Category: Rant

… because what’s coming out of it is a load of shit.

From an MSNBC article:

Oda said banning guns on campus might do more harm than good. He said people bent on violence might resort to other, perhaps bloodier methods, such as swords. “A person that’s got skill with a sword in a very big crowd could put a lot more people down with a sword than a gun,” he said. “They’re silent. You’ll have people screaming, but nobody knows what’s going on.”

Please put your head back in your ass so that when you talk, no one can hear you. You, sir, have clearly never picked up a sword in your entire life. Here is what it is like to cut with a sword. Take a three foot stick and smack a radial tire swing with it. If you can get the tire swing to fly out of the way without transmitting a massive amount of vibration back into your arms, or without bouncing the stick back up in your face, then you may be competent with a sword.

Sword cutting is HARD. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to cut effectively with a sword, no matter how sharp it is. It takes thousands of hours, too, with a gun on a range to be able to kill with pinpoint accuracy, but if you shoot wildly into a crowd, you’ll do some pretty serious damage, probably even fatally wound some people. If you swing a sword wildly into a crowd with no training, you will probably cut a few people. Depending on the time of year, they may need stitches. If it’s winter and they’re wearing leather coats, you’re just going to ruin their coat. Then they will beat you to a bloody pulp. Even a talented, skilled swordsman would have a hard time in a crowd. Think about this – which will get people wet faster, a super soaker that you just shoot randomly, or running around trying to tag people with a wet sponge?

Last thing to think about. If you cook, you know how hard it is to use a knife skillfully on a raw chicken or fish. You’re cutting with a blade. Now multiply the difficulty of making good, clean cuts by a thousand, since you have a target that can and does move, and what would have been a clean cut a half second ago is now a complete miss.

Hey, if you can actually get criminals to give up firearms for swords, the world will be a safer place.

A followup to the previous post. I’m sitting in a courthouse jury pool in Marlborough, Massachusetts as I write this, and in the jury pool room is a TV with a daytime talk show playing, talking about digital tactics to spy on your significant other. A quick check of other channels by one of the jurors reveals more of the same on nearly every other channel.

This is the wasteland of media on the other side of the digital divide, entertainment for the lowest common denominator – entertainment that is so crude and base that anyone can consume it. It’s mental fast food.

How many people are sitting in living rooms, kitchens, even workplaces today being forced to consume only what’s on the mainstream media outlets? How many people have no other choices because they don’t know other choices are available?

Our mission as new media producers has to strongly incorporate outreach. At each PodCamp I attend, I usually present on the topic of podcast marketing, and without fail at least one member of the audience wonders why I’m “giving away my secrets”. It’s a valid question, and the answer is simple: the more people who tune into podcasts of any kind, the more reach we ALL have. Once you tap into one podcast, it’s only natural to find other kinds of new media that fits your interests. If each podcast producer brings in 10 new people a month, with over 250,000 podcasts being produced, you’re talking millions of new listeners. That’s why I give away as much as I can – it benefits me, too.

Mainstream media caters to the lowest common denominator of content because they can’t provide highly focused, highly targeted content. We as new media producers can. The Internet is an infinitely large radio dial, an infinitely large TV tuner. Instead of being forced to choose from a palette of bland, offensive, or pointless on the TV tuner, we can offer audiences content that is relevant, focused, targeted to their interests, and create conversations and communities around the content that will make life better for our audiences.

The most important email I’ve ever received as a podcast producer was from a girl on MySpace who listened to my podcast and was inspired to go back to college to complete her degree. She’d dropped out a couple of years back. How many people has Jerry Springer encouraged to go back to college?

I know lots of other new media producers who’ve reported similar experiences.

Our superpowers:

We can reach global audiences.
We can provide our audiences with content that’s useful, relevant, and focused.
We can engage our audiences in conversation and change lives for the better.

Rip open the metaphorical shirt and reveal your superpowers to the world. Bring as many people into new media as you can. Serve your audiences as best as you can, and we can not only combat the wasteland of mainstream media, but also make the world a better place.

I don’t know about you, but lately, from my perspective, there have been a lot of things going wrong with life in general around me. Not specifically in my own life, which has been blessedly good, but in the bigger picture. Whether it’s the overseas military campaigns, scandals in loan industries (take your pick), it seems some days like we’re barely staying afloat in a torrent of bad news.

At the PESC conference this week, one of the key points I made about podcasting and new media was that it gives us our voice back, gives us the same power as multibillion dollar corporations to express ourselves and be heard. This is a superhero power that is unlike any other we’ve ever had the chance to use. We’ve pontificated long enough on the meaning of new media, the implications, and its myriad potential uses.

The time has come to make use of our powers. If you believe, as I do, that everyone who picks up a microphone or camera, is a rockstar and superhero in waiting, now is the time for us to unleash our powers as fully as we can on the world. Produce media, gather audience, gain mindshare, and let new voices be heard. The PodCamp UnConference series is a good start to this, but there’s more to be done, more to share with the world.

Take a look at our world. Look at the headlines on the news, in the papers, on the radio. The world desperately needs us – all of us – to share media that gives a truer, broader, and more authentic big picture than we currently get from mainstream media.

Are you ready to show your superhero powers?

Ever heard of these two drugs? Pseudoephedrine and Phenylephrine. One is a vasoconstrictor, the other a vasopressor. One is a precursor chemical used to manufacture methamphetamines, and that’s where the trouble begins.

A bit of history: pseudoephedrine has been used for years as a nasal decongestant. It’s effective in temporarily relieving congestion and stuffiness, and works well for a lot of people. Unfortunately for pseudoephedrine, it can be reduced using a variety of chemical methods to form methamphetamine, a potent, addictive drug. As a result, legislation passed in 2005 has restricted the sale of pseudoephedrine, and many retailers, drug manufacturers, and distributors have substituted phenylephrine in their cold remedies.

What’s the problem with this? At least for me, and for others, phenylephrine is ineffective as a decongestant. I’ve tried it a number of times, and it has no effect whatsoever on me. Why? According to Wikipedia and subsequent sources, phenylephrine doesn’t activate a norephedrine response in the body, and is metabolized by monoamine oxidase through ingestion, with up to 2/3 of the drug being broken down before it gets into the body. The net effect? Phenylephrine doesn’t clear a stuffy nose for me, making it a waste of money.

So here’s the question: does the public good of reducing the supply of pseudoephedrine for potential misuse outweigh the cost of a drug which has questionable effectiveness? Does the mitigation of potential criminal activity balance out with increased discomfort from illness?

If you buy a decongestant containing phenylephrine, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t have the same bang for the buck that pseudoephedrine-based decongestants did.

Side tip: even though it’s marketed for treatment of allergies, drugs like loratadine (marketed under the name Claritin) are also helpful for suppressing the histamine response for colds, and is effective for me against a stuffy nose. Disclosure: I work in student loans, not medicine or pharmacy. I have no expertise in this stuff at all besides what works for me – consult someone who’s actually qualified before self-treating with drugs.

Side tip 2: even though directions for making methamphetamine are readily available on the internet, I’d suggest taking a course or two in organic chemistry first. Using the directions available, you’re more likely to blow yourself up than make something that will give you a high. It’d be like giving you this set of directions for making a cake: flour, sugar, milk, eggs, water, cocoa powder. Mix and bake. Good luck actually getting a cake out of that.

This is just stupid. Here’s a bag of bread I bought at the store. Inside this bag of bread is not bread, but bread that has been shrink-wrapped, ostensibly “for freshness”. Look, if your bag is so deficient that you need to shrink wrap the bread inside the bag, maybe you should design a better bag. Or, alternately, if the shrink wrap guarantees freshness, why bother with the bag? Just stamp your logo and the UPC on the shrink wrap.

Either way, you’ve got double the amount of packaging for no good reason. Things like this make me grumpy, especially first thing in the morning as I’m trying to prepare breakfast without a sufficient amount of coffee inside me.