上班族必備軟實力

[There is something to be said for the wisdom of the ages.]

Many old wives’ tales that are sort of true, even if they are not exactly correct. These are modern myths. They try to explain things that we do not understand. Many of these come from the days when many Americans were settlers in a wild, new world and just trying to survive. Many people never went to school and they only had these tales to guide them in life.

One old wives’ tale states that lightning never strikes the same place twice. There is no reason for this to be true except for the fact that the Earth is so big that the odds of lightning hitting the same place twice within a time span that anyone would notice are so small that you can get away with thinking that it would never hit any one place multiple times. The lightning rod on the top of Taipei 101 must get hit often. (Many times a day, the Internet said.)

“Bounty is the quicker picker upper.” That one was going around the television before there was an Internet. They even had videos that showed the paper towels ‘actually’ soaking up spills. There were many gullible people who believed it. Many paper towels were sold.
 

<That paper towels are not all the same is a myth, I think.>

Another old wives’ tale says that cold air can give a person a cold. This is not true. Colds are caused by microscopic organisms that get in our bodies. It is a good idea to keep warm in the wintertime, but a sterile environment will be more effective against disease. Frequent hand washing is important.

Some tales about snow say that it can be too cold to snow. They say that “if the snowflakes are big, it will stop snowing soon”, and “small flakes indicate a longer snowfall”. I don’t know of any valid scientific data for these old wives’ tales about snow. They may be true, they may not be, but you just can’t say something and expect it to be so. We must experiment if we want to find the truth. (If you don’t want to do the experimentation and observation, you can always use Google.)

“Shaving makes hair become thicker.” This one is false. The regrown hair just seems thicker because you have cut off the delicate tops of the hairs. Each individual human hair will naturally fall out and a new one will grow in its place. The new hair is delicate and thin at first and then it gets thicker as it grows. The thin top of the hair won’t reappear until the old hair falls out and is replaced by new, uncut hair. So cutting the hair did not have an affect on how the hair grows.

There are many others: Don't swallow gum or it will stay in your stomach for seven years. Don't make silly faces or your face will freeze like that. These old sayings will only affect us if we let them, they say. Thank you for reading.