Posts categorized “Science”.

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!

Here is some pretty excellent footage of the recent total solar eclipse that happened over parts of India, China, Japan, and the Pacific. Just look at how dark it gets! The camera they used was pretty impressive; at one point you can actually see solar flares leaping out from behind the moon.

Due to a peculiarity with the way we use numbers to represent times and dates in this country, at 12:34 and 56 seconds in the afternoon today the time/date can be written as:

12:34:56 7/8/9

What’s so special about that? Well, remove all the colons and slashes and this is what you get:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Of course, this is only happening in places where the month gets put before the date gets put before the year. Many places will have to wait until the 7th of August for this particular line-up to occur.

I’m not a numerologist or anything, so I don’t hold any superstitious associations with this date/time. I’m pretty sure the Universe doesn’t give a darn what numbers we use to signify an arbitrary point in time. It’s just a peculiar numeric convergence that I find kinda interesting.

EDIT: It just happened! And… nothing happened.

The Japanese public was allowed to propose a series of experiments that would then be carried out by astronaut Koichi Wakata on board the International Space Station. Most of these “experiments” basically consist of performing physical stunts to see what would happen in a microgravity environment. Here is the highlight reel:

Who says science isn’t fun?

(via Pink Tentacle)