SGU Episode 361

This is the transcript for the latest episode and it is not yet complete. Please help us complete it! Add a Transcribing template to the top of this episode before you start so that we don't duplicate your efforts.

This episode needs: transcription, proofreading, formatting, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Monday June 11th 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: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Make it so!

This Day in Skepticism (0:26)

June 16 - Captain Picard Day

• http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/06/16/captain-picard-day/

S: Why do you say that, Evan?

E: I don't know, why do I say that?

R: Well maybe because today is Captain Picard day, apparently.

B: For real!?

S: Captain Picard Day?

B: Who decided that?

R: Apparently someone on Evan's facebook page decided that.

B: Ah.

E: (laughs) They did. Sent me the link and everything.

J: Ensign Crusher.

E: Shut up Wesley.

R: Apparently there's a Star Trek episode and Captain Picard day is a thing on the episode and it was on stardate 47457.1 which apparently matches up with June 16th but apparently there are also other opinions about what that date would be, like November 4th or January 8th or January 10th so I see this a lot like the...

E: Throw a dart at a dart board.

R: ...a lot like how the creation of the universe happened on October 23rd, you know at exactly you know, which year that was. It depends on how you read the texts, basically. But apparently some geeks think today is Captain Picard day.

E: It's a geeky form of numerology.

S: Is there a specific formula for stardate conversion?

B: There can be, but it varies between various series and movies, so yeah just don't use it.

R: It depends if you're the people's front of the federation or the federation's front for the people.

J: (laughs) the front for the people of the federation.

R: Yeah, it depends which you subscribe to.

E: And you wonder why Leonard Nimoy isn't doing conventions any more. This is the stuff he gets.

S: Well what's supposed to happen on Captain Picard day?

R: Well, you talk about how awesome Captain Picard is.

J: You basically put on the British accent, telling people to engage, to disengage.

E: Make it so.

J: Wesley, you know, you just.

R: You tell Worf he's wrong.

S: But apparently in the Star Trek episode, the Next Gen episode, on Captain Picard day, you're supposed to host school children and show them what Starfleet is like. So we could turn this into a science/skepical thing and we could say on Captain Picard day we teach school children about science and skepticism.

R: We do that all the time though.

J: Yeah I mean we do that every week, Steve.

B: Every day is Captain Picard day.

(laughter)

E: It sort of is. School children though, you know, specifically.

News Items

LiDAR (2:52)

• http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/08/lasers-help-discover-lost-city-gold-sought-by-conquistadors-in-1500s/?intcmp=obnetwork

S: Well Jay, tell us about LiDAR and the city of gold.

J: Have you guys ever heard of Hernando Cortez?

E: Uh, Cortez, Cortez.

S: Um, not Juan Valdez.

J: No.

S: Hernando Cortez.

J: Does it make you think of anything, I mean does the last name Cortez remind you of gold maybe?

E: Cortez's gold from Pirates of the Caribbean.

B: Yeah.

J: Right, no...

R: Is that where our history of Spanish conquistadors comes from?

(laughter)

J: Yeah, you have to watch Pirates of the Caribbean.

B: Caribbean.

J: No, but this guy back in the 1500s, he was trying to locate this place where there was supposed to be a lot of gold, it was like an ancient ruin that he was looking for. And that ruin actually is in the Mosquitia region of Honduras, it's called the lost city of Ciudad Blanca. Wow.

S: The white city.

B: The white city.

J: The white city, right.

E: The white city, blanca.

J: Anybody that can speak Spanish will know that I pronounced that horribly wrong. So what happened was, I guess he was looking in the right continent, but he didn't know exactly where it was and the way that they were exploring back then, with the machete going through the woods, walking through the woods, well that's basically the same way that a lot of archaeologists would hunt around in areas like that today and of course that costs a ton of money, there's dangers involved, there's health dangers, there's physical dangers involved in doing that kind of leg work. So what happened was a company came out with a very interesting and a very effective way of being able to look at the terrain that is underneath all of the green growth that most of these regions are completely covered in. So the technique they used is called LiDAR and that means Light Detection and Ranging. The technology is being used to do things like, well they're saying that they would be able to use this technology to map disaster areas or track erosion that's under rivers and shallow parts of the ocean and of course the potential for military spying is there as well. For now though, the archaeologists have their hands on it and other than them, like I said, exploring with machetes and whatnot, this just is very fast and it's very safe to use of course they're flying over in an aeroplane and what they do is they shoot billions of lasers over whatever, like of course depending on the size of the acres they're covering they would be using a lot more but they shoot like I think about 100,000 laser beams a second at the ground.

E: Wow.

S: And you know Jay, they could use that technique to map underwater ruins and they could mount the lasers on the top of shark's heads.

E: (indrawn breath)

J: That's right, and these would actually be frikkin' laser beams.

S: They would be frikkin' laser beams.

J: On their heads, which would be awesome.

E: Be a dream come true.

J: So they shoot the laser beams at the ground and some of them, light bounces back and they can tell how, the distance by how long it takes, and you understand how that works. They can get it down to like about 4 inches or 10 centimetres which is really accurate for this type of technology, it's probably a lot more accurate than they need it to even be to get a good reading out of it. Now this isn't the first time that it's been used successfully, they also used it in 2009 when a team was working on Mayan ruins and they actually successfully used it in a proof of concept it worked very well, and now they're using it on this location, they actually think they've found the ruins and I guess now they send in a crew to get in there and do it on foot, but now they know exactly where they're going. So no gold has been found yet or anything, but proof of concept, it's a fantastic technology, it's very fast, I mean they took, I think they flew over the location for two days and very soon after that when they uploaded the data into the machine it was like yep and here's the ruins and here's the topography, very accurate, and incredibly cost effective, so they're going to be using this a lot more and they're actually, the company that's behind the whole thing is dumping a lot of time and energy into doing research in other areas like I mentioned before about other applications.

R: Interesting. You know, LiDAR is also the name for the animal that's a combination of a Lion and Tidar?

S: Lion and Tidar?

B: Oh boy.

E: Tidar?

R: That was a funnier joke in my head.

B: Yes.

(laughter)

B: One would hope.

R: I've been sitting on that joke for the last five minutes, giggling to myself, but it didn't live up to the hype once I said it out loud, sorry.

S: But you do always need to, when you use any kind of aerial mapping to identify potential locations, you do need to then confirm it on the ground. There's just no way around that.

E: That's true.

S: You don't have to be hunting through the jungle Indana Jones style with a whip and a couple of six-shooters.

R: That is the most stylish way to do it but...

S: Yeah.

R: ...lots of people die.

E: It is, yep and a full orchestra accompaniment.

S: Have you guys seen Prometheus yet, the Aliens prequel?

B: No.

E: No, I have not.

B: Did you?

J: Not yet, I want to see it.

R: No spoilers.

S: I did.

B: You did, how was it?

J: Tell us if it was good, come on.

E: I'm hearing mixed reviews.

S: It was alright. It was not epic.

E: Argh.

R: Well that's a huge disappointment.

S: The coolest thing about the movie was that it featured LiDAR, they had these little devices that would zip around shooting lasers all over the place and 3D mapping the place that they were exploring, it was LiDAR 100 years from now basically. That was the coolest thing in the whole movie.

B: Really?

R: That's sad that that is the coolest thing in the movie?

B: Isn't it that ship?

E: It is kind of sad, yeah well...

Extremophiles (8:30)

http://colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/06/08/cu-boulder-led-team-finds-microbes-extreme-environment-south-american

Moral Behavior (16:04)

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/anonymous-cooperative-behavior/

Neck Manipulation (24:28)

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1734-bmj-articles-oppose-spinal-manipulation.html

This section is in the middle of being transcribed by rwh86 (talk) as of {{{date}}}. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this section while this message is displayed.

Ghost Train (35:39)

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/06/05/Two-teens-killed-in-ghost-legend-game/UPI-55491338925923/

Questions and Emails

Homeopathic Pharmacists(46:30)

Subject: Pharmacists enthusiastically promoting homeopathy

Message: Dear skeptical rogues, I want to address a topic of utmost importance: the medical credibility lend to non-physicians. Pretty much all German pharmacies sell homeopathic remedies. After gathering an relatively big amount of information about current studies and so on, I wanted to confront some local pharmacists with the ethical question: how to justify selling, what obviously doesn't work? The responses were.. unexpected, to say the least. I went to 4 pharmacies, stating that I'm "interested to learn about homeopathy", setting up a little trap, hoping to get the every-day response to a question like that. All 4 pharmacists I talked to, assured me (enthusiastically), that homeopathy certainly works and that it's a great way to go. They were clear that there is not the least(!) doubt about the effectiveness. ( I was even told that homeopathy was, in fact, real medicine and shall not be confused with nutritional supplements. When confronted with the studies, they avoided to address any argument I made. Instead their responses became, ironically enough, some kind of liquid. I heard some arguments from ignorance, some false dichotomies and constantly moving the goalpost. I don't know about pharmacists in the US, but in Germany they have almost the same credibility as physicians. They sell a big variety of (non-homeopathic, actually real) medicine on own judgment and even tell people what dosage to take. Physicians usually only get consulted by Germans, if the state of health appears to be somewhat critical. Most medicine is sold purely on the pharmacists judgment. Today I discovered how full of crap they really are. I would love to hear your opinions on the topic. Especially regarding the potential risk of people selling medicine while basically believing in magic. If you should read from this mail in your show, feel free to change my wording so the grammar is correct. As you can tell, I'm not a native speaker, although I'm trying hard. Keep up the great work! Toni Michel Stuttgart in Germany PS: The reason I learned about this podcast is my older brother, Andreas Michel. He is a really great guy and a big fan of your show for quite some years now. It would be totally incredible, if you could greet him on the air. I probably wouldn't have to buy him birthday presents for the upcoming years.

Name That Logical Fallacy

Congruence Bias (53:19)

S: All right, hey do you guys know, we're going to do a name that local fallacy. Do you guys know what the Congruence Bias is?

R: Hmm.

J: No I don't.

R: No.

E: Why haven't I heard of it?

S: Yes. So this is a good one, this is one that even otherwise well informed skeptics may not be completely familiar with.

E: Clearly.

S: The congruence bias is the mistake of testing only your own theory for something. It can be very subtle and again, it can take even otherwise critical thinking by surprise. So in other words, you come up with some hypothesis, and we do this every day, and then you seek confirming evidence or that hypothesis, and when you find it you go aha, I was right. But what you don't do is test specifically to see if your hypothesis is wrong and specifically you don't test other possible hypotheses. So let me give you an example from my own practice, from medicine, because this, doctors can fall for this all the time. So let's say that I notice, hey you know, a lot of my patients who have migraines drink a lot of caffeine. So then I will ask the next you know, 20 patients that I see with migraines what their caffeine intake, and lo and behold, most of them of all of them drink a lot of caffeine. So then I say, aha, caffeine worsens migraine headaches. That would be congruence bias. What I really need to do is ask people who don't have migraines if they drink caffeine, and maybe they drink caffeine at the same rate as the patients with migraines or I need to ask migraine patients if they have other lifestyle factors and maybe there's something else, maybe they have poor sleep or they eat watermelons, I don't know, there's something else that they could be consuming also, at the same rate, maybe it's just that these are two things that are common in culture, you know, consuming caffeine and having migraines and that have no specific correlation between them. Although, for the record, I do think that caffeine worsens migraines, but just using this as an example. SO our natural tendency is to just test our own hypothesis, not competing hypotheses. So this leads to confirmation bias, right? So it's a form of confirmation bias in fact. But it's a very subtle one because you think that you're testing a hypothesis, the problem is that you're just not testing all of the plausible competing hypotheses. This is also related to something that Sherlock Holmes said, which is a really good quote I like. He said, this is actually a quote that they pulled into the recent, one of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies. He said:

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts

J: How did Arthur Conan Doyle get it right in so many ways? I mean...

S: And yet...

R: And still get it wrong on fairies.

S: And yet he believed in fairies.

E: (laughs) And ghosts.

J: It just seemed that he was so credulous, that he didn't...

S: He understood critical thinking and reason, and yet didn't employ it himself, that's the...

E: Refused to employ it.

S: So Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes was taken in by the Cottingley Fairies, these two young girls who took pictures of cardboard cut-outs of fairies and you know what's really interesting? I was watching the Antique Roadshow the other day, this is the Antique Roadshow from I think Ireland, and the last bit they had on the show was two women, one fairly old and one middle-aged and they had pictures of the two girls with the Cottingley Fairies. And they were the original photographs because the older woman was her daughter, was the daughter of one of those girls and they had all these original Cottingley Fairy photographs, it was unbelievable.

R: That's really cool.

J: What were they worth?

E: Oh gosh, we've got to get our hands on...

S: Well you couldn't price it, how could you put a price on those, they're priceless.

R: That's the point of the show, Steve.

B?: 500 bucks!

S: I know, but sometimes they do say listen, they're worth whatever somebody thinks they're worth, there's no comparison, they're unique historical items, you know? Sometimes they do say that, they might have thrown out a figure of 10 or 20 thousand pounds, I don't know, but it was unbelievable, but what's really funny is, now of course all of these photographs, they also had a camera that Arthur Conan Doyle gave to one of the girls to help them take more pictures of fairies.

E: Cool.

S: And of course, these photos were exposed as frauds but the woman, the older woman showed one photo and said, this photo is real. (laughs)

E: Oh no! Oh no!

J: (laughs)

S: Real fairies.

J: That's awesome.

S: They went back (laughs) and they really thought that they were real.

E: 100 years later, oh my god.

R: I wonder how that woman feels about raising such a credulous daughter.

S: (laughs)

R: Like how she would feel if she was still alive, like oh god really? You believed me when I told you that?

B: Imagine having such an iconic hoax in your family history, wouldn't that be really cool and kind of embarrassing at the same time.

R: It'd be awesome.

S: Well I guess that's how they rationalised it to themselves, that at the end they got a real picture of fairies, and she had some reason like, see how it looks a little different, that's because it's really, you know? Confirmation bias. A little congruence bias, she found a reason to find that the picture was real without testing other hypotheses. So yeah, it was fascinating, fascinating to watch that.

Science or Fiction (59:26)

S: All right, well let's move on to Science or Fiction.

Voiceover: It's time for Science or Fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. I know you're going to love this, we have a theme this week with four items. (laughs) Three of which of course are true, one is fake. The theme is Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens (pronounced strangely). (laughs)

J: What!?

R: (laughs) Wait a minute, there has to be a rule, if you can't say his name...

E: Hoigins?

S: It's Christiaan Huygens but actually his name, I listened to the pronunciation of his name online and if the internets is correct is Hur-hens.

R: All right...

B: What the hell.

E: Now I've heard it, no no no I've never heard it pronounced that way.

J: Remember on the Carol Burnett Show Steve, Lieutenant Huigens?

S: Lieutenant Huigens? Or Professor Huigens? Whatever, so yeah Christiaan Huygens, we'll Americanise it for the show, so yeah, from April 1629 to July 1695, the famous Dutch astronomer who discovered the, or investigated the rings of Saturn and discovered Saturn's largest moon Titan, but here are some other interesting facts about Christiaan Huygens, are you ready?

J: Yeah.

R: Yep.

S: OK. Item number one. He was the first to postulate, in 1678, the particle theory of light. Item number two. In 1695 he wrote a book expounding on his belief in extraterrestrial life. Item number three. He invented and patented the pendulum clock in 1657. And item number four. He designed a basic internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder. Rebecca, go first.

R: Might as well, because I don't have a damn clue.

(laughter)

R: Uuuuh, particle theory of light, 1678. Seems a little early, but OK. 1695, extraterrestrial life. I don't know, why not? Sure. I know there were a lot of theories of moon people and whatnot back then, why not write a whole book on it? Invented and patented the pendulum clock in 1657. That seems really late to me, to be inventing a pendulum clock. But what do I know about pendulum clocks? Answer: nothing.

(laughter)

R: Basic internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder? OK, why not? Sure, that's uuum, I mean that's well outside of what I would have thought his area or expertise is, but I don't know, I'm going with the clock thing, I don't know. You win, Steve, you win.

(laughter)

S: All right, Evan, go next. 1678, particle theory of light, well this guy, this guy, this Dutchman, well the Dutch in the 1600s were just the bomb as far as Western Civilisation goes, they were inventing all sorts of things during this time, they were, you know, the first republic I think since what, the fall of the Roman Empire, before Rome became an empire and fell I think, if memory serves, so they were at the head of the Enlightenment in lots of ways, they did navigation, they did seamanship, clocks were part of what they did...

R: Showing off.

E: Telescopes, tons and tons of stuff, but there were a lot of Dutch inventors, not just Huygens, there were several.

B: Huygens.

E: Huygens. H-man. And was the particle theory of light one of them? Perhaps, perhaps so. But in 1695 he wrote a book expounding on his belief in extraterrestrial life. I think that one could be true. You know, he might have been just questioning what if the surface of the moon had people like us on it or something to that effect, it's one thing to just question these things, so I don't think that's a problem. The pendulum clock in 16... I don't know if he invented it, ugh, himself, maybe perfected it, you might be onto something Rebecca. The internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder. Nice idea but kind of dangerous if you ask me, but I'm tending, I tend to think that he might have designed it, I don't know if it ever got anywhere, actually got a working model, you know you can make a design of just about anything, so I think that one's right, I think the extraterrestrial one is science, I think it comes down to the particle theory of light versus the clock. Yeah, I don't think he invented the clock. I think he did something to perfect it or make it more efficient or something to that effect so I'll agree with Rebecca, that one's fiction.

R: Woop.

S: OK, Bob.

B: Particle theory of light, it seems like so many people kind of had that idea, it wouldn't surprise me if he did. It does seem a little early but um, yeah it doesn't surprise me, nothing's jumping out at me on that one. The extraterrestrial life, I don't know, that sure, yeah I could totally buy that, kind of ringing a bell, but can't really trust that feeling but I don't have too much of a problem with that. And even the internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder, you know that seems a little bit early as well, to come up with that idea, but it is just a design, it's nothing beyond that so it could just be a very very basic, you even have the word basic in number four there, so that one doesn't strike me a crazy either, the one that's rubbing me the wrong way for some reason is the pendulum clock just like Rebecca and Evan, did he invent it? And I'm so pissed at myself because I actually looked this up like three months ago when I was doing a news item on clockwork, so I'm kind of pissed that I don't remember. So it's just rubbing me the wrong way that he invented it and patented it. I mean what kind of patent system did they even have back them. I'm not sure but that doesn't strike me as, I could be wrong but I'm not feeling right abut that either, so I'm just going to say that the pendulum is fiction as well.

R: Woop.

S: Jay.

J: Um.

B: (laughs)

E: (laughs) no pressure, Jay.

J: The first two are the two that bothered me. The particle of light and the extraterrestrial life are the two that I'm going to talk about. The fist one, he was the first to postulate, 1678, particle theory of light, that's damn, I don't know, I'm not exactly sure, did he make up, was he the first to really come up with that? I don't know. And then the second one about him saying that in 95 that he believed in extraterrestrial life, that seems really early for someone to be talking about that. I was going to pick the first one, so I'm going to go with the second one and say that he didn't think of aliens that early.

S: OK. You all agree that he designed a basic internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder, and that one is... science.

E: (sighs) (laughs)

J: Yeah. Knew somebody did.

S: He did in fact design a basic internal combustion engine.

B: Wow.

S: But he never managed to build it. So I did have to say design it, and it was basic, it wasn't obviously a sophisticated or later one. And it did help later, people who later did design and build the internal combustion engine.

B: They refer to it?

S: Yeah, there was apparently some continuity there.

B: Cool.

S: It wasn't like daVinci where he was sort of toiling by himself, Huygens was actually engaging with the scientific community, publishing, writing books, and people knew about his ideas. And he was incredibly influential, the guy was, well you'll see, we'll go through all the items. And really I did know about the guy, I didn't realise how many things he had is fingers in, it's unbelievable.

B: Yeah! If three quarters of these are true, it's interesting.

S: (laughs)

B: Oh, by definition they are!

E: (laughs)

S: Right. Imagine if he actually managed to build the combustion engine, maybe just...

B: Oh boy.

S: ...you know, with help from an engineer or something. So let's go on to number one. You also all agree with this one, that he was the first to postulate in 1678 the particle theory of light, you all think this one is science and this one is the... fiction!

J: Aaah!

R: Aaah!

E: What!?

J: Damn! Damn! Damn!

S: This one is the fiction.

B: I knew it!

J: Daaah! Aaaah!

E: I knew it, I was going to say it.

B: Crap.

S: Because he was the first one to devise the wave theory of light.

R: Aaah, sneaky.

S: In 1678. Yeah, so he's the first one to come up with the idea that light travels in waves, the prevailing idea was, well I don't know that there really was a prevailing idea...

J: Now I hate that guy.

E: Yeah, he was a jerk.

S: He was contradicted later by Isaac Newton who really pushed the particle theory of light, who tried to explain, like when Newton was studying optics and refraction and all of that stuff, he was using, thinking of light in terms of particles whereas Huygens made observations of birefringence.

B: Wha?

S: Birefringence doing experiments, experimenting with double refraction in Icelandic crystals, or calcite, and in order to explain his results, he came up with the notion that light was travelling in waves, and he was exactly right, you know, light does travel as waves and that's why you do get those...

B: So was Newton!

S: ...those kind of things. And of course, you know Newton later came up with the notion that light travels as particles and then there was research showing that photons of light do behave like particles, like when they strike something else, when they impact with another particle, but eventually of course, this led to quantum theory and the notion that, the duality, the wave-particle of duality of light, it travels like a wave but then interacts like a particle, so they were both right, both Huygens and Isaac Newton were correct.

B: Ah, crap.

S: So that means that in 1695 he wrote a book expounding on his belief in extraterrestrial life is science, I did not know this, very interesting, right before his death, this was the last thing, I think the last book that he wrote, and he had some very interesting ideas, first of all, I think this was, I think maybe he published this at the end of his life because it was extremely heretical to say that there was life outside of the earth.

J: I hope I have something that kick-ass to say, like I'm dying and I'm like... ugh, aliens, oh, exist, oh. Right?

S: Right... his book was Cosmotheoros, discussed the notion of extraterrestrial life, now he had an interesting idea, he thought that water was essential for life and therefore if there was life on other planets there must be water on these planets as well, so he thought that the property of water varied from planet to planet, so in other words if there's life on Venus, there must be water on Venus, but Venus is closer to the sun so the water would just evaporate away, so the water must behave differently on Venus than it does on Earth, and if there's life on Jupiter, then that water on Jupiter must again, so that it's not frozen solid, it must behave differently on Jupiter, so kind of a, from a modern perspective...

J: Boy, he was stupid!

(laughter)

S: ...from a modern perspective it's kind of a fanciful notion, but this is just how, just thinking about how could life exist on these other bodies, and using his telescope he made observations of Mars and Jupiter and thought he saw light and dark spots which he interpreted as possibly being due to water, I think this was partly what led, it wasn't exactly the canals on Mars, but he did interestingly make low-res observations of Mars and included water and therefore life, an interesting similarity to later thought processes. Percival Lowell, a later astronomer just thought of the canals on Mars. So I thought that was kind of interesting, and he said that he knew that this was heretical and was going against what it said in the Bible, though he did argue that while the Bible doesn't mention life on other planets, neither does it specifically say there isn't life on other planets, so that was his justification for that. Yeah, interesting, extraterrestrials in 1695. How about that? Which means he invented and patented the pendulum clock in 1657.

E: He did.

S: He needed a more accurate time keeper for his astronomical observations so he invented one, and the pendulum clock was the most accurate form of time-keeping for centuries, until I think the early 20th century. So Jay, do you know what a Horologist is?

J: (laughs)

R: Oh, don't... don't.

J: Come on Steve, who are talking to about that?

R: Don't.

S: It's somebody who studies time-keeping devices.

E: Oh Horoscope, of course.

S: Yeah, like a horoscope. A mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. He actually contributed to the modern form, nomenclature of calculus, he was the first to describe the centripetal force, obviously his observations of Saturn I think are what he's most famous for, and invented devices like the pendulum clock. He also described the idea pendulum, mathematically described the ideal pendulum with a massless cord. You know, that it's swinging from. It goes along with developing a timepiece based upon it. And he did do that, he did like to try to invent things based upon underlying scientific discoveries that he made. For example, he invented, he also by the way patented a pocket watch and he invented a 31 tone to the octave keyboard instrument that made use of his discovery of the 31 equal temperament, which is this part of his sound investigations.

J: Very cool.

E: He was no dummy.

S: No, this guy's a polymath, he was a Renaissance man.

J: Brilliant. He was one of several of that time too, I mean he wasn't the only one inventing and creating. The Dutch were incredible, it was an incredible century with the Dutch.

S: I had fun with that one (laughs).

R: Yeah I could tell.

E: I did too. Do you think we'll ever pronounce his name correctly though?

S: Christiaan Huygens.

(laughter)

S: Nah, it's, wrong country.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:14:50)

S: All right, well Jay, do you have a quote for us this week?

J: I have a quote from another renaissance man, named Bertrand Russell.

E: Perhaps the most quotable man on this show.

(inaudible)

S: Bertie? Sure.

E: Every fifth you would quote him apparently.

J: I can't, I can't help it, I keep stumbling across these phenomenal quotes from the man.

S: And forgetting that you've used them before.

J: It's very likely that I've said this one before but it's so good that I'm going to say it again. This was sent in by a listener named Steven Rogers, this was a quote of Bertrand's from the book he wrote called The ABC of Relativity and this quote is:

Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.

J: Thank you Bertrand for putting that so eloquently and so precisely.

S: Yeah, that's awesome.

R: Word.

S: Good job.

J: Mr. Russell.

E: His rap name would be B. Rus.

J: (laughs) B...

E: Big B. Rus.

R: B. Rus.

J: Bertrand Russell!

Announcements (1:16:00)

J: So guys, we have TAM coming up, that's July 12th and at TAM this years we're doing a poker tournament on Saturday night and you can pre-register for that by going to skeptcspoker@gmail.com, send me your name and make sure I have your current email address and we'll be in touch with you about (inaudible)

S: No I understand Jay, this isn't actually the first TAM poker event.

J: Yeah I there there has been six other Thursday night poker events that people were having before TAM and the organisers of that are not going to be there this year from what I've come to find out today.

S: Yeah this is the first one that the SGU is going to make awesome.

J: Yeah you know we're bringing in other skeptics that are going to come in and sit at the tables and we're going to have prizes and we're doing our own version of this. Please do email us, let us know that you're coming. Saturday night at 11 o'clock.

S: All right, thanks Jay and thank you all for joining me again this week.

J: Thanks, Steve.

R: Thank you Steve.

B: Surely.

E: Thanks, Doctor.

S: And until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.