TWS220: Return of The Thing That Never Was (Away)

CQ: How do we strike a balance between “open-minded” and “skeptic”, between “I know what I saw/experienced” and “I know only what I can prove”? How do we teach science without cynicism?

On the show this week:

• Front Page
• It Came From The Sea! The Sky! On Land!
• It Came From Space! The Stars!
• Extras

Full list of 54 articles after the jump!

• Front Page:
  • However, like *all* vacations, the trouble isn’t while you are away, it’s when you get back..: PhysOrg – Email ‘vacations’ decrease stress, increase concentration, researchers say
  • Is it all about “me”? I asked an expert on this — myself — and we could come to no satisfying answer before we got bored.: New Scientist – The curse of Generation Me
  • File this under “You’re Doing It Wrong”..: The Switzerland Local – Swiss woman starved after ‘eating’ only light
  • Time for a movie remake! Instead of “Oh God, You Devil!”, it will be “Yo Dog, You Devilin’!”: The UK Daily Mail – Woman with GOD tattooed across her forehead arrested for stalking (and calls herself the Godologist of Godology online)
  • I think this may just be a clever scam to be able to declare all porn “potential terrorist documents” and confiscate it..: Yahoo!/The Lookout – Al-Qaida porn: Terror group hid plans in sex video, reports say
  • What You See Is What No One Gets Right (WYSIWNOGR): Freakonomics – Messing With Memory
  • Once again, a prime example of someone seeing illusions. In this case, someone who sees the illusion that any one human trait explains away *all* evidence and experience.. Or is that “delusion”?: io9 – An Optical Illusion that Explains the Origins of Imaginary Monsters
  • Maybe we can only hear it with our *socialist* third ear?: ABC – Mysterious ‘Hum’ Only Canadians Can Hear Is Debated
  • You, too, will be able to talk to your friends and colleages as if they are trapped in a foggy bacta tank!: PhysOrg – Life-size 3-D hologram-like telepods may revolutionize videoconferencing in the future
  • Repeat after me: “machines do only what we tell them to”. Only when machines come up with things on their own *entirely* will we start to get worried for the creatives..: New Scientist – Robot string quintet composes and performs music
  • Is sorta sounds like a rejected plotline for an episode..: The Huffington Post/Reuters – Nude Motel: Fawlty Towers Motel Becomes Naked Resort To Bolster Bottom Line
  • Well, world’s first tour inside a volcano *that you can survive*, perhaps.. Although I think I already went on this ride at Disney..: The UK Telegraph – Iceland offers world’s first tour inside a volcano
  • Bad ideas can come in small scale..: The UK Mirror – Dwarf Empire: The controversial theme park where little people put on shows for tourists
  • Somehow, I think I like this story of the “little guy taking a stand” a bit more..: Metro – Motorway construction thwarted by stubborn elderly couple’s house
  • And some bad ideas tip the scales (and fall over).: The UK Telegraph – Australian billionaire to build Titanic II
• It Came From The Sea! The Sky! On Land!:
  • (EXTRA) Occupy Intake Valve?: ABC – Jellyfish-Like Organisms Shut Down California Power Plant
  • (EXTRA) The uprise has begun! Flee for the hills not bordering the sea!: Birdfellow Blog – Who’s up for lunch? A Gull-eating Octopus in Victoria, BC
  • (EXTRA) Seriously, it’s a friggin’ sea invasion! Although all I can think about right now is barbequeing one of those monsters..: CNN – Scientists: Giant cannibal shrimp invasion growing
  • (EXTRA) Looks like the real winners here are the two-legged anthropods.. Take that, you cephalapod intruders!: Metro – Squiddly dot? It’s a winner at national squid catching championship
  • (EXTRA) See? It’s happening again!: ScienceDaily – Jurassic Pain: Giant ‘Flea-Like’ Insects Plagued Dinosaurs 165 Million Years Ago
  • Why does the idea of the Loch Ness Monster being a shark rather than a serpent make it seem a whole lot more scary?: Alaska Dispatch – Nessie of the North: Is Alaska’s Iliamna Lake monster a huge sleeper shark?
  • Next: dung beetles to find chupacabras, perhaps..: Bigfoot Evidence – Using Leeches To Find Bigfoot
  • It’s a weird philosophical conundrum: do you defend the theoretical life of an unknown beast, or do you do whatever it takes to prove they existed?: Cryptomundo – Taking a Stand Against Killing Bigfoot
  • (EXTRA) Turns out bird brains may just be biological computers..: BBC – Magnetic fields light up ‘GPS neurons’, scientists say
  • (EXTRA) Life is not about having the partner you want, but perhaps the partner you need.. Or can get.: The Record – Bear necessities produce hybrid beast
  • When there are no more animals to hunt, we *will* apparently just hunt each other.. We are, after all, “the most dangerous game”..: Orange – Paintball fox hunters dodge ban
  • (EXTRA) How do you tell the power of a storm? By how far it flings your crap!: BBC – Tsunami survivor claims Harley-Davidson found in Canada
• It Came From Space! The Stars!:
  • It sounds outrageous, but is there any real way to invalidate his claims? (Probably, but until we do, we can’t simply say “they’re wrong”. That’s bad science.): The Huffington Post – Seattle Attorney Andrew Basiago Claims U.S. Sent Him On Time Travels (VIDEO)
  • A short biography for the guy who has been everywhen..: Project Pegasus – Andrew D. Basiago (bio)
  • In order to satisfy entropy and keep the total mass of things in the universe constant, I can only assume that the balance was removed from my bank account. It makes a certain kind of (annoying) sense..: Unknown source: – Are We Visiting US from the Future or is it all Alien Intrusion ?
  • (EXTRA) Does the large number of abductee claimants have any impact on whether we investigate?: The UK Daily Mail – Our close encounters: Meet the alien abductees – and the pictures they drew to prove they weren’t imagining it all…
  • A generally unhelpful and scornful jab at abductee claimers from a prominent outspoken scientist..: Gizmodo – How To Prove You’ve Been Abducted by Aliens
  • (EXTRA) A confused rant against the possibility of a singularity, apparently inspired by *not* getting an interview with a singularity proponent.: The Secret Sun blog – We Interupt this Singularity…
  • (EXTRA) Is it really possible that the term “little green men” is simply an earlier example of a viral idea propogation based on a slip of the tongue?: Forteania – Little Green Meme?
  • (EXTRA) Yeah, but which came first: the egg or the.. uh.. Mars?: Phenomenica/ANI – Egg-shaped globule could be evidence of life on Mars
  • (EXTRA) Well, we might have.. In a move very much in keeping with early humanity’s clumsy discoveries of the natural world (and its gustatory demands), we may have cooked it — although we did not eat it, so we’ve evolved. A bit.: ABC Australia/Discovery News – Mars Viking robots ‘found life’
  • (EXTRA) Wait, now we’re *not* finding life there?: New Scientist – No aliens on Mars? No problem, we will look elsewhere
  • (EXTRA) Sadly, for most this won’t even rank up in the top 100 of “things I have to see before I die” lists..: Phenomenica/ANI – Venus to cross sun’s face in a lifetime event
  • (EXTRA) Apparently, Venus isn’t the only thing crossing the sun.. Also: does this count as a “machine illusion”?: The Huffington Post – UFO Near The Sun: Curious NASA Photo Stirs Debate
  • (EXTRA) I think it’s closer to the lotto, but still not as good as getting repeatedly struck by lightning..: Yahoo!/Space.com – Odds of Finding Alien Life Boosted by Billions of Habitable Worlds
  • (EXTRA) Turns out, it was the same thing that will eventually rend us extinct: bad television reruns.: Archeology News Network – New evidence argues against prehistoric extraterrestrial impact event
• Extras:
  • (EXTRA) DNA is a finite coding system, so theoretically, we could express all possible combinations at any time..: New Scientist – Blond hair evolved independently in Pacific islands
  • (EXTRA) Obviously, he ran up against Sherrif Vader..: The Huffington Post – Obiwan Kenobi Charged With Hit And Run In Roseville
  • (EXTRA) Even older than Keith Richards’!: BBC – Oetzi the Iceman’s blood is world’s oldest
  • (EXTRA) Almost as if they were trained..: Archeology News Network – Roman artefacts churned up by moles
  • (EXTRA) I would imagine your legs falling asleep after a while.. And where do they hang the magazines to read?: Metro – Record breaker ‘Jenson Bottom’ is the fastest motorised toilet racer on earth
  • (EXTRA) Some symbols just need to be built.: Metro – Who ya gonna call? Fan restores Cadillac as real-life Ghostbusters car
  • (EXTRA) Other symbols… Are infesting the world like a mold or a virus..: Metro – Hello Kitty, goodbye sanity: EVA Air launches themed aircraft and check-in
  • (EXTRA) Turns out, you don’t have to *actually* break the speed of light, you can just *pretend* to..: PhysOrg – Researchers develop new way to generate superluminal pulses
  • (EXTRA) It’s a view that very well could cause you to s**t yourself..: Orange – The world’s scariest toilet?
  • (EXTRA) I always knew that humanity would sink lower on the food chain relative to apes, but I never anticipating to kiss their asses..: Orange – Zoo keeper shows amazing dedication
  • (EXTRA) Apparently, it’s only targetted on those born in the 1990s. So, I’m good.. Ladies? : Orange – Cable car sex ban introduced
  • (EXTRA) Hint: it doesn’t involve a lot of delicate spices. Or marinating.: New Scientist/CultureLab – How to cook like a caveman
  • (EXTRA) Well, they *do* say that the key to tackling big tasks is to first *visualize*, but I don’t think they had this in mind..: Metro – Chinese man disgusts crowds by pulling 1.6-ton car with eye sockets

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