Yes, it’s true

Um, have you folks ever looked at yourselves? Faces made for radio!

(I kid, I kid…I think)

Last weekend I listened to Wait, Wait… while assembling a bookcase and stocking it with books. This weekend I listened to it while packing up several hundred more books, sorting through dozens of totes full of other items from my past, and putting three loads of laundry through the washer and dryer. That’s the magic of radio: it’s a multi-tasker’s dream. You are free to do many other things while the voices form images in your head. With television, all you can do is watch television.

I hope the TV version is a roaring success. But I hope the radio program sticks around for a while.

PS Where is the President? Is he still President? We’re looking at the worst finical crisis since 1928-29 and he’s watching t-ball on the south lawn. Has he just given up? Didn’t he see the bat signal? Or is he too busy planning his Presidential library in Dubai?

I caught the repeat of Real Time last night. It was fairly interesting, but John Fund is a complete waste of space. It’s bad enough that he — a Republican mouthpiece — is hawking a book on the evils of vote fraud (don’t these people get the concept of self parody?), a book which he uses to take gratuitous swipes at Obama because Obama was, at one time, a lawyer for ACORN (and we all know, in the Republicans’ alternative universe, that a lawyer is personally responsible for anything his or her client ever did; except, of course, for the good things). But Fund could not give an honest answer to a single question. He wasn’t even trying to be objective; he just spewed one McCain/Palin campaign slogan after another.

This is what the Wall Street Journal has become?

Chris, I think we can all sleep better tonight knowing that President Cheney is on top of it. Or is it that he’s at the bottom of the financial crisis? I never can get that straight.

Television didn’t kill Howard Stern. And, God help me, I’m hoping that any Wait, Wait… TV show will be in the style of the Howard Stern TV show: essentiallly just the radio program with cameras.

Heck, it’s not like they haven’t done it already, sort of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Mm7KmfTXI

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4200931n

I remember when both “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” moved from radio to TV. Neither were ever the same again. Wally, Eddie, the Beav, Kitten, Buddy, all utterly changed by the switch in media. It crushed me then, and it crushes me now.

Back to all-Palin, all the time: http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-ral ly-is-huge/

Very glad to hear that the radio show will continue, for all the reasons stated above. I don’t have cable and, no offense Adam, but that wouldn’t be enough to get me to pony up the big bucks. Now, if Obama/Biden win the White House, I might reconsider. I would be pleased as punch to have a president who can pronounce the word “nuclear” correctly.

By the way, the political party formerly know as the Republican Party will hereinafter be known as The Party That Wrecked America. Bear Sterns, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch…. And it’s only Monday.

Congratulations Wait Wait folks!

Jake:

Steve, “Yet another piece of evidence that there’s no deity.” Were we needing more?

It’s part of the scientific method. Unlike in mathematics, no theory is ever really proven. It’s just not contradicted by the available evidence.

That’s why science isn’t religion.

And vice versa.

If you have a few minutes and you are a fan of GYWO, like I know I am, you’ll want to go here.

http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_8919.php

cooper, it’s not often I get to warn my Michigan relatives that they’re in the path of a hurricane. You’re right about the Outer Banks; people would have been forced to take shelter in Fuquay-Varina.

septer:

Dee, I have never seen TV transformation of any radio show before, but I feel they will pull it off if the folks that make the show currently are given total freedom.

Television and “total freedom” are oxymorons. Network television doubly so.

Steve quips:
Television and “total freedom” are oxymorons. Network television doubly so.

I say: No, Scientology and “total freedom” are oxymorons. Television can be delightful.

Hey! I am a grandparent! Yippie!
Baby came home today. This is fun!

If anyone would like some “virtual yard signs” for your blogs, I have some at my site, and can try to put together other ones if anyone has any suggestions.

http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2008/09/put-obama-sign-on-your-virtu al-lawn.html

Great Lobster, do I have to edit the comments again? An oxymoron is a phrase that contains contradictory elements, not the pairing of words that don’t really go together. “Total Freedom Television” or “Total Freedom Scientology” might be oxymorons, but I don’t think anyone uses those phrases.

SIWOTI

Ann, this week I have been wishing George Carlin were still around - more than usual.

NPR spoke of “fragile stability” in Iraq. OK, from a Physics point of view, this makes sense - a bead on a vertical hoop that is rotating around its vertical axis has a point of stability at the very top, but this point is easily perturbable - leave the bead alone and it will stay up there; nudge the bead one way or another and it will slide down the hoop.

And then there was the warning that residents of Galveston “may face certain death” from Hurricane Ike. I suppose this is analagous to the concept of events that will “almost surely” happen in probability theory.

New poster up on my site: Let’s get it right this time.
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2008/09/lets-get-it-right-this-time. html

Steve, forget about the meds to ease your depression. What you obviously need is some professional understanding from an understanding, professional adult. That, or have a tanning bed installed in your house (like Sarah Palin) to treat your Seasonal Affective Disorder. Tanning beds work better than crystals or even those foolish “light box” devices you see advertised in the back of Cosmo and Popular Mechanics Magazine. Good luck, my friend.

Jeez, Chris, and here I was thinking that Scientology was the bridge to nowhere. Silly me.

Happy grandbaby, Pat! All the fun and much less of the diaper changing…

Congrats to It’s Pat! Wait…..I think you are far too you to be a grandmother! Well, the laws in your state are different than the ones in mine!

Bill Frist gregory: I can’t tell whether you’re serious or just trying to yank my chain but. . .

Steve, forget about the meds to ease your depression. What you obviously need is some professional understanding from an understanding, professional adult.

I am a professional adult. Okay, I actually haven’t lost my amateur standing, no matter how much I try.

And anyone who actually claimed to “understand” me (or anyone else for that matter) probably belongs on that couch where you so seem to wish me because they’re delusional.

That, or have a tanning bed installed in your house (like Sarah Palin) to treat your Seasonal Affective Disorder.

If by Seasonal Affective Disorder you mean being averse to stinky hot summer weather when you can’t snuggle with your sweetie at night because you end up stuck together (or worse, and I’ll let your imagination run with that), then yeah, I’ve got it. I loathe summer and l really dig grey, rainy weather because then I get to wear my favorite rain hat and can walk on the beach without tripping over a bunch of sweaty sunbathers. I’ll pass on the malignant melanoma, thankyouverymuch.

But, hey, thanks for the diagnosis based upon a few random web comments postings written in a persona which may or may not bear any resemblence to reality while riffing on an idea just to see where it takes me.

Have a nice day. Down a couple of Wellbutrin in my honor, huh?

Steve,“What you need is some professional understanding from an understanding, professional adult.” This is a line from one of the Firesign Theatre albums. They are a lot of fun. If you’ve never listened to them, I highly recommend it. Start with one of the Nick Danger adventures. Some of the boomers here have memorized all the choice lines and will often chime in with one of their own favorites.

I’m about half serious and half yanking your chain. Sometimes your writing seems like you’ve pretty much given up hope. Anyway, you’ve been a good sport about it. (BTW, I find that the Fluoxetine/Wellbutron combo works better than Viagra. But don’t take my word for it. Ask my wife. She’s the one over there in the corner of the room - winking at me now with the big grin.)

But if meds or talk therapy aren’t your thing, maybe acupuncture. 3.5 billion Chinese can’t be wrong! Well, maybe they can. After all they did follow Chairman Mao for all those years.

I finally met Carly Fiorina yesterday in the break room. She seems to be pleasant enough, at least as movers and shakers go. She was still on a high from her speech at the RNC Convention. I asked her a hypothetical about Sarah Palin’s management skills and if Carly thought Sarah could run a major corporation. She said she’d give it some thought and get back to me.

The McCain/Palin 2008 campaign has unleashed all the lawyers that usually hang around Campaign HQ all day, eating the doughnuts. That school of barracudas is now migrating towards Alaska to put the kibosh on the Troopergate investigation. There must be something politically catastrophic going on behind the scenes. The lawyers were told to “put a knife through the heart and stop that investigation dead in its tracks - or else.” I would say the Republicans haven’t yet learned that the crime is often just an embarrassment, it’s the cover-up that’s the killer.

Bullwinkle died? Awww, Jeez……

gregory:

Wait, Steve….you’re a persona? You’re not real? Maybe it is time to up my dosage.

. . . or lower it.

But, seriously, of course I am — or, at least, this written manifestation is. Any written expression is merely playing a part — creating an image in someone else’s mind.

What else could these words be than an illusion in your mind created by external stimuli.

We do neuroscience here (though, please, do not think I am a neuroscientist — I’m a computer graphics nerd and have only picked up perhaps one percent [if I’m lucky] of the implications of our research) and the human mind is stranger and more wonderful than anything you can imagine (stand by for recursion).

The simple fact that we are effectively living 300 milliseconds in the past because of neural path delays makes everything we perceive as a complete illusion.

Steve, I seriously want some of what you’re smoking, dude.

“The simple fact that we are effectively living 300 milliseconds in the past because of neural path delays makes everything we perceive as a complete illusion.”

I find the implications of this sort of thing intriguing. Thanks, Steve.