Episode 186 – The One Where We Finish Up The Last One

In This Week’s Show, episode 186, we pick up where 185 left off, and help you cure your weird illnesses on our private jet.

Episode 186 – The One Where We Finish Up The Last One
Episode 186 – The One Where We Finish Up The Last One

In This Week’s Show, episode 186, we pick up where 185 left off, and help you cure your weird illnesses on our private jet.

Now, grab a beer and help us test the god hypothesis — because, while Dukawaqa (The all-seeing and all-knowing shark god of Fiji.) hasn’t struck us down yet, we are trying his patience!

Shea’s Life Lesson

This week I learned that if someone is talking behind your back, you should just fart.

Jenn’s Actual Lesson

Did you know that humans are closer genetically to chimps and bonobos than the African elephant is to the Asian elephant? SCIENCE!

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

This Week’s Beer

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

From: Eli
ABV: 3.72/5
Style: American Pale Ale (APA)

  • Aaron – 7
  • Jenn – 7
  • Shea – 7

This Week’s Show

Round Table Discussion

New patron: The Foz (he updated his name on Patreon)

Thanks to his holiness the Napkin Pope I now know a lot more about alchemy than I did before. Apparently, I was being more clever than I thought I was last week when my Full Metal Alchemy jokes – it turns out Paracelsus was the inspiration for FMA!

If you’re one of those folks who waits with bated breath for the show to air – and who doesn’t really – you might have noticed that I fucked up.

Headlines

Priorities – He has them

Newsweek – http://bit.ly/2LPMDjc

Jesse Duplantis, 68, a Christian minister based in Destrehan, LA has a problem. I mean, a problem beyond being in Louisiana and a Christian televangelist. Happily, he has a following of credulous cuckoos waiting in the wings to help him out with his crushing personal problem.

He posted a video last week explaining what he needed and why he needed, and I desperately wanted to have a clip of him telling us himself but the links take you to another video (probably because of the backlash it’s been taken down) so I’ll just have to quote him:

“I really believe that if the Lord Jesus Christ was physically on the Earth today, he wouldn’t be riding a donkey. He’d be in an airplane flying all over the world. Let me just say this. We’re believing God for a brand new Falcon 7X, so we can go anywhere in the world in one stop.” Yep, that’s right… Jesus Private Air. Duplantis would like his followers to “believe” enough that he can buy a new $54 million jet.

“You know I have owned three different jets in my life and I use them and just burning them up for the Lord, Jesus Christ. Some people believe that preachers shouldn’t have jets. I really believe that preachers ought to be able to go on every available voice, every available outlet to get this gospel preached to the world.”

The reasons he needs this newest jet is…why, to save his parishioners money of course!

“If I can do it for one stop, I can fly it for a lot cheaper because I have my own fuel farm. And that’s what’s a blessing of the lord. This one here I have to stop and then you pay those exorbitant prices for jet fuel all over the world.” Whatta guy!

We touched on the ridiculous hypocrisy of these “prosperity gospel” bullshit con artists, so here’s a new one to add to our list. I’ve seen a few reports that he was one of the ones who claimed he can’t fly commercial because they are “infested with demons”.

Lady Astronaut Answers the REAL Questions At Patreon.com/W4W

… and probably Nasa or whatever.

ScienceAlert.com – http://bit.ly/2LL5c82

Peggy Whitson is a badass. Even though she, sadly, will no longer be heading into space she still has plenty of enthusiasm and love for the space program. She was the former head of the International Space Station and has logged an incredible 665 floating days in space, more than any other American.

“To be a part of exploration in that very direct way,” she told Business Insider, is “incredibly satisfying and gratifying.”

However she did have some less than glowing comments regarding a certain aspect of space life: the toilet. (You know you wanted to know!!)

Here’s a picture of the Russian-made, $19,000 toilet:

Happily, “urinating is relatively easy”. For that, astronauts use a funnel equipped with a fan that suctions their pee away so it doesn’t float off. (See the yellow cone on the top right side of this toilet photo? That’s where the urine goes.) Easy pee-sy.

But now for the … hard part. “Number two… is more challenging because you’re trying to hit a pretty small target,” she said.

ISS residents go to the bathroom into a little plate-sized hole on top of that silver can, using the fan to vacuum-suck the excrement away. After the astronauts are done, the poop gets sealed up in a plastic bag, to await the next space trash day.

“After it starts getting full,” Whitson said with a grimace, “you have to put a rubber glove on and pack it down.”

Every once in a while, the whole process goes awry, or the toilet malfunctions, and the astronauts have to catch a floater.

But eventually, all that waste gets blasted off on a cargo ship that’s jam-packed with ISS trash, and sent on a burning suicide mission towards Earth’s atmosphere.

“We send ’em on a trajectory that will purposely burn up,” Whitson said.

As for the urine, about 80 to 85 percent of that gets recycled into drinking water, and the rest becomes briney waste.

“We want a closed loop system, which means we have to recycle all our water,” Whitson said.

News of the ‘We really aren’t that surprised’ variety:

Insider – http://bit.ly/2slxE8j

A study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology brings us the Earth-shattering news that most popular vitamins and mineral supplements do absolutely jack shit.

Yep, your visits to GNC have probably been a waste of money. The paper covers trials and studies from January 2012 to October 2017 and analyzed more than 150 randomized clinical trials details. They looked at trials of 15 vitamin and mineral supplements, including multivitamins. It was found that many popular multivitamins as well as vitamin C, vitamin D, and calcium supplements — had no real advantage to people’s health and that there was no evidence taking them reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, or early death.

“We were surprised to find so few positive effects of the most common supplements that people consume,” said Dr. David Jenkins, the lead author of the study. “Our review found that if you want to use multivitamins, vitamin D, calcium or vitamin C, it does no harm — but there is no apparent advantage either.”

So, at least it seems to not actively be poisoning us, but it is very harmful to your economic bottom-line.

However there is some indications that certain supplements do have some benefits. Folic acid and B vitamins with folic acid may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, the study found. Zinc has been linked to shortening the effects of a cold — something vitamin C doesn’t do, despite what people think. Vitamin D can also be difficult to get from food, so if you’re deficient, supplements may also be effective.

But for goodness sake, put down the niacin.Niacin (a form of vitamin B3) and antioxidants, meanwhile, were associated with a higher risk of death by any cause, albeit a very small increase.

Final word from Dr. Jenkins: “In the absence of significant positive data—apart from folic acid’s potential reduction in the risk of stroke and heart disease—it’s most beneficial to rely on a healthy diet to get your fill of vitamins and minerals,” he said. “So far, no research on supplements has shown us anything better than healthy servings of less-processed plant foods including vegetables, fruits, and nuts.”

This Week’s Stories

Shea Milks The Patrons… wait…

Grab this… let’s go with “amazing” story at http://bit.ly/2smSELY

Leche de cucaracha

http://bit.ly/2LKkMka

http://bit.ly/2LPMEUi

Goji, Chia, Camu Camu, Lucuma all super hard to say and also superfoods. A new superfood is back and ready to make you all healthy, all for the low low price of your sanity… Cockroach milk!

Making its debut two years ago cockroach milk has slowly made its way into the mainstream mostly due to people becoming more daring and willing to try this somewhat baffling milk alternative.

In 2016, a research team based at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India said the “milk” from the Pacific beetle cockroach could make for the next great superfood. These cockroaches possess protein-rich crystals that lactate to feed their young. This particular type of cockroach, which is usually found on Pacific islands like Hawaii, gives birth to their babies, as opposed to laying eggs. Their “milk” is made up of protein-infused crystals reported to have three times the energy of the equivalent mass of normal dairy milk.

You heard that right, Crystals. “The crystals are like a complete food — they have proteins, fats and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids,” Sanchari Banerjee, one of the main researchers, told the Times of India.

Some companies are trying to get ahead of the trend by selling the bug juice in everything from milk to ice cream. South African company Gourmet Grubb is selling what they call “Entomilk” — a milk that comes from sustainably farmed insects.

“Think of Entomilk as a sustainable, nature-friendly, nutritious, lactose free, delicious, guilt-free dairy alternative of the future,” the company says on its website. Gourmet Grubb says Entomilk has a high protein content and is rich in iron, zinc, and calcium.

Cockroach milk is among the most nutritious substances on Earth. It’s three times richer in calories than buffalo milk (the previous top contender for the most protein- and calorie-rich milk). The taste of the super food is said to taste like pretty much nothing and could be easily added to coffee or over cereal.

Some scientists and cockroach milk producers admit that it may be hard to get people on the bandwagon, but that’s not the only road block for cockroach milk. Besides for its unappealing name, cockroach milk is hard to come by. Roaches aren’t the easiest creatures to milk.

It’s also still unclear if cockroach milk is safe to consume. “We have no evidence that it is actually safe for human consumption,” Subramanian Ramaswamy, the lead author of the study, said 2016.

That being said we still may see leche de cucaracha hit the shelves before to long…

The Quiz, cont.

  1. In 1758, Patrick Brydone was pleased to write about one of his successes. Brydone reported that Robert Haigs, a 45-year-old laborer from Coldinghame, was cured after he “underwent the electrical shocks in the common way. After having received about thirty or forty very severe ones, he grew pale, and staggering for several steps, would have fallen over, had he not been supported.” What illness required Haigs to be “strongly electrified”?

Malaria

Brydone cheerfully reports that, after shocking his patient until he couldn’t stand, poor electrified Haigs went “without any anguish symptom … for the space of four months.”

Bonus: Yep, electro-shock is still used as a treatment for things though it ranges wildly from “maybe that works” to full on cure-by-torture.

  1. In 1761, the New England surgeon Mr. Strong first took “fine sea salt, which was plentifully sprinkled and rubbed” onto the patient. Then, he plastered the man with a poultice of burdock-root and made him vomit by drinking a mixture of saffron, water, and white ash bark. Two days later, “the patient was perfectly cured,” which Strong attributed to the salt.

Rattlesnake bite.

The colonist had been “bitten by a rattlesnake in the left foot, between the great toe and the next.” After slicing open the wound, Strong rubbed salt into it—literally. Which is why they all would have died if the local native americans hadn’t helped out…

Bonus: Yep. Epsom salts aside, salt rubs are still used as natural exfoliants, a terrible sunburn treatment, itch relief, gum disease, and somehow, dry skin.

  1. In 1828, surgeon Henry Perry starting first with bloodletting—“either by means of cupping or leeching”—and blistering, Perry next dosed the patient with the emetic antimony—“carried so far as to keep up a continued nausea, without producing actual vomiting.” Next, he dosed his patient with enough mercury to induce gentle drooling and finished the regiment by noting that “There can be no impropriety in giving our patient … an opiate at bedtime,” such as Batley’s Anodyne. What was the original complaint of Perry’s bloodied, blistered, nauseated, high patient?

Pneumonia.

Perry believed that this debilitating infection of the lungs was caused when an overwarm person suddenly became cold or wet, constricting blood vessels and driving blood into the lungs. Perry proposed that this “inflammation” could be relieved by bloodletting. Presumably, the patient’s complaining was relieved by Batley’s Anodyne.

Bonus: bloodletting we already covered, cupping was an olympic sport a few years back and I’m pretty sure opium is recession proof.

  1. After reading about some experiments on dogs, in 1832 Edinburgh, Scotland, doctor Thomas Latta took “warm water, holding in solution the requisite salts,” and slowly injected six pints in 30 minutes into “an aged female, on whom all the usual remedies had been fully tried.” While Latta lost this first patient, his second patient recovered within two days of a similar injection. This first recorded use of saline in humans was meant to cure what?

Cholera

This terrible diarrheal disease broke out in Britain in 1831, where another Scottish doctor first noticed that the blood of cholera patients was missing salts and water volume. His experiments with saline injected into dogs were reported to the Lancet in 1831 and inspired Latta to try something similar with cholera patients.

Bonus: Yeah, saline is totally common now … of course, it’s a little different than stove-top salt water…

  1. In 1867, the British doctor William Domett Stone reported his treatment of F.G., a 26-year-old, single man. Stone “ordered the patient to take extra meat diet; to suck two eggs every morning,” and to take a syrup of iron and cod-liver oil twice daily. What were the extra meat, two eggs, and cod-liver syrup supposed to cure?

Paralytic insanity caused by masturbation.

Stone firmly believed that “excessive mental work with insufficient nourishment, and sexual excess, either separately or combined, will cause paralytic insanity.” Stone rather irritably reports that, when he asked F.G. if he masturbated, F.G. replied, “Who has not?”

Bonus: Oh sure. Meat is currently used as a treatment for Chronic Illness, digestive problems, and according to Beef Magazine it will cure diabetes, kidney failure, blindness, leg and foot amputations, and can act as a curative in lieu of most invasive surgical procedures. As one might expect, the citation section has a lot of Dr. Oz and Mirror.co.uk in it…

  1. British doctor William Robert Smith offered his suggestion for how to cure “a series of most distressing and chronic discomforts.” Smith reported that a “tablespoon of cold water at night, the cold bath and cold compresses to the abdomen in the morning, the taking of large quantities of fruit, the use of oatmeal porridge and of bran bread, the cigar after breakfast, the daily walk, have all their influence on bringing about the desired end.” What was cured by bran bread and post-breakfast cigars?

Constipation

Smith’s recommendations for exercise and a high-fiber diet to achieve the “desired end” mirror the Mayo Clinic’s suggestions for treating chronic constipation.

Bonus: Yes… but only the fiber and exercise parts…

  1. In 1887, the British doctor Edward Dutton cured an 18-year-old woman through “massage, seclusion, and overfeeding” her with milk, eggs, buttered bread, and “beef-tea.” Nearly three months later, the woman could walk nearly six miles a day and “felt quite well.” What had the beef-tea, seclusion, and abdominal massage cured?

Why, hysteria of course!

A very severe case, with Dutton reporting that when he first saw her, “She was nothing but a bag of skin and bones” who weighed only 85 pounds. The young woman’s mother reported that several years previously Dutton’s patient had stopped eating breakfast, started spending her lunch money on “sweets and cake,” and then began vomiting regularly “in large quantities all day long”—symptoms reminiscent of what we know as bulimia. After several months of treatment, Dutton’s patient gained 25 pounds, and he happily reported that ”she was remaining quite strong and well.”

Bonus: Yep, “beef-tea” is still widely used as a curative for all manner of ailments but seems to focus on the common cold and generally maintaining health. It’s basically beef stock, though some yee-oldy recipes also call for onion, carrot, and lemongrass with noodles, making it essentially beef-chicken soup.

So there we have it. Yee-Oldie style cures for common illnesses… and made up ones. Who knew the curative power of crushed human skull!

Next Week’s Beer

You’re In The Jungle Baby! – Evil twin Brewing, Brooklyn, NY

  • From Andi & Allan
  • ABV: 12%
  • Style: Imperial Stout

Faith In Humanity Restored

Irish voters on Friday repealed the country’s eighth constitutional amendment, a decades long ban on abortion that had forced thousands of women to either illegally order abortion pills online or travel to the United Kingdom to access the procedure.

A total of 1,429,981 voted for the repeal and 723,632 voted against, Returning Officer Barry Ryan said Saturday. The landmark referendum heralds a new era for women’s rights in a government that for centuries operated as a theocracy.

Ireland’s parliament is now expected to write a more liberal law on the procedure, which will likely allow a woman to complete an abortion until up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

“What we have seen today is a culmination of a quiet revolution that’s been taking place in Ireland for the past 10 or 20 years. This has been a great exercise in democracy and the people have spoken,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in a statement.

“The people have said that we want a modern constitution for a modern country and we trust women and we respect them to make the right decisions and the right choices,” he added. “It gives the government the mandate that we need now to bring forward the legislation that we promised and have it through the door … and enacted before the end of this year.”

The laws that were in place put Ireland in with countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua, the former of which a woman can be jailed for a miscarriage.

The turnout was roughly 64.13% of the population which could vote, with the 66.4% of those votes being for Yes, as in “Yes, we’d like to be a civilized nation now”

Numbers: http://bit.ly/2LPMFrk

Bonus Cat Video

MARVEL’S LUKE CAGE Season 2 Official Trailer (2018) Netflix – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcGp0UkLmSs

The Death Of Superman – Official Trailer – YouTube

Who Is Bushmaster? Luke Cage Season 2 Villain Explained – YouTube

Who Built Misty Knight’s Bionic Arm? – YouTube

Fallout 76 Teaser Trailer – YouTube

Céline Dion – Ashes (from the Deadpool 2 Motion Picture Soundtrack) – YouTube

That Time It Rained for Two Million Years – YouTube

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