Episode 185 – The One Where We Got Struck By A Smooth Dolphin

In This Week’s Show, episode 185, we visit intergalactic British Judges to finally get a ruling on curing gonasyphaherpaaids with meat-tea and rage.

Episode 185 – The One Where We Got Struck By A Smooth Dolphin
Episode 185 – The One Where We Got Struck By A Smooth Dolphin

In This Week’s Show, episode 185, we visit intergalactic British Judges to finally get a ruling on curing gonasyphaherpaaids with meat-tea and rage.

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

Shea’s Life Lesson

This week I learned that running was invented by Thomas Running in 1612 when he tried to walk twice at the same time.

Jenn’s Actual Lesson

Did you know that Erebus is the son of Chaos and the brother/husband of Nyx, the female personification of darkness?

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

This Week’s Beer

Contemplation – Brewery Vivant Grand Rapids, MI

From: Steve E

Golden Ale brewed with Michigan Honey

  • ABV: 7%
  • BA Score: 3.66/5
  • Style: Bière de Garde
  • Jenn: 6
  • Shea: 7
  • Aaron: 7

 

This Week’s Show

Round Table Discussion

We get to start this week off right with a new patron! PishedBoy has answered the call and is this week’s best person!

Steve is out today, so the kids will play!

Update to Shea’s shitty train story – apparently the shipment of smelly shite has been sent to … wherever lost socks go I guess, didn’t read that far, but Febreze has swung in to save the day, giving out free cans of air freshener to the locals who surely need it more than most…

Extra Beer!

I Wish You Were Here | Mockery Brewery

Denver
Shea’s Mother-in-law!

  • 3.63/5
  • American Blonde Ale
  • 5.6%
  • Shea – 10
  • Aaron – 9
  • Jenn – 8

Headlines

Teenagers Continue to Suck But Judge Lays Down the Gavel

NPR – http://bit.ly/2IIIv6x

Proving again that a.) we can’t have nice things and b.) teenagers can be the worst, an unnamed then-15 yr old threw fireworks into Oregon’s beautiful Columbia River Gorge last year. The resulting out of control wildfire burned nearly 47,000 acres of scenic landscape. Witnesses watched the boy and a group of friends laugh and throw several in until it finally caught fire, laughed and shouted and were generally awful little shits. One woman told Oregon Public Broadcasting how she him light a smoke bomb and lob it into Eagle Creek Canyon, which was soon consumed by a forest fire that blazed for months, eventually burning an area as large as Washington, D.C.

Happily, the hero of the story, Judge John Olson ran out of both patience and fucks dealing with the teenage turd and his mealy-mouthed lawyer. Despite protests from lawyer Jack Morris of cruel and unusual punishment, Judge Olson has sentenced Firebug Teen to 1,920hrs of community service, 5yrs of probation and a restitution of $36.6 million dollars.

Yep, even though the judge acknowledges that the boy won’t be able to pay it in full, this is a glorious statement that this sort of dangerous behavior will not be tolerated. Judge Olson says this amount of “restitution is clearly proportionate to the offense because it does not exceed the financial damages caused by the youth.” Per an Oregon juvenile delinquency statute: “restitution that equals the full amount of the victims’ injury, loss or damage as determined by the court”.

Olson also pointed to “safety valves” within the statute, “which serve to ensure that the restitution statute as applied in any particular case, even one as extreme as this one, does not ‘shock the moral sense of reasonable people.’ ” Those valves include the establishment of a payment schedule, which the judge authorized the Hood River County Juvenile Department to do. And after 10 years, if the boy successfully completes probation, doesn’t commit additional offense and complies with the payment plans, the court can grant full or partial satisfaction of the restitution judgment.

Side note: the boy is from a large Ukrainian family in Vancouver, Wash., part of a Russian-speaking Pentecostal community. No word on the linguistic differences of speaking in tongues in Russian v/s God blessed American.

Irish activists are wrong and Ed Sheeran is not having it.

The Guardian – http://bit.ly/2IM6bqV

Ed Sheeran, the most famous ginger Brit who was not in Harry Potter and did not get married this past weekend, has had to call a halt to some bullshit involving his music. Per The Guardian, Sheeran was move to action when he learned his song ‘Small Bump’ being used by the Dublin-based anti-abortion group during one of their public campaigns less than a week before Ireland’s referendum on abortion.

When the song was broadcast in Dublin’s city center last week, Sheeran found out and posted an Instagram story distancing himself from the movement. On Friday, he wrote: “I’ve been informed that my song Small Bump is being used to promote the Pro-Life campaign, and I feel it’s important to let you know I have not given approval for this use, and it does not reflect what the song is about.”

Now, the song itself has seriously odd lyrics and I’ve never heard it, nor am I interested to. Sample lyrics: “You’re just a small bump unknown, you’ll grow into your skin/With a smile like hers and a dimple beneath your chin/Fingernails the size of a half grain of rice, and eyelids closed to be soon opened wide/ A small bump, in four months you’ll open your eyes.” But good on Ed for standing up to the Irish zealots who continue to work to put women’s lives at risk with their extreme abortion laws. May 25, the day this episode actually airs, Ireland will vote in a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment to its constitution, which bans abortion in almost all circumstances. So we’ll have some follow up!

We have an intergalactic visitor who isn’t leaving!.. Patreon.com/w4w where the story is available right now!

Syfy.com – http://bit.ly/2s71UDY

Someone let our bigoted administration know that there is an illegal asteroid orbiting Jupiter and it’s refusing to leave.

Unlike last year’s interstellar-famous-asteroid of the hour, Oumuamua, who whizzed through on a travel VISA, asteroid 2015 BZ509 appears to have no interest in leaving our Solar System to the good Christian Earthlings who have colonized it. This makes BZ509 the first known interstellar asteroid to have taken up residence orbiting the Sun and we still have no idea where it came from.

That’s not the only thing odd about. It also orbits the Sun backwards (that’s what you get from these illegal alien freeloaders! That’s not what this planet was founded on!) Per SyFy Wire: Most objects in the solar system orbit the Sun (or in the case of many moons, their host planet) in very close to the same plane, and they do so counterclockwise if you’re above the solar system and looking down on it. We call that direction prograde. But BZ bucks the trend. It has an orbit that’s highly tipped, so much that it actually goes the other way ’round. Its orbit is retrograde.

Also weirdly, it gets close enough to Jupiter twice every orbit to get a bit of a tug from the giant planet’s huge gravity. Over time, you’d think that should disturb the orbit enough to send BZ off its path, either plunging it into the Sun or ejecting it from the solar system. But that’s not the case; last year it was found that, because of its unusual orbit, when it passes Jupiter one time it gets tugged first one way, and then the next pass it gets tugged the other way (think of it as left and right if that helps). The two forces balance out, and BZ’s orbit is stable.

Many scientists feel that the fact of this reverse orbit shows that it must have come from a different gravitational source, most likely from another Star (hence, solar system). It’s not a consensus yet, of course, bc scientists don’t just take info at face value. Some believe that perhaps it was formed so early in the start of the universe that, in basic layman terms, gravitational rotations hadn’t settled yet. As of now, it’s still being investigated.

This Week’s Stories

Patreon Story

http://bit.ly/2IJrhpR

Back in 2014, you may remember that Russia decided it was growing too large for its borders and annexed Crimea. What you may not know though is that along with the miles of gorgeous coastline Russia also acquired Ukraine’s combat dolphins, part of a secret programme that trains sea mammals to carry out military tasks.

For the past four years, Ukraine is demanding the return of the dolphins, who unlike the naval officers serving on the peninsula, were not given the choice of “defecting” to Russia or traveling to mainland Ukraine to continue serving Kiev. Some believed the Russians were planning to retrain the dolphins as Russian soldiers, with a source telling Russian agency RIA Novosti that engineers were “developing new aquarium technologies for new programmes to more efficiently use dolphins underwater”.

Unfortunately four years later and it seems little has come of these supposed Russian plans and most of the dolphins have died. But this week Boris Babin, the Ukrainian government’s representative in Crimea, claimed that they did so defending their country. He said that the dolphins died “patriotically”, refusing to follow orders or eat food provided by the “Russian invaders” and that the hunger strike led to their eventual death.

Representative Babin told a Ukranian newspaper that the dolphins were more honorable than some human soldiers: “The trained animals refused not only to interact with the new Russian coaches but refused food and died sometime later. Many Ukrainian soldiers took their oath and loyalty much less seriously than these dolphins.”

Dolphins have been observed displaying similar “loyal” characteristics to dogs, swimming up enthusiastically to people that they have met before. Occasionally captive dolphins have been known to refuse food when a tank companion dies and there have also been claims that dolphins have stopped themselves breathing after being separated from humans they had formed a bond with. So perhaps the Ukrainian claims aren’t as far-fetched as they sound.

Second Half Quiz Thing…

http://bit.ly/2IZhlYD

I’ve spent some time talking about woo-woo bullshit, laughing at the ridiculous claims modern woo’s make about the curative power of bleach in your butt, porous stones in your pussy, or ward off the evil autistic spirits of vaccination. But what about the time before modern medicine? What about when seemingly intelligent people were recommending bloodletting and porcupine fucking?.. Ok, I don’t know that the last one is real, but it’s easily the most errotic of acurpuncture…

And so, I present the “Crazy Medical Nonsense of Yesteryear Quiz” – bonus points are available on each question if you correctly guess if the “treatment” is still recommended by nutjobs.

There are 14 questions that all draw from the same answer pool, pictured below. Pair the cure described with the ailment listed for a chance to win!

1. In 1530, the egotistical, loud-mouthed, Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, proposed that patients should be dosed with mercury salts to make them urinate and drool. Some of Paracelsus’ contemporaries recommended dosing a patient with mercury until the patient drools three pints of saliva—a sufficient volume to get rid of what common 16th-century disease?

Syphilis!

Paracelsus believed that syphilis was caused by invisible particles transmitted from one person to another—a good guess, given syphilis is caused by the microscopic bacteria Treponema pallidum—and that drooling copiously would flush the particles out of the patient. Even though mercury might kill syphilis bacteria in less-active infections, it might also kill the patient by causing ulcers, kidney failure, and brain damage.

Bonus: Nope, a quick google reveals that if it’s still used, the nutters are quiet about it. Most discussion of mercury in woo circles is about how it’s in vaccines and will give you autism.

2. Friar Agustín Dávila Padilla recorded in 1596 that an aging fellow cleric was ordered by doctors “to use a drink that in the Indies they call chocolate. It is a little bit of hot water in which they dissolve something like almonds that they call cacaos, and it is made with spices and sugar.” What were the doctors trying to cure with this delicious drink?

Kidney disease.

Dávila Padilla delicately relates that the cleric was suffering because “his urine was afflicted.”

Bonus: Despite “medical professionals” as far back as 1662 denying its efficacy chocolate is used to this day to treat things like: reducing cholesterol, raw coco for coughing, reduced natural insulin, lower blood pressure, antioxidants, preventing cancer, blood flow improvements, protecting skin from UV rays, preventing tooth decay, as a painkiller, and “good for your brain” … just about the only thing these woos and I can agree on is that chocolate can “improve moods”

3. The chocolate-loving friars wouldn’t have approved of their British contemporary John Gerard, a botanist who published The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes in 1597. In his herbal, Gerard recommends that juniper should be “boyled in Wine and drunke” to remedy what?

“Delayed Menstruation”

Or as it’s more commonly known, being preggers. Gerard was unusually blunt when recommending a juniper concoction to “bring downe the menses with force, draw away the after-birth, expel the dead childe, and kill the quicke”—that is, terminate a late-term pregnancy. Historians believe that Tudor women must have used abortifacients like juniper—which is known nowadays to cause miscarriages in cows—because illegitimacy rates were surprisingly low for an era without the pill.

Bonus: Oh yeah.

In addition to helping you pass drug tests apparently, juniper is still used for: relief from snoring, gout, arthritis, rheumatism, colic, chronchitis, heartburn, acne, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and various constitutional ailments, including: EBs (Elephant-butterfly), Eagles, Tigers, and Bears – oh my!, and as a Mind-body-emotional curative as prescribed in an excerpt from a 1898 book on nonsense.

The fourth edition of Dr. Willis’s 1675 book “Receipts for the Cure of All Distempers” the famous-even-after-death Willis recommends combining powdered peony roots, amber, and “a man’s Scull, prepar’d” to treat what?

Apoplexy (stroke).

Human bones, blood, and fat were such popular remedies in the 17th century that King Charles II regularly took “the King’s Drops”—a distillation of human skull. The rationale for treating strokes with skulls was the homeopathic idea that like cures like. Despite his drops, King Charles died of a stroke in 1685.

Bonus: isn’t used today, at least that I could find…

  1. Shortly after King Charles died, his successor King James II commanded Sir Gourdon in 1686 to share an elaborate curative recipe of “Agrimony Roots, Primrose Roots, Dragon Roots, Single Peony Roots, the Leaves of Box,” mixed with “the black of Crabs Claws prepared.” This mixture was to be mashed, boiled, and then drunk daily for three days before the new and full moons. Pourquoi?

Rabies… because why not.

Gourdon says should drink their crab claws and peony roots in milk. It was incurable until Louis Pasteur invented a vaccine in 1885.

Bonus: Again, not that I can find in this specific preparation, though elements are still commonly used.

  1. In 1718, the English apothecary John Quincy published his Compleat English Dispensatory, which includes a recipe for a syrup sweetened with honey, cloves, and ginger, mixed with morning glory and the “Roots of Hermodactyl”—the colchicum plant. What was Quincy trying to cure?

Gout – because it was the 18th century in England and everyone was living high on the hog!

Quincy might’ve been on to something by including colchicum. The plant contains colchicine, which is prescribed nowadays to stop gout’s pain and inflammation caused by the buildup of uric acid, which can be caused by diet or genetics. Unfortunately, being wicked stupid, gout sufferers of the time often welcomed the pain: Quincy’s contemporaries believed that being a rich-man’s disease gout protected its sufferers from developing other diseases.

Bonus: Well… the colchicine is, kinda. This could go either way.

  1. In 1744, British doctor Thomas Aery prepared a tincture for a 26-year-old widow, made of a “few Drops of this blood-warm was to be used frequently.” By preparing this tincture, bleeding the unfortunate woman from her arm, and restricting her diet to water-gruel and fresh broth, what was Aery trying to treat?

Get stabbed in the eye with a fork.

Yes, really.

Aery only reports that “she received a Wound in the Cornea of her right Eye, by the Spear of a common Fork.” Despite having her eye washed by Aery’s tincture, being bled regularly, having her scalp blistered, and eating a restricted diet, the young woman recovered enough after two months that she could see “the right Side of Objects a little darkened.”

Bonus: Bloodletting? Oh fuck yeah that still happens.

While it can be used to treat things like polycythemia or hemochromatosis (too much blood, and too much iron in the blood respectively) it’s obviously quackery of the highest order when we try to treat things like the common cold, genetic ailments, stress, and pretty much whatever else.

Join us next week for the quiz finale and find out who won!

It was Jenn. Jenn won. Like a lot. But it’s still super funny.

Next Week’s Beer

The Power of Zeus – High Hops Brewery, Windsor, CO

  • From: Eli
  • American Pale Ale

Faith In Humanity Restored

No Means No Worldwide! http://bit.ly/2J31OXE

As featured in a recent Attn: video submitted to us from the ever-awesome Andi, the program features for women and girls in self-defense and how to own their own agency, which is great in and of itself, but perhaps, more importantly, the program has a track for boys. The boys and men are taught to respect women and their bodies. The program heavily features positive masculinity messages for young men to follow.

Since the program started rape in Nairobi, Kenya has gone down by 50% and boys intervening in sex crimes they witness is up 74% as they learn to stand up for women and justice. In Nairobi 1 in 4 girls is a victim of sexual assault, so this is both desperately needed for their safety, but also to educate the boys whose cultural norms said it was justifiable to rape girls who go out on expensive dates, wear suggestive clothing, or are out late at night. But it takes only 6 or so sessions for their attitudes to change. Soon, the courses will be in every school in Nairobi. Since the 2006 launch of the foundation the courses and education they’ve offered have:

  • 50% decrease in the incidence of rape among female participants
  • 50% of female participants used program skills to stop a rapist in the year following the training, and 20% used the skills more than once
  • 74% of boys who witnessed physical or sexually assaultive behavior in the year following the program successfully intervened to stop it
  • 46% decrease in school dropouts due to teen pregnancy among schools where we teach the program.

Impact Footprint

  • Programs through Ujamaa Africa in urban Kenya (since 2009) & rural Malawi (since 2015)
  • More than 180,000 girls and boys aged 10-20 taught IMpower skills
  • At least 300,000 sexual assaults prevented
  • $7.44 to prevent a rape

Find out more and help at www.nomeansnoworldwide.org

Bonus Cat Video

No Means No Worldwide

https://www.nomeansnoworldwide.org/

How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk | Will Stephen | TEDxNewYork – YouTube

The Soy Sauce Bottle Designed to Bring Happiness – YouTube

Plastics 101 | National Geographic – YouTube

No Means No Worldwide on Vimeo

The Art Of Sci-Fi Book Covers – YouTube

Join The Discussion

We’d love to hear from you!

To comment on a show or suggest a brew visit our web, twitter or Facebook pages. As always, we’d love to get a good rating on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher!