21 Aug 2006
Porn broadcast stuns news viewers

Back in the glorious days of yesteryear, when a certain fellow I'm acquainted with had just gotten out of the Air Force, the only job he could find was at a cable TV "local origination" station.

This was back before satellite TV, before HBO and before the massive consolidation that's since taken place in the cable industry. Most systems were locally owned and operated, and as a condition of their municipal franchise agreement, most ran small, cable only stations. TV2 in Shelbyville, Indiana was such a station.

There were only four staffers, and one of us was a high school kid. All of us were under 25. Consequently, I did everything from sell advertising to run cameras. We produced four hours of live local programming per day, and the rest of the time ran what was known as a "tape bicycle" - we'd get tapes in via UPS, air them, and ship them out to the next station in the line. Most of the tapes were the kind of thing you'd see nowadays on the History Channel or Discovery Network - documentaries and such.

As an aside, we actually produced one "hit" show - "TV Bingo", featuring a fresh faced high schooler named Ryoko Mills as the ball pulling hostess. We actually sold ads to MacDonald's and several other national type accounts for this one, and rated higher than "Dallas" when it went up against us. But I digress...

Basically what you had was four young guys, all with some technical savvy, dropped into a video playground. We probably had better than $100k worth of equipment, including switchers, special effects generators and cameras. And we had fun!

One of the first things we did was "The Answer Baby" - we took one of those big posters advertising for baby portraiture at K-Mart, set up two cameras and wiped Tom's eyes and mouth into the photo - he was then interviewed, news anchor style:

So, Mr. Answer Baby, what did you think of the nursery at the hospital?
Well, Dave, let me tell you, there were some real babes in there!

Let's talk current issues: do those new 'childproof' caps on drug packaging hinder your access to controlled substances?
Why, no, Dave - you see, I have a hammer!

We never aired our experiments, obviously - most of them were pretty off color, and some of them were downright (literally) pornographic. The other Dave that worked there had found some grainy old 8mm black and white "stag" films in his dad's closet - and we dutifully transferred them to 3/4 inch video! But there was one problem - there was no soundtrack.

So called "porn groove" had not yet emerged as a genre in it's own right, so we scrounged the studio for suitable tunes. The only thing we could find was a recording of Henry Mancini and the Warner Brothers Studio Orchestra playing John Philip Sousa. A little time base correction, and we had our audio! And what a sight it was - really ugly people on really grainy film banging away to "Stars and Stripes Forever" and "Under the Double Eagle". I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.

All good things must come to an end, however, and just before the bicentennial celebrations the station went under. Or rather, the owners housing development went under. Literally. He'd built it in a swamp, and neglected to drain it properly, so the stations assets were sold at auction by the bankruptcy court to help pay his debts.

Most of the stuff went to the owner of the local radio outlet, WSVL as I recall, and he wasn't interested in us at all - we were all canned. He had a couple of his DJ's mess around with some music shows for a while, but eventually just settled into showing the tape bicycle. He hired a high school kid to come in and play tapes from 6 to 11 pm every day.

Of course, he found our experiments. And got so excited that he forgot to throw the correct switch when he played them - they went out in all their glory to every cable subscriber in Shelby County one balmy Friday evening in July. And again on Saturday. And once more that Sunday night.

Nobody was answering the phones at the cable company over the weekend, but we later heard that the station took over 900 calls on the topic from Friday night to Monday morning, when the proverbial fecal matter hit the whirling blades and TV2 was shut down for good.

Over half the calls wanted a schedule.

Sweden's state broadcaster SVT on Monday faced ridicule for mistakenly showing a porn movie in the background of a news broadcast over the weekend.

(link) [CNN.com]

21:54 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link

Perpetual Motion Claim Probed

OK, so it's probably a load of bull, but the guy does seem somewhat credible, and he has invited independent testing. That makes it a bit interesting, despite the "free energy" claims.

History offers a discouraging guide for an Irish company hoping to demonstrate an exception to the first law of thermodynamics. Can cleverly positioned magnets create more than hot air? By John Borland.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

17:24 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

August 22: Does Iran have something in store?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. If not tomorrow, someday.

There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers. This worldview and expectation, vividly expressed in speeches, articles and even schoolbooks, clearly shape the perception and therefore the policies of Ahmadinejad and his disciples.

(link) [Opinion Journal]

via The Register

12:56 /Politics | 2 comments | permanent link

'Mint' pain killer takes leaf out of ancient medical texts

Hmmm, here's an interesting thought. It used to be that science operated on the premise that "old wives tales" or commonly accepted wisdom was correct until proven wrong: this is the attitude that led to the bacterial theory of disease, for example. Or to discarding the "ether" that permeated everything.

And this worked quite well - the world is not flat, after all, and once proven was readily accepted.

It strikes me that nowadays the paradigm is reversed: ancient knowledge is considered bullshit until proven. And this new application works, too - see the article linked below. But it also had the unintended side effect of cutting us off from the knowledge of the past by forcing an affirmative proof, rather than a negative one. It effectively takes away some of the height from the shoulders of the giants that science and technology stands upon, because in most cases it's far easier to prove that a thing is not true than it is to prove the positive. And I have to wonder how much knowledge we're missing on account of this subtle shift.

A new synthetic treatment inspired by ancient Greek and Chinese remedies could offer pain relief to millions of patients with arthritis and nerve damage, a new University of Edinburgh study suggests.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

12:49 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Screwed for Sure

Interesting commentary on the hazards of becoming a Microsoft "partner". Why companies keep trying to go this route is beyond me: from expanded memory managers to firewalls and now virus scanners and online music, every company that's worked closely with M$ in the past has ended up crushed and abandoned. Yet they still keep coming ... go figure. Greed, like hope, springs eternal.

Why Microsoft's new Zune digital music player will force the next sale of Napster. Commentary by Eliot Van Buskirk.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

07:14 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link