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Posts tagged science
Ep. 300 – Alex Knapp of Forbes and Asteroid Contingency Planning
Feb 19th
TOPIC: Wow! Episode 300 … and what a great one it is too! Oddly enough, our tricentennial goes unremarked, either through excessive humility or rampant obliviousness (long time listeners of the show will be placing their bets on obliviousness), but with Dave “Sparky” Saganaki, good friend Jay Garmon and new friend of the show Alex Knapp of Forbes magazine tech and blog fame, this is an outstanding reflection on the past years of broadcast!
Jay of course provides us with a great stumper for the coming week:
Who was the one (and only) person in history to have ever been hit directly by a meteorite?
With this lineup there was no way to fit in coolsites of the week, but don’t forget to tweet with Alex @TheAlexKnapp! We end with “The Ship Song” by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.
Ep. 291 – Do Facts Have a Half-Life? Sam Arbesman Says “Yes!”
Dec 5th
TOPIC: We have a great interview today with the author of the book “The Half-Life of Facts,” Sam Arbesman! It’s a fascinating and deep book, and Sam does a wonderful job of explaining how all of the “facts” we know are constantly being overturned … and that this is occurring at a mathematically definable rate. If that scares you, don’t worry, we also spend a lot of time talking about Popeye, astronomy, and who exactly discovered the last major organ in the human body!
The show wouldn’t be complete without Jay Garmon on hand to ask us this geek question of the week:
How and when did the first reported lottery in history occur?
No cool sites of the week this week, but make sure you check out these links for more info about Sam Arbesman and his book:
- “The Half Life of Facts” Book website: http://www.halflifeoffacts.com
- Sam Arbesman’s website: http://www.arbesman.net
Finishing it all off is a fantastic new song by Alt-J called “Fitzpleasure.” It’s also one of the creepiest videos I’ve seen in a long time – go find it on YouTube when you get a chance!
Ep. 274 – A Boson Walks Into a Bar …
Jul 6th
TOPIC: From spy drone hacking to automated speed capture devices in Chicago, and a quick takedown of RIM (again) it winds up taking Jay Garmon to save us from ourselves this TechTalk! After picking his brain on the upcoming Higgs Boson revelation, we even get some great Geek Trivia from him!
How did the fictional character of Spiderman help end an example of real life comic-book censorship?
- BoingBoing Getting Higgy Wit’ It - Some of the best Higgs-Boson jokes from around the net!
- Doodle – Another great pick for scheduling folk with no muss, no fuss!
- RendezNew – Find a place to meet in the middle, every time!
Podcast only song of the week is “I Don’t Know” by Jill Scott.
Ep. 244 – A Vaccination for Late Fees?
Sep 27th
TOPIC: OK, maybe not, but Mike and Dave cover so much ground (and go so far off the rails) there’s no possible headline that could encompass it all! Between bemoaning the anti-vaccer movement to Kindle library books and Spotify on Facebook, we get a lot of great conversation in … and the occasional bit of tech too!
Jay Garmon comes to us with yet another great geek trivia question:
Since ratification in 1972, how many people have filed suit under the space liability convention?
We go for quality not quantity this week on the coolsites with:
- Mouse Without Borders (download link) – Straight from microsoft’s garage, this KVM killer will let you run multiple machines with a single mouse and keyboard!
- F.Lux – adjusts your screen color and brightness automagically based on the time of day and your location.
The podcast only song of the week this week is “Bomba” by Jesse Matador!
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