STEM and Politics

Over the past few centuries, humans have changed (in mostly bad ways) the world. There is no denying that. But the rate of change over the course of human existence is different at different times. Let's take a look at it. In the first 100,000 years, humans made tools, strayed out of their natural environment, and hunted and gathered. The progress was slow, but faster than most all animals. Then, the agricultural revolution began. In the agricultural revolution, we made more progress in 1000 years than we had made in ten thousand before.  Cities popped up, and with it writing. Laws were made and empires formed, and humans now had reached 6 continents, but the cities had yet to change the world. The population of the entire planet was between 1 and 15 million in 10,000 BCE. Not much happened until the industrial revolution. Then progress picked up. Because we know what happened after that, let's get a time traveler and bring Abraham Lincon back right before he was shot....

Really. A lot of companies hate him. If you ask why, here's why: Suppose you travel back to 1900 and start another car company that competed with Ford and General Motors. After a while, it keeps on producing the same type of car every year, and relies on ads. Fast forward slightly over 110 years, almost all scientists believe in Global Warming, and here comes Elon Musk voicing to the public that he can create a car that can: 1. Create an electric car that can: 2. Have zero or near-zero emissions; 3. Have a touchscreen board and a whole bunch of other features; 4. And with the Model 3, cost about the same as an expensive-ish car; 5. And to top it all up, it will cost nothing to charge and will be tax deductible. (By $7,500), 6. And no gas fees, (it's free to charge energy), or maintenance for the electric engine. People would probably start buying that car, right? That's why most of these car dealers are annoyed. They like little competition, and while there ...

Optimist: The glass is half full. Pessimist: The glass is half empty.      I'm sure you've all heard of this. An optimist is a person that looks on the "bright side" (everything that's going well and a pessimist is a person that looks on the "dark side" (everything that's not going well). And maybe your parents have told you when you were young that being happy improves life quality and overall health. But... pessimists aren't necessarily not enjoying their life, and they do see many dangers and risks that optimists don't. So who wins? This may surprise you, but on average, a pessimist lives longer than an optimist.      Don't take me wrong - I believe it's wrong to have to much stress in life, but a little bit of stress and/or pressure is good for your decision-making. What are you stressed about in life? Picture whatever you are worried about in a bubble. If you take a deep breath and blow it out, the bubble will go away. If yo...

When you supercool sodium to -460 C and shoot a beam of light through it, the speed of the light goes from 186000 miles per second to 15 miles an hour (0.00417 miles per second). This is known as the Bose Einstein Condensate. Superfluid helium defies gravity... it flows up and out of the chamber holding it if at the right temperature. It could be a fountain of liquid helium that flows forever if at the correct temperature. Hand sanitizer can catch fire very easily due to alcohol. You can pick the hand sanitizer fire up without getting burned. Nail polish can stay on fire for up to 10 minutes! (Even just a dollop of polish) Ununoctium (Oganesson), element 118 has a half life of 0.9 milliseconds which means that if you had 100 grams of the stuff, within 0.9  milliseconds, half of it would've decayed into another element.

Look around you. No one seems happy anymore. In fact, almost 16 million people were depressed in 2014.  Why does this happen, you ask. It seems... crazy. Tl;dr: We are Unhappy because of Animals or Gravity . There is one simple formula: Happiness = Reality - Expectations. Think about it. If you expect to make $100,000 this year but make a million, you will be extremely happy. If you expect to make $100,000 but make only $25,000, you won't be satisfied with your life. In other words, Happiness = Progress - Goals. It seems like people expect us (and we expect ourselves) to do great things when we don't really do them. How many of you did what you actually wanted to do, not just work, school, or something else? Probably only a tiny fraction of you. You made little progress, but you expect to do great things someday. (Note to everyone: this means that everyone is a procrastinator .) And we've just scratched the surface. Now the question is: why is Progress  tiny but ...

     The daily fact for August 3, 2017 was "Winnie the Pooh is banned in China, it is censored by the government." This is actually because China believes that Winnie the Pooh looks too much like president Xi JinPing, according to BBC news. I have to admit. Winnie the Pooh kind of looks like president Xi Jinping.      China is not the only place that has banned Winnie the Pooh. Polish officials have blocked a school from  using Winnie the Pooh as its mascot. One counselor stated: "The problem with that bear is it doesn't have a complete wardrobe. It is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children!"       Well, all in all, I guess a formerly friendly children's character has turned into a whole new riot.

Historian Answer: 12.  In history there have been 12 trig functions in total. (Search them up.) Average Math Student Answer: 6.  Sine, Cosine, Tangent, Cotangent, Secant, Cosecant. Smarter Math Student Answer: 3. Cotangent, Secant, and Cosecant are just reciprocals of the original 3. Even Smarter Math Student Answer: 2.  tan(x) = sin(x)/cos(x). Smartest Math Student Answer: 1. cos(x) = sin(90-x) and tan(x) = sin(x)/cos(x).

1. People generally notice the first thing and last thing that you do to them. Make them count. 2. When a small group of people are laughing, generally people will look/glance quickly at the person they care about the most in the group. 3. If you know someone that's holds a grudge against you and is just going to have a go at you at a meeting or anything similar, deliberately sit next to them. The proximity makes them uncomfortable and they are likely to be less aggressive. 4. In a large crowd, stare directly ahead at the gaps between people, especially when you are moving against the flow of the crowd. Don't play with your phone or anything like that. Most likely people will move to the side. 5. When attacked (verbally), put yourself down in a playful way. (If someone scoffs: You're so bad at this, say: "Yes I am. I've always had trouble with [whatever you're talking about].) The person will likely be speechless.

Well, its liquid. PSYCH!!! It's neither. In medieval European cathedrals, the glass sometimes looks odd. Some panes are thicker at the bottom than they are at the top. The seemingly solid glass appears to have melted. This is evidence, say tour guides, Internet rumors and even high school chemistry teachers, that glass is actually a liquid. And, because glass is hard, it must be a supercooled liquid. Glass, however, is actually neither a liquid—supercooled or otherwise—nor a solid. It is an amorphous solid—a state somewhere between those two states of matter. And yet glass's liquidlike properties are not enough to explain the thicker-bottomed windows, because glass atoms move too slowly for changes to be visible. Solids are highly organized structures. They include crystals, like sugar and salt, with their millions of atoms lined up in a row, explains Mark Ediger, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Liquids and glasses don't have ...

We're going to make a small change with our facts routine. Instead of 15 - 20 facts a month, we are going to have 1 fact per day (daily facts)! If you are reading this post on August 1st or August 2nd, there might still not be a daily fact in the sidebar, I am currently fixing that. -Thanks for your understanding