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.)
Like rolling an RPG character, but from human history? That could be workable, with the right preparation...
Something like that. I think random sampling would be more fun than just showing the expectation. Instead of a one shot, you could go year by year, giving some sense of the passage of time, and then using the conditional mortality tables, if available.
Adding in actual dice rolls would add to the sense of personally being a causal factor in the process. It comes down to what kind of data you can get, and how energetic you're feeling.
I think this game would generalize well to all sorts of things - health, finances, etc. And, more to the point of Singularita... (read more)