dimland radio 7-12-14 show notes

Pedantic Moment: Cuteeee

 

When I read the posts on my Facebook, I see people not understanding how to elongate words for emphasis. For instance, if you wanted to elongate the word "cute" how would you do it?

Hint: The "E" is silent.

Congratulations Cosmos!

 

Congratulations to the producers of 'Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey'! The Fox science series received 12 Emmy nominations:

- Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
- Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Progamming
- Outstanding Art Direction for Variety, Nonfiction, Reality, or Reality/Competition Programming
- Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming
- Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming
- Outstanding Main Title Design
- Outstanding Music Composition for a Series
- Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music
- Outstanding Sound Editing for Nonfiction Programming
- Outstanding Sound Mixing for Nonfiction Programming
- Outstanding Special and Visual Effects.

I Did A Study

 

Admittedly, it was not a very scientific study, but I was prompted to do it by the meme you see above. I thought that I'd check out 50 notorious murderers and find out what their astrological signs were and see how they fared compared with the claim that is made by the meme.

 

My results showed that 56% of the 50 murderers I compiled did not fall under any of the five signs in the meme. I wrote about it here.

 

I will add this, which I hadn't thought to check for the original blog or to mention on the show. It is interesting that 7 of 12 (that's the ratio of signs not included in the meme) is about 58.33%. That's not far of from 56%, is it?

Dimland Radio Science Hero: Ozzy Osbourne

 

You read that right. Ozzy Osbourne. Some years ago, I'm not sure how many, Ozzy and Sharon were guests on the Graham Norton Show along with Olivia Newton John. ONJ was hawking some fruity, herbal drink her husband was marketing. She claimed the potion "clears your mind, brightens your day."

 

Ozzy drank a good amount of it and had a little fun. Then he wrapped it up nicely when he let everyone know what he really thought of it. Sure, this isn't an example of good science or skepticism being done. It was pretty knee-jerk. But I thought it was an excellent response to some fairly dubious claims.

 

Tommy Cooper Dies On Stage

 

There's a parody of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' song that changes all of the pop culture and historical references. One change was the line, "Tommy Cooper died on stage..."

 

That line intrigued me as I hadn't heard of Tommy Cooper or the fact that he died on stage. I looked it up and I found video of his having a heart attack while performing on live television. I won't link to it out of respect for his family.

 

I hoped that my talking about it wouldn't be disrespectful, but I described what happened. How he was preparing to perform a trick, while his assistant helped him into an over-sized cloak, when he seemed to lose his balance. His assistant leaves the stage as Cooper collapses. The audience laughs, thinking this was part of the routine. He then falls onto his back. Audience laughter again. Cooper is just lying there. It begins to dawn on everyone, "This is not part of the act." Cut to commercial.

 

And that was it. He died.

 

I talked about how suddenly death can come for us. And that the moment wasn't very dramatic. It was almost gentle. Cooper didn't grab his chest or cry out in pain. He just slumped to the floor and then onto his back.

 

When our time comes, sometimes it just sneaks up on us.

 

Movie Recommendation: A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

 

MGM

 

I really didn't have time to go into a movie recommendation this week, but at the top of the show, during my Pedantic Moment, I did talk a little bit about this movie. So, I figured it was as good a recommendation as any.

It's a very funny caper film starring two Pythons: John Cleese, who also wrote the film, and Michael Palin, along with Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline. Everyone is very good and very funny in this movie. Nicely done.

    

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus

First ad break bumpers: 'Highwayman' by The Highwaymen & 'Heat of the Moment' by Asia
Second ad break bumpers: 'Here Comes Your Man' by Pixies & 'Houses In Motion' by Talking Heads
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 show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

hey, ted, what's your sign?

Ok, the following isn’t very scientific, but it is a quick, small sized study conducted by me. It was prompted by a meme (see above) that I spotted in my Facebook newsfeed. As you can see, according to the meme, which offers no evidence other than its say so, the top five signs that are most likely to murder are Aries, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Virgo, and Cancer.

Bullshit, right? Of course.

However, I thought I’d see what I could find out about the validity of this claim. I decided to make a list of 50 murderers, mostly American serial killers, and their zodiac signs. No, I can’t think of 50 serial killers off the top of my head, so I used Google and Wikipedia to find them as well as to get their birthdates. I also found a website that gave me the signs of the zodiac and their dates. Not believing in such childish silliness, I don’t have the signs set to memory.

I wrote each name down first and then used Wikipedia to find their birthdates and determine their signs. One name, Amy Archer-Gilligan, had to be scratched from the written list because Wikipedia did not have an exact birthdate for her.

Once a name was picked, Wikipedia gave me their birthdate, I checked the zodiac chart, and wrote down if it was a hit or a miss according to the meme. The list is in the exact order of the murderers I thought of or found. You will notice that there are a few in alphabetical order. Those were the ones I pulled from Wikipedia’s list of American Serial Killers.

Another name I struck from my original written list was Lizzie Borden. Borden is popularly thought to have murdered her father and stepmother, however she was acquitted of the crime, so, much like OJ Simpson, and she could not be included. I replaced her with Christopher Peterson. Borden would have been a hit and Peterson is a miss. Both names were chosen prior to my knowing their birthdates.

Here is the list, starting with everyone’s favorite Ted Bundy (My apologies these aren't aligned more nicely.): 

Ted Bundy                        Sagittarius           Hit
Jeffery Dahmer                 Gemini                 Miss
Henry Lee Lucas              Virgo                    Hit
John Wayne Gacy             Pisces                 Miss
Andrew Cunanan               Virgo                    Hit
Eric Harris                         Aries                    Hit
Dylan Klebold                    Virgo                    Hit
Aileen Wuornos                 Pisces                 Miss
David Berkowitz                Gemini                 Miss
Dennis Rader                    Pisces                  Miss
Gary Ridgeway                  Aquarius              Miss
Andrei Chikatilo                 Libra                     Miss
Richard Ramirez                Pisces                  Miss
Albert Fish                         Taurus                  Miss
Charles Manson                 Scorpio                Hit
Ed Gein                              Leo                       Miss
Edmund Kemper                Sagittarius            Hit
H H Holmes                       Taurus                  Miss
Timothy McVeigh               Taurus                  Miss
Ted Kaczynski                    Gemini                 Miss
Eric Rudolph                       Virgo                    Hit
Terry Nichols                      Aries                     Hit
Anders Behring Breivik      Aquarius              Miss
Jared Lee Loughner           Virgo                    Hit
Albert DeSalvo                   Virgo                    Hit
Carl Panzram                     Cancer                 Hit
Kenneth Bianchi                 Gemini                 Miss
Richard Chase                   Gemini                 Miss
Ottis Toole                          Pisces                  Miss
Charles Albright                  Leo                      Miss
Rodney Alcala                    Virgo                    Hit
Howard Allen                      Aquarius              Miss
Richard Angelo                   Virgo                    Hit
Benjamin Atkins                  Virgo                    Hit
Joe Ball                               Capricorn            Miss
Jake Bird                            Sagittarius            Hit
Richard Biegenwald           Virgo                     Hit
Richard Speck                    Sagittarius            Hit
John Allen Muhammad      Capricorn              Miss
Lee Boyd Malvo                 Aquarius               Miss
Wayne Williams                 Gemini                  Miss
Anthony Sowell                  Leo                       Miss
Robert Shulman                 Aries                     Hit
Paul Michael Stephani       Virgo                     Hit
Joel Rifkin                          Aquarius               Miss
Dorothea Puente               Capricorn              Miss
Marie Noe                          Virgo                     Hit
Susan Smith                      Libra                     Miss
Kenneth McDuff                 Aries                     Hit
Christopher Peterson        Aquarius               Miss

As I stated, this is not scientific and I’m sure it is likely that I may have made an error or two. I’m not a statistician, but I tried to be as accurate as possible.

So, counting the hits and misses, I get 22 hits (44%) and 28 misses (56%). I realize that another set of names could have the hits outnumbering the misses and that I just happened to get it the other way round. I also think that had the meme included six signs (half of the 12 zodiac signs) the result might just have approached 50%.

Regardless, there is no good credible scientific evidence that astrology is anything more than fanciful and wishful thinking. People should not be any more concerned with those who happen to be born under those five signs than of those born under the other seven.

By the way, my sign is Scorpio. Astrologers! Put your charts away!