News for November 23th, 2007
And a good evening to everyone out there in radio land. I’d like to take a moment to acquaint all those listeners who may be new to the Timothy Jordan Show with some little-known facts about the program. We practice a form of the barrier method, using these microphones and your speaker, to limit the flow of information about the people behind the program. The less that you know, the more we can get away with.
But every now and then we dip into the mailbag and answer some questions from the listening audience. Recently there’s been some curiosity about the people behind the program, and what goes into producing each show. Ever responsive to our listeners, I’ll now provide a few insights into the show.
Many of you know that our operations are based in a Fortified Mountain Compound that’s deep in the redwoods overlooking Santa Cruz. But how many out there knew that our hardened underground bunkers are embedded deep in an ancient Indian burial ground?
My contribution, the News segment, is written, believe it or not, up to three weeks before broadcast. It’s really quite amazing. My highly unprofessional staff is able, in some circumstances, to see nearly a month into the future. I had been tempted to abuse this power of theirs when we first got a hint of what was happening, but unfortunately it’s mostly limited to predicting the next celebrity sex scandal.
Not a great way to make money, but it makes the headlines easier to ignore. When it happens, you are simply not going to believe who Judy Dench’s new boy toy turns out to be.
Regular listeners tell us that it often seems as if Tim is unnaturally productive. The explanation isn’t all that surprising when you think about it. He’s actually two people: Tim and Othy, his identical twin. The deal that they’ve worked out is that one of them sleeps during the day, and other one just sleeps. This is how he can always appear to be asleep when people call the Fortified Mountain Compound.
Our own Scotty K. is himself actually no less than three of the Backstreet Boys. This was accomplished on stage through a complex arrangement of costumes, mirrors, and body doubles to create the illusion.
The Fortified Mountain Compound that houses our offices features three subterranean refrigerated polar bear recreation areas, and yet we have no polar bears. Additionally, our attempts to populate the meerkat habitat have run into oddly parallel snags at U.S. Customs. The current population in the meerkat habitat is limited to one species-confused warthog named Andy.
Kristin, our source of much-needed estrogen, was a brilliant child prodigy, most noted for her invention of a simple and innovative system for keeping socks paired inside the dryer. Those fat cats at the country’s major sock corporations are suppressing the patent, of course. Disappointment over this failure to crack the sock monopoly, also known as the sockopoly, has fueled Kristin’s ongoing, and painful, addiction to Pop Rocks. We’re all working through that one together. She’s down to six packs a day and going strong.
Off-site betting on league-sanctioned midget racing at the upstairs bar remains our primary source of income. I have no problem letting our listeners know that all of these races are, as a matter of principle, fixed by the house. Revealing this information on this local radio broadcast won’t affect our income because all six of our betting houses are located in the outskirts of Ulan Bator. Mongolians love midget racing.
Protesting outside of our offices by Young Republicans is still an issue, although less so than in past years. This is either due to disillusionment with the current Presidential administration, or our practice of taking pot-shots at them with mescaline-soaked airsoft pellets.
While the public voice of the News segment, I myself only play a small part in producing the weekly News. It’s my staff that does most of the work. I occupy my time during the day by taking pot-shots at protesters, menacing my staff with a pointed stick, and sneaking butter into vegan cookies.
Nothing makes me happier than feeding vegans real food.
This News introduction has been brought to you by our new sponsor, Soup in a Hat. Remember: if it doesn’t get all over the place, it’s not Soup in a Hat.
And this is the Timothy Jordan Show News for Friday, the 23rd of November, just a scant few weeks away from the end of ‘07.
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Also getting all over the place is climate change, according to the fourth and final interim summary released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Fresh from their Nobel Peace Prize celebrations, members of the IPCC wasted little time predicting DOOM! That’s right DOOM on you! DOOM on me! DOOM on us all.
As listeners may have guessed, the news is not good, according to the world’s leading climate change researchers. They warn in the report that at best, which assumes that humanity immediately undertakes rapid and pervasive efforts to cap greenhouse gas emissions, we’ll be seeing a one-foot rise in sea levels worldwide.
One foot may not sound like a large number, but remember that countries like Bangladesh, or cities like New Orleans, are barely holding back the ocean as it is. A one-foot rise in sea level would be catastrophic, leading to flooding in coastal cities around the world. Our own Central Valley here in California is only thirty or so feet above sea level. Some of the state’s most productive farmland in the Sacramento River delta is already below the water level, kept dry only through a system of levees and pumps.
Making matters worse, the IPCC estimates do not account for apparent increases in melting from the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. If Greenland were to go, we’d see a 23-foot increase in global sea levels, enough to flood out every major coastal city
And while coastal areas are flooding, already dry regions like the Mountain states will have to face the prospect of even less water as rainfall continues to decrease.
The report predicts that within the next fourteen years up to 250 million people in Africa will be short of water. Already thirsty, they’ll be going hungry too, with yields from rain-irrigated crops expected to fall by half.
We can look forward to more instances of extreme weather. It’ll be hurricanes, tornados, and wildfires, oh my, because all of the lions, tigers, and bears are likely to be dead.
If global temperature increases by more than 3.5° C, the IPCC report suggests that between 40-70% of animal species in the world will go extinct.
It’s not all doom. The scientific consensus is that if, if we get off of our collective asses and start making serious efforts to get greenhouse gas emissions under control there’s a chance to at least reduce the risks of climate change.
• IPCC Synthesis Report, Nov 16th PDF (6.4MB)
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I’d like to point our listeners to an article by Clive Thompson that was published on Wired.com a few weeks back. It provides a remarkable insight into the mindset of a suicide bomber, but from an unusual direction.
Clive Thompson plays Halo 3 against other gamers over the Internet. There’s only one problem: as an adult with a job and a normal social life he doesn’t have the same time to commit playing online video games as an unemployed pimpled teenager in Topeka. What it comes down to is that he doesn’t get as much practice, and just isn’t as good at the game.
This means that he’s often horribly outclassed by the other players, a virtual walking target.
But, as he wrote in the article, there’s a way to reverse the odds using the tactics of classic asymmetric warfare.
Clive knows that he can’t win in a face-to-face fight, and so he doesn’t try to fight. He simply tries to take the other guy out. One of the weapons featured in Halo 3 is a plasma grenade that’s able to stick to whatever surface it hits. What Mr. Thompson does when he finds himself outclassed by another player is to grab one of these plasma grenades and run straight at them.
He’s going to die, but that was virtually guaranteed anyways. What the kamikaze rush lets him do is get close enough to the other player that it’s almost impossible for him to miss with a grenade toss. What he’s done is to adopt the tactics of a suicide bomber, reportedly to great success.
The multiplayer ranking system in Halo 3 rewards the killing of other players in the game, but it also deducts from a player’s score for each death. By adopting this suicide tactic, Mr. Thompson makes it much more dangerous for superior players to try and engage him.
It’s, “Because after all,” Thompson writes in his article, “the really elite Halo players don’t want to die. If they die too often, they won’t win the round, and if they don’t win the round, they won’t advance up the Xbox Live rankings. And for the elite players, it’s all about bragging rights.
I, however, have a completely different psychology. I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor.”
It’s the same problem, and to be fair, the same problem vastly simplified and distorted by a video game, that’s faced by real-life suicide bombers around the world. When confronted by a superior enemy, often the only way to win is to force a stalemate.
There’s a sick logic to it. Since he’s willing to sacrifice his virtual life, Mr. Thompson forces more skilled players to treat him with respect. His actions have changed how they behave. They learn to respect and fear him a little bit, the goal of every suicide bomber.
• Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in Halo 3
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Writing about war and suicide bombing is hard enough when you’re distant from it. Walking into a war zone is another matter entirely. It takes a special kind of person, and occasional excellence. It’s…
One of those writers is David Axe, a man who has made a career out of walking into war zones and reporting from the ground. His bills have been paid by the McGraw Hill publishing house in recent years. From Afghanistan to East Timor, he’s been there to be an eyewitness on the ground.
That was up until Wednesday. About to go on assignment to visit lovely downtown Mogadishu, Mr. Axe was preparing for his flight into the paradise capital of Somalia when he got a call from his publisher’s security arm. Due to Somalia’s ongoing trouble and occasional rocket attacks in downtown, McGraw Hill has recently declared the country a “Category 5″ risk, and therefore off limits to corporate employees.
He was ordered to forget about traveling to Somalia, as well as Iraq.
According to Mr. Axe, he told the security officer that he needed to do some untangling from commitments. Hanging up the phone, he went downstairs, switched his room onto a personal credit card, and called his boss to resign.
Yeah, he’s that kind of guy. He quit, rather than back away from doing his job, and that’s damn excellent.
For his commitment to journalism, David Axe wins this week’s Timothy Jordan Show Award of Excellence.
• Somalia Journal, Day Five: “I quit!”
And that’s the News for this fine Friday, the 23rd of November in Ought-Seven.