by Rob Reilly

About the author: Rob Reilly is a computer education teacher at the Lanes- borough School in Lanesborough, Massachusetts.

As I sit here working on this article I have the television on to keep me company. I’m watching a History Channel program about the Battle of Midway. It reminds me of all those military fliers who were shot down and looked to their “shark repellent” packets to keep them safe. As my mind wanders further away from this article, I recall a college biology class where the professor went on and on about how “shark repellent” did not actually work. He talked about how so many people came to believe that it actually did work—after all, there were lots of aircrew...