I have a lot of podcasts to discuss and oh so little time.
Irreligiosophy
Leighton's very brave brother Sean was a guest on the show to defend the LDS church and to admonish Chuck and Leighton for being disrespectful of other points of view. Actually, I listened to all of part 2 and about half of part 1. It's how iTunes downloaded them, and time is short so if the second half of part 1 is a revelation, I'll add an addendum. Basically, Sean sounds like a very nice, earnest, sincere, and not stupid guy. He was forthright enough not to fake his way into an area where he had no answers, but he did bring in some stinging points about how their no holds barred attack on the religious is an attack on their own families, distant and immediate. Clearly, Sean had his work cut out for him and ultimately he was not convincing (at least to me) with his arguments about the necessity for respect in all walks of life and thought. To be honest, in a way it reminded me of about 25 percent of all Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter dinners where at some point my dad would lecture relatives (especially my late and very missed grandmother and great aunt) on how incorrect religion and in particular organized religion was in the world. Chuck at one point near the end sounded a heck of a lot like he was speaking through clenched teeth. Even I was thinking in my post work errands in the car for Chuck to chillax a bit, calm. (The show opened with a playful knock against the Skeptics' Guide which Leighton confused with Karl's, Conspiracy Skeptic show. Leighton needs to get out more.)
The Token Skeptic
Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic and author of Evolution: How we and all living things came to be was Kylie's guest to discuss "Loxtongate." Loxtongate is Daniel's harrowing tale of breaking into the Discovery Institute under cover of darkness to see what "experiments" they are working toward to prove intelligent design. Ok. None of that is true. The 'gate' is Loxton's few lines in his children's book, the above mentioned Evolution, telling the reader (likely a child) if they have religious questions to go ask friends or family. A whole hubbub was sparked online with P.Z. Myers weighing in on it, and about two hundred or so commenters on the Skepblog. Bascially, Loxton, an atheist, humanist, and skeptic, thinks that all three are basically separate realms and it does no good to mix them together or push a general rationalist viewpoint on all items. It can get stuck, especially in regard to politics. I've discussed this briefly on another post. Needless to say in about 17 minutes, Sturgess gave Loxton a chance to share his point of view without injecting herself into the debate. It's not that Sturgess herself would not have something to contribute that is likely thought-provoking and of greater insight than I could muster in a few weeks of deep thought. I just thought it was more appropriate and necessary to give Loxton a platform to state his case.
Righteous Indignation
The Indignates were down one Marsh, but up one intoxicated blogger Dr. T. Dr. T. fit into the show rather well. R.I. is a sponge for thoughtful skeptical Brits. Anyway, the main event was an interview of Rose Shapiro, author of suckers and a participant in the 10:23 anti-homeopathy campaign, gave a short (or least well edited) interview about why alternative medicine is a waste of time, and can be harmful. Hayley discussed "The Sun's" top ten ghost photographs of the past year including one that was a photoshopped picture of the 9 year old Anakin Skywalker (or Annie for us Star Wars geeks or actually an abomination upon all that is Star Wars) on a fence line of a farm or someplace in the country. My only issue with this segment is that it's a podcast. Visual segments just are not that effective. (If my wife was not such an iPad hater and would let me get that 10 inch device of electronic happiness, life suddenly might get better.) The Indigates also discussed the now well known finding by a committee of Parliament that homeopathy is not worth the British taxpayers' money, and should not be funded. Tristan, I think, was less impressed by the committee's findings, and seemed doubtful that much if anything would change. The others were more hopeful.
The most interesting part of the show was the discussion of the appropriate tone of the show either leaning to glib in its remarks of believers in psi, paranormal, and pseudo-science, and being boring. To me, I get what they are trying to do despite the cultural divide. (Maybe it's because I'm a Beatles fan or love Top Gear, or my mother knows the entire line of Kings and Queens of England to the turn of the last millenium.) Anyway, apparently a lot of overseas ('mericans) seem to think the Indigates are either a bit too serious or not serious enough. They also discussed how some complain they are too soft on woo believers and others thinking they are too mean. Again, I think if they are overly harsh the pool of guests would soon dry up.
Needless to say, it was a good show. The Indignates know how to have a discussion between themselves without any single one of them overpowering the debate. I cannot think of any examples off the top of my head, but on SGU at times Dr. Novella or Watson can just dominate the whole.
For Good Reason
I am behind on Grothe's new effort; his last two episodes had Dr. Harriet Hall followed by Prof. Lionel Tiger as his guests. Dr. Harriet Hall is always an impressive listen. I enjoyed how she described her work as a columnist in "O." Yes, that "O"--Oprah's magazine. She did not seem to be enjoying that much. She was not given many words in her column and the editors seem to dictate the topics. Things such as myths on weight loss. Let's face it, Dr. Hall is a medical skeptical machine, but if it pays the bills and gets her to reach into a broader audience, I do not think it is fair to be critical. It is not as if she's had to ditch her other work to be exclusive to "O." Dr. Hall discussed how she became involved in skepticism and how wrong-headed those in alternative medicine are in their thought processes.
Tiger (how cool of a last name is that anyhow?) discussed his scientific approach to viewing religion in people. His take is that the mind creates religion and then the religious experience feeds the mind. It is a self sustaining circuit. He discussed how being in a religious group releases chemicals that make the participant feel good and really there is nothing else in human experience to duplicate it. Grothe brought up that skeptics have the growing skeptics in the pub groups, but Grothe seemed just a dash crestfallen that Tiger did not think it was an equal substitute to an all encompassing religious affiliation. I found Tiger's interview fascinating. This is not a knock against Dr. Hall, but I'd listen to Tiger's interview first and then Hall's second.
As an aside, For Good Reason seems to be getting more of a unique footing. The show seems to be going with a longer format than Grothe typically did on Point of Inquiry.
Point of Inquiry
Robert Price, Professor of Theology and uber-guest on all sort of skeptical podcasts and raconteur of biblical stories galore, interviewed Robert Miller, who is a Professor of Religious Studies at Juniata College, and author of Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics, and editor of The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate and The Complete Gospels. The Bobs have attended the Jesus Seminars and had a grand old time discussing biblical theology in general as well as how biblical scholars saw their works for decades and how the public is only just beginning to learn what scholars view the bible. The Bobs had a grand old time talking. Price sounded most uncomfortable doing the rote intro and exit dialogues. Once the interview came into swing, the Price that is known and loved far and wide came to the fore. I enjoyed Price's interviewing style as he was not being or trying to be Grothe. He had his own unique style, and it made the show more enjoyable. I have no doubt as Karen Stollznow and Chris Mooney get more time under their belt, they will hit their stride. Price with his considerable charm and practice had a much cleaner break with the show's past style.
There you go, a bunch of shows quick and dirty. I would recommend to not miss Loxton's interview on Token Skeptic and Righteous Indignation, especially for the discussion on a skeptical tone and better feel for the great "victory" over homeopathy in Parliament. None are to be missed, but that is my take.
I try to cover as many podcasts as I listen to each week. Some weeks are better than others. Don't ask me when I am going to fit in Reasonable Doubts. If you are lucky enough to be in the greater Atlanta area this weekend, on Saturday March 13, 2010, you too can be a part of a live recording of The Amateur Scientist Podcast.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Amateur Scientist Podcast #93, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe #242, The Skeptic Zone #72
Louisiana
Brain Thompson's goat sex and boob joke emporium with a dose of science, The Amateur Scientist Podcast, once again served up another 30 minutes of worthy bawdy humor. The show started with a spoof or a knock (at least to me) of SGU's who's that noisy segment, and ended with an old replay of an interview Thompson had with Fred Phelps' son of the justly maligned and utterly horrible Westboro Baptist Church. In the middle bit, we learned that pesticides can turn all frogs into girl frogs, salamanders are criminals, what we should do prior to the end of the world due to global warming, and to forget the destruction and death caused by the terribly powerful Chilean earthquake and wonder in awe that the quake changed the length of the day on Earthy by a tiny, weenie, itty-bitty amount.
I have no idea how Thompson kept it together in his interview with Phelps. I do not know if I was performing the interview if I would have broke out laughing or started to shout angry but appropriate things to him. Thompson kept his cool, impressive. The show now has a new reason to dial in to the new Amateur Scientist hotline, now it is to call in confessions (like the Catholic church has, only on the phone and to a podcasters who have a boob fetish instead of a Priest with a I-do-not-want-to-know fetish.)
A thoroughly entertaining episode, but it will not be on next week as Thompson will be doing a live benefit podcast in Atlanta, Georgia for Skepticamp. (Where was this when I was a kid, but I'm not bitter, no not at all.)
New England/Old England/Florida
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe did not contain an interview, but did contain a guest Rogue - James "The Amazing" Randi. As always, it is quite heartening to hear Randi after his recent cancer ordeal, and he discussed his treatment at some length, and has YouTube video on his chemo treatments. Randi discussed at length the materials in the treatment center discussing acupuncture to help treat side-effects of the chemotherapy. Dr. Novella also discussed a recently high exposure but low quality story that suggests acupuncture might be efficacious in treating depressions.
The show discussed how the Chilean Earthquake very slightly slowed the rotation of the Earth, as Brain Thompson slowly shook his head likely eating Popeyes chicken and red beans and rice.* The Rogues discussed how the Darwinius fossil that was splashed in the headlines and television likely is not a missing link or a human ancestor. The Rogues discussed one of those weird stories of it raining fish. This time, it rained perch in Australia. It is likely that it did not rain perch but possibly the perch due to the rain were taken out of a fish slumber that overwhelmed a town. These tales creep me out almost as much as being abducted by aliens. Fish out of the sky and laying around the backyard. No thanks.
The Rogues answered an email asking what is the difference between a contrarian and a skeptic. I think a lot of people see skeptics as contrarians as we have a tendency to question deeply held but not well supported beliefs. I do not get the hairy eye at work when everyone is discussing last night's episode of "Project Runway." However, when someone brings up Chiropractic then oops, do I get the looks. Then there are just contrarian people who alway take the other side no matter what. However, since people do not like being questioned about things they take for granted, it is easy to be labeled contrarian.
They also discussed the profit motive in having or claiming to have a haunted hotel, and the usefulness of personality tests, especially some of the less scientific shorter versions. Bob hosted a good Science or Fiction, and the show overall was a good effort. Heck, Randi was there the entire time, so what's not to like in a brief 80 minutes or so to enjoy.
*I'm guessing here, but Popeye's is as close to cajun as we get in central Penna.
Australia
This week's episode of The Skeptic Zone was a tour de force by everyone's favorite cell biologist Dr. Rachael Dunlop. The show opens with Dr. Dunlop's win in the Health category on The Shorty Awards.
Dr. Dunlop then did the show's opening introduction which was followed by a internet radio interview of Richard Saunders by Stefan Sojka. What? Stefan has a internet radio show? Yes, he did in 2001 when this interview was recorded. First, it put me back in the mind of when I first started using iTunes and the Beatles radio show I heard was broadcast in the same 48 kb/s. The studio only had three mics, but three guests, so between commercials they had to play musical microphones. It puts me back in the days of being a DJ at my college radio station. What also struck me is how little things have not changed. People peddling magic cure-all water. Talk of alien abductions and that 5% of Americans think they have been abducted, which is a mighty high number if you think about it. The connection of siblings or twins over long distance to know what the other person is doing or thinking at any given time. What I found most interesting is even in this early meeting, the chemistry between Sojka and Saunders. I do not know the last time I have listened to internet radio, but I am glad it stuck Sojka and Saunders together.
Then Dr. Dunlop spoke of her perspective on how she came to win the Shorty Award. On the one hand, it might seem self indulgent or arrogant to tell, so here's how I done it. It did not come off that way to me while walking my dog on Friday night. Sure, it might have been a victory lap, but a well deserved victory lap not just for Dr. Dunlop but for the skeptical community as a whole. I will not go into detail, I'll save that for the listener. However, it did show how skeptics band together to get Dr. Dunlop from #16 into the top 5 so she could qualify to be a winner. On the pseudo-scientific side, all their good natured, calm, "I want to just help people"-rhetoric broke down into some ravings such as Mike Adams' rants, and just rude comments on Dr. Dunlop's weight. (I still do not get, since she looks fine to me.) Dr. Dunlop gives proper shout outs to fellow skeptics such as Prof. P.Z. Myers and Dr. Novella. Once again, congratulations to Dr. Dunlop and to the skeptical community as a whole.
The Grain of Salt segment returned with Eran Segev interviewing the two blokes (am I using the term correctly?) who manned the Parkes Observatory and received the signals from Tranquility Base when Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped foot on the moon. It was a fascinating slice of life interview, and is a reminder just how many people were involved in the vast enterprise to land a man on the moon and return him before the decade was out. They told how they had to contend with a winter storm, and a change in schedule of when the first excursion on the moon was to take place. They also verified, much to the chagrin of Joe Rogan, that the television and telemetry signals they received came from the moon and not a movie studio in the U.S. desert Southwest.
Really, when I think of the first man landing on the moon I should not chant U-S-A, U-S-A, in my head but U-S-A, U-S-A, and Australia, U-S-A, U-S-A.
The final segment was a discussion of two 'readings' that talker to the dead, James Van Praag, has done during his recent tour of Australia. The first reading you hear Van Praag is pretty dead on in his discussions about the dead woman's husband. Now, he walked into the studio with this woman, so it might be a bit suspicious. The second clip you hear is on an Australian version of "The View." The reading by Van Praag is painfully bad. He gets almost no hits at all. Van Praag just speaks at a zillion words a minute just tossing stuff and fluff out in all directions. He misses on a high probability hit that the second woman being read played or plays the piano, nor does Van Praag hit with anyone being musical in the family. It was almost painful to hear, except it is Van Praag so it was fun.
Anyway, this week's episode did not end with a Think Tank segment, but you know I did not miss it. It was fun to listen to the history of when Sojka and Saunders met, and of a little known but very important contribution that Australia lent to the Apollo moon landings. Dr. Dunlop gave her victory lap speech which just makes a skeptic feel good, and ended on Van Praag making an ass of himself. What's not to love?
Brain Thompson's goat sex and boob joke emporium with a dose of science, The Amateur Scientist Podcast, once again served up another 30 minutes of worthy bawdy humor. The show started with a spoof or a knock (at least to me) of SGU's who's that noisy segment, and ended with an old replay of an interview Thompson had with Fred Phelps' son of the justly maligned and utterly horrible Westboro Baptist Church. In the middle bit, we learned that pesticides can turn all frogs into girl frogs, salamanders are criminals, what we should do prior to the end of the world due to global warming, and to forget the destruction and death caused by the terribly powerful Chilean earthquake and wonder in awe that the quake changed the length of the day on Earthy by a tiny, weenie, itty-bitty amount.
I have no idea how Thompson kept it together in his interview with Phelps. I do not know if I was performing the interview if I would have broke out laughing or started to shout angry but appropriate things to him. Thompson kept his cool, impressive. The show now has a new reason to dial in to the new Amateur Scientist hotline, now it is to call in confessions (like the Catholic church has, only on the phone and to a podcasters who have a boob fetish instead of a Priest with a I-do-not-want-to-know fetish.)
A thoroughly entertaining episode, but it will not be on next week as Thompson will be doing a live benefit podcast in Atlanta, Georgia for Skepticamp. (Where was this when I was a kid, but I'm not bitter, no not at all.)
New England/Old England/Florida
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe did not contain an interview, but did contain a guest Rogue - James "The Amazing" Randi. As always, it is quite heartening to hear Randi after his recent cancer ordeal, and he discussed his treatment at some length, and has YouTube video on his chemo treatments. Randi discussed at length the materials in the treatment center discussing acupuncture to help treat side-effects of the chemotherapy. Dr. Novella also discussed a recently high exposure but low quality story that suggests acupuncture might be efficacious in treating depressions.
The show discussed how the Chilean Earthquake very slightly slowed the rotation of the Earth, as Brain Thompson slowly shook his head likely eating Popeyes chicken and red beans and rice.* The Rogues discussed how the Darwinius fossil that was splashed in the headlines and television likely is not a missing link or a human ancestor. The Rogues discussed one of those weird stories of it raining fish. This time, it rained perch in Australia. It is likely that it did not rain perch but possibly the perch due to the rain were taken out of a fish slumber that overwhelmed a town. These tales creep me out almost as much as being abducted by aliens. Fish out of the sky and laying around the backyard. No thanks.
The Rogues answered an email asking what is the difference between a contrarian and a skeptic. I think a lot of people see skeptics as contrarians as we have a tendency to question deeply held but not well supported beliefs. I do not get the hairy eye at work when everyone is discussing last night's episode of "Project Runway." However, when someone brings up Chiropractic then oops, do I get the looks. Then there are just contrarian people who alway take the other side no matter what. However, since people do not like being questioned about things they take for granted, it is easy to be labeled contrarian.
They also discussed the profit motive in having or claiming to have a haunted hotel, and the usefulness of personality tests, especially some of the less scientific shorter versions. Bob hosted a good Science or Fiction, and the show overall was a good effort. Heck, Randi was there the entire time, so what's not to like in a brief 80 minutes or so to enjoy.
*I'm guessing here, but Popeye's is as close to cajun as we get in central Penna.
Australia
This week's episode of The Skeptic Zone was a tour de force by everyone's favorite cell biologist Dr. Rachael Dunlop. The show opens with Dr. Dunlop's win in the Health category on The Shorty Awards.
Dr. Dunlop then did the show's opening introduction which was followed by a internet radio interview of Richard Saunders by Stefan Sojka. What? Stefan has a internet radio show? Yes, he did in 2001 when this interview was recorded. First, it put me back in the mind of when I first started using iTunes and the Beatles radio show I heard was broadcast in the same 48 kb/s. The studio only had three mics, but three guests, so between commercials they had to play musical microphones. It puts me back in the days of being a DJ at my college radio station. What also struck me is how little things have not changed. People peddling magic cure-all water. Talk of alien abductions and that 5% of Americans think they have been abducted, which is a mighty high number if you think about it. The connection of siblings or twins over long distance to know what the other person is doing or thinking at any given time. What I found most interesting is even in this early meeting, the chemistry between Sojka and Saunders. I do not know the last time I have listened to internet radio, but I am glad it stuck Sojka and Saunders together.
Then Dr. Dunlop spoke of her perspective on how she came to win the Shorty Award. On the one hand, it might seem self indulgent or arrogant to tell, so here's how I done it. It did not come off that way to me while walking my dog on Friday night. Sure, it might have been a victory lap, but a well deserved victory lap not just for Dr. Dunlop but for the skeptical community as a whole. I will not go into detail, I'll save that for the listener. However, it did show how skeptics band together to get Dr. Dunlop from #16 into the top 5 so she could qualify to be a winner. On the pseudo-scientific side, all their good natured, calm, "I want to just help people"-rhetoric broke down into some ravings such as Mike Adams' rants, and just rude comments on Dr. Dunlop's weight. (I still do not get, since she looks fine to me.) Dr. Dunlop gives proper shout outs to fellow skeptics such as Prof. P.Z. Myers and Dr. Novella. Once again, congratulations to Dr. Dunlop and to the skeptical community as a whole.
The Grain of Salt segment returned with Eran Segev interviewing the two blokes (am I using the term correctly?) who manned the Parkes Observatory and received the signals from Tranquility Base when Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped foot on the moon. It was a fascinating slice of life interview, and is a reminder just how many people were involved in the vast enterprise to land a man on the moon and return him before the decade was out. They told how they had to contend with a winter storm, and a change in schedule of when the first excursion on the moon was to take place. They also verified, much to the chagrin of Joe Rogan, that the television and telemetry signals they received came from the moon and not a movie studio in the U.S. desert Southwest.
Really, when I think of the first man landing on the moon I should not chant U-S-A, U-S-A, in my head but U-S-A, U-S-A, and Australia, U-S-A, U-S-A.
The final segment was a discussion of two 'readings' that talker to the dead, James Van Praag, has done during his recent tour of Australia. The first reading you hear Van Praag is pretty dead on in his discussions about the dead woman's husband. Now, he walked into the studio with this woman, so it might be a bit suspicious. The second clip you hear is on an Australian version of "The View." The reading by Van Praag is painfully bad. He gets almost no hits at all. Van Praag just speaks at a zillion words a minute just tossing stuff and fluff out in all directions. He misses on a high probability hit that the second woman being read played or plays the piano, nor does Van Praag hit with anyone being musical in the family. It was almost painful to hear, except it is Van Praag so it was fun.
Anyway, this week's episode did not end with a Think Tank segment, but you know I did not miss it. It was fun to listen to the history of when Sojka and Saunders met, and of a little known but very important contribution that Australia lent to the Apollo moon landings. Dr. Dunlop gave her victory lap speech which just makes a skeptic feel good, and ended on Van Praag making an ass of himself. What's not to love?
Friday, March 5, 2010
Australia's Token Skeptic causes a Hershey rant
I was not planning on a long post on this week's Token Skeptic but things change.
This week's episode featured an interview by Kylie Sturgess of Prof. Bruce M. Hood, author of Supersense: Why we believe the unbelievable. The topics discussed were homeopathy and the dowsing bomb detection device (GT200) that has recently made the news a number of times over the past few weeks. Hood has been prominent on both these items. Hood was involved in the BBC story that finally gained widespread attention to that fact that the device was based on the disproved mechanism of dowsing. Hood was invited to test the device by the manufacturer, and in the meantime he had the cooperation of the BBC to try and film the test. The test never occurred but this started the ball rolling where various military leaders in a number of countries are attempting to deal with the aftermath.
Hood has also made waves in the blog/skeptical realm by suggesting that homeopathy might still have a useful application by medical providers as a safe placebo. I wish to be clear that Hood is clear that he does not consider homeopathy to be efficacious at all other than by placebo.
It struck me on my drive into work today while listening to this podcast that Hood arguably has a double standard with placebos. Like many in the skeptical community, I am uneasy with Hood's position for using homeopathy as the placebo treatment of choice for health care providers. I understand Hood's rationale that unlike other placebo medications used by doctors (such as antibiotics to treat diseases that are not amenable to such treatments), homeopathy as a placebo does not have menacing side effects since it is active ingredient-free. One reason I am uneasy about homeopathy as the official placebo "drug of choice" by medical doctors is that I am not convinced medical doctors will realize that it is only a placebo. Many might think it has actual physiological properties, and actually use it as a first line treatment and not as a placebo.
Most doctors are not scientists, and many times, they are not skeptics. A lot of excellent and mediocre physicians alike will see patients happily being treated with their placebo and come to believe, based on such anecdotal evidence, that the homeopathic "treatment" is doing something beyond mentally putting the patient at ease. A very good doctor I know just returned from Haiti and told of a physiatrist treating knee pain on a patient with a mangled knee with pins in the ears, and to him it worked wonderfully. My first thought was placebo effect, and then I thought of Dr. Crislip's recent treatment of this topic on Quackcast.
My other concern is that while Hood concedes a possible place for a medicinal placebo, he sees no place for a military placebo. What military placebo? The GT200 used by U.S., U.K., Iraqi and other military and police forces does not actually do anything, and yet it can provide the user of the device a sense of (false) security, and a sense of doing something. This sense of empowerment must do some good for morale. It is not unheard of for the military to do things to boost troop morale. For you Civil War geeks, there was a famous disagreement between Union Infantry and Artillery officers whether to counter battery fire at the Confederate Army's pre-Pickett's Charge rather massive artillery barrage. The infantry wanted the counter fire to raise morale, while the artillery thought it a waste of ammunition. It's a way to give comfort to soldiers getting pounded by fast moving metal and the random impact of death possible at any moment. The dowsing bomb box could be argued to serve the same general purpose. Sure it won't work, but if it helps gird the soldier at risk to the task at hand it is not worthless, right? The GT200 (putting the crazy $20,000plus cost aside) has some value if it can help a soldier get through the daily grind of looking for bombs and at any moment randomly get blown to bits, or terribly maimed. Basically, this is the equivalent of what Hood is espousing when he states that homeopathy isn't so bad as a placebo.
I know I am comparing apples to very real grenades. I do not wish to diminish at all the terrifying grind of various soldiers, police, and peace keepers around the globe. I am wholly against the use of the GT200 or anything like it in the military kit of a soldier. Yet, I am also against the use of a fake treatment with a widely held misguided following to comfort patients too. Homeopathy is bound to be used to the detriment of the user by a prescriber. This is not even getting into the whole area that if doctors use it knowing it has no real efficacy, the proponents of homeopathy on its own merits will use the medical use for any reason as evidence of its efficacy. Rather than pick one placebo over the other when both could have terribly dire consequences, one in large explosive form and the other in a more boring missed opportunity to properly treat form, they both ought to be rejected.
Once again I found the topic discussed on Sturgess's show highly engaging and thought provoking. At 17 mere minutes, I think most skeptic minded folks can find the time to for a listen.
(I have five minutes left in this week's Skeptic Zone. It is also quite good, and likely to generate a rant free commentary. Australia is home to some might fine skepticism.)
This week's episode featured an interview by Kylie Sturgess of Prof. Bruce M. Hood, author of Supersense: Why we believe the unbelievable. The topics discussed were homeopathy and the dowsing bomb detection device (GT200) that has recently made the news a number of times over the past few weeks. Hood has been prominent on both these items. Hood was involved in the BBC story that finally gained widespread attention to that fact that the device was based on the disproved mechanism of dowsing. Hood was invited to test the device by the manufacturer, and in the meantime he had the cooperation of the BBC to try and film the test. The test never occurred but this started the ball rolling where various military leaders in a number of countries are attempting to deal with the aftermath.
Hood has also made waves in the blog/skeptical realm by suggesting that homeopathy might still have a useful application by medical providers as a safe placebo. I wish to be clear that Hood is clear that he does not consider homeopathy to be efficacious at all other than by placebo.
It struck me on my drive into work today while listening to this podcast that Hood arguably has a double standard with placebos. Like many in the skeptical community, I am uneasy with Hood's position for using homeopathy as the placebo treatment of choice for health care providers. I understand Hood's rationale that unlike other placebo medications used by doctors (such as antibiotics to treat diseases that are not amenable to such treatments), homeopathy as a placebo does not have menacing side effects since it is active ingredient-free. One reason I am uneasy about homeopathy as the official placebo "drug of choice" by medical doctors is that I am not convinced medical doctors will realize that it is only a placebo. Many might think it has actual physiological properties, and actually use it as a first line treatment and not as a placebo.
Most doctors are not scientists, and many times, they are not skeptics. A lot of excellent and mediocre physicians alike will see patients happily being treated with their placebo and come to believe, based on such anecdotal evidence, that the homeopathic "treatment" is doing something beyond mentally putting the patient at ease. A very good doctor I know just returned from Haiti and told of a physiatrist treating knee pain on a patient with a mangled knee with pins in the ears, and to him it worked wonderfully. My first thought was placebo effect, and then I thought of Dr. Crislip's recent treatment of this topic on Quackcast.
My other concern is that while Hood concedes a possible place for a medicinal placebo, he sees no place for a military placebo. What military placebo? The GT200 used by U.S., U.K., Iraqi and other military and police forces does not actually do anything, and yet it can provide the user of the device a sense of (false) security, and a sense of doing something. This sense of empowerment must do some good for morale. It is not unheard of for the military to do things to boost troop morale. For you Civil War geeks, there was a famous disagreement between Union Infantry and Artillery officers whether to counter battery fire at the Confederate Army's pre-Pickett's Charge rather massive artillery barrage. The infantry wanted the counter fire to raise morale, while the artillery thought it a waste of ammunition. It's a way to give comfort to soldiers getting pounded by fast moving metal and the random impact of death possible at any moment. The dowsing bomb box could be argued to serve the same general purpose. Sure it won't work, but if it helps gird the soldier at risk to the task at hand it is not worthless, right? The GT200 (putting the crazy $20,000plus cost aside) has some value if it can help a soldier get through the daily grind of looking for bombs and at any moment randomly get blown to bits, or terribly maimed. Basically, this is the equivalent of what Hood is espousing when he states that homeopathy isn't so bad as a placebo.
I know I am comparing apples to very real grenades. I do not wish to diminish at all the terrifying grind of various soldiers, police, and peace keepers around the globe. I am wholly against the use of the GT200 or anything like it in the military kit of a soldier. Yet, I am also against the use of a fake treatment with a widely held misguided following to comfort patients too. Homeopathy is bound to be used to the detriment of the user by a prescriber. This is not even getting into the whole area that if doctors use it knowing it has no real efficacy, the proponents of homeopathy on its own merits will use the medical use for any reason as evidence of its efficacy. Rather than pick one placebo over the other when both could have terribly dire consequences, one in large explosive form and the other in a more boring missed opportunity to properly treat form, they both ought to be rejected.
Once again I found the topic discussed on Sturgess's show highly engaging and thought provoking. At 17 mere minutes, I think most skeptic minded folks can find the time to for a listen.
(I have five minutes left in this week's Skeptic Zone. It is also quite good, and likely to generate a rant free commentary. Australia is home to some might fine skepticism.)
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
A Whole Mess of Podcasts.
My ears have received quite the workout over the past two days as I've listened to: Skeptoid #195, Scientific American 2/27/10, Irreligiosophy, Conspiracy Skeptic, and Monster Talk. All this and I am only part way through Skepticality, which features a so far interesting interview of somewhat quirky Alex Gambis, who is a Franco-American scientist turned film maker turned film festival organizer. Then what do I get, but a tweet that Token Skeptic has a new episode on homeopathy. Plus, I somehow fit Mac Break Weekly in between all of this science and skepticism. If numbers are a sign of health, podcasting is an Olympic athlete.
Rapid fire
This week's episode of Skeptoid featured Brain Dunning's recurring series of student question-devoted episodes. A student leaves a voice message with a question and Dunning, in his concise and ably researched way, gives an answer.
One topic covered in the students' questions: Do electronic mosquito repellent devices work? The short answer is no. Another question asked by a student was Dunning's take on the report that 32,000 scientists refute Anthopogenic Climate Change as shown by a petition by the the aptly named Petition Project. The answer is the whole exercise is misleading and really reveals nothing. Best of all, Edwin Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, gets a nod. Another question is how much should you worry if you sit near another student who has an active cold? The answer is with precautions one can minimize the risks of catching the cold, but there is no way to insure that you will not get sick. A student asked the hot button question of whether athletic prowess is connected to race. Dunning's answer was that it does not have to do with race, but whether any groups of humans have a specific genetic makeup that are indicative of a good athlete. Dunning used as a measure the height of a group of people as an indicator of athletic prowess. Therefore, the bigger (taller) one is, the better athlete one should be, which is not race related metric. It seems to me that Dunning's assumption that being bigger/taller equates to better athleticism ovesimplified the answer. This could be a quibble, and a likely by-product of time constraints. While I agree with Dunning's answer, it struck me that this question deserved a more in-depth answer given its sensitive nature. The final question was asked on whether it was true Albert Einstein was so smart because he spent an extra month in his mother's womb. The answer is no.
All this in 11 minutes and 55 seconds, which is rather impressive. For the record, not once did Dunning speak in anything close to a bad or any other German accent.
A Panel Show Special!
Steve Mirsky, who likely has the best voice for podcasting I've heard, discussed in a panel type format highlights from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science Conference with Mark Fischetti and Robin Lloyd on Science Talk. I enjoyed this episode more than most for as frequent readers of my blog know, I am a sucker for a panel discussion. If I had my druthers, my wedding ceremony would have occurred around a table with pitchers of water in front of my bride and I, while the guests asked us questions such as "will you love your wife through good times and bad, and what is the true implication of this commitment in modern parlance?" Alas, the wedding chapel on the Las Vegas strip did not have the facilities on site for such an event. I digress.
There was an interesting talk by a professor having his students write papers on the physics of superheros such as calculating how strong was the gravity on Superman's home world of Krypton for him to have the ability to leap a thirty story building in a single bound on Earth? From my days of physics classes in high school, I would have epically failed such a class, but it sure would have been fun to sit through the lectures. Another topic discussed was how to communicate the need for and possible solution to climate change and the realistic time frame for educating the public on this notable topic. The time frame discussed is decades, and not years. This is a sobering thought to me, and do we have the luxury of such an amount of time to get widespread acceptance for new public policies. Mirsky and company discussed new thoughts on combining biofuel-growing algae farms with coal plants in order to make algae an efficient fuel source in the future. The group discussed how the internet will change language abilities and the general intelligence of future generations.
I enjoyed this episode, but if you are not a fan of the panel style show over a straight news report/ interview style show you might be disappointed.
Are Chuck and Leighton doomed?
Why are Chuck and Leighton doomed? This week on Irreligiosophy the duo tackles Scientology, and as discussed on the show, if you go after Scientology the order 66 will be given by the head Scientologist and all the Jedi will die. Or was that Star Wars: Episode III? Whatever, Scientology allegedly has or had something similar related to the use of a .45 gun, in dealing with foes, which is discussed on the show. Really, it sounds terribly wimpy of me, but I would be concerned about doing a show casting a negative light on Scientology, but Chuck and Leighton are braver than I. That is why I am a sissy mouse with a blog and not a manly man with a podcast.
Chuck and Leighton provide a brief biography of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, including his history as a moderately successful science fiction author, his career in the Navy during the Second World War, his dabblings with psychology with Dianetics, and finally his founding of the Church of Scientology. Interspersed throughout the episode are clips of a very creepy sounding Tom Cruise discussing aspects of the Church of Scientology with "Mission Impossible" style music playing in the background. It is effective but we-e-i-i-r-rd. C and L discuss the rocky founding of the church, and its battles against the IRS in at first gaining, then losing, and then gaining again the IRS church exempt tax status. Also covered are raids upon Scientology HQ in 1977 which revealed alleged plots for Scientology to infiltrate various levels of the Federal government of the United States, along with the various operations that were planned such as Snow White and Tricycle. Scientology is chock full of code names and abbreviations. Is this a religion or a military operation?
Anyway, the whole episode leads up to C and L discussing their recent visit to the local Scientology Church. While I found it interesting, I also found it a bit of a let down. Perhaps my expectations were built up too much with visions of Leighton being dragged out the back door, while Chuck ran the other way. Instead, it was both of them taking a two hundred question personality test. Chuck not watching a boring Scientology propaganda film, while quizzing the Scientologist about some cosmology discussed by Hubbard, and Leighton cajoling his Scientologist to give him a free try to have an e-meter used on him. (The e-meter is used to audit would be Scientologists to see what type of amount of engrams they have in their mind, or spirit, or whatnot.) They frustrated the Scientologist on duty, and it was educational. I just expected the show to build up to a bit more. Perhaps, I am just desperate for the entertainment that I missing with Conan off the air.
I enjoyed the first two thirds of this episode the most, while the last bit about their visit to the local church was fine. If the batteries are dying on your iPod or you Zune people out there, and you miss the last twenty minutes, you should not lose any sleep over it.
Conspiracy Skeptic North Korean Special by those who like long skinny legs
Karl Mamer's guest on this month's episode of Conspiracy Skeptic was Stafford Lumnsden, he teaches in South Korea but hails from New Zealand. This makes him a Kiwi, which makes as much sense as calling someone, like my godson or Dr. Novella, a Nutmegger because they are residents of Connecticut. I digress already. Lumnsden is actually quite a charming fellow, and he and Karl hit it off quite well with their mutual knowledge of South Korea. He is also a podcaster, has a blog, and is into technology and seems to like Apple products. He could never be all bad. However, this week's episode focused on North Korean conspiracies.
I get the feeling the conspiracy Karl thought they would focus on was the alleged counterfeiting of $100.00 U.S. bills run by or at least sponsored by the North Korean government. If this sounds familiar to you, it might be because the North Koreans obviously lifted from a British Television series Private Schultz, which I watched faithfully as a kid with my mom during its run on Masterpiece Theatre. While Karl and Stafford did indeed discuss this topic, it was as much a discussion of the cultural eccentricities of Korea as a culture, the interplay between the U.S., Japan, China, and the Koreas.
Let's face it, North Korea is weird. Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea (a communist country), is basically a Tsar Autocrat of North Korea since his dad was the last leader of North Korea. Lenin would probably have a fit if he was not a dead wax figure in the Kremlin. Kim has cut off his country from the rest of the world. The economy is almost nonexistent. Everything they do is on a cash and carry basis, and Kim is dying to getting the attention of the world and especially his hate (genius love?) of the United States. All the while, this is in the face of the South having its own love/hate relationship with the North and the United States. While the South has prospered becoming an economic powerhouse with electronic companies competing toe to toe with the best in the world, cars that currently are besting Toyota and Honda, and a population that is literally growing stronger and taller than their puny Northern kin, the North, if I understand correctly, has an industry subsisting on crystal-meth, military rockets, nuclear engineering of 1946 era atom bombs, and plight. They also print Benjamin's from a bank based out of Macau, China, that they sell for fifty cents on the dollar. Like everything else North Korea does even these counterfeit dollars are not quite up to the challenge. Yes. They are very good dupes. Yes, the North Koreans bought the same high tech printing press, and promptly defaulted on the payments, to make the notes. However, while the notes are good enough to fool a machine and have been used in Las Vegas slot machines, they are not good enough to fool a decently aware human.
There was so much more discussed on the show from Cheerleaders sent to work camps, why some South Koreans want the North to have "the bomb," to South Koreans having an Olympic spat with Australia over ice skating or some other sport I do not pay attention to other than every four years. As always, I enjoyed the show a great deal, and Karl in his humble manner manages to share a ton of information without seemingly breaking a sweat.
At the start of the podcast, Stafford indicates he is trying to get a three month teaching gig in the North, since New Zealand and North Korea have diplomatic relations and it might be a good way to lose weight. However, if the authorities in Korea hear this podcast, he hasn't a chance.
Also, Karl likes leggy South Koreans a whole lot.
Do Skeptics Dream of Electric Sheep?
Blake Smith, co-host of Monster Talk, might be my new hero. Why? The first question he asks the show's guest-some unknown Nuttmegger, Dr. Steven Novella-is the screening question during the VK test on Leon at the start Bladerunner about finding a tortoise in the desert. Unfortunately, Dr. Novella did not quite get the reference, but I thought it was fantastic. (I am a big fan of Bladerunner.)
Anyway, the topic of this episode and of the next few episodes will be about ghosts, spirits, and hauntings. The show opened with a discussion between my new hero, Ben Radford, and Dr. Karen Stollznow on what exactly is the definition of a ghost vs a spirit. The consensus appeared to be the spirit was the surviving consciousness of a person with a living brain, a ghost could be the manifestation of that spirit on Earth, or it could be just the left over energy of an event, or whatever else the person wants it to be. Basically, the believers make up whatever terms they want for a given need. They then discussed how many believe the dead are watching over us and yet still do things such as masterbate. If you think about it, your lost and beloved auntie or best friend can peep you while you are enjoying some high quality alone time.
They then interviewed Dr. Novella, who is the President of the New England Skeptical Society, host of the SGU, writes for at least four blogs, is a dad, a husband, a super geek gamer, and in his spare time is a Neurologist at some safety school called Yale.
Dr. Novella shared some of the highlights of when the NESS went on about a dozen or so ghost hunts with actual believer ghost hunters. The long and the short of it is that the ghost hunters really have quite sad evidence to base their beliefs upon. He discussed his dealings with Connecticut ghost and demon experts Lorraine and the late Ed Warren. Needless to say, he was not impressed with them. Dr. Novella also shared how ghost hunters can have a harmful effect in that some who thought they were being haunted are actually medically delusional and the ghost hunters do the worst thing possible for them, which is to reinforce the delusion. Dr. Novella also discussed how science is more and more reinforcing that there is no mind or consciousness without the brain. He discusses the various lines of evidence that support this proposition, and in particular discussed the evidence that the mind is the antenna to pick up the radio signal of the mind. (This was discussed on SGU episdoe 238 with Simon Conway Morris.) Then they went into all sorts of way over my head inside baseball talk about table top gaming. I have nothing against gamers, my closest pal is a gamer. Wow. Dr. Novella sure loves gaming as does Smith.
I enjoyed the show, and cannot wait to hear the upcoming installments on ghost, ghouls, spooks, and specters. I am really getting into Monster Talk.
Rapid fire
This week's episode of Skeptoid featured Brain Dunning's recurring series of student question-devoted episodes. A student leaves a voice message with a question and Dunning, in his concise and ably researched way, gives an answer.
One topic covered in the students' questions: Do electronic mosquito repellent devices work? The short answer is no. Another question asked by a student was Dunning's take on the report that 32,000 scientists refute Anthopogenic Climate Change as shown by a petition by the the aptly named Petition Project. The answer is the whole exercise is misleading and really reveals nothing. Best of all, Edwin Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, gets a nod. Another question is how much should you worry if you sit near another student who has an active cold? The answer is with precautions one can minimize the risks of catching the cold, but there is no way to insure that you will not get sick. A student asked the hot button question of whether athletic prowess is connected to race. Dunning's answer was that it does not have to do with race, but whether any groups of humans have a specific genetic makeup that are indicative of a good athlete. Dunning used as a measure the height of a group of people as an indicator of athletic prowess. Therefore, the bigger (taller) one is, the better athlete one should be, which is not race related metric. It seems to me that Dunning's assumption that being bigger/taller equates to better athleticism ovesimplified the answer. This could be a quibble, and a likely by-product of time constraints. While I agree with Dunning's answer, it struck me that this question deserved a more in-depth answer given its sensitive nature. The final question was asked on whether it was true Albert Einstein was so smart because he spent an extra month in his mother's womb. The answer is no.
All this in 11 minutes and 55 seconds, which is rather impressive. For the record, not once did Dunning speak in anything close to a bad or any other German accent.
A Panel Show Special!
Steve Mirsky, who likely has the best voice for podcasting I've heard, discussed in a panel type format highlights from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science Conference with Mark Fischetti and Robin Lloyd on Science Talk. I enjoyed this episode more than most for as frequent readers of my blog know, I am a sucker for a panel discussion. If I had my druthers, my wedding ceremony would have occurred around a table with pitchers of water in front of my bride and I, while the guests asked us questions such as "will you love your wife through good times and bad, and what is the true implication of this commitment in modern parlance?" Alas, the wedding chapel on the Las Vegas strip did not have the facilities on site for such an event. I digress.
There was an interesting talk by a professor having his students write papers on the physics of superheros such as calculating how strong was the gravity on Superman's home world of Krypton for him to have the ability to leap a thirty story building in a single bound on Earth? From my days of physics classes in high school, I would have epically failed such a class, but it sure would have been fun to sit through the lectures. Another topic discussed was how to communicate the need for and possible solution to climate change and the realistic time frame for educating the public on this notable topic. The time frame discussed is decades, and not years. This is a sobering thought to me, and do we have the luxury of such an amount of time to get widespread acceptance for new public policies. Mirsky and company discussed new thoughts on combining biofuel-growing algae farms with coal plants in order to make algae an efficient fuel source in the future. The group discussed how the internet will change language abilities and the general intelligence of future generations.
I enjoyed this episode, but if you are not a fan of the panel style show over a straight news report/ interview style show you might be disappointed.
Are Chuck and Leighton doomed?
Why are Chuck and Leighton doomed? This week on Irreligiosophy the duo tackles Scientology, and as discussed on the show, if you go after Scientology the order 66 will be given by the head Scientologist and all the Jedi will die. Or was that Star Wars: Episode III? Whatever, Scientology allegedly has or had something similar related to the use of a .45 gun, in dealing with foes, which is discussed on the show. Really, it sounds terribly wimpy of me, but I would be concerned about doing a show casting a negative light on Scientology, but Chuck and Leighton are braver than I. That is why I am a sissy mouse with a blog and not a manly man with a podcast.
Chuck and Leighton provide a brief biography of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, including his history as a moderately successful science fiction author, his career in the Navy during the Second World War, his dabblings with psychology with Dianetics, and finally his founding of the Church of Scientology. Interspersed throughout the episode are clips of a very creepy sounding Tom Cruise discussing aspects of the Church of Scientology with "Mission Impossible" style music playing in the background. It is effective but we-e-i-i-r-rd. C and L discuss the rocky founding of the church, and its battles against the IRS in at first gaining, then losing, and then gaining again the IRS church exempt tax status. Also covered are raids upon Scientology HQ in 1977 which revealed alleged plots for Scientology to infiltrate various levels of the Federal government of the United States, along with the various operations that were planned such as Snow White and Tricycle. Scientology is chock full of code names and abbreviations. Is this a religion or a military operation?
Anyway, the whole episode leads up to C and L discussing their recent visit to the local Scientology Church. While I found it interesting, I also found it a bit of a let down. Perhaps my expectations were built up too much with visions of Leighton being dragged out the back door, while Chuck ran the other way. Instead, it was both of them taking a two hundred question personality test. Chuck not watching a boring Scientology propaganda film, while quizzing the Scientologist about some cosmology discussed by Hubbard, and Leighton cajoling his Scientologist to give him a free try to have an e-meter used on him. (The e-meter is used to audit would be Scientologists to see what type of amount of engrams they have in their mind, or spirit, or whatnot.) They frustrated the Scientologist on duty, and it was educational. I just expected the show to build up to a bit more. Perhaps, I am just desperate for the entertainment that I missing with Conan off the air.
I enjoyed the first two thirds of this episode the most, while the last bit about their visit to the local church was fine. If the batteries are dying on your iPod or you Zune people out there, and you miss the last twenty minutes, you should not lose any sleep over it.
Conspiracy Skeptic North Korean Special by those who like long skinny legs
Karl Mamer's guest on this month's episode of Conspiracy Skeptic was Stafford Lumnsden, he teaches in South Korea but hails from New Zealand. This makes him a Kiwi, which makes as much sense as calling someone, like my godson or Dr. Novella, a Nutmegger because they are residents of Connecticut. I digress already. Lumnsden is actually quite a charming fellow, and he and Karl hit it off quite well with their mutual knowledge of South Korea. He is also a podcaster, has a blog, and is into technology and seems to like Apple products. He could never be all bad. However, this week's episode focused on North Korean conspiracies.
I get the feeling the conspiracy Karl thought they would focus on was the alleged counterfeiting of $100.00 U.S. bills run by or at least sponsored by the North Korean government. If this sounds familiar to you, it might be because the North Koreans obviously lifted from a British Television series Private Schultz, which I watched faithfully as a kid with my mom during its run on Masterpiece Theatre. While Karl and Stafford did indeed discuss this topic, it was as much a discussion of the cultural eccentricities of Korea as a culture, the interplay between the U.S., Japan, China, and the Koreas.
Let's face it, North Korea is weird. Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea (a communist country), is basically a Tsar Autocrat of North Korea since his dad was the last leader of North Korea. Lenin would probably have a fit if he was not a dead wax figure in the Kremlin. Kim has cut off his country from the rest of the world. The economy is almost nonexistent. Everything they do is on a cash and carry basis, and Kim is dying to getting the attention of the world and especially his hate (genius love?) of the United States. All the while, this is in the face of the South having its own love/hate relationship with the North and the United States. While the South has prospered becoming an economic powerhouse with electronic companies competing toe to toe with the best in the world, cars that currently are besting Toyota and Honda, and a population that is literally growing stronger and taller than their puny Northern kin, the North, if I understand correctly, has an industry subsisting on crystal-meth, military rockets, nuclear engineering of 1946 era atom bombs, and plight. They also print Benjamin's from a bank based out of Macau, China, that they sell for fifty cents on the dollar. Like everything else North Korea does even these counterfeit dollars are not quite up to the challenge. Yes. They are very good dupes. Yes, the North Koreans bought the same high tech printing press, and promptly defaulted on the payments, to make the notes. However, while the notes are good enough to fool a machine and have been used in Las Vegas slot machines, they are not good enough to fool a decently aware human.
There was so much more discussed on the show from Cheerleaders sent to work camps, why some South Koreans want the North to have "the bomb," to South Koreans having an Olympic spat with Australia over ice skating or some other sport I do not pay attention to other than every four years. As always, I enjoyed the show a great deal, and Karl in his humble manner manages to share a ton of information without seemingly breaking a sweat.
At the start of the podcast, Stafford indicates he is trying to get a three month teaching gig in the North, since New Zealand and North Korea have diplomatic relations and it might be a good way to lose weight. However, if the authorities in Korea hear this podcast, he hasn't a chance.
Also, Karl likes leggy South Koreans a whole lot.
Do Skeptics Dream of Electric Sheep?
Blake Smith, co-host of Monster Talk, might be my new hero. Why? The first question he asks the show's guest-some unknown Nuttmegger, Dr. Steven Novella-is the screening question during the VK test on Leon at the start Bladerunner about finding a tortoise in the desert. Unfortunately, Dr. Novella did not quite get the reference, but I thought it was fantastic. (I am a big fan of Bladerunner.)
Anyway, the topic of this episode and of the next few episodes will be about ghosts, spirits, and hauntings. The show opened with a discussion between my new hero, Ben Radford, and Dr. Karen Stollznow on what exactly is the definition of a ghost vs a spirit. The consensus appeared to be the spirit was the surviving consciousness of a person with a living brain, a ghost could be the manifestation of that spirit on Earth, or it could be just the left over energy of an event, or whatever else the person wants it to be. Basically, the believers make up whatever terms they want for a given need. They then discussed how many believe the dead are watching over us and yet still do things such as masterbate. If you think about it, your lost and beloved auntie or best friend can peep you while you are enjoying some high quality alone time.
They then interviewed Dr. Novella, who is the President of the New England Skeptical Society, host of the SGU, writes for at least four blogs, is a dad, a husband, a super geek gamer, and in his spare time is a Neurologist at some safety school called Yale.
Dr. Novella shared some of the highlights of when the NESS went on about a dozen or so ghost hunts with actual believer ghost hunters. The long and the short of it is that the ghost hunters really have quite sad evidence to base their beliefs upon. He discussed his dealings with Connecticut ghost and demon experts Lorraine and the late Ed Warren. Needless to say, he was not impressed with them. Dr. Novella also shared how ghost hunters can have a harmful effect in that some who thought they were being haunted are actually medically delusional and the ghost hunters do the worst thing possible for them, which is to reinforce the delusion. Dr. Novella also discussed how science is more and more reinforcing that there is no mind or consciousness without the brain. He discusses the various lines of evidence that support this proposition, and in particular discussed the evidence that the mind is the antenna to pick up the radio signal of the mind. (This was discussed on SGU episdoe 238 with Simon Conway Morris.) Then they went into all sorts of way over my head inside baseball talk about table top gaming. I have nothing against gamers, my closest pal is a gamer. Wow. Dr. Novella sure loves gaming as does Smith.
I enjoyed the show, and cannot wait to hear the upcoming installments on ghost, ghouls, spooks, and specters. I am really getting into Monster Talk.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Skeptics Guide #241 and The Skeptic Zone #71
I'd like to barrow Parliament.
This week both the Skeptic Zone and The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe covered that the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recommended that the National Health stop funding for Homeopathic treatments and cease funding further studies into the efficacy of Homeopathic treatment. This does not have the force of law, but it is a significant step that a popular form of alternative medicine is getting the suggested axe when the sovereign in waiting, Prince Charles, is a big homeopathic fan. At the very least I hope this is the beginning of defunding such medical practices in the United Kingdom and perhaps other nations too.
This does have me thinking. While I do not have any hard figures, I would hazard a guess that Chiropractic medicine is as big an alternative health problem in the States as homeopathy is in the mother country. Here's my proposal, we borrow the House of Parliament for a weekend, and have them make the same recommendation here about Chiropractic medicine. They do not even have to go to Washington, D.C. They can first practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania legislature in little old Harrisburg. After a nice visit of the MPs hanging around Three Mile Island, and Chocolate World, and visting the Gettysburg National Battlefield, they can go back to England knowing they made a real difference with their petulant offspring.
On the Skeptic Zone, Kylie Sturgess interviewed the Young Australian Skeptics. It was heartening to know that a new energetic generation of critically minded geeks are taking up the torch from elderly skeptics such as Rebecca Watson and Trystan Swale. We geezers need a rest. I like the ideas they discussed on not doing just another version of the SGU, and talking to people on the street about skeptical issues. I also like the idea of an anthology of skeptical blog posts. I do not follow if it was going to be in dead tree format or something online. To have a dead tree format in the face of ongoing explosion of book readers and tablet computing seems to me an expensive step backwards. On the other hand, to have someone point out various good block posts rather than wade through all the zillions of posts for the juicy bits is a worthwhile task.
Dr. Rachel Dunlop did a funny interview of her father, whom she refers to as Moose. The interview focuses on her father's recent conversion into a skeptic, and that older dogs can be taught new tricks. Dr. Dunlop's father was in the Australian Army for 25 years and retired a Lt. Colonel. He had an interesting take on the waste the U.S. military spent on psi experiment and the bogus dowsing bomb detection device that is in use in Iraq. To be honest, it was really nice to have a humanized view of a skeptic and hearing her refer to her dad, Moose, and her mum. Obviously, Lt. Colonel Dunlop did a nice job in rearing Dr. Dunlop and turning her into the shiny star of the growing skeptical world.
Brian Dunning introduced the Diary of Samuel Hahnemann which spoofed what Hahnemann was thinking when he came up with his treatment notions. It was spoken in a very bad Dr. Strangelove-style German accent, which could have been a bit better. It made Jay Novella's British accent sound spot on.
Finrally, the episode concluded with a Think Tank including Dr. Dunlop, Joanne Benhamu, Dianne, Eran Segev, Stefan Sojka & Richard Saunders. An episode of the Skeptic Zone that does not conclude with a Think Tank is like a visit to Disney World without visiting the Magic Kingdom. As noted above, the panel discussed homeopathy taking it on the chin in Britain. They also discussed how Meryl Dorey is no longer in charge of the Australian Vaccination Network, but the AVN may have raised enough money to stay open. It was not clear based on the wording of the press release, but either way they are not currently shut down. They also discussed how homeopathy plus has still not heeded a government order to publish a retraction statement that homeopathy was as good as a regular vaccine. The government has not done anything to enforce this ruling, but Dr. Dunlop has taken matters into her own hands and used a Google product called side-wiki to show those who google the site that it is not in compliance. Once again, don't mess with Dr. Dunlop. You will regret it.
Other than a bad German accent, I enjoyed this episode a great deal.
The SGU panel discussed how Uri Geller, recently recounted how he used his psychic powers to catch a criminal that hid on his property while he was walking his dog. The police were after two crooks, and they captured one, but the other hid somewhere on Geller's property. Amazingly, Geller led the police to his hiding spot in his shed -incredible! If this is not the goofiest alleged use of minimal psychic powers to find someone in an obvious spot, I don't know what is. Geller managed to get his name back into print. Good grief.
The panel discussed the much-hyped Bloom Box which is a refrigerator sized fuel cell that when you pump natural gas or biofuel in one end, out comes electricity on the other end. CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes, did a cover of it. While it might be a new way to have the source of the electrical generation in the house rather than many miles away, it is still nothing more than a generator. My parents have one that runs on gasoline, and that is where I flew when the power goes out locally so I can watch television and enjoy non-spoiled food. The whole story is an overblown yawn.
The panel also discussed a new book "What Darwin got wrong" by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at Rutgers University and a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, respectively. As noted by P.Z. Myers, an actual biologist in the field points out that Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini get everything wrong. Jerry and Massimo found a "hiccup" connecting the pressures of natural selection with non-related connected traits, so that a pressure for one trait might bring along with it another incidental trait. The problem with their idea is that it was thought of and explained about eight decades ago. This seems to be a situation where two smart guys had more than enough information and knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough sense to think someone in the field might have already examined this topic. Science is tough.
The Rogues had a rollicking good interview with Daniel Wilson, roboticist and author of such books as How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where's My Jetpack?, and How to Build a Robot Army. When they introduced the topic, I had flashbacks to when Michael Vasser was interviewed about the singularity, and the entire interview was akin to having a tooth pulled by the gang in "The Big Bang Theory." Instead, this was an enjoyable beer nuts and brew type discussion about the current status of robotics, where it is headed in the near and long term, and why we do not have robot maids that can speak and understand normal language.
This was a really fun episode even with the absence of Rebecca. It made my trip from Hershey to York fly by as I drove down to meet some friends for dinner. Strap on your ear buds and listen to both the Zone and the SGU, it was a fun week in skepticism.
This week both the Skeptic Zone and The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe covered that the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recommended that the National Health stop funding for Homeopathic treatments and cease funding further studies into the efficacy of Homeopathic treatment. This does not have the force of law, but it is a significant step that a popular form of alternative medicine is getting the suggested axe when the sovereign in waiting, Prince Charles, is a big homeopathic fan. At the very least I hope this is the beginning of defunding such medical practices in the United Kingdom and perhaps other nations too.
This does have me thinking. While I do not have any hard figures, I would hazard a guess that Chiropractic medicine is as big an alternative health problem in the States as homeopathy is in the mother country. Here's my proposal, we borrow the House of Parliament for a weekend, and have them make the same recommendation here about Chiropractic medicine. They do not even have to go to Washington, D.C. They can first practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania legislature in little old Harrisburg. After a nice visit of the MPs hanging around Three Mile Island, and Chocolate World, and visting the Gettysburg National Battlefield, they can go back to England knowing they made a real difference with their petulant offspring.
On the Skeptic Zone, Kylie Sturgess interviewed the Young Australian Skeptics. It was heartening to know that a new energetic generation of critically minded geeks are taking up the torch from elderly skeptics such as Rebecca Watson and Trystan Swale. We geezers need a rest. I like the ideas they discussed on not doing just another version of the SGU, and talking to people on the street about skeptical issues. I also like the idea of an anthology of skeptical blog posts. I do not follow if it was going to be in dead tree format or something online. To have a dead tree format in the face of ongoing explosion of book readers and tablet computing seems to me an expensive step backwards. On the other hand, to have someone point out various good block posts rather than wade through all the zillions of posts for the juicy bits is a worthwhile task.
Dr. Rachel Dunlop did a funny interview of her father, whom she refers to as Moose. The interview focuses on her father's recent conversion into a skeptic, and that older dogs can be taught new tricks. Dr. Dunlop's father was in the Australian Army for 25 years and retired a Lt. Colonel. He had an interesting take on the waste the U.S. military spent on psi experiment and the bogus dowsing bomb detection device that is in use in Iraq. To be honest, it was really nice to have a humanized view of a skeptic and hearing her refer to her dad, Moose, and her mum. Obviously, Lt. Colonel Dunlop did a nice job in rearing Dr. Dunlop and turning her into the shiny star of the growing skeptical world.
Brian Dunning introduced the Diary of Samuel Hahnemann which spoofed what Hahnemann was thinking when he came up with his treatment notions. It was spoken in a very bad Dr. Strangelove-style German accent, which could have been a bit better. It made Jay Novella's British accent sound spot on.
Finrally, the episode concluded with a Think Tank including Dr. Dunlop, Joanne Benhamu, Dianne, Eran Segev, Stefan Sojka & Richard Saunders. An episode of the Skeptic Zone that does not conclude with a Think Tank is like a visit to Disney World without visiting the Magic Kingdom. As noted above, the panel discussed homeopathy taking it on the chin in Britain. They also discussed how Meryl Dorey is no longer in charge of the Australian Vaccination Network, but the AVN may have raised enough money to stay open. It was not clear based on the wording of the press release, but either way they are not currently shut down. They also discussed how homeopathy plus has still not heeded a government order to publish a retraction statement that homeopathy was as good as a regular vaccine. The government has not done anything to enforce this ruling, but Dr. Dunlop has taken matters into her own hands and used a Google product called side-wiki to show those who google the site that it is not in compliance. Once again, don't mess with Dr. Dunlop. You will regret it.
Other than a bad German accent, I enjoyed this episode a great deal.
The SGU panel discussed how Uri Geller, recently recounted how he used his psychic powers to catch a criminal that hid on his property while he was walking his dog. The police were after two crooks, and they captured one, but the other hid somewhere on Geller's property. Amazingly, Geller led the police to his hiding spot in his shed -incredible! If this is not the goofiest alleged use of minimal psychic powers to find someone in an obvious spot, I don't know what is. Geller managed to get his name back into print. Good grief.
The panel discussed the much-hyped Bloom Box which is a refrigerator sized fuel cell that when you pump natural gas or biofuel in one end, out comes electricity on the other end. CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes, did a cover of it. While it might be a new way to have the source of the electrical generation in the house rather than many miles away, it is still nothing more than a generator. My parents have one that runs on gasoline, and that is where I flew when the power goes out locally so I can watch television and enjoy non-spoiled food. The whole story is an overblown yawn.
The panel also discussed a new book "What Darwin got wrong" by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at Rutgers University and a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, respectively. As noted by P.Z. Myers, an actual biologist in the field points out that Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini get everything wrong. Jerry and Massimo found a "hiccup" connecting the pressures of natural selection with non-related connected traits, so that a pressure for one trait might bring along with it another incidental trait. The problem with their idea is that it was thought of and explained about eight decades ago. This seems to be a situation where two smart guys had more than enough information and knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough sense to think someone in the field might have already examined this topic. Science is tough.
The Rogues had a rollicking good interview with Daniel Wilson, roboticist and author of such books as How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where's My Jetpack?, and How to Build a Robot Army. When they introduced the topic, I had flashbacks to when Michael Vasser was interviewed about the singularity, and the entire interview was akin to having a tooth pulled by the gang in "The Big Bang Theory." Instead, this was an enjoyable beer nuts and brew type discussion about the current status of robotics, where it is headed in the near and long term, and why we do not have robot maids that can speak and understand normal language.
This was a really fun episode even with the absence of Rebecca. It made my trip from Hershey to York fly by as I drove down to meet some friends for dinner. Strap on your ear buds and listen to both the Zone and the SGU, it was a fun week in skepticism.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
This Week Had 549 Minutes
Frontline
If that title sounds familiar it's because it is. Via iTunes Podcasts, PBS releases select audio only editions of its Frontline investigative journalism show that typically follows Nova. I love Frontline but I never seem to catch it anymore. My cable has PBS on some improbable channel like 64 (I think you need to click past the Federal Parliament channel, the Ontario Legislature channel, and Sikh Today to get to PBS). Also I'm pretty sure it runs against The Office. So. Forget about it. I downloaded an episode called Flying Cheap. It's about a Continental Airlines commuter airline crash a few years ago. Pilot error was to blame in a huge way. Tired pilots, earning poverty level wages, pilots poorly trained on the equipment they flew. They didn't even know enough to put a plane into a dive in the event of a stall warning. Turns out these commuter routes are subcontracted to small local carriers and the reimbursement structure promotes cost cutting. You've probably flown these a few times, especially if you're flying from a smaller airport to a hub. Those little prop driven Buddy Holly jobbers. Whenever I've flown one my greatest fear has been the plane will lack a coffee maker. Little did I know there are bigger problems. All 'n' all the show holds up quite well despite the lack of visuals.
Risk!
If that title sounds familiar then you're wrong. It's not about the board game that has taught generations of kids:
a) the Kamchatka Peninsula exits
b) why comic book super villains always promise Australia to their mistress. It's a lousy continent in which to launch a land war on Asia.
No, Risk is in the same vein as The Moth and This American Life. Real people telling real stories. The tone of the show is a bit, I dunno, barbershop. That's the only way I can describe it, but once you get past the jangly opening, Risk has a slew of interesting story tellers. While The Moth tops in at 12 minutes a show, Risk presents about an hour of great stories.
The Good Grief ep has a great story about a tall white kid who actually went up against a young, pre-NBA Kobe Bryant in a local pickup league and it was his job to trash talk the future mega NBA star. The best thing he can come up with is to taunt Kobe with his excellent SAT scores. To which Kobe responds “I've been drafted by the NBA and I'll be a millionaire next year.”
The Geologic Podcast
A couple weeks back we had an absolutely brilliant “fan” show. This is where listeners of the show do basically a parody of George's show. This week George is back with a 50 minute interview with a guy who won TAM's essay contest. He's a cancer survivor and has some amusing stories to tell about avoiding appealing to a deity for reasons why he got cancer, why he beat cancer, and why the three year old a floor below didn't. Shit happens.
Planet Money
Planet Money ran a bit of a repeat of a segment from This American Life. One of the hosts investigates what kind of human-like rights corporations have and why they have them. They also had mid week show about the Greek debt crisis. They poked a lot of fun at the Greeks but drew many parallels about the Greek debt crisis and America's own looming debt crisis.
Holocaust Denial on Trail
Another new one. I found this one via Orac's blog. Produced by Emory University (famous for those raspy boards your mom uses to file her nails), it's a show examining this most bizarre form of denial: the holocaust never happened. Holocaust deniers are scum, surely, but sometimes you have to laugh at their argument cascade: it never happened, but if it did, then it wasn't so bad, and even if it was bad, Jews and America were as much to blame. So there. I downloaded a show with an interview with Michael Shermer. Shermer applied his “why do people believe strange things” to holocaust denial. Basically, people tend to first believe things for emotional reasons, then they find intellectual arguments to support them. The reason why so many smart people believe such weird things is they're quite good at cooking up science-y arguments to support their emotional beliefs.
The Reality Check Episode 77
The show opened with a parody of 867-5309 (“Jenny Jenny I got your number”). Jenny in this case referred to anti-vax loon Jenny McCarthy. The show focused on the idea chocolate can prevent strokes. It's a classic tale of the media picking up on a wash of fact and then pronouncing X the new “super food”. The study looked at a few studies that suggest people who eat chocolate have lower strokes. However the study cautioned nothing was done to control for the fact people who eat more chocolate have more money and have better healthcare and lifestyles. The show also looked into the mythological Pacific coast Indian creatures that have been used as the basis of Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. The most noticeable of these is a bigfoot mascot. Many bigfoot proponents like to claim since Indians have been talking about bigfoots for hundreds of years, this is good evidence they're real. This is a bit of cherry picking as pacific coast Indians also tell legends about half fish half bear creatures but no one claims this is evidence these creatures should also exist. Finally they expose several myths about why Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC. There are many urban legends like KFC created a six legged chicken and it's no longer legally allowed to call it a chicken.
EconTalk
Russ “Soul Brother Number One” Roberts had on Garett Jones. Jones Twitters little economic puzzles that seem counter intuitive. Like “if a company lobbies for a tax break, it's best not to give them the tax break” or “why are political ear marks actually a good thing?” To the first, I guess most companies just treat tax as a cost of doing business and they engineer around it. To give them a tax break might just make them lazy. You want to give people tax breaks to make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do. To the second, ear marks don't actually amount to much in the US budget. Maybe $10 billion in a $1.3 trillion budget. A rounding error as the economics jokes goes. What they do is buy a politicians loyalty to the party and in the short run they're cheaper. You could buy loyalty by giving a senator $1 million for a new water treatment plant or you could promise to increase medicare funding in his state to the tune of $5 billion. It's Machiavellian surely but it works.
Math Mutations
Math Mutations is a cute little podcast about math topics that host Erik Seligman tries to break down for the lay person. He seems to be on no regular schedule and might do 3 a month or 2 a month or 1 a month. His latest episode he tries to explain why my right and left might be different from your right and left depending on how you stand relative to me but up and down are always the same for both of us.
This American Life
TAL has a series of stories on people trying to please their parents. There was one rather sad/spooky one about a woman who lost her Mormon mother. Before her mother died, she wrote her, Hari Seldon style, a series of letters to be opened several times throughout her life. The mother's vision of her daughter's future and the daughter's actual existence begin to diverge quite radically and this causes the daughter no end of grief and sadness. The ep winds up with a disturbing story about a scientist husband/wife team who adopt a baby chimpa and try to raise her like they'd raise a daughter. They teach her sign language, how to make tea, eat with a fork, and masturbate to Playgirl. That's one swinging mom and pop. Eventually the chimp hits adulthood, reverts to her wild phase, and they have to basically dump her back in Africa.
The Seoul Podcast
This week's ep is about what we'd call Chinese New Year. In Korea it's called Sollal. Like most eps, it starts with a fake ad. This one is particularly hilarious. Adopting the Monster Truck show commercial format, it's for a tractor pull like show called Mega Monster Bus Madness and a pre-game “bbq twinkie cookoff”. Ah you really have to live in Korea to get the jokes. But put succinctly, half of Korea gets on buses, planes, and trains and goes north and the other half get on planes, trains, and buses and they head south. It's 3 days of commuting nightmare and best spent by expats in a bar, far away from anything with wheels. No guest this week and the tall and beautiful Hwarangi (which apparently doesn't mean female tiger) did not return. Probably the best part of this show was its abrupt ending. Cohost Joe's internet connection died, leaving Stafford to find a graceful exit from a show about 60 minutes too short. Stafford employs a lot of classic “we're experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by” sound clips from TV and then gives up the ghost and goes straight to a Joe-less goodbye.
- Karl
If that title sounds familiar it's because it is. Via iTunes Podcasts, PBS releases select audio only editions of its Frontline investigative journalism show that typically follows Nova. I love Frontline but I never seem to catch it anymore. My cable has PBS on some improbable channel like 64 (I think you need to click past the Federal Parliament channel, the Ontario Legislature channel, and Sikh Today to get to PBS). Also I'm pretty sure it runs against The Office. So. Forget about it. I downloaded an episode called Flying Cheap. It's about a Continental Airlines commuter airline crash a few years ago. Pilot error was to blame in a huge way. Tired pilots, earning poverty level wages, pilots poorly trained on the equipment they flew. They didn't even know enough to put a plane into a dive in the event of a stall warning. Turns out these commuter routes are subcontracted to small local carriers and the reimbursement structure promotes cost cutting. You've probably flown these a few times, especially if you're flying from a smaller airport to a hub. Those little prop driven Buddy Holly jobbers. Whenever I've flown one my greatest fear has been the plane will lack a coffee maker. Little did I know there are bigger problems. All 'n' all the show holds up quite well despite the lack of visuals.
Risk!
If that title sounds familiar then you're wrong. It's not about the board game that has taught generations of kids:
a) the Kamchatka Peninsula exits
b) why comic book super villains always promise Australia to their mistress. It's a lousy continent in which to launch a land war on Asia.
No, Risk is in the same vein as The Moth and This American Life. Real people telling real stories. The tone of the show is a bit, I dunno, barbershop. That's the only way I can describe it, but once you get past the jangly opening, Risk has a slew of interesting story tellers. While The Moth tops in at 12 minutes a show, Risk presents about an hour of great stories.
The Good Grief ep has a great story about a tall white kid who actually went up against a young, pre-NBA Kobe Bryant in a local pickup league and it was his job to trash talk the future mega NBA star. The best thing he can come up with is to taunt Kobe with his excellent SAT scores. To which Kobe responds “I've been drafted by the NBA and I'll be a millionaire next year.”
The Geologic Podcast
A couple weeks back we had an absolutely brilliant “fan” show. This is where listeners of the show do basically a parody of George's show. This week George is back with a 50 minute interview with a guy who won TAM's essay contest. He's a cancer survivor and has some amusing stories to tell about avoiding appealing to a deity for reasons why he got cancer, why he beat cancer, and why the three year old a floor below didn't. Shit happens.
Planet Money
Planet Money ran a bit of a repeat of a segment from This American Life. One of the hosts investigates what kind of human-like rights corporations have and why they have them. They also had mid week show about the Greek debt crisis. They poked a lot of fun at the Greeks but drew many parallels about the Greek debt crisis and America's own looming debt crisis.
Holocaust Denial on Trail
Another new one. I found this one via Orac's blog. Produced by Emory University (famous for those raspy boards your mom uses to file her nails), it's a show examining this most bizarre form of denial: the holocaust never happened. Holocaust deniers are scum, surely, but sometimes you have to laugh at their argument cascade: it never happened, but if it did, then it wasn't so bad, and even if it was bad, Jews and America were as much to blame. So there. I downloaded a show with an interview with Michael Shermer. Shermer applied his “why do people believe strange things” to holocaust denial. Basically, people tend to first believe things for emotional reasons, then they find intellectual arguments to support them. The reason why so many smart people believe such weird things is they're quite good at cooking up science-y arguments to support their emotional beliefs.
The Reality Check Episode 77
The show opened with a parody of 867-5309 (“Jenny Jenny I got your number”). Jenny in this case referred to anti-vax loon Jenny McCarthy. The show focused on the idea chocolate can prevent strokes. It's a classic tale of the media picking up on a wash of fact and then pronouncing X the new “super food”. The study looked at a few studies that suggest people who eat chocolate have lower strokes. However the study cautioned nothing was done to control for the fact people who eat more chocolate have more money and have better healthcare and lifestyles. The show also looked into the mythological Pacific coast Indian creatures that have been used as the basis of Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. The most noticeable of these is a bigfoot mascot. Many bigfoot proponents like to claim since Indians have been talking about bigfoots for hundreds of years, this is good evidence they're real. This is a bit of cherry picking as pacific coast Indians also tell legends about half fish half bear creatures but no one claims this is evidence these creatures should also exist. Finally they expose several myths about why Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC. There are many urban legends like KFC created a six legged chicken and it's no longer legally allowed to call it a chicken.
EconTalk
Russ “Soul Brother Number One” Roberts had on Garett Jones. Jones Twitters little economic puzzles that seem counter intuitive. Like “if a company lobbies for a tax break, it's best not to give them the tax break” or “why are political ear marks actually a good thing?” To the first, I guess most companies just treat tax as a cost of doing business and they engineer around it. To give them a tax break might just make them lazy. You want to give people tax breaks to make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do. To the second, ear marks don't actually amount to much in the US budget. Maybe $10 billion in a $1.3 trillion budget. A rounding error as the economics jokes goes. What they do is buy a politicians loyalty to the party and in the short run they're cheaper. You could buy loyalty by giving a senator $1 million for a new water treatment plant or you could promise to increase medicare funding in his state to the tune of $5 billion. It's Machiavellian surely but it works.
Math Mutations
Math Mutations is a cute little podcast about math topics that host Erik Seligman tries to break down for the lay person. He seems to be on no regular schedule and might do 3 a month or 2 a month or 1 a month. His latest episode he tries to explain why my right and left might be different from your right and left depending on how you stand relative to me but up and down are always the same for both of us.
This American Life
TAL has a series of stories on people trying to please their parents. There was one rather sad/spooky one about a woman who lost her Mormon mother. Before her mother died, she wrote her, Hari Seldon style, a series of letters to be opened several times throughout her life. The mother's vision of her daughter's future and the daughter's actual existence begin to diverge quite radically and this causes the daughter no end of grief and sadness. The ep winds up with a disturbing story about a scientist husband/wife team who adopt a baby chimpa and try to raise her like they'd raise a daughter. They teach her sign language, how to make tea, eat with a fork, and masturbate to Playgirl. That's one swinging mom and pop. Eventually the chimp hits adulthood, reverts to her wild phase, and they have to basically dump her back in Africa.
The Seoul Podcast
This week's ep is about what we'd call Chinese New Year. In Korea it's called Sollal. Like most eps, it starts with a fake ad. This one is particularly hilarious. Adopting the Monster Truck show commercial format, it's for a tractor pull like show called Mega Monster Bus Madness and a pre-game “bbq twinkie cookoff”. Ah you really have to live in Korea to get the jokes. But put succinctly, half of Korea gets on buses, planes, and trains and goes north and the other half get on planes, trains, and buses and they head south. It's 3 days of commuting nightmare and best spent by expats in a bar, far away from anything with wheels. No guest this week and the tall and beautiful Hwarangi (which apparently doesn't mean female tiger) did not return. Probably the best part of this show was its abrupt ending. Cohost Joe's internet connection died, leaving Stafford to find a graceful exit from a show about 60 minutes too short. Stafford employs a lot of classic “we're experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by” sound clips from TV and then gives up the ghost and goes straight to a Joe-less goodbye.
- Karl
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Righteous Indignation, For Good Reason, and history
Tonight I'll quickly cover two skeptical podcasts, and a non-skeptical favored podcast of mine.
Righteous Indignation featured an interview with Matthew Parker, mathematician and standup comic. The discussion focused on the use of bad statistics for either shock power in a newspaper headline, or to push a cause using questionable facts. The segment prior to the interview had Marsh discussing shocking statistics used by some to show that 25% of all women in Britain have been raped. The actual number, or at least more likely figure, is 5%. This is not to say rape is not a horrible problem and 5% is 5% too much of the British or any society to endure, but it is a lot better than 1 in 4 women. Marsh does an able job of going through why the figures are just plain wrong. I enjoyed the interview, but it was only about ten or so minutes. I wished there were more of it, as I found Parker an entertaining fellow.
The Indignates also engaged in a discussion on how much blame for the current anti-vaccine hysteria can be blamed on Wakefield's shoddy study and how much can be placed upon the media and other actors. To a certain extent, these type of arguments are moderately meaningless and remind me of the debates I would have in undergrad regarding did the North win the War of the Rebellion or did the South lose. Well, it really is a bit of both, but for the record I would defend the North winning over the South losing. In the same vein, if pushed I would have to lay the most blame on the editors of the Lancet that allowed this crappy study to be published. It's the imprimatur of publication that The Lancet imparted upon his article...it was in such an internationally respected journal that gave credence to the media and public that something must be up with the MMR causing autism. Further, when the majority of the co-authors withdrew their names from the study, but the Lancet did not pull the article, only added some fuel to the fire. Shame on you naughty Lancet people.
Oh yes, the Indignates also bring the light of reason to the claim that rhubarb cures cancer. It likely does not. This is good. Rhubarb is gross. bleck.
Luckily for me, I've never been wrong . . .
But Carol Tavis was interviewed on For Good Reason by D.J. Grothe on why people, who are wrong, find it so hard to admit a mistake sometimes against the weight of a lot of excellent evidence. There is an interesting discussion on how outright frauds in the psychic community can live with themselves, and why folks who are anti-vaccine proponents continue with a perhaps once valid thought against the exceedingly contrary weight of evidence, etc. (This same theme is also taken up by Jamy Ian Swiss' commentary at the end of the show.)
What is also interesting is how this mechanism of getting locked into an opinion despite other evidence can be helpful to one's sanity. It keeps people moving forward and not always second guessing a decision once made. As Tavis notes, it's not good to buy a car and then spend sleepless night after night wondering if you had made the correct decision. The other interesting realm discussed by Tavis is not being caught in the same single minded trap while being a skeptic. I have alway wondered what it would take for me to be convinced ghosts exist, or homeopathy works, or UFOs are alien visitors. If convincing evidence to a truly open mind existed, would I just blow it off as more hum-bug? On the one hand, I hope I would not. As I have noted in earlier posts, I am no longer a global warming skeptic. It did take me a bit to come around and accept that indeed the weight of scientific evidence shows climate change is happening and it is highly, highly likely caused by man. Yet, perhaps that is not my sacred cow, and ghosts or tarot cards are my sacred cow.
Tavis also discussed with Grothe some good and less effective approaches are trying to convince people their belief or world view is incorrect. I will not go into detail, it is not "what, are you stupid? You think Sylvia Brown talks to dead people? Don't be an idiot."
Another non-skeptical podcast
I enjoy My History Can Beat up Your Politics podcast a great deal. It is a podcast researched, produced, and hosted by Bruce Carlton. Carlton is a history buff, but not a professional historian by trade. Carlton typically takes a historical topic, and breaks down how it occurred and uses the actual unfolding of an event as compared to how modern politicians and people view it. He has a podcast about how Martin Luther King Day came about in the United States, and it is surprising to learn how it is actually as much a celebration as a labor day as it is a civil rights day. He has had discussions on the various successes and failures of Presidents' second year in office, and another on how George Washington handled his first year in office. He has had discussions on biased media in the 19th century and how financial panics were handled prior to the Great Depression. Carlton, to his credit, tries to maintain an apolitical stance on his show. If I had to guess, he is a center left type of voter, but I could be wrong. The writing of the shows can be uneven. He'll have a run of two or three episodes that are fantastically interesting, and follow it by one or two shows that are poorly constructed and thought out. Also, Carlton's production and editing do leave a lot to be desired. At times, he will edit in a repeated phrase or paragraph twice in a row, or have a ten or twenty second pause which caused me to wonder if I mistakenly turned off my iPod. The show is extremely American centric. All in all, if you enjoy U.S. history a great deal, and want to hear it told by a gifted and motivated amateur, this is a show you should try.
Righteous Indignation featured an interview with Matthew Parker, mathematician and standup comic. The discussion focused on the use of bad statistics for either shock power in a newspaper headline, or to push a cause using questionable facts. The segment prior to the interview had Marsh discussing shocking statistics used by some to show that 25% of all women in Britain have been raped. The actual number, or at least more likely figure, is 5%. This is not to say rape is not a horrible problem and 5% is 5% too much of the British or any society to endure, but it is a lot better than 1 in 4 women. Marsh does an able job of going through why the figures are just plain wrong. I enjoyed the interview, but it was only about ten or so minutes. I wished there were more of it, as I found Parker an entertaining fellow.
The Indignates also engaged in a discussion on how much blame for the current anti-vaccine hysteria can be blamed on Wakefield's shoddy study and how much can be placed upon the media and other actors. To a certain extent, these type of arguments are moderately meaningless and remind me of the debates I would have in undergrad regarding did the North win the War of the Rebellion or did the South lose. Well, it really is a bit of both, but for the record I would defend the North winning over the South losing. In the same vein, if pushed I would have to lay the most blame on the editors of the Lancet that allowed this crappy study to be published. It's the imprimatur of publication that The Lancet imparted upon his article...it was in such an internationally respected journal that gave credence to the media and public that something must be up with the MMR causing autism. Further, when the majority of the co-authors withdrew their names from the study, but the Lancet did not pull the article, only added some fuel to the fire. Shame on you naughty Lancet people.
Oh yes, the Indignates also bring the light of reason to the claim that rhubarb cures cancer. It likely does not. This is good. Rhubarb is gross. bleck.
Luckily for me, I've never been wrong . . .
But Carol Tavis was interviewed on For Good Reason by D.J. Grothe on why people, who are wrong, find it so hard to admit a mistake sometimes against the weight of a lot of excellent evidence. There is an interesting discussion on how outright frauds in the psychic community can live with themselves, and why folks who are anti-vaccine proponents continue with a perhaps once valid thought against the exceedingly contrary weight of evidence, etc. (This same theme is also taken up by Jamy Ian Swiss' commentary at the end of the show.)
What is also interesting is how this mechanism of getting locked into an opinion despite other evidence can be helpful to one's sanity. It keeps people moving forward and not always second guessing a decision once made. As Tavis notes, it's not good to buy a car and then spend sleepless night after night wondering if you had made the correct decision. The other interesting realm discussed by Tavis is not being caught in the same single minded trap while being a skeptic. I have alway wondered what it would take for me to be convinced ghosts exist, or homeopathy works, or UFOs are alien visitors. If convincing evidence to a truly open mind existed, would I just blow it off as more hum-bug? On the one hand, I hope I would not. As I have noted in earlier posts, I am no longer a global warming skeptic. It did take me a bit to come around and accept that indeed the weight of scientific evidence shows climate change is happening and it is highly, highly likely caused by man. Yet, perhaps that is not my sacred cow, and ghosts or tarot cards are my sacred cow.
Tavis also discussed with Grothe some good and less effective approaches are trying to convince people their belief or world view is incorrect. I will not go into detail, it is not "what, are you stupid? You think Sylvia Brown talks to dead people? Don't be an idiot."
Another non-skeptical podcast
I enjoy My History Can Beat up Your Politics podcast a great deal. It is a podcast researched, produced, and hosted by Bruce Carlton. Carlton is a history buff, but not a professional historian by trade. Carlton typically takes a historical topic, and breaks down how it occurred and uses the actual unfolding of an event as compared to how modern politicians and people view it. He has a podcast about how Martin Luther King Day came about in the United States, and it is surprising to learn how it is actually as much a celebration as a labor day as it is a civil rights day. He has had discussions on the various successes and failures of Presidents' second year in office, and another on how George Washington handled his first year in office. He has had discussions on biased media in the 19th century and how financial panics were handled prior to the Great Depression. Carlton, to his credit, tries to maintain an apolitical stance on his show. If I had to guess, he is a center left type of voter, but I could be wrong. The writing of the shows can be uneven. He'll have a run of two or three episodes that are fantastically interesting, and follow it by one or two shows that are poorly constructed and thought out. Also, Carlton's production and editing do leave a lot to be desired. At times, he will edit in a repeated phrase or paragraph twice in a row, or have a ten or twenty second pause which caused me to wonder if I mistakenly turned off my iPod. The show is extremely American centric. All in all, if you enjoy U.S. history a great deal, and want to hear it told by a gifted and motivated amateur, this is a show you should try.
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