Email Message Warns about Canadian Health Care

 
Friday's Urban Legend: MOSTLY FALSE

The email message begins with,

This was sent from Canada to a friend in the States.

I saw on the news up here in Canada where Hillary Clinton introduced her new health care plan. Something similar to what we have in Canada. I also heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada in his latest movie. As your friend and someone who lives with the Canada health care plan I thought I would give you some facts about this great medical plan that we have in Canada.

First of all:

1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month of $96 for Shirley and I to be covered. Sounds great eh. What they don't tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes. A large portion of that and I am not sure of the exact amount goes directly to health care our #1 expense.

Snopes.com has examined all the claims in this email message and found that most of them are without merit [Canadian Health Care]. For example, there is not a single health care plan in Canada. There are thirteen different ones, one for each province and territories. Most of them do not charge premiums but the British Columbia plan does and it would cost $96 per month for a family of two. This part of the message is partially correct.

The part about taxes is not. Here's what Snopes.com says.

The highest federal income tax rate in Canada is 29% (for persons with annual taxable income over $120,887), and the highest provincial income tax rate in British Columbia is 14.7% (for those with annual taxable incomes over over $95,909). The typical upper-income level Canadian taxpayer is not in a 55% tax bracket.

By way of comparison, a typical upper-income level American taxpayer residing in California pays a roughly equivalant share of his income (40%-45%) in combined federal and state taxes, even though the U.S. has no national health insurance program.

There are many issues concerning health care and whether the USA should adopt socialized medicine like most civilized countries. It doesn't help when people are spreading false information.

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Darwin Awards

 
Friday's Urban Legend: MOSTLY FALSE

Haver you ever received an email message like this one?

It's that time again! Yes, it's that magical time of the again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us. Here then, is the glorious winner:

Darwin Award winners:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked..... And now, the honorable mentions: ....

Did you think it was a true story? Unfortunately, these stories are about as accurate as the ones that tell you about your lottery winnings or your long-lost relative who just died and left you $350,000.

Go to snopes.com to get the inside story on the 2005 Darwin Awards and all the others.

Contrary to common belief, there is no panel of distinguished judges weighing each potential Darwin Award entry then sagely reaching agreement as to which deserves an official accolade. Darwin Awards e-mails have been circulating on the Internet at least since May 1991, with the earliest e-mails and newsgroups posts of this nature setting before posterity inventive works of fiction that had been labeled by their authors as true accounts of actual deaths. Years after the term "Darwin Award" was being used in connection with text descriptions of deaths by misadventure, a number of web sites sprung up to archive the variety of Darwin Award tales then in circulation. Those sites not only collected the fictional offerings then making the online rounds but also on their own dug up numerous true accounts of death by stupidity, thus building a vast body of such tales, some true and some not. While other sites have since faded into obscurity, one has emerged as the clear winner: www.DarwinAwards.com, a site owned and maintained by Wendy Northcutt. Ms. Northcutt has since authored three highly successful books based on her site.

The various "Annual Darwin Awards" e-mails (such as the one which is the topic of this article) do not originate with DarwinAwards.com; they are put together by unknown persons.

The cover of one of Wendy Northcutt's book is shown above. (It's the first volume.) The book lists hundreds of Darwin awards, Honorable Mentions, Urban Legends, and Personal Accounts. Many, but not all, of the valid Darwin Awards are marked "Confirmed by Darwin" to indicate that Wendy Northcutt has checked them out and they actually happened. Unfortunately, confirmation often consists of just tracking down a newspaper account that repeats the story. We all know that newspaper reporters can often be taken in by made-up stories.

They may be fake but they're still amusing. Here's one of the latest from www.DarwinAwards.com.

(21 June 2007, Philippines) Three enterprising individuals tried to make a buck by selling metal to the scrap heap. They entered a former US military complex in Clark, Pampanga, Philippines. Before them stood the prize: an abandoned water tank! Bedazzled by the profit to be made, the three gleefully abandoned logic, and began to cut the metal legs out from under the water tank. Guess where the tank fell? Straight onto the thieves. They have not yet been identified, as their bodies were severely flattened.

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A Blue Moon Is the Second Full Moon to Occur in a Single Calendar Month

 
Friday's Urban Legend: DEFINITELY FALSE, MAYBE

The term "blue moon" dates back to the middle ages where it meant something quite impossible. Over time the term came to be used in the phrase "once in a blue moon" to mean "it ain't ever going to happen" [Wikipedia: Blue Moon].

Gradually the phrase took on the meaning of something that happens rarely, instead of never. Following World War II there was an attempt to relate the term "blue moon" to a real astronomical event. The most common explanation was that a "blue moon" was the second full moon in the same calender month. The average time between two successive full moons is about 29.5 days. This means that you can have two full moons in any month except February. This will occur, on average, every two-and-a-half years. This year for example, you might have seen a "blue moon" in May, June, or July depending on where you live [The Blue Moon of 2007]. This interpretation of "blue moon" was promoted by Sky & Telespcope in 1946 and it was due to a misinterpretation of the Maine Farmer's Almanac of the preceding decade.

The Sky & Telescope website has a detailed explanation of the error [What 's a Blue Moon?].

So, if you accept the new definition of "blue moon" then the title statement is correct and this is an example of an urban myth that has transformed the meaning of a phrase. However, if you stick to the original meaning of the term then the title statement is false because a "blue moon" is about as likely as one made out of green cheese.

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[Photo Credit: The photograph of the "blue" moon is from miramiramazing]

People Living Today Outnumber all Those Who Have Died in the Past

 
Friday's Urban Legend: DEFINITELY FALSE

This month's issue of Scientific American addresses this popular myth [Fact or Fiction?: Living People Outnumber the Dead].

The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in the past century, the number of people alive today is still dwarfed by the number of people who have ever lived.

The data is supplied by Carl Haub, an expect on world demographics at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington DC (USA) [How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?].

The myth isn't as outlandish as it seems. If you look at the chart above it's not difficult to imagine that the area under the curve from 1950 - 1998 might be close to the area under the rest of the curve. (The start point—Adam & Eve in 5,000 BC is meant as a joke.) Nevertheless, Carl Haub points out that it just doesn't make sense once you start to think about it seriously. But, and this is a serious "but", nobody really knows how many people were alive in the past.

Any such exercise can be only a highly speculative enterprise, to be undertaken with far less seriousness than most demographic inquiries. Nonetheless, it is a somewhat intriguing idea that can be approached on at least a semi-scientific basis.

And semi-scientific it must be, because there are, of course, absolutely no demographic data available for 99 percent of the span of the human stay on Earth. Still, with some speculation concerning prehistoric populations, we can at least approach a guesstimate of this elusive number.

The guesstimate begins with a decision about when to start counting. Haub picks 50,000 BC as a somewhat arbitrary beginning of the human population. As it turns out, the exact start point may not matter very much since the human population was probably small for many tens of thousands of years.

The growth in human population can only be estimated by making guesses about the average life expectancy and birth rate at different points in time. Carl Haub is about as knowledgeable in this field as anyone so we can assume that his guesstimate is as good as it gets. Remember that we are interested in how many people have ever lived and this has to include children who died young as well as adults who lived to be 40 or 50 years old.

There are estimates of the number of people alive in 1AD based on the population of the Roman Empire and China. The consensus is about 300 million (45 million in the Roman Empire). By 1650 the world's population may have been close to 500 million even when you take into account the ravages of the Black Death.

Here's the bottom line. The people alive today represent about 6% of all the people who have ever lived.

Ethidium Bromide Is a Dangerous Chemical

 
Friday's Urban Legend: PROBABLY FALSE

Monday's Molecule #35 from last month was ethidium. The salt, ethidium bromide, is used as a dye to stain DNA [Ethidium Bromide Binds to DNA].

Most of us have heard that ethidium is a potent mutagen so you need to be very careful when using it in the lab. Wear gloves at all times and dispose of any excess ethidium solutions in the proper containers.

According to Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia (Canada), this may have been an overreaction to the presumed dangers of ethidium bromide [Heresy about Ethidium Bromide].

THEME

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Deoxyrobonucleic Acid (DNA)Apparently ethidium is regularly used as a drug to treat African Sleeping Sickness and it shows no significant ill effects when used at doses that are 1000 times what we use in a typical laboratory.

Crime Increases When the Moon Is Full

 
Friday's Urban Legend: False

CURRENT MOON

lunar phase

Last weekend I was in Ottawa and I read an article in The Ottawa Citizen claiming there was a link between a full moon and crime rates. This silly myth has been around for decades and it's disappointing that newspaper reporters are still promoting it. It's relatively easy to find sites that debunk all of the studies claiming to find a correlation between the phases of the moon and crime, sex, traffic accidents, and emergency room admissions.

Check out The Bad Astronomer for his latest rant [Full Moon Effect Debunked Again] or go directly to The Skeptics Dictionary for all the gory details [full moon and lunar effects].

The Aliens Are Coming

 
Friday's Urban Legend: False

			The following email message is going the rounds. ALIENS ARE COMING TO ABDUCT ALL THE GOOD LOOKING AND SEXY PEOPLE. YOU WILL BE SAFE, I'M JUST EMAILING TO SAY GOODBYE. We know it's false because I'm still here.

The Name of Buddy Holley's Airplane was "American Pie"

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

From americanpie.com.

Basic errors in American Pie interpretations have been carried forward and sometimes get reported as being fact. One of the most tedious theories of recent times is that the plane that crashed killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper was called 'American Pie'. This is wholly untrue and Don McLean released a press statement in 1999 to confirm this:

"the growing urban legend that "American Pie" was the name of Buddy Holly’s plane the night it crashed, killing him, Ritchie Valens and the Big Boppper, is untrue. I created the term." - Don McLean, 1999

For those (one or two) of you who don't know what we're talking about, here's a video that interprets the song—one of the best pop songs of all time, especially for us old fogies who actually listened to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson, Jr. (The Big Bopper).



[Hat Tip: Karmen at Chaotic Utopia]

City Lights Make Birds Sing at Night

 
Friday's Urban Legend: PROBABLY FALSE

BBC News reports that "Robins in urban areas are singing at night because it is too noisy during the day, researchers suggest" [City birds sing for silent nights].

Scientists from the University of Sheffield say there is a link between an area's daytime noise levels and the number of birds singing at night.

Until now, light pollution had been blamed because it was thought that street lights tricked the birds into thinking it was still daytime.

The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

It turns out that it's not because of night lights that the birds are singing. It's because they can't make themselves heard over the din of city traffic so they wait 'till the dead of night to start singing. That way they get to annoy everyone around them.

I wonder if that's why people talk on cell phones when they're sitting on a quiet commuter train?

They Put Nicotine in Tim Hortons Coffee

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Have you received an email message like this one?

Are you a Non- Smoker or Against smoking all together ?

Do you ever wonder why you have to have your coffee every morning?

** TIM HORTON'S SHOCKER **

A man from Arkansas came up to Canada for a visit only to find himself in the hospital after a couple of days. Doctor's told him that he had suffered of cardiac arrest. He was allergic to Nicotine. The man did not understand why that would of happened as he does not smoke knowing full well he was allergic to Nicotine. He told the doctor that he had not done anything different while he was on vacation other than having Tim Horton's coffee. The man then went back to Tim Horton's and asked what was in their coffee. Tim Horton's refuses to divulge that information. After threatening legal action, Tim Horton's finally admitted.....

*** THERE IS NICOTINE IN TIM HORTON'S COFFEE ***

A girl I know was on the patch to quit smoking. After a couple of days she was having chest pains & was rushed to the hospital. The doctor told her that she was on a Nicotine overload. She swore up & down that she had not been smoking. SHE WAS HAVING HER COFFEE EVERY MORNING.

Now imagine a women who quits smoking because she finds out that she is pregnant, but still likes to have her Tim Horton's once in a while.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE, PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG.... YOU MIGHT SEE THIS ON THE NEWS SOON.

Another version has "them" putting MSG in the coffee instead of nicotine. That's the version that I received this week from well-meaning, but not very skeptical, friends.

As usual, snoopes.com is on the case [Nicotine Non-Fit]. There is no nicotine in Tim Hortons coffee and there's no MSG either.

Killer Cellphones Destroy Bees

 
Friday's Urban Legend: Probably FALSE

An article in our local newspaper (The Toronto Star) suggests a link between the mass kill off of bees and cellular phones [Cellular phone uses linked to bee deaths]. A similar report appeared in The Independent in the UK [ Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?].

Here's the problem. There are reports in Canada and the United States of disappearing honey bees. Apparently, entire colonies are being abandoned. The phenomenon is somewhat localized. In Canada, for example, excessive bee loss is only reported in central British Columbia and the Niagara peninsula in Ontario. The phenomenon is called colony collapse disorder.

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.
.... Albert Einstein

This quote appears in several newspaper articles and on many blogs. Snopes is on to it and so far there's no proof that Einstein ever said this [Einstein on bees].We are told that "German researchers" have linked cellphone radiation to the disappearance of bees. The business reporter checked with Martin Weatherall to see if this is correct. Who is Martin Weatherall, you might ask?

Weatherall, a retired Toronto police officer who was forced out of his Woodstock, Ont., home after high levels of radio waves from nearby hydro-electric poles and cellphone towers made him electro-hypersensitive, is better able than most to understand the German study, which shows that bees refuse to return to their hive when cellphones are placed nearby.

Near the end of the story in the Toronto Star the reporter also checks with Ernesto Guzman, an expert on bees at the University of Guelph in Ontarion, Canada. Guelph is one of the top schools in veterinary medicine and agriculture.

Despite the new German research, bee researchers remain skeptical of the impact of radio waves on bees. They claim it is just one of several theories that include global warming and genetically modified crops.

"All of these are speculation. They deserve to be investigated. They are good hypotheses, some of them. Others are out of reality, in my opinion," said Ernesto Guzman, associate professor with the University of Guelph's department of environmental biology.

Guzman, a specialist in bee research, says he believes stress is the major factor in the situation south of the border while in Canada a combination of poor weather on fall food supply levels and an influx of mites is the likely cause.

Personally, I will take Guzman's word over that of a retired police officer suffering from "electro-sensitivity." If I were writing the headline it would be "Cellphone link to bee deaths discredited by expert." I guess it all depends on how you want to frame spin the article.

Bad Luck on Friday the 13th

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Having a morbid fear of Friday the 13th—paraskevidekatriaphobics—is one of the most widespread superstitious beliefs in western industrialized nations. Believe it or not, there are many people who refuse to leave their house on Friday the 13th because they fear that bad luck will befall them if they venture outside. (Apparently, the bad luck doesn't find them in their homes.)

Personally, I like the attitude of the "eccentric" (rational?) men in the photo.

Members of the Eccentric Club of London at their annual Friday the 13th lunch in 1936 – surrounded by objects that are connected with superstitions. Picture: Getty Images [Unlucky roots of Friday the 13th].

There is no evidence to support the irrational fear of Friday the 13th, with the single exception of a study published 14 years ago in the British Medical Journal [Is Friday the 13th bad for your health?]. That study showed an increase in accidents on Friday the 13th compared to Friday the 6th.

According to scholars, the fear of Friday the 13th is a recent invention. There is no mention of it before 1900 [Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky]. It seems that people simply combined a fear of the number 13—triskaidekaphobia—with an obscure dead of Fridays. Nobody knows for sure why the number 13 is considered unlucky but there are several popular myths. The most common are a Norse myth about having 13 people at dinner and a Christian myth about the Last Supper.

There is no significant historical record documenting a widespread irrational fear of Fridays although there are plenty of minor examples of Friday avoidance. Some people thought it was bad luck to be married on a Friday or to set sail on a ship. In Christian cultures the day is associated with the fact that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and Friday is the day that Adam was tempted by Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

In Canada, bikers celebrate Friday the 13th by congregating at Port Dover on the shores of Lake Erie for a few days of partying—a tradition that's been going on for 26 years [PD13].

(While searching for information on Friday the 13th I stumbled upon this Greenpeace site [Friday the 13th]. It's a perfect example of why I have stopped supporting Greenpeace after many years of donating to them. I will not support an organization that uses that kind of scare tactic to make a case against nuclear power. It's about as low as you can go. This is what I'm reminded of when I think of "framing." Perhaps the supporters of framing could explain why I'm mistaken; if, indeed, I'm mistaken.)

Your Hotel Key Card Contains Personal Information and Credit Card Numbers

 
Friday's Urband Legend: FALSE

I received this warning in an email message from a friend.

Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

Answer:
a. Customer's name
b. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner.

An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee re-issues the card to the next hotel guest.

At that time, the new guest's information is electronically "overwritten" on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is:
Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them.

Snopes debunks this urban myth at [Card Sharks].

They say,

In January 2006, Computerworld investigated the key card rumors by collecting and examining over 100 hotel card keys and found no personally identifiable information on any of them:

As part of a Computerworld investigation into the allegations, reporters and other staff members who traveled last fall brought back 52 hotel card keys over a six-week period. The cards came from a wide range of hotels and resorts, from Motel 6 to Hyatt Regency and Disney World. We scanned them using an ISO-standard card reader from MagTek Inc. in Carson, Calif. — the type anyone could buy online.

We then sent the cards to Terry Benson, engineering group leader at MagTek, for a more in-depth examination using specialized equipment. MagTek also gathered cards from its own staff. In all, 100 cards were tested.

Most cards were completely unreadable with an off-the-shelf card reader. Neither Benson nor Computerworld found any personally identifiable information on them. Based on these results, we think it's unlikely that hotel guests in the U.S. will find any personal information on their hotel card keys

We also purchased our own MagTek card scanner and have scanned several dozen magnetic room keys we acquired during our various hotel stays over the last few years and likewise found not a single key with any personal information stored on it.

Nevertheless, the rumor dies hard. In a followup report consumeraffairs.com claims that there have been instances of personal information stored on a hotel key card [Hotel Key Cards: Identity Theft Risk or Not? "Mythbusters" Aside, the Answer's Not Clear-Cut]. In some cases it's because thieves have stolen hotel key cards and entered stolen credit card information so the key cards can be used as fake credit cards. In other cases, it appears there were hotels that encoded personal information in the past. (These reports sound a lot like hearsay.)

St. Patrick Banished Snakes from Ireland

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Connie Barlow describes A St. Patrick's Day Parable.

Ireland is a land of no snakes. It has no slithering serpents. There are no rat snakes in Ireland; there are no rattlesnakes; there are no garter snakes. There are no snakes at all.

The absence of snakes in Ireland seems to cry out for an explanation — but only if one regards or ventures to the island from outside: from England, say, or from continental Europe. To the indigenous Celts, there would, of course, have been nothing to explain. The Gaelic peoples no more needed to explain an absence of snakes on their island home than they needed to explain an absence of kangaroos. To those who came to Ireland from abroad, however, a dearth of serpents was a striking anomaly in need of an answer.

We humans must have answers. And so arose the legend of St. Patrick and the snakes. The reason Ireland has no snakes, the story goes, is that Patrick charmed all snakes on the island to come down to the seashore, slither into the water, and drown. So Ireland did once have snakes, but it has them no more. Patrick charmed them all into the sea.

She goes on to explain why there are no snakes in Ireland but I prefer to swtich to the website of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park for their explanation of Why Ireland Has No Snakes.

Now snakes are found in deserts, grasslands, forests, mountains, and even oceans virtually everywhere around the world. Everywhere except Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica, that is.

One thing these few snake-less parts of the world have in common is that they are surrounded by water. New Zealand, for instance, split off from Australia and Asia before snakes ever evolved. So far, no serpent has successfully migrated across the open ocean to a new terrestrial home. As the world's oceans have risen and fallen over the millennia, land bridges have come and gone between Ireland, other parts of Great Britain, and the European mainland, allowing animals and early humans to cross. However, any snake that may have slithered it's way to Ireland would have turned into a popsicle when the ice ages hit.

The most recent ice age began about three million years ago and continues into the present. Between warm periods like the current climate, glaciers have advanced and retreated more than 20 times, often completely blanketing Ireland with ice. Snakes, being cold-blooded animals, simply aren't able to survive in areas where the ground is frozen year round. Ireland thawed out for the last time only 15,000 years ago. Since then, 12 miles of icy-cold water in the Northern Channel have separated Ireland from neighboring Scotland, which does harbor a few species of snakes. There are no snakes in Ireland for the simple reason that they can't get there.

[The book cover is from a book by Sheila MacGill Callahan (Author) and Will Hillenbrand (Illustrator). You can buy it on Amazon.com.]

Cell Phones Can Cause Death in Hospitals

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Hospital equipment unaffected by cell phone use, study finds

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Calls made on cellular phones have no negative impact on hospital medical devices, dispelling the long-held notion that they are unsafe to use in health care facilities, according to Mayo Clinic researchers.

In a study published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers say normal use of cell phones results in no noticeable interference with patient care equipment. Three hundred tests were performed over a five-month period in 2006, without a single problem incurred.

Involved in the study were two cellular phones which used different technologies from different carriers and 192 medical devices. Tests were performed at Mayo Clinic campus in Rochester.

The study’s authors say the findings should prompt hospitals to alter or abandon their bans on cell phone use. Mayo Clinic leaders are reviewing the facility’s cell phone ban because of the study’s findings, says David Hayes, M.D., of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases and a study author.

Cell phone bans inconvenience patients and their families who must exit hospitals to place calls, the study’s authors say.

The latest study revisits two earlier studies that were done ‘in vitro’ (i.e., the equipment wasn’t connected to the patients), which also found minimal interaction from cell phones used in health care facilities. Dr. Hayes says the latest study bolsters the notion that cells phones are safe to use in hospitals.

More on Reverse PIN Numbers

 
Last January 5th I posted a article about an urban legend claiming you could reverse your PIN number at an ATM to summon police [Reverse PIN at ATM Summons Police]. The idea is that whenever you are being held hostage and forced to withdraw money from your ATM account all you have to do is key in the reverse of your PIN number. The money will be dispensed but police will be called to rescue you. This is, of course, an urban legend. No such system exists at any ATM's.

Today I get a comment on that thread from a man named Joe Zinger who claims to have invented the reverse PIN number. If you follow the link given by Joe Zingher to ATM Safety PIN you will be re-directed to Zi Cubed Inc. where you learn that Joe Zingher is located in Gurnee, Illinois. I assume that he wants to make money from his "invention" but I can't imagine how he's going to do that even if it were desirable.

Here's Joe's comment (in yellow).

I’m Joe Zingher, the inventor of the ReversePIN system referred to on this website. There’s a great deal of disinformation about the system and it’s usefulness put out by magazines, official government agencies and banking industry. For instance, Forbes magazine claims that IBM holds an emergency PIN patent of its own. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4086277/ and I’m somehow trapped in a life and death struggle with them. Contact Forbes and ask them what the IBM patent number is. They refuse to tell me.

Nobody cares whether IBM has a patent on reversing your PIN number. Nobody cares whether you do—unless you're going to be taking money from us in the form of royalties. The important point is the "disinformation" that's out there (and below) and the "usefullness" of the scheme.

The Illinois Office of Banks and Real Estate issued an official report claiming that the system requires some kind of “physical reconfiguration” of the ATM or “hardware changes” http://www.obre.state.il.us/Agency/news/atmrpt.htm The author of the report claims that it was a lawyer who told him this. He claims that at the time he wrote it, he was under the impression that it needs “new data transmission lines to handle the more intelligent communications.” I guess if you discuss the Chicago Cubs on the telephone, you use one type of telephone line, but if you’re discussing quantum physics, you have to use a different, special kind of telephone line. This is obviously incorrect to anyone who has had even a single course in computer programming.

Yes, it it so obviously incorrect that one wonders why you even bother to mention it. But that doesn't mean that the cost is negligible. As the study you referenced [ATM Report] pointed out, the system requires a complex interaction of several databases.

ATM card issuers typically issue one PIN to a customer. Under the Zi Cubed system, customers are assigned an emergency second PIN which is usually the reverse of their original number. For example, if 1234 were an individual’s PIN, then the emergency PIN would be 4321. If the PIN were 2442, then the emergency could be 4224. If the emergency PIN is entered, presumably during a robbery, the ATM processing main computer sends a distress message to the local police department. In addition to the location of the ATM, police could find out who the customer was with information taken from the customer’s bank account records. Police could also access a description of the customer from the Secretary of State’s Drivers’ Services Division. By the time police reach the ATM they would know who the customer is, what s/he looks like, and where s/he lives.

... conversion to this system requires a significant commitment in resources to writing new computer software programs that recognize the reverse PIN and then make multiple complex decisions. Currently, ATMs communicate with banks and make what are termed "binary" (i.e., simple "yes/no") decisions concerning the account and transaction information. Under the reverse PIN system, the main computer must: (a) determine and communicate with the police station closest to the ATM; (b) the computer must communicate with the bank account of the cardholder and obtain account information that is usually confidential and protected (this process is more complicated if the ATM is not from the accountholder’s bank); and, (c) the main computer must then also communicate with the Secretary of State’s office for driver license information.

I can see a number of problems here but they aren't really of much concern for the moment because the main problem is that the whole idea is just plain stupid.

So why isn’t the system in place then? The vast majority of the public seems to like it a lot.

The main reason why it's not in place is mentioned in the opening section of the Illinois State report. Here it is, in case you missed it ...

Although there is no precise data on ATM crime, violent crime against ATM users is relatively rare. Over the decade of the 1990s, ATM crime has actually decreased from approximately one crime per one million ATM transactions to one crime per 3.5 million transactions. At the same time, the use of ATMs has significantly increased. Nevertheless, public perception of significant crime at ATMs exists.

That's a polite way of saying that the crime you're trying to prevent isn't significant enough to warrant preventative action. Implementing a code to summon police on the remote chance that it could help in the extremely rare situations where it arose is just not worth it. It's about as silly as making everyone take off their shoes in an airport or requiring passports at the Canadian border.

An analysis of the reverse PIN warning system is specifically requested by Resolution No. 134. The reverse PIN system attempts to utilize current technology to provide law enforcement with the immediate location and background information concerning a potential victim. However, a consumer may be under too much emotional stress to properly utilize the system, the system would be tremendously costly to implement both as to hardware and software requirements, quick response by police is not guaranteed, and no evidence exists that the reverse PIN system would actually reduce crime.

In order for the system to be effective an awful lot of things have to happen in a timely manner. One of these is compliance by the victim. That means the victim has to be convinced that summoning police won't cause them harm.

Given that the disease for which you are proposing a cure is extremely rare and that your cure probably won't work, I suggest you look for another way to make money from the general public.

Well, I am not the authorized spokesman for the US banking industry, but here’s a short list of the claims I’ve heard about my system and why it’s not being used.

1) “An international treaty forbids it from being adopted. This treaty sets the technical standards for ATM transactions.” Actually, there’s no such treaty. It sounds like a great explanation though and one that the layman might buy.

2) “You’d have to issue all new ATM cards, costing $5 each to put the system in place. The system is terribly expensive and not worth it.” This is false too. You don’t change the card at all. All that is done is a small change in the PIN verification section of the code. This can be either at the ATM as part of the normal software upgrades or at the main link where the PIN verification software is. The invention is “transparent” to the existing software.

3) “Who could remember their ReversePIN with a gun at their neck at the ATM? It won’t work.” This is misleading because it defines a DIFFERENT crime than the one intended to be deterred. The crime pattern begins as a hostage taking in a carjacking from a parking lot or during a home invasion; the victim is then taken to an ATM and forced to make a withdrawal; then the victim is taken elsewhere, executed and the body hidden so that no one will cancel the card. There’s a LOT of lag time between the initial assault and the first withdrawal for the victim to get their wits about them. Further, EVEN PEOPLE WHO CANNOT USE THE SYSTEM BENEFIT from it. The criminal cannot know what is going on until it is too late. The goal is to get him to grab the money and run, and leave the hostage behind and hopefully unhurt. Moreover, there will be some people who can always use the system and that means they generate an umbrella of deterrence for the rest of society. Since the criminal can’t know for sure before the attack begins, does the attack ever begin?

Number 3 is the only one of these that's worth discussing. You make two claims here. They are typical examples of irrational thinking. The first is standard hype whenever you are trying to scare people into parting with their money. You construct a hypothetical scenario that serves your purpose then you hope that people won't notice how rare it is. In this case, the number of times when hostages are forced to withdraw money is so infrequent that it barely counts in crime statistics. The second claim is that when banks buy your system, crime will be deterred. What crime? Are you talking about the case where a criminal has taken someone hostage and intends to kill them when they have withdrawn a few hundred dollars from their ATM? Do you really think that a criminal like that is going to be deterred on the off chance that a cop car might show up at the ATM before they get away?

4) “If our state makes it mandatory, that means some customer from out of state won’t be able to use the ATM at all.” Why on earth would you program the computer that way? That’s just stupid.

5) “What if your PIN in reverse is someone else’s regular PIN? It would shut down the system.” Excuse me, but your PIN is already being used by at least tens of thousands of other people already. The PIN is connected to the bank account number and the bank identification number. Think about it. From “0000” to “9999” there are only 10,000 possible variations on a four-digit PIN. There are over two hundred million ATM cards in the US alone. (A PIN like 2442 is handled by the “Inside-OutPIN 4224 and a PIN like 7777 is handled by the “Plus-1PIN” 8888. Get the idea here?)

The list of ridiculous claims is just too long. And they keep changing. What does it tell you when “experts” keep coming up with different false claims about the system?

It tells me that those "experts" are stupid. On the other hand, your claims aren't much better.

By the way, to be an ACTUAL expert in the technical aspects of it, you need to have some background in computer programming, say an associate’s degree.

Hmmm ... I'm just taking a wild guess here; do you happen to have an "associate's degree" in computer programing (whatever that is)?

So what’s the real reason it’s not being used? All their answers are different. That in itself should tell you something. Here’s a thought. If you’re the head of marketing at a bank, how many of these murders per year involving your ATMs makes you jump up and down yelling “HOORAY!!! We only had “X” murders this year that involved our customers being kidnapped and forced to make ATM withdrawals”? I think that is where the root of the problem lies.

BINGO! I think you've hit upon the answer. The Bank will have lost a customer but they make up for it by not having to repay the forced withdrawal. I imagine the entire corporate headquarters celebrates with champagne all around whenever an ATM customer is murdered. If it's a big bank, you wonder how they ever get any work done at the headquarters.

Aspartame Is Poisonous

Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

The idea that aspartame is poison is widespread—much more common than most rational people would care to admit. You can hear people whispering about the dangers of aspartame in the coffee shops and on the commuter trains. If you believe what they're saying then aspartame is one of the most poisonous products that has ever been foisted on the public by unscrupulous international corporations. It's part of a vast conspiracy to murder innocent citizens in the name of corporate profit. This sort of thing is just a small part of a growing belief in all kinds of irrational, superstitious nonsense that threatens to make a mockery of science.

Here's a typical claim from a site called "Ethical Investing" (sic).

The artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, NatraTaste, Canderel) is without question the most toxic and health-destroying "food" sold to consumers. The number of people who have recognized toxicity reactions or damage from chronic aspartame ingestion is well over one million people in the U.S. (based on the reported toxicity reactions divided by the estimated reporting rate). While many people's health has already been destroyed by this product, the more serious concern is the long-term nervous system damage, immune system damage, and irreversible genetic damage known to be caused by aspartame's metabolite, formaldehyde. Formaldehyde can cause severe health problems at exceptionally low levels of exposure.

Here's another, from a website called "The Light Party."

Diet Coke is poison. And it's addictive, some victims drink several liters a day and keep it on their nightstands. If Coke changes the formula to remove aspartame the world will heal and the surge of hatred and vengeance by the disabled and bereaved shall certainly destroy Coca Cola.

The poison in Diet Coke is aspartame. As a member of the National Soft Drink Association Coke opposed FDA approval of aspartame for beverages. their objections, running to several pages published in the Congressional Record of 5/7/85, said aspartame is uniquely and inherently unstable and breaks down in the can. It decomposes into formaldehyde, methyl alcohol, formic acid, diketopiperazine and other toxins. In a study on 7 monkeys 5 had grand mal seizures and one died, a casualty rate of 86%.

This is all nonsense. The false claims are countered by dozens of scientific studies that show no adverse effects of aspartame. Snopes.com has a summary at Kiss My Aspartame.

[In a sop to the superstitious, you can also buy Diet Coke sweetened with SPLENDA®]

Can Your Dog Die of Chocolate?

 
Friday's Urban Legend: PARTLY TRUE

Will your dog die if it eats chocolate? No, not unless it eats a lot of chocolate. It's true that chocolate contains theobromine and in high doses this can be lethal to dogs. However, according to an article in Scientific American (Fact or Fiction: Chocolate Is Poisonous to Dogs) ...

A small dog should be belly-up after eating a handful M&M's, at least according to conventional wisdom. But watching "Moose," a friend's five-pound Chihuahua, race around a living room after his sweet snack makes one wonder: Is chocolate truly poisonous to dogs? ....

The hazard, however, is probably overblown, says Tim Hackett, a veterinarian at Colorado State University. Chocolate's danger to dogs depends on its quantity and quality. Large dogs can usually handle a small amount of chocolate whereas the same helping could cause problems for Moose and his pint-size kin....

Around every confection-centered holiday—Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas—at least three or four dogs are hospitalized overnight in the animal medical center at Colorado State. But in 16 years as an emergency and critical care veterinarian, Hackett has seen just one dog die from chocolate poisoning, and he suspects it may have had an underlying disease that made it more vulnerable to chocolate's heart-racing effect.

It's probably better to be safe than sorry. If you have a dog then it's a good idea to remove all chocolate from the house. If you have a dog and a wife/girlfriend then you have to make a hard choice.

How to Save Yourself in a Falling Elevator

 
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE

Imagine the cable on your elevator breaks and you're in free fall for ten stories. What do you do? Maybe you should wait until the elevator is just about to hit the ground then jump up as high as you can?

Photos of Gol 737 Mid-Air Accident

 
Friday's Urban Legend from About: Urban Legends and Folklore.

This photograph is supposed to have been taken from inside a plane that has just been involved in a mid-air collision. The plane crashes and everyone on board is killed. The photo was recovered from a digital camera at the crash site.

Status: FALSE This is a hoax. The photos are from the opening scene of Lost.