Once again, it's that time of the week. With no jingles, no
music, no talent and no apparent agenda. My name is Adam curry
here in the curry condo in San Francisco.
And I'm John C. Dvorak actually sound more like you're in the
curry bucket.
Really? Let me see. Maybe I can. Oh, no, that's because I'm on
the on the mobile setup. So when I do it from home, then you get
the nice, really clear sound. And now I'm basically talking to
you through a little hole in my laptop screen. Oh, really? Yeah.
Sure. The laptop. Yeah, well, I'm talking into my microphone.
But the sound that's going into Skype is, is through the laptop
mic.
Okay, so you're gonna sound better on the broadcast? Oh,
yeah.
Oh, yeah, baby. In fact, I'm vibing all over my own sound
right now as we speak.
We should do it to Leo does when I do the twit thing with him, he
like makes himself sound great. And everybody else sounds like,
do you guys do that on Skype? Or do do you do it on I chat? It's
done on Skype. Okay, that works out pretty well. It sounds
pretty, pretty decent. Yeah,
yeah. The, you know, the drawback is that wanted to do a
couple of other shows like they wanted to do. I still want to do
and I'm going to try I do a pod cast or pod show cast with a
bunch of comics and deconstruct jokes, I still think it'd be a
very fascinating show. And I know a lot of comics, my wife
used to produce comedy. And the problem is, is like getting, you
know, first getting people up to speed on Skype. And then making
sure they have a good enough connection to do it. Otherwise,
you really can't do any of this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind
of self limiting.
Well, you know, the they have a computer though, right? Most of
these P
everyone has a computer with it looks like as a mouse, you don't
have to like go there and set it up. Right. Yeah. Because a lot
of people have broadband, they have the capability to do this
stuff. But they just don't know how to do
it. And you don't like you don't like phone calls.
You know, they're just too hard to mix. It has a phone call
sound. I mean, Skype, even when it's not working well, and it
breaks up once in a while. Has an in studio sound that I think
people prefer to listen to.
Right. Yes, it does sound better. I agree. I agree. Okay,
John has been a man. It's been a long month, we're at the end.
And I just found out that I might actually be staying
another another week here in San Francisco.
Oh, that's great. Yeah.
You better grease up day because I'm been away from home too
long.
Yeah. Well, I'll stay away from you then. So what's what do we
have on the you know, you were telling us? You know, we had
actually had lunch the other day. And you were mentioning a
couple of items I think we should discuss and one of them
was your your continue? You can your continue to hassle by the
TSA when you come into the country?
Yeah. And it's, it's not the TSA. Technically, it is the
Customs and Border Protection Agency, I think they are. Okay,
so you're basically being stopped by the customs guys at
the end?
Exactly. So whenever, yeah, it is very different. It's also a
part of Homeland Security. But it is it is a completely
different department. But it starts the minute you go through
those glass corridors where you talk to the customs agent. And
then they look at your passport, they scan the RFID chip that's
in there, because I have a new passport. And then they look at
the terminal. And every single time it's like, all this
tapping, typing, you know, looking looking back at my
passport typing, typing, and, you know, and then I always get
a big, big M, on my on my customs form. And and this time
I asked, you know, what is that for? For many, many what? Well,
I don't know, just many, many, really. So then you
get to they do have a bunch of codes that they put on there. I
know. There's a line sometimes it's different colours. Yeah,
well, yes. It must be a website that describes these things,
don't you think?
They have their own website and it talks about everything on the
security form and why you could be stopped and or the customs
form and why you could be stopped. Because what happens
then is, you know, as you have your luggage and you hand that
off to the officers there, they say, Oh, you have to go this
way. And this way is it's not through like the agricultural
line. They put my my customs form into a into a plastic
envelope, which is blue, because they also have yellow ones. I'm
not quite sure what the blue is for. And then I have to go up to
another officer at the desk. And then he starts going into all
these questions. They don't even look at my bag. It's something
else. You know, it seems to be a lot of questions about Are you
sure you're not carrying more than $10,000?
Well, you know, you're known as Mr. Moneybags. Yeah, well,
I had this big black bag with me, but they still don't look at
it. And you know, at this time, he had the guy actually went to
his supervisor, and then he came back. And of course, I was
prepared. I had a business card this time. And I just for yucks,
I said, he said, Do you have any more ID? I'm like, Well, yeah,
so you have my passport, a business card. Oh, here's my
pilot's licence and see maybe if that'll mess with his head.
That's cool. But that didn't make any difference. And then I
said,
You know what, you're missing a Costco card.
I'll try that next time. And I said, you know, so what is this?
By the
way, by the way, just to interrupt the story. And I will
Jake course I do it better than anybody else. When people ask me
for a photo ID I always show him a Costco cart because it has a
photo on it.
Okay, well, the only photo ID I have is my passport because
there's no law that no driver's licences don't have photo IDs on
them.
Anyway, go ahead with the strobe sorry,
right. So, so I say, you know, could you please tell me what's
going on? Oh, it's nothing. It's just random. I said, this is
three times in a row that I've come into the state. And he
says, that's exactly what random is. I said, Uh huh. As if it
says right here, you know, the CBP procedures will be explained
to me is one of your, you know, one of your mission statements
here? It says, Yeah, well, it's just random. So what kind of
information he says, you know, stuff is in there that we don't
control or change. And so there you go, it's just random, he was
clearly just not going to tell me not going to tell me what's
going on. But now that I've done a little bit of research,
there's about a million people on these lists. And there's all
different kinds of lists. And I'm on a pretty insignificant
one, if I look at some of the hassles that other people are
going through. And of course, I'm not going to actually try
and get off of this list. I mean, this is all the hassle I
get, I can live with that. I think it's probably would open
up a bigger can of worms, if I send in all my details and try
to follow through just the frustration alone, because no
one seems to be able to actually find out how to get off these
lists, except for one, which is if you have the same name as a
suspected terrorist, the system is set up to change that. But
the system from what I have read is not set up to actually remove
people from the list entirely.
That makes sense. Yeah. So I know there's a guy, I forgot
what it is, is one name like Bill Johnson, or there's some I
mean, they the TV shows here in the US, they harp on this one
name, I can't remember the name exactly. I think some like Bill
Johnson very common name, or, or Jerry Jensen, or there's some
very common name, and then it's the maxed out name. I mean,
you're at the top of the terrorist list and everything
these people literally cannot get on a plane.
I'm just thinking, I'm just realising that about nine or 10
months ago, there was a deal that we tried to put together
with a radio network. And that deal for a whole bunch of
reasons fell through and the main guy on the other side, sent
me an email at one point and threatened me that he would call
up his buddies at customs and get me make sure that I had a
cavity search each time I came into the country that was
basically what he said I should look up the emails pretty funny.
So I'm wondering if that has something to do with it? If so,
then that of course is something that should be traceable and is
a huge misuse of power. But I'm not really being investigated
for any contraband I don't think you're
being harassed. Now the thing is, you say you know it should
be traceable. But then again, it might not let me tell you my
story, which is not quite as horrendous but it's actually
more annoying because it's a continuing one we have an
account of you know, because we're part of the in the west
coast or you're stuck with us SBC which is a TNT and so we end
anyway our phone gets slammed a lot of next you know because we
people calling up to try and get you to switch now well,
it's not even there in Bali call calling anymore they just do it
but it's not that it's that there's all these extra services
they add to the 18 T bill and let me just explain you know we
have a long time ago this is like me and the burners and the
cell phones people who listened to me a lot know that i i prefer
buying these disposables Oh yeah. And well with the with our
phone service, we only have local service and is the same up
in Washington in here. And we use calling cards to make long
distance calls because it's just there's no comparison you don't
have to worry about a lot of that just a cheaper more
sensible thing to do if you can do it because the quality is
sometimes even better. And so we don't have long distance service
to on the phones
you're funny man John C Dvorak. Keep going.
Okay, so we have no long distance service because we just
dial the 800 number and make it long you know, whatever we do,
and besides I use prefer people calling me even though I don't
keep them machine but anyway, let's get back to this Alright,
so every once every two months the next thing you know we've
got long distance service we have all these crazy services
that we never use because I don't like for example having a
call waiting because I don't like to be talking to somebody
on the phone and then having the phone call interrupted by
somebody else who's just you know, could be a sales call.
Yeah, but that's but that's the beauty of of caller ID if I
don't recognise the number I you know, if I hear the beep i like
call waiting I'll you know, I'll just look while I'm talking. A
lot of people think it's fantastic. I think it stinks and
I don't like the beep. So anyway, but so we have next
thing we so this was happening over and over. So We We got a TN
T to give us a password. So every so you cannot do anything
on our supposedly on our phone without giving them the
password. So some, you know, buddy's gonna say
oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. So they said they set up the
password so you can't change it?
No, we can change it. Oh no, they saved the password so
somebody else can't change it. Okay, got it. Because what's
been going on is somebody else's changing it. And so now so now
it got changed again, like a week ago. Inside Job then
totally an inside job anyway. So we started, or my wife started
grilling this guy saying, Well, what about the password? Does
anybody get looked at it? Yeah, apparently all those people that
call, they can bring up your record and your password, your
password is on there
some some fucking phone monkey for eight bucks an hour sitting
there looking at all the passwords.
Exactly. And so we keep having to deal with this. And this
never goes away. I know. My wife says I've you saying She always
thinks it's somebody that hates me. You know, some Macintosh
user still has a grudge about something I said, 99
Wait a minute, I get an email that you've been harping on
leopard. So you know, they could it could be a new new,
like leopard. So this is the joke of it. I just talked about
an on tech five today, you can check it out if you're
interested in tech five.pacho.com You know, the
under listeners. And I say you know, people are calling it lib
tard and they're having all kinds of issues when it crashed
for me at the office today for the first time ever. Oh, really?
Yeah, crashed because they couldn't load some Excel
spreadsheet and it just died. It just basically hung up. And so I
rebooted it after like, you know, I've had to think for two
or three weeks, and I rebooted and I'm thinking, This is it, I
have to reboot the machine once every three weeks. And
it's like, I mean, it's like an etch a sketch, you just kind of
shake the Mac around and started up again. And it works magic
thinking you
know, and people are complaining about this. I'm a Windows user
we're rebooting every couple of days if we're lucky. And these
guys are moaning about it I'm thinking you guys haven't got a
clue
I gotta tell you man ever since I went back to the Mac I'm so
happy with my with my work experience just doing everything
is just so much nicer and I still I still till now I lug
along the VAIO laptop because it has been is basically now just
the studio. Right because the God cast blaster running which
only runs under Windows and you know, and I gotta tell you, I've
been on windows for a year and a half and I'm back to the Mac and
Damn, fuck you Steve Jobs you got it right
well, you know, I don't have a problem with either the systems
I liked I liked the Mac I liked the PC I mean I have issues with
with Apple as a company and but you know, the fact that it is a
better system, I'm not going to deny it and when people I've
said this before and I'll say it again if people are asking me
what to get you know, I tell them to get a Mac they get a Mac
laptop or get an iMac or something like that because
because they're not going to be calling me exactly but if I you
know I tell people to go get loaded up PC with a dual with a
you know, a dual core Tri core whatever they you know, some
fancy machine was making a lot of noise. It's got big fans in
it and a really fancy Yeah, it's probably a great machine for
playing games and things like that. But I don't want to get
the phone call about you know, the crazy crashing or whatever I
just too many too many too much going on.
I hate that. I really hate it. It's gone away from me now a
little bit but man for a while there. I was definitely. You'll
probably about five years ago, when there was a hole maybe
around the time XP came out, I guess I don't know. But man, I
was definitely the support guy for my family. Oh
yeah, no, it's terrible. In fact, yeah, no, it's yeah, just
it's to be avoided. I mean, especially if you've done it for
years and years and years, which, I mean, it was okay in
the early days of computing, you know, 20 years ago because it
was kind of cool to help people out and get them going. But now
it's just tedious and there's no reason for it. You know, did and
it doesn't Mac doesn't? I don't think a max a good deal by
necessarily. I mean, I was when like Sargon was pretty much the
same price. It's a little more expensive, but not that much
more expensive that you shouldn't get one.
Yeah, for the lack of hassle. Did you switching gears Did you
watch the Republican debate?
I only saw bits and pieces of it. And I'm actually surprised
that the Republicans would put up with such a cornball. I mean
when you have snow men asking your questions and guys as
avatars of Krusty the Clown, and whatever else is going on. And
these guys are standing up there seriously answering these
questions. And
did you did you see that Anderson Cooper issued an
apology? The day after the debates because there were like
two shills in the audience. One guy who sits on like three
boards with Hillary Clinton or something, something like that,
or, you know, on a border
the whole thing was a disaster. It was it was laughable. They
were Republicans. They shouldn't be ashamed of themselves for
putting up with it. They should have walked out Yeah,
I agree. It was really bad and just, you know, CNN just making
a show. I like it. It's entertaining. But you know, what
the hell does that have to do with With a real debate, you
know, high, it's just
now it was I, you know, I would really if I was any any of the
candidates, I would rethink going to any of these things
when it's set up as a joke,
ya know, I I tend to agree. And also I thought, my man Ron Paul
didn't do a great job. It wasn't the forum really, it was
infantile almost predict what everyone was going to say. And
there's a little bit you know, and then all the all the news I
read was, wow, fireworks and, you know, Giuliani and Romney,
and they're going at each other's throats and like, wasn't
all that it was dumb, was just dumb. It was
dumb about it. That summarises it. So I noticed that the
hurricane score came in finally, you know, hurricane season just
ended. In the United States,
it must have been lower than the cholera. Here's
what I got, you know, in 2005, when everyone's really jacked up
about global warming, there was these 26 hurricanes hit the US.
And so everybody's thinking, you know, they're all the whole
climate change and all this other folks run for the hills
run for the hills. So they So Colorado State there, they were
one of these, you know, these, all these great meteorologist
area, you know, arenas or I don't know what they are, but
these schools that have a lot of meteorologists in them, and
they're big shots, meteorologists out of state
predicted 17, we're going to hit this year, it's going to be
horrible, and it's getting worse and worse and worse, because of
global warming. One Yeah, I
was gonna say, I can't think of more than one, no one
hit the state. So there's a few that hit, you know, Central
America, but even then, it wasn't that many. So it was a
dud. So, so I'm thinking that these, you know, climatologists
and all these meteorologists, these guys don't know anything.
And we're still waiting for the huge superstorm that is supposed
to hit the west coast of continental continental Europe
and the east coast of the UK. These two know this. There's one
guy in the UK and a couple different meteorologists, you
know, basically TV weatherman, in continental Europe had been
predicting this for weeks, they evacuated 1000s of people two
weeks ago, nothing happened. Now they're talking about this huge
depression. You know, there was a famous instance in the UK.
Maybe I don't know, I think maybe nine or 10 years ago,
where a TV weatherman God, I wish I knew his name because the
Brits would know exactly what I'm talking about. He got a call
just before he went on the air from this woman. And he relayed
the story on the air. He said, You know, he was given the
weather forecast. He's saying, by the way, just got a call from
this woman who said there's a there's a twister coming
through. Coming through Wales or whatever it was. He says, I can
assure you don't have to worry about that, like 18 dead because
of this fucking twist that went through Wales and we've never
had the guy disappeared from the face of the planet. Isn't he has
no career. He's no life. He's gone.
A Twister and Wales. Wow. Yeah, I'm
sure it wasn't Wales. But you know, it was it was just any
hurricane or what that what's up with that? Well, it's a tornado.
We're not in Kansas anymore. Toto.
So I didn't know anything about this evacuation thing.
Yeah, I think 10,000 people were evacuated. They had stadium set
up and everything and it just didn't happen. Yeah, just the
rain a little bit. But they've been looking at us.
They've been looking at a soccer game and the stadium and imagine
have to do something to assuage. Exactly.
So yeah, it's, you know, I read the Dutch Google News. Every
day, I read the US Google News. I read the UK, Google News. And
then the Dutch Google News, which really gives me a flavour
of Europe. And there's a lot of stuff that that we just don't
know about over here. There really
are news coverage sucks. We I mean, it's weird, like the one
of the worst. And of course, especially we can read it in a
foreign language and you read, it's funny for anyone out there
who doesn't know Adam, you know, he roams around the office at
pod show. I don't know why, who he's talking to. But he's
probably his wife. Yeah, but he's got somebody on the other
end and he's speaking Dutch
I tongs I'm speaking in tongues
is rattling prattling away in some some foreign language that
I can't quite make out.
And that's usually I take those calls in the stairwell as you
know, of course, that's my real office. But then you know, I'm
talking to 50 into my wife for 1520 minutes and then you know,
you know how women can be and I said, Honey, I gotta hang up and
she's and yeah, okay, and oh, let me just talk about this. And
then so I start making coffee in the hallway and I started
walking towards my office hoping that the call will end just
before I walk into the meeting so that's what that's about
well it's it's actually adds a kind of a continental quality to
the whole place. Well, dude,
have you seen our office? I mean, it's like Tower of Babel
in there man. We've got guys with the turbans we've got
people with the you know, God knows from what planet they came
from, we've got quite an international crowd.
Yeah, but they're not speaking Dutch. Okay, so why the you
know, that guy with the, you know, that Korean that was
supposed to killed by a cell phone.
Yeah, I heard about that. I think I saw a post on on your
blog about that, that. Yeah, well, it turns out to be a hoax.
I was just gonna say it didn't look like an implosion it looked
like something might have melted
that we had on the blog was just a generic picture of a gel
generic picture. Okay. But apparently somebody had murdered
that guy. Oh, no. And then they planted the cell phone in some
way that make it look as though the cell phone might have killed
him. And what was interesting to me is that the media, nobody
questioned the story because I think, to be honest about it,
that everybody, especially people in the media, are, they
have such a deep seated hatred of cell phones and cell phone
users and the fact that they're annoying as they're walking
around. They were hoping it would kill it killed the guy.
Oh, well. I think I mentioned on my show the that what people
really want to see is some guys, cell phone blow up was holding
it up to his ear, you know,
on source code. Remember, Nokia had to recall hundreds of 1000s
of batteries, maybe millions of batteries. Remember that. So
probably two months before that. Someone called in and went
through this whole story about how his girlfriend woke up in
the middle of the night and the phone had been charging and the
battery exploded out of it. And flu shot straight across the
room and burned a hole in the rug. And she didn't know what's
going on. It was all backstory to it. And until you know, I
hooked him up with Nokia. And lo and behold the the exact battery
type that was the exploding kind was the one in this guy's phone.
So hopefully we contribute a little bit to, to them doing
that recall, but it was it was I thought it was pretty amazing.
Huh?
So you were going to talk to about the Yeah, it was amazing.
You were going to talk about I'm sorry, better reaction to your
expense.
I'm tired.
You are tired. Yeah. And you got to spend another week that's
terrible. So because I know you're trying to leave to get
back to,
to my my girls, man. And it's like cold here. It's
kind of really cold over the last couple of years. No
better in the UK. But at least there we have, you know, like
coal fire and a nice fire. You know, I
talking about coal fire. You know, I used to work for the Air
Pollution Control District and I'm still a lot of people don't
realise I'm an air pollution expert.
Among amongst many talents, Mr.
Yeah. But it happens. You build them up as you get to become
older. So anyway. So one of the things I have some Yes, that's,
that's cool. Sorry, I do have some sort of sick pleasure in
cranking up a coal fire every once in a while. Yeah. I love
because in California, people don't even know what coal looks
like. And, and I happen to have one of those, you know, the coal
holder, if you're gonna put a coal fire in your fireplace, you
need like this special kind of a basket. Yeah, he's loaded up
with coal. And then when you get the thing cranked up into and I
kind of fell in love with coal fires when I was in England
about 20 years ago, and I was out in the middle of nowhere at
some meetings, in some giant one of these giant inns that had a
bunch of rice in the room. You had one of those problems? Well,
actually, no, this was it was like a big hall with about five
fireplaces all lined up that each of them had a coal fire
going. And coal fires are absolutely fantastic. Because
they've stuffed for one thing once you get a coal fire going
people, you know, in the US in the west coast, the East Coast,
people know about this, they hate this stuff. But the West
Coast, they don't they don't understand any of it. And the
thing is, it's a fascinating product, because coal is a rock
that burns. Right. And so once you get it going, it burns for
ever. Yeah, it just glows. And you don't have to like have a,
you don't have to keep tending it and just
throw logs on the fire. You don't have to do any of that
yet. And it goes out a little bit after a couple hours and
just rake it up. And there it is, it's back.
And actually for us, they're really super high quality coal,
which we can get out here. You don't even have to do that. It
just is it'll go free on overnight and then in the
morning, it'll still be going and you can throw some new coal
on there and get it cranked up again. And it gives off a really
nice radiant heat. It has a flame that's that's very pretty.
It gives off a beautiful radiant heat. It's very hot. And but it
gives off a stink. It's not a bad smell. To me.
It's a cosy smell.
It's a funny smell and but I know for a fact that I haven't
done it for a while because the guys that I get the coal from
they stopped bringing it in. I'm going to try to get some more
but I know that for a fact when I cranked up in the
neighbourhood here that because I would draw you know go
someplace and come driving back you could smell the coal smell
in the area and I know for a fact nobody in the entire within
you know 10 miles of the House who was maybe smelling it knew
what it was. There's no way it's just an alien aroma to
California
okay mister pollution expert is this not horrible?
Well, you know the amount of the actual amount of particulate
which is real The The problem here is with low sulphur coal is
not really much of a problem. And the kind of coal that you
burn in fireplaces casually for decorative purposes is extremely
low sulphur. So it's not harmful. It's burning wood is
probably worse to be honest about it, in terms of what it
puts into the air. Well, I like it. Anyway, that's my story, and
I'm sticking to it. But it's really a great product. For me.
It's just amazing.
What are we not spoken about?
The comic book guy?
What we're gonna do is gonna give you the backstory on that.
Yeah, I don't know anything. You said, we're going to talk about
it on the show? Well,
I gotta be careful, because if I say it wrong, then he'll get
really upset. Well, who is he? Comic Strip blogger. Okay, his
name is Jay said something or other. I don't remember his real
name.
But he's a fan of yours, or what's well, he latched on to
the daily source code. Couple of years ago, and he started in the
comments, and he would just write these outrageous things.
You know, he really, as we would say, in Holland, his heart was
on his tongue. But you know, and he's he's also coincidentally
the guy that started this whole fucking Adam curry business,
because that's literally how he talks, you know. And, and, and
it was just really interesting to me. And I Googled him. And I
found out that, you know, he had worked at Nokia. And I guess he,
he had a blog, and he was basically posting on the blog,
you know, about shit that sucked within the company. That's, I'm
paraphrasing, I'm sure as to what it exactly was. And so he
got fired. And I don't know, some say he got kicked out of
Finland.
get kicked out of Finland, you don't want to
cross Naki as path man, they are Finland, and, and out of anger
and spite. But Maybe also because he felt there was more
future in the platform. He became a huge proponent of
Windows Mobile. And he started blogging and podcasting. He'd go
around to these MVP events, which I believe he's been banned
from now. And he would he would ask really straightforward
questions actually, journalistically. Great
questions. But his approach, of course, was very brash. And you
know, he'd be the equivalent of going up to, I saw a piece of
video done in the Apple UK store, where the journalist went
up to Phil Schiller and said, so, you know, is this going to
be a problem with anti competitive laws in Europe,
where you basically have to buy something to get something else?
Are you tying the phone to the, to the network, and then
immediately the PR people jump in and Schiller backs off? And
you know, that it's that kind of question straight to the point,
and good stuff. Exactly. Good stuff. And it freaks him out.
And I think he his appearance and the way he speaks, he has
his Polish German accent and he's just the vocabulary. Yeah.
So I got really interested in the guy. And, and that, you
know, I think Jeff Smith made a jingle for him, you know, and
then he started calling in and, and he knows a lot of shit,
particularly about the European Union. And so, you know, he give
reports on that.
And what like, what, what, give us some examples.
An example like a pro. Is
he an EU basher?
No, no, no, he really believes in the EU. But he points yeah,
many EU basher. Now he points out all of the all of the things
that are wrong and that are messed up. And you know, he's
another guy that gets stopped going into another country, and
then he'll record it. And you'll say, Why do I have to show
passport? Am I not a US citizen? Which, of course is a great way
not to get through passport control. Yeah, that works. But
he's no, he's a beautiful guy. And then he one time he came,
you know, we set up a date, after years, we would meet at
the UK office. And this video was on YouTube. And I think on
his site, comic strip, blog.com he interviewed me about my
mobile devices. And it was so funny, because then he gave me a
PowerPoint pitch about what he wanted to do to work for pod
show, you know, like a consultant type role. And it was
so funny. It was the only pitch I've ever received in my life
that literally ended with a slide that says, PS Fuck you,
Adam. Oh, man, this is so beautiful. But he's been.
He's been he's the one who invented that phrase. I know
you'd like to use?
Yes, yeah. So people start. It's comic strip blogger, you know,
and everyone knows him that way. And everyone on the show, listen
to the show has become accustomed to that. And, and
what I noticed is, I think I said once is this is my mistake.
I said, Hey, everyone should end their comments that way. That's
pretty cool. And then of course, everyone starts doing it. But
psychologically, it's really interesting, because the quality
of the comments has gone up, because people are really
concentrating because they know what the end they're gonna have
this big payoff. And, and the comments are good at you know,
they're short the sussing people don't ramble on because they
know you know, they gotta get to the point to get that bit in and
it's so it's it's been fabulous for me.
Yeah, apparently you like it? Yeah, I think you like being
cussed out.
You should. You should look this guy up though, because he has a
pretty interesting history and he's definitely one of us when
it comes to questioning authority, and the man, he's an
interesting guy.
Yeah, it sounds like I'm gonna have to I will check him out.
Now one other thing before we finish the show today, I wanted
to mention which we got a letter from somebody
who a letter, not an email, but an actual letter. I'm sorry. I
misspoke. Okay. I was kind of excited there for a minute.
Yeah, well, it I don't think I don't think I've gotten a letter
for God knows how long. Anyway, this guy wrote in talking about
we talked a little bit about this last week or the week
before about psycho or retro psychokinesis. Yeah, right. This
is the guy who moved to Switzerland. I did look into it
just a little bit, but not John
Walker. Right. John Walker's is a it get character. Anyway, he's
up in the mountains, or somewhere I know where he is.
He's somewhere buried somewhere in Switzerland. Anyway, the
we've mentioned. So this guy went and looked at this. And I
didn't even realise there were a couple of these experiments. I
didn't know they were on there. And I'm glad he sent me this
note. Because there's an experiment you can do with a
random number generator, that theoret or that at some level,
you can, by thinking about it can affect the outcome,
right. And the idea of that, because I did see that they have
these like Java applets. And you can send that to someone and
then they can generate a number randomly and then, but you can
swing back and forth. Now let me just reach out with this guy
says not too long. So Greg Hampton, says, John, I
discovered former lab blah, blah, blah experiments a few
years ago and tried some of the experience but never got any
statistically significant results. One day, a couple of
years ago, I decided to have my four year old grandson, try the
pendulum experiment. And people out there want to check this
out, you can go to form the lab, which is www fourmilab.ch. And
then you could dig around and you'll find these experiments.
Anyway, he says, I decided to have my four year old grandson
try the pendulum experiment. And he had the thing, hey, banging
up against one side like crazy. And his results are off the
charts. I just stood there in shock watching. Maybe it's all a
bunch of hooey. And his performance was some kind of
weird coincidence, but I'll never forget how exciting it was
to watch. You should try a couple of these pairs. I tried
the pendulum one myself, and I have it a sense that something
would change.
How does it work? What is the pendulum experiment? Exactly?
The pendulum experiment is a random number generator that
rocks a pendulum back and forth in some very standardised way.
And supposedly because of retro psychokinesis. And I have to
tell everybody out there, I think a lot of this is malarkey.
But there are some people that can go to a crap table. And when
and there's a lot of random numbers in the world, the way
the world works is a random number generator, and then a lot
of different ways. And, you know, I don't know, I just I'm
not buying into this, but I think it's interesting, and
people should check it out. But anyway, you can get this thing
to move around in ways that it shouldn't be moving, if you
concentrate in a funny kind of way. So you
do that you concentrate, and then it happens before your very
eyes,
you have to the way, the way I read it and the way it seems to
maybe work. Although it could all be a coincidence, like he
says is that you have to imagine the thing doing something before
it actually happens. In other words, you're not trying to make
it move. You don't say Oh, move moving over, like the old guy
was going, Whoa, make the paper lift, I'm going to levitate that
kind of thing. Now. It's something else, you have to have
some other way of doing it.
The Kinesis part that's that's the muscle you have to train.
But it's like you don't pay real. You don't. At least the
way it seems to me is you don't really pay close attention to
it. It just almost a background task and you know, people get
you ought to check it out and see what they think. I mean, I
think it's generally speaking malarkey and any effects that I
had. But John isn't, isn't this the same thing as you know, the
old adages of people saying, you know, if you act successful, you
will be successful? And you know, isn't it that type of
behaviour?
See, I'm not I'm going to argue against that, because my feeling
about that sort of thing, which is, I believe that's true to a
large extent. But that's the I think there's a milieu aspect to
that. In other words, if you hang out with a certain class of
people, you will develop kinds of body language and nonverbal
communication skills you don't even know you have and then you
will be become part of that group. You know, swimming with
the sharks is part of that. And so if you're, you know,
depending I'd like you were criticising me for holding my
fork in this peculiar way. The couple weeks have
I had an effect on you or have you become part of my group now
of the people who hold the fork properly?
Yeah, the feet group from Holland the
post group That's No, no, no, that's Emily Post, I know how to
hold my fork, you hold it like a baboon.
Anyway, so the point is, there's, you know, there's
milieu communication that takes place. And I think a lot of it
has to do with what you're describing is that and I don't
think that has anything to do with retro psychokinesis, where
you can go supposedly, or theoretically, or maybe to a
craps table in Vegas, and then
and imagine that it's going to hit number 36. Or I'm sorry,
number two, and you end up in the future, and then it actually
happens. Yeah, which
would be craps. But anyway, so. So anyway, you so that people
should just look at it, but but, you know, Walker's got as his
site has always been kind of interesting, because he's a
acquisitive person. He's, he's likes to look into things and
and I think he's sent my board. You know, I sent him a couple of
notes once he's actually sent me a nasty note, when I accused him
of leaving the country to avoid taxes, he sent me this nasty
note. And, you know, I sent him an apology. And then but you
know, and then I sent him something else once in a cabin
and he stopped communicating with me. So he's, he's, you
know, I don't think he's, like, necessarily receptive to like
normal people. That guy's worth a fortune, but
he's probably having a good time when I was
in. I was in Switzerland a few times and I was gonna say, let
me stop buying and going out. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe
people said you don't want to hang out with it. It
looks like those that research he did into retros what does it
retro psycho psychokinesis looks like he stopped doing that a
couple of years ago. I mean, all the stuff is still there, but
doesn't look like there's any new entries.
Yeah, yeah, I noticed that. I don't know if he gave up on it.
All right. So now I have to do I do I download this pendulum
thing is that
well, no, no, it's it's a it's a Java app. It runs on the
machine. Yeah. Okay, cool. Run it, you know, run it on a
machine that's got some some power. Because it'll spill the
suck your brain better will run on my Mac. In my Mac runs Java
apps. Sure. Should. It's mostly Java. It's like a Javascript
app. It's not like, I think
so. I guess I'm gonna kind of spend the weekend doing some
retro psychokinesis
Yeah, well, the one to do is to stop it. You can actually stop
the pendulum if you try hard enough.
But could you imagine what can I do with that power? Let's say
let's say because you know, I'm like, yeah, no, will you wait a
minute? Wait a minute, I'm pretty good. It's I know I'm a
believer and stuff like this. So let's say I'm able to do it if I
can do this pendulum thing by like Monday. We're so going to
fucking Vegas. We are so going we're out of here Monday night
we're in Vegas. Just got to be back Tuesday morning for a
meeting otherwise it's cool.
Yeah, in Vegas back Bekins for this kind of thing. You know, I
believe you know, I actually win a little bit not a lot. I don't
think anyone can, but I do quite well on video poker machines for
two there's two. There's Well there's two reasons one I know
which poker machines to look for. People don't realise that
all those poker machines and some of them playing the exact
same game have totally different payouts and you want to look for
one specific payout I can't remember the exact number I
always look it up before I go for some reason but anyway you
can if you go on the internet if you go on the internet look at
you know best payout video poker machine they'll tell you the
ones to look for and you just go you find those because the other
ones nickel and dimed to death just enough so you can't quite
when
can't quite get there and it's called like dealing
So anyway the but the video poker machine if you learn how
to play it, play a video poker machine which is actually it's
not like I would say as a high level skill but there are rules
to doing it right because it's not really poker That's the
irony of irony or the or the scam of video poker is not a
poker, there's not poker involved here. This is a this is
a different kind of a game. It's video poker. And if you know how
to play it, you can actually well I actually always when I
vote never walked away from video poker playing the right
machines without some, you know, some money
and a 39 minutes. I would have to call it a game, I would say
and so you'll have your homework now. What's that URL again?
Forum. For me lab
four. fo you are M I L A b.ch. You can also if you look up John
Walker's John Walker Switzerland on Google, you'll probably run
into it pretty easily, or retro psychokinesis I'm sure it's
listed I
coming to you from the curry condo in San Francisco. My name
is Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.
And we'll talk to you again next week with another no agenda.
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