Episode #338

[Ron Obvious]

Well, cliff swallows (males) will mate with a HEADLESS (obviously dead) cliff swallow.

I find that difficult to swallow.

[khendar]

Well, cliff swallows (males) will mate with a HEADLESS (obviously dead) cliff swallow.

I find that difficult to swallow.

*ba-dum*chiiish*

[MikeHz]

There is already a system in place that in theory could allow hackers to communicate with satellites. Amateur radio has all the capabilities - satelites, repeaters, internet (IRLP), and hardware gallore. The problem though is that the FCC regulates ALL of the airwaves. So if you're using spectrum, you have to have the appropriate license.

Here's a link to the satellite stuff and IRLP.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/status.php

http://www.irlp.net/

I'm working on my extra license. It's a good retirement hobby. I plan to do some "expeditioning" once I move up to the northwest and want an alternative to cell phones. Amateur radios have a lot of range and emergency features now.

That's why I got my license years ago. Even without commercial power or phone service, I can stay communicating for several weeks, on either VHF, UHF, or HF. Last week when we were vacationing in Canada and couldn't use cell phones (due to cost), the 2-meter radios came in handy. (My wife is a ham as well.) And, most towns have an autopatch in case you want to use a phone.

Hams also have long had access to a non-landline based internet, via packet-switching radio, in which the computer accesses other computers via radio. Some serious proposals have been made for a long range based wi-fi system, in which packets would bounce from station to station until reaching their final destination.

[Citizen Skeptic]

Yeap. Coincidentally, I just got the latest issue of QST and it says that the first amateur satellite was launched 50 years ago! Wow!

[RHC]

I have to challenge Rebecca's perpetuation of the myth about the Inuit having a large number of names for snow.
I saw this debunked on Stephen Fry's QI a while ago. Wikipedia is down today, but this is from the second result on the Google search list:

'The Great Inuit Vocabulary Hoax is anthropology's contribution to urban legends. It apparently started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz casually mentioned that the Inuit—he called them "Eskimos," using the derogatory term of a tribe to the south of them for eaters of raw meat—had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference in textbooks and the popular press the number grew to sometimes as many as 400 words.

In fact, "Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English," according to linguist Steven Pinker in his book The Language Instinct. "Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen." '

Source http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html

If you continue to read down the page there is a fictional list of the different types of snow, such as " snow in the beard", "snow that looks like it's falling upward" and my favourite, "ever-tla- a spirit made from mashed fermented snow, popular among Eskimo men".

[MikeHz]

I remember reading about a reported asking an Unuit about this. "I hear you have dozens of words for snow."

"Naw. We just call it white shit like everyone else."

[uolj]

I have to challenge Rebecca's perpetuation of the myth about the Inuit having a large number of names for snow.

I think she actually acknowledged it as a myth when she mentioned it. "The old, incorrect standby is that the Inuit have a million words for snow."

[RHC]

I think she actually acknowledged it as a myth when she mentioned it. "The old, incorrect standby is that the Inuit have a million words for snow."

Thanks for that, I was in the gym listening to my iPod, so I must have missed her disclaimer with all the background noise. It's still an interesting point though, as a lot of people believe it to be true. Last year my lecturer at Sydney University quoted this myth as fact, to a postgraduate class of 20. I wish I'd had my facts ready on that day. 

[Chew]

A cartoon I read years ago had the caption: "Eskimos have 80 words for snow but only 19 for a fixed rate mortgage."

[Mirkady]

Maybe I've missed it, but did no-one else think it odd that the review of major news stories not predicted didn't mention the Arab Spring leading to the overthrow of the Tunisian government, the Egyptian government and the overthrow of - and death of - Colonel Gaddafi in Lybia?  Or for that matter the Euro currency crisis leading to the toppling of governments in Greece and Italy?

[Silly Llama]

Maybe I've missed it, but did no-one else think it odd that the review of major news stories not predicted didn't mention the Arab Spring leading to the overthrow of the Tunisian government, the Egyptian government and the overthrow of - and death of - Colonel Gaddafi in Lybia?  Or for that matter the Euro currency crisis leading to the toppling of governments in Greece and Italy?

Very true, but if they were to list all the major events that psychics didn't predict they could hardly keep the show under 12 hours.

[pipelineaudio]

I spend a LOT of time discussing and dismissing myths about audio, especially regarding audio summing myths http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94903 so it is with a very hard heart that I have to question the conclusions the SGU team comes up with on the violin testing issue.

First of all, there isn't a generic "violin" sound. The SGU crew seems to presuppose there is in a lot of the podcast, and that is a fundamental problem. The "violin sound" is determined by a great many factors, and in one small for instance, a ten dollar string change can have a much, much greater effect on the desirability of a sound than a 100,000 dollar violin change

Second of all, if I am reading the article right, the violinists were asked to chose which they preferred. I can think of about a billion reasons off the top of my head why in that specific instance, they may like one more than another

I didn't see anything in the article about them being asked to pick which was the strad

I'll make this claim, and I'll be happy to be tested on it: Give me a reasonable amount of time with a strad and a reasonable amount of time with a violin that isn't meant to be an exact copy of a strad, play them in the same room, with the same mic and the same position and I will be able to pick which is the which 10 times out of 10

There is nothing special in my hearing, just a lifetime of knowing the differences between sounds professionally in an effort to deal with how they fit into a narrow audio range

This is nothing unique. Many people can tell you what mic someone is singing through, sometimes even under varying acoustic conditions.

All this said, I am not coming in on the side of audio magic, and to me a good violin is a good violin for recording purposes, but the claim that its impossible to tell the difference between any pair of violins sonically is ridiculous