Humans are hard-wired to function in groups. But it's a double-edged sword -- it takes a lot of us to build a city, but as anyone who has ever witnessed a riot can attest, people's ability to act like idiots also multiplies in crowds. And this phenomenon can manifest itself in really weird and even fatal ways.
Let's face it, we all hate nature to varying degrees and for our own reasons. But surely nothing inspires loathing of the animal kingdom like the fact that its creatures are constantly trying to trick us.
We tend to romanticize the age of exploration, like it was all grand exotic frontiers and tiny people tying sailors down with ropes. What we don't hear about so often is the scurvy and the starvation and the months of endless walking through landscapes full of awfulness. And that's too bad, because it actually makes their stories that much more bad
Unless you're talking about diamonds, Twinkies or vampires, lasting forever usually isn't in the cards. Yet all over the world -- and universe -- there are machines, engineering feats and pieces of meat that never got the memo that we all have a use-by date.
It's no shock to find out that remedies involving magic and ghosts don't really make your pain go away. It would be more of a surprise to learn that they do. Well ... surprise! (Sort of.)
Space is full of mysteries, and you don't have to go far to find them. It's easy to forget that, after mankind went to the moon and found out it was just a boring, dusty ghost town.
Science has some bad news for you: The behaviors of the elderly that you write off as old-person lameness, and your behavior that the elderly credit to dickish rebellion, are all based in biology. And no, you can't stop it.
