The first one I tried suffered from trying to do “real” science, which as it turns out is really boring. (Few people contributed experiments because of the work involved in doing them “right”). Food oriented experiments seem like a more fun starting point. Blind taste testing seems like a good framework because you can try different things each year.
I’m trying to collect science demos that are fun for parties while actually being worthy of thought- here are a few examples I’ve found. I desperately want to find more!
I’m vegetarian, and pigs ARE particularly smart and I’m not sure whether I should in good conscience be encouraging holidays that are bacon themed in particular. I suspect that most people would eat meat on any given holiday no matter what so I’m not sure it matters.
It probably will result in slightly more people eating poorly raised pigs, all told. I decided that the benefits of a science-themed holiday, times the added popularity that it would have if I made it bacon-themed, outweighed that disutility. I understand if you disagree. (Also, I don’t think that it’s a bad thing to have a pig raised on a farm, have a reasonably good life, then die and be eaten. But most pigs don’t live lives of high quality in our current food-system.)
I think we more or less agree about pigs. I’m fine with humanely raised and killed farm animals.
I actually encouraged Calamari at the Solstice party, and squids seem at least as intelligent as pigs. I was thinking we’d be having meat anyway so it might as well be something on theme and any single instance of meat-eating doesn’t really impact overall consumption of a species. As it turned out squid is hard to cook and wasn’t really worth and I’m glad, because in retrospect, if it HAD become popular, I’d feel pretty bad. The squid also ended up being eaten in ADDITION to a more traditional roast, and probably would have been in future Solstices as well, if it became popular.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I’m trying to collect science demos that are fun for parties while actually being worthy of thought- here are a few examples I’ve found. I desperately want to find more!
It probably will result in slightly more people eating poorly raised pigs, all told. I decided that the benefits of a science-themed holiday, times the added popularity that it would have if I made it bacon-themed, outweighed that disutility. I understand if you disagree. (Also, I don’t think that it’s a bad thing to have a pig raised on a farm, have a reasonably good life, then die and be eaten. But most pigs don’t live lives of high quality in our current food-system.)
I think we more or less agree about pigs. I’m fine with humanely raised and killed farm animals.
I actually encouraged Calamari at the Solstice party, and squids seem at least as intelligent as pigs. I was thinking we’d be having meat anyway so it might as well be something on theme and any single instance of meat-eating doesn’t really impact overall consumption of a species. As it turned out squid is hard to cook and wasn’t really worth and I’m glad, because in retrospect, if it HAD become popular, I’d feel pretty bad. The squid also ended up being eaten in ADDITION to a more traditional roast, and probably would have been in future Solstices as well, if it became popular.