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Nov. 30, 2007 - No Agenda
39:41
6: No Agenda 006
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Time Text
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. DeVorek.
I 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 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?
You're doing it through the laptop?
Yeah, well, I'm talking into my microphone, but the sound that's going into Skype is through the laptop mic.
Oh, okay.
So you're going to 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 what Leo does when I do the twit thing with him.
He makes himself sound great and everybody else sounds like crap.
Do you guys do that on Skype or do you do it on iChat?
It's done on Skype.
Oh, okay.
That works out pretty well.
It sounds pretty decent.
Yeah.
You know, the drawback is I wanted to do a couple of other shows.
I still want to do it.
I'm going to try.
I do a podcast or a pod show cast with a bunch of comics and deconstruct jokes.
I still think it would be a very fascinating show, and I know a lot of comics.
My wife used to produce comedy.
And the problem is 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, that's true.
So it's kind of self-limiting.
Well, you know, they have a computer though, right?
Most of these people.
Yeah, everyone has a computer.
It looks like it's a monster, so I had to 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 phone calls?
You know, they're just too hard to mix.
And 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.
Yeah, it does sound better.
I agree.
I agree.
Okay, John, it's been a long month.
We're at the end, and I just found out that I might actually be staying another week here in San Francisco.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, yeah.
You better grease up, baby, because I've been away from home too long.
Yeah, well, I'll stay away from you then.
So...
What do we have on the – you were telling us – we 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 continued hassle by the TSA when you come into the country.
Yeah, and it's not the TSA. Technically, it is the Customs and Border Protection Agency.
Agency, I think they are.
Okay, so you're basically being stopped by the customs guys at the end.
Exactly.
Yeah, it is very different.
It's also part of Homeland Security, but 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 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, looking, looking, back at my passport, typing, typing, and then I always get a big M on my customs form.
And this time I ask, what is that for?
For many.
Many what?
Well, I don't know.
Just many.
Many?
Really?
They do have a bunch of codes that they put on there.
I know.
Sometimes there's a line, sometimes there's different colors.
There 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 or the customs form and why you could be stopped.
Because what happens then is as you have your luggage and you hand it off to the officers there, they say, oh, you have to go this way.
And this way, it's not through the agricultural line.
They put my customs form 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, there 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.
Well, I had this big black bag with me, but they still don't look at it.
And this time, 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 just for yucks, 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 license.
I see maybe that'll mess with his head.
That's cool.
But that didn't make any difference.
You know what?
You're missing a Costco card.
Yeah, I'll try that next time.
And I said, so what is this?
By the way, just to interrupt the story...
Of course, I do it better than anybody else.
When people ask me for a photo ID, I always show them a Costco card because it has a photo on it.
Okay.
Well, the only photo ID I have is my passport because driver's licenses don't have photo IDs on them.
Anyway, go ahead with the story.
I'm sorry.
Right.
So I say, 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 States.
He says, that's exactly what random is.
I said, uh-huh.
I said, but it says right here, the CBP procedures will be explained to me as one of your mission statements here.
He says, yeah, well, it's just random.
So what kind of information?
He says, stuff is in there that we don't control or change, and so...
There you go.
It's just random.
He's 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...
I mean, if this is all the hassle I get, I can live with that.
I think it probably would open up a bigger can of worms if I, you know, 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, there's one name like Bill Johnson, or there's some...
I mean, the TV shows here in the U.S., they harp on this one name.
I can't remember the name exactly, but I think it's something like Bill Johnson, a very common name, or Jerry Jensen.
There's some very common name, and it's the maxed-out name.
I mean, you're at the top of the terrorist list, and these people literally cannot...
I'm just thinking.
I'm just realizing that about nine or ten 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 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 email.
It's 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.
No, you're just being harassed.
Now, the thing is, you say 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, you know, because we're part of, in the West Coast here, you're stuck with SBC, which is AT&T. And so we, anyway, our phone gets slammed a lot.
People calling up to try and get you to switch networks?
Well, it's not even, they don't even bother calling anymore.
They just do it.
But it's not that.
It's all these extra services they add to the AT&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 listen to me a lot know that I, I prefer buying these disposable phones.
With our phone service, we only have local service.
This is the same up in Washington and here.
We use calling cards to make long-distance calls because there's no comparison.
You don't have to worry about a lot of...
It's 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 on the phones.
You're a funny man, John C. Dvorak.
What?
Keep going.
Okay, so we have no long-distance service because we just dial the 800 number and make a long, you know, whatever we do.
And besides, I prefer people calling me if I'm around, even though I don't keep a machine.
But anyway, let's get back to this.
So about 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 just could be a sales call.
Yeah, but that's the beauty of caller ID. If I don't recognize the number, if I hear the beep, I like call waiting.
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.
So this was happening over and over.
So we got AT&T to give us a password.
So you cannot do anything, supposedly, on our phone without giving them the password.
Oh, yeah, of course.
So they set up the password so you can't change it.
No, we can change it.
They set up the password so somebody else can't change it.
Okay, got it.
Because what's been going on is somebody else is changing it.
And so now it got changed again like a week ago.
That's got to be an inside job then.
Totally an inside job.
So my wife started grilling this guy saying, well, what about the password?
Does anybody get a look at it?
Yeah, apparently all those people that call, they can bring up your record and your password is on there.
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.
My wife says, if you're saying, you know, she always thinks that somebody that hates me, you know, some Macintosh user, who still has a grudge about something I said in 1989.
Wait a minute.
I'm getting email that you've been harping on Leopard, so, you know, it could be a new occurrence.
I like Leopard.
See, this is the joke of it.
I just talked about it on Tech 5 today.
You can check it out if you're interested at tech5.podshow.com.
You know, there are 100 listeners.
And I say, you know, people are calling it leptard, and they're having all kinds of issues with it, and it crashed for me at the office today for the first time ever.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it crashed because it 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 this thing for two or three weeks and I rebooted it and I'm thinking, this is it?
I have to reboot the machine once every three weeks?
Yeah, it's like an Etch-A-Sketch.
You just kind of shake the Mac around and start it up again and it works magically.
I'm thinking, you know, when people are complaining about this, I'm a Windows user.
We're rebooting every couple of days if we're lucky.
Yeah.
And these guys are moaning about it.
I'm thinking, oh, you guys haven't got a clue.
Yeah, I got to tell you, man, ever since I went back to the Mac, I'm so happy with my work experience.
Just doing everything is just so much nicer.
So now I lug along the Vio laptop because it's basically now just the studio, right?
Because it's got Cast Blaster running, which only runs under Windows.
Yeah.
I've got to 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 of the systems.
I like the Mac.
I like the PC. I mean, I have issues with Apple as a company.
But, you know, the fact of the matter, it is a better system.
I'm not going to deny it.
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 they're not going to be calling me.
Exactly.
But if I, you know, I tell people to go get a loaded up PC with a dual, with a, you know, a dual core, a tricore, whatever, you know, some fancy machine which is making a lot of noise and 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.
Just 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, probably about five years ago, when there was a whole, maybe around the time XP came out, I don't know.
But man, I was definitely the support guy for my family.
Yeah, no, it's terrible.
In fact, yeah, it's to be avoided.
I mean, especially if you've done it for years and years and years.
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.
I don't think a Mac's a good deal, necessarily.
I mean, one like Stargate Wells, 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.
Hey, 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 snowmen asking you 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 see that Anderson Cooper issued an apology the day after the debates because there were like two shills in the audience?
Yeah.
One guy who sits on like three boards with Hillary Clinton or something like that, or is on a board.
Oh no, the whole thing was a disaster.
It was laughable.
The Republicans, they should 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's just making a show.
I like it.
It's entertaining.
But, you know, what the hell does it have to do with a real debate, you know?
I don't know.
It's just...
No.
It was, you know, I would really, if I was any of the candidates, I would rethink going to any of these things when it's set up as a joke.
Yeah.
No, 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.
Yeah.
You could predict what everyone was going to say, and there was a little bit, you know, and then all the news I read was, wow, fireworks, and, you know, It wasn't all that.
It was dumb.
It was just dumb.
It was dumb.
That's about it.
That summarizes 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 previous years.
Well, here's what I got.
You know, in 2005, when everyone was really jacked up about global warming, there was these 26 hurricanes hit the U.S. And so everybody's thinking, you know, the whole climate change and all this other stuff.
We're fucked.
Run for the hills.
Run for the hill.
So Colorado State, they were one of these great meteorologist 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.
Meteorology schools.
Colorado State predicted 17 were 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 going to say, I can't think of more than one.
No, one hit the states.
There was a few that hit Central America, but even then it wasn't that many.
So it was a dud.
So I'm thinking, these climatologists and all these meteorologists, these guys don't know any things.
And we're still waiting for the huge super storm that is supposed to hit the west coast of continental Europe and the east coast of the UK. This one guy in the UK and a couple different meteorologists, basically TV weathermen, in continental Europe have been predicting this for weeks.
They evacuated thousands of people two weeks ago.
Nothing happened.
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 ten 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, I just got a call from this woman who said there's a twister coming through Wales or whatever it was.
He says, I can assure you, you don't have to worry about that.
Like, 18 dead because of this fucking twister that went through Wales, and we've never, you know, the guy disappeared from the face of the planet.
He has no career, he has no life, he's gone.
A twister in Wales, wow.
Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't Wales, but, you know, it was in Britain, just any hurricane.
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, yeah, yeah.
I think 10,000 people were evacuated.
They had stadiums set up and everything, and it just didn't happen.
It just rained a little bit.
But they've been looking at these huge...
It rained a little bit.
They had a soccer game in the stadium.
They might as well do something to assuage the puppet.
Exactly.
I read the Dutch Google News every day.
I read the U.S. Google News, I read the U.K. Google News, and then the Dutch Google News, which really gives me a flavor of Europe.
And there's a lot of stuff that we just don't know about over here.
It really is.
No, our news coverage sucks.
I mean, we're like one of the worst.
And of course, especially if you 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 Podshow.
I don't know 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 guess.
In tongues.
I'm speaking in tongues.
He's rattling away in some...
Some foreign language that I can't quite make out.
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 my wife for 15, 20 minutes, and then, you know, you know how women can be.
And I say, hon, I've got to hang up.
And she says, yeah, okay.
Oh, let me just talk about this.
And so I start making coffee in the hallway, and I start 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 actually adds a kind of 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 turbans.
We've got people with, 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, you know that guy with the, you know that Korean that was supposedly killed by a cell phone?
Yeah, I heard about that, and I think I saw a post on your blog about that.
Yeah, well, it turns out to be a hoax.
I was just going to say, it didn't look like an implosion, it looked like something might have melted.
I can't see how that could kill you.
Well, the picture that we had on the blog was just a generic picture of a cell phone.
Generic cell phone picture, okay, right.
But apparently somebody had murdered the guy.
Oh, no!
And then they planted the cell phone in some way to 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, 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 the guy.
Oh, well.
I think I mentioned on my show that what people really want to see is some guy's cell phone blow up while he's holding it up to his ear.
You know, on source code, remember Nokia had to recall hundreds of thousands of batteries, maybe millions of batteries?
Remember that?
Yeah.
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 flew, shot straight across the room and burned a hole in the rug and she didn't know what was going on.
It was a whole backstory to it.
And so I hooked him up with Nokia, and lo and behold, 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 them doing that recall, but I thought it was pretty amazing.
Huh.
So you were going to talk about the...
Yeah, it was amazing.
You were going to talk about...
Thanks.
I'm sorry.
That's a better reaction than you expected.
I'm tired.
Yeah, you are tired.
And you've got to spend another week.
That's terrible.
So, because I know you were trying to leave to get back to...
To my girls, man.
And it's like cold here.
It's gotten really cold over the last couple of days.
Yeah, it's no better in the UK. But at least there we have, you know, like coal fire and a nice fireplace.
You know, I... You're 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 realize I'm an air pollution expert.
Hmm.
Amongst many talents, Mr.
DeVore.
Yeah, what happens, you build them up as you get to become older.
So anyway, so one of the things I have some...
Yeah, that's cool.
Sorry, I do in DeVore.
I have some sort of sick pleasure in cranking up a coal fire every once in a while.
Yeah.
I love it.
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 going to put a coal fire in your fireplace, you need like this special kind of a basket.
You load it up with coal.
And then when you get the thing cranked up, 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 one of these giant inns that had a bunch of fireplaces.
In the room, right?
In the room, you had one of those probably.
Well, actually, no.
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 the stuff, for one thing, once you get a coal fire going, people in the West Coast, the East Coast, people know about this.
They hate this stuff.
But the West Coast, they don't understand any of it.
And the thing is, it's a fascinating product because coal is a rock that burns.
Right on.
And so once you get it going, it burns forever.
Yeah, it just glows.
And you don't have to keep tending it.
And you don't have to throw logs on the fire.
You don't have to do any of that.
And it goes out a little bit after a couple hours and you just rake it up and there it is.
It's back.
And actually, if you use the really super high-quality coal, which we can get out here, you don't even have to do that.
It'll go overnight, and then in the morning, it'll still be going, and you can throw some new coal on there, and you get it cranked up again.
And it gives off a really nice radiant heat.
It has a flame that's very pretty.
It gives off a beautiful radiant heat.
It's very hot, but it gives off a stink.
It's not a bad smell to me.
It's a cozy smell.
It's a funny smell, but I know for a fact that I haven't done it for a while because the guys that I got the coal from, they stopped bringing it in.
I'm going to try to get some more.
I know that for a fact when I cranked it up in the neighborhood here, because I would go someplace and I'd come driving back and you'd smell the coal smell in the area.
And I know for a fact nobody within 10 miles of the house who had maybe been smelling it knew what it was.
There's no way.
It's just an alien aroma to California.
Okay, Mr.
Pollution Expert, is this not horrible?
Well, you know, the actual amount of particulate, which is really the problem here, with low sulfur 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 sulfur, so it's not harmful.
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.
I mean, it's just amazing.
What have we not spoken about?
The comic book guy.
What were we going to do?
I was going to give you the back story on that?
Yeah, I don't know anything.
You said we were going to talk about it on the show.
Well, and I've got to 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 Jacek something or other.
I don't remember his real name.
Okay.
And he's a fan of yours, or what's the deal?
Well, he latched onto the Daily Source Code a couple years ago, and he started in the comments, and he would just write these outrageous things.
He really, as we would say in Holland, his heart was on his tongue, and he's also coincidentally the guy that started this whole fuck you Adam Curry business, because that's literally how he talks.
And it was just really interesting to me, and I Googled him, And I found out that he had worked at Nokia, and I guess he had a blog, and he was basically posting on the blog about shit that sucked within the company.
I'm paraphrasing, I'm sure, as to what it exactly was.
And so he got fired, and some say he got kicked out of Finland.
How do you get kicked out of Finland?
You don't want to cross Nokia's path, man.
They are Finland.
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 ask really straightforward questions.
Actually, journalistically, great questions.
But his approach, of course, was very brash.
And it'd be the equivalent of going up to...
I saw a piece of video done in the Apple UK store where a journalist went up to Phil Schiller and said, so...
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 network and then immediately the PR people jump in and Schiller backs off?
It's that kind of question, straight to the point.
Right, good stuff.
And it's exactly good stuff, and it freaks him out.
Now, I think 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 I think Jeff Smith made a jingle for him, and then he started calling in, and he knows a lot of shit, particularly about the European Union, and so he'd give reports on that.
Give us some examples.
Is he an EU basher?
No, no, no.
He really believes in the EU, but he points out all of the things that are wrong and that are messed up, and he's another guy that gets stopped going into another country, and then he'll record it, and he'll say, Why do I have to show passport?
Am I not EU citizen?
Which, of course, is a great way not to get through passport control.
Yeah, that works.
No, he's a beautiful guy.
One time we set up a date.
After years, we would meet at the UK office.
This video was on YouTube and I think on his site, comicstripblog.com.
He interviewed me about my mobile devices.
It was so funny because then he gave me a PowerPoint pitch.
About what he wanted to do to work for Podshow, 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, P.S. Fuck you, Adam Curry.
I was like, oh man, this is so beautiful.
So he's the one who invented that phrase that I know you like to use?
Yes.
It's comics for a blogger, and everyone knows them that way, and everyone on the show who listens to the show has become accustomed to that.
And what I noticed is, I think I said once, 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 at the end they're going to have this big payoff.
And the comments are good.
They're short.
They're succinct.
People don't ramble on because they know they've got to get to the point to get that bit in.
And so it's been fabulous for me.
Yeah, apparently.
You like it.
I think you like being cussed out.
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 it.
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.
Okay.
A letter?
Not an email, but an actual letter?
I'm sorry.
I misspoke.
Oh, okay.
Oh, I was kind of excited there for a minute.
Yeah, well, I don't think I've gotten a letter for God knows how long.
Anyway, this guy wrote in, we talked a little bit about this last week or the week before, about 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.
John Walker is a...
Anyway, he's up in the mountains or somewhere.
I don't know where he is.
He's somewhere buried somewhere in Switzerland.
Anyway, so this guy went and looked at this.
And I didn't even realize 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 at some level you can, by thinking about it, can affect the outcome.
Right, and the idea, because I did see that, they have these Java applets, and you can send that to someone, and then they can generate a number randomly, but you can determine what it is.
Right, and it makes the thing swing back and forth.
Now, let me just read you what this guy says, not too long.
Greg Hampton says, John, I discovered Formulab, blah, blah, blah, experiments a few years ago and tried some of the experiments, 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 who want to check this out, you can go to Formilab, which is www.formilab.ch, and then you can 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 banging up against one side like crazy, and his results were 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 the experiments.
I tried the pendulum one myself, and I have the sense that something would change.
How does it work?
What is the pendulum experiment exactly?
Well, the pendulum experiment is a random number generator that rocks a pendulum back and forth in some very standardized way, and supposedly because of retro-psychokinesis, and I have to tell everybody that I think a lot of this is malarkey, but there are some people...
That can go to a crap table and win, and there's a lot of random numbers in the world.
The way the world works is a random number generator in a lot of different ways.
I don't know.
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 a way.
So you do that, you concentrate, and then it happens before your very eyes?
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, move, like the old guy who's going, woo, make the paper lift.
I'm going to levitate, that kind of thing.
Now, it's something else.
It's some other way of doing it.
Well, that's the kinesis part.
That's the muscle you have to train.
But it's like you don't pay real – at least the way it seems to me is you don't really pay close attention to it.
It's just almost a background task.
People should go out to check it out and see what they think.
I mean I think it's generally speaking malarkey in any effects that I had seen.
But John, isn't this the same thing as the old adages of people saying if you act successful, you will be successful?
Isn't it that type of behavior?
Yeah.
See, 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 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...
There's kinds of body language and nonverbal communication skills you don't even know you have, and then you will become part of that group.
Swimming with the sharks is part of that.
You were criticizing me for holding my fork in this peculiar way a couple weeks ago.
Have I had an effect on you?
Have you become part of my group now, of the people who hold the fork properly?
Yeah, the Feet group from Holland.
The Emily Post group?
No, man, that's Emily Post.
I know how to hold my fork.
You hold it like a baboon.
Yeah.
Anyway, so the point is, there's milieu communication that takes place, and I think a lot of it has to do with what you're describing as 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 crap table in Vegas.
And imagine that it's going to hit number 36, or I'm sorry, number 2, in the future, and then it actually happens.
Yeah, which would be craps.
But anyway, so...
Yeah, right.
Sorry.
So anyway, people should just look at it.
But, you know, Walker's got a...
His site has always been kind of interesting because he's an acquisitive person.
He's a...
He likes to look into things.
And I think he's semi-bored.
You know, I sent him a couple of notes once.
He 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 I sent him something else once.
And then he stopped communicating with me.
So I don't think he's necessarily receptive to normal people.
The guy's worth a fortune.
Well, he's probably having a good time in Switzerland.
I was in Switzerland a few times, and I was going to say, let me stop by.
I don't even know.
Go hang out, yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
People said, you don't want to hang out with the guy.
But it looks like that research he did into retro, what is it?
Retro psychokinesis.
Retro psychokinesis.
It looks like he stopped doing that a couple of years ago.
I mean, all the stuff is still there, but it doesn't look like there's any new entries.
Yeah.
Yeah, I noticed that.
I don't know if you gave up on it.
All right.
So now I have to...
Do I download this pendulum thing?
Is that what it is?
No, no.
It's a Java app.
It runs on the machine.
You have a decent machine.
Oh, nice.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
Run it on a machine that's got some power because it'll be able to suck your brain better.
Will it run on my Mac?
It might.
Yeah, Mac runs Java apps.
Sure, it should.
It's mostly Java.
It's like a JavaScript app.
It's not like...
I think...
Oh, so I guess I'm going to spend the weekend doing some retro psychokinesis.
Yeah, what I want to do is to stop it.
You can actually stop the pendulum if you try hard enough.
Could you imagine?
What can I do with that power?
Let's say...
Nothing.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
I'm pretty good at...
I'm a believer in stuff like this.
So let's say I'm able to...
Dude, if I can do this pendulum thingy by like Monday, we're still 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, Vegas beckons for this kind of thing.
I actually win a little bit, not a lot.
I don't think anyone can.
But I do quite well on video poker machines.
Really?
Well, there's two reasons.
One, I know which poker machines to look for.
People don't realize 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, if you go on the Internet, If you go on the internet and look at best payout video poker machine, it'll tell you the ones to look for.
And you just go, you find those, because the other ones nickel and dime you to death just enough so you can't quite win.
You can't quite get there.
It's called, like, dealing.
So anyway, 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 it's a high-level skill, but there are rules to doing it right, because it's not really poker.
That's the irony or the scam of video poker.
There's not poker involved here.
This is a different kind of a game.
It's video poker.
And if you know how to play it, you can actually always win games.
I've never walked away from video poker playing the right machines without some money.
And at 39 minutes, I would have to call it a game.
I would say.
And so, you all have your homework now?
What's that URL again?
Forum?
Forum Lab.
F-O-U-R-M-I-L-A-B dot C-H. 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 high.
Coming to you from the Curry Condo in San Francisco, my name's 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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