09.01.17 Saturday – Episode #66
Click image to go to No Agenda.
This Episode’s Show Notes by KD “Bubba” Martin:
- Throwin’ the “O” and what can your government do to you, it’s time for No Agenda!
- We’re starting with wrestling, current and past; who remembers the Sheik? Who remembers the XFL?
- Adam brings up the inauguration. Don’t forget to throw the “O”, the Obama salute.
- Dexter gets a lap dance.
- John reviews Battlestar Galactica. Hmm, a 2,000 year old Armani suit and tie.
- The media is ready to turn its photographs into the Obama cream, red and blue motif. John has the URL.
- German measels leads into an outbreak of rabid raccoons in the US.
- Was the recent U.S. Air crash really caused by a flock of geese? We discuss other aspects of the crash.
- There might be a stop to the campaign speeches. Maybe.
- The stimulus package and tracking the dollars: oh, boy, renewable technology.
- Adam reads some interesting quotes from the stimulus package document, and how the money is earmarked. Don’t miss this.
- On tape: Congressman Alan Grayson grills the Federal Reserve Vice Chairman.
- Are we going down the same road as Zimbabwe? Expect the $100,000,000,000 dollar bill soon.
- John’s interesting railroad economic indicator.
- Germany’s internet to be filtered to protect the “children.”
- Man arrested for Obama assasination plot, according to Press TV. Why didn’t we hear about this?
- The world economy as a fractal.
- Saltwater burns. John laughs.
- Off we go into satellite, local stations and the slingbox. Who wants a Russian feed?
- Have you got your TV converter coupon yet? What a gorgeous credit card.
Queue / cue / Q the closing credits — We hope you enjoy the show!
No Agenda
Running time: approx. 105 mins.
The Sheik, the Iron Sheik, Sheik Adnan Al-Kaisy, are all the same man. I lived next door to him for a few years when I was a teenager. He was (and still is) an extremely nice man, very intelligent, and has quite an interesting story about leaving Iraq while fearing for his life because a fellow named Saddam Hussein had taken power.
The plane ditching was an interesting conversation. Adam expressed an interest in things aviation and made several relevant points all of which had to be correct by JCD.
Amusing.
Please don’t entertain the “O” salute. I’d buy a shirt if it came with a sample of what Adam was smoking.
Don’t know what the Obama “O” salute looks like, but I’ve always been a fan of the Tv series “The Prisoner” and their “be seeing you” salute. Which is suppose to represent the eye of “big brother” watch you. Coincidence?
About Flight 1549. Well I have little doubt that the airlines industry hopes it’s “bird strike” damage. Because they might be royally sued for any other causes, like defective engine parts. And I wonder how sensitive the NTSB is to their financial concerns? And will it result in another stall? The way they did with TWA Flight 800, out of Kennedy, whose center fuel tank exploded back in 2006? The phony news that it might have been a missile, was floated by some prominent new wags, and kept Boeing off the hook during some sensitive contract negotiations (merger?). Otherwise its stock would have plummeted. Was the whole “missile attack” theory a huge con job, which wasted millions of tax payer dollars investigating, just to keep Boeing from being sued too soon. Is this “bird strike” cause of Flight 1549, a smoke screen as well. What happened to all the concern over counterfeit engine parts being used, just a decade ago? Did the industry clean up its act, or cover it up better?
This is what happens when speculation runs rampant before the facts are in. See this article for more info on the A320 crash.
Flight 1549 was only suppose to be in the air for about 5 minutes! It probably took a heck of a lot longer to screen baggage and people, and wait for departure and take off clearance. Just how short a flight, is to be considered impractical? Apparently none are! And what about environmental concerns. Shouldn’t flights under 20 minutes really be few in number, to help save the from burning so much fuel into the air? Short trips like these should be accomplished more by Rail, than by air travel. If the US wasn’t so aerospace obsessed, it might have the kind of railway system most of the other industrial nations enjoy. And people would gladly take the train for a half hour ride. Than spend an hour waiting to take a five flight, that fouls the air faster, and risks birds and other longer flights by the increased congestion. If the air travel industry isn’t going to turn down doing so many short flights. The government should step in a limit their numbers. Just as the gov. is supposed to limit the broadcast airwaves, from becoming over saturated. If they did this with air travel, rail travel would get a boost in business. But gov. seems to more interested in subsidizing air travels’ business, with most of the tax dollars going into air traffic control. You don’t think the airlines pay for that, do you? They’d just as soon fly blind, across the country. All of their profits go into booking more flights via modern reservation computer systems.
Glenn I suspect it takes longer than 5 minutes to get to Charlotte from NYC.
I once flew from the east coast to San Francisco. The plane stopped in Oakland. Then flew across the bay. You can probably buy a ticket for that leg.
Oh yeah, I love fractals. Long ago I wrote a program in Pascal where I got the basic Mandelbrot Set algorithm from the excellent book Fractal Programming in C, by Stevens. I improved the interface and used larger floating point coordinates so that I could zoom in 20 times. I took a screenshot of Windows 95 so that I could print it out and iron it on a T-shirt that I wore just last week. I reall love ’em. Nowadays there are probably better Mandelbrot Set programs for you all, but that was the only one satisfactory me at a moment in time.
Re: money to spend on the grid.
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout) should be a sign of how fragile our electric grid is.
I also understand that there is a large potential of effeciency gains to be had by improving our current electric distribution infrastructure.
#8, you might enjoy this real time fractal zoomer, XaoS, available for many OS’s, including Win, Mac and Linux. I’ve used it for years and it’s a very robust and educational program, with beautiful results. You’ll need a fast machine.
http://wmi.math.u-szeged.hu/xaos/doku.php
# 6 Glenn E. said, “If the US wasn’t so aerospace obsessed, it might have the kind of railway system most of the other industrial nations enjoy.”
Airlines are private companies. The “railways” in other countries aren’t paid for by the riders, but by taxes. If you want to see rail here to the extent of other industrialized countries, get like minded people together and pay for it.
BTW, please show me a country with similar geography and pop distribution to the US that has a great rail system…
He was talking short distance. You can’t have 5 minute flights and then argue that the population is too disperse…
Thanks KD Martin, that’s a fantastic fractal program!
Also, thanks John and Adam for the news about Zimbabwe currency. I’m not gonna bother looking for the Gazillion dollar bill so I just bought a 10 pack of 20 Billion bills off eBay. Let’s hope it’s not one of those African scams like you read about. Oh yeah, Mr. Curry; if you bring teens to South Africa when you go there soon, remind them that 1 in 7 people there is H.I.V positive.
The Sheik, the Iron Sheik and Sheik Adnan are not the same man.
#8 – B. Dog
Benoit rocks.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gEw8xpb1aRA
Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
[Fixed – Ed.]
Thanks, Mr. Mustard, for the video. I’ve spent many hours exploring the set (and Julia sets as well).
You could have some fun downloading the XaoS program I mentioned in post #9, and exploring the set for yourself.
* For me, pro wrestling begins and ends with Gorgeous George, who parlayed his fame in the ring into something of a film & TV career for a while. Though I did follow a character called (I think) The Argentine for a while, who was one of those with the flashy acrobatic moves. But when he started playing the Bad Guy, I got disgusted and turned if off for good.
* Someone else already mentioned the big electrical blackout — the grid could well use a few billion in upgrades and improvements. I really _hate_ power outages — they interfere with my computer time…
* TV: the prices of the digital/analog converter boxes will never come down until the discount cards are all gone and actual competition can begin. I expect to get the equivalent to whatever is the best on the market now for 1/2 to 1/10 the price in a few months.
* Burning salt water: Is this guy a Nigerian?
* Fractal math has indeed added greatly to our understanding of the world, and goes way beyond Mandelbrot and Julia sets, but those are what most people think of whey they hear the term. I remember getting the algorithm from the Scientific American and cooking up some Commodore-64 BASIC — one screen rendered in about 20-25 hours and at the time the only method I had of saving the images was with a camera!
Mr. Dvorak
The coupon is actually a debit card.
If you had purchased your converter at a store it would have been swiped just like any other debit card.
As you purchased online all you had to have was the number just like any other debit card.
Had you allowed the card to expire the funds revert to the coupon program. A replacement coupon can then be sent to someone who will use it. A simple piece of paper will not do that.
Actually a pretty slick setup. No unused funds in somebody’s sock drawer.
# 6 Glenn E. said, in part:
“Flight 1549 was only suppose to be in the air for about 5 minutes!”
Charlotte, NC is about 500 miles from NYC — unless passenger airliners routinely go faster than 6000 miles per hour, the flight takes quite a bit more than five minutes. I think you are mistaking the actual flight time, from takeoff to splashdown in the river, for the scheduled flight time.
That said, I agree with you that the U.S. needs more passenger trains (the best way to travel in my book).