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View Full Version : Paul Harvey Jr. vs. Science


Phase Inverter
20th October 2008, 04:49 PM
I had the opportunity recently to catch the Paul Harvey Show, hosted by Paul Harvey Jr., a few times over the last few weeks. Each time I heard it, he made some comment about science. Below are the transcripts of the three stories that I heard.

Emerging details on something we started last week. It was there... and then it was gone. Lingered two hundred tantalizing days. Long enough for astronomers to decide that whatever it was we saw in the night sky, it was like nothing we have ever seen or even imagined among the literally innumerable stars. And, no this was not a star, not a super-nova, certainly not a black hole. In fact the spectrum analysis suggests it was made of nothing we know of in the entire universe. Just appeared out of nowhere. Spotted first by the Hubble Space Telescope. Can't have been any nearer than a hundred-thirty light years but may have been eleven billion. And, whereas stars reside in galaxies, no, not this thing. And I want you to remember this report, and the many others like it next time someone tries to tell you that wonders are worthless, and science is king. Because science, once again, doesn't know what it's looking at. One of the elite physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider said the flash was what you'd expect, quote, when an Imperial Star-Destroyer reaches warp ten. And he was not smiling.



You've heard of near death experiences. Nobody wants to call them death experiences yet because science has taken no official position that anything happens afterward. But that may all be about to change. You see, over the next three years they're going to conduct a study. In twenty-five hospitals in the US and UK, in which special shelves will be installed in resuscitation areas. You know how people whose hearts and brains have stopped, later sometimes tell of looking down from above at themselves and doctors. Well, those high shelves are going to have unique images on them, visible only from above. And if those clinically dead patients are revived knowing what those images are, science will take another hit. Forced to admit that consciousness is something separate from the physical you.



What you're about to hear is, at the bottom of it, what this program is all about. The golden calf called science keeps getting its little tail singed by some greater, yet inexplicable reality. In astrophysics, those most recent mocking intruders on scientific law and order are called dark energy and dark matter. Euphemisms for "we have absolutely no idea what's really going on in outer space." And now, this morning, along comes dark flow. Patches of matter way out there in the high sky, traveling at unimaginable speeds and in a uniform direction that can not be explained by any force anybody knows of. Best the pseudo-explainers can do is to say whatever is pushing or pulling this matter at two million miles an hour must be outside the known universe. You understand what you've just heard? Our best technology has just proved the existence of something beyond the universe. Of something immeasurably powerful beyond all the stars that are. And, for some reason, you and I are the only people talking about it.


This is the first time I have ever listened to the show with him hosting, but I get the impression that Mr. Harvey Jr. is not too fond of science.

fls
20th October 2008, 04:54 PM
This is the first time I have ever listened to the show with him hosting, but I get the impression that Mr. Harvey Jr. is not too fond of science.

You know what's really weird about all of that? He wouldn't even know about any of that (or that it was wonderful) except for science.

Linda

dudalb
20th October 2008, 05:40 PM
You know what's really weird about all of that? He wouldn't even know about any of that (or that it was wonderful) except for science.

Linda


The Woo is strong with this one.
I see he is careful not be to specific as to what kind of woo he endorses. He can suck in both the Fundy Christians and the New Age morons that way.

Ysidro
21st October 2008, 12:25 AM
when an Imperial Star-Destroyer reaches warp ten.

Everyone knows Star Destroyers (no hyphen!) travel through hyperspace! A Bird of Prey goes to warp ten! He can't even get his fandoms straight!

Priorities, doncha know? :D ;) :p

Ladewig
22nd October 2008, 03:48 PM
Every broadcast opens with the words "Stand by for news." I cannot listen to that phrase without instantly thinking that the next line should be, "immediately following this broadcast."

SphereGuy
22nd October 2008, 04:27 PM
I've heard stories that were debunked by Snopes ages ago repeated as "current news" on that show. It's basically a commercial with stories, both not true and hardly true, and some opinions sprinkled in.

CapelDodger
22nd October 2008, 04:33 PM
I've heard stories that were debunked by Snopes ages ago repeated as "current news" on that show. It's basically a commercial with stories, both not true and hardly true, and some opinions sprinkled in.

A sure-fire recipe for success.

UnrepentantSinner
24th October 2008, 10:00 PM
This is the first time I have ever listened to the show with him hosting, but I get the impression that Mr. Harvey Jr. is not too fond of science.

I'm sure he loves science - "True" science, which cannot contradict a literal reading of the Bible.

Ladewig
25th October 2008, 06:57 AM
As they used to say on ALT.FOLKLORE.URBAN, the purpose of the Paul Harvey show is to allow people without e-mail addresses to get urban legends.

Cavemonster
25th October 2008, 07:30 AM
I used to listen to his segment when I was in Tennessee (It came on after a personal finance show I liked)

What bugged me more than anything was the fact that the advertisements were presented as indistinguishable from the "news". He'd read a "news" story, then an ad, in the same tone, with no announcement.

It was very jarring to hear him right after NPR.

Puppycow
25th October 2008, 07:46 AM
The golden calf called science
There's a dead giveaway there. He's a hardcore woo.

Perpetual Student
26th October 2008, 11:44 AM
Unfortunately, this guy is part of mainstream American anti-science pop culture. It's my guess that a majority of listeners would agree with him. Our society may yet kill the golden goose.

.13.
26th October 2008, 03:13 PM
"You've heard of near death experiences. Nobody wants to call them death experiences yet because science has taken no official position that anything happens afterward. But that may all be about to change. You see, over the next three years they're going to conduct a study. In twenty-five hospitals in the US and UK, in which special shelves will be installed in resuscitation areas. You know how people whose hearts and brains have stopped, later sometimes tell of looking down from above at themselves and doctors. Well, those high shelves are going to have unique images on them, visible only from above. And if those clinically dead patients are revived knowing what those images are, science will take another hit. Forced to admit that consciousness is something separate from the physical you."

Good stuff. Science fails by proving consciousness is seperate from the physical body...