Yes, I’m late posting my AI again. I’ve been running around all day. Right now I’m in the car on my way to my birthday dinner. Yes I am also in the car after leaving Gino’s East where I ate pizza with everyone who toured the Fermilab. It’s a lot of food.
Anyway, back to the birthday part. My birthday is Tuesday. I’ll be 33. If I want to save the world by the time I’m 40, I need to get a move on.
Your gift to me is to help me save the world. You can do it any way possible. You can even invent things! What are you getting me?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
I’m a professional magician – I’ve been designing a show to teach rational thinking / skepticism to school children (think of it as an age-appropriate BullShit! program). I just gave my first performance yesterday. Hopefully there will be more.
Happy Birthday.
I present to you, for your day of birth, my most recent invention: A device which allows you to slap the shit out of someone over the Internet.
It wont save the world but it will sure as shit make it more tolerable.
Congratulations on successfully eluding inevitablity for 33 years!
* wraps up a disintegration ray gun.
Here you go! You’ll never guess what it is but it is SOO useful.
It works on dirty dishes, overflowing landfills, oil spills, despots, bunions, bad drivers in front of you, and even hard to get out pet stains.
I want to invent a video game that teaches critical thinking, so that kids unconsciously learn critical thinking.
Or perhaps just a learning program that can be implemented in schools.
Perhaps a cure for the people who think they need to save the world.
Well, since Hobbits come of age at 33 … how ’bout one ring to rule them all?
I give you the church of life eternal. As it sweeps the globe in a evangelical wave of rationality, people start making informed and intelligent choices ensuring a future for ourselves and all other life.
A subtle perfume, designed to evoke in adults the wonder and majesty that children are able to see in the world. Though it won’t allow you to control others, it’s effects do make it easier to share with others the wonders of the natural world, the pleasure of finding things out, and the awe of realizing that the very atoms we are made from were formed by stars in the same processes that we can still see happening in the skies.
To supplement this, a digital earring cam to record and share those awakenings with others.
A blog with a following. Run with it.
I give you the skepticizer. When activated, anyone within a 1,000 mile radius will be unable to hold beliefs that contradict reality. Just be careful with it, it is extremely dangerous to all major religions, woo of all kind, and the belief that Dane Cook is funny. In fact, you may just want to head straight to D.C.
On second thought that would end in the the downfall of the government and the pummeling of dozens, no hundreds of politicians.
That does, however, give me an idea for a reality show.
Happy Birthday! My present to you is a gabberfloozle. What’s a gabberfloozle? It quarfs your liznark for you, and spleazes your plountoons. It’s the most useful thing ever! I have two.
My present to you is an army of godless atheists who have treacherously seized control of all the world’s nuclear arsenals and await only your word of command to launch radioactive oblivion. (You can even have a choice of flavour of atheist: there are the ones who have absolutely no morals because there is no god to tell them what to do and so are completely fine with nuking the world, or you can have the ones who are just plain evil, and rejection of gods and blowing up the world are aspects of that evil.)
Now you can save the world by not telling them to fire.
Elyse,
My birthday is on Tuesday as well, except I’ll be a bit older :) Hope you have an interesting birthday. I am helping you change the world by raising two skeptical children.
since this year has been dedicated to protecting biodiversity, i give you 10 jars of properly preserved (and labeled) seeds of native threatened plants.
Bappy Hirthday Elyse!
I present. with compliments, the Do-Over machine, enabling a ‘do-over’ of any length.
Use wisely.
I giveth to thee a device that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen so that it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect! I giveth thee… a TREE! HOORAY! A… really large one?
42
Happy birthday Elyse. I’m also going to turn 33, but on Thursday.
As a present, how about an astrodome to encapsulate Skepchick Island so that it can navigate the universe, away from Earth’s woo-mongers?
A skeptifix. It works like a crucifix works on vampires, but instead on psuedoscince. Hold it in front of someone who professes psuedoscience, and it repels them.
My gift to you is an *Anti-Woo Gun* (patent pending). When pointed at perspicacious pontificators of woo-related pablum it instantly converts whatever they are saying to your favorite music. Unfortunately, I still haven’t perfected the music delivery system and it only plays “Mandy” by Barry Manilow. So currently it’s just a torture device.
Happy B-day, Elyse! You’re still just a youngin’, so enjoy it.