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ANIMALS Why Doesn’t Ireland Have Snakes?

GREEN SNAKE Care_SMC, via Flickr/CC BY ND 2.0 Legend has it that, back in the fifth century A.D., St. Patrick exterminated Ireland’s snakes by driving them into the sea. He would appear to have done a thorough job, because Ireland is free of native snakes to this day. Except, Ireland never actually had snakes. Everything you’ve been told about St. Patrick's Day is a lie. (Ok, probably not all of it.) So, if snakes can be found almost everywhere else the world, from Australia to the Arctic Circle, what makes Ireland so special? WHERE SNAKES LIVE Wikimedia Commons For one, it’s an island. The Irish Sea is 50-plus miles wide. That would be a long swim for a land animal. A sea snake might have an easier time of it, but sea snakes live in warm tropical waters, not the frigid Atlantic. But, you may be thinking, the U.K.  has snakes , and it’s an island. That’s true. But for a long time, neither Britain nor Ireland was home to snakes. The Ice Age ...

We ate the world’s spiciest chip, cried for 45 minutes, then wrote this article about it

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Once upon a time, Tabasco sauce was considered spicy and a  jalapeno  hit the upper threshold of heat for the American palate. But that was before 2007, when the  Bhut jolokia —an Indian chili better known as the ghost pepper—became the first to top a million Scolville Heat Units (SHU), the measure of spicy pain. While your typical sweet pepper weighs in at zero on the Scolville scale, the ghost pepper’s 1 million SHUS make it 125 times hotter than your hottest jalapeno; between 200 and 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. If the thought of chowing down on a pepper that spicy gives you heartburn, the Austin, Texas based tortilla chip company Paqui (rhymes with hockey) has what can only be described as a delicious form of torture in store for you. Their  Carolina Reaper Madness Tortilla Chip  is a savory mix of not one, but  two  of the world’s hottest peppers. It combines the aforementioned ghost pepper with the even hotter variety for which the c...

How to build a medieval crossbow

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DOUBLE CROSSBOW A mirror lets you see both sides of this model crossbow William Gurstelle The Romans invented the crossbow, but after this promising start, it disappeared from most Western armories. Nearly 700 years later, Europeans rediscovered the technology—and it became a game changer. Unlike longbows, which required years of practice to use effectively, crossbows could be used immediately. A longbow’s power came from the bowman’s arm: He had to bend the heavy bow by hand, which could require him to apply more than a hundred pounds of force. With crossbows, an iron lever called a “goat’s foot” allowed a bowman to apply leverage, which made it much easier to pull back and cock the heavy bowstring. This made crossbows easy to use. Too easy, according to medieval European government and religious officials. If ready-to-use weapons like this got into the hands of insurgents or heretics, well, that could shake the foundations of government and religion. This fear led to perh...

Playstation VR Vs. Oculus Rift Vs. HTC Vive: Here’s How They Stack Up

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OCULUS RIFT Now that Sony has finalized its PS VR pricetag, it's time to compare the headsets Creative Commons / Bago Games Sony announced earlier this week at GDC 2016 in California that the Playstation VR will cost $399 and be released in October 2016. Now that the three major virtual reality headset makers have finalized consumer versions and release details, proper comparisons can be drawn between the three: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PS VR. The Oculus kicked off the modern VR craze while the Vive teamed up with Steam's Valve to offer suitable competition. Sony, on the other hand, represents the console side of VR. With varying price tags, content offerings and experiences, it'll be important to know all the details before taking the plunge and scooping up a VR headset. Here are the important things to kn Design Let's get one thing out of the way. You will not look cool wearing any of these headsets. You may feel cool in virtual reality in your EVE: Valk...

What is Gluten?

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AMBER WAVES OF PAIN Gluten, a mixture of proteins found in wheat and other grains, can cause serious stomach ailments for people with celiac disease and with celiac-like responses to it. Jon Bunting There is a menace in our supermarkets. And it is nothing short of a dietary WMD: A Weapon of Mass Diarrhea. Its name is gluten. Gluten is a mixture of proteins found mostly in wheat, but also in barley, rye, and oats. These grains make up many of our breads, pastas, granolas, noodles, tortillas, and beers. That's trouble for several million Americans (about one percent of us) who suffer from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which gluten causes the body to attack the small intestine. Several million more people (up to five percent of the population) suffer from “non-celiac wheat sensitivity,” in which gluten triggers celiac-like symptoms—such as stomachaches, diarrhea and depression. For both groups, gluten is an intestinal bomb for reasons you'll see below. Fo...