Podcast #147 5/14/2008
Interview with Martin Rundkvist
News Items: Einstein and God, The Vatican The UK and UFO's, China Quake Superstitions, NASA Announces Supernova Discovery, Creationism in Maine
Your Questions and E-mails: Wizardry Followup
Science or Fiction

Great remarks on the History Channel's UFO coverage... and it's true, the interest is really dying off. I was just on my lunch break, and my company has a big screen TV in our break room... I put it on the History Channel because I don't feel like watching that roach show on Discovery while I eat, but there was one of those stupid UFO stories about some random Air Force base encounter. It was nice to hear my coworkers laugh at every stupid claim and convenient equipment failure, one guy even calling it out as a hoax. All I could do was laugh! 

Was Martin broadcasting in a brook?

He has a fantastic accent! 

Now that the Catholic Church has made an accommodation for aliens, it will be just a short time before the Pope and Tom Cruise get together for a chat. 

"Science or Fiction": discussing protein folding without mentioning http://folding.stanford.edu/ -- m-mh! It's a distributed computing effort comparable to SETI@home; cool stuff!

Highlights that will stick with me: "The constant i is equivalent to the erect male organ" and "I'm not gonna let you keep me from suckling at the teat of the mother goddess". 

I sound something like that as well (I think).

Martin, are you here on the forums??

Can't find out much about anthropostrophy, except that it has something to do with Norse mythology.

nah, I don't think that is correct, where did you get that info? It originates from late 1800's germany...

Here you can find a short abstract from some dudes paper on the subject, though I get the feeling it's not written objectively... theres a lot of info in swedish but can't seem to find many in english. If you erase the "lejon.htm" you can find some more.

http://antroposofi.org/lejon.htm

also found this: "Anthroposophy is a path of cognition from the
spiritual in man to the Spiritual in the Universe."  haha.

anyway, one more link (warning: a lot of really bad "junk-talk" (in lack of better wording. I'm tired) is to be expected)
http://antroposofi.org/anthroposophy_an_introduction.htm

Hello everyone, first post here!

Had to register since there was a swede on the podcast. I'm from Finland which is the neighbouring country and i've also lived in Sweden for almost 6 years. The funny things about countries are sometimes not visible for people that live there themselves.

Martin mentioned the co-worker who didn't like skepticism about dangers of cell-phones. This is quite typical for swedish people for some reason, being abit more afraid than others. There is alot of research published in Swedish about "novel" dangers, such as cell-phone radiation, friend potatoes:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1949413.stm -- "The research was deemed so important that scientists took the unusual step of going public with their findings before the details had been officially published in an academic journal." -- this ring any skeptical bells?  There are lots of other examples of "alarmist" stuff from Sweden.

There are some big conspiracy theories in Sweden aswell, the biggest (which surfaces in the news yearly around the time the news is slow in the summer) is the assassination of Olof Palme, which is a big deal for swedish people. Another one which was big at one point was Soviet/Russian submarines training in swedish waters.

Sweden has been very good at "hiding" its religious fundamentalism, there are a smattering of small churches and they have a system for providing state money for private schools that were supposed to allow for science-schools, art-schools etc but instead turned out a bunch of schools that are deeply religious with some whacky stuff. They are supposed to teach the same basic curriculum, which contains evolution, big bang etc, but some research has shown that many of them don't have the expertise or the will to do so. I should point out that this hasn't been shown to be as extreme as some american religious schools are but still, a worrying trend for swedish skeptics.


Now I should mention that Sweden has a very good tradition, way better than over here in Finland, to critize their leaders and really express free speech and generally be democratic. Sometimes to the point of ridicule but in general very well. They have some very good aggressive journalists that are not afraid of uncovering scandals (something I miss over here) but they also make it abit too alarmist at times. Finland is on paper just as democratic but we bow down to authority and their arguments automatically way too easily compared to Sweden and people dont want to stand out as much.

All in all Swedish, and Finnish, people are well educated and don't fall for the most extreme woo (in very big numbers atleast) - mostly just the "normal" woo you encounter in "normal" people with regards to health-stuff etc. Haven't heard much of people talking to the dead, physics and things like that.

Although to be fair, we did find a submarine in our coastal waters at one time. Well, it ran aground actually.

I also had a visceral reaction to Ben Stein's moronic comments - but after a while I began thinking (always a dangerous thing). This must be what deeply religious people felt when they read Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens, Harris... I still think that "our" side has the better argument, but it's always interesting to see the world from the other guys' side.

As for the Swedish scholar who claimed that Atlantis was in Sweden (Olof Rudbeck), Steve may be interested to know that he also discovered and chartered the lymphatic system.

You are right about the submarine and some of it was probably true, but there was still alot of hysteria about it. Still it wasn't the best example I guess.

Its good to try to see the other viewpoint, just as you do when you ignore the argument and look at the reaction. Your example with Ben Stein is a good example, and I can relate to the feeling. However, my problem is the willful ignorance of facts and proof while being proud of it and calling it faith. That part I just cannot relate to - I wish people were rational beings and people like Ben Stein just didn't know better and needed to learn the facts. Yet clearly this isn't the case, they are lying, cheating and misrepresenting and that is infuriating. "Our side" is ready to discuss and change opinions if new proof and facts are found - which these people aren't.

Which is a point Steve often makes. Scolars may be an authority in one subject, but that does not make them an authority in all subjects.