Ep 146: Science... sort of - Relative Position, Absolute Precision

Science... sort of

Brachiolope

Of, Science, Network, Paleopals, Media, Brachiolope, Natural Sciences, Sort

4.8 • 677 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2012

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

00:00:00 - A theory is nice, but without the right tech it can sometimes be hard to test. Such was the case with the popular "selfish herd theory" and it took some very precise GPS and some perturbed sheep to finally prove it right.

00:17:12 - Drinks are more fun when you're in a herd. Charlie has mixed feelings towards his Hell or High Watermelon from 21st Amendment. Kelly is refreshed by a Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. And Ryan has to explain his B-Craft Black Double IPA by Arcadia Ales.

00:21:14 - Trailer Trash Talk laments the over-exposure of the American electorate, The Black Keys, and the comedy duo of Will Ferrel and Zach Galifianakis in the new comedy The Campaign.

00:32:10 - Decades ago we launched some probes into the far reaches of space. They're out there still chugging along, but the Pioneer probes were chugging a bit slower than they should have been. After converting some very old data, scientists think they've narrowed down the options for the cause of the anomaly.

00:56:02 - PaleoPOWs are a lot like untested theories, we're pretty sure it's a good idea but have no way of knowing yet. Kelly has a most excellent e-mail for Temporal Tony, who knows exactly how long it's going to take before he hears it. Ryan appreciates the kind words of Shlomo D.'s iTunes review. And Charlie makes a social network exception to read a Facebook message from Brian E.

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Music for this week's show provided by:

Black Sheep - Metric

Six-Pack Summer - Phil Vassar

Gold on the Ceiling - The Black Keys

Don't Slow Down - Matt & Kim

Transcript

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0:00.0	He's bugged a bunch of sheep.
0:03.8	That might mean something different in Australia.
0:10.5	From science sort of.com, you're listening to another episode of science.
0:29.6	Sort of.
0:30.3	This episode happens to be numbered 146.
0:34.3	This week's theme is relative position, absolute precision. Oh, yeah. I'm your host, Ryan, and joining me to talk about things that are science, things that are sort of science, and things that wish they were science. I'm a paleo palo-pacisting partners in crime. Kelly Weiner-Smith. Hello, science enthusiasts. Hello. I'm sure they're saying hello back to it. You just can't hear them
0:54.1	because it's happening in the future. Whoa. We're also being joined by Charlie Barnhart. You're
0:59.4	welcome to science haters. We do the show for people who both love and hate science is what you're
1:05.3	saying. Yeah. We're an equal opportunity podcast. I think there are people that feel lukewarm about
1:09.6	science. Do we need to include them or do we not do the show for them?
1:12.6	Science.
1:12.9	No, screw those guys.
1:13.8	Yeah, I'm with you.
1:14.6	Have an opinion.
1:15.8	Geez.
1:17.1	And one opinion you might have is that they're safety in numbers.
1:20.8	And now, you know, there's like a, you could probably do an entire book of the times that science has studied common sense and found it to be either correct or incorrect.
1:30.6	I think that would be a really cool, like two-volume set.
1:33.7	But this happened to be one time where the strength and numbers ideas proved solid, right, Kelly?
1:39.5	Right.
1:40.3	So we're going to be talking about the selfish herd hypothesis, which is a hypothesis that was put forward by W.D. Hamilton. He was an evolutionary biologist. And the idea here is that the reason you find animals herding together is not because they're like helping each other out in some way. It's not altruistic. It's a totally selfish behavior. And all of the individuals are together because one,
2:01.1	they're hoping to dilute the risk of predation by being in a large group, and two, they're
	...

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