Episode 6 - So Say We Four

We recorded this episode on April 4, 2008, the night of the launch of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. So warning, there are a few spoilers here, as we recorded before, and then after the show. We also had two of our regular guests, Isabelle and Christine join us on the show. We celebrated by drinking Caprica 6 martinis which are an oz and a half of lemon vodka, an ounce of Triple Sec and an oz of blueberry-pomegranate juice.

The topic, the uses and misuses of science fiction. OK, so it is not a tech story, but too bad, it is a geek story, we are branching out. Basically Ken thought of this idea when comparing say BSG to more fantasy type stuff. In other words, explosions vs. story. Isabelle says the worst Science Fiction movie ever is Highlander 3 and she also hates Tron. This took Dave and Ken aback.

Starship Troopers is an example of a great sci fi book that turned into a bad sci fi movie. We wondered aloud if Gulliver's Travels is Sci Fi and came to a bit of a consensus that the genre was invented by Jules Verne.

We even delved a bit into comics and superheroes. It was a great time, thanks to Christine and Isabelle, oh and the black Shure SM 45.....

Enjoy episode 6.

Episode 5 - Do We Save Or Weed Out The Weeds?

On February 26, 2008 a new Global Seed Bank opened in Norway. The idea here is that if some horrible disaster happens, well we could at least plant some baby corn and purple basil. Or, could we? What did they put in the vault, what types of seeds are in there? Are there weeds? Is there weed?

This got us thinking about repositories of knowledge, which Dave though was what libraries are. Ken corrected Dave, as he often does. However, there are libraries that are more like repositories, like the Great Library at Alexandria, or the Library of Congress.

Dave always brings up a Canticle for Liebowitz, also tries to bring most any conversation around to talking about the Name of the Rose. Both of these works are about preserving knowledge. Preserving knowledge is what the fictional Memory Alpha was about in Star Trek. Preserving the world was what the horrible movie Independence Day was about, but that is another matter....

Isabelle and Maddie listened along to this episode and made the occasional comment, as well, Isabelle stepped on for a few minutes for Dave. Isabelle made an interesting point about youtube. Youtube itself really is a thing that preserves knowledge, who knew?

Enjoy Episode 5.

Pondering Ponderables

Hi everyone. It has been nutty around the virtual homesteads these last few weeks. The good doctor and I partook of heady discussions today in Senate around the future of our university as an independent, non-affiliated star in the glittering constellation of provincial universities. Needless to say, everyone is pretty much tired of listening to me harp on about projected library costs through to 2013, so I began pondering where Dave and I should wander next in the podcast.

One thing I would like to go back to at some point is some sort of comparison of Creative Commons, CopyLeft, etc. to other periods of intense thinking of rights, relationships, and all that jazz (do not tell the RIAA! -- I'm only going to take some of that jazz). Where have these come from? What cultural elements combined, and especially what is lacking in our society that has led to all sorts of people defining rights, drafting mini-constitutions and so on.

Woodrow Wilson liked to do that sort of thing for fun as an academic (and I suppose as President, SEE League of Nations), but it seems a lot of people in their own way have become Locke and Hobbes, Mill and Bentham, and so on. If I can re-word Kant: Is it Enlightenment? Or do we just have a lot of little sandboxes being fenced differently?

Dave and I also have been involved in some "blue-skying" about using Web 2.0 tools for recruitment and marketing. It was interesting to mix with different sorts of people from the campus who would come at the final product(s) from different perspectives. And of course everyone around the table brought different awareness levels of the big bad Web 2.0 world, so that made it interesting and could make for something to yap about.

Anyhooo, we will get back on the tubes as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and comments. And remember... it looks like BSG will be back in April!

Episode 4 - Format is the Enemy of Content

Yes we still exist. However, working at a University you tend to get sorta busy during the term. We aplogize to our listeners, especially faithful commenters like Markus and Rachel, not to mention our recent emailers, Tom and Autumn.

The amazing thing is that, in the four intervening months between episodes 3 and 4 there has been no change in what we wanted to talk about. Format wars affect us all. Indeed, the writer's strike going on in the US right now (which means no new episodes of House, Numb3rs or the Unit, much to Dave's chagrin..) is about formats. Writers get nothing for internet video. So that is why they are on strike, seems like a good cause.

The classic format war is VHS vs. Beta back in the 1980s, and now we have HD DVD vs. Blu Ray. In between we had Amiga vs. Atari ST vs PC vs Apple, we had cassettes vs records, hell, you could even consider Papyrus vs. Paper, sorta....

This comes up of course in Ken's line of work. What if you have a database that was built in the 1970s that nobody now knows how to rad? Dave mentioned that on Star Trek they never seem to have a problem reading alien computers, indeed, it seems that everyone uses some for of UNIX in the future...

Please email us, and thanks for you patience.

Enjoy Episode 4

Episode 3 - Did Medieval Scribes Have to Deal With Analogue Rights Management?

We have had a bit of an absence, but are now back better than ever. OK, that may be a cliche, but we are back nonetheless.

TC Episode 3 is devoted to DRM, digital rights management. You know DRM, the stuff that stops you from doing what you want with stuff that you actually own. We both come down on the anti piracy side of things, but we also are opposed to DRM. It breaks stuff, and it simply does not work, everything is crackable.

We talked some about historical stuff and ideas about copyright. It seems this is a rather old concept, much to Dave's surprise, if not to Ken's.

Probably the best known sci fi book with copies and copying as a theme is The Man in the High Castle. We both love that book, and both hope to hell that Hollywood does not make a movie out of it (or a movie out of a Canticle For Leibowitz, but that is another matter....)

Enjoy.

Direct Episode Download.

Isabelle strikes again

Isabelle has made this awesome logo for TC. Thanks Iza! Isabelle also made the music for the podcast. She has also done the music and logo for thunderbird six, as well as the music for Why? and Broca's Area. (The Broca's Area logo was not her doing, it was made by one of our listeners). I wish I had some sort of talent...

Episode 2 - Helpless Without the Internet but we Can Still Get Herring From The Hanseatic League

On July 11, 2007 a fibre optic cable was cut somewhere between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury ON. Well we are in the Sault, and that meant no long distance, no cell coverage, no ATMs, and NO INTERNET. This was very distressing. Well in troubled times like these, friends come together and draw strength from each other. OK, we couldn't get online so we had to interact with real people.

Well this seemed a fine topic for TC episode 2. Going offline. There are many examples in Sci Fi and history of people being on and offline. Of course there are always a number of Star Trek references in any of our discussions as well as Battlestar Galactica. Historically one could think of the so called Dark Ages as a time when much of the West was offline. However, there were still networks, but they were slower than dialup...

Enjoy.

Direct episode download