6 Animals Humanity Accidentally Made Way Scarier. Wolves have gotten a bad rap where pop-culture is concerned: They're constantly menacing peasants or participating in rape metaphors involving young girls visiting elderly relatives.
But despite this age-old slander, not a single wolf-related fatality was recorded in the entire 20th century for all of North America. Even non-fatal attacks happened less than once a year. Regular dogs kill more people. But just as humanity started changing its tune and embracing our awesome wolf brothers -- depicting them as sexy, caveman-faced hunks in Twilight, buying our three-wolf shirts, and teaching them to high five on command -- everything changed. After 100 years of peace, there have been two fatal wolf attacks in the last decade. What the hell did we do? Two things lie behind the twenty-first century's Rise of the Wolves (as our grandchildren will surely call it, in hushed whispers, lest the Great Pack hear them and sniff out their hiding caves).
They tore our greatest armies into Kibbles and Bits. 5 Reasons Rats Are Way Scarier Than You Think. Rats are kind of creepy and gross, but they're not all that bad: They make fine test subjects, decent pets and rather excellent drug wizards.
Considering all that, people with a serious rat phobia seem relatively silly -- all shrieking and gathering up their skirts atop the nearest chair in response to a measly little rodent. But it turns out that those of us who scoff at a rat sighting are essentially the randy teenagers boning right beside Crystal Lake while loudly insisting that Chad, the dashing lead, should "stop being so uptight, man! Nothing is safer than having unprotected sex right next to this machete pile! " #5. You Can't Keep Them Out Getty It's a classic movie monster trope: No place is safe from the hellspawn.
"Phew! Rats are no different: No matter how sealed up you think your dwelling is, be assured the rats will find their way in if they want to. Wikipedia"Is he gone? " Another preferred rat highway is the inside of your pipes, as small as 1.5 inches in diameter. . #4. 9 Badass Lasers That Prove the Death Star Isn't Far Off. The purpose of science is to shine a light in the darkness, and lasers do it hard enough to set the darkness on fire.
Metaveld via Wikimedia Commons.Enlightenment is awesome. Lasers embody how technology allows everyone to benefit from the smart people. They've taken quantum mechanics, the single most mind-boggling science in existence, and put it to work in our supermarket checkouts. If you want to build supercomputers, set up a global communications network, trigger thermonuclear fusion, melt steel and weld flesh, lasers have you covered. They're like the Swiss Army Knife for people planning to attack the Justice League. . #9. Lightning used to be so scary that people prayed to it, but when the modern world couldn't make up its mind whether to copy or steal it, we decided "Both! " LucasArts, 20th Century FoxThis image is now required by law when using that phrase. French scientists have found a way to laser-designate Zeus's wrath.
. #8. Science fiction gives scientists a bad rap. . #7. . #6. The 10 dimensions of reality (The Sun BabelFish Blog) In my previous post on possible worlds I pointed to the excellent flash animation (click) that covers the 10 dimensions of string theory.
The summarise the points made in that film (worth seeing again and again): The 0th dimension is the dot. You don't need any numbers to identify its position. The first dimension is the line. You need two dots to define a line. David Lewis does not specify an upper limit to possible worlds: he does not exclude impossible worlds. Here are a couple of quotes worth remembering from that presentation. Quantum physics tells us that the sub atomic particles that make up our world are collapsed from waves of probability simply be the act of observation. In the description of the 10th dimension he says In string theory physics tell us that superstrings vibrating in the 10th dimension are what create the subatomic particles which make up our universe and all the other possible universes as well.