SGU Episode 349

<Transcription currently in Progress by TimM>

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• Show Notes
• Podcast
• Forum Topic

Skeptical Rogues

• S: Steven Novella
• B: Bob Novella
• R: Rebecca Watson
• J: Jay Novella
• E: Evan Bernstein

Introduction

(0:00)

S: Hello and welcome to the skeptics guide to the universe. Today is wednesday march 21st 2012 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella;

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson;

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella;

J: *Jewish Accent* What is this? Pod-casting?

S: ...and Evan Bernstein

E: Good evening ladies and gentleman, how's everyone?

R: *Unintelligble*

S: Good, Fine and dandy.

E: Now this was some winter huh?

S: This is my kind of winter.

E: We barely had 'any' snow this year in New England, it was in the 50's for a large part of the winter in southern New England which is unheard of.

S: I love the vernal equinox becase it means the next six months the sun is in the upper half of it's course through the sky.

?B: I hope all of you have released your white owls.

S: Well anyway rebecca what else is special about this day?

Segment 1: This day in skepticism

(0:58)

March 24, 1989: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

[1]

R: Well, this day marks the anniversary of a quite horrific and march 24th 1989 was the day that the Exxon Valdex spilled oil into prince williams sow.

S: You just can't let it go can you Rebecca?

R: No, no me and the otters... pretty pissed about it still.

?E: One drunk sea captain, it helps(you know?), guides the boat into the low into the shoals and he pays for it for the rest of his life.

R: I think, apparently that's a... apparently that's a bit of a myth, the captain apparently was drunk but was not at the helm. The third mate was, and on the list of things what went wrong the biggest ones seems to be that the radar for detecting possible collisions had been broken for nearly a year. Also...

?J: And the captain was too drunk to know it. Apparently.

S: We'll get to that eventually.

R: And apparently all of the crew was severely overworked and exhausted and had been for quite some time. So those were identified as being the main causes why it ended up striking a reef and spilling up to possibly seven hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil. It's not however...

E: Think of all the cars and furnaces that it would have provided heat and energy for. It's very sad.

R: Yeah, despite how devastating that oil spill was, it's not even in the top ten worst oil spills of all time. It 'was' the worst one in the US up until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. But yeah it's kinda crazy to think that there are oils spills happening all the time and some of them are much much worse than the Exxon Valdex. Yeah, there's a happy thought for you. The ship itself was recently auctioned off, actually. Just the tanker, just this week it was sold for scrap so apparently it was renamed the "Oriental Niceity"

S: Mmm hmm?

R: I guess as some way to trick people into to thinking it was err...

?B: For real? Oh my gosh.

?J: Might as well call it the happy xxx, what the hell?

S: The little nicenty?! That's odd. I've a funny Exxon Valdex story, i was in Epcot Centre in Disney world shortly after that oil spill and to the dinosaur exhibit was, I guess, funded by Exxon and before you get to see the dinosaurs, there's essentially a big commercial for Exxon. At one point they have this aerial shot of an oil tanker going through a harbor and they go: "The beautiful Exxon Valdex..." 'Course everyone starts laughing 'cause this is like right after the disaster they hadn't updated the ride yet.

?E: Time to update the rides...

?: DOH

R: A little embarrassing. Here's my question; I've always heard people call it the Exxon Val-deese but I don't understand why they pronounce it Val-deese, when it's obviously Valdez.

S: I don't know I'm just slavishly following what I hear.

R: Yeah I don't know, I think it's weird.

S: But at least we can have our super hero magical bracelets to make it all better right jay?

?B: Nice segway

R: That was a good segway Steve.

S: You know It kinda takes away from it when you say it's a good segway.

R: I know that's why it's funny, and every single time, Steve, you will never be able to do a segway without us calling attention to it. This is your curse.

Segment 2: News Items

(4:39)

Superhero Pseudoscience

• http://colantotte.com

?J: Steve jumped right into it, I wanted to loosen up a little bit before we say bad things about Marvel, 'cause there's some good things about Marvel like, you know I think that for super hero movies they've done a great job you know for the most part I've liked all of them, and you know ,the Avengers movie is coming out and I'm really psyched to see it, its totally right in my sweet spot. I mean I love super heroes i love like you know science fictiony stuff like that. So it really was disappointing to find out that marvel and probably even more involved is the production company that they're using, the marketing company that they've hired for the avengers film, is sadly has, is selling some crazy wacky merchandise. So they're selling a magic bracelet a 'real' magic bracelet. Ala Powerband type BS.

?B: As oppossed to those fake magic bracelets?

S: They're not a toy, they're making actual claims for it.

?J: Yeah they are, here I'll get into some of the details here, the limited edition Magtitan Neo Legend has a carbon fibre surface finished with a coat of transparent resin that yields an attractive stylish design.

S: Oh I thought you were going to say transparent aluminum. That would have been impressive.

?J: A 100mT 1000 Gaussferrite permenant magnets arranged in colantotte's unique alternating north south polarity orientation which is

?: oooh

?: unique!

?J: They've trademarked A-N-S-P-O. ANSPO trademark.

R: I'm holding out for the east-west polarity.

?: Yeah i'm there too.

S: They're saying because they have alternating strips of magnets with the north-south polarity alternating, and that's supposed to be unique to this, that's exactly how you make a refrigerator magnet.

?J: Now wait a minute, what are you accusing them of?

S: That's how the refrigerator magnets have a very you know, narrow, of depth but for relativley strong for the power of the magnets used, attraction right? That's why like when you pull a refigerationg magnet off of the refigerator it's really strong over a very short distance but they're very quickly gives way

drops off

that's because they have alternating strips of north and south, you know of poles in the magnet.

yeah but steve is a referigeratior magnet made of adimantium, i don't think so?

I don't think so

A really good refrigerator magnet

Steve you can say what you will, put it down, but each limited editon magnite comes in a special limited edition package commerating marvels avengers movie. So of course it's works, it works steve you gotta buy this ghitnk.

cause the eavengers are real.

Now i saw something I'm perusing the ah, website and i have to admit the design of it is pretty cool, but you know go around the website and i was nosing around the SGU forums and they were chit chatting about it and they came up with a couple of interesting things. Somebody on our forums said thatthis is basicly proven to work in japan. like they have real medical benifit in japan. I couldnt find any proof of that so if anybody does i'd be intersting to read it for myself but they do have on the website is of course they have first hand comments by professional atheletes.

S: oh here we go.

?J: THe magntite neo legend is collin totts finest gear, the combination of titanium and carbon fibre is great, plus it's been created specifically to commeratate marvel's avenger movie. Two things! Two comments ready? One; That guy did not write that, he did not say that.

Oh no!

if that guy walks arond talking like that, he needs help

Don't you love it when anecdoes like that are written in ad-copy? Right. It's so obviously wirten by som sales guy, and it's supposed to be a spontaneous indorsement or anectdote from sombrbody. You know what i mean it's so transparent.

steve pretend i'm rory micleroy and ask me about that bracelet i'm wearing?

Hey can you tell everyoenb about tha tbarclet your' wearing

the magtight neo legend is collin totls finest gear, the combination of pure titanium and carbon fibre is breat. yeah right.

R: That's really natural.

I thinky rory has a scottish accent.

don't even

if memory serves

The magtigte neo legent is colin tots finest gear.

R: What was that?

I'll take ? for four hundred.

i think you just invented a new accent that's never been heard of before.

yeah it hink it was just shouting. it was like a klingon variant

Noises.

SO anyway the second thing from that guy's endorsment tha tmakes me shudder is he says i can't wait to go see this movie with my mates to watch collin totes magtite neo legend in action. Does this mean it's in the movie? is it in the movie marvel?

Seriously

Oh god.

I guess soo

SOmeone had to

You gotta give it to 'em, i mean it's pretty brilliant, having a magic bracelet be on a super hearo i mean, right?

Yeaaah?

The marketing is good, the marketing idea is good, espcially becaues most people iwll probably buy into it, even if it's just because it looks good but you know, it's very..

its better than those green lantern rights.

Laughing

i have two of those

It's a sad state of affairs when a compay like marvel a copmany which produces fantasy, you know, they're actually,

they're still doing it

they're morphong to relatity here, yo jknow lets cash in on the fact that we write about magic and sell magic.

Yep. So I'm a little twigged at marvel righ now.

What has this world come to.

Paying the bills

Jay on the website it shows a picture of the bracet and underneath is says the superheros secret.

Yeah

Oh wow really that's the secret huh? Two little magnets on their writes, that's where it does it.

We should... we should try that..

It's a secret

SO you're saying it doesnt work jay? Can we agree that DC maybe has taken a notch up due to this.

J: Yeah absolutley, it comes out april first, i couldnt find any prciening i bet you it's gunna be in the ^60 to 100 dolllar range?

APril first really?

April first.

Hmmm.

Well what do you think do yo uthink the whole thing is a hoax?

SOme thign hoaxy.

I dont think so and i'll tell you why, the company that procdueces the bracelet i researched them, they make allot of other BS stuff, the negatie ion crap and all that stuff.

(10:54)

High Altitude Skydiving

• [www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17399985 www.bbc.co.uk]

S: Alll rith well lets move on, we've a bit of a folloup to a previosu discussion we had frazer kane and pamela gay are on this show a few weks ago, we talked about he up comming attempted world record breaking high skydive. High altitdue sky dive from x x, and there's a discussion and bit of a news update, the news up date is that he completed a test jump recently he jumped from 71,500 ft or 22Km above new mexico, landing ssafely 8 minutes later. Although this is only a test jump, that puts him in the top three! In terms of the highest altitude skydives ever. This is a preperation for his planned jump later this year in which he will break the world record. He's planning to jump from 120,000 feet, so the current record stands at 102,800 ft in 1960 by Jo kettingger who was a US airforce kernal at the time, when we were talking about bom gartners planned jump on the last episode we mentioned the fact that it's inherintly dangerous to jump from such a high altitude because of the velocities involved and that kettingger during his jump in 1960 actually spun out of control, blacked out, and didn't regain conceionsness until after his shute had automatically deployed. so when i was reasearching this for this piece, I found out that that's sorta true but one thing we didn't mention is that was, that occured on the first of kettingers three jumps this was the excelsior mission, is waht it was called, tehre was excoesior 1 2 and three.

(12:48)Excelsoior

yearh the third one was the one that was