Geek Counterpoint -- Your antidote to soundbite science!
Your own personal geek-to-English translator, in handy Podcast form! Equal parts topical science background, correction / explanation of poorly reported science & tech issues, and just plain interesting points to ponder. A 20 minute helping of critical thinking every week, presented in conversational style and with a dash of dry humor.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 22 minutes
- Episodes
- 60
- Years Active
- 2005 - 2007
GC040 News Grab Bag #4
This week's episode is a "grab bag," including news on three broad topics:
* Stem cells -- see episodes 18 and 20 (February 2006), and episode 21 (March, 2006)
* Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" -…
00:25:28 |
Sun 10 Sep 2006
GC039 Politics and Science
This episode started as an examination of political interference in science. But while doing research for the episode, I ran across two studies on the brain activity involved in partisan politics, a…
00:23:09 |
Fri 01 Sep 2006
Geek Counterpoint Administrivia
Reminder of video episode (for non-iTunes subscribers), announcement of upcoming server swap (may see odd behavior in last week of August)
00:01:26 |
Sat 26 Aug 2006
GC037 What's in a Name?
Planetary science used to be so simple. Our solar system had 9 planets, and a bunch of little leftover scraps called asteroids and comets. But over the last few decades, improvements in observing t…
00:20:44 |
Fri 11 Aug 2006
GC036 Meet the New Man
2006 has been dubbed "The Year of the Neanderthal," since the first official discovery of Neanderthal remains was made 150 years ago this month in a limestone quarry in Germany's Neander Valley, east…
00:23:26 |
Thu 03 Aug 2006
GC035 Inflatable Spacecraft
Now that Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 1 module is in orbit, the concept of inflatable spacecraft is starting to get a little bit of press attention. Genesis 1 is not the only inflatable space vehicle…
00:28:09 |
Thu 27 Jul 2006
GC034 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a French biologist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and can be credited with a number of advances in the study of species origins and (in particular) invertebrate …
00:22:17 |
Wed 19 Jul 2006
GC033 Quantum Mechanics
This is the third in a scattered series of episodes that I'm in aggregate titling "20 Minute Lessons in 20th Century Physics." Tune in this week, and I'll give you a brief introduction to quantum me…
00:19:59 |
Mon 10 Jul 2006
GC032 Net Neutrality
There's a battle under way in the U.S. Congress over Net Neutrality -- and it's got broad implications for all internet users, regardless of where they live. Unfortunately, the mass media haven't be…
00:15:46 |
Sat 24 Jun 2006
GC031 Stuck in the ITAR
Many a blog entry has been written in complaint about the difficulties of working in space with the U.S., or about the hurdles U.S. aerospace companies face in dealing with partners abroad. As is oft…
00:19:23 |
Sun 18 Jun 2006
GC030 News Grab Bag #3
This week's episode is a "grab bag" of news on three broad topics:
* RFID (see episode 13) "best practices," and in practice
* The "Hobbits" of Flores island (see episode 15), and other dwarves
* As…
00:24:50 |
Sun 11 Jun 2006
GC029 The NSA and SNA
Anybody that's been keeping up with the news lately (at least in the U.S.) has heard about the recent allegations that the NSA is collecting call routing information on most phone calls made within t…
00:20:41 |
Sat 03 Jun 2006
GC028 Love at Goon Park
A quick overview of an excellent book by the same name -- a description of the career of Harry Harlow and his studies of the science of affection, with special attention to the conflict between Harlo…
00:26:49 |
Tue 16 May 2006
GC027 General Relativity
This is the second in a scattered series of episodes that I'm in aggregate titling "20 Minute Lessons in 20th Century Physics." Tune in this week, and I'll give you a brief introduction to general r…
00:16:12 |
Fri 05 May 2006
GC026 Down With The Old Canoe! (pt. 2)
This week, I wrap up my treatment of the loss of the Titanic with a simplified (if not brief) failure analysis. How the ship broke up and sank is fairly straightforward -- so I don't spend much time…
00:39:14 |
Sat 22 Apr 2006
GC025 Down With The Old Canoe! (pt. 1)
April 15 is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and it's been just over 20 years since the ship's wreck was found, so I thought it'd be a good time to talk about some aspects of the traged…
00:21:37 |
Sat 15 Apr 2006
GC024 A Bad Day on the Beach
No sooner had I uplinked last week's episode, than related news showed up. This, a study doubting the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction. Disappointingly, the study was presented non-critically…
00:27:11 |
Sun 09 Apr 2006
GC023 Quantifying Chicken Little
We've all heard or read about some scare or another based on the potential future impact of an asteroid or comet. Often, the core issue behind such scares (leaving aside an occasionally over-excited…
00:21:50 |
Fri 31 Mar 2006
GC022 Special Relativity
As I mentioned in the last episode (#21), I've got a whole list of topics I'd like to discuss that require at least a cursory background in modern (non-Newtonian) physics. So this week's episode is …
00:22:12 |
Sat 18 Mar 2006
GC021 News Grab Bag #2
This week's episode contains updates to previous episodes based on recent news, and a little bit of news about Pluto (I don't have enough material for an episode all about Pluto, so it gets tossed in…
00:19:58 |
Fri 03 Mar 2006
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