View Episode 169
Originally aired 06.06.09
1:09:48
26:21 – UYD: A computational knowledge engine
33:53 – UYD: Blacks. Whites.
33:59 – UYD: Blacks and whites in large numbers … next week.
37:39 – UYD: Context, contacts, consequences
2:16 – NBC’s new show, The Listener, features a young paramedic who has telepathic powers which he uses discretely in both his job and his personal life.
9:33 – Seth talks about Heidi and Spencer leaving the reality show I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and then they came back and Spencer slaps a water bottle out of Frangela’s (Frances Gallier and Angela V. Shelton) hands. Jah kind of wants to be on the show, but Seth says he couldn’t handle being in the Costa Rican jungle
11:12 – Seth watched Earth 2100 on ABC, looking ahead 100 years. Basically they told him this would be the last century of human civilization.
34:05 –Seth watched the season 2 premiere of Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, which featured a girl named Katie, the punk rock princess. All the girls are introduced in a lineup where they speak out into the darkness to Paris, pleading their case to be her new BFF. Katie prepared a letter that she wrote while in tears: “I want to drive with you to McDonald’s and order some fries.” Later, in an interview, still in tears: “I am so scared that she might not pick me and that she might not like me.” Later they bring everyone to Vegas, and Katie goes “What happens in Vegas … ends up on Myspace!”
47:02 – Under the Harpo banner, Jenny McCarthy will be getting her own talk show in the summer of 2010.
1:04:04 – Seth has never seen a minute of The Wire but he still knows it’s one of the best things ever.
11:53 – Seth drank four Pepsi Maxes the other night, and he’s kind of confused why they changed it from Diet Pepsi Max to just Pepsi Max. Seth had to take a knee because he thought there was an earthquake but it was just a bodyquake inside of him.
53:06 – Cell Phone Elbow – the constant bending of the elbow from cell phone use blocks blood flow to the fingers and hands, causing nerve damage and permanent damage. Jah doesn’t talk on the phone as much as he texts, so he won’t have to worry about this affliction as much as he will Cold Stone Forearms (Episode 072, 30:21).
1:16 – Seth spits out some Wrigley’s 5, which is still potently packed with flavor despite chewing it for an hour. They also ate Snickers Nougabot bars with yellow nougat
54:14 – Cold Stone Creamery has unveiled two new summer flavors – Butterscotch Velvet and Chocolate Goodness. They are one part ice cream – smooth and creamy, but when they begin to melt it turns into velvety-textured Jell-O pudding.
Games That Jonathan and Seth Play
29:17 – More trivia featuring horses, strains of medical marijuana and fake horses from Seth’s mind’s eye: 1) Tasmanian Devil (Marijuana), Dolphin’s Fin (Fake), Summer Bird (Horse); 2) Aruel (Marijuana), Muldoon (Fake – Seth’s mother’s dog), Dunkirk (Horse); 3) Sacrificial Lamb (Fake), Louis XIII (Marijuana), Flying Private (Horse). Jah does so-so in the game, getting one of the three options right in each set. Jah was a little self-conscious about this particular game because someone sent him answers on his phone this week. Jah saw what it was and he rejected the idea because he wanted to keep the competition friendly instead of pranking Seth by having the best game ever after having the worst one ever.
5:11 – According to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, many mothers remain completely sober for their nine months of pregnancy; however, they also go bananas after the nine months are up – both drinking booze and smoking pot.
8:09 – In Jah’s boarding school, they had a kid named Greg who was deaf in one ear and they all called him “Gweg.” They thought he got kicked out of the school but he only got suspended. Jah and all his buddies broke into his room and took all of his stuff, and the guy came back. Jah recalls holding his Walkman and almost starting to cry in his bedroom when they were raiding it.
18:18 – Amir claims that he believes Jonathan takes a bath every time before he masturbates. Seth thinks Jah lights votives and takes a bath after his jerk session.
57:02 – Seth finds it disgusting to drink the leftover milk from his cereal, but Jah loves doing it. Seth can’t stand the sugary lukewarm texture of it. Jah considered it a rebellious thing to do because his mom wouldn’t let him buy super sugary cereals. He had to drink a lot of Hansen’s Cola in his life.
2:34 – Friday, June 12 – analog to digital. From the time they announced the switch to digital (Episode 048, 15:08), anyone that hadn’t done it yet has since passed away.
7:27 – A guy gets on Twitter and tells everyone how him and his family are on vacation, so someone reads it and goes to his house and steals all his shit.
14:00 – A judge in California has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a woman who stated that she bought Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries because she actually thought the cereal featured real fruit berries. Her name is Janine Sugawara. She also claims she was misled by the box cover because it features the Cap’n thrusting a spoonful of berries in her face.
16:18 – At a recent Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference, a speaker showed a sonogram that showed an example of an in utero masturbation taking place. The Journal of Ultrasound and Medicine released a photo of a baby with its hand hovering over the penis, and then an in-motion footage of the fetus jerking off.
18:58 – A courtside seat to Game 2 of the NBA Finals this week at the Staples Center is on StubHub.com for $55,000. Jah says that’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard in his life.
21:12 – The Nielsen Company announces they are ending the publication Radio and Records
22:30 – Microsoft has a search engine called Bing which they’re hoping will replace Google. The search engine features automatic video preview playing when you scroll your mouse over a link, and tech reviewers basically said it was its own porn site.
23:57 – At the E3 Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft unveiled their Project Natal, which is basically Wii motion sensor technology without any handheld controls.
25:37 – New Wikipedia/Google – Wolfram|Alpha. Seth thinks it sounds like an Iraqi War operation (Episode 077, 15:56). It’s a computational knowledge engine, the first step in an ambitious long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation and Wolfram|Alpha uses its own built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer based on a new kind of knowledge-based computer. Breaking this down in layman’s terms, Jah explains that the concept is Shazam (the song recognizing iPhone app) wrapped over the entire internet.
40:04 – Sunday, June 21 is Father’s Day and the first day of summer. The National Retail Federation expects spending on dad to be down again this year. Last year the average was $94.54, and this year the average is expected to be $90.89 (Episode 120, 12:10, and Episode 013, 41:21).
42:13 – Kids love to hug each other, according to a front page New York Times article. One theory is that play dates were big and novel when J-dawg’s brother, Ben (now 22), was growing up, and it was a huggy time. Jah’s theory is that there is something on a deeper psychological level that has to do with the antithesis of all the other stuff going on in their lives (technological prowess, not being in control), and they look to one another and move toward each other and bracing for what’s going on.
48:10 – The Grandview Topless Coffee Shop (Episode 156, 24:33) burned down this week, thanks to an arsonist.
51:34 – Over 1,000 distinct species of bacteria live on the human skin at any given time. The part of the body with the most bacteria (44 different kinds) is the forearm (Episode 051, 24:28).
58:35 – Police have arrested a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter for using a 14-year-old girl to have sex with potential military recruits. 33-year-old staff sergeant Brian Damone Cunningham enticed the girl from her home after he meter her online. Police found her in a car after having sex with Cunningham and two potential recruits.
1:01:24 – Pearl Jam’s newest album, Backspacer, comes out Sept. 11 and will be sold exclusively at Target.
6:05 – An Incredible Hulk is 2 shots of Hpnotiq and 2 shots of Hennessy. Jah explains that they taste like human sweat but they get you extremely hammered. Jah technically only had a single, which Seth labels a “Bruce Banner.”
33:17 – UYD T-shirts will be on the website next week. There will be both black and white shirts
35:40 – Jah hasn’t logged into Myspace for a very long time. Every once in a while he begrudgingly logs in because he feels bad that he asked people to go there for so long.
36:15 – Jah isn’t smoking on the show anymore but he has congestion nonetheless
46:00 – The name of Seth’s autobiography is Metabolism for Pornography. Chapter 6 is entitled “UYD.”
46:10 – Seth was watching a funeral in Ohio for a clown that passed away. The pallbearers were all clowns, and everyone standing around the casket were clowns, and it was pretty scary for him watching it.
1:05:17 – UYD continues to bounce around the iTunes rankings, which Seth can’t make much sense of.
1:06:38 – The Integratron is a dome-shaped structure constructed out of plywood and fiberglass by George van Tassel. He built the structure in Landers, Calif., as a “rejuvenation machine,” supposedly following instructions provided by visitors from the planet Venus. Van Tassel was a former aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who moved out to California’s Mojave Desert to operate an airport and inn. During his time there he supposedly began meditating under a giant rock which the Native Americans of the area held to be sacred. In August of 1953 van Tassel claimed that he had been contacted both telepathically and later in person by the Nusians, who gave him the technique to rejuvenate human cell tissues. Van Tassel, acting on these instructions, began constructing the Integratron in 1954. Construction costs were paid for by an annual series of successful UFO conventions, the Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions, which continued on for nearly 25 years. Van Tassel was clearly inspired by early 1950s contactee George Adamske. Construction was supposedly complete in 1959 but van Tassel continued to make minor modifications until his sudden death in 1978. The Integratron, despite being built without nails, survived a magnitude of 7.3 earthquake in 1992. The workings of the Integratron, according to van Tassel, supposedly rely chiefly on two principles. The principle involves the occult sacred geometry of domes, and their ability to concentrate mystical energies within the earth. The Integratron is also said to be constructed atop a powerful energy vortex. According to adherents of this belief, the dome shape naturally concentrates the energy of the vortex for the benefit of users. Also, the building is said to borrow design cues from the Tabernacle of Moses and the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza – both of which were thought by some occultists to have similar energy-focusing properties. The second part of the theory centers around the belief that human beings are truly electrical in nature. It is believed that though each individual has a unique personal wavelength, the multiple wavelengths of energy put out by “focusing and concentrating devices” such as the Integratron will find a resonance with individuals’ basic harmonic frequency and recharge his cellular structure as if he were a battery. After Van Tassel died there was a proposal to turn the Integratron into a disco but these plans were never realized. The new owners now operate it as a tourist attraction, allow scientific studies of the structure and promote the unusual practice of a “sound bath.” During a sound bath groups of people are exposed to harmonic sound frequencies produced by quartz bowls. This is said to have a deep calming effect. The Integratron website claims it is the only all-wood acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.
4:39 – Hot new research straight out of Harvard shows that drunk teens have more sex than sober teens.
36:24 – According to new social research that has come out, the overall size of your social network stays about the same, but when it comes to close friends you lose about half and replace them with new friends every seven years. The title of this study was “Where Friends Are Made: Context, Contacts and Consequences.”
38:04 – The Science Journal Researchers have reported that a mass extinction that happened about 260 million years ago was more than likely caused by volcanic eruptions in what is now called China.
49:13 – Jah goes off on Scott Roeder, who killed the abortion doctor, George Tiller, while he was in church.
4:09 – Seth is worried that “Nougabot,” Snickers’ new candy bar, could be misconstrued as an ethnic slur.