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Dec. 15, 2007 - No Agenda
01:07:58
8: No Agenda 008
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Time Text
Well, it's that time once again for the show that has no music, no commercials, no jingles, no talent, and no agenda.
I'm Adam Curry in the Curry Manor in Guilford.
And I'm John C. Dvorak out here in the middle of nowhere, Northern California.
It is Saturday, Saturday evening.
It's really cold here in the UK. I think it's actually a little bit below zero right now.
So how's it out there in California, John?
Well, the sun's out, but it's foggy.
It's just slightly foggy.
And it's actually chilly here, too.
It was, I think, as low as 35 Fahrenheit, yes, last night.
Burr.
I was just thinking, you know, you called me and said, okay, I'm up.
I'm ready to do the show.
And I said, all right, well, I'll call you in a couple minutes.
Let me go make a cup of tea.
And then you said, yeah, I'll go make a cup of tea, too.
And as I was making my tea, I was thinking, boy, aren't we the perfect married gay couple?
You know, a little older guy, younger guy, making tea.
All right, so you promised me earlier in the week...
Wait a minute, stop.
When you called me, by the way, I want to get into a little rant here before we go on and do anything else.
Are you going to rant on me?
Did I do something wrong?
No, when you said, are you up and about, it just triggered a thought.
Because it's like up and about.
Up and about what?
Where does that term come from, up and about?
It's like, you know, he's out and about.
Or in Canada, I'll boot.
He's out and about.
Well, it's kind of a polite way of saying, are you, and a shortcut code for saying, are you ready to do the show?
Yeah, I know, but what does the about part come from?
Where does that come into the picture?
I mean, how does that phrase even evolve?
And here's what thought it triggered.
Some years ago, I got irked listening to Carly Fiorina give a speech, and I noticed other women CEOs started to say this phrase, and it's the phrase that bugs me.
And the phrase is, by and large...
And by and large, da-da-da, by and large.
And I could never tell whether it was by in large or by and large.
And what does it mean, by and large?
So I heard some guy on the TV the other night saying it.
One of the politicians says, well, by and large, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm thinking, by and large, by and large, where does this phrase come from and why do people use it and what does it mean?
And what is it?
Is it by and large?
Is it by in large?
It just...
I can't tell you how...
Doesn't it come from, like, Old English or something?
Does it?
And why are we using it?
I mean, it's just one of these...
I actually was going to bring it up.
I think maybe I mentioned it.
It's one of these things that just...
When I hear it, I just cringe.
I don't know why it annoys me so much.
It's also probably a phrase that someone is implementing just to buy some time while they're thinking about what bullshit they're going to say next.
By and large, that's probably true.
By the way, by and large, there's a great BBC program called Global Business.
It used to be called In Business.
Peter Day hosts this.
I've seen the show.
I think it's...
But it's radio.
It's not video.
Oh, I haven't seen it.
Maybe I'm imagining I saw it.
No, because Peter Day interviewed me about podcasting in 2005.
And, you know, it's like this...
One of these real old-time, you know, trench coat, Nagra-carrying journalists who travels all over the world and interviews...
That's a good reference.
Nobody's going to get the Nagra reference, but I did.
Thank you.
So he has Tony Perkins, as you mentioned, Fiora, who was HP's CEO? Carly Fiorina.
Carly Fiorina, yeah?
Yeah.
Yes, she was.
So, you know, that whole scandal and the whole boardroom blow-up and tracking cell phone records and shit and impersonating board members.
There's big news here.
Right.
So, you might want to listen to that.
Really good interview.
He goes pretty in-depth into all that stuff.
Is he complimentary, by and large?
Completely, by and large.
When he's up and about, he, by and large, is quite complimentary.
So you were going to say something before I rudely interrupted you.
Well, earlier in the week, you asked me if I'd heard this Pod Save Christmas song.
And I said the same thing I just said before we hit record.
I mean, if every day were Christmas.
And you're like, no, this thing, Jonathan Colton.
And I don't know.
I mean, this has been around for a year, apparently.
I don't know if I've heard it.
Well, why don't you play it?
But my daughter's a huge fan of this guy.
Well, he is huge, and he did come from, I might say, the Podsafe music revolution.
Well, here's his Podsafe Christmas song.
All right, I'm going to give this up.
I certainly don't recall seeing a YouTube video, but I have it lined up.
You may not hear it through your headphones.
Can you hear it?
Okay, guys, everyone ready to sing the song?
Yeah, I'll get it going, baby.
Great.
Now, remember, it's almost Christmas, and nobody has any pod-safe Christmas music, so that's your motivation here.
Cece Chapman, you ready?
Ready as I'll ever be.
And Len and Nora from Jawbone, good to go?
Let's do this!
And Adam Curry, Skyping in from the helicopter flying somewhere above your golden palace.
You all hatched in there, Adam?
Adam.
Adam!
What?
I'm right here!
Me?
Yeah, I do remember this, actually.
It's well done, though.
Alright, I'm not going to play the whole thing.
That is pretty funny.
You've got to kind of see the video because you can't understand all the lyrics and they have it on screen.
So, yeah, that's pretty funny.
But have you heard If Every Day Were Christmas?
I think so, yeah.
That was the Podsafe music, We Are the World, where everyone cut their tracks at their own home studios, and then they put it all together.
You know, the whole Podsafe thing, I think it's underappreciated.
It's interesting.
You know, Ron and I met in New York with Alan Grubman.
Do you know who that is?
Oh, yeah.
So, I met Alan Grubman once or twice in the MTV days.
He absolutely did not remember me.
You should explain to the audience who he is.
Yeah.
Alan Grubman is the music industry lawyer at the music industry law firm, which was, what is it, Grubman and Dursky-Schindler, I think?
I don't know.
And basically, these guys have an amazing racket.
They negotiate both sides of any deal with the music industry.
So if you want to license music from basically their four major labels, then you do that negotiation with Grubman and Dursky-Schindler, who also represent the labels.
And they sit right on the fence and they basically sit in the middle and they negotiate on both sides.
And because of that, they've become incredibly, well, they've been incredibly powerful.
And they represent everybody and everything that moves.
It's just an amazing, it's like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory of money in there.
And Alan Grubman is obviously one of the...
He's like Denny Crane.
If you ever watch the...
Right, everybody.
Denny Crane.
I'm Denny Crane.
He's Denny Crane.
But Ron knows him really well because Ron, when he was going out with Princess Stephanie and Stephanie was getting into the record business and Prince Rainier said, hey man, what is this record business shit about?
Then Ron Bloom, being as he is, of course, he said, oh, I'll bring some of the top guys over and they'll tell you all about it.
And so he called up Alan Grubman and said, you know, I'm going to take you to go see Prince Rainier.
So that, of course, is one of those small things that gets you meetings easily in New York.
They remember that shit.
That would.
But anyway, you know, we basically had that conversation about Podsafe Music with those guys.
And everyone knows that the labels are completely fucked.
They have absolutely no desire to try anything new.
They just want big check up front from everybody and for everything all the time.
And they're just all watching it kind of go down the drain.
Quite amazing.
So I think you're right.
This Podsafe thing is undervalued.
Well, I think it's one of those things that will gain momentum.
It just makes too much sense.
It's pretty big already.
Well, yeah, I know you've got, like, how many songs do you think are just on the pod show system?
We have, like, 35,000 artists.
And, you know, God knows how many tracks each artist has uploaded, or label.
We've got some pretty big labels on there, too.
Like, Orchard, they do huge, huge distribution of independent music.
It's good.
And Duran Duran just showed up with one track the other day.
Yeah.
You remember them, don't you?
From when I was a little kid.
Hey, John.
Today is Super Ship Saturday on National Geographic.
What does that mean?
It's the whole day.
All they show is super ships.
Like how they built the Queen Mary 2.
Oh, that could be actually kind of fun.
It's amazing.
It really is.
That thing is three times as big as the QE 2.
Which, in turn, was twice as big as the Titanic.
Yeah, I think the thing's only coming over to the U.S. It's coming over to the U.S. sometime.
I think it was over here recently, and it doesn't visit over here that much.
Or it's in New York.
I don't know.
I was following its...
I wanted to get on board the thing.
I think it was in San Francisco for a day.
And so I got a hold of the Cunard people, I think, are one of those.
That's the owner, Cunard, yeah.
Yeah, I said, you know, I'd like to, you know, I'm a journalist, blah, blah, blah.
They went on and on with the, you can't come on under any circumstances because your country's homeland security won't allow it.
They went on and on.
Really?
Oh, that's crazy.
I said, even with an escorted tour, I can't get an escorted tour?
No, it's against the rules.
I'm thinking, well, that's good for your publicity.
I find it hard to believe.
The reason why you don't see it that often is because, and just because I watched most of the program before we got on the Skype, they had to make a very important design decision Pretty early on.
In order to make it the size that it was, it had to be wider than the Panama Canal.
So it can't actually go through the Panama Canal, so it has to go around Cape Horn to do a round-the-world trip.
And so that's why it does a different route than was originally intended even.
It just takes longer to complete its whole journey.
No, that's why we don't see it.
It doesn't make sense.
Yeah, but wow, what an amazing...
Are you going to take it over to New York one of these days?
You know, I would certainly want to do it.
Patricia is very against cruise ships and ocean liners because when she was 16 and her dad had a big band and she, by default, had to kind of go along and she was the singer and she played the marimba, I think.
They spent months on cruise ships and she really loathes it.
She has a mental block about getting on a cruise ship.
I don't blame her.
She has the idea that she can't get off.
She doesn't like that thought.
You know, I have that same feeling about, you know, they do a lot of events at trade shows, and every once in a while somebody comes up with this crazy idea that we're going to do it on a boat, and you're going to get a boat ride.
Yeah, I hate that.
I did one, the last one I did actually when I was writing for Forbes, because I wanted to do this anyway, but Forbes has this yacht, the Highlander, that they like to take, you know, they take their customers out on, you know, the advertisers.
Yeah.
And I always wanted to get a ride on it, and one day they were going to do one of these trips, and so I jumped on that, and I spent most of my time talking to the crew, because the thing is fully crewed all the time, and it's got like a chef on board.
It's actually quite nice.
Oh yeah, it's a little town.
And the ride that they give these guys is one ride around Manhattan Island.
It takes about 45 minutes.
They take about an hour to do it.
Anyway, they zoom around and then they go around the Statue of Liberty and they come and park the thing back over wherever it is.
And that's a lot of stuff.
But generally speaking, it's like if you're in the media and somebody wants you to...
Go to one of their boat trips.
I just refuse to do it because I just like to get in and out of these things.
You don't want to be stuck listening to somebody lecturing you on a boat you can't get off of.
And I've also found that there is always a percentage of people, if you have enough of them, it always pops up.
No matter how big the boat, how slow, there's always a percentage of people who get seasick.
And it's like, it's wrong, you know?
It's, oh man, I've been on really bad junkets like that.
Really, really, really bad, where there were just lots of people seasick.
And, I mean, seriously.
And, you know, still, oh, we'll be back at shore in three hours.
People are fucking dying, man.
Yeah, that is a problem.
I don't normally get seasick, but I have gotten seasick a few times, and I'll tend to get seasick on a yacht or a boat or anything.
If I go up to the front, really the very front, front, front part of the boat, You know, where you would normally go, I'm king of the world!
Yeah, yeah.
And just that bobbing up there, just enough to get you.
And once you, you know, the problem with getting seasick is that if you start to get seasick, you panic about it, and then it makes it worse, and then you do get seasick.
It's, like, embarrassing.
I've never been seasick.
In fact, I haven't puked in 20 years.
I just refuse.
I don't do it.
Huh.
Yeah.
I'm a non-puker.
Let me write that down.
Yeah.
Our whole family is anti-pukage.
So talking about...
Puking.
I'm trying to make the transition.
You just blew it for me.
So talking about traveling, I understand that your hassles have continued and you're coming in and out of the country you were telling me about.
Yeah.
And I think people would be interested in...
Because you found out new information.
Yes, I did.
I found out that...
I'm on what's called a lookout list.
And this lookout list is automatically, or maybe we would say dynamically generated from something that is relatively new, about a year old, called ATS, the Automatic Targeting System.
Which is, imagine a Google page rank for a terrorist threat rating.
So it trolls from these just hundreds of databases from federal, state, and, oh yes, tribal level, from DMV to IRS, as a part of the Treasury Enforcement Computer System.
Which is basically this big black box of information, and the ATS does some kind of SQL query, I guess, and looks at what kind of different things popping up.
Are there flags put in?
It could be anything from parking tickets to a tax filing, I guess.
And it'll just pop up a flag if it has a rating, and that for me means automatic secondary screening, which is different at each port of entry.
But apparently this system, Congress a year ago specifically said that they did not want this system to be put in place by Homeland Security.
So there's a link that I have on curry.com and also dailysourcecode.com that goes to an ACLU page that explains more about that in some more detail.
For a number of reasons.
One, the information will be stored for 40 years, 4-0.
Yeah.
Two, it lives outside of the Privacy Act, so you cannot request to see your record so you can contest anything that's on it.
So in other words, it could be just a bunch of BS in there and there's nothing you can do about it.
Well, and this is just what I'm extrapolating from all the information I've received.
I believe that literally it's a one-way system only.
So somewhere there's some logic in the middle of all these databases, and then there's really the display that the Customs and Border Protection Agency sees.
And so my name is entered, and it gets a couple of different flags from God knows what different things.
And literally, when you look at what's attached to this system, it's Believe me, I'm in there for something.
There's no doubt about it.
Or someone could have put something in there about me.
But the middleware kind of doesn't know where it's all coming from.
It just assigns a score and then says, oh, wait a minute, you should talk to this guy.
That's basically it.
And I guess there's different levels of ratings.
And there's no way to drill down to the information and find out where it's coming from.
I mean, of course, if you built the system, of course there's a way to.
But apparently there's no way for CBP to do that.
And there's no way to change it.
So you walk through, you come into the country, American citizen I might add, you come rolling in and the thing, they slam your...
No, no, so you walk through, you have those glass aisles as it were, by and large.
Right and large.
And you put down your passport and your landing card.
And so then either he types in your name or swipes the...
Actually, it's not a swipe.
It's reading an RFID chip, which is embedded in all the new passports.
And this guy was...
I could already see he was one of those types of guys because he had just sent the people in front of me.
He said, look, this is not legible.
I can't read this.
This is unacceptable.
Get out of here and go fill in a new one and do it properly.
You know, one of those guys.
So I put on my info.
I think he does it.
Well, you know, some of them are funny.
It's okay.
And, you know, it used to be, John, before I was on the lookout list, and, in fact, pre-9-11, I would have to say, I kind of enjoyed coming up to the border because it was, hey, welcome home.
Every single time they would say that.
Right, they used to say, welcome home.
Welcome home, Mr.
Curry.
And, you know, you feel so good when they said that.
Just saying it gives me kind of a warm feeling.
And so I haven't gotten that for a long time.
Maybe sporadically, you know.
And sometimes they'll recognize me.
Hey, man, MTV guy, how's Martha Quinn?
So actually, they get pretty ornery sometimes.
What were you out of the country for, you know?
Well, yeah, sometimes they usually ask me that.
Usually do.
But anyway, the guy says, hey, you ever have any problems getting into the country?
I said, yeah, like every single time for the past four goes.
He said, why would today be any different?
Yeah.
And I said, there you go.
And I said, come with me.
And so he gets out of his booth.
I follow him.
He takes me to secondary, which is a different, a secondary room with kind of like, you know, like DMV, basically, with chairs and a high desk.
And then he hands me off.
At least there's not a high desk.
I like the high desk.
It's a nice touch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's very authoritative.
But it's still kind of like, you know, there's a...
It's kind of messy.
It's grimy, right?
It's all kinds of shit stuck on the wall.
Soviet style, right?
Very Soviet style.
And then you're told to sit down, and the guy's bringing up your info, and then he says, okay, Adam Curry, and then, yep.
And there's people there.
There's some British couple, and all kinds of...
A real mix, not specifically what you might expect, terrorist-looking folk.
Let them go.
And then he just starts to ask me all kinds of questions.
And from his questioning, I can tell that he's just probing.
There's nothing specifically that he's looking for.
He's just trying to figure out if I stumble over something or if I say something weird.
It's very basic interrogation tactics.
Hey, you didn't put the address of your hotel.
You just put Palace Hotel.
I said, oh, well, hold on.
So I pull out my phone and I look at the agenda.
So it's 455 Madison.
He says, is that a phone?
What's the number?
So I give him the number.
He's like, you got a business card?
I was prepared for this one.
So I said, yes, well, here it is.
You already have a couple.
You can add this to your collection.
But, you know, so he's asking these questions and he's writing it down with a ballpoint pen on a piece of paper, like, you know, on a form or anything.
In other words, it goes in the can after it's done.
Exactly.
So it's total horseshoe.
Okay, sit down.
All right, so sit down.
And then a little while later, okay, and he's written on my, you know, you can go, and he's written on my boarding card ENF, which I guess stands for Enforce or whatever.
And so I get my bag, which has been twirling around for 30 minutes now, all lonely.
And then you still have to go through and hand off your landing card slash customs form.
And of course, you know, there immediately, you know, it's like, okay, go over to that line behind the glass.
And then I get another guy assigned to me and he goes through exactly the same questions while he's going through my luggage.
But I mean like opening up envelopes, looking at addresses, checking, just the general, and continuously asking questions.
And this first guy was kind of funny.
It was sad, actually.
I mean, he really was getting nowhere with me, and he started to stutter, and it got really, really bad.
And he just couldn't ask the questions anymore.
And I'm like, oh man, I don't want to crack up.
This is going to be fucked up.
And luckily, he called over one of his colleagues and said, I've got to go over there.
You take over the secondary.
And then this guy started asking the same questions, you know, and then empty out your pockets, and just fishing around for stuff, and then finally it's like, okay, you can go.
So, in all about an hour and a half.
Well, that's a waste of time.
It's a waste of the government's money, as a matter of fact.
But let's go over this.
You said that the last time you went through this process, they weren't going through your bags, or they did some superficial thing.
Are they going through your bags more now?
I think it depends on...
Because this has happened to me now at three airports in Chicago.
There, I was met right at the jetway.
But the guy knew me like MTV guy knew me.
You were met at the Jetway?
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
You mean you're coming off the plane and there's guys waiting to grab you?
Yeah, absolutely.
Are you kidding?
No, no, no.
I could tell they're waiting for me because they made one of those announcements.
Ladies and gentlemen, please have your passports out because the TSA will be looking at your passports as you exit the jetway.
And so I had my passport out and then I showed it to one of the agents, female agents.
She said...
Yep, this is one.
Curry!
And then there was another guy, and he took my passport.
And I was like, oh, cool, man.
I'm getting VIP treatment.
I'm walking through all the lines and shit.
Oh, this is your first experience then, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm walking through all the lines.
Oh, that's hilarious.
No, this is awesome.
And then he takes me.
He says, go ahead.
Go get your luggage.
And so he's asking me questions, but pretty harmless.
He clearly knew who I was.
And he made his assessment pretty early.
And then he said, okay, now you can go.
And then he actually, I was in the terminal building.
I had passed through the sliding doors, and he said, Adam, Adam, Adam, dude, I'm sorry, but I'm required to look through your bag, so you've got to come back.
And so I went back, you know, like someone had told him off or something.
And so I had to go back through the doors, and he didn't really do a wholehearted search, but he went through the motions of opening stuff up.
And then it happened twice in San Francisco.
And I think it's really the resources because at Liberty Airport in Newark, they've got a pretty big staff.
It's well equipped.
San Francisco is much smaller.
And Chicago, I think I just got a different...
That may be really fucked up, but just because the guy knew me, I kind of got a semi-secondary treatment by and large.
By and large.
So this is an interesting developing story, I have to say.
You versus the TSA. Well, it's actually Homeland Security.
TSA has very little to do with it.
Okay, you're right.
I'm sorry.
TSA's got nothing to do with it.
It's the Customs and Immigration people.
Yeah, it's CBP, so it's Customs and Border Protection Agency, who are a division of Homeland Security.
I wonder what it says on the computer screen.
This guy's rated number three.
Take him aside and ask him these questions.
It's just a standard thing they do with everybody that comes up with that flag.
I think it's pretty low level because they're not looking for anything specific.
That I know for sure.
There's no body search.
Well, maybe that's coming.
Oh joy, oh joy.
Do you think you're a smuggler, maybe?
It can't be a terrorist thing, because, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.
Please, look at yourself.
You're a blonde guy.
Well, maybe Amsterdam.
I think it's either smuggling.
I mean, you lived in Amsterdam for a long time, you know.
I'll tell you, when I had my old passport, I got a new one maybe a year ago, which could also have something to do with it, because my old one certainly didn't have the RFID chip in it, but it had all kinds of visa stamps and stuck-in paper visas for Kuwait and Iraq.
That probably didn't help.
If they were inputting information based upon that, that's a possibility.
Oh, you had a visa to Iraq?
Yeah, I went to Iraq in 2003 for 10 days.
Well, there you go.
That's the whole thing right there.
It's got to be it.
Maybe.
But that's not on this new passport.
No, but it's in the system, I bet.
Maybe they couldn't track me until then.
I don't know.
I'll bet it's in the system.
Could be.
Could be.
Or maybe just because I keep saying on my show, skull fuck the rotting corpse of the TSA. Could that have anything to do with it?
I don't think anybody from the TSA listens to this show.
Just about that for one second.
So once again, I'm leaving Newark Liberty Airport, and I'm always observing the...
And that, of course, is the TSA. Now, first of all, you have that new CLEAR program, which I just can't believe that they're actually trying to get people to freely give away their retinal scan and fingerprints to the government.
Fantastic idea.
And then you're CLEAR. And then I look at these idiots, total...
Idiots who are running airport security.
Literally, I could see these poor saps, these guys who had bought perfume and all kinds of nice gifts for their wives.
They're going back home.
And they bought them duty-free right there at the airport.
And you can literally see these women going, Oh, I'm sorry.
See, that's 110 milliliters.
You can't take that on board, so you're going to have to dispose of that here.
They're taking that home with them.
And it's...
Why are there no journalists signing up to become TSA and reporting on it?
Because I have to believe these people are the same idiots who were doing airport security 15 years ago when we were laughing about them then.
I don't know where they get these people from, but they're total nincompoops.
I actually admire these folks.
I want everyone out there to know that.
By the way, I got nothing to do with his commentary.
You know what I'm thinking?
The reason journalists won't do that, and they could, is that they'll end up in Gitmo.
Okay, that's a good point.
That's enough point.
You know, I mean, there's one guy, there was a thing on PBS or one of the stations recently, some guy who went around, some writer, I think he was out of Chicago, I don't know where he was out of, I can't remember.
But anyway, people out there have probably seen this.
And we went out and he did kind of an expose on how insecure or unsecured a railway system is when it comes to, like, shipping hazardous material and how the summit goes right through New York and you can put a bomb on one of these things and blow it up in the middle of the city and, you know, chlorine shipping hazardous material and how the summit goes right through New York and you Right.
And so he went over...
I'm sorry.
Anyway, he went around with his business card and he stuck it all over these things as though they were bombs, you know, but it weren't.
And then he wrote it up and then he got nothing but hate mail from everybody.
He said, you're just giving the terrorists more ideas and blah, blah, blah, blah.
These terrorists, you know, they're under everybody's bed.
It's the communist threat of the 50s.
Right.
So on that note, I'll say that indeed, if everything was secured and we had this type of, even at the minimum level, this type of security for all of the threats, then I would buy into it that someone's actually trying to protect us.
And I wouldn't mind airport security if it was done properly.
Twice, on the way out and the way back, and I tried it.
I've got a bag.
You've seen this bag that I have, right, John?
The rolling bag with everything in it.
Everything in it.
And it's got transmitters and wireless microphones.
I have hairspray, of course.
I've got tons of wires and extra batteries and all this shit.
And this bag never gets opened.
Ever.
Ever.
Ever!
They never open the bag.
And they'll look at it and they go...
And I'm like, I certainly have enough shit in there to do something.
I'm sure I could MacGyver something together.
You know?
So, I don't know.
It just makes no sense.
It sounds more like you're being harassed rather than anybody really cares to find anything that's of interest.
Well, see, I don't believe that the...
Maybe you come up with an H. Harass this guy again.
And then they have to give a score saying, we want him delayed for at least an hour and a half.
I don't think so.
I can really see that it's a very clear instruction that they really just don't know what to do with me, and I think it's just like, you know, just talk to the guy and see what's going on.
They're not harassing me.
I think they're doing their job, and they're doing it pretty well.
It's just the system is stupid and redundant.
I have to answer the same questions three times just to get out of the building, but I don't think it's...
It's just an inefficient system.
And if there's a reason for me to pop up on the screen, yeah, of course you should ask me.
But I think that there should be a way to say, okay, we've talked to the guy.
He's clear.
Let's just check him off, you know?
Well, I guess for the next 40 years coming in and out of the USA, you're going to be...
You don't want to travel with me.
No, definitely not.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Well, whatever the case is, I'm sure we'll get more anecdotes because it's going to get funnier over time.
So anything in the news you've seen that's interesting?
Yeah, I think so.
I'm trying to wrap my head around it.
You know, the only newspaper I read is the Financial Times, and I thought they did a pretty good job of covering this, but I'm still trying to extrapolate it into a conversational topic.
This move that all the central banks made earlier this week, did you follow that?
No.
Okay, so I've become interested in central banks ever since I kind of found out that, you know, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 with the power to print the U.S. dollar, but that it's not a, you know, it's as federal as Federal Express, basically.
That it's a commercial entity and commercial banks, you know, like Oppenheimer and...
Yeah, what are the...
Yeah, everybody's in on the deal.
Yeah, everyone who's in on the deal.
Give me another name, another one of those Oh Yeah names.
By and large.
Please, help me.
Anyway, so I've become interested in central banking and how they make money and how it works.
And a lot of it has to do with the overnight storage of money and how you basically can keep lending out the same capital over and over again.
And, you know, so this credit crunch, this credit crisis has caused a big problem in the banking world.
And so maybe I should just tell you what happened, I think it was Wednesday...
The central banks, for the first time in, I think, known history, all coordinated the same offer to all of the banks around the world at the same time in kind of like a cartel fashion to essentially stabilize the markets.
So you didn't hear about this, John?
No.
Okay, so I think what...
I mean, here I am, a writer for MarketWatch, and I missed this one.
I don't know.
I probably, you know, I may have heard about it in passing, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but go on.
Well, I hope I'm explaining it properly, but this has just fascinated me, you know, this credit crunch and, you know, how Northern Rock has been temporarily bailed out by UK taxpayer money, 25 billion pounds, and there's, you know, Anyway, so I think what has happened that all these banks are basically trading with each other all day.
I'm not talking about the stock market.
I'm talking about stuff like derivatives.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let me just explain a derivative real briefly.
Just the simplest form of swap derivative is where, let's say, I have...
500,000 pounds sitting in a bank account here, and John has a million dollars, and I'm looking to spend a million dollars or borrow a million dollars in the States, and it's collateral, and I'm going to be matched up by a bank, someone looking for the equal amount in pounds.
And so we don't actually transfer the money, saving all kinds of foreign exchange fees, etc., but we sign a contract, essentially.
So that's a lot of what this is.
And I think that all these banks have become really afraid that no one's really good for the credit.
So if there's a time to cash in and say, oh, wait a minute, by the way, I need to call that loan for half a million pounds, that it was based on some shady structured investment vehicles known as subprime debt.
And what the central bank said is they said, you know what, we're going to put up a month-long loan, $10 billion, I think, in total, and we're going to do another one in a month after that, another $10 billion, and we'll lend that to any of you guys who...
So that you'll have real guaranteed equity to trade against to continue trading.
And, of course, none of the banks, and this is the interesting part, none of the banks would be the first to take a loan from the central bank because then it would basically be saying, hey, those guys are in trouble.
They need money.
So they came up with this brilliant plan of a blind auction.
Where in the auction, no bank can get more than 10% of the total $10 billion being made available.
And that's basically, I think, bullshit because it's probably only 10 banks that really need the money anyway.
So everyone's going to get a billion dollars.
And it's for a month.
And so for a month, trading can resume.
And, you know, this is a very interesting, I think a very interesting phenomenon that's taking place where, you know, something has shifted so phenomenally that for the first time in history these central banks have banded together to stabilize their system, which, you know, directly doesn't really affect you or I. You know, they're running their own fucking show.
So I'm guessing that during that story that you just told, five to six, listeners committed suicide.
Was it that boring?
I'm sorry.
I thought that was really interesting.
Yeah, I know, because you're a rich guy that has all this money, and you have to deal with its value.
What are you talking about?
It's about the dollar.
It's about your currency, your power to buy, too.
I just see the whole system as rigged.
And I know there's a bunch of weird stuff that goes on in the back rooms, and it's all for somebody's benefit.
Generally speaking, the American public does benefit in some long-term sense.
At least the country seems to be...
Not falling apart completely.
But anyway.
Okay.
Well, let me look into it so we can maybe discuss this more in detail next week when I'm more...
Fuck you.
Thanks, John.
Here's the story that I thought was interesting.
In contrast to my piece of shit story.
Which was...
We have this on the blog, by the way, demorek.org slash blog.
Mitt Romney's VC firm to buy Clear Channel.
Did you see this story coming out?
No, I was too busy paying attention to derivatives.
I didn't realize that Romney was an associate, or I guess one of the guys that runs Bain Capital.
Yeah, no, he's a successful dude when it comes to wealth creation.
So they're thinking it looks like these guys are going to, a couple of these companies, you know, these big, these are these privatization guys, right?
These big companies, KKR being one of the more high profile.
They're the leveraged buyout firms.
Yeah.
They've been buying stuff left and right all over the place.
So their plan is to buy Clear Channel?
Yeah.
And then what?
And then it's split it up after Clear Channel basically was a...
Well, if you read some of the conspiracy blogs, the reason you do this is so you can start promoting Romney for president.
Well, obviously, there's a huge issue with the ownership, direct or indirect.
There's a huge conflict of interest.
That's obvious.
I don't think it's a conflict of interest.
Where's the conflict of interest?
Romney wants to be president?
He buys some...
I'm sorry, aren't there rules against that?
I think all those rules have been put in abeyance years ago.
I mean, they were almost going to let one company own every media outlet in one city when you had that crazy Powell running the FCC. I don't think there's anything to prevent that.
I don't think it's illegal.
I saw on television when I was in New York that there's rumors now Bloomberg is going to join the presidential race.
His name keeps cropping up, but a lot of times it keeps cropping up as a Democrat.
Yeah.
As a Democrat.
Yeah.
Isn't he a Republican?
I don't know.
That's what my understanding was.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But, you know, the Democrat race is falling apart.
I mean, Hillary is just starting to dwindle, and nobody really wants Obama in there.
I think part of this is, it's fatigue, man.
It's very hard to run a campaign for this long.
You know, they started way, way early.
I know this is why I keep saying...
That's why I keep telling people that McCain is still in the race as the dark horse, because in the long race, if you've been to the track, those horses that are lingering in the back there, they're the ones who come when you get around that last turn, bam!
Just like Ron Paul.
You watch.
The Ron Paul blimp is now flying, John.
Well, you know, Ron Paul is going to be, again, based on my conception of everything's rigged, Ron Paul is going to be derailed by the powers that be.
They're not going to let him run for president ever.
It's not going to happen.
They'll have some dirt on him or something.
I mean, they're just waiting.
There's no dirt on this guy.
You don't think they haven't tried?
There's nothing.
This guy is square and boring.
Well, they'll do something to them then.
Maybe they'll do what they did.
You know, the thing that's always kind of fascinated me, and I've never heard any follow-up to this story, and everyone just says, well, the guy was nutty, so what difference does it make?
It's not a true story.
It's probably bull.
And he was like, he kept upsetting, you know, I mean, it was one of the reasons Clinton got in, because this guy is a third-party candidate, was changing the, you know, the way it's supposed to work, which is, you know, you got two parties that, you know, swap sides every once in a while, and you don't want to have three parties because the system's not equipped to make it work.
So you had to get this guy out.
So he quit the presidential race, I think in his second try he was going to do.
And he says it's because he claims that some group or somebody or somebody high up in the government...
He was being threatened, wasn't he?
Yeah, he was threatened.
Him and his family were threatened in some way by some black ops operation of some sort.
And that was all just, you know, it kind of floated through the news system and then it came out the other end and he quit.
And there was never any follow-up.
Everybody kind of reported it or assumed it was, well, the guy's nuts.
Yeah, but he wasn't.
He's a crackpot.
No, he wasn't.
And you know what?
I think Huckabee is being set up in the same way.
That could be.
Huckabee doesn't really have much.
Yeah, Huckabee's not.
He's got no fundraising happening.
The Chuck Norris thing, great.
Very cute.
Great idea.
You saw that, right?
Yeah.
But otherwise, I don't know, man.
It just feels like a total setup.
But with these campaigns being so incredibly long, I think that you're going to see all the...
The press is just going to be looking for stuff that they can turn into nutty.
So that's why I like the Ron Paul blimp idea.
Because they'll have, oh, finally something else to report on.
God.
Yeah, well, that's probably true.
And I do think that the campaign's too long, and I think it is a long race, and that's why I still think that McCain is not out of it.
And he seems to be the most relaxed candidate.
He doesn't, you know, he's not panicking, you know, which I think we're starting to witness with Hillary.
Especially, I don't know what's going to happen with these early primaries, but when the first wave of primaries hits, the big wave that happens, I guess, in February, whenever California and all the rest of them do have a big day.
Yeah.
You know, one of the reasons I think people overlook, I've said this before, which is one of the reasons they keep changing a lot of these, the way this is done, is the media itself, especially in California, when we had a late primary, we had to move it up because we weren't getting the media money.
There's billions of dollars in these campaign coffers, and that money goes to the TV stations and the media outlets, the newspapers, and everybody.
This is all advertising dollars that we don't want to lose.
Clearly.
And if you're not important, you know, because the race has already been figured out, and then the primary comes to California, nobody cares who wins because it's already been won by somebody.
All those billions of dollars, none of it comes into our coffers.
The whole thing is rigged.
It is, but it's just rigged to everybody's advantage.
Well, the thing is, except for the public in general...
How come we don't get any of that political money spent on podcasting and shit?
I think they need to be...
I don't know.
There's probably...
There probably is a sales conduit that just specializes in this sort of ad sales that we don't have anybody that knows it.
One of the things you run into when you're in publishing or broadcasting or anything like that, the sales groups tend to be, and sales people move from company to company to company, and they tend to have the same shared Rolodex.
Yeah, it's true.
If you're working with that PC Magazine, for example, the salespeople at PC Magazine pretty much have the same Rolodex that they've had 20 years ago in the same database, and when you work there, you also...
You can make your copy.
Yeah, you make your copy.
You add your couple of contacts in there, and you pull out the whole database, and when you go to the next company, you take it with you, but it still tends to be within kind of a click.
If you're in broadcasting, network versus local or whatever, it's the same kind of thing.
They have the people that they've been selling to over the years, and they obviously won't have the same Intel contact or AMD contact, if they even have one, in a broadcasting environment that they do in a magazine publishing environment.
Now, that said, the contacts involved with getting money from these campaigns, obviously, we don't have them.
Well, I'll tell you that it wouldn't work.
It wouldn't work because I know that the producers would just have a really hard time with taking political advertising.
Because, you know, it's not really a station, right?
You know, each show is its own show, even though they're part of the pod show network.
And if you get, like, you know, a Rudy...
I wouldn't want a Rudy Giuliani ad running in front of my show.
Well, that's one of the problems.
That's probably where you're not going to get one.
Now, that said, blogs do get a lot of political ads, and a lot of them run through Google AdSense.
Yeah.
Because I track this on the Dvorak.org slash blog, obviously, and every once in a while.
In fact, yesterday I hit the blog, and there's an ad for Ann Coulter.
I'm going, oh, brother.
You can block that now.
You can change that, can't you?
Yeah, no, you can block it, but usually the only ones I block are the ones that I find really annoying, and they come up a lot.
Yeah.
If I don't see it again, I probably won't.
And those are the money makers.
Those are the money makers, John.
But the early...
Punch the monkey.
Yeah, punch the monkey.
So I got a letter from a kid, let's see if I can find it, who told me, because I was writing or complaining about woot.
Yeah, I heard you talking about that.
The part of the letter I didn't read, he says, he's a young guy obviously, he says, it's not punch the monkey, it's slap the monkey.
No, it's punch the monkey.
I know, but he doesn't realize that, and he thought it was a reference to, you know, Oh, Peter Gabriel?
I don't know.
Shock the monkey?
Whatever the case was, I just thought it was amusing.
But anyway, the first political ad I saw on the blog ever was the McCain ads.
They came out right away.
And now, I'm just hitting the blog, and there is a Bromini in 2008 ad.
Really?
And it's got a big picture of Romney, who looks a little too much like Treat Williams, for my taste.
You know, who always plays, who's the actor, always plays the good-looking evil guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you.
You know, I always thought Treat Williams, Treat Williams is getting a little old now, but in his heyday, he was never, he was always underutilized, because he played a terrific evil businessman.
I mean, it was like, it was worth watching him.
Yeah.
Because he'd always get the girl and he was just a bad person.
But Romney has that same look, which is just slightly creepy.
It probably doesn't matter who wins anyway.
They're not running the show.
Well, yeah.
It's a system.
The guys with the boring story, they're running the show.
Anyway, so anything else?
No, man.
We've depressed the users.
I mean, our listeners are like all going, God, what is with these two jerks?
All right.
I'll just say I'm actually very vibrant and full of life today.
After I look at the calendar, I had not flown for two months.
And even though it's not great weather today in the UK, I went out to the airfield, walked around the plane, did all the little, like you have to counter turn the prop Seven times to get some oil into the cylinders if it's been standing still a long time.
And then you get in, you turn the key, and it comes to life immediately.
And I just flew down to the south coast and back.
And it's hard to explain, but that really makes me feel alive.
Okay.
How about you?
I just got up a little while ago.
I got up a little while ago.
You're just up and about.
I was by and large.
I'm up and about by and large.
All right, John.
I don't know.
I'm going to go shopping.
I think I'm going to do some Christmas shopping.
I haven't even started.
That's this week.
I'm going to do Christmas shopping.
I did get a good bottle of quality vinegar that they were selling at a closeout price yesterday.
I felt real good about that.
Oh, I'm so happy for you.
What I always like to do is get a good white wine vinegar.
I make my own vinegar, too, but with the stuff that's commercial, I'll buy a good white wine vinegar, and then you buy a bunch of tarragon, and then you take half of it if it's a big enough bunch, and you shove it in the vinegar, and you just leave it in there for about three to six months, and then you use that vinegar, and it's an outstanding product.
Another culinary tip from John C. Dvorak.
Make your own tarragon vinegar, folks.
You've got to see these one-minute holiday tips the Barefoot Doctor has done.
I don't know if they're up yet.
We've got this guy, this healing Chinese martial arts guy.
We'll talk about this later, but that gave me the idea that I think I'm going to do a one-minute computer tips for Podshow.
That's a good idea.
But there's going to be a hundred of them.
Yeah, exactly.
John's 100 tips, but we're going to start that probably in a couple of weeks.
That's a really good idea, and I like it.
And this is what we did with Barefoot Doctors.
So for the holiday season, I'll find them.
I don't know if they're up yet.
I just approved them, so I don't know if they got up yet or if they're going up Monday.
But he has like a one-minute tip for the hangover, how to prepare for a night of drinking, all kinds of really useful stuff.
Yeah.
It sounds like he's got some sort of narrow-minded approach.
It's just about drinking.
By the way, anybody out there who has a really good...
We're in Britain, okay?
It's all about drinking.
If it was all about drinking, why did they close the pub so early?
No, no, no.
They changed that law, man.
You can stay open 24 hours a day.
They changed that over a year ago.
Really?
Yeah.
You didn't know that?
No.
I haven't been there for over a year.
I don't go there because I can't afford it.
Yeah, it's not that they all do, but they're allowed to, and so now their place is open, God, it seems like 24 hours.
Well, that's good news, I guess, for all the alcoholics.
Yeah.
Anyway, anybody with a good computer tip that they think should be relayed, that could be given away in a one-minute bit, send me an email at john at dvorak.org, and I'll use the tip and give you a plug.
Yeehaw!
I got about 50 so far, but I need another 50.
And are you doing Mac and Windows and Linux as well?
Not to mention it, no, but I could.
The thing is, I don't want to turn the audience off with a bunch of Mac tips.
The Mac really doesn't need a lot of tips.
It's kind of self-sufficient.
It's the PC that needs it.
And it's not just about computers.
I mean, it's going to be tech tips, too.
I got a hot Mac tip for you.
Yeah.
And this will be quite rewarding for people who have sat through 54 minutes of this kvetch.
Yeah, I had dinner the other night in New York with someone who absolutely knows what goes on inside Apple, who doesn't work for Apple anymore, but has been there for a long, long time, dating back to the Newton days.
And, you know, they're talking about a new Mac coming out, something, you know, thin or whatever.
Well, he says it is pen-based.
Oh.
Well, that's no good.
And the reason why, he says, is because Apple has a certain patent over, I think he said, write anywhere.
I guess it's so that wherever you write, it doesn't drop down to a pre-fixed line that the writing has to go on to.
I'm not quite sure what it meant, but he was telling me about some patent that Apple had had since the Newton days, and that was the reason why no one had done it right yet, Implemented multi-touch, and they still have the light pen.
Do you recall that?
Yeah.
He says that that's what they're going to be doing next, is something pen-based, more tablet-sized, not full computer-sized.
Well, we'll see.
Hey, by the way, you mentioned that they're going to go after Huckabee, so I just hit the blog just to finish the show, but there's a post somebody just put up.
One of my bloggers, McCullough.
Huckabee's, and here's the headline, so this is kind of an indicator.
You don't have to know any more of this than the headline.
Huckabee's theology degree?
Not exactly.
Oh boy.
Yeah, it's all over.
So we'll see.
Who's that guy from the cage match?
Does he work for you?
The Bubba?
Yeah, Bubba.
What's his deal?
Baba is one of these guys.
Most of these guys that I have working, not all of them, but a good number of them, are kind of retired geezers.
Really?
I was thinking you had all kinds of young kids who were following...
There's a couple of guys that are young, but generally speaking, they're either retired or they're early retired.
A lot of them are kind of independently wealthy or they're just...
Ladies and gentlemen, the rare look inside the Dvorak Empire was we lift the curtain, the veil of dvorak.org slash blog.
It's all geezers.
So they seem to be...
They have a lot of time on their hands, a few of them.
And they're always surfing the web because a lot of people do that.
And they have this same libertarian perspective.
All of us have the same basic libertarian perspective, although we don't have the same...
And these are just guys you met throughout the years through email and stuff and then said, hey, you know, I'll maintain some stuff on your blog.
Is that how it works?
It started with a guy who's, I think, Ed's about 60...
I don't know.
I could be wrong.
But anyway, it started when I started the blog like four years ago.
And I'd get these guys and say, I like your blog and you should check this out.
Look at this post.
And then I would be getting ideas for posts.
And every once in a while somebody would come along and every one of their ideas was exactly what I would be posting if I had found it.
Right.
So it was like a self-selecting group.
There's other people that do this, but they're spotty.
They hit one, and the other one's kind of, oh, I don't know, I can't do that.
But there's a couple guys that were just hitting the exact right post.
I said, would you like to just do this post without going through me?
Just do it yourself?
Right.
And they said, yeah.
And I was thinking, well, they probably don't want to.
Every one of them said, yeah, absolutely.
So I just gave them the administrative...
Do you have a moderator set up though?
Is there a flow or does everyone just post freely and you don't check anything?
Do you ever remove anything?
Nope.
It's all freeform.
That would be work, Adam.
We're trying to avoid that.
That's very interesting because I've always wondered about that.
And so they probably don't even get paid at all.
Actually, they get a Christmas bonus every year.
Oh, that's nice.
Based on the Google Ads.
Google Ads, right, right, right, right.
And you know what it costs to keep the blog running.
But anyway, so yet, and I haven't sent that out yet this year, but I'm going to do it this week, I think.
But anyway, the thing is, it was self-selecting, and then Bubba came along, and Bubba was...
He was really anxious to do a lot, but he was too much.
He was really way anxious.
And so I said, well, you know, what really needs beefing up, if you want to do a lot of work, is the Cajun match, which is this other form.
It's a BBS type thing.
And so I just gave him.
I said, here, go do what you want to do there.
I just kind of gave it to him because it's actually run by him and a woman named Catherine McIntyre.
And she is the one who set it up, and she's kind of the techie.
And she found the right bulletin board software, and she did all that stuff.
And then I just gave it over to Bubba, who's also got his little couple of minions that he's kind of working with.
And so that's kind of an independent thing that competes with the other site.
The network that Dvorak created spreads far and wide across the universe of like-minded people.
It's the Tom Sawyer approach.
Have you met any of these folks personally?
Not in person, except Catherine.
I've known her for a year.
She used to be at PR at IBM. So you don't have a Dvorak.org slash fan day, and you all get together and have drinks and talk about the blog?
One of these days, when a couple other schemes work out, and after the pod show company goes public...
After we're rich beyond our wildest dreams!
I'll put a meeting together.
Dream on.
You're going to be working your sorry ass off for a long time, brother.
Well, we'll see.
So hopefully something good will come of it.
Anyway, so that's kind of the story.
It's the way it is.
I try to set that up so it's automated, so I'm not spending a lot of time on it myself.
And everybody that does it also does the comment moderation.
So if you happen to be on the blog, you check the comments.
Right, right, right.
It works out.
It's like a Wikipedia team.
Well, you know what it is?
It's very similar to the Daily Source Code.
People are sending in bits.
They contribute.
I can almost always count on Jersey Todd to send in songs for Friday.
You do collect kind of a core, what I call savants, of people around you who just contribute to your little media thing.
It is really quite awesome.
Yeah, no, people do like to get involved with like-minded people, and they're having fun.
What I give these guys, because a lot of them do have their own blogs, is I give them more exposure, because their blogs, like a typical blog, if you get 30 or 40 visitors a day, that's like a lot.
I get 30,000 a day, and it makes kind of a difference.
Nice.
So you get more...
The comments are more interesting, and there's like cadres of commenters.
So I think everybody appreciates the fact that it's a good platform.
Fantastic platform.
So man, you must be doing okay with those Google Ads.
You're probably doing like $50 to $100 a day?
No.
Google Ads are like overrated.
Really?
Yeah, you make about...
If you have a million page views, I'm guessing, generally speaking...
But you have about a million a month, right?
No, yeah, right.
You get about a thousand a month for about a million page views.
That's how low the numbers are for Google Ads.
Jeez Louise.
I mean, the only reason you run them is because Google has to look at your site more, so you get indexed a little better.
But if somebody comes along with a better scheme than Google Ads, I mean, everyone will jump to it.
Because most people, if you talk to them about what they make on Google Ads, they lie.
Because everyone's embarrassed.
Because the numbers are so low for Google Ads.
They're so low that everybody's humiliated by them.
And they think, well, it just must be me that they're so low.
So they'll lie to you and tell you, you know, I'm getting $5,000 a month.
Bullshit.
That's why I'm convinced this sellertainment stuff we're doing, like with GoDaddy and with the Nokia headsets.
And we're doing this...
Sony headsets.
I'm sorry.
It's Nokia.
Now I'm confused.
We're not doing Sony.
Sony's not sellertainment.
Vitamin Shop, I think, is going to be one.
Just like GoDaddy, there are people who are going to make $300,000 next year.
And, you know, they don't have a big audience, but again, it's one of these audiences, you know, they do promos and contests and, you know, you, you, because every single time, you know, you, you sign up a new customer, they get like a real, it's like QVC. It's like fucking QVC. And I really think it's a future.
I mean, I could sell cars.
I know I've sold cars, you know?
Hmm.
Yeah, I think you're right.
That really could be the answer for independent media, where you just ride along with whatever.
Basically, you can put anything up for sale.
I test this stuff with Amazon religiously, and I'm selling all kinds of stuff.
Not that it's a lot of money, but to someone else it would be a lot of money, probably.
Well, one of these days I'm going to bump the Google Ads and start selling stuff on the blog, and that will change the financing.
But for now, the Google Ads are there.
I actually learn a lot from them because I can see what's going through.
Because we have an eclectic blog.
I mean, it's got all kinds of weird stuff on it.
And so it's interesting to see what kind of ads come up.
Because they're trying to analyze the information, and then they throw up an ad that somehow...
You know, that's why I think the Huckabee thing's up right now with the Romney ad.
Yeah, I get all kinds of curry stuff.
Which is what I want, basically.
Well, there you have it.
Anyway.
So, I think that's it for this week, don't you think?
I don't know.
Is anyone still out there?
I think the suicide rate's gone up to 10.
So, we'll have to watch the numbers on this show.
Either people are going to love the longer format, or they're just going to have shot themselves.
Well, you know, I think the format is a variable anyway.
We're trying to keep it at a half an hour.
I don't know how we got carried away.
I think you were talking it, because you're all jacked up about that plane ride.
Should I edit out the whole thing about the banking system?
Oh, absolutely not.
Ha!
People know how to fast forward, don't they?
Isn't that the whole point?
No, they're going to listen to it.
And they're going to be listening, waiting for the punchline, and then they're going to be sorely disappointed.
I think that's great.
Does everything have to have a punchline?
I think so.
Well, could you rewrite that one for me then?
No, I'm not going to deal with it.
I've got to go try to even catch up with what you're talking about.
You should definitely look at this.
Hopefully we won't get back into another banking discussion in the future.
Well, okay.
Okay.
I'm just a little more meta at that than you are, John.
Oh, absolutely.
But that's because you have a greater interest in the international banking scheme of things than I do.
I think we all should have an interest in that.
It's important stuff.
That's where we can make some change.
Well, then people should go out and read Confessions of an Economic Hitman as soon as they can.
I think I should go read that.
Alright, I'll leave you with one then.
You definitely need to read Next, the new Michael Crichton novel.
Next?
Yeah.
What's it about?
It's about DNA and your right to your DNA in the future.
Oh, right.
And, you know, when, of course, we can solve every problem by just growing a new piece.
Yeah.
Right.
And putting it into you.
And it's a very good book.
And you can't miss it at the airport because they have a promotion on the stand where they have done the same.
It has an ape on the front with a barcode.
And they have different jackets.
They have a yellow jacket, a red jacket, a white jacket, a blue jacket.
And it's all the same logo, so you can't miss it.
It's a great book.
You'll like it.
I will get it immediately.
On one of your many travels.
Okay, still no word on an Eisenhower book?
No.
No.
I forgot about it.
Actually, I mentioned this on Daily Source Code.
I was obviously at the airport in the UK, and I was looking for an Eisenhower book in the biography section.
And the whole section, John, I kid you not, is filled with Autobiographies from David Beckham, Victoria Beckham, The Beckhams, The Unauthorized Beckhams, Baby Spice, Ginger Spice, Three Guys from Big Brother.
I mean, there's not a fucking serious biography to be found anymore.
That's your market.
All right.
We better stop before we kill again.
Exactly.
All right.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in sunny Northern California.
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