Skeptics Guide

Segment #1. News Items News Item #1 - First Private Landing on the Moon theness.com/neurologicablog/o... News Item #2 - Sex Difference in the Brain news.yahoo.com/men-womens-bra... News Item #3 - Bee Venom for Breast Cancer www.cureus.com/articles/18183... News Item #4 - Learning Empathy neurosciencenews.com/empathy-... News Item #5 - Brightest Object phys.org/news/2024-02-mass-bi... Segment #2. Who’s That Noisy Segment #3. Quotation Game Segment #4. Your Questions and E-mail Some Corrections Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake - and you can play along. Item 1: A recent review finds that male psychopaths outnumber female psychopaths 10:1. Item 2: A new study finds that boiling tap water for 5 minutes removes up to 90% of nano and microplastics from the water. Item 3: Using AI scientists have developed a method for atomic force microscopy of material surfaces with resolutions below the width of the microscope probe tip. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "Random Number Generation is too Important to be Left to Chance." Robert R. Coveyou (February 9, 1915 - February 19, 1996)

[@nicholaicheck]

[0:26] Happy leap year day eve [1:20] Willy's Chocolate Experience [7:25] Alabama's definition of life [19:36] News Item #1 - First Private Landing on the Moon [28:39] News Item #2 - Sex Difference in the Brain [37:28] News Item #3 - Bee Venom for Breast Cancer [48:00] News Item #4 - Learning Empathy [59:43] News Item #5 - Brightest Object [1:10:08] Who’s That Noisy [1:14:56] Dallas private show & extravaganza [1:16:06] Chicago private show & extravaganza [1:18:32] Quotation Game [1:28:54] Your Questions and E-mail Some Corrections [1:31:03] Science or Fiction [1:47:33] Quote of the Week

[@Rune6969]

ty for these :)

[@diegopadovani4942]

Hello skeptics! Your videos are awesome but the audio volume is very low. Other's I set the volume to 30, here I put 70-80. Probably a normalize action or a compressor in the post can help. Cheers!

[@AlanMGross]

I understand you're planning a lot of events including being at PsyCon in October. Do you think there will another NotACon in November?

[@PhysicsPolice]

19:00 The Alabama legislature didn't create this political disaster. The IVF clinics that shut down are to blame. Unless they're being negligent by leaving doors to the freezer room unlocked, they have nothing to fear from this ruling. Either way, they shut down for no good reason.

[@mjowsey]

One unfortunate/irresponsible incident in one facility. Now Any disposal of excess embryos is now wrongful death.

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@mjowsey that’s a lie. Read the court ruling for yourself. They say no such thing.

[@PhysicsPolice]

7:40 No, the court did not rule frozen embryos are, in general, children. Saying that is beyond stupid. The ruling says that, for the purposes of one specific law that uses the word "children" in one particular clause, the frozen embryos can trigger the clause despite obviously not being children as that word is most often used. In law, single words are often used to define a class of triggers to legal language where it would be impossible to list every exception an corner case in the body of the text. That's why in legal documents you often see class labels in all caps, like "RENTOR" or "LICENSEE", so they aren't taken to be mere words.

[@PhysicsPolice]

12:00 No, that's not the question, either. The Alabama Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is very clear. It talks about two classes of person. There's the person who can sue (a parent). There the person who can be sued (the negligent person). And then their's the child. Who is very certainly not a person. Not anymore. Because they're dead. They never had to even be a person, either. They never had to have a social security number. They never had to have any personal rights or freedoms. They just had to be the kind of thing that grows up to earn money and spend some of it on taking care of their parent. The parent is the person with rights. Like the right to have their child around to help them when they're old and need help. Stop making this ruling about something that it's not. This kindergartener's approach to the law is not helping win the culture war on abortion.

[@PhysicsPolice]

16:40 Neither of you chuckleheads read the court decision. Clearly. Because it discusses this situation. The court specifically called out the fact that civil laws are a superset that contains criminal law. You can't assume just because an act causes a wrongful death that it's a criminal act. Disposing of extra embryos isn't negligent. It's what the IVF contract states will happen. So it's not a wrongful act. You're drawing wild, incorrect conclusions from a profound ignorance arising from several gross conceptual errors.

[@mjowsey]

You can't change the law with a contract.

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@mjowsey I never said you could. Please read my comment again, more carefully.

[@PhysicsPolice]

15:30 Wow. Steve. It's almost like you've never studied law or something! You know lawyers and judges have. And if you had you'd know how stupid it sounds for you to complain about the interpretation of a general law listing no exceptions as indeed having none. It's not arbitrary to make that interpretation. It's correct. Everyone agrees no such exception exists. This is not the same legal situation we see attacked by originalists. In that case there's a general law that says the federal government has no powers. Federal powers start at zero, but they're built up by a list of exceptions. This is a fine way to make laws. Originalists aren't arbitrarily deciding to exclude federal powers. They're challenging whether the intended exceptions (everyone agrees they exist) to a general law fit the modern day interpretation.

[@Xen0Phanes]

Wow, it's like you can't make a comment without sounding like an arrogant, condescending a-hole. You sound like a POS who is also FOS. You must be very popular at parties.