Discussion Thread

[espreite]

We have a couple more articles this week! One called YOU ARE ALL GOING TO BE DELETED: The Olivia Munn Paradox and another about media and politics as a source of comedy in TDS. Discuss away!

Comments

[seagullsong]

Ok, so I'm totally going to get a reputation for only posting stuff from atheist blogs, but PZ Myers talked about The Daily Show over on his blog Pharyngula, which is huge in the online science/skeptic community.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/jon_stewart_you_let_me_down.php

Keep in mind that the blog and it's commenters tend to be on the more aggressive side of the atheist spectrum, so (faint-hearted) religious folk should tread lightly.

[erinptah]

From the comments:

"Not only is antimatter real, but it's accessible to everybody. The humble banana is rich in potassium, including the positron-emitting isotope K-40. Your average banana produces antimatter once every 75 minutes. And it doesn't stop just because you eat it."

Is that true? Oh, I hope that's true. Because that would be awesome.

Facepalming a bit at all the "what do you mean Stewart [and/or Colbert] is not an atheist? He makes fun of religion!" As if the only options in the world are "humorless dogmatist" or "secular snarker."

[seagullsong]

I...I think it's true! Google says it's true! Of course, it's buried in stuff like this:

"A "medium" banana (whatever that means) has about half a gram of potassium, or 7.7×1021 atoms. Of these, 9.0×1017 (about sixy micrograms) are 40K. If you picked just one of these nuclei, you'd have to wait a billion years (on average) to see it decay; in our banana we have lots of atoms we can watch all at once, so there will be about 23 decays per second. Of these decays, 89% are β- decays to calcium, and 11% are electron capture decays to argon. Only one decay in 105 actually emits an antielectron. So an ordinary banana contains an antielectron for a brief instant about once every 75 minutes."

Help, my brain! It hurts.

(And I knooow. I was really startled that so many people thought he was an atheist. And then I remembered that most people don't have an obsessive need to read about Jon Stewart's life. Losers.)

[espreite]

...Wow, I dislike that article in almost every way possible XD

What bugs me most as an agnosto-atheist who loves religious philosophy is the way they've assumed that because Jon didn't rip her theory to shreds, he can't possibly be an atheist. While I don't like his explanation about science being based on faith, I think that it's pretty harsh to get angry at him for not taking her to task on a single line about religious contributions that most people who aren't aggressive atheists wouldn't necessarily disagree with.

Also, major lulz at the people who are like, "Colbert would have ripped her a new one!" Lolololol, have they ever even *watched* Colbert's interviews with non-extremist religious people?

[seagullsong]

Have they ever watched *any* of Colbert's interviews? I think most of them are pretty weak. Definitely not his best stuff, and like PZ said, neither he or Jon are really "attack dogs" in interviews. So it is a bit silly for people to get so worked up over it. But Pharyngula's whole shtick is pointing out exactly how wrapped up in religious and superstitious thought our culture is; to the point where very few television hosts would ever really question a statement like that about science. So it really is quite an aggressive site. It used to bother me, but now I think that we need that kind of brutal analysis as well as the softer kind of atheism. To every thing there is a season? :P

[espreite]

It kinda seems to stem from the same sort of logic as the "Colbert is edgy and satirical and Stewart is weak and a suck-up" camp, which has always intrigued and baffled me. Colbert has had some *really* hard-hitting interviews early in his career, especially with the WH Correspondents Dinner speech, while Stewart has only come into his own in interviews more recently. It's like a major camp set up in the parts of the US where there are large groups of people who watch TDS/TCR (not where I live, so I can't speak from experience) that Colbert is SOFREAKINGAMAZING and Stewart sucks. It's just especially ridiculous here because Colbert's religious interviews tend to be...not very atheistic.

Hehe. I'll be honest, "brutal analysis" of anything does bad things to my blood pressure, so I mostly avoid it. Doesn't mean it's good or bad, just not my kind of toast ^_^