How does one compost?

The subtleties of the English language appear to be lost on you.  Do you wish to learn how you yourself would compost, or how to make compost out of your yard wastes. 

In reality it does not matter which you had in mind, as both processes are essentially the same.  However, it is not recommended to compost animal products for household use (reference needed, find one on Google, you can search from this page :)) <-- That is suppose to be a smiley at the end of a parenthetical comment, not a double chin smiley.

Composting works by letting worms and microbes and black magic (think Harry Potter and his evil devil worshiping friends) do their things and break down organic material into smaller pieces which can then be recycled by other plants.  After these other plants have used the material one of two things can occur.  Either the plant will die and then can be composted, or an animal will eat the plant, then die and be composted.  The second option is not preferred however, as mentioned in the missing reference above, clearly then it is better to eat animals then vegetables.

To start your own compost pile throw a bunch of organic crap (leaves, grass clippings, Lima beans) in a pile on the ground.  Every so often 'stir' the pile to ensure that oxygen can get  throughout the pile to allow the microbes to "do their thing."  After a couple of months the microbes will be done, and you will have what farmers call "brown gold."  At least I like to think that is what they would call it.

When is the end of the world?

This is a science blog, most of the questions answered are scientificly based on a real science.  Today we delve into the world of astrology, which although it sounds like a science, it is really just a bunch of crap.  For example, how can Jupiter influence your life, only through gravity.  However, assuming your doctor weights 75 kg (reasonable), and was less than 12 cm away from you when you were born (hopefully he caught you on the way out) he had a stronger gravitational pull on you than Jupiter would have at its closest distance to earth.

But on to the answer.  The world ends on December 21, 2012.

This date was not chosen at random from a hat containing only 2's and 1's and the occasional 0.  It was chosen because of a bad implementation of a calendar, just like the whole Y2K thing back at the turn of the century.  This time however the end of the world is the fault of the Mayans, and not short sighted computer geeks.

The Mayan calendar was pretty wack (that is the technical term I am told) by metric standards, but is A-OK based on the English system.  Much like the rational behind putting 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and 5280 feet in a mile, the Mayans took liberties with their place holders for the calendar.  The first place recorded a number from 0 to 20. To the left, the second place could have a range from 0 to 17; the third from 0 to 19; the fourth from 0 to 19 and the last from 0 to 12. The numbers were written from right to left, like our system, separated by a dot. Instead of multiples of 10, the first place had a multiple of 1 (like our system); the second place a multiple of 20; the third a multiple of 360; the fourth a multiple of 7200 and the fifth a multiple of 144000.

It is assumed that we developed a base 10 system because we have 10 fingers.  This raises an interesting question about Mayan fingers which will not be addressed here. 

This calendar will run out of days on, you guessed it, December 21, 2012.  So what exactly will happen?  This is where we must turn to astrology.  It could be a pop quiz, your boy and/or girlfriend dumps you, the death of a loved one, or just a gigantic solar mass ejection event as this day coincides with solar max, and also with the solar system moving from the top of the Milky Way accretion disk to the bottom, as well as the inversion of the magnetic poles of the sun, and the last shopping weekend before Christmas. 

Personally I find it preposterous that the world will end on a Friday.  It seems more like a Tuesday or Thursday kind of thing.  Either you just made it through the worst (Monday) or it comes to get you just as you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, play it safe, and don't wait to buy that special someone their Christmas gift, or they might dump you, leaving you to wallow in your self pity wishing that the destroyer would come to purge the Earth, ending your unbearable emo agony. 

If only we could find some ancient Mayans to fix this mess.  I was hoping for a long retirement. 

This site here was used as a reference, as well as blatantly plagiarized without proper quote marks for the description of the Mayan Calendar.