“Oh,  I don’t believe in hypothetical situations, Mr. Donaghy. That’s like lying to your brain.” –Kenneth, 30 Rock

“20s & 30s it was the role of government. 50s & 60s it was civil rights. The next 20 years it will be about privacy. The Internet. Cell phones. Health records. And who’s gay and who’s not. Besides, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?”– Sam, The West Wing

” We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and  positive, from the outset of life.”– Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics

Episode 8: All Eyes on Me

This podcast will be our second published live cast, the topic a completely surveilled society, like London.  We talk about weather surveillance makes society safer, or is privacy more important.  So why are we here?  I am under the opinion, and I believe Mr. Nies does as well, that a person’s privacy is more important point.  To illustrate  the point the to of us make arguments to that hypothetical situations, and to Nies’s credit he does it better than I do.  We both believe that the potential for harm, outweighs the potential for good.

Why is privacy and issue?

See quote above.  With advent and improvement of communications and computers we can get information and share it within seconds.  Privacy as it once was no longer exists, and surveilled society would eliminate it almost completely eliminate privacy. It ends up hurting more people then it is helping.  People who commit crimes and will continue to weather or not they are being watched or not, it happens now and more intelligent criminals well be get around it.  The other reason is comes from the following phrase. It is not what is, it is what it looks like. Which brings me to another point, why crime happens.

Why crime happens?

At the most fundamental level all actions are based on the following choice is the risk worth the reward.  What is the incentive for a certain action.  The criminal commits a crime because s/he know/think they can get away with it.  A person who breaks into a car knows that the police don’t have the resources investigate every break in, so the risk for breaking into a car is very low.  Why?

1.  Small chance of eye witnesses.

2.  There rarely is an investigation into it.

3.  Low risk of injury.

4.  Easy to commit.

Reason 2 is the major problem.  Why don’t police investigate the crime?  The incentive to investigate isn’t there.  It is two expensive to run tests, and there are not enough police officers to patrol.  The police allocate resources based on the severity of the crimes. That means that murder, rape, robbery, and assault are all higher on the list that a simple robbery.

I think I have ranted enough.

This is my opinion,take it, leave it, love it, hate it.

Until next time.

~B

Cardboard Tube Fighting League

On 11 July, 2009, the Cardboard Tube Fighting League organized an event in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum. Dumondicus and Niestophalus partook. This... is their story.

The End Of An Era

Today, at 0748 hours, The Drexel Shaft... was imploded. By imploded I mean "FELL THE FUCK SIDEWAYS."

At 0748 hours this morning, the Drexel Shaft was destroyed in a controlled explosion.

The explosion was very loud. And then the 400ft(?) tall chimney (at the tip) fell sideways. Entirely unlike what we’d expected.

Turns out, everyone knew what they were doing, and the demolition was an act of precision after all.

The best video footage, IMHO. I didn’t shoot it. I’m just linking to it.

Sorry guys episode 8 will be delayed we recorded it, however due to some background noise issues we decided to re-cast the episode for better quality.

~B

Featuring our very good friend and listener Drew, but sadly missing our very own Nies, but welcoming BACK our long-lost Kyle, we share opinions and confusions about MMO’s past and present.

Listen to the Podcast

Hope you enjoy!

~Paul

I give you: Episode 07!

Listen to the Podcast

Mainly focusing on Halloween Movies and MMO’s this week, we briefly touch upon the original Halloween, The Shining, as well as give M. Night a bashing like it’s 2007.

Enjoy!

Episode 6And now, for your listening pleasure, I present to you: Episode 6.

We talk about:

District 9

Racism

Gamecrazy's imminent demise

Ticketmaster

Cell phones

annnnd

natural family planning.

Take a listen!

Listen to the Podcast

It was a mandate I gave to myself in order to finish my ascension into true manhood: I must travel to my father’s land and prepare myself for the greater journey ahead.

A quest.

So I gathered what I knew I would need, and handed out what remained to those I left behind. I required a beast of burden for my travels and acquired one from a near by village. It was a large and powerful pack animal, as red as the setting sun. I lashed my necessities to its back and started out on my long journey northwards, through the hellish nightmare that is…

Jersey.

Listen to the Podcast

So tonight we recorded episode 6.  Which will be out this week for all of you faithful listeners.  We plan to cast again in 2 weeks, the topic video game music.

See you then!

~B

As part of our new expanded content we decided that when post a podcast we should each write some flavor text for the episode.  So in addition to absorbing our opinions aurally you also now get them visually.

This episode was not as focused as previous episode, meaning instead of the conversation going off on tangents away from the set topic, the conversations were the tangents.  One particular topic raised my ire.  That topic was overpayment of entertainment professionals.

Those people who choose to provide entertainment for a living, by they I mean athletes, actors, musicians etc, get paid more then they rightfully should be.  My major gripe is that the service they perform is neither useful nor strictly necessary for the betterment of society.  Perhaps this is me being pretentious  but I believe  society could survive without the world series or the next Final Destination movie.  Yes the world would be a much duller place without these things, but it would carry on.

So the question is why in the name of sweet baby Cthulhu is it that baseball players et al get paid millions of dollars when much of the country is struggling to make ends meet.  The answer is, however unfortunate, that society as a whole would rather pay to be entertained then to pay for the necessities.  I am not saying that they won’t pay for the necessities, but rather that people tend to skimp on what really matters and pay extra for things that don’t.  Just my observations.

I could go on but I feel that I have gotten the point I wished to make across without being too redundant.

This is my opinion,take it, leave it, love it, hate it.

Until next time.

~B

Thanks to our good friend and (al)most faithful listener, I have a few updates with which to delight and entice you.

First, look for our card in the coffin case at Eulogy.

Placed there by our Nies on the street (in this case, our Nies in a Bar - our official card)

Second, courtesy of Drew – here’s a link to Kyle as Castle Crasher.

Kyle Defeating Some Guy in his first fight at the Cardboard Tube Fighting League.

Third, ALSO courtesy of Drew – here’s the David vs Goliath battle we talked about. It was over before it started. Poor kid.

Word on the street is, the League will be hosting another event sometime soon, and if they do, maybe I’ll join in on the fun.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned, we expect to be casting tomorrow!

~Paul