The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe > Podcast Episodes
Episode #354
Steven Novella:
Live from NECSS 2012 with special guest James Randi
This Day in Skepticism
News Items: Pedantic Words, Sports Pseudoscience, Nuking Asteroids, Loch Ness Monster Spotted, Cosmic Rays, Space Shuttle Enterprise
SGU Video
Science or Fiction
Remembering Perry
neurotraveller:
Awesome! Thank you, as always!
wallet55:
I have always been somewhat sympathetic to those in sports who latch onto superstitions or rituals. The problem, as several have told me is that they are attempting to do the same incalculable thing with their bodies each week (such as hit a baseball coming at them faster than their brain can actually process it) and the truth is, they have absolutely no real conscious idea how they do it. Worrying about it just tempts their conscious mind to interfere with their muscle memory, a sure way to fail. So, what many of them do is latch onto rituals that are anti-thought, which frees them to not to think about what they are doing. (a true description of ritual if I do say so myself, but in this case, not overthinking is the goal)
Chew:
A blobsquatch equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster?
Blobbie?
Blossie?
Blob Ness Monster?
GodSlayer:
slightly disappointed that 'decimated' wasn't better explained.
wouldn't the answer to Jay's 'why so specific?' be the historical origins--why a word for killing exactly one tenth existed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_%28Roman_army%29
"A unit selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots, and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades"
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