viafrank:

There’s an old story, true or not, that people love telling about writing implements in space. The American space program discovered that normal ink pens didn’t work on missions (no gravity in orbit to pull down the ink), so they spent millions to research and develop a pen that could write…

While I’m familiar with this story, having read it before, the original writer flat out misrepresents it to make his point — a failure in my book. “true or not” implies there is some doubt to it — that it may have happened. Yet the article actually linked to by the original author, in Scientific American, flat out refutes the story. There is no truth to the story — it is not “true or not” — it is a myth and untrue. It shouldn’t be used to introduce an argument, especially not insinuating that it may be true when you know it isn’t, unless it is being used it to illustrate how people like to make up untrue stories to prove a point. Personally, starting off the post this way puts me off the entire thing.