Wireless Tower

Finally, we have Nikola Tesla. While he did not invent alternating current (AC), he did refine it, endlessly championing it over direct current (DC), much to the chagrin of his nemesis, Thomas Edison (for whom he worked for several years, and upon whose designs he greatly improved). His contributions to the development of electrical power supply cannot be overstated, but his most ambitious project—had it been realized—would have put to shame not only those fantastic contributions, but those of pretty much every other inventor to ever exist.

Wardenclyffe Tower, shown above, was built in 1901, and it was meant to be exactly what it looks like: the world’s first wireless transmission tower. The long-term plan was to build a global network of these towers (just like the one that exists today) to transmit information around the globe. The tower stood almost 60 meters (200 ft) high and reached 36 meters (120 ft) underground. Due to financial and tax troubles (and the fact that Tesla, while a genius, was probably kind of insane), the project was never finished, and the tower was demolished in 1917.

But had he somehow been allowed to see the project through to completion, it would not just have beaten our current global wireless network to existence by decades and decades. Tesla intended for this network to transmit not just wireless electric signals, but also wireless electric power, to the whole world.

Violet Jessop

Violet Jessop was an ocean liner stewardess that survived three separate disasters on Olympic-class ocean liners, including the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The three ships were the largest and most luxurious boats of the early 20th century, but coincidentally, they experienced horrible accidents early in their careers.

Violet Jessop was an Irish emigrant who worked her first job as a stewardess with the Royal Mail Line on the Orinoco. On June 14, 1911, Jessop was on the RMS Olympic when the boat crashed with the cruiser HMS Hawke. At the time of the accident, the Olympic was the largest civilian liner in the world. It took heavy damage and flooding in the crash, but was able to make it back to Southampton.

On April 10, 1912, Violet boarded the RMS Titanic on the ship’s maiden voyage. Four days later, the boat hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. During the sinking, Violet was asked to set an example for the people who did not speak English and were having a hard time following directions. She was able to board the 16th lifeboat and given a baby to look after. 

After the outbreak of World War I, Jessop worked as a stewardess for the British Red Cross. On November 21, 1916, she was onboard the HMHS Britannic when the ship hit a mine and sank in the Aegean Sea. The Britannic was the largest ship to be lost during World War I, and 30 people died in the tragedy. As the ship went under, Jessop was forced to jump off her lifeboat and was pulled under the water. She hit her head on the ship’s keel, but was able to surface and be rescued. Before the Britannic was lost, Jessop made sure to grab her toothbrush because it was the one item she most missed in the aftermath of her Titanic experience.

" No Kill" Animal Shelters Encourage Torture

“No kill” shelters are where you dump an unwanted pet when you’re cruel enough to throw out a puppy, but not quite cruel enough to have it sent to certain death. They’re the ultimate balm for troubled psyches—a “get out of jail free” card for dads needing to dispose of their kid’s unwanted birthday kitten while still feeling okay with themselves. And they’re about a zillion times crueler than their murderous counterparts.

Let’s start with the basics. If you have a shelter committed to a “no kill” policy, that means the animals have to be rehoused. If you can’t rehouse them, it means you have to keep them. And if more animals that you can’t rehouse keep on coming in, it leads you down a very dark path. PETA reports hundreds of shelters where animals are crowded together in conditions that would make a battery hen shudder: crammed into cages, living in piles of feces, and suffering diseases so awful that killing them would be a mercy. The alternative some of these shelters have is to turn away animals they can’t rehouse. Unfortunately, this usually means the owner dumps them on a roadside, leaving them to starve, or flat out kills them in whatever way they see fit. So while we may shudder at the idea of a shelter putting down its inhabitants, the alternative is one heck of a lot grimmer.

Environmentalism Harms The Planet

It’s now pretty much irrefutable that our planet is getting hotter. Temperatures are soaring, sea levels are going up, and we’re now comfortably cruising toward an apocalypse of our own making. So it makes sense that you’d want to do something about it. But I’ve got some bad news: Chances are, whatever you’re doing isn’t helping.

Take carbon offsetting. The idea goes that you pay a little extra for your flight, and in return your airline plants a tree or whatever. Sounds good, except for the part where it doesn’t make any sense. See, we in the West produce a lot of emissions—so much so that offsetting them all would require the rest of the world to start producing negative carbon. In other words, offsetting is no help at all, just like recycling. Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but recycling has become a global market. That means that suppliers of recycled goods follow the money—even if it involves shipping their produce across the world, at ozone-shredding energy costs. And that’s before we get started on the environmental damage caused by mercury mining for energy-efficient light bulbs. So, to sum up: The planet is doomed and trying to help will only make things worse. Great.