America’s political system is designed to always pull toward the center. You have two parties who can’t get much done without compromise, a rigorous primary system to weed out the fringe candidates, and an electorate which has more Independents than any other affiliation. Yet things don’t always work out that way. Sometimes, a controversial candidate…
Author: Morris M
Every so often, a new medical condition comes along that suddenly becomes the talk of the town. It’s non-deadly, harmless to others and, best of all, just so damn quirky. Celebrities love it. Your co-worker who loves pointing out how unique they are suddenly gets it. You know the drill. But what happens when you…
In his 1896 short story The Sea Raiders, HG Wells describes a world where sentient octopuses and squid patrol the coast of Devon, England, feasting on human flesh. It’s one of the sci-fi master’s sillier stories. After all, how scary can a sea-based villain made of squishy stuff be? The answer, it turns out, is:…
Hear the words “crazy dictatorship” and most of us picture one country: North Korea. Under Kim Jong Un, the Communist throwback has scaled new heights of insanity that are somewhere between hilarious and terrifying. On the hilarious side, there’s stuff like Kim ordering every government vehicle, no matter how small, to be fitted with a…
Sometimes, history is gross. Really gross. Especially where diseases are concerned. We’ve all heard of the nasty stuff the past could serve up for our ancestors. What we might not know is just how many famous historic figures got walloped with these awful diseases. From the utterly weird to the utterly terrifying to the simply…
The FBI are supposed to be the good guys, the ones protecting the public from evil. They’ve got none of the crazy skeletons in the closet that the CIA suffer from, and aren’t as generally mistrusted as the ATF. Yet we’re deluding ourselves if we think the FBI really has our best interests at heart.…
Turn on the news and you’re almost guaranteed to see a story about some Western kid running off East to join ISIS. But not everyone who flees home to join some far away terror group has easy-to-see connections with it. Go looking, and you’ll find a million unique motives; ranging from the sad, to the…
Blue sky thinking. Taking a creative approach. The business world is full of appreciative lingo for people who can deliver innovative solutions to serious problems. Sometimes, such crazy, pie-in-the-sky ideas really work. More frequently, they’re simply just crazy. Here are ten times countries and companies abandoned commonsense in the face of serious issues. Problem: Australia…
In this age of terror, there might be nothing more terrifying than the thought of an attack carried out with chemical weapons. We’ve all heard the horrific stories of soldiers being gassed in WWI, and the idea that it could happen in the here and now is blood-chilling. Perhaps scariest of all is that this isn’t…
What with the pro-legalization movement gaining ground in the US and Latin America, it can feel like the war on drugs is almost at an end. And maybe it is…if you happen to live in Uruguay or Colorado. Look to some other parts of the world, though, and it’s clear that drugs are still unwelcome.…
From an early age, we’re taught to see things in black or white. Perform medical experiments on children, or deliberately drop bombs on innocent civilians and you’re clearly a bad person, right? Well, no, not exactly. See, real life is a lot more complex than we’d like it to be. It’s totally possible to do…
For the vast majority of people, war is a depressing, squalid affair. If you think you’re going to grab a machine gun and re-enact the finale of Rambo, you’ve got an unpleasant surprise coming. But apparently not everyone gets the memo. Defying expectations, commonsense and basic physics, some soldiers arrive on the battlefield ready to…
Swearing is a basic fact of life in every society on Earth. However, some societies swear much, much better than others. You might think you’re OK just using curses like “damn”, “hell” and “sh*t” to express displeasure. We’re here to tell you that there’s a whole cornucopia of delightful insults out there, just itching for…
It’s no secret we guys are obsessed with our junk. From having the biggest to knowing how to use it best, there’s no wang-related goal we’re not desperate to hit. But what if you’re worried that you might be shooting blanks? Fear not. It turns out all you need to increase your sperm count is…
When we think of “historical firsts,” we tend to think of the good stuff: the first man in space, the first man on the Moon, or the first man to eat 25,000 Big Macs. But there’s a whole other, darker set of firsts out there: unique instances of death, insanity, torture and murder that inspired…
Rule 34 states that if you can imagine it, there’s porn of it on the internet. But simple imagination has nothing on the bizarre realities of sexual experience. We’ve all heard about people who are aroused by feet or dressing as animals or being put in diapers, but how many of us have heard of…
Over the years, some of history’s grandest, strangest or greatest people have occasionally crossed paths. Sometimes, their meetings are nothing special. Other times they’re little moments of oddness seemingly designed to beguile and befuddle fans for generations to come. Guess which type this article is about: 10. JD Salinger was Dumped for Charlie Chaplin In…
Along with abortion, religion, and Donald Trump, gun control is one of the stickiest debating points in modern America. People are either rabidly for gun rights, or just as rabidly against them, and any shades of nuance are often lost in the resulting melee. But not everything is as simple as you might expect. Go…
Government spending is always topical. For every liberal decrying the paltry money begrudgingly dripped into the welfare state, there’s a libertarian begging for it to be reduced further. For every spectacularly wasteful government project, there’s some piece of essential infrastructure that benefits millions. Getting it right is tricky. Or, as in the cases below, you…
Are you sitting down? Good, because we’ve got some bad news for you: you’re going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day the cold hand of death will come grasping after you. When that happens, you better pray you don’t die in any of the following awful ways. 10. Electric Chair…
George W. Bush is arguably the most unpopular president in recent memory. He invaded Iraq, bungled Katrina and failed to stop the banking crisis that led to the latest Great Recession. Yet he did some other stuff too. Stuff that often gets overlooked. Stuff that’s even kinda awesome. Here are 10 reasons “Dubya” may have…
We’re used to our media feeding us narratives in terms of black and white. The world has good guys and bad guys, and it’s as simple as that. While those countries that earn the ‘bad’ label frequently do do some terrible things, reality is waaay more nuanced than our media lets on. Here are ten…
Nobody likes a blowhard, and Donald Trump may be the hardiest blowhard of them all. Since declaring his candidacy, the presidential hopeful has turned vacuous insults and jaw-dropping gaffes into a kind of booming cottage industry. Most recently, he ruffled feathers with his comments about how Muslims should be kept track of in a database,…
It’s often said that truth is the first casualty of war. In the age of mass media, we don’t even need to wait for the war. Right now, Europe is in the grip of its worst refugee crisis since Hitler decided to expand his living space by annexing Poland. While the general response has been…