BellGab.com Archive

I mentioned this in the Tobias McGriff thread, but it got buried fairly quickly and I think it's important enough to mention on it's own.

This is news about the dark matter detector experiment, LUX, that has been collecting data in South Dakota for a while now:
http://sanfordlab.org/news/press_release/event-announce-first-physics-results-sanford-lab
They are holding a press conference on Oct 30 to announce their first findings. This has the potential to be as huge an announcement as the Higgs boson if a light dark matter particle has been found. If it is a non-detection then it is also a significant announcement and pretty much rules out light particle dark matter. The situation is then more complicated (and still very interesting)!

I sent the link down the wormhole, hopefully Art recognizes the potential significance of this!

Whoever it was on this board that suggested the BBC show Survivors from 1975, thank you. I found a torrent and have made it about a quarter of the way through the first season (the only one, I think). I'm 90% sure someone here suggested it.

And, if you've never seen it, you should all go out and watch Survivors. Wow.

I just bought a PS3. I have Borderlands2 and NHL13. I'm wondering what other Coastgabbers are on the PS3 Network?

Some interesting speculation on Comet ISON, which was recently discovered heading toward the Sun from between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. Estimates have been thrown around that there is a potential for this object to become quite bright, even around magnitude -12, which is about the brightness of the full moon. Some less conservative estimates put it even brighter, but it is within the realm of possibility that this object will be visible during the day. The date of closest approach is November 28 2013, so maybe next year will give us quite a dramatic autumn. Keeping my fingers crossed that this one doesn't fizzle as some of the other recent comets have.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120927-new-comet-2012-s1-ison-science-space-moon/
http://www.universetoday.com/97578/guest-post-comet-kerfuffle/#more-97578

Polybius is the name of an apparent arcade game that made the rounds in Oregon in the early 80s. The game supposedly caused players to have panic and anxiety problems, including night terrors. In true urban legend fashion, there are stories of men dressed in black coming to claim records from the game, but not emptying the machine's quarter bin. The game was thought to be part of some kind of government program, conditioning or testing for something. There are no Polybius coinops that survived, and pictures of the cabinet and title screen have popped up online. One of the original arcades that carried the game is now apparently a bar, and still gets phone calls from curiosity seeker looking to track down the game.

This is a great story, and has all of the necessary elements to keep the legend going. It's just a creepy scenario, and there's something compelling about the government using video games to achieve some kind of nefarious end when the coinop gaming scene was still sparkly and new, and attracted quite a following and community of fans.

Some links for your consideration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28video_game%29
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/polybius
http://www.coinop.org/g.aspx/103223/Polybius.html
Details and images of the cabinet here: http://www.freewebs.com/polybiustheory/

Has anyone run into this before or heard about it as a talk show or podcast topic?

I just listened to an Art Bell show from September 27, 2003. The first hour guest was Jose Escamilla, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much heat Art put on him. The interview began with a review of Escamilla's "discovery" of Rods, which he proposed were strange life forms ("skyfish") that can only be detected on recorded media after the fact.

Art had Escamilla on the show to specifically address the evidence presented on a website that explained away the supposed phenomenon by simply adjusting the camera capture speed, causing all of the insects in the frame to appear elongated since the camera caught several beats of the insects wings in a given frame. Art was taken by this evidence, along with the fact that Escamilla apparently admitted it was "damning" previous to the show in private communication which Art mentioned on the air. Despite Escamilla's squirming, Art did not relent in holding his feet to the fire, and ended the hour mentioning how he had essentially changed his opinion on the legitimacy of Escamilla's claims.

The first hour of the show was deeply satisfying. It showed that Art was willing to challenge a guest's claims, and acknowledge evidence contrary to a guest's position. Escamilla got owned on this show hard, and went through a litany of excuses as to why the Rods are an actual phenomenon. Escamilla argued that this phenomenon could stand up to any apparent criticism, but seemed to be grasping at straws from the beginning. From what I remember, the Rods were featured on at least one episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and may have shown up on other news magazine type of shows that periodically ran stories on paranormal topics.

The rest of the show was kind of a typical show exploring alien abduction that you might expect from a classic Coast show. The highlight was definitely the first hour. For me this show illustrates perfectly the change in tenor of Coast under Noory. There is just no way the current regime would allow anything like this to happen, nor would it occur to Noory to even try rocking the boat like this. I'm not sure if Escamilla showed up on future Coast shows, but I would be very interested to hear any follow up. If Noory had Escamilla back, did both of them just ignore what came before?

I remember this show from the original broadcast, but I'm glad I gave it another listen. I wish there had been more debates like this on the air. Even though Art let a lot slide throughout his career on the show, from time to time he went far outside of what was expected and these incidents stand out the most dramatically for me.

Yesterday I went to a friends place and we watched The Troll Hunter.

Has anyone else seen this?

They manage to incorporate pretty much every single piece of folklore about trolls in this one. The attention to detail through the whole film is incredible and it has a really interesting and original story too. Very cool.


The Troll Hunter - Official Trailer

I know that this was started on the Something Awful forums, but it's an idea that creeps me right the hell out and seems like it might generate some conversation here.

The Slender Man is a shadow person type creature who is associated with the abduction of children or disasters involving children. He has no discernible face, and long tentacle like arms.

Here is a wikipedia article about this urban myth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_man

The Slender Man was used in a film/alternate reality game called "Marble Hornets". The Marble Hornets series can be found on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets#p/u/41/Wmhfn3mgWUI
I've only made it to about episode 7 or so myself, but I plan on watching all of them throughout the day.

Also (of course!) here are some Coast to Coast callers that talk about the Slender Man:

The Slender Man on Coast To Coast

I just stumbled onto this subject this morning, but I'm glad I spent the time following it up. This is really genuinely creepy to me. I love the idea of a tulpa, a creature which is brought into reality and sustained by the belief and thoughts of others. In a way this is what Slender Man actually is, an internet meme "come to life" and subsequently has passed over into the perception of people off of the internet. The meme itself has a life of it's own and spreads like a virus.

In this regard there is a connection to Philip Aylesford, a character concocted in the 70's and later supposedly communicated with by seance. In both cases, a meme seemed to have taken on a life of it's own.
http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghosthuntinggeninfo/a/create-a-ghost.htm

:O


Green Lantern - Wonder-con Footage

Maybe it's the comic book nerd in me talking but OMGOMGOMG
The first trailer did nothing for me. I'm still not convinced of Reynolds in the lead role. But this looks much more along the lines of the Green Lantern movie I was wishing for. I'm now officially looking forward to this movie.

I've been listening to Crystal Gayle's awesome song lately. I put it in my playlist so it'll pop up from time to time while I'm at work. The more I hear of it, the more it works as a metaphor for what happened to the show itself.

Under Art we had Gayle's fantastic voice to play us off the air, leaving us with the mysterious sounds of the desert to contemplate whatever bizarre discussion we just heard. It really added a nice touch to the show and served as the final credits for a long time.

Then, Coast transitions to George Noory as the host. What do we get to play us out? UFO Phil.

I'm in the middle of a show on MV's stream from Jan 13 1997 with Steven Gibbs, a guy who supposedly invented a time machine. This was an awesome show, the guest is a total burn out and has no clue of what he's talking about which turned into a mishmash of new age crap, lei lines, time travel and general confusion. I'm literally on the edge of my seat to hear the calls.

Gotta say though, I was actually a bit annoyed with the way Art handled the guy with kid gloves on. I half expected Art to call him on some of his stuff here. Art was very gentle with the guy which was a bit too bad, I feel like Gibbs got a bit of a free pass on this one.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion about this - or at least, I haven't stumbled into any of the myriad discussions going on about it yet.

A supercomputer named Watson has defeated two of the best players of Jeopardy in the world.  I saw a special on the machine on Nova, which was very interesting. But actually seeing it on television was a trip and a half.

Part 1

Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge Day 3 Part 1/2 (Season 27.23-3) Ken, Watson, & Brad
Part 2

Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge Day 3 FINALS Part 2/2 (Season 27.23-3) Ken, Watson, & Brad

This is an interesting application of neural networks to a low-level AI. I really do think Watson is a significant step forward, probably larger than anyone really imagines right now.

Wondering what others opinions here may be.

The subject line says pretty much all I remember about this caller. I'm sure Art was the host, it was from the late 90s, maybe early 00s. Sounded like the caller had schizophrenia, and he was convinced that unless he got up at night and touched the box of frozen fish in the freezer, he would kill his neighbor. When Art questioned him he said something to the effect of "the voices tell me so".

Anyone remember this?

A bout of insomnia and a 12 pack in the fridge, coupled with a ton of great clips that have been uploaded here, have me ruminating on some of the best times I've had with Coast.

Though I'm no fan of Noory, one of the most memorable shows in recent times (re: the bad new days) for me has to be when a typical caller to Noory asked some astronomy based gibberish. Noory, without breaking stride said something like "Didn't you hear? All the stars have gone out" and the caller actually took him seriously! This person was downright distraught that the night sky is not as they remembered it. To my shock and amazement, the next few callers didn't have the guts to come out and say "you're wrong", they took it as roughly gospel truth. Some gently questioned what George said but none of them openly challenged him and obviously missed the joke. From memory, these callers seemed to take George - somehow, even in the face of absurdity - at his word.

While awesomely hilarious, this for me was the tipping point. It was then I realized that the screened callers of this new C2C did not represent the same demographic that Art appealed to and that the show had proceeded past the event horizon of dumb, catering instead to screened BS that made little to no sense and the producers (as well as the host) knew it. While I thought it was a really funny gag, it said something sad about the intellectual agility of the new listening audience, and was I think the break from the good old days of Art Bell to the new listening audience. It made me question how seriously the show took it's guests if it did not take it's audience seriously.

Nevertheless, this is my favorite memory of Coast during the Noory era.

I would be very interested to hear this exchange again to see if my memory holds up.  Does anyone remember this series of calls, or have a link to the actual episode?

Ian Punnet did a great job with Mary Roach tonight. I'm a space-geek so maybe I just naturally had a soft spot for this guest. Hearing about these obscure details of the space program and challenges in the future was absolutely fascinating. Even the second half guest Rick Collingwood was passable, even though I don't buy much of the hypnosis stuff.

I hope Ian will interview Mary Roach again in the future. Does anyone know if she's been on the show in the past?