Here we are again, whang ban kerpow, at Science Day! I have a basket of science goodies for you, Grandma, and they can keep use safe from those Big Bad Wolves of ignorance and boredom.

So let’s open up this gift basket of wonders and see what the always tasty world of science has for us to feast upon today!

First, we have scientific proof of what we cat lovers have known all along : cats don’t actually ignore us.

Or at least, the scientists seem to be on their way to what I already know about cats. They get the idea that cats communicate in more subtle ways than humans or dogs. But they are missing a key fact.

Cats view direct staring as a challenge. Cats are not looking to challenge us. So they do not look directly at us, because to them, that would be rude and disrespectful. Ergo, cats rarely look us in the eye, so to speak, and to some people, that looks like they are ignoring you.

But they are not. They are respecting you. Watch cats interact with each other and you will see this in action. Cats who are the best of friends will “ignore” each other too.

So when your cat seems to be ignoring you, they are just treating you like a cat. One they like.

On the domestic front, we have NeverWet, the superhydrophobic coating.

I have been waiting for the new science of making substances that repel water with a vengeance to bear consumer fruit, and it looks like it finally has.

Check out this video of the stuff in action :

Imagine having clothes that simply never stain. Fluids just slide right off it. And it’s not just for home use, either. I am sure there must be myriad medical and industrial uses for the least sticky substance in the world (once it’s dry).

For instance, how about bandages that never stick to the wound?

Next up, a spooky development : a program that can tell you if a screenplay will make a hit movie or not!

It’s a simple enough concept. Take a whole whack of scripts. Break them down into their various elements. Compare said elements with box office success. Analyze new scripts based on that comparison.

As a writer, I should be horrified by this. But as a science fan, I just find it too damned interesting to be really upset by it.

After all, once writers know about this program, they can just be sure to include all the things it likes in their screenplays and then all new scripts will rate highly and they will be back to having to decide whether a script is actually good or not.

Besides, in the future, we will all be too bust playing with our desktop particle accelerators to care!

I mean, check this shit out :

“We have accelerated about half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch,” said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences. “Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields. It’s a downsizing of a factor of approximately 10,000.”

Holy crabcakes, that’s amazing! This cannot help but transform the world of particle physics. Even small universities will be able to afford a particle accelerator that normally would be massive, expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and a huge drain on local resources.

Now it will be roughly the size of a large microwave oven, or a good sized centrifuge.

You could have three!

Next, huge news from the field of medicine : a cause for fibromyalgia has been found!

That has got to be a massive relief for fibromyalgia sufferers, who have had to endure decades upon decades of suffering from a life-changing illness that science could not detect. They have had to endure being told it was all in their heads, that they were just faking for attention, and so forth.

Now they can point to this study and say “See, it’s real!”. As a sufferer from another “phantom illness”, namely Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I am ecstatic for my fellows in suffering.

It took a long time for the medical world to accept that IBS was a real thing. Of course now, it’s quite well established. But for many years, we too suffered in silence.

Hopefully, this development will allow medical science to come up with swift and effective treatments for this painful disorder.

And finally, the Big Story of this week, 3D printing with your mind.

I am not kidding. Someone at the Satiago Makerspace came up with a way to design printable 3D objects using only your mind, and technology is so simple even a four year old child can use it.

And that’s not a coincidence. The inventor want to make something that would let his four year old design toys and print them.

And how it works is truly fantastic. Basically, you wear a helmet that can read your brain’s electrical activity. You are presented with various shapes, and the helmet monitors your mind, and registered what shapes make you happy or excited, and which make you unhappy or bored.

The favored ones get bigger, the unhappy ones get smaller, and by this process your child could design their own monster, piece by piece.

The idea of emotion-driven design simply blows my mind. The very idea of such a pure connection to art makes me dizzy.

But even more, it makes me wonder what kind of art could come from a more sophisticated version of this. After all, it measures emotions, not thought, and who is in total control of their emotions? You could end up with art that expressed the artist’s inner state far better than they ever intended and hence break extraordinary new ground in expressionism alone.

And sure, you could probably do practical stuff with it too, I suppose.

But it’s the art that draws me.

Seeya next week, folks!