Reflex forum is now closed

[Devilfish]

Um... I may have missed something, but I saw this on that ew FA's blog:

First of all i would like to say what an honour it is to be a FA here at TSR.
All sets i made earlier, and that are also on www.blackpearlsims.com (former reflexsimsforum) will always remain free for download.

Did I miss something? Because that url leads nowhere and it's the first I hear about it.

[scrappysim]

That will be the new forums address once it is up an running.  (from what I understand form the thread on sims cave)

[oolongteadrinker]

She's just a twat all her own   

LOL @ Devilfish! Lemmings go in TSR ocean. *plop*

Way off topic, but I read somewhere that the popular mythos  of mass-drowning-lemmings was due to Disney's "creative" nudging of facts. A group of lemmings DO in fact run off a cliff and drown in an old disney "nature documentary" but what most people don't know is that a stagehand chased them off the cliff.

Or so I've read. *cough* Back to scheduled programming. Nothing to see here.
Ahoy  Black Pearl!

[SoggyFox]

Don't know if it was Disney, believe it was Wild Kingdom.  Staged nature shows were the norm and a lot of facts about animals on those shows were comletely made up to make for better ratings.

[neriana]

Disney did the Wild Kingdom shows, and yes, they murdered lemmings en masse. Lemmings don't jump off cliffs normally.

[oolongteadrinker]

Stupid Disney!
Prefer Attenborough, anyway.

[Skoria_Bay]

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was on before the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights when I was a kid. Disney did a nature series called True Life Adventures, but had nothing to do with Wild Kingdom which was a separate show.

Yes, Wild Kingdom did some pretty crazy stunts even before (rest his soul in peace) Steve Irwin was wrestling crocs. "Watch now as Jim holds the python" at which point poor Jim would get tangled with some python and struggle in the background as Marlin Perkins gave some information on the snake, animal, whatever. Apparently Animal Planet shows the show in syndication now.

[Scurvy Cat]

No, the Lemmings incident was one of Disney's True Life Adventure series.  Not Wild Kingdom, which was a separate show sponsored by an Insurance Company--Mutual of Omaha.l

[Paden]

For the ugly truth about this, you can read it all here. I loves me some Snopes late at night.

[SoggyFox]

That's what threw me - I'd read this article, and confused the MoO with the Disney one.

[Paden]

It's late, and you're most likely tired and both of the shows had a history of staging the animal action, so it's not unreasonable to get them crossed, which is why I went to Snopes. They iz mythbusters...

[rum nate]

Thats disturbing they would want to do that. But anything to make a buck apparently, right.

[Elphaba]

Actually there are two myths about Lemmings that are completely untrue. The first, obviously, is that they jump off cliffs. The second is that the first myth was invented by disney. In fact it predates disney, as episode 5 of series 4 of the wonderful british show QI shows

Alan
They don't actually jump off cliffs.

Stephen
They don't jump off cliffs.

Clive
It was invented by Disney or somebody?

Stephen
Oh, dear me.


Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "MYTH INVENTED BY DISNEY".


Stephen
It was not invented by Disney, no. There were two myths about it, one that they commit mass suicide, the other that it was Disney who invented the myth.

Clive
Ah, right.

Stephen
In fact, they didn't. As early as 1908 in an . . .  Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia, he talks about them throwing themselves off cliffs into the water.

So there you go, another myth dispelled by Stephen Fry

This has been random facts from Elphaba, tune in next time for 'The shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark' and 'Yes you CAN walk on custard!'

[Devilfish]

Lemmings do fall to their deaths en masse when their population explodes and they migrate though, but those are not suicides, they're accidents. I suppose to a casual observer it could look like a mass suicide, which would explain the entry in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia.

And in any case, real lemmings don't interest me quite as much as those cute little green-haired critters

[Darqstar]

I grew up seeing that Disney video week after week (they showed a clip of them leaping off the cliff it during the opening of Wide World of Disney, every single Sunday night)  and with most people believing that Lemmings killed themselves when their population was too big. 

My father though, called bullspit on this almost imedietly, pointing out that there were more logical things to do to restore population than for all the healthiest Lemmings to go leaping off to death.  Most animals in population control situations will stop mating, or kill the young.  Yes, I know, we're a child centered society now, that would kill all adults in order to save the precious children, but in the animal kingdom it's a bit different.  Until they become young adults,  animal babies are a liability to the society.  They cannot self sustain, they need other to help. Even worse, if they are nursing, they tie up another member so that the rest of the tribe have to protect mother and babies.  If it gets to the point where there is not enough food for everyone, the logical thing to do is to get rid of the members who are taking resources without giving back.  The young and the old.

For a mass suicide, even if the entire colony of Lemmings ran to jump off the cliff, the strongest and fastest would make it first, leaving the weaker behind.  Yeah, that's logical for evolution.

My father was convinced that it was all faked.  And what do you know?  He was right.  But even better, he convinced me and my brother of that as well, it also helped teach us to think before we accept.