Should we just believe everything we get in our Inbox...? Do you...?

Email is fantastic.
It makes messaging so darn simple. Keeping in touch with customers, family, friends and the world in general is really a breeze thanks to good old email.

The downside, of course is that we as human beings like to buy into almost anything that we read. Especially if we received it in an email...
"Sure it came in my email - so it must be true!"...

Fact is, most of the time those outrageous crazed stories are actually a load of lard (that's pig fat by the way).
I have no idea where some of the stories actually start - who in the world thought up some of this stuff?

The latest one I picked up is the one about the "widely unknown" SAPS law, whereby a woman cannot be arrested between 6PM and 6AM, unless she is arrested by a woman officer and taken to an all-woman police station... SERIOUSLY??

An all-woman police station? Do such things even exist?
The reason that this law is so "widely unknown" is because IT DOESN"T EXIST.
Want proof?
This is what the SAPS themselves have to say about it:
http://www.saps.gov.za/_dynamicModules/internetSite/newsBuild.asp?myURL=907

So did you buy into this one? Imagine for a second that it is true:

The cops arrive at a crime scene at 03:00 a.m. - let's say a robbery for arguments sake.
Ah but alas, the perpetrators are all women and the cops are all men!! OH NO!!
The subsequent cop-criminal negotiations could go something like this:

COPS (shouting): "Come out with your hands up! You are all under arrest for armed robbery!"


DANGEROUS FEMALES: "Sorry, no can do! We are ladies and we know our rights. Please stand down and let us escape."


COPS (whispering to each other): "Damn, we should have brought Sergeant Nomsa with us!"


COPS (shouting): "Umm, ok then... can you guys hang around until 06:00a.m. maybe? You haven't got anywhere to be now have you...?"


DANGEROUS FEMALES: "..."


Yup - all they will get is a silent reply because by now of course the dangerous ladies are long gone.
So next time you receive an email which claims to show a giant clam devouring an entire cargo ship in Durban Harbour (or some other absurd phenomenon)... just stop for a second and check it out properly before forwarding it onto every single person in your address book.

I usually head on over to www.snopes.com... it is a wealth of eye-opening and myth-debunking!