This year, he posed the open-ended question “what is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?”. (I added the “scientific” part to the title myself, which in hindsight was probably not the correct thing to do. I assume it was worded this way carefully, and I made a mistake adding the word. I was just trying to simplify what it was likely about by adding the word, but clearly it is not my question so I probably shouldn’t have. Without the word it becomes much more open-ended, which is the clear intent, but I won’t remove it now since it is already archived.)

This is a question that I find quite interesting. Personally, I am no scientist so I would have absolutely NO IDEA how to answer it. I can certainly appreciate the passion that scientists would have answering it, however. Listening to passionate scientists is always something that is highly entertaining, and informative to me. While I can think critically, and logically, I have never spent a good deal of time studying any scientific discipline exclusively to be considered more than someone that just likes to know things about the world. Something I assume many others do, and find it to be something we all should at least try to do. After all, the search for truth and understanding is always something I feel is important even to the point of figuring out how a signal booster cell phone works. Science is always something I am interested in and if there is one thing I can thank religion for it is that it got me much more interested in science. Not to figure out what religion had to say about it, but to actually understand what religion is too lazy to look for, and answers rather than just make up things to fill in the gaps.

I will not attempt to explain any of these explanations myself. If you go to the blog post about this you will find 192 responses already to the question and you can see them for yourself. It is a fascinating read and one I hope you will take the time to view.

As we all know, we have to think about which day holidays fall on every year. This year Christmas fell on a Sunday, next year it will be a Monday, etc. Due to the way the months are organized with some having 30 and others having 31 days, the calender is different every single year.

A couple of Johns Hopkins University researchers have a better way to make a calender in their opinion. One which will have all days the same every year. One calender that is always the same and only the year changes. Christmas would always be on the same day of the week. Always.

Using computer programs and mathematical formulas, Richard Conn Henry, an astrophysicist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Steve H. Hanke, an applied economist in the Whiting School of Engineering, have created a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity.

“Our plan offers a stable calendar that is absolutely identical from year to year and which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays,” says Henry, who is also director of the Maryland Space Grant Consortium. “Think about how much time and effort are expended each year in redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world and it becomes obvious that our calendar would make life much simpler and would have noteworthy benefits.”

Then we can wear funny t shirts that say “Remember when Christmas was on a Tuesday?”

Started in 2007 with much frustration hearing celebrities butcher science, the review has become an annual tradition. Celebrities are just lucky they don’t need to worry about malpractice insurance. They would never get covered.

This year we have seen a strange difficulty with understanding the sea! US political commentator Bill O’Reilly claims we have no understanding of how the tides work, while reality TV’s Snooki Polizzi put forward her own theory for why the sea is salty (too much whale sperm). Amongst the many short-cuts to better health, supplements proved especially popular; with Suzi Quatro stopping all illnesses by taking colon cleanser, and Simon Cowell preferring his vitamins drip-fed.

Minced meat, bread, fruit juice and many other foods are packaged in a protective gas which extends their shelf life. There is currently no good method to check whether the packaging has the correct gas content. However, researchers in Atomic Physics and Packaging Logistics have developed a new laser instrument which could solve the problem. The first product is expected to be ready for market launch later in the autumn.

“It will be the first non-destructive method. This means that measurements can be taken in closed packaging and the gas composition over time can be checked. This will make it possible to check a much higher number of products than at present,” says Märta Lewander, Doctor of Atomic Physics at Lund University in Sweden.

In an official announcement, NASA granted Santa permission to fly over various Kennedy sites — including the Shuttle Landing Facility, the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and orbiter processing facilities (OPF) — where the shuttles Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis are being readied for launch.

Santaa will clib off his modern sofa and get to work tonight.

The cavernous VAB is considered to be one of the few structures outside the North Pole big enough to contain Santa’s giant sack of toys, NASA officials said. Reaching 525 feet into the Florida sky and covering eight acres, the building could hold more than 129 million typical toys.

Obviously, this is pretty common sense to anyone that understands what happens to dead MEAT, but it is still entertaining anyways to see what reasons people give for it not being possible.

Psychologically, I want to throw out there the question of why people WANT to have zombie apocalypses and have some sort of fantasy about it. I’m not going to side with those that want to be the heroes, but take the approach that most people that have this fantasy are closer to already being zombies than not as it is.

Why fight it? They already spend their time doing nothing. Becoming a zombie is the natural next step. It allows you to do even LESS than you already do, and nobody will even care.

Do you really want to lie on the street running for your life everyday? You spend all day inside and you think you will survive more than 15 minutes when confronted by zombies? You have to find food, ammo, water filter supplier, shelter, other people, kill zombies constantly, deal with tons of disease. You just aren’t going to make it, friend.

Getting a job as an employee in business is very competitive. Many corporate positions require at least a Master’s degree to e3ven get your foot in the door. Even though experience is a major factor, getting that experience may not be as easy at it once was. Just having a Bachelor’s degree doesn’t do a lot for you these days. Everyone has a bachelor’s degree, and there are a lot of people with them in the business fields. It is almost a necessity to go further in school in the competitive environment of today’s marketplace.

So…you likely are looking to take the GMAT after getting your undergraduate degree so you can proceed into even higher education. This exam is almost as big a challenge as it is finding work. Making sure you do enough gmat prep isn’t a recommendation, it is crucial. Get one-on-one attention, in and outside of class. Learn from the most dynamic instructors in the country. Engage in a class that’s a 2-way conversation, not a lecture. All important aspects for studying and it sets itself a part from most other programs.

“Santa is using technologies that we are not yet able to recreate in our own labs,” explains North Carolina State University’s Dr. Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who just completed a six month visiting-scholar program at Santa’s Workshop-North Pole Labs (SW-NPL). “As the first scholar to participate in the SW-NPL program, I learned that we have a long way to go to catch up with Santa in fields ranging from aerodynamics and thermodynamics to materials science.”

For example, Silverberg says that Santa’s sleigh is far more advanced than any modern form of air transportation. “The truss of the sleigh, including the runners, are made of a honeycombed titanium alloy that is very lightweight and 10 to 20 times stronger than anything we can make today,” Silverberg says. The truss can also morph, Silverberg adds, altering its shape slightly to improve its aerodynamics and “allowing it to cut through the air more efficiently. The runners on the sleigh, for example, have some flexure. This allows them to tuck in to be more aerodynamic during flight, and then spread out to provide stability for landing on various surfaces — such as steeply pitched roofs.”

We should get these guys working on the climate change fiasco ASAP. Santa needs to start sharing his research with an online backup of his studies so we can all become magic too. And I thought Santa was for helping all of us. Shame on you Santa.

Merry Christmas!

A demonstration at CeBIT in Hannover this past March, provides an innovative way of controlling the interconnected electronic devices that will populate the smart homes of the future, granting increased autonomy to people with physical disabilities as well as pleasing TV channel-surfing couch potatoes.

Check this out:

“The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,” explains Christoph Guger, the CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application.

g.tec teamed up with a group of international universities and research institutes as part of the EU-funded Presenccia project to incorporate its BCI technology into virtual environments. As part of the project a fully functioning smart home was created in virtual reality (VR).

“It has a kitchen, bathroom, living room… everything a normal home would have. People are able to move through it just by thinking about where they wanted to go,” Guger says.

So…you can basically sit in your chair and perform basic lazy functions with your newfound Bioshock plasmid, Telekinesis. (Just got done playing Biohock)

Here is how it works:

Electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment is used to monitor electrical activity in a user’s brain via electrodes attached to their scalp. After a period of training, the system learns to identify the distinctive patterns of neuronal activity produced when they imagine walking forwards, flicking on a light switch or turning up the radio.Eventually it learns how to do it for you.

This was developed to help people with disabilities of course, but surely the lazy are looking to benefit as well. These aren’t people that are going to make plans to go rv camping anytime soon obviously. Who cares if you look like a swimmer with a bunch of boils on your head. You are a fat slob anyways. It isn’t going to make much difference is it? :p

Controll everything with your mind

As you all know, people send you 50 friggin’ apps to add to your Facebook profile everyday. Once in a while there is actually a half way decent one that you may like. Few and far between, but the Scrabulous Ap, which is basically identical to Scrabble is one that millions have found and are more than happy with.

Now, Hasbro has decided to sue the makers for copyright infringement stating: “This is theft of intellectual property,” Blecher said of Scrabulous. “It’s really no different from when the recording industry faced the issue of folks posting music on sites like Napster and letting them copy it for free.”

(Give me a break with that comparison…lol)

Mark Blecher, general manager for Hasbro Digital Media, said in a telephone interview that his employer’s goal is to promote its authentic, legitimate Facebook application. After a bit of corporate performance management they have finally created the Official Scrabble Ap after the Scrabulous one has been out there for nearly 2 years.

So it begs the question…is Scrabulous doing anything wrong here? If you clicked over to the link for Scrabulous you can see that it is about as close to Scrabble as you can get with out actually calling it Scrabble. As far as I know, Hasbro actually offered to buy the application from the makers of Scrabulous, but were asked to pay millions for the rights. Never coming to any agreement, so now we are at the point where they will be sued over the Facebook creation.

Facebook representative Brandee Barker replied with this statement:

We believe that games are an important part of the social experience on Facebook and have been impressed by the creativity and innovation of the games that developers — both large and small — have built on Facebook Platform. In the case of disputes such as the one involving Scrabulous, our hope and expectation is that the parties can resolve their disagreements in a manner that satisfies the parties, that continues to offer a great experience to gamers and that doesn’t discourage other developers from using Platform to share their creativity and test new ideas. Over the past year, Facebook has tried to use its status as neutral platform provider to help the parties come to an amicable agreement. We’re disappointed that Hasbro has sought to draw us into their dispute; nevertheless, we have forwarded their concerns to Scrabulous and requested their appropriate response.