>> There was a time when all of humanity honestly believed the world was 
>> flat, and anybody who claimed it wasn't was *obviously* a lunatic.
> 
>   AFAIK that's an urban legend. "Popular history" so to speak.
> 
>   *Some* people believed the Earth was flat at some point, but it was not
> as common as most people nowadays believe. The concept has been inflated
> a lot because it sounds like a funny piece of historical anecdote. Even
> at medieval times many scholars not only knew the Earth was round, but
> had a relatively good estimate about its radius.

I'm told the ancient Greeks placed sticks in the sand and measured the 
difference in angle between the shadows of sticks seperated by great 
distances, and thus came up with a pretty accurate estimate of the 
Earth's radius. But I was under the impression that this information was 
"lost", only to be rediscovered centuries later.

(Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve quite 
a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then rediscovered, often 
after a seriously large length of time.)

>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes in the 
>> body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that sounds...)
> 
>   The placebo effect also causes measurable chemical changes in the body.

Sure it does. But, as I understand it, a placebo only works if you're 
expecting it to work.

The way I heard it, damage to the body stimulates the release of natural 
painkillers, and accupuncture has a similar effect. (It is, after all, 
damage to the body.) Whether the diagrams depicting the best place to 
put the needles have any validity is an entire other question, 
however... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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