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Aug. 9, 2008 - No Agenda
01:19:42
42: Paris Hilton Does Zero Point Energy
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Once again, it's time for that international roadshow of sheer intellect.
It is no agenda.
I'm Adam Curry, coming to you from a blustery and wet United Kingdom.
And I'm John C. Dvorak, up here in the Pacific Northwest, home of Microsoft, Nintendo, USA, and Sega.
And John's Deli.
Right, the Spicer's Delicatessen.
Oh, Spicer's.
Spicer's Delicatessen.
You have a cold.
I'm congested because it rained for some unknown reason here in the Pacific Northwest.
I got congested for some God knows what reason.
So I sound terrible.
Let me ask you a very important question, John, right off the bat.
You ready?
Yeah.
Do you have the Olympic fever yet, John?
Olympics?
When do they start?
You're horrible.
Did you see the opening ceremony?
You know, I turned it on last night to see what the heck was going on, and I saw some of it.
It was very dull, that opening ceremony.
Really?
I thought so.
I mean, I watched it live.
I mean, you must have been watching a repeat.
No, wait a minute.
Was it live or was that a repeat?
I think it was probably on tape.
But then, you know, one of the channels had the, you know, these guys walking around sluggishly around the thing holding their flags, and I couldn't watch much of that.
Oh, yeah, no, that's after the whole opening ceremony.
So you didn't see the fireworks and the...
Oh, no, I'm sure the...
No, I didn't.
Oh, my God, man, it was amazing.
You know, the director who did...
Ah, what are all those movies?
Like, what was that Flying Dragon movie?
Help me out.
Flying...
Flying daggers, crouching tiger, flying...
Yeah, that one.
That guy.
So he did it all.
John, I swear to God, they had fireworks of footsteps, of giant footsteps walking towards the stadium.
It was unbelievable the way they did that.
Well, you know, the Chinese invented fireworks, and so they do a pretty good bang-up job, as it were.
And I found out they also invented the compass.
So they say.
Oh, this is one of these disputed who invented things?
Well, anyway, so I missed that, so I suppose I missed probably the best part, because the rest of it's going to be like what else they were showing, like two-person women's volleyball between some Yugoslavian team in Australia or something like that, and one of the...
I think it's the Australian volleyball team.
It's just hard to believe it's not actually a guy wearing a bikini.
It looks like Jim Carrey when he wears that bikini top.
My favorite Olympic sport is women's field hockey.
I just love those skirts.
You know what I mean?
When they run and the skirts just kind of flop up.
That reminds me of something I saw recently in one of these track and field events.
There was this...
In fact, I took some pictures of it off some screen captures.
I was going to blog, and I never got around to it.
But there was this woman who was a...
She was essentially wearing a thong.
Yeah, it was for speed and flexibility.
And for ratings, John.
It's all about ratings, dude.
Anyway, she had a pretty nice figure, too.
And she had this thong on and just a tight-fitting bikini top.
And I'm looking at this saying, when she goes up on the pole, then you immediately imagine a pole dancer.
And then she flips over into the thing and bounces around, and you're going, wow, this is like borderline lewd.
But it's an interesting thought.
Yeah, I'm sure there's all kinds of aerodynamics and all kinds of technology involved, but at the same time, I'm really thinking television ratings.
There's just no two ways about it.
Well, I'm thinking that, too, because the guys aren't so scantily dressed.
I mean, if that was all it was about, the guys would...
I mean, the guys are wearing a full...
T-shirt, you know, level top.
It's tight-fitting.
Speedo top, whatever.
And, you know, pretty good-sized pants.
And when they're doing the same sports, why is this woman wearing a thong and a bikini top?
I think basically because guys in thongs is just not a good look, perhaps.
Well, I'm just saying, if you really have to win...
Well, no.
I mean, I know lots of women who love the way those guys look.
It has nothing to do with what they're wearing.
Men are just so superficially stupid that we have to be thinking scooge all the time.
Otherwise, we don't get excited.
Well, all I know is that this is a trend that somebody's...
I don't know.
It just seems...
Distracting.
These girls are obviously doing it for just, I think you're right, it's for ratings.
Ratings, yeah.
Getting a modeling contract or something.
You never hear how much money is actually involved in the Olympics, but besides just what China spent on infrastructure and what they'll hopefully bring in in new business, the television rights worldwide for the Olympics is just outrageous.
It's billions of dollars.
I'm not a big fan of the Olympics or the Olympic Committee or the basic corruption that takes place.
Ditto.
But the one thing that China, it's going to be interesting to see, because we haven't seen any good, at least I haven't, and I haven't really started watching.
I'm sure it's going on as we speak.
See how exactly, how much they managed to clean up the air.
Oh, no.
Remember we were joking about it?
We were joking about the smog.
I watched the BBC from yesterday, I don't know, from like 10 in the morning until the boring part of the opening ceremony where all the athletes come in carrying the flags.
And every single time they were talking about it, you know, I was like, now let's go take a look at, you know, here's a repeat of the Olympic flame coming down the Great Wall of China.
Well, at least we think that's the Great Wall of China, you know.
Yeah.
And the official word was, it's mist.
It's not smog, it's mist, John.
That's what it is.
Well, actually, I've been to the Great Wall of China, and it may have been mist, because that area, for some reason, has got a lot of mist.
Oh, you pretty pooper.
Yeah, but also around the stadium.
I mean, it's clear that they've got some kind of issue in the air.
Yeah.
It's pretty funny.
All I know is when they were doing all the early reports, they'd have a guy standing there.
You might as well have been in the studio.
Because it was just a guy standing there in just this gray mass, vaguely visible.
It's funny because it reminds me of what Holland used to look like in the mid-70s.
The climate has changed since then.
But Holland used to be just like that.
Really, really gray, overcast, mist in the morning, very depressing.
Hopefully most of China isn't like that.
Well, you know, if you look at paintings that go back even before they industrialized, you know, people who do art in China, in fact, I've got a few pieces I've collected, they never show a blue sky.
The skies are always white, which makes it easier to paint a painting, I suppose.
It was a shortcut.
It's a shortcut.
Ah, fuck it.
You know, let's just not go on that.
This sky shit is too hard.
But, you know, it's like there's a big contrast between the art that comes out of China because I rarely see any, you know, interesting skies as opposed to you go to Southeast Asia.
So when the first time I visited Vietnam, the first thing you notice is like, my God, what is going on with this sky?
It's got all kinds of cloud formations.
It's got big sky look like, you know, Montana would have.
It's got, you know, It's got all kinds of looks, and they paint fantastic cloud scenes, all the artists down there, because you don't even need to paint anything else.
You just look up and start going at it.
It's quite interesting.
A friend of mine's been taking, he's doing a world tour.
That's like the second or third time he's done it.
He was just, he went through, and he sends pictures now, of course, because we've got digital and And you can get Wi-Fi even in Mongolia.
And he actually went...
So some of the pictures have just been astounding.
But he also was in...
I think he was in Mongolia for the most recent eclipse, which looked pretty spectacular.
I haven't been to Mongolia.
Or Tibet.
I'll probably never get...
Those places are kind of off the beaten track.
You'll meet my friend.
He's in San Francisco this week.
And I'm out there as well.
I'm coming out tomorrow.
Oh, really?
Yeah, so you know what that means.
It's time for another Customs Border Patrol Agency trip.
Yeah, you're going to...
Yeah, take notes.
I do want to say one thing.
Actually, I heard you guys on Twit talking about it as well.
And I'm not quite sure what the big hoopla is, because I think you and I even found out, it must have been months ago, that if you're not officially in the country yet, then the U.S. Border and Customs Patrol Agency, Inc.
Limited, has the absolute authority to search anything and everything about you.
You don't have your First Amendment rights yet.
And I don't know what the big hoopla is all of a sudden about this.
Oh, they can check your laptops.
Like, they've been able to do that and have been doing that for a long time as far as I know.
Well, all I know is it's a lot better than years and years ago, actually before 9-11, where they made you boot the laptop.
Yeah, I remember that, yeah.
I'm like, why do they want me to start it up and potentially bring it to an explosion in their face?
It's like, why do you want that?
If you don't trust it, you want me to really start it in front of you?
Here, I'll point the screen towards you, my friend.
I know, that's what's so funny.
But then, of course, there was this practical joke floating around that you'd slip onto somebody's laptop.
Which, when they booted it, would come up with a countdown to explosion.
Oh no!
A bad idea.
I always thought that was one gag.
And the other one, that gag, which I've never done, but I've always thought it would be humorous.
Is you get some lead foil, which is, you know, it's like aluminum foil, only it's lead.
And then you would cut out the silhouette of a gun.
And then you slip it into one, if they're packing a book or something, you slip it into the book.
Oh, wait, not so fast, John.
I've got to take notes from my upcoming trip.
Hold on.
Slip it into a book as a bookmark.
Oh, yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, right.
And then as it was, the x-ray, you could just imagine.
I was listening to, what was it, either on the media, no, it was probably Fresh Air earlier this week, and they had this guy on, you heard about this book, I even forgot the author's name, it's like a whistleblower about this, it has been in the news, about the letter that came from Hubush, The security guy for Saddam Hussein.
There was a backdated letter that came to the White House because this guy had already said, hey, you know, we don't have any weapons of mass destruction.
Did you hear any of that at all?
No, it's been suppressed or I missed it.
Ugh.
Okay, I'll find out the author's name.
And of course, I haven't read the book either.
But what has been in the news, and I've seen a couple of reports about it.
So apparently there was contact between...
He must have been CIA, this guy.
There was contact between the CIA and Saddam Hussein's chief of intelligence, Hububush, I think his name is.
Something like Hububush.
Hububush, that's it.
And so Hububush said, you know, look, this was before we went into Iraq.
Hububush is saying, you know, look, we don't have any weapons of mass destruction.
And so, you know, this was all back and forth.
And, you know, the essence of the story is, of course, that the White House ignored it, and then they had some documents falsified, which, of course, this is a truly impeachable offense, etc., etc.
But what really caught my attention about the story, you know, besides the fact that, you know, the president lied and we went into a country illegally, false pretenses, etc., So the English had been following these 25 guys who had the idea of mixing liquids on the plane and blowing up all these US-bound planes from the UK, right?
And this is what eventually has resulted in us not being able to carry more than 100 milliliters of urine in your carry-on bag.
And what happened was, is that the English really wanted to take it easy.
They had all these guys on a 24-7 surveillance, and they wanted to get some real hard evidence.
They even said in conversations, look, here in England, we take things a little slower, we make sure we've got all the evidence we need, so there's no mess up, but don't worry, because they can't make a move without us.
And then what...
The White House did, either Bush or Cheney or whomever.
They basically blew the whistle on this Habubush guy, who was in contact with one of the informants, so that the 25 people being watched in the UK, of course, were immediately alerted.
And the Brits then had to scramble in the middle of the night and run all over the freaking place.
And I remember how weird this was when this arrest came down.
I'm like, what the hell is going on with this?
It already felt really strange.
And now we know the back story that the U.S. blew the whistle and...
And that was because Bush had such a low approval rating at the time and everything was all messed up.
He needed some kind of new mini-event to chalk something up for terrorism.
And so they blew the whistle so that then the Scotland Yard had to rush and go and apprehend all these guys.
And they're having to let them go now one by one because they really have no hard evidence on them.
It's a fascinating story.
Well, how did...
Interesting...
Let me see if I can find it.
It's around here.
I guess that means that Scotland Yard and the Brits shouldn't have shared so much.
Well, I think they were working together, but they were like, you know, according to this guy, Hooboosh.
Let me see.
Somehow that doesn't seem like that's the right spelling.
No.
I think you're just making up the name.
Hooboosh.
Maybe it's Hooboosh.
Hooboosh?
Oh, man.
Crap, I don't know.
I'll find it and I'll send you a link to that show.
It was good.
Good story.
Oh, and John, listen to what I have here.
You can't tell, of course.
Can you hear?
It's four DVDs.
And what do these DVDs contain?
They contain all of the Curry family home albums, home movies, which were transferred from Super 8, Melaviner film to DVD. Oh, when did you finally do that?
Actually, so my sister heard us talking about it, and she says, no, no, no, Bob doesn't have them.
I had them because my mom wanted to throw them out, and so she basically rescued them.
She had them sitting around the house forever, and I said, well, you know, let's have someone put them on the DVD. And it turns out that her husband, one of his friends, was able to do it.
He did it for free and made everyone a copy.
Super 8?
Super 8 millimeter.
Yeah, from 67 to 75, I think.
And there's some pretty amazing stuff on there.
It's not just Africa, it turns out.
There's me at the...
There's other places you were at where they give you knockout pills so they don't get us removed at the beginning.
It's really weird watching this because you see things like, oh wow, I remember.
Because I really don't remember that much of Africa because I was three years old.
But seeing all of these images, I'm like, yeah, I totally remember that.
And all this stuff just starts popping in and we're fishing for big game fish and I remember that.
I certainly remember the lions having sex when we had to wait for like half an hour until they were done.
But it's great because my dad really got some awesome footage.
It's really amazing when you see this sex sequence.
It's hot, baby!
And, um...
See, there was also...
We were in, uh...
In different parts of Asia.
All of a sudden, there I am at the Taj Mahal.
There's me at the Acropolis.
I mean, it's really priceless footage.
And things that look quite differently now than they did then.
But here's what was funny.
I was trying to figure out what country we were in, and I saw something called the Three Sisters Inn.
And I thought it might be Japan.
And so I googled the Three Sisters Inn.
The first hit, it was the exact same sign.
The building was a little more modern.
And it was in Kyoto.
And it was just like, wow, you know.
It was just a pretty amazing experience.
I'll bring them with me, so if you're interested, we'll make copies.
Yeah, I'd like to see them.
Sounds like good travel log footage.
Well, there's some really good close-up footage of President Abote and all kinds of ceremonies.
I have no idea what it's all about, but it's cool to watch.
Now, was that the Super 8?
There was a Super 8 format that had a soundtrack on it.
Was this the soundtrack?
No, unfortunately not.
This is before that.
In fact, when you look at it, it has a very high Zapruder kind of vibe to it.
It really does.
Kind of the rounded edges on the screen because it doesn't quite scan all the way through, you know, and the colors and the flash of, you know, like a bad frame.
It's pretty awesome.
It's 1968, man.
You know, that's like, what was that, 40 years ago?
Yeah, 40 years ago.
Yeah, it's amazing any of these old...
Yeah, people have to find these old...
Films and transcode them.
Because you'll lose them, right?
Eventually they'll just...
Well, they're all fading.
I mean, one of the problems is that they're just turning...
All the colors aren't going to be there.
In fact, if you have any color, it's a miracle.
Although I think you can probably run it through eventually a computer program.
Yeah, it'll re-enhance.
Oh, sure, yeah.
Well, of course, so now I've got them on DVD. Now I have to worry about the lifespan of the DVD. So it's like, we're going to put another backup of this.
I find I wind up in my life with a couple of these 100 gig hard drives, these Firewire drives, and they're labeled stuff like Photo Archive.
And you just have to schlep that along for fear of eventually losing everything.
Well, you know, it's...
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you have the modern...
I mean, I still probably have some backup cassettes Or, you know, DAT tapes or whatever that nothing can read.
But I don't think it's that much different, though, than having a cache of negatives that you might have around the house that your mom would just chuck.
Yeah, just throw out, right?
I mean, we have, like, my mother probably threw out 90% of that kind of thing.
I mean, I scrounged it, you know, when I was younger.
Oh, that's horrible.
My wife's mom was worse.
Dude, by definition.
That would be your mom-in-law?
Yeah, okay.
They're always worse.
Actually, my mother-in-law, I got along with her famously.
But she apparently threw out everything that was worth...
I mean, we're talking about 18th century oil paintings.
No way.
Family collected, she'd just give them away.
Oh, here we go.
I'm sorry.
I was wrong.
It was Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind.
That's the guy who wrote the book.
You were wrong.
Who did you say it was?
I thought it was some CIA dude.
It's called The Way of the World.
That doesn't mean you're not necessarily contradicting yourself.
It could be a CIA dude.
Good point.
Well, he worked for the New York Times.
Yeah, you're right.
It could have been a CIA dude.
I keep proving the point, don't I? Here we go.
In his new book, The Way of the World, A Story of Truth and Hope in a New Age of Extremism.
Crikey.
Who wants a title like that?
Author Ron Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and eventually fabricated intelligence assets to support its case for war.
Both the White House and the CIA deny his claim.
So he's got the CIA guy on record, on tape, and he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
He says, look, I've got everything on tape.
I've got, you know, signed affidavits.
You know, the fact that these people are denying it now, it's like, yeah, duh.
Duh.
That sounds like something to read.
Yeah.
So what else is going on over there?
So I'm drinking this tea this morning, by the way.
Is this a trend over in England?
Because, you know, one of our British friends sent this tea over.
And it's Tetley's Earl Grey with Vanilla.
Oh, God.
That shit's starting over here.
You know what's next?
This is somewhere, somehow, some point in time, someone decided that all the teas now have to be fruity teas and flavored teas.
And I don't know why this is happening, but it's infiltrating everywhere.
And I don't like it.
No, I mean, you can add your own flavor if you want to add flavor, it seems to me.
That's my point.
But, uh, huh, there must be some marketing guy out over there convincing these people.
Yeah.
Yeah, you think?
When I see PG Tips, you know, chocolate flavored or something, then I'll know the end is near.
Yeah.
They're in the supermarkets now.
This is so cool.
They're all really enthusiastic.
Some trials.
So you can buy booze in the supermarkets here.
But of course you have to be at least 16.
And so they've got a new project.
16?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
We like to get our kids started young here.
And it's working, quite frankly.
So in the supermarket, they'll actually have a camera at the checkout.
Because there's always these arguments, right?
You know, you're overage, underage, and then you have kids on the weekends who are actually at the register, and they can't actually sell it unless, you know, some other adult at another register sees and approves.
And there's all kinds.
It's a hassle, or at least that's what they're saying.
So now there's going to be a camera hooked up to a central network And there will be official screeners who will be sitting there watching the monitors, looking at who wants to purchase booze, and they'll either approve it or they won't.
And that's going to be like a central, some kind of central command that's going to do that for all the supermarkets and the government's excited about it and they want to subsidize part of it.
But they're excited about this kind of, this proactive monitoring of people going through the checkout and they're excited.
They're excited.
They literally said, this is very exciting.
This is really fantastic.
You know, it was funny, Christina has had a little bit of a flu.
And there's this concert she wants to go to.
Of course, she's sitting out in the rain right now as I look outside.
So she's like, Daddy, you've got to go get me some happy drugs.
I've got to get better in a couple of days.
So I go off to Boots.
And I think I'll pick her up, because they don't have NyQuil or anything like that, God forbid.
Boots, of course, is one of the big pharmacy chains.
And so I figured I'd pick up something like night nurse, day nurse, or whatever, with paracetamol in it.
And then I'd grab a box of paracetamol aspirin.
And the register literally would not accept the sale, because you can't have two products that contain paracetamol.
And I was like, wow, why?
He said, well, you know, because there's so many overdoses.
I'm like, I've never heard of this ever.
Except, of course, for Bruce Ivins, the scientist who killed himself on aspirin.
I've never in my life heard of someone overdosing on paracetamol.
And I figure if anyone knows about this chemical, John, it's you.
Yeah, I don't know anything about it, actually.
But...
I think it's weird that they would have this kind of thing built into the registers now.
That country over there is like a fascist state.
It is, man.
No, we have to use a new word.
It's not good enough, fascist state.
Yeah, I know.
You know, everyone's come up with...
We sent this plea out, I guess, a few weeks ago.
Yeah, two or three shows ago, yeah.
No one has come up with anything.
I mean, one guy came up with neo-fascist.
I said, what are you kidding me?
Yeah, that's not new.
And then oligarchy...
But it's not the same thing.
It's not the same thing, no.
I don't know.
We'll just call it, I don't know, UKism.
I have no idea.
But people are feeling it here.
They really are.
It's really starting to piss people off, I can tell.
It's about time.
They sure are tolerant.
Well, mainly they're tolerant because there's so many rules against protest.
You can't actually protest legally in Britain anymore.
All that shit's been taken away.
And it's true.
They kind of have the same thing here.
Now they have free speech zones.
Yeah, right.
If you want to protest, then you can do that 10 miles south.
Almost.
And in the free speech zones, usually they're fenced in, so it's almost like if they wanted to, they could probably just say, well, we got them locked up already.
Let's just put a couple padlocks on the gates and let's gas them.
John, I've never heard anyone say that.
The gates thing, the camps, yeah.
I don't know about the gassing.
Well, I'm telling you, I mean, the way they've got it, I mean, and the thing that's funny about it is that everybody goes low with the program.
They walk right in there.
I mean, isn't that amazing that they actually do that?
They walk into an enclosure set up by, apparently, the enemy, the man, with a big padlock on it.
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
You know, it's ridiculous.
And then you can't find any politicians that, you know, you could vote in.
I mean, I guess Ron Paul comes the closest, but, you know, people, you know, these guys are marginalized.
Much more important is, you know, we have to have an in-depth discussion about John Edwards' extramarital affairs.
That's what's important.
Well, you know what's interesting about that is that that's more important apparently in the UK than it is in the US because it's not being covered at all by major media at all.
You're kidding me!
No, it's like a big scandal amongst all the right-wing talk show guys.
Really?
You know, it's a page 10 thing.
There's nobody in the major media here that is covering it.
They all don't know what to do about this.
Really?
I mean, the Brits love a good sex scandal, so yeah, they're all over that.
Yeah, no, you won't find it on the front page.
I mean, I know the Telegraph and all the British papers are covering it to an extreme, but here, nah.
Well, since we last spoke last week, Obama is now being booed.
Oh, he's being booed?
Yeah, he's being booed in places where he shows up.
Paris Hilton, thank God Paris Hilton's been pulled into politics.
We were waiting for it.
It was going to either be Amy Winehouse or Paris, but it clearly is Paris Hilton now involved in our politics.
Now, this is the news you're getting over there, because I haven't seen no coverage.
I'm looking at the New York Times right now.
You haven't seen the Paris Hilton video?
Oh, no, everyone's seen the Paris Hilton video.
Okay.
But nobody's talking about Obama being booed.
Oh, okay.
No, no, I'm...
This is a talking points thing.
We talked about last week, is Obama now getting arrogant?
And there's all this anti-Obama type news.
And they're showing clips here, at least.
I saw it on...
No, I saw it on Fox News as well.
And Sky News, which essentially is the same thing.
And there's clips of him getting booed.
And he's like, oh, hold on, let's be respectful.
Of course it's taken out.
He may be booed because he has poop on his shoe.
I mean, it's taken out of context.
I have no idea why he's being booed.
That's the question.
Why is he being booed?
I don't know.
That, they're not going to tell me.
But that doesn't matter.
I'm interested in the positioning.
That's more interesting than fact.
Let's see here.
There's Obama, the end of black politics.
This is the New York Times, my beautiful London, the tall, cool drink of sewage.
This is in the magazine, which has all these kinds of...
Are you looking for Obama stories about him being booed?
I can't find anything.
I can't find it.
John Edwards is definitely not on the front page of anything.
Let me do a search in the Times.
I was just presuming about John Edwards.
That must be front page news because it's talked about here.
Yeah, no, everybody...
I'm telling you, this is one of the points of interest.
Here's the New York Times search.
You got...
The top story's not even about this.
If you go down a couple ABC News, they point to saying Edwards admits to extramarital affair, and that's the end of that.
I think I know what the problem is.
I figured it out.
I saw it on my mobile phone this morning, and I just want to make sure before I... Here we go.
Riel Hunter...
See, the problem is, she's not hot.
That's the problem.
That's why it's not a good news story.
She's not.
She's not hot.
In fact, his wife is hotter than she is.
You know, what's he doing?
If you're going to mess around, man, get someone who's hot.
That's the problem.
I'm looking at, here's the story that ran in the Times by Catherine Seeley, or C-L, or I can't even pronounce her name.
Oh, here she is.
Is this it?
Reale Hunter?
Yeah, yeah, Reale Hunter, yeah.
See what I mean?
Well, I, you know, she's, well...
She's not hot.
Yeah, no, she actually looks, he looks British, actually.
So, but, you know, that's the problem.
She's not photogenic, so that no one wants her.
No, she's not very photogenic at all.
She has, she looks like she's got a horse face, as it were.
Well, I'm just saying.
I'm not saying it in a bad way.
But she has kind of a horse face and she's got like this scroungy hair and then she has a kind of a Carly Fiorina smile.
Yeah.
You know.
And why is she...
I wonder where she...
Like this picture that I'm looking at, it's like she's posing for something and she's proud of herself.
Oh.
She's got some mugshot from Extra or whatever.
Anyway.
Yeah, no, it's not...
It's like...
You might be right.
That actually could be the whole thing.
If she was like, you know...
It's got to...
John, the media is so stupid.
Why doesn't she have any affair with a Hollywood actress, you know, to make things interesting?
I was watching Fox...
Oh, this is great.
You know, so I watch Fox News because I have to get my shot of reptilian motion.
And so they have the live press conference where the officials at the White House...
Are now going to lay out all the evidence for Bruce Ivins.
This is the researcher who was about to be indicted for sending the anthrax letters and mysteriously killed himself on massive quantities of Tylenol.
This is a great story.
So, I mean, they couldn't even pin the patent angle to him, which I thought was actually, you know, when you're looking for a motive, it's like he had a patent for the vaccine, and like, okay, you know, wow, what a stretch, but, you know, I'll buy it if you guys can stick it to him.
They couldn't even do that.
But then questions started, and this must have been like, you know, like, not the, this must have been like the South Wing or something.
I have no idea where this was, because I let fucking anybody into this press conference.
So, They're carrying it live on Fox News.
And then I hear...
She was not on camera.
And so I can hear an African-American female voice.
And she's saying, you know, so what are you going to do about the family's Uh, people who were affected by the anthrax.
It was some question kind of like that.
It was kind of like a weird question.
So I turn up the volume, I'm listening.
And then she launches into this, like, because I'm one of the affected, you know, and then within seconds, John, within seconds...
Boom!
Shep Smith, or whoever it was, came in with a voiceover and immediately was like, okay, we'll come back to the...
It was like, now it's getting interesting.
Now something cool is going to happen.
Boom!
You could almost hear the cue on camera.
It was like, we're going back to Shep!
Shep!
Covered up!
Just amazing.
Just amazing.
Let's shut that woman up.
I'm sure they were pounding her with batons.
Tasering her.
Tasering her on the spot.
We laugh, but it's not that funny.
But we do laugh.
Yeah, I figured it all out.
All my research, all my conspiracy theories, I finally figured it out, John.
It was so easy, and I'm enlightened today.
I feel great.
No more reptiles, no more UFOs, no more nothing for me.
I've been able to rationalize everything.
Reptiles?
Well, you were never into that, I hope.
Well, I mean, if you believe in the Nibiru Planet X and our reptilian origins, then you've got to kind of believe in it.
Yeah.
I know you like it.
No, no, but I figured it out.
The whole thing...
Actually, where it started for me is I started reading a lot about Nikola Tesla.
What an amazing guy this was.
Let's just list his inventions.
Niagara Falls power plant, alternating current, I guess the electric generator in general, radio wave transmission.
This guy was into a lot of stuff.
And then you see a lot of this free energy concept.
And this, of course, you could see as a huge hoax, conspiracy, etc.
Were it not that I've actually had some results with some of this with the hydroxy booster.
And so I've met a lot of these people.
I've been talking to them over the past week.
And guys who are making Joe cells.
And then this concept of zero-point energy.
And I think, you know, really at the bottom end or the bottom line, and if you believe Christ of all things as a resource, Wikipedia, that J.P. Morgan was, well, I have seen it in other places, but who knows, J.P. Morgan was one of Tesla's original investors, and I believe he acquired a lot of his patents.
And Tesla, of course, never got around to making his, you know, his free energy device.
And I think, probably, that whenever the decision was made to have a petroleum-based power society, of course there was no chance left for anyone 100 years ago when Tesla lived to continue with these experiments because you actually need money to get these things going and to create them.
You need labs and materials and tools and dye and you name it.
And I think that probably that is really the reason why we're in this messed up world right now is because science was actually stifled at that point in time and it's carried on for quite a while but now of course as we're in 2008 there's a lot more resources to build and test things and if you see what people are doing right now with this free energy concept and how far they've gotten You've got to believe that there is certainly a different
dimension to our world that we're not seeing or not able to see, but it does consist of movement, energy, and we are figuring out ways to harness this.
And I know you have some expertise in some of these fields, but clearly there's something that we're latching on to.
But at this point, you have this classic kind of conundrum, I guess, where no one believes anyone.
Because, of course, it's been hammered into our brains.
There's no perpetual motion.
There's no machine.
There's no creating energy without any other loss of energy.
It has to equal up, etc.
And then, of course...
By the way, that's called physics.
Go ahead.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
But there are a lot of physicists who are now saying, hey, you know, we have to perhaps look at rewriting the laws of physics because there's something here that is definitely new.
I mean, you've never heard of this?
So your approach to this, your own, you know, obsession with kind of a crackpot ideology is to dig a deeper hole.
No, no, not yet.
Wait, bear with me.
Bear with me.
Because at the absolute, so, you know, frantically, the people who really own the world have to keep everything running on energy that they can control.
Because, of course, you know, there is some definite control in the oil market.
And a part of the whole scam, and actually money comes secondary to this whole scam, is keeping us away from finding the free energy.
Because if you actually have energy that anyone can create for free, and you don't have to buy anything, and you can pretty much make it out of magnets or whatever it is, then really the whole structure of everything falls apart.
You don't need a whole bunch of things because they're based on energy that costs money.
And that's kind of the basis of our entire society.
So you think I'm digging a deeper hole by following this trail?
But there's a couple of things here that need to be addressed.
Besides the fact that you're digging a deeper hole.
But I like explaining these things to you because then you really help me evolve my thinking.
So please, shoot away.
Actually, my influence on you in this regard seems to have the opposite effect.
I mean, if anybody...
It's good.
It's good.
It's like the marriage of the two people that, you know, they make each other's life worse.
Okay.
So that's nonsense.
But I love you more for it.
Yeah.
So first of all, you're advocating.
I mean, it seems to be a base hope that something ridiculously impossible could happen to destroy society.
So I think the basis for this kind of thinking is questionable.
Wait, what are you talking about?
I'm not hoping for something.
You said yourself, you know, the whole thing is a mechanism.
The whole society's mechanism is based on this need to buy oil or have an oil economy.
You disagree with that?
Yeah.
No, it is an oil economy, but that's just the way it is.
It just evolved that way.
It wasn't decided by J.P. Morgan.
I know what we'll do.
No, no, no.
Hold on a second.
I didn't say that.
I said that he's...
No, no.
Here's what I'm implying.
He's one of the several names that we've spoken about.
Put Rockefeller in there.
You know, and...
I definitely think that there was an option to people who already had a lot of money at the time to say, hey, you know what?
This shit works pretty good.
This oil stuff.
Let's get into this business.
Let's control it all.
I mean, that's pretty much proven that that's what's happened.
And then we'll be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
I mean, that...
And isn't all of society is based upon that.
And that's why those guys will do whatever it takes to continue themselves to get richer.
And upon...
Upon the shoulders of this oil idea came the whole banking system and all this money.
They're all behind that.
I mean, you've got to agree with some of that.
I think the banking system was pretty evolved by the 1800s.
But anyway...
Yeah, derivatives and subprime mortgage lending?
No.
Well, that's just recent.
Yeah, exactly.
So let me ask this question, just change the subject slightly.
Do you think that in England it's, you know, because the British are known for eccentrics and eccentricities.
Do you think it's maybe like in the water or the kind of tea that you drink or they poison people specifically to make them wacky?
No, I'm not wacky, dude.
No, I'm not saying about you.
I'm just talking in general.
No, I don't think so.
Coincidentally, you're in England and you're getting more eccentric as you're...
I think it's more like cabin fever.
Because you're on an island.
It's like Gilligan's Island.
There's 60 million plus people on it.
A couple of us are bound to go nuts after a while.
You know, there is a thing called island fever that people who move to Hawaii suffer from often.
They're not used to it.
Yeah, I think I should go try that sickness.
I'll go there for a while.
But I always wonder about the British Isles because when I'm over there, you never feel that you're on an island at all.
So I don't know how the people...
Like maybe yourself, get to the island fever kind of state.
Right.
Well, it's a big-ass island, first of all.
So you feel more like you're going to the coast.
Of course, it was originally connected to France.
There was land there.
In fact, it's still there.
It's eroded.
It's underwater now.
But it used to be a part of the mainland.
I mean, it was connected.
There was an actual road.
There was?
I've dumbfounded you now.
Yeah, you didn't know that?
I mean, when did the road go away?
When the water beat it.
No, I realize that, but you're talking about the year.
Oh, I believe the road was Roman period.
So the Romans, they drove to the British Isles?
I'm basing this...
Ben-Hur went there and conquered England.
Now, I was watching a documentary about early English man and where he came from.
It was a BBC documentary, so I have that in pretty high regard.
Then they said, okay, and so this, and they actually showed, and they showed geological surveys, and said this was a road.
It went off to the middle part of France, and it was an actual landmass that was just connected.
Oh, yeah, I can find out for you.
I'll go and do the research and find out when it was built or when there was a road there.
Maybe it was just dirt.
Was it actually a road?
It was dirt.
It was probably dirt.
It was two ditches, okay?
It was one ditch going that way, the other ditch going the other way.
But it was connected.
So maybe that's psychological.
Maybe that still makes it feel like it's attached.
It was probably connected a million years ago.
It's like the Bering Strait where the Koreans and the Asians waltzed over to North America and became Eskimos and Indians.
It was a while back.
Well, let's go back even further.
When the whole Earth was just one big giant landmass, it split apart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, now back to my free energy, dude.
Oh, brother.
Go on.
Well, have you seen any of these experiments or actual working models of generators that are based on magnets and that actually work?
No, I haven't seen anything in this regard that actually works.
Well, there's a lot of examples, and there's a lot of different versions, and there's still a lot of hydrogen-type stuff that people are doing, but I've kind of figured out what the problem is.
First of all, anyone who's into this stuff and is actually going to spend time in his garage building it is, of course, kooky.
And then people like you, of course, ridicule them, and we're already kind of weak to start with, and we're kind of introverted.
I like the way you're siding with these people.
Totally.
We.
You've got a mouse in your pocket.
We.
We're totally introverted and then you push us back into the garages.
But here's the big problem.
All these guys are trying to get patents and they're trying to make money and then of course investors rip them off because they're not really investors.
They're just people who are trying to grab stuff to go figure out patents themselves.
Basically, if we're talking about something that is easy enough to be made in your garage, no one's ever going to make any money on it.
And that's kind of why it never gets off the ground.
And by the way, they used to just kill the guys who came out and said, oh, I've got some free energy.
They stopped doing that about 15, 20 years ago.
So now they just ridicule you with the John Dvorak fucking slash blog army who just want to stop the world from being saved by having free energy.
Yeah, right.
They used to kill him.
I know the guy who did the pill.
You dropped into a 55-gallon drum of water.
You put the pill in there, and boom, fuel.
They killed that guy.
First, they stole his invention, beat him up.
By the way, they didn't just kill him.
First, they beat him up, and then they killed him.
John, I'm telling you.
So I'm off of the aliens, the UFOs, and the reptiles, but I think that this is where the real problem of the universe is.
And if we understand this and we see the change in physics, in the laws of physics as we know them, that's when we're going to really unlock our true potential.
We're going to create some amazing stuff.
I do believe that.
Apparently.
But again, you know, I don't know what it is they're drinking over there.
But let's take, you know, anyone who wants to deal with this can go to YouTube and type in Zero Point Energy and look for some videos and you'll find plenty of guys on there.
And all you have to do is watch any one of dozens of these guys pontificate for the hour and a half that he feels like chatting with that crazy comic book guy style of talk and this like whack job Thank you for giving me the perfect example of why civilization
cannot progress.
It is exactly that attitude that you just sent out that is...
How can you be so...
How can you ridicule?
Have you ever seen yourself?
I wouldn't give you a freaking dime on the street, dude.
You know, and if you came out and said, oh, look, I've got zero point energy, you know, you would be laughed right out of Silicon Valley.
I mean, this is the problem.
We've got to stop this.
I would be laughed out of Silicon Valley.
This is true.
This is the problem, though.
This is why we're not getting our birthright, man, free energy.
All right.
All right.
As long as I was able to entertain you.
Yeah.
Well, it's...
The hole is deeper is all I can tell you.
Right.
Well, keep your eye on that hole because, you know...
Oh, wait a minute.
I think your next transition, let me predict it.
Okay.
I'm visualizing it.
Where am I going next?
It's coming.
Anti-gravity.
Oh, it's all a part of it.
No, it's definitely a part of it.
The zero-point energy is mixed in with anti-gravity.
Absolutely.
Okay, dude That's fine.
You can laugh.
Yeah, hey, you know, if you get that free energy, let me know.
I mean, I'll take a piece of it.
Yeah, well, of course.
It has to be made for all mankind.
No one can own it.
It just has to be out there.
So you can say, oh, I need a little energy right now and just pick up a rock and some gaffer tape and make a battery.
You know, string a couple magnets together, put it under your Nikes and your wheels and you're off to the races.
I mean, why not?
I would recommend anybody out there just go to YouTube and decide for yourself.
Yes, very good.
Please do that.
Don't listen to me.
No, look for, what was one of the first ones I saw?
Don't listen to me.
Don't listen to your college professors.
No.
Go look at the Race to Zero Point Energy.
That's the one you want to watch on YouTube.
That's a good starting point.
I have one that I blogged a couple years ago of this guy.
Anyway, I'll look it up.
I'll reblog it.
Actually, or anybody out there who has some of the more wacky ones, I'd be interested to know.
It's not wacky.
Why don't you just say challenging or interesting?
Just because you don't understand that doesn't mean it has to be wacky.
I don't know.
Somebody sent me an email saying that you need...
Help?
I need help?
He said, you know, poor Adam is getting worse.
Is there anything you can do for him?
Can you help the man?
Bubba didn't send us any stuff to follow up on.
We didn't have anything to follow up on.
No, we didn't have any teasers.
Just ended.
Hey, did someone really send that?
Adam needs help?
Yeah, seriously.
Alright, then let me switch gears for a second.
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae.
Hello.
Yeah, well, you know, it's just the way it goes.
Hello.
Oh, come on, man.
And now, Royal Bank of Scotland.
This is the closest we get to zero point energy.
I mean, I'm trying to get...
Run a bankrupt operation and then get bailed out.
No, we were talking about that last week, and I said that the whole system is coming, crashing down.
You're like, oh, I don't think so.
Dude, this is bad.
I mean, the UK is literally bankrupt.
Oh, then it worked.
Yeah, success.
How did we get all these overseas investors suckered into this is what amazes me.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The thing is, it's three banks now.
It's the Fortis Bank, which is French and Belgian, I think.
Fortis and Royal Bank of Scotland, they bought AB and Amro for $50 billion.
Oops.
And they bought it just before the subprime crisis hit.
And so, you know, these guys are like really hurting.
Royal Bank of Scotland, it's the second largest loss reported by a UK bank in history.
And what's interesting is the news reports don't tell us what the biggest loss was, but I'm pretty sure it was Northern Rock.
Well, you know, these guys, apparently they're not very good at their business.
Yeah, but look at what's happening now in the States.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who's going to pay for it?
Tax.
Taxpayers are going to pay for that.
Yeah, well, you know, they always find some sucker.
Yeah, but it seems like these numbers are getting kind of big, John, and it's not over yet.
I mean, come on, give us some professional prognostication here.
I think it's just a sign at the bottom.
Okay, why don't you invest now and let me know how that goes, okay?
Okay.
I would say that right after the elections is an ideal time to invest.
And then I'll let you know how it goes.
Until the elections, you know, it's going to be like this.
And then what?
And then as you predict the stock market's going to go crazy, it's going to go up?
If McCain is elected?
Actually, I think either one of them, but I don't think Obama's going to win.
Even though, you know, everyone goes, oh, how can he not win?
He's already won somehow.
I don't see that.
I don't see he's won already.
Most of the people here do.
Which I think is part of the scheme, of course, is to push that image out there because the public is so fickle, especially the U.S. public.
They're going to start saying, well, you know, guys thought he had it wrapped up, you know.
No, it's this whole arrogant thing.
It's a whole booing thing.
Dewey Truman, you know, all over again.
Well, interesting.
I think that, I mean, it seems like this is a total media manipulation.
You know, the word is out, okay, now let's call the guy arrogant, now let's make him look funny.
And I'm actually, I'm still kind of with Lyndon LaRouche on that he may not even make the nomination at all.
Well, you know, there's still, you know, now the right-wing talk show guys are revealing that Hillary had a meeting in San Francisco, and she went at her meeting, and she says, you know, it's not over until, she didn't say this, but the kind of message was, it's not over until it's over, and maybe somebody should place my name in, you know, in nomination, at least symbolically, so we can all walk away as a united party, and blah, blah, blah.
But it looks, according to, of course, this could all be bull two, you know, just to stir up things, but the...
To create fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Supposedly, Hillary's folks are calling all those superdelegates who can do whatever they want when they finally get to...
Oh, right.
Now we've got to make some...
Yeah, so this is what we talked about, man.
That they could always go back to the superdelegates and make them change their mind.
And anything could happen.
Anything that Obama does could make those superdelegates change their mind.
Easily.
Right, and there's another month to go, or almost a month.
Of which he's going on vacation for a week or two.
And by the way, Clinton never actually stopped her campaign.
She suspended it, remember?
Yeah, no, she never fully...
Right, right.
She's still playing the game somehow.
And I guess this is her strategy, which this is the argument she'd make.
She'd say, look...
I never really quit.
I never said I did.
I just said that, you know, she'll have some parsing thing.
And this is Bill's old thing.
You know, you say one thing and mean another.
And then, you know, say this was a strategy all along because the way it was going, you know, it looks like this was the way we could, because our job was to get the nomination any way we could that was legitimate.
And this is the way we went.
And if this guy thought he was the winner all along, it's not my fault.
Yeah, exactly.
I wasn't anointing him.
Yeah.
Now, he's been doing some kind of wacky interviews, too.
Saying some kind of suggestive stuff.
Well, he's at the point where there's a...
See, I still have one of the problems I have, and I think the public eventually is going to go...
Has this guy ever actually held a job...
No, seriously.
Well, I mean, what is...
I mean, he was a college professor for a while, but essentially he's a...
You know, talk about your professional politician.
This guy was a politician from the get-go.
Clinton?
No, I'm talking about Obama.
Oh, okay.
I don't know if Clinton's held a job either, to be honest about it.
But...
It's like, I mean, was he ever a paper boy?
Did he ever sell lemonade on the corner?
Did he ever work in a factory?
Did he ever work in a gas station?
Did he ever work in a supermarket?
Was he ever in the union?
Was he a union man or ever a member of some local union?
I don't know.
Has he ever done anything?
And so now he's going to direct a...
This, you know, biggest country, or not the biggest, but the most powerful country in the world, with no work experience, except, you know, lecturing about law.
I just kind of, I think that's kind of frightening.
Well, let me see, there must be a bio on his website that says what he did.
I mean, it wouldn't surprise me that no one's ever just bothered to look at his bio.
Community organizer, which is a volunteer job.
You know, that's what, you know, women in the Hamptons do, that kind of stuff.
Meet the candidate, let me see.
Born in Hawaii, August 4th, 1961.
Grew up, blah, blah, college years.
Oh, man, he went straight from, let me see.
Yeah, here we go.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 91, where he became the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review.
Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law.
What does that mean?
Like an internship?
I don't know.
Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate.
No, it doesn't.
I mean, there's nothing about paper routes, that's for sure.
No, as far as I can tell, he's never worked.
Hmm.
So, okay, we got a guy who's never worked for a living running the country.
Great!
That's what we need.
Ah, they're all chipped.
They're all robots.
They can't help it.
So, anyway, I think that's going to, at some point, people are going to go, wait a minute.
I've got more experience than this guy.
Why am I voting for him?
And so they'll vote for the old man.
Really?
You think so?
Yeah.
Oy vey.
Wow.
My wife has another theory kind of why they were going to vote for the old man.
It's because the last two presidents we've had have both been baby boomers.
Right.
And they've both been fuck-ups.
And we want a father figure.
Is that it?
I want some old, you know, somebody with, you know, yeah.
Somebody that's just not in that generation.
Yeah, it could be.
I don't know, man.
He doesn't...
I mean, that...
Again, it doesn't matter.
If you look at the rationale people have to vote for him, I mean, he's well-spoken.
Really?
Well-spoken?
That's what they say about me?
Well-spoken.
No, the thing they say is, well, he represents this.
He represents that.
He represents change, and he represents the kind of forward thinking that I agree with, but...
Fine.
I mean, you can represent that all you want.
I mean, it just doesn't mean you can do something about it.
You know, it's like, okay, you know, fine.
I mean, I admire the symbolism of the guy.
In fact, that he's symbolic of this and that.
And I think a lot of Democrats would love to get, you know, I mean, both parties, as far as I'm concerned, would love to be the party that has the first woman president or the first black president.
Sure, sure.
Because they have bragging rights.
It's like Nixon going to China.
How come the Democrats couldn't pull that off?
They're the big socialists.
They couldn't do any deal with China.
So Nixon did it.
So the Republicans had bragging rights.
Both parties would like to have the first black president.
So the Democrats are putting everything they can into this guy.
But their backup strategy is to have Hillary run.
So they're either going to get...
The first black or the first woman, if either one of them can win.
Yeah.
I think Hillary has a real shot.
If I look at the landscape, it was Hillary Clinton against McCain.
I think she'd have a real shot.
I mean, forgetting, of course, the rigged Diebold voting machines, etc.
The rigged machines helps the Republicans, let's face it.
Yes.
But let's take another look at that assertion.
I think that if Hillary...
I think either one of them is going to have trouble.
I think they're both unelectable, personally.
But if Hillary ran...
And by the way, I think it would be really funny if she could talk Obama into being the VP. That was your initial theory, right.
That that is completely unelectable.
Completely.
But let's just say that it's her and somebody else, or whoever.
I think that if they bamboozle the party and somehow screw Obama out of the nomination, they're going to lose all the black voters, period.
In fact, I think a lot of them might even vote Republican.
And then they're also going to lose all these young people that are – half of them are middle-aged, actually – idealists who are all for Obama because of what he represents and symbolizes.
And they're going to be really irked.
I just think they're going to just get a poor turnout.
You saw Jesse Jackson's thing, right?
That they caught of him talking about Obama.
Yeah, right.
That was two weeks ago, yeah.
Yeah, no, he's, but Jackson is, you know, nobody's, he's out of the picture.
He's not relevant anymore.
Yeah, I think that even blew over really fast.
It just showed, you know, what he's become, which is, you know, you know he did that on purpose.
You think?
Guy's a media whore.
I mean, he knows exactly what he's doing.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, you don't sit there at that level, sitting there mic'd up.
You know, and then put your hand slightly over the mic.
He was essentially cupping it.
Essentially to direct your voice into it.
Can you hear me now, sound engineer?
Here we go.
You know, he might even tip somebody off to say, hey, you know, you might want to be recording these off-air comments.
Just a thought there.
You know, who knows?
But whatever the case was, it was pretty funny.
But it blew over.
Anyway, just for people who didn't see it, Jesse Jackson says, I'd like to cut Obama's nuts off for the way he talks down to black people.
I think that's pretty much exactly what he said.
Something like that, yeah.
But, you know, it was staged, I think.
Oh man, there's so much going on.
What?
Well, just in general...
We just ran out of material when you said that.
Well, no, just all that stuff.
I mean, it's the way the media is...
I mean, it's just fascinating to watch.
Here's just another thing that's going on, I think, that people have to pay attention to.
People who listen to the show will enjoy this tip.
Over the last number of years, McCain used to go on the Jon Stewart show a lot.
I think he probably still comes out.
He probably more than any other politician and exchanges gags.
The Republicans are more likely to hire, and I think McCain was trying to figure out how he could hire some joke writers.
Ronald Reagan had a couple of joke writers on staff, and so he could do Essentially material.
I don't think the Democrats, I think they rarely do this because they're so humorless, generally speaking.
And So McCain obviously has somebody working for him now, because he came up with one the other day, which is obviously professionally written.
Very funny.
Seemed like an ad lib.
But he was starting to do the talk show circuit now.
So he's showing up here and there on the radio talk shows, the right-wing ones.
And so Obama has...
There are no other radio talk shows except right-wing ones, except for this one, and this is such an undirected...
Piece of garbage.
This is a zero point energy talk.
No one will show up on this show.
Well, Ron Paul would.
That would be interesting.
Okay, anyway.
Maybe we can get Lyndon LaRouche.
That would fit in with our theme.
Crackpot theme.
Come on!
They're not all crackpots.
Don't talk like that.
Didn't your mom teach you anything?
No.
So anyway, let's...
Okay, so the latest gag going around.
So they had, you know, Obama comes out with this.
We can save X billions of dollars in...
Go gas if everyone kept their tires inflated properly.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, right.
This is the pressure gauge thing, yeah.
Yeah, so then the next thing that Democrats or the Republicans come out with is apparently this is a pressure gauge that has on the side of it emblazoned Obama's energy policy.
And they were handing this out to people, right?
And so Obama comes back on the air and says, He says, you know, they're criticizing me for, and then he says, this stupid tire pressure gauge thing, you know, it's only part of this, that, and the other thing.
And he was, like, a little annoyed by it, but he was handling it with some humor.
And so, but the McCain line, which has shown up since, which is, McCain said, the line is as follows.
He says, well, you know, he talks about tire pressure gauges and this kind of thing and that kind of thing.
He says, this is not an energy policy.
It's a public service announcement.
LAUGHTER It is.
Well, I went back and I listened to the original speech that Obama gave.
He did that a couple of times.
So it was one of the speeches, but this was presented as the speech that it came from.
And it didn't come across very well to begin with.
With the tire gauge?
Yeah, you know, it's like, get your car tuned at regular intervals.
I mean, basically what he was saying.
Public service.
Well, this is, yeah, okay.
But he was combating the Republican, McCain's energy policy by saying, you know, the amount of energy that McCain's plan will save can be achieved by just keeping your tire pressure in check.
It was not well thought out to start with.
You'd almost think someone set Obama up without one.
How easy is it to see that that's a great one for a gag?
As soon as I heard the line about this public service announcement, I immediately said, McCain's got some joke writers now.
So we're going to hear some good stuff coming.
Well, so I think this is the thing that no journalist, as far as I can tell, has actually investigated.
So we have this Paris Hilton response to McCain's use of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in an anti-Obama ad.
But who made that?
It was on Funny or Die, but who actually produced that?
I mean, that was well-written, that was well-produced, and quite honestly, what Paris Hilton suggested was completely what President Bush said in his weekly radio address, and it's completely the Republican plan.
Yeah, I know.
It looked like the whole thing was supposedly a criticism of McCain.
No, but it was a Republican ad, as far as I could tell.
Yeah.
You know, I feel exactly the same way, even though the Democrats seem to have missed the point on this.
For one thing, if you look at the entire process, first it was the original ad with Britney and Paris, and equating Obama with some sort of like a dimwit.
Wait, then we had the next piece.
The next piece was the Hiltons were really pissed off because they had both given money to McCain, right?
Right, so they get all bent out of shape, supposedly, complaining how they gave money to McCain, but they didn't expect their daughter to be ridiculed in the process and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So there's more publicity for both the ad.
And by the way, McCain doesn't have the budget Obama has, so he's doing a lot of the kind of really grassroots, fake grassroots, AstroTurf-type promotions.
That gets you free...
You know, you don't need to pay for these ads.
No, it's viral.
Totally.
Yeah, they're viral.
And it's like the Apple Macintosh 1984 ad that only ran once and is still being watched.
Yeah, still must-see, copied everywhere.
I think you're absolutely right on that, John.
And what just amazes me is that because Paris Hilton is perceived as to be rich...
Everyone automatically assumes, oh man, Paris is so funny, what a great way to respond.
But no one's actually saying, who fucking produced this thing?
Who paid for it?
Who wrote it?
It's brilliant.
And by the way, because I listen to the presidential radio address each week, it's a podcast.
It is exactly the same words that Bush used in saying to Congress, the Democratic Congress has gone on vacation.
You know, without signing this, our energy bill, and he used the exact same words that Paris Hilton used.
This is the way we should do it.
You know, we should, you know, whatever later tax credits, you know, we'll use that for alternative energy.
Yeah, no, I mean, her thing was extremely well thought out, you know, as a policy.
And so it was written by somebody else.
She doesn't look like she was using a prompter.
No, she's a little actor.
She's good.
She can act.
Yeah, so she can memorize her lines.
And they probably did it in about three or four takes.
And, you know, the hot thing she keeps throwing in.
It was funny.
Yeah, it was funny.
It was very funny.
It was very endearing.
Ben, you're right.
I'm totally convinced that the whole thing is part of this grand scheme to stretch the advertising budget.
And it just gets more attention than anything.
I mean, what has Obama done that's even remotely that interesting?
I'm especially interested because, as far as I can tell, this thing was launched on FunnyOrDie.com, which is really Mark Kwame's baby.
Mark Kwame is of Sequoia Capital.
I don't know anything about the other people in FunnyOrDie, but I'm just thinking there's all kinds of interesting connections to be made there.
Who actually came up with this?
Who did it?
Why don't we just find out?
It's like zero point energy.
I want to know.
Paris Hilton and zero point energy.
That New York Times article that ran about lulls that we talked about.
Oh, I heard that on Twitter.
That was pretty good.
I heard that.
Well, there's a picture of a kid in the article and they don't tell you who he is.
It's just a kid.
It's a stock photo.
They took it off of Facebook.
They just take this picture.
They use this one.
It's like, you know, I mean, we're not, these guys aren't doing any, I mean, you're right, exactly, I mean, actually, I didn't think it that far along, but, yeah, where is the reporting?
Who wrote this?
And by the way, now somebody will eventually do that, but it'll be dead.
You have to do this immediately.
Yeah, there's something else that's happening, is that all kinds, I mean, there's all kinds of plagiarism going on, where, um, Smaller newspapers that have a website, you know, they're literally stealing entire reviews and copies, a copy from other, you know, like The Guardian in the UK, you know, and they're reprinting that in the US as news.
They're actually putting it into their papers now.
I think it's licensed, though, don't you think?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I've heard a couple stories that it was not licensed.
It happened to us.
You know Games Weasel?
So Matt Cuddle does Games Weasel, which is a great video games video show.
There's also an audio version.
And so he does an audio version, a video version, and he also publishes on his blog, his show notes, he publishes the text.
It's a script.
He scripts it, he writes it, and then he records it.
And so we found out that the Scotsman, which is not a really small publication, but they've been reprinting his exact text for like the past three months as their weekly video game review.
No, no, no.
So they hired some chick, I forget what her name is, to write video game reviews because she looked the part.
It's one of these pieces where it's a weekly column and there's a picture of her and she looks like she's cool and hip and would totally know everything about video games.
And she apparently has just been copying it every week off of our site.
And Scotsman has just been printing it.
That's pretty funny.
Yeah.
Don't these people know anything about the law?
They're not checking.
This is my point.
There's all kinds of plagiarism.
What about the girl?
Can't she write?
She has to steal somebody else's material.
No, of course she can't.
What are you going to do about it?
Of course we send off a letter.
I don't want to go through a lawsuit.
Even if we're right.
The only people who are going to win are the lawyers.
I know that game.
Typically the problem with these...
But you could stop it at least.
Oh, no, no.
Oh, it stopped.
No, it stopped.
Believe me, it stopped.
But you really want to ridicule them and shame them.
There's not much you can do.
Give us some free ads in the Scotsman.
Woo-hoo!
Thanks.
Why not?
Huh.
Well, yeah.
Well, that's, I think, the blogging mentality thing is what you – I think it's – I think a lot of people don't know what an excerpt is, what fair use is, and they don't – in fact, I always have to tell my guys a blog for me at dvorak.org slash blog.
That, you know, they're sometimes overdoing the excerpting, you know, you can't just take the whole damn thing.
And, you know, the AP is concerned about it and Reuters is irked.
I think the main thing that I've heard, and I think this came from AP, what they really hate is like the headline, if you steal the headline.
Because the news, they consider it's the news.
And you should be able to copy a portion, link to the original, etc.
But they really don't like you taking their headlines.
They want you to come up with your own headline.
Well, generally speaking, your own headline should be an improvement.
I don't think their heads are that great.
No, but you know what I'm saying.
I can understand where they're coming from on that.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I think there's probably a better...
I think if you're a blogger in particular, your headlines, which end up in the RSS feed, they have to be compelling.
They have to be great, yeah.
Well, people don't understand this.
It's like, there are still people in my life who send me email with an empty subject.
I mean, how stupid is that?
You've got to be marketing for anyone you send email to.
The subject line has got to say it all.
That's what's going to get your email clicked on because increasingly, of course, your email is scrolling off the screen.
Yeah.
In fact, I have like two or three days of email.
I mean, I look through, for one thing, all the spam gets moved over.
So this is not spam.
It's generally, you know, something, press releases and people, you know, have something to tell me.
And I'll scroll through.
I just look, look, look, look, look, you know.
Oh, this Curry said once something.
Let's see what he said.
I'll click on that.
Or scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
From now on, every email I send you is going to have a subject zero point energy.
So I'm assured you're going to open it up.
Well, that would keep me from opening it.
That's one way of doing it.
Free energy!
Exclamation point.
That would probably end up getting thrown in a spam box.
I go down and I find something else that's like some reader I'd never heard of and he's got some interesting subject line.
I guess he wants to tell me something.
So I click on it and it might be a link to a story that I can blog or Something I should be reading or some correction to our show, which is pretty common.
And, you know, you guys got that wrong, too.
Oh, we forgot to say, by the way, we don't know anything about anything.
Right.
That's our new, that's got to be our new subline.
No agenda.
We don't know anything about nothing.
That's a t-shirt.
And we like it that way, damn it.
All right, John.
I'll cut you loose.
I can tell you're not feeling too well.
No, I'm fine.
No, we haven't had any rants from you.
I've been pushing you all throughout the whole show.
I just can't get you to rant.
You've basically buried me with the dirt you've been thrown out of that hole you're digging.
Just give yourself a day and think about it, John.
Are you doing it already?
Yeah, I'm zoning out as we speak, listening to the fine ones of the...
Yes, our Marriott Jazz Quartet.
You in town next week?
We're going to have dinner?
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
I have to be home before 9, though, because I'm doing my Dutch radio show, and that means it starts at 9 p.m.
San Francisco time.
Oh, okay.
Well, every night?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, we'll just do something early.
Yeah.
Or we could do Friday, because I can stay out late on Friday.
We can play.
All right.
Hey, say hi to the family, John.
Will do.
All right.
That's it for this week.
Coming to you from the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak here in the Pacific Northwest.
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