On the whole, American cities have become much safer. After years of declining rates of violent crime, they are now about as safe as they were in the 1960s. But violent crime is still a problem in lots of cities. And while the gap between urban and suburban crime rates has narrowed, suburban spaces still tend to be safer than urban places. Echoing that trend, it seems the safest cities in America are predominantly suburbanized middle-tier cities with moderate population density.

Photo credit: Rodrigo Gianesi/Flickr Racism is like an invasive species. As a mindset and expression of larger cultural attitudes, it tries to overwhelm its competitors wherever it sets seed. Defining victory as someone else’s oppression, racism causes imbalance and conflict in societies in which multiple races or ethnicities of people live and work. It promotes hostility within a culture, and ultimately leads to hatred and violence. Why are people racist?

Credit: Ars Electronica/Flickr Everyone forgets things some of the time. You walk into a room and entirely forget why you decided to enter. You are mid-conversation and suddenly space-out what was just said. Although odd and sometimes embarassing, short-term memory loss below a certain threshold doesn’t mean anything at all. However, if you are having significant, unexpected and unexplained trouble remembering things that just happened, it could be a symptom of a greater problem.

Many types of scenery are beautiful, but few geological features are as dramatic, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring as mountains. Mountains soar high above our heads, astounding us with their heights and features. They make us feel tiny, vulnerable, and fragile, but they also lift us up at the same time, inspiring us to strive for new heights. Here are 10 of the most beautiful mountains in the world. Some of these peaks are famous, while others are not as well known.

Flick/Itamar Grinberg Filling a sunken land at the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea in the Middle East is one of the world’s most fascinating places. It’s an incredible salty lake–one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water, in fact. As a giant solution in which 45 billion tons of salts has been dissolved, it’s about 10 times saltier than ocean water. This is not the kind of salt used to season meals.

If you’re out in the wild, what’s the last creature you want to encounter? A shark? A rattlesnake? A jaguar? There are a lot of different traits which make animals dangerous. Some animals are particularly aggressive. Others are stronger or faster than we are, or have razor-sharp teeth. Still others are venomous, and can poison us with a sting or a bite. Others yet are clever and cunning. Here are the top 10 most dangerous animals in the world.

Wikipedia/Ricardo Liberato The pyramids of ancient Egypt have rendered observers awestruck from the day the royal tombs first rose from the desert floor. Thousands of years ago, people were just as dumbfounded by their visual impact as we are today, and just as prone to mythologizing their origins. The astonishingly prescient achievement of the pyramids has fueled speculation the geometrical structures must have been made by an alien species or perhaps a race of giants.

All of us have been on roads at one time or another that scared us. Maybe it was the steep drop-off along the road side, or perhaps it was all those signs warning you that a rockslide was possible at any moment. Perhaps it was a lot of sharp twists and turns, low visibility, a steep grade, or bad weather. Maybe it was just the other drivers who scared you. But it probably got you to wonder—were you driving on one of the world’s most dangerous roads?