PhoneBoy Says

From Weird 1972 Experiment in Marijuana Use:

In the winter of 1972, 20 young women took part in one of the weirdest scientific experiments in this country's history.

For 98 days in a downtown Toronto hospital, their brains, hearts, kidneys, livers, blood and urine were rigorously tested and analyzed. A team of nurses kept round-the-clock records of their behaviour, logged at half-hour intervals.

Just how was marijuana affecting the 10 who had to smoke it every day?

The results of this study basically showed that the one thing people didn't lose while smoking pot was motivation to do what they felt they needed to do. In other words, the traditional "stoner" would probably be a slacker even if he stopped smoking the wacky weed. Normal people would more or less continue to live their lives, do their jobs, and so on.

Eventually the countries of the world will get over this "marijuana is bad" trip.

Aside from No Agenda, I also am a regular listener to the Corbett Report, which provides another data point in my quest to find out the truth of what's actually happening in the world.

In 2010, James Corbett recorded this piece on False Flags, which started making the rounds again shortly after the explosions in Boston last week. Corbett highlighted this piece on Corbett">http://http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-266-the-terrorists-have-been-identified/">Corbett Report Episode 266 where he also made the point that the concept of False Flags are clearly entering the consciousness of enough people that the mainstream media made a point to discredit the idea it was a False Flag event.

Meanwhile, ask yourself why we're not seeing more on the fertilizer explosion that occurred a few days later in West, Texas--a">http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/21/west-texas-plant-explosion/2101025/">a disaster that caused a lot more damage and deaths than the explosions in Boston.Or">http://rt.com/news/iraq-election-attack-killed-876/">Or the explosions that occurred in Iraq earlier that day killing far more than the people in either Boston or West, Texas.

I have a lot of thoughts about what happened today in Boston. Unfortunately, none of them are going to be particularly popular.

While it is certainly a tragedy that people needlessly lost their lives today in the bombings that occurred, the real tragedy is only just beginning.

When I first heard about this event, my thought was: false flag. No facts. No research. Just my gut reaction.

Maybe I've spent too many hours listening to No Agenda. But clearly I wasn't the only one thinking this:

It turns out the guy that asked this question was a guy from InfoWars, a mainstream "alternative" news source that, quite frankly, rubs me the wrong way the same way that traditional mainstream news media does, just with a different point of view.

And surely the media people at this press conference knew who this guy was and let him ask his crackpot question, purely for the purpose of discrediting the idea that maybe--just maybe--there's more here than meets the eye.

Who did it? Who cares. Because whoever the news media ultimately reports as the parties responsible, they are but pawns in a much larger game.

In the last decade or so, I've noticed a series of tragic events followed by a public outcry by the public to "do something" followed by measures that, ultimately, restrict our freedom in the name of making the population feel more secure.

I feel safer with freedom than I do with thugs in charge of keeping me safe. Because at the end of the day, the thugs are only looking out for themselves, not me.

Who's behind it? It really doesn't matter. All I know is I feel like a crab in a pot with water and the water is heating up.

I've gotten out of the habit of writing blog posts.

It's actually really hard to write something coherent that doesn't take me an eon to churn out. That's certainly a lesson I learned with my books that I wrote more than a decade ago.

I should have learned that lesson back in 2007. Maybe I did and I forgot, though.

Or maybe I just don't care as much now as I did back then. Maybe I know how to write better and so I need less editing.

Whatever. Now that I have a way to record my thoughts from anywhere and make them available on the Internet pretty easily, why do I need to write anything at all?

But speaking is a lot harder, at least for me. Mostly because you only get one shot at it. At least in person.

When I do a podcast, I've gotten to the point I do one of two things: leave it as is or re-record it. I may occasionally edit something but that is getting rarer and rarer.

Meanwhile, until I hit the "create post" button, the entire stream of consciousness I am typing is here just waiting to be edited.

Or not. Even though I edit a lot in my mind before I type, I'm getting to the point now where I'm done editing. I am who I am. I'm going to say what I'm going to say. You're either going to like it or think I'm full of shit.

Or maybe you'll like it even though I'm full of shit. Whatever floats your boat.

I kinda did a post earlier today, but now that I have everything hooked into IFTTT (at least until Posthaven adds its own support for posting on Social Networks on new posts), I guess I should "reintroduce" my personal blog to the world.

Of course, now that I think about this, it seems like an awfully douchy thing to do. I mean, who gives a crap? I'm barely going to write here. You're barely going to read it. So I guess we're even :)

But since you came here, look at the cool, shiny Posthaven-hosted blog. I can't do much to it right now, but I know that the Posthaven guys are hard at work They at least got a flawless import of my old Posterous sites. That's something.

Anyway, this is my personal blog. For things that don't fit into either phoneboy.com">rel="nofollow">phoneboy.com or phoneboy.net">http://phoneboy.net">phoneboy.net. And a little to long for app.net or Twitter. :)

I've decided to move this blog over to Posthaven. Who better to "preserve" stuff from an old Posterous blog than the people who originally wrote Posterous in the first place?

This is this blog's 3rd move in the last year. I hope this is the last time I have to do this.

There's this text box. A text box that begs to be filled with the internal chattering, giving it a sort of physical manifestation.

What does the chattering say right now? That it's bedtime and I should sleep. It also says I want to be heard.

About what, exactly? I don't know. It really doesn't matter. I just want to be heard. I guess that's why we're online creating content, in the ways we do, right? We just want to be heard.

But the harsh truth is, no one gives a fuck. That and there's too much other shit out there on the Internet for other people to do. Or read. Or listen to.

I'm lucky in that I started on this Internet thing way early–before it hit the mainstream. I have somewhat of a following. Not a big one, mind you, but I have one.

But I also know the likelihood that anyone will say "hey, I like what you do." Or even acknowledge that I'm doing something.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter all that much. What I said. Or that you acknowledged it. I'm either going to continue doing what I do or I won't.

That said, a nice note to someone who created something goes a long way. Its lets them know they've been heard.

Even if you don't do it for my little narcissistic blog posting, do it for someone else. Let them know they have been heard.

But I really don't know what I want to write.

There was a time in my life where I could write for hours on end. Granted, I edited. A lot. But I could do it.

Now I feel like it is a struggle to string words together on a page: real or virtual. Surely, I can put them down on a page, but to string them together in a coherent manner in way that conveys whatever it is I am trying to convey.

What was I trying to convey again? See, that's the other problem: as soon as I try to take the idea out of my mind and put it into a form that others can see, the idea is gone.

Maybe in the dead of night, I can put a few words together on this blog app thingie that a nice chap from app.net put together. Maybe it will make some sort of sense.

Maybe I've spent too much time on Twitter and Facebook, but I actually find character limits to be a useful thing. I can strip away all the nonsense and get to the point. Sometimes it takes a while to craft those 140 characters–255 characters on app.net–but I can usually do it.

Whereas a blog post like this has no limit. Well, I see a character count at the bottom of this blog-app.net thingie I am using to compose this blog, so maybe I can't prattle on forever. But still, there's a huge difference between 140 characters and 5000.

Maybe this is why I've started podcasting. I know my word choice is not perfect. Some cleanup can be done with editing, but I can't obsess over an audio waveform the same way I can obsess over words on a page.

The end result: nearly 70 episodes (to date), one per day. None of them perfect, but they get the ideas across and out there in a way I've always wanted to: on the radio.

Well, it's not terrestrial radio, which I did briefly in 1997, but it's Internet radio. My podcast does appear on the No Agenda Stream. In addition to the fact you can listen to it on phoneboyspeaks.phoneboy.com, subscribe in iTunes, etc.

So maybe it's not so bad. I can still communicate. I can still participate in the conversation going on in the world.

But sometimes, it's nice to not have to communicate. To not be putting ideas into the world. To just listen. Sometimes to others ideas. Sometimes to my inner dialogue. Sometimes, to silence.

That said, I wish I were heard sometimes. Truly heard. Because if I'm not being heard and making an impact on the world around me, why am I bothering to communicate with you all.

I'm very tired. I am finishing this at 2am. I hope it will make sense what I'm trying to say.

From The Science of Compassion:

Why, in a country that consumes 25% of the world's resources (the U.S.), is there an epidemic of loneliness, depression, and anxiety? Why do so many in the West who have all of their basic needs met still feel impoverished? While some politicians might answer, "It's the economy, stupid," Based on scientific evidence, a better answer is, "It's the lack compassion, stupid."

I have no problem with Compassion. Aside from the good feeling I get when I choose to be compassionate, I recognize that it is in my rational self-interest to be compassionate for many of the reasons listed in this article.

To be clear, I am not opposed to giving to those less fortunate. I am against being given no choice in the matter about it, which is essentially the way our current welfare and similar aid system works. They are funded by taxpayer dollars, which unless I suddenly develop a desire for orange jumpers, three hots and a cot, and living in a 10x10 cell, I have to pay.

Governments have been proven to be horribly wasteful at spending money. And this is by no means a new phenomenon, either. According to Ronald Reagan's "A Time of Choosing" speech (where he was stumping for Barry Goldwater in 1964):

We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now, do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families [making less than $3,000 a year], we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

The government is compelling me to give them money, which they are turning around and wasting, depriving me of any joy that I might get from those compassionate actions. Furthermore, they are significantly lessening the resources I have remaining, thus depriving me the resources to make my own independent choice to be compassionate.

Maybe if the rent weren't too damn high, more of us could actually afford to be compassionate, much less make the choice to be compassionate--and have the opportunity to feel good about it, to boot.

I've been a fan of TWiT since Leo Laporte got the idea to start a podcast sometime after the demise of TechTV. Seven years later, it has grown into a podcast network of 20+ shows with a huge studio in downtown Petaluma, CA.

Unfortunately, Leo has done some things recently that, quite honestly, are not the kinds of things I wish to support. As a result, I've decided to stop listening to any TWiT-produced podcasts.

What are my reasons? Glad you asked.

The Leo Laporte Affair and Erik Lanigan

This is somewhat old news. I expressed my thoughts on this last year and they haven't changed, at least with respect to his personal relationship with his now-estranged wife, which he has claimed numerous times on-air is still good.

What does bother me is the fact that, right around the time this event broke, a particularly talented post-production editor and up-and-coming talent on his network was suddenly persona-non-grata at TWiT. Erik Lanigan was editing the video that ultimately exposed his "affair," which was picked by Gawker.

When asked about Erik's firing on his recent Reddit AmA

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Erik Lanigan was fired.

Adam Curry and the Man Who Was (Not) On The Moon

Last week, Adam Curry was a guest on TWiT and the topic of Neil Armstrong's death was discussed. Leo had asked Adam if he believed that he walked on the moon, to which he replied very honestly, "no." A very respectful discussion occurred about this on the show. That, along with the later discussion about the display advertising model, makes it one of the best TWiTs I've heard in a long time.

Meanwhile, Leo's fans were not happy about this and took to blasting him on Twitter. That didn't bother me. What did bother me was Leo's response, like this one:

First off, Adam Curry disputes that "Adam was booked earlier in the week" in his version of the events that he described in Daily Source Code 866--he was actually booked the day before the episode (which was after Neil Armstrong passed away). Second, he's had Adam on before, knows all about No Agenda and that his views on a great many things are, well, different. Or even "crackpot."

Leo also represented Adam's views:

And finally, on his This Week in TWiT show, he continues to throw Adam under the bus, even mentioning banning Adam from the show!

Leo's free to have whoever he wants on his network. It's his to do that with. However, to say he had no idea that things could go this way was at best disingenuous, at worst an outright lie.

The TWiT Army

I've also had my own interactions with the TWiT army via their IRC channel, which is moderated by some of the strictest moderators known to man. Anything even remotely challenging to either the hosts worldview, the moderators, controversial points of view, or anything that could be construed as sexual will result in being kicked from the chatroom immediately.

Based on the comments Leo continues to receive on Twitter related to Adam Curry's views, I can only conclude the majority of the TWiT army is perfectly happy to not question authority or to even entertain differing points of view.

Sorry, folks, that's not me.

Conclusion

I realize that me not listening to Leo Laporte and the TWiT network is probably not going to be noticed by anyone but me. I also don't think I'm necessarily going to sway anyone to come to the same conclusion I did. That said, I am building a handy page explaining alternatives to TWiT podcasts to help anyone who is.

Update 16 Oct 2012: Leo's sexts get caught on the air again. Honestly I don't care that he gets sexts--good for him--but as many times as he has inadvertently "exposed" himself on-air, you'd think the self-proclaimed "Tech Guy" would take a few more precautions.