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May 17, 2008 - No Agenda

01:25:58

31: Truth to Power Ratio

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	Hey everybody, it's time once again for the program that is literally made up on the spot.
	Well, sometimes in advance, and sometimes even after the fact.
	You know why?
	Because we have no agenda.
	This is 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 where we've had a couple of 100 degree days and I think it's cooling off today and I can finally see the marine layer out there beyond the Golden Gate Bridge ready to come in and cool us off.
	Well, shit, if I knew you were going to give a full weather report, I would have done the same, you know?
	Actually, let me tell you, I did just come through the clouds from the Netherlands, and I did some amazing instrument flying today.
	I've gone to a whole new level of airmanship.
	I'm quite jazzed and adrenalized, actually.
	Well, that's sweet.
	It is because there comes this point when you have the confidence to do a number of different things.
	It actually kind of gets easier when you get to instrument flying because all you have to do is just follow instructions and you're really managing the system instead of flying the airplane.
	But it feels like the oyster that is my world enlarged a little bit today.
	I think I can go to more places and do more things.
	But you're not going to take...
	That doesn't mean you're going to become some sort of a crackpot risk taker.
	Quite the opposite.
	No, no, no.
	In fact...
	There's this magical moment, I think, before you get to your instrument rating, where before you really have done instrument flying, because the thing with instrument flying, and people may know this, but really the main issue is if you're a private pilot, and so you fly under what they call visual flying rules, VFR, that means you can see the ground at all times when you're flying.
	Because when you go into clouds, and let's just call that a whiteout, because all the windows is just white.
	You can't see anything.
	At that point, if you don't know how to read your instruments and fly on your instruments, you will probably wind up upside down within about seven seconds because of vertigo.
	And the vertigo thing, or as we call it, the leans, is really quite interesting because when you're flying in IMC, so instrument meteorological conditions, You know, you basically have to look at your horizon and keep the aircraft level and you don't look outside.
	In fact, you don't even move your head very much because every movement you make with your head could cause vertigo.
	If you're trained in it, you recognize it and you don't do anything wrong, but you still have the same feeling.
	It's like, I feel like the aircraft is leaning to the left, where really it's leaning to the right or doing something else.
	It's a very weird sensation, but once you're past it, it's pretty cool.
	Well, good.
	Then I'll feel more comfortable flying with you.
	Would you really get on with me?
	You'd fly with me, wouldn't you?
	Yeah, yeah.
	You're safety-oriented, you know, and you're not crazy.
	So let's talk a little bit about No Agenda.
	The program No Agenda?
	Yeah, you've heard of it.
	Yeah, surely, along with some 35,000 other people.
	So I've been getting a lot of, you know, since I'm doing a lot of twittering, as you do, I've been getting a lot of commentary regarding the concept of No Agenda and what it means.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	Okay.
	Yeah, they always say, well, in fact, I said on a Twitter, or a tweeter, whatever the hell you want to call it, a tutor, earlier, that I'm going to explain what no agenda means, and then somebody, you know, Uberchick, I think is who it was, one of my followers, she said, well, then by even saying that, that means you have an agenda.
	And see, this is what I'm going to try to point out, is that we're talking about agenda in the meta sense.
	We're not talking about a show that has no list of things to talk about or things that we're maybe going to discuss here and there.
	But by no agenda, we mean we don't have like some sort of a meta agenda.
	Like we're not trying to sell something.
	We're not trying to get somebody in office.
	We're not trying to do anything.
	We're not scheming.
	And by agenda in this sense, I mean scheming, planning, plotting.
	Yeah, because first of all, it's entertainment.
	Every show we do is intended to entertain the audience one way or the other.
	And I think you're right.
	When you do an entertainment show, of course there's some planning.
	But the thing that's interesting about this is we typically plan separately.
	So I have a couple of things.
	John has a couple of things.
	But we don't discuss the topics offline.
	But that has nothing to do with the agenda.
	It just has to do with the freshness of the conversation.
	Right.
	We don't, yeah, and we do.
	And sometimes, like last week, I don't think either one of us had a list of anything to talk about.
	In fact, the show took a good half hour before it got off the ground.
	And I also want to mention the fact that because we're doing it on Skype, it does take a little, it takes more than a few minutes before the two of us actually sink.
	Tune in, yep.
	Absolutely right.
	With the timing of talking to somebody who is out of phase.
	Now, even with ISDN, I think we'd be out of phase because of the distance.
	Can I just say one thing about that?
	Because I'm glad you brought that up.
	Because I learned a lot about ISDN. I've been working with it for the past week doing this thing for Aero, Classic Rock, in the Netherlands.
	And I do that with an ISDN. And the delay is literally 60 milliseconds.
	So it is like sitting next to someone.
	There is no delay.
	Or the delay is so minimal that your brain adjusts to it within seconds.
	Yeah, but that's the delay from there to the Netherlands.
	It's not the delay from there to California, which has got to be one of the longest distances, one of the longest throws for ISDN there is.
	And I have seen these overseas...
	Can I just say something?
	Go ahead.
	Because I have learned something here.
	That delay, even to California, would still be minimal.
	And the reason why, because this is what I've learned, the reason why is you are actually getting two dedicated 64 kilobit circuits.
	There's no routing, there's no buffering of routers, and of course there's no waiting for packets that were lost along the way.
	So when I consider...
	By the way, it's using an AAC codec, so it's kind of an open standard, and it's available everywhere.
	When I consider, though, how easy the ISDN codec makers have it, these boxes, because of that dedicated circuit, I have to say, what the guys at Skype have done, coming up with, what is it, maybe 600 milliseconds?
	It's a little more than half a second, it feels like.
	And you can even hear it on the show.
	Sometimes when one of us responds to the other, usually with laughter, there is just that split-second delay.
	Sometimes I'll say something, I'm like, wow, I really bombed on that joke, but then the laugh will come in.
	But still, those guys at Skype have done a phenomenal job with minimizing the latency.
	I agree.
	Actually, if we ever make money on this show, I'll put ISDN in, and we'll do it that way, because it would be a little better.
	But it would only be incrementally better, but it would be better.
	I agree, because a direct shot between you and...
	Because P2P is not really P2P on the internet.
	It's like, yeah, it's kind of P2P, but it's jumping around all over the place in the meantime, right?
	The bottom layer, the actual packet layer is jumping around.
	Yeah, it's all being passed around the way it works.
	But anyway, I actually have a faster connection now.
	I got my Comcast boosted to 16 and 3, which is pretty...
	But when I tested it against the English servers, I was getting 4 and 0.5, which is still better than I was going to have before.
	When did you boost this?
	Did we have it last week as well?
	No, no, I got it boosted like yesterday on Friday.
	Okay, because last week I think we had a show without, you know, knock on wood and don't invite the boogeyman in, but last week we had almost a flawless connection the whole way through.
	Yeah, I think it was because, what time did we do?
	No, it doesn't make that much difference.
	No, I think it fell apart once, which brings me to another point.
	Let me finish the latency thing first, because one of the worst kinds of latencies is these, when you see it on broadcasting.
	With the satellite.
	And one of the cheapest.
	Exactly.
	One of the cheapest connections you can make.
	It's very inexpensive to do a satellite link-up.
	And anyone can do it because you can have a truck come out and put a satellite in your front yard.
	But the delay is unbelievably painful.
	Yeah.
	That's probably one and a half to two seconds.
	Yeah, it's horrible.
	Now, on to us.
	We have some critics out there, and I wanted to answer a question that came up in their discussion, which is...
	We have critics?
	I'm flabbergasted.
	I think that's a good sign, because that means we have a lot of listeners, and there's a lot of people that, let's face it, don't like either one of us.
	But anyway...
	But anyway, the thing is, we do this show straight up.
	We do not stop.
	Oh, yeah, I've heard that, too.
	I'm like, we don't fucking edit.
	Coffee breaks.
	Now, what happens now, this does happen, and if you think you're hearing an edit, it's for the following reason, because it didn't happen, I don't think, last week, but it might have.
	Once in a while, we yakking away, yakking away, and then the next thing you know, ding, the connection is dead.
	The Skype connection is dead.
	We re-hook up.
	You know, without taking a break, and try to start at the exact same point where we lost the connection.
	In fact, I'll even count John in on a thought that he's making, and I'll let him hear the piece, or I'll say, okay, this is the word that we're going to edit it on, punch back in on, and I'll count him down and say, three, two, one, and then I hit record, and then you just pick it up literally with the same thought.
	Right.
	And people have to realize that we're not really interested in overproducing a show like this because it works the way it works.
	And once you start producing, I can just imagine bringing somebody in as a producer.
	Well, I think you guys ought to punch it up.
	We should need some jingles in the middle.
	Or you do the hour and a half and they say, that was pretty good.
	Let's do a safety.
	The safety.
	You know, another hour and a half.
	So...
	That was...
	I'm laughing, John, because for eight years at MTV, whenever we did something on location, there's nothing I hated more, particularly if it was an on-location situation where maybe I'd just done an interview.
	Sometimes they would even call for it after an interview, but usually you're doing segments, and then every single producer would say, wow, hey, that was really great.
	That was right on the money.
	Let's just do one more for safety.
	I'm like, what the fuck?
	I hate that.
	And then some guy in the booth...
	They picked the wrong damn thing.
	Exactly.
	This is what I was going to say.
	They always picked the wrong one.
	Which is part of the reasons why I really started to despise television for a while.
	You have no control, unless you literally sit on top of it and control everything, which is very tiresome.
	Well, you run into that with photography and magazines, too.
	They'll take, they'll shoot, you know, they'll say, like, we need a new portrait for your whatever, your column.
	And they'll shoot a thousand photos.
	And in there, there'll be, like, five that are really outstanding.
	And they never pick those five.
	Even if you say, I want one of these five, they always pick some other one that's just like, I don't, my ears aren't that big.
	You know, why are you picking this picture?
	So you know how I solved that?
	You may have noticed.
	So recently a lot of requests have come in.
	I've been doing some interviews and they always say, do you have a picture?
	Sometimes they really insist that they take the picture, which is where it gets kind of tricky.
	But every year, and my wife really got me into this, we have a photographer she's been working with for 30 years.
	He did all of her Playboy pictures and whatever.
	And, you know, so we'll do a couple of different series of pictures.
	You know, she'll do hers and I'll do mine.
	And, you know, the deal you make with a photographer is, look, you know, I'm going to give these away to...
	Normally you would pay for them, but we know this guy so long.
	You know, we'll give them away to press and he gets a photo credit.
	You know, he doesn't really need the money necessarily.
	But then you have total control over it.
	And eight out of ten times that a picture is needed for stuff like that, they'll take yours.
	Yeah, no, that's true.
	In fact, I have one posted on the web when people say, it's like a huge JPEG. And I just let them go get it.
	But it's not even one of the better ones.
	But I have a bunch.
	I had a guy who used to be the same kind of photographer.
	I always demand that they use him.
	It was Tom O'Brien.
	He used to be in Los Angeles.
	I can't find him now.
	I don't know where I went.
	But anyway, he used to be a food.
	He used to take some of the best pictures of food.
	And he also worked for a couple of the game companies.
	It was unbelievable.
	I mean, this guy just was a natural.
	It's like he'd take 500 pictures of you, and they were all good.
	Yeah.
	And so then you couldn't pick one because it was like, geez, I look pretty good here.
	Well, it does take some time.
	You have to work with a photographer.
	It takes a little while to get a vibe going between you, and it really makes a difference.
	I think there's more to it than that, and I think what it is is I think there's a lot of untalented photographers out there, too.
	Yeah, usually when it comes down to lighting, obviously, that's where I think the men are separated from the boys.
	Lighting and they can't bring anything out of you.
	One of the guys who was in, you know, I were actually one of the, I worked with Jim Marshall and actually became his friend.
	He's a famous rock and roll photographer.
	He's the one who got the Jimi Hendrix picture of him lighting the guitar.
	All those photos are in the Hard Rock in Las Vegas.
	And Marshall's a character, if anyone knows him.
	I mean, he's like, you know, mean and, you know...
	But he did a bunch of pictures of me for Microtimes.
	And he's...
	The guy is such a good photographer in every which way that it's like...
	It's just unbelievable.
	And it was like he didn't even take that many pictures.
	He's one of these guys...
	I worked with a guy once who shot...
	I had a picture taken...
	Now we're getting...
	This is to drive the audience nuts.
	But I had a picture taken...
	At the absolute other extreme of the guy who takes a thousand photos, it was a setup shot for a giant blow-up of me's to sell my first telecom book in the mid-80s.
	And the guy shot this camera that was the size of a house with basically a 12-inch negative.
	Oh yeah, of course, for the resolution, absolutely.
	Right, and he goes in there, he sets the shot, they put makeup on you, they set you this way, they take you and make you smile, bang, one shot.
	And that one negative cost $87.
	Whatever it costs, I don't know.
	But the shot was perfect.
	It was just the complete opposite of the guys who shoot a million and try to find the one.
	I mean, I'm one of those photographers.
	I take a lot.
	I've decided that my eye is fair.
	And I do nail stuff with one shot.
	But for the most part, if you take a million pictures, you've got a much better chance of finding one or two really good ones.
	So our guy, whose name is Govert de Roos...
	He's been a Hasselblad guy all his life, which is obviously a brand of very professional and expensive camera.
	About three years ago, he finally purchased the digital back, which is like a $50,000 thing.
	It takes these really, really high resolution, but still with the Hasselblad warmth and how they do it, I'm not quite sure.
	And obviously, you just get better results because indeed, you just fire off.
	We'll do 200 shots and yeah, you're going to find something just perfect.
	Mm-hmm.
	So how do we get to this part?
	How do we get to this off this track?
	Well, let me just say, I'll take it back a little bit and say we did edit one part last week.
	I was just thinking, and this has happened maybe one other time before on your end.
	My wife actually called me, and it was more than like 30 seconds.
	There was something important she had to tell me, so it probably took about a minute or so.
	Oh, right, right.
	She called.
	The phone rang.
	Right.
	And you even said in the show, let's remember to cut that out.
	And I'll tell you that when I was preparing the show for post-compression, everything, to send it up, to upload it, I listened to that piece, and I really thought for a second, well, it's kind of cool to let it in, but I thought, but, you know, it's really, it's like two minutes, you know, it's like boring, so I could cut a piece out, and I might as well just cut the whole piece out.
	But that was it.
	There's no other edits, you're right.
	Straight up, straight through.
	Right now, it's ten past eight Saturday evening, where I am.
	It's noon here.
	So, right, yeah, which is, you know, this is actually, we're doing the show late...
	Uh-oh.
	Did I lose you?
	Oh, there you go.
	So, Irina Slutsky sent me a tweet.
	She was on Cranky Geeks recently.
	Oh, I haven't seen it in a while.
	Cool.
	I like her.
	Oh, I actually watched last week's, it was actually quite good, with O'Mallick.
	Anyway, when she was on the show, she just sent a note to me.
	She got her second marriage proposal out of the appearance on the show.
	Excellent.
	But a serious one?
	I don't know.
	Maybe this would be some way of getting more women to do this show.
	Yeah, we need more women in tech.
	Well, there's definitely a shortage.
	So anyway, so to talk about real topics, I want to go on, I want to talk about this.
	So this guy Thomas Derrick, or no, Decrick, D-E-C-R-I-C-K, who turns out to be Belgian.
	Uh-huh, okay.
	So, he has first sent me a note about use of the term poo-pooing, which I guess bothers the Belgians when they hear it in English, and I'm not absolutely sure why.
	Oh, I know why.
	Yeah, you've been poo-pooing that, you know, kind of thing.
	I know why.
	Okay, why?
	Because in Flemish, if we're talking about the Dutch-speaking side of the country, poop...
	It's your ass.
	Yeah.
	So when you just said it, poo-pooing, it sounded like assing, kind of.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, then the problem, he thought even saying pissing on, which is a British comment, I mean, Americans don't say that.
	Right.
	He thought it was better, but I, okay, well, now at least I know.
	Anyway, but in the process of that, I went back and forth with him on this because I was, you know, I liked saying it because it's effective.
	But he mentioned the thing, he said, what is the deal with with all this kind of there's like a bunch of news stories about George Bush went to the I guess the Knesset or is in Israel and he made this comment about appeasement to Hitler without saying anything about anyone and I don't even know why he's saying this but next thing you know Obama is coming off the off the walls going on saying it was a direct slam at him he's not you know about appeasement and and
	then Hillary came on you know and it This thing has become this kind of a weird little firestorm.
	And I said to him initially, I don't know what the big deal is one way or the other.
	It seems as though just a bunch of political crap going on.
	And I don't even know why Obama volunteered.
	I mean, he was almost...
	Which makes me think that maybe there's some interesting baiting.
	Not only some...
	Anyway, let me stop for a second.
	Well, look, can I just say one thing?
	Just because I actually had to do this appeasement.
	To bring to a state of peace, quiet, ease, calm, or contentment, to satisfy, allay, or relieve, to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of.
	We have an international audience.
	Yes.
	Now, here's the deal that's been cropping up on right-wing talk shows.
	And I'm going to give you the whole overall, what I believe is a reverse marketing thing going on here by the Republican Party, and I think it's going to be quite interesting when you hear my whole spiel.
	Does that mean shut up, Adam, and let me talk?
	No, no, I want you to interrupt every chance, especially when I go a little bit...
	It's a funny thing to say, but yeah, interrupt me, because I'm going to be throwing a bunch of English stuff in here.
	Here's what's happening.
	One of the things that the right-wing talk show guys are doing is they've reintroduced to the American psyche, Neville Chamberlain.
	Now, Neville Chamberlain is the guy best known, and he's still kind of in the history books as the guy who kind of appeased Hitler on behalf of the British.
	Now, nobody remembers this guy, and young voters definitely don't remember this guy.
	He was actually dead in 1940 before – I was the oldest guy in the room, and he was dead long before I was born.
	But somehow – and now that they're playing on one of the shows, I heard them actually playing a Neville Chamberlain speech.
	And this is – this speech was from 1938 or something like that, or – Chamberlain died in 1940.
	Within six months after he was essentially kicked out of office, he was prime minister.
	He was dead.
	By the way, I went into Wikipedia just to do a little shaggy dog version of this story.
	This is why Wikipedia is kind of funny.
	I'm going to read you two sentences, or actually one sentence, two sentences, from the early life of Neville Chamberlain, as it's stated in Wikipedia.
	Chamberlain was, now listen carefully, Chamberlain was born in a house called Southbourne in the Ed Bastion, I can't even pronounce it, district of Birmingham, England.
	He was the eldest son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and a half-brother of Later, Sir Austin.
	So in other words, Chamberlain was the son of two guys.
	That's the way it's written.
	That's the way it's written.
	Oh, you gotta love Wikipedia.
	It's just they need an editor.
	You know what we say?
	We would say Neville Chamberlain would turn over in his grave, my friends.
	So anyway, it's just worded funny.
	But anyway, they go on, it says mothers actually.
	Can I just say that I'm desperately searching.
	I can recall something, some news in the UK in the past few weeks, also someone referring to Neville Chamberlain.
	So I'm trying to find that reference while you're telling the story.
	Yeah, okay.
	So Neville Chamberlain is back into the picture.
	Now, I started to think about this.
	At first, when the Crick brought this up, I said, no, it's not a big deal.
	It's just the way it goes.
	But now I'm thinking about maybe not.
	This actually may be part of a scheme because the Republicans have done this better than anybody else, which is to tag somebody with a moniker that they can't shake.
	Flip-flopper, for example, with John Kerry.
	Mm-hmm.
	This may be the beginning of tagging Obama with an appeaser, and he seems to have taken the bait on this.
	Now, he's either aware of the fact that they're going to try to tag him with this, and he's going to be stuck with this moniker right into the election, and this will have, oh, God, he's an appeaser.
	It's going to be like Neville Chamberlain.
	He's going to be in war because of this guy.
	He may have reacted to the early salvo, which was, in fact, the Bush speech in Israel.
	He may have overreacted or he may have reacted because he was told to kill this before it got out of control, but in fact because Hillary jumped on the bandwagon and shook her finger at Bush has made it actually worse.
	So who would Obama actually be appeasing?
	Obama went on in some minor way saying that he wants to talk to the head of Iran, that guy whose name, if you're not pronouncing it every day, you'll never pronounce it.
	Ahmadinejad?
	Yeah, that guy.
	He says, you know, we should be talking, bringing it to the table, we should be, you know, that kind of thing.
	And this guy, Ahmadinejad, has already been associated with a Hitler by the right-wingers of the U.S. And he acts like a Hitler, too, in terms of his hatred of the Jews, and he wants to blow up Israel and wipe them off the map and all this kind of thing.
	This stuff doesn't fly.
	Of course he has no real power in Iran, but that's beside the point.
	Well, we don't care about the facts.
	True, true.
	So by even talking about this guy as somebody we should bring to the table, that's an appeaser.
	So they're trying to associate him wanting to talk to this maniac as the same as Neville Chamberlain, coming back with a phony baloney paper and then having the Netherlands attack the next day.
	So, this is all, and so I'm now thinking this is all part of a long-term strategy by the Republicans to tag this guy with this particular moniker, and I think, you know, it's already working.
	So, I mean, this is already one strike against Obama, and I think Hillary jumped on the bandwagon because she still has high hopes of everybody bailing out at the last minute.
	She can still technically get the nomination, but of course, neither one of these people are electable, in my opinion, anyway.
	But if it's starting this soon with this kind of thing, in other words, there's a appeasement tag, I can't imagine what it's going to be like three or four months from now when we get down to the wire.
	I mean, Obama's going to look like a pedophile or something.
	I don't know how they're going to do it.
	It's interesting you say that because I don't think the – I understand the moniker.
	I understand the reference, the historical significance.
	I don't think the average, as you already pointed out, the average voter, let's say anyone under 35, under 40 for that matter, they may not even really understand what the appeaser label means.
	I know, but there's plenty of time to educate people.
	We've got months and months and months.
	I think the election is, what, in five years?
	Anyway, we've got plenty of time to educate people as to what it means.
	And if it's used in a pejorative way, oh, he's an appeaser.
	Even if you don't know what it means, you know it's bad.
	You know, because it's always going to be taken as, oh, he's an appeaser.
	Oh, an appeaser.
	I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good.
	And that's kind of the way these things work.
	The Democrats have never been able to label their opponents the way the Republicans can label their opponents and make it stick.
	And it's all marketing.
	It's very interesting, but it's counter-marketing.
	It's not, you know, the Democrats are good at, you know, old-fashioned politics.
	Proactive marketing to push an agenda.
	The Republicans are good at this subtle attack marketing, which is really more complicated.
	It's really word hacking.
	It's like meme hacking.
	It's launching phrases and labels and memes, I guess, into the media space and getting it repeated and getting something to stick.
	It's really social engineering.
	Yes, and they do a much better job.
	Now, I heard a speech by Bill Moyers.
	He was talking to some group of one of these journalist groups of people that write for counterculture.
	There's basic people with no money.
	And he was talking to this group, and there was a socialist gathering is what it was actually.
	And he was going on about how the Republicans have made all these crazy phrases, and they've thrown all this stuff into the public domain, and it's just manipulating the public, and we should be aware of it.
	But he never mentions the fact that the Democrats are constantly trying to do this, and they do it more often.
	Then the Republicans do, in fact, and I'll give you a couple of examples.
	I don't have my list here, but I do have a list that I maintain, by the way, of these phrases.
	A couple of them, for example, that have come up recently.
	And if you listen to them, they're too intellectual.
	And they're also too, by the way, the appeasement thing is going to work even better when the peaceniks come out.
	You know, supporting Obama, it's just going to reaffirm his base being all, you know, we just basically want to turn the country over to Iran.
	It does kind of make sense, in a way, although, you know, so we had Hillary saying that, what did she say, the U.S. would certainly obliterate Iran.
	Yeah, she was going the other, she was not going to put up, yeah, that was a smart thing for her to say.
	Although not a very friendly thing to say, let's be honest about it.
	No, she didn't.
	Well, she's not trying to get their vote.
	Good point.
	Anyway, a couple of the items that the Democrats have tried to come up with.
	Right after the 9-11, first you saw justice, not vengeance, which was a little bit much.
	And that bumper sticker was everywhere in Berkeley.
	And then you have more recently – I mean, if you want to go back even further, they tried to popularize the term.
	And this is definitely from the Democrat side.
	They tried to popularize the term gravitas, which was never used by a Republican ever in.
	And it means, well, he has gravitas.
	And we had to elect somebody gravitas, gravitas.
	And of course, then the public voted in Bush, which is hilarious.
	That was kind of a popular word for a while back in the 70s, I have a feeling.
	It's come and gone, but it was directly attached to Cuomo, the Mario Cuomo.
	He was the gravitas guy that was supposed to run in 92, but he saw that Bush was going for a second term and said, well, you know, nobody ever beats an incumbent, and so he didn't run.
	Clinton won, and that was the end of Cuomo.
	But anyway, he had gravitas.
	So gravitas, seriousness or sobriety as of conduct of speech?
	Yeah, in other words, he can talk without stuttering or mumbling or saying stupid things.
	Now, the more recent one, which the Democrats have also tried to promote and has gotten nowhere, but it keeps cropping up.
	And the problem with it, it sounds creepy.
	And I'm not even absolutely sure what it means.
	But the term is truth to power.
	Oh, you must speak truth to power.
	Oh, is it going to allow truth to power?
	Truth to power.
	And this is like...
	I'm not even sure what it means.
	How would you interpret it?
	Truth to power.
	You must speak truth to power.
	Well, first of all, it seems like there should be a ratio attached to it.
	What's your truth to power ratio?
	Like a drive train.
	Now, wait a minute.
	I've got to write that down because no one's ever come up with the truth to power ratio.
	We can use it.
	We can introduce it.
	The truth to power ratio.
	Yeah, the truth to power ratio of 3.2.
	You're rocking, baby, with a 3.2 TPR. T-P-P, T-T-P-R, whatever.
	T-T-P-R. Truth of power, yeah.
	I'm not really sure how to interpret it.
	I would probably ignore it.
	Well, what it means is that you don't surround yourself with yes-men at the base level, is what I think is one of the implications.
	But it means that you will tell, you tell it like it is.
	I think it's probably a takeoff I'm just reading from some fucking website.
	The phrase, speak truth to power, goes back to 1955.
	When the American Friends Service Committee published Speak Truth to Power, a pamphlet that proposed the new approach to the Cold War.
	It's title which came to friend Milton Mayer toward the end of the week, whatever.
	That's good.
	Well, yeah, there's nothing new under the sun.
	Here's another data point.
	Anita Hill entitled her memoir of sensational charges of sexual harassment against, or harassment, against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Speaking Truth to Power.
	Hmm.
	Well, sneaking in.
	Anyway, but you'll find it's all left-wing.
	I like that, yeah.
	Let's do something with the truth-to-power ratio.
	That's cool.
	I like it.
	Yeah, we have to come up with a formula.
	We will turn it into an algorithm.
	Yeah, there you go.
	Like Social Graph is another one of my favorites.
	I love that, too.
	So anyway, I have a list of these, and one of these days I'll discuss in more detail.
	You got one more?
	Well, you know, I probably will on the top.
	I don't have one more off the top of my head, but there's a ton of them.
	All right.
	Well, yeah, there's another one that they threw out there, which is No War for Oil or something.
	I can't remember how it's phrased exactly, but that bumper sticker's all over the place trying to be a meme.
	Anyway.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, there's a bunch of these.
	Like I said, I just thought about them now.
	So I thank Thomas DeCrick for asking what I thought was a stupid question, but it turns out to be interesting.
	Because now everybody who listens to this show is on top of the appeasement thing, and we'll be able to spot it as the propagandistic machine starts to grind away on poor Obama.
	That is interesting to track.
	Well, I guess the education now, what you said, you know, since a lot of people, I mean, I had to look it up, like appeasement, let me just look it up.
	So let's watch out for the education process of the appeasement meme.
	And the rebirth of Neville Chamberlain.
	That's a funny one.
	By the way, everyone should go take a look at that Wikipedia page on Neville Chamberlain just to see all these photos that are in there of these British stick-in-the-muds, and there's one after another.
	It's unbelievable.
	It's humorous.
	Careful now.
	I live over here.
	I had an interesting conversation on Wednesday.
	You know, I'm finishing up some historical tax crap with the IRS. And so I got a really nice tax lawyer, Bob, and Bob lives in Connecticut.
	And, you know, we usually do everything through email, but, you know, we talk.
	I've only known the guy for a little bit because it's just been a short kind of thing he's had to do for me.
	So I get on the phone with him.
	We're chatting away.
	So we basically go through whatever we need to do in like 45 minutes.
	I might as well talk with a guy for 15 minutes.
	He's going to bill me for a full hour anyway, right?
	And so we're talking and he's interested in Mevio and what kind of stuff about my show.
	And he also has to kind of understand some things because believe it or not, I'm one of these people that has to write down how many days I'm in which fucking country to pay tax in the right place.
	And so he just wants to understand what's work and how do we do it when I'm doing something for the Netherlands from here or I'm doing something here for San Francisco.
	Yeah.
	And I said, you know, what else do you do for kicks, man?
	He's like, oh, I'm actually a volunteer ambulance driver up here in Connecticut, and that's part of the Department of Homeland Security.
	And, you know, so I, of course, you know, start laughing, and I launch into my whole, you know, my crap at trying to get into the country, which, of course, has nothing to do with DHS, but, you know, and we're talking about, he says, oh, man, I got to tell you something really amazing, because he is one of these guys...
	That has a special ID card that should, when Armageddon strikes, then he gets to the front of the line for vaccinations or any necessary stuff in order to help people.
	And there's a number of these guys, not just in services like ambulance driving, but also it's well known that there are businessmen who are also a part of, have a DHS credentials, for instance, supply food or whatever is necessary.
	And he said that one weekend they were all called up, you know, not just the ambulance drivers, but a couple of the services, because they needed some real manpower.
	And it turns out they had these, what do you call it, I actually wrote down, like sanitation kits.
	And so, you know, they have a stockpile, a warehouse of stuff that, you know, when something goes wrong, then these guys know how to, you know, got to go get it and distribute it.
	And they had to open up every single sanity kit, and he said there were thousands, and remove the toothpaste because they were tainted.
	They were the toothpaste that was tainted from China.
	Oh my goodness.
	And I'm thinking to myself, how in the frig...
	Can we have Department of Homeland Security being so stupid as to put, you know, stuff that you put into your body, especially in the case of emergency, that has been purchased from a foreign country?
	And oh, by the way, China?
	I mean, so you could, you know, if you want to make sure that after you've dropped the bomb, you kill everybody else, just sell toothpaste.
	Wow, that's a story nobody got.
	That's amazing, isn't it?
	Yeah, it's a scoop.
	Yeah.
	I said, dude, is it okay if I said to talk about this?
	Yeah, sure, as long as you have a lawyer that understands that type of business.
	Yeah, well, you didn't give his name and it's just a fact.
	Anyway, facts are always good.
	I just think that's a huge risk.
	I don't know what other things they hand out.
	You know what?
	The fact of the matter is they know nothing's going to happen.
	That stuff's all going to expire anyway and get thrown into the landfill.
	Okay.
	But yeah, I agree with you.
	I think it's stupid.
	Can I complain about something?
	Gee, a surprise.
	You know, I was thinking about this because earlier before we started the show, I called you.
	And I use Skype.
	I was on Skype, and I hit your number on Skype, and it forwards, because you have call forwarding set up, by the way, which people should know, works amazingly well.
	Yeah.
	And it goes to your cell phone, and it sounds like you're on your, I mean, you sound like it's an outstanding connection.
	Well, there's only one drawback, and that is it does not pass on caller ID. Ah, this is what I'm getting to.
	Yep, okay.
	There's more to it than that.
	What's really weird about it is that if you're not really picking up right away or something, it goes to a message box.
	AT&T interrupts the call.
	And I've gotten this a number of times.
	They do it not necessarily just with Skype.
	They do it occasionally with other systems too.
	But I get the feeling that Skype is the reason they're doing it because they're losing their butt on the fact that Skype is doing this free call from me to you and you're in England.
	So hold on.
	So when you call me, it forwards, and if I don't answer or my phone is off, it doesn't go to voicemail?
	AT&T disconnects?
	No, it goes to an AT&T voicemail that asks me to put your phone number in.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	No, dude.
	That's just...
	Okay, I got that one.
	That's just me.
	AT&T's...
	Check this out, because this has been irritating me for quite a while.
	AT&T's roaming partner in the UK is O2. And, by the way, if you buy the iPhone over here, it comes with an O2 subscription, right?
	So they are definitely connected.
	That is the only network.
	It doesn't happen if I'm on Vodafone.
	It doesn't happen if I'm on 3.
	It doesn't happen if I'm on T-Mobile.
	It doesn't go automatically to the voicemail.
	It gives you that, please enter the 10-digit number, blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	And I also can't retrieve my voicemail through their own freaking partner here in the UK. Now, if I change the network and I roam on a different network, we get an astronomical bill.
	Okay, so let's go back up a couple of notches.
	What I'm claiming, well, this is interesting, but here's the point.
	I am calling through a network where all these numbers, and by the way, I'm going to, you know, it's not what you're supposed to say, but I'm still amused.
	My kids actually all know about this, and we all laugh when it comes up on a TV show where the guy says, keep them on the line as long as you can, and we've got to trace the call.
	I've almost triangulated.
	Yeah.
	You know, it's like the call, all the details are in the line immediately, so you don't have to trace anything.
	But the point is, and that's bullshit.
	But anyway, the thing is, they've got my number, they've got the number I dialed.
	Of course.
	They have the 10-digit number I dialed.
	Why are they asking for me to put it in again?
	The only person that can't put it in is a guy who didn't dial it at all, but somebody coming in through Skype.
	I understand what you're saying, John.
	But I don't think...
	It's much worse than that.
	They're not doing that just because you're coming through Skype.
	They do it no matter who calls me gets that.
	No, I've got it on the regular line, too.
	But on the regular line, I can punch the number back in.
	And so then it goes through.
	But if I'm coming through Skype, I don't know what the number is.
	So it's like a blocking factor.
	I mean, it's a natural, it's like a self, it's a self-generating...
	No, but John, but you're not hearing me.
	I guess not.
	Who else do you call that this happens to?
	No one, only with me.
	Who else do you call who has Skype forwarding?
	I have to think about that.
	I don't call that many people on Skype that get their calls forwarded to a cell phone.
	So, first of all, of course, this is...
	So, it is messed up because no matter who calls me...
	With proper caller ID, if they're calling from a landline, calling from the UK, the United States, the Netherlands, wherever they're calling from, if my cell phone is on the O2 network, which is the default roaming partner for AT&T in the United Kingdom, you get to that freaking stupid menu where you have to enter the 10-digit number.
	If I'm roaming on any other network here, it goes straight to voicemail the way it should.
	So the problem is not with...
	I don't believe the problem is with AT&T denying Skype.
	How can they even do that when they're such boneheads they can't even make it?
	Regular calls go to voicemail.
	Of course they have all the information.
	They're just fucked up.
	So there has to be an agenda.
	I don't think there's an agenda.
	Why would you screw your own partner?
	I don't know.
	I'm just telling you.
	It's just annoying.
	I call, and if I'm doing it on a cell phone, yeah, it's not a problem getting the number, and I can punch it in, and it does go to some voicemail that apparently you don't hear.
	You have no idea how many misconfigurations take place on these networks.
	I travel between three countries.
	All of a sudden, my text messages start arriving five hours late, which really pisses me off because they cost money for a reason.
	It's guaranteed delivery.
	It's supposed to get there.
	You're supposed to have it immediately.
	It really pisses me off when you can't rely on that.
	Yeah, I know you've complained about this, and it's happened to me, because once in a while I get a voicemail from you, you know, a day late, that comes in out of the blue and says, yeah, I'll be there in ten minutes.
	You know, I'm going, oh, great.
	Where was I supposed to be in ten minutes?
	And there's a skeleton of me, you know, standing with my finger on the buzzer, not opening up.
	Yeah, no, that's very frustrating.
	It's only in the UK that that happens with O2. I've been meaning to mention that, because a lot of people say, I couldn't leave your voicemail, you know, and no matter where they're calling from.
	So...
	Anyway.
	Sorry to blow your conspiracy theory there.
	I'm not completely convinced that it's not an element of what I'm suspecting.
	And by the way, to people who have been talking about this, yes, I am subservient most of the time to John in these conversations.
	But he's also 10 years older than I am.
	Well, 9 or 8 years.
	And more worldly and smarter.
	And I'm actually trying to learn something.
	And it's nice to be not the lead dog.
	Well, I'm not the lead dog.
	No, but in this conversation, feel free to patronize me.
	Okay.
	I'll do that.
	Somebody's got to do it.
	So what do you got on your no agenda list?
	I did want to thank you for sticking up for Mevio for the company on the last twit at the very end there.
	That was nice.
	Oh, it's because, you know, one of the people was talking out of their behind, as it were.
	And it was just like, you know, it's like anything else.
	I mean, if you're not in the, you know, I mean, you can, of course, I'm like the expert at just blowing, you know, blowing smoke about stuff I only know half the story about.
	But generally speaking, if you do that, sometimes you do get the real story because people say, no, you're completely wrong.
	And here's what really happened.
	And I always correct myself.
	I mean, I've I've always done it.
	By the way, yesterday I'm standing out.
	It's hot here.
	So I'm watching.
	There's some kid.
	This is a subject we have to bring up and do a whole show about.
	The kid is going by on a scooter with the handles, you know, it's not like a skateboard.
	Oh, a Zappy, one of those?
	You stand on a skateboard and it has handlebars?
	It's got handlebars and it's got like four wheels and he's pushing it.
	It's obviously not designed to go very fast.
	Oh, one of those things.
	It has no engine.
	It's just the...
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
	He's going up the street, you know, at one tenth of a mile an hour.
	I mean, I could walk faster than this kid's pushing this thing, okay?
	Yeah.
	He's got a helmet on.
	Yeah.
	So I'm thinking, what the heck is wrong with this?
	I mean, yeah, I understand the helmets are important on bicycling and some people don't wear them and, you know, a motorcycle for sure because you can hurt yourself.
	Your head is something you don't want to let you get damaged because, you know, you can't do much without it.
	But come on.
	I mean, at what point do we just wear a helmet to go shopping?
	I mean, I was expecting to go to, you know, one of the stores around here and somebody pushing around a cart with a helmet on.
	How old was he, you think?
	Kid, he looked like he was 12.
	Oh, well, of course.
	That's an entire generation of parents turning their kids into pussies.
	I remember when I was six years old, we were visiting friends.
	Here's one for you.
	I still have a picture, and I'm sure I can find it.
	We were visiting friends in Texas.
	I think it was Dallas.
	And I was completely into skateboarding.
	Skateboarding was everything.
	I'm sorry, I was nine.
	And so I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go skateboarding because they lived in kind of a...
	One of those very suburban type areas, rack housing, etc.
	But nice asphalt.
	And all of a sudden I find myself on something I really had not been on, having learned how to skateboard in the Netherlands, and that was on a significant hill.
	So I'm going down, I'm picking up speed, I'm like, holy crap.
	And at that same moment, basically I was trying to occupy the same...
	Space of road as a truck.
	So, basically, I wind up wiping out.
	But, you know, I had two black eyes because I fell on my nose.
	You know, my elbows were fine, but my knees were...
	No, I'm sorry, my shins were...
	My knees were fine, but my elbows, you know, completely shot.
	I still have gravel in my left elbow from that wipeout.
	And that was what it was like, man, as kids.
	Like, you got fucked up and, you know, you took a tumble.
	And guess what?
	I ain't gonna do that shit on that skateboard no more.
	I learned my lesson good.
	Well, anyway, so I think you might have something.
	My wife and I talk about this generation of pussies thing.
	I can't wait to meet her, man.
	It comes up in the conversation when we're watching the British version of what I consider one of the great, and I've said it before, I'll say it again, one of the great management consultants.
	Gordon Ramsay.
	Gordon Ramsay comes into these places, and when he runs into this certain generation, the younger people...
	He runs into these wimpy characters that he has to yell and scream at, and there's a whole generation of people that aren't used to this.
	They have been, especially in the United States where they've been raised...
	With political correctness.
	Well, it's not only that, but it's this self-esteem crap where, you know, you're a winner.
	We should have sports that there's no competition.
	My kids went to these schools that did this, and I, you know, got them out of those schools.
	And all you know, there should be a game.
	There shouldn't be a winner and a loser.
	Everyone's a winner.
	The guy who came in last is the last winner.
	You know, this kind of thing.
	And it's just that you don't have to do well.
	You don't have to perform.
	You, yourself, this, you know, you're important because you're a person and all this kind of crap.
	And it results in a generation of people that don't perform very well.
	So this brings me to my favorite topic, having just been a show business bitch for my wife, which means carrying her suitcases, getting her tea, and keeping people out of her dressing room.
	Once again, she had the last semifinal.
	The next show will be the finals of Holland's Got Talent.
	And I'm so proud of my wife because she's sitting there in the audience.
	And the show is beautiful.
	The lighting is beautiful.
	And people are doing stuff.
	And you can see they've really put effort into it.
	But I'm sorry.
	A lot of it just sucked.
	And she's sitting there and she just says it.
	And the end of the semifinal were two kids, an eight-year-old Chinese kid named Oscar, which is a perfect name for a Chinese kid, and a 13-year-old Dutch girl who had a musical performance, you know, like some piece from a Dutch musical.
	And, you know, then the judges have to make the final decision on these two.
	And so you have these two young, you know, kids sitting next to each other.
	And you can just hear hearts breaking everywhere, you know.
	And they just had to be honest and say, boom, you know, kid, you're out.
	Go home.
	But, you know, this is what's really I like about this show is there are actual losers.
	And they say, I'm sorry, you lose.
	Go home.
	Go away.
	Not...
	You know, ah, well, you know, good try.
	No, it's just exit.
	Good try.
	Exit, yeah.
	And that's good.
	There's some social value to that, I feel.
	Well, it's still, you know, it's still, if you go back in time, let's, you know, start looking at the history of all this stuff.
	You know, there used to be amateur hour shows and there used to be these kinds of shows forever because people, you know, it's a good way to get people to work for nothing.
	Let's face reality.
	But anyway, they used to have a thing where a guy would come out with a hook.
	Yeah.
	In fact, the term, give them the hook, has to do with this.
	And it wouldn't be, it wasn't a kind and gentler world back then.
	Dude, that still exists.
	That still exists in Showtime at the Apollo.
	The Sandman will come out with the hook if the audience boos you off the stage.
	It still happens today.
	Yeah, they boo you off the, right.
	They boo you off the stage.
	And if you go back even further and you start looking at the history of the theater in the 1800s, they used to throw stuff at the stage.
	People would come in with boxes of tomatoes, usually rotten.
	Tomatoes.
	Eggs, because there were eggs everywhere back then, because people had chickens.
	And you can't eat enough.
	You can't eat the eggs, believe me.
	If you have more than three or four chickens, there's no way.
	So you bring them to the theater.
	And if some crappy act came out, they would just pelt them with rotten cabbages and tomatoes.
	Is that the vaudeville days?
	Is that how far back we're going?
	Well, vaudeville was one of them.
	Actually, if you go back to the 1860s, there's a number of good books on this.
	We're talking about the regular theater where people would come out and sing and dance.
	It wasn't vaudeville per se.
	Vaudeville is actually something that developed out of burlesque.
	Burlesque.
	Burlesque was a subcategory of the formal theater, but it was...
	Basically dirty.
	Sexy, sexy, sexy.
	Sexy is not dirty.
	There you go, John.
	This is exactly the problem we have.
	Turning sex into dirt.
	No, the problem we have is you and the political correct use of the word sexy.
	This is not sexy.
	I got to go to a couple of these.
	What do you mean sexy?
	It's not dirty.
	Let's call it horny.
	A dirty comic would come out with dirty jokes and these girls were just, you know, they were dirty.
	There's nothing sexy about it.
	Okay.
	Anyway, so that was not family entertainment.
	So they developed Burlesque.
	I'm sorry, Vaudeville came out of that and developed down in that Canal Street area, actually, where it really started.
	You are so knowledgeable.
	I love this.
	No, I just happened to read a couple books on it.
	Anyway, so, but the thing is, the regular theater where people would come out and they'd sing or they'd do a play or something like that, that's where they'd throw the stuff.
	It's like going to Broadway today and watching, you know, Les Mis or something and then heaving a tomato as a guy with the mask.
	I mean, geez.
	This is the next level in reality shows.
	You let the audience in on the act, but you actually really let them in on the act, and you let them come in with rotten eggs and tomatoes, and we just take it back to those times.
	I would watch that show.
	Of course you would, specifically because I'd have the guy telling dirty jokes and the tits out on stage.
	This is my kind of show, Johnny.
	So, actually, you know, a show where people got a little more involved, I mean, it would probably be kind of interesting, although with today's, you know, audience, today's, we don't kind of understand, you know, what the rules really are.
	Some guy would bring a gun and, like, shoot a guy.
	I was on the stage, you know, kind of thing.
	But, yeah, I think it'd be entertaining to let people have a...
	Maybe if you limited the people to maybe one egg and maybe one cabbage and one tomato each, and they could only use them, you know...
	Oh, yeah, you had a certain limit.
	Yeah, you have a...
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Yeah, you don't want to get a box of tomatoes just throwing them up there because he wants to practice his pitching.
	And by the way, studio audiences are screened.
	They do go through metal detectors.
	At least they do on any show my wife is performing on.
	Well, that's because you're in the audience.
	I'm everywhere.
	I have eyes everywhere.
	So anyway, yeah, so that's kind of the...
	We have so much to do.
	We have shows to start.
	We have, oh my gosh.
	I like the idea of the tomato show.
	I think that would work.
	You know what?
	Hey...
	Especially if you get a good guy that really has a good, accurate arm, so you can just hit somebody right in the head.
	This could be really easy.
	We could do this with Mevio, no problem.
	We can put together a treatment and put together a budget.
	It doesn't have to be hugely expensive to do this.
	You rent out a place, you set the ground rules, and you just invite people to come and do their act.
	And then you either go or you get...
	Something thrown at you.
	And we could do it with two cameras.
	We could do a hell of a lot.
	We could really get a lot accomplished.
	We definitely need a cleanup crew.
	Details, details.
	That's what interns are for.
	I wrote something down here.
	You know, I carry my iPod Touch everywhere.
	I love it.
	And we'll have to see if I switch to the new iPhone with 3G when it comes out so far.
	You will.
	Yeah, probably.
	But I did the crack thing, the zip phone hack, whatever it is, on the iPod Touch so I can load all the cool applications.
	And there's some that are actually usable.
	Anyway, you said something on, I think it was No Agenda, you were talking about cameras with a GPS receiver in it, so it would geotag the pictures?
	I was on Tech 5.
	What did I say that was?
	You said no agenda.
	I'm sorry, Tech 5, yeah.
	By the way, which can be found at Tech 5 with a 5.mevio.com.
	And that you had always, and here it is, poo-pooed them until you actually found it was quite handy to have pictures and be able to place them exactly where you were when you were on your Korean trip.
	Yeah, I thought about it for a while, and I realized that I don't go to Korea every minute, but I'm pretty good at finding my way around, but I realized that I have a lot of shots.
	If you're like me, if you're traveling, you just take a lot of pictures because it's just fun to even find something that's worth having.
	And you'd shoot, shoot, shoot, and then you shoot, and you shoot out of windows.
	Sometimes I shoot out of cab windows a lot.
	I see something weird, and I say, oh, look at that, and I'll shoot it.
	And most of these pictures are just a waste.
	But occasionally you catch something that's pretty cool, and then you sort them out, and so you end up with this picture that you say, wow, that's pretty cool.
	And in there you see something.
	I didn't know.
	I would like to go to that store that's in that picture.
	I don't know where it is.
	It would be cool to have a GPS data attached to that photo so I knew exactly where the picture was taken so I could actually go back to that spot.
	And I couldn't really think of any real reason to have GPS data on photos until I realized that that reason I just described is a really good one.
	So this kind of ties into my iPod Touch and the iPhone, the new iPhone.
	And I was thinking the following, because you know that we're going to be able to make applications for the iPhone, etc.
	Hopefully the capability will be there.
	So I would presume, I could be wrong, but let's say the new iPhone had GPS capability, which pretty much these days, if you want to make a high-end mobile phone, it has to have GPS in there, because that just seems to be the trend.
	So if we actually had a GPS receiver, and of course it has multimedia capabilities, up popped an idea that I've had for five years at least, maybe longer, ever since I've been using GPS. How cool would it be if you could geotag certain areas in the world?
	For instance, we were talking about Amsterdam, and actually a couple of people took me up on the offer.
	They emailed me and said, hey, I'm going to Amsterdam in the next couple of weeks.
	Could you please give me a couple of cool places to go?
	Could you just tell me whatever you and John were talking about?
	So I made up a little template thing, and I've been sending that off to people.
	Now, wouldn't it be cool if I could say, you know, if they could click on a link or have some kind of, yeah, a link would be easy.
	And you download something.
	And while you're walking around Amsterdam, you're getting directions to places.
	And when you're in the spot where, for instance, in front of the Anne Frank Museum, you would then hear from an MP3, which could be a really low res, and it could be streamed immediately, I presume.
	You could hear me saying, well, right now you're standing in front of the Anne Frank house.
	They give you some background.
	I say, there's probably a long freaking line there.
	So what you want to do is just, you know, turn 180 degrees, turn around and walk up to the Rosenkopf to Ben Cohen's and have yourself some shawarma.
	And ask for it this way and tell him I sent you.
	And you could really put together almost like, which I loved as a kid, those walking guided tours of the museum where you'd get the headsets and you'd walk towards an exhibit and then you'd start to hear the description of that exhibit.
	I think you could really build something like that and it could be a community thing where you can contribute just like Google Maps which of course would come into play somewhere I'm sure in this whole infrastructure I'm dreaming up.
	Where, you know, if someone else wants to add to the tour or add another point of interest, as it's known, you know, there could be a number of things there.
	But the whole idea of a guided audio walking tour and descriptions of places anywhere, or you could just be walking somewhere and all of a sudden you'd get a little beep, beep, beep, beep, and then you'd click the play button and it'd be like, hi, this is Peter and this is where Mary and I had sex for the first time.
	I mean, it could be all kinds of interesting things.
	I think it's a nightmare.
	Why?
	You don't think that would be interesting or useful?
	Yeah, I think it would.
	No, I think, in fact, I think the idea is sheer genius and I think it's something that's needed, except I think it's like anything else that if we've got two, you know, I don't know, I'd rather have a professional...
	Rather than the guy who screwed his wife near that corner.
	I don't really care.
	But that's what would be in there.
	That's the problem.
	That would be in there, and that's the drawback.
	Obviously, that's just an option.
	That's a bolt-on.
	I mean, you could sell professional packages.
	In fact, you could take no agenda, and you could take every single bit where we've talked about a restaurant, talked about a place you or I have been.
	We could have the no agenda visit pack.
	Now the thing is, by the way, there's a really cool restaurant by the Anne Frank House that is just like, and I think I took one picture inside the place, and that would be a cool thing to have geotagged because I don't even remember the name of the place.
	I'm looking, hold on a second.
	But it's like very, it's a really stylish, you know, lots of wood and fancy architecture place.
	Is it the Five Flies?
	I don't know, maybe.
	It was cool.
	Oh, no, wait a minute.
	That's the restaurant in the church tower.
	Near the church, there's a big tower right to...
	No, it's not in a tower.
	It's right on the street.
	And it's got like weird...
	It's weird.
	It's a weird, trendy, kind of over-designed, architecturally interesting place.
	And by the way, the food was good there.
	You could see them walking to go to the Anne Frank thing.
	The other people that were in this group, you'd see friends going down the streets and you'd bring them in.
	It was like tapas was what we were eating there.
	Was it in the Westerkerk, maybe?
	The Wester church?
	Maybe.
	So anyway, the point is that if I had this system, or the one you're talking about, I would be able to punch it up right now and tell people to go check it out.
	But yeah, no, let's make that a company.
	Let's do it.
	Let's make that a company.
	Hey, I hear you're really good at fundraising.
	Let's do that.
	We'll just send you out with my idea, your fundraising skills, John.
	Fantastic.
	I think you should start with a patent.
	That, by the way, was an inside joke.
	Yeah, it was.
	Wait a minute.
	Another patent I can get?
	I can get a patent on that idea?
	Surely someone's come up with this.
	That can't be unique.
	Not the way you could do it.
	You could make it specific enough that it would be very...
	By the time we got the patent done, it's like someone else built the whole system.
	No, build the patent.
	I mean, you have the patent done on the side while you're building the system.
	John, what I'd much rather do is I'd rather talk about the awesome system and very much like podcasting, I'd like to energize and incentivize people who can build that.
	Well, I like the idea because it would be cool, and it would be cool, but it's non-trivial, let me say that.
	I'm walking around San Francisco and my phone beeps at me with a distinctive sound, meaning I'm walking past some place I showed some interest in or that I'm subscribing to one person's feed.
	This almost could be a little bit like Twitter.
	Well, very good point.
	Now think about it.
	A GPS has points of interest, and it has points of interest by category.
	So those systems already, you know, kind of pre-baked, know the concept.
	So you could have the no agenda category, and that would just be points of interest or waypoints, as they're sometimes known, that, you know, would be ours.
	You know, the...
	It really comes down to the tools, I guess, to assemble and create a route or some kind of database stuff.
	And then, of course, some application that is constantly seeing if you're within proximity of one of these waypoints.
	All that kind of exists, John.
	That's not all that big.
	I don't think that's a big deal.
	Yeah, okay.
	Well, I mean, it's something that would be interesting to get it so it was institutionalized to such an extreme that more than two people, more than two geeks with an iPhone would subscribe to the No Agenda tour of Amsterdam, which is what the market would be today.
	This whole podcasting started with really two geeks, Adam Gurry and Dave Weiner, sending movie files back and forth through an RSS aggregator.
	It took three, four years before even we had thought of coming up with doing shows that, you know, putting MP3s in regularly.
	So, you know, by 2012, we might have some.
	Maybe, but it seems to me that the GPS thing is not new.
	It's already gone past the three-year point.
	Yeah, but this is a GPS thing, but we're combining it with a couple things here.
	By the way, you could also integrate RSS and subscribe to different Waypoint services.
	Come on, man.
	There's something here.
	Yeah, no, I think there is something there because I wouldn't mind...
	When I go to some of these places for the first time...
	You get, you know, you don't get good information from the hotels, you know, that you don't, I mean, you just don't, you know, if you had somebody that you knew was there all the time and they put together a little tour or just a waypoint thing where you just, if you happen to be going by it, it beeps at you and you can say, oh, that's interesting, I should go check this out or, you know, a restaurant tour or whatever.
	Yeah, you could have the weed service, so, you know, any city you're in, you know, it would automatically start beeping when you're near a dealer.
	Well, that's something you'd be interested in.
	In fact, you could make it...
	Oh, here it comes.
	You could make it even better.
	You could have the other side...
	Oh, this is cool.
	So let's say...
	This would be a great app for the iPhone.
	So let's just take that as an example just because we mentioned it, not because I really want that service.
	Although...
	So let's say if you're a dealer, you could have the reverse of the service and it would actually be broadcasting your location.
	Within the category dealer, and then you could be on the lookout.
	You could have your system set to automatically detect one of these people so you can find each other.
	Alright, well let's go to something more practical, which doesn't involve illegal activity.
	Speak for yourself.
	Well, you might as well do the hookers then.
	There you go.
	Here it is, Speed Traps.
	Well, Speed Traps, so that system, well, gee, maybe this is where I got my idea from.
	Didn't we talk about that last week?
	Yeah, there's some Speed Trap stuff.
	I don't know that we did, but there's a bunch of Speed Trap websites and there's all kinds of Speed Trap systems out there.
	This really inexpensive device, like 30 pounds, and you just stick it on your dashboard.
	It has batteries and you plug it into the cigarette lighter.
	Screw it.
	Put it on the cell phone.
	Have a specific ringtone.
	When you're entering a city, this would be very handy in the USA, you're going into some little city that's loaded with speed traps, the GPS thing will send an alarm to you saying, slow down, because you're running into a speed trap.
	Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
	And you'd slow down, and you'd drive through the speed trap, and then you'd get an all-clear sign, maybe or not.
	So exactly.
	The point is...
	That would work.
	I would subscribe to that service tomorrow.
	Okay.
	Would you carry an iPhone if it was available on the iPhone?
	Because I think that's where it's going to pop up first.
	Yeah, I guess I could carry an iPhone if I had to.
	Crap.
	I don't like carrying phones.
	The people don't understand.
	I don't really like being on the phone all day and all night, so I don't carry a phone generally.
	But baby, listen to me.
	You don't need that.
	I carry a separate phone, even with the iPhone.
	I want a phone that just does a phone, and by the way, I want one I could drop in the toilet, get run over by a truck, and it'll still be a phone.
	Right.
	I use a track phone for that, by the way.
	I know you do.
	They should be sponsoring our show, but we should call them up.
	Yeah, well so should Cessna.
	Let's call them up too.
	Cessna should be sponsored.
	Well, I don't know how many people out there would buy a Cessna.
	Are you kidding me?
	I guarantee you there's lots of people in aviation who listen to me, and I bet you there are future pilots who will buy a Cessna because of me.
	Cessna and TrackPhone should both be paying for this.
	Damn, man.
	All this missed opportunity.
	Yeah, that'll be the day.
	There you go.
	Wouldn't that be funny if we were sponsored by Apple?
	It would be funny.
	I mean, we don't even need to be sponsored.
	What I would suggest, and I think we're going to have to find some way of doing this, is just doing these product placement discussions.
	As they all are.
	Because it sounds like that's what we're doing anyway.
	As they all are.
	Except we do it.
	No, we do it differently.
	As our audience grows, which it really is going quite swiftly, just what do we know?
	This is the 31st episode.
	So at a certain point, we'll just have a large audience.
	When we talk about some product, we'll just send them a bill and just see what happens.
	Here's your bill.
	You owe us like $45,000, jerks.
	Send them a bill.
	It's funny.
	They're already in the hole.
	Big time.
	Nothing I had to do with it.
	I'll tell you that right now.
	But wait a minute.
	But we should make it fair.
	And if we really slam a product, we should send them a check.
	Ah, absolutely.
	See?
	Now, so then we have a little fun going, right?
	Or some equivalent of a check or something to make right whatever we think is wrong.
	I don't know.
	Something like that.
	Well, you know, I don't think we have to make right what we think is wrong if the product sucks.
	Ah, true.
	But maybe sending them a check will be funny.
	So you join our advertising club, and if you're lucky, we talk about your product, we send you a check.
	If you're unlucky, we talk about your product, and it can be thousands of companies.
	Most will never talk about, but if we slam your product, we send you a check.
	I like it.
	I like the advertising club aspect.
	Nice, isn't it?
	Yeah, you have the advertising club.
	We'll list them for the listeners.
	Here's the people that we're going to maybe or maybe not talk about in a pro or con way.
	And of course, there'll be some jerks out there that'll track it.
	Well, I see that they talked about Apple three times and they didn't say anything bad about them.
	And, you know, that kind of thing.
	We can lose credibility, but I think we can do it.
	Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think we can do it.
	How much credibility do we need?
	That's what I say.
	How far must we go?
	Oh, man.
	All right.
	You got anything else, John?
	I got plenty, but I think we're running out of time.
	Actually, time is not that bad.
	Well, 72 minutes.
	I sent you the thing about the Bordeaux in a box somebody sent me on Twitter.
	Why don't you talk about this?
	You're a wine guy.
	What do you think about Bordeaux in a box?
	Actually, there was something that caught my eye in that article, and of course, like an idiot, I closed it.
	Crap.
	Do you have it open?
	Do you have that article open?
	The Bordeaux in a box article?
	Yeah.
	I got it.
	It's actually on the Twitter feed.
	Let me just...
	By the way, anyone who wants to...
	It's now called the Dvorak Brigade.
	Hold on a second, John.
	Downloading the Wine in a Box page.
	Just cut the Skype off for a second there.
	Hold on.
	Are you there?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	You've got to get a better link.
	I've got 16 megabits coming down on my stream.
	Dude, I'm about to move to London just to get a better link.
	All three of us are so fed up with the level of service we can get, and that's just because of the proximity of our house to the exchange.
	I've had a cable modem and cable on order from Virgin Media for about three months.
	I mean, they acquired a company called NTL, also known in the United Kingdom as NT Hell, and they have not yet implemented the Virgin brand of customer service as far as I'm concerned.
	So we're just going to move.
	We're going to move to get a better connection.
	Why don't you just call Branson, aren't you, his friend?
	What's he going to do?
	He's going to dig up, he's going to build a new exchange closer to my house just because he's my friend.
	Okay, is Bordeaux and cartons the last straw for French wine?
	That was it.
	By the way, somebody also sent a topic idea in.
	But wait a minute.
	Man killed on tracks while listening to an iPod.
	Wait a minute, I want to say something about the wine in a carton.
	The wine in the carton is one thing, but it comes with a sensory straw with four holes which are in the straw to send a spray of wine around the palate and ensure you enjoy exactly the same sensations as with a wine glass.
	That is technology, my friend.
	That is technology.
	I've got to try that.
	Hey, when I get to San Francisco, which I'm sure will be in the next week or two, maybe three weeks, let's have a carton of wine together with a sensory straw.
	I'll share a straw with you.
	Why don't you find, see if you can find that.
	You check luggage ever?
	Luggage?
	Yeah, when you come over.
	Of course I check luggage.
	I carry, you know...
	You've never seen me wear the same two clothes twice?
	That's true.
	You know, this guy, for anyone out there listening, this guy has never, that's why he didn't want me talking about the shirts I was having tailor-made, because I wear shirts more than once.
	I have, you know, I get them cleaned, I wash them, I put them on again.
	But you see, you're wrong.
	You're wrong.
	You wear everything once and then throw it out.
	No, John, no.
	First of all, I do not throw it out.
	Second of all, you're wrong.
	What I actually do is I'm much better at coordinating.
	I know exactly what outfits you've seen me in, and I make sure I wear something different to keep you entertained.
	That's not true when you know it.
	It is true.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	I wonder, did Dvorak see this?
	Let me try a different shirt.
	When I go on, as an example, when we go out to dinner, yes, I absolutely, no matter who you are, whether you're John C. Dvorak.
	Well, speak for yourself.
	But when I go on Cranky Geeks, I would never wear the same thing twice.
	Dude, I'm in show business.
	This is what I do.
	You're like a woman.
	Okay.
	Go ahead and yell at me.
	Let's get back.
	You went off topic on me.
	Let me just say what I was going to say.
	Get two of the white wines and two of the reds.
	Skip the one in the middle.
	So bring four of these little boxes of wine.
	Okay.
	And check the luggage, because you can't obviously get it through any other way.
	And then we'll check it out at a restaurant.
	Are we going to drink this wine in a restaurant?
	Yeah, we'll go to Fringal, because they always game for crazy things like that.
	Okay, where can I get it?
	Hold on.
	It's called, was it Tandem is what it's called?
	I don't know.
	And here it is.
	I don't have it.
	It's Tandem.
	Oh, here it is.
	Produced by Cordier Metzerzat.
	Mestrezat?
	Mestrezat?
	Is that French or German?
	Yeah, they're a big giant operation.
	I think they're from Algeria or something.
	Oh, no.
	Which has been selling fine wine since...
	Oh, there you go.
	So this thing from Nigeria, which has been selling fine wine since...
	No, not Nigeria.
	Algeria.
	Algeria.
	Since 1886...
	Maybe they're French.
	I don't know.
	The 25-centiliter product called Tandem will arrive in Britain next week at the London International Wine Fair.
	John C. Dvorak.
	I'm thinking road trip.
	The London International Wine Fair.
	Go figure.
	Yeah, that'd probably be good for a laugh.
	Photo op.
	Anyway, so they got a red, a white, and a rosé.
	We can skip the rosé.
	We know that's going to be crap.
	Or just a mixture of the two.
	Do you think they sell the straws separately?
	That would be cool.
	Here, London International Wine Fair.
	Well, excuse me.
	See, the bad news in this article is the following.
	The annual wine consumption of France has fallen from 100 liters per person to 54 liters per person during the last 40.
	Nobody's even drinking in France anymore.
	No wonder the country's in trouble.
	Why is that, do you think?
	That's interesting.
	I think it's because of the Muslim influence.
	Really?
	Well, I'm just guessing.
	I mean, what else?
	That and the teetotalers, which are all over the place.
	I don't know.
	For the visitors, the fair can be hugely beneficial.
	The opportunity to meet with over 1,200 exhibitors from every major producing country all in one place and to taste the new vintage in a relaxed yet professional environment saves time and money.
	Yeah, that's what Van Expo is all about.
	That's just a bigger event.
	These are for the lazy guys that can't get out of England and take a trip to the continent.
	But anyway, back to this product.
	The guy, I think, was asking me, what do I think?
	I don't think these are ever a bad idea.
	It's nothing new.
	I mean, Beaujolais used to be in a can in the 70s.
	It's not that big of a deal.
	You can still buy wine and bladders all throughout France.
	You bring your own bladder.
	It's a big old plastic thing, and you fill it up right from the barrel.
	And there's still wine in a box that comes out of Bordeaux from various little chateaus.
	And so this is just taking it to a kind of a junk wine level.
	I'm sure this wine's not that good.
	But for just something, if you want to just have some wine to help digest your horrible lunch, if you happen to be working in some place in San Francisco in a startup...
	Where there's no good restaurants.
	This might be a bad solution.
	I think a couple of these things would be good for you.
	I think that this would be potentially a hit with Patricia.
	Maybe.
	That's interesting.
	Maybe the Dutch in general would go for this stuff.
	Suck it and see is the Guardian headlines about the wine.
	Suck it and see.
	That's a good headline.
	One person complained that the problem with this, you know, some snoot, and as a wine connoisseur collector, I'm not as bad as I sound, but I can see some snoot saying, well, you know, you can't smell it in the glass and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	You know, this is a wine that probably should, even the red wine in this case, should probably be in the refrigerator anyway.
	And it's not a wine...
	You know, it's a wine as a beverage.
	It's not wine as a target of affection and intellectualism.
	You know, oh, the nose, it's got the orange blossom smell.
	So here's another data point for you.
	So this Guardian article that's titled Suck It and See is from September 13, 2007.
	And indeed, it's talking about the straw.
	Oh, really?
	They didn't even have the carton then, so the carton, it seems, was an afterthought.
	Drinking from the special straws is said to recreate the sensation of tasting wine from a glass.
	Quote, bringing small wine containers with straws to a party is more amusing than arriving with a bottle.
	Huh.
	How about that?
	We've got to get a hold of some of these straws.
	I'm telling you, man, that's what caught my eye.
	I'm like, that is some awesome technology.
	It's a hole.
	Yeah.
	Hey, it's patentable, motherfucker.
	Let's put a pinhole in his straw.
	You know a guy patented that shit.
	And he's got that pinhole in the straw.
	Now I gotta look up sensory straw.
	Oh, shit.
	I should have been Googling that.
	Sensory straw.
	Tetra Pak launched sensory straw.
	Sensory straw makes drinking fun.
	Yeehaw, baby.
	Tetra Pak, Carton Ambien, Sensory Straw to be launched in Australia.
	Sensory Straw tackles different taste buds.
	Oh, bullshit.
	Tools for innovation.
	Making milk interactive.
	They're going to use it with milk for kids.
	When kids take a sip, the liquid flows in all four directions at the same time, tickling the kids.
	Let me get this.
	Hey, dude.
	So I was just looking for Sensory Straw, a patent.
	Right?
	And here's what I ran across.
	It's a different patent.
	U.S. Patent 6129265.
	Beverage container with entertainment features.
	That trips me out.
	This is interesting.
	Yeah, it's funny.
	It is funny.
	Now, on the dairyfoods.com, there's a picture.
	It's fairly good.
	It's not a close-up, but it's close enough that you can see this straw.
	It's got a knob on the end, and I guess it's kind of like the shape funny.
	It's kind of like the thing you get on a Pavoni cappuccino machine, the milk steamer that has the holes going every which way.
	And that's what it looks like it's modeled after.
	And so when you suck on this thing, and they sell all the straws with flavors in them, too.
	Oh, my God.
	John, John.
	Oh, you're not going to believe this.
	This is a link to the...
	You're at the Tetra Pak website?
	I'm at...
	No, I'm at the dairyfoods.com website.
	Okay, look at that link.
	I'm Skyping you right now.
	So this is the history of...
	Of this company.
	Check this out.
	In 1890, Clemens von Bechtelsheim develops and takes out a patent for the first models of the so-called alpha plates, which are at the very heart of a separator.
	Wait a minute.
	Is that the straw technology?
	Now I'm confused.
	No, we're talking about the DeLaval family.
	These are guys who made centrifuges.
	So we're talking a separator, a machine able to continue.
	This is one of those continuous centrifuges.
	In other words, you don't keep it in a single container, and you can centrifuge stuff out in a process.
	So it never stops.
	This is used in the wine business and other food concepts.
	So these people, look at 2003.
	The sensory straw concept was launched.
	A nougat food tech?
	Whatever.
	Okay, so...
	They've been sitting on...
	Man, can you believe it?
	They've been sitting on this shit and depriving it from us for five years.
	I have not had the pleasure of a sensory straw.
	It's a gimmick.
	Anyway, let's get some of those straws, but let's get some of those wines, too.
	We'll check it out.
	Report back.
	Yes, definitely.
	Definitely.
	I think it's...
	I think it's important.
	I love the picture of the kid at the top of this page.
	Wait a minute.
	Let me see.
	Let me see.
	At the top of which page?
	Of the history page that you were looking at.
	Okay, hold on.
	Let me go back to it.
	Of the Tetra Pak.
	Sipping a fucking...
	A big mug of wine.
	A mug of wine.
	Just this kid looks so happy.
	You know why?
	Because...
	Well, actually, the kid's not even using the sensory straw.
	Hmm...
	Well...
	Then there's something there.
	Let's quit while we're still ahead, John.
	Yep.
	That's a good idea.
	All right, hey, can I just say, this was a fun show.
	I enjoyed it.
	We learned something.
	Yes, we did.
	We started a couple businesses, we learned something, and we have homework, which means we have to get some of the tandem wines in a carton with the sensory straw mechanism.
	Great technology.
	You know, the astronauts use that space shuttle.
	Okay.
	All right, then.
	That's it.
	Coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And from Northern California, I'm John C. Dvorak.

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