Urban myths

Science kicks ass!! I want one of these for a pet!!


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An eight-month old rooster weighing 3.3kg, stands on grass May 22, 2002 at the Hebrew University in Rehovot. Israeli scientists at the Agriculture department of the university have genetically engineered bare-skinned chickens as part of a research project to develop succulent, low fat poultry that is environmentally friendly. The naked chicken, as the bird has been dubbed, would also save poultry farmers large amounts of money on ventilation to prevent their chickens from overheating.

Yeah, as you can see it's been around for quite a while (the date of your clip is May). Not sure if I'd want to eat any of these. Plus I imagine you couldn't raise them in cold climates of any kind.

But why is this an urban myth?

Sorry I should have included the urban myth as well
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KFC has been a part of our American traditions for many years. Many people, day in and day out, eat at KFC religiously. Do they really know what they are eating? During a recent study of KFC done at the University of New Hampshire, they found some very upsetting facts.
First of all, has anybody noticed that just recently, the company has changed their name? Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does anybody know why? We thought the real reason was because of the "FRIED" food issue. It's not. The reason why they call it KFC is because they can not use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms. These so called "chickens" are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients throughout their structure. They have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet. Their bone structure is dramatically shrunk to get more meat out of them. This is great for KFC because they do not have to pay so much for their production costs. There is no more plucking of the feathers or the removal of the beaks and feet. The government has told them to change all of their menus so they do not say chicken anywhere. If you look closely you will notice this. Listen to their commercials, I guarantee you will ot see or hear the word chicken. I find this matter to be very disturbing. I hope people will start to realize this and let other people know. Please forward this message to as many people as you can. Together we make KFC start using real chicken again.

That's ... uhhh ... creepy.

I heard they'd changed it to "KFC" because the state of Kentucky decided to trademark their name in order to extort money from companies that used it. This of course, could also be an urban myth, I never checked www.snopes.com on that one.

Please forward this message to as many people as you can. Together we make KFC start using real chicken again.


Screw that! Whatever they're doing they need to keep doing! I don't care if they have chicken plants which grow out of the ground and they lop off the heads of the chickens with a lawnmower.

I'd never heard that, I did a little digging and the only referenece to KFC changing their name suggested that they did it to show that they had a more diverse product line than just chicken...

Or better than that... engineer the chickens to be headless, they can be chicken plants.. YUMMY!

Vegetarians would dig that..

http://www.wolfeandlois.org/~wolfe/humor/news/cowplants.txt

The line "Please forward this message to as many people as you can" makes it kinda obvious that this is a hoax. You'd think the people that write these things would go to more effort.

"The government has told them to change all of their menus so they do not say chicken anywhere"

Well from what i remember last week, i said ill have the popcorn CHICKEN please.

On Ripley's Believe It Or Not they had a story where there was a chicken that lived several years with no head. It was fed through it's neck and eventually died after choking on some corn.

you mean Mike?

I've had popcorn chicken a few times and most of the time I've had trouble actually finding any significant amount of chicken in the bits

Hint: Don't try to look inside fast food. It'll put you off so just eat it and don't think!

- Trevor

Ok, I retract my original pet request, I think I want Mike instead!!!

Yep, that's him.

On the topic of Urban myths, in case any one hasn't seen the story of the guy that claims to be the cause of the Rocket/JATO car myth, here it is... Long but fun!

/Michael

I can't believe i read that whole thing. It's pretty impressive, but it's still hard to tell if it's really real.

Two parts caught my attention. The brake cooling system doesn't seem like it would work. The way he explains it, I would think that air would go up the hoses instead of the air pushing water up the hoses.

In reply to:

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The only part of the cooling arrangement that even came close to sophistication was the result of a brainstorm that came to me while I was strapping a five-gallon jerry can under the hood of the Rocket Car. I started putting the sprinkler system together with the idea that we'd simply open a valve before launch, letting water leak out of the hoses and onto the runners for the duration of the run. But while I was attaching the jerry can, a better method occurred to me. Instead of attaching the garden hoses to a valve, I drilled a pair of holes directly into the top of the jerry can, and fed the hoses through the holes. Then I drilled a third, smaller hole, and connected another hose from the jerry can to the air-dump handle for the shock absorbers. I sealed all the hose connections with massive amounts of rubber cement, then called it quits for the day.

No word from Beck or Sal that night, so I assumed finding a launch site wasn't as easy as they'd thought it would be.

When I checked the Rocket Car the next day, the rubber cement sealant had dried to the consistency of a hockey puck, so I tested the entire system. I filled the air shocks from Dad's portable compressor, then closed the dump valve. Filled the jerry can with water, and screwed the top down tight. Said a quick prayer, and hit the dump-valve lever. There was a slight hiss as the air rushed out of the shocks, through the dump valve. But instead of being vented into the open, the last air-hose I'd installed directed the escaping air into the jerry can full of water under the hood, forcing water out through the sprinkler hoses. When I checked under the car there was an impressive puddle, and water was still jetting out of the holes in the garden hoses.

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The second part was right after they fired the car and drove down to the mine. He explains how he tried to pull the JATO out but it was stuck. Having cooled for only a few minutes, I would think the rocket would still be very hot.

It's a federal law. No company that operates outside of a given state can use that state's name in it's title.

In general, the Lanham Act prohibits registration of marks which are "primarily geographically descriptive or deceptively misdescriptive" of the goods or services. The prohibition derives from the common law concept that no one person can obtain an exclusive right to use of a geographic name so as to preclude others from truthfully representing to the public that their goods or services originate from the same place.1 A geographic name tells the public something about the product or the producer about which his competitor also has a right to inform the public. No one entity can secure a monopoly of a term which legitimately may be used by others.2 For that reason, geographic marks or names should be free for all to use to truthfully represent to the public that their good or services originate in a particular locale.

Full link

You're going to trust a document written by two guys who look like THAT?!

(See bottom of page)

I know.... That was just the first reference I found. That first guy really is a goober, eh?

Fine. Section 1125.a.1.B.

It's pretty impressive, but it's still hard to tell if it's really real.

Yeah, it's hard to tell - but I sort of wish this was true...

About the hoses - as long as the "water" hose (ie the one going down to the brakes) has its end/opening down by the bottom of the tank, forcing air into the tank will make water go out. Doing it that way instead of connecting it to the bottom of the tank also removes the need for a valve on the "water" hose - gravity takes the job of keeping it in the tank until applied air pressure pushes it out.

Same principle (but here it's the headroom gas pressure instead of outside applied pressure that does the job) is in work in CO2 bottles used to fill smaller CO2 bottles (for instance for paintball) with liquid CO2 - the "water" hose is then called a dip tube (attached to the outlet and has its end a couple of centimetres above the bottom of the tube).

/Michael

In reply to:

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Two parts caught my attention. The brake cooling system doesn't seem like it would work. The way he explains it, I would think that air would go up the hoses instead of the air pushing water up the hoses.

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The pressurised water cooling system he described would work but only if:

1. The 2 hoses that were meant to "suck up" the water were inserted nearly all the way into the jerry can so that the their "open" ends were near the bottom of the jerry can and covered by lots of water.

2. The 5 gallon jerry can he was using was "airtight" when "sealed" with sealant around the 3 hose "holes" he drilled into it (and presumably with the filling/pouring nozzle sealed with a "threaded cap" or similar) and then filled with water so the inrush of air from the dump valve pressurised the jerry can, forcing the water in it out through the only exit - the two hoses with their open ends near the bottom of the can and covered with water.

I do wonder however if the pressurising of the jerry can via the dump valve would cause the "brakes" to apply less quickly as the jerry can could take only so much air before it exploded or else it would hold the air in the air springs long enough so that the brakes acted slowly or not at all.

All I can say about this story, is that if this story turns out to be a hoax [and I think a lot of folks are on the fence on this stories authenticity], then its one hell of a good long "shaggy dog" story - much along the lines of march82003.com or whatever the site is that had the "they are after me" story.

re: JATO bottle being too hot to touch - thats true.

I also note that the story goes quiet on what happened to the other 3 JATO bottles - I doubt they were left around the junkyard afterwards.
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About the hoses - as long as the "water" hose (ie the one going down to the brakes) has its end/opening down by the bottom of the tank, forcing air into the tank will make water go out.


You are correct about that.

But I wonder... just what volume of air, at what pressure, would have been contained in those air-lift shocks? Would it have been enough to displace enough water from the reservoir to be effective?

I can only speak from empirical experience with the air shock on my mountain bike. Now, it is only supporting about 150 pounds (figure 2/3 of the total bike+rider weight on the rear wheel) and not the 1500 pounds of the rocket car... but that bike shock really holds just a tiny puff of air. Assuming a linear relationship (150 lbs : 1500 pounds) then the rocket car would have had only ten "tiny puffs of air" to work with. Of course, you don't need much pressure to drive a little bit of water through a couple of leaky garden hoses. But would it have been enough?

In any case, Robert Munafo seems to have cast enough doubt on the veracity of the tale to cause me to think it is fictional. (See attached file.) But nonetheless, entertaining and well written.

tanstaafl.

edit: ewwww.... the formatting of the attached file did not come out as expected. Don't bother trhing to read it -- I will respond to this post with a better formatted file!

Here's an attachment that is hopefully a bit easier to read.

tanstaafl.

Ah... Pity....But a good story it was

So now we have a debunking of the debunking of the debunking....

/Michael