Bagging Your Own Reality

00:01 It is time once again for the program many equate to a deticket ride at Disney World. It contains no frills, none of the thrills, no commercials, no music, and two no talents. From the Manor in Guilford, England, I'm Adam Curry. and I'm John C. Dvorak in what is now a kind of a dreary Northern California. Well, join the club my friend. We've got horrible weather here. It's been bad all week and I just got back from Antwerp flying through rain and gusting up to 40 knots of wind. So it's bad. That sounds dreadful. Yeah, but they have this thing which is actually really good where every aircraft has to have an annual inspection and there's a whole bunch of each aircraft has to go through this whole checklist and things have to be opened and replaced and if you don't do it in time, mine expires on the 31st of March, then your insurance is no longer valid. So I had to get it to the shop before the 1st of April and

01:02 Well, you just gotta go where... whether or no weather. The shop was in Antwerp? Yeah, that's... I'll tell you, the big thing about it... here's the secret about aviation. If you want to stay alive, maintenance is everything. So, you find a guy who you really trust, who a lot of people trust, and you stick with him. You don't go from mechanic to mechanic. You really want only one pair of hands working on your aircraft. There's a bunch of jokes I'm not gonna go into them. No, you can do it. I've heard them all, believe me, I've heard them all. No, no. There's too much flack. There's too much political correctness out there. You know, can I just say, John, you are absolutely right.

01:47 About political... In general, but about political correctness. You know, did you follow the... You can't say anything. I mean like, you say anything about anyone as you're either hurting somebody's feelings or you're a racist pig or whatever. Well, racist pig is the big one because you know the Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, he released his movie there on Thursday evening. How was it? And you know what, as movies go really bad, Because it's one of those typical, like all the 9-11 truth type movies. So not the same topic obviously, but footage taken from all over the place and edited together. So it absolutely had no impact whatsoever. But the message was exactly that about political correctness. Basically saying, hey look,

02:36 We now have a third generation of Muslims who have been born in the Netherlands and half of them think the Netherlands should not be a democracy, it should live by Sharia law. And this shit has got to stop. That's basically what he's saying. Stop the Islamization of Western Europe. And I believe, John, that this is what a lot of people in Europe want to say, but it's politically incorrect to say it because we're all supposed to be living in the multicultural society, which I just don't think really works.

03:15 Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with understanding different cultures so you can deal with them for business purposes. But there was something I read, I'm gonna have to find this book, I have a book that was making an interesting comment. The writer made this, it's just about three sentences that are so well done I can't even get close to it without quoting him exactly, but he says, you know, there's a lot of cultures out there that you can respect to a point, but many of them really should are bad. Really suck. They're just bad. And we should, you know, maybe our respect for them should be reconsidered because they're just bad. I mean, there's no reason that there's, there are bad cultures out there and if you know some of these things are bad and I have, I question some of the things that have been floating around in terms of whether they're good cultures or not. Well, so that's, I'm sorry, go ahead. But since we're on the topic of cultures,

04:10 I wanted to bring up something that came up in a couple of emails and I sent you one I believe yeah, I got it But I'll pretend I didn't get it to stick with the no agenda like we didn't prepare anything. Okay. Well no, but we get mail That's true. You know it's not like an agenda like I didn't say what I want to talk about I just sent you read I just said read this and what it is is from a guy who have been corresponding with it was talking about the This big British grocery chain. Tesco's. Yeah, Tesco's. And this is related to cultural issues, although it's not extreme cultural issues where you're beating women or anything. I mean, I don't think they want that. But what's happened for people out there who want to follow this is an interesting story.

04:54 This and it starts in Southern California, and I did some follow-up by going to the websites of the of Tesco and It looks like they're gonna open up a bunch of these stores are called fresh and easy and they're small grocery stores that have a lot of fresh Supposedly fresh products in them although there's so many of them. They're gonna open like 30 of them or something like that but But the whole basic formula is fresh and easy. So it's really fresh food and easy to get. That's their formula, right? Yeah, and you're right. And they believe that the Americans have got it all wrong and they can show us the way even though I've been to grocery stores all over the world. And the fact of the matter is we have some of the worst in the United States and some of the best.

05:44 including a chain that's now evolving out of the Seattle area. I'm sorry? What's coming out of C- Well, we'll get to that in a second, I guess, about C- Yeah, let's talk about Fresh and Easy. Here's what they did, and this is what makes the story interesting. They came in with supposedly a lot of research, and they're gonna come in and blow the American market away. They're actually on the wrong trends in almost every way. They're gonna lose- If anyone's an investor out there in Tesco, they're gonna lose- Short that shit! They're gonna lose their ass. And I normally don't cuss. And here's one of the reasons. For one thing, their research indicated that people wanted fresh food, and I think that's probably generally true. But so what they've done is they've changed the way they do expiration dating. And that was the biggest mistake they made, because in the United States we expect the date to be pushed way out to the point where the date should reflect

06:44 should reflect the date when the food, milk, or eggs, or whatever, are literally rotten. Yeah. In fact, it is American culture to reach behind the products in the front of the Of the shelf and get I mean even even fresher stuff from the back. I do that I do that all the time. Are you kidding me? Especially with buttermilk by the way for anybody out there who doesn't like buttermilk and they should get into it But if you live in Florida and Georgia, this is where the best buttermilk in the country exists. I mean you can't I'm not a buttermilk. I'm a I'm a soy milk guy. I don't drink buttermilk. Yes, so I shrink your brain by the way No, it does not that's what a horse shit. It's really good for you. Shrink your brain

07:27 Yeah, it's if you like to have mock Estrogen are you so he's good. So if you're into that that's fine, but anyway, so you know which causes all kinds of issues We're not big soy eaters in the wait a minute. Excuse me John am I killing myself by drinking soy milk now? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, what seriously? Yeah What's an unnatural product? Stop drinking it. Drink milk. Well, no, stop. No, no, no, no, no. Stop the fucking show. Excuse me. I've been drinking soy milk exclusively for the past two years because it's supposed to be good for me. And now you're saying... Yeah, it says the Soy Council and the public relations operations out of the U.S. By the way, we did a lot of research on soy. Of course, I get a lot of flack for every time I bring this up.

08:10 You know a lot of people think that you know male breasts are due to too much ingestion of soy Products, but anyway, but the thing that's interesting is that the soy bean lobby in the United States has got a public relations agency that is so strong that every time you read about soy, if you start looking at enough material, go on the web and start looking at, you know, where people say, well, soy is bad for you, and then you'll see these responses. These responses are almost word for word identical because they're all pushed out by the soybean PR people who are just, you know, keeping the soybean industry alive and it's mostly for the oil, which we don't use either. We don't use soy and we don't use canola. Hold on, hold on, hold on. We'll get into the soy thing right after you finish the fresh and easy because we just got to stick on that but then I really want to hear about the soy stuff. And canola is another one. Anyway, I'm surprised you don't drink canola milk. All right, let's go. My breasts are a little tender. I wonder what's wrong. Well, that's probably from something else. But anyway.

09:10 So Fresh and Easy comes in with this idea. So they put, to get people, they think that by changing the date, instead of like, for example, say it's April 1st and you go back and you wanna get some product that says April 14th and there's some that says April 10th. Yeah, that makes you feel good. That makes you feel like it's fresh. Yeah, you make sure. So they've got, but they got their numbers really tight. So if you go on on April 1st, probably the furthest out it'll say is April 4th. And so people would go in there and they wouldn't find what they considered fresh by American standards because of the way we do our dating. So these guys immediately come into the country and the first thing they do is they assume that their style of dating is somehow acceptable when it's not, which is a cultural thing again, which makes me wonder because they supposedly did a bunch of research before they opened these fresh and easy stores. The other thing that seems to be a problem with them

10:03 Is that there, if anybody's been to London, if you go to a Marks and Spencer's, they have a grocery store in many of these places. And those places are, they have a lot of nice stuff in there, but the fact of the matter is it's a very sterile environment. But it's very upscale. I mean, it's the most upscale supermarket food you can purchase here apparently. Chain, chain supermarket. Well, I'm not sure that there was another place Sheffield chef that other one that's over there. No marks and Spencer's well Yeah, I mean you have you have like Fortnum and Mason's you know, but that's that's not a chain. That's no that's not no That's not a right for a chain. Okay. Well, maybe whatever the case is it is not a comfortable. It's not a comforting It's not an American new style store like a Whole Foods for example and

10:53 Which would have a funkier quality and more, you know, more wood and you know kind of a... You know what their ad campaign is for Marks and Spencer over here for their food? What? Oh, they've really beautifully styled... I mean it's very hard to shoot food for television to make it look good. So it really looks good. And the tag is always, this isn't ordinary food. This is M&S food. Yeah, right. Well, nice try. So their bangers are quite good, by the way. If people like a British banger, a good one, there's only they're very hard to get in the United States because it's almost there's a lot of people don't realize it's against the law to put as much bread crumbs or what they call rusk into the sausage as they do in England. It's actually illegal. Really?

11:41 Yeah, there's a law because years and years ago and during the 20s I guess you know people would make him crappy sausages And they were just loading them up with bread and meat and so the you know it's the legal guys came said this is ridiculous That's not a sausage damn it, but so meanwhile a sausage. That's really us. That's about half bread which is a British banger and A good one is really, mostly, is you got a lot of bread in it. Because for the texture, you need that bread in there for it to be exactly right. If you like that sausage, I'd really like it. I do too. I love them. Bangers and mash, baby. The only good bangers that I've had, there's some in Canada you can get. And in fact, I took a Canadian air flight once from Toronto to London, and they had, for breakfast, they had a really outstanding banger on the Canadian flight.

12:30 Anyway, so I'll say back to the the this was now becoming a shaggy dog story about fresh and easy. Yeah So they so they immediately tells me that their researchers were either had their you know, they were there were It's full of shit. So anyway, so they come in. But the other thing that's interesting that people complain about, which I wanted to discuss a little bit, is the fact that they also have this European style that is rather alien to Americans in general, except maybe in Berkeley, where people do it voluntarily, where you bag your own food. In the United States, it's like,

13:11 If you're in the union, maybe I'll bag my own food and get in union pay. But for the most part, we don't bag our own food. And I can already hear one of the listeners to this show moaning about the dilettante nature of American shoppers. But the fact of the matter is, it's a tradition here and it's our culture not to bag our own groceries. In fact, most people can't bag them right anyway. break bags and I think over time they discovered that it was a disaster to let people bag their own groceries. Also, it's an efficiency thing because if you're bagging your own groceries it just takes longer unless you know because you got to bag them, you got to go back and you got to move forward and pay it and you got to put them in the cart and meanwhile people are waiting behind you. It's a much more, I mean, and by the way I think that there are many many retirees and young kids who would really benefit from having that gig. I mean it's a

14:01 It's a great gig just to be doing something and making some money. Yeah, no it keeps employment up. But anyway, the point is that we don't bag our own groceries. Although if you go to Berkeley, you run into people that voluntarily go over and start bagging their own groceries because they think they're in Europe or they want to pretend they're in Europe or they feel like they should be in Europe or whatever. We're saving the earth, John. We have to save the earth. Now these are the same people that put bicycle lanes all over the place and there's no bicycles in them but they all wish they you know I say those bicycle lane building and I'm sorry no one or my drinking losers if you want to ride a bike move to Amsterdam that's what you ride bikes all the time it just doesn't make any sense at all and we shop at Sainsbury's as you know that's where we do most of our shopping and they do ask you so they don't have baggers but they'll the cashier will say would you like me to help you bag

14:55 Well, that's new. Um, no, no, no, no, I've never seen it. Well, I live here dude and I've heard it for the past couple years. I've passed it since Barry's numerous times. Well, maybe they looked at you and went like, fuck that yank man, you know, let's teach him a lesson. It's possible. Bag yourself. But the point is, is that, uh, Generally speaking in Europe you bag your own groceries and in some places and I think in Asia in some places you actually have to buy the bags. Oh no, that's common in the Netherlands you have to buy the bag. You have to pay for it. It's an extra, you know, like 50 cents now. It used to be, I remember it used to be a dime but now it's 50 euro cents per bag. I can advise most Americans that you can just take the bags and not pay for them and they figure you're just an idiot.

15:40 So, uh... Typical American attitude, John. Come over here, visit our fantastic supermarkets, yeah? The ones you love to shop and you know so much about, and then act like an asshole. Don't do that, man. This is what gives us a bad rep. You gotta stop that. And, you know, it's like drinking soy milk. Anyway, back to the cultural things. Right. Now, another thing you run into in Berkeley besides people voluntarily bagging their own groceries because they wish they were in Europe, is that they buy, they bring in all these crappy bags that are made out of cloth that they either bought or whatever, you know, because you could say, they actually do give you like a nickel or a dime or something back on your bill if you don't use their bags. Which is fine because, you know, golly, you know, the same people though that are walking around with these

14:55 Well, that's new. Um, no, no, no, no, I've never seen it. Well, I live here dude and I've heard it for the past couple years. I've passed it since Barry's numerous times. Well, maybe they looked at you and went like, fuck that yank man, you know, let's teach him a lesson. It's possible. Bag yourself. But the point is, is that, uh, Generally speaking in Europe you bag your own groceries and in some places and I think in Asia in some places you actually have to buy the bags. Oh no, that's common in the Netherlands you have to buy the bag. You have to pay for it. It's an extra, you know, like 50 cents now. It used to be, I remember it used to be a dime but now it's 50 euro cents per bag. I can advise most Americans that you can just take the bags and not pay for them and they figure you're just an idiot.

15:40 So, uh... Typical American attitude, John. Come over here, visit our fantastic supermarkets, yeah? The ones you love to shop and you know so much about, and then act like an asshole. Don't do that, man. This is what gives us a bad rep. You gotta stop that. And, you know, it's like drinking soy milk. Anyway, back to the cultural things. Right. Now, another thing you run into in Berkeley besides people voluntarily bagging their own groceries because they wish they were in Europe, is that they buy, they bring in all these crappy bags that are made out of cloth that they either bought or whatever, you know, because you could say, they actually do give you like a nickel or a dime or something back on your bill if you don't use their bags. Which is fine because, you know, golly, you know, the same people though that are walking around with these

16:31 With these cloth bags that they stuffed the groceries in instead of using and wasting the one paper bag Are the same ones who subscribe to the New York Times and relish the Sunday edition which probably accounts for about a thousand paper bags Per issue, but that doesn't bother them. You know they have plastic bags here only plastic They don't have paper bags we have plastic we have to come either plastic or paper Generally they ask you in most stores in some parts of the of the state and in San Francisco in particular they have gone out of their way to ban the plastic bag, and I think the plastic bag, which is used throughout Europe and the Middle East, I might add, is a disaster. I remember the first time I was visiting Israel, I thought, you know, you drive around into the outer reaches of the country and there's all these trees with plastic

17:23 Plastic bags is a woomy country. Plastic bags hanging from the trees as though it was fruit and you can't get these things down. It's a disaster. Do you, do you, oh by the way, when you drive over them and they stick to your exhaust, how much does that suck? It's the car smells the garage smells, but the remember we talking about those was it? Those swirling the swirling centers in the ocean where all the plastic It's one of the first shows we did so that's now happening near Midway. I saw a documentary the other night All this plastic is all whining at Midway is right in the middle of that was it with the word started with a G What was it called John?

18:03 What? One of those... Guadalcanal? No, no, no, no. In the middle of the ocean where all the plastic is swirling around? Yeah, the word for this phenomenon? Yeah, what was that? It was with a G. Remember? I vaguely remember. Somebody will bring it. Maybe we'll get it shortly. Anyway, so Midway is... which of course... Midway Island you're talking about? Yes, Midway Island. It's right in the middle of one of these and they show that it's unbelievable the shit that shows up there. And remember when I was growing up, which was, you were already grown up, that you say, you know, plastic lasts for a million years and it never, it's not biodegradable. Well guess what? It's degrading in the ocean and it's being consumed. Yeah, it's being consumed by the smallest microbes and everyone, all these fish are getting sick. They're all gonna die. We're gonna die.

18:56 Most of the current plastic that's being manufactured is designed to biodegrade. They've reformulated it so it literally falls apart. But it falls apart in the ocean and those particles are eaten up by microbes or whatever they're called. So that's not good, is it? I don't know. Maybe they drink soy milk. Hey, I got a cultural one for you. Let's finish this story about fresh and easy. All right, but then we got to do some more cultural stuff. Fresh and easy. Okay, so let me just let me summarize so These arrogant Brits come in thinking that they're gonna take over the supermarket world. They say you know what we'll do We've done all the research apparently and they're going to change if they change the way that they date the food but in such a way that it is exactly opposite to what Americans like because we like to see a date that is at least 14 days in the future, but we'll settle for a week and

19:57 That's it, right? Okay. That's part of their problem. It just shows that they're incompetent. Also, their store layouts are not Americanized and their stores are too small. They think they're going to do... This has already been proven not to work. The mom and pop family neighborhood store doesn't work anymore in the United States. People get in their car and they go to a bigger place. Now, the The best example of this is that, because Fresh and Easy wants to sell like, you know, pre-packaged meals and all this kind of stuff, that Boston Market. See, we always associate that kind of thing with a fast food chain, and Boston Market's already got that. They already figured out how to do that. But anyway, in the late 90s, and I think when I was still working at Tech TV, my route coming back from San Francisco would take me past

20:43 one of the uh... be yuppie markets such chains in the bay area is called andronicos and they were test marketing state i think all the andronicos marketplace was which as i read about fresh and easy is exactly the same concept and it was sitting right in the middle of a million condos and if anything could have survived with that mentality, it would have been this place which went out of business within two years. It was a test, it didn't work, obviously Tesco never heard of Andronico's, they don't know anything about this test that was done in the Bay Area, which failed miserably and the store was fantastic I might add. It was a really good little place to stop. They had everything, it was amazing in some ways.

21:27 But everything people just don't walk to a little store anymore that that went out of business with them with the milk trucks in the United States, and what people want now are these big stores, and the best example of what is really a hot store is up in the Seattle area, and this is, I'm gonna end the story after this, which is, and this isn't related to the Texas chain of the same name, by the way, but there's a market up there called Central Market. There's one in Seattle, there's one in Paulsbo, and it was started by a couple Japanese guys, It's huge, it has everything, it has everything Whole Foods has, but it also gives in to the regular commercial products. And it also even has like a hot dog stand that sells a perfected Chicago-style hot dog with Vienna sausage, as a matter of fact, with the sport peppers and everything else. It's an unbelievable facility.

22:21 that these guys should go check out and then rethink their strategy because this fresh and easy thing is a loser. Well, I'll tell you, a friend of a very dear friend of mine worked for McKinsey, the consultancy, and she was in the food department and these they called format. So the format of the store, which is the layout is what you see first, what every aisle. This is really well thought out. This is they they even would go on espionage missions And take because you know try taking a camera into into your local supermarket and start taking some pictures and see how quick your ass is kicked out because yeah I have done that but I do it knowing that I could get kicked out so I do it really quick Yeah, I mean, it's they are so protective of this so it it it really it boggles my mind That they would you know that they think they've done the research this sounds like literally like a first-year McKinsey

23:16 consultant who say let's try something new you know it doesn't sound like it's really been researched that well. No, it sounds like they botched the job of researching that then these little kinds of stores are not what right now Americans are going for the I mean if you go to a Whole Foods those aren't small little... No, those are huge. Those are huge. They're huge. But the central market, if anyone's up in the Seattle area, they should check out Central Market or Polsbo. There's actually three of them up there and I think there's gonna be a few more. Although I've heard that the central market done out of Austin, which is done by the H-E-Butt Company, a huge retailer, they, the H-E-B stores all over Texas and they do a thing called Central Market, which competes with Whole Foods down there.

24:03 And it's supposed to be spectacularly nice too, but I haven't been to one. So speaking of cultural differences, last night on the BBC here, the show I always watch Friday night, Jonathan Ross, Donald Sutherland was on. And do you know he's from Canada? And everybody know he reminds everybody right, but he you know so he he still says that you know Americans usually think he's British British think he's American, but everyone kind of neglects the fact that he's Canadian So he said you know there's a joke that he that he said he said he would tell he said The Canadians love the joke the Americans hate the joke and he wanted to try it out on the on the British and

23:16 consultant who say let's try something new you know it doesn't sound like it's really been researched that well. No, it sounds like they botched the job of researching that then these little kinds of stores are not what right now Americans are going for the I mean if you go to a Whole Foods those aren't small little... No, those are huge. Those are huge. They're huge. But the central market, if anyone's up in the Seattle area, they should check out Central Market or Polsbo. There's actually three of them up there and I think there's gonna be a few more. Although I've heard that the central market done out of Austin, which is done by the H-E-Butt Company, a huge retailer, they, the H-E-B stores all over Texas and they do a thing called Central Market, which competes with Whole Foods down there.

24:03 And it's supposed to be spectacularly nice too, but I haven't been to one. So speaking of cultural differences, last night on the BBC here, the show I always watch Friday night, Jonathan Ross, Donald Sutherland was on. And do you know he's from Canada? And everybody know he reminds everybody right, but he you know so he he still says that you know Americans usually think he's British British think he's American, but everyone kind of neglects the fact that he's Canadian So he said you know there's a joke that he that he said he said he would tell he said The Canadians love the joke the Americans hate the joke and he wanted to try it out on the on the British and

24:50 Okay, yeah, thank you. I was waiting for that so you want to hear the joke of course all right Let's let's see let's see if you like it He did some little visual thing here, but I don't think it's important for the joke to smile before before you do the joke not to interrupt But the fact that the Canadians love the joke means is somehow as some it's one of those Canadian jokes But you know That's what I was waiting for but it isn't at least I didn't think it was but then again. I'm not real I'm certainly not Canadian. I'm only half American half European. I'm a lover not a fighter So here's the joke

25:27 Two sperm are swimming along, swimming along, swimming along, and the one sperm says to the other sperm, dude, how long until we get to the womb? And the other sperm says, I don't know man, we haven't even left the esophagus yet. Huh. Now I thought it was pretty funny. Well, it is funny. I mean, technically. Did I not tell it well? Did you not like it that much? No, no. I mean, I think you can't tell it much better than that because, I mean, it's, you know, it's shallow. Very typical Canadian. You know what I think it is? I think what it is, the Canadians do... They're into fellatio in Canada? No, maybe. They have more hookers up there. Oh, please. Here comes the email.

26:16 Anyway, no, I think the joke is juvenile. You know what, I thought it was kind of funny. You know what, if anything, I thought that... It's like the punchline to the joke. Oh, that's not a rash, that's lipstick. To be honest, John, I thought that maybe a lot of Americans, if he would tell that on television or in some public forum, that maybe a lot of Americans, it takes them too long to figure out what an esophagus is. Oh, now that's a nice insult. Seriously. Well, I mean it, unfortunately. Yeah, you know what? I hate to admit it, but you might be right. Yeah. Not that, uh... You know that... We don't want to generalize or anything. By the way, esophagus... I don't know, this is no agenda where we're just obviously going to just roam all over the place. Ah, I can't wait. Esophagus is one of the definitive dishes in Taiwan. Of the beef variety? I believe so. Yeah.

27:18 I've had it I went to was I had Taiwanese get take me to a Taiwanese restaurant to give me all the traditional national dishes as it were from Formosa and Esophagus is apparently the you know right at the top of the list and it's actually quite good Can you imagine esophagus stuffed with banger? dripped in M&S soy milk oh man how wonderful would that be so Another thing about self-service, which we you know is the That in the United States we used to people used to pump our gas Oh, yeah, sure absolutely my wife you still won't pump her own gas because she wants that here And we used to get free maps

28:09 Oh that's right, oh that's right. It was the biggest thing on a road trip. He's like, dadadada can I run in and can I get a free map? Can I get a map? Can I get a map? Can I get a map? And the guy would check your oil, he would wash your windshield, pump your gas, and look at your wife's tits. And give you a free map. And the gasoline was like 50 cents. Ah, the good old days. So what happened with the $4 gasoline and they don't do anything, you have to do it all yourself and they won't check your oil and nobody cares. I just don't get the economics of this. By the way, in Oregon, it's illegal to pump your own gas. By law, it's required that somebody else pump it. Someone who's qualified. Yeah, qualified gas pumper. It ain't easy, you know.

28:53 Well, the economics I think are, you know, that came with the self-serve, I think it makes sense. It's just less bodies there and people don't care anymore. You know, we're conditioned to it. I think that went away such a long time ago. The, you know, self-service seems to be really everywhere now. Is there still anywhere you can get your gas pumped? The internet makes it even worse. Now you have to, you know, you can't even go to the, everything's self-service. I didn't notice it began when, When you used to go to Macy's, in the olden days, you used to go to a store and they would have people actually that could help you and actually had taste and they could lead you to buying a certain thing or whatever. Nowadays, they just have these clerks that get whatever the minimum wage is. And then they require them either through the bar coding system or through a...

29:44 punching it in by hand to essentially do all the people don't realize why it takes so long to get away from a counter in a big retailer because they're punching in all the accounting information instead of a bean counter doing it they're doing it at their register. They're doing the work for it absolutely. They're doing all the work bang bang bang so you sit there as if all this data is going in and then of course it ticks off something in some computer database So they can reorder more white shirts because nobody can notice that there aren't any left, dude I worked in retail when I was 16 selling electronic parts so literally diodes transistors capacitors You know transformers solder wire you name it and it was you know we had a cash register where you would in you'd write down every item by hand on the

30:37 on the, you know, basically, you know, like a receipt and then you slide that receipt into this cash register. It had a handle that you would spin but it actually modernized it and you hit the You type the amount in, you hit the big black button and it printed the total and it had an internal total, right? And then at the end of every single day, you'd have to compare all three pieces. So how much money you have left in the till, excluding the 30... gilders at the time that went in just for change at the beginning of the day and you had to match all of these different pieces of paper and that matched back to stock. You know, that's the way it worked. Well, and it worked well, but you know, by the way, I wonder where the word till comes from?

31:28 The money in the till I've heard that all my life and never thought much about it But it's not it's not a till it's a cash register the money in the cash register But the always said the money in the till maybe one of our listeners knows the etymology of that particular screwball term I'm of course looking it up as we speak, but it's kind of a hard word for Google Yeah, TIL would be impossible. I think it's TIL. Maybe it's TIL L. I think it's double L Yeah, TIL L. Let me see I'll do entomology till that always help cat you maybe put cash register and until him I come up with something Associative which is the way I do a lot of searches. That's something that I only learned maybe 10 years ago that NCR stands for National Cash Register Company

32:15 Right, and the reason that Watson named his company, he used to work at NCR of course, and got all his ideas from NCR when he started IBM, and he decided that he was going to name it like National Cash Register, but he was going to up the ante on each and every word. So instead of National, he made it International, and instead of Cash Register, he made it Business Machines. Yeah, exactly. A little a little known a little well, she's not that long Watson's Tom Watson still lives on in dr. Watson doesn't he does he yeah, it's not that dr. Watson like on it on NT and I thought it still did it on the 2000 dr. Watson would pop up and he would like Monitor shit that crashed wasn't that him? I don't think so. That's too weird if true. That's what I that's what I always thought I said that that's that's him. I

33:11 Well, if he had a baseball bat, maybe. What does that have to do with it? Yeah, there's stories of him and, you know, coming in to collect, you know, by breaking somebody's kneecaps if they owed. There's all these stories about the early days of IBM being the kind of a brutish, B-R-U-T-I-S-H type of company. Well, they were one of our clients when we had Think New Ideas, and they were like a I think they spent 15 to 20 million dollars a year with us and it was for the AS400 division. Boy oh boy oh boy. And those things, oh man, they're still huge. I mean really really big. Yeah. A lot of people are really fans of those machines.

33:57 By the way, back to the, and one more thing I just came to mind, because I was looking at my list of complaints, which goes on for days. But the fresh and easy people had this excuse about the dating, saying that, well, people are just, you know, they're going to come in and shop daily, which is another assumption they made about the shopper. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Which is not the way Americans do it. No. We shop weekly. Yeah. Yeah, I go, I don't, I mean, I love to, like I said, I like to shop. But I don't like to go to the grocery store each and every day just to buy today's food. I mean, I have a freezer. So here it is. Here it is. Okay. So it's a combination of... There's also a cultural shift happening in Europe, which has gone, I think, gone very, very rapidly, having grown up in Europe.

34:40 Absolutely, now you have your long-term items like your potatoes, okay, and stuff that you can just keep laying around. You get that in some big bulk. In fact, the potato guy would bring that to you, and he'd also take away the potato peelings. There was another guy for that back in the day. And you know every single day, you know mom goes out and she goes by the butcher around the corner and whatever and then you know she gets her meat and she'll go to the vegetable guy and that could even be a stand on a little market. And what has happened is they've tried to keep that

35:15 cultural process going, but now they've, you know, all those smaller stores are gone and it's become big box supermarkets. But they've kept that idea of going every single day. Yeah, well, Americans have never, except maybe in large cities like New York, generally speaking, don't shop every day, especially in the suburbs, which is where most people live in total numbers. And it's also impractical. I mean, I wouldn't mind living in Paris, you know, a block away from a meat market and a cheese shop and a bread store and a whatever. And yeah, and go every day, say hello to the butcher or, you know, get a cut of horse or whatever I wanted to eat.

36:03 That's because we live in a country where you gotta work your ass off. We work 12, 14 hours a day in the United States. We don't have any time for that shit. That's what's driven us. That's why we're such a tremendously huge nation and not like all those socialists in Europe who work 8 hour days and take 8 weeks of vacation a year. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's a shame. Dude, dude, speaking of the French. Sarkozy had a huge state's visit to the UK to visit the Queen and this is really big. I mean, they rolled out... Yeah, of course, we know nothing about this, so you might as well read it for us. Oh, okay. So, oh no, this is a big public display. They rolled out the golden coach and all the... It was really beautiful. It was a real throwback to like 18th, 19th century. Just fantastic grandeur, if you will.

36:54 And, you know, so Sarkozy addressed the entire parliament and he says it's time for, you know, for our two countries to bond together, talking, you know, about deploying more forces together around the world. But really saying, yeah, we know, in fact, he literally said, Sarkozy said, you know, you have your special relationship with America, that's great, but we want a real brotherhood between our two countries. But of course the real news was this was the first time that his wife Carla Bruni, former model and singer, came along with him. And dude, oh man, she's awesome, John. She is, I mean, she's like Lady Di of France, I'm telling you. I mean, just from the appearances, right? I don't know if she's done all the type of work that Diana did.

36:03 That's because we live in a country where you gotta work your ass off. We work 12, 14 hours a day in the United States. We don't have any time for that shit. That's what's driven us. That's why we're such a tremendously huge nation and not like all those socialists in Europe who work 8 hour days and take 8 weeks of vacation a year. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's a shame. Dude, dude, speaking of the French. Sarkozy had a huge state's visit to the UK to visit the Queen and this is really big. I mean, they rolled out... Yeah, of course, we know nothing about this, so you might as well read it for us. Oh, okay. So, oh no, this is a big public display. They rolled out the golden coach and all the... It was really beautiful. It was a real throwback to like 18th, 19th century. Just fantastic grandeur, if you will.

36:54 And, you know, so Sarkozy addressed the entire parliament and he says it's time for, you know, for our two countries to bond together, talking, you know, about deploying more forces together around the world. But really saying, yeah, we know, in fact, he literally said, Sarkozy said, you know, you have your special relationship with America, that's great, but we want a real brotherhood between our two countries. But of course the real news was this was the first time that his wife Carla Bruni, former model and singer, came along with him. And dude, oh man, she's awesome, John. She is, I mean, she's like Lady Di of France, I'm telling you. I mean, just from the appearances, right? I don't know if she's done all the type of work that Diana did.

37:43 But she, it makes so much sense. I mean, like finally someone good looking in the royal family. Really, I mean, we got Camilla for Christ's sakes. Yeah. A cab driver told me a joke about Camilla. He said Charles was driving around Windsor Castle and he accidentally drove over one of the Queen's corgis, you know, one of those dogs that she has. And the corgi's dead. And all of a sudden the fairy godmother appears And I said, oh, why are you so glum? And Charles says, well, you know, I've killed one of mom's corgis. Well, you know what? I'll give you one wish and maybe that'll make you feel better for today. He says, oh, could you please bring the corgi back to life? And Fairy Godmother looks and says, nah, no, I think that's a goner. I can't do anything that, you know, no, can't do that. And then Charles says, well, maybe you could do something about Camilla's appearance.

38:44 And the fairy godmother says let's have another look at that corgi for a second Now that's a good joke yeah, I mean you have to hear it in kind of that you know that London cabbie accent Yeah, no, it's funny with it with or without that Yeah, we even probably funnier with a guy that they could do the voice really do it Yeah, I can do the voice, but it that's it sounds pretentious Unfortunately, it's not quite so I had grits today. I I have, I'm not a big fan of the grits. Why? I don't know, it's just, it's not, I mean I'm very particular about breakfast. I was, I was, you know, I never, like, I never had grits actually until I started traveling into the south, the deep south in particular, they were, it's common. That's where you get your grips. Yep. Well it's common at breakfast and even in all the hotels. And it's an interesting dish because for people who don't know what grits are, they're actually a

39:40 kind of a corn mush, cornmeal mush that is made from a specific type of corn, hominy, that seems to soak up so much water and expand to such an extreme that you can see why poor people eat it because unlike like- It makes you feel full! In oatmeal, where you might need half a cup of oats to a cup of, or maybe three quarters of a cup of oats to a cup and a quarter of water and milk, it's like a couple tablespoons of grits in a cup makes a huge pile. But they're bland.

40:20 So I've been thinking about, I like them because they're interesting as a side thing. But what do you eat them with? I mean did you... Oh yeah, I'm with bacon and eggs or whatever. I mean just on a plate with the... Right, but would you consider... Instead of hash brown potatoes you'd have those. Right, but you don't consider any, like some people will put syrup on it, some people do other things. Right, yeah, some people put syrup on them and some people put butter on them. and you can cook them, if you cook them in broth they taste a lot better. But I was experimenting with, we have at the deli, we have a bunch of salts, a big thing right now, it's a big trendy item, everyone's buying all kinds of salts, all kinds of weird salts, and they're very expensive.

41:00 Salt's a huge I was at the fancy food show for the last two or three years some of the biggest vendors making the most money are selling salt and what kind of salts are there I mean that's like a Hawaiian salt which is red because it's in these Brick kilns and essentially it's pieces of brick that are in the salt as far as I'm concerned There's mined salt. There's Florida sell from France. What are the main differences between the salts I mean is it a I mean, it's like, what are the differences? I mean, you know, like spices can be sharper or less sharp. Yeah, there's flavors that are slightly different. They have a lot of different mineral contents. Not all salts are just sodium chloride. They have a lot of magnesium. Some of them have, I have some salt from Switzerland that has, it's half potassium chloride naturally, supposedly.

41:47 Anyway, but the one thing that you know, this is there's a number of salts expanding and it's just salts from the Himalayas There's Tibetan salt and a lot of these restaurants are starting to use these salts It amazes me John you don't know shit about Tibet, but you do know about Tibetan salt. That's just a travesty It's a travesty of justice And anyway, there's also a black salt. But the thing is, is that because they can't seem to make enough weird salts, there's all these smoked salts. And now you can get from the United States, you can get hickory smoke salt, mesquite smoke salt, and these are, you know, just basically taste like smoke. But now that's the lead up to what I have to say, which is the French have made a smoke salt called fumé sel for a long time, it's a tradition.

42:35 And unlike the American smoked salts, this stuff is actually fantastic as a product. And when you use it on grits, when you make the grits and use this fumé sell, it makes the grits taste really outstanding. It improves things a lot. But it's a French smoked salt, it's extremely expensive, but it's an astonishing product. I didn't know there was such a... such a variety of salts. I mean, anything like sea salt and, you know, table salt. Yeah, no, the salt thing is huge. And the other thing that we've noticed, and we can't figure this one out because we sell out of it constantly. We, you know, sell a lot of spices mostly. And I ran into the Andronicos that I mentioned earlier. I was in the store and they had it there too. And it keeps selling out and my wife can't figure it out. I can't figure it out. We haven't found any research indicating where

43:28 this demand is coming from, I figure it's the Food Channel or somebody, smoked paprika is the hottest thing right now in the spice department. Really? Red or green or both? Red. It's red smoked, it's red paprika, looks just like regular paprika, which there's no such thing as regular, now there's varietals and all the rest of it. the smoke paprika is going out the door and we can't and if anybody out there knows why I'd like to know myself because we can't figure it out I don't even have a recipe. It must be a new secret ingredient in crystal meth or something like that. Yeah well that's possible. So front page of the Financial Times weekend edition over here in the UK of course the controversial tax law new tax code goes into effect April 6 here in the United Kingdom

44:17 uh... and has been a lot of talk about that even on this show about non-domicile taxes etc so the uh... the first big uh... big loss for britain because you know i also predicted a lot of companies will leave and a lot of cool shit is just not going to take place here because of this so you love this uh... britain uh... britain's bid for the two thousand ten champions league finals which is near the huge uh... football competition at wembley arena uh... they're out of the race Because you a pho which is the the governing body of the Football Association? Said you know what since you guys aren't gonna waive our players being taxed when they play in the UK you're off so like the this is the country that is supposed to be the the new sports minded country we have the Olympics coming up and

45:10 They're now losing UEFA Championship football because of the tax code. Which has got to be worth millions and millions of dollars to the local businesses. Pounds even. Sorry. We don't talk about dollars anymore, John. It's just not worth it. Oh, by the way, have you seen this documentary, The Money Masters? No, okay. I'm only one hour into it. It was brought to my attention by one of my listeners the daily source code at daily source code calm And it's a three and a half hour documentary I think it's from it must it looks like it's from the early 80s and it does look like it was a real television documentary in its professionalism, but just from the Just looking at the at the footage it pretty much looks like it was 80s or maybe even a little or maybe late 70s, but it's about how

46:03 banks came to rule the world. So they focus specifically on the Bank of England, which surprise, surprise, is owned by private individuals and families and has nothing to do with the government or the Queen of England, and the Federal Reserve, which of course also has nothing to do with the government of the United States, and how the system works. And of course, you and I, I think we understand kind of what's going on, but they're able to simplify the process of how it works and how basically doesn't matter who's running what country where, these guys are running the whole show. It's a fantastic piece of work. You can Google it. Video.google.com is like the top hit. The Money Masters. Three and a half hours and it's just...

46:50 completely engaging even if you know the story they did it so well and it's and I hope that lots of people watch it because it just shows you how how everything is running and even the elections are a joke These two entities, the Federal Reserve and Bank of England and of course other central banks, they control us because they literally control how much your house payment will be, how much your car payment will be, what your salary is going to be. They determine that random and not well random to us but for their own benefit whenever they need to do it. So that's pretty much I think when

47:30 The lending hand is always above the borrowing hand, right? Well, all I know is that it's fishy. When you see this, your jaw will drop. your jaw will drop. You'll be like, of course, now I get it. Does it fit in with the confessions of an economic hitman? Oh, completely. Well, in that system, okay, so this is going back to, in fact, the American Revolution was because of central banking. They wanted to get away from that.

48:08 It's fascinating. We're taught in school it was about taxes. Yeah, it was partially about taxes, but it was about America having the colonial script, which was their own form of money. And they just issued enough for trade to take place and everything worked. There was no inflation, there was no national debt. There was money in circulation and everyone used it. You could get more of it by selling more or spending less. But there was just so much in circulation it wasn't brought in. through printing it through a third party who would then basically lend it to the government. Fascinating. It's really an eye-opener. Well, definitely watch it. Yes. In fact, I don't think you should go anywhere today. I think you should stay home in your slippers. Have a nice cup of tea there.

49:09 and watch this documentary. You know what, you won't get... I'm not mad. I'm looking at it, I'm going like, oh my gosh, of course. I mean, it's really Rothschild. Rothschilds run the world, dude. Well, you know, they make good wine too. Not just wine, they got all kinds of stuff. So we like them, I got nothing against the Rothschilds. But you also understand how bank runs really work, you know, when everyone has a run on the bank and everyone wants to get their money out and of course then you immediately understand why you get

49:45 Why there's attractive interest rates for locking up your money, which means you can't take it out for a certain period of time. Why? Because they're using that tenfold to, they basically lend it ten times over. It's just phenomenal. Well on this subject of colorless bankers, I met a number of the Rothschilds over time and they reminded me of the character, a lot of them, the British part of the family. Did you ever see the movie The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon playing a CIA guy? Yes I did. You know how he was basically no personality?

50:24 Yeah, yeah, that's kind of the way a lot of these that's the way they are The personality of a dishrag essentially I actually enjoyed that movie. Yeah, it was kind of highly rated You know it's for spy movies, but it brings up a lot of interesting points including the skull and bones thing. We have no candidate running for president currently that's a member of that organization. Which is new in history. Half the time there's always one of these guys running the country. There's always someone running, right? But this last guy, Bush,

51:05 He's done such a crappy job that the whole, they should kick him out of the Skull and Bones. Well I think McCain, although technically not a member, I think he does janitorial services for Skull and Bones. Yeah, at least he's not a, you know, it's these Yalies. I mean, you know, William Buckley and the rest of them, they're all characters. He passed away, didn't he? Yeah. You know, my cousin is married to Christopher. Buckley's son. Is that right? Christopher's also a writer, obviously. Yeah, I think he's the editor now of the New Republic or the... Right. ...or the... National Review. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, he's a nice guy. You know, I've hung out with him a couple of times at, you know, big family gatherings. And he's alright. You know, arrogant fuck, but he's okay. Hmm. Well, that's just kind of bread. He's probably... I think he's a Yale-y too.

52:01 I'd be surprised if he wasn't. So they all have that personality. Well, my cousin divorced them. So you won't see him anymore? No. You're gonna get him to do a podcast? Oh, you know, I remember When everyone had AOL and that was your email and that was kind of your information source and it was before the history of AOL at a certain point they actually opened up like pieces of the internet and that could come in through little gateways and still be within the AOL user interface and within its universe and it was protected, sanitized for your protection.

52:46 So I remember having a conversation with him and he was like, you know, the internet who cares the internet is stupid. That's nothing It's like CB radio. It's dumb, you know, AOL Having quite a conversation with him and I think it was at least six years seven years later and Several several million dollars in my pocket and he had to concede. Well, it's about time. Yeah Anyway, no, I'm reminded of you know, there's a bunch of these guys are a certain level of society that

53:22 They don't have the, either the wherewithal of the time or the desire to really learn anything at all about computing, computers, the internet. I mean, they can get by maybe. And because, you know, the secretary does their email. The secretary does all the work. And the thing is, is they make these ridiculous comments every once in a while. I remember when I was writing for Forbes, I read an editorial by Steve Forbes, who went on and on. This was like in the late 90s or whenever. And it was about how things are gonna change in the next couple of years because computers are finally going to become appliances. And you could just see it was just a wishful thinking. Computers have never and never will become appliances because they're not appliances. You'll have a smart refrigerator. They're not appliances. It's like a car becoming an appliance. You have to learn how to drive one. Yeah.

54:14 I mean it'd be nice if you could just jump in a vehicle, punch in where you want to go and boom you're there, but that's not the case. What bugs me is that there's never any real encouragement or they never really got to the right tools to enable people to actually program their computers. And there's been a lot of efforts, and if you have half a brain you can learn to program something, like AppleScript or some other, I think scripting languages mainly. But for your computer to do more, to automate stuff that is redundant for you on the computer. I've never felt enough has been done that way. It's always... I agree with that a thousand percent, and in the early days of the computers,

54:53 the desktop computers from 1976 to about 1986, that was encouraged a lot more. There was basic and there's all these languages that were easy to use. And then the professionals came in, you know, and they kind of swept it away when C, which is nothing you can casually learn, and some of these other languages became dominating. And then the next thing you know, they just kind of gave up on it. And even with the macro languages and some of these other things, they're either too complicated or stupid. Modem era was over when you had to learn some macro languages to make those things work properly. That was it, it just died off and now you don't do any, now it's just punch a, click on something, run a program, click on something else, get your email, do a search.

55:39 It comes standard. I've seen it. I saw it sitting there. It's got a robot icon and it's on the Mac I have at the office. Yeah. And I've not, I've been meaning to click on it. Well, I actually got into AppleScript a while back and I've always kind of kept up with it. You know, so you have scriptable applications and you know, passing data from one process to the other. And well, you saw like some of the stuff that I'd done with With my setup, with understanding MIDI commands. And it's really powerful, you know? If you have some type of control over what your computer is doing, which can involve multiple applications or processes that you're probably doing by hand. Yeah, no, you did as a phenomenon, phenomenal, but you took four years to do it.

56:30 Well, yeah, because the not that I didn't understand what I wanted to do or that I would you know Or that I could put the effort into learning how to do it, but literally the tools were not available so the buses and You know the the audio interfaces and APIs I guess you would call them or a system hooks or whatever and there was just no tools to get to it You know, I mean, yeah, if you're if you're a programmer you couldn't you could delve in and do something at a lower level type language like C But for just a guy who would you know who could understand the concept of scripting and just want some stuff to happen or connect? you know thing a to widget B and

57:12 There was just no way to do it. And so now there was a way to do it and the particular application I wanted to make, which involves a lot of heavy audio processing. The machine actually is strong enough to do it now. So my stepson says he'll help you get the patent if you tell him what you did. Sure. Well, I thought it should be a full on family effort, man. You got to be a part of this. Yeah, no, I mean I was showing I mean I've done it. I've gotten I've done patents. Yeah, what would patent do you own? I did a pet I don't own any patents, but I've helped people do patents and went through a real process with the patent office with a years ago as a guy came up with a

58:00 A weird recycling separator. This guy used to work at a scrap yard and invented this crazy device which sucks paper out of it. It's just that you throw all this stuff on this big spinning thing with a vacuum behind it and it sucks all different. Prod different things with different densities onto it and then shoots it off someplace on a conveyor belt You have to look at some of these places these huge scrap yards And how they operate to see what what that you'll see this kind of device anyway help me get patent It's funny. It's it's never really interested me to go to a scrapyard

58:39 Well, I was in this air pollution inspector and I had to go to scrap yards to see because there'd be smoke coming I was never pollution inspector. I wasn't Gonna clean up all your air gonna clean up like that. It sounds like a song Oh terminal five song ready to happen John. I got some more some more cool shit for you, man You'll love this the Heathrow's terminal five took 19 years of planning and building costs eight billion dollars to build Mm-hmm opened up a fucking disaster. They've canceled hundreds of flights the Something went wrong with the baggage system, and it always is with the baggage system, right? It's always the baggage system ever test these things They're not telling us exactly what went wrong, but it's not the airport because BA British Airways who has exclusive use of this terminal

59:33 It has said, you know, it's our mistake, it's our fuck up, it's not BAA. And saying at the same time, they're very critical of BAA who own all the airports. So that's British Airport Authority. It's not their fault. It has something to do with their baggage handlers or, I mean, it's a staffing issue clearly because everything else is apparently working. But they've had people sleeping overnight, people waiting four hours for their bags to get off of the plane, not being able to check in with any baggage at all except for hand luggage. It's just been absolutely disastrous. This is more reason never to check bags. Yeah, I know. But then you've got all that liquid restriction shit. And I got product, baby. I got product for my hair. I got product for my face. I got product for all kinds of stuff. And it's not all in 100 milliliter bottles.

1:00:25 Put it in 100 milliliter bottles. How much of that stuff do you need? Ever travel with somebody who takes big, giant bottles of shampoo? I mean, what is the point of hauling around all this stuff? I have a lot of small bottles. I got product. I'm like a woman. No comment. So, uh... Thanks. Change your ways. You are right though. You are absolutely right. But sometimes you got to. Clothing... Oh, the dog is pissed off. He's saying it's time to wrap it up. We actually got about 8 minutes left before we get to the 70 minute mark. This show has been going on a long time. But it's... I'm not getting a lot... Well, the only people who complain about it are those two jabronis, but I don't hear anyone else complaining about the length.

1:01:12 Well, it just seems to me that it should fit on one CD. But yeah, no, I mean, I don't care. Seems like an okay idea. I got a couple more complaints if anybody wants to hear them. Let me see. Yeah, we'll take another complaint. So, Jose can say ko is the guy as a baseball player is the guy who was responsible for the steroid thing in baseball being Broke blown wide open with this book that he did I think is a couple years ago mm-hmm called juiced and he named all the people that he had helped get he's a big steroid promoter juice which of course is the exact same name as the video video program

1:01:55 Juiced you spell it differently, but juice j-o-o-s-t. It is the same pronunciation juiced, but anyway He named all these days, and he actually when he comes on he's like a big steroid user he Probably has a prescription. I don't know what but he stays pumped up on this He's huge, and he thinks is the greatest thing ever And he talked, and I guess a lot of baseball players found it was very useful because it was a myth that, well, you know, people would always, I remember during the era when it was really being discussed a lot, was, well, you know, you can take all the steroids you want, but that doesn't mean you're gonna hit a 90 mile an hour fastball. You know, that takes other skills. It turned out that a lot of steroid use,

1:02:35 doesn't get actually increases all kinds of things other than just purebred strength it also makes you more likely to hit a ninety mile an hour fastball if you were with the added but anyway so it was like so that the show became a scandal and so nice got another book coming up which naming more names and uh... Which will keep this controversy going for a while. So I'm watching the TV version of the Jim Rome, Rome is Burning show and Jemele Hill was on it. She brings up this topic and she said something interesting to me that just kind of triggered a thought or two which was that She says that the problem with all this that these accusations that can't say who makes in the book He says he gave somebody the needle in the butt and then he told so he hooked up some other guy with it with a drug dealer all the rest of She's the problem is there's no second source. There's no second source for this information. Oh second source This became a big thing in journal. No, there's no second source. No second source. You have to triangulate

1:03:34 So I had to start thinking about the second source concept. And I realized that Hemingway, when he's reporting about World War II, was just reporting what he saw. George Sells, the famous correspondent in Italy, he would write about what they're doing, and it would go into the newspaper. There was no second source for correspondence. They would go someplace take a look at something and report on it. They didn't have to say well I see that the big oak tree over there is Dying let me get a second source in here to confirm what I'm seeing I mean you did it doesn't exist So your beef is that all of a sudden there seems to be some unwritten new journalistic rule which is not official well

1:04:20 Yeah, that's one of my beats, but what it boils down to, in fact, in straight reporting where you're essentially staying in the office and phoning people, you're supposed to get not only a quote from one person, but a counter quote from somebody else and a neutral quote. You're supposed to get the three quotes and you're supposed to have a second source for anything that... But if you actually are witnessing the situation or you're a participant, why would you need a second source? You're just saying what you saw. So I don't need a second source to say that the world is crumbling. No, no, no, I got it, I got it. Let me tack something on for you. This is more of the don't edit your own Wikipedia page bullshit. Which is another, that's where I fucked up. I didn't know that you, certainly not three years ago, I didn't know that you weren't supposed to edit your own Wikipedia page. Wasn't I fucking there? Am I not some kind of authority?

1:05:11 That's what this is. It's a cultural shift. There's a lot of mistakes in the Wikipedia that could be easily corrected by the person that the post is about. So it's actually idiotic. Not to edit your own Wikipedia page so you can maintain accuracy. The reason, of course, they don't want you doing it is because you're gonna take out all the negative stuff. What's negative stuff about people unless they're criminals even in their form? I mean, the Wikipedia thing is sketchy in a lot of ways. But the second source thing, you know, because we gotta, I've got a new correspondent I'm gonna be working with who's a Chinese guy, goes to China a lot, and who's a,

1:05:51 I think he's calling himself Hong Mao Tang, I think, something like that. He's just basically reporting. He was just in Tibet and he's essentially just goes and he's going to be reporting. And I'm not going to get any second source. I think, why do I need a second source? You don't need a second source when somebody's there reporting. And so I found it weird that she would say, this woman on the show would say that Ken Sago needed a second source. And I realized that that's a bunch of malarkey. You don't need a second source when you're just... 90% of the time, if you're there, you don't need a second source. You're looking, you're reporting, what do you need a second source for and why does this come up in the conversation?

1:06:34 Okay, well I've given you my input. I can't help you anymore with that one. No no I appreciate that too, but I just think it's a it's an interesting phenomenon We're all you know where you can say all that all you want But I'd like to see a second source in a second opinion. It's like you're going to another doctor second source Well, I guess no one trust anyone anymore. And you know, and even if you have second, third and fourth source, you know, the truth is, is whatever your perception was at that time. I think there's always three or four sides to the truth. It's just the way it is. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, don't even have any complaints this week. I'm just sitting here griping all the time. No, no, I got a big gripe. You know what? I'm actually pretty happy because Patricia is has been in Holland all week doing the Holland Got Talent.

1:07:20 Show no no this is great. I love the name well it comes from America got talent and Britain got talent You know this is a huge formula. This is like dancing with the stars type of audience like pop idol American Idol I mean, this is a worldwide successful format so You know that it's almost no risk when you walk into, when someone says, do you want to do this show? Because these shows don't fail anywhere. The formula is tweaked. It's perfect. But of course, if you are a good judge, that's really important for the show. So really the casting, and it is casting, of the judges in these reality shows makes all the difference. And it's not just how

1:08:05 How knowledgeable you are about either singing or in this case. It's a wide variety of performance art I'd say but it's also your reactions and you know and and it's really about how you approach it and you know they always want to have the Simon Cowell type person maybe the softer person and really what works and what is always this the the core of the of of the success of this formula is one person who is just honest. Not a dick. It may come across that way, but the person is just honest. And that is my wife to the T and but she can actually say things so honestly that it's you know Just cut your legs off at the knee, but you still feel good about it So the first episode aired last night huge ratings like a 20 share just off the charts And so that's been exciting. You know she's worked really really hard on it, and and you literally you know you you work all for a couple of weeks and then

1:09:05 You know they broadcast in the next morning. That's your that's your number right? That's your report card That's what it's all about in in in that arena after after the show airs I mean do they they did do they put them all in the can quickly I mean, they don't do does you have to go back every week? No well yes, so here's the here's the way it works, so they've done. They've completed now two weeks of the of taping in the theater with an audience, but it's kind of like the audition round, if you will. So 90% is going to go away. And then they have the next round, which will be four live shows in May.

1:09:41 And that's really counting down, you know to the final person. So those will be done live, but I think they've probably done Shit, I don't know. They must have done eight maybe eight episodes that will be the the audition rounds which of course are a lot of what the fun is about and then by the time you've finally become endeared to Yeah, no the audition rounds as far as I'm concerned is the only entertainment in these shows. Yeah the because it's fine Then you get hooked you get hooked on on someone that you just really turn on to and then that pulls you into the watching the live shows and voting and all that excitement it's fabulous it's it's if you're unlucky you get hooked

1:10:16 But anyway, so you're telling me, so the way they do this, they shoot like eight to 10 shows and they get those in the can so they just work real hard to get those done and then they have to go back, then they have to actually go live because they're missing phone ins and the rest of it. Week after week after week and that must be the grind. Well, no, those four live shows are great because the show is only going to last an hour and a half or whatever it is. Live television is great because you start and the shit's just gonna end at some point, whatever you do, and it's over. There's no going back and fixing it. So these shows, every day from one in the afternoon until ten at night,

1:10:59 You know, one after another. I mean, it's not front to back shows. They do openings and closes, etc. But it's really just all performances. They're sitting there watching one after another. And it's like grandmas on rollerblades. It's all kinds of crazy shit. And a lot of it is just, you know, I was there the last time when Patricia was doing the first week of shows. And the judges are just so So tired after you know one of these days of taping and just you know emotionally drained from looking at you know some really bad performances So do they have did and they do a wardrobe change I would assume between yeah Yeah, you shoot for an hour, and then you'd change and you go back and yeah, I mean this is all post-production it and

1:11:49 It's believe me Yeah, I think the person who deserves to win always wins, but man this thing is it's all post-production It's they really put this together. Well. It's art I mean what an art form and it just makes for a fun fun entertaining show and laugh about some people and get emotionally involved with others and Has no other redeeming quality or value Yep, no value whatsoever in fact. I was watching the effect I can't even watch much television the network's always wondering what's what's going on you watch shows like What's that one with Howie Mandel? Oh, yeah, I like that it's Well you have deal or no deal and then Dennis Miller's doing a show now, I think amnesia, it's worse

1:12:34 But I like Deal or No Deal, that's a great show. It's an idiotic show, there's no questions, there's no skills, it's just like you guess and then you watch people go off the deep end because they think they're gonna make more money because they can't do simple math. and look up on the screen and say, yeah, no, I think $250,000 is enough. I doubt that I picked a million dollars and it's in this suitcase I'm sitting next to. Besides, even if it is, why should I go through all the anguish? And it's probably not, it's probably five bucks. But no, I'm not going to take the $250,000 quarter of a million, even though I'm not making any money and I'm poor. So listen, so they go off and they walk off with five bucks.

1:13:10 It's unbelievable. You need to see a different show. You need to watch the show that Jerry Springer hosts and it's called Nothing But The Truth. I've watched that show once, it's unwatchable. I love that show. I love that show. This is my favorite question. So it's always around the $5,000 mark. And of course it's all based on lie detector stuff, which is all totally sketchy, but let's just say that you know this is I mean it really comes down to people saying things in front of their friends and family who are sitting there so the question I love the most is have you ever Fantasized about gay sex. I love that question It's so funny, and you see these guys just going like oh fuck man. You know it is

1:13:55 If I lie, then I'm gonna lose the $5,000, but if I say yes, it's like I'm never gonna live this down You know my homies are gonna be laughing at me. That shows is rigged weird anyway because the questions and answers are all pre-prepared. Yeah, I don't like that either. and you know the but it doesn't matter that's a good thing but that part is so entertaining makes you itch it makes you scratch it makes you it makes you cringe to watch that show that show is an example of what's wrong with television it shouldn't be encouraged people shouldn't watch it they should shoot the people who produce it that would be a good idea I love that show, John. You have the worst taste in television. Oh, please. Oh, look, just because I'm on the cutting edge on the working tip of what's going on in media today doesn't mean I have horrible taste. As the media goes off the cliff.

1:14:46 Look the I these shows are not going off the cliff These are the only shows that will be left because they're inexpensive to produce highly entertaining No other not offensive or or or useful in any other way whatsoever It is chewing gum for the brain. It is fantastic. I love it It's good for us everything else should be done online. It's not good for us It's probably the most detrimental programming in the world It's turning the public into a bunch of jackasses that don't know anything about anything. A good show on current events is what we need. People are so stupid, it's because of these shows. They're just stupefied by it. It is worse than the worst kind of drug.

1:15:34 I don't know what to say now, you've hurt my feelings. Well let me just think, I don't know, you know what, 75 minutes, forget about it. Let me think about this and I'll get back to you next week. That's my new signal, the time is up, John. You sure you're gonna let me, you're gonna let it end with my rant about your taste in television? Yep, I'm just gonna have to end it there. Okay. You got me. You got me. What can I say? You'll have to come back with something next week then. Yes. Not that we have an agenda or anything. You really got me going there for a moment.

1:16:23 But I think, I'm afraid if we get into it that the show will be two hours, you know what I mean? Yeah, we should save that topic for later. Let's end on a high. We're ending on a high so that people can, they're already yelling, in fact a lot of people are going to help me formulate my rebuttal next week. Good luck with that. Alright. So you doing twit today? Oh no tomorrow. No, I think that Leo took off he's up traveling somewhere. Oh Mongolia or so good because then we get a lot more listeners. I think that could be yeah and also a lot of people who are like Dvorak Dvorak groupies are showing up. No, it's about time. Yeah. All right, my friend and that was entertaining. I

1:17:16 I think. Yeah, and we'll be back again next week with more good stuff. For sure. From the Curry Manor in a wet Britain, my name is Adam Curry. And I'm John C. Dvorak in a slightly wet Northern California. We'll talk to you again next week right here on No Agenda.