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.
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.)
Can you come up with any traditions that would highlight the progress of past technology, and that you'd definitely want to do at a party?
I think a death pool could be kind of fun. I suppose I'm rather morbid that way.
But between disease, war, and death, pick a year and a place to be born, and using mortality tables, plot out expectations on when and how you die, and what diseases and ailments you have. How many calories you lived on. How much you weighed. What was government like. What was crime like? Maybe we should all be cats, and get nine lives, run some randomization, and see how the nine lives end.
Most straightforward - did you make it to your current age, and if not, how did you die? Child mortality was pretty bad for most of human history.