Baconmas: The holiday for the sciences

post by orthonormal · 2012-01-05T18:51:10.606Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 11 comments

Contents

  What is Baconmas?
  How can I help Baconmas grow?
None
11 comments

Summary: Sir Francis Bacon's birthday (Jan. 22) is a holiday devoted to the sciences, with a side order of bacon. Check out the website and share the Baconmas cheer with everyone!

What is Baconmas?

For the past few years, I've been celebrating the birthday of Sir Francis Bacon (Jan. 22) as a holiday, hosting parties with both science experiments and bacon dishes. It's been excellent enough that I want to share it with everyone else, so I made a website devoted to Baconmas and I'd like you to check it out (and share it if you like it).

It goes without saying that holidays devoted to the sciences can be a force for good as well as a lot of fun (if you haven't, you should see the writeup of the Solstice Celebration for an awesome example). I thought it would be especially powerful to have a holiday that was (1) explicitly about science, (2) fun to celebrate, with a "hook" like bacon, and (3) positive and open to everyone.

The main "tradition" of Baconmas is simply to try something new with each celebration, and to record how it went. Everything else is just a suggestion. I think it's clear that the Zombie Feynman school of science is a powerful and good meme. Science isn't only about the things that are shiny and fun, but it should be shiny and fun whenever possible. So I'm linking a bunch of fun, easy experiments (that have actual content for both novices and the scientifically literate).

How can I help Baconmas grow?

Are you as excited about Baconmas as I am? Great! There are some things you can do to really help!

• Tell all your friends! Share the website, the Twitter feed, and the Facebook event page. If you're part of a relevant forum (anything from a subreddit to the XKCD forums), share it there too!
• Host a Baconmas party, and then send me (happybaconmas at gmail) pictures/video/testimonials that I can add to the site! These will help Baconmas 2013 grow even faster than 2012.
• Create a local Baconmas Meetup group, and send me a link that I can post.
• Find or invent any of the following: experiments, recipes, traditions, carols, guest blog posts; then send them to me for the Baconmas site!
• One thing that would be totally incredible: a funny video biography of Sir Francis Bacon, done with puppets/costume/animation/whatever works for you! I'd love to do this myself, but may not have the time.
• Give me feedback and ideas for the website and everything else!

P.S. Thanks for all the comments on my advice request post! I made a few key additions based on your input.

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