Episode 172 – The One We Give Hairy The Bald Mouse Three Thumbs Up!

In This Week’s Show, episode 172, We beat the lizard aliens at their own fried conspiracy game by smashing the board. Take that lizard people.

Episode 172 – The One We Give Hairy The Bald Mouse Three Thumbs Up!
Episode 172 – The One We Give Hairy The Bald Mouse Three Thumbs Up!

In This Week’s Show, episode 172, We beat the lizard aliens at their own fried conspiracy game by smashing the board. Take that lizard people.

Now, grab a beer and help us test the god hypothesis — because, while Asclepius (the Greek god of the medicinal arts) hasn’t struck us down yet, we are trying his patience!

Shea’s Life Lesson

This week I learned that if you’re being chased by an animal just lay on the ground for five seconds. After 5 seconds the “5-second” rule takes effect and the animals won’t eat you.

Jenn’s Actual Lesson

Did you know that in the Homeric poems Asclepius in not referred to as a god? He’s merely a mortal. However, scholars think Homer’s getting the deity confused with a human doctor who is thought to also descend from Apollo.

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

This Week’s Beer

Unita – Grapefruit IPA

From Mr. Jenn

  • BA Link: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1416/291893/
  • BA Rating: 4/5
  • Style: American IPA
  • ABV: 7.3
  • Aaron: 5
  • Jenn: 8
  • Shea: 8

This Week’s Show

Round Table Discussion

First we need to start off with a quick announcement!

We’re happy to encourage donations to WyoAIDS.org by hawking our extra content. Specifically, if you mention us or the show in the donation notes / comment area, we’ll send you Patreon shows as a thank you.

So far that’s gone really well and thanking people has been pretty straight forward. But remember to fill in that comment box for goodies! If you’ve donated and didn’t get goodies — actually, patreons too as I think about it — get in contact and let us know. We need to make sure we’re saying thank you / rewarding you properly.

And John, just in case you forgot and you’re a listener, shoot us a message. If not, thanks anyway ;)

Voicemails

  • Dana
  • Shane

New Patrons:

  • Mr. Hägglöf
  • Eli
  • Rich

Speaking of patreon, Louise had a question and let’s address it on the show in case others have the same question. Re: charges for the month v/s charges per show.

Headlines

HL:1 – Everything is bad for you

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/california-green-lights-initiative-thats-a-conspiracy-theorists-dream/

  • Activists in California can now move forward collecting signatures for an expansive ballot initiative that encompasses a world of non-evidence-based and fringe notions, according to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
    • The initiative would eliminate vaccination requirements for schools and daycares, banish genetically modified organisms, and prohibit basic water treatments with fluoride and chlorine. The initiative would ban more than 300 chemicals, including fire retardants, and it would order the removal of smart meters.
  • The initiative, dubbed the “California Clean Environment” initiative, will create an elected, three-person board to oversee the sweeping regulations and approve new chemicals. Violations of the initiative would be considered up to felony crimes punishable by fines and prison sentences.
  • As justification for extensive regulation, the initiative claims that GMOs and unspecified contaminants in the environment, food, and vaccines are causing cancers, autism, Parkinson’s, and a slew of other diseases.
  • “We are trying to restore people’s ability to fight for themselves and decide what they should do,” the initiative’s author, Cheriel Jensen, told Patch.com. “These companies that make the chemicals have taken our right to refuse those chemicals away.”
  • The initiative states that “nothing may be introduced into people, commerce, or the environment if it causes or increases the probability of one or more of the following in people, mammals, birds, bees, other beneficial insects, or amphibians.”
  • With the state authorization, Jensen is now clear to start collecting signatures to get the initiative on the ballot this November. She’ll need to collect valid signatures from 365,880 registered voters—five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the November 2014 general election—in order to qualify. She has until August 8 to do so.

HL2 – Radioactive Lizards

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5385619/West-used-lizards-spy-Irans-nuclear-facilities.html

‘The West used lizards to spy on Iran’: Head of country’s armed forces claims reptiles that can ‘attract atomic waves’ were used by spies to locate nuclear facilities

  • Western spies used lizards which can ‘attract atomic waves’ to spy on Iran’s nuclear programme, the former chief-of-staff of the nation’s armed forces has claimed.
  • Hassan Firuzabadi, the senior military advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said he did not know the details of the cases, but that the West had often used tourists, scientists, and environmentalists to spy on Iran.
  • ‘Several years ago, some individuals came to Iran to collect aid for Palestine,’ he said.
    • ‘We were suspicious of the route they chose. In their possessions were a variety of reptile desert species like lizards. ‘We found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium mines and where we are engaged in atomic activities,’ he added.
  • Firuzabadi said Western spy agencies have ‘failed every time’.
    • He also mentioned another espionage case which involved a couple from Germany.’They got them on a fishing boat from Dubai and Kuwait and sent them to the Persian Gulf to identify our defense systems,’ he said.’But when we arrested them, they said they had come for fishing and were tourists.’
    • In October 2008 Iranian security forces arrested two pigeons suspected of spying on its nuclear facilities. The birds were captured near the heavily-bunkered underground uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. An Iranian newspaper at the time quoted a source as saying one of the pigeons was ‘caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings’.

HL3 – Prayer Protection!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-candidate-advocates-returning-apos-233228335.html?utm_content=bufferb7cab&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

GOP Candidate Advocates Returning ‘Prayer To The Classroom’ To Stop School Shootings

  • At a time when many people are fed up with the empty “thoughts and prayers” of politicians after every mass shooting, a Republican congressional candidate is doubling down and arguing that making thoughts and prayers more regular would perhaps be a solid step toward solving the problem.
  • The country would not be experiencing so many mass shootings if it had not “deteriorated to this point morally,” said conservative Republican Steve Lonegan, who is running to represent the GOP in New Jersey’s 5th congressional district.
  • He made the statements in a Thursday radio interview on the Kevin McCullough Show, which Democratic opposition research group American Bridge first spotted.
    • Lonegan added that he would be a “big advocate” for returning prayer to the classroom. “My own wife has been a Catholic school teacher now for 37 years, and they have to do drills for this kind of a purpose ― how to shut down the classrooms,” he said. “It’s just so disturbing that society has deteriorated to this point morally that we’re confronted with this. And if there’s ever a time to return prayer to the classroom, now’s the time. That’s something I would be a big advocate for. Fortunately, in my wife’s school, they have prayer in the classroom.”
  • Lonegan is a former mayor of New Jersey and ran unsuccessfully for Senate against Democrat Cory Booker in a 2013 special election. In that race, he faced significant criticism for saying it was “weird” that Booker wouldn’t talk more about his sexual orientation.
    • “As a guy, I personally like being a guy. I don’t know if you saw the stories last year. They’ve been out for quite a bit about how he likes to go out at three o’clock in the morning for a manicure and a pedicure,” Lonegan said at the time.

This Week’s Stories

Three Thumbs Up!

Yet again, this is why we can’t have nice things. China is furious at the US after historic artifact damaged while on loan to Philadelphia museum.

Franklin Institute – https://www.fi.edu/exhibit/terracotta-warriors

From Sept of 2017 through March 4, 2018, The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia is hosting a traveling exhibit on the Terracotta Warriors of China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuang. (A total of ten, valued at $4.2mil each, are on loan for the traveling event.) The discovery of these statues is one of the greatest archaeological finds in human history. They were re-discovered in 1974 when a Chinese farmer digging a well on his land unearthed bits of terracotta. Turns out there were thousands of life-sized warrior statues buried here, about 8,000 soldiers, charioteers, and horses unearthed in Xian, capital of northwestern China’s Shaanxi province, dating back from around 200 BCE.

These statues have survived over 2,000 years, but at least one will not be surviving Philadelphia unscathed.

South China Morning Post – http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2133707/china-urges-us-get-tough-man-who-stole-thumb-us45

BBC News – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43109139

Please to meet Michael Rohana, 24 yrs old, and an exceptionally important human being. I know this bc he decided he should be allowed to break into the exhibit (he was at the Franklin Institute attending an Ugly Christmas Sweater party when he wandered off to explore and enter the closed exhibit) and deface, or de-thumb, a statue.

On the night of December 21st, he used his cell phone as a flashlight to find and then take a selfie of himself and the statue. (Embracing the statue in a side-arm hug, bc of course.) Not content to slither away back to the party empty handed, he then snapped off one of its thumbs, put it in his pocket and left.

The theft went unnoticed until January 8, at which time the museum sought help from the FBI’s art crime team, who traced Rohana to his home on January 13.

He was subsequently charged with the theft and concealment of a major artwork, and released on bail.

The cultural centre said it had loaned its exhibits more than 260 times to 60 different countries over the past 40 years but had never before experienced “such a noxious incident”, according to the newspaper report.

Chinese art officials are calling for a serious penalty plus restitution from Rohana, as well as restitution from Franklin Institute.

Harry Fry Mice

Some of you have probably heard to the good news about McDonald’s freedom fries and regrowing your exceptional man-pelt!

If not, here are a few headlines…

According to the reporting on the study, Dimethylpolysiloxane is in everything and will make you grow a mullet of power – almost like Sampson hizself…

According to the study, released in the Biomaterials journal the breakthrough came after the scientists successfully mass-produced “hair follicle germs” (HFG) which were created for the first time ever in this way.

According to the Daily Mail, they are the ‘Holy Grail’ of hair loss research, as HFGs have never been regenerated before – which already poses a problem because HFGs have been around for the better part of 30 years, they’re just a giant pain in the ass… or head… or asshead, depending on where they got the samples they put in your head.

From the study by way of reporting:

“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel,” Professor Junji Fukuda, of Yokohama National University, said in the study. “We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well.”

The technique created 5,000 HFGs simultaneously – which is awesome, because before you had to do it one at time… The research team then seeded the prepared HFGs from an HFG chip, a fabricated, approximately 300-microwell array, onto the mouse’s body.

“These self-sorted hair follicle germs were shown to be capable of efficient hair-follicle and shaft generation upon injection into the backs of nude mice,” Fukuda said.

“This simple method is very robust and promising,” Fukuda said. “We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness). In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells.”

And it’s all thanks to the dish of oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS).

Yeah… I just said all that. Mind blown!

But What Does It All Mean?

Dimethylpolysiloxane, also bearing the name polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), is a type of silicone. It is a non-biodegradable synthetic substance.

It’s commonly in used in items such as contact lenses, or medical devices. Even shampoos and conditioners use it (properties in PDMS give the hair a shiny and slippery feel). It’s also used in: caulk, lubricants, adhesives, mold release agents, polishes, heat transfer fluids, aquarium sealant, kinetic sand, silly putty, cosmetics and even breast implants.

In food, PDMS acts as an anti-foaming and anti-caking agent. Its presence changes the surface tension in many liquids – including frier oil – allowing for a more uniform appearance. It’s also used as a preservative, because it’s non-biodegradable, but mostly to stop fries from foaming over by places you might have heard of like:

  • McDonald’s.
  • Subway.
  • Chick-Fil-A.
  • Wendy’s.
  • Jack-in-the-Box.
  • Domino’s.
  • Taco Bell.
  • Pizza Hut.
  • KFC.
  • Burger King.
  • Arby’s.
  • etc

Basically, if it’s American and fast food, it’s got this in it. And some in the UK.. for your “chips” but all in all, it’s harmless.

Show How Much Is In Fries Anyway?

None. There is none in the fries. Eating “Chips” as the mirror suggests won’t grow a goddamned thing except for your midriff.

It’s In the oil. And you should probably not just drink fryer oil.

The FDA last approved dimethylpolysiloxane as a food additive in 1998. The move was requested by the Dow Corning Corporation, which describes itself as a “global leader in silicon-based technology and innovation.” The FDA placed a number of limitations on the use of dimethylpolysiloxane as a “secondary direct food additive” for human consumption:

“Limitations: 10 parts per million in food, or at such level in a concentrated food that when prepared as directed on the labels, the food in its ready-for-consumption state will have not more than 10 parts per million except as follows: Zero in milk; 110 parts per million in dry gelatin dessert mixes labeled for use whereby no more than 16 parts per million is present in the ready-to-serve dessert; 250 parts per million in salt labeled for cooking purposes, whereby no more than 10 parts per million is present in the cooked food.”

McDonald’s Fries Contain Dimethylpolysiloxane – Truth!

A number of health agencies have reviewed the use dimethylpolysiloxane as a food additive over the years, and those studies haven’t linked it to any harmful side effects.

The European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals carried out a review in 2011 that found it had no adverse effects on the immune system and was “rapidly excreted unchanged in the feces” when ingested by humans.

The World Health Organization also explored potential long-term consequences of dimethylpolysiloxane exposure in lab rats. It concluded:

“Studies have been carried out on silicone fluids with and without the addition of silica. The presence of silica did not raise any toxicological problems nor did it affect the results of the experiment in a significant way. Short-term studies have been carried out in several species, including one study on an emulsion of dimethylpolysiloxane. An adequate long-term study with dimethylpolysiloxane has been carried out in the rat. None of these studies has revealed any significant toxicity.”

So it’s not even in the fries, it’s in the oil, as a cooking agent. And there are less than 10 parts per million. The lab mice, their hair was grown literally in a petri dish of this shit. So know this won’t help you grow your hair. This really only works inside the lab, and the version of the chemicals are using his oxygen permeable, entirely different product then what is used to keep fryers from forming over.

Or we could just quote their conclusion:

In the present study, we demonstrated the fabrication of a culture array chip for the large-scale preparation of ssHFGs via a two-step molding process. Seeding a mixture of dissociated epithelial and mesenchymal cells on this chip resulted in their self- organization to form aggregates and subsequent ssHFGs. The supply of adequate oxygen through the gas-permeable substrate used to fabricate the chip was demonstrated to be essential for the spontaneous self-organization of HFGs capable of generating hair shafts after transplantation into the back or scalp skin of nude mice.

Regularly aligned hair follicles were generated by transferring ssHFGs from the chip via a collagen gel that enabled direct intracutaneous transplantation. Notably, the experiments conducted in the present study utilized murine cells, and thus, further studies of human trichogenic cells are required to assess the feasibility of this novel method for use in human hair-regenerative medicine.

Or, to sum it all up – we spent a fucking ton of money making a new petri dish to grow eyelashes on the backs of mice as a proof of concept and in no way do McDonald’s fries affect anything hair growth in a human. But you could grow yourself heart disease.

Next Week’s Beer

Hopfusion Ale Works – Hairpin

From: Elizabet

  • BA Link: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/47543/264291/
  • BA Rating: 3.88/5
  • Style: Rye Beer
  • ABV: 6.38%

Faith In Humanity Restored

Sting the ‘sad’ reading dog no longer sad and alone after pics went viral.

Good News Network – https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/sad-dog-looking-kids-read-now-booked/

Sting the dog loves helping children with their reading skills. So when no one showed up to his library session earlier this month, his owner posted some lonesome looking photos of the canine to Facebook to encourage participation.

Unfortunately, nobody signed up to read to Sting at the White Bear Lake library tonight. If you know of a 4 to 8yr old who would like to read to a dog. Please contact the White Bear Lake library by phone or their website about the Paws to Read program.

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The 10-year-old hound is a retired race dog who now works as a certified therapy dog in White Bear Lake, MN. Once a week at the city library, Sting lets kids read to him for the Paws to Read program – an initiative that lets kids practice their reading skills by reading to complacent pups. He usually spends an hour at the library so at least three kids can get 20 minutes of reading time; but this week, no one showed up.

But that all changed once the pics of his little face and lonely reading nook went viral.

“People are asking if we could hold the phone to Sting’s ear so they could read to him,” librarian Ann Wahlstrom told TODAY. “The whole staff of a Petco in California called to say they love Sting. It’s just amazing, the outpouring.”

Much to the delight of the librarians, Sting’s schedule is now booked solidly until April, as is the other resident reading dogs of Paws to Read.

“We love promoting the joy of reading; the joy of reading to dogs,” she added.

Bonus Cat Videos

How Paintballs are Made – YouTube

The Making Of “Wakanda” With Ludwig Göransson | Presented By Marvel Studio’s Black Panther – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XtCnGT0B20

Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn – Launch Trailer | PS4 – YouTube

Homeopathy Explained – Gentle Healing or Reckless Fraud? – YouTube

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