It’s
a New Year. Time to scrape the sludge from the old noggin and find answers to
those questions that have kept you awake all night. Well, they’ve kept me awake,
anyway. I really need to find a hobby.
Randall
Munroe is a former NASA roboticist and creator of the webcomic xkcd. His tackles
esoteric questions both large and small with a cheeky sense of humor and
delightfully irreverent stick figure drawings. Unlike dry, dusty scientific
textbooks Munroe takes a humorous approach, dealing with matters of physics, chemistry
and biology—even daring to tackle matters of the heart. Einstein would never
have tried to determine the possibility of a random encounter with a soulmate
if one actually existed. (Sorry to say it is slim to none, so you better hold
on to your current heartthrob while you can.)
His
approach to scientific inquiry is both amusing and thought provoking. Who knew a
continuously power hairdryer in a box is the secret to building a time machine?
Warning: don’t try this at home with your Conair since it requires an indestructible
casing and an unlimited power source. Also it is definitely not a good idea to
fire off a nuclear device in the eye of hurricane to vaporize it. Apparently,
this question gets asked so often to the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere
Association that they even have a paper on the subject.
Some
questions are unexpectedly thought provoking. If every human being disappeared
from the face of the Earth, the last artificially created light source would
take centuries to go out. No, it’s not the Energizer Bunny. Some radioactive
waste products are melted, mixed with glass, and formed into a solid block. In
the dark, these blocks glow blue. The last artificial light source would be a
pile of toxic waste. Mankind’s crap will outlive all other technological
achievements. Ha! Made you think, didn’t I?
All
the question in the book have been submitted by fans of his website which does
make one wonder about their mental stability. After all, who needs to know if
you dial a random person and say “God Bless You” what is the probability that
person has just sneezed? Oh, all right, I do.
And I was tickled pink to hear the answer is 1 in 40,000.
Despite
the sciency stuff, this book is an easy, fun read and the stick figures are cute
with a quirky charm. The biggest fault I found is the author fails to address
the one question that has haunted me for years. Why are cologne commercials always
stupid and make no damn sense?
