SGU Episode 350

Incomplete, see bottom of transcript for where to pick it up.

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Skeptical Rogues

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

Introduction

You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Wednesday March 28th 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: Hey guys

S: Evan Bernstein

E: Welcome to episode 350!

S: 350 that's right

E: three fitty

R: Hooray! A round number

S: Yeah, an arbitrarily round number

J: does that mean I can retire now?

S: if you want, Jay, you can retire whenever you want, man.

R: No!

J: I'll go another 300, OK let's go

E: Three fitty

S: and we're coming up on our seven year anniversary, a couple of months.

B: Holy crap

R: wow

E: I've gotta look up what to get you guys this year

This Day in Skepticism

R: Guess what today is!

J: Not your birthday

R: Jay is right, it is not my birthday

S: It's your un-birthday

R: No! On this date in 1981, March 31st, Indian American microbiologist Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty received the first ever patent for a living organism.

B: Cool

R: it was me! No, just kidding.

(laughter)

S: that explains a lot

R: it was right after I was born though, and that would have been epic. Uh, no he created a new species of oil eating bacteria called pseudomonas?

S: Pseudomonas

R: Pseudomonas?

S: Pseudomonas

R: I'm going to say Pseudomonas because it sounds better. Putida, which sounds filthy, which turns oil into simpler substances which can be eaten by aquatic life. He genetically engineered it because there are already four species of existing oil metabolisers, but they apparently competed with each other for the oil. So he made this new species that consumed oil an order of magnitude faster than the others. And it was a very interesting case because initially when he applied for the patent, it was denied, and then he appealed and the US court of customs and patent appeals overturned it. And then it went to the supreme court, and on March 17th 1980, the supreme court case was argued, June 16th 1980 the supreme court decided 5-4 in favour of Chakrabarty. And so on March 31st of the following year the patent was issued, and that paved the way for other genetically engineered micro-organisms and other things to be patented.

S: yeah, the issue was whether or not you could patent a living organism. And yeah he won that, that was a landmark case. Interestingly, how he made the organism was to plasmid transfer. There are examples in all of the domains, but bacteria especially can have part of their genetic information bound in these small circular usually transferable units called plasmids. That's how bacteria can exchange genetic information with each other, they can transfer antibiotic resistance, for example. So he took the oil eating genes from four different plasmids and he found a way to make a stable new plasmid thereby creating this new super oil eating bug. Pseudomonas Putida. And it is related to a lot of other species that do lots of neat things, you know, breaking down not just oil but also toxic chemicals, insecticides, it really can clean up the soil with all kinds of nasty chemicals in it. Some of them, however, can be human pathogens, so most of those are banned, you know, you can't really use those. The pseudomonus putida, however is not, it's a safe bacteria, so this is actually a really useful one.

B: Well, where the hell were they last year, I mean what's going on, that was so long ago, what the hell?

R: Well, they just don't work fast enough I guess. They're not efficient enough to take care of our large-scale disasters.

S: well, the use of bacteria in the deep horizon spill is complicated actually, first of all, there are a lot of different chemicals in crude oil, that were released from that spill, a lot of different types of molecules, and bacteria could eat some better than others. It's still controversial what impact bacteria had on biodegrading the oil spill and also there are concerns that bacterial overgrowth in the gulf can cause problems: health problems for people living on the coast, perhaps even depletion of oxygen in the waters, and other environmental effects, so they're not a magic bullet

E: we need to develop an organism that could eat up carbon emissions, wouldn't that be handy?

S: Yeah, they're called trees.

(laughter)

E: more trees!

R: zing!

E: we need, what eight times as many trees? 10? 12?

S: well, it's also just phytoplankton, it's just a matter of how much of it we have.

E: yeah.

R: I think that there was, speaking of things that can conveniently eat things for us, there was recently a plastic eating fungi that was found that you know, would obviously help a great deal in terms of the huge amounts of waste we produce.

E: he's a fun guy.

News Items

Tennessee Anti-Evolution Bill

S: down in Tennessee though, they're not having such a great time, I understand they're having some creationist shenanigans going on down there.

R: correct, they are. Yeah, last week I talked about the news of an anti-science bill in New Hampshire, and this week's story is another anti-science bill that's passed through the state senate so far of Tennessee. The crux of it is that the creationists are continuing to sneak their creationism into science classrooms, this time with a bill that would protect the jobs of teachers, and I quote "teach the strengths and weaknesses of topics that" I quote "can cause controversy" And these topics include global warming, human cloning, and of course our old favourite, evolution. Of course, they're not talking about scientific controversy because you would have to be pretty ignorant to think that there's any scientific opposition to the theory of evolution. No, what they're actually talking about is their own made-up religious controversy in which they're having trouble marrying a literal interpretation of the bible with reality. So the really amazing thing is the language that they use in this bill to justify themselves. They're actually co-opting our language. Let me read you a part of it. An important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students to develop critical thinking skills necessary to become intelligent, productive and scientifically informed citizens. That sounds pretty great, right? We agree with that. The bill states, though that when it comes to controversial subjects, and I quote "some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects. Those subjects being evolution, cloning, global warning. One of the big issues that's been brought up by opponents of this bill, opponents that include every scientific advocacy group ever, pretty much. They rightly point out that it's the job of state science standards to make sure teachers have the tools they need to present materials, not the job of a bunch of conservative Christian law makers who wrongfully think that they're the ones who should be insulted when we point out that they're related to monkeys. So it is yet another one of those bills that is in the wedge strategy of creationists, you know, change up the language a little bit in order to protect teachers who will go ahead and start teaching creationism as a way to teach the weaknesses of evolution. And once they let that through, they'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing until they've got creationism recognised as some sort of official topic for science classrooms. So, people in Tennessee, please let your representatives know how you feel about this. As I said it's passed the senate, it has gone to the house now.

S: It passed the house this week.

R: well, shit (laughs). There's still hope. There's still hope that the governor may go ahead and veto this, he did make some rumblings about how this should be up to the science standards, not lawmakers.

E: hey!

R: So, yeah.

S: yeah, it sounds like he's making a legal justification for vetoing it, not because it's the wrong thing to do, or not a scientific justification, it's just not in the purview of the legislature to step on the board of education, it's their job to do this. But that may just be a politically acceptable way for him to veto a bill he knows is bad. It's also a bad bill, the science aside, a lot of people are critical of it because the only net effect of this bill is to create million-dollar lawsuits on the back of the taxpayers, this is just wasting Tennessee taxpayers' money, because it's going to generate lawsuits that they're going to lose because we already have enough precedents to know how the higher courts are going to rule in cases like this, and it's utterly transparent what they're trying to do here. But you've got to love the long term strategy here. They make this fake controversy over evolution, and then they say, oh and because we made it controversial, now we have to pass laws to water down the teaching, to teach the contravener essentially. But really what the sweet-spot goal of this bill is to provide cover for teachers to teach creationism in the public school, so that the hope is more science teachers who are creationists will have the courage to do just that, to present creationist arguments without worrying about being fired. Because they'll say, hey I'm protected by this bill, I'm just doing what it mandates, to teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

J: it's our role as critical thinkers in the community to point out these things because you could just imagine how this would just go right over the heads of our politicians, they'd never find this, or discover this on their own, right Steve?

S: I don't know, I guess it depends on how savvy the politician is, but yeah I mean it's certainly, the fact that there's a sceptical community and specifically the National Centre for Science Education and Genie Scott who keeps an eye on these things, we have to be right there and say Nope, this is what this bill is all about, this is a stealth creationism bill, this is the goal, this is why it's anti-science, this is all the things that are wrong with it. It certainly makes it more likely that politicians will get the message. But let's more on. Bob, you're going to tell us, or give us an update about thinking about the origin of the Earth's moon.

Origin of the Moon

B: Yeah, the moon was in the news again this week, it seems this past year it's been in a bunch of times. Recently scientists seem to have obliterated the most popular moon formation theory by finding new compelling evidence that the moon is not made up of bits of Earth and another planet that hit us 4 billion years ago.

J: or cheese, bob

B: or cheese, yeah, they debunked that last year, Jay. For years now, the prevailing theory of the formation of the moon was the giant impact hypothesis, a Mars sized planet called Thea hit us, spewing debris from both planets into orbit around the decimated Earth. Is spew the right word there? I kind of like it, I"m going to go with it. After a century or so, this debris kind of gravitationally coalesced into the moon that we know and love. So there was little research that cast doubt on that scenario. Even a weird oxygen isotope comparison couldn't really put a dent in it. Different isotopes of an element like oxygen for example, have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons in its nucleus, years ago they compared oxygen isotopes from Earth and those found in moon rocks and they discovered that the ratio of isotopes were the same. So that means that when they compared the ratio between say oxygen 16, 17 and 18, those three different isotopes, they were the same on Earth and the Moon. This seems odd though, because normally you'd think that since the planet Thea comprised perhaps 40% of the moon, the ratios would be different. And that ratio is important because it's kind of like a fingerprint, every planetary body out there has a unique genesis, that they formed in very unique circumstances, and so their ratios of the various isotopes would be different, so...

S: So bob, on that point though, I understand why that's the case, but you could also think, well everything in the solar system formed from the same cloud of dust and gas, why would the isotope ratios be so different for one hunk of rock that formed one place in the solar system and another hunk of rock that formed some place else? But from remembering correctly, I believe it has to do with the distance from the sun, you know the relative gravitational strengths and etc. do actually create this sort of layering out of different isotopes

B: right

S: and so the exact location in that cloud does affect the isotope ratios, right?

B: yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I mean you're not going to have a completely homogeneous mixture in that cloud, and that's pretty much the thinking of why there should be some difference, some detectable difference, but which they really didn't find when they compared these oxygen isotopes, but you know those crafty scientists, they explain this away, they explained away this apparent anomaly saying that it's very possible that Earth's oxygen mixed with the oxygen in the orbiting magma soon after the collision, so nobody really had a problem with that, and that's fine, it makes a lot of sense. But now, however, they found another isotope ratio that can't be explained away so easily, and this time it wasn't oxygen, but titanium. SO what they did was they compared titanium 50 with titanium 47. The ration between the 50 and the 47 is the same for the Earth and the moon and this is why essentially the old Earth collision theory, the big impact theory may actually now be dead. For oxygen, exchanging is possible as I just said, there is a mechanism that might explain it, but for titanium a similar type of exchange is essentially impossible, and that's pretty much, as far as I could tell, due to its very high boiling point. So this is an anomaly that really stands out and really is at odds with the current theory. So how do we then explain that the geochemistry of the moon seems identical to the Earth? So let's look at a few of the earlier Moon formation that were bandied about years ago.

S: well bob, before we... I'm not sure I'm ready to get rid of the impact theory here just on one line of evidence. Is it possible this is just sampling error, or the idea that this is just too small a sample to make a generalisation from?

B: you know, I thought about that, and I'm just going with the scientists here on this one, thinking that that's just such an obvious issue, that they had to account for it by taking moon rocks that were gathered at different points of the moon, and yeah sure we're going along with the assumption that they believe that Thea comprised 40% of the moon, and that could potentially be incorrect which would impact this, but to me Steve...

S: but couldn't they have sampled it from one of the 60% that's from earth?

B: yeah, I'm sure that's possible, but I thought about it and that just seemed like that's too obvious for them to have missed so I'm just kind of going with the scientists on that one

S: yeah, but how do you know how accurately the reporting is reflecting the real consensus of opinion, or have they just talked to one guy? You know what I mean? We don't know that the reporting that you're talking about is really a consensus of scientific opinion, or is it just some of, a narrow opinion that whoever is doing the reporting is presenting as...

B: well I've read some of the abstract and that seems to be the angle they're going for here, so yeah maybe it's a little premature and there won't be a consensus on this, maybe there's something that they're missing, sure that's possible. But it seems like a significant blow to this theory that has held sway for so long.

S: yeah.

B: and definitely, yeah, more research, let's get some more lines of evidence going, let's look at some other isotope ratio comparisons, absolutely

S: yeah

B: so maybe I'm being a little bit too definitive in this.

S: it just seems a little early to toss out a perfectly good theory because of one piece of evidence that doesn't seem to fit.

B: yeah, sure I'd have to agree with that, so let's see how this plays out before we make more definitive statements

S: well what are some of the other theories

B: well there's the capture hypothesis that says that the moon came in from outside the solar system or other parts of the solar system and that the earth pretty much captured it, and that's really not viable because if this was a distinct body that did not co-mingle with the Earth, then the isotopes should be obviously different, which they're not, and also I recently discovered that the Earth, for this to be a viable idea, the Earth would need a hugely extended atmosphere to dissipate the energy like the moon passing by, so that theory I guess fairly quickly, maybe not quickly but it's pretty much not highly regarded any more for these obvious reasons. There's also, this one was good, an ice collision, you know if it wasn't a planetary body, it could have been a gargantuan chunk of ice that hit the earth, the evidence would then have evaporated away, there wouldn't be much left of it to mess with the isotope ratio. I don't hear much about that theory though, I don't think it's held in very hard regard. There's the spin theory, I remember this one as a kid. That there was no collision but the rapidly spinning Earth spewed chunks of itself into orbit, but the problem with that is that this would require the Earth to have too great of an initial spin, that they really can't explain so that's pretty much not believed any more. There's the co-formation theory, that the Earth and the Moon just were created at the same time and I remember seeing animations of this theory, how they're just kind of these spinning balls and gas forming together, so they're just companions, twins that were just created the same time. But I think that the Achilles heal of this theory is that there's so little metallic iron in the moon that that theory is kind of defunct. This latest theory could perhaps suggest another hypothesis or another theory, maybe called the collision spin theory, which is kind of like a fusion of the collision and the spin ideas, and the idea here is that a glancing blow from a planetary body, a blow that would have the effect of causing the Earth to spin much faster but not really, I guess it could be such a glancing blow that there really wasn't any major exchange of material, and this other body just kind of, for the most part just kind of went on its way after slightly impacting the earth, if that's really even possible. And because it increased the rotational speed of the Earth, then you'd segue into the spin theory where this piece of the Earth is just extruded away and becomes the moon, so I think that's kind of like the preliminary hypothesis they might be going with that would kind of work with this discovery. But of course there are issues with this new idea as well that need to be worked out, such as the angular momentum. If the Earth had such a great angular momentum that a chunk of it could spin away, where did that angular momentum go? How was it finally slowed down to what we're seeing now, beyond the tidal breaking that we might see from the moon. So yeah, we'll keep an eye on this and we'll see Steve, we'll see what other scientists say about this, and maybe there's some fatal flaw that doesn't seem apparent to me. Or it might just completely supplant the old giant impact hypothesis and they'll just have to kind of work out the details of this new hypothesis.

S: yeah it sounds like there is no one good theory then. Right? I mean so there are significant problems. The impact hypothesis was the prevailing idea because it actually was the best fit to the data that we have, now we have one piece of data that is problematic, but we're still not left with any really good replacement theory.

B: yeah, unless...

S: another reason why I wouldn't toss it out so quickly.

B: yeah, unless this whole collision-spin theory has legs. Yeah, who knows, I mean that's... what would it be like? I'd like to see simulations of what a real glancing blow would be like? Could you actually speed up the spin of something the size of the Earth but still go on your merry way and not really interact much with the material? And to such an extent that maybe there's only 1 or 2% of the Thea planet mixed in with the Moon, and then that would be a good explanation, or maybe it's as high as 10 or 15%. But 40% which is what some of the latest figures I've seen, is fairly significant, and you'd think that if you have a good enough sample, which I'm not sure how many samples they used, if you've got a good enough sample, you think you'd find some hint of those isotope discrepancies.

S: ok, interesting. Evan, I want to move from the Moon to Mars.

Mystery Cloud on Mars

E: well, you're going to need a company to help you do that, Steve. Sorry, I don't think I could be of much service with you.

S: Get your ass to Mars!

(laughter)

J: that's cool though, Evan before you start, do you think that some day there's going to be a moving company that will help you move from planet to planet?

E: well, of course, Planet Express!

(laughter)

E: give it about 1000 years, we've seen the future. Futurama reference for all those who don't know. But Mars, yes, Mars is in the news this week. We just (and when I say we, the Earth) recently lapsed Mars in our revolution around the Sun so we're actually relatively close to Mars but we're fast pulling away. This recent close encounter we have every two years or so we have with Mars has given amateur astronomers a chance to get their telescopes and point them in the direction of the Red Planet. And they've been capturing some very good, very clear, very cool images of Mars, which you can find, you know, just about everywhere on the web. But a few photographs in particular made some headlines this past week. Wayne Jayski who is an amateur astronomer from Westchester, Pennsylvania has been photographing Mars all during this time, the past week or two, and he noticed something actually rather odd in some of his photographs. There is a blob, this sort of bulge that he captured at the edge of the planet. We're not exactly sure exactly what that blob is. Lots of theories out there as to what it possibly could be. Phil Plate seems to think of all the options out there, that it's most likely an atmospheric event, in other words a cloud, some sort of high atmosphere cloud formations that have taken place on the planet, which actually has been recorded before back in the 1990s and around 2003 as well, the captured some similar pictures of Mars and this particular phenomenon. But it is rare, and we still really don't have a good handle on exactly what it is. Is it a gas cloud? Is it a dust cloud? Is it an ice cloud? And how exactly might the trick of light playing off that cloud be either skewing the picture, so what we're actually seeing in these photographs may not be the most accurate representation, but these clouds, based on measurements would be as high as they're saying, 150km above the surface of Mars. Which for a planet with an extremely thin atmosphere is pretty remarkable.

S: yeah so one question is, can just a weather phenomenon produce a cloud that high? With so big and with such an altitude, and we really don't know. Is the bottom line.

E: We don't know, and one of the interesting things about the photographs that made the news this week obviously is that well fist of all, it was an amateur astronomer that took photos, although it's since been correlated with other people who have also taken photos during the course of the week, but Wayne was the first one to sort of notice this anomaly. And got the community, both the amateur and the professional astronomical communities taking a closer look at this, and they've actually pointed the thermal emission imaging systems which is one of the instruments on the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which is one of NASA's orbiters on Mars right now, so NASA's taken an interest in what Wayne has discovered and they're starting to conduct some tests, they're going back and looking at the data that they've collected from Mars over the past few weeks and they're trying to also get a better idea of exactly what this is.

S: an alternate theory I heard is that something smacked into Mars, that this is basically the plume of a little meteor strike.

E: that is one of the theories, other theories include aurora, some people are suggesting that aurora are taking place on Mars, which is apparently possible, there is evidence to suggest that that is happening on Mars, even though the atmosphere is much thinner than Earth, right, that maybe is electrically charged, but it does have a magnetic field unto itself and it can reflect these charged particles in the form of an aurora, but not too many people... they're kind of playing that down as one of the less likely scenarios.

B: well they could tie that directly to solar activity. If the solar activity matches the timing of this phenomenon, then I would think it would be more likely but I wonder if anyone's done that.

E: and some folks think that this could just be a rare trick of lighting.

S: it seems to be rotating with Mars though, when you look at the little quicky animation there.

E: and what some people are proposing is that this is taking place in an area of Mars in which you have some of the higher elevations of land formations and what you're seeing is the light hitting that crest.

J: So there's enough wind or air movement to actually kick up some dust on Mars?

S: oh yeah!

E: very large storms, huge relative to the size of the planet

J: I saw a picture not too long ago of a dust devil on the surface, did you guys see that?

S: yeah, those are not uncommon on Mars. Yeah, Mars can get wracked with planet-wide dust storms that last for months.

E: wow

S: they don't tell you about that in the brochure you know. Oh man, we came to Mars during dust season again.

(laughter)

S: well, thanks Evan.

Newage Mountain

S: Now we're going to move on to a little bit of lighter news, or we like to do some light-hearted news every week. Jay, you're going to tell us why new-age hippies are flocking to a mountain in France.

J: yeah, so there's a small town in Southern France called Bougarach? Boogarach?

R: what?

J: what is it?

R: Because of my French background.

J: Boogarach! Boogarach! How do you pronounce that, Steve?

S: Boogarash?

R: Try it again.

J: there's a small village in Southern France called

R: what's it called?

J: Boogarach, I believe.

R: that's not what it's called.

J: I'm a guy that cannot pronounce French words at all! Bugarach! Bugarachie, how about that?

(laughter)

J: a population of about 200. And this town has the fortune of having many myths about the outlying area and a mountain that's right around the corner from the town. The mountain is called Pic de Bugarach.

S: literally the peak of that town, right?

J: that's right. And some of the myths are that the mountain has a strange magnetic force, that it has a concealed alien base, that there's access to an underground facility, and quite a few other things that people were making claims about the surrounding area. And there's a growing number of people, and I've read that anywhere between two and twenty thousand people are now making their way to the town or I think those numbers were estimates of how many people are actually there.

S: my favourite myth, by the way, about the mountains, which has nothing to do with the rest of the story that we're going to tell, but there's the myth that the mountain is somehow upside-down. Did you hear that one, Jay? Like the top of the mountain was somehow taken off, flipped upside down and put back down on top of the mountain.

E: what!?

J: yeah, because there's like an area where it's flat on the top or whatever, that's something I read as well, I did read that.

E: that's one of the...

J: My favourite myth about the mountain is that there was a Nazi archaeological dig that was conducted there and they think there were some shenanigans going on with, remember the Nazis were trying to, you know there was rumours about magic and whatnot.

E: opening up the arc and everything

S: oh yeah

R: and their faces like melted

S: they were obsessed with the occult

E: They got what for!

J: so we've got all of this wonderful mystery percolating and all that and there are a growing number of people that are trying to get to the town and that are at the town and it's turning into a little cult of people there that believe that this is one of the few places, or sacred places that will be saved during the upcoming Mayan calendar predicted apocalypse.

E: I agree, it is one of the safe places, along with the rest of the planet.

J: rationalists know and understand that this Mayan calendar hubbub is just the end of another 5125 year cycle and the end of the world is not coming and there's nothing that anyone has legitimately predicted like a meteor coming to destroy the earth or anything, there's nothing tangible that's going to do this, so of course it has to be aliens or magic or whatever. Now, of course, and as Steve pointed out so eloquently in his blog, these people have also wrapped up the idea that they're going to be saved, which is awesome! They believe that the aliens are going to come and they're going to save them when the end of the world happens on January 21st.

S: December 21st.

J: No, I'm predicting it's January 21st.

S: are you pushing it into 2013, are you?

J: so anyway...

(laughter)

E: you're getting a lot of pilgrims over there, Jay.

J: they're calling the mountain the alien garage, I guess with the idea that the aliens come here and use it as a way-station or whatever, but for some reason the aliens are going to come and they're going to be picked up. So one of the guys that's there said something kinda funny that I'm going to read to you. The apocalypse we believe is the end of a certain world and the beginning of another, a new spiritual world. The year 2012 is the end of a cycle of suffering and Bugarach is one of the major Chakras of the Earth. A place

R: Bugarach!

J: Bugarach... come on... I just gave up on pronunciation long ago.

R: alright yeah.

J: is one of the major Chakras of the Earth, a place devoted to welcoming the energies of tomorrow. I mean this almost sounds like it was written by Disney World.

S: yeah, it's blah blah, new age nonsense, blah blah. Right, I mean it's just it's like spin the wheel of new age words and whatnot, in fact, you could make magnetic poetry out of these new age words and just throw them up on your refrigerator and come up with something as coherent as that.

Skeptic Word Magnets

R: you mean like the awesome sceptic word magnets that SGU is now producing?

E: I heard about those

S: Oh you think I brought up the concept of word magnets by coincidence?

R: yeah well that was truly an amazing coincidence that you brought that up, and if people were to go to skepticalrobot right now and go to the SGU section of the store, they will find that they can purchase for the low, low price of $16, more than 200... 200 words that they can stick on the refrigeration and create beautiful sceptical art.

B: remember 200 words means 1100 phonemes.

R: yes, thanks Bob

B: you're welcome

R: yes, you can create such classic sceptical phrases as to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe, or science of fiction, of the plural of anecdote is not evidence, or bird vs monkey, or Steve debunked homeopathy.

J: Steve believes in yeti.

R: you can say that. Uh no, you can't say that. You can say Steve believes in bigfoot.

J: there you go.

R: you can make Steve believe all sorts of things. Yes, all our names are in it.

J: including Perry too.

R: as well as a lot of SGU related things. Perry is in it as well, yeah.

E: yeah.

R: and if you purchase a set, then you can make your best awesome sceptical magnetic literature attempt, take a photo of it, and email it to us info@theskepticsguide.org and we will sort through the entries, pick the five that we like the best that we will read on air and the very best one will receive a free skeptics guide t-shirt.

S: awesome!

R: so yeah, go ahead and buy your set at skepticalrobot.com and send us a photo by May 1st.

J: and I'm going to pick my favourite. You will win nothing, but you will get praised by me.

(laughter)

R: and isn't that enough?

(laughter)

Who's That Noisy?

S: Evan, we had a very interesting who's that noisy for last week. It was a challenge to our listeners. Why don't you tell us about it?

E: We put the challenge to our listeners to come up with the best sceptical words uttered by a cartoon character in all of cartoonist. A new word I just invented. And our listeners did not disappoint. There were lots of entries, lots of suggestions and thank you all, everyone who did play along and what we've done is put together for you the three most popular ones.

B: Can I say my favourite first?

E: sure, Bob

B: this is a quote from Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory. "Science, the only true magic."

R: That's beautiful

B: isn't it?

E: poetic, you could have almost have arranged that in magnetic words on your fridge, but I digress. So I'm going to play for you the third most popular cartoon phrase uttered, having to do with scepticism that was sent in by you, the listeners, let's take a listen.

That makes no sense, sometimes you just have to believe in things even when you can't figure them out.

I will not believe in anything I cannot explain.

S: That sounds like My Little Pony.

E: My Little Pony, yes!

J: how kick-ass is that, that kids are hearing that?

R: I think it's mostly men in their 20s.

(laughter)

J: how kick-ass is that, that men in their 20s are hearing that?

E: it's interesting, of all the cartoons, you know, My Little Pony, I didn't know that would even register with people, but within the sceptical community it has a bit of a following I guess, in a sense.

R: yeah

E: and rightly so, because, in more than one of their episodes they sprinkle in, you know, some good thoughts, some good critical thinking notes for the kids. And whether they know it or not...

S: We heard from one of the writers, said it was very deliberate. He's a sceptic.

E: And thank goodness they're doing that. So.

S: That's number three.

E: My Little Pony is number three. Now, for number 2, is from one of our favourite shows, Futurama, chock-full of good scepticism, all over the place. Matt Groenig is definitely one of the good guys, he's definitely in the sceptical camp.

R: You've got a degree in Bologna!

S: You've got a degree in Bologna... that's my line, hey.

R: Sorry! Sorry, beat you to it.

E: But the one that the listeners pointed out the most, or came up most frequently from the show Futurama was the debate that Professor Farnsworth had defending the pro-evolution stance vs Dr. Banjo, an orang-utan who is also a creationist. So I'm going to go ahead and play for you the first little part, and then I'm going to follow it up with another bit so you can kind of get the gist a little bit.

Dr. Banjo: Why has no one found the missing link between modern humans and ancient apes?

Professor Farnsworth: We did find it, it's called Homo Erectus.

Dr. Banjo: Then you have proven my case, sir. For no one has found the link between apes and this Homo Erectus.

Professor Farnsworth: Yes they have, it's called Homo Habilis.

E: and it progresses from there, and it continues to go, and it goes, in fact Rebecca and I are going to kind of play out the rest of the dialogue of that scene for you. Rebecca, are you going to take on the role of Banjo or Farnsworth?

R: I will be Banjo

E: Very good, and it picks up with Banjo saying:

R: Ah hah! But no one has found the missing link between ape and this so called Homo Habilis.

E: Yes they have, says Farnsworth, it's called Astrolopithicus Africanus.

R: Ho ho, I've got you now!

E: And then there's a little transition to the near future. The harp music...

R: Fair enough, but where then is the missing link between apes and this Darwinius Masili? Answer me that, Professor.

E: *sigh* ok, granted, that one missing link is still missing, but just because we haven't found it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

R: Pischaw. Things don't exist simply because you believe in them. Thus sayeth the almighty creature in the sky.

E: End scene. Well done Dr. Banjo.

R: Thank you, I was Dr. Banjo in my high school production of that episode of Futurama, so I got a lot of practice.

E: As the understudy or did you...

R: no, I was the lead. That was me.

E: Perfect, so. Fit like a glove.

R: It's my orang-utan like features that made me perfect for the part.

E: But the number 1 sceptical phrase uttered by a cartoon character comes to us courtesy of (of course) the Simpsons. Our dear, dear friend Lisa Simpson. And I've cut this one up into two little segments. We're going to listen to the first segment first and the second segment second, isn't that novel? Here we go, take it away.

Homer: Aaah not a bear in sight, the bear patrol must be working like a charm.

Lisa: That's specious reasoning dad.

Homer: Thank you honey.

(laughter)

E: now it continues, the dialogue does continue right from there, which is the perfect finale for this. Here we go, take it away Lisa.

Lisa: by your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.

Homer: oooh how does it work?

Lisa: it doesn't work

Homer: uh huh.

Lisa: it's just a stupid rock.

Homer: uh huh.

Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?

E: and then Homer pauses, thinks about it, and says to Lisa: Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

(laughter)

S: Of course.

R: It's a classic.

E: classic.

R: You know, Lisa was the inspiration for junior sceptic magazine.

B: Yeah, because she was reading it in one episode right?

R: There wasn't a junior sceptic until

E: That's right, in one of the very early episodes of the Simpsons.

S: So what are we doing for this week, Evan?

E: This week, we have the classic Who's That Noisy. I'm going to play a noise and you, the listeners are going to try to guess exactly what it is you are hearing. Without further adieu, did I pronounce that right, Rebecca, I hear you're French.

R: no, you didn't but...

(laughter)

S: close enough.

E: The Jay Novella school of French language

J: France!

R: ado is not French.

E: Here we go

(sound of a Tesla coil)

E: OK

S: cool

E: info@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. We'd love to hear from you guys on Who's That Noisy and anything else that's on your mind. And join our forums, sguforums.com and our moderators do an awesome job of keeping that site up, running and squeaky clean for your entertainment. So hats off to all of them. Good luck everyone.

S: Great, thanks Evan.

stopped at 41:40. Taking a break now if someone would like to continue.