BellGab.com Archive

Quote from: Lena on January 22, 2011, 12:18:09 PM
I read his book - a short history of time, or whatever it was called again.
Was a nice read, but I don't like Hawking either.
Just because he is good at math and sits in a wheelchair with some crazy vocoder doesn't make him know anything better than I do.
Especially when it comes to god, aliens and such stuff he recently farted through the airwaves.

Saying that Hawking doesn't know anything better than you just proves how stupid you are.  He's never claimed to KNOW anything about god, aliens, or santa claus as far as i've ever heard.  But you can bet your ass he knows more about physics than everything you know put together.

P.S. George gets teabagged by Ian every Saturday night.  Sometimes on holidays.

Quote from: fabucat on January 21, 2011, 11:11:43 PM
I knew Ian did a radio show in the mornings, but I didn't know that he did it with his wife.  That's pretty cool and so middle-American. 

Sometimes I wonder why Ian is no longer a clergyman.  I also wonder how he got into broadcasting.  True lots of clergy get into broadcasting, but not SECULAR broadcasting!

Last I knew he still did his preaching on Sunday mornings.  I bounce around a lot in his shows so I could be thinking of something I heard on an older show.  He mentions now and then little stories about it.  If he did stop that's news to me.

Quote from: Michael V. on January 20, 2011, 03:29:52 PM
actually, i remember hearing him say this, but i don't remember WHERE i heard it.  do u know?

It's the intro to his Brain Droppings book.  I didn't want to post the entire thing before but if it's interesting to you here it is.

"For a long time, my stand-up material has drawn from three sources. The first is the English language: words, phrases, sayings, and the way we speak. The second source, as with most comedians, has been what I think of as the "little world," those things we all experience every day: driving, food, pets, relationships, and idle thoughts. The third area is what I call the"big world": war, politics, race, death, and social issues. Without having actually measured, I would say this book reflects the balance very closely. The first two areas will speak for themselves, but concerning the "big world," let me say a few things. I'm happy to tell you there is very little in this world that I believe in. Listening to the comedians who comment on political, social, and cultural issues, I notice most of their material reflects an underlying belief that somehow things were better once and that with just a little effort we could set them right again. They're looking for solutions, and rooting for particular results, and I think that necessarily limits the tone and substance of what they say. They're talented and funny people, but they're nothing more than cheerleaders attached to a specific, wished-for outcome. I don't feel so confined. I frankly don't give a fuck how it all turns out in this country - or anywhere else, for that matter. I think the human game was up a long time ago (when the high priests and traders took over), and now we're just playing out the string. And that is, of course, precisely what I find so amusing: the slow circling of the drain by a once promising species, and the sappy, ever-more-desperate belief in this country that there is actually some sort of "American Dream," which has merely been misplaced. The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood, improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to. So, if you read something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in "issues" is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they "ought to be." And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope! P.S. Lest you wonder, personally, I am a joyful individual with a long, happy marriage and a close and loving family. My career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and continues to expand. I am a personal optimist but skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for it's destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right. P.P.S. By the way, if, by chance, you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don't wish to be included."

-George Carlin

Or to hear it from the man himself grab the attached file.  By the way, I wasn't trying to hijack the thread at all.  The original quote was my first thought about the idea that things were once so much better or more moral in this country.  Perhaps Carlin deserves his own thread.

"Listening to the comedians who comment on political, social, and cultural issues, I notice most of their material reflects an underlying belief that somehow things were better once and that with just a little effort we could set them right again. They're looking for solutions, and rooting for particular results, and I think that necessarily limits the tone and substance of what they say. They're talented and funny people, but they're nothing more than cheerleaders attached to a specific, wished-for outcome. I don't feel so confined. I frankly don't give a fuck how it all turns out in this country - or anywhere else, for that matter."

-George Carlin

I miss the man.   

- Larry Silversteen taking out insurance on the WTC buildings right before the attacks. The owner of the WTCs made an absolute killing off the insurance money


The OP mentioned this early on in his post and that's where I stopped reading.  The idea of that is just insane.  Think of how stupid it would be to take out a life insurance policy on your wife and then off'ing her the next weekend.  Then multiply that stupidity by a million.  No one who seriously wanted to commit to a conspiracy on this level would throw up a red flag so obvious.  One could assume prior to the act that this would result in an investigation the likes of which this country has never seen.  I suppose after the fact this is debatable but prior to it? 

MV put my thoughts into much better words than I could do. 

Quote from: onan on January 20, 2011, 11:58:03 AM
I am more befuddled that there are still no buildings replacing the towers.

There is a new one being built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_World_Trade_Center

http://www.panynj.gov/wtcprogress/index.html

It's actually pretty far along.  I'd like to see the insurance price tag on this thing.

Where do people find the time...

Quote from: Michael V. on January 18, 2011, 11:10:52 AM

Wow....that's interesting.  Out of curiosity I wanted to see where Google would rank that website when just searching for Jeff Goldblum.  I got to 'Jeff Gol' and it already sorted it to #2.  The poor guy.

Quote from: b_dubb on January 16, 2011, 11:50:24 PM

vick is a first rate sociopath. the fact that the nfl let him back in is a travesty.  that guy should still be in jail.

I can only agree with your assesment of Vick as a sociopath.  As far as the NFL, what do you expect?  Do you think they should be some kind of moral authority or something?  They're a huge business and teams are going to do whatever it takes to win and make money, period.  To expect any more than that is foolish.  And I think it's great he's playing again.  The man did his time, more than most people with that conviction I'd bet (no evidence to back that up).  There's no reason he should continue to pay further.  The fact he has a desireable skill that allows him to make a lot of money is completely beside the point.  There aren't many jobs that convicts are excluded from upon release.  I mean by the law itself.  Employers can weed out convicts if they desire but that's up to them.

Whether he whould be in jail or not still should be a discussion on the problems with the judicial system.  Vick has done exactly what they told him to do.  This topic usually ends up as an emotional judgement which is not what the judicial system is about, it should'nt be anyway.  I love dogs as much as anyone else but i'll say this, how would you feel if he were having rat fights instead of dogs?  Other than the fact that Americans generally love dogs and hate rats is there any real difference?  In my heart I feel the same as most people on this topic but at some point I realize that it's mostly about me wanting to feel good by seeing someone else suffer, and that's really all there is to it.  That's my opinon of course.

Well he makes comments about his progress in rebuilding the site at least.  Maybe he doesn't intend to put the CTC shows back up but some of the other things he had available.  I'll admit I've never seen anything that specificly states 'yes i'm going to bring the site back up with all the old CTC shows'.  Wishful thinking on my part possibly.

Quote from: Michael V. on January 05, 2011, 03:12:59 PM
i have been told that the guy who ran the archive is facing some rather significant personal challenges at the moment, and that's why the site was shut down.


don't expect it to return.

You may be right but the forum he has up shows otherwise.  From reading there it's pretty apparent he's working on things.

Oh! Oh!  Will you do DB Cooper or JFK next?!?  Pretty please??

Quote from: HAL 9000 on January 10, 2011, 12:44:20 AM
I think I'll have to respectfully disagree on this one - I found Coast to Coast's "expert" on the Internet and Internet Security, Lauren Weinstein,  to maybe be the worst website, ESPECIALLY considering his expertise... who would purchase his services with a site like this? Looks like it was made with Netscape Navigator 3.0 Gold Edition.

http://www.vortex.com/

Well it looks like he's at least smart enough to see where incoming traffic to his sites is coming from

Neither are pretty but at least the vortex site is functional.  Websites like that Starfire one bother me because it's just a lot of scrolling down and down and down some more with nothing organized.  Sort of like http://www.enterprisemission.com/   That's got both of the previous ones beat in my book.  Also any sites with animations like the sparkling stars bug me.  All it needs is sounds or a song to play when it loads up to top it off. 

Quote from: ArtBellFan on January 05, 2011, 11:41:05 PM
Art's interview with Michio Kaku from 09-12-02

Thanks again!  This is another one I didn't have.

Very nice collection.   A big thank you.  Does this pretty much amount to all of the SIT and Classic shows that are available only through streaming then?

Interesting emails there.  There's a big difference to me between 2012 and the scenarios she listed as Arts topics or guest choices.  Y2K in particular was a known threat.  It was real.  The others maybe were speculation but nonetheless were based in science and probability.  Maybe shaky or pseudo science, or maybe extremely low probablity, but still it had grounds in reality somewhere.  2012 is based on nothing.  An ancient race decided to stop adding days to their calander....wow.  Somehow you jump from there to the end of the world.  I'm sure Art would've covered 2012 also but not a show per week and he wouldn't have believed a bit of it.  Y2K was known to be a threat and based on technology.  Real threats from technology is what CTC is about.

I'm sure you can find plenty of shows Art did with as much reality in them as these 2012 shows but he didnt obsess over them.

I'm not sure it qualifies as a topic but I love the guests with crazy ideas or stories.  The ones where it's obvious that Art doesn't believe them but keeps on asking fun questions.  The key to these for me are that the guest has to sound like they really believe their own ideas or stories.  Sometimes Art can throw a really odd question at the guest that they weren't prepared for.  The good guests can pull the strangest answers out of their ass and make their stories even better.  If you pay close attention during these interviews you can pick up on when Art will pause for a bit and i'm pretty sure he's trying to figure out how to corner these people with their own answers.  It's like a cat and mouse game.

Guests like that are pretty rare.  As a backup answer I'll say anything related to science and space. 

I've been listening to the latest podcasts (linked above) and they're pretty cool.  They're not very long but he gets right into things and goes pretty in depth.  He advertised for his TV show on the Science channel in one of them so I decided to check that out too.  It looks like it's based off his Science of the Impossible book.  It's a decent show but his podcasts and interviews with Art are much better I think.  The show seems more for mainstream and doesn't get too technical.  Some of the things him and Art would get into I could never quite understand.  One of the shows posted above has him getting into details about what exactly gravity is.  It seems like such a simple concept at first but I don't really understand Mr. Kaku's explanation.

ArtBellFan, you said you have all of his books.  Which one would be best to start with?

Quote from: ArtBellFan on January 03, 2011, 01:23:22 PM
It is fun listening to those old shows with the commericals breaks in them, loved Art's promo on C Crane.

That show you posted for me in .ra format had the commercials in it and they were cracking me up.  The crazy tech things they'd try to sell.  There was one for a complete computer system with the perk of online assistance from the company in real time.  I guess you could just push a button on your keyboard and connect live with a tech rep. for help.  I wonder how long that lasted?

I think you're right on about the TV.  Another way to look at it though is that they are only giving us what sells the best.  Unfortunately lots of people judge appearances first and talent second.  Our culture is so shallow that the two go hand in hand and we end up with people like Lady Gaga being presented to us as a musical talent.  It doesn't matter if you rely on blatantly ripping off music from 20 years ago and can barely muster a tune, you look good doing it so here's a pile of cash.

I don't have cable or sattelite TV and havn't bothered with it in 10 years at least.  I use Netfix streaming and demonoid for the handful of shows I care about and will occasionally watch a dvd or blu-ray.  The looks and attitudes I get from people at work when I tell them I don't have cable TV and never watch network TV are telling about the world we live in.  I get laughed at like I'm a weirdo or a cheapskate who's only trying to save money.  I don't miss it one bit and wouldn't let them install it if they paid me, just out of principal.

It is a little depressing but the situation is entertaining in itself to me from a psychological and sociological perspective.

Some great shows here, I've finished the all.    One part that made me chuckle was Michio Kaku describing how soon we will have internet on watches and on flat screen TV's built into our walls.  He didnt call them flat screens, I forget the term he used but that's basiclly what he meant.  Art sounded amazed and I'm sure at the time I would've been too.  This was from the Novermber '97 show I think.  Michio the prophet!

Maybe MV is being a little modest?  He runs an Art Bell stream you can tap into.

http://www.coastgab.com/index.php/topic,433.0.html

I second demonoid also.  You'll find lots of shows there to download and listen to at your lesiure if the live stream isn't appealing.

I feel the need to elaborate a little more on my comparisons between Art and Noory, as if we need more of that here.

I think it was an EVP show that Noory did that put me to the point of giving up and moving on from all of CTC.  This was prior to me re-visiting the old Art shows.  I remember thinking 'why did I ever listen to this garbage?'   'Did I ever actually believe this junk?'.  No offense to those who believe but to me EVP is such transparent pseudo-science and just fake fake fake.  The difference, as I found out, was that Art just supplied a stage for these people to speak from and challenged them in their claims.  His interview style made even something like EVP an entertaining listen.  George, on the other hand, challenges no one and believes everything he's told.  Everything is presented as fact and this assaulted my sensibilities.  All of the old ghost stories, EVP, alien abductions, and even flying to the center of the earth in a helicopter were entertaining and still are even though I believe none of it.  George completely fumbles these topics and guests.

Beyond that is his fixation on 2012, NWO, the Illuminati, end of the world scenarios, and angels.  The show is more like a cult these days than an exploration of the unknown.  I've heard people describe Art's show as conspiracy radio back then but that really wasn't true.  He rarely seemed to believe much of that stuff and always reminded the audiance to use your head and decide for yourself.  George on the other hand is telling you what to believe and evidence and skepicism don't belong.

I was a big fan of CTC in the mid to late 90's and slowly lost interest around the time Art was going back and forth with retirements.  It had nothing to do with Art, I was in my early 20's then and was easily distracted maybe.  From then until about a year ago I only caught a show a few times a year maybe.  About a year ago nostailga made me seek out some old Art shows online and I got hooked again.  I subscribed to Streamlink since I dont stay up late enough to listen to the show live anymore.

At that point I had no opinion on the new hosts, I barely knew any of them.  I, of course, started with Noory and after a week or two I grew tired of it.  I started to wonder why I ever listened to the show in my past, it was just boring and filled with stupid people.  I eventually got to really like Ian so I stuck with Streamlink because of him.  He at least was a smart guy and didn't buy everything the guests were trying to sell him.

I eventually found many of Arts shows available online and found out that the show wasn't actually bad back then.  Noory was just bad in the present.  Once I was able to contrast Noory with Ian and confirm that Art's old shows were indeed compelling radio and not my memory going bad, I completely ignored anything Noory did.

I still currently maintain a Streamlink account for Ian's shows and listen to old Art shows.  That's a boat load of entertainment for me to wade through in itself.  Why even bother with something inferior?  By the time (if ever) I exaust my supply of Art and Ian I'll be ready to start back from the beginning again.  I don't really have anything against Noory.  It's sad that the show has become so dumbed down is all.

These opinions were formed prior to finding Coastgab.  Reading all the humerous ways people will describe Noory here was funny and the reason the forums grabbed my attention at first.  It was a confirmation of my own feelings.

If you're looking for an .ra to test ArtBellFan has one posted in the Kaku thread.  It's the 1997-11-20 show via the yousendit link.  That's the one I used in setting up winamp.

I could be wrong here but I believe that when CTC first started making shows available online they were in .ra format.  Or maybe they used Real Audio streaming and people just saved the .ra files from that?  The one Kaku show posted is actually pretty decent quality and tagged like the show itself made it available.

Those shows which come in batches of .wma files are a pain too.  That's a result of how CTC now streams shows.  I've found streams to the entire history of the Coast to Coast Live that Ian did in 06-07 that I eventually would like to get but they will come in those .wma batches and I havn't built up the courage to start in on it.  Audio Anomolies had these available in .mp3 and I'm still kicking myself for not downloading them there.

Quote from: coastfan on December 30, 2010, 09:16:12 PM
Professor Kaku has/had his own call-in radio show. I was able to tune into it a few times at night, with limited reception, the show not airing in my market.

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/complete/51

That appears to be a complete archive of his radio shows.  I've just downloaded his most recent one to check out.  I was able to find that through his own website so it looks to be legitimate and free.

Quote from: MV on December 15, 2010, 06:42:52 PM
if anyone on this site has a pipeline into the music industry, please make this guy rich and famous.  he deserves it.

Pardon my language but this shit fucking pisses me off.  Last night we had on the New Years Rockin' Eve thing with those horrible no talent fucks all over the TV with their trash music with no soul.  Meanwhile these guys are playing in some shit hole bar with 3 people to applaud them.  It's not right.  This culture is ass backwards and pays attention to the wrong things.  I want to puke thinking about it.

Anyway...great video and thanks for posting it.

Between last night and this morning I've spent at least 5 hours figuring this out.  With all the effort put in I figured I should post this here to hopefully save others some time.  This in no way is a complaint about people providing shows in .ra format.  I'm grateful to those who post shows in any format available and I'm simply converting them to something I find easier to use.  That aside, this whole ordeal was a giant pain in the ass and .ra is a creation of Satan himself.

First, do not install Real Player.  It's garbage software.  Second, there's many little stand alone programs around the net which claim to convert .ra to .mp3 and those also seem to all be garbage.  I tried a lot of them and none of them even worked at all.  The following is what I ended up doing.  It's a bit of work to get set up but once you're done it's just a few clicks and things are done.  A small price to pay to have these old CTC shows in a more user friendly format.  Plus this is all totally free and legal.  No hacked software required.  No strings attached.

1.  Install Winamp http://www.winamp.com/

2.  Install Real Alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download/real_alternative.htm
This is a codec package that Real Player uses.  Installing this will allow you to avoid installing Real Player.

3.  Install Tara's Real Audio Winamp Plugin http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Audio_Input_Plugin_for_Winamp.htm
This is a Winamp plugin that allows Winamp to access the Real Alternative files and play the .ra audio file.

At this point Winamp will now play your .ra files if that's all you need.  You can avoid Real Player with these 3 simple steps.  If you want to actually convert it to an .mp3 things start getting more complicated.

1.  Download and install this Winamp plugin http://www.winamp.com/plugin/mp3-output-plug-in/177
This will allow you to record anything playing through winamp as an .mp3 file.  There are various plugins that do this and this is the    only one I could get to work with consistancy on .ra input.

2.  That plugin requires the LAME encoding .dll files to be installed which are not included for legal reasons I think.  This needs to be downloaded from http://www.free-codecs.com/download/lame_encoder.htm  Extract the package and find the file called lame_enc.dll  WARNING:  The following is done at your own risk.  Installing .dll files like this is a good way to mess up your PC if they are written with malicious intent.  I took a chance and it worked fine and this appears to be clean.  When you find this file just right click it and select 'install' from the pop up menu.  Afterwards this downloaded package can be deleted, the needed files are now installed.

Okay, that's everything you need to install.  Now to set up Winamp.  You need to open the Prefrences window.  To get there click the orange square in the top left and select Options > Preferences.  Toward the bottom of this window you'll see various categories of plugins.  The only ones you're concerned with are the Output plugins.  By default the Nullsoft Directsound Output should be selected.  This is the output plugin for general use of playing all your audio files.  To convert your .ra to .mp3 you want to select the Nullsoft MP3 Output Plugin.  After selected click on Configure below it.  Select the folder you want your new .mp3 saved to.  You will want the following settings:

Format: LAME MP3
Attributes: 32 kBit/s, 8,000 Hz, Mono  3kb/sec

Click Okay then click Close to exit the Preferences menu.  At this point all you have to do is play your .ra file and Winamp will speed through it and convert it over to .mp3 to the directory you specified.  It took my PC a minute or two to convert a whole 4 hour show.  VERY IMPORTANT:  You will want to go back into the preferences menu afterwards and set that output plugin back to the Nullsoft Directsound.  If you don't then Winamp will keep converting any files you play.  You can't actually listen to files when you have that Output selected.

But that's not all!  If all of the previous worked for you then you're good to go with your new file.  I wasn't satisfied with the results completely.  For some reason the LAME encoder at those low bit rates doesn't create the file header correctly.  This results in a play time that shows something insane like 10 hours.  The file will actually play fine altough skipping around is problematic.  I found a little program here:  http://www.kaufen-ist-toll.de/download/radio/Vbrfix-1H+Moonbase-Setup.exe  that will fix the file header.  It then will show the correct length in Winamp and allow accurate seeking.  The program is easy to use, pretty much select your .mp3 and click Fix.

Also a few notes on the attributes selection for the MP3 Output plugin.  I did a lot of trial and error runs with this setting.  The one I settled on is listed above.  I found it to be highly important to keep the Hz at 8,000 or the resulting MP3 was much louder and with obvious distortion.  I dont know the technical reasons for this.  The bit rate I used had (to my ears) no audiable difference from the original .ra file and the finished .mp3 was 68mb.  That's a little higher than a lot of the shows i've seen from that era but not by much.  There are a ton of attributes to choose from some of which wouldnt work at all and froze up Winamp.  I tried some in the 60 kbit/s and higher range and they didnt create the seeking issues with the lower bit rates although the finished file size was in the 100+mb range.  Try the settings mentioned above and if they work for you I wouldnt mess with them.  I also was only testing all this with one .ra file so it's possible that different files may require a different a different setting to maintain quality.

It's a bit of a headache to get this all set up but once you do it's only several clicks and done for any future files you run across.

One final thing about all of this for those with .ra files.  I would suggest holding on to the original .ra file even if you convert them over.  Conversion always results in degradation of quality even if inaudiable to you.  It also provides the original source if you ever need to convert it to something else.  Using the original is always the best option.

I hope this will help some of you out and if someone has a simpler way to achieve the same results please post your method.