dimland radio 3-4-17 show notes

 Illness, Hospitalization, And Death

I spent the first segment letting people know why there hasn't been a new show in a couple of weeks. I had been sick and the aftermath of that illness kept me coughing and sniffing so much it wouldn't have been a pleasant listening experience if I had done a show. I'm not sure it's a pleasant listening experience when I'm not sick, but certain not when I'm a phlegm and mucus factory.

 

There was death in the family. My uncle and his wife died over the course of one weekend a few weeks ago. Both had been very sick, but he was the one told he had days, maybe weeks, to live. So, when my aunt died, it was a little surprising.

 

My dad and dad-in-law both spent some time in the hospital during my time away from the show. My dad had pneumonia and my dad-in-law fell. Both are out of the hospital and are doing better. But they're both 81, so how "better" they are is relative.

Mary Tyler Moore Show Theme Says What?

A popular feature that started in the pages of the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, the Bulletin Board, had moved to the internet last year. I had been a regular contributor in the past but had stopped when I longer got the daily paper. When I learned the Bulletin Board was moving onto the internet, I began to read and contribute again.

There was an item last Friday in the Bulletin Board that claimed most of the tributes to Mary Tyler Moore that included lyrics to 'Love Is All Around,' the theme song of her show, got the lyrics wrong. Most were listing the line in the chorus as variations of "You can have the town." I had always thought it was, "You can have this town."

According to my fellow Bulletin Boarder, the line is: "You can never tell."

That got me falling down a rabbit hole in search of what the line really is. I looked up lyrics, listened to several clips of the song as done by it's writer (Sonny Curtis), I listened to cover versions of the song. I couldn't find anything definitive.

 

Then I realized that Sonny Curtis is still alive. The rest of the story is on the show. Or you could go here and read what was in the Bulletin Board.

Please follow the Bulletin Board. You, too, can become a member of "our community of strangers."

Pedantic Moment: State Farm Ad And Home Burglary

The State Farm ad for their renter's insurance shows two women admiring a recently purchased couch, then, at night, two men are admiring the same couch. One of the women had just bought it, because she had to have it. The men are there to steal it, because one of them had to have it.

Oh, so clever, but home burglars aren't breaking into houses at night to steal furniture! Can you picture burglars attempting to lug out a couch without waking the renters or homeowners?

Punching Nazis...

...is still wrong, unethical, and immoral if you're punching Nazis because of their bad ideas.

 

I talked about a podcast and a YouTuber trying to rationalize their wrong ideas. Sure, Nazis have bad ideas, the worst ideas. Just about everyone can agree on that Nazis are bad, but they still have the right to have bad ideas and not be punched because of them.

 

It occurred to me that some of these folks enjoying the idea of punching Nazis had most likely expressed the idea that violence against terrorists would just make more terrorists. Wouldn't violence against Nazis do the same?

 

Watch this scene in Sidney Lumet's '12 Angry Men' (1957) in which Juror 10 (Ed Begley) goes off on a bigoted, racist, and hate-filled diatribe about "these people."

 

 

I think those podcasters and that YouTuber might have liked the scene better had the other jurors all punched Juror 10. Yeah, that would have felt so good! Punch the racist! Punch him good! That'll learn 'em! 

Movie Recommendation: None

I didn't get to one this week. You are on your own.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'OK This Is The Pops' by Tones On Tail & 'Dark Entries' by Bauhaus

Second ad break bumpers: 'Bitter Fruit' by The Alleycats & 'Electric Lash' by The Church

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland radio 2-11-17 show notes

A Dimland Radio Look At Sports 

Although my favorite game is baseball, I do also like football and last weekend was the NFL's biggest game: the Superbowl. Since I'm certain the MN Vikings will never again play in that big game, I never have much of a rooting interest in which team wins the game. Sometimes I might pull for a particular team, but most of the time I just want a good game. A game with plenty of offense and great plays. A close game, in which the teams are evenly matched and that either could win. Blow outs are boring.

After the first half and well into the third quarter, I thought this year's Superbowl was going to be a bore. I was happy for Atlanta, but the game would still have been anticlimactic.

However, the Atlanta Falcons were playing the New England Patriots. And hard to believe as it is, those Patriots managed to come from a 25 point difference to win in overtime. Insane!

I got that good game after all.

Speaking of baseball, which I did on the show, there's an experiment that MLB wants to try on the minor league level. In an effort to shorten games, they want to, in extra innings, place a runner on second base at the beginning of the inning. (Oh, boy! More bunts!) Extra inning games might get shorter, but that's not the cause of longer lasting games. Most games don't go to extra innings, but can still go for more than three hours. 

MLB is considering other options, but this one just seems dumb to me.

Pedantic Moment: An Explanation

One of the regular segments of my show is the Pedantic Moment. Last week I did one on a McDonalds McCafe TV ad. I was needled in the chat room that I needed to lighten up. It's just a commercial.

Well, yeah. A Pedantic Moment is called that for a reason: I'm being pedantic. Duh.

If I lighten up, I wouldn't have a segment for my show. And you try filling an hour each week.

An Example Of Fake News 

A Facebook friend posted a bit of fake news from a site called vaccines.com. The anti-vax site posted a triumphant article about how the Center for Disease Control and Prevention "admits 98 million Americans were given cancer virus via the polio shot." Well, that's not exactly what happened.

I replied to my FB friend: 

This anti-vax site is an example of fake news. If you read the information in the screen capture from the CDC that the anti-vaxxers are so proud to have captured you would learn:

1) The CDC did not admit 98 million Americans were given the "cancer virus" via the polio shot. 98 million Americans received one or more doses of the polio vaccine between 1955-1963. Of those 98 million, 10 to 30 million could have received vaccine contaminated with SV40. 

2) SV40 is a virus found in some species of monkey. And, although some research results conflict, the majority of the scientific evidence does not show SV40 to be cancer causing in humans. Quoting from that same page "...the majority of studies done in the US and Europe, which compare persons who received SV40-contaminated polio vaccine with those who did not, have shown no causal relationship between receipt of SV40-conaminted polio vaccine and cancer." 

3) This information is not gone from the CDC site. The information is still there, but it has been summarized as follows: 

"Some of the polio vaccine administered from 1955 to 1963 was contaminated with a virus called simian virus 40 (SV40). The virus came from the monkey kidney cells used to produce the vaccines. Once the contamination was discovered in the Salk inactivated polio vaccine in use at that time, the U.S. government established requirements for vaccine testing to verify that all new batches of the polio vaccine were free of SV40. Because of research done with SV40 in animal models, there was some concern that the virus could cause cancer. However, evidence suggests that SV40 has not caused cancer in humans." 

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html 

Judging by what the anti-vaxxer wrote, they hadn't read the information thoroughly before believing this to be some "grand admission" by the CDC. That was evident from the jump when they claimed all 98 million polio vaccine recipients got the contaminated vaccine. 

Vaccines.news is what fake news looks like.

Some True Crime Is Too Difficult To Listen To

I briefly talked about a podcast called Sword and Scale. It is a true crime podcast that the real monsters of the world are real. One particular story real monster was Luka Mignotta and what I heard on the show had me fast-fowarding because it was just too much. 

I think I'll talk more about this on next week's show. I didn't have time to get into it fully this time. 

Movie Recommendation: Dirty Harry (1971)

Yes, this is the classic tough, play-by-his-own-rules cop drama featuring one of Clint Eastwood's signature character and you've probably seen it. If you haven't, it's a very gritty and compelling film. If you have seen it, but it's been a while, I recommend watching it again.

I watched it again recently and I was struck by Andrew (Andy) Robinson's performance as the serial killer named Scorpio. He's so intense and his angelic face makes his demented need to kill and for fame even more distrubing. His plea that he has rights when suffering Harry's wrath is so creepy in one of the film's pivotal scenes.

Eastwood is solid, but Robinson steals the show.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Waltz The Halls' by Game Theory & 'Absolute Beginners' by The Jam

Second ad break bumpers: 'Time The Avenger' by Pretenders & 'Perfect Skin' by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland radio 2-4-17 show notes

A Tale Of Two Schools

My wife and I have a thirteen year-old son and he'll be starting high school next fall. We've gone to two open houses for schools he might attend. One is the school he would be sent to automatically, the other is one he can choose to apply to attend.

 

The first school's open house, the school he is automatically set up to head to, was not perfectly executed, but they did a far better job at selling their school. They most of their staff in attendance wearing school colors. The principal was cognizant of the notion that we were taking time out of our busy lives, so he knew to move it along. They even had a parent talk about the virtues of the school. The school was also easier to navigate, but, if we needed help, it was easy to find someone because they were all wearing the school colors.

 

The second school's presentation was not as well organized. They started late, but the principal didn't seem to think it necessary to adjust the schedule or shorten her talk. A school counselor spent way too much time going over which districts were set to automatically accept students and which dfistricts would need to apply.

 

And the school was a maze. And old school, built of a hill, with a newer expansion built around it. One of the teachers said that, after 9 or 10 years there, he still gets confused from time to time. So, you would think there would be a map for visitors. Nope. Or staff and students in school colors abundantly available for information. Also, nope.

 

The worst part was when we found one of the classrooms for a session with the teacher to learn about the class, what it had to offer, what the teacher's expectations were, etc., the door was closed and locked. This is an open house. We had the right room. What gives?

Before we had even gotten to the locked room, our son stopped us and said, "I don't want to go here. I'd rather go to the other school." We did convince him to try one more session, but that was the locked room.

 

We've been told it is a good school, but we don't want to force our son to go there if he doesn't want to. Besides the first is also a good school and we think he'll be challenged and get a good education there.

 

The second school did have cookies, though.

Pedantic Moment: McDonalds McCafe Intern Ad

This moment of pedantry was prompted by the McDonalds TV ad for their McCafe coffee, mochas, and lattes. Put simply, the intern is sent on a coffee run. He returns with coffee and some change. He states that they give him "way too much money," but the change he hands back what looks like a reasonable amount to me.

 

 

 

Sure, that doesn't sound exciting. I make a bigger deal out of it on the show.

 

Ricky Gervais Does Well In Discussion On Atheism

 

Recently, comic/actor/writer Ricky Gervais appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert is a devout Catholic and Gervais is an atheist. As in the case with previous guest Bill Maher, Colbert challenged Gervais on his atheism.

 

When Maher was challenged there was plenty of snark on both sides. Gervais and Colbert were more respectful of each other and that seemed to me to work better when presenting the atheist view to a believer. Sure, snarkiness can have its place when played for uncomfortable laughs, but I think Gervais' method worked better.

 

Gervais pointed out that the talk show host himself didn't believe in a great number of gods, but that atheists just go one god more. He also argued, very well, that if all religious books were destroyed and rewritten a thousand years later, they wouldn't be written the same. Science books, on the other hand, would come back the same. The theory of gravity, of evolution, of germ-caused diseases, etc. would all come back the same. Maybe with some updates and refinements as science is always refining itself, but still essentially the same.

 

The Catholic admitted that was a really good argument.

 

 

 

10 points, Ricky!

Is It A Phone Scam Scam?

It's been in the news that there is a phone scam attempting to get people to say "yes" on the phone. Then that answer can be used to do nefarious things. What the alleged scammer does is ask, "Can you hear me?" The receiver answers "yes" which is recorded.

 

I shared an article warning of this scam, but a friend of mine questioned how the recorded "yes" could be used to any nefarious benefit. That got me curious to find out.

 

At this point, Snopes is saying the claim is unproven and they, too, question how this scam benefits the scammer.

 

So, is this really a scam? Perhaps. I would still advise that you hang up. You don't want to be dealing with telemarketers, anyway.

 

I did relate a story from a few years ago of an attempted phone scam at where I work. The scam was to get my company to pay a cancellation fee for the services which they claimed my boss wanted to discontinue. I was unaware we were getting whatever that service was, so I told them I needed to talk to my boss. I talked to my boss and we hadn't been getting their services. He'd never heard of them.

 

Invoices started to show up in the mail demanding payment. I thought I had somehow messed up and got the business on the hook, but my boss said to just ignore the invoices. At some point, a phone call came through (maybe more than one, I can't remember) demanding we pay up. I was told they had a recording of me acknowledging we owed the money.

 

I told them we weren't going to pay and that we knew they were a scam. I hung up on them and we haven't heard from them since.

 

Movie Recommendation (Documentary Series Edition): OJ: Made In America (2016)

ESPN Films

 

Even though I haven't finished watching it yet, I recommended this ESPN 30 For 30 documentary series on OJ Simpson to my listeners. It covers OJ's rise from poverty to football glory, both collegiate and professional. We learn about the civil rights movement that grew as Simpson's career flourished, and we learn how he didn't want to be thought of as the color of his skin and kept himself away from the movement.

 

It deals with civil unrest and the rioting in the aftermath of the four LAPD officers being acquitted for the beating of Rodney King and other civil rights abuses suffered by African Americans, while Simpson climbed the ladder of success. And, of course, there are the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman and the "trial of the century."

 

It is a fascinating look at the man and at the history that surrounded him.

 

Be warned! In part four, the documentary reveals the crime scene photos. The camera looks full on at the damage Simpson was accused of doing. Very graphic!

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'One Step Ahead' by Split Enz & 'Lay All You Love On Me' by ABBA

Second ad break bumpers: 'Limelight' by Rush & 'One At A Time' by The Who

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.