Definitely think this is a good idea. My first question was going to be "why Baconmas?" (as opposed to Newtonmass, or other potential holidays). You say in the blog that it specifically fills a holiday gap - curious if that was part of the original intent or if it just sorta worked out. For my purposes, I think the 22nd is actually a little too close to New Years - I like holidays to stand out from one another.
Most of my thoughts actually go up a few levels of meta - I'm interested in having a collection of holidays that reflect worldviews I care about, and I'm interested in them not just being individually optimal, but in working together to produce a whole better than the sum of their parts. The solstice celebration almost went down an alternate path which would have officially been called Newtonmas, but would have celebrated the rise of rational thinking, starting with Socrates and hitting various high notes throughout history. Other possibilities include Pi Day/Tau Day and Charles Darwin/Abraham Lincoln's Birthday.
I've also been wanting to do a science party for a while. 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 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.
Thanks for your thoughts!
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 fi...
The Gist: I started this blog to get people excited about a science-themed holiday. I want your suggestions before I advertise it to everyone I know!
Two years ago, I came up with the idea of celebrating Sir Francis Bacon's birthday (Jan. 22) as a festive science-themed holiday called Baconmas. (The name has the additional bonus that it's easy to convince people to come to a party if there will be bacon there.) I had a good Baconmas party in 2010 and a better one in 2011, and now I want to let other people in on the fun.
So I made a website.
It's currently "in beta"; I wrote a couple of preparatory things, but haven't yet shown it to the vast majority of my friends. I want to maximize the chance that it goes a bit viral when I do, because a science-themed holiday really needs to exist. So I'd like any suggestions you have, before I go "alpha" with it. So as to not cause anchoring, I'll put down in the first comment the things I already plan to do- if you could make all your original suggestions first, then read those plans and others' comments, then add more suggestions, that should maximize the good ideas. Thanks!
(Oh, and it goes without saying that you should celebrate Baconmas if at all possible. It's been a lot of fun for me.)