The De-Textbook

by Cracked. com

  It’s always possible that your doctor will notice something terrible before you do, but most diseases can’t be detected by your doctor until symptoms start showing up. Plus, there’s the danger of false positives: The human body is actually full of things that look like tumors on a scan result, but if none of them are growing tentacles and slithering around your arteries, investigating every one of them just leads to unnecessary scalpel-stabbing. And just in general, you don’t want to be at the hospital if you don’t absolutely have to be: Anywhere from forty-four thousand to ninety-eight thousand Americans die each year because of something they caught in the hospital, which is more than either motor vehicle crashes or breast cancer.

  Safety Equipment: We Have Nothing to Fear but Not Fearing for Our Lives

  THE MYTH: Safety equipment makes you, y’know . . . safer.

  THE TRUTH: Safety equipment turns you into a reckless maniac.

  It’s something called the Peltzman effect: “the hypothesized tendency of people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behavior, offsetting some or all of the benefit of the regulation.”

  It’s not just a wild theory: The Highway Loss Data Institute bore it out in its ten-year antilock brakes study. Its research showed that a person in an ABS vehicle actually has a 45 percent greater chance of dying in a single-vehicle crash than someone without ABS. Science’s explanation? Unskilled drivers drive more aggressively thanks to their false sense of security.

  The same thing happened in 2006, when a researcher in Bath, England, posted the results of a study showing that people in cars are more likely to hit bicyclists wearing safety equipment such as helmets. Motorists drove an average of 3.35 inches closer to the test bike when the rider was protected. The sight of safety gear apparently turns off the brains of nearby drivers. Either that, or the test subject looked really, terribly, murderously dorky in his helmet.

  FIGURE 8.12 Still a bad idea, even in a Volvo.

  The Weirdly Arbitrary Decision to Kill Yourself

  THE MYTH: Whether to kill yourself is the most important decision you make in life, other than who to marry and what your high school yearbook quote is. Suicide is a big deal, and most of us assume that people who kill themselves recognize this fact.

  THE TRUTH: Statistics show that most suicides are caused by a temporary fart of the soul that would have passed if the victims had just given their brain a night or two to air out.

  The British coal-gas story is famous among suicide experts, whose children tend not to invite them to career day. For the first half of the twentieth century, the preferred method of suicide in Britain was to stick one’s head in the oven, where the coal gas delivered a swift, fatal dose of CO2. When the British government transitioned to a more efficient fuel that, as a happy coincidence, couldn’t kill you, the suicide rate for the entire country dropped by a third, and it has stayed there ever since.

  A similar thing happened in the state of Washington, where jumping suicides were cut in half by raising the guardrails on one bridge. At the Golden Gate Bridge—the world’s most popular suicide destination—515 people were grabbed by cops in mid-suicide attempt between the years of 1937 and 1971. A researcher in the late ’70s tracked these troubled souls down and found that only 6 percent had gone on to actually kill themselves. In other words, 94 percent of a random sampling of suicidal people only needed to be saved from themselves in that specific moment.

  This isn’t to deny that there are people in the world who have profoundly difficult problems. It just indicates that many of the ones who try to kill themselves only want to do it for a brief window of time. So if you’re thinking of doing something drastic, it’s probably a temporary trick of the mind. Sleep on it. It’s amazing what a night of sleep can do for you. In fact, sleep is so amazing that science can’t even explain what it is, or why or how you do it. The world is crazy like that. It’s terrifying and weird and bewildering sometimes, but rest assured, it is those things to everyone, even the people who pretend they’re “over it.” It is also a magnificent, whirling ball of colors that haven’t been invented yet, and emotions that can’t be explained, and forests that vibrate with mystery, full of animals that are miracles of efficiency and murder and sex and survival, and you get to be one of them.

  Image Credits

  CHAPTER 1: HEALTH AND ANATOMY

  Here Shutterstock

  Here Kitty Brown

  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here Steve Stankiewicz

  CHAPTER 2: BIOLOGY

  Here Adam Moore, Randall Maynard, iStockphoto

  Here, here, here Barbara Gibson

  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Francisco Perez

  Here, here Steve Stankiewicz

  Here Randall Maynard, Shutterstock

  CHAPTER 3: WORLD HISTORY

  Here Randall Maynard, Shutterstock, public domain

  Here, here Randall Maynard, public domain

  Here Monique Wolf, Shutterstock

  Here public domain

  Here, here, here, here, here Barbara Gibson

  Here Sean O’Neill

  Here, here Dan Campagna

  Here Adam Huntley

  Here Jacques-Louis David, public domain

  Here Kitty Brown, unknown artist, public domain

  Here, here, here public domain

  Here, here, here Glenn Phenecie, public domain

  Here, here, here, here Heinrich Hoffman, public domain

  Here unknown artist, public domain

  Here unknown artist, public domain

  Here source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FardierdeCugnot20050111.jpg

  Here Randall Maynard

  Here Glenn Phenecie

  Here Titian, public domain

  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here public domain

  Here iStockphoto

  Here, here Flavio Bolla

  CHAPTER 4: SEX EDUCATION

  Here, here Brendan McGinley, Glenn Phenecie, Shutterstock

  Here Getty Images

  CHAPTER 5: PHYSICS

  Here Francisco Perez

  Here Getty Images

  Here, here, here Steve Stankiewicz

  Here Glenn Phenecie, public domain photo

  Here, here, here public domain

  Here, here, here Randall Maynard, Steve Stankiewicz

  Here, here Glenn Phenecie, Shutterstock

  CHAPTER 6: U.S. HISTORY

  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here Barbara Gibson

  Here, here Glenn Phenecie, Shutterstock, public domain

  Here, here Glenn Phenecie

  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here public domain

  Here Glenn Phenecie, Shutterstock

  Here, here, here, here Dan Campagna

  Here, here Kitty Brown, public domain

  Here, here Steve Stankiewicz

  Here Charles Willson Peale, public domain

  Here Randall Maynard, Shutterstock

  Here, here Randall Maynard, public domain

  Here, here MGM

  Here Getty Images

  CHAPTER 7: NUTRITION

  Here Kitty Brown

  Here Glenn Phenecie

  Here, here, here Steve Stankiewicz

  Here Monique Wolf

  CHAPTER 8: PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

  Here, here, here Glenn Phenecie

  Here, here Randall Maynard, Shutterstock

  Here, here Steve Stankiewicz

  Here, here Glenn Phenecie, Shutterstock

  Here Shutterstock

  Here Corbis

  Here, here Getty Images

  1 Author’s Note: This is nothing at all like making love.

  Table of Contents

  The Authors

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION: A Brief Recap of Your Squandered Education

 
; CHAPTER 1: HEALTH AND ANATOMY

  1: Welcome to Your Body! Here’s Some Bullshit We Made Up About It

  CHAPTER 2: BIOLOGY

  2.A: Jurassic Myth

  2.B: The Animal Conspiracy

  CHAPTER 3: WORLD HISTORY

  3.A: The Greatest Story Ever Withheld

  3.B: Miscast Stars of World History

  3.C: History Doesn’t March Forward

  3.D: History Had Sex

  3.E: Fictional Scenes from History

  CHAPTER 4: SEX EDUCATION

  4: Sex and Relationship Advice

  CHAPTER 5: PHYSICS

  5.A: Science Is Bluffing

  5.B: The Laws of Physics

  5.C: Miscast Stars of Physics

  5.D: Practical Physics

  CHAPTER 6: U.S. HISTORY

  6.A: America’s Origin Story

  6.B: Miscast Stars of U.S. History

  6.C: American Wars

  6.D: Fictional Scenes from U.S. History

  CHAPTER 7: HEALTH AND NUTRITION

  7.A: Everything You Know About Food

  CHAPTER 8: PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

  8.A: Your Brain’s Misleading User’s Manual

  8.B: Lies Your Brain Naturally Tells You

  8.C: Highly Implausible Causes of Death

  8.D: What Should Scare You Instead

  Credits