Two Bit Geeks

Ped invites Tom to try some vocal warmup, before moving on to fingers and hands, cursive redux, neuroplasticity and critical thinking, flora and pesky fauna, plus some brief Star Wars news.

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Vocal Warmup [00:37]

• Aerobics for your voice (NPR)
• Voice and Articulation by Kenneth Crannell – Tom’s college textbook

Fingers and Hands [11:48]

• Muscles of the Hand
• Neuroplasticity

What are today’s kids learning? [22:07]

• Teaching Controversial Topics
• Critical Thinking

Flora and Fauna [28:09]

• Mr. McGregor
• Procyon lotor on the porch
• Gift-giving crows
• That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think
• Fact or Fiction?: People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep
• Why Do Cats Bring Home Dead Animals?

Han Solo [39:00]

• Ron Howard filmography

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

After a hello to our Imperial listeners, Ped & Tom discuss the decline of cursive writing, the Common Core Standards, learning cuneiform, and the purpose of purposeless pursuits. Also, squeaky cats and oatmeal.

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An Imperial listener [00:00]

• The Empire Did Nothing Wrong
• The Ridgeway National Trail

Should we still learn cursive writing? [06:55]

• What is cursive writing?
• Left-handed scissors
• The Common Core State Standards Initiative
• Sentence diagrams
• A math teacher answers the question: When Am I Ever Going to Use This? (Matt Kitchen)
• The Palmer Method
• Cuneiform script
• The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
• Star Trek:TNG s5e02 “Darmok”
• The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal

Squeaky Cats and Oatmeal [35:35]

• “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” played on squeaking stuffed cats (Rare and Strange Instruments)
• Simple vs Complex Carbohydrates

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Fitness tracking followup, setting goals and how to manage them, aspiring towards Inbox Zero, the benefits of side projects and time scheduling, the manager-self versus the worker-self, and the sensitive plant revisited.

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Fitbit Followup [00:41]

• Previous Fitbit discussion in Episode 06
• The health hazards of sitting
• What sleep tracking apps can and can’t tell you

Are you a goal setting kind of person? [04:38]

• Cortex podcast by CGP Grey and Myke Hurley
• Tom uses OmniFocus for daily task management
• Ped uses Todoist
• Getting Things Done
• Managing your email with Inbox Zero
• Big Rocks First metaphor for scheduling your time
• Time chunking with the Pomodoro Technique
• 7 Ways to Maximize Misery - video by CGP Grey
• And the Reddit discussion
• The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
• Harry Potter’s Pensieve

Drop testing plant memory [35:17]

• Previous discussion of plant memory in Episode 13
• Mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant
• The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
• Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters - Gagliano, M., Renton, M., Depczynski, M. et al. Oecologia (2014) 175: 63. doi:10.1007/s00442–013–2873–7
• What are mechanoreceptors?
• Clever Hans and the observer-expectancy effect
• Human memory versus computer memory

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Alien megastructures on the move, Tom happily hopping across the pond, a lot of bleu at the Pompidou, replicating everything, Fluffernutters in Paris, matching voices with faces and Tom’s tendrils are seriously onto something.

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Tabby Star is Dipping! [00:00]

• “The most mysterious star in the universe” (Tabetha Boyajian TED talk)
• We should totally build a Dyson Sphere (or not)
• Just turn the cube, reveal the message?

An American (Geek) in Paris [10:42]

• Rhapsody in Blue (IKB #002EA7, that is)
• Reddit has spoken: Prado beats the Louvre (for Mona Lisas)
• The Ship of Theseus consumes us all
• Fine American cuisine on display
• The “Vomitorium” (not what Ped thought it was)

Voices and Faces [45:36]

• Great show, but I want to un-see this
• Exclusive reveal - it’s Brother X!

Tom’s Tendrils [54:54]

• In all their emergent glory
• Can this sensitive plant learn? To be continued…

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Giving Tom another micro-hobby, celebrating the return of Doctor Who and MST3K, the first trailer for the The Last Jedi, a trip through the galaxy of the Goldberg Variations and throwing dirt and shade on Ender’s Game.

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Something earthy, something Who; something reboot, something new [00:00]

• Gardening means you put seeds in dirt!
• Nardole, Bill and the Doctor jump start S10
• A taste of MST3K
• The Last Jedi trailer (and some great fan breakdowns)

Bach’s Goldberg Variations [18:20]

• Open Goldberg Variations (free download)
• Bach is “annoyingly unimpeachable”
• Glenn Gould, all into “The Black Pearl”
• Cool viz: Bach showing off with canons (some more)
• The best orchestra gig, hands down

Ender’s Game [44:32]

• In the end… not of universal acclaim
• Well, Tom did like the Fantasy Game (a bit?)
• Existential Crisis Ped is returning to the Earth

Public Domain performance of the Goldberg Variations by Kimiko Ishizaka (CC0 1.0)

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Mystery project part two (or, I Can’t Believe I Just Did That), some mildly interesting follow-up, all hail what we objectively know to be true, even more Who, the mathematical beauty of J.S. Bach and will Ped ever finish his homework.

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Check Ped’s Project (part 2) [00:29]

• And the winner is…
• The importance of trust
• No time for meta, persona

The greatest era of all-time [25:20]

• A mildly interesting subreddit
• Praising 1983 pop
• Waiting in line for Star Wars is awesome (and an upcoming movie)
• Decathlon tournament? You gotta want it…

Spotting-up: Big Finish and Bach [33:58]

• Big Finish on Spotify (thanks, Gallifrey)
• Free Bach Intro: Goldberg Variations
• Is there “mathematical beauty” in elegant logic?
• A blow-you-away Bach viz: Toccata and Fugue

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Scandinavians have excellent taste in podcasts, floating away on uninteresting waves, occupying attention for sleep and creativity, Tom picks Ped’s brain on meditation, mystery project part one and a micro bit of barely audible follow-up.

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On Scandinavia, Sleep and Static [00:59]

• “Sleep With Me” podcast
• White noise for sleep
• White noise for focus

Check Ped’s Head: it’s meditating! [09:55]

• Ready, set: nothing
• The mind needs something to hang its hat on
• Ped is happy for the time to work on discipline
• This is Ped’s style, but there are many to choose from
• The back of Ped’s car has good advice
• A fun song and nice intro to cog sci’s take on the automated mind

Check Ped’s Project (part 1) [34:53]

• It’s a surprise! : )

Micro follow-up [55:41]

• Tom did his homework; Ped will try…

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Crickets by caquet (CC by 3.0)

Wheeling and dealing on a weekday evening, sportsball gets a foot in the door, simulating simulations, tidally locked exoplanets and other cool space stuff that will take forever to get to, lunar tourism and this podcast train is bound for Silly Town.

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Coughing along, singing our song… [00:00]

• Entomology etymology: there’s two XKCDs for that
• A truly Hall Of Fame cereal, brought to you by the 80s
• Pretty much Tom’s crack-of-dawn routine
• Ira Glass and “the NPR voice” (not everyone likes it)

Following follow-up [09:19]

• Can you find Tom’s limerick in HI 77?
• A closed refutation, and an open discussion, of momentum in sport
• Living in a simulation? Don’t think too hard about it…

Space [21:59]

• The ultra-cool TRAPPIST–1
• Playing with the Drake equation
• Tom’s Star Destroyer mineral rights: 16 Psyche
• The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance are pretty chill

“One of these days, Elon…” [45:18]

• “…pow - straight to the moon!”
• Can one enjoy reading Ender’s Game despite its author? We shall see…

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Evolution and expansion of the greater tribe of geek, a farewell to John Hurt and a bon voyage to Peter Capaldi, pop-culturally informed (?) speculation on Who’s next, and looking forward to the next work from Denis what’s-his-name.

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Ped’s podcast recording studio

Are we not Geeks? [01:04]

• The evolution of Geek, visually and narratively
• Spot-on phase–1 geeks in Stranger Things
• Nichelle Nichols, pioneering role model of Star Trek

Deep Dive on Doctor Who [17:38]

• John Hurt’s finest hour
• Who saw this coming? Best cameo ever
• There’s a subreddit for that: audio drama
• Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas and more
• Who’s next? Roll the dice (The Ancient One in the lead as of this writing)

A Few Follow-ups [39:08]

• Deep Dive with Denis V* on Arrival -> Blade Runner -> Dune
• Don’t diss the Quakers! (FTR, they’re cool with tech)

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)

Thanking dear listeners (with apologies to the Dutch and Danes), why are we doing this again?, checking out this super happy milkmaid, purposeless beauty, patience and imperfection, regulating news and paying heed (or not) to speed limits.

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Reviewing the Reviews [01:45]

• Thank you, dear listeners!
• Why create at all? Lotsa different reasons
• Feeling the Norwegian Love

Art of the Intentional, Art of the Accidental [10:40]

• Behold! The Happy Milkmaid
• Thomassons: the short shrift to the frivolous no more
• Embracing imperfection with wabi-sabi and agile
• Desire Paths and usability

Surfing the News Tsunami [30:43]

• (submit your million-dollar solution here)
• Or step outside your comfort/country zone

Speed Limits: strict laws, or helpful suggestions? [38:03]

• Ped’s role model from the 80s
• UK has national speed limits; US, not so much
• Varying tendencies of (in)attentive drivers between countries
• Working with psychology through traffic calming

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)