"We Are Scientists Get DRUNK" (🔊a Stoop Chat)

co-produced with Dirt From the Road 🏀

“We Are Scientists Get DRUNK” is what our collaborator Brett Newski chose to call this podcast, but we think that Brett just doesn’t realize how we normally approach pods. We approach ‘em drunk, Brett! Can’t give ‘em all the same title! Anyway, we suspect longtime Stoop Chat listeners will find our degree of intoxication to be pretty moderate, versus the mean. Take a look or a listen and find out. (Show notes down below 📝)

Here it is in stunning 3D UltraWarm Static-Stand Video:

Or maybe you like listening on Spotify:

Or do you get nervous about the idea of leaving this entertainment vertical just now? Then there’s this:

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Some notes about the show, in Show Note format… 

• Chris mentions the Mormon practice of proxy baptism, in which dead people are added to the church’s rolls without their consent (obviously). After reading more about this, we can say that he reasonably represents the popular understanding of this process, but also that his summary is incomplete in important ways. Proxy baptism crossed many non-Mormon radars in the 1990s, when a former LDS member reported that the church had “baptized” a few hundred thousand Holocaust victims. The church acknowledged it, said they were sorry, and promised to restrict future posthumous baptisms to direct ancestors of current Mormons. Apparently they’ve done a good job of cutting down, though for some reason lots of notable exceptions continue to slip through the cracks. In 2012, Anne Frank showed up on the list. The grandparents of Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Steven Spielberg, and Joe Biden recently got baptized, and so did Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and the Queen Mother.
  But why?!?!, you might ask. Well, it makes more sense if you believe, as Mormons do, that after death, a non-believer’s soul hangs out in a sort of purgatory where they are given a final chance to sit down with “the gospel,” read over it slowly, and really make sure they still don’t buy it. And if — sitting, post-death, in this celestial waiting room that seems like it kind of straight-up proves all the shit they told you in church — you decide to flip flop and embrace “the teachings,” well, then you get to go to Heaven… after you get baptized. Except! Except you don’t have a body anymore, and only bodies can be baptized. 😳 And that’s where the proxy baptism comes in: Somebody in a Mormon church down on earth gets dunked on your behalf, and off you go. So, critical clarification number one: The soul being baptized by proxy has to opt in. All the Mormons are doing, they say, is making the offer. (I’m not clear on how they decide that someone has accepted, or if they just go ahead with the ceremony knowing that it might be a waste, having been, unbeknownst to them, rejected by the person in the otherworldly waiting room.)

  Something Chris’s report also gets wrong is the idea that successfully baptized souls are thereafter scored as members of the LDS Church. (In his defense, The Washington Post, Associated Press, and The Guardian also seem to think this.) In the words of an official church blog post, “The ordinance does not force deceased persons to become members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor does the Church list deceased persons as members of the Church. In short, there is no change in the religion or heritage of the recipient or of the recipient's descendants.”
  Basically, like precocious teenage Christians the world over, the Mormons are annoyed that the Bible seems to damn to Hell people who are never properly exposed to Christianity, and they try to right that injustice for as many as they can of all the souls that have ever lived, even though it must be quite time consuming and pretty muted in terms of immediate, tangible payoffs. If you think of it that way, it seems not so bad — okay, it seems downright nice of them!
  You know what? We hope that if any of our readers find themselves marooned in an afterlife holding pen, unable to cross into Heaven simply for lack of a stinkin’ body, the good Mormons down on earth flip ‘em a baptism. 🍻

• “To ape,” according to Merriam-Webster, “may suggest presumptuous, unoriginal, or inept imitating of a superior original.” (Except in the case of our Great Apes series, they might have written.)

• We allege that chimpanzees are fearsome fighters. Here is an article that backs that up, and includes this chilling anecdote: “It is said an agitated Chimp in Uganda’s Kibale Forest once held a park ranger’s arm tightly and when it let go of his arm his bones had broken to bits.”
  We also love these claims about chimpanzees by an anonymous Quora user, who offers no citations:
  They are the psychopathic ape. Why?
  For one, whenever they have temper tantrums or displays of dominance, they will randomly push you if you are their proximity for no reason.

  Second, you can treat them like a human and their aggressive instincts will still kick in

  Third, Chimps don't forgive and they don't forget. If you tease or torment them years ago, you better stay away because they will mame you if they get a chance.

  Fourth, they treat their own clan like crap. Chimps kill one of their own if they want the throne or if they think that chimp is a judas to the group.
  And last, they love drama. Whenever they are fighting amongst themselves, they cheer on the conflict by screaming and jumping.

• We discuss the impressive musculature of gorillas, and wonder how they accomplish it on a vegetarian diet. Indeed, all of the largest land mammals are herbivorous — elephants, bison & such — and despite the evident significance of that fact, we couldn’t find a well-written article, nor one from a reputable source, that clearly explains this phenomenon. After choking down the contents of several lousy websites, like a powerful rhino forced to feed on discount magazines, we can say that it has something to do with the huge quantity of food herbivores ingest, their digestive systems’ adapted ability to harvest protein from roughage, and maybe something about their gut biomes actually “forming” protein after they “feast” on the cellulose in the ingested plants? Anyway, you ever see an elephant? This shit is real!

• Chris’s laser tag birthday party in the early years of this millennium, which Keith has rinsed from his memory through a persistent regimen of hypnosis and rum, took place at Lazer Park. Looks like it closed not long after the party, and possibly as a direct result. The only online reference we could find is in a 2015 New York Post article.

• Does Zuck drink beer? A cursory investigation was inconclusive, but the smart bet is on Yes. In a recent Instagram post, Mark Zuckerberg says he is raising cattle on his ranch in Kauai, and that they will “grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch.” So he’s producing beer on his ranch. Sure, he’s doing it for the beef cows, but ya gotta dip a mug into the vat every once in a while. Further evidence includes the fact that he’s drinking wine in the photo (or at least sitting with a decorative glass of wine), and also random people on reddit say he likes whisky. We bet Zuck’s a guzzler!

• Chris references the song “Pink Cadillac,” which turns out to have been written by Bruce Springsteen and released in 1984 as the b-side to “Dancing in the Dark.” (Here’s Bruce performing it.) It was Natalie Cole’s 1988 cover that Chris remembers, however, and apparently even Springsteen thought it was pretty good. According to Wikipedia, he had actually vetoed Bette Midler doing the song back in 1984, saying that the perspective of the lyrics was necessarily male. It’s unclear why he changed his mind for Natalie Cole. Maybe he realized that the problem had just been that the perspective of the lyrics is necessarily NOT Bette Midler.
  

“This is easily the drunkest I’ve ever been on a podcast. It’s been an honor.” - Newski

🌺🦍

Thanks to our guy B. Newski for the chat, and best of luck to all of us in the afterlife.

– C.K. Personmen