Our ancestors without fear, worry and anxiety are not our ancestors, as organisms without defense systems were extinct. Therefore, while behavior such as fear and anxiety are useful to prevent harm, the exaggerated form, that is, anxiety disorders, has more costs than benefits. Likewise, while a panic attack is a normal and useful response in the face of life-threatening danger, a panic disorde...

An innovative study of Wikipedia biographical pages is presented. It is shown that the dates of some historical cataclysms may be reproduced from peculiarities of lifespan changes over time. Time dependence of number of biographical pages related to a year has a broken linear trend in logarithmic scale. It shows a sudden change of the slope from 0.0006 to 0.008 per year near 1700 AC. Presumably...

Several years ago, my buddy Steve died in an avalanche. It was a stormy day and the avalanche danger was high, but Steve and his partners felt that by choosing a familiar route and carefully managing their exposure, they could stay out of trouble. After all, they were experienced backcountry skiers with avalanche training. Steve, the most skilled of the group, had just visited the area less tha...