Archive for the 'humor' Category

Monday, April 30th, 2007

Music, Math and Models


I’ve said a few times that music is math. I’ve also said a few times that I’m a Chinese jet pilot and that Halle Berry wants to bear my children so it’s probably hard to know when you should take me seriously and when you shouldn’t.

But let’s go back to this “music is math” stuff. On that part I’m not kidding. At the end of the day, a lot of things can be math, including music and supermodels. A few months ago I did an article on how Phi, the famously named Golden Ratio, could even tell us who would be a supermodel. It contained excellent science, humor, Elle MacPherson, Carol Alt and Heidi Klum , yet still left some math questions unanswered.

In that article I mentioned the golden ratio in music, namely that the octave, fifth, and major and minor sixths are ratios of consecutive numbers of the Fibonacci* sequence, making them the closest low integer ratios to the golden ratio. But that doesn’t make a ton of sense until we get a little more basic, mostly because math doesn’t exist in the real world, it isn’t a hard science like physics.

So we’ll figure out how math is music but first we’ll show how music is physics.

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Friday, April 6th, 2007

An Equation About Easter Miracles - Should Captain Carrot Quit Smoking?

I got some questions from a writer named Captain Carrot, i.e. a stranger, who deduced that, because I write this column for free, I must also be available for free science consultation and/or general life and relationship advice.

Here is a sample:

I am 27. Should I try to stop smoking, or will I regret it later in life?

Most of you know me well enough by now to realize that, unless you provide webcam proof you are a supermodel, I am unlikely to even bother learning to spell your name.

ImageShack sucks

Yet something in his plea struck me. Maybe because it’s Easter Weekend and I feel bad that Jesus died so most of you could tell George Bush how much smarter you are than he is, or maybe it’s because I feel a twinge of guilt at Photoshopping a picture of myself in a picture as a half-Crusader/half-Crusaded warrior of the 12th century, or maybe it’s because I am saddened that this poor monkey can’t even decide for himself whether or not he should ingest carcinogens that we’ve spent trillions of dollars telling him he should not ingest.

It doesn’t matter. I felt his pain so I answered his call. However, I am a busy man - if I am to have an orgy of unprotected sex with supermodels this weekend to celebrate the Resurrection of the Messiah, I need to make a coke run. And don’t let me forget to buy a grape for them to share when they have the munchies.

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Friday, April 6th, 2007

Have a happy Easter

Be sure to enjoy a wholesome Crusade. I know I will:

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Even if you don’t admire my Photoshop skills, you have to admit I don’t look as silly as a British guy who signs up to be crucified and then claims God told him at the last minute not to do it.

Maybe I’m crazy but I bet God didn’t have as much to do with it as watching nine Filipinos before him get whipped and nailed to crosses. That would make me get down on my knees and have a religious epiphany too.

How did the crowd react? They boo’ed him, of course. If I go all that way to see radical Catholics re-enact the Crucifixion you can bet nothing would make me happier than seeing some smarmy British journalists take some spikes to the hands.



Monday, March 5th, 2007

Who Funds The Chocolate Consensus?



In case you were hiding under a rock, there was the scientific equivalent of an earth-shattering thunderclap that emanated from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meetings held February 15th-19th in San Francisco - to be honest, they pretend everything they say is big news, you can see 20 articles from it just on Scientific Blogging - but I mean this was legitimately big news.

Was it that they took their own vote and decided that there is global warming after all? No, someone jumping on the climate change bandwagon is nothing new.

Was it that your astrological sign can tell you what medical problems you will have? That one was a lot of fun but still not it.

No, the most surprising news was that chocolate makes you smarter.

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Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

Some Scientific Equations Can’t Be Solved, Like This One: W*0^M = N

And Π (Pi) or Maxwell’s Equations. Everyone knows Π already, it’s the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle (22/7) and goes on forever. Then there’s Maxwell’s Equations; Maxwell grasped the connection between magnetism and electricity and how they create each other. But, like Π, they can never be solved. If you spend more and more time trying to solve either of those you can only come closer to the answer. You can never actually reach it.

So what happens when you put Π and Maxwell’s Equations together? You guessed it; you get women.

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