This is the longest Neal Show you shouldn’t listen to. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a couple of really good moments, but does that really make it worth your time? I doubt it. At any rate here’s the link:
Twitter Guests on this TNS were:
And, the birthday man, himself, @williamedia
Last night Geoff Smith did a show on USTREAM.TV. I think this was the fourth one, and every time, it’s such a fantastic experience. The first time was a total accident.
Geoff tweeted that he was going live on ustream while he worked in his studio. Cali tweeted we were going to watch, and she invited twitter friends to join us. Geoff started taking requests and about 40 people had an unforgettable private concert.
That accident inspired Cali’s Streaming Christmas Party and at least two other Geoff performances that were equally as exciting.
The first couple of times, Cali did a lot of twittering throughout the show to encourage more people to join us. It felt like people were missing out on a great time. Last night about 20 people I follow on twitter were doing the same kind of promotion.
Geoff’s live shows are pretty difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t clicked through to watch. He plays piano and guitar while singing and taking requests via chat. One guy who didn’t know Geoff showed up last night and couldn’t stop talking about how amazing Geoff is.
For the Big Trip, I have to sell my piano. It’s a digital baby baby grand (really short). It’s beautiful, but since it’s digital, it doesn’t have much resell value. Rather than selling it, I think it would be awesome if we could get it to Geoff to use for Ustreaming shows, but I don’t know how we could get it to him.
The legs come off and it’s about half the size of a baby grand, but it’s also extremely heavy. Have any ideas for getting it from Dallas to Geoff in Nashville? We have about a 3-week deadline before our lease ends.
Twitter friends MAY, and I do mean may, want to listen to TNS #4, but only because @Jeffmccord (aka, Moxie Wine) stopped by for some conversation. If you are NOT a twitter friend, my regular advice that you not listen to this show still applies.
I was using the Heil Classic Pro. It’s a mic I love, but without a shock mount option, it is too impractical for me. I take back what I said about liking the way it makes my voice sound.
Instead of wasting 7 minutes listening, you COULD just go read Jeff’s Blog.
Cali was shooting a video for The Big Trip about Arnie, a motorman who volunteers with the free trolley system in Uptown Dallas. Arnie asked her to put her camera down, and then he had her come up and drive. I got to drive it too, but the footage of Cali is more fun.
It was scary because there were passengers on board, but it was surprisingly easy since there is no steering involved. One handle clicked from point to point to speed up, and one handle moved slowly to slow down.
It’s interesting that TNS #3 is exactly the same length as TNS #2…EXACTLY!
Beyond that, it was nice to have William the Graduated Geek Brief Intern (aka, Dr Pepper) join us to talk about the Dallas WordPress meetup this Saturday.
Details are on William’s Blog.
I still cannot recommend listening to this, but here’s the link.
The show should be available in iTunes within a couple of days.
This may be the official men’s t-shirt for the Big Trip:
It’s a 100% Ringspun Cotton Preshrunk American Apparel Fine Jersey T-Shirt. The logo is distressed. The samples should arrive in a week. What do you guys think?
I really think anyone who listens to this is sweet, but could probably spend their time in a better way. Oh well.
Don’t listen to my show, unless you’re bored to tears. I’m calling it The Neal Show. Cleaver, huh?
5: Benadryl
4: Urban Outfitters
3: Tanqueray
2: Chipotle
1: Apple
Someone posted a comment on BigTrip.TV:
I’m interested to know what you’re doing to offset the carbon emissions from this “trip”.
I love that he put the word trip in quotes, as if it’s somehow suspect and not really a trip at all. Surely our true intention is to destroy the planet as we know it with our harmful carbon emissions. I don’t care to argue, so I replied with a joke, “We’re going to eat more cows.”
We live in a time where environmental fascism is being pushed so hard and so often, that thinking, logical people are bending over and giving into global, irrational, unscientific peer pressure. You can’t turn on a television anymore without hearing environmentalist nonsense about being green to save the planet. The planet is not in danger.
As a thinking person, I can’t base my opinions about the environment and global warming on emotional arguments like those offered by Al Gore and his allies in Hollywood. My gut feeling is that their arguments are nonsense, and oh you cannot imagine how much, I would love to ignore these people and just go with my gut.
My gut instinct is based on simple logic. If scientists cannot accurately predict the weather next week, they also cannot predict the weather next century. It’s the same logic I used to discount disaster theories about Y2K. When everyone was worried and spending millions of dollars on solutions, I changed the clock on my computer to see what would happen at midnight, January 1, 2000. Nothing happened, so I knew nothing would happen anywhere else, and I was right.
I can’t rest with simple logic, though, because the people making arguments based on emotion appear to be winning public support. In order to continue to believe what I think is true, I have to spend time reading the science behind the arguments to see for myself it the emotional arguments have scientific validity.
The emotional argument is that the scientific community has reached the consensus that global warming is a reality and it’s caused by human activity. Global warming is necessarily bad, and since it is caused by humans, it can be corrected, but only if we act now before it’s too late.
There is nothing scientific, rational or even reasonable about that argument. To begin with, scientific fact isn’t determined by consensus. I worry about the state of science education if we don’t remember what we learned about the difference between law and theory in science.
It is a fact that the existence of global warming and its causes are based on climate models that could turn out to be accurate, but could just as easily turn out NOT to be accurate. It is also a historic fact that warmer periods in the past have resulted in global economic prosperity, so global warming, if it exited is more likely to be good for us than bad for us.
It is not, however, a fact that global warming exists. The planet hasn’t warmed since 1998, and 2007 was cool enough to offset all warming that has taken place over the past century.
One of my favorite presidents in history is Teddy Roosevelt. He loved nature and he lead us to set aside parts of our nation to be preserved in a natural state. Nature is good. Pollution is bad. Protecting nature is good. Making people feel guilting for using resources is evil.
Rather than bowing to environmental fascism, religious fundamentalism or any thought system not based on reason, I choose to embrace logic and balance. I have full confidence, when we go too far as humans, a little something God built into nature called homeostasis will bring everything back into balance.
My favorite climate scientist is Dr. Roy W. Spencer. He just released a book explaining climate science. It’s called Climate Confusion. It’s based on science not emotional arguments and I highly recommend it.
If you read this and disagree, feel free to post scientific research that contradicts what I’ve written. I would love to read it, but I’m not going to get into an emotional argument with anyone about science.
