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It’s nearly November the 5th and Obama’s nearly President. Listen to our take on things.

The fourth podcast in a very occasional series:

• psychic goings-on at the Ministry of Defence
• a 1925 publication describes how to fill your own teeth
• Kenneth Arrow proves that voting systems are always unfair

Ministry of Defence employs psychics

Just a few years ago the UK’s Ministry of Defence spent £18,000 investigating Remote Viewing, only to conclude that there was nothing to it – or, as the MoD’s report says rather revealingly, that the results were disappointing.

A rather disturbing glimpse into the minds of people we trust with guns and bombs.

Enquire Within

An old home encyclopedia surfaces. Dating from around 1925, by which time it was already past its 100^th edition, it’s stuffed full of fascinating items. he first we’re reading out here is advice on how to fill your own teeth.

Kenneth Arrow on voting

Prizewinning economist Kenneth Arrow showed that any voting arrangement could not adhere to a small set of basic conditions that most of might think were prerequisites of a fair system. Interesting.

You can subscribe to the podcast feed here or take a link to the MP3.

Third podcast in a very occasional series, just reminding myself how to do it with WordPress and feedburner.

Shownotes

Photos of holidays in Estonia and the US, if you’re interested.

USB Mic in Audacity on Ubuntu

Compiling Audacty under Linux to accommodate the Logitech USB mic. First of all.

• Download the latest beta source from here (choose the tarball). Use gunzip and tar -xf to unzip
• Make sure you have the the latest wxWidgets installed, and also the development files for libmad (use the Synaptic Package Manager to install)

Compile the source and make with the following command:

./configure --with-portaudio=v19 --without-portmixer --with-libmad=system && make

and then install

Step 2 – create the symbolic link with the command:

ln -s /dev/dsp /dev/dsp0

Atheism ahoy

Finally, Amazon of course stocks The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Dan Dennett and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Happy New Year

3rd podcast MP3

or subscribe to the feed here.

A new podcast is out. In the light of the Dover Board decision we revisit the Emmanuel College creationism brouhaha, try recording sound on a Boxing Day walk (hence hoofcasting, as in podcasting on the hoof) and finally we take issue with the contribution Dawkins made to the Edge‘s New Year list of ‘dangerous ideas’. As Bill Hamilton’s representative on Earth Dawkins does a good job and he’s a fine writer but he’s a shaky philosopher.

MP3 here: podcast20060107_64kb.mp3 or subscribe to the feed here.