BellGab.com Archive

I actually agree with Hoagland on much of the politics tonight.

What's interesting is that it's 500 pages, but it's also overall really positive. Compare that to the GNS thread.

Quote from: (Sandman) Logan-5 on September 17, 2015, 01:14:10 AM
That's right. He did didn't he.

Yes, and he also Braaped during the Dean Haglund interview. As I recall, he also said "Bellgab wants to know" or something similar during a question for a guest.

Quote from: coaster on September 17, 2015, 01:12:46 AM
Norman Mailer was overrated.

Worse. He was a complete anti-humanist ass.

Quote from: Sandra Kristen on September 17, 2015, 01:10:13 AM
I'm waiting for Richard to say Braaps.

Richard gave an epic Braaps to Bellgab one night when we cured his sinus headache with a mass consciousness experiment.

Quote from: jazmunda on September 17, 2015, 01:07:53 AM
Nice shoutout to a BellGabber!!!

Richard's done that several times. He's cool.

Yay! K_Dubb got a shout out.

Richard's talking about the "ship of foolishness".

Braaps!

Spooky show tonight, I enjoyed it.

Quote from: Sandra Kristen on September 17, 2015, 12:49:20 AM
Yeah but Richard will probably try to make it a political show.

The danger of that is great, given the debates.

Quote from: Gumby, Dammit on September 17, 2015, 12:49:08 AM

LOL. Dave needs antlers.

Hoagland open lines coming in less than 19.5 minutes.

Quote from: jazmunda on September 17, 2015, 12:41:19 AM
Fake JAZ!!!!!!!

You really do have a lot of impersonators. Kinda creepy. Why do you call your house Australia?

Quote from: (Sandman) Logan-5 on September 17, 2015, 12:38:15 AM
There's lots of info online about growing your own. But it is extremely hard to get started. Conditions have to be very precise and you have to check them, and seperate them daily until they get 6-8 inches tall. Then you can transplant them. Over water and they'll rot. Under water and they die. Plus they really deplete the soil. Can't plant them in the same spot two years in a row.

Sounds like my various potted citrus tree experiments. Very temperamental. Overdo it, and they drop their leaves on a dime.

Whenever Art plays this Enya tune I'm instantly 20 years old again and it's 1995 for a few seconds.

Quote from: (Sandman) Logan-5 on September 17, 2015, 12:20:51 AM
I've heard Cayanne pepper works, never tried it though. Those bastards ate all my tobacco one night though. Pissed me off. Tobacco is hard to get started from seed.

I made this really nasty concoction once of Dove soap, Cayenne pepper and garlic and then let it sit out in spray bottles in the sun for several days. It smelled god awful, I mean, unreal. It was the only thing I've found that does deter rabbits . . . but the deer just laugh at me. I'm sure the one outside was just peeking in to mock me as it was heading off to destroy the herb garden. I've always wanted to try growing tobacco. I've never tried it.

Quote from: Gumby, Dammit on September 17, 2015, 12:10:20 AM
Back in the DAY....in Michigan of all places...one summer deer ate my entire refer crop overnight. It was then that I started noticing (like my friend SciFi) that they were beginning to appear with only ONE EYE.
Shit man.

Certain things are best grown inside. 

Quote from: albrecht on September 17, 2015, 12:07:15 AM
Good luck! I've made "stuff" that would spurn the devil but deer will still eat. (Concoctions of rotten eggs, various peppers, etc) and then, of course, the urine of predators (expensive.) No avail, only thing is combination of fencing (not electric unless large guage wire) and dogs. And planting stuff they don't like...and even then in drought. Good luck

Oh god, I know. I've tried the dried cougar urine, the pepper and soap concoctions, even the Great Wall of SciFiAuthor failed because these things can jump like you wouldn't believe. So I just try to grow enough for everybody. Corn is hopeless, I think we've gotten five ears this year out of the +-100 plants I started with.

Quote from: Gumby, Dammit on September 16, 2015, 11:59:36 PM
One-Neuron Nooron has lowered the lissning bar so low these days!

You know, thinking on it, I don't think I've been spooked by a single show he's done. Or any paranormal shows other than Art for that matter. Art just has a certain way to present this stuff so that it's spooky.

Quote from: albrecht on September 16, 2015, 11:57:58 PM
You need to look up better (I think I mentioned this with the Bigfeet caller) on eye color of animals (especially considering type of light, natural and otherwise if spot-lighting, artificial light, car-head lights etc.) These newer LEDS are more "blue" and change it somewhat. But many threads on eye color for species, predators versus not etc. Now red-eyes in your closet....don't hesitate.

You'd think my brain would work quicker. They're literally out there this time of night every night 365 days a year grazing around and eating my garden.

Quote from: Gumby, Dammit on September 16, 2015, 11:52:18 PM
No telling how many poor deer have been bludgeoned to death thanks to Art Bell. :-(
Bambi, FFS.

I didn't bludgeon it! Art's right though, when I jumped out of the chair I could hear both of my cats take off from wherever they were perched around the house. Now they're in here looking at me with much puzzlement.

Alright, I just had the shit scared out of me. I'm in my kitchen, one dim lamp turned on, house built in 1868, no one else here, rural. I just looked at a normally pitch black window and saw movement and an eye. So I screamed like a school girl, grabbed a baseball bat, looked out the window and . . .

It was a deer. That'll teach me to draw the curtains when Art's doing these kinds of shows.

Quote from: Northern Nights on September 16, 2015, 04:42:41 PM
The rise of technology and the resulting information age in the post industrial era and it's effects on society was predicted with eerie accuracy in a book called The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, which was written over 40 years ago.  It essentially predicted today's world, where the real challenge is keeping people employed and providing the right training for the jobs on the cutting edge of technology.  It didn't necessarily predict mass unemployment, only that many jobs would in effect be unimportant in the greater scheme of things.  That's true today when you think about it, most office jobs today don't exactly require full effort, people still have time to read the news on the internet, fill out their football pool, post on Bellgab, etc.

Yes, Toffler was prophetic. The complete unemployment scenario oddly comes from John Maynard Keynes originally. He wrote a paper in 1930 entitled "Economic Possibilities for our Grand Children" and basically predicted that within a century of writing man would literally automate everything and go unemployed. He appears to have been right. Quite a few people in business are already calling for 3 or 4 day work weeks.

Economics is only one aspect of the big shift though. We're at the edge of the biotechnology revolution as well. It's looking increasingly likely that over the next four decades we will dramatically extend human lifespans until eventually some form of immortality becomes a reality. One has to ask how do the religions adjust to a world where people don't die? Or another aspect would be genetic and physical manipulation, just what does race mean when you can change your color? What happens when prosthetic limbs become better than biological ones?

All of these questions are coming faster than anyone realizes and our social and political order is not prepared for it.

Hoagland however will survive it. All hail emperor Cyberhoag!

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 16, 2015, 03:23:01 PM
We've got a long way to swing left before we're back to New-Deal socialism, Manhattan-Project-style government mobilizations or even Nixon-era price controls.  The only thing our generation has suffered from is decades of political and economic stability.

I don't think we'll have time for any sort of political adjustment period. We'll simply see staggering unemployment rates as everything gets automated and the system will be forced to put everyone on welfare until we come up with a suitable replacement system, perhaps a resource-based economy. Human government as we knew it will be obsolete within 40 years due to technological unemployment.

Quote from: ShayP on September 16, 2015, 02:50:18 PM
*Sigh*  If I continue typing, it will only seem like the incoherent nostalgic ramblings of a grumpy 44 year old man whose failures got the best of him and wants to take it out on the 'millennials' and those after.  I just look at my avatar and know I'm okay.

I think our whole generation is like that. We basically failed because we were stuck between the old way of doing things and the new technological order. Now we're middle aged and already yelling for the kids to get off the lawn.

Quote from: gabrielle on September 16, 2015, 02:25:25 PM
I think that what you all are discussing is akin to what Hoagie is calling a disruption in the field.  I think we are on the verge of a post industrial revolution because of the rapid changes brought about by technology.  When the industrial revolution occurred, the old institutions crumbled or redefined themselves.  IMHO, we are witnessing a shake up in our old institutions as they attempt to deal with the changes brought about by the internet, the digital age, and major scientific advances.  I can't wait for the Art and Hoagie tonight.  It just keeps getting better.   

I think you're right, our old institutions are groaning and straining to keep up with the advance of technology and are woefully unprepared for the future. Over the next 40 years, for example, the vast majority of jobs will fall to automation. Economically, our system has absolutely no way of dealing with what happens when the entire human race goes unemployed, yet the system will drive that very automation because it saves money for the corporations. Eventually, the corporations have no market because it went unemployed and the only way to keep things going is nationalization of the means of production. It seems apparent that the end result of capitalism in a technologically advancing society is utopian socialism. Imagine how blind-sided the political order will be going through that transition.

Quote from: ShayP on September 16, 2015, 01:50:02 PM
Well said!

It was also about that time that "new journalism" took dominance, of which the aforementioned Norman Mailer was a proponent. They took  ideas from fiction such as ecstatic truth and applied them to journalism supposedly to emphasize truth over fact. Today all that means is skewed, opinionated journalism taken as absolute fact by the masses.

Quote from: chefist on September 16, 2015, 11:46:05 AM
Absolutely...and many became programmers...we emphasize computers too much...that technology has accelerated past the point of really being necessary...we need a working fusion reactor more than faster, smaller computers, smart phones and storage devices...

Yeah, that was the internet revolution that did that. All of us Gen X folks thought we were supposed to go into computers and IT and those fields got saturated. The fusion reactor will come faster than you think, Lockheed-Martin is working its ass off on one. Its one of a number of advances that are coming down the pike that will catch people by surprise. Another one is the quantum computer, someone somewhere is working on that and getting close enough that the NSA is studying security measures against a technology that's officially not supposed to be here for another 35 or 40 years.

Quote from: chefist on September 16, 2015, 11:35:53 AM
Back when it was cool and exciting to become a scientist or engineer...seems our present society only values entertainers, politicians and sports figures...

Great video though! I would have paid $2K too!

It was the 80's that destroyed it. Smart people became nerds and intelligence became something that you hid, at least during school hours. At the same time the pop culture and politics became corporate and formulaic and as a result music, literature, etc. became dumbed down. That seems to be changing lately though.