Show THE OGDEN STANDARD EXAMINER —SUNDAY MORNING JANUARY 5' 1936 gwg o n ® V O § I 77 At) IT M I t 1 1 M Ilk o i t I ii 4 "ijp"'' H' V V a As for the Soviet Union there are 180 races speaking 150 distinct languages It is the strangeness of the moving object rather than its Psychologists have found redness which enrages the that brunets can be as at successful bull gold-di- g ging as blonds By Madelin Blitzstein i We chuckle at our ancestors Tor thinking the earth was flat but hold on smarty while we quiz you on Ethiopia's climate fat men athletes and Soviet Russia's language it ever occurred to you that any day in the week you are I HAS to and believing a num- -t facts which really ber of : aren't tacts at all? And have you ever stopped to consider that i you yourself pass on to your neighbors and your children as common knowledge a host xi conclusions that are completely unscientific ? We are apt to speak contemptuously of our ancestors who thought the world was flat and so were afraid to sail westward tor tear of j falling off the edge and we chuckle over the medicine men of Henry VI I I'i time who declared they could reduce swelling of the legs by applying a plaster cora-- l pounded of marshmallow proofs linseed malmsey wine white wine oil of roses coral pow- dered gold and silver Yet today at a time when Ethiopia u a topic of conversation at: every dinner table don't most of us believe that it is a country where the heat is intense all year "round : don't we picture the Sahara as one vast sand dune when there are so many contradictory opinions about life in the Soviet Union don't we ac--i cept it as a fact that the Land of the Sickle l inhabited by Russians who and the Hammer-iall speak one mother tongue? The startling truth is that every one of these popular beliefs is as wrong as a host of others which we call facts The climate of Ethiopia varies greatly the Sahara is not a sand desert but a stony windswept region of most irregular surface with numerous oases rocky plateaus valleys and the Union of Socialist Soviet f pebble tracts is inhabited by an extraordinary Republics of and races variety peoples each with its own ancient traditions and language or dialect so-call- If ed f S w — t f V ZLJ -- red-hea- ds I good-natured- ly A" 4? Psychological tests have shown that fat men can be quite as mean as skinny onesv s though most of the country lies in the tropics the uplands are cool b the summer and bleak in winter While deep low valleys are con - ducive to tropical fevers the climate in the is Alpine m character mountains higher exPicturing the Sahara as a huge sea-lik- e is as popular a misconception as that panse In eality the Sahara is a about Ethiopia region of most irregular surface ranging from 100 feet below to as much as 8000 feet above sea level: m the Ahaggar plateau similar to the Alp m area there are snow-cappe- d peaks from December to Mafth And what ts even more surprising since Jie Sahara contains the skeleton ot a river system it is possible to tap indergrbund reservoirs by artesian welts and get pure water French engineers employing this method since 1856 have managed to fertilize large tracts by harBesides moisture nessing the underground these tracts there are oases where grain and the greatest amount of misappre-hensiohave been built around cures tor bodily ills and there are almost as many false ideas about cures and foods today as there ever t " xrv were There is no truth in the platitude that fish is brain food developing keen wits that appendicitis comes from eating fruit seeds that milk should not be eaten at the same meal' with fish that veal is more difficult to digest than chicken or that eating fruit brings on rheumatism Nor is eating powdered glass a dangerous pastime Not long ago a New York gentleman of suicidal intent devoured six broken electric lamps and suffered practically no ill effects Has anyone told you recently that you don't look well that you are aging rapidly that the only thing for you to do is get out in the open air and take a lot of exercise? Well if you've been perturbed by such advice listen to this When Senator William Maxwell Evarts the famous Boston attorney who was President Johnson's chief counsel m his impeachment trial was asked at the age ot 62 what it was that had kept him mentally and physically alert over such a long period of "1 dont know unless it years he answered 1 is because never take any exercise" And the life insurance companies bear out Senator Evarts theoTy While we think of athletes' as the healthiest members ot the community no 'life insurance company considers an athlete professional or amateur as a preferred risk They give ncWnsu ranee at all to wrestlers p'rize fighters or jockeys limit swimmers and bicyclists to $10000 and on rare occasions grant a $25000 policy to a professional football or hockey player The little man who sits behind an office desk or in a library all day and never gets a chance to indulge in a game of tennis or a round of golf can get as much insurance as he likes When Dr Louis Dublin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company made a study of college athletes he found that tuberculosis was the most frequent cause ot death with pneuAnd be also discovered that monia following of 315 college athletes who died after 45 101 had died of heart failure 8 per cent greater (han in the caso of average men pERHAPS ns oft-repeat- ed r "VTOU see the greater part ot Ethiopia con- trary to what most ot us have been told has a healthful and temperate climate and What's more even when mainly other dogs a dog can not possibly swallow because his throat is completely paralyzed by rabies he will still stick his head into a pail of watei in an attempt to quench his great thirst Just as erroneous as the belief about "mad" dogs and water are those about lightning never striking twice the sun being nearer to the earth in the summertime porcupines "shooting" their quills and baldness resulting from wearing a hat constantly or taking too many showers Lightning if the truth is told strikes in the same place very often tall buildings like the Empire State have been struck dozens of times and the Eiffel Tower was hit as many as six times during one storm Baldness is hereditary porcupines never shoot" their quills but sometimes lose them when they are in close contact with a person or another animal and the sun is really farther away from the earth in the summertime We have our warmer weather during June July and August because the earth's axis is then tilted and the northern hemisphere is In the winter when tipped toward the sun tilted we are away from the sun the southern hemisphere has its hot season the way from ing afraid to sleep in the moonlight' curing wafts by tying knots in a believing string what a mother looks at during pregnancy has an effect upon her unborn child being certain that red enrages a bull more A New York gentleman of suicidal Intent devoured six than any other broken electric lamps with practically no ill effects color to thinking that all have quick tempers that beauty and brains fruits are grown and mammals thrive Thus the truth is that only a small fraction are seldom combined that fat people are good-naturcovered is desert and that brunets are more trustoi the enormous by rolling wave-lik- e sand dunes of the type we always worthy than blonds see in moving pictures about the Foreign Legion old fables tell of the controlling As Jor the Soviet Union there are 180 SINCE races there speaking 150 distinct languages power of the moon jver reason many perOt course the Russians themselves make up sons still think that the moon's rays when dihalt the population with the Ukrainians comrected on a pillow can make the sleeper lose his mental powers and become an idiot prising" another 50000000 but there are innumerable ' small ethnological groups like the Warts for some reason have long been Soiots the Black Tatars the Dolgans the buried underneath many false assumptions not Negidals the Orochi the Samogiry the Chu-vant- si only do they not appear as a result ot handling the Ainy the Berbers the Oirots the toads (they are merely tumorous growths) but Didoi the Kemshiny and the 1 avliman who they can not be removed as many people suphave survived" without being absorbed in spite pose by tying as many knots in a string as ot the tact that not one of them numbers more there are warts to be taken oft and then burying than 1000 today the string at the crossroads by the light of the Doctors can remove warts by means of Certainly our misconceptions are not at all moon confined to foreign lands They include all an electric cautery kinds ot everyday occurrences and extend all Though medical men have been persistently (Coprrlsrht 1928 by EvryWk &Iasr&zin) that red-hea- v ed -- ds telling the world that a mother can not change the appearance or the ability of her unborn baby by what she looks at or listens to during the time of pregnancy this bit ot ancient folklore continues to be popular throughout the world Expectant mothers frequent museums and gaze upon statues oj handsome Greek gods in the hope that their babies will become Adonises they go to concerts and listen to Bach and Beethoven because they want their infants to grow up to be musical geniuses and they read books about saintly characters so that their babies may have beauty of soul Though psychology tests have shown that college students believe that red angers a bull the truth is that it is the strangeness of the moving object rather than its redness which enAs a matter of tact it has rages 'the animal been proved that white rags made bulls angrier j than red ones Psychologists have also found that many are calm? that beauty and brains are often found together that fat men and women can be as mean as skinny ones and that brunets as blonds can be as successful at red-hea- ds gold-diggi- ng you believe that dogs with hydrophobia IF afraid of water you are ail wrong are In the early stages of the disease a dog with rabies laps water eagerly as the disease progresses he is made! miserable because he cannot drink all the iwater he wants due to a throat constriction that prevents him from swallowing iit is with a that dog Just how untrue hydrofrom tact the be seen fears can water phobia that "mad" dogs have been known to lord streams and swim rivers to attack other animals 1 llOllltlDfjllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllOllllllilllllllllllllii'' illlllllllllllllilOllllllllllllllllli" 'uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiraiiiiiiiiH I SJ |