So I was browsing the homenode of one of my favorite e2 users and saw a simple imperative listed:

Your assignment is to compare the rise and spread of the Abrahamic religions to that of Walmart.

At first, I laughed. Then I thought about it for a minute. I suddenly realized that this was an important subject. There are certain parallels here that simply cannot be denied. The Abrahamic religions are so…

In the spring of 1990, Voyager 1 had become the most distant man-made object in the solar system. At the urging of the famous astronomer Carl Sagan, NASA directed Voyager to take a series of photographs of the planets between February 14 and June 6, creating the first 'family portrait' of the solar system. One of these pictures was of Earth, a picture which in its own way has become as iconic as The Blue Marble and Earthrise.

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In the last ten years I learned, reading somewhere, that American doctors die young. They die an average of ten years before the rest of the American population. This bothers me for three reasons. One, I am a doctor. Two, my grandfather the psychiatrist died ten years before any of my other grandparents and 21 years before his wife. Three, why? What is it about doctoring that kills doctors younger?

It's not

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Ever since the invention of the grenade way back when, users of said grenades (typically soldiers) have wanted to be able to project said grenades farther. Initially, this was mostly to ensure their own safety from the dangerously unpredictable things; later, as fuzing mechanisms began to become safer and more reliable, the distance was desirable in order to be able to use them while as far from the enemy as possible.

The first standardized (i.e. not one-off hand-built) mechanisms for…