True stories too good (or too bad) to be true!

I frequently receive "forwards" which contain warnings of all manner of catastrophe about to befall the human race. These are accompanied by urgent messages from the sender pleading with me to forward the message at hand to everyone in my address book.

But 99 times out a 100 this warning is false and often something that's been floating around the Internet for years, regularly resurfacing and catching a new audience to frighten.

When I receive one of these I ask myself, "Have I read about this in the newspaper? Have I seen this on the 11:00 news? Have radio talk shows been hyping this?" More often than not the answer to all three questions is NO! That's when I go to snopes.com, sometimes called The Urban Legends Page. This is a handy service that surveys and reports on all the rumors that criss-cross cyber space and, in brief form with concise explanation, let's you know the history and veracity of that e-mail burning a hole in your mail box.

I'm adding snopes.com to my LINKS on the sidebar. It makes for interesting reading so check it out, especially since it's that time of year when wild (and false) explanations of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas are about land like reindeer on your roof!