BellGab.com Archive

The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger (original narration by Randall)

Quote from: guildnavigator on April 01, 2012, 10:22:14 AM
that risk shit was pretty bad! Mustaine has lost his shit a few times now... I bought a bunch of megadeth records from itunes a while back because I have no idea where my original copies are, and they were all mixed entirely differently, with NEW VOCAL TAKES, and other new recordings overdubbed here and there. He went full-on George Lucas on us. Some of those older records, Mustaine would get his hands on the recording budget, spend it on junk and speed and whatever else, pawn the band's gear for more drugs, and then finish the record with whatever broken pieces were left. And you can hear that on recordings like "So Far, So Good, So What."

Have you read the book Mustaine published a year or so ago?  He goes into detail about how much he hated that album and other recordings from around that time.  I recall him saying he felt physically ill after hearing the finished album, or something to that effect.

If you havn't read it I advise you don't, assuming you're a fan of some of his work.  It was interesting, particularly the early history of Megadeth, but I lost a lot of respect for the band and their music after reading it.  Without coming right out and saying it he makes it obvious that Megadeth never was about the music and he never gave much of a shit.  That's no shocking revelation but hearing it admitted right from Dave kind of sucked.

I still consider Rust in Peace a classic and one of those rare albums which are perfect from start to finish, but it was a fluke.

To give a more serious response, since you did answer my question and deserve an acknowledgment:  I think you are seeking religous and philosophical enlightenment through science which is not what science sets out to do.  You know this.  To hold science accountable for things they do not aim for is not fair.  The same can be said in reverse.

Quote from: Avi on February 13, 2012, 08:01:33 AM
Yes, I do. Science has many Just-So stories; indeed, levels of scientific inventiveness far surpass the miracles expressed by most religious texts. Many science supporters do not realize this, however, because their understanding of actual science is nil. The mathematical physicist, with whom I work on my acoustics projects, is pretty far out there. G-d would be far easier to rationalize and to quantify than some of his doozies - and he freely admits it. I realize the word "faith" is a supreme irritant to the science-believers, only because they know not of which they speak. Reading Hitchens, Hawking, Harris, Dawkins or Dennet does not give one practical understanding of science at all - only the understanding of the author's polemics.

Nonetheless, facts and data are very important to me, too, but they do not spring, fully formed, from the head of Zeus. Facts have context, from which they cannot be separated. Indeed, when I discuss acoustics, I must rely on mathematical constructs which are accepted, but which function beyond our ken. Concepts like gravity, for example. Yes, I know gravity is there, but there is no all-encompassing explanation for it or for many over-arching concepts. Professional skeptics, with the possible exception of Hawking (who amazingly ties mathematics into a pretzel and holds it hostage to avoid confronting the dreaded s-s-s-singularity), do not understand, or do not admit, this. It's ok by me.

Again, I am of a highly skeptical persuasion, but I am not entirely happy with this stance. There must be a place to discuss what we mean by knowledge and wisdom (which leave facts, as such, way down on the totem pole). Are facts ingredients (or bytes?), while knowledge is a recipe (or a program?)? How do we derive wisdom from these, or can we? We can construe the answers as a silly science vs. religion debate, but I, for one, am not satisfied with that. The ultimate meaning of facts, or data, or what have you, is the Grand Quest - but we have yet to grasp knowledge, understanding and wisdom in their essences (interestingly, the Ari [Rabbi Isaac Luria] calls all of these a part of the top tier of the Tree of Life. I wonder how he envisioned it. From beauty?). I know it sounds as though I want to invite Philosophers to the Physics Party (such a no-no!), but I get off on cross-fertilization. I suppose I'm in the hybrid vigor camp.

I've rarely seen so much bullshit in one post.

Quote from: Avi on February 03, 2012, 04:59:40 AM
Nonetheless, I see many skeptics and rationalists as invested in the ideas of science and rationality, with little actual understanding of either. They have faith in science and rationality to provide needed answers.

Do you really think that faith in science and faith in religion or god are the same thing?  Maybe in a very narrow sense of the word.  By that usage of the word faith, everything we think we know as fact is really only faith.

How fitting that his first real and public criticism of CTC comes on the coastgab forums!  Thanks for the years of top notch radio entertainment.  There will be no replacement.

Maybe Art could spare 5 minutes for a MVDRT interview??     Come on Michael, do it!

Quote from: analog kid on January 24, 2012, 10:11:26 PM
^^ It's a political show? Uhg.

There was talk about Bachelor's show somewhere else in these forums which was positive enough for me to give it a try and I really like it.  But, yes, some of it is political and that part does suck.  The non-political discussions however are great.  From what I've seen, the shows are separated into four parts, like CTC, and topics will change only at those breaks.  This makes it easy to sort through the political garbage.

Plus he sounds like Artie Ziff from The Simpsons so that's fun.

Last night I actually listened to Wells for the first time because the discussion here about the Krauss interview had me interested.  During Ian's last show he did a brief interview of Wells where Wells said his interest in CTC topics lies in the hard sciences.

I wasn't impressed with the show at all but one point turned me away.  Krauss was talking about how every particle in our bodies was involved in the big bang and afterwards these particles formed stars which went supernova.  So, essentially we're all stardust.  A very cool idea to think about, and Wells' reply was simply "Excellent".  Prior to that his responses to quantum physics ideas with scripture quotes was grating on me.

Quote from: Michael Vandeven on January 14, 2012, 05:40:12 PM

i think it would probably suck to be a seller on ebay, but i buy computer hardware/parts off of there probably 5-10 times per week, and i really love it.  thank god for it.  i don't know where else i'd buy some of this shit if ebay didn't exist.

I'm not a big time seller by any means but selling is a real pain in the ass sometimes.  Roughly 1/4 of my completed auctions are a hassle.  When someone doesn't pay it takes at least a week to get refunded the final value fee.  I've had stuff lying around for several months straight due to repeaded buyers not paying.  The real bad part is that ebay changed the way feedback works so I can't even warn future sellers about these people.  It's impossible for me to leave feedback on buyers who don't pay.

On the positive side, ebay is the only place I would ever get rid of most of my junk.  Without it I would just throw most of it out so the hassle is worth it for me.

My contribution to things which annoy me:  I just read an article which informed me that the SOPA bill in congress has bipartisan support.  Of all the important issues in our country this is the one which they will cooperate on.  I think I just puked a little.

Quote from: stevesh on January 09, 2012, 09:32:32 AM
Last night was a good example of what's wrong with what we have now. An interesting guest discussing (among other civil liberty issues) jury nullification. When Ian Punnett went to calls, almost all of the callers just wanted to talk about their personal problems/experiences with the legal system. Very boring, and those sorts of calls don't give the guest anything to work with to provide an answer that helps educate the rest of us.

I can't believe that C2C doesn't get intelligent callers with cogent questions, so it must be screener incompetence or the screening policy is to put the dimwits on the air, which doesn't make sense to me.

I also have to agree with your excellent observation.  Callers almost always ruin the show for me as I've mentioned in other threads.  I hadn't much considered what callers do that I don't like but your post really hit the nail on the head.  A more recent show that comes to mind is the GPS spying show Ian did with Lauren Weinstein.  The show was very much in the realm of reality concerning confirmable facts, science and technology but so many people were calling with their paranoid stories of the government spying on them and psychic spies.  It's like they can't discern a difference between Weinstein and people like Dames and Hoagland.  And as you said they weren't even calling with qustions.  They just wanted to tell ridiculous, irrelevant stories with no questions for the guest.  I could just tell at certain points the guy was thinking 'WTF?!?'.

In all forms of entertainment whether it's music, movies, tv or radio the performance should strive to end with the audiance wanting more.  With how CTC is constructed the final hour is usually callers.  Anything the show was building on, generating interest, completely unravels when the phone lines open and masses of neurotic schizophrenics realize this is their chance to finally have someone listen to their life story.  Usually by the time a show ends I'm glad it's over.

In the spirit of the thread topic I'd like to give constructive ideas but.....fuck it.  With Ian mostly gone I'm now a former listener anyway.

Quote from: Michael Vandeven on January 09, 2012, 11:16:29 AM
HP laptops FUCKING SUCK.  Don't EVER buy one.  They SUUUUUUUUCK.  God DAMN it!!

Many years ago I bought a desktop computer from HP which arrived with the CPU bouncing around in the bottom of the case.  No company has a perfect record but there's no excuse for that.  I havn't touched anything from HP since then and never will.

I like it, thanks.  It's a nice, clean and simple site.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/19/health/north-korea-mass-grieving/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

This year the entire population of North Korea should recieve an Oscar.  Get these people in Hollywood!

I've been wondering what happened to Onan.  Did someone scare him away?

Quote from: Michael Vandeven on December 18, 2011, 02:48:25 PM
the art of talk.


if you don't already have it, enjoy.

Thanks for posting this Michael.  I hope I'm not being too picky but can you have a look around your hard drive to see if you missed a file or 2?  I just finished what you've posted and it stops suddenly, mid sentence, in the middle of a story about blowing up a whale with explosives.  I won't be able to sleep now!

Quote from: The General on December 16, 2011, 02:41:10 PM
We could split hairs all day.  All I'm saying is that he was prone to be an apologist for Marxism, overlooking it's consequences, while castigating selfless people like Mother Theresa because of her motives.  I like Hitchens, he was funny and bright, but it takes a morally confused person to think that way.

For sure, we can agree on everything you said there.  Morally confused sums up a lot of his views as far as I understand them.  There are conflicting quotes from him on Marxism and socialism all over the place.  Marxism, Lenin, and Trotsky aren't something I know enough about to even have a valid opinion on, let alone critiquing someone elses opinion.  I hope I didn't sound confrontational for the sake of it.  Notice most of your post I didn't address because either I agreed or am too ignorant on the topic to say anything half intelligent.

Quote from: The General on December 16, 2011, 01:12:33 PM
He was a self described Marxist.  He regarded both Lenin and Trotsky as great men.  He called Che "A role model."  He was surprised later in life "to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity."

http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_hitchens.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/jul/11/features.review
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/mao-zedong

Interesting links, thanks for those.

On Mao I think you misread what he was saying.  The full quote is:

"Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity."

I don't see how in any way that is saying something good about Mao.

Saying he called Che a role model and leaving it at that is taking it out of context too, unless he goes into more details in another article.  I'm not saying by any means I agree with everything Hitchens said, far from that, but I don't think you're fairly quoting him.

Quote from: The General on December 16, 2011, 11:17:28 AM
Hitchens- I never understood how such a smart man could admire mass murdering thugs like Lenin, Mao, and Che- meanwhile writing a book condemning Mother Theresa.  Sure, be an atheist, you'll get no argument from me... But don't judge people by their motives, judge them by their behavior.  I'll take Mother Theresa over Lenin any day.

I'm familiar with his criticisms of Mother Theresa but not with the admiration of those you've named.  Are you talking about small comments made or something larger from one of his books?  I'm just interested to see exactly what he liked about them.

The best I could find with Google was one quote about Lenin praising one particular thing.

Sad news about Hitchens.  I was just looking into his health status a few days ago.

Quote from: reversefiction on December 09, 2011, 04:22:53 AM
Ian had an open line caller this weekend. I'll listen to Coast with headphones on next to my girlfriend in bed. She's usually sleeping. I almost lost it though. When she said to him that Jesus was in Australia and his name is Brian. Rather than having the typical GN response of "Ohh really, that's fantastic! Does it mean the apocalypse is coming soon." Ian was the persistent smart ass with this woman. Who I do believe was completely serious. I looked it up, and there is some guy in Australia claiming to be Jesus.

I listened to this show last night.  That caller was hillarious and completely insane.  It was obvious she has some kind of mental problems by the way she talked and her near inability to process any of Ian's questions.

Her call was funny because it came during the Open Lines portion of the show where I consider those types of calls fair game.  What really pisses me off is when they go to callers during really good interviews such as earlier in that same program.  Ian and his guest had some cool discussion going on about things like GPS tracking and internet privacy.  Instead of continuing with any number of great questions they head to callers during the last 30 or 40 minutes of the interview.  What a fucking waste of time and it brought the interview to a grinding halt.  Stupid people calling swearing they're being psychically tracked.  Leave it to CTC callers to take a real life topic with real evidence and turn it into some pseudo science bullshit.

Callers almost never have anything constructive to add and I wish Ian was not required to take calls.  I'm guessing he must be required.  He clearly has little patience for this type of crap and it happens just about every time.  Really, it's probably my fault for wanting CTC to be something it's not and never has been.

Quote from: alejandro on December 05, 2011, 02:25:54 AM
it's pretty easy with Total Commander file manager's mass-rename function with reg-exp.
http://www.ghisler.com/

It even supports Windows 3.1!  But does it support 3.11 for Workgroups is the real question.

Seriously, it looks like a nice piece of software and I might give it a try.  Thanks for the link.

Quote from: Paper*Boy on December 06, 2011, 10:36:40 PM


This is Ian Punnett, distilled down to his essence. 

It's a remake of his very first film, made when he was the AV guy in 8th grade.  You like this, you like Ian - if you don't, you don't.

lol i thought it was pretty funny

Quote from: Flaxen Hegemony on December 05, 2011, 07:31:31 PM
If your reference is needed for quotation or discussion of one published part of the manifesto, use the Washington Post or 1995 citation.  If you are referring to the manifesto as a body of writing, without quoted passages or detailed discussion of content, simply cite the manifesto itself with T Kaz as the author.  It is published as a book: ISBN 978-1595948151.

Great timing, as I'm just about to start grading 60 APA style research papers this week.

That sounds logical to me but I see two problems.  In text citation seems to require a year so something like (Washington Post) is wrong.  The year 1995 refers to the primary source, not the source I'm using.  Logic then leads me to believe that these two problems mean my source is just bad and shouldn't be used except this is as near the primary source as possible.  I'll just use (1995) most likely.  I didn't see this becoming so complicated.

The quote isn't vital to the paper by any means and fudging the citiation likely would never be noticed.  But citations are a thing of exactness which I wanted to get right.

I chuckled to myself when my first solution was to ask Coastgab but this is why I did.  Thanks to all for the rapid and helpful information.

I'm getting closer.  The Washington Post actually has the entire essay on their site.  It just took some more refined google searches to find it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm

Reading APA rules at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ assumes that there's at least a publication year, which that link does not provide.  It does mention the essay being published in 1995 but if what Avi said is right then that doesn't matter since I need to cite the link posted above, not the original newspaper.  This creates a problem with in text citations (which I need to have) since a publication year is not present.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/ discusses in text citations always with the assumption of a year being present.

Footnotes are not required so no worries there.  Just in text and the full reference on a seprate page.

The links have helped me get a citation together for the reference page but that in text is stumping me.  It's not even an article outside the Manifesto itself.  There is just a editor's note preceeding it and then 35,000 words from Ted.

Thanks for the links.  That software looks handy but actually I'm not anticipating a whole lot of research papers in the future.  If that turns out differently then I might give it a try.

As far as citing the website; I think i'll need to find a different one with his essay.  Surprisingly (or maybe not?) I'm not having much luck finding any reputable sites which give the whole text.  At least I know what I need now.  Thanks for the tips Avi.

Quote from: Michael Vandeven on December 05, 2011, 02:17:59 AM
there were 832 unique coastgab visitors on sunday according to google analytics.  wow.  that's a record.

Maybe Fort Rock discovered proxy servers.

I've been working on a research paper for a college course and I'm hoping someone here can help me with a problem.  Generally I would ask these things in class but the paper is due later this week and that is the last day of the semester.

The issue I have is with citations.  This might sound weird...I need to cite the Unabomber Manifesto but I'm not sure how I go about doing that.  Is this considered well known enough that citation is not required?  What I'm using is a few quotations from it and my guess is a citation is needed.

Assuming it is needed, how do I cite that?  It was published originally in the Post and Times in 1995 but I accessed it from a website.  http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt  Should I just attribute it to Kaczynski in 1995, or include one of the newspapers and or website?

If it matters for a response, I'm required to use APA format.  Surely with all the brain power floating around Coastgab someone knows the answer.  Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Quote from: Lovely Bones on December 05, 2011, 10:59:19 AM
I know Art talked a lot about Ramona's tragic and sudden death.  I don't, however, remember the details with regard to how he raised the topic on the radio.  I just remember feeling kicked in the gut for him and remember coming to realize over a series of shows that he was teetering on the edge.  While I was surprised by the quick marriage to Airyn, she pretty much saved him from going off the cliff, IMO.

I have that show somewhere around my HD.  He basically did an entire show dealing with her death.  It was his way of getting it into the open, discussing it, and then moving on.  Moving on as far as CTC was concerned.  He didn't want people calling to talk about it after that show and often requested that people avoided the topic.  It's been a while since I heard it but that's how I remember it going down.

Quote from: The General on December 04, 2011, 01:14:21 PM
Someone who projects strength instead of weakness and indecision on both domestic and international affairs would be my preference.  It doesn't have to be a male.  Remember Margaret Thatcher?  Golda Meir?  Our politicians tend to think that they need to be all things to all people and consequently walk a fine line in an attempt to be moderate.

That makes sense to me.  I had a little different definition I'm used to thinking of.  Different enough to make me do a double take and wonder what you guys meant.

I'm sure someday I'll hear Alpha-Person.  I wasn't assuming the personality was male only and didn't think you meant that either.  I've known plenty of alpha-females, maybe more than males.

Now that I understand what you mean I can agree with you.  This is a big problem I have with politics and contributes to my indifference.  Our issues domestically and over seas I find a fascinating subject to discuss and think about.  Once a discussion comes around to what the government will do about things is when I lose interest.  It feels like when you wander into the fiction section of the library while doing research.  It's irrelevant.  Rarely do politicians actually take a stand and work to resolve issues.  When they do, the beneficiaries most often aren't Americans.

Or perhaps non-sequitur is the right word?