Episode 165 – The One Where We Just Barely Had Enough Material

In This Week’s Show, episode 165, Aaron says some cleverly-worded shit about this week’s topics

Episode 165 – The One Where We Just Barely Had Enough Material
Episode 165 – The One Where We Just Barely Had Enough Material

In This Week’s Show, episode 165, Aaron says some cleverly-worded shit about this week’s topics

Now, grab a beer and help us test the god hypothesis — because, while Strenia hasn’t struck us down yet, we are trying her patience!

Shea’s Life Lesson

This week i learned that during an earthquake, coffins become huge underground maracas.

Jenn’s Actual Lesson (by Steve)

In ancient Roman religion, Strenia was a goddess of the new year, purification, and wellbeing. On January 1, twigs from Strenia’s grove were carried in a procession to the citadel, in a rite first noted as occurring on New Year’s Day in 153 BC. She is connected with the custom of exchanging presents (strenae) and good wishes on the first of January.

But before we get to all that, let’s have a beer!

This Week’s Beer

Short’s Bellaire Brown Ale | Short’s Brewing Company

By Heeby Jeebus

  • BA Link: http://bit.ly/2kzW9uN
  • BA Rating: 3.78/5
  • Style: American Brown Ale
  • ABV: 7%
  • Aaron: 9
  • Shea: 6
  • Steve: 7

This Week’s Show

Round Table Discussion

Beer donation from friend of the show Brendon!
He brought us some wonderful beers from Nebraska… hopefully they aren’t all made out of corn…

Voicemails!

Felicia from Utah Outcasts!

  • http://podhell.com/category/utah-outcasts/

Text message from The Naptin Pope:

  • My day job is a telephone engineer.
  • Because I design and help oversee construction of buried phone lines, running into water lines is an issue. Water lines are notoriously hard (and/or expensive) to locate by other means (the best way is with precise maps); however, almost universally, our sub-contractors and even the water companies themselves use “divining” (aka water witching) to locate lines. So, of course, we hit them a lot. However, when I’ve brought up that divining doesn’t work, they look at me like I’ve grown a second head. It’s all confirmation bias: they remember when it worked, and make excuses for, or forget, the numerous failures. I once had a contractor try to convince me by walking up to a newly installed water meter and pipe system and show me how the rods “found” them; of course they found them because the upturned soil from the installation was obvious. Meanwhile, we were standing 80 feet from a huge lake.

Jenn is out – make sure you fill out some iTunes reviews to get her back on her feet!

Welcome to 2018 folks! To start the year off right we’re burning our evergreen content, so enjoy a second half and Jenn’s patreon story… on a show without Jenn! Ahh, the magic of post production.

 

Finally – I want to mention that we’ll soon be gearing up for this year’s Drag Queen Bingo in support of Wyoming AIDS Assistance. We’re going to be having some fun with it on the show thanks to the fabulous Big Gay Jim, I hope you all enjoy what’s coming and I hope you all donate to WyoAIDS.org!

Headlines

HL1 – Swiss Politician’s Logic Is Also Full of Holes. – http://bit.ly/2lQww8Q

A Swiss politician has blamed incontinence due to weakened anal muscles as the reason for an increase in suicide among gay people.

  • Zurich City Council member Daniel Regli made the statement during a budget debate on funding for sex education.
    • Regli criticized a sex ed website, Lust and Frust (Pleasure and Pain). He claimed the site, supported by the city’s education department, promotes homosexuality and promiscuity but doesn’t say anything about “homosexuals with multiple partners take their lives between the ages of 30 and 40…because their anal muscle is not holding up as it should.”
  • His remarks brought laughter and chaos in the hall, until Mayor Corine Mauch, an out lesbian, called for order. Even his own party criticized him, with Marco Denoth, Swiss People’s Party (SVP) co-president, saying, “I do not want to see him anymore.”
  • “Someone who is able, in a homophobic tirade, to make the link between the anal muscle of homosexuals and suicide is beyond any conception that I can have of a politician,” said René Schegg, director of the LGBTQ organization Pink Cross.
  • Regli remains defiant.
    • “I said Saturday what nobody wants to hear,” he claimed, failing to grasp that no one wants to hear it because it’s asinine.

HL2 – Keewee McGee Says Have One On Me

New Zealanders build island in bid to avoid alcohol ban

  • A group of New Zealanders has constructed a sand island in coastal waters, seemingly in a creative attempt to avoid a ban on drinking in public places. The group built the structure at low tide in the Tairua estuary on the Coromandel peninsula on Sunday afternoon, reports said. They then installed a picnic table and ice box for drinks.
  • Locals joked that they were in “international waters” and thus exempt from an official liquor ban.
  • A ban on public drinking is in force in Coromandel over the New Year period and those violating the ban face a fine of $250 (£130; US$180) or arrest.
  • But authorities seemed to be taking the initiative in light-hearted spirit.
    • “That’s creative thinking – if I had known [about it] I probably would have joined them,” said local police commander Inspector John Kelly when told about the sand island.
  • But a well-known community organiser Noddy Watts said the ban was not working and was simply resulting in swathes of arrests. He said the police were “dealing with drunk teens”. “That’s not what they are there for. That’s what parents are there for,” he said, according to the New Zealand Herald.
  • “The police and St John were getting frustrated with the result and said it has to change,” said Mr Watts according to the New Zealand Herald.

HL3 – 4 Million Year Long Erection – http://abcn.ws/2CUqwCS

  • A tiny, early crustacean called an ostracod, which is related to crabs, shrimps and water fleas was found to have a penis. This is the oldest known penis found at over 100 million years old.
  • Professor David Siveter, of the University of Leicester in England, said, “To my knowledge, it is the oldest penis. I don’t know of any older.”
  • Siveter was presenting his research on the fossil (found in Brazil) to the British Association Festival of Science.
  • This little creature was only about a millimeter wide and actually had not one, but two penises (no word on what kind of attitude it had as a result).
  • We can assume that the dinosaurs had dicks, but since the fossils we have of them are just bones, we have no hard evidence.

This Week’s Stories

Putting Nature On Spin Cycle – http://bit.ly/2By4HwR

A study of female macaques (aka snow monkeys) published earlier this month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior confirmed suspicions from another incident reported earlier this year that, yes, monkeys are having sex with deer (or, more precisely, exhibiting sexual behavior on deer). Researchers studied two groups averaging 80 monkeys each, both living in the Minoo Quasi-National Park of Japan; they found the deer-humping to be taking place only amongst one group, and only by females.

The study, for human reference, is like a monkey-on-monkey-on-deer Joy of Sex:

  • “bird-dogging”: frozen stance and intense gazing, hindquarter presentations, inclined-back presentations
  • “tantrum”: crouching on the ground or against a branch while screaming
  • “body movements and gestures”: lip quivering, head bobbing, ground smacking, hindquarter sniffing, hands-on-hindquarters solicitations, pushing, grabbing, and body spasms
  • “sexual vocalizations”: [Author note: understood amongst researchers]

Reports of the monkey/deer sexy time has been coming from the area for several years, so of course scientists had to get their asses to Japan in order to watch some of that action. For science reasons, of course. While homosexual relations between these young female monkeys is very common, the scientists weren’t sure what to make of the tales of inter-species loving.

13 successful interactions of an apparently sexual nature were recorded between monkeys and deer between early November 2014 and January 2015, involving five adolescent females and a total of 258 mounts. (side note, monkeys be horny)

Analysis of the animals’ behaviour revealed no clear difference between the adolescent female snow monkeys and other females or deer when it came to how often they sought such attentions, mounted their partner, how long they spent on their partner, or even their orientation – although as expected monkeys more often undertook sitting mounts on deer than on other monkeys. Unexpectedly, pelvic thrusting was more common when the partner was a deer.

The observers have several theories as to why this new behavior has developed: there are usually less males than females, the males are very aggressive and can severely injure young females and the monkeys have been utilizing the deer as steeds as long as they have been observed. So maybe, like a bored housewife and a washing machine on spin cycle, they just like the genital stimulation.

While sexual interactions between different species is not unheard of, it is usually between more closely related species. This is actually only the second known example of vastly different species having sexually contact, the other being the violent (usually fatal) sexual assault of emperor penguins by male Antarctic Fur seals. (Ok, so deadly penguin rape, sorry I put that in a Christmas story.)

Lastly, as sexual consent is a current and always important social topic, the deer don’t seem to mind but no explicit permission appears to be given.

Timey Wimey Dumey Wumey – http://bit.ly/2hLNkwv

Bizarre Theory Says It’s Actually The Year 1720 Because The Early Middle Ages Were Faked

  • According to the Phantom Time Hypothesis, Charlemagne never existed, along with 297 years that were just made up.
  • German Historian Heribert Illig the year is actually 1720, the Gregorian calendar is a lie, and a chunk of Middle Ages was completely made up. Discuss.
  • Illig claims that Pope Sylvester II, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII all got together and changed the calendar to make it seem as if Otto had begun his reign in the millennial year of 1000 AD, rather than 996. The reason being that 1000 sounded a lot more meaningful than 996 considering AD stands for “anno domini,” or, “the year of the Lord.”
  • Illig says that an inadequate system of dating medieval artifacts, as well as an over-reliance on written history are to blame. According to his research, the years between 614 and 911 AD don’t quite add up. The years prior to 614 were full of historically significant events, as were the years after 911, however he claims that the ones in between were unusually dull.

Le Sigh.

  • Observations in ancient astronomy, especially those of solar eclipses cited by European sources prior to 600 AD don’t support the missing time model
  • Two in particular are dated with enough precision to disprove the hypothesis with a high degree of certainty. One is reported by Pliny the Elder in 59 AD[9] and one by Photius in 418 AD.[10] Both of these dates and times have confirmed eclipses. In addition, observations during the Tang dynasty in China, and Halley’s Comet, for example, are consistent with current astronomy with no “phantom time” added.
  • The Gregorian reform was never purported to bring the calendar in line with the Julian calendar as it had existed at the time of its institution in 45 BC, but as it had existed in 325, the time of the Council of Nicaea, which had established a method for determining the date of Easter Sunday by fixing the vernal equinox on March 21 in the Julian calendar. By 1582, the astronomical equinox was occurring on March 10 in the Julian calendar, but Easter was still being calculated from a nominal equinox on March 21. In 45 BC the astronomical vernal equinox took place around March 23. Illig’s “three missing centuries” thus correspond to the 369 years between the institution of the Julian calendar in 45 BC, and the fixing of the Easter Date at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.
  • Then there are other lines of evidence. We have historical records of every appearance of Halley’s Comet since 240 B.C., including Chinese records from 684, 760, and 837. The 837 approach was one of the closest and brightest ever.
  • If Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty were fabricated, there would have to be a corresponding fabrication of the history of the rest of Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire. The “phantom time” period also encompasses the life of Muhammad and the Islamic expansion into the areas of the former Roman Empire, including the conquest of Visigothic Iberia. This history too would have to be forged or drastically misdated. It would also have to be reconciled with the history of the Tang dynasty of China and its contact with Islam, such as at the Battle of Talas.

Next Week’s Beer

Daybreak | Martin House Brewing Company

By Elizabet

  • BA Link: http://bit.ly/2zcjGGk
  • BA Rating: 3.62/5
  • Style: American Blonde Ale
  • ABV: 5.2%

Faith In Humanity Restored

Mosque pays off debts of man who spray painted hateful messages on their building in 2016 – http://bit.ly/2DUnVcK

A mosque in Arkansas has paid off the debts of a man who was caught on camera spray painting hateful messages on their building in October 2016. Arkansas Matters reports that Masjid Al Salam in the city of Fort Smith ponied up $1,700 to pay off court fines imposed on Abraham Davis, the man who vandalized their building just over a year ago with messages such as “Fck you, fck Islam” and “Go home.”

Louay Nassri, the president of Al Salam, tells Arkansas Matters that he has forgiven Davis, and that he didn’t want his hateful actions to punish him for his whole life.

“We didn’t want him to go to jail for six years,” he explains. “After all that he had been through, we didn’t want him sitting on the severe financial stress. And like I told him, we want him to have a much better future.”

Nassri also says that Davis has apologized for his actions, and has already done community service to atone for what he did.

“If he would’ve known who we are, he wouldn’t of done this,” Nassri says. “If we would’ve known his troubles with us, we would’ve tried to help him. Communication is extremely important. Education is extremely important.”

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