Today is 'Talk Like A Physicist Day'

Hurrah! I'm here to help you celebrate 'Talk Like A Physicist Day' and, because I'm a Classical Archaeologist, I've just put that in Greek (left).

Didn't you know that 14th March was special? Well, hasten over to the always fascinating site of Cosmic Variance to listen in as a gaggle of physicists happily babble on about their 'random samplings from a universe of ideas'. Or go to the ur-website itself to learn what it takes to talk like a physicist:

How many slices of bread can you toast from a bolt of lightning?

A bolt of lightning has enough energy to toast 100,000 slices of bread.

And visit them, too, for some really, really terrible but statistically valid puns ("What happens if you break the law of gravity?" "You get a suspended sentence."). Of course.

Now it's time to turn serious and give you the bad news.

Feminism is destroying the planet.

I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. This has nothing to do with International Women's Day which some of you may have misguidedly celebrated last week. Today, on a day dedicated to physics (and not girly stuff like the 8th of March), you have a right to expect 100% scientific rock-solid evidence.

This is the hypothesis:

Those pushy women have tipped the balance of the universal order, and thrown Nature’s intricate equilibrium out of whack.

Once stated, the truth of this obviously-correct hypothesis is blinding. I owe the nuts and bolts of this demonstration to Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance . I'm sure he won't mind my bringing his sober analysis to the attention of the history-savvy readers of Zenobia: Empress of the East.

The evidence is on this chart.


If this graph is Greek to you, let us explain.

The chart plots CO2 emissions into the atmosphere as a function of the ratio of girls to boys attending school in different countries (emphasis Sean's own).

The correlation is unmistakable: countries that educate women are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

There are only two possible conclusions. Either CO2 is causing all those girls to get an education (which is plain crazy), or feminism is destroying the planet.

Q.E. (as we Classical Archaeologists like to say) D.

Resistance Is Useless! (If < 1 ohm)

Like any good scientific theory, this new hypothesis explains a lot that was previously inexplicable. For example, as long ago as the 1950's, there was evidence from Sweden (via Christian H.) that should have pointed us in the right direction. Swedish scientists had already noticed a possible correlation between the number of storks and the national birthrate.

This is now easily explained: more female education –> more CO2 –> warmer weather –> fewer storks AND more female education –> lower birth rate.

Science doesn't lie.