Show Notes for TWS099: Demonstrating My Lack Of Brain Power

On the show this week:

• Religioneering and Evoludicrous
• A Manner of Minding
• Can’t Stop (or Explain) The Firefly
• Miscellaneous Etcetera (EXTRA)

This week’s Challenge Question:
Are we (humanity) genetically (or otherwise) destined to be on top on this planet? Do we have to struggle to stay on top?
Leave your answer in the comments, send your email to weirdshow[[at]]gmail.com, record your message via the MobaTalk client on the right hand side of Encaffeinated!, leave an answer on Facebook or call in at 206-203-2292.

Full links to all stories covered and many more after the jump!

• Theme Song: Caffeine by Grubspoon from The Podsafe Music Network
• Promo: The Geekspin — A collection of geek music, parody music, odd music.
• Mentioned: Mur Lafferty Presents: The Takeover — The Zombinc free audio drama I mention at one point.
• Religioneering and Evoludicrous
  • “Look, we’re sorry. We screwed up. Yes, we know you are long dead. No, we’re not offering any money. We only really meant to keep our strangehold on thinking active for a hundred years, but we sorta forgot. Um… Friends?” – The UK Daily Mail: Church makes “ludicrous” apology to Charles Darwin – 126 years after his death
  • “Screw you, Galileo! We took your theories and made them religious-based — whaddya think about that? Huh?” – New Scientist: Vatican says it does not owe Darwin an apology
  • Warning: if you seek office inside a scientific institution, make sure you keep all non-scientific opinions to yourself! – New Scientist: Royal Society prof resigns over comments
  • While the essense of his argument I can agree with, I never agree with name-calling. It’s very childish and poorly representative of the hallowed — er, “revered”? “sanctified”? how about “self-righteous”? — halls of science.. – New Scientist: Letter: Richard Dawkins on the Royal Society row
  • All religious sightings must be scientifically verified. Um.. huh? – The UK Times: Pope urges crackdown on reported visions of Mary
  • How many angels will dance on the head of a fad? – The UK Times: Angels set to be the next big thing
  • Next: Tigger, embodiment of waaaay too much joy. – The UK Telegraph: Mickey Mouse must die, says Saudi Arabian cleric
  • Superstition/religion getting in the way, or just the fact that soccer attracts riots? – The UK Telegraph: Eleven dead in Congo football riot after use of ‘witchcraft’
  • EXTRA: “Luck” in this case being the retroactive appreciation of the beating of slim odds, rather than the proactive “rabbit’s foot” kind. But, in a deterministic scientific universe, is there any such thing as either? – ScienceDaily: Good Luck, Not Superiority, Gave Dinosaurs Their Edge, Study Of Crocodile Cousins Reveals
  • EXTRA: I can’t believe I didn’t get to this story about THE ANT WITH NO EYES! Doesn’t it just scream B-grade horror wonderfulness? Oh, and biological diversity with evolutionary niche specialization? (And popcorn!) – The UK Times: ‘Ant from Mars’ emerges from its 120 million-year anonymity
  • EXTRA: I think the “red light” district of the sea was just found.. – ABC/AFP: Glowing fish have scientists seeing red
  • EXTRA: Well, actually, he just picked up the phone. He sorta “tongue-dialed”. – KPHO: Dog Calls 911 After Owner Collapses
  • EXTRA: Last week, cats and dogs got along together. Now, cats and chickens. We’re doomed. They’re uniting against us. – The UK Telegraph: Cat saves chicken by a whisker
  • EXTRA: A duck with chicken feet is notably chicken of water. I thought tuna was the chicken of the sea? – Ananova: Chicken-footed duck scared of water
  • EXTRA: The first example of bird-over-simian domination. I’m telling ya: that budgie is a spy! – New Scientist: Crows make monkeys out of chimps in mental test
  • EXTRA: Bigfoot ambles across your web page, but is it really a stable topic? – boingboing: Stabilized bigfoot film
  • EXTRA: Seaweed, logs, or a genuine sighting? If there is still a story about this next week, I’ll be impressed. – Cryptomundo: Connecticut Lake Monster Caught on Video?
  • EXTRA: Another story I wish I’d covered.. Just to clarify: no Sasquatch are necessary for the show. Something tells me that they won’t do the show, because the people will be too open-minded. (Well, I could hope.) – Cryptomundo: Wife Swap: Wanted Bigfoot Hunter Families
  • EXTRA: How to scare away other birds? Sound like a cat! – Ananova: Myna talent for mimicry
  • EXTRA: He poked it.. then ran into the tree with his car. I’m sure the koala was taunting him. – The Brisbane Times/Fairfax Digital: Teen fined for poking koala
  • EXTRA: Wait.. the cat was *royalty*? Was it from Ulthar? – The Lancashire Evening Post: Ginger cat’s death sparks Diana-style tributes
• A Manner of Minding
  • Just because you have the symptoms, you might not have the disease.. – Wired: Terrorism Fear Could Create Psychosomatic Epidemic, Feds Warn
  • Your inner zombie only wants you for your brain.. – MSNBC/Discover: Could inner zombie be controlling your brain?
  • Now all they need is a lot of technically dead (brain-dead, heart stopped) patients.. Hey, *that’s* a repeatable act, so science can progress! – BBC: Study into near-death experiences
  • The misnomer here is that it’s not *mind control*, it’s *telepathy*. – Yahoo!/TIME: The Army’s Totally Serious Mind-Control Project
  • Sometimes, they really *are* after you, and there really *is* something in the darkness.. – New Scientist: Superstitions evolved to help us survive
  • We should remember that human brains still surpass GPS, at least in some ways. – BBC: Taxi drivers ‘have brain sat-nav’
  • Staying at home in front of your computer makes you social. What a topsy-turvy world we live in.. – The Age: Computer games ‘foster civic engagement’
  • Also, sitting on your couch/desk chair for extraordinary hours playing games makes you likely to be fitter. Obviously, I know a bunch of outliers. 😉 – New Scientist: Online gamers are fit – physically if not mentally
  • I still think of “complementary” in terms of free towels and shampoo.. – Medical News Today: Latest Survey Shows More Hospitals Offering Complementary And Alternative Medicine Services
  • Does this mean that the phrase should change to “Yes, dear, I’ve got a headache”? – New Scientist: In pain? Take one masterpiece, three times a day
  • EXTRA: Psychosomatic response, delusion, excuse or real? – BBC: ‘Voodoo-cursed’ woman is jailed
  • EXTRA: Talk about pleasure and pain responses.. – CBS/WebMD: Woman Suffers Orgasm-Related Stroke
  • EXTRA: Yeah, but scrubbing your lungs with brocolli is a real pain.. – BBC: Broccoli ‘may help protect lungs’
  • EXTRA: It also holds the key to several tasty salsa, if I remember properly. – Medical News Today: Basil Holds The Key To Anti-Ageing
  • EXTRA: Are we too attached to our organs? This story deserves more attention.. – New Scientist: New laws could make everyone an organ donor
  • EXTRA: It doesn’t sound fair to manipulate plants into getting up earlier to work/grow longer.. That may be my natural dislike of getting up early, however.. – New Scientist: Plants’ daily alarm clock discovered
  • EXTRA: The computers are watching, waiting for the tiniest indication of weakness. Then, they will pounce. – New Scientist: Software spots the spin in political speeches
  • EXTRA: Poo power! – Metro: Human waste to be ‘alternative’ fuel
  • EXTRA: A terrible, terrible case of what happens when societies are clashing and changing and identity is hard to come by… Or is it? – The UK Daily Mail: Satan worshippers kill and eat four Russian teenagers after stabbing each of them 666 times
  • EXTRA: They have to stop saying that they are against cloning if they insist on using the same old copied arguments… – New Scientist: Food companies reject clones over consumer fears
  • EXTRA: “Look, fly: can’t you just buzz off like your cool friend over there?” – ScienceDaily: Flies, Too, Feel The Influence Of Their Peers, Studies Find
  • EXTRA: Does that mean that my aspirin might come from severely stressed plants? That idea gives me a headache.. – LiveScience: Plants Make Own Painkillers
  • EXTRA: You know, maybe there *is* a good reason to make the emergency number complicated.. – BBC: Pet bunny’s ears prompt 999 call
• Can’t Stop (or Explain) The Firefly
  • The sun that burns twice as hot burns twice as long? Or did a Firefly just moon us? – Sky and Telescope: Hubble Finds a Mystery Object
  • Nothing like a faint pinprick of light detected two years ago to remind you that we only know a *fraction* of the potential stars and phenomena out there.. – New Scientist: Space ‘firefly’ resembles no known object
  • Evidence of a planet around a Sun-like star. Besides ours, of course. – BBC: Exoplanet ‘circles normal star’
  • “I didn’t grow up around here. I was thrown out of my home.” Our sun as teenaged runaway — feel the angst! – New Scientist: Sun may have been thrown far from its birthplace
  • Another named astronomical body which falls under the category of “not a *real* planet”, or “plutoid”. – New Scientist: Controversial dwarf planet finally named ‘Haumea’
  • I hate getting out of bed early, but even I would have issues with 78 days later. – New Scientist: Hurricane forced bedrest volunteers to get up early
  • EXTRA: Soviet block coming back together, or just innocent multi-million-dollar contracts to conquer space? – New Scientist: Russia may help Cuba build space centre
  • EXTRA: The question is: if you wait long enough before exposing your evidence that you aren’t going to get in trouble when you do it, does that mean that the evidence, by that point, really is innocuous, perhaps worthless? And is that doing anyone a service? – The Sun: RAF radar chief: I saw UFO fleet
  • EXTRA: It was inevitable that someone would tie the LHC into something. Coincidence, or grabbing on to any possible source? – Louth Leader: UFO sightings connected to Large Hadron Collider experiment?
  • EXTRA: More Chinese lanterns or actual sightings? – The UK Sun: UFO link to orange lights
  • EXTRA: The definitive answer is: yes, some of them may be Chinese lanterns… but some of them may *not* be. – Louth Leader: BUFORA offer possible explanation for orange lights UFOs
  • EXTRA: There’s nothing like having the phenomena actually appear when you’ve got the investigator *right there*. Although it looks like bug clouds.. – Phantoms and Monsters Blog: MUFON Section Director Photographs UFO Fleet Over Kentucky
• Miscellaneous Etcetera (EXTRA)
  • EXTRA: You know it must have been one hell of a party, if teeth were left on the ground.. – National Geographic: Stonehenge Partiers Came From Afar, Cattle Teeth Show
  • EXTRA: They probably did something like, y’know, should “BUILD IT! BUILD IT NOW!” – The UK Times: How the barbarians drove Romans to build Venice
  • EXTRA: Um.. that would be *Canadian* ice, thankyouverymuch. It’s called permafrost for a reason, folks.. – New Scientist: America’s oldest ice discovered… then it melts
  • EXTRA: Covering your nose is soooo offensive! Let the snot flow into the pool and merge, making it whole and… wait.. I’ll be over here, not swimming. – Ananova: Swimmer banned over goggles
  • EXTRA: At what point does an Anti-Social Behaviour Ordanance become an abuse? – Ananova: Wave-stealing surfers face Asbos
  • EXTRA: The universe/world is smiling at us? – The UK Daily Mail: Pictured: Rare upside-down rainbow spotted in the UK
  • EXTRA: Oddly enough, this is not an isolated incident, but seems to be a phenomena. – Metro: Drunk man has sex with car
  • EXTRA: “They’re coming to get your, Barbara!” – The North Wales Chronicle: Mystery of coffin found in field
  • EXTRA: *Always* read the prize list and consider whether winning is really for you… – Ananova: Raffle won by coffin dodger

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