Women Are Bad Drivers...

Well not really. But they are stereotyped for a reason. Whether you want to accept it or not, women are biologically different than men. We are not physically equal, and that doesn’t mean women are weaker than men. It just means they are different. I can think of three things off the top of my head that most people don’t know. Let’s start from the top and work our way down.

Andrew and Heidi (Her Blog)

The eyes! The window to the soul… Also our brains. These two little round organs in our head are so complex, it’s amazing. They are involved in everything we do from walking to sleeping. And each set of eyes are unique in more ways than one. Men and women have different eyes. Women have much better peripheral vision then men. They can see up to 45% better than men, out of the corners of their eyes. This is why women never get caught staring at a hot guy, or why your mom ALWAYS knows what you are doing, like she has eyes in the back of her head. Women are fantastic at reading body language simply because they can take in, and process, the entirety of what they are seeing. Their enhanced peripheral vision and ability to read body language is where the whole “Woman’s Intuition” thing came from. But women evolved the ability so that they could understand their babies, to better care for them.  Think about it, when a baby cries you always see the dad looking confused and then mom comes over and says “Oh, she just wants to be fed. I swear sometimes I think you are blind.” Fathers normally don’t learn to read their children like a mother can until much later. 

Men on the other hand have much better depth perception then women. The reason for this is for hunting. Society (for the most part) evolved with men being hunters and women being care givers and gatherers. Men have eyes that are ideal for spotting animals at a distance, judging how far away it is, and using that to essentially hunt and kill the animal. 

When it comes to driving women tend to be more defensive because they can see what is going on to their sides. But because men have to turn their head to see, we think women are being reckless and oblivious. Also, because men have better depth perception we can see how close we are to objects and other cars. Men always notice when women stop short, or get ridiculously close to a garbage can and it scares the crap out of us. All of this compounded has created the stereotype of women being bad drivers. When in reality, men are just as bad if not worse, because men need to feel macho. And showing off usually end up in an embarrassing accident… 

The next part of the body is one not many people think about… until they bang it. The elbow! Men and women have joints that differ slightly from one another. For example, the elbow. Women’s elbows bow out slightly. This is because, as I have stated earlier, women have usually been gatherers/care givers. The bowing of the elbow makes thing very easy to carry, such as an infant, or armfuls of fruit and vegetables. And on the contrary, men’s elbows are set more inward.

 My friend Erica and her beautiful baby girl Tessa.

Holding a baby is so natural for a woman, give a baby to a guy and chances are he will hold it like a football...

Humans haven’t always been hunter/gathers. Many scientists believe that the early human was a scavenger. Surviving off the carcasses of already dead animals. It wasn’t until humankind started using tools did they develop weapons for hunting. And the earliest hunting tool, was nothing more than a sharp stick. Men have evolved as hunters, and if we evolved throwing spears, it makes sense that men’s elbows are set inward. Because tucking the elbow in provides a very straight and strong throw. We have survived for so long because we adapted to hunting. Men were able to spot game from a distance and chuck a spear into it to bring it down. While women, got their smart on and, learned what plants were edible, how to grow them, and how to harvest. If not for one gender or the other we may have died out. But together men and women evolved and adapted into the perfect survivalists. 

The last thing I want to discuss is more of a subject then a body part. But none the less it is a physiological difference in men and women. Men are great sprinters and women are… well slow. They can’t help it, it’s just true. Women are terrible sprinters.

 Heidi and Andrew in a foot race. I don't think he is even trying....

 As Christopher McDougall says 

“The fastest woman to ever run the mile did it in 4.15. I can throw a rock and hit a high school boy who can run faster than that 4.15. For some reason, you guys are just really slow.” 

You can see one of his talks on running Here.

But don’t let this sound like women are by any means weaker or less efficient at running then men. It is quite the opposite. Women get stronger as the distances increase. 50 and 100 mile races take female running to a whole new playing field. So while women may not be fast, they can certainly go the distance. 

 Women have only even been able to run marathons since the 1980's. Before that they were banned because it was thought that the uterus would tear and fall out. Now women have some of the fastest times in the world in races that span 50 to 150 miles!

I could go on and on, but the point will always be the same. Men and women are no better or worse than one another, they are both good and bad at different things. It is like comparing seafood to chocolate, they are just in two completely different places in the same world. 

I'd like to thank Heidi, Andrew, and Erica for letting me take/use pictures of them for this post.  Also my friends for their continual support. Thanks guys =]

The Moon!!!

The moon is made of cheese. The moon has a man on it. The man on the moon lives off of the cheese, so therefore the moon is slowly getting smaller. These are some thing we know to be fact. But I’m sure there are plenty of things about the moon that you don’t know. 

The moon is actually responsible for a lot of stuff. Like the tides in the ocean, or volcanic activity. But we don’t actually know how the moon got there. The best theory that scientists have today is something called the “Giant Impact Hypothesis”. The hypothesis says, that while the Earth was just a baby, a big proto-planet came out of nowhere and crashed into the Earth. While giant pieces of both the proto-planet and Earth are flying about gravity kicks in. The large amount of junk being tossed around forms What the Earth is today, and a smaller amount goes to make the moon.

The moon is a natural satellite for the Earth, and at about a quarter of the Earth’s diameter, it is the biggest moon in comparison to its planet in the solar system. And when you look at the moon you are actually seeing the face, called the Lunar Near Side. The other side of the moon is called the Lunar Far Side… Man, scientists get crazy when they name stuff. Anyways, the moon, like the Earth, rotates. And while you would think that, if that were the case then you would be able to see all sides of the moon. But the moon and the Earth rotate and orbit in a kind of unison. Like they are dancing, and the Lunar Near Side is always the side that looks at us. So they next time you look at a full moon and think “Man, that crater looks familiar…” it’s because you have seen it your whole life!

The moon is known for playing tricks on us too. Think about it, when does a full moon look biggest? When it is on the horizon, at its farthest visible position from your location. It looks smallest when it is in the middle of the sky, the closest it can be to your location. Why is that? 

Well, it’s actually an optical illusion. Your brain knows that the moon is massive. And when the moon is right next to something, like trees, or buildings, you brain will blow the image up to make it look bigger in comparison! And when the moon is in the middle of the sky, your brain has nothing to compare its massive size to, and so it looks smaller. 

Another cool trick is when the moon changes color. Have you ever see the moon on the horizon and it was an orange-red color? This is because the light coming from the moon is being refracted (bent) through particles and chemicals in the atmosphere. When the light is bent we see every color but the orange-red colors, and so this is the color we see. Light being refracted in the Earth’s atmosphere is also why the sky is blue, and why sunsets turn purple some times. An easy example of refraction is a straw in a glass half filled with water. The light gets refracted in the water and the straw looks like it’s not one solid line, same concept. 

There is a lot more to the moon then meets the eye. And as far as things to look at, it’s one of my favorites.

Tornadoes!

Tornadoes are one of the most violent kinds of storms. They occur in most places of the world in one form or another with varying degrees of severity. The USA gets them most frequent. But why do certain areas get them more frequently than others? 

Well tornadoes occur when two masses of different temperature and humidity meet. This causes a thunderstorm. The warm moist air will shoot up and create what’s called an updraft, while the cool dry air falls down creating a down draft. Normally the down draft created in this process will be separate of the down draft created from rainfall. The rain creates its own down draft because it is cooler then the warm air rising. The two down drafts eventually negatively affect the updrafts and the storm dies out. 

What makes a tornado different then a thunder storm, and essentially more dangerous, is that the down drafts become so powerful they wedge the updraft and make it rise faster and more intense. It can become so intense the updraft shoots into the stratosphere.  They will start to feed off of each other, and instead of dying out in 30-40 minutes as most thunderstorms do, it will take on a life of its own and last for hours.

As the updraft rises it will meet varying wind currents traveling at different directions called wind shears. If the wind shears are placed in the right spots and are fast enough it will spin the updraft like a top. That is when you can actually see the storm rotating. This creates a wall cloud, and the start of a tornado. 

“Tornado Season” is normally during the spring time when the climate is rapidly changing. Tornadoes occur less frequent in the winter time. A tornado can happen anywhere, in fact since 1950 a tornado had been recorded in all of the continental states in the US at least once. With central America and the east coast being the most common. This is because cool dry air will travel south from Canada and meet the very warm hot air traveling north from the Gulf of Mexico. The east coast too has the cool air from Canada mixing with the warm humid coastal air. 

The NCDC figures for 1950-2006 show that Pennsylvania reported 697 tornadoes with the only recorded F5 tornado in the region in 1985. Massachusetts reported 153 with an F4 in 1953 that killed 90 people, and New Jersey reported 144. Compared  to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma whose reported tornadoes are well over 6,000 combined it’s no wonder you rarely hear anything about them. Tornadoes happen much less in these states because the weather conditions are only optimal for a tornado much less frequently. On the east coast the weather is warm and humid most of the time. When the cool air from Canada travels south it makes a much less of an impact as it does to the states in Tornado Ally.

The Universe and Newton: A Love Story

A friend of mine recent asked me “Can you fire a gun in space? And if so would the bullet keep going forever at the same speed?”  The answer for this might not be as simple as one might think. First let me answer the first part of the question.

When a gun is fired a firing pin will strike the primer that will ignite the propellant (in this case gun powder). In older weapons you would have to pack the gun powder in behind the bullet. In both cases the gun power is ignited, and the bullet is dispelled from the weapon. The difference is that in a modern bullet casing, everything is sealed. Since you need oxygen for an ignition, older weapons could not fire. But modern weapons have oxygen inside of the casing allowing them to be fired in a zero oxygen environments.

Now what happens after the bullet is fired is another matter altogether. First let me point out that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s Third Law of Motion). And when the weapon is fired, the recoil will be equal to the force of the propelled bullet. So assuming you aren’t being held in place by something you will fly in the opposite direction. 

Apart from the fantastic visual I get of an astronaut hurtling through space clutching a rifle, there is the matter of the bullet itself. According to Newton’s first law of motion; an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Normally the external force that slows down a bullet is friction and gravity, or a body… But in the vacuum of space there is no friction. But there is gravity.

You see, every point of mass attracts every other point of mass (Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation). That is why the moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun. So all throughout space, gravity is acting upon everything including something as small as a bullet. What is confusing is that, those exact forces of gravity are still unknown! If every point of mass is attracted to every other point of mass then logically the universe should be converging, essentially collapsing in on itself. Yet the universe is expanding! These forces of nature are still a mystery to us. So the effects it would have on a bullet are unfathomable.

Considering the mass of the bullet the forces of gravity acting upon it are probably too small to notice. But that doesn’t mean that they are not there. Assuming the bullet doesn’t get too close to a planet and get caught in orbit, or hit the planet, or a rock floating in space, or even an alien! It will eventually slow to a stop and become caught in the currents of the universe.

It's For Science!

First off, what is Science? Is it all test tubes and guys in white coats who never see the light of day? Not so much, Webster’s Dictionary defines science as: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. You see, science is in everything we do from waking up in the morning to the second we lay our head down to go back to sleep. Science encompasses all, and for that very reason we should try to excel in it. 

According to Steven Hawking, “The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.” 

A Brief History of Time

What he is saying is that, essentially science is here to answers the biggest questions we all have. Why are we here? What comes after death? What is the point of our existence? The problem with this is that it creates a paradox. He argues that, if there was a unified theory that sums up the universe it would also determine the outcome of our actions. In searching for this theory we would enviably find that the theory itself would dictate the outcome for search itself. But what if it doesn’t lead us to the right answer? It is equally possible for it to lead us to the wrong answer, or even no answer at all. 

Steven Hawking says, “The only answer I can give to this problem is based on Darwin’s principal of natural selection. The idea is that in any population of self-reproducing organisms, there will be variations in the genetic material and upbringing that different individuals have. These differences will mean that some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world around them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce and so their pattern of behavior and thought will come to dominate. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chance of survival.”

A Brief History of Time

So if Darwin is correct, with every new generation the human race is more prone to discover the laws that govern our universe. Otherwise we won’t survive as a race. And although our scientific discoveries have been largely beneficial such as nuclear power to generate energy for us, it has also sundered us, by using that same nuclear energy to create the world’s most devastating weapon. People as a whole have a tendency to destroy things. It’s a very primal thing to destroy, but with every discovery we make about our universe the closer we get to finally answer that big question. 

What is the meaning of life?