ing asleep in socially inappropriate circumstances it's perhaps possible that you've got obstructive sleep apnea and then other clues can be if your partner complains obviously snoring is is pretty common but particularly in a regular pattern of breathing at night patients with obstructive sleep apnea often slow down in their breathing and then start off again with a very loud snoring type effect so if you've got any of those sort of symptoms again talk to your GP about getting assessed for obstructive sleep apnea alpha 1 anti trice piece in deficiency help me out here alpha 1 obstructive deficiency is a genetic cause of COPD and the gene the gene itself is very common and it's certainly something we tend to look for in our patients with COPD as it can have genetic implications it tends to produce early onset COPD and if people can be warned about stopping smoking and often prevented becoming an established COPD the clue would be somebody who develops COPD at an early age particularly if they know risk factors just one thing that you mentioned there which we may be aware of but maybe we've forgotten too to some extent lung cancer the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in Ireland now I think if you were to ask 100 people on the street I'm not sure how many of them would have gone for cancer lung cancer review to ask them 2700 people diagnosed with the disease each year you've also mentioned smoking in relation to COPD how big of an influence does smoking have on the amount of people that are diagnosed with lung cancer and the likes of COPD annually a lot of patients with lung cancer would have had a smoking history but what's particularly perhaps scary is that we're seeing increasing amounts of lung cancer patients who've never smoked perhaps there are other things in the environment that might have precipitated this but it is by no means ubiquitous to have a smoking history for everybody with lung cancer the lungs are amazingly exposed to whatever we breathe so we know for instance indoor pollution can have effect on patients who can aggravate asthma or aggravate COPD and by indoor pollution I'm talking about things like exposure to coal fires exposure to turf smoke exposure to household chemicals like bleach and things like that to be in the poorly ventilated circumstances so we have to be a little bit aware and this is what the five steps involve a little bit aware of our environment and make sure that we don't have a accumulation of dust and fumes in our indoor environment we look to ventilate as much as we can do with the energy crisis our surroundings yeah because we have this notion that the dangers of burning certain fuels goes out the chimney but of course they also come out through the open fire stove as well and earlier this week we were talking about the 1300 people that die annually because of poor air quality and that figure is it's trotted out and I mean that with no disrespect those affected by it but I might mean more to our attitude it's mentioned every year but I'm not sure it captures people to say to realize these are 1300 moms dads, grand and grand dads brothers, sisters, sons, daughters these are real people just and that's attributed primarily to poor air quality outdoors and indoors well we know it's all the same you don't really realize that you know the diesel fumes that the trucks and heavy traffic are emitting and near your house are there it looks perfectly clear but those diesel fumes can have an adverse effect on people with COPD and on asthma we know a lot of studies are shown that people who live in inner city areas you know in particular how worse children have worse asthma but inner city implies Dublin but in fact to talk about urban areas and you know you've only got to look and let a Kenny I was up there recently and there's lots of traffic going through let a Kenny at various times it's very congested and there has to be a significant amount of you know get in certain circumstances again it's a little bit of a valley I don't mean to just talk about let a Kenny particularly but it's a little bit of a valley despite all the winds you're often done in the oil you can often have days where the pollution is just accumulating and often and maybe it's because the message doesn't resonate with us but often when they try and get us to move away from using petrol or diesel there is or burning certain fuels it's an environmental or financial argument that's made rather than really the thing that's most valuable to us and that is our our health but they've obviously done research as to how they think the message will get across but you know you know yourself professor the impact it has on our health and I'll come back to you professor Michael McGloin who we introduced at the beginning Michael you have had COPD since 1999 did you find out really quite early or did you have an event that triggered the diagnosis and then things started to make sense for you Michael yes well actually as professor McDonough referred to that I had it for and in a way early in the 90s but again I didn't really I passed an ad of it because I didn't really know what it was but in October of 1999 I had a what's called a respiratory arrest and that's where all that the lungs stopped working so after that then I'm the it was in in hospital they carried out all of the tests and the I was diagnosed with have which I hadn't a true what it was because I had never I had never heard of it before but given what happened to you and given how it was described to you and this is in 1999 let's forget 23 years ago did you think that was it for you then did you oh god I did I taught my life was over because I had the fact that I never had never heard of it before but since then I discovered that's when you accept what you know you accept the finance you can you can carry on with your life because there is life after COPD but when I was diagnosed first I mean I I had never heard of it I thought my life was over and I said I would I sensed a fear anger depression the whole that I just wanted my life back as it was prior to all this but it was obviously it was not going to happen me and I had to learn to cope with it but since that I have I'm quite happy like to cope now it's it's a struggle at times and but medication and there is another it's in IV it's a bi-pap it's non-invasive ventilation I use a bi-pap at night and it really it's it helps you helps you get on with your your life like you know so you had to make life adjustments there's certain things that perhaps you would be doing that you can't do but you are living proof that you can live with this diagnosis well you certainly can live with it but you do have to make life changes all right and some of them are not not good I mean a lot of people now refer to Gardner that and you know I was quite good at that as well I used to be open to them but there's things I cannot do no more and there's things that you can't do in the house but if you accept you can't do the money just gently you you can have a good life you know and it but I'm a Professor McDonnell so then unfortunately the COPD is a progress of these so as time goes on it does that you know it gets worse and worse but you have to adjust your life to to to live with it yeah now you established to Ben support group where you know support groups are fantastic because firstly you know it's not just you but secondly the support there and advice and networking in just a sense of connecting with other people that understand you because I imagine it's difficult for even the people closest you to fully get it the same way as someone else with COPD might yeah but the COPD support groups I um again just going back to when I hadn't a clue what it was and when I got out of the hospital I got home I started researching on the internet as people do but at that time way back to a very very little there was actually nothing at all in Ireland I found it was any information I was getting was from the UK and from America so I decided I says to myself well it's time there was a little bit of information here so that's when I started getting the I set up a support group as well and I got a the first website COPD website now since that we have support groups has grown around the country there is there's one in Africa any and there's one in the west of Donny Gall as well as well and there I think there's 39 of them around the country now and they all offer support to to patients like myself which it's it's such a relief when you go to a meeting and you have maybe depends on the number you have you could have 20 30 people there and you know I was COPD and oh god you have that and you realize you're not on your own and you can compare your stories and you're you're whatever happens to your incidences and all that kind of thing and we what we do is we bring in a professional health professions and they give a presentation and they do have a question and answer and then as well as that what we do we have a kind of a we do have a day trip out and we do have a Christmas meal and all that and all that kind of brings people together and you know we can spend our time to some of the rep from those local support groups as well Michael listen thanks for giving us that insight I appreciate it greatly thank you very much thank you Michael Professor McDonald before I sort of maybe get some parting advice from you I don't think it is almost somewhat unique here in Donegal at the moment with the crisis we have with Micah and people trying to keep their houses warm and what have you the the presence of black mold and mold inside the homes and it's come up now and again and it's just maybe a good opportunity for me to ask a consultant respiratory physician is that harmful to lungs because there's no lot of parents that are moving children out of rooms with this black mold and or the mold inside bedrooms is that something that people should be aware of is that damaging to one's lungs mold can be very damaging indeed it's one of the questions that I would routinely ask of my patients with asthma is the mold in the house because we know it can produce it can aggravate asthma can induce asthma and it can also produce other forms of lung disease such as hypersensitivity pneumonitis and you read it your listeners would be familiar with a a disease called farmers lung that is produced by a mold that goes on down pay we don't see it as much nowadays with silage but older farmers would certainly have been aware of it so yes mold can be very damaging it obviously depends a little bit on the mold but if you're growing a mold from inside of your house that is not a good thing okay thank you for that by the way that's an important question answered right so what what I mean the what I'm getting from you and you can add to this is that A if you stop smoking please do everything you can to try and avoid it but also any respiratory condition don't put it down to something else don't be don't trust doctor Google get along to your GP be frank open and honest and if there's something going on there get treatment get an early intervention as much as possible is that it and anything else to add professor no I think we I think we should also mention just vaccines that's hugely important COVID is very topical at the moment but every year you've got the flu vaccine comes around patients with COPD and chronic lung disease should also get the pneumonia vaccine and then I think watch what you eat try and not put on too much weight if you if you have lung disease and obviously if you're underweight that might need to look at sort of getting your nutrition looked at and try and put on a bit away exercise is hugely important and you know I tell all my patients to get out to exercise for 45 minutes a day to walk to get breathless not overdo it but get a little bit breathless to get a training effect it helps patients use the lungs better and helps them clear the lungs of secretions okay very finally actually I should have asked this a listener wants to know what's what is the relationship between alcohol and lung health or alcohol and lung health if you have COPD a little bit of alcohol won't do you any harm excessive alcohol dampens your immune system and can set you up for infections but a drink or two is not going to be too much of a problem Professor Tim McDonnell thank you for your time this morning greatly appreciated he's a consultant respiratory physician also Michael McGloy in there who is living with COPD and an interesting bit of information there and one I think has been mentioned before but I think is certainly when you hear from a professor there not only is mold inside your house potential for exacerbating respiratory problems asthma and so on and so forth but in fact can create problems in and of itself and we know so many of you out there who are enduring life in a defective block home mold and damp inside the house is something that you would not become accustomed to but you're used to and not wishing to people that make decisions politicians the council whoever needs to speed things up here to hear that okay I think people living in the homes I don't want to add to any anxiety I don't want to create any panic but I think those who make decisions right and those who can speed this up or make it right need to hear that another problem of living in a defective block home where there is damp and mold present inside is how it can the impact it can have on people's long health okay really really important I think The 9 till noon show with St Yunan's GA Club Development Draw 40,000 Euro and Prizes first prize a Hyundai Kona car plus nine other grit prizes tickets now available online at stunyunansgadraw.com or any club member Declan Yeah did you know there's already been more than 20 big Euro Minions winners this year What 20 Yeah and that's just in Ireland whoa wait how big is big at least half a million euro whoa oh is that another dream yeah snorkeling in Fiji hey Declan yeah don't forget your ticket the national lottery it could be you play responsibly play for fun Euro Millions and Euro Millions plus wins between January and September 2022 text or WhatsApp your view to Greg on 086 60 25,000 there are many reasons people are switching to ClearMobile serious deal simple as customer service is A1 great coverage there you go unlimited calls texts and data with 99% 4G population coverage from $12.99 a month for a limited time you clear they are switch today at clearmobile.ie 30-day contract activation fee and fair usage applies max data speed five megabits per second $12.99 subject to eligibility offer ends 30th of September 2022 see clearmobile.ie for terms is your scooter a little older pre-loved perhaps what adventures I wondered did it have in the past another family another life bright city lights or a quiet country existence 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I'm looking to claim on my insurance policy Okay, and what type of chip do you need to claim for? It's not a chip I was in a minor accident And was your windscreen chipped in this accident? No, it's just my backlight and the bumper So your windscreen is not chipped? No Unfortunately, our policies only cover chips Do you get the feeling that you're not getting the right cover? Well at local insurance we are Irish owned and understand your needs Call us today for a bespoke quote on 08 18894444 Local insurance, we'll get you sorted The local insurance network DAC Trading's local insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland Local insurance is a Tide Insurance intermediary of Acorn Brokerage Limited Acorn Brokerage Limited Trading's Acorn Insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland Finharps are back in Primary Division Action this Saturday afternoon when they face Bohemians in Balaba Faye Join the Highland team for live coverage from 4pm kickoff at Fin Park as Harps look to move off the bottom of the table Finharps live on Highland in association with BNS Credit Union Balaba Faye where the student loan rate is now an offer visit bnscu.ie or free phone 1800 290 390 BNS Credit Union Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland All right, good morning to you John how are you getting on? No, good morning, thank you Thanks for taking the call We're paying Right, now you are scratching your head when people give out about refugees coming here from Ukraine are you? Well I think we're looking at it from a point of view I have one sided point of view very biased point of view we even look at Ireland themselves the number of people that had to go abroad in the past and we wouldn't like them to be welcomed the way that we some of your guests this morning have actually Well we know what it's like because for a long time we were talking about the no dogs no Irish no black signs I mean so we don't have to imagine what it would have been like since we felt it Yeah it was not even in terms of what has happened back in salmon times or even early 40s 50s you know from 2008 to 2012 we were sending about 70,000 people of our young people educated people abroad for economic reasons what we have now is the people running for their lives from an invading army and mostly women and children and I don't think that the number of people that were given their views this morning were representative of even what the whole country is because I believe that in general Irish people are very generous in their views and they have very much helped out with the refugee crisis of course John and there's a number of there's a number of inaccuracies there too there's an assumption there that these refugees are going to cost us a fortune in reality whether they come or not they're going to cost us a fortune because we pay into one central fund in Europe and basically whether those refugees are in Germany or in Ireland it's the same thing that's going to cost in fact there's a benefit to have them here because they use up accommodation that might not have anything going for the winter here we'd have hotels maybe clothes but just in relation to that John in relation to that John personally right I don't think I don't think any much most of the anger out there let's call it anger or or upset or disquiet is because Ukrainians are coming here I think it's how it's been handled you know when you've got houses that were earmarked for social housing now housing refugees when you've got long-term renters being asked to lose just let me finish the point John because I really want to hear what you have to say when you've got long-term accommodation people being thrown out of that and rooms being stacked with bunk beds to accommodate refugees when you've got hotels which although they might be quiet they do generate footfall local businesses and people employed in those hotels may no longer have that option when you have people who can't get school bus places yet you can come here and you'll be very well looked after can you not understand that maybe it's not that the Irish people don't remember what it was like to be in that situation it's just that and the government recognize this was happening John it's the way it's been handled has made people feel that it's unfair and that they are worth less and is that not an understandable human emotion it has but I would argue very much that the that the anger is directed in the wrong direction who really have there's nobody denying but that we have a housing problem here in Ireland the difficulty is that is not as a result of refugees coming here that is a result of poor government policy on housing down the years and actual fact if we look at what they have done with they take the lake of Dublin they have encouraged all the services and all the people to go to the lake of Dublin where there isn't enough houses for them they have bent over backwards to facilitate developers and culture funds stopped people building on their own land as well yeah and that's what they have basically stopped people out in the country from building on their own land so they have created a housing problem we had a housing problem in the 1940s here and basically the the government at the time started out by building a lot of county council houses we had a housing problem here in 2019 and since the crash in inverted commas very very few houses have been built we read today that in east on the Gaul ball of face in all area just 19 units of social housing have been built in the last number of years and I've said exactly what you've said on this program a number of times John and you know to some extent it might suit the powers that be for anger to be directed at at Ukrainian refugees and not at the people who actually made these decisions the people that make it profitable to throw people out of a house okay and to make it more profitable to house refugees in I don't think many of us would like to live five or six to a room either in a in a semi-detached but they've made it so profitable that that house has been taken from the general rental market and solve the air bnb's and so on well but but do you going to have a housing problem if you have people in charge who may have 11 houses themselves and forget that they have them or to declare them you know that's part of the problem and in that way it's not our refugees are not causing our housing problem our housing problems are long long before those refugees our housing problems is caused by poor government policies on housing and that's basically we haven't built enough social housing and we are basically allowing developers to make a fortune well can I with respect add to that with the statistic how bad must it have been here when a population increase now the population fluctuates up and down and as you mentioned it's a really good point 70 odd thousand Irish people heading out away because of emigration but how bad must this country have been when an increase in the population of less than one percent which is what the population has increased regardless of the gender or makeup of the Ukrainian people that have come here less than one percent the population has increased by and look at the chaos and the drama it's caused that's crazy to me that's crazy if it was 15 or 20 percent I'd say wow like in Poland but here our population has increased by one percent and you'd swear the country's about to collapse yeah but the part of the the part of the problem is there is a decrease in population in in some areas and the population has been all enticed to go into messed up areas where there isn't enough accommodation for them there if they're there's some town imes out in the country where there would be as many as 50 percent of the houses would be vacant and there's nobody living in them and that's that's our problem and our problem is that we have put all all our education and everything into Dublin and our work is mainly based there as well or the larger towns in each county and there's a shortage of houses yeah but there's some sort of exactly there's a shortage of houses even to deal with remote working let alone anything else like so forget the war in Ukraine forget well not forget you know what I mean I don't mean that disrespectful but we actually don't have adequate housing to accommodate remote working John it's been a pleasure speaking to you I have to move to the next corner thank you for your time and your points are very well made well that's the first prize in the St. Unions GA Club Development Draw who are sponsors of this week's Nine Till Noon Show there's nine other grid prizes and tickets are now available online at stunionsgadraw.com or any club member 50 000 euro to refurbish derelict houses for more in your farmers journal is Paul Mooney a grant of up to 50 000 euro will be made available to refurbish one-off rural houses we reveal the results of our survey of over 1800 farmers which reveals low interest in acres farm organization ratings and cuts in stock numbers and fertilizer use what we know so far ahead of next week's budget and farmers will be included in pension bonus scheme this week's Irish Farmers Journal more than ever you can't afford to miss it make big savings in the final clearance sale at Watson men's wear lever Kenny like top label polo shirts jackets and fleeces just 24 95 forget two for 40 euro casual shirts and knitwear for 29 95 or two for 50 euro a selection of super dry now half price there's also 25 percent of selected suits and many more great savings in every department in the final clearance sale at Watson men's wear mean street better Kenny since she got her free hearing aids with her PRSI at spec savers Roshin is a changed one music has never sounded better and that makes her dance and dance and dance her singing though well free hearing aids with PRSI at spec savers music to your ears find out more online terms and conditions apply at Volkswagen commercial vehicles the wait is over production is back now your plans can really begin whether that's scaling your business or smartening your service offering with HP finance from 3.9 percent purchase contributions of up to 3 000 euro and service plans from 12 euro 99 per month don't wait secure your next caddy cargo transporter 6.1 or crafter at your local Volkswagen commercial vehicles dealer or visit Volkswagen vans.ie be ready to really deliver offers for business customers only finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen financial services Ireland and subject to lending criteria terms and conditions apply call into Connelly's Volkswagen letter Kenny today or visit connellys.ie to book a test drive okay Mary sorry for holding you I really appreciate your time Mary Cole manager of Ined Neve Pods we're going to be in Guido good morning to you good morning to you as well right now we have this unfortunate but not unfamiliar situation where a deer had been found shot and dismembered and I'm not sure if it was dismembered by whoever shot it or other wildlife but this happened at Unrampa in Crawley is that right yeah it is it's actually between Guido and the Rosses it's walkways that were established by the centre here by an Ined Neve Pod they can conduct in conjunction with Donegal County Council and there's there's actually three walkways and it was it was found or we were alerted that it was found down on Hulajan Kloppenberg which is one of the most popular walks in that area so my thought is that whoever did this it was left there knowing that these walks are cared for and that they're the maintenance it is very well taken care of from these walks and that they know that the men that worked down there would dispose of this purge here that was left like that now I talked about this not being on common it is on common though in this area this is the first time you have encountered this this situation yeah we do have a lot of deer we do have I live along that stretch myself and we do have a lot of deer but this is the first time that this has happened that somebody's actually left this deer in that state on the walkway now the walkway is used we have a beautiful picnic area down there we have a little theory walk we have done so much with that walk to entice families to use the walkway and to leave that there knowing that children would be using that walkway was you would just wonder why somebody would do that yeah now obviously you know there's people out there who don't think we should be controlling the deer population but it does happen people are licensed and they're allowed to do it in certain circumstances and in certain times and what have you this would indicate though that it's not those who would engage in that in a legal way that were responsible because firstly it wouldn't be common practice to shoot dismember and leave a deer in this type of location so it may be some sort of you know haunting tourists from outside the area perhaps would be the likely candidates to be responsible we're not really sure who would do this normally as you say you know if people are into this sort of thing that they would you know they would dispose of the deer in a proper manner it's just this is very uncommon for it to be left like this and I suppose what we're trying to do is appeal to whoever did this or if anybody would know who would do this sort of or who did this sort of thing to let us know because you know it's very unfair to do that and to leave it in this manner for everybody to see especially given the effort that was put into making this such a beautiful and popular space which I'm sure during the pandemic became even more valuable to locals and visitors it was it was it was a fabulous walkway that was not that it was the best kept secret but not a lot of people knew it was there but during the pandemic the numbers grew and grew and so many people used the picnic area and it was a lovely place to go for families and you know it was and since then since even the the restrictions have have been lifted a lot more people are using these walkways and you know I suppose we now have a tourist stop and the walkways are to be found on that so a lot more people are using the walkways but this is just it is disgraceful that a deer would have been left like that and the poor deer and how the disrespect with which it was treated thankfully you were told quickly and you got people down there to remove the deer right of way so hopefully as few as possible of the public were exposed to this site it is a once off so people should not be discouraged to visit this area you mentioned an app for those who it still remains a secret merry what is the name of the app do you welcome people to download it and explore the area oh I do I do indeed the app is called the door or Guidoor and it's available on iOS or Android and you can download the app and it shows everything that is beautiful here about Guidoor and anybody that wants to visit it's a free app and it can be downloaded and it just tells everything we have in the area and how to access the services that we have here and the walkways are part of this app okay well done we'll get that downloaded Guidoor or Guidoor download it from Apple or Android and explore merry nice to finish on a positive note thank you so much for your time this morning I appreciate it okay take care that's Mary Coil manager of Inundni Poglig in Guidoor and we'll be back with more after these your comments on the way the nine till noon show with St Junards GA Club Development Draw 40,000 your own prizes first prize a Hyundai Kona car plus nine other grid prizes tickets now available online at StUnionsGADraw.com or any club member text or WhatsApp your view to Greg on 086 60 25,000 at Creasley Supermarket we are renowned for offering quality and value for all your daily convenience needs we've expanded and now offering a full on-post service pay a bill send a package or lodge into a bank account our on-post service is available Monday to Saturday Creasley Supermarket we're here for you at Ulster Bank we are closing and from the 8th of October all customers whose accounts have passed the six-month closure notice period will no longer be able to use their accounts for our customers making nursing home payments for themselves or on behalf of a loved one make sure your payments remain uninterrupted by switching your account now for more vulnerable customers who need extra assistance please call our vulnerable customer line on 1800 656 001 call costs may vary and calls from mobiles may not be free Ulster Bank Ireland DAC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland when you hit a certain age exercise can seem like all pain and no gain I mean no one's to see yours truly wearing lycra but keeping fit doesn't have to mean getting ripped simple things like bringing the dog for a walk and taking the stairs more often can make a big difference work out what works for you get more tips at sportdorland.ie forward slash work out it's back the furniture show and i returns to cfc interiors campsy dairy this Saturday save save save with massive discounts from leading brands and furniture and interiors from sofas beds flooring and design cfc have it all reduced and they're biggest sale don't miss the furniture show and i start in this Saturday exclusively at cfc interiors campsy dairy okay you're welcome back to the program sip to industrial organizer kevin mckinney joins us on the program now good morning kevin thanks for your time good morning graven to your last night right now workers in 13 community organizations across donagola taking strike action today can you talk to me a little bit about the types or even maybe specifically the organizations that are taking part in this what type of people are working within them and what kind of work is done through the organizations i lost that last bit there Greg would you were saying but i'm assuming that you're talking about the type of work that's carried out in the community sector yes kevin well i suppose our members in the sector care for the vulnerable and maintain our communities they provide a very wide variety of services including personal care crisis intervention meals and meals with clubs and many other essential schemes basically the work that they do is absolutely invaluable to our community and tell us about why they're taking this action i mean these people have not received a pay rise in a long time so their take home pay presumably is worth an awful lot less now than it would have been in 2008 when the last received a pay rise that's absolutely correct it's over 14 years since they had a pay rise we come back to 2008 when the crisis hit we were in a recession at that time this group of workers would have been linked to the public service unfortunately we seem to have lost that line the sector adequately for the last number of years so basically the employers cannot afford to pay increases and pay because the funding is so low yeah and where are we at in terms of negotiations i mean obviously you know strike action is one of the last options available to workers how long has this dispute if i can call it that been ongoing for we've been trying to engage with the government in a positive fashion for many years it's come to the stage where workers can no longer sit back and accept their lot the cost of living crisis affects us all and this group of workers who have hadn't had a rise are severely affected by it and they're also a group of workers who are very much care about their community it's like a vocation and they do the work out of the heart a good heart and they believe that what they're doing is for the benefit of the people they serve is it possible that's being exploited Kevin it's absolutely been exploited there's no other word you could use and that's a very good word to use Greg the bottom line is that this group of workers are being taken advantage of and the work that they do is in a par with the health service with other departments because it's valuable work it's also training people to get back into the work environment who have been out for long term on employment and so forth they do a lot of different work that is crucial to communities and local communities especially rural communities the other thing worth noting too is that this group of staff because it's a vocation they go an extra mile they go that extra mile to help their communities and that's not being recognized and the problem here is government through the minister will not engage whatsoever they say they're not the employer but the crucial point in all of this is they dictate to the employers in the sector and that's why we've had to serve strike notice and on employers as individuals because that's what you have to do under the act and that is complicated isn't it stay where you are because Kate Campbell is DLDC supervisor Kate you're speaking to us from the picket line are you happy with the attendance where are you now Yeah we're pretty well happy with the attend now we could do with more but it is what it is but we have haven't got a pay rise as Kevin says since 2008 and with the cost of living crisis it just has come to a head now we have been in negotiations and we have had forums and networks and all that set up but the powers that be are not taken listening to us so what else have we to do we just need to get on the picket line and a fight for our cause like the companies that employ us will give us the wage increases when they come down the line but because we're totally funded by a government department and they set the wage limits that we're on they can't their hands are tied regarding it Yes and the government obviously feels some insulation from that that the companies are a firewall but I mean obviously it's there in plain sight it's the government that sets the rates it's the government that fund these companies and they leave you in a position whereby you have to serve strike notice against companies that you know really aren't culpable Yes exactly like once we once as the wage increase comes we get it right away and that happened here before up to 2008 and I think really the nail on the coffin was when the new pay talks came on board there during the summer we're not included in them because we're neither public nor civil servants because we're not paid by the government directly we're paid indirectly but all the funding for our programs comes directly from the government so we we just fall into the to a loophole between between being a program that's funded by the government but not a civil servant and I think it's really important particularly in a strike like this that the public elected reps opposition politicians or government politicians get behind you because it can be to the laborers a little bit hard to explain if someone engages with many of the various services under this strike Kate they know fine rightly the fantastic work that's being done and where it's being done but for those who maybe don't have a knowledge of it or aren't engaging directly it can be more difficult to sort of get your head around perhaps and to see the cause to get behind and I think that's why it's important we educate ourselves and support you guys Yes definitely because all all the rural and villages and towns and parties throughout the country actually the tidy towns the mowing and maintaining the football fields church grounds graveyard ourselves we look after the community child care sector there's also the UIS looks after the youth they were involved with the Irish wheelchair the congress resource centers every one of them organizations would have participants from CE schemes so you're talking the length and breadth of the country or have participants on CE schemes working in their local communities Yeah indeed Kevin what has been the traction like for this campaign I mean you know obviously it's a strike now can it be escalated or do you feel that maybe it might be having that desired effect are you are our opposition parties or backbenchers standing up in the door shouting your corner what what is the status and position of this campaign as we speak well great it started out slow to be fair and what we're trying to do is lessen the impact from workers on the ground because they are they haven't had a pay rise so any any action that they take really hurts them yes so it's important for people to understand that while this is very very difficult to do and it's very difficult for the staff infected because they treat their work like a vocation the fact remains that we are not going away okay we are not going to give up all right Kevin and this campaign will grow and we'll speak to you again and Kate Campbell and Kevin McKinney both of you thank you very much for joining us that's where we have to leave it on the program today we're back tomorrow of course kicking off with the Friday panel have a great


Oxygen. It makes up 21% of the air around us and without it, we'd die. So how do you make oxygen in space and what do you do when your oxygen generator breaks? This is your space pod for November 10th 2016. On November 7th the ISS commander Shane Kimbrough replaced a hydrogen sensor in the oxygen generation system or OGS. The OGS was taken offline due to a low voltage signal in the hydrogen unit of the system. He will continue to perform maintenance on it for the rest of the week. So how does the US oxygen generation system work? It uses electrolysis to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity. Electricity is directed through electrodes in contact with liquid water from the station's recycled water supply. Bubbles of oxygen are generated and released into the station's air. Hydrogen is also produced and this is used in the saboteur reaction to convert carbon dioxide into methane and water. Fortunately, the astronauts aren't going to run out of oxygen. The Russian electron system also uses hydrolysis to split water into oxygen but it hasn't been very reliable over the years. If the electron system breaks, astronauts can also use the Vika system or solid fuel oxygen generation. The Vika system uses canisters containing lithium perchlorate which are burnt to create oxygen. The system was originally developed for MIR and was the cause of the fire on MIR in 1997 but the whole system was upgraded before it was used on the ISS. And of course, astronauts can always breathe air from the oxygen tanks stored on board. But what about in the future? What will astronauts breathe on Mars and beyond? The Vika system needs canisters that need to be resupplied and both the electron and OGS systems need water. Moxie is a payload on NASA's Mars 2020 rover which will use solid oxide electrolysis to make oxygen from carbon dioxide which makes up about 96% of the Martian atmosphere. It's a 1% scale model of an oxygen generator that NASA plans to send to Mars sometime in the future, if Moxie works. This isn't the only way to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. Nature had that figured out millions of years ago. Photosynthesis converts carbon dioxide to oxygen using sunlight. Both plants and algae have been proposed to manage the atmosphere for humans on Mars. Both plants and algae can be edible and can tolerate super high levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, photosynthesis becomes even more efficient at higher levels of carbon dioxide. How neat is that? In the meantime, I wish the ISS crew a speedy fix of the OGS in preparation for three more crew members arriving next week. If you thought this video was pretty neat, be sure to like, subscribe and share it with your family and friends. And I'd like to know, what oxygen generation system do you think we should use as humanity explores space? Let us know in the comments below or via social media. Personally, I'd like to see humans use plants for both oxygen and food on Mars. And of course, these videos are not possible without the generous support of our crowd funding supporters, our Patreon patrons. So thank you so much for all of your support. Thank you to our founders, architects, engineers, ambassadors and dreamers of tomorrow. And if you'd like to help support these space pods, head on over to patreon.com slash space pod. The more we get, the more space pods we can make. So every dollar helps. Thank you. My name is Lisa Stodzianowski and until next time, keep on discovering.


You hear the bridge right here. It's pretty dope. You know, our jerseys, the alternate ones, they got that on the jerseys. I know you like this bridge, bro. For sure. You think you can swim from here all over there? No. I mean, if I had to, then you can. If I had to, yeah. I mean, it's far, but you can do it. The NBA has a funny way of bringing players together. Just two seasons ago, Alan Krab, Chavez, Napier, and Ed Davis all played together in Portland. By way of free agency and trade, the trio find themselves playing together once again. When I first got to Portland, AC was quiet. So it took a while for us to actually get cool. But once we got cool, it was good. Me and Ed always going back and forth. That's my older brother right there. Portland was good times, I mean. Went a lot of games together. Yeah. I mean, you make the playoffs. Team is winning. Energy is always good, positive. Guys going out to eat on the road, hanging out with each other, stuff like that. So it was cool, man. It's a glad for them to be in Brooklyn. I'm originally from Boston. I've been to Brooklyn before. I've been to New York. I've been to Connecticut. I was schooled there. So it was definitely cool for that. And it was kind of the cherry on top of my fellow teammates being here. So I was excited. I mean, when you go into a new situation, you don't want to feel secluded. So I already knew coming in, I'm going to be with a group of guys that I already became accustomed to. Getting accustomed to a new situation is vital for early success. And in Brooklyn, there's no better way to learn the culture than with practice in the park. The second annual practice in the park allows players and fans to celebrate Nets basketball with a backdrop synonymous with the borough. Let's come out and hang out with the fans and let them know some of the things that we do when we're in practice. So it's just good for fans to see what we go through and what we have to do in a dedication. And we appreciate their dedication and they appreciate ours. So it's a great event for them. I would say the turnout was even better than last year. You can tell the crowd got more into it. And everybody's happy for the upcoming season.  If we don't have them enthusiastic, they don't really care. And we're having them. We show that we actually care about them too. So it's a both ways. Brooklyn.


Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 21st, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, our daughter five, and as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Hey, I'm the Wombat. And the guests today are Red Pirate Higgs. Welcome from Western Canada, D. John Richards from over in England Way. Hello. And guest Joe Skye out of Texas. Welcome, Joe. Swedish, oh, sweet Steve's not with us today. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition, and souls. And if you think that you're the only nonbeliever in your town, well, you're probably not. And Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand others. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going over a mailbag today. All listener comments that we have in our backlog, all the ones that were thankful for. But you know what? I like to think of that as just the appetizer. No, not the appetizers, but like the sweet, sweet, sweet bundles of cherries and on top of a delicious cake that I like to build out of starch and carbohydrates. And I think who better to lead us through that piecemeal slices of deliciousness than our own Red Pirate Higgs for a weekly vacation? Please lead us in our invocation. Our newly lord, who worked in a colander, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be rum, thy sauce be enough with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and deliver us some carbs and lead us not into ketwism. For thine are the meatballs and the noodles and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. So happy to talk to everybody today. I hope everyone's having a good time. Guys, I had a really vivid dream that I had to do a lot of car repairs. And I woke up and I realized that nothing's wrong with my car. I just had a really exciting dream about having to buy all these pieces of equipment.  And then I realized not my car is perfectly fine. I was just like, aw, geez. Oh, well, but you know what? It's not bad to be healthy. It's not bad to have a working car. What else can I say? You got to count the genuine moments of happiness and not taken for granted. Speaking of which, that or five, I'm going to throw it up to you.  Well, yesterday I took my bike out again, my motorcycle rode for a couple hours. That was a very nice day. It was about 83 degrees. Perfect. I played on my quest to virtual reality, first person shooters and stuff. I've also got a chess game in there that you have virtual opponents virtually.  It's great. So I imagine Larry with like the headset and he's just staring like this. And his family walks in is like, dad, are you awake? He's like, no, I'm just playing chess. I'm waiting for the other guy to move.  John Rich is how you been? What's going on? Yeah, everything's fine here. Thank you. We've got guests at the moment. So there's a total of six children or girls as we've done playing football in the garden and dumping each other in the pool occasionally. How many touchdowns have they made so far? No, sorry, the wrong game. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Pretty ball. Oh, foot's association football. I see. I see. The real football. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad. Yeah. Nice. Very cool. Very cool. Drey Pirate, tell me some moments of happiness for you. What's going on? Well, Friday we had our monthly past acts. So we gathered together and feasted and had a good time. And one of our, or two of our newest members are actually planning to get married and I will be there. I will marry them. Very cool. He will be the first pastafarian wedding in Canada. We're going to take him out here. Yes. Wait. Because I'm an appointed marriage commissioner in British Columbia. There's only four statements that are required by law to be made by the celebrants. Outside of that, they can dress it up any way they wish. And so they've decided to go with the pastafarian theme. And we will really play it up. So and we're going to record it. We're going to let the news agencies know local and provincial. So that we can just pretty well say, look, we're here. We're not going away. You better recognize this and get over it. We're here. We're here. Get used to it. Right. Drey, I got a question for you. You've done marriages before. Have they all been in the U.S.? Like where have they been, if not Canada? Well, they've all been in Canada. So you said this is the first in Canada? First. First. Pastafarian wedding in Canada. The theme. So were the other ones not pastafarian themed? No, no, no, that because marriage commissioners in in BC in Canada, they're they're appointed by the Ministry of Vital Statistics. And it's the secular option available to people, right? I see. Because the only other marriage celebrants are are of religious nature. So this is the secular option that's available to people. But like I say, because right currently, you know, BC doesn't recognize us as a religion, so they can't give me any grief. You know, like we're playing two sides of the field here. And either way, we're going to get recognized in a little airtime, I think is going to happen. So guys, I'm going to ask one last question. Please forgive me for belaboring the point. So this is a religious optioned wedding where the theme will be pastafarianism. Is that it? Or is it a secular themed wedding where it's pastafarianism? Correct. The latter. OK. Yes. Just to get it done as the secular option, even though it's a religious option. Correct. Yes. You're just causing chaos. That's all. Yes. Just more operation.  It's like all the same stuff. You got it right. What's the strangest wedding you've ever done? For me, it was the vampire wedding. Oh, yeah. No. I'm an ordained minister. I can marry people too. Yeah. No, I did one in the winter outside in the snow and wearing plaid pajamas. We were all wearing plaid pajamas. Oh, that's the strangest one so far. I've actually gone to a pirate themed wedding before. What's that? I've gone to a pirate themed wedding before in a suit because no one told me it was pirate themed. So I just pretended I was one of the hostages. Hey, what's up there? I did a steampunk wedding once. Oh, yeah. I was the the efficient in that one. And I did, I married two ladies. This was before it was legal and we just, they just went through the ceremony because they wanted to make it semi-official. Wow. Look at that. It's good on you, Larry. Good on you. Skye, were you saying more things? No, nothing important. Okay. Well, then let me ask you, what's going on with you in the last week? How you been? Tell me some of your happy moments. The past week has been really good for me. I've basically just been studying. I am rereading Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus and I'm also reading his book, Proving History, which is about Bayesian analysis. Yeah. And I'm an author. Richard Carrier. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, right on. Yeah. Do you, do you check out Bart Ehrman at all? I weed Bart Ehrman, but I don't really check out his website or anything like that. I think he is a top notch scholar, but I just agree with him on some key issues. Guys, that's such a scientific topic and no better way to transition than into some of the scientific comments that we got on some of our last week's episodes. And a lot of these come from Dada's Trading Room. One of the mainstay commenters on the channel. We appreciate it. And some from some others as well, but we're going to go through them all today. Just want to let you guys know we really appreciate the comments. Feel free to leave them, whether you're watching on Larry's channel, Dredd's channel, my channel or on John Richards. Feel free to leave a plug and we'll get to them in the show. Today's solely dedicated on mail bags. And then if we run out, we'll go into some other topics too. But we'll throw the first one out to John Richards. John Richards last episode, we were talking about UFOs, Loch Ness and Bigfoot. Oh my. And we were talking about life potentially existing on Mars and some issues that might exist with like a low atmosphere and some of the harsh conditions that are there for life. And so Dada's Trading Room mentioned that there's actually a place on earth in Canada of all places where the conditions are Mars like. This environment is under snow and ice where there is no air. Scientists have actually found life there, bacterial life that works in a different way than the bacterial life in oxygen. This fact may signify that there's similar life that's possible on Mars. And the surprise will be if we don't find life on Mars. You can check it out at SCTI Davon Island Research Camp. Comments. Let's have a conversation. Dred, you want to go first? Go for it. Yes, sure. So one of the biggest issues with looking for current life on Mars is that it doesn't have a magnetosphere, right? So cosmic rays and other deadly radiation hits the planet unabated. And relentlessly. So back billions of years ago where it might have had a magnetosphere, it would have had the protection that life could have flourished. But at this point, they're looking for signs of past life, I think, more than current life. Just for those reasons, right? That's a good point. Yeah. Gamma radiation can be a real killer. You know, that's what I was going to say. I understand that tardigrades can survive cosmic rays. That's true. You're right. Yeah, for years. They're really weird organisms. Our correspondent is absolutely right. There's a place in the high Arctic region of Nunavut, Canada, which is permafrost. It's always frozen. And so it's pretty hostile. There's salt there as well. And so it's miraculous that life has been found there, but it just goes to show. Miraculous, you say. Yeah, wonderful. Maybe I'll take I'll take back. Well, amazing. Of course, astounding. Because awesome is a biblical word too. Yes, it is. No, they aren't. Those are just regular words. Religion has tried to take a monopoly. They belong to everyone. Yeah, we want them back. Give us back are awesome. You can keep miraculous. Let us keep awesome. We have skateboarders that use it all the time. But the thing is that what Dallas Stingy Bob said isn't quite so surprising because life began on this planet. We're pretty sure in a non oxygen atmosphere. Yes, that's right. And it still exists anaerobically, respiring without oxygen in places where there's no oxygen. In fact, one of our family members has just recovered from a nasty condition called necrotizing fasciitis. Oh, my goodness. Odds are not good on that one. That's for sure. Absolutely. Well, she's fine. Thank you. After all, a lot of operations and still dressings being changed, but she's making it. But that is a condition where a bacterium that normally breathes oxygen is trapped under the skin in a place where there is no oxygen, turns anaerobic and starts eating up your own flesh. So it's not a good idea. But these organisms do exist in places where there's no oxygen. In fact, if you've ever drunk a beer or a wine, then you've taken advantage of anaerobic respiration, because that's what yeast does when it makes alcohol. So this is not a surprising aspect of it. But as Dred says, what's surprising is that it's unlikely to have survived still extant in Mars where there's now no magnetosphere and no ozone layer. So Mars is blasted with all the nasty radiations all the time. And the likelihood is if we ever colonize it, we're going to have to be under domes or underground because of that. And the other problem it's got is it's so small, it can't retain an atmosphere of any thickness. So forget terraforming it. That's my... Yeah, right. That's my thing. There's not enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere of any substantial density. No. There's a couple of things I'd love to say. It'd be funny if the indication of whether or not there's been intelligent life on the planet is if there's a layer of plastic meets layers and layers of seismic rock. Right? Yeah, if we find a tweaky wrapper on Mars, we'll know.   And that's it. And you're like, there was when the life was and it can give you a good impression of like where was intelligent life at what point in time like cutting a tree and seeing like the rings. The rings.  Yeah, there you go. But I know we like to go to tardigrades.  There's worms. Tape worms are also really popular. They can withstand radiation. They are the parasite that can grow in your intestines. You can break them in half and each segment is its own being. They just feed each other sort of like a train. They like to just push new treats down. Yeah. The thing about it is with parasites, you've got to have a food animal, you know, a host and that requires all kinds of evolution before the parasite can ever come about. It's kind of a later thing, I would think. But also and that's the thing with viruses, right? Is that they hijack other cells replicating machinery in order to exist. They can't exist independent of that. But also because they don't follow the same rules as organisms do or in most... Because they don't have organs. They can also hibernate or basically go into like this non-active state for long durations of time. And then if they get rehydrated or if the conditions are just right or if they reach a specified temperature, they're back alive again, even though they've not been active for like hundreds of years. It's just really... That's the premise of alien, right?  It's the exact same thing, how we had some breakouts where people were going to like Egyptian tombs to be realizing, oh, there's golden stuff here and next thing you know, there's another smallpox outbreak. It's just like, yeah, those viruses were just waiting to latch on to somebody and then walk out with them. It's crazy. Hey, John Richards, what's up? Interestingly, we were talking about this with our guest on Free Thought Hour, only last night, which you can now see as a podcast on Free Thought Channel. Very interesting guest. Took us through the development of complexity. Development of complexity? Highly recommended. One of our best Free Thought Hour conversations. Yeah. In fact, I did want to make a little point on intelligent design here. When you design something from an engineering point of view, you want to make it as simple as possible, less fueling moving parts, the less parts needed, the less SKUs needed. Most simplistic way to transfer energy from one system to the next. No additional heat, no additional movement. We have a lot of complexity in our bodies. We have, you know, twice as many nipples as most people would ever need in the corner of the population. But like when you talk about bacteria that can go under your skin and then convert into an anaerobic state and start consuming living flesh, that is just more examples in my head of just, why would you need that function? Why would you intelligently design that when it could lead to so many problems? One last. It's not a benevolent God thing, is it? Right. Not a benevolent God, not an intelligently designed Zerner. Yeah, not a smart God. Right. No, there's never 4,000 genetic diseases that doesn't seem very intelligent. Yeah. Dredd, I'm also going to plug this one. I think we should have had a guest from Australia because if there's that much radiation, we can guarantee there's not intelligent life, but it might just be really ugly life. There you go. And that's not a stab at Australia. They just mean they have a lot of ugly, crazy animals out there, especially bug lights. Dredd, I'm also going to throw this other one out to you. This is a question we had from last week, but it's not on space particles. It's more on viruses because we're talking about viruses. I'd love to get your feedback on that as well. Apkin commented on the episode of UFOs, Loch Nose and Bigfoot, oh my. She asked, hey, I'm going to slightly disagree with the dangers of viruses, that being if aliens were to come to Earth and potentially give us their viruses or we go to another planet and we give them our viruses. If the analogy would be better if every time humans go in the ocean, we have a chance of infecting prawns with human diseases. For us to infect the aliens and vice versa, there would need to be more genetic similarities than life on Earth has. This is always the case since some diseases can jump species, but it's a larger barrier than some people take into consideration. What do you think about that? Just hang on a sec. I got this. Well, Walter is distorting himself out. I'll come in on that. Yeah, you're the biologist here. What's up? Yeah, yeah. So what we're talking about here is zoonosis, the transfer of diseases between species. And it does happen in both directions. There's a recent case of a dog having been infected with, I'm not sure if it was COVID or one of the diseases that was previously found in humans. So that's exactly what it is, zoonosis. That is what all been started as. Yeah, yeah. It came from. It jumped from animals in the live market. And we'll hand on. We're giving it back. Yeah. Yeah. Down to five. Yeah, I was thinking that there might be a good argument to be made for the fact that life on other planets, if it exists, might have the same DNA structure as us. And the reason I say that is that all Earth was made to all the common elements. The most common elements are the most common here. And that would be the same in other, could be the same on many other planets. And if we started with certain replicating molecules, then that are made out of certain atoms, elemental atoms. Why wouldn't that happen on other places as well? I mean, it could be a very common thing throughout the universe. You never know. And then they would just develop their DNA pretty much the same way we did. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I've been listening to some interesting podcasts with, you know, on that very topic. And that suggests that the mystery of life is not really that mysterious. If you look at it as chemical... Combination. Chemical actions that happen naturally and that the first replicators are really just processes that happen naturally and take chemical exchanges down to their lowest state, which, you know, is like photons being emitted by atoms by, you know, electrons just moving down into a ground state, right? It's just part of nature. It's just that's how it works. It's not as mysterious as we all think. And maybe the very precursors to life are just these natural chemical processes that generated the first replicators. And those replicators just become more complicated and life then being sort of just an emergent property. Absolutely. But it doesn't have to be necessarily a decrease in energy level. I mean, I know sometimes that happens. In fact, in the case of crystallization, the reason that the particles come together into that format is because they contain less energy than when they're buzzing around in a solution. You think about mitochondria and the adenosine triphosphate, that cycle there, where adenosine triphosphate ATP turns into ADP, diphosphate. And so that's a loss of... It is in that case, but it needs some atom, right? So it's an exchange in energy. Well, the complete cycle, you need to pump in some energy to restore the ATP. And of course, that can happen in lots of places in the universe where there's energy being released by massive stars, for example. So it can be a build up as well as a... In other words, it's... It's an exchange. It's what it is. It's an exchange. So what we're basically saying is there could be localized native states or low energy states towards the lowest energy state where a molecule is happy enough to be right there because it might even take more energy for it to get to the next transition point. And so it will settle on its way down, sort of like going down steps of stairs, right? And because of that, just because we see how life works here on Earth may not necessarily mean how it works in other places, but it could also mean that we are trajectory... Since we're all working on trial and error using the same base parts, there might be a lot of similarities in space somewhere to life here. And from my point of view, the only thing I'm saying is two things. One, it'd be really polite of us not to try to contaminate another planet when we see it. And we should be thoughtful how we approach another intelligent life, whether it's using robots that might use a lot of radiation or emissions to send signals back to Earth that might be sensitive to the life forms that are on that planet. Like they might hear Wi-Fi, for example. And that'd be like, man, why is this robot screaming Wi-Fi? I hate it. We can't hear it, but maybe they can. Who knows? Something weird like that. But the other thing is, if we took the inverse and we replaced it and the alien visited us, and we're so happy, we have the White House all surrounded by this thing, and it comes out of the spaceship and it's just sneezing. And then it's like coughing and it's pooping on the floor. It's like, ooh, ooh, ooh, please get back in your spaceship. That's great. It's like, I won't contaminate you guys. Don't worry, we're in three different life forms. It's like, yeah, this is a lot. We did a lot of things. This is politeness thing, in my head. It's fine, corrective stuff, isn't it?   Dred, one extra question for you before we get into more science stuff. Dred, have you ever thought about a noodle-themed turban? Maybe your problem in Canada, distinctive head covering. So it sounds like you could probably get away by wearing a turban and have noodles on the turban. Have somebody knitted that white? Yeah, we really have tossed these ideas around. But again, it's arbitrary, right? I mean, I've actually talked to a couple of my Sikh friends who would be willing to dress me up in a turban. And I posed that question actually to the uppity ups at ICBC to say, if I go in and claim I'm a Sikh, what would you do? Would you say you can't possibly be a Sikh because you're not the right color? You know what I mean? Seriously, seriously, right? Because no Sikh of Indian ethnic origin is ever questioned. Nobody says, are you, what religion are you? And certainly, nobody at ICBC likely who isn't a Sikh likely knows what Sikhism is all about. They couldn't tell you what Sikhs believe or even what Hindus believe or anyone else that isn't Christian because they don't really care, right? They're just very myopic. And I'm certain that Sikhs only got the right to wear their turban after a considerable protest and just by sheer numbers, right? Yeah, so speaking of irrational conclusions, let's talk about hypothetical particles. Well, can we take a break? That's a nice segue. At the bottom of the hour, we are done. Okay, okay, okay. So we have so many more comments to go through, guys. We'll go into that in the next episode. Stay tuned for the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville for just a second. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year and have over a thousand members. We have weekly in-person meetings at Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top table so if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday evening ASK Zoom meeting. And if you'd like to join us, email us at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat s-e at gmail.com and we'll send you the link. You can also find ASK online at Facebook, meetup.com or at their website. Meetup, I'm sorry, Knoxvilleatheist.org or you can just Google Knoxvilleatheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Stop one. Well, where do we want to pick up? Hey, we're going to be talking about mail bags and all the listener comments that have come through. We got everybody and we're highly happy to have so many wonderful comments to go over. They inspire a lot of conversations and feel free to add more. We're going to go straight into it. Dred, two comments for you regarding right to education from the show, right to education. We were talking about particles. First question is, Dred, you need to deliver. So it's about entangled particles. We were talking about that. How do you measure entangled particles if they are instantaneous and they're faster than the speed of light? How can we detect them if nothing we have is faster than the speed of light? That's just the both of those part of questions. I'm not saying you do have the answer. I'm just wondering, it's a good thought experiment. How do you measure something that's immeasurable with our current techniques? And I think you're right. You just said it there. It's more of a thought experiment. It's the math that makes sense. So this idea that you could measure or you could determine that particles are entangled that are light years apart. Of course, that's impractical. In terms of actually measuring these things to demonstrate that that's the case. But certainly, the math is pretty sound. And that's more of what it's being relied on than actual, it's a thought experiment as opposed to a real experiment. Right? I love mathematics because that, it gives you the freedom to be able to do it because you're working with such well-defined variables. Rarely that you get three of anything in real life. But in math, you can just declare three, even prove three and just work with those assumptions that you have these well-defined things. And I think thought experiments have their place. Yeah, absolutely. Richard Feynman, one of the greatest minds of the current era, he said that he doesn't understand quantum mechanics and that anyone that makes that claim probably doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. Right? I mean, it works, right? We have FMRIs and different technologies that are totally reliant on the fact, on the math, quantum mechanics is the case. But a lot of people, there's still a lot of unanswered questions with respect to what it really is all about. Interestingly, just on the 16th of this month, a bunch of prominent scientists met in Vancouver to start the Quantum Gravity Institute, which is a new institute well-funded that is going to explore the connections between Einstein's special relativity and quantum mechanics because that's still currently a big mystery right now. And also, skepticism of quantum mechanics is not the same thing as dismissing that their ideas are actually accurate or true. The default position of science is I don't know or we can't reach a conclusion yet. Yeah, and we still don't have a grand unified theory. Hopefully they'll find one. Just going to finish, a lot of these times when we're talking about these theories, it's because we're looking at these unknowns and trying to come up with narratives or thoughtful experimentations to try to come out with standards. And the cool thing about standards is those can be tested, those can be demonstrated, those have utility. But some thought experiments have utility too, even though they haven't been converted or precipitated down to a standard yet. And so we work with the thought experiments lacking any sort of measurable or feasible way to measure these concepts that we're talking about. But we may precipitate them into better standards when we have that technology or have that capability in the future, who knows. But at least until then, it's not that they don't exist, it's just that we don't know. And I think it's okay to say you don't know in science or if something's undefined to say it's undefined or inconclusive at this point. And a very important, yeah, I was going to just say that to add to that, that a very important aspect of science and an appropriate understanding of it is that scientific theories are models, right? They're only models of the way we think the universe works. It is not direct experience. They're just how we model things and how we understand them. It's not necessarily the absolute way it works. It's just our understandings. And by that, I mean, even like things that we think we have a very strong grasp on, like gravity, like that's the model, right? And we might be subject to change as we learn more about gravitational forces in the future, right? John, it sounds like you're about to say something. Go ahead. Well, most of what I was going to say has been said now, actually, but what we're looking at here is the difference between conceptualizing, which is maths, you know, and observing, which is the science bit. And we've conceptualized gravity, and we've conceptualized quantum mechanics. And those models sometimes have a decent match to what we observe, in which case we run with them while they're working. But then who knows what we're going to discover tomorrow? We certainly, if we look back, we've certainly been, it found it necessary to change, to ditch old models and change them for new models, like the model of gravity, which has changed from Newton's laws of motion to relativity. These are all thought experiments. And there's no way of saying that they are congruent with reality. We just run with them until they're falsified. Yes, that's right. And it's a Bayesian, it's a Bayesian thing, right? With the understanding that all new evidence goes on our priors. Right. With the understanding that as long as the math checks out, we can run with these until we have problems or improve them. But we understand that they are models. They are functionally models, right? Yeah. And in the case, and in the case of entanglement, it's a mathematically sound idea. But until we find some way of separating one of the partners and sending it 100,000 miles away and observing that one change simultaneously, it's not being evidenced. Right, it's all true and principle. Yes. It's the equivalent of packing your suitcase for an ideal trip to Japan that you haven't really gotten the tickets for or anything like that yet. But you have the suitcase ready to go. Yes. You've got the tickets. But until then, we can pack the tickets. We can put chopsticks in there. We can do all sorts of stuff. There's subway maps, all sorts of stuff. We're free to do that in the right headspace. Well, we haven't gotten the tickets yet. That's a very good analogy. And we were talking about this last night with Chet Anderson. And it's the difference between nominalism, which is the understanding that we've got something going on in here which doesn't necessarily match something out there. Like numbers are all conceived. If you look into the universe, you won't find a three. Exactly. We apply the concept of three onto... Abstract concepts, yes. Exactly. We apply that onto three points in the universe and designate it a three. But the alternative, of course, is Platonism, where Plato used to think that there must actually be a three out there that we have to discover and then identify it. And so he thought, for example, that somewhere there was a cow in reality that you had access to so that you could compare what you observed with this... This ideal... What would you call it? You know, it's like the standard yard. Yeah, the absolute. The absolute. Yeah, yeah, but the world doesn't work like that. No. Plato was wrong. He was. Data five. Go for it. Yeah, getting back to the question of being able to test quantum linking and all that at extreme distances. We don't have to take them light years apart. I mean, we can measure time down to a nanosecond now. And if we could get two particles separated by the width of the earth, say, or between earth and the moon, I mean, light takes us one and a quarter second just to get to the moon. If you could get a particle there and we could test whether it instantly flips or not with current technology. Yeah, but that would be in defiance of the uncertainty principle, right? Heisenberg's uncertainty. You can't both know the vector of particle is traveling in. And it's... Well, we're not worried about its vector or traveling or any of that. We're talking about its state. True. You know, whether it's... There's more simplification. We just don't have a piece of equipment that's that fast yet. And then after we determine... After we have a piece of equipment that is that fast, is it that piece of equipment operating on the same thing that we're trying to prove in the first place? Because that's a problem. Because if you have a machine that measures quantum entanglement that's powered by quantum entanglement, how do you verify that quantum entanglement actually works?  Because I can make a magic detector that runs on magic that always says it's magic, right? It's just... Get a piece of tape on a box that just says, it's magic.  So therefore it's right. But that was what I was saying about certain technologies that already exist that make use of the principles of quantum mechanics without necessarily being able to prove certain aspects of it are true experimentally, right? And I would say... Tanglement is already being taken advantage of in certain technologies by virtue that it works in principle, that the math is right. And it doesn't take a demonstration that these things are true experimentally because they work in practice. But that is also something we should be considered as... I'm going to use a word here, don't forgive me if you're using it, but that's a dangerous path to go down. Only because when we standardize something, it's an actual approach where we don't use the word in the definition in the simplest sense. You have to have a alternative strategy to test something rather than just here's the thing I'm trying to test and here's the method I'm using, which is the thing I'm trying to test and therefore it works. It's like that's not a standard. It wouldn't pass any sort of standardizing body. It has to be a different means to test it. And it has to be a well-tested regular way to test it. That's not a declaration that it's non-existent or not trainable or not existent. It's just you have an inclusive way to test it. So the default position is it's inconclusive, which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means we don't have a way to test that in a reliable way. And I think the more reliable way we can test it, the more confidence we can put on it actually existing. And if it's useful in the meanwhile, fantastic. But until then, we need a way to test it. That's better than just part of it's kind of working because Jerusalem exists in the Bible, but that doesn't mean that Jesus did, right? Or God does. Or New York and Spider-Man. Exactly, like New York and Spider-Man. So we have to really, really hone our methodologies here. John Rich, you just saw your hand up. What's up? Well, I was a bit confused because we were talking about in practice and experimentally. And I think they're the same thing. I was going to say that. Are we testing the same thing or are there two things that are correlating to each other? Like how are we proving that one is causing the other or are you just saying these two things are the same and we're testing in two different capacities in two different places? Well, I mean, if you if you create a circuit or something that depends on a physical principle when the circuit works and repeatedly works and works in many different states and many different occurrences, couldn't you say that those are scientific experiments proving the principle is correct? Unfortunately, it looks like I don't believe you can. There are if there is if that was if you could be proven that that's the only way that could happen. For example, I'm just going to throw this one out. Why not? What if pixie magic existed and pixie magic is the thing that's causing these entangled particles to flip and swap? And that's an option. Well, it's if I prove that it's the scientific thing and not pixie magic, great. But until then you still have pixie magic on the table. And so how do you prove that it's not pixie magic? There's could be a wealth of other credential scientific possibilities for a lot of these things that we're working on. The way how we define that it's one and not the others is by standardizing our process. And I don't think we have the tool sets necessary to like standardize entangled particles. We can make use of them through models that are useful, but I don't think we have gotten there yet. Go ahead. Everyone raise their hands. So this is and this is what I was getting to because until recently, no, we haven't been able to image an atom. Yet the our whole society is predicated on atoms existing to our current understanding of how they are. You know, at first it started with Rutherford and the Goldfoil experiment. And then Neils Bohr came up with the idea of a quantum or quantized orbits and all this kind of stuff. So despite our lack of understanding of how things really work, the principle that they work in the ways they do as we model them are the important points because that's how our technology works. It works on the premise that the understanding we currently have of how things work is true and correct. Despite the fact that we cannot necessarily image or prove definitively that these things work in the way that we think they do. If that makes sense. Yeah, models are. So I dread you're hitting a good point. The models are still useful, even if our understanding takes time to catch up to them. Yes. Yeah. And our models can be incomplete, but we still must. I mean, this is what I was saying about this physics, gravity, quantum gravity institute being started because there are many unanswered questions with respect to how quantum mechanics and special relatively work together. This is the grand unified theory that Dutter 5 was talking about or the theory of everything, TOE, as they call it. You're right. In the interest of time, I want to maybe hopefully condense this and continue this. I'll make another topic. But I like to think of it as like a lunch table and you have philosophers on one side of the table. Then you have your theorists, your mathematicians. As you work your way down, you have your scientists who are like, hey, these are really good ideas. I like listening to these guys. And right next to them, you have your engineers who are like, you got to make this applied and practical because you're not following objective testing protocols. Like if you actually want me to build this, if you want this to actually work, what are you talking about? Put it in like actual tolerances for me. And so like when I hear, hey, it's working on the philosopher's side of table. It's like, this works, guys. This makes sense on the engineering table. It's just like, what are you guys talking about? Please make this make sense. Like Sheldon Cooper says, engineers are the oompa-loompas of science, right? They make things happen. Right, right, right. And so I say, it's fun because all this whole table is what's propelling science forward. But it's most important that we realize that each side has its function. And it's worthwhile to listen to all the whole table saying and not necessarily be persuaded by this one side. And again, the default position of science is that it's not true. It's you got to prove it better or come to a better conclusion or use a better methodology to demonstrate it. And it's good to be skeptical in the meanwhile. So we got a lot of comments. I'd really, really like to get to them. Joe Skye, did we get to the one? We haven't gotten to yours yet. Let's see. So Joe Skye, we had a question from someone who asked if you had seen the original oldest images of Jesus in an art piece called earliest depictions of Jesus in art. It's a collection of art by useful charts. And what's interesting is in the earliest ones, he's a guy who looks like a typical Roman dude without any beard and wearing a Roman turmenic and a mantle and not a toga. And then later on, he has curly hair depicted of people of that time period all the way down to a sculpture who sculpted his face who looks, the final work looks just like the sculptor himself. And what do you think about that? Of course. How about that? I have not seen these particular pieces of art. What I have seen is some fourth century art where Jesus does look Palestinian. And the interesting thing is, is that some of these art pieces depict Jesus performing his miracles with a magic wand. Okay, not bad, not bad, not bad. John Riches, do you have any thoughts? Was it from Harry Potter? That one? No. Was you wearing round glasses? John Riches, do you have any more comments on that? Well, images of early images of Christ, I think the oldest one is in a Greek freeze where he's depicted as a toddler and he strangely resembles Apollo. Well, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen 22 Jump Street, the movie. Oh, I think I've seen the TV show. Well, there was the movie that came out much, much later. And of course, 22 Jump Street was a church wherein was a Vietnamese Jesus on the cross. And there was a big joke about that. It was a very funny part, but yeah. Later, I'm also going to throw this question out to you. I've seen Santa Clauses that are white. I've seen Santa Clauses that are black. And it's just depending on where I'm going to. I've seen Korean Santa Clauses. I feel like, do you feel like there's a similar tie there where people just see what they want to see in their Jesus? Especially if they live near places that are surrounded by big pieces of butter? Have you seen Santa Clauses on a cross? I've seen that. A friend of mine in Japan took a picture of a department store display around Christmas. Apparently the Japanese love Christmas. But they don't quite get it. And in the picture, there was a Santa Claus on a cross. How can he deliver the presents? How will he deliver the presents? So dark. They had a theory in movies where a lot of them followed the Christ narrative, like Star Wars, Matrix. A lot of these have the main character basically do all the points where he's persecuted for trying to do something that's good and then comes back after a period of absence to kick the bad guy's butt and inspire a lot of people to be better than they are. Like that is like a trope in storytelling that probably predated the Bible. Well, Joseph, you're familiar with Joseph Campbell and that Joseph Campbell actually assisted George Lucas in fashioning that story based on the themes throughout history in mythology. The downtrodden, the uncooperative hero who thrust to the forefront of the destiny you've never anticipated. Speaking of being thrust into a destiny you never anticipated, let's talk about hell. Larry, we've got a question from hell for you. Have you ever heard of modern hell?   Have you ever heard of those two hells, Larry? All I heard of the first one, of course, the new one is not, I'm not that familiar with, but if it is contingent on the existence of a soul, I think we're in the same problem we had with the early hell. I don't believe the soul suggests every other living thing on the planet dies and we believe that that's it. It's over, but not humans. No, we've got to live forever. No, I don't believe that we do. I don't believe that souls are real. I don't believe they go anywhere after the die, of course, for that reason. So, you know, the new hell has the same problem as the old one. Not bad. Not bad. Are we getting close to the end of the show? I think. Pretty close. Time for the final words here. I'll throw one last log into the fire. Maybe we can do a longer forum episode on sciences because we seem to all love that, but I'd say I've done some SC with a friend of mine who's at work, and he was telling me during, while we're in the parking lot, just chatting up after a game of disc golf that either the universe came from nothing or God made it, right? Because to him, those were the only two options because he looked around and everything to him looked like it was made by God and designed by God. And the only alternative he can consider was nothing, which didn't make any sense to him. And I'd say like the idea that you've reduced your options to a false dichotomy to whether it's the thing that you really like to be true is correct or something completely unreasonable is a false way to prove something is actually true. The way that we demonstrate that things are true when we standardize it is by looking at the process that we're inspecting and making sure each point connects to a logical connection, which means that we need a way to test it that doesn't rely on the premise that we're talking about. And since we don't have a God detector or anything that can measure miracles, we can't claim that God exists on the scientific point of view. God is inconclusive. It's not a default. It's not a default. But that same methodology applies to any other thing that the theorists that are talking about on the other side of the table, even if we're sitting at the same science table, if they're talking about something that we can't test, doesn't mean that it's not true. Just means that we've reached an inconclusive conclusion that their method actually works. And if they say, well, it works on these other things, like that's great, but we're not talking about those other things. We're talking about the fundamental thing that we're all trying to get from point A to point B and we don't have a way to test that yet. It doesn't mean that it's not true. It means we can still make useful things out of it. That's fantastic. That's even better than what God is giving us right now. But we can't conclude that it exists until we have a better way to work on it. And that's our new problem. And we can work on that together. So let's work on that. And in the meantime, in the meantime, it's perfectly all right to say, I don't know. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. It's the most honest answer sometimes. And you shouldn't be persecuted for it, God. We'll talk about that maybe in a future episode. Jared, Pirate, what would you like to plug and feel free to throw your stuff out? You can find me, let's chat on these YouTube. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over them in the future episode. Yeah. Well, you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel. It's Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. I livestream this at 7 a.m. on Sunday mornings, Pacific Daylight Time. And I also do the Global Atheist News Review at 11 a.m. Sunday mornings, PDT, and I'm looking forward to doing that later this morning. Yep. Yeah, click and subscribe. Love to see you. Cheers. Cheers. Arr. John, what do we got? Well, yeah, as Tred said, you and you two, Ty, will be in, you've both accepted. Thank you. We'll be on the panel of Gann Rev, Global Atheist News Review, in a few hours. And that's on Free Thought Channel, where all our other stuff is, including the Free Thought Hour interview show that I referred to earlier on in this show. John, my only umbrance with you on a deeply personal level is that tugboat will never get to the left side of your screen. It just really bothers me.  Guy, anything that you'd recommend we check out before next week? My content can be found on Facebook, on the Nova City and Chronicles. I talk about things of interest to atheists. I talk about biblical historicity. Well, it's my blog. I talk about what I feel like. Nice. Nice. It's your blog. You should be able to use your party and you can do whatever you want. Doubter 5, anything that you'd like to plug before or out since you haven't written any books about atheism. Yeah, I do have a book out. It's called Atheism. What's it all about? It's on Amazon. My content generally can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. It'll take you to our radio show archives, Atheist songs and many articles on the subject. If you have questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org or let'schatse at gmail.com or just leave a comment below the videos. If you're having trouble leaving religious police behind, you can find help in recoveringfromreligion at recoveringfromreligion.org. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's health. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody.


Income tax 2021-2022, unemployment compensation. Get ready to get refunds to the max, diving in to income tax 2021-2022. Income tax formula, line one income. This is the first page of the form 1040, looking at line number eight, other income from schedule one line 10. Here's the schedule one part one. We're looking at number seven, unemployment compensation. The total from schedule one part one flows back into as we saw the first page of the form 1040, line number eight, other income from schedule one. Back to the schedule one, we're focused in on the unemployment compensation, just to recap in general of unemployment compensation and just note that unemployment compensation has become more of a big deal and kind of caused some confusion over the last couple of years. The IRS has sent out a whole bunch of stuff in the last year or so to deal with kind of the confusion that's been brought out for it. Obviously a lot more.