Episode 31 - Silver is Gold

Well, the US election has come and gone, and I for one will miss it. I won't miss the partisan attack ads, I won't miss the superPAC ads, but, I will miss reading fiverthirtyeight.com every day. In episode 31 we tackle the US election, the future of US elections and the unwillingness of some (we're looking at you pundits, and you FOX news) to accept reality. We don't mean on political opinions. We mean you know, like how polls can be accurate and Nate Silver can figure out results, or say climate change, or evolution, well, you get the idea. We bring in some history of course (Dewey Defeats Truman!) as well as our usual dash of science fiction. We hope you enjoy episode 31

Four More Beers!

OK, I know we had a good title in there, but I forgot it and frankly, I don't feel like going through the whole thing to find it.... Four years ago we three got together (for the first time) on episode 8 to talk politics and technology. We also, happily, had a visit from the ever popular Isabelle. We talked about the influence of social media and tech on elections and campaigns, and the current problems in the mid East that seem to have been brought on by a mix of a hateful 'movie' and a bunch of twits who don't understand that in the West the government does not really own the media..... For a bit of historical perspective, Robin suggested you check out an article in the New Yorker. In the end we all predict an Obama victory. Let's see if we are right.... We hope you enjoy episode 30.

Episode 29 - I Know Enough Mimbari, and That Is Kind Of Sad...

Yes, really, we all still exist. Seriously. So much has happened since we got together a little over a year ago. Several countries have new leaders, and Steve Jobs, on of the icons of tech, died. What do these things have in common? Leadership. So yeah, that was our topic. Robin is writing a book on leadership, so he told us about his ideas, they include the notion that leadership is different from managerial ability, and a lot of what we think of as leadership is just being a good manager. We talked Steve Jobs, Jim Kirk, Jean Luc Picard, and of course Gordon Ramsay... We hope you enjoy episode 29.

Episode 28 - Jesus is The Flash

Oddly, this episode had nothing to do with Jesus or the Flash, but, you will get the reference once you listen in.

In fact, we got together for the first backyardcast of the season and talked about Google +. We love the 'circles' idea and figure this might be the thing that puts G+ over the top vs. facebook. We are also all pretty sure both are evil....

Politically this reminded us of the quick rise of parties such as Labour in the UK or the Bloc Quebecois here in Canada. The question is, is G+ the next Labour Party or the next Bull Moose Party?

Sci Fi wise the idea that some are plugged in and others not, the whole digital divide thing, is a real concern, This can be seen in films like the Matrix and in an episode I remembered of Sliders...

Oh yeah Robin and I have blogs, Ken does not, yet....



We hope you like episode 28.

Episode 27 - Passwords, Playstations and Politics

We three sat down to enjoy a lovely beverage, and discuss the playstation outage, the end of term and the exciting recent Canadian election. Robin blames China, Ken blames the Russian mafia, and, I kept silent on this, so don't bug me... Robin has been burnt by the cloud, but will not give any details. Amazon went down too, which is, frankly most of the cloud. When it went down the whole damned cloud, or much of it, went down. The problem is that there are many services, but they often rely on Amazon.

We then rambled about the Canadian election that just happened. It surprised us, and some odd candidates got elected, but we wish them luck (though that did not stop us from mocking them....)

If anyone has a blog post idea for Robin, email him, and you can get a free Algoma University hoodie! Oh and Robin is now on twitter, run for your lives...

Enjoy episode 27.

Episode 26 - Social Media Revolutionaries

We had to talk Egypt and the mideast in this recent episode, hell it is on everyone's mind. We are somewhat optimistic about the future, though Ken and I are more optimistic than Robin and Isabelle, who sat in and drew us during the recording.

There have, of course, been other revolutions, the colour revolutions and the others that brought down communism in the late 80s and early 90s and of course the ill fated Tiananmen Square protests.

We were somewhat taken aback by the lack of peaceful revolutions in science fiction, and mused on that for a bit.



We hope you enjoy episode 26.

Episode 25 - We're Wikileaking Cheese All Over Mouse Balls and Taking it Downtown....

OK, that title is a tad odd, you will have to listen in to understand it.

Robin, Ken and I decided to take on wikileaks and its oddball founder, Julian Assange. We had really not a lot of love for Assange himself, but we pretty much agreed that he is a journalist. The odd thing is people are not caring much about where the leaks came from, they are just mad they got published. The other thing we agreed on was that, from what we have seen, there is little in the cables that is anything more than embarrassing. In other words, this is not the Pentagon Papers.

We also agreed, (we were all quite agreeable in this episode) that relating the leaks and Assange's legal troubles in Sweden is a bit much.



We hope you enjoy episode 25.