Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:08] Thunderf00t: So what if I were to tell you that there’s quite literally a way where you can lose 1 kilo—that’s like 2 pounds—per day? With no fuss, no tricks, no dieting—just literally breathing the weight away.
[0:24] ‘Crazy!’, I hear you ask, ‘you’ve got to be selling me something!’ I hear you say. Actually, no; not even close. This is using knowledge gained through the Apollo space program.
[0:36] You see, if you can put three men in an oversized Coke can and fly them off into space for a week or so, the one thing that you REALLY need to remember is to pack enough supplies before you leave. And the supply that you’ll miss the most the first, is air.
[0:52] clip from Garbage, The Trick is to Keep Breathing
[1:02] Thunderf00t: -specifically, the oxygen in the air. So NASA really needed to know how much oxygen they should put in their space capsule. Now it turns out you need about a kilo—that’s about 2 pounds—of oxygen per day to survive.
[1:17] Or looked at another way, you breathe out about a kilo—about 2 pounds—of carbon dioxide per day. Now just think about that for a second. If you breathe out about a kilo per day that means that you’re breathing about 365 kilos per year. That’s a THIRD of a TON of carbon dioxide is how much [Equation] your breathing out PER YEAR. That’s FIVE times my own body weight. And just so you know, this chemical reaction is doing what your body is doing EVERY single day. It’s essentially burning sugar and it’s releasing about how much energy your body releases per day. And that’s about how much carbon dioxide your body is producing PER DAY.
[1:59] Which does bring about this really quite odd question that if I excrete five times my own body mass of carbon dioxide per year, is there really anything left of me that was there at beginning of the year? I mean, just ignore for a second the water that you take in and put out. The majority of the mass that you actually excrete comes out as carbon dioxide. That is, if you’re going to lose weight, it’s gonna come out of the same hole that it went in through.
[2:25] clip from Garbage, The Trick is to Keep Breathing
[2:29] Thunderf00t: This has a very global impact. I mean YOU—just you—your metabolism alone is producing about a THIRD of a ton of carbon dioxide per year. That’s HALF the mass of a small car, and there are 7 billion other people doing almost exactly the same thing. How that carbon footprint compares to your total carbon footprint, and how the energy dumped into the atmosphere from your burning metabolism compares to the total amount of global heating that you’re gonna get from that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are points that we’re going to address in an upcoming video series called “The Universe in Perspective”.
Got a little lost trying to meet up with the gang for lunch, and while wandering I bumped into Richard Dawkins. We exchanged pleasantries, but he was clearly going somewhere and I was lost and late for lunch. Had lunch with DataJack, Ashley and ZOMGitscriss, although me and Crissy were so stuffed from breakfast that we could only hack coffee. I then went out to the car to bring out the ‘big guns’: MY catholic outfit and the communion wafers. By the time I got back to the convention some talk had just finished and there was a giant table full of giant, and very sweet looking cookies. So I did what any sensible person would have done under such circumstances, I opened up the communion wafers and added them as a plate on the end of the cookie table!
As people filtered by I accosted them with the words ‘Blasphemy Maam?, blasphemy Sir?’,’Get your celestial zombie flesh here, freshest in town!’, ‘Remember Sir, blasphemy is a victim-less crime’ and so on. Even went in to find PZ at one point and we muched on communion wafers blessed with the magic words from Army of Darkness ‘Klaatu barada nikto.’ Got through about 250 wafers in the end. It was a gloorrious blasphemy ! Spent most of the afternoon chatting with people of one sort or another, mostly from RDF and SSA. Wearing a priest uniform is absolutely fantastic. All I had done was put on a dress, and people started treating me with all sorts of underserved respect. It’s baffling to me why wearing the uniform of irrationality should bring you social respectability but it does, and YES, definitely I was soooo tempted to abuse that underserved respect. Y’see Chuck Norris was guest of honor at some dinner for a karate championship, sooo tempted to bluff my way in and ask him why he hated the flying spaghetti monster. There was also a significant amount of debate about who would win in a show down between Norris and Dawkins. It later transpired that Norris had a security detail to take care of him which really kinda burst the internet meme of the indestructible and unbeatable man.
In early evening came the hot tubing! Regrettably I didn’t have a swimming costume of any sort, so I did what any self respecting man wanting to show the absurdity of religion would do, and went hot tubing in my priest uniform (having stripped off my pants and shoes of course). IT WAS FAAANTASTIC! Not only did everyone love it, but the bubbles were going up my dress. It was just like Marilyn Monroe in subway season. The drinks had already started to flow, and I had managed to bring some of the 151 out to the hot tub, and by the time they turned the bubbles off I was already ‘a little bit tipsy’. It then suddenly occurred to me as I was walking back into the hotel, that I was almost naked, bar my priests dress. I had no wallet, my pants were in someone elses room, and I didn’t have a key, indeed the only thing I had left was the car key and whistle around my neck. Other than that I was walking around Vegas, dressed as a priest, with only my underwear to protect my chastity. Well I guess it’s something to cross off my ‘to do’ list. Back at Delmars (the bar) the booze continued to flow, till many a drink later, I retired with Liz n Howard to pass out on their sofa.
The next morning (Sunday), this time, much the worse for wear I headed down for breakfast with a craving for pancakes. Enroute bumped into bumped into Eugenie Scott of NCSE and we chatted for a bit about the possibility of doing an interview or something in LA. Hooked up with Crissy, Liz and Howard for breakfast. Service was fairly slow, and breakfast was late, so I had to excuse myself early to a podcast with the ‘Ardent Atheist’. PZ was there, but damn was my brain ‘morning after the night before’ fried. I did the trooper thing and did my best to hold it together, but, oooh, could I have done with another 4 hours sleep and some paracetamol! The podcast was made all the more interesting by a girl who was a theist of some sort. She was very sporting about it, but ultimately missed the fact what makes science, well science, is the models need some level of predictivity. Somewhat recovered over the afternoon before helping the RDF guys pack up before heading off to dinner with them (a pleasant sushi house). Back at Delmars that evening things went in a rather predictable fashion with the exception that people were visibly thinner on the ground. We took a brief break from the bar as Crissys fans had given her some stuff to do while at TAM before heading back down to the bar.
Randi showed up briefly and everyone in the bar went absolutely ballistic. Said a mournful goodbye to Ashley, who had been run ragged over the past few days (she had an early flight), but not before giving me instructions to keep Crissy safe and make sure she got back to her room safe (having some knowledge of how these conferences tend to play). I hung around for a couple of hours but I too was a spent force, and by now in pigtails(!), and after explaining to Crissy my ‘duties’, she made it quite clear that the gesture was appreciated, but she was aware of what these conferences were like, and could handle it, and she looked like it too! Said my goodbyes to Crissy too, gonna be while before I see her again. 😦
Went up to sleep in a vacated room of one of the folks from the RDF.
On the final day (actually the day after the conference ended, Monday), I was again feeling kinda groggy, but not that bad. Took breakfast with friends from RDF (M, S and N), before helping them shift some of their stuff. On walking out of the casino, I suddenly realized I had no plan for what to do next. None. Took a brief look at the map and decided that I should head towards California.
Thunderf00t 