Sun 23 Dec 2007
This was supposed to be a short show to wish everyone well for the festive season, but it blew out because we spent so long covering listener toy and present stories and reminiscing about cool toys from the 1970s. Have a great New Year and you’ll hear from us in 2008!
December 25th, 2007 at 12:55 am
First Comment!
Wow, over an hour and a half! I can tell this is gonna be a good one.
December 25th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Temporarily ultimate comment!
Big episode!
Happy whatever anyone is celebrating.
I’m glad you brought up kangaroo meat, as I’d meant to inquire about that.
Since it’s already Xmas there, don’t tell me what presents I’ve received. I want to enjoy the surprise.
December 25th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Ah, yes. I remember that old Atari Pong system. Not only did it use dials, but they were attached directly to the device, so you had to sit right next to the person you were playing against. Strangely, it required a bunch of C or D batteries, rather than being plugged into an outlet. And the sounds all came from a speaker on the device, rather than through the TV.
Completely off topic to this episode, I just wanted to note that one of the news releases about the British Queen going to YouTube ends by using the expression Bob’s your uncle!
December 26th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
The pong system Jana and I coincidentally both got fobbed off with as children wasn’t even by Atari. I’ve never seen the Atari one, but I’m guessing it was the original which was copied by Hanimex. I would imagine the Atari one wasn’t an object of shame or pity like the Hanimex because it was probably as good as you could get at the time, but the Hanimex pong game was around while other kids had the Atari 2600.
I can’t remember exactly what our one looked like, but it was something along the lines of these. I see one of those illustrated was described as having 10 variations of pong, and that was the kind of improbable number I remember, although I’m sure the one we were talking about didn’t have cartridges you could change over. There was no escape from the remorseless parade of pong and pong-derivative games!
December 28th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Caitlin uses the phrase “Happiness writes white.” I’m not sure where it comes from.
Yes, the missing word was “atheist.” Thanks for substituting it. I hate it when that happens. Maybe I should say “atheism writes white!”
I should have submitted my favorite bad gift story, even though it’s a second hand story and it’s not a Christmastime gift. There was a couple in college who had been dating for a while, two years maybe. It was either on their anniversary or Valentines Day that they exchanged gifts, and he gave her a DVD copy of Oceans 11. Not a great gift, but alright. Thing is, it was a used copy. Ouch. Not bad enough? He had already given her a DVD of Oceans 11 earlier that year! Apparently he forgot he did and gave her another one. And that was all she got. That’s gotta hurt. They broke up about a week later.
One more thing. Not to infringe on your or Muffintot’s privacy, but hearing about your trip to the beach made me think maybe it’s time for another picture of the tyke? They grow fast, and I know I’d like to see how she’s grown since the you put the first picture online.
January 1st, 2008 at 8:33 am
Happy New Year!
January 16th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Where’d everyone go?
I share a lot of the same toy memories as Zan. We must be close in age.
I too wondered who the hell would want an Oscar Goldman doll at the time. It’s the kind of toy Milhouse on the Simpsons would have had.
Did you ever notice in the 70s it seemed popular to suddenly equip the action figure for a character with a campervan or RV? Even if they didn’t have one on their show? Always annoyed me.
I especially loved Micronauts as a kid. I ruled, as I even owned the Battle Cruiser.
In fact, it’s up in the attic. So I still RULE!
January 16th, 2008 at 1:18 am
I managed to avoid looking “happiness writes white” up until I was prodded out of my mid-winter lethargy by Kevbo’s “Where’d everyone go?”.
It was the French author Henri de Montherlant, 1896 - 1972, who coined it - “Happiness writes white. It does not show up on the page”.
You may be interested in the following, culled from his biography:
He was old French aristoracy and a fairly prolific war and novel writer after being wounded in World War I. In 1960 Montherlant was elected a member of the Académie française. His presentation speech dwelt mercilessly on the geography of New Zealand.
In 1970 he was beaten up by some youths causing a serious eye injury, and as a consequence of which he became progressively blind. He committed suicide in 1972, swallowing a cyanide capsule then shooting himself in the head (not a cry for help, then…). He concealed his pederastic tendencies from the public during his lifetime.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Just after I pressed submit, I remembered that many years ago I was told the following by an old PC support guy in my department:
“Speed up their PC by 50% and they’ll remember you for a day. Slow it down by 50% and they’ll remember you for ever.”
In other words, happiness writes white.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Zebulon, you have a real flair for biography. Perhaps I’ll have you write mine if I ever do anything worth writing about.
And Kevbo, how could I forget micronauts? They were definitely a favourite of mine, although I didn’t have anything more elaborate than the figures. I seem to remember one with detachable wings …
January 16th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Micronauts actually were re-released a few years ago and were indistinguishable from the originals. Unfortunately, this means that they are just as delicate. I only bought one and managed to break it before I even got home.
Anxiously awaiting the next episode.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
For lots more about Micronauts, see http://www.megomuseum.com
Whilst browsing it I came across this:
The Buck Roger’s line was not met with much enthusiasm. The 12 inch Buck figures are now mostly famous for always being zombie grey. There are rumors that Mego knew they had a problem with migration (the process where the vinyl of the head degrades the pigment it was mixed with resulting in a grey corpse-like face with a slimy feel to it) and chose to do nothing about it for financial reasons.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Hi Z&J!
I’ve wanted to write a reasoned reply to the recent Amateur Cognitive Science, but I haven’t re-auditioned it yet. So, I’ll fall back to my main point, and rely on my admittedly flawed memory.
I was really surprised you feel it’s unusual and rare for people to perceive things through other’s eyes. It’s how I consciously live, in an attempt to connect more fully with the important people in my life. And I think it’s more common than you might believe.
Don’t agree? I think this “reverse projective identification” (yep, I’m a psych major) is inborn. When Muffintot is around 2 years old, (if she’s like most youngsters) I think you’ll find she begins telling non-truths more and more frequently. Why? She’s able to put herself in your heads, and projecting how you’ll react to answers you don’t want to hear! Amazing stuff, though frustrating.
Perhaps it becomes an unconscious habit in later years, perhaps some lose it completely. Still, I think it’s present in some form for most people. Really!
As far as the bicameral mind book, I can’t dismiss the central theory so easily. One sticking point seems to be what might have triggered the change in people’s brains to elicit self-awareness. Evolution isn’t the only possible answer; it could be something something as simple as a retrovirus that causes the required genes to express themselves. You probably know that human DNA reveals the influence of a few dozen retroviruses, which have reprogrammed bits of what might have been in our genome. In other words, something as simple as an influenza epidemic (which have roamed the globe freely as recently as the last century) could have far-reaching effects.
One fascinating parallel is that that last generation or two are among the first to equate happiness and love. In the US 50 years ago, and moreso in earlier times, marriages were about duty and raising the generation; contentment and mutual emotional support (and good sex) were outside consideration. It was a secretive time, as severe physical punishment (which would be easily a criminal offense today) was very common and considered the husband’s prerogative, even duty. How times have changed!
Granted, chances are the book is grasping at straws. Still, it’s important to try and form opinions based on the possibilities as far as we can conceive them, instead of pm intuition. At least, as a scientist, that’s what I’ve been trained to do as best I can.
So, on a less serious note, when will you be back? Are you busy watching the Australian Tennis Open in your backyard in Melbourne? I would be!
Best,
-V
January 26th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Hey Vibeeen,
Yeah, we’ve been slack with the shows. Things have been very busy around here lately (and not because we’ve been watching tennis, either). Zebulon should be proud to hear that I’ve mostly been occupied setting up a workshop and making things with wood, something I’ve been threatening to do for a long time.
In response to your two point about Amateur Cognitive Science:
Firstly, the point that I was trying to make isn’t that we can’t or don’t see things through others’ eyes, but rather that this isn’t something that we always employ, or even need to employ in order to relate to people. If I lie to someone, I want a particular outcome and so come up with a conception of how they would respond to a certain piece of information. However, I don’t believe that I need to do this in order to understand that someone is angry with me, or that I’ve hurt their feelings - I can understand these things without having to develop a theory concerning what’s going on inside the other person’s head (even if this is more a hardwired simulation rather than a conscious theory). I can respond naturally to things like expression and body language without having the faintest idea what’s going on in their head. So the the idea of a ‘theory of mind’ I think refers to something real, but I don’t believe that, without it, people seem like objects whose inner states are completely lost on you.
Secondly, with the bicameral mind thing, who knows? I have no real way of knowing how the brain of someone in the Bronze Age worked. Still, I think there are some big gaps in the theory. Most importantly, if something physically did change in the human brain at the time, we simply have no material evidence of it. Of course we couldn’t under the circumstances, but without that evidence it’s a pretty big jump. The other point gets down to nature versus nurture. That old chestnut is being worked through with increasing effectiveness these days as our understanding of things like genetics and neurology increases, although there’s still a lot left to figure out and our tradition of research, which segregates the sciences and humanities and works to ensure that people on one side know pretty much nothing about what’s going on on the other, is a major impediment to progress. Anyway, I think the kind of change Jaynes talked about can be much more easily and economically explained with nurture rather than nature given the lack of evidence for physical change. Your example about changing understandings of love further illustrates this point: no-one is claiming that there must have been some change in the architecture of the human brain to explain this, or that modern westerners have brains that are constructed differently from people in other cultures who don’t understand love the same way. History is actually littered with major changes in how human beings perceive themselves and the world around them, and this results from the evolution of culture, not the human brain.
February 6th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I just heard your ‘gay pills and booze’ promo on the Dawn and Drew Show 713.
“Making things with wood”. Snigger. Maybe you could fashion protective cases for iPods?
On second thoughts, maybe not. Some time ago we had a visit from a salesman from a company that made very high quality wooden cases for mixer desks in studios, opera houses and so on.
He had been sent to try to sell our company high quality wooden cases for our PCs. We told him that they cost far more than the PCs did, we changed our PCs every few years, and anyway nobody much cared what they looked like. He replied despairingly “Everybody I visit says that.”
February 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Ha! Thanks for letting us know what Old Gil Gunderson’s been up to, Zebulon!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Gunderson#Gil_Gunderson
February 7th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
PKnJ released show #100
February 11th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Don, that’s great! I had totally written off PK and J. Thank you for letting us know. I first heard about Bob’s Yer Uncle! on their show.
Zan, it’s been years since I read Jayne’s book, but if I recall correctly, he was arguing that the switch from bicameral to modern was an extreme cultural change. He argued that the physical differences in brain structure were caused by nurture, not the other way around. And he speculated that radical differences in nurture might be capable of triggering other physical changes as well.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:42 am
I was browsing PC magazines yesterday and I happened to come across a short review of Ableton Live, which said in passing that it was called ‘Live’ because you were meant to use it on stage for live perfomances. They didn’t say how you would do that.
I always imagined it took ages to put tracks together, piling instruments on one at a time, adjusting them individually to finally achieve the desired effect. If so, surely a more unwieldy stage instrument is difficult to imagine?
Or did they just mean you can use it as mixer to play back stuff you have already recorded?
Zan, would you ever consider using Ableton Live on stage?
February 21st, 2008 at 8:47 pm
G-spot news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7254523.stm
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 am
Some animal smut for the Smut Report.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15926_15-most-bizarre-animal-mating-rituals.html
Animals are incredibly filthy creatures.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Hey everybody,
Thanks for the material; we do want to do a show soon, it’s just that things have been pretty busy for us. Next weekend is the Muffintot’s first birthday party, so we may not make it then, but if not then we’ll definitely try for the week after.
Zebulon, in answer to your Live question, the idea is that you have a collection of loops for individual tracks which you can start and stop in realtime to create music on the fly. Presumably you’ve already selected the loops because they go together well. You can also trigger them as collections of loops (e.g. grouped as ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’ or whatever), but you might mix and match them in new ways, just like a DJ creating a new juxtaposition of material from two different records. You can also have some audio just coming through headphones, rather than the speakers, so you can check if something sounds OK before anyone else hears it. You can also run external vocals or other instruments through it to use it as an accompaniment if you like. Also, a key consideration is that Live can change the tempo of music automatically, so that everything is set to a global tempo regardless of how it started out, and therefore doesn’t turn into a big mess.
There’s a free demo with a demo song on it from the website — it’s fun to play with if you want to know more …
February 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I’ve played with both GarageBand and Ableton, but they’re both so radically different from Audacity that I just can’t grok them.
By the way, is it appropriate for me to use the comment space here to shamelessly promote my new podcast? If so, then everyone should go check out the Brazilianisms Podcast.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Oops. I think I screwed up that link. Here’s the site:
http://www.brazilianismspodcast.com
February 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
It’s very much appropriate, Tvindy. If we hadn’t gone so long without making a show, I would have already said that I think it’s a great podcast idea that lots of people should be interested in.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I bet you never thought you could work the Melbourne Cup into a smut report… How about this news?
http://news.smh.com.au/jockey-alleges-abuse-at-melbourne-stable/20080227-1v9q.html
February 28th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Zan,
Aww, that made my day.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
This video is very relevant to one of the more recent episodes of Amateur Cognitive Neuroscience.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
As if you needed a new segment, but how about “Strange religious prohibitions”?
To kick it off, may I propose this Orthodox Jewish one concerning toilet paper:
http://tinyurl.com/2xaybn
March 29th, 2008 at 12:14 am
One thing I’ve noticed in the podosphere is that it seems to be very difficult for a show to make it to the 100 episode mark. The closer they get, the more the podcasters slow down. It’s like there’s an entropy barrier. But if you can make it past 100, you’ll never fade. So get to it, Zan and Jana. It’s just 20 more episodes to immortality!
March 31st, 2008 at 7:35 am
Did we move to a one show per season format? If so, I missed the memo.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:18 am
Man, I can feel the comments getting progressively more resentful.
We’re really sorry for the silence, guys. Jana’s gone back to work part time, which has put a real crunch on our free time (and we didn’t have that much of it before). I’m working full time and doing some child minding, meaning that I usually have at most half a day off a week, so producing a show is beyond us at the moment. Hopefully things will settle down a bit before too long and we’ll get back on track, but I can’t say when that’s likely to happen.
We miss talking to you guys, and hope we’ll be back on deck soon.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Zan, have you ever considered using Twitter? That would be a great way for you and Jana to keep us informed. Also, you should go to DragonCon.
How about a 5-minute mini-episode?
April 6th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I miss your show, but I am not resentful. Take care. I won’t delete you from my aggregator.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I still check here often. Looking forward to your return. I forgive you for the delay and having a life bit!
I watched “Chopper” the other night and thought of my pals down under.
In the meantime I turned 40 a couple months ago so Jana owes me a big birthday wish.
Greets to my fellow BYU devotees