Ask HN: I'm having dinner with the Mythbuster tomorrow night... got any questions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm having dinner with the Mythbuster tomorrow night... got any questions?

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I won an Intel triva contest and the prize is a trip to San Fran for dinner with the Mythbusters. Anyone have any questions or myths they want me to plug?

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Please have them debunk water-for-gas once and for all! And thank them for improving the science-education aspect of their show! It's gotten much better over the past year/year and a half.

Haven't they done the water car already?

Possibly, but there's a new one which Reuters managed to fall for the other day (look up "genepax").

Very nice.. I'll try to mention this one.

Wow. Do they not have any science editors at Reuters, or do they just parrot every cool sounding press release that they can find?

Please ask them to tackle the e-meter from scientology!

That could be difficult. It's difficult to get the CoS to pin down exactly what it is that the e-meter is supposed to be measuring ("mental energy"), so it's impossible to tell whether it's measuring it or not. Of course it's possible to show that it _also_ measures resistance when used in a certain way, but no doubt the CoS would say that it only works when used properly.

How could they do an experiment to show conclusively that whatever vague claims the CoS makes about the e-meter are false?

I'm not entirely sure, but as far as I can tell I think that was quite possibly the point of the joke.

Now, I'm just going on out on a limb here in assuming it was a joke. Don't quote me on that.

Tackle? How can the tackle something so obviously true?

Can you ask them to watch an episode from the first season, then straight away an episode from the most recent season?

I hope that the shock from seeing how much the quality has gone down might prompt them to do something about it. The new ADD friendly format is still better than anything else on television... but that isn't saying a lot. With a bit of luck they might fire the producer who believes in the myth of appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Is there any tech (in the sense that most news.yc readers are used to - software, or computer hardware) that is invaluable to making their show?

Great point.

I would like to see if they can melt steel using an open kerosene fire, but I hear they won't touch that because of the politics.

Isn't there already hard, well-known scientific facts about the maximum temperature of kerosene and minimum melting temperature of steel?

Yes there is, but that isn't what myths are about. Being able to calculate the terminal velocity of a penny didn't prevent MythBusters from doing a show on that. Busting myths is about revealing a truth in non-scientific ways so that the average person understands the absurdity of the myth.

Is there any truth to the "Birds mimicking cell phones" stories.

Like this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20031005163144/http://www.ananova...

This would also be a great opportunity to talk about tits.

Ever watched a trained parrot? Birds imitate all kinds of sounds. Doubtless a cell phone ring is in the avian call repertoire. The Lyre bird can perfectly mimick lots of man-made sounds: camera shutter, camera with a motor drive, car alarm, chainsaw. http://youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

They should set up an experiment where different people pray for the same thing using different prayers (and different faiths) along with a control group of people reading poetry and tally the percentages of people that get results, so we know which prayers are most effective.

Is the movie JFK2 true?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=818267521031292324

Utterly convincing documentary!

Dead body raft like on Rome.

Nice, I like that one. Maybe they could do a show set in Roman era myths.... just have to come up with a few more.

Any suggestions on how they could do this one? Pig corpses aren't going to cut it this time, and neither is Buster.

I'd like to know if washing colors in cold water vs. hot really makes a difference. Maybe that's not explode-y enough though...

Easy.

Test them in cold water, hot water, and a control group, in gasoline. Be sure to include dryer footage.

Does nickb = pg?

No.

It'd be cool to have a behind-the-scenes style show like I've seen done on Dirty Jobs where you kind of get to know the camera people and sounds folks, etc. that are always behind the camera.

I'm only suggesting this because I'm sure there are others out there that are thinking it.

... Can you get me Kari's number? :)

Is it true that the North Pole won't have any more Ice by the end of 2008???

Twitter: Infosourcer

Ask them for help pluralizing words in your HN submissions ;)

hahah... touche

Ask them if I can have a job.

Looks like PG is right about the mean downmodding.

Downmodding is getting more frequent, but comments are also getting worse. The only problem so far as I can see is that instead of downmodding all bad comments, everyone seems to pick the same comment and downmod it.

Everyone picks the same comment to upmod. People see a good or bad number next to the comment and want to go along with the groupthink. After all, how could you go wrong upmodding a comment that 20 other people already upmodded?

I tend to do the opposite. Even if I somewhat agree with a comment, if it has a higher score than I think it should, I downmod it. Ditto for bad comments, but in reverse. I pay special attention to the 1 point comments that I like... they definitely get an upvote (note that "like" does not necessarily mean "agree with").

I remember you! Glad you have an opportunity to make it out here to California!

Yeah me too! I'm really excited to see where all the magic happens.

ask them to find manbearpig

Do girls poop

hahah you guys have no sense of humor

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