Podcast #145 4/30/2008
Interview with Kirsten Sanford
News Items: Mystery Lights in Maryland, Evolution Freedom Law in Florida, Gary Null-HIV Denier
Special Report: The Real Iron Man
Science or Fiction

Of all the people that should be on television Kirsten should be at the top of the list.  Her enthusiasm is infectious and would be able to encourage young women to enter the sciences.  Great interview.  Thank you.

C'mon guys, the mystery bang is obviously a time-traveling DeLorean.

Come on guys!  It's obvious that he's got a quantum transporter which beams in just enough fuel to keep him going for 10 seconds (which is the cycle time on the transporter).  Then, 10 seconds later, 10 seconds more fuel gets beamed in.

He'd be screwed without GPS, though........

Here's something I've been wondering for a while... I keep hearing about HIV denial, which of course is stupid, but I haven't heard anyone ever mention what the motive is behind these people thinking HIV doesn't cause AIDS. To what end does this idea really serve in their minds?

Them gay fags put the Devil in them sickos is why.

(sarcasm folks)

Steve's kook-o-meter description scale:

Starts out with:
-The most evil, slimy con artists out there

Evolves into:
-anti-vaccionationist-nonsense

Nec Plus Ultra:
-the Kevin Trudeau end of the spectrum




1 minute 21 seconds   

Kiki's Food Science show is delightful!  I am interested in cooking and food anyway, so, seeing KiKi explaining stuff is fascinating.

Either they have it and they are in denial (think that woman who's HIV+ and her child died of AIDS but she's fine so they kid just had pneumonia), or it's a malicious way to ensure "divine intervention" for dirty rotten fags and philanders, or the other option is that they're selling something geared towards the alternate hypothesis.

Re: Kirsten Sanford still being a girly girl: This hit home. Either the girls are only obsessed with fashion, or you're into "higher" stuff and look down on any and all "shallow" activities. I pretty much fell into the latter category as a teenager.
I try to teach my almost 4 y/o daughter well, obviously, she knows dozens of species of plants and animals by name and she's not allowed to watch Slu.. eehh Bratz but she does get to wear pink dresses and play princess.  Obviously now she's at an age where she starts to assert things like "boys do X, girls can't do X, boys can't (wear dresses, make-up, pink)" and I challenge those ideas. If she can play soccer, then why care if a guy uses eyeliner? Challenging the gender rules goes both ways.

The prize of the creationists, Kurt Wise's doctoral advisor was... drumroll please... Stephen Jay Gould.  Wise has said that he cut everything out of his bible that wouldn't be true if evolution was real, and realized that he had to make a choice.  He chose the bible.

A sad example of a scientist who fully understands evolution, who can talk the talk, but still rejects it.

I'm surprised at the mention of "bird brains" no one said "Like Jay?"

I consider it a missed opportunity.

On the Florida Law segment, I have to applaud Steve's honesty on the portion of the law dealing with passing students that can demonstrate understanding despite claiming not to believe in the mechanism of Evolution. I wholeheartedly agree that it isn't the place of the education system to force people to change their minds. Job one is educating people about science. If they know all the facts, demonstrate understanding of the process and the science behind it, and still choose to deny based on their ideology, then so be it. Despite being a rather hard-line atheist, I would never want the public school system to get into the business of forcing people to deny their beliefs (no matter how absurd) in order to graduate. The result would simply be making the religious feel even more martyred for having to claim to believe in evolution when they really don't. It's ammo for the ID crowd that we don't need to offer them, and the kind of low-road tactic I expect from religious schools, but not the direction I think science education should take.

So once again, Dr. Novella reveals his true agenda by trotting out his so-called "experts" to spew their dogmatic myths of "bird intelligence".

The entire time Kirsten Sanford was telling us how great scrub jays are, all I could think was that the last time any of my evolutionary relatives saw birds they were swooping down to carry them off to their nests to devour them, and possibly use their skulls as bowling balls.

I urge all of you who have not been brainwashed by the birdist establishment to see my upcoming film, which documents the sordid connections stretching all the way from Darwin's finches to the atrocities of the monkey holocaust*.

*Ornithologists, please ignore this statement.  The film is actually about the intersection between bird research and monkey research.

The majority of Florida are from other states, and republican right-wing.

The majority of our voters are over the age of 50.

That's all I need to see why it passed.

Fortunately, BOTH of my children have expressed that they do not follow religion, but accept science.

This happend this last weekend, and I am proud. (I had little to do with it other than showing them answers to questions they had)

I told them that being kind to others was MORE important as an atheist/agnostic/humanist than for any other group, and they said they live by it because I am such a nice guy.

I am beaming.

Didn't see a link to the exoskeleton report in this week's episode info page so here is one I found.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1589#XOS

The japanese HAL looks like a cross between a stormtrooper and TRON. Cool.