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Dec. 22, 2007 - No Agenda
01:04:00
9: No Agenda 009
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Once again, it's time for the program that has no music, no commercials, no jingles, no talent, and absolutely no agenda.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Northern California, a long ways off.
And the sun has definitely gone over the yardarm here.
It is...
Pitch black outside.
It's 4.30 p.m.
on Saturday, so that would make it about 8.30 your time, San Francisco?
Actually, it's 8.57.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I was looking at the second hand.
It's even more time gap between your house and my house.
It's amazing how that works.
So, yes, the sun's coming up.
It's actually up quite a bit so far.
Seems like it's up further than I think it should be.
But there it is.
And we do have sun today here in California, although we have a lot of high-level clouds, which means that something's coming up.
Yeah, it's been very, very cold here in the UK for the past, I think the past two weeks.
Just really cold, like constantly around the freezing point, which made my Christmas shopping that much unhappier today.
Oh, yeah.
I usually go Christmas shopping the night before Christmas.
Well, that's what I do, too.
Last Minute Man.
Yeah, well, the funny thing is you run into a lot of, if you go on Christmas Eve, besides the fact that they throw everything on sale, you run into, and I've done this for years, decades, you run into fellow travelers, people who are just the same, you know, they're just like you.
They go on the last day, and they've been doing it for years, and you're kind of like your immediate friends with all of them, and you joke about it.
And it's like a whole different crowd of people.
It's mostly men.
And they're out shopping around and it's the funniest thing because it's like one of those deals where you're just like your pals with these people without even knowing them and you all know what you're up to.
I really got boned.
I had Christina spy on her mom to find out what she wanted because when it comes down to the right or wrong bag or shoes or whatever, there's no way I can buy that.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
So I met her after she was working Today.
And so I met her after work.
And she had to go for a driving lesson.
So she said, oh, here are the boots that mom wants.
And I said, what size?
It's size 3.
Okay, so of course they only have size 4, right?
And my daughter's gone.
So I'm like helpless walking around going, oh, what other boots will do?
Well, of course, I have no freaking clue.
So what did you do?
What did you buy her?
Nothing.
Nothing yet.
I have to go back tomorrow.
I've got to Shanghai my daughter into going with me.
I'm completely lost.
I have no idea what I'm going to do.
Actually, my wife this year made an edict, which is that we can't buy gifts that aren't either handmade or used.
Wow.
Is this a part of the stop consumerism?
I'm very proud of you, John.
Yeah, I think it is because we're kind of sick of it.
The pendulum's swinging back, dude.
It's going to happen for everybody.
Well, luckily, there's like, you know, we've got, in the Berkeley area, there's like a lot of high-end, extremely competent potters and artisans.
Of course, you have the Telegraph Avenue weekend thing, which is hilarious.
I mean, if you want to see tie-dye, it's like a, I think I'll post some of these pictures.
I was there last weekend.
What is the interior of your house like?
Is it like a Western vibe, or...?
It's eclectic.
Gee, how surprising.
That's all I can say.
I did some research.
I think you told me you listened to the source code, so maybe you already heard about this.
I wanted to ask you about Stephen Brill.
Yeah.
Does that name ring a bell?
Stephen Brill, the guy who did that magazine, that's that Brill.
Brill's content, yes.
Yeah, Brill's content.
So guess what else he did after Brill's content folded in 2001?
Tell us.
He started a little-known company, which is so little-known.
Verified ID Systems, I think it is.
Who are the people who are rolling out the CLEAR program?
Verified identity pass.
Yeah, this is the thing at the airports now where you give the government your retinal scan and your fingerprints.
Right, and you can roll right past the gate.
Well, no you can't actually.
You get a different line where you still have to take your shoes off and your bag still has to go through x-ray and you still can't have liquids.
It's a separate line, that's all.
I just found that interesting that he had set that up.
I wonder if that's the same, because somebody was telling me about one.
Is that the only system that has the bypass?
Because the one this other guy was telling me about had a different name.
No, there were a couple of pilot projects that ran, but it seems like now that Brill's in with his clear program, it looks like he's the only guy that is really doing it.
But it's all part of the...
Oh, what is it called?
I think it's the Targeted Traveler Program or something like that.
That would be you.
Yes!
No, it's a TSA initiative.
And so they rolled out a couple of pilot programs.
And I guess this is the better brand or whatever.
But you don't know him personally?
I thought you might know him.
You know, I ran into him once.
I don't really know him.
I'd like if he sees me or if I see him on the street.
Run away now, man.
Run away from him.
I wouldn't probably recognize him, unfortunately.
But, you know, maybe you can give me a comp, not to mention it.
As long as you give up your retinal scan, you'll be fine.
Hey, you know, they probably have it already.
My wife doesn't want me to talk about this stuff anymore.
Oh, because she's going to be next on the list.
No, no, no, no.
She says, I have a bad feeling.
Do you know Adam Curry?
Are you married to him?
Come on with us.
She says, I have a really bad feeling about this.
You've really got to be careful with what you're talking about.
And what she's referring to, of course, if people want to go back and listen to previous shows, is the fact that every time you come into the USA, they stop you for one hour and a half just to harass you.
Well, you keep saying it's just to harass me, but it's obviously because their computer system is saying that there's a reason to speak to me.
But it's not really harassment.
They do that.
It's just dumb.
It's an inefficient, stupid system.
They've already asked me the same questions five times.
Hey, let's try this.
I think we should start experimenting.
Okay.
Now, the next time we come in, which will be in a few weeks, I think.
Yeah, around the 15th.
You're going to, as soon as they say, well, you know, and they start asking you questions, before they take you, you stop and say, wait, stop a second.
You're just wanting my autograph, right?
That's all this is about.
Okay, great one, John.
Can't wait to try it.
There's a domain name now that is don'tsendadam2gitmo.com.
Yeah, that'll probably trigger something.
You know, it's probably like a key word that the NSA is like scanning for.
The echelon, yeah.
Why shouldn't we, I wonder?
What's the reason for this?
Some suspicion.
So she's probably...
No, it's not just about that, but damn you, curse you, John C. Dvorak.
You got me into this Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
Yeah.
A book by John Perkins.
And you had mentioned a couple times to get the audio book, and I actually did.
Yeah.
And so I listened to it over the course of the week.
I think probably the stuff that's been coming out of my mouth here at home since I completed that book is probably what has caused her the most concern.
Has she listened to it yet?
No, she hasn't, you know, and I'm just about ready to start showing her some of the masses of videos that are out there online, because, you know, of course, I look a guy like this up, this John Perkins, and he's got links to, you know, other journalists, and these are serious-ass dudes who,
you know, have quite a record, quite a journalistic record, and they're uncovering some amazing things, and, you know, from that I rolled into, you know, you have a lot of these, 9-11 conspiracy videos.
I mean, there's at least four or five well-produced ones that are out there and available online right now.
Yeah, and in fact, the group as a whole are called the Truthers.
Yes, exactly.
The truthers, which is actually kind of an interesting term because it's catchy in some screwball way.
But anyway, I ran into the truthers seem to crop up as a group.
And I ran into a pile of them with their signs.
They have signage.
I haven't blogged this because I took some photos.
Yeah, they show up at media events typically where there's a camera so they can show up in the shot.
Right.
With the signage that says, you know, tell the truth about 9-11.
Anyway, they were out in front of KGO Studios in San Francisco, and I ran into one of them who happened to know or she knew me or something like that.
You said, you just want my autograph, don't you?
We've got to start using that as a catchphrase.
Anyway, so they have these discs that they hand out.
They tell you to reproduce them and scatter them around.
So they gave me a couple DVDs.
Which ones?
Do you remember the titles?
I've probably seen them all.
You know, I don't have the title.
The titles are also kind of not memorable.
Like 9-11 Empire?
The DVD's got a bunch of these documentaries on each one.
There's two of them.
Right.
But it says, Tell the Truth About Something or Other.
It's the name of the organization.
I don't follow it that closely.
They're kind of nutty.
But anyway, when I started looking at one of the DVDs, I seem to have lost the other one.
It's how conscientious I am.
But once you get past the poor production values of some of the earlier videos, there's actually some good stuff in there.
And there's a lot of questions that still, it seems to me, I mean, I think everything really stems around the World Trade Center 7.
Right, exactly.
Because of the timing, how that came down, the so-called command to, quote, pull it.
And, you know, all this scientific evidence surrounding the use of thermite, which is used in demolition.
There's a ton, a ton of that.
And I have to say that now we're getting some videos that the production value is a little higher.
A lot of this seems to...
I think his name is Alex Jones, Infowars.com is his site.
Oh yeah, that guy.
And that's kind of the problem.
You see this guy, he does seem indeed a bit nunny.
He also seems like a huckster.
Well, he does.
And it's unfortunate.
But I bumped into...
So I've seen all these videos and I don't talk about it anymore because it's an endless debate, right?
I have to say the videos that have been put together, wow, very convincing stuff.
But I found this other site, pilots4911truth.org.
And I'm like, well, that's interesting because there's something...
I don't know anything about thermite.
I don't know anything about demolition.
I do know something about flying.
And very interesting, under the Freedom of Information Act, they asked for the black box data.
It's about 25 megs worth of data.
And the black box tracks speed, inputs on the controls, obviously altitude, pitch, yaw, roll.
I mean, every single attitude of the aircraft, if thrust was used.
Just a lot of stuff is stored there.
Under Freedom of Information Act, they said, you know, send us a CSV, so, you know, comma, what does that stand for?
Comma...
Comma, CSV, comma...
Comma separated values, that's it.
Right, right, right.
Wow.
So, you know, basically a spreadsheet.
And they loaded it into a simulator.
And there's some very interesting discrepancies in that data.
I mean, like, really, really wrong.
You know, that just makes it, in fact, if the data was correct, at the point of so-called impact, the aircraft was actually at 480 feet in altitude, so it flew over the Pentagon, according to the data that the NTSB sent.
Thank you.
Now, that doesn't look that way in the simulator.
In fact, the simulator shows about 180 feet, so just about at ground level.
But either someone forgot, or somehow something was altered, and there was no reset of the altimeter.
They looked at the pressure settings for that day, which was 30.22.
They look at the temperature and they know exactly how high that aircraft was flying.
And according to this black box data that was sent to them by the NTSB, the plane actually went over the Pentagon at 480 feet.
So, you know, at least there's some stuff in there that I think warrants some further investigation at minimum.
Yeah, I think so.
But, you know, I don't think it's going to happen.
I think the official word is what we're going to have to live with.
You know, I was reminded during, there was a little era, I mean, this is like the guys who talk about the bomb at the, that Oklahoma City bombing and how it was two explosions and they found the two things and you can look at the, you know, it goes on and on and never ends because you can second guess everything.
But I'm always reminded of the early reports of, and I'll bring this one up for the nutballs out there, the early reports of the fact that the planes were flown into the buildings by remote control.
Mm-hmm.
Which was kind of a screwball concept, if you ask me.
But there used to be, in fact, the guy still exists.
There used to be a kind of a crackpot writer that had all kinds of weird information that he used to put on the net.
And this was in, like, the 90s.
And there was used to, and he talked about, you know, in fact, that book you're talking about, the Confessions of an Economic Hitman, talking about how they like to assassinate people with plane wrecks.
Yeah, planes and helicopters.
Right, because people are flying around in them a lot, and they crash all the time.
Anyway, and so...
Thanks.
The pilots of the world, thank you.
Yeah, well, but anyway, so Clinton used to have this guy who was the head of the Democratic National Committee, this black guy, and I remember he used to be on TV all the time.
He's a fast-talking character who was really good at making the Republicans' life miserable.
And he died in some mysterious wreck in Africa.
and during some period where he was involved with some scandal.
And the whole thing seemed suspicious to me, and this guy that I'm going to refer to in a minute, he wrote it up as an assassination, and he had all this information that was kind of interesting.
And the bullet to the back of the head or the body, nobody wanted to talk about things like that.
So anyway, the guy's name, in the 90s, and he was very interesting, and I'd read his stuff all the time because for no other reason it was highly entertaining.
and even though some of it was completely off the wall.
And the guy's name was Jay Orlin Grabb.
And J. Orling Grab wrote up his analysis of the 9-11 situation, which included the remote control flying.
And shortly thereafter, his material, his sites all became kind of like softcore porn sites with a lot of women.
And he was like, and you can't find his essays anymore.
No.
He's off the grid, dude.
Yeah, he's basically off the grid.
And if you do find anything by him, it's nothing compared to what he was doing in the 90s.
Maybe he's getting old.
But I can't tell.
But whatever the case is, I found that kind of interesting.
I have to say that...
And I'm very prone to obsessive-compulsive behavior, so I really dive into this stuff and I'll pull myself out.
And for the past couple of years, I've been looking at a lot of these.
First of all, I think it's actually pretty good that people are doing this.
And the more I think about how can we stop a lot of this insanity, which you can't even explain in a half-hour show as to what...
What actually potentially is going on on a big, big global scale.
I think that the Internet is actually the way that it's all going to unravel.
There are no secrets, is my slogan.
Only information you don't yet have.
So there's bound to be people who know something, and something's going to come out.
And it will come out through the net.
I'm quite sure of it.
Now, will it get squashed?
Will it get written off as those kooks?
Perhaps.
But I think the message is getting out.
And these are very, very powerful images.
There's certainly nothing...
Of equal power to these videos that I'm seeing in mainstream media.
Absolutely nothing even close to it.
And this is just really riveting stuff.
I have no reason to believe it's...
You look at the people who are giving speeches around the country.
These are scholars, John.
These are smart people.
They're not dumb disc jockeys like me.
Well, you know, the problem with that, you know, I actually have the opposite take on this, so far as the Internet's concerned.
I believe the Internet's got so much information, good, bad, and so much disinformation, and it can be so overloaded with BS and crazy people and people who are pretending to be crazy and all the rest of it, that the truth is probably harder to discern, you know, And gets more clouded than ever before, and so I think you can get away with more, not less, because of it, to be honest about it.
Yeah, but it's not like the internet produces this.
This comes from other people in there.
And I think that the way that it typically works on the internet is the things that are kind of complete bubble up and everyone's a filter and in my own way I'll act as a filter for other people.
And I don't know.
I have a little more optimistic view.
Yeah, no, I have a totally pessimistic view.
In fact, I think the internet can be used to manipulate things to an extreme, and I think we're going to witness some really outstanding examples of this in the future.
It'll be fun to watch, to be honest about it.
We're starting to see this a little bit, my theory anyway, with the political campaign, because I've still been a believer that McCain is the chosen one.
And they have to start destroying some of these guys who keep creeping into the mix to kind of almost win.
And Huckabee is the main one.
And Huckabee is this Baptist minister kind of, but now there's words out that maybe he's not.
And there's a lot of interesting disinformation.
It's starting, right?
The real campaign is now starting.
Yeah, he seems to be four Mexicans taking over the country, if you read carefully enough.
Anyway, yeah, it's starting.
And one of the key elements, and somebody who has a lot of influence is Rush Limbaugh, who's, for the European viewers, he's a very popular right-wing talk show.
He's the one who invented right-wing talk, talk radio.
And in 1987, when they revoked the law, the equal time law, yeah.
Yeah, that was revoked, and Limbaugh jumped on that immediately within two years, and the next thing you know, he's like a millionaire with his own private jet.
And, you know, a drug habit to match.
A drug habit, yeah.
Two friends of mine who actually, business partners, got him going.
They sold all of his ads.
It was an amazing business in those early years.
I mean, just hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Well, so he has, but the word, or at least the belief is, even though nobody proves it, he denies this constantly, that he's really a spokesperson for the established Republican Party, the true leadership, whoever they are, the secret club.
He's a bonesman.
Right.
And if you listen to him, you get a flavor for what might be coming down.
And Huckabee, in his sights, is a target.
Oh, okay.
Right.
So he started by calling him Hucksterbee.
Yeah.
And then now it's just the Huckster to refer to him.
And as soon as I started hearing this, I said, well, this guy's got, you know, Limbaugh's doing this, and he's just the beginning.
It's the opening salvo.
It's about to start, yeah.
It's about to start, and Huckabee's going to be screwed.
But meanwhile, he's getting into kind of an interesting debate with this other guy who's a more interesting character that they've got to move aside, which is Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney, yeah.
And Mitt Romney looks a lot, if anybody in Europe knows movie actors, he looks a lot like Treat Williams playing one of those evil businessmen that he used to do in a lot of movies.
Probably better than anyone.
And he has that evil businessman Treat Williams look.
And a good-looking guy, a Mormon, and apparently an incredible businessman, probably worth billions.
Well, you know that Bain Capital, one of his hedge funds that he's involved in, is, I think at this point, the only serious contender and bidder to buy Clear Channel.
Right.
Yeah, he wants to buy, which would be a great idea.
I wish he would buy Clear Channel.
Of course, it would turn into the Mitt Romney channel, but whatever.
I'm kidding.
I mean, this has been attempted before.
William Randolph Hearst I owned most of the newspapers in the country, or many of them, and he tried to become president, and that didn't work out.
You can't necessarily...
Trick the people by owning all the media, even though people like to think you can.
And you don't own the Internet, and the Internet can cloud anything, as I said.
But anyways, the true contenders for these offices were not the really...
My initial belief about two years ago was that the ticket was going to be McCain and Giuliani, which I thought was an unbeatable ticket.
I mean, nothing that Democrats could put up could beat those two guys.
But now, you know, Giuliani's hanging in there, but, you know, they don't want him to be president, and now he's sick or something.
Yeah, oh yeah.
He has some, like...
Yeah, he has a flu bug.
Yeah, but they call it flu-like.
Like, what does that mean?
Yeah, what does that mean?
Yeah, good point.
Flu-like, which means he was puking, basically.
Dehydrated.
Yeah, it probably poisoned him.
Oh, shit.
The first thing I thought when I read that is, hmm, radiation sickness, perhaps?
Well, that's possible, too.
Whatever the case, you know, this whole, the race is up for grabs, and I'm still a believer, and I think, I thought, you know, because McCain went soft on Bush during an era where he was being...
Really wrecked across the coals when he tried to run for president some years earlier.
And I'm absolutely sure a backroom deal was done saying, look, Bush has got to be in for this next election.
Well, you're the next guy.
Right, you're next in line.
And just shut up.
Get out of the way.
Don't do anything to ruin this because we can't lose to these other idiots.
And we'll give it to you for the 2008.
And that's why I've always believed that McCain is so relaxed during this campaign.
He doesn't even seem to be...
He's just coasting, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise later in the year.
This is my conspiracy theory.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's just a meeting happened and this is what they're going to do.
Well, it's interesting.
I did see...
What did I watch recently?
It was an older Meet the Press with John Kerry and John McCain together.
And you're right, the guy just sits there, you know, completely at ease.
But I'm not liking all the stuff that's coming out of his mouth, quite honestly.
Well, he's getting too, you know, this is a problem.
He's getting a little cocky.
And then he shows up, and he's the only guy, by the way, that consistently shows up on the Jon Stewart show.
And Jon Stewart is like a...
And they apparently have become friends.
And Stewart, of course, is a...
I wouldn't say he's a socialist, but he's definitely a liberal.
And one of the few funny liberals that knows how to handle the media and knows how to twist the knife with humor.
Tweak the nipple.
And he and McCain just get along famously, and they exchange barbs, and it's actually quite interesting to watch this, and I think that's all part of the overall scheme.
Well, it could be.
Eh, it's a theory.
Well, actually, I usually put money on the elections, but only near the end.
I mean, I have already put, I think, two bets down that the Republicans will win again.
Well, first we've got to get through the next stage.
So you're saying McCain will get the ticket for the Republicans.
That's what my theory is, but I don't care who gets it, they'll still win.
I don't see the Democrats being able to field, and I've taken this bet twice now, and I'll take it with anybody.
Really?
You think the next president will be a Republican?
Absolutely.
There's no question about it.
Wow.
Wow.
I don't think the Democrats have anyone they can field.
And I think, in fact, my original, again, a couple years ago, my view of things was going to be McCain-Guliani versus Hillary-Obama.
Because there's a weird logic to the idea of running Hillary and Obama, which is that you'll get all the women and you'll get all the blacks to vote for them because there's a woman and a black thinking that everybody's an idiot.
And you can't lose.
So I'm still sticking with the Hillary-Obama ticket.
I don't know.
I mean, I will probably be proven wrong, but I truly believe that so few people turn out to vote anyway.
I believe that an outsider could come in and could steal this race away, particularly because it started so early.
The press is already getting extremely bored of...
Either nothing happening.
In fact, nothing is happening.
It's just boring.
So they're making shit up.
It's getting bad.
That's why the Ron Paul blimp works.
There was real good coverage for the $6 million man.
$6 million raised on...
I think that's why Huckabee gets lifted up.
I think that at the end of this race, we'll see that there's a lot more exposure and a lot more attention for some of these more like fringe candidates.
I think that's really going to happen.
It truly is how television works.
They are already bored of what's going on.
Yeah, you know what I think is going to happen after this election?
Somehow the politicos are going to get together and they're going to have a meeting.
You know, it's all one party anyway.
They're going to have a meeting and say, look, this is killing us.
Who came up with that idea that we should run this election for like over a year?
It scatters the money because they'd rather have the money just go into where it belongs rather than scattered all over the place.
But to a bunch of maniacs, they're going to have to do something about this.
They cannot do this again, which again may show up at the end when they reanalyze this election cycle.
They're going to say, this didn't work to the public's benefit.
You're going to end up with the candidates that weren't leading at the beginning, and then you just have a bunch of mudsling.
And also, there's no one running the country back in Washington.
Did I not see, was it Chris Dodd who...
You know, created this filibuster to stop the new FISA Act?
Yeah, I haven't, you know, I hate to say I haven't been following it that closely.
In fact, I kind of...
Well, I heard you say on Tech 5 that it had gone into law, that it had passed.
No, I admit, I screwed up.
It was a mistake.
Okay.
And it was essentially the vote was to keep the debate going or not going.
The whole thing is a joke.
Well, the thing is the amnesty for the telco companies.
What this revised FISA bill said, amongst other things, was.
And FISA is basically this whole wiretapping bill which says you can get a wiretap under certain circumstances without a warrant through the traditional court system.
I'm just paraphrasing.
I'm not a lawyer.
But in addition, in the new FISA law, which expires, I believe, in a week or so, the old one, which would mean wiretapping would have to go back to the way it's supposed to be, which is like you get a proper warrant and it takes a couple days.
But anyway, in this new FISA Act, the telecom companies who had conspired with the government to give them data...
going back five years in time and uh so i believe chris dodd um stopped this and they and they actually took it off the table uh and they won't vote on it until after the new year and they're going to try and revise it and you know and try and uh and i guess they're going to try and keep that part in but that obviously is is horrible yeah no that's a bad thing uh
But, you know, these guys have played ball against probably what they should have done.
I mean, a couple of them didn't.
At least they claimed they didn't.
They said, look, these guys came in.
It doesn't sound right to us that we should be listening to these customers because we have laws that prevent us from doing that.
And they just wanted to do it for, you know, just...
In a kind of broad way, just listen to everything, collect all the calls into a big database, and then go over them later, data mine them.
And we didn't think this was something that was legal, and they told them that they weren't going to do it.
I think it was one of the Quest guys and some other guys refused.
But AT&T and all these other guys, sure, whatever, we don't care.
There you go.
And, you know, whatever, you know.
I have an AT&T account.
That's my cell phone, so that's probably, they echeloned me.
Probably heard me talking to you.
You're probably in there, I'm sure, for...
I don't know.
I don't know.
It still baffles me why you're under constant scrutiny.
Under scrutiny.
Hey, man, we wrote a couple things down earlier in the week that we were going to talk about.
Do you have your list?
Oh, yeah.
Hang on one second.
I'm going to have to put a pause in there because I do have the list.
Well, you got your headphones on while you're getting it or did you just walk away?
I have to walk away.
Well, then let me...
Let me...
Let's see.
Maybe I have something I can play.
I thought maybe there was a voicemail comment that we had that came in.
You know, I have this...
I have this bad habit of writing stuff on little...
My latest thing is I take printouts that are...
The backside are blank, right?
And a lot of printers.
I have a duplex printer, but most of them are just blank.
And so I flip the things over, and then I use them as...
And I fold them in half vertically, and then I use that as my note thing.
So I have piles of these things.
Yeah, I use my one-side printed paper for filters.
I rip off little strips and then roll it up.
Okay, now here's the problem with the notes I took.
Okay.
Legibility?
This is the problem.
This is like...
We had good stuff, John.
One of them was like this.
This is the note, and then you have to kind of extrapolate, why did I write this?
It's almost like when you're in college and you took notes on some of your passing thoughts, usually late at night, and they don't make any sense the next day.
A million people probably sent this to you already.
Oh, I know what that is.
I know what that is.
We were talking about how when you're, you know, so either, you know, I have a company, there's 100 people in the company, but, you know, there's a lot of people that I know.
Look, I'm famous.
What can I tell you?
John C. Dvorak, you're famous.
And so what you get when you have a certain level of fame is that people send you stuff and And they'll say, you know, you probably have already had a million people send you this link.
But anyway, here it is.
And it's a really tough situation because the fact of the matter is most people actually believe that someone else already sent it to me.
And then you wind up not knowing fucking shit because no one sends you anything anymore.
So whenever someone sends me something like that, I'm always saying, hey, thanks.
No, first one, like first post.
Great job.
I keep trying to, you know, I'm sure you have the same thing.
Absolutely.
I get a lot of these and they always say the same thing, which is a million people probably sent this to you already, but...
And then they send you some link that you've never seen in your life.
Nobody else sends it to you.
No one has sent it, no.
No one sent it before or after.
And you go, wow, this is interesting.
And it could have to do with the company you're working for or something like, you know, you made a mistake on the blog, for example.
Whatever it is, yeah.
That happens a lot, yeah.
Everyone assumes that you, you know, the sense you do have.
I mean, there are numbers here.
I mean, the blog, my blog has like a million...
Page views a month plus.
So there's 30,000 or 40,000 people that hit the thing every day.
So it would seem likely that somebody out of these tens of thousands of people would say something.
But they don't.
Because they always assume that the next guy did.
I think this concept is happening on a global basis.
Because I know for a fact that when I'm driving past...
Years and years ago when I had a...
You know, when I actually carried a cell phone, I would be on the freeway and I'd see a wreck and I'd call CHP and say, you know, there's a wreck on such and such and such right here and there.
Right.
And now you get to the, I think most people, myself included, go, ah, somebody must be called now.
Ah, someone already called it in.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And there's a transition point because I remember calling those in and I was like the guy calling them in.
And then at one point, somewhere along the line, every time I called in, they said, oh yeah, we've got that one.
Somebody called it in.
Yeah.
And then you stop calling.
Then you stop calling, and then nobody calls it in, because I've seen some of these wrecks out here.
They've been there for hours.
Yeah, and no one's fucking called it in.
Right.
Yeah.
So please, consider your celebrity friends.
And do send us that link.
We really do appreciate it.
So anyway, that's...
Yeah, because now you get too much.
I don't know if you knew this, but...
There's another thing that I brought on this list, which is, you know, people...
Kissinger came out with a comment that we can never...
It was on some show.
I think it was in Europe.
He was on the BBC or someplace saying, you know, we can't...
This war in Iraq is unwinnable because, you know, there's nobody that you can win against because there's no other side.
You know, it's just a scattered bunch of people doing whatever they do.
So you can't have a table.
There's no surrender table where somebody can come and sign over, right?
So we might as well just forget it.
We're going to be there for the rest of our lives for some reason.
And I'm thinking, well, you know, the one thing I would say, well, you can't cut and run.
You can't do this.
You can't do that.
And every time I'm always hearing about how come we can't just pick up and leave, I'm thinking, isn't this the kind of criticism that we used to have against Asians in general about their concept of saving face?
Whereas it's, what a bunch of dingbats.
You know, they can't do this, they can't do that because they wouldn't be saving face.
You know, they would be humiliated because of face, face, face, this concept of saving face.
And we always thought that it's purely an Asian phenomenon about saving face.
When in fact, apparently it's not because that's what this is all about.
It's saving face.
Well, really, it's about the United States saving face in both cases.
Exactly, that's what I mean.
Yeah, in both cases.
I'm looking at the article now.
If you mean by military victory in Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs the whole country, that gets a civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political process of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible, he told the BBC. Right.
Of course, that got no play in the U.S. No, of course not.
Well, I'm getting this from MSNBC, which is the first hit on Google.
But, you know, of course, the fact of the matter is...
That's not the U.S. Good point.
The fact of the matter is that...
It's all about the flow of money for building infrastructure.
I think it's about saving face at this point.
I think the flow of money thing has already been controlled.
No, no, no.
You know what just happened?
Here comes Adam's finance segment of the week.
Oh, no.
Yep.
The Saudi royal family and Saudi Arabia, as I guess a kingdom, are putting together the...
Sovereign Saudi Arabian fund.
A trillion dollars.
A trillion dollars.
And they're going to lend this money to whom?
To us.
We could use it.
To our banks.
And essentially, it's just money that's coming in that's going to be paid for more infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
It's crazy.
I know, the whole thing is just pretty fun.
They're laundering money.
It's really interesting.
Kind of.
Okay, anyway.
So let's make the oil $100 a barrel, and then we'll give you half of it back.
It is $100 a barrel.
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, it's not quite.
I think it was 96 or something today, or yesterday.
It reminds me, every single time I see those numbers, it reminds me of Waterworld.
You ever seen that movie with Kevin Costner?
Yeah.
One of the corniest weird films ever.
Yeah, but what I liked about it was everyone was after the go-juice.
You had to have go-juice to make your engine go.
And you got the big pirate ship.
And I kind of imagine that I'll wind up one day like that on a big go-juice pirate ship.
Yeah.
Well, that reminds me, there was a good, let's see, it wasn't Death Race 2000.
It was, there was another movie, which is a cult film.
I can't remember the name, some viewer out there knows it, but it was a movie about a guy who got a hot, like a big sports car, or like a racing car, and he was shot across the country to get to free California, which was the only free country left in the world.
Oh, yeah.
And he was We're shooting across, and his whole time he was going, and they're trying to kill him constantly with missiles and everything else, was he'd stop at all these old gas stations because gasoline was eliminated.
We couldn't have gasoline anymore.
But all the old gasolines had a few inches of gasoline left at the very bottom of the tank because the pumps wouldn't go all the way down, of course.
Because they couldn't hit the bottom.
Because they'd suck up rust, is the reason, if anyone wants to know.
So he could take a tube and run it down at the bottom and siphon up a few gallons for his race car and then shoot off toward California.
And I can't remember the name of that thing for the life of me.
But anyway, that was a similar kind of thing.
Where gasoline has become this weird commodity.
What else is on our list?
I don't know.
Something more interesting than that, I hope.
We should talk a little bit about the fact that I have another one here.
This is another example of my kind of note-taking.
And I'll tell you what it is.
It says French, and then there's an arrow pointing to IBM. Okay, that gets nothing.
What the hell was that about?
French arrow IBM. No, no.
Here's another one.
This is promised because once they get over three or four days old, they'd make no sense to me.
Here's another one.
Ambulance chasers with an arrow, a long arrow, pointing to age.
And underneath age in a box is written the word ramps.
And then another arrow pointing to nothing.
Okay, I remember parts of this.
Part of this was about San Francisco being very disabled-friendly.
The Ambulance Chasers was about lawyers who used to literally wait outside our building when we were a public company in New York.
Oh, right, right, right.
And then ask women, you know, hey, did this happen to you today?
Because then you have a sexual harassment suit.
The age thing came from me...
Telling you that I had training, you know, HR training, and in a job interview you cannot ask someone how old they are.
If you do, then you can get sued later for an age discrimination suit, but I have no idea what it was in reference to.
I think we're talking about, I think maybe we've been talking about even the Office Romance book that was written recently by Stephanie Losey that we covered on a Cranky Geek show.
Oh, yeah.
And she was always, she was shocked by the fact that, you know, she had all the, she had big agents and all the publishers seemed interested, but nobody wanted to publish this book.
But I had taken that HR course on sexual harassment.
And if you really look into it, I mean, you can't do anything.
You can't even, you know, say hello to a woman without the possibility existing that you're going to get sued.
And so I told her that the real problem is because of the way sexual harassment has gone, these lawsuits, that if one of these big publishers, or usually a multinational corporation, published that book about office romance, and they had a sexual harassment suit thrown at them, it would be evidence against them.
Yeah, I think there's something to that, absolutely.
So in other words, because of the way the courts work in this country, it's actually kind of impacting, is the word I'm looking for, freedom of speech.
It is.
Literally.
In fact, I think if somebody would bring up, you know, say you go up to, you got somebody in the office and you go, you know, you can't say, you can't compliment them on their appearance or anything according to most of these.
And they have all kinds of documentation in these courses showing you why.
Because some guy said, hi, honey, you've got a beautiful dress today.
Well, boom, he's in court the next day.
I am so going to Gitmo, dude.
You see me around the office, I'm horrible.
You should take the course.
I have to.
By law, I have to take the course.
Well, I don't know why you haven't.
But anyway, the point is that where does freedom of speech begin and end, and where does sexual harassment begin?
And it seems to me it's a freedom of speech issue.
If I want to say, hi, honey, that's a great dress you've got on, I think I, under the Constitution, have that right.
And I shouldn't under any circumstances be sued for sexual harassment.
Not only do I think you have that right, I think you are obliged to say hi honey to me every single time you see me.
That is absolutely true.
Yeah, dream on.
So it's not going to happen.
But anyway, the point is that the fact that this book wasn't published, except by a very small independent publisher who doesn't have anything to worry about because they have less than 100 employees, is a pathetic indictment of the system.
Anyway, that's what I think.
That's a really good point.
No one's going to go to the mat for that, though.
No one wants to go through the hassle.
Yeah, you know what?
That's what it is.
It's a hassle.
Nobody cares.
They figure everyone's a short-timer.
Screw it.
You know, somebody's wearing a nice dress too bad.
I can't help myself.
If someone's wearing a nice dress, I've got to say, nice dress.
I just can't help myself.
Yeah, well, I'd stay in London if I were you.
The other thing I wanted to say is that one of the movies I wanted people to see, and we could talk about it at some point, because we were talking about comics, and it was the movie Best of Show.
Which is a hilarious movie, but it has a guy in it named Fred Willard.
And Fred Willard, who's done some of the finest, most inventive comedy.
I don't know how old this guy is, but he must be 90, even though he doesn't look that old.
Because when I was in high school, which was a while ago, I saw this guy when he was a comic team called Willard and Greco.
I saw him at the Hungry Eye in San Francisco, and he was hilarious since then.
He was also the guy who was the sidekick on Fernwood Tonight with Martin Mull.
His type of humor is epitomized by this particular joke, which I'll try to explain, which is the two of them are sitting there.
Fernwood Tonight was a fake talk show that was mocking the talk show genre.
And Martin Mull was like the Johnny Carson, and Willard was the sidekick.
And they'd be getting into some discussion, and Willard would, out of the blue, make these strange comments, which, by the way, is what I have Sebastian Rupley on Cranky Geeks fashioned after.
He'd make these strange comments.
He'd say, you know, I don't know why they've got these ramps on...
Why did they put these ramps on all the sidewalks just so skateboarders can go zooming up and down, almost knocking you over?
It's ridiculous that they'd do something like this.
And then Martin Mull goes...
He says, those ramps are for the handicapped.
And without missing a beat, Fred Willard says, that's bull.
I've never seen a handicapped guy on a skateboard.
I had a Martin Mull run-in once.
It was at the Cable Ace Awards, and I was presenting, and this is a very industry-heavy event, and I had to go because MTV was trying to break through the new cable markets, and basically it's a big jerk-off session for these...
At the time, there were hundreds of cable operators in the U.S. Of course, they're now all bought by Time Warner or Comcast or whatever.
And they all kind of felt and acted like they were NBC. So it was a big deal for them.
And so all these tabers were filled with these basically ditch diggers, what we called them, with respect.
But ditch diggers, because that's what they did.
They dug a ditch and they ran some cable to your house and they had no fucking service and it sucked and you couldn't reach anyone.
It never worked.
But they acted like they were...
Hot stuff.
Real hot stuff.
Some of them had their second wives there, and they were all dressed up.
So, Cable Ace Awards.
Anyway, I was there with Patricia, and we're backstage, and Martin Mull is the emcee.
Any...
I forget if we were on like a dais or...
I think we were on a dais for some reason.
I'm not quite sure what the fuck it was.
But he announces me.
He's like, you know, and here's this guy from MTV. Boy, you'd hate to have your daughter come home with him.
You know, here's Adam Curry.
And Patricia, she pulled him aside and said, The fuck are you, Grandpa?
She totally came up to defend my honor.
And from that day on, whenever we see him on TV, we turn him off.
It's like, oh, that dick.
Eh, fuck him.
We don't like him.
It's a showbiz feud.
He had a funny career.
I remember first hearing him when he was doing a bunch of song parodies and inventions, humorous song inventions, that were extremely popular for a very short period.
And then he stopped doing that, and then he became an actor.
And I don't know, it's just a strange career, but he went through this one little phase where he had this fake talk show.
I don't know what's ever come up.
He kind of comes off as like he's a comedian, but he's not really funny.
He's an actor, but he's not really talented.
You know, he's just kind of there.
He's recognizable.
That's it.
He's recognizable.
Yeah, well there's been a lot of that in Hollywood.
But the best of show has Willard playing another perfect role for him.
I recommend seeing it if anyone hasn't seen that movie.
It's quite funny.
It's about dog shows.
So what is the opposite of Rush Limbaugh?
Can we be that?
There's no real, you know, people keep thinking, I mean, I think the opposite of Rush Limbaugh is actually Jon Stewart, but nobody really has been able to go on the left in terms of the liberal side and do that kind of material because there's, and a lot of people believe it's because itself, the liberal people have, like they're the Chinese people.
The liberal people.
The people from the liberal republic.
Yeah.
The liberal people.
They have painted themselves into a corner because they can't be offensive and they can't insult anyone and they can't do this and they can't do that.
You know, they all have to be politically correct.
Yeah, you can't say nice dress, honey, you know, like we do in Texas.
You can't do that.
You can't be funny because then you're hurting someone's feelings and that kind of thing.
So you end up with a namby-pamby kind of thing unless you have someone who's a pure satirist like Jon Stewart who doesn't mind doing that stuff, but he's not seen as the opposite.
The closest that anyone comes is actually another right-wing guy, but he...
He portrays himself as...
He takes kind of a weird position, which is this guy, Michael Savage, who's much more entertaining than anybody.
And he's in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he just complains about everything.
And he doesn't like Bush.
And he sees Limbaugh, and he's the one that promotes the idea that Limbaugh is just a mouthpiece.
Well, the only reason I ask is...
There is no opposite.
Right.
Could we get that kind of audience?
Because quite honestly, I want the jet and the drug habit.
I can go for the jet.
The drug habit I can do without, because that drug habit is actually what made him deaf.
Because a lot of people don't realize that using...
Well, he is deaf.
But OxyContin, when used in an addictive fashion where you're just using way too much of it, actually makes you deaf.
It's one of the side effects.
Does it say it on the box?
Overused will make you go deaf, may decrease hearing abilities, and induce nausea?
It would have had to have said it on the baggie.
If you've had a hard-on and are going deaf for more than four hours, please contact your physician immediately.
So anyway, so he had to have these implants and all these other things because he went deaf.
And in fact, I remember that period where he first went deaf and he didn't have the hearing aids.
And I turned him on once because I listened to right-wing talk, you know, I admit it.
Because you get a lot of information from these guys, to be honest about it.
Anyway, so I was listening, I said, who's this guy?
And I said, this isn't Rush Limbaugh, this is somebody else.
Because he couldn't hear himself, because he was a DJ, like you.
And he loved his own voice, but he had to modulate it with the microphone, so he'd be up to the microphone, and he'd be talking like this.
Yeah, like I do.
Hey, baby, how they doing?
People out there should know that if you're on the radio and you have a pair of headphones on, you can really control your voice a lot more because you're hearing yourself.
Exactly.
And you can talk a little bit more like this.
Hey, baby, send naked pictures.
Anyway, so he couldn't hear himself, so he couldn't do his own voice.
I thought it was weird.
I didn't think it was him.
I thought it was some phony.
And then I found out about all this other stuff, and then he got the implants, and now he sounds exactly like he used to.
But it's funny.
If you can't hear yourself, it's like people who are...
I know a lot of people that went to way too many...
When I was a kid, I worked in factories and I learned about ear protection.
So when I went to rock concerts, I always had ear protection and I still wear it.
But there's a lot of people that went to a lot of heavy metal concerts and never wore ear protection.
They're deaf.
They're all deaf.
And when you talk to them, they scream at you because they can't hear themselves.
Did you leave the lights on?
What are you doing?
I've always, always worn ear protectors.
In fact, all the roadies at all these concerts, every single person at the show is wearing ear protection.
It's an insurance requirement these days.
Yeah, nowadays.
But back in the day, you know, in the 70s and 80s, it wasn't as...
People weren't paying attention.
I don't know.
It did help, and I think this is lost on the public.
It did help when you were a kid where you could actually get jobs in factories during the summer.
Nowadays, you go around and you see kids hanging out in the streets and say, why don't you guys get a job?
Get a job where, they tell you.
Yeah, I'd get a job, dude, but like where?
But back in the day, you could get work when you were a kid and you'd learn a lot because you were on these jobs, you know, learning stuff like wearing ear protection or taking salt tablets and things like that.
Okay, this just in on the wires.
For some reason, it's from Clarksburg, West Virginia.
I actually happen to know where that is and have been to Clarksburg, West Virginia.
The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of people's physical characteristics.
A project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints, palm patterns, and iris scans.
There you go.
The FBI will also retain upon request by employers, fingerprints of employees.
Oh, this is great.
This is just awesome.
Another half hour on the waiting line for you.
It's related.
It's related.
Look, the Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks who want to move through the lines quickly.
It's all related, dude.
It's happening.
They're rolling it out.
They're totally rolling this shit out.
This is great.
I'll put this link in the show notes.
It's like a whole story on the Washington Post.
Why Clarksburg?
Is that where the FBI is?
I don't know.
It's probably where they can get cheap land.
No idea.
No, that's not where the FBI is.
Maybe they like football.
There's some good football teams in West Virginia.
Well, yes.
The Mountaineers.
The Mountaineers.
Although they lost their coach.
They suck, yeah.
But didn't they lose out on the championships?
I don't really follow it, but...
Yeah, no, they can't get in.
So I got a couple of West Virginia hoodies that now I can't use as a one-upsmanship thing.
I've always thought they had the chromiest logo, that green and yellow, kind of like really jagged WVU, whatever it is.
No, they don't.
They have the flying W. It's actually gorgeous.
I never liked that.
I know it.
And it's yellow on blue.
It's perfect colors.
I mean, it's a really good-looking logo.
Maybe there's an old logo you're thinking about, but the Flying W, which is called the Flying W, which is actually W and F shoved together, I think it's a very good-looking logo.
But, you know, now they lost their coach, and they're probably, you know...
It's all over.
The best team this year was Appalachian State, there's no doubt about it.
Again.
You've lost me.
Yeah, I know.
But the two other football fans in our audience are going, Dvorak's right.
So what are you doing for Christmas?
You celebrate?
Going up to Washington.
You go see the family?
Yeah, everyone's up there because we've got a deli up there, and so my wife comes down half the time.
I go up there half the time, but she's got to be near the deli more than I do, so I'm down here mostly.
So you're really alone most of the time?
Well, except when the girls are here.
Well, yeah, but they only come down on the weekends, don't they?
No.
You are in Gitmo, my friend.
I'm talking about the other girls.
Oh, okay.
On that note, we've done another hour show.
In the future, should we try and do this daily?
Do you think people would show up for it?
I think if we get a critical mass of weekly listeners, we should, because the only money in this is doing it daily, let's face it.
But I think we're going to run out of material, because although I don't think we're the boringest guys in the world, at some point, although the news usually provides us with more than enough information, Yeah, but that's kind of the problem.
I don't want it to become one of the...
And there's so many shows about news, which really just makes you a part of the fucking machine.
Yeah, we should be talking more about society, as opposed to talking about what we didn't talk about this week, which is the implications of Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy.
Yeah, now there's a topic.
I can't believe we overlooked that one.
Well, I can, but it's an interesting topic to me because I get the sense that she got pregnant on purpose to get attention.
You think?
It's really sad when you see people caught up in the show business machine like that, because that's really what that is.
They just have no idea.
Apparently.
And no one gives a shit.
It's like Amy Winehouse.
Everyone's just waiting for her to fuck up again or die.
She's been arrested.
Nobody even knows who that is over here.
No one knows who Amy Winehouse is?
You're kidding me.
Well, I don't know who she is.
No, no.
She's been nominated for six Grammy Awards.
Someone knows who she is, John.
Oh, that woman.
Yeah, that woman.
Yeah, I get it.
Exactly.
So, hey, this is interesting.
So I have the Google News page up, because I figure if we ran out of material, I could always jump on one of these stories.
And the thing just refreshed on its own, and it swapped out all the photos.
So they've changed this code in this thing.
I don't think you used to do that.
You used to get the same picture?
Bing, and the next thing you know, the whole page is different.
What's your top news item?
Well, you had the one from the...
Mine is the FBI plan's $1 billion database.
Right.
I just want to compare.
Under that, no troop surge for Afghanistan?
Yeah.
Okay, so it is the same.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
And then the ex-CIA subpoena thing is interesting, and the rest of it, you know, just...
Yeah, but it's just more commenting on the fucking news.
Yeah, no, I'm not saying we should.
Yeah.
Okay, I forgot to tell you.
I got the Yorkshire tea that I brought home from the office that they sent me.
The one that you got for free?
Yeah, that was...
Paul Parkinson actually arranged that.
Did he?
He has a show here in the UK. I didn't get any free, by the way.
No, you didn't get anything free.
So I tried it out, and I'm like...
And I have to tell you, I don't think my palate is sophisticated enough.
To really tell the difference.
In fact, Patricia, she shunned it immediately.
She said, oh no, I like the PG tips much better.
And then I tried.
I did one of the decaf tests.
You remember the old commercials?
Hmm.
She didn't even notice it was decaf.
And so I made her a Yorkshire tea.
And she nailed it.
And she said, which one is this?
Is it the regular tea?
And I said, yeah.
Trying not to really fib.
So she thought it was PG Tips.
She said, oh yeah, I can taste it.
This is PG Tips.
But it wasn't.
It was the Yorkshire tea.
Oh, you jocked her?
Yeah, yeah.
I haven't actually said anything to her about that.
She's going to know now.
You're going to get the, you know, instead of the T-bone steak, it's going to be liver.
Oh, dude, you actually believe that my wife listens to this shit?
Well, you're probably right.
It's like my wife.
She doesn't listen to anything I do.
Does she read any of your articles?
No.
Never.
No, never.
Have you written books?
You've written books, haven't you?
Yeah, but usually she has something to do with the editing, so it's like she reads them that way.
All right.
Well, you know, I think you should check your wife out with a tea called Lifeboat.
Lifeboat tea.
Okay.
Yeah, that's actually a pretty nice tea.
I like Lifeboat.
And of course, Sainsbury's Red Label is a favorite amongst the cheapskates in England.
Yeah, you mentioned that, but we've had that before, but still think PG is better than that.
I don't like Sainsbury's Red Label so much either.
I think it's bland.
There are people in America going, what the fuck?
No, I think Americans are drinking more and more tea.
Yeah, but they're drinking flavored tea.
Have you seen the selection at the office?
If you just want a regular tea bag, you can hardly find it anymore.
It's all raspberry.
They have a box of PG tips sitting there now.
Really?
Oh, thank you.
I'm sure you took care of that.
No, I don't know who did, but somebody did.
Nice.
I guess somebody, maybe somebody listens to our show.
Someone actually listens to this shit.
All right.
All right.
That's it.
You got anything else?
No, I think we're through.
I think we're done as well.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor in Guilford in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Northern California.
And we'll talk to you again next week on No Agenda.
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