This week is Tony’s anniversary, so we’re not recording tonight. But we recorded last week, just for you! We talk pro wrestling, space flight, and then crap all over the concept of sports like a couple of bitter drama students! Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Why do people like the Olympics so much? — Anonymous
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I was listening to an interview with the twin astronauts talking about the experiments NASA is doing with one on the space station and one on the ground. Scott Kelly mentioned that one of the things they’re looking at is the increased exposure to radiation in space, and that spending a lot of time in space increases your risk of cancer. That got me wondering if anyone–either in reality or in sci-fi–has addressed the problem of radiation exposure in long term space travel. I mean–does radiation mean that in reality you couldn’t have human beings travelling in space? And that also reminded me of another problem–communication across a great distance. I know Orson Scott Card addresses that but I’m not sure that I can think of other sci-fi that does. On Star Trek, for instance, how could they be getting instantaneous communication with Admiral Whoever?
Not sure about sci-fi authors who have addressed this, but, to my knowledge, there are some people who believe that the radiation problem renders space-faring for humans a no-go. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are some transhumanists who use this argument to advocate for augmenting human biology, because it’s necessary to make us more hardy and space-worthy.
Quantum entanglement has been used by a few writers as the way that instantaneous communication is allowed, but I think in Star Trek, sub-space communication is only as fast as a ship would be at maximum warp. In spite of this, ships in space are often communicating with HQ with no delay whatsoever, so… this is an inconsistency in the Trek mythos, unless there’s some justification I’m not aware of.
The video Tony & William discuss (Kids React to Walkman):
That video somehow makes me feel very sad.
And it has nothing to do with how old I am/feel.
Weird coincidence…
In this episode I note that we’ve had one podcast where we actually didn’t draw any questions.
And I just now realized that the podcast we didn’t draw any questions in was exactly one year ago.
Seems like this kind of coincidence has happened before… like, exactly one year after the first time we talked about Game of Thrones, we talked about Game of Thrones again… or something like that.
And we also talked about “the nature of the word geek” in that podcast.
Does this coincidence impress anyone else, or is it just me?
Oh, and everyone go back to that episode (112: Snarfblats) and read the comments, because they’re pertinent to our discussion in this episode. Jas in particular points out how gender enters into perceptions of sports fanatics vs sci-fi geeks.
Oops… not Game of Thrones… House of Cards…
Or House of Thrones.
Or Game of Cards?
Throne of Cards maybe…
Tony, I thought your comparison of Walkman to Wax Cylinder at the end of the episode was apt. I cannot believe William actually had one as a kid. As much as you make fun of William’s 18th century upbringing, wax cylinders were not normal household items ever.
I have no idea where my mom go it. We didn’t have a phonograph to play it on, but we knew that’s what it played on and we generally knew how it did that because we’d seen the old-fashioned phonographs in other places, perhaps even parts of phonographs in the “junk” areas of the house/farm. (Well… and vinyl records really work the same way, so compared to the LPs we were used to the cylinder wasn’t that odd.) I think Mom intended to get a restored phonograph somewhere so we could play the cylinder but I don’t recall that happening while I still lived there.
We had all kinds of really old things around the farm. My dad remembers his father farming with the horse-drawn implements that sat around in various places all over the property when I was growing up, so… the Wrights of Marion County, Iowa were generally slow to adopt new technologies. Or, in some cases, we’d get the first of something and then not get the updated versions. So, for example, Pong was the only video game console we ever owned.
Well, unless you count the Texas Instruments computer console we owned, because it played arcade-style games. But it also ran what passed for regular computer programs back then, and you could program on it in Basic. I usually count it, though, as one of the first “poor man’s” computers you could get back then and, as per usual, it’s the last computer we ever purchased.
Ultimate Warrior: No idea who this is.
Ice Cream Parlors & Arcades: I know William’s not that much older than I am; but somehow when he talks about his childhood, he makes it sound like another era.
Congratulations on having the gumption to survive yet another year to William’s sire.
Producer & Tony: Way to go lasting 10 years without killing each other. 😉 I recall the day was perfectly fine and like William I don’t recall the food being late.
ISS: Watching a space-walk live? That sounds awesome. William, if you find that all fasinating; you might be interested in reading An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (he made the youtube videos on the ISS a couple years back).
Venom: He actually came from Battleworld.
TOO MUCH LIKE. DID NOT LIKE. :p
Olympics: Meh. Sometimes I watch but the last few times it’s been on; I’ve spent more time avoiding watching them rather than attempting to see them. If NBC didn’t make it so hard to watch them, other than during primetime, I think it might be more popular with people outside the sports fans set.
Why are you torturing your cat, rather than allowing your cat to torture you?