Fascinating Facts and Fallacies About You and Your World

Our world usually consists of us, our family, work, sleep and everything else in between. It is both what happens in between our ears and what happens between us and the outside world. We usually feel we have a pretty good grasp of reality. We can get comfortable knowing how the world works, but here is the rub, we can and do make bad choices and bad decisions that waste effort, time and money because what we assume is true is in fact not true. That is where this book comes in. A lot of what we hear others say, what you see when you look on television and read on the internet is often just opinion, not facts. Occasionally, what we think is just someone's opinion is in fact real. But more often it seems what you hear or read is all too often just made up.

This book is designed to provide truthful, useful and surprising information, not faulty assumptions or misleading statements. Bad information can produce bad decisions and wasted effort. So what you will find in this book is that every fact in the book is referenced. If you doubt the information you can check the source. If you doubt the source look it up yourself.So there you have it, within these pages you will find common fallacies and the facts that can help you make smarter personal, family and work decisions. But the book is not simply about getting better information. Sometimes it is just the experience of learning something new and surprising, things that make you say, Oh, my gosh can that be true? Yes, it is, that’s a fact!

Despite what many might think, all the following statements are false. If you doubt it, look inside the book:
• People on welfare are lazy and sit at home collecting money while the rest of us work to support them.
• Safe Sex is a more important issue to Americans than environmental issues. (it’s the opposite)
• The single biggest type of waste entering landfills is plastic ,paper or diapers (it’s food)
• The U.S. is losing is competitive edge in production of manufacturing goods. (no, we’re doing fine)
• China can hold the U.S. hostage over the debt we owe them.( they would be cutting their own throat)
On the other hand, there are also things about our world that may be hard to believe but are true.

The Truth is:
• Simply expecting a medicine to work will make it work, even if you know it's a fake medicine.
• Want to make a lot of money? Surprisingly, it is better to work for someone else than work for yourself.
• Undocumented immigrants contributed more - much more - to the national treasury last year than General Electric.
• About 55 percent of all Americans believe that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs (half-jokingly referred to as the Fred Flintstone Factor).Science education anyone?
• Co-workers, with a nasty disposition, do affect your life expectancy.
• Obesity can be contagious. Viruses may actually cause some obesity.
• Allergy sufferers are far less likely to contract cancer than anyone else.
• Laughter can be used to help treat diabetes, stress, heart disease and a host of other ills.
• Want to know why kids act like they do? Parents spend 40 percent less time with their children than in 1965.
• The average woman can expect to spend more years caring for her mother than for her children.
• About 1 in 7 U.S. adults can't read, so I guess they wouldn't know this fact.
• One in five public school students is an immigrant
• 99.5 percent of all fresh water on Earth is in icecaps and glaciers.
• There are estimates that up to one-third of what Americans spend on medical care are unnecessary.

So take a look inside and learn some surprising facts about the world around you.