of the shennanigans of a haphazard cartoon ships crew. This programme has been forgotten for 20 years before people were told that the script writers had been having a little fun and had called some of the characters with dodgy sexual double entandres.
e.g. Seaman Stains, Master Bates and Roger the cabin boy.
 

Tom the cabin boy Captain Pugwash The Black Pig (the ship) Captain Blackbeard (enemy)

A few years ago do gooder parents and vicars were roundly condemning the practice, and journalists were replying that it gave the adults some intellectual amusement, while the kids laughed at the fuzzy shapes.
    Turns out that this wasn't the case at all, and Seaman Banes, and Master Mates were wholesome characters after all, and the original makers of the programme are now trying to find out who the instigators of the myth were in an attempt to claim damages.

And what is more the Gardian newspaper printed an apology to the BBC for repeating the rubbish.

The Halcyon Days Of English Cricket
    Journalists, and old players remember the great days of Boycott, Truman, Close Botham and W.G. Grace as if they all played in one side in 1969 and beat all comers for fifteen years. Not true, English cricket has always struggled to some extent. There was however a period in the 50's when we had a decent team, and in addition the rest of the world were struggling. England were at the time a full country mile in front!

The Flat Earthers
    Regular justification is afforded to stories about scientific progress, by demonstrating how stupid our ancestors were in the dark ages, with their belief that the world was flat. This is patently not true. Not only were our ancestors equally intelligent, they were also very inventive. They had many techniques and skills which have since been completely lost.
    As our modern exploration and investigations continuously prove, our recent ancestors, and some of our ancient ancestors were very technically astute. There are many devices and items, which have been uncovered and labelled as being out of place and out of time.

Consider these examples of recently discovered ancient human ingenuity :-

1. An electrical Battery cell for storing electricity discovered in Baghdad in 1936 thought to date back to around 248bce - 226ce

2. An analogue computer, consisting of lots of complex interwoven sprockets, similar to the internals of a watch. Thought to have been used for complicated astronomical calculations for navigational purposes at sea. This device is thought to date back to around 65bce. It was found by sponge divers off the Mediterranean island of Antikythera.

    In addition, some recent theories being expanded, are suggesting that many ancient buildings include relatively advanced cardinal alignments, and even, that some of the dimensions, encode latitude, and longitude. Which means that the builders were tens of centuries ahead of our ideas about how to measure the Earth, and navigate the vast oceans.
    It is known that the vatican tried to impose a theory of flat earth on the astronomers and scientists in the 18th century, but everyone else on the planet was able to climb the nearest hill and observe the gentle curve of the horizon, knowing full well that this was all the proof they needed that the Earth is a spheroid!

Roswell
Don't really need to say anything about this. Just a load of superstitious hillbilly yanks scaring each other into a frenzy because they've got nothing else to do. 50 years later, 200 million Americans believe the story, despite no evidence at all.

Henry VIII
Famous for changing his wife more often than his socks, Inventing the church of England after falling out with the pope, and Being a big fat man. The last fact comes from a bizarre painting of him in later life when he was suffering from gout. He was actually a keen sportsman, and for the greater part of his life was fit slim and agile.

Wagon Wheels - New 9-12-2000
    Wagon Wheels used to be bigger! I remember in the 70's thinking how big they were. And now they look nothing special at all. This is all a matter of perception though. When I was a child, such a treat would have been bigger in my small hands. Whereas nowadays, my massive digits can easily span a perfect 11th on a full sized piano keyboard, and a wagon wheel looks just like a small coin in the palm of my hand.
    The manufacturers of wagon wheels, use the same basic design, shape and size that they always have, the only difference is that nowadays, they are more consistently put together. Twenty years ago, I remember regular misalignments between the two outer wafers, as if they had slipped. They have many examples of their wheels, to prove that they have not changed, and regularly discuss the issue on radio and t.v. programmes.

Toilet Water - New 1-4-2001
    Americans are regularly told by their badly educated teachers, that water drains in the toilet flush in a certain direction in the northern hemisphere, and the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. This is abjectly wrong. The coreolis force applied to flushing toilet would be so tiny, that your breathing in the room would have more effect on the direction.
    Thanks to an episode of the Simpsons, now most of the English speaking world believe this myth too.

Lunatic Asylums - 18 - 4 - 2001
    Ask anyone in the medical profession, who has worked on psychological wards, and they'll tell you, oh yes on full moon, they play up something rotten, in fact they're bouncing off the walls.
Whilst this is a romantic story, oft repeated, it seems it's just a misconception, fuelled by constant repetition and belief, if you're new and you are told it's going to happen by the existing staff, then you notice any tiny twitch with highlighted alarm, supposing it's the full moon phenomenon coming into play.
    A recent study reported in the scientific press, concluded that, no statistical difference could be noted in the behaviour of psychological patients, with the advent of a full moon, or any other phase of the moon, although, anxious staff can affect ward mood, and patient behaviour.

The Beer Belly
    How many times have you heard someone scoffing at a fat bloke, by making some comment about his beer belly? Well, far from making a belly, beer is a highly efficient foodstuff. It motabolises cholesterol as well as making instant energy. People who carry around extra weight, do so because they eat too much. If you drink an excess of beer, then the diuretics in the alcohol would causemorethan an equivalent measure of weight, to leave your body by the liquid exit between your legs. Drinking more beer actually makes you thinner.
    But not if you visit the chippy on the way home from the pub.

The Origins of Rugby Football
There's a romantic story propgated by the inhabitants of Rugby and most of the Rugby playing world, about a chap called William Webb Ellis, who in 1823 picked up a football and ran with it thereby inventing the game of rugby. When further research was carried out in 1895, none of his surviving contemopary students who replied to researches inquiries could remember the guy, infact they had never heard of him, and furthermore, they confirmed that running with the ball was still illegal during the 1830's.
    The author of Tom Brown's School Days, Thomas Hughes, thought that the game was invented in 1841-1842 while he was captain of Bigside. Although for decades, it was reported that players had sometimes picked up the ball and ran with it. And if Ellis had done it, then he certainly wasn't the first.

Penguins
    In 1999 a report was circulated about an unusual discovery about the behaviour of penguins. Penguins exist naturally in Antarctica and islands of the southern oceans, and the Antarctic is also always home to various research teams, intrested in climate, Fauna and Ice. To support the researchers, there are regular flights of personnel and supplies.
    A co-pilot on one of these flights noticed that a group of penguins seemed to be mesmerised by his aeroplane on take off, and they followed it's progress into the sky and as the plane flew over them, they finished up lying on their backs. For the next few months, all manner of theories abound, as to why penguin required to show their white bellies (as camuflage against the snowy ground?) to larger preditory birds above them in the sky etc..
    Until finally, someone on the ground who knew what they were talking about, pointed out that Penguins didn't actually do this at all, and the pilot, must have mistook the shadow cast by the birds as their black bodies, and got the impression that they were falling over as the plane went over.

Population Explosion
    Every year, there is a story bandied about of how the global population is going through the roof and we're all going to die because of the lack of land and resources. While the global population is estimated at roughly 6.2 (American a.k.a. Scouse) Billion, 6,200,000,000. That would still leave everybody in the world a plot of land big enough for a house and garden in the American state of Texas.

Now that puts a different complexion on it doesn't it !

    It's true that the richest 10% of the world's population use 90% of the planet's non-renewable resources, but there is more than enough room to sustain 100 times the current population easily, if you were to make sure everybody had access to enough farmland.
    The population explosion myth is propogated by rich western capitalists, who know that if westerners have less children, they will have more money to pay for luxury cars, foreign holidays and expensive consumer products.
    The issue of third world poverty and child mortality is in general a product of war and greed, not connected to population issues.

Snow
    A popular comment is that the Eskimos have 100 words for snow. This is a missunderstanding however, the word for snow is APUM. Although just like English and most other languages, you can conjugate it as a verb, and an adjective :-

English Villages Are Quiet Places To Live
Villages are not, and never have been the silent rustic idyll which is often painted by travel agents, and period T.V. dramas and films. In fact, the modern rural machinery is less loud these days, than some of the old part manual devices of a centuary ago.

The French Have The Lowest Death Rate From Heart Attack In Europe 22 Dec 2001
This anomoly is created by the french doctors, who are so proud of their nation's supposed heathy diet that they hardly never enter Heart Attack on a death certificate. They usually use "natural causes" or "died in sleep" or some other such vague statement.

The French have a diet which is quite high in fat, so if they didn't exaggerate their health, they would register a heart attack rate as bad as Glasgow

Rod Stewart is a midget 17th Mar 2002
The popular gravel-voiced London born Scotsman, Roderick David Stewart, has proved himself on national television, to be at least 5'11". For some time he has been portrayed in the tabloid press, as diminutive, largely due to shots from the papparazi's long lenses which heavily distort the depth of field making objects and people the wrong relative sizes.

Elephants Graveyard 22nd June 2002
Everyone knows about elephants, from black and white Tarzan films. Elephants on their final journey, go to a secluded place deep in the jungle where they find a space among the bones and lay down for the last time. This place has never been found by humans (apart from Tarzan himself), and would be kept totally secret, in case ivory rustlers got to hear of it's location.
    This is total myth and can be traced to the tales of the Arabian nights.

The Indian Rope Trick 14th January 2004
The Trick Consists of an Indian gentleman sitting on the floor in the open air with a pile of rope on the floor at his feet. He concentrates and the rope projects up into the air. Then a boy comes out from the crowed and climbs up the rope and dissapears. Then the rope falls back to the floor and nothing looks suspicious. Later the Indian causes the rope to reach for the sky once more, whereupon the boy emerges climbing down the rope.
In reality the Myth of th indian rope trick was invented by John Wilkie in Chicago, America, by a man who got the story published in a newspaper In 1890, He made it up to sell more copies of his newspaper, and suceeded. His fame and fortune came soon after when he was appointed to the government as Chief of the Secret Service and later set up the FBI with the president.

The Mama Cass Died When She Choked On A Ham Sandwhich 19th May 2005
The famous and obese singer from the Mamas n Papas with the wonderful voice had always drawn attention through her enormous size, but she died in her hotel room in London and a doctor who attended her body when she was found dead, Commented that she had died choking on a ham sandwhich. Unfortunately he only supposed this, because there was a sandwhich in the room, her real cause of death was reported to be a heart attack, but it is thought that she may have had other health problems

More People are alive Today than .. 8th April 2008
You regularly hear journalists and presenters repeating a variation of the following statement :- There are more people alive on the planet today than are dead..
Nobody knows how this codswallop began but it is just plain wrong. It is endlessly repeated in scare stories about the pressure of human activity on the planet. While it is impossible too give exact population figures for the whole planet and especially across the whole lifetime of the human race a population expert from a british univerity gave the following statistics. The approximate human population today is 6 billion and the approximate entire human population since the first human can best be estimated as 100 billion.

So therefore far from the majority of humans since the begginning of the species, all that are alive today are around 6%.

That's 94% dead - 6% alive! a figure which is far from the common statement above..

more soon . . .
 

This Page is available at www.thewookie.co.uk/advice/survivors.htm

Thanks To Mark C. For Help With this page Also thanks to Arthur Guinness for your Thirst quenching inspiration. And Miss Stella Artois, a fine lady with a nice bottle!