Lawrence Krauss on Science Friday

When we contemplate jobs worse than ours, one that doesn't often come up but has to be bad is call screener for a radio or (less common these days) television show. Howard Stern alone probably nearly killed this career. I had jobs in my youth that involved answering the phones at businesses and it's stressful being the gatekeeper for every shut-in, teenager and pervert (or some unholy combination of the above) with a telephone, even when you aren't on the public airwaves. If you don't believe me, try working third shift at a hotel.

Despite my sympathy for folks so employed, the screeners on Science Friday seem either particularly gullible or the show is just target for a lot of wackos who can't locate "Coast to Coast" on their dials. You can guarantee some religious wack job will call in almost every time they open the phone lines, as will someone who questions "What good does this do?" to anyone who isn't literally curing cancer or whatever they feel is morally acceptable for all scientific types should be working on.

Lawrence Krauss was on recently plugging his new book, A Universe From Nothing, and was discussing among other things dark energy (to review: the universe is growing colder and farther apart infinity or as the late Christopher Hitchens put it, hurrying towards nothing.) One deep thinker called in to say, "I think dark energy should be called 'God's glue.' " That's great, man. I think traffic roundabouts should be called "monkey circle droppings" and that 2 Broke Girls should be called "lame vagina joke cesspool." Also, I don't like grapes with brown spots on them. Thanks for letting me share these equally relevant observations.


At any rate, Krauss had a brilliant response that I wish I could recreate verbatim which essentially boiled down to isn't that the great thing about science is that, unlike religion, scientists don't mind and in fact enjoy having their beliefs challenged. That they don't require their world to be unshakable no matter what things are called. 

And the "What's the point, blah blah cancer" guy called in too, of course. WTF is happening, Science Friday? Do you want those calls? Are not enough real questions coming in? Is this like some pledge drive torture device?

Anyways, I think I'll add Krauss's book to my queue. And probably never read it but it'll make me look smart. Or, smarter.