The REAL Science of Christmas

Sometimes people think that, because I write this column, 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 Al Gore can prove 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; "Cash, you are my final chance Of finding the Christmas happenstance For I have read of Old St. Nick So I have to know, what makes him tick. "Does he travel the world and make kids glad? 'cause the science is shaky, the physics is bad And tell me, oh guru, before you are through How a sleigh can fly and those eight reindeer too?" I agree about the baffling nature of this whole Christmas thing from a physics perspective. If you're a Newtonian guy it not only lacks common sense, it is the kind of leap-of-faith slag heap only evolutionary biologists make. But a puzzle is a puzzle and I wouldn't be the internet's pre-eminent anonymous scientist if I didn't tackle the tough problems once in a while. So I have decided to give it a try. The results surprised even me. Of course I am not just an outrageously sexy scientist, I also have my own creative side. Thus, I decided to honor the spirit of the season by answering in similar rhyming verse: You came to Cash, guru of physics Who writes sexy equations and confounds all his critics (Pretty good? Never fear, this part of my verse May start out okay, but it gets a lot worse.) I consulted my sources, to make this is a cinch Like "The Year Without Santa" and that show with the Grinch Yukon Cornelius and the one with great Ak Soon let me know I was on the right track I learned of Snow Miser and Chuck-In-The-Box and found it's not just distance but logistics and clocks If we go east to west, we have 31 hours And that doesn't require any magical powers Weight is a problem, now and days past and heat builds up plenty when toys travel fast You see, millions of toys bring on all kinds of joules To get Santa to work you must throw out the rules So let's look at the atom and all that free space It will help us decide how to win the big race Think of atoms like apples, but we just need the stem Maybe C squared's no problem when you're E without M. So "Santa's" aren't people, they're energy terms They use quantum mechanics and holes made of worms With such arcane science and theories of strings It's easy for Christmas and lots of nice things. Thanks to quantum mechanics, tons weigh only an ounce It explains flying reindeer and Bumbles that bounce But time's still a problem and Santa's must choose So forget about Muslims, Hindus and Jews Sure, they can't get presents, a wreath or a tree But they can go to a movie, like "The Santa Clause III" Meanwhile our Santa can get on his way With all of those stops there's no time to delay So using the magic of science fiction math He has a little more time and can choose the best path Hauling thousands of tons he sets on his course Generating 10,000 times my centripetal force And the joules are no problem,with the math we have reckoned Though you and I would be dead in just half a second Santa math is no problem, Christmas bugs me no more No one else could have solved it – well, maybe Al Gore Kids will be happy, our homes full of cheer So look out for St. Nick and his flying reindeer Even coke-addled models have stuff for their tree Like a grape and some Prada and perhaps even me Christmas isn’t just physics or even great toys It’s a lesson in giving for all girls and boys The lesson is easy though less simple for some Be nice to each other and good things will sure come So whether you're Christian or Hindu Muslim or Jew This girl got what she deserves And I hope you do too:

A Plea For Eating Disorder Tolerance

Just this once, we need to talk about something serious. I know it's easy for people to have a knee-jerk reaction to the problems of others and just start laughing but we're all adults here. So I am going to bring this up and then we can discuss the underlying issues and what we, as a society, can do to help. You see, I just discovered that Dennis Quaid has "manorexia." Sometimes he looks in the mirror and realizes he is 50 years old and he doesn't feel beautiful. And I have a confession to make, because Dennis Quaid's bravery under the intense pressure of society's unrealistic media-based expectations has inspired me: I have manorexia too. I admit it. I sometimes feel I am not hot enough. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see nothing but defects. Sure, I have a great jaw and the hair is ... well ... perfect, but it isn't all balloons and ponies. I'm only 6'2" and sometimes I have to buy pants with a portly 34 waist size. And good luck buying a suit off the rack with these shoulders. My clothes require more cutting than an entire room full of suicide girls. So sometimes I have self-image issues just like Dennis Quaid I know it's a trap imposed on me by women falling all over guys like Brad Pitt and foisting off an unrealistic body image on me. And still I am driven by this need to be attractive to the opposite sex. So I find myself going to the gym every other day and doing 10 minutes of cardio before I lift some light weights while watching "Punk'd" re-runs on TV. Is the pressure sometimes too much? Dennis Quaid and I would both agree it is. I am not here to lay blame but I think we can all agree that the root cause of this problem is demanding women. The more attractive a woman is, the less likely she will be to get involved with someone who has a less-than-perfect body. You think Adriana Lima will still date me if I get fat? No, because she sees perfect men on magazine covers and in movies and has unrealistic expectations about my gender. Real men have curves too! I am proud of Dennis Quaid for bringing this problem into the light. It has been the dirty secret of me and my manorexic brothers for far too long. The shame belongs with women, my brothers, not with you. But, just the same, I am skipping my sundae this evening. The pressure never lets up. I don't want to end up looking like Dennis Quaid. Don't you judge me. This article brought to you by Coke

Need A Christmas Gift For Your Left-Leaning Chick? Try Ethical Underwear

You can absolutely bet when a marketing department uses the word "ethical" - about its lingerie - someone is out to make a buck at your expense. And they think you will believe anything, my environmental friends. But French designer Sophie Young's g=9.8 company is doing it with a straight face. In yet another blatant product placement on treehugger.com they claim the kinds of things only the well-meaning but gullible among us will believe; namely that the company is producing a line of lingerie which will make your hippy chick girlfriend quiver with environmentally friendly delight. Fabric made from white pine tree clippings! No water used! The comfort of silk! The feel of cashmere! The coolness of linen! And the clincher: It's biodegradable! Now, treehugger.com is usually a pretty good site. I don't know what has sent them over the edge on this product endorsement kick recently. The only thing that could be worse is if they start handing their authors Coke cans made from hemp and have them pose for pictures. So let's give them a pass on that part and stick to the science. I guess I can buy that no "additional" water is used, whatever that means. I am unsure of the benefit though. I can certainly get behind* hippy chicks quivering with delight about their undies. What confuses me is, how is underwear made from pine clippings better than regular old, environmentally renewable, cheap-to-produce cotton? * Get it??

Want Men To Understand Your Relationship? Make A Card Game Out Of It

I've done acupressure for over 20 years. Not because I am some wussified New Age guy who cites Three Men And A Baby as his favorite movie but because it works. I have taken aspirin maybe once in that time for a headache. I didn't learn it from an ancient Chinese guru, I learned it by reading a book. When you are a young guy, you are just reading for knowledge and you can learn lots of interesting things by reading books. The one interesting - and important - thing you could not learn through reading was about relationships. Until now. Let's face it, you could read until the skin on your fingers peeled off and you were never going to be able to understand why, when a women spends two hours telling you about a problem at work, the last thing she wants is for you to give her a solution to the problem. To men this makes no sense but we had to learn to accept the oddness of women because the only alternative was to imagine looking at some guy's hairy ass and saying, "I gotta get me some of that." * Yeah, you see the problem. But science is here to help, my friends, and I will do it through Chinese medicine. And card games. You see, I could write a whole book on relationships and I could even make it simple and list the points in numerical order, with things like: 1. You'll probably never know how many guys she's slept with. The standard lie is five. Which really means about 12. and 2. Let her beat you at something once in a while - poker, chess, whatever — and she’ll be more likely to give you what you want, like some peace and quiet. and men still wouldn't get it. They would just laugh and forward it to their friends in complete violation of my copyright. But I think I have discovered how to make men understand: Make a card game out of it. Men can learn games like nobody's business and card games even easier. I know seven year olds who can recite all 75 Pokemon characters including their elaborate relationships, special abilities and killer effects on other characters, but if I ask one of those lads about women he will just scowl and say, "Girls are icky." But I bet if I made it a game he could make any scientist proud. So I thought about it, and hit on this Chinese medicine idea again, and suddenly it came to me that Chinese men 2500 years ago really knew their stuff because relationships, like medicine, are elemental. We just didn't know how to interpret this elemental Chinese stuff in valuable ways, like dealing with women, until I came along. Say, for example, you are Yin and she is Yang. Each of you have five elements and each element has a matrix for their seasons, their colors, and their emotions. Then put it on playing cards. You get the idea. Of course, for men to understand relationships, there has to be a way to win, so I created a generating sequence and a resolution sequence to allow you to make progress with the cards you get. So, furthering the example, if you get the right cards you can either create something new, like for you, or destroy something of hers. Want to build a nice Wood state of harmony with your cards? You can do that. Want to destroy her angry Fire element? You can do that too. It's all about building good things and destroying bad things in the relationship. Okay, now for the specifics and I'll even include the cards so you can print them off: ( Rest deleted by me, because I took one look at this and decided we are going to make this game. He's not right often. Actually, he is only right when I tell him he is right, but he is right this time - Lady Scientist ) So there you go. Want to decide where to go out to dinner? Game her for it. He's not willing to believe he looks ridiculous in that sports jersey? Game him for it. Almost any important decision can be determined in a way that makes complete sense to both sexes. Love is a game anyway, right? Well, I just provided a way for both of you to win. *Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Science Goes On A Spiritual Quest

It still seemed like a great idea when I walked out of Kathmandu but by the time I crossed into Tibet I was starting to worry I had made a mistake. Scientists are always looking for answers, you see, and not all answers can be found at the bottom of a bottle of Miss Clairol. I had begun to doubt myself. "Why blondes?" I found myself asking. And "Maybe Al Gore is right and my car causes global warming but Mexican cars don't" crept into my brain. This is the kind of thing that can kill your career. Scientists need to have answers, even if they're wrong. So I decided to throw it all away and give in to my pre-midlife crisis of faith. I sold my slide rule, put the "ME=MC^2" pocket rocket in storage and started buying plane tickets. First stop: Franklin, Tennessee. I wanted to meet with Joe Beam, a conservative Christian minister who has a message worth hearing: Have hotter sex. His message is a good one, mostly because he starts right in with advice on how to make our semen taste better. Sweet stuff works, says he, and you even get to say, 'I'm eating this cake for you, baby!'" Welcome to the world of hot Christian love. And I think he's right. Sex is a sacred subject, at least when a scientist is doing it, and a wonderful gift, specifically when I am doing it. Still, I had been hoping to meet one of the holy hotties on J.C.'s Girls but they were nowhere to be found. So Joe Beam didn't have the answers I needed because scientists already have sex like rock stars. So next I went to England and consulted The Cosmic Ordering Service but they wanted me to ask for a house in the south of France or a new job or something. It certainly sounds easier than that Kabbalah stuff but it might be more fun to hang out with Madonna. So that's how I ended up in Tibet. And that explains why I have been missing for so long. Did I find the answers I was looking for? Not really. But at least I found my missing condom.