SGU Episode 111

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SGU Episode 111
5th Sept 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 110                      SGU 112
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
BN: Bill Nye
Quote of the Week
There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling -absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.
Dan Barker
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Introduction

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

S: Hello & welcome to the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday September 5th, 2007, and this is Steven Novella, uh your host. Let me say that again. And this is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella.

B: Hey everybody.

S: Evan Bernstein

E: Hi everyone.

S: and Jay Novella

J: Hey guys.

S: Rebeca is on a cruse ship in Alaska.

J: With Randi.

S: She is with Randi, she is on the JREF Cruse, with Randy and some other prominent skeptics.

J: It's a booze cruise isn't it?

S: Well Rebecca is on it.

B: Right.

S: Apparently they are going to be doing some skeptical lectures at some point in time during the cruise.

E: Hopefully in the mornings.

B: That's a great cruise, I recommend it.

S: But she of course will be back with us next week.

E: I'm sorry, can I throw out that I wish everyone a happy teachers Day in India today?

J: Just in India?

S: Apparently you can.

E: Just in India, sorry, so everyone else has to remain ignorant, But uh in India Happy Teachers Day to all our India listeners.

S: Thank you Evan.

B: Do we have any?

J: Did we ever get an email from somebody in India, I don't even remember?

E: I believe we do, several.

S: I don't remember if we've ever gotten any emails from any listeners in India. Well if any of our listeners are from India send us a shout out to let us know that you're out there. This is our eleventy first episode.

E: I love that. A little tip of the hat to Tolkien.

S: Right, We have an excellent interview coming up later in the show with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

B: I can't wait for that

E: Yeah

News Items

Airline Sacrifices Goats (1:45)

S: Very good, but first let's do some news items. One news item that's been making the rounds this past week deals with the Nepal state run airline, who apparently sacrificed two goats to appease the Hindu sky God following technical problems with one of their Boeing 757 aircraft. So that was their response to the technical problems, to kill a couple of goats to appease the gods.

E: I wonder if it worked?

S: Well the plane didn't crash.

J: Do you think they have little like pen at the air port where they keep them there and raise them there?

S: Yeah, that would be efficient, you would keep goats right at the airport, sacrifice them as needed to the sky god.

E: Right next to the bar.

B: It dosent sound like something that is done very often, but wouldn't, after they sacrificed the goats,just wouldn't you have loved just to see the wing just fall off, just something like that happen.

E: While its on the runway.

B: Yeah, and nobody in it of course.

S: Actually I would like to see absolutely nothing happen, because anything will be interpreted as significant. Although nothing will be to, right.

E: But the Sky God!!

B: It's a win, win situation.

E: Think about that, think about back thousands of years when people were worshiping Zeus and Thor and whom ever elce, I mean this is what that smacks of, and its just incredible that people kinda really, they will take that seriously. I don't know what much more to say.

S: Every now and then something sticks out in the news where it's just a little bit of mid evil mentality popping into the 21st-century.

B: That's what I was thinking, after I read it my first though is what the hell year is it, come on.

E: Isn't it incredible, I mean in the face of this boeing 757 this magnificent feet of science and engineering, you are standing before it, the hundred years of aerodynamic study and flight study that went in to achieving this point in getting to this point of having this magnificent airplane, and you are sacrificing a goat to the sky god, is such a jux to position and contradiction, it's stark.

S: Yeah, just imagine.

J: Who makes the decision, did one pilot turn to the other and say " the plane dose not work, we must kill the goat". When does that happen?

S: I think it's probably someone above the pilot, only the highest officials can decide when the goats get slaughtered.

J: The guy in the tower? I mean, please help me Steve.

B: You wake up in the morning and uh, before you step in your car you sacrifice a rabbit, you know, you buy some lotto tickets, you sacrifice ten frogs, I mean you know.

J: Bob, 300 year from now, some complete jack ass is going to be taking a homeopathic remedy in a space ship going to Pluto.

S: Thats probably true.

B: Thats good Jay.

King Tut Exibit (4:40)

S: The next two news items also are thematically linked, almost in an ironic way. the first one deals with the King Tut exhibit. There has been some controversy over this exhibit, based upon the way that King Tut is being portrayed. There are some in the African American community who think that he is being made to look too caucasian, or too white, and to be historically arrurate he should have more african features, and this has become quit a bit of a social controversy. You know I'm alway interested in the intersection between culture, politics, and science. This is the kind of question that you would think would be pretty definitively answerable by science, and yet it gets turned in to a political, sort of hot button, question, or topic.