Episode #594
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week: Binary stars
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Fiction
There are more Native Americans living today than there were in 1492, according to the average estimates of population at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
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Item #2
Science
Native American words that found their way into English include all of the following: chipmunk, pecan, racoon, skunk, avocado, chocolate, shack, barbecue, tomato, and cannibal. http://www.factretriever.com/native-american-facts
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Item #3
Science
The term “Sioux” is not the real name of the Sioux tribe, but derives from an insulting name told to the French by their Algonquian neighbors. http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/faq/etymology.htm
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,— often the surfeit of our own behavior,— we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!” William Shakespeare — King Lear, act 1, scene 2, Edmund