No Agenda 006

00:01 Once again, it's that time of the week with no jingles, no music, no talent and no apparent agenda. My name is Adam Curry here in the Curry condo in San Francisco. And I'm John C. DeVorek. I actually sound more like you're in the Curry bucket. Really? Let me see. Maybe I can... Oh no, that's because I'm on the mobile setup. So when I do it from home, then you get the nice really clear sound and now I'm basically talking to you through a little hole in my laptop screen. Oh really? You're doing it through the laptop? Yeah, well I'm talking into my microphone, but the sound that's going into Skype is through the laptop mic. Okay, mm-hmm, so you're gonna sound better on the broadcast. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, baby In fact, I'm vibing all over my own sound right now as we speak We should do what the Leo does when I do the twit thing with him He like makes himself sound great and everybody else sounds like crap. Do you guys did that on Skype? Or do you do it on iChat? It's done on Skype. Okay, that works out pretty well. It sounds pretty pretty decent. Yeah Yeah, you know the drawback is I wanted to do a couple of other shows like I wanted to do a

01:04 I still want to do it. I'm going to try. I do a podcast or a pod show cast with a bunch of comics and deconstruct jokes. I still think it would be a very fascinating show and I know a lot of comics. My wife used to produce comedy. And the problem is, is like getting, you know, first getting people up to speed on Skype and then making sure they have a good enough connection to do it. Otherwise you really can't do any of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's true. It's kind of self-limiting. Well, you know, they have a computer though, right? Most of these people. Yeah, everyone has a computer. It looks like it's a mount, so I had to go there and set it up. Right. Yeah, that kind of thing. Because a lot of people have broadband, they have the capability to do this stuff, but they just don't know how to do it. And you don't like phone calls? You know, they're just too hard to mix. And it has a phone call sound. I mean, Skype, even when it's not working well and it breaks up once in a while, has an in-studio sound that I think people prefer to listen to. Right. Yeah, it does sound better. I agree. I agree.

02:01 Okay, John. It's been a man. It's been a long month. We're at the end and I just found out that I might actually be staying another Another week here in San Francisco. Oh, that's great. Yeah You better grease up baby because I'm been away from home too long yeah, well, I'll stay away from you then so What do we have on the, you know, you were telling us, you know, we had actually lunch the other day and you were mentioning a couple of items I think we should discuss and one of them was your continued hassle by the TSA when you come into the country. Yeah, and it's not the TSA. Technically, it is the Customs and Border Protection

02:42 Agency, I think they are. Okay, so you're basically being stopped by the customs guys at the end. Exactly. So whenever... Yeah, it is very different. It's also part of Homeland Security. But it is a completely different department. But it starts the minute you go through those glass corridors where you talk to the customs agent and then they look at your passport. They scan the RFID chip that's in there. Because I have a new passport. And then they look at the terminal and every single time it's like... all this tapping, typing, looking, looking, back at my passport, typing, typing, and then I always get a big M on my customs form. And this time I asked, what is that for? For many. Many what? Well, I don't know. Just many. Many? Really? They do have a bunch of codes that they put on there. I know. Sometimes there's a line, sometimes there's different colors. There must be a website that describes these things, don't you think?

03:39 They have their own website and it talks about everything on the security form and why you could be stopped and or the customs form and why you could be stopped because what happens then is you you know as you have your luggage and you hand it off to the officers there they say oh you have to go this way and this way is it's not through like the agricultural line they put my my customs form into a into a plastic envelope which is blue because they also have yellow ones and I'm not quite sure what the blue is for and then I have to go up to another officer at the desk and then he starts going into all these questions. They don't even look at my bag. It's something else. You know, there seems to be a lot of questions about are you sure you're not carrying more than $10,000? Well, you know, you're known as Mr. Moneybags. Yeah, well I had this big black bag with me, but they still don't look in it.

04:25 And you know at this time he had the guy actually went to his supervisor And then he came back and of course I was prepared I had a business card this time and I just for yucks I said he said do you have any more ID? I'm like well. Yeah, so you have my passport a business card Oh, here's my pilot's license. I see maybe if that'll mess with his head. That's cool But that didn't make any difference, and then yeah, I said you know what you're missing a Costco card. Yeah, I'll try that next time And I said you know so what is this by the way by the way just to interrupt the story I? And of course I do it better than anybody else. When people ask me for a photo ID, I always show them a Costco card because it has a photo on it. Okay, well the only photo ID I have is my passport because there's no other, you know, driver's licenses don't have photo IDs on them.

05:09 Anyway, go ahead with the story. Sorry. Right, so I say, you know, could you please tell me what's going on? Oh, it's nothing. It's just random. I said, this is three times in a row that I've come into the States. He says, that's exactly what random is. I said, uh-huh. I said, but it says right here, you know, the CBP procedures will be explained to me as one of your, you know, one of your mission statements here. He says, yeah, well, it's just random. So what kind of information? He says, you know, stuff is in there that we don't control or change and so... There you go, it's just random. He's clearly just not going to tell me. Not going to tell me what's going on. But now that I've done a little bit of research, there's about a million people on these lists and there's all different kinds of lists.

05:49 And I'm on a pretty insignificant one if I look at some of the hassles that other people are going through and of course I'm not going to actually try and get off of this list I mean if this is all the hassle I get I can live with that I think it's probably would open up a bigger can of worms if I you know send in all my details and try to follow through just the frustration alone because no one seems to be able to actually find out how to get off these lists. Except for one, which is if you have the same name as a suspected terrorist. The system is set up to change that, but the system from what I have read is not set up to actually remove people from the list entirely. That makes sense. Yeah!

06:33 so uh... i know there's a guy after i forgot what is is one name like bill johnson or there's some i mean they do they be tv shows here at the u s they harp on this one name i can remember the name exactly i think some legal jobs are very common name or or jerry jensen or there's some very common and and and it and it's it's the maxed out name and you can you're at the top of the terrorist list and everything these people literally cannot get on a plane You know, I'm just thinking, I'm just realizing that about nine or ten months ago there was a deal that we tried to put together with a radio network and that deal for a whole bunch of reasons fell through. And the main guy on the other side sent me an email at one point and threatened me that he would call up his buddies at customs and get me

07:28 Make sure that I had a cavity search each time I came into the country. That was basically what he said I should look up the emails pretty funny So I'm wondering if that has something to do with it. If so, then that of course is something that should be traceable and is a huge misuse of power. But I'm not really being investigated for any contraband, I don't think. No, you're just being harassed. Now the thing is, you say, you know, it should be traceable, but then again it might not. Let me tell you my story, which is not quite as horrendous, but it's actually more annoying because it's a continuing one. We have an account, because we're part of the West Coast, you're stuck with SBC, which is AT&T. And so, anyway, our phone gets slammed a lot. Next, you know, because we... People calling up to try and get you to switch networks? Well, it's not even, they don't even bother calling anymore, they just do it. But it's not that, it's all these extra services they add to the AT&T bill. And let me just explain, you know, we have long...

08:26 time ago, this is like me and the burners and the cell phones, people who listen to me a lot know that I prefer buying these disposable phones. And well with our phone service, we only have local service and this is the same up in Washington and here. And we use calling cards to make long distance calls. Because the it's just there's no comparison you don't have to worry about a lot of it's just a cheaper more sensible thing to do if you can do it because the quality is sometimes even better and so we don't have long-distance service on the phones. You're a funny man, John C. Dvorak. What? Keep going. Okay, so we have no long-distance service because we just dial the 800 number and make a long, you know, whatever we do. And besides, I prefer people calling me if I'm around, even though I don't keep a machine. But anyway, let's get back to this. So every, about once every two months,

09:23 The next thing you know, we've got long distance service. We have all these crazy services that we never use because I don't like, for example, having a call waiting because I don't like to be talking to somebody on the phone and then having the phone call interrupted by somebody else who's just, you know, could be a sales call. Yeah, but that's the beauty of of caller ID. If I don't recognize the number, if I hear the beep, I like call waiting. I'll just look while I'm talking. A lot of people think it's fantastic. I think it stinks and I don't like the beep. So anyway, so we have, next thing, so this was happening over and over, so we got AT&T to give us a password, so you cannot do anything, supposedly, on our phone without giving them the password. So some, you know, buddy from the sales. Oh yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they set up the password so you can't change it.

10:17 No, we can change it. They set up the password so somebody else can't change it. Okay, got it. Because what's been going on is somebody else is changing it. And so now it got changed again like a week ago. That's gotta be an inside job then. Totally an inside job. So my wife started grilling this guy saying, well what about the password? Does anybody get a look at it? Yeah, apparently all those people that call, they can bring up your record and your password is on there. Some fucking phone monkey for eight bucks an hour sitting there looking at all the passwords. Exactly, and so we keep having to deal with this and this never goes away. My wife says, if you're saying, you know, she always thinks it's somebody that hates me, you know, some Macintosh user who still has a grudge about something I said in 1989. Wait a minute, I'm getting email that you've been harping on leopards, so, you know, it could be a new occurrence. I like a leopard. See, this is the joke of it. I just talked about it on Tech 5 today. You can check it out if you're interested at tech5.pacho.com.

11:14 you know, the 100 listeners. And I say, you know, people are calling it leptard, and they're having all kinds of issues with it. It crashed for me at the office today for the first time ever. Oh really? Yeah, it crashed because it couldn't load some Excel spreadsheet and it just died. It just basically hung up. And so I rebooted it after like, you know, I've had the thing for two or three weeks and I rebooted it and I'm thinking this is it. I have to reboot the machine once every three weeks. And I'm a Windows user. It's like an Etch-a-Sketch. You just kind of shake the Mac around and start it up again and it works magically. I'm thinking, you know, and people are complaining about this. I'm a Windows user. We're rebooting every couple of days if we're lucky.

11:58 And these guys are moaning about it. I'm thinking, oh, you guys haven't got a clue. Yeah, I gotta tell you, man, ever since I went back to the Mac, I'm so happy with my work experience. Just doing everything is just so much nicer. And I still, till now, I lug along the VIO laptop because it has, it's basically now just the studio, right? Because it's got Cast Blaster running, which only runs under Windows. and I gotta tell you, I've been on Windows for a year and a half and I'm back to the Mac and damn, fuck you Steve Jobs, you got it right. Well, I don't have a problem with either of the systems. I like the Mac, I like the PC. I mean, I have issues with the Apple as a company. But the fact of the matter, it is a better system. I'm not gonna deny it. And when people, I've said this before and I'll say it again, if people are asking me what to get,

12:47 I tell them to get a Mac, they get a Mac laptop or get an iMac or something like that because they're not gonna be calling me. But if I, you know, I tell people to go get a loaded up PC with a dual, with a, you know, a dual core, a tri core, whatever, you know, some fancy machine which is making a lot of noise and it's got big fans in it and it's really fancy. Yeah, it's probably a great machine for playing games and things like that, but I don't want to get the phone call about, you know, the crazy crashing or whatever. I just, too many, too much going on. Ah, I hate that. I really hate it. It's gone away from me now a little bit, but man for a while there I was definitely, you know probably about five years ago when there was a whole, maybe around the time XP came out, I don't know, but man I was definitely the support guy for my family. Ugh. Yeah, no it's terrible in fact.

13:37 Yeah, it's to be avoided. Especially if you've done it for years and years and years. I mean it was okay in the early days of computing, you know, 20 years ago because it was kind of cool to help people out and get them going. But now it's just tedious and there's no reason for it. I don't think a Mac's a good deal, but necessarily, I mean everyone likes to argue, well it's pretty much the same price. It's a little more expensive, but not that much more expensive that you shouldn't get one. Yeah, for the lack of hassle. Hey, did you, switching gears, did you watch the Republican debate? I only saw bits and pieces of it, and I'm actually surprised that the Republicans would put up with such a cornball. I mean, when you have snowmen asking you questions, and guys as avatars of Krusty the Clown and whatever else is going on, and these guys are standing up, they're seriously answering these questions. And did you see that Anderson Cooper issued an apology?

14:33 the day after the debates because there were like two shills in the audience. One guy who sits on like three boards with Hillary Clinton or something like that or is you know on a board. Oh no, the whole thing was a disaster. It was laughable. The Republicans, they should be ashamed of themselves for putting up with it. They should have walked out. Yeah, I agree. It was really bad. And just, you know, CNN's just making a show. I like it. It's entertaining. But you know, what the hell does it have to do with a real debate, you know? I don't know, it's just...no. It was, you know, I would really, if I was any of the candidates, I would rethink going to any of these things when it's set up as a joke. Yeah, no, I tend to agree. And also, I thought my man Ron Paul didn't do a great job. It wasn't the forum, really. It was infantile, almost. You could predict what everyone was going to say and there was a little bit, you know, and then all the news I read was, wow, fireworks, and, you know,

15:29 Giuliani and Romney and they're going at each other's throats and like wasn't all that it was dumb. It was just dumb It was dumb. That's about it that summarizes it so I noticed that the hurricane score came in finally, you know hurricane season just ended and in the United States. It must have been lower than previous years. Well, here's what I got. In 2005 when everyone was really jacked up about global warming there were 26 hurricanes in the US. And so everybody's thinking, you know, the whole climate change and all this other stuff. We're fucked! Run for the hills! Run for the hills. So Colorado State, they were one of these

16:08 all these great meteorologist area you know uh... arenas are uh... the value i don't know what they are but these schools and have a lot of meteorologist and their big shots meteorologist a lot of state predicted seventeen we're gonna hit this year is going to be horrible is getting worse and worse and worse because of global warming one yeah i was gonna say i can't think of more than one no one hit the states is a few that hit the nose and central america but even then it was in that many so was it died So so I'm thinking these you know climatologists and all these Meteorologists these guys don't know anything and we're still waiting for the huge superstorm that is supposed to hit the west coast of continental continental Europe in the east coast of the UK These two you know this there's one guy in the UK and a couple different meteorologists, you know, basically TV weathermen

16:56 In continental Europe have been predicting this for weeks. They evacuated thousands of people two weeks ago. Nothing happened They're talking about this huge depression. You know, there was a famous instance in the UK Maybe I don't know. I think maybe nine or ten years ago where a TV weatherman god I wish I knew his name because the Brits would know exactly what I'm talking about and He got a call just before he went on the air from this woman, and he relayed the story on the air He said you know he was given the weather forecast. He's saying by the way. I just got a call from this woman who said there's a There's a twister coming through Coming through Wales or whatever it was he says I can assure you you don't have to worry about that like 18 dead because of this fucking twister that went through Wales And we've never you know the guy disappeared from the face of the planet. He has no career. He's no life. He's gone and

17:45 A twister in Wales, wow. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't Wales, but you know, it was... In Britain, yeah, just any hurricane. What's up with that? Well, it's a tornado. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. So I didn't know anything about this evacuation thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think 10,000 people were evacuated. They had stadiums set up and everything and it just didn't happen. It just rained a little bit. But they've been looking at this huge... They had a soccer game in the stadium. They might as well do something to assuage the bump. Exactly. So, yeah, it's... You know, I read the Dutch Google News

18:24 Every day I read the US Google News I read the UK Google News and then the Dutch Google News which really gives me a flavor of Europe and there's a lot of stuff that we just don't know about over here. There really is. Our news coverage sucks. We're like one of the worst. And of course, especially when you read it in a foreign language and you read...it's funny for anyone out there who doesn't know Adam, he roams around the office at Pod Show. I don't know why, who he's talking to, but he's probably his wife. But he's got somebody on the other end and he's speaking English. I'm speaking in tongues. He's rattling, brattling away in some, some foreign language that I can't quite make out. That's usually I take those calls in the stairwell as you know, of course, that's my real office.

19:10 But then you know I'm talking to 15 to my wife for 15-20 minutes And then you know you know how women can be and I said hun I got to hang up and she's and yeah, okay? Oh, let me just talk about this and then so I start making coffee in the hallway And I start walking towards my office hoping that the call will end just before I walk into the meeting So that's what that's about. Well. It's actually adds a kind of a continental quality to the whole place. Well dude, have you seen our office? I mean it's like Tower of Babel in there man. We've got guys with the turbines, we've got people with the... you know, God knows from what planet they came from. We've got quite an international crowd. Yeah, but they're not speaking Dutch. Okay.

19:56 So, you know that guy with the, you know that Korean that was supposedly killed by a cell phone? Yeah, I heard about that. I think I saw a post on your blog about that. Yeah, well it turns out to be a hoax. I was just gonna say, it didn't look like an implosion. It looked like something might have melted. I can't see how that could kill you. Well, the picture that we had on the blog was just a generic picture of a cell phone that was melted. Oh, a generic cell phone picture, okay. But apparently somebody had murdered the guy. Oh no! And then they planted the cell phone in some way to make it look as though the cell phone might have killed him. And what was interesting to me is that the media, nobody questioned the story because I think, to be honest about it, that everybody, especially people in the media, they have such a deep-seated hatred of cell phones and cell phone users and the fact that they're annoying as they're walking around. They were hoping it would kill, it killed the guy.

20:49 I think I mentioned on my show that what people really want to see is some guy's cell phone blow up while he's holding it up to his ear. You know on Source Code, remember Nokia had to recall hundreds of thousands of batteries, maybe millions of batteries? Remember that yeah, so probably two months before that someone called in and went through this whole story about how his girlfriend woke up in the middle of the night and the phone had been charging and the battery exploded out of it and Flew shot straight across the room and burned a hole in the rug and she didn't know what was going on It was all backstory to it and and so, you know, I hooked him up with Nokia and

21:27 And lo and behold, the exact battery type that was the exploding kind... ...was the one in this guy's phone. So hopefully we contributed a little bit to them doing that recall. But I thought it was pretty amazing. So you were going to talk about the... Yeah, it was amazing. You were going to talk about... I'm sorry. I'm tired. Yeah, you are tired. And you got to spend another week. That's terrible. So, because I know you were trying to leave to get back to my girls, man. And it's like cold here. It's gotten really cold over the last couple of days. Yeah, it's no better in the UK. But at least there we have, you know, like coal fire and a nice fireplace. You know, I, you're talking about coal fire. You know, I used to work for the air pollution control district and I'm still, a lot of people don't realize I'm an air pollution expert.

22:18 Among amongst many talents mr.. DeWalt. Yeah, what happens you build them up as you get to become older so anyway So one of the things I have some yeah, that's that's cool Sorry, I do I have some sort of sick pleasure in Cranking up a coal fire every once in a while. Yeah, I love because in in California people don't even know what coal looks like and And I happen to have one of those, you know, the coal holder. If you're going to put a coal fire in your fireplace, you need like this special kind of a basket. You load it up with coal. And then when you get the thing cranked up and I kind of fell in love with coal fires when I was in England about 20 years ago and I was out in the middle of nowhere at some meetings.

23:00 in some giant, one of these giant inns that had a bunch of fireplaces. In the room, you had one of those probably. Well actually no, this was like a big hall with about five fireplaces all lined up that each of them had a coal fire going and coal fires are absolutely fantastic. because the stuff for one thing once you get a coal fire going people you know in the US in the West Coast the East Coast people know about this they hate this stuff but the West Coast they don't they don't understand any of it and the thing is it's a fascinating product because coal is a rock that burns And so once you get it going it burns forever. Yeah, it just glows and you don't have to like have a You don't have to keep tending it. It's just throw logs on the fire You don't have to do any of that yet And it goes out a little bit after a couple hours and just rake it up and there it is It's back and actually if you use the really super high quality coal which we can get out here You don't even have to do that

23:58 It'll go for overnight and then in the morning it'll still be going and you can throw some new coal on there and you get it cranked up again. And it gives off a really nice radiant heat. It has a flame that's very pretty. It gives off a beautiful radiant heat. It's very hot. But it gives off a stink. It's not a bad smell to me. It's a cozy smell. It's a funny smell, but I know for a fact that I haven't done it for a while because the guys that I get the coal from, they stop bringing it in. I'm going to try to get some more, but I know that for a fact when I cranked up in the neighborhood here, because I would go someplace and I'd come driving back, you could smell the coal smell in the area, and I know for a fact nobody

24:42 in the entire, within 10 miles of the house, who's maybe been smelling it, knew what it was. There's no way. It's just an alien aroma to California. Okay, Mr. Pollution Expert, is this not horrible? Well, you know, the amount of, uh, the actual amount of particulate, which is really the problem here, and there's a little, with low sulfur coal, it's not really much of a problem. And the kind of coal that you burn in fireplaces casually for decorative purposes is extremely low sulfur, so it's not harmful. It's, burning wood is probably worse to be honest about it. Right. In terms of what it puts into the air. Well, I like it.

25:21 Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it But it's a really a great product for I mean, this is amazing. What are we not spoken about? The comic book guy what we're gonna do I was gonna give you the backstory on that yeah, I don't know anything you said we're gonna talk about it on the show well And I got to be careful because if I say it wrong then he'll get really upset Who's he comic strip blogger okay? His name is j6 something or other I don't remember his real name and And he's a fan of yours or what's the deal? Well he latched onto the Daily Source Code a couple years ago and he started in the comments and he would just write these outrageous things. He really, as we would say in Holland, his heart was on his tongue. But you know, and he's also coincidentally the guy that started this whole fuck you Adam Curry business because that's literally how he talks. And it was just really interesting to me and I googled him

26:22 And I found out that he had worked at Nokia. And I guess he had a blog and he was basically posting on the blog about shit that sucked within the company. That's, I'm paraphrasing I'm sure as to what it exactly was. And so he got fired and some say he got kicked out of Finland. How do you get kicked out of Finland? You don't want to cross Nokia's path, man. They are Finland. And out of anger and spite, but maybe also because he felt there was more future in the platform, he became a huge proponent of Windows Mobile. And he started blogging and podcasting, he'd go around to these MVP events, which I believe he's been banned from now, and he would ask really straightforward questions, actually journalistically great questions,

27:16 But his approach of course was very brash, and you know he'd be the equivalent of going up to no I saw a piece of video done in the Apple UK store where a journalist went up to Phil Schiller and said so Is this going to be a problem with anti-competitive laws in Europe where you basically have to buy something to get something else? Are you tying the phone to the network and then immediately the PR people jump in and Schiller backs off? It's that kind of question, straight to the point. Right, good stuff. Exactly, good stuff. And it freaks him out. I think his appearance and the way he speaks, he has this Polish-German accent and he's just the vocabulary. I like it. Yeah, so I got really interested in the guy.

27:57 And I think Jeff Smith made a jingle for him, you know, and then he started calling in and he knows a lot of shit, particularly about the European Union. And so, you know, he'd give reports on that. What, like what? Give us some examples. Is he an EU basher? No, no, no. He really believes in the EU, but he points out all of the things that are wrong and that are messed up. He's another guy that gets stopped going into another country and then he'll record it and he'll say, why do I have to show passport? Am I not EU citizen? Which of course is a great way not to get through passport control.

28:36 Yeah, that works, but he's no he's a beautiful guy and then he one time he came You know we set up a date after years We would meet at the UK office and this video was on YouTube, and I think on his site comic strip blog calm he interviewed me about my mobile devices, and it was so funny because then he gave me a PowerPoint pitch and About what he wanted to do to work for pod show you know like a consultant type role And it was so funny it was the only pitch I've ever received in my life that literally ended with a slide that says PS fuck you Adam Curry oh Man, this is so beautiful

29:12 But he's been he's been he's the one who invented that phrase. I know you you like to use yes Yeah, so people still It's it's comics for blogger You know and everyone knows him that way and and everyone on the show listen to the show has become accustomed to that and and what I noticed is you know I think I said once I said this is my mistake. I said hey everyone should end their comments that way that's pretty cool, and then of course everyone starts doing it, but psychologically it's really interesting and Because the quality of the comments has gone up because people are really concentrating because they know at the end they're gonna have this big payoff and And the comments are good, and you know they're short There's a sink people don't ramble on because they know you know they got to get to the point to get that bid in and it's so it's it's been fabulous for me

30:00 Yeah, apparently you like it. Yeah, I think you like being cussed out You should you should look this guy up though because he has a pretty interesting history and he's definitely one of us When it comes to questioning authority and and the man he's an interesting guy. Yeah, it sounds like it I'm gonna have to I will check him out now one other thing before we finish the show today I wanted to mention which we got a letter from somebody Oh who uh... letter not an email but an actual letter i'm sorry i misspoke okay i was kind of excited there for a minute yeah well it i don't think i don't think i've gotten a letter for god knows how long uh... anyway the sky wrote in talking to you we talked a little bit about this last week of the week before about psycho or a retro psycho kinesis yeah right this is uh... the guy who moved to switzerland i did look into it just a little bit but not john walker right john walkers is a uh...

30:55 character. Anyway, he's up in the mountains or somewhere. I don't know where he is. He's somewhere buried, somewhere in Switzerland. Anyway, we mentioned this. So this guy went and looked at this. And I didn't even realize there were a couple of these experiments. I didn't know they were on there. And I'm glad he sent me this note. Because there's an experiment you can do with a random number generator that Theoretic or that at some level you can by thinking about it can affect the outcome right and the idea that because I did see that they have these like Java applets and you can send that to someone and then they can generate a number randomly and then But you can determine what it is swing back and forth now Let me just reach it that what this guy says not too long so Greg Hampton

31:37 He says, John, I discovered Formulab, blah, blah, blah, experiments a few years ago and tried some of the experiments but never got any statistically significant results. One day a couple of years ago, I decided to have my four-year-old grandson try the pendulum experiment. And people out there want to check this out. You can go to Formulab, which is www.formulab.ch. and then you can dig around and you'll find these experiments. Anyway, he says, I decided to have my four-year-old grandson try the pendulum experiment and he had the thing banging up against one side like crazy and his results were off the charts. I just stood there in shock watching, maybe it's all a bunch of hooey,

32:16 And his performance was some kind of weird coincidence, but I'll never forget how exciting it was to watch. You should try a couple of the experiments. I tried the pendulum one myself and I have the sense that something changed. How does it work? What is the pendulum experiment exactly? The pendulum experiment is a random number generator that Rocks a pendulum back and forth in some very standardized way and supposedly because of retro psycho kinesis And I have to tell everybody I said I think a lot of this is is malarkey But there are some people that can go to a crap table and win and there's a lot of random numbers in the world that way the world works as a random number generator and in a lot of different ways and

32:54 and you know I don't know I just I'm not buying into this but I think it's interesting and people should check it out but anyway you can get this thing to move around in ways that it shouldn't be moving if you concentrate in a funny kind of a way. So you do that you concentrate and then it happens before your very eyes? You have to, the way I read it and the way it seems to maybe work although it could all be a coincidence like he says is that you have to imagine the thing doing something before it actually happens. In other words, you're not trying to make it move. You don't say, oh, move, move, you know, like the old guy who's going, woo, make the paper lift. I'm going to levitate. That kind of thing. No. It's something else. You have to, it's some other way of doing it. And it's almost like- Well, that's the kinesis part. That's the muscle you have to train. But it's like you don't pay real, at least the way it seems to me, is you don't really pay close attention to it.

33:52 It's just almost a background task and it you know people can show out to check it out and see what they think I mean, I think it's Generally speaking malarkey in any effects that I had but John isn't this the same thing as you know The old adages of people saying, you know, if you act successful, you will be successful and you know Isn't it that type of behavior? See, I'm not gonna argue against that because my feeling about that sort of thing which is I believe that's true to a large extent is But that's me. I think there's a milieu aspect to that in other words if you hang out with a certain class of people you will develop kinds of body language and Nonverbal communication skills you don't even know you have and then you will be become part of that group You know swimming with the sharks is right part of that right and so if you're you know depending it like you were criticizing me for holding my fork and

34:45 in this peculiar way the couple weeks ago. Have I had an effect on you? Have you become part of my group now? Of the people who hold the fork properly? Yeah, the feet group from Holland. The Emily Post group? No, man, that's... No, no, no, that's Emily Post. I know how to hold my fork. You hold it like a baboon. Anyway, so the point is, there's milieu communication that takes place and I think a lot of it has to do with what you're describing is that, and I don't think that has anything to do with retro-psychokinesis where you can go supposedly or theoretically or maybe to a crap table in Vegas and then... And imagine that it's going to hit number 36, or I'm sorry, number 2 in the future and then it actually happens. Yeah, which would be craps.

35:35 But anyway, so people should just look at it. But Walker's got a—his site has always been kind of— interesting because he's a acquisitive person. He likes to look into things and I think he's semi bored. You know, I sent him a couple notes once. He actually sent me a nasty note when I accused him of leaving the country to avoid taxes. He sent me this nasty note. And you know, I sent him an apology. And then, but you know, and then I sent him something else once and then he stopped communicating with me. So he's, you know, I don't think he's like,

36:10 necessarily receptive to like you know normal people the guys worth a fortune but uh... well he's probably having a good time in Switzerland I was in Switzerland a few times and I was gonna say let me stop by I don't even know where he lives. I don't know maybe people said you don't want to hang out with the guys. But it looks like those that research he did into retro what is it? retro psychokinesis looks like he stopped doing that a couple years ago I mean all the stuff is still there but doesn't look like there's any new entries Yeah, yeah, I noticed that. I don't know if you gave up on it. All right, so now I have to do I download this pendulum thing is that what no no it's it's a it's a Java app it runs on the machine you have a machine okay cool run it you know run it on a machine that's got some some power because it'll be able to suck your brain better. Will it run on my Mac?

36:59 In my Mac runs Java apps sure should It's mostly Java. This is like a JavaScript app. It's not like I think oh, so I guess I'm gonna I'm gonna spend the weekend doing some retro psychokinesis Yeah, well they want to do is to stop it. You can actually stop the pendulum if you try hard enough Could you imagine what could I do with that power? Let's say, let's say, because you know, I'm not thinking, you know, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm pretty good at it. I'm a believer in stuff like this. So let's say I'm able to do it. If I can do this pendulum thingy by like Monday, we're so going to fucking Vegas. We are so going. We're, we're out of here. Monday night. We're, we're in Vegas. Just got to be back Tuesday morning for a meeting. Otherwise it's cool.

37:44 Yeah, Vegas Beck beckons for this kind of thing. I believe, you know, I actually win a little bit, not a lot, I don't think anyone can. But I do quite well on video poker machines. There's two reasons. One, I know which poker machines to look for. People don't realize that all those poker machines, and some of them play the exact same game, have totally different payouts. And you want to look for one specific payout. I can't remember the exact number. I always look it up before I go for some reason. But anyway, if you go on the internet, If you go on the internet and look at best payout video poker machine, they'll tell you the ones to look for. And you just go, you find those. Because the other ones nickel and dime you to death just enough so you can't quite win. You can't quite get there. It's called like dealing.

38:27 So anyway, the video poker machine, if you learn how to play it, play a video poker machine, which is actually, it's not like I would say it's a high level skill, but there are rules to doing it right, because it's not really poker. That's the irony of, irony or the scam of video poker. It's not a poker, there's not poker involved here. This is a different kind of a game. It's video poker. And if you know how to play it, you can actually, well, you actually always win I've never walked away from video poker playing the right machines without some money. And at 39 minutes, I would have to call it a game.

39:06 I would say. And so you all have your homework now. What's that URL again? Forum lab. F-O-U-R-M-I-L-A-B dot CH. You can also, if you look up John Walker's Switzerland on Google, you'll probably run into it pretty easily. Or retro psychokinesis, I'm sure it's listed high. Coming to you from the Curry condo in San Francisco. My name is Adam Curry. I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California. And we'll talk to you again next week with another No Agenda. The best and the brightest served up daily by the sharpest minds in content delivery, pod show and limelight.