You’d think that anyone who puts the time, effort and money into becoming a doctor would really be committed to helping people. Years of medical school, huge tuition fees and, arguably, a lot of intelligence need to be involved. And yet, despite that, you keep hearing stories of doctors doing things so remarkably dumb or…
Author: Ian Fortey
Can any animated show claim to be more influential than The Simpsons? At this point, it may be the most influential TV show period, animated or otherwise. And whether you love or hate the “new” Simpsons, you can’t deny that the show has been a powerhouse of comedy for over 30 years now. But beyond…
There’s an old saying that goes “use it or lose it” which essentially means if you have a thing, you better make use of it before it’s gone. We don’t have a lot of sayings about overuse, however, and it turns out we should. There are plenty of things in life you can overuse that…
Your brain is almost always there when you need it, barring those occasions when you find yourself chemically altered, really tired or far too enamored with an attractive person you’re trying to impress. And while it’s a marvel of biology capable of doing incredible things, the fact is your brain is only human. If you…
Fear is one of the greatest motivators in the world. It can make a person act irrationally, and it can breed paranoia and distrust. And sometimes it just has really bizarre and unexpected effects that echo throughout history. All because someone was afraid of what might happen if they let things play out a certain…
For a long time, the pursuit of bigness consumed a lot of the world. It still does in many ways. Just look at the massive Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, towering 2717 feet in the air. The world likes big. But the opposite end of the scale holds fascination as well. The smaller we can…
We’ve found evidence of surgery performed on people as far back as 12,000 years ago. These procedures indicate our ancient ancestors performed surgical trepanation which involved drilling a hole through the skull to expose the brain. So it was clearly something that would have taken a deft hand if the patient was to live. Today,…
Every element has a distinctive atomic number. The atomic number represents the number of protons in the nuclei. Isotopes have the same number of protons, meaning it’s the same element, but there’s a different number of neutrons. Carbon, for instance, has three isotopes – carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14. Each one has six protons, but they…
We’ve covered some of the side hustles that celebrities have had, but this is by no means a new trend. (1940s film star Hedy Lamarr, for example, basically invented WiFi.) Numerous figures of note throughout history have achieved fame for one thing, while also making a name for themselves with some lesser known skills as…
Blackmail is about as old as secrets. The idea of someone using secret information to coerce another into doing what they want exists in all cultures throughout all time. It’s typically frowned upon and certainly considered a crime, but the blackmailer does need to get caught and, often, the victim wants to keep everything on…
In the past, we’ve covered just how expensive war can get and, as many people know, the defense budget of a country like the United States or Russia is enough to make Elon Musk break into a sweat. But not every victory has to break the bank and there is more than a little precedent…
People have loved getting attention for as long as attention has been a thing.The publicity stunt exists solely for this reason and when they work well, they can cause a stir and amuse thousands. But when they go wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. 10. The Crash at Crush What would someone have to do…
Your brain is an amazing organ. It generates enough electricity to power a lightbulb. It’s believed to operate at one exaFLOP, which is said to be of a scale of “a billion billion calculations per second.” It may have a storage capacity in the range of one petabyte, or 500 billion printed pages of standard…
For some people, nothing is more satisfying than pushing their personal limits and seeing to what extremes they can go. Whether that’s climbing a mountain or traversing untraversable terrain, there is no challenge some of us will not accept. For other people, nothing so lofty or exciting consumes their lives, but they are subject to…
Along with turning water into wine, Jesus was also said to have the power to cast out demons. That means exorcisms have been around for at least 2000 years. Surprisingly, the Catholic Church didn’t really establish any guidelines until 1614. But in the modern world, and no doubt thanks to the influence of pop culture,…
To this day, 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides still stands as the most expensive film ever made with a truly baffling $379 million budget. The average studio movie costs $65 million, not including marketing. Even the average bare bones, no frills, just out of film school indie movie will cost between $10,000…
Cancel culture is a buzz term we can’t escape these days. Ban, ignore, refuse or deny anything and it’s a victim of cancel culture rightly or wrongly. But the concept of banning things is hardly a new one. We’ve done it just short of forever. Even music is unable to escape the cold, callused hand…
The idea of a world beneath our feet has been fascinating to people for ages. It’s a staple of old science fiction in stories like Journey to the Center of the Earth and the Divine Comedy both describe incredibly rich and detailed worlds and even in modern times the idea that there’s something more down…
They say that only two things in life are guaranteed: death and taxes. If you’re not a human, then that means only one thing is guaranteed. And even though we all have to die sometime, we sure don’t all get to go out the same way. The animal kingdom can be brutal and death can…
The word phantom is generally used in two ways. It’s something of a less popular synonym for ghost, but outside of old Scooby Doo episodes, not a lot of people bother with it anymore. It’s also used in a semi-synonymous way to deal with more serious issues, including medical ones. The idea of something felt…
They say the English language is one of the hardest to master if it’s not your native tongue, and for good reason. The words we use are a confusing mishmash of what must look like nonsense to non-native speakers. Why doesn’t laughter rhyme with slaughter? Why does the word “set” have 430 ways it can…
When it comes to learning how to do anything in life, we tend to have two options. You either study what other people have come up with, which is what most of us do, or you come up with a method on your own. At some point, everything we could learn or do was new.…
War has changed a lot over the years. The earliest battles were probably fought with sticks and rocks. Later, we evolved to use swords and bows. And now we can kill people on the other side of the planet with the push of a button. Typically, any war or battle takes place in a geographic…
The world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket these days. There are murder hornets and natural disasters and pandemics and the threat of world-destroying war to keep us all on edge. What happened to the good old days when all we had to worry about were things like rampant street crime and…