As ancient civilizations go, the Egyptians are by far one of the more well-known. Their pyramids still stand to this day, and their mummies and sarcophagi pepper our museums, but is there more to them?

It turns out, some aspects of our modern life found their start in Egypt.

10Mathematics

The Egyptians were remarkable at mathematics. The earliest records of geometry come from Egypt, as their geometry specialists were called “arpedonapti.” The arpedonapti used ropes to calculate the area of lands, eventually passing this knowledge to Greece.

Egyptians also worked out efficient ways of performing multiplication and division. While we have various ways to perform such calculations, Egyptians used a more computation-friendly method that involved doubling numbers, a technique we still use in modern-day computing. The above video goes into detail as to how computers and ancient Egyptians come together.

Egyptians also invented basic fractions. Most had 1 on the top (called a “unit fraction”), and more complex fractions (such as “4/7”) had to be represented by adding up several unit fractions.

9Bowling

Egyptians played a game very similar to modern-day bowling.

Archaeologist William Matthews Flinders Petrie found a child’s grave containing crude pins and small marbles and concluded it might have related to bowling, but there was no proof that they were used for such a purpose. More solid evidence can be found in a room near a residential area from the second century. It featured several balls and a lane with a hole in the middle. Some of the balls could fit through the center hole, while others were far too big.

Archaeologists believe it was a competitive game; one person tried to bowl the smaller ball into the hole, while someone on the other side of the lane tried to knock the ball off-course with the larger ones.

8Alphabets

Of course, we don’t use any Egyptian alphabets today, but the idea of a phonetic alphabet (where each symbol represents a sound rather than a whole word) came from Egypt.

Egyptian hieroglyphs used a symbol for each word, but 24 uniliuteral signs were phonetic to pronounce loanwords and foreign words. Due to the complex nature of hieroglyphs, people had to be trained to use them, so Semitic people within Egypt crafted a 22-letter alphabet based on the uniliteral signs. It’s now known as the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. It was wholly phonetic, with each letter used to construct a larger word—like our own alphabet.

It caught on with Egypt’s neighbors, including the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians would make it their own with an alphabet, simply called the Phoenician Alphabet, which spread around the Near East and Greece through trading. This acted as the foundation for alphabets around the world.

7Paper and Writing

While the Egyptians didn’t discover the paper we use today, papyrus was a huge step up from carving words into stone, both in terms of ease of writing and being lighter to carry around. The Egyptians discovered papyrus (and the reed pen, so they could actually write on it) in 3000 BC. Still, it would take until 500 BC for papyrus to catch hold in the Mediterranean and West Asia. Papyrus would become one of Egypt’s best exports; it was very expensive, and the secrets on how it was made were heavily guarded.

Inspired by Egypt’s work, Europe would eventually move on to parchment. China would invent paper in 100 BC using mulberry bark and hemp rags, using a method that would evolve into today’s technology. While Egypt’s grand invention fell out of use, it gave the world the idea of moving away from stone tablets.

6Wigs

The Ancient Egyptians had a little bit of a dilemma. They didn’t like to have a full head of hair under the heat of the Sun, but they also didn’t want to go totally bald due to both the head skin being roasted by the Sun’s rays and for personal fashion reasons. They needed a temporary head of hair that didn’t trap heat as much as normal hair did but still looked good. The answer, of course, was the wig.

Keeping the heat away wasn’t the only reason the Egyptians adopted the wig. It also protected against head lice. As for what the wigs were made from, the rich and influential could afford to wear wigs made from the real thing—hair, either from themselves or someone else.

5Recorded Medicine

People were treating wounds with all kinds of herbs and ground-up animal parts for a long time. Due to their new and convenient writing methods, however, the Egyptians produced some of the oldest logs we’ve found of both medical procedures and medicine recipes. So far, we’ve found nine separate papyrus logs that talk about how the Egyptians performed their medicine.

One of them, the Edwin Smith papyrus, discusses myriad different wounds on each part of the body and their treatments. It’s unique, as it’s the first historical medical description that doesn’t rely on supernatural or magical forces to treat the wounds, making it scientifically sound—at least, as sound as Egyptian science was at the time. If you’d like to read some of their methods yourself, you can read a translation of the Edwin Smith scroll online.

4Surgery

To go with their new-fangled recorded medicine, the Egyptians hold the title for the civilization with the earliest discovered surgical tools. They were found within the Tomb of Qar, known as “the Physician of the palace and keeper of the secrets of the king.” Kept next to Qar’s head were several bronze surgical tools, each of which sported a hole as if intended to be hung up on a hook.

Of course, given how Egyptians were now writing down their methods and procedures, we can also see written logs of surgery. They detail the removal of cysts and tumors, but more major surgeries that are performed today were probably never performed back then. Given how it was in the very early days of human biology study and anesthetics were still very crude, it’s easy to imagine why.

3Calendar

How we divide the day into hours and minutes and the structure and length of the yearly calendar owe much to pioneering developments in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was run according to three different calendars. The first was a lunar calendar based on 12 lunar months, each of which began on the first day in which the old moon crescent was no longer visible in the East at dawn. This calendar was used for religious festivals.

The second calendar, used for administrative purposes, was based on the observation that there were usually 365 days between the heliacal rising of Serpet. This civil calendar was split into twelve months of 30 days with an additional five epagomenal days attached at the end of the year. These five days became a festival because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time. A third calendar, which dates back at least to the 4th century BC, was used to match the lunar cycle to the civil year. It was based on 25 civil years, which was approximately equal to 309 lunar months.

2Toothpaste

Methods of keeping the teeth clean of detritus have been around for a while, but the Egyptians invented the first recorded toothpaste specifically created and reported to help oral health. Some Egyptian tombs were even found with toothbrushes within, which consisted of a twig frayed on one end.

Found in papyrus documents, the recipe for an Egyptian-style toothpaste is a drachma (1/100 of an ounce) of rock salt, two drachmas of mint, a drachma of the dried iris flower, and some pepper. A dentist called Heinz Neuman gave this recipe a shot and said that while it made his gums bleed, his mouth definitely felt cleaner afterward.

1Glass

While glass can be found naturally formed around the world, the first proof that people were creating and using glass in crafts can be found back in 3500 BC, in both the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations, mainly in the form of small glass beads.

The Egyptians would go on to discover an efficient way of making vases, by plunging compacted sand molds into molten glass and rolling the result onto a cooled slab. The earliest Egyptian vases found were dedicated to Pharaoh Thoutmosis III, dating to around 1500 BC. Ancient Egyptians also managed to master the art of making red glass, which was very hard to do due to the glass having to be fired in an environment without oxygen.

Both the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians would spread their methods through trade and conquer, inspiring the Romans to take up the craft.

In the United States and other Western nations, children are often taught about the Salem witch trials that saw 19 men and women executed by hanging for practicing witchcraft. These trials fell out of favor as society developed, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world.

Across much of sub-Saharan Africa and other places, the hunting and purging of witches and practitioners of the dark arts continues. Not only is it a pervasive problem, but the scale of these operations has only worsened with thousands of people falling victim to accusations of sorcery.

Here are 10 examples of modern witch hunts that you won’t believe happened so recently.

SEE ALSO: 10 Infamous Witch-Hunters From History

10 Ghana

Much like people in 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts, modern-day Ghanaians sometimes settle disputes by simply accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. An accusation can be all that is needed to remove a potential rival from a situation, and it happens far more often in Ghana than seems logical.

As witchcraft is such a perceived threat in the country, the nation has established eight sanctuaries for the victims/prisoners of witch hunts. Many of these sanctuaries are hundreds of years old; they’re also commonly known as witch camps.

In 2014, it was reported that over 1,100 people languished in these makeshift prisons/sanctuaries across Ghana. Hunts vary throughout the north and south of the country. But they often are instigated by supposed “penis-theft” hysteria, resulting in the accusation and rounding up of purported witches. Usually, these people are killed, though some make their way to the sanctuaries to live out their lives as outcasts.^[1]

9 The Gambia

Following an order by President Yahya Jammeh in March 2009, a group of government “witch hunters” went out into the nation of The Gambia and rounded up approximately 1,000 villagers. They were taken to secret government detention centers where they were forced to drink an unidentified hallucinogenic substance.

According to Amnesty International, “a lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhea and vomiting while they lay helpless.” They were then beaten and forced to confess to being practitioners of witchcraft.

Those captured were rounded up over a five-day period and consisted of young men and women as well as the elderly. Fortunately, of the 1,000 captured and tortured, only two succumbed to the violence, but the violation of human rights is a serious problem throughout the country.

The incident was reported through Amnesty International, but this wasn’t the first time that Jammeh said or did something controversial. In 2007, he claimed to have found an herbal cure for HIV and ordered the execution of any homosexuals found in his country.^[2]

8 Kenya

The people of Kenya are no stranger to witch hunts, but they seem to come and go in spurts. The history of Kenyan witch hunts dates back centuries, but random acts of intense violence occur somewhat randomly.

In May 2008, it was reported that a mob rounded up and burned to death as many as 11 people accused of practicing witchcraft in the western region of Kisii. In total, eight women and three men between 80 to 96 years old were dragged from their houses into the street and individually burned.

The mob then burned down each of the victims’ houses with everything they owned still inside. That particular hunt began after someone found an exercise book at a local school containing the minutes of a so-called “witches’ meeting.” It had an accompanying list of people who were to be bewitched in the near future.^[3]

All of the victims’ families were forced into hiding. This attack was by no means an isolated incident. Kenyans have long suffered under the threat of witch hunts with no indication that it will end anytime soon.

7 India

You might not think India would fall on a list like this one, but certain regions of the country remain deeply enshrouded in a fear of mysticism. From 2001 to 2006, approximately 300 people were rounded up and killed in the northeast state of Assam.

The majority of those rounded up were women, which resulted in an increase in the number of homeless children in the region. The remaining children are often a major issue when it comes to the aftermath of a modern-day witch hunt, but the problem seems to be exacerbated in India.^[4]

Further killings took place throughout the country in various regions, usually resulting in as many as 5 to 35 deaths in each case. A report from 2010 estimated that 150 to 200 women are hunted down and killed each year throughout India. The estimate included accounts between 1995 and 2009. This puts the total number of women slaughtered in India due to a perceived practice of witchcraft during that period at over 2,500.

6 Nepal

A strong belief in witchcraft is common throughout Nepal, which is why hunting people suspected of practicing witchcraft isn’t as rare as it probably should be. The majority of people targeted in these hunts are low-caste women who are rounded up, beaten, tortured, humiliated in a public forum, and often murdered.

When these hunts occur, the families of the victims are often accused and dealt with in much the same way. In one instance in 2010, a woman was captured, beaten, and tortured for two days while she was forced to ingest human excrement until she “confessed” to being a witch.

She was targeted by a mob of around 35 people who showed up at her home and took her away. This kind of practice happens almost regularly to low-caste women throughout the country. But unlike other examples, the victim is often released after she confesses.^[5]

Murders do occur. But in many cases, the victim is released after being tortured for an extended period of time. That isn’t to say that the practice isn’t brutal and needs to be stopped, but the death toll in Nepal is significantly lower than some of the other examples on this list.

5 Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may be one of the richest nations on the planet, but its society still lives in fear of sorcery. The majority of Muslims believe in the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, which may be why the country defines its practice as a legitimate criminal offense.

Not only can someone accuse another person of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia, they can then be tried by the government for committing said crime. If the person is found guilty, the punishment is death.

Reporting on the total number of these cases doesn’t get outside the country often. But several high-profile cases resulted in imprisonment and death at the hands of the Saudi government, which was accused by Human Rights Watch in 2009 of “sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police.”

Numerous cases indicate that the punishment is beheading. In fact, that sentence was carried out as recently as June 19, 2012, on Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, a man accused of practicing witchcraft and sorcery in the Najran province of southern Saudi Arabia.^[6]

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre Witch Burials

4 Indonesia

For 31 years, the people of Indonesia suffered under the rule of Suharto. But that all came to an end in 1998 when the militaristic dictator resigned.

On the surface, Suharto’s resignation was a positive move forward for the country. But his leaving office caused widespread unrest, a severe financial crisis, and for some reason, an intense witch hunt resulting in the deaths of some 400 people. These hunts consisted of a series of brutal killings throughout many parts of the island nation, though many were likely called witch hunts to cover up murders.

In September 2000, a mob in West Java rounded up a 70-year-old woman who was accused of casting spells that made local residents ill. She was decapitated, her eyes were gouged out, and her limbs were torn from her body and tossed into the street.^[7]

The anger and hatred toward purported witches in the country often led to the brutal death and dismemberment of anyone accused of witchcraft. This is why Indonesia’s post-Suharto witch purge is one of the more brutal examples on this list.

3 Papua New Guinea

Interestingly, Papua New Guinea allows a legal practice called “white” magic, which is used for faith healing and other benign practices. In the 1970s, the nation passed a law called the Sorcery Act, which imposed a two-year prison sentence on anyone found engaging in “black” magic. As the country outlawed the negative aspect of using magic, the nation saw a rise in violence and extrajudicial torture committed against alleged practitioners of “black” magic.

As recently as 2013, four women were accused of witchcraft because their familial home was made of wood. All four women were tortured, and one was beheaded. That incident occurred not because the women were practicing magic, but because they were economically better off than their accusers.^[8]

Similar crimes have been committed throughout the country, typically against young women who are tortured and often beaten to death. Fortunately, the country repealed the Sorcery Act in 2013 and defined the killing of accused witches as murder.

2 Cameroon

Fortunately, not all witch hunts end in the brutal deaths of purported practitioners. When it came time for the mob to launch a witch hunt in the city of Buea, Cameroon, in January 2014, the unleashed fury only resulted in property damage.

Residents of the southern Cameroonian town rioted and destroyed the homes and vehicles of several people identified as witches. The rioters claimed that the victims were members of a cult responsible for some recent deaths in the region. Blogger and reporter Mathias Mouende Ngamo said, “16 homes and 10 shops were destroyed. There were also the shells of burned-out cars on the streets.”^[9]

In another incident in the 1970s, a child witchcraft scare spread throughout part of the country which resulted in the rounding up of several children believed to be witches. Fortunately, the children were not terribly harmed. After they were forced to confess, they were “rewarded” with large amounts of meat meant to induce a purifying vomit and were released to their families.

1 Tanzania

Of every example on this list, Tanzania is by far the worst. In the 21st century alone, it’s believed that an estimated 20,000 people have been rounded up and slaughtered for practicing witchcraft.

But these witch hunts aren’t strictly limited to the practice of the dark arts. In addition to denouncing people for witchcraft, Tanzania has targeted and slaughtered homosexuals or people accused of being homosexual.

Between January and June 2017, the Legal and Human Rights Center reported 479 deaths from so-called “mob justice” throughout the country. These deaths included mainly elderly women accused of witchcraft as well as government-sanctioned murders of homosexuals.^[10]

Many murders have been carried out under the direction of local governors, while others were the result of a mob frenzy. Regardless of their reasoning, Tanzania is the deadliest place to live for anyone accused of practicing witchcraft in the 21st century.

The beauty of origami appeals to the eye as well as the mind. Designs using paper can yield both detailed sculptural works of animals and flowers.

They also employ powerful mathematical principles. Since the 1960s, modern engineering and design have been able to harness both the beauty and the power of origami techniques to introduce efficient alternatives that can be seen in many scientific disciplines today.

10 Emergency Shelters

Zipper tubes can be used for natural disaster relief or emergency shelters. They were created by the amazing researchers at the University of Illinois, Georgia Institute, and University of Tokyo.

They are simply two zigzag pieces of paper glued together. Although a single strip of paper can be quite flexible, two pieces will interlock in a tube design. This provides a much stronger and resilient structure.

Materials that might be used for this design include paper, plastic, or metal. It can be as big as a house or microscopically small. The tubes can be made into shelters as well as buildings or bridges by combining geometric angles for every purpose.^[1]

9 Battery Poisoning

If someone accidentally swallowed a button battery, then this might just save their life. In 2017, there were 3,244 cases of ingested batteries—with almost 2,000 of those by children under age six.^[2]

This origami design has a permanent magnet folded within and is swallowed inside an ice capsule. It is able to take medicine to specific locations in the body. A magnet is used to manipulate where the robot goes in the body, and the bot moves in a “stick-slip” motion. The protuberances can stick to a surface within the body and slip away with body movements. The device also moves around when in contact with stomach fluids.

The origami robot works by allowing the magnetic field outside the body to help process the battery through the digestive system before any harm comes to the person. Instead of paper, the origami design was made from dried pig intestines that are normally used in sausage casing.

This ingenious idea and design is the brainchild of researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

8 Space

Space missions use nuclear fuel to power the technology to explore the galaxy. This energy source is not particularly economical and has a definite time frame until it is depleted. With space programs hampered by limited budgets to power missions, the ability to combine solar and nuclear energy would mean longer missions for less expense.

Shannon Zirbel from Brigham Young University has imagined a way of using the ancient art of origami to one day do this. Today’s solar arrays (panels) are made of rectangular pieces that fold out in space similar to an accordion. But their size and weight limit how large the arrays can be and, therefore, how much solar energy can be captured.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brigham Young University, and Robert Lang, an origami expert, have suggested a more efficient design based on origami principles. This could produce up to 250 kilowatts of power compared to the 84–120 kilowatts produced by the solar arrays on the International Space Station.

Based on the Miura fold, invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura, their design opens out like a flower to expand into a large, flat, circular area. Simple designs that hark back to origami techniques are already in use in space exploration and research, but the team is constantly searching for more efficient methods of deploying space arrays for missions.^[3]

7 The Ocean

Robert Wood from Harvard University came up with an origami-inspired design to enable soft-bodied marine animals to be captured in deep-sea dives without harming them. The robot’s design had to be simple as a lot can go wrong at those depths, and there are no means to fix any problems without surfacing.

Wood settled on a five-arm feature of interconnected triangles and pentagons that fold together into a 12-sided compartment. Sea slugs, sponges, and corals could be easily captured using the grabber, which is animated by a single motor and attached to a robotic submarine.

In addition, the grabbers are all 3-D printed in mere hours. So you have the means to revolutionize the methods by which marine biologists conduct research at such inhospitable depths.^[4]

6 Shields

Professor of mechanical engineering Larry Howell from Brigham Young University invented a bulletproof shield that was based on a folding pattern dating back nearly 100 years. Bulletproof shields used today can weigh 40 kilograms (90 lb) or more and only protect a single person at a time.

Using an old origami technique, Howell designed a shield that weighs only 25 kilograms (55 lb) and is wide enough to protect several people at once. Even better, the improved design can be easily folded into the trunk of a police vehicle.

The product needed some additional improvements to ensure that the thick bulletproof fabric could fold like paper. The engineers solved the problem by sewing rigid panels into the soft areas between the plates that then behaved like hinges.^[5]

5 Muscles

Robots usually have jerky movements that make interaction with living organisms difficult and potentially harmful.

Researchers at Harvard University and MIT have designed origami-like artificial muscles that can lift objects up to 1,000 times their own weight. It is the equivalent of a duck being able to lift a car.

Using water or air pressure, these muscles have the strength that was missing from other soft designs that were also flexible and dexterous. They look like folded skeletons that are covered with fluid-filled sacs that collapse and contract like real muscles when a vacuum is applied. They can be used for space and deep-sea exploration as well as for miniature surgical devices or wearable robotic exoskeletons.^[6]

4 Airbags

Robert J. Lang gave up his career as a prolific physicist and mathematician with NASA to devote himself to his first love—paper folding. Lang was employed by German engineering company EASi Engineering to help with the design of an airbag using origami techniques.

During a crash, an airbag must fully inflate in only milliseconds. It also needs to be firm enough to stop an accelerating person from injury while cushioning them. Computer simulation of the design is critical, and inventors must be experts in thermodynamics, engineering, physics, and geometry.

Origami begins with a single sheet of paper where polygons can be folded into a design, but an expanded airbag looks nothing like a sheet of paper. Lang used an algorithm called the “universal molecule” to create an airbag with polyhedral facets which could fold into a small space and then open into a device that would protect drivers and passengers without causing damage on impact.^[7]

3 Stents

A stent is a flexible tube design that can be folded into a tiny structure, inserted into problem areas in the body, and then expanded. Esophageal stents are used in the gastrointestinal tract to treat cancers found in the bile duct and esophagus.

This is vital as many of these cancers are inoperable and do not respond to conventional treatment. These stents can instantly allow the patient to swallow. They restore bile flow and often make hospital admission unnecessary for the affected individual.

Zhong You from Oxford University developed a heart stent based on the techniques of the origami “water bomb base” that expands in a similar way to the popular expanding origami boxes. Made of plastic materials, it is small enough to pass through a catheter. Once in position, the stent can be inflated to open up arteries.^[8]

2 Retinal Implants

Sergio Pellegrino, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, has developed a retinal implant inspired by origami that creates a 3-D structure from a 2-D one, a concept vital to this amazing design. The implants are constructed from 2-D parylene-C film and transformed into 3-D spherical structures to help those with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.^[9]

These conditions result in the loss of photoreceptors that respond to light. The elastic design accommodates a variety of retina sizes and allows for many electrodes to be placed near the retina to relay electrical signals from a camera placed near the eyeball. The device can be built flat to keep costs down.

1 Fighting Cancer

Katerina Mantzavinou, a PhD student at MIT, worked on implants for delivering even doses of chemotherapy to patients whose cancers had spread to their abdomens. The surgeons and oncologists collaborating with her team explained that a sheet design would be better than the existing tube model to increase the surface area reached by the drug.

Having had some experience using origami designs in biomedical engineering, she realized that the tools had to be narrower than 1 centimeter (0.4 in) to reach the area. They also needed to unfurl in the body.^[10]

Stretchy polymers containing the drugs were used to create the folding patterns that were then 3-D printed. Due to her prototypes, Mantzavinou won the MIT Koch Institute image award for 2018. She is currently researching how to make the prototypes thinner to fully realize the design.

Alexa is a writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Since the late 19th century, psychiatry in the Western world has claimed to be a medical specialty. By stressing that mental disorders are an “illness like any other,” psychiatrists strive to keep the same status as their colleagues in cardiology, oncology, and other specialties. Mental disorders, they argue, should be viewed no differently from diseases like heart failure or leukemia.

There is a dearth of evidence for this grand claim. Psychiatry, ably abetted by the drug industry, has created an idea of mental health that may bear little resemblance to reality. Listed below, in no particular order, are the 10 biggest myths of modern psychiatry.

10Mental Illness Is The Result Of A Broken Brain

Most psychiatrists believe that the main cause of mental illness is a life-long brain defect. We are often told that people diagnosed with schizophrenia (a severe mental health problem involving hearing voices, jumbled thoughts, and unusual beliefs) display brain deformities. Using the latest technologies, we are shown not-so-pretty pictures of schizophrenic brains displaying abnormal bumps and craters.

But recent research suggests that the antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia can cause human brain defects directly in proportion to the amount of medication ingested—the more of the drug consumed, the greater the extent of damage to the brain. Despite failing to find any strong association between brain shrinkage and the intensity of the schizophrenia, the researchers cling to the idea that antipsychotic medication only aggravates underlying brain defects. However it has also been demonstrated that antipsychotic drugs given to macaque monkeys reduce their brain volumes by around 20 percent, casting further doubt on the broken brain dogma.

Furthermore, childhood abuse (a major risk factor for schizophrenia and other disorders) is known to alter brain structure, suggesting that early trauma may contribute to structural changes in the brains of adults with mental health problems.

Thus, it seems possible to conclude that brain defects in schizophrenia sufferers are likely to result from what life in general, and psychiatry in particular, inflict upon them.

9Severe Mental Disorders Are Mainly Genetic In Origin

Most psychiatrists also link the risk of schizophrenia to the genes we inherit from our parents. In support of this argument they point to studies of identical twins (who share exactly the same genes), which seem to show that if one twin has schizophrenia there is a very high chance the other will too. Almost 70 years ago, one of the most famous twin researchers, Franz Kallman, announced an 86 percent concordance rate for schizophrenic twins—in other words, if one twin was diagnosed with schizophrenia there was an 86 percent chance their sibling would suffer from the same condition—suggesting a huge genetic influence.

Although these claims have moderated over the last few decades, 21st century psychiatry persists in the view that schizophrenia is primarily genetic in origin. As well as twin studies, psychiatrists cite adoption research that measures the concordance rate between blood relatives separated early in life. The idea is that this rules out the possibility that aspects of a shared environment may account for the correspondence. By demonstrating that children of schizophrenic mothers continued to be at greater risk of developing schizophrenia themselves, despite being adopted away as babies, the adoption studies are often considered to be the most convincing evidence of a genetic basis for the condition.

However, decades of research has signally failed to identify the genetic marker that supposedly underlies schizophrenia. Meanwhile, psychiatrists like Jay Joseph have sought to demonstrate that the twin and adoption studies touted as proof of a genetic cause are riddled with biases, ranging from blatant misreporting of the data to subtle statistical tricks. Reviews of the research that have excluded the effects of these flaws and focused only on more recent, better designed studies, have estimated the schizophrenia concordance rate for identical twins and non-identical twins to be 22 percent and 5 percent respectively, indicative of a real but modest genetic contribution—on a par with the genetic contribution to traits such as intelligence.

Life experiences seem to be a much more potent cause of the symptoms labelled as schizophrenia. For example, childhood sexual abuse has been convincingly shown to render a person 15 times more susceptible to psychosis in adulthood. The size of this effect is far in excess of any gene yet discovered.

8Psychiatric Diagnoses Are Meaningful

Medical experts diagnose illness—the symptoms presented guide them to deduce the presence of a named disease process that explains the cause and maintenance of the patient’s complaints. So if a doctor makes a diagnosis of diabetes, we know that we lack a hormone called insulin and that injections of it should improve our health.

But if mental health problems are not primarily the result of biological defects (or a “broken brain”), psychiatry is faced with a problem that is impossible to solve. So how do psychiatrists overcome this fundamental obstacle? They gather around a table and invent a list of mental illnesses!

In the USA, this list is crafted by the American Psychiatric Association and is grandly titled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short). The latest edition (DSM-5) of this psychiatric bible thrust itself onto the world last year and lists over 300 mental illnesses.

A useful diagnosis should pinpoint a specific underlying pathology that can explain the symptoms, provide guidance as to the appropriate treatment, and display high levels of reliability (so that two or more psychiatrists assessing the same person will typically reach the same conclusion). DSM-5 (along with its predecessors) fails on all three fronts. Even a key figure in earlier editions of the DSM berated the latest offering as “deeply flawed” for mislabeling normal emotions as mental illness.

7The Number Of Mentally Ill People Is Increasing

Psychiatry constantly tells us about the vast number of “mentally ill” people there are in the general population, most of them never having received professional help and many not even aware that they have a problem. One recent study claimed that almost half of all Americans will suffer a formal mental illness at some point in their lives.

The central reason for this apparently ever-increasing number is that psychiatry keeps widening the net of mental illnesses to incorporate more and more normal reactions to life’s challenges. According to DSM-5, if you remain sad two weeks after the death of a loved one you are suffering from “major depressive disorder.” A child displaying tantrums risks acquiring the label of “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.” And a modest degree of forgetfulness in later years means you are suffering with “mild neuro-cognitive disorder.” It is a wonder anyone manages to avoid the grasp of these ever-elongating psychiatric tentacles.

6Long-Term Use Of Antipsychotics Is Relatively Benign

Psychiatry carries a shameful history of failing to recognize when its treatments are doing more harm than good. Whether it be mutilating genitals, slicing brains (“leucotomy”), surgically removing organs, inducing comas with potentially lethal doses of insulin (“insulin coma therapy”) or triggering fits by electrocuting people’s heads (“electro-convulsive therapy”), psychiatrists always seem the last to realize they are damaging the very people they are paid to help.

And antipsychotic medication could well be a similar story. Long term use, particularly of the older (typical) antipsychotics, blights around 30 percent of patients with uncontrollable twitching and spasms of the tongue, lips, face, hands, and feet, an often permanent affliction known as tardive dyskinesia. The newer (atypical) antipsychotics are a little more forgiving in this respect, although not to the point of eliminating the problem altogether.

In addition to the curse of tardive dyskinesia, long term antipsychotic users may also be at greater risk of drug-induced heart disease, diabetes, and obesity (the newer atypical type being arguably more problematic in this regard). As we’ve already discussed, and perhaps most disturbingly of all, there is mounting evidence that antipsychotics may directly cause brain shrinkage.

5Effective Treatment Of Mental Illness Is Essential For Public Safety

High-profile psychiatrists continue to promote the myth of public safety being compromised by psycho-killers in our midst. A striking recent example is provided by Jeffrey Lieberman, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, who claimed that, “shocking acts of mass violence are disproportionately caused by people with mental illness who have not gotten treatment.”

Although there may be rare instances where a person’s psychotically-driven paranoia leads to an act of violence, a recent Dutch study calculated that only a tiny 0.07 percent of all crimes were directly attributable to mental health problems. A UK study found that only 5 percent of all homicides are carried out by people who have acquired a diagnosis of schizophrenia at some point in their lives, a figure dwarfed by alcohol and drug misuse, which contribute to over 60 percent of such cases.

To put the risk posed by insane people into perspective, it has been estimated that the odds of us being murdered by a psychotic stranger are about one in 10 million, on par with being hit by lightning. And people suffering mental disorders are much more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators—one study found that those diagnosed with schizophrenia were 14 times more likely to be the subject of a violent crime than to commit one.

4Many People With Mental Health Problems Have No Potential To Recover

Anyone who has spent time within Western psychiatric services could be forgiven for assuming that many of those afflicted with mental health problems were hopeless cases with little or no chance of improvement. Such pessimism is unsurprising, given that many psychiatrists believe that mental illness is caused by brain defects, and is a life-long condition akin to diabetes or heart disease.

The language of psychiatry screams hopelessness, as illustrated by the oft-used terms “severe and enduring mental illness” and “chronic schizophrenia.” Yet the reality is very different. Even when medical views of schizophrenia are considered, along with narrow, symptom-reduction definitions of recovery, the expectation is that around 80 percent of sufferers will, in time, achieve some significant improvement.

Recovery from mental health problems doesn’t necessarily equate with the elimination of all symptoms. A more meaningful definition for many sufferers might involve the pursuit of valued life goals, and the subsequent achievement of a worthwhile life, irrespective of difficulties. In this sense, to move towards recovery requires the transition from pathology, illness, and symptoms to a greater focus on health, strengths, and wellness. Free from the shackles (and self-fulfilling pessimism) of psychiatric dogma, meaningful recovery is a realistic goal for all.

3Psychiatric Medications Are Very Effective

In the USA alone, 3.1 million people were prescribed antipsychotics in 2011, at a total cost of $18.2 billion. These drugs continue to be the core treatment for people suffering with schizophrenia and practice guidelines from around the world recommend them as a first-line intervention.

In the same year, a staggering 18.5 million Americans (about 1 in 14 of the youth and adult population) were swallowing antidepressant drugs. The current view of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom is that three months of treatment with antidepressants will “much improve” 50 to 60 percent of patients.

But the effectiveness of both antipsychotics and antidepressants has been seriously challenged.

Surprisingly few studies have directly compared antipsychotics with a sedative drug like diazepam (Valium) for someone suffering an acute psychotic episode. A review of the research that has been carried out demonstrated that general sedation can have a significant effect on psychotic symptoms. This suggests that reduced arousal could be the common factor in achieving respite, as opposed to the specific “anti-psychotic” effect touted by drug manufacturers.

A recent review of 38 clinical trials of atypical antipsychotics (the newer type most commonly prescribed) concluded that they achieved only moderate benefits when compared to a placebo and “there is much room for more efficacious compounds.” The authors also found evidence of a publication bias—in other words, researchers (many sponsored by drug companies) may have been guilty of selectively publishing those studies showing the drug in a good light, while withholding those where the results were disappointing.

Furthermore, it has been established that around 40 percent of people who suffer psychotic episodes can improve without any medication at all, thereby casting further doubt on the appropriateness of blanket antipsychotic perscription.

As for antidepressants, the case is more complicated, but a recent scholarly review concluded that, overall, benefits from antidepressant use did not meaningfully exceed those from a placebo. Although the authors reported that a small number of the most severely depressed patients achieved a level of drug-placebo difference that did reach clinical significance, this probably reflected a decreased responsiveness to placebo rather than an increased responsiveness to the antidepressants.

However, a subsequent group of researchers who re-examined the results concluded that 75 percent of patients on antidepressants did show some improvement, but that the other 25 percent actually suffered a deterioration in their depressive symptoms. This risk of worsening symptoms led the original study’s author to conclude that “antidepressants should be kept as a last resort, and if a person does not respond to the treatment within a few weeks, it should be discontinued” in favor of physical exercise and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, which have both been shown to have a positive effect on depression sufferers.

2An “Illness Like Any Other” Approach Reduces Stigma

Psychiatrists often lament the everyday stigma and discrimination faced by people with mental health problems and emphasize the importance of educating the general public about these disorders. Under the banner of mental health literacy they strive to convince the public that schizophrenia and depression are illnesses like any other, primarily caused by biological defects such as biochemical imbalances and genetic brain diseases. Many psychiatrists believe that promoting biological causes for mental health problems will result in the perception that the afflicted are not to blame for their mental disorders, thereby improving attitudes towards them.

On the contrary, trying to convince the general population that schizophrenia and depression are diseases like diabetes is likely to exacerbate negative attitudes towards people with mental health problems. A recent literature review found that in 11 out of the 12 studies examined, biological explanations of mental disorders led to more negative attitudes toward sufferers than explanations based on a person’s life experiences. In particular, “illness like any other” explanations encouraged social exclusion and inflated perceptions of dangerousness.

1Psychiatry Has Made Huge Progress Over The Last 100 Years

Many medical specialties can boast impressive progress over the last 100 years or so. Vaccines for polio and meningitis have saved millions of lives. The discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, revolutionized our fight against infection. Survival rates for cancer and heart attacks are steadily improving. But what has society gained from more than a century of professional psychiatry? Apparently surprisingly little.

Psychiatry’s claims of progress have been commonplace. Edward Shorter, in the preface to his book, A History of Psychiatry, swanks that: “If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the twentieth century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry—treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of brain biochemistry—has been a smashing success.” Recent, high-profile commentators continue to stubbornly defend psychiatry’s status as a bone fide medical specialty.

But the cold facts paint a radically different picture. If you are ever unfortunate enough to suffer a psychotic episode, you will have a greater chance of recovery if you live in the developing world (Nigeria, for example) than you would in the developed world (e.g. the USA). The overuse of psychiatric medication in Western countries seems to be the primary reason for this difference.

Furthermore, you have no more chance of a recovery from schizophrenia today than you would have had over a century ago. A recent scholarly review of 50 research studies concluded that: “Despite major changes in treatment options in recent decades, the proportion of recovered cases has not increased.”

Psychiatry a smashing success? I don’t think so!

I am a freelance writer who recently opted for early retirement following 33 years of continuous employment in the UK’s psychiatric services, mostly as a clinical psychologist. During my career as a mental health professional, I have written around a dozen papers, published in academic journals or as book chapters. Since retirement, my writing focus is shared between criticisms of western psychiatry and humor.

More of my mental health writing can be found on gsidley.hubpages.com/ or at twitter.com/GarySidley.

For humor articles and chit-chat, visit brianjonesdiary-menopausalman.blogspot.co.uk/, facebook.com/gary.sidley, and bubblews.com/account/108867-gsidley.

Every year, surprising discoveries are made all over our planet, in our solar system, and even farther out in the deep void of space. These findings push forward our understanding of the reality we live in, often challenging previous notions of universal physical laws.

When a discovery falls outside the boundaries of our understanding—sometimes with a lack of context—it will often stump the smartest experts. Here are 10 mysteries that are baffling modern scientists.

10 Giraffe Skin Disease

Since the 1990s, baffling cases of skin disease have affected giraffes in captivity and in the wild. It is a widespread condition in sub-Saharan Africa.

Experts are unable to determine if this mysterious ailment is due to a combination of diseases or if an environmental effect is in play. The scientific community still doesn’t know how this disease spreads, if it can be transmitted to other animal species, or if there is a cure.

Currently, Fred Bercovitch, director of Save The Giraffes, advises that this skin disease should not play a larger role in giraffe conservation efforts due to a lack of information as to how the condition affects the animals’ reproduction and mobility. A better understanding of the effect of this disease on the giraffe population could greatly increase conservation efforts in the future.^[1]

9 East-Shifting Tornado Alley

Areas east of the Mississippi River have seen an increase in tornadic activity over the last few decades. Meanwhile, states in the area commonly known as Tornado Alley have seen a significant decrease.

Although states like Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas still have the most tornadoes each year, the total number has decreased since the late 1970s. The greatest decline has occurred in central and eastern Texas.

This change in atmospheric activity has led scientists to believe that Tornado Alley is shifting east, and they do not know why. Areas where tornadoes would often go unreported before the digital age are surprisingly the same regions seeing the largest decline in tornado activity.^[2]

Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University believes that the shift in Tornado Alley can be attributed to the drying of the Great Plains. Tornadoes form along the dry line where the dry air from the West meets the moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, a mixture that causes violent thunderstorms. As the dry line shifts east, so do the tornadoes.

However, it is unknown whether the shift is caused by our impact on the environment or an influence of nature.

8 Mysterious Seismic Waves

Seismic waves were picked up worldwide by monitoring stations on November 11, 2018, causing scientists to speculate as to what caused this never-before-witnessed event. They were able to trace the initial location to Mayotte, a French island located between continental Africa and Madagascar.

This region has been plagued by earthquakes over the last year with a decrease leading up to the event. However, no earthquakes were reported to have occurred on November 11, especially nothing capable of producing the seismic signal. The strange signal was described as better representing a burst in energy than an earthquake.

Lasting roughly 20 minutes, the seismic waves traveled thousands of kilometers across the globe. They tripped earthquake monitors, although oddly enough, nobody aboveground was able to feel them.

As the signal was so unusual, its origin is difficult to determine. John Ristau, a seismologist at GeoNet, compared the Mayotte signal with that of the 6.3-magnitude North Atlantic earthquake. Although both signals were visible, they were very different in appearance.

As Ristau explained, “You can see that the amplitude of the [Mayotte] signal varies over time; however, the frequency, or period, of the signal is virtually uniform for the entire time. This implies a source that is producing a signal at one consistent frequency, but the strength varies.”^[3]

Typically, an earthquake has a broad range of frequencies and periods at which it’s producing energy.

Anthony Lomax, an independent seismologist, suggested that the activity was probably caused by an undersea volcano to the north of Mayotte. Another possibility is an unacknowledged slow earthquake that kicked off the event.

7 The Antarctic Particles That Shatter Physics

Physicists have observed a high-energy particle blast toward space from the ice in Antarctica, and they have no idea why or how this event happened. They believe that it must be some sort of cosmic ray.

The collection of particles that comprise the Standard Model of particle physics should not be able to travel this way. But this is exactly what was observed by NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) in March 2016.

It is known that low-energy particles can travel miles through the Earth without being affected. But high-energy particles act differently because their large cross-sections make it likely that these particles will collide with something once they enter the Earth. As a result, they don’t make it out.

Most scientists suggest that ANITA captured a whole new type of particle. Some theories include an atypical distribution of dark matter inside Earth or a type of sterile neutrino which rarely collides with matter.

According to Penn State researchers who combined data from ANITA and IceCube, another Antarctica-based neutrino observatory, the particles bursting from the ice toward space have less than a 1-in-3.5-million chance of being a part of the Standard Model of particle physics.^[4]

6 Persistent Noctilucent Clouds

The mesosphere, the part of the atmosphere that almost touches space, is very cold and dry. During the summer, ice crystals about the size of cigarette smoke particles form around dust, possibly from meteoroids, in the -125 decree Celsius (-193 °F) conditions. When this happens, it creates a blue illuminating display of wispy clouds shortly after sunset called noctilucent clouds.

These fascinating clouds were first witnessed roughly two years after the eruption of Krakatoa in the 1880s. However, in 2006, scientists were able to answer the questions about their nature and formation.

Recently, a new mystery has sprung up about the persistence of the noctilucent clouds during the 2018 summer season. They are observed every year and have followed an expected routine—beginning their formation in May, intensifying in June, and dissipating by late July. It came as a shock to sky watchers across the northern hemisphere to see these spectacular night lights intensify in July and stick around long into August.

By using data from NASA’s satellite-based Microwave Limb Sounder, researchers from the University of Colorado realized that an increase in moisture is the cause of the prolonged effects of the noctilucent clouds. We do not know why there is an increase in moisture.

However, some theories are already in place. One involves an early entry into the solar minimum (originally expected in 2020), which may be associated with the coldest and wettest years in the mesosphere. Another possible explanation is planetary wave action in the southern hemisphere which causes more moisture in the northern atmosphere than one would usually expect.^[5]

5 The Puzzling Hexagonal Vortex Of Saturn

Analyzing data from the Cassini-Huygens mission that reached Saturn in 2004 and ended in 2017, researchers observed a strange hexagonal vortex forming at Saturn’s north pole as the northern hemisphere entered summertime. This vortex towered hundreds of kilometers above the clouds in the stratosphere.

In the 1980s, NASA’s Voyager spacecraft had discovered a hexagonal vortex much lower in the planet’s atmosphere, but they were astonished by the Cassini-Huygens finding. Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester explained:

While we did expect to see a vortex of some kind at Saturn’s north pole as it grew warmer, its shape is really surprising. Either a hexagon has spawned spontaneously and identically at two different altitudes, one lower in the clouds and one high in the stratosphere, or the hexagon is in fact a towering structure spanning a vertical range of several hundred kilometers.

A process called evanescence is one way for wave information to push up into the stratosphere, although its strength decays with height. According to our understanding of atmospheric sciences, however, a hexagonal vortex should not be able to push past the lower altitude clouds as wind directions change with higher altitudes.

Cracking the case on this geometric mystery will help scientists understand the transportation of energy around planets by grasping how the higher atmosphere is affected by the lower-altitude environment.

The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) used on the Cassini-Huygens mission also revealed that Saturn’s poles exhibit surprisingly different behaviors. The south pole displays a vastly more mature circular vortex during the southern summer. This could indicate that Saturn’s northern vortex will continue to mature. Alternatively, Saturn may have asymmetrical poles that are yet to be understood.^[6]

4 The Missing Dark Matter

A team of scientists led by Pieter van Dokkum has discovered a galaxy named NGC1052-DF2 that appears to be lacking dark matter. This has astronomers scratching their heads because the absence of dark matter in this galaxy would confirm that the substance exists as well as produce doubts about our current understanding as to how a galaxy is created.

Our modern understanding is that galaxies are created from a halo of dark matter. Without dark matter, a galaxy should not be able to form.

The team was able to get a closer look and determine the mass of NGC1052-DF2, located 65 million light-years away, by tracking 10 embedded star clusters with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. They found that the mass of NGC1052-DF2 was almost equal to the total mass expected from the stars (visible matter) within it. Also, the mass of NGC1052-DF2 is only 0.5 percent of the mass of our Milky Way galaxy.^[7]

Some have suggested that dark matter may not exist and that we need to modify our understanding of gravity. However, alternate theories of gravity still have something that mimics dark matter on a galactic scale. In fact, it should always be there.

So, van Dokkum argues that if an alternate law of gravity applies to one galaxy, then that law should affect all galaxies in the same way. As a result, every galaxy should look like it has dark matter (even if it doesn’t) because the mimicking factor would always be there.

That leads us to van Dokkum’s paradoxical conclusion. If all galaxies should look like they have dark matter (even if it’s really something else), then the inability to detect dark matter in galaxy NGC1052-DF2 proves that dark matter is real. Scientists are still debating this issue vigorously.

3 The Deep Space Flashing Light

When astronomers were searching the depths of space to determine what comprises the 80 percent of the universe we can’t see, they stumbled across something unexpected. Seventy-two intense bursts of light were monitored from the Cerro Tololo International Observatory in Chile by Miika Pursiainen and his team.

The hot bursts of light were measured as being 300 million kilometers (186 million mi) to 15 billion kilometers (9 billion mi) across. They also had brightness that one would expect from a supernova, although they did not have the duration.

According to one theory, this event occurred due to a complication in the development of a Type II supernova. A Type II supernova happens when a star blows off its outer shell of gas after a buildup of heavy elements in the star’s core causes it to collapse in on itself.

This complication is currently being researched by the Australian National University. It has been named a fast-evolving luminous transient (FELT), which occurs when a star develops gas bubbles during the early stages of the collapse. When the star goes supernova, these gas bubbles explode due to the superheating effect. This is still a working theory, and only time will give us any definitive answers.^[8]

2 Strange Infrared Light Emitting From A Pulsar

RX J0806.4-4123 is one of “The Magnificent Seven,” a group of X-ray pulsars located within 3,300 light-years from Earth. These pulsars are hotter and slower than astronomers would expect for their age.

RX J0806.4-4123 is emitting a strange infrared light that is completely new to scientists. When an international group of astronomers observed the pulsar with the Hubble Space Telescope, they noticed the extended area of roughly 29 billion kilometers (18 billion mi) of infrared light emitting from the pulsar.

Obviously, something more is going on with this neutron star as the infrared emissions are greater than the star alone can produce. So, what is the source of the energy? Scientists have proposed at least two theories: a fallback disk or a pulsar wind nebula.^[9]

A fallback disk is a large disk of dust that formed around the neutron star after its explosion. Although such a disk has never been observed, researchers have hypothesized its existence.

It would explain the higher temperature and slower rotation of the star as well as the amount of energy needed to emit so much infrared light. A confirmation of the fallback disk would be a huge leap forward in our understanding of the formation of neutron stars.

Now let’s examine the pulsar wind nebula theory. The fast rotation of a neutron star with a strong magnetic field creates an electric field. In turn, when particles are accelerated in this field, a pulsar wind may be produced. Infrared emissions would then be emitted by shocked particles created when the neutron star travels at faster than the speed of sound through the interstellar medium.

However, the existence of an infrared-only pulsar wind nebula would be extraordinary.

1 The Bird In The Child’s Mouth

Fifty years ago, the remains of a young child were found in Tunel Wielki Cave in the Saspowska Valley in Poland. The child’s gender is unknown, but the skull of a bird was in the youngster’s mouth and another was by the child’s cheek.

Although the discovery was peculiar, the bones were almost immediately boxed and put into storage without being properly examined and assessed. The findings went unpublished except for a single photograph in a 1980s book by Professor Waldemar Chmielewski, the man who originally discovered the skeleton.

Anthropologists don’t know why the child was buried about 200 years ago in this manner or location. The only other human remains found in the cave were at least 4,000 years old.

The mystery doesn’t stop there. Although the University of Warsaw has bones from the youngster’s body, it does not have the child’s skull. In fact, it is missing. It was sent to anthropologists in Wroclaw after the excavation, but no one seems to know where the skull is now.^[10]

Humans have always had a close relationship with alcohol, and the United States even has a holiday commemorating the repeal of Prohibition. Alcohol shaped our history, our culture, and our biology—sometimes in pretty surprising ways.

10We Evolved To Drink

In our bodies today, an enzyme called ADH4 processes whatever alcohol we consume. Other primates have the enzyme, but it acts differently in many of them—and many of them can’t process alcohol like we can.

Chemist Steven Benner, recreating enzymes present in our earliest ancestors, noted different types of ADH4 along our evolutionary tree. He traced our version back to a split in the tree 10 million years ago, when the gorilla and the ancestors of the chimpanzee branched off from other primates like lemurs and the orangutan. One branch—that we’re still on—developed the ability to process alcohol. Our group of primates spent more time on the ground eating fallen fruit that had begun to ferment, as opposed to picking fruit fresh from where it grew.

Though there’s still no concrete fossil evidence from our last common ancestor with the gorilla, we know one thing about them: They had the first awesome holiday parties.

9The Face Of World Politics

Every politician makes promises. It’s in their job description. But in the good old days, they offered something more concrete: Candidates handed out alcohol in return for votes.

The practice dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, and it’s been recorded throughout Europe’s history as well. It then stayed around longer than you might think. George Washington’s first attempt at running for office (in the Virginia House of Burgesses) was a failure; on his next attempt, he won, after giving out about half a gallon of alcohol for each vote. A century later, the Republican Party elevated the idea, treating 50,000 of Brooklyn’s citizens to an alcohol-laden picnic.

Some attempts failed, however, leading to important life lessons for 19th-century politicians. Stephen Douglas learned the hard way that if you’re expecting 20,000–30,000 people to show up for your party, make sure you have enough booze to go around. After the food and alcohol ran low at his New York bash, the whole thing turned into a massive pushing and shoving match. Voters went away still hungry and thirsty, and when they went to the polls, they voted instead for some man named Abraham Lincoln.

8The Booming Cork Business

Besides brewing and distilling, the alcohol industry is responsible for another business worth $2 billion—cork production.

High-quality cork is needed to preserve the taste and quality of wine. Cork bark needs to be a certain thickness to be effective, but global warming is changing the trees responsible for the material. Cork is now thinner and of lower quality because trees lack vital proteins.

Wine enthusiasts are up in arms about the need for better-quality corks. They’re starting to look toward metal screw caps or rubber stoppers instead, leaving the fate of the cork industry up in the air.

7American Rum And The Revolution

Schools teach us that the colonists living in America rebelled because of unfair taxation, which is a pretty accurate statement. They also teach that a tax on tea fired the colonists up, culminating in 1773’s Boston Tea Party. In reality, it didn’t all start there. First came a tax on molasses—molasses used for making rum.

Rum was a hugely popular drink in the American colonies, with hundreds of distilleries all manufacturing their syrupy version of the Caribbean drink. As North America’s climate was ill-suited for growing sugar, most of it was imported, to the tune of about six million gallons of molasses in 1770.

Molasses and sugar came from British- and French-ruled areas. To secure trade for themselves, the British used the Molasses Act of 1733 to slap a heavy tax on molasses that didn’t come from their own colonies. A revised act in 1764 imposed the tax on both sugar and molasses, allowing for the seizure of any cargo imported in violation of the law.

Suddenly, tax was having a very real impact on the success of a major colonial business, leading to the beginning of the rebellion against the idea of taxation without representation.

6Pasteurization And Alcohol

When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization, he wasn’t trying to make safer milk. He was trying to solve the problems of local wineries, distilleries, and breweries.

Pasteur was a chemistry professor and the Dean of the Faculte de Sciencies in France. His work in bacteria and fermentation started when a local man approached him about problems with his beet sugar distillery. Sometimes, his product came out fine. Other times, it produced sour lactic acid.

Examining the processes, Pasteur determined the product was being contaminated by germs in the air. For the first time, he proved that a living thing—bacteria—caused the reaction. He responded by introducing processes for heating, boiling, and creating pure yeast cultures. This not only revolutionized wine and beer but made many other foods safer to eat.

5Christianity And Alcohol

The New Testament is pretty explicit about approving of alcohol. Jesus and the Apostles all drank wine, and according to St. Paul, wine is a gift from God. Paul also said that wine should be enjoyed but not abused, and abstinence is better than alcoholism.

While it seems like that should end all disputes on the matter, some Christians argue that the wine of the New Testament is actually non-alcoholic grape juice. They argue this even though the same Hebrew words describe Christ’s wine and the wine that got Noah drunk and naked.

One of the first things the Puritans did in the New World was build some breweries, but some Baptist and Methodist groups call drinking and alcohol evil. Abstaining from alcohol is a big consideration in the Mormon belief system. Other groups, like the Evangelicals, have recently begun lifting bans on the consumption of alcohol in some of their schools—by instructors, anyway.

4The Ancient Drinking Age Debate

In ancient Egypt, from around 4000 B.C., writings reminded mothers to include a healthy serving of beer when sending children off to school. The idea that we needed to keep alcohol from younger generation started later, with Plato.

In his Laws, written about 360 B.C., Plato described a soul having tasted alcohol as being made of fire and iron. Anyone younger than 18 wasn’t ready for the responsibility that needed to go along with enjoying this most godly of pleasures. He also outlined guidelines for how much you should drink. Once you were 18, you could certainly drink, but it was also important that you didn’t drink too much. By the time you were 40, however, you were free to honor Dionysus above all other gods. Alcohol would help you forget sorrow, renew youth, and soften the hard edges that came with age.

Plato also went a step further in his Republic, saying that young men needed to be coached on how to drink properly. They should be trained at formal dinners about how to behave while drinking and what their limits were.

3The Tavern Guided America’s Political Landscape

When taverns were first built in American colonial cities, people from all walks of life went there to drink and compare notes. As America grew and the class division became more evident, divisions in tavern culture followed suit. In taverns such as Boston’s Green Dragon, plans were hatched to form this entirely new nation. By this time, taverns were a male-dominated world, so a lot of decisions happened without a female voice.

Taverns were also divided ethnically. There were Irish pubs, there were German taverns, and other drinking establishments catered to other particular immigrant groups. That meant taverns and pubs were highly visible targets when someone wanted to make a statement against a particular group. In the 1850s, cities closed taverns on Sundays, effectively eliminating the only public meeting house that the immigrant community had on their one day off. Law enforcement would often use taverns to send messages, shutting down establishments frequented by one group or another.

2The Start Of The Gay Rights Movement

Taverns and bars are meeting places even today. In the late 1960s, though, the drinking culture of America looked pretty different. In New York State, places that served a gay clientele were often denied permits to sell alcohol. Most of these taverns and bars kept operating, though, many striking deals with law enforcement to keep their doors open.

On June 27, 1969, police raided one such tavern, the Stonewall Inn. They arrested 13 people. Over the course of the next six days, protesters took to the streets. Other gay clubs had already been closed, and the attack on the Stonewall was the last straw. Stonewall was more than just a bar: It was a place where young people with no family (usually kicked out by parents in denial over having a gay child) could go to be accepted. The attack on the Stonewall was viewed as an attack on the community.

In time, riot squads were dispatched to deal with the crowds, which numbered in the thousands. On the heels of the Stonewall Inn’s arrests came the formation of the LGBT rights groups, as well as the first gay pride parade—held a year after the bar’s clientele faced off with police.

1No Alcohol? No Utopia.

In 1732, the American colonies contained English land to the north, Spanish-held Florida, and a gap between their borders. Wanting to develop something of a buffer between the two, King George agreed to a rather forward-thinking plan put forward by General James Ogelthorpe.

Oglethorpe asked the king to release many poor English citizens languishing in debtors’ prison. He would take them to the New World, giving them a chance at a new life in his Province of Georgia. Along the way, Oglethorpe was determined to avoid the mistakes he saw the colonies making. In his utopian paradise, there would be no handful of wealthy landowners. Instead, the land would be divided equally among the settlers (50 acres each), and selling it was forbidden. Slavery was forbidden, too. He wanted a state where everyone was equal.

He also banned alcohol. Many in debtors’ prison had gotten there because of alcohol.

The buffer zone succeeded in keeping the Spanish from expanding northward, but that was its only success. The 2,800 people who settled in the area imported slaves from farms to the North. They ignored—or ranted about—the land they had been given. They grew angry that the promises of a flourishing silk industry failed. And they really, really didn’t like the idea of the alcohol ban. Settlers drank openly, and Oglethorpe soon found that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

His grand plan for a utopian society of self-sustaining equality collapsed on itself, and England revoked their relative independence in 1752. We like to think that everyone had a drink when they found out.

Uber’s rise to global prominence has played out in the blink of an eye. Struggling to find a taxi one frosty night in Paris, founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were inspired to set up a ride-hailing app that ended up flourishing into an enormous worldwide success. Or so the press release claims.

It hasn’t all been clear sailing. Uber’s journey has been marred by a series of controversies, earning the company a reputation for lax security, bawdy jokes, and worker exploitation.

The culmination of these difficult episodes resulted in half a million users deleting their accounts in the space of a week. That said, the app still boasts 75 million customers worldwide and annual revenue of $11.3 billion. Like it or loathe it, Uber has transformed our modern world.

10 They Improve Health Care Efficiency

The United States is said to have one of the least efficient health care systems on the planet. Approximately 3.6 million Americans are unable to attend their appointments each year due to a lack of reliable transportation. In total, around $150 billion is lost annually in health care due to no-shows from patients.

UberHealth aims to address this pressing issue. First introduced in February 2018, the service has been set up to promptly deliver patients, including those who don’t own smartphones, to nonemergency appointments. Uber designed the platform in collaboration with a team of medical experts, and it can be tailored to meet the needs of individual clinics and hospitals.

A little over a year after its launch, UberHealth appears to be making a positive impact. In Massachusetts, the Boston Medical Center has reported savings of half a million dollars following the replacement of their shuttle bus service. Patient satisfaction is on the rise, too.

On the other hand, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that UberHealth had no significant effect on the number of missed appointments. Whether UberHealth will provide long-term improvements to the US health care system remains to be seen.^[1]

9 They Run Outreach For Military Veterans

When a military veteran returns home from the service, finding work can often be a struggle. Many employers have no direct need for the skills acquired during military training, which means that veterans can find themselves at the bottom of the pile in an overcrowded job market.

Uber is striving to change this. The company has employed around 56,000 veterans as drivers since the launch of their UberMilitary outreach service in September 2014. The scheme helps to reduce the ex-service unemployment issue and increase profits for Uber. In fact, UberMilitary is predicted to earn $500 million in revenue by 2020.

In addition, it paves the way for Uber to expand into military bases. Currently, ride-sharing apps are banned from carrying passengers on journeys to and from military bases. Todd Bowers, director of UberMilitary, has told journalists that he hopes the veteran scheme may persuade the Department of Defense to change its mind.^[2]

8 They Claim To Be Saving The Environment, But Are They?

Environmental sustainability is a key piece of Uber’s image. The company prides itself on encouraging commuters to give up their vehicles and hail a lift instead. Proponents claim that the app is reducing the amount of traffic that spews harsh pollutants into the atmosphere.

As cofounder Travis Kalanick explained in 2015:

A city that welcomes Uber onto its roads will be a city where people spend less time stuck in traffic or looking for a parking space. It will be a cleaner city, where fewer cars on the road will mean less carbon pollution—especially since more and more Uber vehicles are low-emission hybrid vehicles.

Kalanick’s bold claims about sustainability are refreshing to hear. However, the body of evidence to support them is worryingly small. One of Uber’s key boasts is that they reduced San Francisco’s monthly carbon dioxide emissions by 120 metric tons back in 2015. However, there is a significant possibility that the data was distorted by a series of promotional offers that the company was running at the time.^[3]

Furthermore, by claiming to reduce the number of cars on the road, Uber assumes that all its passengers would otherwise have driven. This fails to account for the former pedestrians and cyclists who have been enticed to hail rides.

In their defense, Uber claims that they are reticent to release journey data publicly to stave off competition from rival start-ups. They also cite the need for security.

7 They Sparked Mass Online Condemnation

#DeleteUber is arguably one of the biggest PR nightmares in the history of social media. In one week, half a million users deleted their accounts in protest of the company’s contentious actions.

In January 2017, the US travel ban on a number of Muslim-majority countries was met with a wave of backlash. As part of the protest, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a professional drivers union, announced an hour-long boycott of the John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Shortly afterward, Uber decided that surge pricing (increasing fares at peak times in affected areas) should be turned off around JFK Airport. This was viewed by many online as an attempt to undermine and profit from the strike.

Protesters on Twitter reacted with a surge of condemnation, severing ties with the app and encouraging others to do the same. #DeleteUber promptly started trending. In total, around 500,000 users deleted their accounts.^[4]

In his response, CEO Travis Kalanick branded the travel ban “unjust” and promised to support affected drivers. This included a $3 million investment in immigration and translation services.

6 They Fund Better Public Infrastructure

According to Uber, there is an urgent need for investment and innovation in public infrastructure. The ride-hailing company hopes to tackle the issue in collaboration with cities across the US while also pressing Congress to step up their contribution toward improving the roads.

Although the company does seem to be having a noticeable impact on infrastructure, it is important to understand that Uber’s actions are not charitable donations. The changes for which they are lobbying ultimately increase their profit margins.

Since 2015, Uber has forked out $2 million to encourage congestion pricing in New York with the aim of reducing traffic and boosting revenue for the city. The divisive decision to charge drivers to enter Manhattan’s busiest neighborhoods will benefit the company enormously. Reduced traffic will result in shorter journey times for Uber vehicles, and motorists put off by the congestion fee could be enticed to hail a ride instead.^[5]

On top of this, Uber has announced four key principles to which Congress should adhere when financing federal infrastructure. In March 2019, the tech giant called on Congress to repair and maintain existing roads, prioritize public-private partnerships, encourage sustainable forms of transportation, and advance their use of cutting-edge technology.

While some supporters hail these developments as a win-win situation that promotes better infrastructure and boosts Uber’s profits, others are concerned about the implications of the company’s corporate dominance of the roads. The worry is that Uber’s lobbying is discouraging cities from investing in public transportation or other alternatives that may be more beneficial in the long run.

5 They Try To Conceal Hacks

In October 2016, Uber was the victim of an immense global hack. Personal data—including names, phone numbers and emails addresses—was stolen from 57 million users. The license details of 600,000 US drivers were also accessed. Most damning of all, Uber’s chief security officer attempted to cover up the hack rather than inform users. But it all came spilling out a year later.

With flagrant disregard for their responsibility to notify customers, the company chose to pay the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet.

Although Uber assured passengers and drivers that no sensitive information like credit card and social security numbers was compromised by the breach, it was a massive blow to their public image that threw the integrity of the company into serious dispute.^[6]

In 2018, Uber agreed to pay $148 million in compensation to 50 US states and the District of Columbia. As part of the settlement, they also promised a major overhaul of their security systems.

Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, blasted the cover-up as “a blatant violation of the public’s trust.” Cybersecurity expert Paul Lipman called the company’s data storage practices “unforgivable.”

4 They Are Changing The Face Of Drug Dealing

You might not imagine it, but drug dealers have been at the forefront of almost all major advances in technology. The rise of the dark web has provided an underground forum for black market sites like Silk Road to thrive. Burner phones are inextricably linked to dealing narcotics. Rumor has it that the first sale made over the Internet was a bag of marijuana.

Uber is no different. According to anecdotal reports from drivers, dealers are happy to use them as private chaperones from one client to another. However, a number of drivers are uneasy about having a potentially large quantity of drugs in their vehicles. Due to the nature of Uber, the vast majority of drivers own their cars and, as such, could be found culpable even if they weren’t aware.

Fortunately, in the handful of legal cases involving drug dealers and Uber, the drivers were rarely charged. In one instance in 2015, two Uber passengers were arrested in California after authorities discovered them with a quarter-pound of cannabis oil and $2,000. While both passengers were placed on probation, their driver was found innocent rather than charged as a coconspirator.

Although some drivers are concerned about being implicated by criminal passengers, others are less fazed by the prospect. As one driver from Boston wrote on an Internet forum: “Hookers, pimps, and dealers have been using taxis for 400 years, is it really surprising that they’d use Uber as well?”^[7]

3 Some Of Their Staff Have Been Condemned For Serious Harassment

In recent years, some of the most serious accusations leveled against Uber involve harassment and discrimination. The tech giant has come under fire in a series of scandalous headlines which claim that some Uber workers are a danger to both passengers and fellow employees.

In 2018, it emerged that Uber had agreed to pay a settlement of $10 million to current and former employees following claims of serious workplace misconduct. Fifty-six people received a reported $34,000 each after being subjected to “incidents of discrimination, harassment, and/or hostile work environment and connecting their experiences to their race, national origin or gender.” A further 483 people were each paid around $11,000 due to other discrimination issues.

Technology corporations in Silicon Valley are often viewed as neglecting gender diversity issues and fostering toxic workplace environments. In February 2017, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a high-profile account of her manager propositioning her for sex. She also detailed the tepid response from human resources.^[8]

Furthermore, the company has faced accusations that it attempts to suppress passengers who claim that they were assaulted by drivers and instead pressures the women to settle out of court.

Passengers who allege assault are made to settle their disputes through the private and often confidential process of arbitration. According to critics, this plays into hands of serial offenders and gives other victims less confidence to come forward.

In response, Uber announced that it is taking action to change. This includes reorganizing salary and equity structures and changing the method of performance review in line with legal recommendations.

2 They Are The Leaders Of The Sharing Economy

The sharing economy—using technology for the exchange of goods and services between multiple individuals—is one of the most rapidly expanding industries on the planet. Companies that a mere decade ago were seen as budding start-ups have grown into lucrative global businesses, including key players like Airbnb, Lyft, and, of course, Uber.

Due to the privacy of the businesses involved, the exact size of this hybrid market is anyone’s guess. However, the decisions by Uber and Lyft to hold initial public offerings (IPOs) should begin to open up the mystery. It is predicted that the number of Americans using the sharing economy will have risen to 86.5 million by 2021.

The unprecedented rise of the sharing economy is a wake-up call for traditional industries—either adapt or become obsolete. For example, Uber has swiftly dominated the transportation sector by providing a more efficient and convenient alternative to buses and taxis. In New York City, there are now 4.5 times more Ubers than yellow taxicabs, causing the cost of cab ownership in New York City to fall from $1 million to $200,000 in three years.

The sharing economy has transformed our relationship with services such as transportation and accommodation, while online peer-to-peer marketplaces like Ebay have revolutionized the sale and purchase of consumer goods. Traditional sectors must now catch up if they are to survive this advanced digital age of business.^[9]

1 They Are Pioneers Of Self-Driving Cars

Uber is paving the way for a future filled with autonomous vehicles, although that future is a lot further away than initially expected. Only a few years ago, they were viewed as bold, enthusiastic technological trailblazers eager to get as many self-driving cars on the roads as possible.

Several of their global competitors like Google and Tesla rushed to bring out their own rival vehicles. Meanwhile, Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson announced that premium car owners would flock to buy autonomous cars.

That all changed after the death of Elaine Herzberg. On March 18, 2018, Herzberg was struck by an autonomous Uber SUV while walking outside a crosswalk in Arizona. She was later pronounced dead at the hospital. In the aftermath of the fatal collision, Uber suspended its autonomous test vehicles and brought operations in Arizona to a halt.^[10]

A second wave of public testing resumed in December 2018, which marks the start of a more cautious approach to development in the self-driving industry. Instead of brash, overhyped comments about ushering in a new era, Uber now appears to understand that the engineering involved in building a car that can think for itself is far more complex than originally predicted.

We expect our doctors to be competent, ethical, and up to date. What we don’t understand is that these qualities sometimes conflict. For example, does a new surgical technique really work, or does the patient just think it does? The only way to tell is with a clinical trial—somebody is going to secretly get a fake surgery as a test control. Is that ethical?

That’s just one of the many controversies the doctors are hotly debating (out of public sight, for the most part).

10Doctors Can Be Deceived Or Make Mistakes

Medical journals help physicians stay up to date. Unfortunately, they sometimes contain papers written by drug company ghostwriters. For instance: In 2000, a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine praised Vioxx, a new pain reliever. The writers—some of whom later turned out to be connected with the company that made Vioxx—played down cardiac side effects. Does Vioxx sound familiar? It was taken off the market in 2004 for—you guessed it—causing cardiac problems.

Most medical treatment goes through clinical trials to make sure that it works and is safe. However, experts recently went back through some of those studies and found that over a third of them had mistakes. These ranged from relatively small stuff all the way up to recommending treatment for the wrong group of people. And that’s not all. A second look at the studies that led governments to stockpile flu-fighting agents Tamiflu and Relenza showed that these drugs probably aren’t as effective as researchers once believed. They might shorten your bout of flu by half a day, but there’s no evidence that they will prevent complications or keep you out of the hospital.

9Advance Directives Can Let Dementia Patients In For Risky Research

Doctors won’t treat you without your informed consent. So what if you’re unconscious? Hopefully, you’ve filled out an advance directive. You might even have a research advance directive on file, if you don’t mind taking a chance and possibly helping others in the future. It’s pretty basic—unless you come down with dementia.

Alzheimer’s has been studied for over 100 years, but we still don’t know much about it. Research is a priority, and some scientists do it with the help of an advance directive. The special research consent has to be signed before the patient gets dementia, and this doesn’t happen often. Some believe that requiring this consent blocks valuable research. Others aren’t at all comfortable with the idea, and they’ve got a point, too. Terrible things have happened during human experiments.

The Alzheimer’s Association takes the middle ground. They suggest enrolling everybody in research if there’s little risk, obtaining the surrogate’s consent for risky research with potential benefits, and requiring research consent for any risky research without likely benefits.

8Incidental Findings Can Ruin Your Life

Modern medicine has the most powerful tools in history. However, sometimes it’s possible to see too much. Say you go to the ER because you’re feeling depressed, and routine tests show a mass on your adrenal gland. It’s such a common finding, doctors call it “incidentaloma.” These tumors are usually benign, but the doctors won’t know for sure that it’s not cancer unless they do a lot of tests.

Cancer? Do all the tests!

So they do all the tests, and those come back benign, because that’s what incidentalomas usually are. However, now you have huge medical bills and are feeling emotionally overwhelmed, maybe even suicidal. You could just ask the doctor not to tell you about incidental findings. However, if it involves gene sequencing, the doctor might ignore your request. The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics tells its members to look for unrelated risky genes whenever they do genetic tests and to tell the patient about whatever they find. Medical technology can cause some expensive, heartbreaking problems. Nobody really knows how to handle the problem of incidental findings.

7Unethical Co-Branding

Co-branding can do wonderful things. For example, some credit card companies donate $100 to a medical center if new customers spend $500 within six months of being approved. Businesses, including hospitals, link their names with other companies for greater public visibility. It usually works out well for everybody. However, problems can come up if the hospitals don’t do their homework on potential business partners.

Some genetic screening companies, for example, avoid regulation by describing their tests as “recreational.” Some direct-to-consumer companies that provide cardiac screening are under attack by consumer groups for pushing tests that these groups claim will do more harm than good.

It’s a mixed bag. Even experts who oppose direct marketing to patients have to admit that there’s no solid evidence so far that it’s harmful as an educational tool. Beyond that, there’s a lot of controversy. So don’t automatically assume the name of a respected medical institution on something guarantees it’s just what the doctor ordered—think it through and read the fine print.

6You Could Wake Up During Surgery

As depressing as modern medicine can be, at least there’s anesthesia. Back in the day, surgery on a wide-awake patient was ghastly for everybody. Well, guess what? Today, one or two patients out of 1,000 wake up while they’re being operated on. Not surprisingly, up to 70 percent of them develop PTSD.

It happens when the general anesthesia is too light. The drugs are so powerful, that it’s a fine line between no pain and no vital signs. Anesthesiologists want to keep you alive and comfortable. Sometimes, they just can’t tell how much is enough, especially toward the end of a case, when your body has used up most of the anesthesia. Also, for certain high-risk surgeries, they have to go easy on the gas because you’re already in critical condition.

There can’t be any guarantees that you won’t wake up before they want you to. The good news is that, if you do, you’ll probably feel pressure, not pain. The pressure of instruments and strange hands deep inside your body, moving around—no wonder the PTSD rate is high.

5Doctors May Have Conflicts Of Interest

Everybody munches on freebies at the grocery store. Why shouldn’t doctors get free samples, too? Drug company reps offer them everything, from notepads to free pizza. Of course the physicians take some. Then they go on practicing medicine their own way. Probably. This isn’t a problem in itself—doctors have to eat and doodle just like the rest of us. Conflict of interest only gets serious when money and influence are at stake.

That happens a lot. Researchers say that 40 percent of the drug company directors they studied also held top posts at major academic medical centers. Those directors, on average, got well over $250,000 a year for their services. Then they went back to the medical center and ran its health care, research, and school their own way. Probably.

It also turns out that your medical care may be different—and possibly more expensive—if your doctor owns any labs and equipment or is a partner in a specialty hospital. Federal and state laws restrict self-referrals. In spite of that, it’s been shown that patients have more tests and more surgeries in areas where physicians own a lot of the local medical infrastructure.

4 No One Really Knows What Your Health Care Costs

When medical bills arrive, most people reach for their checkbook or maybe for the phone to call the insurance company (and possibly a bankruptcy lawyer). Would you believe the hospital might back off if you challenge the bill? Or that hospitals charge different prices depending on your insurance? They do this because nobody has a clue how much your visit actually costs. Don’t take our word for it. In 2004, the UC Davis Health System chief financial officer said, “There is no method to this madness. As we went through the years, we had these cockamamie formulas. We multiplied our costs to set our charges.”

Hospitals use a master price list called a “chargemaster.” Except in California, you don’t have the right to see one. Even if you do, it won’t make much sense. There’s no national standard for them, and everybody updates them differently. Your insurance company may get a discount of more than 50 percent off chargemaster prices. Uninsured? You’ll pay the full amount. Obamacare has caused a boom in medical billing specialists. But still no one is sure how to code your medical bill.

3Electronic Health Record Errors

Your medical records were once stored on paper. Doctors and hospitals have saved time, space, and money by switching over to the electronic health records. These wonderful software packages save lives, too, but nothing is perfect. Computer and human errors are also present. Even worse, contracts with the software companies are silencing physicians who want to complain about the software.

Errors are common. Doctors miss important lab results because the screen is badly designed. Medication doses are mixed up. Notes disappear. And no one is tracking these errors. It’s even possible that this has contributed to the US Ebola crisis. Thomas Duncan caught the bug in Liberia. After coming home, he went to a Dallas ER for symptoms that could easily have been something like the flu. He did tell them where he’d been, and a nurse did enter that into his electronic record. What happened next isn’t clear, but it’s possible that the nurse’s note wasn’t immediately available to the ER doctor and other health care providers because of a software design flaw. In any case, they didn’t immediately treat Mr. Duncan for Ebola, and he later died from the disease.

2Hacked Medical Devices

Medical equipment has NSA-level cybersecurity, right? No, not at all. Recently, a Midwestern US health care chain asked the IT department to hack equipment at its 100 facilities. It was horrifyingly easy for them to access medical records, reset medicine pumps, reprogram defibrillators, change refrigerator temperature settings, and to take down emergency and lab equipment. And that’s just what the company would publicly admit. Problems included weak passwords, infected devices, and poor firewalling. However, the system’s best feature—feeding embedded information directly into medical records—also made it a hacker’s dream.

This isn’t a one-off problem. Malware shut down a New Jersey heart catheterization lab in 2010. The Conficker virus was found on 104 devices in a Tampa VA hospital. An antivirus program forced a third of Rhode Island’s hospitals to postpone everything but emergency surgeries and treatment because it mistakenly identified a critical Windows DLL as malicious.

No patients have been harmed yet, fortunately. The FDA just released cybersecurity guidelines. While they’re not federal law, good luck getting your new medical device approved if it’s not secure. And the guidelines are a heads-up to the health care world that now is the time to somehow secure all the vulnerable equipment out there.

1Unfair Treatment Of Minorities Still Exists In The US

Americans once got different medical treatment based on their ethnic background. We’ve come a long way, but not as far as we think. In 2002, the Institute of Medicine found that minorities were routinely given lower-quality health care and denied some drugs and medical procedures. They were also more likely to have an amputation for diabetes. Researchers called for system changes, as well as for more minority providers and more interpreters to overcome language barriers. Six years later, a different group found the same problems. This group put their findings in a book that people could use to improve things in their own communities.

In some ways, people are even worse off in 2014. Doctors say that it’s a very complex problem. Insurance plans and providers don’t serve poor communities. There are also cultural differences, communication barriers, and lack of information on how to access the system.

+Faking Surgery For Science

Unfortunately, our example about secret placebo surgeries isn’t theoretical. It’s rare, but it has happened. In 2009, for example, a report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that described how 63 patients with compression fractures from osteoporosis got “a simulated procedure without cement” as part of a study. This didn’t just happen at a single hospital, either. Several major medical centers were involved. Well, that sounds horrible, but the study proved that the real surgery probably wasn’t helping anybody. Was it worth it? When it comes to sham surgery, doctors are still trying to make up their minds.

Barb likes to write about science at her blog Flight To Wonder.

Everything in moderation, as the old adage goes. As it turns out, that couldn’t be more accurate, as research continues to shed light on how the modern world is damaging our health. We might be living longer today than our ancestors did, but the current era isn’t as health-friendly as we might think.

10Feeling Guilty Can Damage Your Health

Every January, people around the world resolve to leave their bad habits behind and embark on a journey of self-improvement as the new year begins. Then, a few weeks later, everyone starts to feel a little guilty for not following through.

But while a little guilt can encourage someone to make positive changes, too much guilt is a different story. Feeling guilty isn’t just unpleasant—it could be causing damage to your immune system. Researchers from Hull University found that people who felt guilty about their favorite activities had decreased levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A in their saliva. So if two people like to unwind with a box of wine and some trashy reality shows, but only one feels guilty about it, then the guilty person is more likely to catch viral and bacterial infections. That means your favorite “guilty pleasure” could be the reason you seem to catch colds more often than someone who just calls it “pleasure.”

9Light Pollution

According to astronomers, the majority of Americans under 40 have never experienced true darkness. Urban areas experience a phenomenon called “sky glow,” where artificial light is scattered by water droplets, creating a dome of light over the city. Even inside our own homes, the little lights on electronics like alarm clocks and televisions stay on 24/7—and our bodies just weren’t built to handle that. In fact, light pollution in the developed world is now so bad that it’s damaging our health. According to physicist Eric Vandernoot, the human body is hardwired for a cycle of light and darkness. Overuse of light in the evening is connected to a number of health problems, including increased risk of diabetes, obesity, depression, prostate cancer, and breast cancer.

Sleep disorders are another big problem. In fact, light pollution may have actually changed the entire way we experience sleep. Before the industrial revolution, it was common for people to sleep for two periods of around four hours each, separated by one to three hours “of quiet wakefulness.” Even today, studies have shown that people tend to revert back to this sleep pattern once light pollution is taken out of the equation.

And even if you buy blackout curtains and cover those flashing LEDs, you might still be in danger from excess light, since the streetlights are still on outside. Turning streetlights off has actually been found to drastically reduce crime (even criminals need to be able to see). Of course, that might not be much comfort to anyone trying to find their way home in the pitch dark, but at least they won’t get mugged.

8Added Sugar Is Worse Than You Realized

Sugar itself isn’t bad for you—glucose is essential to powering the body, especially the brain. The problem is that people are now consuming more sugar than ever, and you can definitely have too much of a good thing. And while our ancestors got most of their sugar from fruits and grains, these days most of our sugar is added to various processed foods—the average American eats 27.5 teaspoons of added sugar a day. It’s hard to cut back, too—the brain has a built-in trigger to let you know when you should stop eating and sugar consumption makes it less effective over time.

It’s only relatively recently that we’ve started to realize just how bad too much sugar can be for you. In the 1970s, when the public became concerned about fat in foods, manufacturers simply replaced fat with sugar. Since then, sugar consumption has shot up worldwide. Which is unfortunate, since sugar is now linked to high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, premature aging of the skin, dementia, brain damage, poor metabolism, and liver damage. Added sugar might even be damaging to our very DNA. In fact, some scientists now regard sugar as a problem potentially as damaging as alcohol and tobacco.

7Climate Change

We already know that global climate change is making Mother Earth sick, but it may also cause major health issues in humans. As our oceans get warmer, toxic algae blooms will increase in likelihood, area, and duration. Algae like Alexandrium catenella can contaminate seafood and cause everything from vomiting to death by paralysis.

Meanwhile, as the Earth gets drier, more dust will be blown into the ocean, spurring the growth of dangerous bacteria—poisoning caused by bacteria of the genus Vibrio in seafood is already up 85 percent since 1996. Rapid urban growth means that many sewer systems are already close to overflowing and contaminating our water sources—in Milwaukee, it currently only takes 4.3 centimeters (1.7 in) of rain a day for this to happen. As climate change makes flooding more likely, this could become a real problem. Between the flooding and the increased bacterial growth in the oceans, don’t be surprised if water-borne diseases make a comeback in the developed world.

6Lack Of Sleep

It might be a cliche, but in our fast-paced modern world many people just don’t get enough sleep. And researchers are increasingly concerned about just how dangerous that might be. In fact, men with chronic insomnia who sleep less than six hours per night are substantially more likely to die young than normal sleepers. In one study, 51.1 percent of male insomniacs were dead within 14 years, as opposed to just 9.1 percent of regular sleepers. Oddly, this only appears to affect men—women with chronic insomnia have only slightly higher mortality rates than average. That might be because men are more likely to suffer from severe insomnia than women, even though women are more likely to have insomnia overall.

While insomnia itself isn’t deadly, it will slowly wear a person down by not allowing enough sleep for the body to rest, recover, and revitalize, and long-term sleep loss is now known to cause irreversible brain damage by killing off neurons. Even just working night shifts can badly damage your health. There is also no such thing as being able to “catch up on sleep”—taking naps on the weekend won’t make up for lack of sleep during the week.

5Phones And Tablets

Of course, trouble sleeping isn’t helped by a smartphone buzzing through the night because you forgot to set it to silent—and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Even if you seem to get enough sleep during the night, using bright electronics like phones, tablets, and e-readers right before bed can really mess with your body. Harvard Medical School conducted a study where people would read a real book before bed for five days and then use an iPad for the next five days. Reading on an iPad made it substantially more difficult for people to fall asleep. Once they did nod off, they experienced less REM sleep and were thus less alert in the morning.

On a cellular level, participants who used an iPad before bed were found to have delayed the release of the sleep hormone melatonin by around 90 minutes. The specific kind of light given off by electronic devices confuses our internal clock by affecting the circadian pacemakers in our brains. According to PEW Research, 61 percent of Americans aged 18–29 reported keeping their cell phones next to the bed in order not to miss updates, calls, or texts during the night. But if you really do need a tech bump before bed, put down the smartphone and opt for something like the original Kindle, which doesn’t emit light.

4Suppressing Anger

Being unwilling to engage in a constructive argument about something that’s bothering you can wreak havoc on your health. Holding in anger increases stress, which in turn shortens lifespans. There is such a thing as healthy anger and it can be an effective coping mechanism. Anger is also an adaptive trait that can encourage risk-taking. On the flip-side, chronic anger expressed in explosive bursts is linked to high blood pressure, a weak immune system, strokes, cancer, heart disease, and digestive issues. A study by the University of Michigan found that couples who suppressed their anger had a higher mortality rate than couples who argued their problems out.

Learning to manage anger and conflict effectively is vital to health, but many people don’t understand how to deal with their anger, repressing it and effectively punishing themselves for their feelings. Psychologists say that it is not uncommon for people to experience low self-esteem because they deal with anger ineffectively—which can in turn have disastrous consequences for relationships, work performance, and mental health.

3Antibiotics Can Kill Helpful Bacteria

The development of antibiotics in the 20th century was one of the most important breakthroughs in human history—but it came with some unintended side effects. Humans are far more dependent on bacteria than science realized until quite recently (there are 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in your body) and antibiotics tend to kill off the good bacteria with the bad. For example, bacteria in the human gut helps to digest food and boosts the immune system. That’s why a course of antibiotics often results in diarrhea and other stomach problems.

Researchers from New York University have also found that giving antibiotics to newborn mice made them more likely to develop metabolic disorders later in life. At that age, their guts were still being colonized by bacteria and the antibiotics disrupted this process—with long-term implications. The study suggests that human babies who receive antibiotics might be more prone to obesity and diabetes once they grow up. Of course, in most cases, the potential consequences of using antibiotics are very mild compared to the alternatives. Used judiciously, antibiotics are still one of medicine’s most important tools.

2Noise Pollution

Obviously, a sudden loud noise could damage your hearing, but what about the constant hum of noise that surrounds us every day? Spinning hard drives, passing cars, sirens in the distance, whirling fans—it is almost impossible to escape noise pollution in the modern world. Every year, around 30 million Americans are exposed to dangerous levels of noise as part of their job. But even people who don’t experience occupational noise hazards suffer from secondhand noise pollution. Hearing loss can lead to communication issues, discrimination, poor performance at work and school, loneliness, and depression.

Low-frequency sounds, such as vibrations caused by passing traffic, can have a direct effect on health. People living in areas with elevated noise levels have correspondingly high levels of stress hormones, and the World Health Organization has warned that noise pollution is a risk factor in developing heart disease. Noise pollution can also cause high blood pressure, sleeplessness, breathing problems, cardiovascular issues, increased heart rates, and even brain changes. Studies have also shown that high levels of noise can badly impact young children, having a significant negative effect on cognitive performance.

1Retiring

The dream for many Americans is to work hard enough to be able to retire and relax, but health-wise it isn’t that simple. Working a job you hate can damage your mental and physical health, which is pretty worrying when you consider that only 13 percent of Americans report enjoying their work. Even if you’re one of the lucky 13 percent, working too hard can still seriously damage your health. The average work week is now around 47 hours and a Gallup poll showed that 21 percent of full-time workers put in 50–59 hours a week, while 18 percent worked more than 60 hours a week.

And while working hard for retirement might sound like a good tradeoff, retirement itself can cause a decline in mental and physical health. Compared to similarly aged people who are working, retired people are up to 40 percent more likely to suffer from clinical depression. They are also 60 percent more likely to have a diagnosed physical ailment, although it’s not clear if that’s because people with medical issues tend to retire earlier anyway. The lesson is that moderation is important and the healthiest choices involve a fair balance between rest and work.

Kristance is a freelance writer and travel addict currently living in Argentina. She’s always “that person” who will bore everyone by blurting out facts awkwardly at inappropriate moments. She sometimes writes about her travel adventures on diggingtoroam.com and constantly adds ridiculous posts to instalaugh.tumblr.com. The most exciting thing that happened to her in 2014 was when Jewel retweeted her. If you want to hop on that Twitter bandwagon check out Kristance’s account.

As anyone who has explored the depths of the Internet would tell you, it’s a pretty weird world out there. From fetishes you didn’t even know existed to websites maintained entirely by bots, there’s no dearth of bizarre things to be found in the online world. However, those areas are still just niches and almost no one seems to care about them.

When it gets truly weird is when you get more than just a handful of people to go along with your bizarre, out-of-place idea. These Internet fads don’t stand out because they exist—as the Internet is home to much weirder stuff—but because they convinced a bunch of regular individuals to get on board.

10 ‘Naked Butts In Front Of Pretty Scenery’ Photography

No one likes a picture of a naked butt online unless you’re specifically looking for that, and you’d probably be banned from most social media platforms if you post one. However, it’s a completely different matter altogether when you do it with a pretty landscape in the background as the recent viral trend proves.

Carefully and successfully walking the line between art and buffoonery, users on Instagram have taken to photographing their bare butts in exotic, beautiful places. Before anyone could ask, “Why the hell are you doing that,” it was too popular to contain. Many people include it in their travel itineraries as we speak.

You can still see the pictures on an Instagram account called Cheeky Exploits. We’re guessing that it has something to do with body positivity, though that’s not explicitly clear from the photos or their captions. It’s highly likely that people are just doing it because everyone else is.^[1]

9 Hot Water Challenge

In case it’s not immediately clear through common sense, pouring scalding water on yourself for no reason other than to see if you can is a terrible idea. It’s one of those everyday things that may seem like a harmless mistake, but it actually ends up killing more people than you’d expect. In the US alone, around 100 people die every year due to burns caused by hot water.

So, when some people on the Internet thought it’d be a great idea to turn the hot water challenge into a viral trend, it raised some understandable red flags. Everyone was suddenly pouring hot water on themselves or others or just drinking it with a straw and then posting the evidence all over YouTube and Instagram.

As you’d expect, many people were seriously burned. Medical professionals across the world advised against jumping on this particular bandwagon.

The worst of it was when an eight-year old girl died after being dared to drink hot water through a straw after her cousins saw videos of the challenge on YouTube.^[2] Due to the injuries caused by this type of challenge, the trend has thankfully ebbed and the Internet audience has finally learned its lesson. Oh wait, it didn’t . . . 

8 Salt And Ice Challenge

For a species that counts burning to death as one of its biggest fears, we sure love to come up with ingenious ways to burn ourselves for fun. The salt and ice challenge is another one of those.

As you accurately guessed, you put salt and ice on a part of your body. The trend has apparently fizzled out for now, but videos of people doing it can be traced as far back as 2012. It was only recently that it became popular in a big way, though, causing parents and health experts to issue warnings.

While salt and ice may not seem dangerous at first, they combine to create a dangerous chemical reaction that causes serious burns and injuries. The combination of the salt and ice results in something very similar to frostbite.^[3]

7 Furry Nails

Although we were unable to track the user who started it all, the Internet fashion trend of doing up your nails in the form of fur has spread far and wide ever since it first gained traction.

Essentially, it requires you to painstakingly attach strands of fur to your nails. Even if we ignore its ethical implications—and the people doing it claim that it’s all faux fur—the simple fact that it doesn’t really look good or fashionable is why this trend baffles us.

There may be some legit benefits to it, like added insulation during winter, though we were under the impression that gloves do that job quite well already. It may not be as popular now as it was around a year ago. But why it was popular at any time is a question we all need to ask ourselves.^[4]

We may think that this one is a bit less dangerous than the others on this list. However, that’s only if we’re talking about bodily injuries. Looking at something so aesthetically displeasing still harms the brain in other ways.

6 Condom Snorting

We all know the most popular uses of a condom—to fight against the spread of STDs and avoid unwanted pregnancies. The Internet, however, has long disputed that those are the only applications.

We’ve seen everything from DIY furniture-fixing kits made with condoms to condom blow-up challenges surface on YouTube, which were all fine as long as they weren’t hurting anyone. The most recent condom trend to hit the Internet, however, took it a bit too far.

It entails snorting a condom up your nostrils until it comes out of your mouth. We don’t need to tell anyone why that’s a horrible idea as condoms are made to not break or dissolve under any conditions. Aside from the danger of choking to death, this can cause bacterial infections or rashes in the nasal cavity. However, that didn’t stop it from blowing up on YouTube.^[5]

Thankfully, this challenge has largely subsided now, and teenagers are (hopefully) back to using condoms for their intended purpose.

5 Parent Shaming

Having arguments with your parents was a healthy and natural part of growing up. However, with the advent of the Internet, that’s not the case anymore. “Parent shaming” refers to an increasingly popular trend of taking your parental complaints online—whether it’s about your folks refusing to buy you the latest gaming console or embarrassing you in front of your friends. Almost anything goes.^[6]

If you’re feeling bad about the parents at the receiving end of this, don’t. Child shaming is a countertrend. There are around 30,000 clips of parents disciplining their kids on social media platforms, and the types of punishments range from grounding children to setting their Christmas presents on fire.

4 Funeral Selfies

If you’ve spent enough time on the Internet, you know about the creative and creepy ways that people have used corpses throughout history. One particularly unsettling example is Victorian-era corpse photography when people would prop up their dead loves ones to get a photo with them.

Now if you thought that was a thing of the past, we’d like to tell you that it absolutely was. Then modern-era Internet users picked it up again and turned it into a fad.

Many people on Instagram and Facebook are now taking selfies alongside corpses of their dead relatives. The living relatives are often found to be smiling or cheerful about the whole thing.^[7]

For some, it may even be a part of the mourning process. Although from all the photos we’ve seen of the trend, mourning doesn’t seem to be a part of the process. It’s a horrifying combination of the modern craze of taking selfies wherever we can and the age-old tradition of being photographed with the dead.

3 100 Layers

With the deluge of Instagram beauty influencers and YouTube vloggers consistently coming up with new ways to look better, beauty trends are often hard to define. Are we supposed to shave off our eyebrows now? Are bangs back in fashion? Can we make DIY lipsticks from things found in the kitchen?

All of those questions have wildly different answers depending on whom and when you ask. Some people got fed up with that and came up with a whole new trend as a statement against the generality of the term “beauty” nowadays. The trend is putting 100 layers of something on yourself and making videos of it.^[8]

It can be anything—from 100 layers of tape to makeup to clothes—as long as it’s precisely 100 and you put it up on the Internet for everyone to see. While we can’t say if it’s still all the rage, the mere fact that it caught on is something we’re still grappling with.

2 Fire Challenge

For some people online, pouring hot water on yourself or giving yourself frostbite with salt and ice was not an efficient way of causing burns. So they took to actually setting themselves on fire.

We especially love Wikipedia’s matter-of-fact and dry definition of it: “Fire challenge is an activity which refers to the application of flammable liquids to one’s body and then setting the liquids aflame, while being video recorded.”

If you’ve seen people pouring lighter fluid on themselves and lighting it up on Facebook, that’s not a one-off Internet weirdo. Worryingly, it’s a growing trend on video-sharing sites like YouTube. Needless to say, it is extremely dangerous to attempt.

While we don’t understand the motive behind any of the trends on this list, we particularly don’t grasp this one as it entails actually burning yourself for a bunch of fake Internet points. That is, of course, if your video goes viral. Otherwise, you just burned yourself for nothing.

There have been reports of people—especially kids—being admitted to the hospital due to severe burns after attempting this challenge. However, that hasn’t done anything to discourage other proponents of this viral phenomenon.^[9]

1 Pimple Popping

As most of us have been told at some point during our adolescence, popping a pimple yourself is almost never a good idea. Doctors and surgeons are qualified to do it in case it gets worse, but most pimples are temporary occurrences that go away on their own. It’s just one of our body’s many mechanisms to fight off infections, which usually don’t require any intervention on our part. Also, pimple popping is a bit gross.

That’s why the Internet video phenomenon of people popping zits—as well as removing botflies from the body—is so fascinating. We have no idea what’s fueling it, but right now, plenty of people are searching online for videos of other people doing it.^[10]

Some say that the process is immensely satisfying to watch, which makes sense as some people are just weird. However, why so many others are getting in on it remains a mystery to us.

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, or get in touch with him for writing gigs.