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Dec. 13, 2008 - No Agenda

01:45:11

61: One Big Ponzi Scheme

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Time	Text
	It's Saturday.
	Time once again for the highlight of the week for at least two people I know of.
	Coming to you from Gitmo Nation East from the United Kingdom in the affluent suburb of Surrey known as Guilford, I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm here in Gitmo Nation West as we like to call it.
	Actually, northern Silicon Valley.
	Also San Francisco Bay Area.
	Also California.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.
	Hey now, oh my.
	Hey John.
	Hey.
	How you doing?
	I'm doing better than those guys who invested with that Ponzi scheme guy who's been apparently in business for 40 years.
	Isn't that fantastic?
	I love that story.
	And, you know, it's like, yeah, this is the only guy doing it?
	Please.
	Well, the only guy who's done it that long and managed to do it to the tune of $50 billion, this guy, if anyone hasn't followed the story, you should.
	Here, I'll get you his name.
	Bernard Madoff.
	He was the SEC chairman, wasn't he, at one point?
	No, I think he was the head of NASDAQ. Oh, NASDAQ, that's right, yeah.
	But he was notorious.
	A lot of people consider him the father of modern Wall Street.
	Yeah, well, my case in point.
	Yeah, there you have it.
	There it is.
	Summarized.
	But if you talk to these guys in the business...
	This is essentially, and I mentioned this on the blog, this is almost the same thing as, in terms of what a letdown this was.
	This is kind of like people discovering that Mother Teresa was a hooker.
	I love that analogy.
	Spot on.
	That's exactly right.
	Or that Obama was involved with Chicago mobsters.
	I mean, that kind of stuff, it could just set you off, you know, really disappointing.
	Really, really could disappoint you.
	So while we're on that talk, I mean, anyway, apparently everybody, you know, there's a bunch of people, it looks like they're going to lose their shirts.
	What happened, though, is the guy's conscience got the better of him, and he gave himself up.
	Here's what some people are thinking.
	Okay.
	They were closing in on him because he was getting too many redemptions because of the economic situation.
	Explain redemption, how that works with the hedge fund, because not everybody knows.
	You're cashing out.
	Right.
	You can't just go up and say, hey, I want my money.
	There is a process involved.
	You can if you have a Senate seat for sale.
	At some point, he's essentially going to run out of money because his old game was nobody redeemed because he always had these great returns, so you kept accumulating more money, which never really occurred.
	Let me just explain that part really quick.
	So he would take, make it simple, a million dollars from someone, and then he would return maybe $200,000 profit at the end of the year, but it wasn't actually because of his investments.
	It's because he got another 200 people to join up and give him $200 million.
	It's a Ponzi scheme.
	Ponzi scheme, right.
	So he's taking the new money and paying it off as if he was being successful.
	By the way, just as an aside here, before I go into the theory about this guy, I want to read you a paragraph from The Big Money, which was published in Slate Magazine.
	And I'm wondering, is there any editors, or does this guy know what he's talking about?
	From Big Money?
	Is that a column?
	What is that?
	It's a website called TheBigMoney.com.
	Let me just read this.
	This is Mark...
	I can't pronounce his name, G-M-E-I-N, but anyway, and this is the first graph.
	Bernard Madoff, one of Wall Street's best-known brokers and money managers, was arrested, blah, blah, blah.
	The whole thing was, as the criminal complaint quotes Madoff himself saying, basically a giant Ponzi scheme.
	And then he finishes the sentence with this, in which investors who wanted their money back got paid with earlier investors' money.
	No, that would be later investors' money.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's a Ponzi scheme is you pay with newer people coming in.
	That's how it works.
	You don't pay with earlier investors' money.
	That's a legitimate business.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That would be like an investment business.
	Right.
	So it's like, okay, so I'm starting off with the first paragraph of this analysis, and this is what you define as a Ponzi scheme.
	I'm thinking, does he know?
	Does he know anything?
	I think it may have been just kind of a stumble.
	Writers, you know, but I thought to be an editor or somebody who picked this up had been changed by now.
	Anyway, so this thinking goes as follows.
	This thing was going to collapse because of the economy right now, and he couldn't possibly redeem.
	I think he had $17 billion.
	Yeah, because everyone wanted their money back, and they were waiting, so he knew there was no way he could do it.
	He couldn't get any more capital in to even pretend.
	So supposedly, he told his two sons that it was a Ponzi scheme, and he's going to turn himself in in a week after he gave what little money was left to some of his employees who could use a Christmas bonus or something like that.
	Like a hundred million.
	He was going to give his last hundred million to his employees and family.
	Yeah.
	So the two boys said, oh, this is unbelievable.
	And so they turned him in.
	Now, the thinking is, of course, is that the boys were in on it, potentially, allegedly, perhaps.
	Right.
	And this whole thing was a gambit.
	To get them off the hook.
	Right.
	He wasn't intending in giving anybody any money whatsoever.
	I mean, whatever money's been, you know, squirreled away for people is long since, you know, in Switzerland.
	And so perhaps the idea was to save, you know, his sons from getting caught up in what's going to happen to him.
	Getting nicked, yeah.
	I mean, it's going to be jail.
	For him, for sure.
	After what they did to Martha Stewart.
	You watch.
	You just watch.
	Yeah.
	Well, so yeah, that was front page of the Financial Times, obviously, for this weekend, so everyone's all over that.
	You're right.
	You should pick up a copy of Barron's this weekend.
	I'm sure it's filled with all kinds of fun facts.
	That's kind of the National Enquirer of the financial industry.
	Barron's Magazine comes out on the weekend.
	Fun facts.
	Fun facts.
	You got burned.
	Fun facts.
	Apparently a lot of endowments and a lot of hedge funds.
	There's just apparently endless number of rich people in Palm Beach, Florida.
	Here's one for you, John.
	And we just got back from the Terrace House, the new place.
	And we had spent some time with our new handyman.
	It's good if you can get one of those.
	Oh yeah, I've had a handyman.
	So you actually have a name for this place?
	The Terrace House?
	Curry Terrace is what it is.
	Okay.
	It's a Terrace House.
	Are you familiar with the concept?
	No.
	I mean, I've heard of it.
	I never thought much about it.
	Tell us what a terrace house is.
	Well, it's your very typical English house, which stands in a row with other terrace houses, and you step up like five or six steps to go into the front door that you can also go down to the left and around in the front that you can go into the basement level.
	And it's Victorian is what it is.
	Are the houses stuck next to each other?
	Yes, yes.
	It's one long row.
	Really big, so maybe like six in a row or something like that.
	It's called a terrace house, and we have the coveted end of terrace house, which means you're on one end of it, so you only have neighbors on one side, which means you have a view out of the front and out of the back.
	Well, certainly out of the back.
	Anyway, so the handyman, he's been with this house for many, many years, which is good.
	It's his house.
	Exactly.
	And he did the most recent remodeling with all the new plumbing and everything.
	So now he knows how everything works.
	He's got all the bugs.
	He knows where it is.
	So that's great.
	And he says something to me that I was like, really?
	And here it is on page two, the inside, way at the bottom in fine, small, tiny print of the Financial Times.
	The United Kingdom has experienced its coldest start to winter in more than 30 years, experts said yesterday.
	There you go, my friend.
	Global warming at its finest.
	Actually, I'm supposed to be up in Washington today, but I'm not, because the coldest front ever to hit the state, predicted to be the coldest days ever in Washington state, are today.
	And there's an ice storm on the East Coast.
	That's global warming for you.
	We're all going to die.
	And it's snowing in Houston.
	It was snowing in New Orleans.
	So, of course, that's where they spun it into climate change.
	But, you know, very important and very relevant to this very moment, Thursday and Friday, in Europe, the ministers all got together and they had their big powwow.
	And, you know, they've essentially built up the next phase of regulation that we'll have around finance and environment.
	They are now linked with these carbon credits.
	Yep.
	I told you it was coming.
	Yeah, I know.
	You and his carbon credits.
	Everything is going to be linked to carbon credits.
	Yeah, because carbon credits are a guilt-free version of tax.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's just like you're paying taxes and you're supposed to feel good about it.
	Well, no.
	The analogy is paying a thin person money so you don't have to go on a diet.
	It's stupid.
	Because all that anyone ever talks about is the credits.
	You buy the credits.
	You buy the credits.
	But it doesn't actually reduce anything.
	Because somewhere, someone has to produce less carbon emissions to fulfill the credit that you've purchased.
	Everyone's just buying the credits.
	That's what it's all about.
	And they've got it all tricked out, man.
	Eastern...
	How come we're not doing this?
	How come we don't have some sort of a deal?
	What, the U.S.? No, you and me.
	A carbon deal?
	Why aren't we selling credits?
	I'm telling you, we should totally be doing this because these carbon credit exchanges are popping up everywhere.
	It reminds me a lot in the mid-90s of, at the time we had May East and May West.
	I built a NOC. I built a NOC in Amsterdam, for Christ's sake.
	It was the thing to do, to have an exchange of bandwidth.
	This is the next thing.
	You've got to have an exchange of carbon credits.
	We can run it on an Excel spreadsheet.
	Google, uh, on a Google spreadsheet.
	Something like that.
	And what kills me is I was on a website the other day.
	It says, would you like to buy carbon credits to visit this site or something?
	Ugh.
	So, while this is taking place, or it just took place, this two-day meeting, where they decide, okay, they're going to put 200 billion euros into the European economy, even though that's only half of what Germany has to put in and is failing with in its own country by itself.
	But then they have all these carbon credits, which is essentially about a 30 billion euro tax, which is going to be levied on corporations, new tax.
	And there are over 600 scientists who are preparing now to sue Al Gore.
	And the IPCC over their bogus global warming report, which of course almost gets zero press anywhere.
	But 600 PhDs, dude.
	I mean, this is serious business.
	Well, you know what the reason is, is because, I think, they have been making this claim, and I run into it all the time, and people, when we talk about it on the show, somebody will write, well, you don't know, the IPCC said this and that, and why are you even making these assertions?
	And I think a lot of people, a lot of scientists...
	Wait a minute, are you telling me that people in our audits actually use the word assertions?
	Well, not those particular people.
	I just want to make sure.
	I rarely use the word.
	I like it, though.
	We should use that more often.
	Yes, we should.
	Anyway, so I think...
	There's a lot of people out there who are probably either climatologists or they're experts in some way, shape, or form.
	And they have been put into the same sack because of this notion that everybody agrees.
	Everybody agrees.
	The discussion is over.
	We have consensus.
	It's more than consent.
	It's everybody.
	Everybody.
	Nobody disagrees with this.
	Not one single person.
	So your PhD maybe has some thoughts on it and you have some other kinds of data and your friends come up to the cocktail party and they go on about putting you, pigeonholing you with this other side.
	But it's even worse.
	It's even worse.
	If you do that as a PhD or a researcher, your research funding gets pulled.
	That's why people are so quiet about it because they're afraid that their money is going to go away.
	Well, I think the more people should join the lawsuit.
	I'm sure there's more than 600 that are irked about this.
	In fact, there's about 30,000, I believe, but that's not all PhDs.
	These are just the PhDs.
	The Business and Media Institute, I have no idea who they are, but this is a story I just got.
	Oh, we'll get to know who they are.
	They're a bunch of right-wing nuts that don't believe in any of this stuff.
	Okay.
	Is that true?
	I don't know.
	No, I'm just going to tell you that's what it has to be.
	What else could it be?
	Well, they have data.
	They have data.
	So I'm just going to presume the data is right for the sake of argument.
	The Business and Media Institute analyzed 205 network news stories about global warming or climate change between July 1st, 2007 and December 31st, 2007.
	They found that only 20% of the stories even mentioned there were any alternative opinions to the so-called consensus on the issues.
	And this just goes on and on and on about how, you know, it's pretty much the media just jumped on and said, okay, we're all going to die.
	Hey, roll some of those polar bear footage.
	Come on, let's get that out.
	That's good shit.
	If it bleeds, it leads.
	Exactly.
	So, um...
	CBS was the worst.
	Uh, yeah, let's see...
	151 people used by the network to promote global warming hysteria.
	And 28 people who even questioned it somewhat.
	Somewhat.
	Well, I don't know about that.
	Yeah, that's nuts.
	Questioned it somewhat.
	Well, you know, it could be bullshit.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And it's amazing what's taking place.
	Our financial system is going to be based on this lie.
	And granted, hey, I'm all for saving the earth.
	I'm all for less pollution.
	No doubt about it.
	Yeah, let's do something about China.
	They're polluting California from a distance.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, there's plenty we can do and should be doing, but this whole idea of buying credits so that you can continue to pollute, that somewhere someone down the line, like my children's children's children, will then apparently have to produce less.
	Or plant a tree.
	Yeah, they're talking about a 20% reduction promised by all of the EU in carbon emissions.
	20%!
	Well, that's good.
	I'll screw them.
	As long as we don't get too involved.
	Unfortunately, we've got a president now that's probably going to jump on it.
	Totally!
	No, totally.
	You're already involved, man.
	Well, you know, it wasn't going to do any good to get McCain.
	McCain was just on Letterman last night, or the night before.
	Oh, really?
	Oh, shit, I didn't know that.
	He was just on the same bandwagon.
	It would have been the same thing with him.
	Well, because they're run by the same people, John.
	How often do I have to tell you that?
	Here we go.
	Okay, okay.
	Well, actually, this is funny.
	I think you blog this.
	You blog the Gideon Rackman story in the Financial Times.
	He's a columnist, and he was talking about the possibility of a tongue-in-cheek article about the New World Order, etc., Oh, right, that guy.
	Yeah, that guy.
	So there's a follow-up to that.
	He's like your pal.
	Don't you know him?
	No, no, no, no.
	You've got to read his follow-up that he posted on his blog.
	I'll just read you the conclusion.
	Because what happened is he says, I couldn't believe the amount of email that he got.
	From, you know, from out there.
	He says, you know, hundreds of pieces of email.
	Here's his conclusions.
	There's an undeniable amount of anger and hatred out there directed at everything from the United Nations to big business to Barack Obama.
	These people can read, but they cannot think, he says.
	So he's not my buddy, dude.
	It gets worse.
	The end of days crowd is very strong.
	I would say that about a third of the emails I got referred me to the book of Revelation.
	In which apparently it is all foretold.
	Three.
	There's a lot of people who believe not only that global warming is a hoax, but that it is actually a conspiracy.
	The fact that the most influential reports on climate change have been produced by an intergovernmental panel, the IPCC, sponsored by the UN, fuels this theory.
	The idea is that the UN is perpetuating a climate change hoax to provide an excuse to impose a world government on America.
	I am a part of it, apparently, he says.
	Totally!
	Totally.
	Anyway, so he winds up.
	He does have a funny line at the end here.
	Something positive has come out of this experience.
	If the newspaper industry really goes down the pan, I now have a business plan.
	I will claim to be a former member of the Bilderberg Illuminati Council on Foreign Relations UN Zionist Establishment and write a book revealing the inside story of a plot to form a world government.
	It will sell millions.
	Funny.
	So sad, though, that it's actually true.
	That's the old matador trick.
	The old matador trick?
	Yeah, yeah.
	You go in one direction and then you just...
	Oh, like you did with Mac a couple of years ago.
	Did you do something with Mac?
	Yeah, I remember.
	You did something like that.
	Matador trick.
	Matador trick.
	Oh, okay.
	So he's not your friend, I can see.
	No, of course not.
	He's a stooge for the whatever.
	The New World Order.
	Which, by the way, if you look at Time Magazine, in there it says Obama's New World Order.
	No, I haven't seen that.
	It's phenomenal, dude.
	Well, you know, the problem is there's too many people in the United States that cling to their religion and guns to the point that they're not going to put up with this.
	So good for them!
	Yes.
	Keep clinging.
	I got nothing against it.
	At least, you know, they'll...
	Shoot the New World Order first and ask questions later.
	I hope so.
	Hey, by the way, so we have a guy who gave us a use of his...
	Girlfriend's wife.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've been checking it out.
	Have you?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	And there's the Canadian channels are on there.
	And then, you know, there's the local news in Detroit.
	And it's actually kind of interesting because it's like a whole, you know, and then, you know, I was thinking about that.
	I'm going to probably write a column on this for MarketWatch.
	You know, the Echo Star bought the Slingbox.
	Yeah, I did know that.
	Yeah, they were going to integrate it, weren't they?
	Well, I don't know if they're going to integrate or not, but it gets them around a certain problem that I was thinking, why would they buy this, and what's it got to do with anything?
	And then I realized that one of the things that I believe that irks both DirecTV and the Dish Network folks is the fact that if I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I use the Dish Network, by the way, I'm very happy with it, But one of the things I can't do is I can't sit here in the San Francisco Bay Area and watch the local news in Seattle where I have a house in the area.
	Because of some, I guess it's some...
	It's copyright region laws, all kinds of syndication rights.
	It's impossible to figure it out.
	Right, it's impossible to figure it out.
	In fact, there's even something called Most Favored Nations, which has got nothing to do with broadcasting, but it's in there for the means that you can't do this and that.
	Yeah, it really has to do with, you know, when television series are released in which countries.
	I mean, it's a mess.
	It's marketing.
	Yeah, it's a marketing problem.
	So I can't get this thing, and I'm sure that I'm not one of the only people that say, why can't I get my Seattle?
	Yeah, would you like local channels on your dish network?
	Because you can get local channels.
	And I just go over the air, so I don't even bother with it.
	But if I was going to get the local channels, I'd say, yeah, I'd like to get the local channels.
	I'd like to get the Seattle channels.
	Yeah.
	Oh, no, no.
	Can't do that because we can't.
	It's against the law.
	Now, so they buy a sling box, but I'm sure they're not happy about it.
	They'd love to sell me, wouldn't you?
	I mean, if you're running a business and you've got some sucker, me, that says, hey, I want to get local channels in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans.
	You sell them a sling box and a sling catcher, right?
	I mean, I would like to get these local channels on the Dish Network over the satellite, and I know they have them, but they can't sell them to me.
	So there's money they're losing.
	So now you got this.
	Well, here's your solution.
	You get a sling box and you put it up.
	If you got two houses, you put one in the other house and you can watch your local channels that way.
	And you can, and it works really well.
	So we're watching Detroit.
	Yeah, and I've been, of course, I've been watching more than just, and by the way, astonishingly, it works astonishingly well.
	Yeah, and it only requires 384.
	Yeah, and it takes a second or two for it to optimize the stream, so actually switching through the channels is just like IPTV. It's a huge problem because it takes a while and stutters.
	It doesn't take that long.
	Maybe for you.
	Yeah.
	But anyway.
	Yeah.
	Well, dude, I've got 26 megabits of bandwidth coming at the new place.
	Ooh.
	Yeah.
	I'm like, I want everything.
	I got Virgin Media.
	I got BT. What are you going to pay for that?
	The total...
	So I got the BT full-on XL package with...
	I said, give me everything.
	Give me your, obviously, phone service, but give me your...
	They have a BT Vision, which is their...
	Which really, truly is IPTV. Yeah.
	I got that.
	Which you said doesn't work, but go ahead.
	Yeah, well, I... It works in the UK, but it's on BT's network.
	It's not running across the internet.
	Yeah, well, IPTV doesn't require running across the internet.
	It's not internet.
	It's internet protocol TV. Yeah, but if you want to see...
	Alright, I don't want to get into this discussion again, okay?
	Yeah.
	I have IPTV now, coming.
	And that is...
	It's not that bad.
	I think with the full-on package, it's like 28 pounds a month.
	What?
	Yeah, it's not too bad.
	26 megabits?
	No, no, no.
	That's 6 megabits.
	Then on top of that, I got Virgin Media who have fiber optic cable running right up to the house.
	Of course, you don't actually get fiber in your hand, but then they convert it.
	Close enough.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so that's 20 megabits.
	How much does that cost?
	That is also...
	I didn't get the phone service.
	And of course, that's cable TV at the same time.
	So there's packages in there with movies and all that shit.
	That's probably about $48 a month.
	But that's going to be the main television package that has a whole bunch of...
	That's a steal!
	Of course.
	Well, that's the way it should be.
	And we're in a metropolis now.
	So you shouldn't be paying crazy amounts for bandwidth.
	We'll see how the connection is.
	Exactly.
	And in both cases, I said, and they say, you have unlimited download.
	I said, okay, unlimited means as much as I can eat, right?
	No asterisks, no, no, unlimited.
	Okay.
	I said, how about upload?
	You have unlimited.
	I said, unlimited upload.
	Bull.
	And I said, I'm recording this because you're recording the conversation as well, which they tell you up front.
	I said, I'm just going to ask you one more time.
	I have unlimited upload and download capacity.
	Anything you want to do, sir, unlimited.
	Okay.
	And I'm sure I'm going to have to use that recording sometime in the next six months.
	When you're cut off.
	We'll see.
	We'll see.
	Well, good.
	That's good.
	I think everyone out there should document the BS because when it comes down to it, it's not in writing, you haven't got a recording, that you announced that you were recording it, which is nothing illegal.
	No.
	Well, they announced they're recording me.
	Yeah.
	And so you can record them.
	And so the whole thing now, you can give that to a magistrate.
	Yes.
	And my solicitor, my solicitor will go to the magistrate.
	And bingo.
	Yeah.
	And then what?
	You won't get your connection back.
	No.
	I'll never get a connection.
	Dude, the other day.
	Now, of course, I'm so not used to it.
	This was southwest London.
	This is a nice neighborhood.
	And so you've got parking for residents with parking permit only, which I haven't gotten yet because I have to show a bill or something or whatever.
	It's just a pain in the ass.
	I haven't done it yet.
	So I park off to the side, and there's maximum four-hour parking, whatever.
	So I throw whatever money in there.
	And I come back, and it's like 20 minutes overdue.
	They have a hand gripper almost on my car, John.
	They park a truck next to it.
	A Boston boot?
	Is that what it's called?
	Or is it just called a tow truck?
	No, no.
	It's like one of those machines you see at the carnival where you put the money in, you steer it, and then it grabs something and then shakes it and then you never get the prize.
	What's the purpose?
	So they actually pick your car up out of its spot in the air and then put it on the truck.
	Oh, you're going to get towed away.
	Not towed away.
	This is what I'm trying to say.
	It's a big arm.
	And it comes down on top of the car and picks it up.
	And then puts it on the truck.
	I'm sure there's a name for it.
	Yeah.
	It's outrageous.
	After 20 minutes, they were already there with the hook.
	You must have cameras.
	They have cameras everywhere in England.
	They have 37 cameras.
	I looked it up on the website.
	37 cameras dedicated specifically to parking control.
	Yeah, my block.
	I'll point it at my window.
	No, it turns out that these cameras are pointed at the meters.
	I'll make it even better.
	We haven't left a meter one minute every So, we had a delivery come from Holland early on Tuesday.
	Patricia had bought some stuff there, and she had one of our moving companies we worked with before.
	Yeah, just when you guys are coming over next trip, bring that shit for us.
	Okay.
	So, you know, they roll up, they double park to open up the truck, you know, and it's a square, alright?
	It's not a through-way, you can drive past on either side, it's a square.
	And so they're loading stuff out, and the traffic warden comes over, and, you know, what they always do, they take a picture, right, for proof, a digital picture, so they have your license plate and the situation at hand, and they write out a ticket for him.
	And Patricia goes out, and Patricia's great at this, and she's immediately, she's like, I'm going to make friends with this guy.
	And she's talking, and she says, so, you know, they're just stopping to unload some stuff.
	Yeah, he says, but you're not allowed to do that.
	I said, well, what is the procedure?
	Because we have other trucks coming, you know, we're moving.
	What is the procedure?
	He said, I don't know.
	He literally could not tell you what to do.
	He said, I'm not allowed to stand there with your truck.
	I have no idea how you can get a permit to stand there.
	How do you move from house to house in that city?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, it's crazy.
	However, you will love it and you've got to come over in the new year.
	Because obviously, to test out the AGA oven.
	But we have, in our neighborhood, within like three minutes walking distance, we have an independent wine store.
	Which I'm excited about.
	Because I need some advice from you.
	You know, you need to ask me if they have X, Y, or Z, and I'll go see if they're any good.
	They look really slick.
	Did you ever go to Barry Brothers and Rudd and get me those glass bottles?
	No, no, no, no.
	Dude, I don't even have time to scratch my ass.
	But we also have an Italian, it's kind of like an Italian butcher slash deli.
	Oh.
	And, oh man, it's just, they've got fruits and vegetable and unbelievable assortment of meats.
	It's just, it looks so good and inviting and so non-big box.
	Hmm.
	Sounds French.
	No, it's Italian.
	I mean in style.
	You know, they have all these little stores.
	I mean, you know, they subsidize.
	They don't let big stores crop up everywhere.
	Oh, no, no.
	They got plenty.
	Well, this is London.
	You know, you walk 10 minutes and there's a Starbucks anywhere.
	And there's Tesco's and there's all kinds of stuff on it, as usual.
	So what's the third one?
	You said there were three.
	I thought...
	No, I said there were three.
	I thought there were...
	No, the AGA. Oh, right, the Aga, the wine store.
	Yeah, the wine store looks really happening, man.
	It's called Wines of the World.
	Well, go in there with your camera.
	Well, I don't know.
	Send me an email with a couple things I should go look for.
	I don't want to go taking pictures like that, not until I know them.
	Well, you could also just stream.
	It's all about geeky.
	Hey, John, you home?
	Yeah, dude, cool, man.
	Take a look at my stream, my quick, man.
	I got my quick cam running.
	It's really cool, dude.
	Check out my wine store.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Get that, get that.
	People always are sending me email asking us to put this on video.
	And I'm like, what is the appeal?
	When you're in San Francisco together, how come you don't do the show together?
	Well, because it would suck.
	It has to be.
	I can't look at you when we're doing this.
	No, because I'm always mugging.
	Or rolling my eyes.
	It doesn't work.
	Oh, here we go.
	I get more eyeball exercise.
	Actually, my prescription is going closer and closer to 2020 because of the eyeball exercise I get when talking to Adam Curry.
	A-M-E-E. A-M-E. A London-based startup with an API which has the grand aim of measuring the world's energy consumption and therefore carbon footprint.
	Has secured an undisclosed Series A financing from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and UK-based Angel, The Accelerator Group.
	There's your carbon trading company.
	Why can't we structure one of these deals?
	Because it's actual work and we're lazy bastards.
	Damn.
	That would be the basic problem we have.
	We don't actually want to do any of the work.
	Like our t-shirts.
	Let's mention the t-shirts early today.
	Get it out of your way.
	Noagenda.angryshorts.com Please buy a t-shirt to support this show.
	No, we're only going to do these for one shot, and then we're going to go to a different design.
	So you've got to get them where you can.
	You know, the guy's moaning, we're not selling enough t-shirts.
	Did he sell any?
	Did anything move out the door?
	Yeah, he sold a few, but it's hardly enough to pay for the cost of admission.
	It's noagenda.angryshirts.com.
	Now, here's one of the problems.
	I got two notes from people saying, well, it costs too much to ship them to Europe.
	And yeah, it costs too much to ship them to Europe.
	Do you love this show or not?
	I mean, what is that about?
	Well, they don't think it's worth paying $25 total to get a t-shirt.
	Apparently they don't.
	But what we need is, like, we need a vendor in Europe that can, you know, ship.
	Yeah, right on.
	Or in England, at least, or something.
	Yeah, right on.
	Right on.
	There must be somebody there.
	And I still think that we can do even better designs.
	I mean, I like what the Angry Shirts guy did, but, you know...
	There could be more.
	Actually, I did that.
	Really?
	Well, in that case, dude, it kind of sucks.
	Hey, I just wanted to get something out there so we could see what the mechanism's going to look like.
	So we'll do some fancy shirts.
	Hey, Zazzle, I've been asked to do something with Zazzle.
	Yeah.
	How's their stuff?
	Is that any good?
	It's just the same as...
	It's similar to Cafe Presso.
	It's not really a silkscreen shirt.
	It's a sticker.
	Oh, like a press-on?
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	I think we want to stick with silkscreen because we're not going to make that many of them.
	And, you know, this guy's okay, and he does the whole thing.
	So I was looking at this.
	I was digging around, and I ran into this weird article about how girls are dominating the Internet.
	With some interesting numbers, a few research people did this, and this came out in January.
	I think I heard about this.
	32% of the 12-17 girls started a website, as opposed to 27% of boys, and 14% of adults.
	So I'm looking at all this data, and I'm thinking at the same time, there's a scandalous story that came out last week that's saying these kids are taking nude pictures of each other.
	And swapping them over the phones, you know, because the phones you can send a photo from your phone to my phone or whatever.
	Yeah, it's called multimedia messaging.
	It's been around for 10 years.
	Right, but it's never been convenient or cheap.
	In Europe it's been used quite a lot.
	Oh.
	So I never use it.
	I do it all the time.
	I mean, I do a lot of SMS. I mean, I do a lot of typing on that little E71, which is, I like to, you know, I was looking at the specs on that phone.
	I didn't realize it had an FM radio in it.
	Yeah, you just stick your headphones in and it works.
	Unbelievable.
	Which is something, by the way, that I hate.
	It's got GSM radios.
	It's got Bluetooth, Wi-Fi.
	Wi-Fi.
	It's got a receiver for the satellite.
	What?
	You know what?
	Yeah, GPS. GPS. Satellite receiver.
	The thing that bothers me is that, and I've never, I understand why.
	They say you've got to plug your headphones in because then the headphones become the antenna.
	But that's always been a bummer to me, because I like listening to the radio from time to time, but I want to use my Bluetooth headset.
	I don't want to have to plug in wires.
	That's the whole point.
	That's the problem with FM. It's an FM tuner.
	If it was an AM tuner, you could probably get away with it.
	Right.
	It needs to have some length.
	Yeah.
	I heard you talking about it on Twit.
	You are that show, by the way.
	When you're on that show, it's really good.
	Well, it's actually when I'm at Leo's studio.
	Yeah, that really made a big difference.
	And I'll tell you why.
	It's because unlike you and me, Leo and I have worked together on radio for so long that we actually can cue off each other and make a radio show, kind of like an old-fashioned way.
	And so the timing changes a lot.
	And there's other people involved, so the timing's important.
	And Leo even noticed it.
	He says, you know, it's just...
	Because doing stuff over Skype has its moments, but if you're right in studio, especially with somebody you have worked a lot with on the air, it makes a difference.
	Yeah, the timing...
	It's very difficult because we're always struggling with the timing and the delay that you automatically have on Skype.
	It's inherent.
	Yeah.
	Now, I was using those Countryman headphones, and you told me that they sounded like crap or something.
	No, no, no, no.
	No, because I heard it, and I didn't even know you were in the studio, because I didn't watch the live feed, and immediately I heard the difference.
	I knew you were using something different.
	Then, of course, I heard that you were in the studio, and then you sent me a text message, so I figured you were using the Countryman.
	And it sounds good, but the S's are a little bit slissy, a little slushy.
	Yeah, go listen to it again.
	Maybe it's just because of the MP3 transcode, but of course, you know, that's the same result.
	It sounded a little slushy, just the S's.
	Check it out.
	Now, for anyone out there listening, we've only done this a million times.
	We talk about these mics because we're both looking for mics.
	But the Countryman, which is used in churches, he bought the omnidirectional, and everybody who sent me a note says you should buy the unidirectional.
	Maybe that'll make a difference.
	But here's where my problem is.
	I've used these before, and I realize they go around the ear.
	That's my question.
	Is there an earpiece on that as well?
	No.
	Okay, good.
	It goes around the outside of the ear like a pair of glasses and then it hangs there and you bend it around until it's just, you know, in front of your mouth, but not quite.
	The thing is always flopping around.
	I can't get it to be tight.
	I'm wondering whether it's even usable for me because it just doesn't fit around my ear right.
	I find the thing to, you know, and then if you move your head a little bit, the thing goes out of whack and it's laying against your skin.
	Well, do you use headphones?
	You don't use headphones, do you?
	No.
	Okay, because the headphones, of course, will squeeze it on.
	Or we could use gaffer tape on your head.
	Just like a big slab of gray gaffer tape right there, just sticking it in place.
	It's usually black.
	I have the gray.
	Well, that's called duct tape, I think.
	Oh, you're right.
	Okay, okay, yes.
	That's called duct tape.
	Gaffer tape is black.
	You're right.
	Gaffers.
	Gaffers.
	And I hate to keep correcting you.
	It just makes me feel bad.
	No, you're just a dick like that.
	So, by the way, they have clear duct tape now.
	Oh, but no gray?
	No, they have the gray, the silver duct tape.
	That's the classic.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I call that gaffer tape.
	No, I'm just saying they have clear.
	It's weird, but there's a clear duct tape out there.
	Maybe we can put some of the clear across your lips, across the front.
	front.
	That would be good.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, so the idea is that when you use countrymen, it's like you're supposed to be on stage.
	A lot of singers use them, and a lot of preachers use them, and a friend of mine wants to do stand-up comedy with one, and you put the countrymen on your face, and then you have the radio in the back, but you're not going to be wearing headphones.
	So these things are supposed to fit without a pair of headphones crimping them on.
	So I'm wondering whether, you know, maybe my, I don't know, I don't think my ears are any weirder than anybody else's, but I don't know.
	I'm having second thoughts about, they're so expensive, these countryman mics, that I'm having second thoughts about using one.
	Really?
	What do they cost?
	Because I want something for when I travel.
	Yeah.
	What do they cost?
	You know, they cost about 400 bucks.
	Ah, so that's pretty steep.
	But they're great.
	But for traveling, I mean, I could throw it in the suitcases.
	They weigh nothing.
	So I don't have to, you know, when you travel nowadays, you want to travel light and you don't want to check luggage.
	And so I, you know, rather than carrying around a big clunky microphone or something like I did last time when I went to Portugal.
	Yeah, with Ohio.
	It's too much, you know, too agonizing.
	So what else is going on in your neck of the woods, Ron?
	John?
	Ron.
	Why do I say it?
	I do that from time to time.
	That's not good.
	It means you're losing interest in the conversation.
	Correct.
	Yeah, there you go.
	We figured it out.
	Whenever I start calling you Ron, that means...
	What's your name?
	Whenever I start calling you Ron, you know that I'm losing interest.
	Yeah, well, I suppose you are because you're not going to get the countrymen.
	No, I'm not.
	I'm very happy with my new discovery, with the lav microphone.
	It's fantastic.
	Yeah, which one is it you're using?
	It's the Lectro UHF UM110. And I've had these for seven years, and I carry them with me everywhere, just in case I need a good sound recording.
	Because it's a lav microphone, but I just hooked it right on my windscreen here, and it works fine.
	People love the sound, so why am I going to argue?
	Are you talking directly into it?
	Yeah.
	I don't have to.
	But you have a windscreen in front of it.
	It has its own little windscreen.
	On it.
	So I've clipped it literally onto the windscreen, which is still hanging in front of the Heil microphone, as we discussed earlier, because I like the idea of a microphone.
	I can't get into this.
	Wait a minute.
	Hold on a second.
	Let me just try to visualize what you're just describing.
	All right.
	Here it comes.
	I have a mic stand and a boom.
	And then I have, on the end of that, I have a Heil, you know, the Pro 40.
	Right, the Pro 40 in its, you know, that cool professional looking wire hanger thing.
	You know what I mean?
	It looks like a cat's cradle.
	Yeah, a cat's cradle.
	Right.
	And then I have a windscreen in front of that.
	Now the windscreen previously was turned the other way around and my joint burned a hole in one side of it.
	So I've flipped it around and I put the, and so I could just kind of squeeze the microphone, the lav, in between the two screens.
	And I fold it down in front of the mic, and so now it feels like I'm talking into a real microphone.
	But you actually have a lot of a Lear mic hanging there by its wire between the screen and the real microphone.
	Yes, it's clipped onto the windscreen, yes.
	Could you turn on your speakers just a little bit for me, John?
	Oh, sure.
	Because when I get excited, I hear myself.
	Yeah, well, I think you do that anyway.
	So now, that sounds pretty cockamamie.
	Well, what else?
	I mean, what am I going to do with it?
	Like, tape it onto my forehead or hold it with a pencil?
	It's got to be hanging somehow.
	Yeah, no, I mean, it's just like having a Ferrari pulled by a donkey, it sounds like to me.
	Well, this was an expensive set.
	This was like 700 bucks.
	This is a real set.
	For the lavalier?
	Yeah.
	And so I literally have...
	It's a good-sounding mic.
	Thank you.
	But I thought you'd have it hooked to yourself to maybe some wireless and you'd be walking around the house.
	I can.
	I can.
	It's just that I couldn't hear you because I don't have the return wireless.
	So I guess I could put Bluetooth headset on.
	Or something.
	But anyway, people have commented that you sound better on this lavalier than you do on the PR-40.
	Yeah.
	I think it's maybe because you're so naturally bassy that you don't need to overdo it.
	Because the PR-40, I think, emphasizes the low end.
	Yeah, and it becomes a little woolly on my voice.
	But anyway.
	Yeah, what you need is a notch filter.
	A notch filter?
	Yeah.
	What's that?
	One of the sound guys I used to work with explained it to me.
	Most people have a little, which is called mud, down at the low end of their voice, and if you notch it out, and I think the notch you want to notch is from 200 to 400 hertz.
	You just want to take that out, and you just notch it out with a notch filter, and it makes you much more crystal clear.
	I do filter my microphone, and I have taken some of that out, but it's just an EQ. I don't call it a notch filter.
	Yeah, but notching is better because then you can pull it to exact frequencies and they're gone.
	They don't come through at all.
	It's not like they're rolled off or anything like an equalizer.
	It kind of turns things into a curve and pushes it down, but it's still there.
	I'm looking in my sound filters.
	I don't see anything called a notch filter, though.
	Oh, well.
	I'm sure you can get one.
	I mean, I'm kind of torn because at the new place, I want to go really minimalistic.
	So all I want is one 19-inch rack.
	I don't have all this 19-inch gear, but not in a rack.
	So I'm going to, you know, there's like five or six things I just want, you know, great compressors and things.
	I'm not using them now.
	And then I want really just, you know, it's my laptop.
	I've got my Fader Fox MIDI controller, you know, a microphone, and that's it.
	And no more wires, you know, just get rid of all this shit.
	Well, you need a wire hook to the lab.
	Here's what I would recommend visually for the minimalistic studio that you're looking for.
	Get yourself a mannequin, like a good-looking one, and have her seated in a chair in the middle of the room, which has to be stark bare.
	And she's got nothing on.
	And then the mannequin is holding a fishing rod and reel.
	And at the end of the reel is the wire hanging down with the lav at the bottom.
	And you have just a folding chair that you sit in front of the lav at the end of the reel and you just talk into it.
	Okay.
	That would be cool.
	Yeah.
	People don't know, but John sits in a lot of programming meetings at Mevio.
	And whenever there's a brainstorming session, John always resorts to, yeah, let's do auditions with hookers.
	It's always the same with you.
	Hey, yeah, let's do, I got an idea, a show with hookers.
	It's always hookers with you.
	Never.
	No, the thing is that to lighten up any meeting, and I recommend this to anybody out there who has the balls to do it, to lighten up any meeting, and some of these meetings are pretty dull, you have to use the word hookers because it's funny.
	And it always gets a big laugh, you have to admit.
	It brings the house to its knees.
	It does, but it was only like 10 minutes after that you texted me and said, hey, call me so I can leave this meeting.
	Which of course I dutifully did.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Thanks for mentioning that.
	I just want to make sure everyone knows.
	Luckily nobody in that meeting will be listening to this show.
	Probably not.
	I think we have one fan at the company which is Andrew.
	Oh, Grumet?
	Yeah.
	Andrew Grumet listens to everything.
	Yeah, he does.
	Well, this is why Andrew started it.
	Unsung hero, by the way, of the podcast movement, in my opinion, Andrew Grumet, because he really was the team leader and the catalyst behind iPod or Lemon, which later became Juiced.
	Juice.
	And he got into it because he liked the whole idea of the programming.
	So he wanted to essentially build the receiver side.
	Hey Andrew, shout out.
	Yeah, well, he'll come up to me.
	The thing is, he always listens to these shows with a timely manner, not like, you know, every once in a while I get in and say, you know, I listened to that No Agenda show from five months ago, and you know what you guys said about blah, blah, blah?
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	You and I don't remember what we were talking about five minutes ago.
	So, that's true.
	That's how you do it.
	So, what else is going on in the news over there?
	Now, you said the weather was cold.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, as I said, it's the coldest since 1976.
	We already went through that.
	Flooding today, massive flooding.
	The heavens have opened up.
	Flooding?
	Yeah, flooding.
	The country's not equipped for this kind of weather, for the global warming.
	So yeah, the minute it really starts to rain, then you get massive flooding and people are stuck on motorways for hours on end.
	Every time I've been in London where it really has a big rainstorm like that, the tubes flood.
	Yeah.
	The subways.
	You can't get around town because the subway line, such and such, Baker's.
	The Bakerloo line.
	Everything's crippled.
	It's a mess.
	But I gotta say, John, it is romantic and fun.
	The city.
	I'm excited about the move.
	I really am.
	Just a walker.
	The city in general I like.
	Just a city to be able to walk and get places and get stuff quickly.
	Not drive and park.
	Yeah.
	After your car's towed away for the umpteenth time.
	Well, I'm getting rid of all the cars.
	I don't need the car anymore.
	I'm getting rid of it.
	Wow.
	Don't want it.
	So you're not going to have any vehicle?
	Yeah, one.
	Just my daughter's Twingo.
	Huh.
	Because we just bought that one.
	It's brand new.
	Where would you keep it?
	You don't have a garage.
	No, the garage is converted to the teenager apartment.
	Cleverly.
	So just keep it on the street, right out front.
	I don't care.
	But you need a permit.
	You get a resident permit.
	Okay.
	It's not free.
	Yes, there's always parking.
	Always parking in our neighborhood.
	Oh yeah, it's beautiful.
	We'll have to check it out.
	Let me see.
	Actually, I was reading a BBC article here about Obama.
	Robert Gates, who is of course the defense secretary or the U.S. equivalent of the minister of defense in the United States, who's been that ever since Donald Rumsfeld resigned.
	So he's the guy mainly responsible for the surge.
	And of course he's staying on for the Obama administration.
	Gee, that's some change.
	He says the new president's security team is ready to defend U.S. national interests from the moment he takes office next month.
	Mr.
	Gates, who is staying in his post, said Middle East and Gulf security would remain a key issue for the U.S. And he said he's warning foes of America of testing Obama.
	This is a throwback to the infamous Biden campaign.
	Yeah.
	He's going to be tested and you're not going to like what he does.
	Yeah.
	So the guy is saying, anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to test the new administration would be sorely mistaken.
	Dude, them's fighting words.
	It's sorely mistaken.
	That's what he said.
	It's a quote.
	It'll be sorely mistaken.
	That's what my parents used to say.
	You know, if you don't come in by 8 o'clock, you'll be sorely mistaken.
	If those streetlights are on and your ass isn't in this house, Adam Clark Curry.
	Yeah.
	That's kind of freaky.
	You'd think he knows something.
	Well, I don't know.
	I guess they're expecting something.
	Precisely.
	I mean, they must know.
	I don't know why they just don't tell the public what they know.
	They know something.
	Because, you know, I mean, a lot of times I think they, when they reveal, I mean, every once in a while they say, well, there's going to be a terrible thing happening, you know, and it's going to go down this way.
	It usually thwarts the plot.
	But they'd rather see these plots unfold, you know, at the risk of public, you know, death.
	And...
	I don't know why.
	Well, I think there's a number of things.
	One is, first of all, a lot of them are just idiots.
	It's not like you need a degree to become a politician.
	So they just don't know any better.
	There are actual senators who think that the U.S. dollar is still backed by gold.
	I mean, this is how dumb some of these people are.
	You can't say all of them are, because they're not, clearly.
	So, A, they just don't know.
	B, they're under severe threat that, you know, the whole financial bailout, the Economic Stability Act.
	You know, Paulson literally went to the Senate and the Congress and said, hey, you know, if we don't pass this, it's all going to come crashing down.
	We're going to have martial law in the United States.
	That's what he was telling.
	He was threatening them almost.
	So, they don't know.
	Okay.
	So, they don't understand.
	They don't know.
	You know me.
	I'm pretty sure it's all planned.
	So let's get back to the sling box.
	When are you going to hook yours up?
	When we get in the new place.
	By the way, I should have mine hooked up.
	So I'm going to give you Virgin.
	You're going to have Virgin Cable, which is stacked.
	Every channel you can imagine.
	But will I be able to access it?
	Yes.
	I have my own private cable box.
	No, no, I'm saying because I was noticing I downloaded the newest software from Sling and they said, well, you know, it's only good in the US. You can't even though you...
	Did you download the same stuff?
	Oh, no.
	I have a Slingbox here.
	So I used my Slingbox, my UK software, to look at the Detroit one.
	Oh, okay.
	It wasn't a problem.
	No.
	So you'll be able to look at my box easy.
	Well, do you have a box yet?
	No.
	Yeah, now I've got two.
	I'm going to put one on the...
	Well, send me your ID, man.
	Well, I haven't hooked it up.
	I'm going to hook it up.
	What I realize is that I have a Comcast, my internet connection is Comcast, but to get the deal I got for the high speed, I also had to get the cable.
	But I don't use the cable because I use the Dish Network.
	What would I use the cable for?
	But I realize I can just hook the sling box onto the cable directly.
	So listen, you got the software right there?
	Do you have the software on this?
	Yeah.
	No, it's not on this machine.
	It's on another machine.
	Oh, okay.
	Because I have a Slingbox here.
	Is it working?
	Yeah.
	There's my number.
	There's my ID. Oh, okay.
	Yeah, you can try it out.
	Your ID is P-I-N-G? I don't think so.
	No.
	It would be what came right after that.
	Oh.
	Ah, okay.
	Well, I'll give it a shot later.
	But anyway, the point is, I'm just going to hook this sling box onto this Comcast cable, and you'll be just dedicated, just like yours, to be looked at when you feel like it.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah.
	So I was looking at my...
	I do have a bandwidth meter on because you can only...
	With Comcast, you can only...
	And I'm using Comcast...
	You have an upload limit?
	Not that I know of.
	There's a 250 gigabyte monthly limit.
	And I've been monitoring it to see...
	Because they never tell you how much you use.
	So for people out there who want to know, I mean, general usage of...
	Just general internet surfing and doing stuff like this once in a while and these other things amounts to about, you know, usually about a half a gigabyte a day.
	Uh-huh.
	Which gives you a lot of leeway if you have 250 a month to play with.
	Yeah.
	When I was hitting the sling box a lot in Detroit, I ended up pushing about two gigabytes a day.
	Yeah.
	So that's what I'm thinking is probably what you're going to spend, which is about 60 to maybe you can push it to 100 gigabytes a month, maybe, if you were doing a lot of tooling around other than just simple surfing.
	So it seems like they still give you a lot of headroom.
	Well, I have unlimited...
	I'm not worried.
	I have unlimited.
	Yeah, fine.
	Well, I have to be because when you hit my slingbox and you just happen to leave it on all night because you don't care.
	Because you're unlimited.
	I don't care.
	Hey, dude, let's just talk for one second about Blagojevich, whatever his name is.
	The governor from Illinois.
	Yeah, I can't pronounce his name either.
	Blagojevich, I think it is.
	Blagojevich.
	I mean, is it just me, or does anyone see this as like a sign?
	Does anyone get that this is the nest where Obama comes from?
	Well, you know, somebody pointed this out, interestingly enough.
	No one's talking about that.
	Wait, wait.
	They believe that Obama rose so quickly in Chicago politics that he never really became that much of the machine.
	And in fact, when he was talking about the overheard conversations with the FBI where they were calling him and cussing about him...
	Because he wasn't going to play ball.
	Obama gave a, I don't know if you saw it, but when he came out and when you saw him giving his talk about, well, you know, these guys, I got nothing to do with it, and you can tell by the conversations I didn't.
	He had a real smug look on his face, like, eh.
	Yeah, didn't catch me.
	Didn't catch me.
	You can't touch me on this one.
	This is nothing.
	Yeah.
	But it's just amazing, you know, just to read some of the transcripts.
	And with this guy and his wife, too, who looks like a real bitch.
	You know, ugh.
	It's just...
	Well, it's kind of bad.
	Jesse Jackson Jr., I guess, got caught up in it most recently because somebody, I guess, wanted to collect a million dollars to get him the job.
	And I've met him.
	He's really a nice guy.
	I don't know what part of the machine he is, but he sure got screwed in this deal.
	He'll never get anything like that now.
	And now he's under the cloud of suspicion, even though he probably had nothing to do with it.
	But the whole fact that that's literally how this shit is done.
	You know that's the way it goes.
	These seats are traded that way.
	That's the way government works.
	So that is almost proof that fascism is rampant in the U.S. political system.
	Because it's corporatism interwoven with government.
	Done.
	Yeah, it's corporatism for sure.
	End of.
	I don't know.
	So what's your point?
	My point is that everyone's like, oh, well, okay.
	Yeah, well, that's because we're getting jaded.
	They're going to hound this guy.
	It's interesting that you have the collapse of that $50 billion Ponzi scheme guy, and then you have this happen about the same time, and it's like, what should we be talking about?
	And Obama's in the mix somehow.
	It's just a lot of bad news.
	It seems it's like one thing after another.
	We have someone at the office to go unnamed who is a massive, massive Obama supporter.
	Sure.
	We know who that is.
	Well, you do.
	And at a recent company meeting, she was talking about how excited she was.
	Were you there?
	Were you at the all-hands meeting?
	Yeah.
	She was so excited because she has front-row seats to the inauguration.
	Yeah.
	Oh, she's a huge fan.
	She's going to be so disappointed.
	I feel so bad for her.
	You mean she's going to be disappointed two or three years from now?
	Six months from now, dude.
	Two or three years.
	Please.
	Uh-uh.
	I would say, and I'll put this down as a gentleman's bet, six months from now, She's not going to be disappointed, and Obama's going to look like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
	Okay, I'll take that one.
	You got it.
	Well, okay, but hold on a second.
	Will it be because she's been hypnotized into believing that...
	No, no, because a lot of, you know, it'll be a very positive time.
	In general, you think it's going to be...
	So, we will not be at war...
	Well, I'm not saying that.
	We're at war now, and I don't think he's going to pull out, although he could.
	I think I'm just saying, he just threw six months out.
	I'm going to make this assertion that six months from now, things are going to be really, he's going to be, everyone's going to be very happy with Obama.
	He's going to have a high rating and all this rest of it.
	Okay, well, you got that bet, my friend.
	No, man.
	Well, you don't think so?
	No, of course not.
	First of all, 20,000 troops are going to go to Afghanistan.
	We're going to have a whole bunch of crap going down in Pakistan.
	India's going to be on our side.
	The question is how well it will be reported if you even know it's happening.
	I believe that we're really going to be in some kind of quagmire with...
	This EU regulation, because maybe the US could separate on climate and say, okay, we want to do climate this way or that way.
	Bush declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
	But when it comes to economics, and now that they're intertwined, I don't think the US can get away with not being a part of the whole carbon credit scheme.
	And that is going to affect us.
	It really will.
	Or the US, it will severely affect it.
	I don't think it's going to be a happy time in six months from now.
	Alright.
	We'll go over it in six months.
	What would that date be?
	Do we have it?
	June 30th.
	June 30th.
	Okay.
	That's good.
	When I'm bringing you food.
	We have a deli.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You got plenty of pepper.
	We have a deli and it has a lot of cured meat.
	Cured meats.
	So you could go on Letterman and actually know your cuts of meat.
	I could.
	I'm one of the few.
	So I brought back from Portugal a very strange piece of meat, cured meat.
	In Portugal they make this sausage which is generically in the United States called linguiça.
	And all the linguiça providers around here, and I told the story when I was over there by the way, and everyone was kind of interested in the story.
	When I was a kid, I lived most of my childhood youth in Newark, California.
	And Newark, California was a, I didn't realize it at the time, I'm looking back on it now, obviously, was kind of a settlement at one point for the Portuguese expats from the 30s or 40s or something.
	And so the town was mostly Portuguese.
	Everyone was named, you know, Freitas or...
	Silva or Bogas and there's a bunch of different people.
	Bogas?
	P-O-G-A-S, Bogas.
	Bogas.
	And anyway, there's all these, and they're all Portuguese.
	And so one of the things, I was raised, because they used to have these events on Saturday, there were dances and whatever at this big hall.
	And when they would cook outside, they would cook this sausage, which was this exact linguiça sausage.
	And And instead of hot dogs, I ate these things.
	And there was about six factories, or maybe as many as 20 at one time in the area, that made this sausage, this linguiça.
	Over the years, I lost favor.
	It's too expensive.
	And it also is difficult to make because part of the process has to be a kind of a wine-cured meat that's in the sausage.
	And so anyway, these places became less and less.
	And there was one left in San Leandro that was the best called Santos.
	And Santos made a true...
	It was the last great California linguiça.
	But because of the process for making it, which goes back in time, it was illegal to do the process by health department standards.
	What was so illegal about it?
	I don't know.
	Not enough melamine?
	I'd have to go back and find the records, but I think it had to do with the curing or leaving the meat out.
	You need to put more melamine in it.
	Right.
	Yeah, that would be okay.
	Anyway, so the guy kept getting harassed by the health department, and one day he flipped out and killed two of them.
	Excellent!
	That's what everybody in Portugal thought.
	Excellent.
	Yeah, of course.
	Fascinating.
	These people are crazy.
	So they threw the guy in jail as a murderer, and then he died like a year or two ago, and I never got the recipe.
	Oh, shit.
	No, that really sucks.
	Well, then, when I go to Portugal, it turns out that this recipe, which I thought was just a, because linguiça means sausage.
	It's like the pancakes of Portugal.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there's sausages everywhere.
	I mean, it's not like a secret how to make this stuff, but it's complicated.
	There's a place up in Oregon for anyone out there who wants to try a good linguisa called Taylor's.
	And you can look it up.
	And Taylor's ships.
	And they have a credible linguisa.
	In fact, when I'm in Washington, I usually stop at one of the stores that carries it and stock up on this stuff and then bring it down to California where I should be able to get good linguisa, but I can't.
	It's either too grainy or it doesn't have that ripe, soaked meat taste or whatever, or it's not chunky.
	There's a lot of grizzle in a good linguisa.
	Anyway, so, but meanwhile, I'm going to the store and this woman that's taking me around from the Commerce Department of the country, because I have to stop at a store wherever I travel, and I'm looking for some sausages to bring back or something, and she points out this strange thing which is kind of like the ultimate,
	it's not a linguisa, it's a big like a salami, but it's made In the same way, so it's essentially, and there's nothing else in there but the meat itself, which is obviously cured in some way because the stuff is not even refrigerated.
	It doesn't have to be.
	It just sits there.
	It is unbelievably delicious, but you have to boil it or cook it.
	I mean, I haven't figured out how to prepare it properly, but it's this flavor.
	So my wife, who has the spice store, she's doing a lot of research, and she We're working on a book on spices.
	She makes the assertion, using that word again, that most of these cured meats and salamis and all these things that have been perfected over the years, spices weren't used necessarily for adding flavor.
	No, it was for preservation of food, right?
	Right, and almost every one of these crazy spices has some specific characteristic.
	One's an antioxidant, one of them kills some sort of bacteria.
	Yes, I love this, John.
	You have to come out with that book because this is what people are going to need.
	We have to get away from this crap that we call food that has nothing to do with food.
	It's either chemicals...
	Or posing as protein, like melamine, which, by the way, is now acceptable at 2.5 parts per million by the Federal Food and Drug Administration, or...
	It's genetically modified.
	And God knows what that's doing to us.
	Yeah, I know.
	You never know.
	So anyway, so you end up with these characteristics that can't be duplicated unless you follow the process.
	And so when the health department...
	And by the way, this is going to hit the EU harder than it hits us.
	And I talked about this when I was in Portugal.
	What happens when some guy from Brussels comes into Portugal and says, You can't make sausage that way.
	It's already happening.
	It's called the Codex Alimentarius.
	Yeah, yeah, you and that.
	I've got to start reading that thing.
	You know what?
	You'll never get through it because, of course, you are a chemical engineer and a health inspector and a coin collector and all kinds of incredible careers that you've had.
	There's another coin.
	It's very, very, very, very technical.
	But they're basically outlawing anything good for you.
	Well, or anything like these classic old recipes which were designed to keep you from getting sick.
	Yes, exactly.
	And Mimi points out, and this is also in the book, which is, especially during the Middle Ages where you'd have one, you know, feudal empire take over another, the first thing they'd do is they'd steal the cooks.
	Yeah.
	The cooks would be the first guys, and they'd have to work for the new guy.
	Good point.
	And if they poisoned him, he was dead, the cook.
	Yeah.
	So these recipes and these developments, these procedures for making preserved meat, because they didn't have refrigeration, and all these things were designed not to make you sick.
	They were designed to keep you from getting sick.
	Keep you alive, yeah.
	And those processes are being outlawed.
	The processes that this guy Santos was using to make this delicious linguista sausage we ate for decades and never got sick, they wanted to mess with it.
	Actually, it may have been a threat to the public health itself.
	Yes.
	Right?
	Don't you think?
	Of course!
	Look, now you're in my camp, you know.
	Are you kidding me?
	I'm just rolling my eyes thinking, yeah, oh, welcome to the world of the awakened, John.
	And anyway, this reminds me of the French who are complaining bitterly, especially the guys who make various kinds of goat cheese.
	And if you go to France, anyone who goes to the French countryside, the last thing you get at the end of your meal in any decent restaurant, probably every restaurant in France, at least any one that's a restaurant, as opposed to a bistro, is they roll out usually a platter.
	Yep.
	And a pungent smell.
	Well, the goat cheeses, yeah.
	Well, it smells like some of them.
	Some of them are pretty pungent.
	Anyway, they have all these goat cheeses, and the way they make the goat cheese in these places is the same thing.
	They've been doing it, you know, from handing it down from father to son for a reason, and they put the cheese on a certain kind of wood, and they cure it, and they do this, and they do that, and they follow very closely.
	Oh, yeah, but that wood isn't clean.
	Oh, no, that can't pass FDA standards.
	No, it was not clean.
	So the Brussels inspectors come in, and they're telling all the goat cheesemakers in France to get rid of the wood.
	They have to use plastic.
	Oh, of course, with melamine.
	There you go.
	We're back to the melamine.
	Nah, it's an outrage.
	I find it kind of depressing.
	You seem to be, you know, of a mind that they think they can beat the system.
	See, that's why I was so excited about this Italian shop.
	You'll see, because they've got all kinds of sausages and all different kinds of cuts of meat.
	You know, and it's real stuff.
	It's not, you know, they source it themselves.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah.
	I'm sure that's dynamite.
	You should just shop no place else.
	Thank you.
	That's what I was trying to say.
	I don't need to go anywhere else.
	Everything they have there is homemade.
	They've got jars of stuff from horseradish that's homemade to you name it.
	Oh, no.
	I'm very excited about it.
	It's a goldmine.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There is indeed no reason to go shop anywhere else.
	Right there is fine.
	They don't sell cat food.
	That's about it.
	They sell cat food?
	No, they do not.
	They do not.
	I do not.
	So the thing is, I'm always surprised by people.
	There'll be somebody that lives in that block that won't shop there because it's too rustic or something.
	Well, because they're hooked on the shit.
	It always surprises me that you could be in some neighborhood and you can have the world's greatest little store and you won't support the store.
	You'd rather go to Safeway or something because, I don't know, it's baffling.
	I think more people get like that.
	Even in the country where they should know better, they won't shop in the appropriate place when they have the opportunity.
	If you don't have a choice...
	Yeah, great.
	But when you have a choice, and when you have a choice like that, little meat market.
	It's a no-brainer.
	It's a no-brainer.
	And we have the farmer's market that comes once a week into the high street.
	No, that's good.
	Yeah.
	So, Formula One is in trouble.
	Yeah, isn't that funny?
	That's sad, really.
	Yeah, they finally did the math.
	I mean, they were just losing their pants.
	It costs like 300 million a year for a team just to participate?
	Yeah.
	With all costs.
	Pounds, by the way.
	300 million pounds.
	So Honda's out.
	Who else was out?
	There was another...
	Like, every team is now saying, well, I don't know, man.
	And what do you do if you're a Formula 1 driver and Formula 1 falls apart?
	What can you really go and do?
	NASCAR. NASCAR. I want to turn right.
	I want to turn right.
	You know, NASCAR is pretty exciting.
	I don't know if you've ever driven or been in one of those cars or taken hot laps or anything, but it's pretty interesting.
	Yeah, I think I've driven just about every...
	Not Formula 1, but I've driven Indy, NASCAR, Formula 2000...
	I haven't done Rally.
	Rally looks dangerous to me.
	So the guys on Top Gear, which is really probably one of the best auto shows ever, I guess one of them drove a Formula One car or something.
	But the process of driving a Formula One car is ridiculous.
	It's not even like driving.
	It's like every million push buttons.
	It's like computer programming.
	Well, they don't call you a driver.
	They call you a pilot.
	You're a Formula One pilot.
	Makes more sense, yeah.
	I'm trying to think.
	I think these guys would like to go in the NASCAR, because in NASCAR, you know, they do bump each other quite a bit.
	No, man.
	These guys like to...
	I swear to God, if you talk to a Formula One driver, they'll say, no, I like to turn right once in a while.
	That's what they all say.
	Yeah, they say that.
	They're moaning and groaning.
	So what?
	Well, you like to turn right where there's a bank?
	Yeah.
	No.
	Or would you like to turn right where there's like, you know, the poor house?
	Yeah.
	Well, there you go.
	That's a good point.
	IndyCar was cool, though.
	I drove IndyCar at Indy.
	That was cool.
	How fast did you get it up?
	The car speed, that is.
	It didn't have a speedometer, so I really don't know.
	It didn't have a speedometer.
	There's no, like, speedometer on the IndyCar.
	They must have had a TAC. A tachometer.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, you know, I was specifically told not to rev more than 10,000.
	Okay.
	Well, then you could have made the calculation, finding out what the ratio of the rear end and the gear box and the number of RPMs.
	You could have figured out your speed.
	Yeah, I was too busy looking at the chicks in pit lane.
	I had no patience for that.
	But the bailout for the car industry hasn't happened.
	You know, this is a worldwide thing.
	This is not just the U.S. They're begging over here, too.
	The car companies.
	Yeah, I heard that.
	I don't know.
	I mean, you know, maybe if they...
	Well, it's really interesting, because here's what I've seen.
	I didn't know cars were such a commodity that they were just one hiccup, and the next thing you know, these guys are all going out of business.
	Well, I... There's a lot of people tied in.
	They're talking about the supplies.
	Also, if the U.S. companies go down, then the supplies of certain raw materials goes up.
	So it becomes a real problem for everybody.
	But parts and a lot of different manufacturers in different countries make parts for a lot of auto companies.
	So there's a fear that they could go under.
	Of course, dealerships are huge.
	So I understand where the fear comes from.
	But what's kind of funny is that the Treasury, who of course has this tarp, this $700 billion little sliver compared to what they've actually spent of our money.
	And they're saying, no, we don't want to give any of that money to the car companies.
	That's for our friends.
	Go find your own money.
	We've got our supply right here.
	We're not going to give it to those guys, not to Detroit.
	No way.
	We want to keep it here.
	There was a website that documented the amount of money given to Congress by both the banks and the banking interests and the car companies, and it was like...
	Something like a hundred times more money came from the banking interest.
	The car companies barely gave anything to Congress because they didn't have a lot of money to give.
	Bet they're regretting that now.
	Oh yeah.
	Man, we should have been on, was it K Street?
	Is that what it's called?
	Q Street, Avenue K, whatever.
	Where all the lobbyists live?
	Yeah, there's a...
	I don't know the name of the street, but yeah, there's some street that's notorious.
	But yeah, no, obviously the whole thing was...
	Do you think they're still going to get some money?
	Do you think they're still going to get it?
	Yeah, they're going to get some money, but they're going to make them suffer first.
	You know, if you've got these guys on the ropes and you're kind of sadists, you know, let's make them suffer, you know?
	And then this will teach them a lesson about not giving us enough money for our campaigns.
	Let's teach them a lesson and let's make them suffer to the last second.
	Oh, that's a good idea, Jim.
	Okay.
	It's our money, though, dude.
	It's our money.
	It was our money.
	You asked me last week about the Lisbon Treaty.
	Right.
	So here's the headline from the Daily Mail.
	EU leaders agree on bribes to convince Irish voters to vote yes to treaty at second referendum.
	Does that kind of sum it up for you?
	Well, the Daily Mail.
	Yeah, but, you know, it's essentially...
	So they're going to do another referendum.
	It's like...
	Yeah, they're going to...
	My experience has always been...
	It always reminds me of a guy who used to be a gas station owner in Niles, California.
	And as I... Warm Springs, one of these old little bergs, who used to run for office all the time.
	And you'd see his name on every ballot.
	He'd just get soundly whipped because he was a dud.
	And so one day he ran for the board of the BART thing before they built the BART Barrier Rapid Transit.
	And for some reason or other he got in.
	And it was just like, I mean, whether he was any good as a BART director, I don't know.
	I can't remember.
	Probably not.
	But the point is that he just kept over and over.
	You keep putting it in there, putting it in there, putting it in there.
	If you keep, if you ran, if the Irish refused to vote this in 20 times in a row, they'd try 21.
	They'll do a 21, yeah.
	This is like, you know, let's flip for it.
	No, let's do two out of three.
	No, no, no, let's do three out of five.
	No, no, no, no.
	It will get through.
	It's just his basic corruption.
	Yeah.
	Well, thank you.
	That's why the headline says it all.
	Bribes.
	Corruption.
	Thank you.
	Meanwhile, that Czech guy, that's going to be funny when he takes over because little known fact, the Czech Republic has also not ratified They don't have a referendum, but they haven't ratified it, the Lisbon Treaty.
	And this guy is a very strong opponent, or at least that's the way he's been speaking as of late.
	And he will become president of the EU very soon, I believe.
	Well, maybe he'll stave off or push away the grander scheme.
	Maybe he'll get assassinated.
	This seems fine to me.
	No, he's going to get killed.
	Oh, okay.
	Please.
	Do you think by June 30th?
	Yeah, put me down for a dead check by June 30th.
	Okay.
	What did you have by June 30th?
	Obama, everybody happy, and I'm saying...
	Everybody happy.
	I'm saying nobody happy, and we got a dead check.
	I'm not going to argue...
	Well, no, actually, I'll argue against a dead check.
	I think they'll keep him alive.
	They'll keep him alive?
	Yeah, okay.
	Okay.
	What they'll do is they'll persuade him to see the error of his ways.
	I hear that Saakashvili, the Georgian prime minister, is getting kicked out, though.
	It's about time.
	Yeah.
	And they've all agreed now that, yeah, we started it.
	Of course, no one gives a shit.
	They all agree that we started it?
	The Georgians started it, yeah.
	The ministers now in the parliament are saying, well, yeah, we kind of started bombing first.
	But the Russians were ready for us.
	So meanwhile, of course, I didn't know this, by the way.
	So meanwhile, our media, nobody picks up on this because we still think Russia's the bad guy in this thing, and they just admitted guilt, but nobody cares?
	Is that what you're saying?
	That's what I'm saying.
	Great.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Another moment of enlightenment.
	Because if people followed our show, they would know all this in advance.
	They would know all this stuff.
	Yeah, well that's why we got 200,000 people listening.
	By the way, it's not enough.
	We need more.
	And we'd like you, yes you, we'd like you to tell a friend.
	Turn them on to our show.
	Give them a copy.
	Yeah, burn a copy.
	Burn a copy and give it to a friend.
	Say, listen to these two idiots.
	Maybe they're on to something.
	Yeah.
	You like wine?
	Here, listen to this.
	You like wine?
	You got the right place.
	You like wine?
	Pepper?
	You like sausage?
	This is the show for you.
	Yeah, we're, let's see, we have, and by the way, you don't want to give the show to a vegan.
	No, please.
	Bad idea.
	Or Canadian, apparently.
	Man, we pissed off a lot of Canadians last week.
	From what?
	Well, everyone's like, you don't know shit about Canada.
	You don't know how it works.
	This is not how it went down.
	Oh, because of that crazy thing they're doing up there?
	We don't know anything?
	Yeah, that's why we got to Detroit.
	Let's explain.
	That's how we got to Detroit Slingbox.
	Good point.
	That's right.
	Yes.
	He gets two Canadian channels.
	He gets the CBC and something else.
	And we're going to watch Canadian television and catch up.
	This is how responsible we are as two podcasters.
	Yeah, we're actually taking time out of our day to get on the crappy-ass sling box, which has been kindly offered to us by a No Agenda listener, whose name I'm looking up as we speak.
	You better keep talking because Gmail ain't that quick.
	I'm still trying to say why you'd call it a crappy ass device when earlier in the show you praised it.
	Well, what I'm saying is it's extra effort.
	It's extra effort.
	We are taking the effort.
	Okay, Andrew Thompson.
	There you go.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	So we're using his Slingbox.
	And by the way, if anybody out there is in some remote part of the world and they have a Slingbox...
	Yeah, send us the ID. Send us the ID and we'll watch your shows locally and then we'll make some comments about it.
	Hell yeah.
	We don't have...
	In fact, the new Slingbox software, which is really impressive, by the way, the stuff you can download, and anyone, by the way, out there can do this, if you get an account, it actually maintains a database of all the Slingboxes that you're talking to.
	Yeah, it's awesome.
	And so you just go down...
	Right.
	It's great.
	You just go down the list and you click Detroit and boom, I'm on the Detroit Slingbox.
	So we've got...
	They should be sponsoring this show.
	There you go.
	Now that's a good...
	I'll go after that.
	Let's have Lawrence call him up.
	Tell them we think the show should be sponsored.
	Mainly because we're using the thing to do an international show.
	We got two one guys in different parts of the hemisphere.
	We are the target audience right there.
	We're not chicks, but otherwise we're the perfect target audience for this device.
	Right.
	And I think a lot of people that listen to this show would probably use it if they thought about it.
	It's not a cheap device, but it's not expensive.
	So we now have access to CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, out of Windsor, and something called Global?
	Or something.
	I don't know what the other thing is.
	It's like some station in Windsor.
	And I know that you've been watching it because you left it on Channel 99.
	Oh, I did.
	Yeah.
	Because I was surfing through, right?
	And I also have the software downstairs in the kitchen on Patricia's MacBook.
	And I'm switching through and, you know, it stops on TMZ. Oh, man.
	And then all of a sudden, you know, I went to make a cup of tea and then, like, the laptop's gone.
	Patricia's sitting there watching it.
	You know, I can't get it back.
	She's watching stupid celebrity gossip on TMZ. Yeah, that's pretty bad.
	But anyway, the other device, again, although I don't want to just keep giving him all his free publicity, is the sling catcher.
	Yeah, this is the thing that I need, because this is the other side of it, right?
	Then you hook that up and then you can put a sling box stream on your television.
	Right.
	Cool.
	So you don't have to just do everything on the computer.
	I mean, when the Slingbox first came out, I thought it was kind of a hokey idea.
	But until I started realizing, especially with having two different houses, how advantageous it would be, especially since I can't get to local stations up in Seattle on my dish network.
	Because of some legal thing.
	And then when we started having used it and realized how actually it's very powerful.
	It gives you the local stations.
	It has its own guide.
	You can change the channels effortlessly.
	It's amazing.
	Yeah, it is.
	It really is.
	I hope someone made some money on that.
	Well, I think the guy I was at a dinner recently and somebody mentioned that the Slingbox founder is a really sharp character.
	Yeah, I'm sure they did.
	Unfortunately, if it wasn't for Sarbanes-Oxley, a company like that would have gone public and they would have made some serious money.
	Yeah, it would be huge.
	I agree.
	Ah, well.
	As soon as we get the new bandwidth, get it all set up.
	All right, meanwhile, I'll check out the one you have hooked up now.
	Yeah, you should try it.
	But don't stay on it too long because I have some pathetic 300 kilobit per second upload or something.
	It's really fucking sad.
	Do you have a cap?
	That's just the speed.
	I get a megabit down and 300k speed up.
	So if you're watching the Slingbox, it's like the internet comes falling, crushing to its knees here.
	Oh, I'll only do it at midnight then.
	Your time.
	Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool.
	That's cool.
	Any time after midnight here is no problem at all.
	Alright, good.
	I'll get mine hooked up in the next week or so.
	I need to find the power supply for one of them.
	You know, it helps, I've heard, if you have one of those that putting the power on makes it better.
	It actually works.
	Yeah.
	Alright, what else happened with you, Ma?
	I think that's about it.
	The weather here is actually quite good, but a little chilly.
	Then we had a big full moon, and it's raining up in Seattle, so I'm down here, and not much.
	So another weekend at home, huh?
	Yeah, well, next weekend I'm going up for sure, because I'm going to spend the whole week up for Christmas.
	Well, that's kind of interesting.
	So next weekend, so are you going to call in, or when do you want to do it?
	I'm leaving on Sunday, so we'll just do it at the regular time, and then the next Saturday, I think I'm up there, but I'm going to bring some gear up there, and I'm going to hook up, because what happened to change is that we had this local provider, but then my son Eric down the hill is sitting on top of a fiber optic.
	And so he had, well it's actually, there's a string, it's actually strung on the telephone poles.
	And so he did a deal with a guy who apparently has the legal rights to this fiber.
	And so he bought a 5 meg up and down Fiber connection, which is straight shot, no sharing.
	And I think we're actually getting 10, 10 megabits per second fiber.
	Nice.
	And then he's got a one watt Wi-Fi, a one watt Wi-Fi directional antenna thing shooting up to my house.
	And so I'm picking up, you know, about 100 megabits per second on that network, and then taking the fiber in, and it is so much faster.
	Even though, you know, I have a fast connection here on the Comcast, but it has that, it's not like, you wouldn't call it a delay, it's just like every once in a while it goes, can you hold on just one second before I give you that data, because I am a little busy over here.
	Okay, here it comes.
	With the fiber, it's just wow.
	Boom.
	Yeah.
	I love the way they market it, because I did some research, and you look at Virgin Media, which, you know, we're on the fiber optic network, and they say, okay, you get the 20 megabits, it'll take you 1.7 seconds to download an MP3 track.
	I'm like, what kind of measurement is that?
	You know, that's not a Pink Floyd track, okay?
	You know, it's like, they're taking averages, but the way they market that is so misleading.
	I hate that kind of marketing.
	Yeah, me too.
	Why don't they just tell you what your megabits per second is going to be?
	Well, they do.
	They do.
	They say it's the big, long, and 20 megabits.
	Well, some people don't.
	They just go on with a bunch of, well, you can load a book and so on.
	You can download a movie in an hour.
	You know, whatever.
	They even say that with that tone of voice, don't they?
	Well, you can download a book in an hour.
	That's real marketing for you.
	Hey, get Comcast.
	You can even download an MP3. Like, meh.
	That's exactly the voice they use.
	Here's one, John.
	We're not done yet.
	Goldman predicts oil to hit $30 a barrel.
	Awkward U-turn after $200 warning.
	Awkward U-turn.
	You should see this picture.
	So you have to assume, once they made the statement, that the oil downturn is over.
	It's going to shoot up like a rocket.
	It's coming.
	Well, actually, after they made that statement, it did go up a little bit.
	A lot of people think it's going to stabilize at 30.
	Some people think it's going to stabilize at 50.
	When they're ready to crush us, as per plan, which will probably be around June 25th, then it's going to skyrocket.
	I'm not seeing it.
	This is a supply and demand problem.
	They've got a serious problem.
	We cut back on our oil usage with Obama coming in and pushing all this other stuff.
	I think oil's got serious problems maintaining these prices.
	I think they're probably right about 30%.
	Right.
	The guy who's running Iran says that they're planning their whole economy on $30 barrel oil.
	And the guy from Saudi Arabia came out and said, out on 60 Minutes last week, he came out and said, well, you know, out of the ground, it's costing us two bucks to produce this stuff.
	I'm hearing a lot more, but okay.
	He says two bucks.
	I'm telling you, you can go look at the 60 Minutes on Hulu.
	It's like two bucks, he says, that's what it costs.
	And they have hard-to-get oil.
	It's not like their oil is just oozing out like it was in Texas.
	I'm telling you, a friend of mine works at a Halliburton company, and it's in oil support services.
	And he says, really, it's 20 bucks a barrel to get it out and onto the container.
	I'm just telling you what the guy said.
	And he's full of shit.
	As is CBS. Why would he say that?
	Why would he lowball himself?
	I don't know.
	To make it sound like, to help continue to bankrupt the Middle East.
	I don't know.
	It sounds like he didn't want to do that.
	Do you know the story behind the name Ponzi Scheme, just to bring this show full circle?
	A guy named Ponzi.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Charles Ponzi.
	Yeah.
	And his original Ponzi scheme in 1920 estimated lost $10 million.
	And it was the same thing.
	You just, you know...
	Right.
	That's why a lot of people think a lot of these multi-level marketing things are Ponzi schemes of some sort.
	I don't see it as...
	I think that's a misnomer when you call an MLM a Ponzi scheme.
	That's not true.
	It is when your orientation is more to selling franchises than it is to selling products.
	Okay, yeah, true.
	And I have run into those.
	You know, it's like, you know, you want to sell a product?
	No, no, you should sell more people to be under your umbrella and then they're under yours.
	And they've had to actually change a bunch of, they've actually had laws against overdoing that.
	So you can't have a huge, you know, pyramid scheme is the other word for it.
	Yeah, that's the word.
	They changed the law so the pyramid can only go so far.
	You can't have an infinite pyramid, which is how you made the big bucks.
	Right.
	Nor can you have an infinite bubble, which is exactly what happened here.
	Right, or an infinite Ponzi scheme.
	Yeah.
	But the fact that it could take it to 50 billion, that's amazing.
	And for so many years.
	40.
	Just based on reputation, I guess.
	Yeah, no, that shows you what reputation can do for you.
	Didn't work.
	Yeah.
	No, I can see it.
	I'm saying the reputation, I mean, people who thought highly of his reputation were mistaken.
	I've gotten a couple of papers from people that show that this guy was under suspicion like a decade ago because there were these writers that would come and say, I don't know how...
	How does he do it?
	Yeah, how does he do it?
	It can't be done, and then they always have him quoted at the end and say, well, you know, a lot of people don't take it into consideration that I'm a great trader and I know what I'm doing.
	Maybe when you realize that, you'll see how I did it.
	Yeah.
	Well, so we'll be talking about this guy, and it's great, and it makes fantastic headlines, and meanwhile, $8.4 trillion has been stolen from us by Goldman Sachs, effectively.
	By extension, with Paulson by extension.
	Stolen.
	Just stolen.
	Well, you know.
	You don't care.
	I do care.
	I wish I was working for him.
	John, would a lot of money make you happy?
	No, but it would allow me some time to go float around Europe more.
	I mean, I have to work all the time.
	I'm always around here podcasting or doing something, trying to clean the office, fixing things.
	It's ridiculous.
	When's the last time you moved?
	I haven't moved.
	Well, we have different properties, and I haven't moved from this house for like...
	15 years?
	It's time.
	I think it's time.
	Yeah, it's well beyond time.
	But the problem that we have, and we have the same problem with the Port Angeles house, is that if you don't follow the move every four years, move and move and move, you start to accumulate so much crap.
	It's like a nightmare.
	Well, that's us, man.
	This is four years.
	It's time to move.
	We're done.
	And it feels great.
	It's exciting.
	I really like it.
	We enjoy moving.
	I mean, the actual process kind of sucks, but the throwing out, the reboot, it's cool.
	I like it.
	There's a lot of bills you don't have to change.
	You just don't tell them.
	And you don't see them anymore.
	More power to you.
	It's like junk mail ends for a while.
	I like that.
	That's kind of cool.
	You should consider it.
	It's a buyer's market, I hear.
	I'm trying to go...
	Well, I'm going to wait for the market.
	I know what the...
	The market works in a wave anyway, so you have a...
	You were telling me half a year ago, now is the time to buy...
	Yeah, no, now's the time to buy, but now's not the time to sell.
	That's the difference.
	Yeah, true, true.
	So what I want to do is I want to get into the...
	California's going to make a comeback probably in that same June period that we're talking about next year.
	California properties' prices should stabilize and start to go up to the point where I can sell at a decent amount of money that I need to sell at.
	But it will not have happened in other parts of the country, namely Washington State or some of these other places.
	Because everything happens in bulges.
	And so I should be able to get the timing just right to get out and then get in within a good time to sell, good time to buy.
	It's just like a straddle.
	And where are you going to go?
	Washington.
	Oh, you want to go live there?
	You just want to sell this place and sell up and be gone?
	I want to get out of California because I think this place is doomed.
	Well, it's bankrupt.
	Bankrupt.
	They've got no money.
	They're going to stick it to us.
	Yeah, probably on...
	Oh, I know.
	Capital gains on house sales.
	That's how they'll stick it to you.
	Well, they're not going to get away with that.
	But they're going to stick it to us in other ways.
	They're going to have a value-added tax.
	I'm convinced of that.
	And then they're going to do two or three other things.
	They're going to raise property taxes and everything they can do.
	That's really funny.
	The big stimulus package here in the United Kingdom was the reduction of the value-added tax from 17.5% to 15%, which is a huge amount.
	But what's interesting, what they don't tell you, is that on the very same day that they lowered the VAT tax, they increased the alcohol, the liquor tax, by 8%.
	And no one wrote a single line about it.
	It's like booze is 8% more expensive, but everyone's talking about, oh, they lowered the VAT by 2.5, giving you a net 5.5 increase on the number one substance the Brits put into their bodies.
	They like to drink over there.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, they do.
	It's cool, man.
	We've got like five pubs in our neighborhood.
	I've got to find my local.
	Yeah, find a good one.
	Make sure they have Adnans.
	That's kind of one of the keys.
	A beer?
	Yeah, A-D-N-A-N-S. Adnans.
	Adnans Ale.
	Okay.
	How about just a nice atmosphere and cool people?
	If they have the Adnans, the rest will come with it.
	Cool people come included with the deal.
	Yeah, you watch.
	Alright, I'm going to send you a link, John, and we should talk about it next week.
	It's from a Colorado...
	What's the university up there in Colorado?
	University of Colorado Buffaloes.
	How about Boulder?
	Boulder, Boulder.
	What's in Boulder?
	It's in Boulder, yeah.
	Okay.
	Or as they pronounce it up there, Boulder.
	Boulder.
	It's a university professor in a...
	In his classroom.
	And it's about 20 minutes.
	And he's talking about...
	And he's kind of an old kook, which is obviously why I liked him.
	And he's talking about the inability of human beings to understand the concept of exponential growth.
	And he goes through a whole number of examples how exponential growth works and then he draws parallels between global population and oil use.
	And it's kind of like the old story, if you saved a penny a day every single day, you'd be a millionaire or you'd have $100 million within 20 years or whatever with compounded interest.
	And it's quite frightening when you see the numbers on...
	And forget about...
	Basically, the numbers double every 10 years, like the population.
	And it goes very, very quickly.
	And then when you get exponential growth, this hockey stick curve that just goes straight up after a certain point...
	And what he's basically saying is where it's two minutes to twelve and the next doubling of everything is essentially going to kill us.
	And what he goes into is he literally says, here are the options.
	War, disease.
	He's going through all the options.
	Famine, exactly.
	Yeah, those are the classics.
	And, well, I mean, so you obviously know what I'm talking about.
	I mean, this is not just nutball stuff.
	This is kind of realistic.
	Yeah, it's been discussed a lot.
	That's probably more or less true.
	Well, Carter used it.
	Carter tried to explain how exponential growth works, and he was right.
	He said, we'll have tapped out our resources in four decades from now.
	And even if you find two more huge oil fields like Alaska and Indonesia or whatever.
	You know what?
	The one no one wants to talk about because it would change everybody's attitude.
	There's a whopper sitting underneath Nebraska as big as Saudi Arabia.
	Yeah, but this is the whole point.
	It doesn't matter when you're looking at these exponential numbers where usage increases continuously at like 6% per year.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know too much to handle.
	You know, apparently, what he was saying is the population growth of Boulder is at 3%.
	No, was it 6%?
	And they brought it down like 4.8%.
	And his point was that we actually send humanitarian aid into countries that have a population growth over 2%.
	Because it can actually, it can kill you within, you know, you wind up very quickly at the end of that curve with, you know, you each got a square meter and that's it.
	I'm going to send you that link.
	I looked at it and I was just like, wow, this is freaking me out.
	Yeah, send it.
	I'll blog it and then we'll talk about it next week.
	That's a good idea.
	Because if it really holds true, and the numbers certainly make sense, but if the underlying data he's comparing it to, if it makes sense, then...
	Shit, man.
	Who cares?
	Don't pay your mortgage.
	Don't move.
	Just hang out.
	It's not happening tomorrow.
	Well, a lot of this could be in our lifetime.
	2035.
	You're turning into a nihilist.
	Nihilist?
	What's that?
	NIH. Look it up.
	No, no.
	Explain it.
	It's a person who just has a gloomy outlook.
	Yeah.
	Oh, you mean a realist?
	I'm sorry.
	I misunderstood you.
	A nihilist.
	A nihilist.
	That's what a nihilist would say.
	Exactly.
	Well, that's me.
	I'm going to get business cards printed up.
	Yeah, use it as your title.
	Nihilist.
	How do I spell it?
	N-I-H, I think.
	N-I-H-I-L-I-S-T, I think.
	N-I-H-L-I-S-T, I think.
	As in annihilation?
	Well, I wasn't thinking in those terms, but maybe there's a root there.
	Hmm.
	Okay.
	All right, John.
	Well, good talking to you.
	As usual.
	Yes.
	And, well, coming to you from Gitmo Nation East over here in the United Kingdom where climate change is indeed in effect.
	It's getting colder.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm John C. Dvorak in Silicon Valley North, Gitmo Nation, USA, and it's getting, it's kind of warm here, but it's cold every place else, so I don't know.

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