It never ceases to amaze me the kinda stuff the floats around the internet by email. The legend of the fish above is that it is a man eating “catfish”. In fact, it is a small whale shark that eats plankton and would never even try to eat a human. Every day something new comes by that is proported to be some factual thing or another. Most are completely bogus.

The recent article in the NY Times regarding Sen. John McCain’s affair with a lobbyist is a form of “urban legend” that has made the mainstream. Anybody with Goggle can find this website and this article and spread it like a virus through the internet.

I recently sat in on a meeting where somebody made a comment that was outrageously false. Sitting behind them was a reporter who was taking very careful notes. Had that information been reported as fact, it could have spread on the internet and nobody would have known that it was completely fabricated. Every day I learn a new lesson on the power of the web - for good and bad.