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An interesting podcast I've started listening to recently is "Exposing PseudoAstronomy" http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/ It focuses, of course, on explaining the truth behind a lot of astronomy misconceptions; but also delves into explaining why a lot of generally space-related conspiracy theories and such are bullshit (like Billy Meier, the dude from Switzerland who's claimed aliens have been in contact with him since the 60s; and a bunch of Coast To Coast AM regulars). There's also many episodes that simply explain basic and not so basic concepts in astronomy in general that help you understand why things are wrong. Some of the early episodes are kinda dry because he hadn't really gotten going yet, but as he's gone on he's developed better flow. He also releases video episodes from time to time, Separately and slightly related there's also 365 Days Of Astronomy, http://cosmoquest.org/x/365daysofastronomy/ Originally it was supposed to be a single year project for 2009, to do a 5-15 minute podcast from many different groups once a day for an entire year. It ended up being able to sustain itself and continues to do the one 5-15 minute podcast on astronomy topics per day, 5 years on. Some episodes are roundups of news related to space and astronomy, others are meant to tell you about a certain events in the sky that will be coming up, and still others will just cover general topics. I usually end up only keeping up with it for a few months a year because there's just so much content! Incidentally if you wanted to listen to the first 3 years of the podcast now, you're better off listening to the "52 weeks of astronomy" format that got discontinued after 2011: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/52WeeksofAstronomy It simply removed the redundant segments from each episode in a week and put them together (since you'd be going back and listening, you didn't need to hear the short intro song and closing section for each episode every 10 minutes)
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Jun 9, 2014 03:11
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If you find certain podcasts are otherwise good, but the pace makes you sleepy, speeding up playback by like 10% or so might help.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:08
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bad day posted:I like that Skeptoid looks into whether certain events even happened at all, it's a perspective you don't really get from other sources, people looking at some mysterious and speculative event and saying "naw, doesn't make sense, didn't happen that way" but his episode on "true" conspiracy theories was sort of insulting - by his definition nothing even qualifies as a conspiracy unless extremely specific conditions are met. So what things exactly do you want to call conspiracies but the mean man won't let you? Legit curious here.
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Dec 26, 2014 23:24
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Wilson really was a jerk in a lot of ways he didn't touch on in the episode. Open racism, literally being buddy-buddy with the KKK, allowing certain parts of the US government to re-segregate.
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Dec 31, 2014 17:05
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Gyges posted:Mostly its the focus on memorizing dates and names, turning history into the world's most boring excel equation. So instead of, say, asking for a description of what happened in the battle of Canae, students are instead told to recite the date it happened, numbers of troops involved, and who the principle generals were. I can tell you for sure, never in any of my history classes did we have to remember the numbers of troops involved in a battle, and if a date was required it'd be only in a multiple choice question with greatly different years.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:24
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bad day posted:Well, his definition of a "true" conspiracy is that specific, verifiable claims are made which are subsequently proven true. So for example PRISM is not a considered a proven conspiracy theory, even though a lot of people (including myself) speculated about it before Snowden, due to the fact that those people did not have enough information to make specific, verifiable claims. Saying "the government uses the internet to spy on citizens" isn't a theory because it is unspecific, and even if it was, the Snowden leak (which proves the government uses the internet to spy on citizens) was the result of Snowden's actions and subsequent investigative journalism, so it wouldn't count as proof. PRISM doesn't count as a conspiracy theory since there's been repeated leaks from the NSA over the years as wella s straight announcements that they work with companies to get what they want and also want to monitor everything possible (see: ECHELON). It was a known mission to spy on people of interest to the government and it's a completely obvious subsidiary that this would mean spying on citizens (not to mention that PRISM's stuff was explicitly done partially by the FBI instead). And yes the term conspiracy theory in english generally applies to things that aren't true, because it's no longer a "theory" once it happens, then it's just the crime of conspiracy.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:55
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bad day posted:But, according to him, there really aren't any conspiracy theories at all; a statement like "the CIA essentially started the crack epidemic by flooding the market with cheap cocaine in order to fund their clandestine operations under Reagan" doesn't even count as a conspiracy theory because it doesn't make a specific claim about a specific event at a specific time and place. Again, "conspiracy theory" inherently refers to something false, people who believe them will rarely claim they believe in a conspiracy theory since it's tantamount to claiming you can't prove it. E.g. they'll tell you about the Bilderberg Conspiracy or whatever but as far as they're concerned it's already proven.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:21
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bad day posted:Yeah but according to him it doesn't even count as a "theory" unless extremely specific (and fundamentally impossible) conditions are met. Well yeah because when you have a theory it has to be testable. When people just go, basically, "i think something vaguely happened at some vague time" yeah it's not going to count. bad day posted:It just seems sort of disingenuous - "I'm going to do a show about true conspiracy theories but nothing qualifies as a theory so none of them could ever be true" I didn't realize you were talking about that specific episode, it was intended as joke title (like that one magazine that ran a cover that said "WAS DARWIN WRONG?" and then the feature article was just titled "NO"). Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 05:27
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Swagger Dagger posted:MST3K used to do the "Join us, won't you?" line in the exact same way, but I've never figured out what it's a reference to. Generic 1970s kids' shows and public television documentary type programs, I believe.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:30
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head58 posted:Can anyone recommend any UFO/Forteana/Weird poo poo podcasts? The batshit loonier the better. Blame It On Outer Space presents info on various Weird poo poo in a humor-laden manner: http://www.blameitonouterspace.com/
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Jun 17, 2015 01:44
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Wilson really was a huge racist dick though. Fucker rolled back decades of slow desegregation in the executive branch when he took office ya know.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:39
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Malloreon posted:Sam Harris isn't stupid or racist. He simply believes that Abrahamic religion is a gigantic net negative for humanity. So he IS stupid then, got it.
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Jul 18, 2015 19:10
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adebisi lives posted:What race of people is he racist against again? People who ain't white.
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Jul 18, 2015 20:36
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adebisi lives posted:I hate to break this to you but there are white Muslims, the group of people sam harris is accused of being unfair to. He's also extremely bigoted against white muslims, as well as being racist as hell against everyone who isn't white. Sorry that he's your hero or whatever, but his ideas are poo poo and he's terrible.
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Jul 18, 2015 20:41
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adebisi lives posted:Haha I don't even like sam harris I'm just marveling at the low bar being set for racism today I guess. I did not know that being racist is a low bar for being racist. That seems a bit insane, friend.
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Jul 18, 2015 20:49
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adebisi lives posted:Racist - Full Definition Yes, the fact that he's repeatedly said racist things. Just go listen to him. What you're doing is like asking how Rush Limbaugh is racist.
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Jul 18, 2015 21:05
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