I was trying to sleep last week and after spending the first hour tossing and turning I got back up again. Clearly that 'one last coffee' before bed was the one cup too many. That one cup of coffee lead me to getting up and sitting in front of the computer at 4am. I live in front of a computer these days, every aspect of my uni life revolves around writing assignments, Matlab, Excel, Simulink or Google. God only knows how engineers coped in the days before Amstrad CPC 64K's and BBC Microsoft Computers. If you have no idea what they are Google them, well that's what it is there for. They were amazing, the first time I saw Paint I nearly wet myself, and when I was fifteen I was shown a held held scanner that could magically transfer images into a computer. Yes I did say hand held, you had to wave it at exactly the right speed over the thing you were scanning, and I seem to remember it took about thirty four seconds before somebody scanned their face with it. Fast forward seventeen years, one week and several coffees later and here I am, wide awake five hours before I need to get up watching GameOn and contemplating scanning body parts again. More coffee.. More biscuits... It's a dangerous game drinking coffee and staying up late link surfing. Last time that happened it took me an entire two weeks to get over the image of 'Mr Hands'. Once again if your curious then by all means Google it, but I don't wish to go through that episode again. This time all that has happened is that I have found videos on ramjets and I have resorted to eating the only things edible in my room, toffee flavoured ice cream sauce and half a pack of chocolate biscuits of an unknown origin, I found them in a drawer before Christmas during a bout of tidying.... I may regret this in the morning, ah well 'he who dares' goes to bed with a tasty supper..
Here is an update on my mushroom friends, they grew to an enormous size and then I ate them...Harsh I know, but its a Paul eat mushroom world out there. Here's a picture of the funky fungi shortly before I nibbled on them with Aerospace Girlfriends huge hands for scale. I am just joking, she has perfectly small and delicate feelers. Anyway, I am now waiting expectantly for the second lot of shrooms...
I had the misfortune to see this video this morning and it annoyed me. How can there be such a level of ignorance in the world?
As a scientist, I thought I would address some of the questions...
1. Why are the planets round? Newtonian physics... seemples...
2. Chimpanzees can't give birth to a man? Well no, since they are Chimpanzees, the clue was in the name of the species, Chimpanzee. Although I have seen some exceptionally hairy men, so maybe Humans can give birth to a monkey.
3. Have you ever seen a mountain form. Yes, the Himalayas have been measured to grow at the rate of about a metre a year.
4. If the Big Bang started with a singularity, who held up the singularity? Well a singularity is a mathematical construct that is used to define the 'starting point' for the expansion of matter. I suggest reading about string theory and M theory, so nobody held it up.
5. A painting had a painter, therefore the universe had a maker. This isn't a question, it's a statement. A wrong statement but I think Creationists deserve to be beaten to death with their own sense of self importance, but hey ho.
6. If a monkey gave birth to a man, who would he, (or she), mate with? See question 2 and I would suggest reading about what defines a species.
7. How can you explain gravity? There are four fundamental forces in the universe, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electro-magnetism and gravitation. They are understood well enough to allow accurate mathematical models to made that have been verified by thousands, if not millions of experimental results. Exactly what causes gravity is though to involve the interactions of a sub-atomic particle and the recent work at the LHC is well on the way to proving this theory. If you don't believe a sub atomic particle can interact with anything, take a look at a CRT TV screen where electrons interact with a coated piece of glass.
8.If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? ahh That old chestnut. Well species evolve to fill niches within an environment where a plant, animal, bacteria, fungus ect had found a new way to exploit a food source or evade predation. The reason monkeys still exist is because there is a balance between their food source, predators and potential mates. Upset the balance and things change, I read once that the average tusk length of African Elephants has reduced due to poaching. So since a new form of predation has occurred the genes for large tusks are being removed from the population.
9. If the world is millions of years old, why is it only 2008? err, well.. Nope I can't even dignify this level of stupidity with an answer.
10. If I throw dirt up into the air, what are the odds it will fall into the shape of living a man? I think there are two ways to answer this, the odds of forming a ''living'' man are zero. Namely due to the lack of such vital ingredients as haemoglobin, calcium phosphate, keratin to name a few. The odds of forming a shape of a man, well depends on how you define ''man''. Since people will often see faces in clouds then the chances are good. If you expect to see a full three dimensional human, like a sculpture, then I'd have to say the chances are probably zero. If I could be bothered I'd attempt to back that up with some maths, but I can't. So there.
11. Can you see electricity? Easy answer, lightening... Long winded answer, well technically you can't, just like you can't see magnetism, but you can easily see the effects these things have in the real world.
12. Science changes, the book of Genesis is perfect. This is a statement, but considering there are two books of Genesis, would you care to inform me which one is the perfect one for future reference. Also God took a rib from Adam to create Eve. Last time I checked men had an identical number of ribs as women. Not that I want to doubt the claim of perfection..
13. The holy bible says it's the truth because the bible says it's the truth. Again a statement and not really a question, although by that reasoning should I also believe that the other bastion of truth, the Daily Mail is also the world's best newspaper?
14. Evolution is a religion and science leads to killing people. So we are continuing with the theme of statements and not questions. Last time I checked millions of people haven't been killed in the name of evolution. Although science has been used to create weapons, the reason the weapons were created in the first place is often in the name of a ''God''.
15. Scientists around the world are jointly involved in a conspiracy against God. I don't think we can be bothered to waste our time trying to conspire against a work of fiction. I do know that by replying to this video I may sound like a hypocrite, but I freely admit that I am.
16. Bananas are perfectly designed for the human hand. Not had a question for a while now, but I like rebutting these statements. No bananas are not designed for the human hand, the yellowy, bendy fruits you see in the supermarkets are the product of a thousand years of cultivation by man and bear no resemblance to the wild banana. Also see wild wheat, rice, roses, apples, strawberries in fact most of our food crops.
17. Millions of years for a monkey to turn into a man? Monkeys don't live that long. I'm still trying to evolve that third arm to reach my coffee on the desk so I can type and drink at the same time.
19. Archaeologists always remove the human remains first when they find a dinosaur so they can continue the lie. I'm still waiting for a Christian palaeontologist to show the world a fossil dinosaur and human in the same geological strata.
20. Can you speak monkey? No I don't think so. Actually Gorillas and Chimpanzees have been taught sign language and people have had some very basic conversations with them. I read a transcript once between a Gorilla and a man as they walked through a zoo once, (the Gorilla lived there and this was out of hours, the book was about animal behaviour). The Gorilla didn't like Tigers, and signed ''Tiger teeth sharp and nails rough [claws]''. It blew my mind.
21. It seems like there was only twenty questions, maybe it was lost in the sea of mind numbingly idiotic drivel. Who knows.
Christianity, Islam, Judaism they're all fairy stories which lead to suffering, oppression and attempts to prevent ordinary people from learning. Besides we all know the one true faith is Pastafarianism, may he grace us all by the touch of his noodley appendage.
