Not too long ago I decided to give Porkie’s® Pork Rinds a try. Did I like them? Am I now hooked on Porkies and “lite” beer? Will I finally be able to #MAGA? Watch my review and find out!

I wanted to start this series with a tongue-in-cheek observation of pop culture, but recent events have changed those plans. Pundits, newspeople, politicians, religious groups, and millions of people across social media are all offering their sympathies and prayers for the people who lost their lives, as well as the survivors, of the massacre in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. That’s great, but prayers are no longer enough. The mass shooting in Las Vegas is the worst one in modern American history since the last one, or the last one before that, or the last one before that…

So fuck the prayers if they don’t lead to action. I’m not Catholic, but I love this quote from Pope Francis:

Prayer that doesn’t lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer.

And why isn’t there action being taken? Three simple letters: N.R.A.

The N.R.A., an organization ostensibly representing hunters and gun owners, but in reality the gun manufacturer’s lobby of choice. They never met a horrible idea in support of the 2nd Amendment they didn’t like. But please, go ahead and watch my rant and see what Gets My Goat!

There is a change coming to Ever The Optimist. It is being transformed into a new, much shorter video podcast rant series called What Gets My Goat. Sometimes on point, most of the time pointless. The new show will be a fast, spirited, and ad-libbed take-down of whatever Gets My Goat in the world of politics, culture, religion, and barnyard animals.

 

Originally published 07-07-2013

Hello and welcome back to the ‘Ever the Optimist’ podcast. We’re back and working on some audio hang-ups, but let’s get going anyway! Remember, you can Like “Ever the Optimist” on Facebook and as always you can find links and discussions of show topics in our show notes at www.wyethdigital.com/optimist

Question of the Week

Nature.com reports that:

“electrical engineers have used lasers to create a cloak that can hide communications in a ‘time hole’, so that it seems as if they were never sent. The method, published today in Nature1, is the first that can cloak data streams sent at the rapid rates typically seen in telecommunications systems. It opens the door to ultra-secure transmission schemes, and may also provide a way to better shield information from noise corruption.”

So the obvious Question of the Week: Given that the NSA and other intelligence agencies have been data-mining and  tapping our communications, would you like to be able to hide your communications?

Future Tech

UPI.com takes us where no one has gone before with news that:

“the command ‘shields up’ to protect humans traveling in spacecraft from radiation may soon graduate from the realm of science fiction, British researchers say.

“Scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory say they’ve been testing a lightweight system to protect astronauts from harmful radiation on long voyages, such as a round trip to Mars, who would be exposed to cosmic rays and high-energy particles from the sun contained in solar storms.” 

Make it so!

Future Fail

Web Urbanist fills my Amazon wish list with 10 fantastic inventions that failed. Flying tanks,  poison-gas spewing riot cars and telephone answering robots are but a few of the colossal failures that made the list!

Glass Half-Empty

Discovery News  cautions that warming oceans are putting puffins in peril. According to their article, which relies heavily on reporting from the AP:

“The AP’s Clarke Canfield reports that instead of feeding their chicks herring, the puffin parents were attempting to feed them butterfish, which were too big for the chicks to swallow. Butterfish is a more southerly species of fish that has become more abundant in the Gulf of Maine as waters have warmed, or perhaps more accessible to seabirds because it has moved higher up in the water column; according to Steve Kress of the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program, exceptionally warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine last year may have prompted an earlier-than-usual phytoplankton bloom,

This is the 3rd and final installment of our classic How-To series, the World Chocolate Masters.

One of the more unique experiences that my former partner Madeline and I had as pioneering How-To video podcasters was our invitation to cover the United States finals of the prestigious, global chocolatiers’ competition, The World Chocolate Masters (WCM).

This episode goes behind the scenes to learn how a competition like this is judged, how contestants deal with tragedy in the kitchen, and, of course, who won!

Original Date of Publication 05-02-2014

Hey, Optimists! I’m sharing another classic How-To!

One of the more unique experiences that my former partner Madeline and I had as pioneering How-To video podcasters was our invitation to cover the United States finals of the prestigious, global chocolatiers’ competition, The World Chocolate Masters (WCM).

In this episode we meet two of the contestants in the WCM; a seasoned competitor and master at chocolate sculpting and a first time competitor trying to make a mark in what has been a man’s world. A tense battle between Experience and Youth ensues and culminates in tragedy in the kitchen!

Original date of publication: 04-14-2014

One of the more unique experiences that my former partner Madeline and I had as pioneering How-To video podcasters was our invitation to cover the United States finals of the prestigious global chocolatiers’ competition, The World Chocolate Masters.

It was a departure from our usual format, which presented some challenges to our overriding “mission” of showing young people, especially young women, ways to express their own style and individuality in easy and affordable ways. But being a creative juggernaut and all, we set our sights on telling two stories: One story would be the story of the competition itself. The other story would be that of talented women. One, a young up-and-coming pastry chef cutting her teeth in a male-dominated competition; the other, an established celebrity chef, author and TV personality who graduated from competitor to judge. I could tell you all about them, but that would spoil the fun of watching the videos! Enjoy Part 1 of 3!

Originally published 06-02-2013

Hello and welcome back to the ‘Ever the Optimist’ podcast. We’re back and raring to go, so let’s get started! Remember, you can Like “Ever the Optimist” on Facebook and as always you can find links and discussions of show topics in our show notes at www.wyethdigital.com/optimist

Question of the week:

Russian researchers have discovered a prehistoric mammoth carcass in the New Siberian Islands in the arctic circle, that was so well preserved that when they began to remove the ice from around it’s belly, thick red blood began to flow out. Samples of blood, muscle tissue, teeth and bones have been sent to university labs in Yakutsk. A South Korean team, known for cloning a dog, have expressed interest in cloning the mammoth, which was about 60 years old when it died some 10,000 years ago. So the obvious Question of the Week is: Should we do this?

Bonus question: If successful, what should happen to the live mammoth?

 

Future Tech:

A NASA scientist giving a talk at the 100 Year Starship conference in Houston, Texas last September declared that he has put together a theoretical model for a warp drive. Harold “Sonny” White, a nine year NASA veteran with a lab dubbed “Eagleworks” at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, claims that he’ll soon begin physical testing of his theories. If faster-than-light warp drive travel is possible, that means a trip to our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, that would take 75,000 years with conventional propulsion could take a mere two weeks with a warp drive. Engage!

 

Future Fail:

Not only did famed science fiction author and notable recluse, Arthur C. Clarke, predict placing manmade satellites in geosynchronous orbit, he pretty much pioneered the concept. There’s no denying that he was a genius and a visionary, but let’s face it, even the best of us have an off day or two. Check out the link to the video of a rare in-studio interview of Arthur C. Clark by the BBC, circa 1963. He discusses moon colonization and moon-based astronomy among other things. But what was one of his biggest future fails? For one thing, Mr. Clarke predicted that the Russians would win the race to the moon, and that the United States would not likely reach the moon until after 1970. His quote:

“I think that it’s very unlikely that the American Moon project, which is really a colossal thing, costing $10 million a day, will succeed in getting a man to the Moon and back—which is equally important—before 1970, but it will not be much after that.”

 Bzzzzt! Sorry, Artie, but you were wrong on that one! Care to try another?

Clarke also predicted that there would be a human mission to orbit, but not land, on Mars in 20 years, with a landing in 25 years. “So a Martian base may just come in this century.” That, too, was wrong. But I like the optimism!

Glass Half Full:

I’m going to travel back to this 100 Year Starship initiative. Imagine, if you will,

We’re uploading replays of Ever the Optimist after our tragic website crash. Enjoy, and look forward to new shows when the replays have run their course!

Today’s show features rats with test tube kidneys, failed technology predictions, Asteroid wrangling and a tragic end to a desperately bad idea.

Download the show here! Find the show on iTunes or a newsreader (RSS)!

Links we covered:

Question of the Week: Are you comfortable with the idea of lab-grown organs being implanted into you? Bonus Question: Could this lead to “Bladerunner”-style lab-grown replicants? Leave a comment below! Link: BBC.com

Future Tech: Popular Mechanics explores the history and the reasoning behind lassoing an asteroid and how it might work. Link: Popular Mechanics

Future Fail: Listverse.com has compiled a list of 30 technology predictions that missed the mark. Here’s five of our favorites (quoted from Listverse.com):

* “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.

* “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

* “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

* “Home Taping Is Killing Music” — A 1980s campaign by the BPI, claiming that people recording music off the radio onto cassette would destroy the music industry.

* “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955. 

Glass Half-Full: NASA discovers three Earth-like planets in close proximity to us. One of the two stars sporting habitable “goldilocks” worlds is Kepler-62, and is relatively close by — at about 1,200 light years away (708,000 trillion miles). Sure, it’d be a bit of a walk to borrow a cup of sugar, but it’s nice to know we have some neighbors nearby! Link: USA Today

Glass Half-Empty: The Guardian reports on Youssoup “José” Matada’s tragic fall from the landing gear of an airliner.

Here was this kid, desperate for a new life, with seemingly few ties and no family; willing to risk almost certain death for a fresh beginning — instead taking up space in the newspapers and the internet as an oddity for the way he perished; a News of the Weird segment with no one to mourn him, or to honor his life and his aspirations for a better one. As our world’s politics become more unstable and as our resources dwindle, refugees like José will continue to take desperate chances to find peace and a small...

Today’s show features asteroid detectors, bionic hands, film’s failed future predictions, Martian Big Brother and the Fusion Drive to get us there!

Here are the links we covered:

Question of the Week: Should we have an asteroid detection system; what would it look like; who should pay for it; and who should run it? Bonus question: Is this the grand unifying endeavor that will finally unite humankind? Link: Space.com 

Future Tech: Bionic hands with the sense of touch and “muscle” control dictated by the human nervous system may soon be a reality; oranges beware! Link: Discovery News

Future Fail: Hollywood is no Nostradamus, as is well demonstrated by their many motion pictures predicting the future. Smosh.com compiled a list of 10 movies that got it wrong. We covered five of them.

What movies would be on your list, and what prediction would you like to see come true? Link: Smosh.com

Glass Half Empty: Leave it to the Dutch! First, they seem to stubbornly refuse to use vowels, and now they want to shoot a bunch of twenty-somethings into space on a one way mission to a Martian “Big Brother” house. Is there room for Justin Bieber? Pleasssse!  Link: The Register

Glass Half Full: Just in time to launch an entourage of Beliebers into space comes news from the University of Washington that NASA has granted $600,000 to create a working prototype of a Fusion Driven Rocket that could cut travel time to Mars by 1/3 the time or better. This could make the dream of interstellar travel into reality. Where would you go? Link: The Register