Episode #115 of Drunk Ex-Pastors begins with a voice mail involving a Tinder date and a potentially profitable bowel movement, after which Jason is given the chance to clarify whether he hates rich people because they’re horrible, or simply because they’re rich. We again are forced to reiterate our complete mistrust of “science,” and then receive some encouragement about our continual use of movie quotes as well as being scolded for missing an obvious one. A listener challenges Jason’s assertion that his generation invented irony, and another caller causes Christian to explain the Fermi Paradox (we think it’s about those stuffed owl-hamster things from the Nineties). We are then asked by another listener (a guy, or a girl, we don’t remember) about whether we ever bother thinking about who our audience is (we do, as we explained to whoever it was who asked). Lastly, Jason relays what it is like to peer into a person’s soul by means of parking their automobile. Christian is biebered by Facebook trends, while Jason’s bieber involves the HR department.
Also, Donny Don & the Funky Bunch were the BEST.
Podcast #151: Games and Ghosts
Podcast #432: Movies, Heart Failure, and Big Bones
Podcast #32: Bondage, Christian Privilege, and the Divine Lisp
Podcast #132: Minimalism and Blackmail
• If you always look miserable, then you have no tells.
• If you start to feel better, just throw on some Smiths music in a dark room while you sit remembering all of the lost loves of your life, all your regrets, all of your dear beloved pets that are no longer with you. That’ll fix you right up. Helpful Hint: Stop the music BEFORE you start cutting yourself with a spork just to feel something.
• Guys, first the planet is located only 500 light-years away, so we’re looking at that star as it was in the year 1516, give or take. That’s pretty close in interstellar terms.
• Second, the farthest we’ve been able to see is about 13 Billion light years and scientists believe the origin of the universe, the Big Bang, occurred around the 14 billion year mark.
• Lastly, we can calculate interstellar distances with a variety of methods, many of which are over my head right now since I haven’t had an astronomy course in about ten years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder
• “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
• Yeah, don’t fuck with Australia. Anyone who can live on a continent where God or Evolution dumped all of the world’s most deadly fauna and flora is someone to be reckoned with.
• http://io9.gizmodo.com/if-you-touch-this-plant-it-will-make-you-vomit-in-pure-1693770289
• You invent the internet, everyone becomes stupid, and we all die.
• Christian apologists know science about as well as I know neurosurgery.
• Also, the orbit of the Earth isn’t circular. It’s a ellipsis. Meaning that 93 million miles is an average. At our orbit’s closest point to the sun, we’re only 91.5 million miles away from it and at the farthest point, we are 94.5 million miles away.
• “It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
• Perhaps because FTL travel is impossible? The sheer amounts of distance between habitable planets may make manned space travel too costly, time consuming, and not worth the risk. Let’s say we somehow know that there is intelligent life on that other Earth that is only 500 light years away. We would have to build a starship that could run, be maintained, and sustain human life for 1,000 years if we travelled at half the speed of light. There would have to be extra room for the offspring of our astronauts. They would have to be able to regrow their own food and refresh their water supplies, even with stringent recycling. Throw in the time commitment, these are people who are volunteering to spending their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren confined in a ship, leaving behind everything on Earth. During their 1,000 year journey at .5 lightspeed, 1154 years will have passed on Earth. Communications would be impossible after some point, because anyone who would hear them would be long dead. Let’s throw in that there is no help for the crew of this ship. No star bases, no space docks. If there is an accident, a collision with a stellar object, or the ship breaks down, they are dead.
• A civilization that becomes advanced enough to deal with all that, may decide not to bother with it and spend its time colonizing local planets or sending out drones like our Voyage probe.
• Also, think of it this way, let’s say some alien civilization discovers Earth. Depending on the distance to us, they may be seeing light from anywhere from 500 years ago to 6 billion years ago. Earth might look like an uninhabitable mess, they might be seeing dinosaurs, or they might be watching us butcher each other during the Crusades. Any of which would be a reason not to shoot off a probe or starship to say, “Hi.”
• No politics. Not now. Right now, it’s like watching a dear friend engage in a stupid, self-destructive cycle that will end in their death.
• Look, I don’t judge. We’re all shuffling around on this dirt clod in insignificance with the knowledge that we’re going to die and nothing we do will ultimately matter to those who come after us. We hang our thin hopes for some form of permanency and fairness on the thin sliver of hope for an afterlife that may or may not exist. Everyone’s dealing with their shit the best they can.
• My Bieber is the following: Dear Microsoft, my computer has been saying that my updates are 100% complete now for ten minutes now. If I have to wait any longer than 2 seconds from the time the UI says it’s 100% complete, then it’s NOT 100% complete.
“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
This sounds a lot like something Douglas Adams would write.
You are correct, Sir.
Nice! I did not look that up. I love him though.