Posts categorized “Science”

A Thought & Logic Experiment

The last article I wrote was about the vagaries of time travel and the whys and hows as to howcome nobody has ever met a time traveler. Keeping with the theme of time variance, I thought it would be fun for me (and hopefully you) to give a good inquiry into an old thought & logic experiment that I first conceived back in college: Chris Harris’s infamous Reverse-Time Tube. [Read the Full Article]

Yesterday I did many things in Tacoma in the evening. Let’s kick it:

Tacoma Art Museum

Carrie had to teach in the evening, but fortunately I did not have to go it alone. I picked up our friend Laura and we headed on down to the Tacoma Art Museum. Why? Well, for one thing it’s free on the third Thursday of every month (in the evening). For another—more important—reason, it was the opening celebration of the Mighty Tacoma exhibit, which involved an exhibit of a whole bunch of photos taken by local Tacoma artists, including our good buddy Neighbor Gary. He had six photos up—three black-and-white (silvered gel prints) and three rather large color prints. Gary was there schmoozing with all the people who came to gaze at his photos, and so, coincidentally, were my in-laws. They were on their way to their wedding dinner and had decided to stop at the museum.

One part of the exhibit was the opportunity to get your picture taken with a digital camera that then uploaded your image to Tacoma Art Museum’s Flickr stream. A slideshow of all the photos taken was transmitted to a big flat screen monitor mounted to a wall of the exhibit, so that you could be a part of the show! Carrie’s dad had absolutely no interest in being a part of this, so I posed instead with Carrie’s mum. She wanted me to do something “silly,” so I struck a pose that I think is rather indicative of our relationship:

She thought it was very funny.

Laura photo taken as well, and also participated in another interactive part of the exhibit where you wrote down your thoughts about Tacoma on a sticky note, then read your note out loud into a camera before sticking it on a wall of all the other sticky notes. I assume that the videos will all be edited together at some point.

Also, there were free cupcakes from Hello Cupcake.

Tollefson Plaza

At 6:00 our friend Katie was s’posed to be dancing across the street from TAM in Tollefson plaza, so Laura & I headed over there but nothing was yet happening. So we went back to TAM where there was a beer garden put on by the Harmon. They were showcasing a steamed beer, which was tasty but a little flat.

After the beer we went back to Tollefson and watched the dance, which was put on by a troupe called BQdanza, which unfortunately does NOT have anything to do with Tony Danza. Much dancing took place in the water in Tollefson, which must have been very cold by that time in the evening.

Dorky’s

The show was over by 6:30, which was a bit early to call it a night. So instead Laura & I hiked the nine blocks up Pacific to Dorky’s Bar Arcade, which right now is only Dorky’s Arcade because they haven’t gotten their liquor license yet. We played many a game of pinball, including Cyclone, Bride of Pinbot, Evel Knievel, Supersonic, and Space Riders. Culture at its finest.

After we ran outta coin we walked back down Pacific to my car and I proceeded to drive Laura back home… or so I thought. While en route, she got a text message and asked me, “Do you wanna go to an art gallery?” Seems a couple of her friends were going to go. And the gallery was two blocks from where we were.

Fulcrum Gallery

The gallery was the Fulcrum Gallery in Hilltop. They were showing the “Street Botany” series by Maria Jost. I’d love to give you a link to her blog or website or whatnot, but I just can’t seem to find anything. So here are a couple of images from them:

They’re these incredibly detailed illustrations of plants that grow in urban areas, but there’s usually something whimsical or odd about them. Like if you look closely at the dandelion one, you’ll notice that whole, tiny dandelion plants are actually growing on the little ball at the center of all the puffs. Another one was an illustration of various mosses arranged to look like clouds. In recent weeks posters had been made of the whole series and plastered up around town. I like them. They’re science and they’re fun.

After looking around the gallery for a while (and having a bite of cheese) we left before Laura’s friends ever showed up. I took her home then came home myself. The ey-end.

I laughed so, so, so hard when I read this essay. Out loud. Yes, I LOL’d. Click for a larger (readable) version:

(source)

Yesterday was Boobquake Day! What’s a Boobquake, you ask? Seriously? I find it hard to believe that someone who reads this blog doesn’t know about Bookquake already, but I’ll explain.

Just a couple weeks ago a high-ranking Iranian cleric gave a dire warning that linked immodestly-dressed women with earthquakes:

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.” (source)

Basically, if women show off their cleavage, there’s a-gonna be some earth a-quakin’.

Well, a certain Jennifer McCreight (pronounced Crite not Crate), a well-respected skeptic blogger (her blog is Blag Hag), thought that sounded a little fishy, and decided that maybe there should be some scientific testing done to see whether or not boobs equaled earthquakes.

“On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty.” (source)

That’s right. She tried to see if she could cause a BOOBQUAKE.

The post on her website was done mostly in jest to point out just how ridiculous the idea of causation between method of dress and natural disasters was. But it took off like wildfire. The idea of trying to cause a Boobquake tore through the blogosphere, through Twitter, and through Facebook. Soon regular media started to pick up on it. CNN, WGN Morning News, BBC, Canada AM, and more. The idea of showing off some skin in the name of science turned out to be incredibly popular.

So Monday the 26th arrived, and as promised Ms. McCreight wore what she jokingly called a “horribly scandalous” outfit (source):

So did quite a lot of other people, if Twitter is any indication. Just look at the Boobquake hashtag. McCreight even got interviewed on CNN about it. It was covered on BBC, CBC, FOX… but most excitedly for her, a humorous segment appeared on The Colbert Report:

But what of the results? Well, McCreight spent all of Boobquake Day gathering as much data on earthquakes as possible, and in the end it turned out there wasn’t any statistically significant deviation in worldwide earthquake activity on Monday the 26th.

Even though there were several problems with the scientificity of the experiment (control group, quantitative properties of “immodesty,” length of study, etc.), it appears that boobs don’t cause earthquakes. They can get you on The Colbert Report, though!

As an epilogue, I feel somewhat tangentially connected to Ms. McCreight because once she rode in @jeffthefish’s car. So good for her! You go, girl!

As we learned from They Might Be Giants, science is way more awexome when set to music.

That’s why I was delighted to discover these two oddities from YouTube user melodysheep. He edited bits from various science TV shows together and then auto-tuned them into melodies. He made science into songs:

Bravo.

From Here Comes Science, the new album by They Might Be Giants!

I really like that the song is ballsy enough to include angels with unicorns and elves in its list of fictional things. Good on ya, guys!