QUESTION NO. 1: Elon Musk says it is a near certainty that we are living in a simulation. Let's assume he's right. Should we let our wonderful and wise Simulators—“All Hail Our Simulator Overlords and Overladies!”— know that we know? Shouldn't we eep-kay it-ay ecret-say?
QUESTION NO.2: I have discovered this number:
I googled it and could not find it anywhere. I would like to name it "Ned" and would appreciate any information about when I should expect one of the bigger Science prizes for it.
QUESTION NO. 3: Water. What's going on there?
QUESTION NO. 4: Here's a question that has puzzled me since I was a child. I sat, spellbound, in classrooms and at home watching all of the Apollo missions. (That was so righteous! Thanks, NASA!). But I was puzzled at an early age with the launch countdown.
Simply put, it doesn't add up.
The NASA spokesperson would say, "Launch in 10 seconds," followed by what we all remember, "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and we have liftoff!" It's hard to explain, so I'm going to show you graphically:
I'm ashamed to say that I still count this off with my fingers as a supposedly reasonable adult. Shouldn't the NASA spokesperson say, "Launch in 11 seconds," followed by "10, 9, 8 ..." and so on? This also gets into my life-long skepticism about the numbers 1 and 0, but we won't go there at this time. My question for Scientists: So, what gives?
QUESTION NO. 5: Do you think that the stereotype of the mad scientist who attempts to take over the world is based on any solid data? For the life of me, I can't recall a single one of them. Even in history books, the people attempting to take over the world were always politicians or generals. Some of them, like Hitler, had pretty smart scientists working for them. Hannibal had his zoology people work out the Elephant problem. And so on.
My hypothesis is that, for much of this, we have Ian Fleming and his James Bond books to blame. I don't know, though, because Jules Verne or H.G. Wells or Lovecraft or Poe probably did a story along these lines that I don't know about. Can we narrow this down, somehow, scientifically?
Once we’ve narrowed it down, is anyone interested in some payback? On a global scale?
Haha! Just kidding. Seriously, I’m just talking, talking here. Nothing more. You know how to reach me.
QUESTION NO. 6: I just saw a PBS documentary about Nikolai Tesla. It was awful good and went into his version of Alternating Current versus Edison's DC and much more. At the end, though, I was left with a puzzle. The narrator noted that Marconi was the first to send wireless signals across long distances (first the English Channel, then the Atlantic). But they noted that Marconi used 17 Tesla patents in his equipment. Thereafter an American court acknowledged Tesla as the inventor of wireless transmission.
I love me some Tesla, but I think Marconi deserves that distinction. Here are my questions: Was the narrator stating a legal determination and not the scientific conclusion? Who do you believe invented the wireless? Where do you draw the line, when giving credit, between theory and practical application?
QUESTION NO. 7: Back in our first question we discussed the Simulation Theory. It’s still bugging me. Another thing I want to know is this: Did the Simulators—“Oh Great Simulators, We Are Not Worthy of Thou!”—maybe bite off a bit more than they could stomach, what with all of the scratching and masturbation?
QUESTION NO. 8: Is the young lady below wearing a pearl or a silver earring? How would you prove it (one way or another)?
QUESTION NO. 9: Has the right hand of the man on the far right been painted to suggest that it is moving? Not that it has moved and stopped. I mean, that it is moving? Again, the question is: How would you prove it?
CONCLUSION: Thank you, Scientists! Thanks for putting up with the persecutions throughout history. They continue to this day. And you probably remember a few persecutions in high school as well. Thanks for dealing with the inequitable amount of attention. You deserve so much more.
Thanks for the Scientific Method. My goodness that was big!
Thanks for all of your discoveries and inventions. Thanks for the cures. Thanks for putting up with the inadequate and inequitable pay. Thanks for helping us better understand what is going on in our world. Thanks for the hours and days and months and years and decades of painstakingly complex work that has added to the body of our knowledge. Even if you discovered "nothing," you've shown us the path not to follow.
Thanks for conquering your egos and requiring peer review of your data and experiments. Would we all were so circumscribed. And demanding repeatability! You force everyone to prove their theory by duplicating their experiments. Republicans still haven’t learned that one. Thanks for putting us on the internet and getting us to the Moon. Thanks for fighting our battles for us (and not for them). We really need you now! Thanks for our children, many of whom would not be here today without your discoveries.