Nerds Make Science Fun!

Consider this: a man walks up to you and says, “Give me your money, and I’ll take care of it. I won’t give you anything you as collateral, but hey, you can trust me”, what would you do?  Well, if you were like most people, you’d probably give him your money willingly without a single complaint. Why? The ridiculous situation I just described is the entire premise of the banking system. Right now, nearly every single person on the entire planet has given their money to people and corporations who really provide no physical product other than the promise that they will be able to return more money to the customer later on. It’s weird if you think about it.

So why am I writing this? Well, because now I’m going to ask you for money. I’d like everyone to donate to www.polioeradication.org.  Go to the donate link and use the online donation button.

Really, please donate. Given the fact that the polio vaccine came out in 1955, it’s almost criminal that people still have to suffer from it 50 years later. Compare this to smallpox, whose first mass hemisphere wide vaccination took place in 1950, and was eradicated by 1977. With your help, the same could be done to polio.

This is probably a better use of your money than letting it sit in the hands of a random stranger who basically just rolls around it.

William

So, today I’m updating with two things you might want to hear about.

The first and most important thing is that Interact is trying to eradicate polio as this year’s service project. Now, I can’t find the exact page, since Bill told me about it but forgot to send a link, but I was able to find this. It seems that there will be a concert for the sole purpose of this fundraiser, and the proceeds will go to eradicating polio in poorer countries. If you like music or hate disease, go buy a ticket. Concert’s in New York by the way.

Second, I’m giving a link to the zero gravity flights website. It’s one of those planes that flies up, then goes into a nosedive to simulate zero G. You might have seen these on the discovery channel, or on the NASA website. Normally, you’d need to be in cahoots with NASA, like the Mythbusters were, to get a chance to ride one. But this is apparently a corporation that lets you pay for flights, like an educational experience. The only catch is that they happen infrequently (each flight/launch site seems to only have one per year).

Oh, and they’re crazy expensive. A learner package costs just under $200, which includes the pre- and post- flight activities, to learn about physics, zero gravity and the like, and comes with some swag and an invitation to the landing party. The flight itself costs about five thousand dollars. Plus tax. Sorry, not in this lifetime. I only know about this because a friend (i.e. my mom) sent me an email talking about how a teacher took a flight.

Once again, China has succeeded in technologically kicking the crap out of white guys.

What they invented has been described as a miniature black hole (it fits into your pocket), but it’s not really a black hole because it doesn’t work on gravity.

Instead, it uses some odd materials to bend light and direct it toward other materials that turn it into heat, so it’s like a black hole for light. They’re looking for ways to apply this into solar panels and stuff. I’m guessing that they could use the heat to power up a steam turbine or something like that.

-T

This is a simple equation.

Cash Cow Franchise - Cash Cow = Win.

There are quite a few cash cow franchises out there, many of them stuff with immense potential for optimization, such as (3.5) D&D, Pokemon (the handheld games), and basically any trading card game (including the aforementioned Pokemon). However, cheapskates like myself can’t get the full enjoyment out of such franchises because we’re too cheap to actually buy the full companions to the games. In D&D it’s the tack-on sourcebooks, in Pokemon, it’s each new version of the game, with slightly different movesets, and in card games it’s the cards themselves.

Now, D&D is a tabletop game, so you can get most of the enjoyment by browsing some forums, finding some class descriptions, and optimizing in a hastily thrown together excel spreadsheet, and you can participate in contests on forums to see which person has the more optimized character. Character sheets are usually moderated, and appropriate forums have die roll functions, so cheating isn’t common.

But what of other games, where random events can’t be determined by simple die rolls, and actions have to happen in some degree of real time? You obviously need some sort of automated framework to control everything, but who has the time to continually update it as new material gets released? Then how can you compare your optimization skills (and your excess free time) with other people?

As it turns out, some people do have that sort of time. Pokemon has Shoddy Battle, which has every possibility of moves hard-coded into the system, and Yugioh has the Kaiba Corp Virtual Duel System, which doesn’t have everything hard-coded, but instead has a framework for moving cards across all possible positions, leaving it up to the user to make sure rules are applied correctly.

At the end of it all, I guess I’m trying to say: I have way too much free time.

-T

Alas, our annual school fundraiser has arrived. Every year, our school wants us to sell raffle tickets in order to get funding for whatever school projects they deem necessary. Usually, these projects include school maintenance, student financial aid, class activities, and etc. That’s not too unreasonable. Of course, there’s always the portion of money that seems to get set aside for “WTF?” things, such as a glass walkway to be built at the corner of our school 10 years in the future.

However, this year, the school has basically told us: “We don’t want anything useful, we want expensive flashy crap”. Our school wants us to come up with 50,000 dollars for, of all things, flat screen TVs. More specifically, 42” flat screen TVs made by Panasonic. Now, the given excuse is that they want the teachers to stop using the projectors for HD video, since the projectors burn out much more quickly than TVs. The problem with that is no teacher who already has the flat screens EVER uses them, except for 10 minutes every other day for announcements on MCTV, which is our school’s “TV station”.  This is in addition to the fact that we have 6 flat screens currently hanging in the hallways doing nothing.

So, in light of this imbalance, I have a suggestion for you, O administration of Moreau Catholic High School: Stop spending money on crap no one cares about. Yes, flat screens are flashy. Yes, the pictures they show are pretty. But more importantly, NO ONE USES THEM. EVER. So stop blowing our money on stuff like this and actually use it for something important, like getting more bandwidth, or getting air conditioning in some of the rooms. Now, I know it seems like spending money on something useful is an incredibly odd idea, but you should try it sometime. Seriously.

http://nerdsmakesciencefun.com/?p=235
http://nerdsmakesciencefun.com/?p=259

Cripes, I don’t remember the last time I updated this site.

A couple things before I begin.

First, that robotics club takeover isn’t going to happen. It turns out they need a specific format, and wordpress just doesn’t fit the bill. They’ll probably have the school pay for a server and domain.

Also, I’ve essentially given up on categorizing. I might get around to sifting through the almost 100 posts, and even clearing out some, but for now, it stays uncategorized. If you read this and need an article, post here and I can get you a link.

And for the main event, I’m continuing the Kent Hovind challenge rebuttal.

The two links at the top of the page, reproduced slightly below, are how far I’ve gotten so far with this challenge of sorts. I’m still not much of a biology student, and I’m still whipping these off the top of my head, and wikipedia if need be. Again, follow along here.
http://nerdsmakesciencefun.com/?p=235
http://nerdsmakesciencefun.com/?p=259

23) The problem with this question is that “major” is ill-defined. You can basically pass anything off as (relatively) minor if it was essential to your argument. Since I’m still crazy rusty, I’ll just say that evolutionary theory has predicted correctly and multiple times the location, appearance, and age of “missing links.” I’m not sure on specifcs, but I’d assume it includes some of the fossils along the path to the horse.

24) Wrong answer: point out that creationism isn’t scientific. This is what they want, so that both creationism and evolution are classified as religion and thus can’t be taught. Instead, answer a straw man with a straw man. Note: I’m Christian, and I don’t believe what I’m about to write.
What’s so holy about a God who kills his followers at the drop of a hat, and implicates all of humanity for a transgression that happened when there were only two people on the earth, despite later commands that no man be punished for the crimes of his father?

25) No. This isn’t evolution either way, but I believe that God created the universe (and God said, “Let there be a big fricking bang.”) and that evolution took place to create life in its present form.

26) Reasonable, yes. Right, most likely not, since I’m bs’ing this. They are provable; all you really need is to dig up a bunch more fossils or ask someone who actually knows what he’s talking about. I’ve indulged in some religion in questions about metaphysics, but not in any questions about evolution. I based my answers off educated guesses from my limited knowledge of biology. They reflect science.

27) Educated guesses require less faith than relying on a Bronze Age text. In addition, the person who says God designed everything must also believe that paternity tests and any other number of modern developments are null and void.

28) What the heck are you talking about? 1: I believe God created the world. 2: God can still be demonstrated by process of elimination.

29) Yes. There are so many facts and modern conveniences based off it that anything else would be lunacy. For more information, go on youtube and look for “Why young earth creationists must deny gravity.”

30) Success, prestige, care for the less fortunate because you understand that misfortune is caused by random chance rather than “God’s judgment.” Your eternal destiny is being buried under about 4 feet of dirt.

31) There are bound to be people who follow the given reasons. But for many people, including myself, they follow evolution because they have analyzed it and it is the most reasonable possibility. In fact, a good number of people at my (Christian) school do not argue for evolution because our Bible grade depends on that.
This is still incomplete, and I’ve worked on this for a day and a bit, but I figure I might as well post this, because I can always get the rest of the questions done later.