“Interesting fact about 2010: This August has 5 Sundays, 5 Mondays, 5 Tuesdays, all in one month. It happens once in 823 years!”
An old friend posted that supposed fact on his Facebook page a while back, but the assertion of rarity is NOT TRUE. I apologize for yelling those last two words, but I wanted to make sure you heard because we have an obvious tendency to believe whatever is printed.
After I commented to his post and pointed out ... gently, for sure ... that it was erroneous and added that the “rare” event actually occurs an average of every seven years, my friend confessed that he knew it was not true and just wanted to see who would catch it. We had a laugh about it.
It may have backfired on him, though, because even after a handful of people traded comments about the error that’s been flitting around the Internet, another of his friends posted, “Thanks for sharing this unusual fact!” One can only hope she did not repost it on her page.
Another friend of mine, this one a retired journalist who should have known better than believe whatever he reads, posted the same item last week. Again, I corrected it but this time without response from him. However, two hours later, another friend of his posted, “I tweeted this, thanks. Got more?”
And so it goes.
Once something like that gets started, it’s hard to stop. Just ask Barack Obama. The Christian Science Monitor published an interesting story the other day under the headline, “Why is it so hard for Obama to shake the Muslim myth?”
The root of the story is a recent poll that shows (if you’re willing to believe polls, which I find increasingly difficult to do) more Americans today believe Obama is Muslim than did prior to his election. This even though Obama continually says he is Christian and even generated scandal because of his Christian minister.
Why do they believe ... or “know” ... Obama is Muslim? Because they heard or read it was true. Not unlike those who think the August 2010 calendar is something special. Origins of the two stories are different, though, because while those who generate distrust of the president’s religious beliefs have a desire to undermine him, those who fabricated the calendar myth were just being mean.
The Monitor article sought an explanation in a recent university study in which subjects read fake news stories with misleading claims from politicians. When shown corrections to the stories, many people did not believe the updated version.
To no surprise, they were even more likely to cling to the original if it conformed to their ideologies. Indeed, in some cases the correction efforts caused them to cling even more tightly to the original story. I suppose they thought the corrections were part of some conspiracy.
Any of this sound familiar? Hints: Hawaii, birth certificate.
The lesson here is not to accept what you hear without checking it out, especially if it (a) sounds amazing or (b) confirms what you want to believe. The second one is most difficult to catch.
By the way, the planet Mars does not “look as large as the full moon” this week ... that was in 2003 and someone apparently thought it would be fun to make people lose sleep to look for something that is not really there.
(c) 2010 by Steve Martaindale
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