Things worth explaining are seldom that easy to explain.
Category Archives: Science and Technology
Posts on all things scientific and technological; biology, evolution, all the way to space, climate science, technology (also see computers and Internet) and other important or cool scientific things.
The last special date in 89 years is right now…
As I said around three years ago (September 9, 2009) there have been some special dates since 2001.
Basically moments in time when year (ah well at least the last two digits of the year), month, day, hour, minute (well I guess seconds and milliseconds and so on as well) have been the same. E.g. 01-01-01 01:01:01… for first of January, 2001, one minute and one-second past one.
However, this moment… the 12th of December, 2012, is the last such moment in 89 years… When there will be 2101-01-01 to have… (January 1st, 2101) So why not do some partying! 😀
Okay, to be infernally strict about it, the party should probably have started say the first of January, year 101 A.D. Or how about years before then? But on the other hand, nobody knew it was 100 B.C. Because if they did, they’d been time traveling. Imagine then… some archeologist finds an inscription saying:
He died a hero in the … lords? unlordly? … year 189 B.C.
Then we’d know… time travel! 😀
Anyway, so then there’d be another party on February 2, 202… all the way to December 12, 1212…. Then I’m guessing if you’d be strict about it, the next big date should be January 1, year 10101 (10101-01-01).
Hey, how about U.S. dates… They’re typed as month-day-year, right? So …um doesn’t matter much, there would still be the same logic. If you really get off on dates, have a look here for a more thorough discussion of the topic!
Okay, anyhow… let’s go have a party! (I’m fearing not many girls will find the specialty of the date that appealing though hahaha!)
Header image: by Setaou_ on Flickr
Earth Overshoot Day
Oops! We used up the last resources of our planet yesterday… Should I be worried since it was my birthday? :O (Or perhaps I have completely other reasons for concern?)
http://www.ameinfo.com/169573.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008701.html
The concept was apparently invented by Global Footprint Network. Here’s a link to their overshoot page: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=overshoot
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
You may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider or perhaps concerns about its safety, and if not you may still have come across this funny web page to test if it has destroyed the world yet.
Check the source for the last one as well, there are a few laughs. Their test to see if the world has ended is:
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}
If the undefined variable worldHasEnded is not “undefined” then there’s some really spooky stuff going on… like the end of the world… otherwise we’re all safe and sound. In the same spirit I’m offering a test for world destruction for Java (and possibly C++ and other object oriented languages as well):
System.out.print("Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet? ");
if (this == null) {
System.out.println("Yes!");
}
else {
System.out.println("Nope");
}
Is the object running this test not existing any more… then risk is neither is the rest of the world…
Of course, we’ll have to wait until sometime in the end of October or beginning of November before they actually start colliding protons… and then perhaps the world will end…
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins discusses in his book “The Selfish Gene” if we are using our genes to propagate ourselves, or if maybe our genes are using us to propagate themselves.
According to Dawkins life may very well have begun a long time ago, in the primordial soup, when simple clumps of amino-acids became self-replicating. This self-replication started a kind of war between competing replicators and who was on top (or in the majority) in the soup probably changed many times until one kind of replicators using a protective layer of matter came out the winner (one cell organisms).
Evolution — a guessing game…
Does evolution really work? Has it really made us what we are today? Surely the chance of just randomly creating human life must be “zero many times over”, right?
I’ve read quite a few pages from the more fundamental and lively bunch of Creationists and Intelligent Design aficionados (like for instance this one), and I’ve frankly grown tired of this talk about randomly creating life…
Talkwards 