I have asked a lot of questions of Scientists. You can see previous posts here and here. Why? Because Scientists have the answers. Christian Scientists, para-scientists and political scientists have answers as well, but they are not quite as informed, tested or unfunny. I also want to say thanks.
Thank you, Scientists! Thanks for putting up with the persecutions throughout history. They continue to this day. Thanks for dealing with the inequitable amount of attention. You deserve so much more! Here’s a bit of good news: I ran a google search of the word “God.” It came back with 1.49 billion responses. Okay, that’s not very good news. But, I also ran a google search of the word “Science,” and the internet gave me 2.13 billion results!
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. Thanks for fighting our battles for us (and not for them). We really need you now! Thanks for putting us on the internet and getting us to the Moon. Thanks for our children, many of whom would not be here today without your discoveries.
With a thankful heart, let us move directly to the questions.
Question #1 for Scientists
So, is there a temperature at which tater tots burn? I've been fiddling with a couple bags of tater tots and an oven with a maximum temperature of 550 degrees, Fahrenheit. Thus far, the tater tots have proved impervious to heat. Even books burn at Fahrenheit 451, at least according to Science Fiction. Where do crunchy tater tots come from? Why are we not building our tall apartment buildings out of this fire-proof and delicious material?
Question #2 for Scientists
It is my personal hypothesis that everything in Art and Entertainment has already been done. Charles Dickens, himself, must account for 90% of it. If you consider that quite a bit more than 7 billion of us exist on the planet, and there've been 100 billion of us up to now, there is a basis for the theory. We almost certainly have done most of it. Much of it by accident. If an infinite number of monkeys can produce a flawless Hamlet, then what have 100 billion goal-oriented monkeys been up to? Okay, that's not the question. My question is better than that. I believe that everything has been done before, but with one crucial caveat. Science. We will be startled and intrigued and confused in the future only by Science. Is that so?
Question #3 for Scientists
I've read about these new man-made elements, and it seems that many have very short lives, as in millionths of a second. Of course, I had to have some of that, so I gave a box of man-made elements to my wife for our anniversary. When she opened it up, the box appeared to be empty, but she didn't understand the trouble I had gone through to get them and their ridiculously short half-lives. Is there something scientific I can tell her that would help her to stop shouting?
Question #4 for Scientists
I think that "The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Fractals of Doom" would be a great name for a rock band or the MIT Debate Team. But, is that true, scientifically?
Question #5 for Scientists
My previous theory was that if we wanted to locate a time-travel device, we should stake out an important event, like, say, the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, and poke around for the least obtrusive device imaginable. For example, a porta-potty-shaped time machine with an out of order sign and faux-feces smeared on the door handle, or perhaps one disguised as a 1984 silver Datsun. But then I thought, why wouldn't those time travelers go to the future and discover the secret to invisibility? What do you think? Where should we start?
Question #6 for Scientists
How much anal probing would be educational for a species that had already developed faster-than-the-speed-of-light travel, and how much of it is just plain fun? How do those aliens keep getting grants for that stuff?
Question #7 for Scientists
Likely you have not researched this question, but I have exhaustively examined the literature to determine if there has ever been a reported ghost sighting while somebody was masturbating, and no, there hasn't. Why? (I realize this is a question better suited for para-scientists, that is, “unreliable people,” but I thought I would ask you.). Peeping Toms are not immortal. They die like the rest of us. Do ghosts have tact? Coincidental good timing? Because ghost stories aren’t real and came of age during the prudish Victorian Era?
Conclusion
I just ran another google search. This time it was for the terms “Scientific Discoveries” and “Religious Discoveries.” You can guess the outcome? Actually, the search for Scientific Discoveries turned up almost twice as many responses. But, in fairness, Noah’s Ark padded one of the searches on the very first page of the so-called Religious Discoveries!
But it’s not all roses and black holes. When I ran a google search for “Scientific Accomplishments” and looked at the images, this disappointing one kept popping up like frenetic white males at a Trump rally:
It is fascinating to me that Science has brought us the first three laws of planetary motion, diagrams of the Pleiades, Orion and Taurus, the use of logarithms for calculation, the intricacies of blood circulation and the law of falling bodies, all in a span of 29 years during the 1600s.
Please don’t stop now.