Ah, modern medicine. As in antibiotics from the pharmaceutical industry (which is NOT an easy word to spell – thank you Google auto-complete!). As in not prayer, therapeutic touch, vitamin mega-doses, yoga, meditating, acupuncture, chi manipulation, homeopathy, exorcisms, magnets, nor any of that other crap. Good ol’-fashioned tested, repeatable, proven drugs.
This episode is late, though back-dated, because I did not get better, I got worse, in my sore throat. To the point of having a fever and noticing white splotches towards the back of my mouth, so I went to the doctor for the first time in almost 8 years, and the first time in over 15 due to an illness (my mom made me get a checkup when I turned 21). I’m surprised that it took so long, but I guess I’ve been lucky to be generally healthy; but when a sore throat lingers for 2 weeks and gets worse and is accompanied by increasing fatigue and fever and chills and white spots in your mouth, I figured it was a good idea to see a doctor. After a day.5 of antibiotics, I’m already feeling much better, though of course I will take my full prescribed 5-day course, and hopefully that’ll be the end of this.
Anywho, the topic of the podcast for (ahem) two days ago is the Fake Story of Planet X. In other words, all that stuff you hear about Planet X being Nibiru, Zecharia Sitchen’s ideas, brown dwarf stars, a 3600-year-long orbit, it approaching from the sun or the south pole so we can’t see it except for the gummament … all that stuff, and why it’s hooey.
The puzzler this time – because I couldn’t think of something else – is more straight-forward math, and it contains two parts — a main question and then a bonus.
I think I’m going to start soliciting puzzlers from people: The next odd-quarter episode, due out March 1 when I’ll be flying to DC, is going to be about the Magnetic Pole Shift. If you can think of a good (decent, half-decent, or passable) puzzler related to that, please e-mail me.
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 