The advent of the internet has given new life to a lot of old wives' tales and urban legends. With so much information (and disinformation) out there, how does one separate the wheat from the chaff? When spotting errors of fact, whether stemming from simple ignorance, laziness or intentional deception, is it worth taking the time and trouble to flag errors and offer corrections?
To be honest, I don't know. Even before Google and the World Wide Web, many nonsense stories became perpetuated and attacking their credibility became almost futile.
Maybe you've heard this one, which I spotted in the Bangkok Post's "Night Owl" column of July 12, 2002, in which the writer remarked, "How much force is legally permissible to resist a perpetrator? In Japan, a second dan and above (higher than a black belt) has to register his hands with the police as lethal weapons."