dimland radio 5-29-10 show notes

Talking Twins

My friend, Dave, and I went to see our first MN Twins game Saturday at their new ballpark. Very cool. Dave's friends have season tickets and they gave him their tickets and he asked me to go with him. Awwww. And the Twins won!

Behind Blue Eyes Part 2

On the May 22nd edition of Dimland Radio I spoke extensively on my thoughts about The Who and Pete Townshend, paying particular attention to Pete's 2003 arrest on charges of child porn. After that show, the aforementioned Dave said that I missed an opportunity to cast my skeptical gaze on the media, how they report a story and how the people remember those stories. The news media covers a story big at first with sensationalism, but then don't give it the same emphasis when the story turns out to be more mundane.

Townshend's arrest story was all sensations at first, juicy and lurid, but when the investigation had been completed and Townshend had been essentially cleared of all charges, the media reported it almost as an afterthought. That kind of reporting leads the public in general to mainly remembering the opening salvo and forgetting the wrap up. This phenomenon leaves the public thinking ill of Pete and he doesn't deserve it.

To be fair, Pete Townshend has been fairly rehabilitated in the public eye. If he hadn't the 15 different versions of the TV show CSI wouldn't be using Who songs for their themes and The Who wouldn't have been booked to play the last Superbowl's halftime.

RIP Martin Gardner

I talked about the loss of Martin Gardner at the age of 95. He was a founding member of CSICOP (now CSI) and a leading light in the skeptical movement. His contributions were many, most notable was his 1952 book 'Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science'.

Read more about him here, here and here.

I also took this opportunity to talk about the mistaken notion that celebrities die in threes. What makes someone a celebrity? How close together do the deaths need to be to be clustered? And so on.

My new friend in skepticism

Through my listening to the excellent podcast, Skepticality, I became aware of Chris Brown. Chris is a skeptic whose website is www.skepticsinthepub.net. At his site, he promotes other podcasts, blogs and events of a skeptical nature. I wrote to him about Dimland Radio. He wrote back and we've been FaceBook instant messaging back and forth for quite some time now. Chris will be a guest on my show once we can work out a schedule.

Chris's 10 year-old son, Ethan, has quite an impressive ability with math. Here's the YouTube video that Chris would love to see go viral. Let's help me out, shall we?

Awareness Tests

Chris Brown had me check out a couple YouTube videos that really demonstrate what poor observers we human beings can be. We just aren't that good. We stink! We're awful! Lousy! Crappy!! Almost worthless!!

Take the test here and here.


Jonny Quest

I finished up the show talking about how much I like the original Jonny Quest animated TV series. It was great. I liked the art, the characters (Ok, Bandit got a little annoying), the creatures and villains, the music and, most of all, I liked the fact that people died on the show. Pretty blood thirsty, eh?

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ahead' by Wire
First ad break bumpers: 'Town Called Malice' by The Jam & 'Come Again' by Au Pairs
Second ad break bumpers: 'Age Of Consent' by New Order & 'The Mayor Of Simpleton' by XTC
Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com You can also download my show from the Z Talk On Demand page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com