wsieber, I'm sure you're right about this specific type of urban legend. The desire to have a "contrast foil" for an opposing viewpoint is likely to be a large part of the reason why this particular subset of urban myths survive and flourish. Another example is the Bill Gates "No one will ever need 640K of RAM" - now acknowledged as almost certainly apocryphal, but still a favourite of M$-bashers everywhere.


noho ora mai
http://maxqnzs.com/References.html