Nerd Pride Radio

Double Science Corner this week! First there’s the Schmidt Insect Sting Pain Index, where a badass scientist went out and intentionally got stung by the worst of the worst just to measure how much they hurt. Then there’s more science as Mike goes on at least semi-coherently about the inscrutable complexity of the human brain. After that, he talks about immersive theater and an amazing Alice in Wonderland-based production out of Brooklyn called Then She Fell that he so wishes he could see. At the Gaming Table, it’s all anticipation of upcoming events, and the Pod-O-Matic brings another half-dozen listener-submitted questions. Hurry now so you can be in the loop when everyone’s talking about this podcast around the water cooler tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Great episode! Hour & 40 minutes flew by like a good movie!! Probably because I was mentioned. You should mention me more often!

Random fact (and I'm probably jinxing myself) but I've never been stung by a bee.

Also: Yes, Sonic Hedgehog is the actual gene name (SHH for abbreviation) and is part of canonical pathways (specifically in patterning of the body)

Regarding assisted suicide:

With what my transgender son is going through right now, there are required counseling sessions (individual and group) and letters of recommendations from therapists required before they will even begin hormone therapy, and at least a year of that treatment and more counseling before they will consider gender reassignment surgery.

I would want to see something similar for assisted suicide. This could help prevent situations where someone is coerced into doing it by a greedy heir who just wants to get their hands on the person's money, or someone suffering from a temporary, curable, or manageable condition, from making a spur of the moment decision. So before assisted suicide would be allowed, there would have to be mandatory counseling sessions to make sure the person is competent to make the decision without undue influence, and review by a medical board to confirm there is no viable treatment, etc.

I wonder if we had to spend more time experiencing the presence of dying persons whether we would start to see those laws and trends in our culture change. People used to die at home with their families more often, and people understood and experienced what that was like. Now maybe it happens completely out of sight, or you only get brief glimpses in visits to a hospital or nursing home or whatever. Assisted suicide would not have helped all of my relatives but it sure as heck would have helped some of them avoid a protracted and senseless period of suffering. And it's not like they weren't being medicated to the hilt anyway, so I'm not quite sure where the moral line gets drawn between letting someone's body slowly and agonizingly come to a "natural" and fully medicated halt, vs. an "unnatural" and fully medicated halt without all the suffering.

I am seriously concerned about what to do if my parents get to this type of point when they're older. I don't think any of the states that presently allow for assisted suicide would permit it in the situations I anticipate are likeliest, but that may change. I know for sure it's something my husband would want, should the situation arise, and while we can't predict whether we'll be hit by a bus tomorrow, my own future likely involves some sort of horrible protracted mental and physical decline, given what the genetic lottery has dealt me as a set of options. Or I may draw the lucky card, who knows. We shall see, but I'd certainly like to be able to lay out all my wishes in writing and let my kids make those choices for me, which is not something you can do even when assisted suicide is legal right now.

My understanding is that in most states that have such a law, they do require counseling and depression screening and that sort of thing. Not sure state to state how the details work. My biggest concern is that some of these restrictions make it so that you cannot decide for yourself in advance. You have to be competent to agree to it again and again as the end approaches. But some of the people who suffer most are those who cannot physically or mentally do this, and therefore they're disqualified even if they know two years in advance that this isn't the end they would choose for themselves. I'm literally terrified of what happens if one of my loved ones ends up in this situation where they are aspirating food or something and get aspiration pneumonia and die in some terrible fashion, or they just get to a point where they can't move or do almost anything and there's no way for me to communicate with them effectively to know whether they are suffering or need a specific sort of help. Those are the people who right now aren't going to be at all eligible for an assisted suicide. I've lived through this situation a few times, never as the primary caregiver but close enough to see what it was like, and we are doing a terrible job as a society of addressing this very common situation.

Another worknight Monday, another fresh episode of Nerd Pride Radio.

Thanks Mike!

Just for you, Caz.

I really enjoyed the way that this week's podcast addressed a number of interesting scientific topics. However, I have a small gripe about the psychologist who criticizes the computational model of the brain. First of all, this is a really old criticism that he is promoting as if he were the first to stumble upon it recently. He can reasonably be expected to do some sort of literature review or at least pay attention to other major arguments related to his topic. Secondly, some of the examples and arguments he uses to make his case are extremely weak. The idea that anything much is proved simply because we can do better at reconstructing a drawing of a dollar bill when we have one right in front of us as opposed to working straight from memory is bizarre. And just because computational language doesn't exactly fit as a metaphor for what happens with human brains doesn't mean that nothing whatsoever like that is taking place. He hasn't given a plausible alternative account of how human brains retrieve information to explain why this metaphor is so useless to us and should be utterly abandoned. If the main point he wants to make is that we shouldn't use this analogy excessively, to wave vaguely at things that haven't been proven or explained in a manner that supports the analogy, then great. Agreed.

I got the episode late, but man was it fantastic!




Now I want everyone to listen to Mike when he says the word "hard"...To me he sounds like Owen Wilson whose movies I almost always enjoy. Now re-listen to the rest of the podcast with Owen Wilson's face in your head and Mike's voice coming out. Although Mike's voice is just a tad bit lower (scientific term ya' know) the accent and emphasis as well as sentence structure is spot on.

Conclusion:
Owen Wilson is disguising himself as Mike Jones

Follow-up Question:
Mr Wilson, what have you done with Mike?

On relistening to this episode, I figured out more of what I meant by cutesy names distracting from the science. You want to name your gene the "Sonic the Hedgehog" gene? No problem. Attention getting, and the cute name is a great device for remembering the function of the gene. Etc. You want to name your ship Boaty McBoatFace, or your new insect garylarsoni... awesome and fun. But when I see media report and media report about the search for the "God Particle," I get annoyed. Granted (and thankfully), God Particle was never an official name, but it's use was sensationalistic and caused all sorts of discussion and controversy that simply got in the way of the science.

Interesting note: Googling "God Particle" just now, I learned it's origin. It's from a 1993 book entitled, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?. The author, Nobel winner Leon Lederman, originally named the book The Goddamn Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? His editor wouldn't allow it.

Imagine how much different the stories about the search for the Higgs boson would have been if it was consistently referred to as "The Goddamn Particle." Now THAT I approve of.

I just read an article that says it's a myth that we only use 10% of our brain. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, we use ALL of it! Between this & the episode debunking that our brain works like a computer, my inner sci-fi nerd is taking a huge psychological hit! Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

90% of your brain already knew all of that.

It looks dirty when you do it.

Something about that image seems off target, not sure why.

Everyone knows the information comes through your nose, not your forehead!