As with many of man’s great achievements (or is that blunders?), it all began with the wine. In this case, however, it was actually the glasses and their capacity to produce sound. Wet your fingers then rub them over the ridge of the goblet and (after a few minutes of frustration) a high pitched tone will fill the room at a loudness unexpected from such a gentle motion. It’s a surprising sound – a clear pitch with a gentle vibrato that, while emanating from the glass, seems to surround you as the sound bounces off the walls of the room.

The first time that musicians took advantage of the musical properties of glass bowls was in the mid-1700s, when performers created music using a collection of glasses filled with varying levels of liquid to alter pitch. Benjamin Franklin first heard a glass bowl piece while in Europe as an ambassador and loved what he heard. However, he noticed a fundamental problem with the setup – it’s very difficult to play complex music on fifty glass bowls on a table. He decided to make a much more practical method of creating music from glass. Always the inventor, he succeeded in creating a much more elegant instrument: the glass armonica, an instrument of ingenious design that eliminates the need for tuning as well as allowing a musician to easily play melodies and chords. Franklin’s invention took Europe by storm, and the glass armonica was in such high regard that some said it was more popular than the violin.

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During times of economic hardship, people turn to the road to see if they can make their luck somewhere else. As such, back in the days of the Great Depression, the U.S. saw an increase in the hobo population. Walking along long roads or hitching rides on trains, these hobos would travel about, looking for a place where they could get lucky and find a better home. Of course, such a life of wanderlust was difficult, especially since one has to travel without knowing anything of the landscape or local populace.

To combat this ignorance, the hobos came up with an ingenious sign language to communicate to each other along the way. This is not like the sign language that hearing-impaired people use to communicate; rather, it was markings and drawings that hobos would leave along the road for their fellow travelers. Whether a sign told others of locations of important places in town, the attitudes of the locals to tramps, or the best places to beg, the hobo sign language helped many get by in hard times.

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Try to imagine a world without numbers. No more addition or subtraction, algebra nor calculus. No more high school geometry. It would be pretty hard to get by without basic counting, such as being able to tell whether you had caught five fish or ten fish. Yet one tribe in Brazil seems to get by just fine with practically no comprehension of any mathematical concepts.

The inhabitants of the banks of the Maici river live in a world unlike our own. The difference goes beyond the lack of computers, cell phones and cars; one would be hard pressed to find that technology in the middle of any forest. Rather, for the Pirahã, numbers are just not a big part of their life. They can barely count, and anything more difficult than that is right out. That’s not all that’s different about them; They lack any examples of art or fiction, and their language has a grammar so radical that it could possibly disprove the theory that certain principles of grammar are shared by all languages– the universal grammar theory. The Pirahã certainly have a unique way of life.

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In the U.S., violent crime rates are consistently higher in the South than in any other part of the country. It’s just a fact. When one tries to figure out why this might be occurring, a few thoughts come to mind. Perhaps the South has a more violent culture and enjoy their guns more. Maybe the South has better reason to be vigilant. Or they could just still be bitter after the US Civil War.

There is one school of thought that does not buy any of these explanations. Instead, it points towards a much simpler idea – the South is warmer than the rest of the country. Could it be that hot weather can lead people to anger easily, become violent quickly, and more readily kill each other? Supporters of the heat hypothesis think so. The heat hypothesis is a simple yet powerful idea: the more uncomfortably hot the temperature, the more likely people become aggressive.

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In 1963 1971, a study about prisons was funded by the U.S. Navy to try to better understand problems in the Marine Corps.’ prisons. The study was run by a group of researchers at Stanford, led by psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo. The idea was to create a controlled environment in the Stanford halls to simulate a prison. There would be participants recruited to play both the prisoners and the guards, and the experiment would last for two weeks.

No one thought the experiment would have any big problems – the participants were just playing a short game of prison. Yet in less than a week the prisoners were becoming psychologically disturbed, and the guards disturbingly sadistic. There were riots, hunger strikes, and abusive treatment – all in the mock-up jail cells created in the halls of the Stanford psychology department. The study had to be canceled early, leaving one critical question – how could a fake prison situation become real so quickly?

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Amnesia is a fascinating condition, and as such it comes up commonly in popular culture. It’s such a wonderful (and by wonderful, I mean wonderfully over-used) plot device – after an unfortunate whack on the head by a large blunt object, characters can be caught in precarious positions as they struggle to recall one key piece of information, acting as a detective of their own minds. Sometimes the amnesia is temporary, lasting long enough for one 22-minute television program; in others, their amnesia is a lifelong problem.

Yet there’s one type of amnesia that is rarely covered in the media. It strikes spontaneously, without warning or easily detectable cause. Its victims go through the normal conditions for amnesia, forgetting a good portion of their past and becoming unable to form new memories. They are disoriented, confused, lost. But here’s the surprising part – within 24 hours, the amnesia is gone and previous mental abilities return. It’s called Transient Global Amnesia (TGA), and is among the more harmless (though bizarre) conditions one can have.

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Thanks to my parents’ genes, I simply do not grow facial hair. I never have, unless you count microscopic stubble in the same ranks as a full beard. It certainly makes me a little jealous, especially when there are groups around promoting goodwill and happiness through the growth of a beard. So imagine my surprise when I found out that facial hair has had a much more troubled history than I first imagined.

Coming in many shapes, sizes and colors, the beard is a prominent feature on most men who do not shave (and the occasional woman – though let’s not go there). Today, pogonotrophy is normally accepted in society; but in the past, growing a beard could cause quite a few problems. Sprouting your manly facial hair could get you taxed, be a sign of rebellion against the church – or could even get you killed.

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Animals have often been used in battle throughout history, mostly as a means of transportation. But what happens when you use them as transportation for bombs? Though good for giving members of the SPCA apoplectic fits, the benefits of animals used in the military have an interesting history. What follows are two rather unique uses for animals during World War II.

Pigeons as Bomb Guidance Systems
During World War II, the U.S. air force developed a new type of bomb – a glide bomb. Instead of falling straight on a target, it would instead float at an angle towards its target, guided by a variety of tools (such as infrared, radar, or flare targets). Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a well-known behaviorist, thought of a brilliant new way to guide these missiles during World War II using pigeons. He’d already trained them to dance, do figure eights, or play tennis – why not guide bombs?

Starting in 1942, PROJECT PIGEON aimed to get specially trained birds to guide a bomb within six meters of its target. It worked thus: First, three pigeons would be informed of a glide bomb, each compartment containing a little lens to view its target. Via classical conditioning, the pigeons would peck the center of the screen if it saw the target – otherwise, it would peck towards the target. Successful pecking would be rewarded with grains of seed. (It turned out that if fed marijuana instead of normal grain, the pigeons would be less easily disturbed from their task). If two of the three pigeons “agreed” to re-aim the bomb, the bomb would change direction. Then, of course, the bomb would explode…

So, was Skinner able to train his pigeons to pull off one more feat?

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