#newtonmas

[former-vampire]

Merry Christmas

And for the ones who don't celebrate Christmas. happy: Yule Sol Invictus Newtonmas Present Giving Day Decemberween Candlenights (I see you Adventure Zone fans)

And the Celebrations to come, happy: Boxing Day New Years Eve Hogmanay Kwanzaa Omisoka

And the ones I missed, hope you had a good: HumanLight Koliada Yalda Hanukkah Soyal Solstice Zamehof Day Salgirah Chalica

[vigilantsycamore]

The Sexuality Re-Evaluation

Chapter Two

The Newtonmas Gift Exchange

And Sheldon had thought he’d been nervous when he’d been picking out a gift.

He’d wracked his brains for a suitable Christmas Newtonmas present to no avail (it’s not like he could give someone the same gift for Newtonmas and for their birthday, especially when said birthday was a week before Newtonmas Eve), so he decided to ask Penny for help. (“I can’t give her the same gift two occasions in a row, Penny!” Sheldon shot down her suggestion, not telling her that it had been the only idea he could think of.) She suggested something that fit Amy’s interests, so Sheldon decided to make a list.

Dr Amy Farrah Fowler’s top interests:

Dr Sheldon Lee Cooper

Neurology

Little House on the Prairie

…

Hadn’t Amy once tried to explain to him that conlang she’d developed?

Dr Amy Farrah Fowler’s top interests:

Dr Sheldon Lee Cooper

 Neurology

Little House on the Prairie

Linguistics.

The first option was out - the lizard brain Sheldon had forgotten he had disagreed, but there was nothing worse than redundancy. Fortunately, that still left him with three options. For each one, Sheldon set up a tournament bracket to find the best possible gift in that category to give to Amy - that took him a day - then pit the three finalists against each other. Eventually, he was able to find and purchase the best gift.

And now he was standing outside Amy’s apartment. He’d texted her to expect a surprise (giving any details away would have been a huge spoiler, but not warning her at all would have been rude). He recalled being nervous when he fretted over what to get Amy for Newtonmas. But now he was too nervous to even knock!

He didn’t know if he’d been standing outside for fifteen seconds or fifteen minutes before he finally raised his knuckles towards the wooden barrier.

Knock, knock, knock. “Amy.” Knock, knock, knock. “Amy.” Knock, knock, knock. “Amy.”

Amy opened the door.

“Hi Sheldon,” she said, smiling at him. “Merry Newtonmas.”

“Merry Newtonmas, Amy,” Sheldon smiled back. He reached to the left, picking up something to the left of the doorway. When he held it in his arms, Amy saw that it was a large cuboid neatly and thoroughly enveloped in wrapping paper that had diagrams of atoms and neurons on it.

“Thank you Sheldon,” Amy said. “Do you want to come inside?”

‘No, lizard brain, that’s not what she means,’ Sheldon thought. ‘She’s going to unwrap the present and she wants me to be there when she does.’

“Yes, thanks for asking,” Sheldon said.

They sat down on Amy’s couch and Sheldon handed Amy the carefully wrapped gift. Amy unwrapped it, cutting the tape with scissors and making sure not to tear the wrapping paper. When she was done and saw what the gift was, she didn’t know what to say.

It was a book: a large tome, the cover illustrated with stick figures and fictional characters speaking in various languages, the title reading ‘From Sindarin to Esperanto: a Comprehensive Analysis of Constructed Languages’.

Amy’s face lit up, and in the blink of an eye she was passionately kissing Sheldon.

Amy was the first one to break contact. “Sorry,” she said looking down. “I should have told you I was going to kiss you.”

Sheldon smiled at her. “It’s alright Amy. I love kissing you.”

They started kissing again.

***

Quite a long while later, the two of them were on their way to a storage unit. Once they’d finished their make-out session, Amy had informed Sheldon that she had a present for him too, but that it wasn’t in her apartment. She also made Sheldon promise not to try to guess what it was.

“We’re here,” Amy said as she stopped in front of a storage unit door. She reached down to lift the door up.

“I can’t wait to see it!” Sheldon said excitedly as he helped his girlfriend lift the door.

Once the door was all the way up, Amy watched her boyfriend run inside and take in his surroundings. His jaw dropped when he realized where he was.

“This is the bridge from Star Trek: the Original Series,” he said. Sheldon eyes were full of admiration, gratitude, and joy.

“Yep,” Amy said as she followed him inside.

“How…?”

“I asked around the Star Trek forums if I could hire someone to build a recreation of a set from the show, and eventually found a small company located in Pasadena that recreates sets from all sorts of franchises.”

Sheldon looked at Amy. “Amy… I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay.”

“Yes,” Amy said.

And the two scientists started their second make-out session that day.

***

“Science Officer’s log. Stardate minus three oh seven oh one seven point six. The symptoms I’ve been experiencing continue to manifest themselves and my diagnosis is that I am experiencing sexual attraction to one Amy Farrah Fowler. This is… not unexpected, but certainly unprecedented. I’ll need to re-evaluate certain things in light of this turn of events. However, at present I have other matters to attend to.”

Sheldon stopped the recording and began acting out a scene that could have been in the show during the sixties, running to each station to do an accurate impression of each character.

“Mr Sulu, fire photon torpedoes!”

“Firing photon torpedoes.”

“Cap’n, the shield’s cannae take much more a’ this!”

“Captain, the enemy vessel could have destroyed us already if it hadn’t retreated. The logical conclusion is that something we did damaged it.”

“But what could it be?.. Of course! The comms!”

“Their transmission didn’t make sense because it wasn’t a message. Their ship’s shields must be susceptible to disruption by specific radio frequencies. They assumed the same was the case for us, so they sent out the same transmission at a wide range of frequencies.”

“And our attempts at communicating disrupted their shields! Exactly, Mr Sulu! Mr Chekov, can you identify the frequency that caused them to retreat?”

“It veel take some time Keptin, but I can do eet.”

See? Like something right out of the show.

[newtonian-tragedy]

It's Newtonmas. Watch out for falling apples!

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

I made the apple newton cookies for Newtonmas! I messed up a little, but I guess that's lessons learned for next year. As Carl Sagan would say, crumbly, but good.

[moreisdifferentblog]

[puppyluver256]

Let's all remember the real reason for the season tonight. A highly influential man was born on this day many, many years ago. A man whose life's work led to inspire many people in his wake.

Give it up for our main man Isaac!!

Happy Newtonmas, everybody :D

[tanuyeiro]

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday #IsaacNewton b. Dec 25, 1642. #julianvsgregorian Newton discovered the laws of motion, the universal law of gravitation, and invented integral and differential calculus. All of which served as the mechanistic foundation for the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that would forever transform the world. #newtonmas (at New York, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6fvnsNpOMP/?igshid=14r0c6h1ozvff

[tattooed-alchemist]

'Tis the season for reason! Sir Isaac Newton's birthday on December 25th launches an eight day celebration of reason, science, and technology. We like to call it the Season of Reason. Please join us

The first part of our Newtonmas celebration centers around the gifts of technology. We give the fruits of reason to people we care about to help them improve their enjoyment of life and productivity at their vocation. Any technology is an acceptable present!  Anything from a plane or a pully to the latest laptop will do. The only requirements are that the technology you give 1) makes the recipient happy 2) was invented by humans 3) is a useful tool in the recipient’s life.

As you can see many people are already giving Newtonmas gifts for Christmas, Hanukkuh, Kwanzaa, Yule, Mithramas, and Saturnalia and they don’t even know it!

The next part of Newtonmas involves apples. Apples are important to Sir Isaac’s story because it was during a walk in his garden that an apple falling to the ground inspired him to form a hypothesis for Gravity.  So give an apple, eat an apple, hang an apple ornament on your Newtonmas (or Christmas or Yule) tree, drink apple cider, give apple wine, the possibilities are endless. Have fun with it and let us know how you have incorporated apples into your celebration.

Finally, and this is important, we honor and celebrate the gifts that science and the scientific method have given us this past year. You can reflect on a friend or loved one who has received a life saving medical treatment this year and express gratitude that they are still with us. Make a list of all the new technology that has influenced our lives in the past year and debate as to whether that technology actually made our lives better or worse. The point of Newtonmas is not to blindly celebrate technology and science but to examine how these tools fit in our lives to make them fuller and richer experiences. As we reflect on the gifts of science take this opportunity to have a rational debate about technology’s place in our lives.