Someone once said “everything in moderation” and it was probably about alcohol or betting on robot fights but it can apply to almost everything. Food is one of the best examples because, as we know, overindulging in almost anything can have negative consequences. Eat too many gas station burritos and you may spend the rest…
Author: Ian Fortey
What’s in a name? Research shows your name alters how people perceive you from the moment they learn it. Your first initial could change your entire life without you knowing it because we’re subconsciously attracted to cities and jobs that share the same letter. So names carry a lot of weight even when we…
There are some colorful sayings about opinions and few of them paint a pleasant picture. But everyone indeed has an opinion and they’re not always going to be good or valid or agreeable. When these opinions are presented as reviews, whether for books, or restaurants, or products, they can color other people’s perceptions and maybe…
Nuclear power is arguably the safest and most efficient form of power we currently have. Despite how great and reliable it is, the nuclear stigma will probably never go away because when it has gone bad in the past, it’s gone really bad. And there’s the eternal association it’s going to have with nuclear weapons…
How much memory do you have on your phone? An iPhone can have anywhere from a “bare bones” 64 GB to as much as a terabyte. Do you have an external hard drive for your gaming console? If so, it’s probably got at least a terabyte or two, right? And to think, if you bought…
The human body is a wondrous thing and arguably a miracle of science. Consider how many other things are as complex as a human in the known universe and we do kind of stand out as pretty incredible. It’s either extremely fitting or extremely offputting then that some people have taken it upon themselves to…
The Byzantine Empire was essentially the Roman Empire, just further East. It existed from the year 330 AD until 1453. Constantinople was the capital, serving as the head of Roman interest in their eastern lands because the Empire had spread so far that it needed another base of operations. Traveling by land from Rome to…
The idea of discovering a buried treasure is appealing to just about everyone. Who wouldn’t want to just dig down somewhere and find an ancient trove of gold and jewels? You’d be instantly rich. For a very long time, this was how the world at large viewed the situation. If it’s buried underground no one…
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that’s probably meant in the same way people say that a bird pooping on you is good luck. Is it the same situation when someone makes a replica of something? Generally, replicas aren’t pretending to be the real thing, they’re just very weird reproductions of…
Over the last several years, summers have been increasingly brutal in many parts of the world. Cities in the Southwest United States have had to plan for droughts and water conservation initiatives. Nearly all parts of the United States have experienced at least some drought since the year 2000 and it’s a trend that is…
The Bronze Age covers a massive swath of human history. Spanning from about 5500 BC to 650 BC, there was a lot going on around the world. Human society was really laying the groundwork for what was to come, and a lot of remarkably important inventions and concepts were being created. Even though by today’s…
When people list great civilizations of the past, they’ll often list the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, the Maya, the Incas, the Vikings, Mongols, and so on. Rarely do you hear much about the Indus-Valley civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization. From around 3300 BC to 1300 BC, the Harappan people were some of the…
When you go shopping, do you look for name brands? Some people will only purchase something if it has that name-brand appeal. And there is something to be said for a trusted name, especially one that has a lot of years behind it. It stands to reason, even if we don’t have proof, that a…
For all the marvels of the modern world, there’s something to be said for things that were created in the distant past that still astound us to this date. With the technology we have today we often smugly think of ourselves as far more advanced than our ancestors. But then we come across something truly…
How much time do you spend thinking about atoms? Probably not that much since you can’t see them and most of us have no real reason to ponder them in any great detail outside of a science class. But the atomic world is endlessly fascinating and the idea that everything, everywhere is made of atoms…
Life is unpredictable. Tomorrow may play out like every other day or your life or maybe a meteor falls from the sky and crushes your house right before you win the lottery then get attacked by a tiger on the way to collect your prize. We mostly get by hoping that things are predictable and…
It’s an indisputable fact that some of the best people in the world are dogs. Dogs are great. No citation is needed. They make wonderful companions, they’re fun and also helpful since they can be trained to do everything from fetching a stick to identifying drugs and alerting you to seizures. Good dog! Who’s a…
Some folks say that patience is a virtue or that good things come to those who wait. Instant gratification isn’t something you should expect and may not even be a good thing. But all things in moderation is another idiom worth keeping in mind. You don’t want to wait too long for something or else…
People sometimes say that you can’t live in the past but is that true? Today is tomorrow’s past. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. That said, there are some people, places and even entire organizations in this world that learned how to do things one way a long time ago and…
Every day when you wake up and start walking around you’re carrying a skeleton with you. That’s just as bad as being stalked by a vampire. That creepy, bony guy is right under your skin 24/7. You might not be giving a second thought to your skeleton in your day-to-day life unless maybe you have…
Are you the kind of person who is worried about what they eat from day to day? Do you count your calories to make sure you’re not going overboard, or do you just kind of eat whatever until you’re not hungry anymore? There’s a lot of science behind understanding the caloric needs of the human…
The world is full of things that people don’t like. That could be other people, ideas, art, food, and even facts. If something exists, you better believe somebody hates it. If enough people get together to dislike something, an entire society can shun that thing and it becomes taboo. Throughout history, there have been a…
There’s a good chance that, whatever money you make in a year, you could probably do with a bit more. Most of us aren’t extravagantly wealthy and our annual income is enough to get by, but a few thousand dollars more would certainly make things more comfortable. There is a very diverse range of incomes…
Time inevitably marches on and there’s not much we can do about it. The world progresses, things change, and theoretically, everything improves. That may not always be the case, or at least not in everyone’s eyes, but you can’t deny that things definitely are different today than they were 100 years ago. Some things that…