SGU Episode 311

Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

This Day in Skepticism

 * July 2 1843: Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann - a German physician, founder of the system of therapeutics known as homeopathy - died.

Tau Day

 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13906169

Body Temperature of Dinosaurs Measured

 * http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110628132557.htm

Magnets and Blood Flow

 * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/magnets-and-blood-flow/

Guru in Sweat Lodge Deaths Convicted

 * http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/us/23sweat.html?_r=2

Close Call for Space Station

 * http://gawker.com/5816596/space-station-nearly-obliterated-no-big-deal

Who's That Noisy

 * Answer to last week: Brian May

Interview with Eugenie Scott

 * Director of the National Center for Science Education

Science or Fiction
Item #1: A recent extensive DNA analysis of coconuts indicates that all modern cultivated coconuts derive from a single ancestral variety located in Indonesia. Item #2: Paleontologists have discovered fossilized eyes 515 million years old - they are surprisingly complex compound eyes with about 3,000 lenses. Item #3: A new study finds that wars have been increasing steadily over the last century by 2% per year on average.

Skeptical Quote of the Week
"'If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another, and science will do for them all they wish and more than they can dream.' - Winston Churchill"