Archive for June, 2009

Technology has always played a big role in fighting terrorism. Some inventions are truly useful and will undoubtedly save lives, whereas others are so bizarre that one wonders how in the world they got patented. This list is about the latter: Behold the Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents! (Note: yes, most of these patents cite fighting terrorism as raison d’être) Anti-Terrorist [...]

It is said that those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it – and as any history buff can tell you, much of history is something you would NOT want to repeat. However, many well-known historical “facts” are myths, with no basis in fact. Here (and in the next few segments) are 20 of the most common, which have misled and misinformed people for years, decades, or centuries. If [...]

1. Botulinum (ingested) It’s hard to rank the lethality of toxins, but experts agree that botulinum – several orders of magnitude deadlier than sarin – is the gold standard. Your nervous system fails and you die in extreme pain. Works miracles on wrinkles, though. 2. Ricin (ingested or inhaled) Made from the lowly castor bean, ricin causes respiratory and organ failure, followed by death within [...]

In our modern, scientific world it is sometimes easy to forget that human progress often comes attached to some spectacular intellectual clashes between different ways of looking at things and differing interpretations of what is seen. There have been some notable intellectual mind-fights over the millennia, the following are ten such fights, the outcome of which changed the world into what we know [...]

A new blog, maybeyoushouldntbuythat.com, publishes pictures of ridiculously expensive products. Describing itself as “a collection of the most expensive and most worthless items in the world” it is proof that some people really do have more money than sense. Among the items on show is this Ginza Tanaka handbag, covered in platinum and diamond studs, retailing for $1.63 million The [...]

We investigated some of the most puzzling anomalies of modern science, those intractable problems that refuse to conform to the theories. Here he counts down the 13 strangest. 1. MOST OF THE UNIVERSE IS MISSING We can only account for 4 per cent of the cosmos If you’re wondering what the LHC might do for you, how’s this: it might just find a whole quarter of the universe. The collider is hoping [...]