SGU Episode 349

<Transcription currently in Progress by TimM> <Transcription currently in Progress by TimM> Hello and welcome to the skeptics guide to the universe. Today is wednesday march 21st 2012 and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are bob novella hey everybody rebecca watson hello everyone jay novella what is this podcasting? and even burnstein Good evening ladies and gentleman, how's everyone? Ola evan Good, Fine and dandy

now this was some winter huh?

This is my kind of winter. we barely had any snow this year in new england, it was in the 50's for a large part of the winter in southern new england which is unheard of. i love the vernal equinox becase it means the next six months the sun is in the upper half of it's course through the sky. I hope all of you have released your white owls. .. rebecca what else is special about this day? Well, this day marks the anniversary of a quite horrific and march 24th 1989 was the day that the exxon valdez spilled oil into prince williams sow. You just can't let it go can you rebecca? No, no me and the otters... pretty pissed about it. One drunk sea captain, it helps(you know?), guides the boat into the low into the shoals and he pays for it for the rest of his life. I think, apparently thats a... apparanenrly that's a bit of a myth, the captain apparently was drunk but was not at the helm. The third mate was, and on the list of things what went wrong the biggest ones seems to be that the radar for detecting possible collisions had been broken for nearly a year. Also... And the captain was too drunk to know it. apparently. We'll get to that eventually. Apparently all of the crew was severly overworked and exhausted and had been for quite some time. so those were devised as beeing the main causes why it ended up striking a reef and spilling up to possibly seven hunded and fifty thousand barrels of oil it's not however

think of all the cars and furnaces that it would have provided heat and energy for. It's very sad. Yeah, dispite how devestating the oil spill was, it's not even in the top ten worst oil spills of all time. It was the worst one in the US up until the 2010 deepwater horizon disaster. but yeah it's kinda crazy to think that there are oils spills happening all the time and some of them are much much worse than the exxon valdese. Yeah, there's a happy thought for you. The ship itself was recently auctioned off actually. Just the tanker, just this week it was sold for scrap so apparently it was renamed the "Oriental Niceity" Mmm hmmm? I guess as some way to trick people into to thinking it was err... For real? Oh my gosh. might as well call it the happy xxx, what the hell? The little nicenty?! That's odd. I've a funny exxon valdeze story, i was in epcott centre in disney world shortly after that oil spill and to the dinosaur exhibit was i guess funded by exxon and before you get to see the dinosaurs, there's essentially a big commercial for exxon. at one point they have this airial shot of an oil tanker going through a harboar and they go: "The beautiful Exxon valdese..." 'Course everyone starts laughing 'cause this is like right after the disaster they hadn't updated the ride yet. Time to update the rides... Here's my question; I've always heard people call it the exxon valdese but I don't understand why they pronounce it valdiese, when it's obviously valdeze. i don't know i'm just slavishly following what I hear. I think it's weird. But at least we can have our super hero magical bracelets to make it all better right jay? Nice segway Tha'ts a good segway steve. It kinda takes away from it when you say it's a good segway. I know that's why it's funny and every single time steve you will never be able to segway without us calling attention to it. This is your curse. Steve jumped right into it, i wanted to loosen it up a little bit before we say bad things about Marvel, 'cause there's good things about marvel like, i think that for super hero movies they've done a great job you know for the most part i've liked all of them and you know the avengers movies comming out and i'm really psyched to see it its totally right in my sweet spot. I love super heros i love like you now science fixionny stuff like that.so it really was dissapointing to find out that marvel and probably even more involved is the production company that their using, the marketing company that they've hired for the averngers film, is sadly has, is selling some crazy wacky merchandise. So they're selling a magic bracelet a 'real' magic bracelet. A like powerband type BS. As oppossed to fake magic bracelets? They have the They're not a toy theoy're making actual claims for it. Yeah they are, here i'll get into some of the details here, the limited edition mag-tigt neolegend has a carbon fibre surface finished with a coat of transparent resin that yields and attractive stylish design. I thought you were going to say transparent alluminin. That would have been impressive. A hundred