Presidente del Gobierno José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain said the Spanish Republic has decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by revoking Mexican independence:

“It has always been a common misperception that the 5th of May is a celebration of Mexican independence from Spain. This is not correct, is is actually a celebration of victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, but we know that no one can really be proud of defeating the French so the mistake is understandable. In truth, we never agreed to Mexican independence anyway so we are simply revoking it.” (more…)

Sometimes people think that, because I write this column for peanuts, I am somehow available for free science consulting services. Obviously this is not the case but I don’t mind the occasional question, especially if it concerns real puzzles like how a car in China doesn’t cause global warming but a car in America does.

Lately I have been pestered with questions about this whole Christmas thing. It’s a troublesome issue, I agree, but I am not in the free science business so most of the questions I just ignore - however, one of the many,many,many (not that many - Lady Scientist ) groupies that flitter about me on the internet caught my attention recently with their query about Yule physics because they had the creativity to put it in seasonal rhyming form;

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I guess the NY Times is just discovering that Halloween is the perfect time for women to let out their inner tramp.

Men knew this. Hell, we invented Halloween many years ago for no other reason than to get Celtic women out of those ill-fitting robes and into some cool outfits.

Even seeing that picture makes me feel all piratey. If she were here I’d totally make her surrender her booty.

“It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning,” said Linda M. Scott, the author of Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.

(more…)

Sometimes people think that, because I write this column for peanuts, I am somehow available for free science consulting services. Obviously this is not the case but I don’t mind the occasional question, especially if it concerns real puzzles like how a car in China doesn’t cause global warming but a car in America does.

Lately I have been pestered with questions about this whole Christmas thing. It’s a troublesome issue, I agree, but I am not in the free science business so most of the questions I just ignore - however, one of the many,many,many (not that many - Lady Scientist ) groupies that flitter about me on the internet caught my attention recently with their query about Yule physics because they had the creativity to put it in seasonal rhyming form;

(more…)

Groundbreaking - and heartwarmingly unessential - research done by University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou has attempted to confirm what a generation of suicide girls has always feared - that vampires do not exist.

His reasoning? On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was just over 530 million people. If one vampire existed on that day and bit one person per month, and then each new vampire also bit one person per month, by 1605 the entire planet would be nothing except vampires.

Now, I am okay with there being no vampires, though I think the world would be poorer without that cinema classic, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

And, without vampires, I would not be able to spend 4 seconds scouring the internet and find pictures like this:

So we can’t just let someone claim they have wiped out a millenium of folklore by doing simple ( very simple ) math. First, let’s deal with the premise behind his numbers. Professor Efthimiou’s research assumes that each vampire bite results in another vampire being created. People, if there’s one thing I know, it’s vampires ( and Thai transvestites, but hey, that is a post for another time ) and I need only point you to the definitive work on the matter, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to state unequivocally that vampires don’t always create more vampires. They only create vampires out of people they really like, or who have waistlines like Vampira:

Yes, she looks as all women should look; like a sexy, zombie skeleton.

Additionally, back in 2000, in the British series Ultraviolet, it was clarified that vampires wouldn’t feed themselves to extinction any more than we would keep on killing buffalo until they were almost gone.

This was on TV, people. If you can’t believe what you see on TV, I can’t reason with you.

Professor Efthimiou’s simple and surprisingly jingoistic math and logic errors mean that there is still at least some statistical chance that vampires could exist. However, there is also some statistical chance I am a Chinese jet pilot. Yet, since the chance exists that vampires are roaming the earth, it can’t hurt to have a vampire slayer handy.

Everyone goes for Buffy. I’d rather have a little Faith.