SGU Episode 876

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SGU Episode 876
April 23rd 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 875                      SGU 877
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Stupid entropy ruins everything.
Jennifer Ouellette, American writer
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Bermuda Vacation

Voice-over: 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 Tuesday, April 19^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone!

S: So I am back from Bermuda, I had a little vacation last week. It was my 30^th anniversary 3-0.

C: Oh yay.

E: Wedding anniversary?

S: Yes my wedding anniversary.

J: So you you what, you flew out to Bermuda?

J: Yeah.

E: You called how long Jocelyn, you said, hey, I'm here. (laughter)

S: We got a direct flight from JFK, it was 90 minutes.

E: Oh beautiful.

J: That's really close.

S: A little faster than average but less than two hours basically from New York to Bermuda. It's a lot further north than people think. It's actually not in the Caribbean, it's not a Caribbean island.

C: No it's the, it's the outermost point of the "triangle".

S: Well yeah, by definition.

C: It's far up.

E: You said the magic word.

C: I mean the triangle is made up of what? Like it's Miami or the Keys, Puerto Rico and Bermuda. So it's like really far away from those two places.

J: Steve did you see any planes like actively being sucked into the ocean?

S: I didn't see, I saw very few planes. So the planes land on the east side of the island, that very tip, like very end of it. And they don't fly over the island. So when you're on the island, you're not really seeing a lot of planes. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, it's shaped like a J but tilted like 45 degrees on this side. So it's a very very long skinny island.

C: What's the water temperature out there in the middle of the Atlantic?

S: So it's in the jet, it's in the gulf stream, right? So that's why it is semi-tropical, right, because even though it's so far north, it's basically like equal to the Carolinas but it's subtropical because, it's because of the gulf stream. So it gets a lot of warm water. However at the end of the winter is when the water is at its coldest and then it warms up in the spring. So when we were there actually the water was warming up while we were there. We go from day to day it was a little bit warmer. But when we first got there it was fairly cold. The locals tell us that they start swimming in the ocean in May. So by then it's swimmable. And then through through the summer of course it'll be swimmable.

C: Nice. Yeah, Atlantic waters can be, well I guess it all depends on where you are, but so warm. I remember going to Puerto Rico and being like oh my gosh the ocean feels like bath water.

S: Yeah.

C: And I'm so used to the ocean out here in California it's like frigid, you can't get in it unless you're in a wetsuit.

S: Yeah I think it's just all the gulfstream.

J: So did you ride scooters?

S: We didn't, you know, so it, it's again, getting around the island was interesting. So here's my quick skinny on Bermuda especially if you're in the northeast of the United States, it's actually a it's the closest, you know, like tropical paradise you can get to. It's beautiful, you know, we had a great time there. On the plus side it's, you know, they definitely, like tourism is one of their major industries, the whole place is set up to be tourist friendly. They make it very easy to even though it's a foreign country, you know, it's very easy to get in and out of. And they accept the American dollar one-to-one with the Bermuda dollar. I think they must just fix the Bermuda dollar to the American dollar, so everyone just accepted the American currency one to one. And everyone is super friendly, like everyone is incredibly friendly.

E:' That's their, that's their industry.

S: And not just like at the hotel like I mean we were, we were at one point we walked up like the middle of the island on the old railroad trail, there used to be a railroad that goes there, and, but that's gone, there wasn't even any railroad ties or anything, it's just a path now, it's just a trail. But it's basically going mostly through residential areas and we would walk by people in their backyard and they would be super friendly to us. Also like like when you ride in a taxi like the taxi driver like beeps and points and waves at every other driver. Because, you know, obviously there's like 60 000 or something people who are─

C: A small town.

E: Oh everyone knows them.

S: ─yeah live permanently in Bermuda, yeah, residents. And yeah but they say, all the taxi drivers chatted with us while we were you know getting a ride and they said yeah it's a small small place. And not that everyone knows everyone but, you know, especially if you're like I guess all the taxi drivers know each other. Sometimes they were shout out by name. But it was just like a super friendly environment and culture. Very, very nice. The downside is it's kind of expensive.

B: Oh really?

S: Yeah.

C: Well you when you said that they fixed their dollar to the dollar one to one that definitely right there tells you, and plus you're going to be paying a, well hey it's it's a remote island, so shipping is expensive, just getting supplies there.

J: You can't drive anything there it's like all imported.

E: Yeah for example, do you have a for example Steve on that?

S: On the, on the expensive thing?

E: Yes.

S: Well yeah, just everything, the restaurants were the worst. They were like twice as much as what you would pay for the same food here.

B: Oof.

S: I don't think that's a shipping, think about it─

C: There's also a tourist situation there too.

S: ─all of our food is shipped in too. Like even in Connecticut, we're not, we're mostly eating food that is shipped a lot farther away than getting to Bermuda, so I don't really think that's the issue.

C: Well there, I do think there are some like if you think about Hawaii that is a real, supply chain issues are real.

S: That's different yeah, that's different Bermuda is close.

C: Yeah it's further away, that's true.

S: It's not that big a deal you think about it, you buying, you're eating your potatoes from Idaho, does it matter? It's closer to Bermuda than probably to some parts of the United States.

B: What about fish dinners?

S: A lot of seafood, of course, it's an island.

B: You'd think that would be cheaper.

C: No but you're also paying for tourist prices.

S: So here's the thing, it's not, it's actually not tourism is part of it but here's the big reason and─

B: Aliens right?

S: ─no it's in the 90s I think finance eclipsed tourism as the number one industry in Bermuda. And the guy, so one of the taxi drivers who's been born and raised or lived there his whole life he gave us the whole history like financially at Bermuda is like. It was great in that it brought a lot of money into the island. But he said but that was the inflection point where everything became expensive. Because now you have a bunch of millionaires buying up 10 million dollar homes and willing to pay lots of money for everything and so everything became expensive. So that was, that was the point at which it really got out of control. And to the point, to the point where like a lot of younger Bermudans had to leave. They couldn't make a living there. Just became too expensive to live there.

C: So even when you like leave the the hotel kind of areas─

S: Oh yeah, everywhere.

C: ─yeah unlike when I was, I was just in Puerto Vallarta and it's like you know the peso is is weak compared to the dollar, I think it's 120th. And when you're out in the city everything's really cheap. But of course when you go to like tourist trap areas, thing were more expensive.

S: It wasn't just a tourist trap. Although that that did add a yet another layer to the expense. But it was it was basically just an expensive cost of living is expensive there, that's the problem.

C: That's unfortunate.

S: Yeah, yeah it is. So it's kind of a double-edged sword, you know, that the finance coming in because it did, it did bring money to the island but it raised, raised the cost of living there. The, so getting around the island so if, you're if you're not a permanent resident you cannot rent a car, right, it's not an option.

B: Wow.

S: So there was a bus system we used that a few times, it was fine, you know, the bus system is fine. They have, the taxis are fine. We were happy to, to give money to the locals who were driving the taxi, so we didn't really care about that. If you really, if you want to rent something to get around, you could rent scooters or twizzies. You guys ever heard of twizzy?

B: Nope, never.

S: That was I think the most popular thing for visitors to do, so it's basically an all-electric vehicle, it's one person wide so you're basically sitting in the middle of it and it only sits one person across. But it's it's two people front to back. But it like barely fits two people. It is small.

J: It's kind of like a quad, right? It's like a quad that has a cabin.

S: Yeah, kind of, it's four four wheel but it's two people─

C: But not big crazy off-road tires.

S: ─the person would have to squeeze into the back. And the thing is the traffic, there's there's no highways, right? I mean the traffic is all slow everywhere. And it's, you know, it's a it's a British colony so everyone drives on the left. You know you wouldn't, I wouldn't feel like the traffic is not dangerous but here's one thing about it. It's not very pedestrian friendly because, you know, it's a volcanic island, right? And the, you know, geologically it's basically all volcanic rock and it's not a huge cliff or a mountain but it's very hilly and so the roads are essentially cut out of the volcanic rock. And they made them just wide enough for the two lanes of traffic, there's no shoulder there is no place to walk.

E: Nowhere to walk.

S: And some of the bus stations are literally a pole on the side of the road. Like I don't even know where you're supposed to stand.

B: Jesus, wow.

S: No so you really, so a couple of times, now some of the more residential areas did have shoulders and did have there were a couple of sidewalks here and there, but you couldn't really walk the main roads. I mean you could but you have to just count on cars driving around you, because you're walking in the road you know you there is no side of the road and sometimes it's literally a wall, you know, on the side of the road. So it's not very pedestrian friendly, so that's why we generally either took a taxi or took a bus. We did do a little bit of walking then it was a little bit scary at times. We would look both ways for traffic and then run to the next sidewalk, you know, before too many cars had to go by. But very very nice, I definitely think we'll be going back. It's, you know, just a very close, quick. You could, you could take a long weekend there, you know what I mean? Like it's so close.

C: Did you get a tan?

S: I did. I got a little bit of a tan, more than I wanted to but yeah.

B: UV sucks.

S: Yeah, I just don't, I don't like to expose my skin to UV light.

J: So what was your absolute favorite thing about the experience?

S: I probably, there was, there was some birding there, you know, so we went to this, is called Spittle's Pond and it was, that was, that was a fun day. So it was yeah, there was lots of good pictures, just good nature walks. We went to the, we were there on Good Friday and Good Friday apparently is Kite Flying Day on the island. They flight─

C: Kites? Fun.

S: kites on other times but that's like the big day. And there's a traditional Bermuda kite. It's like round or octagonal and it's called a hummer because it has a thing in the middle that spins it makes a humming noise when you─

E: Cool.

S: ─when you fly it.

C: I haven't flown a kite since I was a child. I don't think.

S: Yeah.

C: How fun.

S: Yeah it was a lot of fun.

B: Last time I saw a kite it was on Reddit and it was lifting a little kid up in the air. I mean.

E: Okay.

B: I mean it was crazy. And I think it was real.

E: Right. 70% chance of it being real.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Vaping and Brain Inflammation (10:55)

• Vaping Alters Inflammatory State of Brain, Heart, Lungs, and Colon

Projectile Fusion (25:20)

• Nuclear fusion breakthrough: 'Holy grail' of power production closer to reality after UK start-up develops new technique for accelerating fuel at 200 times the speed of sound

Facilitated Communication Still Pseudoscience (41:30)

• Facilitated Communication Is Still Pseudoscience

Gamma Rays and Gravitational Waves (58:56)

• Cosmic 'Lighthouses' That Beam Gamma Rays Could Reveal Gravitational Waves All Around Us

AI Emotion Detection (1:10:32)

• Reported AI-based emotion recognition by Zoom irks rights advocates

Who's That Noisy? (1:21:05)

Answer to previous Noisy:

The 'Telemetron' Is a Post-Earth Musical Instrument Designed for Zero Gravity

New Noisy (1:24:37)

[in and out puffing sounds similar to heavy breathing]

J: ... If you think you know what this week's Noisy is, or if you heard something cool like the sound that you just heard, then you should just email me very quietly and very sincerely to Who's That Noisy, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's all you have to do.

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups (1:26:10)

Email #1: Communicating Skepticism

I work at a not-for-profit (https://www.digitalpublicsquare.org/) and one of things we try to create are interventions when it comes to things like public health. In terms of vaccine misinformation, we have a site that offers information in a quiz-like format (https://knowitornot.com/). Now, I know you all have discussed the efficacy of these types of interventions and wanted to know your thoughts. I've heard that sometimes these types of true/false paradigms might not be the best and don’t do well to "vaccinate" folks against mis/disinformation. Personally, I can see how such a paradigm talks down to someone who's deep in the hole, and it might not communicate the "skeptical" mindset. I'm wondering what the Skeptics think of strategies like these, and if there are any particular insights you could offer based on your experiences. Love the show, thanks!

– Wahid Shafique, Toronto

Science or Fiction (1:33:44)

Theme: Bermuda Item #1: There are no native mammals in Bermuda, only introduced species such as mice, rats, and feral cats. Item #2: There are more than 300 shipwrecks in the waters off Bermuda, making it the shipwreck capital of the world. Item #3: When Bermuda was first discovered in the 1500s and later settled by Europeans, it had no native or indigenous population.

Answer	Item
Fiction	No native mammals
Science	Shipwreck capital
Science	No native population

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Shipwreck capital
Jay	No native population
Cara	No native mammals
Bob	No native mammals

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:54:41)

Stupid entropy ruins everything.
– Jennifer Ouellette, American writer

Signoff

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

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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