Kirsten: Hey there minions, this is Kirsten. Before we start the show I just want to let people know that this week’s show occurred during our home radio station’s fundraising drive.
KDVS is fabulous example of how great freeform community non-commercial radio can be. But it does have to pay bills just like any business and fundraising has become a major part of the station’s income.
KDVS has been home to TWIS for ten years. And both TWIS and KDVS have matured quite a bit in that time. I hope that you will consider donating to the place that has supported and continues to support a unique brand of science reporting.
And even if you don’t care for supporting a radio station you barely know, consider supporting the show. Regardless, thank you for being a part of our exploration of science and journey of discovery. With that note, on with the show! Continue reading “Transcript:TWIS.ORG April 21, 2009”
It is said that a little knowledge can be dangerous. By this logic, having no knowledge at all may make you safe. Well, the following hour of our program is potentially lethal. More accurate perhaps is to say that too little knowledge can be an annoying thing — like finding a subtype strain of human-swine-avian flu that had not been previously documented and freaking out based on zero information, assuming that it can persist to a pandemic proportion.
While fear of such scenarios may be warranted, action out of that fear is not. And we attribute to the unknown the properties that lurk within our worst case scenarios our worst fears and then act on that fear without any true information, we spread the fear, incubate misinformation, making the potential or false fear and ignorant actions become a global pandemic freak out.
Enough with the surgical masks already! With patient to patient observations, we will learn that this flu is likely just a flu and therefore defeat-able. Fear served no purpose in solving such things. And then our best solution is soap and water, covering mouths while coughing, not leaking fixtures in public places and to avoid kissing pigs.
While licking fearful farm animals in public, much like the following hour of our programming, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.
We live in a world with the mysteries of disease are few. A world with a source and transmission of most illness is generally well known, identifiable and preventable, a world in which science has concurred many mortally challenging ailments and will continue to do so into the future. We will do so by seeking a lot of dangerous knowledge by gathering a lot of dangerous information and by acting out of reason, not fear.
While the following hour of our programming is not intended to be offensive, if you feel yourself in any way provoked, you should be provoked into thinking not to anger.
The content is for mature audiences. Though, by mature audiences, we mean to include five-year olds with the love and interest in science. The show itself well about science and employing scientific means to get science-y news to your ears, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.
And though the world is strange enough as it is, each week here we seem to discover that it can stranger still. “What can be stranger than ants raised by butterflies or see-through frogs?” One might ask. The answers await us in This Week in Science, coming up next.
Good morning, Kirsten!
Kirsten: Oh, great morning.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: Do you know what today is?
Justin: Tuesday, right?
Kirsten: Besides that, what’s the date today?
Justin: No idea.
Kirsten: Today is the third month – the third day of the third month of the ninth year of 2000, whatever.
Justin: What? You’re – now what?
Kirsten: And I’m rambling. No I’m not. Today is Square Root Day.
Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer! “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates in defense of his life lived in endless pursuit of examinings, so what of an unexamined universe?
While many people find the unexamined universe worth living in, they are likely the same truck of folk living the unexamined life, never questioning, ever mindless of the vast intricacies of the oceanic abundance of the reality that surrounds.
It is an illness of mental potential. Have they ever stopped for a moment to consider why it is that they don’t examine themselves or the world around them, they would be cured of this mindless fate?
While the following hour of program does not necessarily represent the views of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors, it does attempt to keep you on the path of mindful pondering, endless examining and tireless thinking.
From the first oceanic microbial stirrings to the latest in anti-microbial soaps, from the first flint (mustk) fre to the current climate crisis, life on earth is always been a struggle for sustenance versus sustainability, survival versus survivability.
One thing that has made to human life form successful in determining its fate has been our unparalleled ability to out-think our circumstance to find ways to adapt and overcome obstacles. Nowhere is this ability better exhibited then on our scientific accomplishments.
The next hour of programming, well, not representative of the University of California at Davis, the campus radio station or its sponsors – is representative of our current efforts to elude the uncertainty of chance and ignorance and forge a future based on a brilliance of our mental evolution.
Just by listening, you are increasing your chances of survival on the planet by continuing your own brilliant mental evolution with This Week In Science, coming up next. Continue reading “Transcript:TWIS.org Nov 27, 2007”
Kirsten: Good morning, Justin. That was a loud one this morning.
Justin: Sweet too, lack of – is that pharmacological, pharmaceutical – no poison in the bloodstream still.
Kirsten: Well, that’s right, that’s right. How is it going?
Justin: Everything is under control.
Kirsten: Under control, yes exactly. Well, this is This Week In Science. We are here yet again to talk about all the science going on in the world and there is lots of it as usual, plenty going on to fill well more than an hour. Continue reading “Transcript:TWIS.org December 18, 2007”
