Simple Madness

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This is the first podcast of the year and my first podcast with any serious audio editing. I decided over the holidays that I needed to tighten things up a bit and that means learning how to edit the podcast after recording. I believe this is what the professionals call post-production. That’s when things are cleaned and unnecessary pauses and weird background noises are edited out of the show.

Until now, I have just made some notes for each segment and rambled on for about ten minutes or five minutes, depending upon the bit. I would then edit out the obvious stuff, but that was it. One of the strange side effects of doing a podcast is you spend a lot of time listening yourself. My gross lack of professionalism and all too frequent hemming and hawing have started to bug me so I’m determined to up my game this year.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. YouTube has the four longer segments from the show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones.

This Week’s Show

Contents

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Google Play Link

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

20 thoughts on “Simple Madness”

  1. Remember Z, your people listen to the podcasts for content, and you do not need to over edit. post-production. I could lead you to shocking >>>” umm, ahh wait on I am thinking” podcasts, and yours is not that.
    Content, content, content
    I would say you retain a high level of podcast interest, nice clean segments, so best to retain winning formula all the best for 2018.

  3. I’m sorry, i don’t listen to podcasts, I read while listening to music. I wait to read the transcripts of Derb ‘s podcasts. I regret the columns which don’t appear because of promoting podcasts.

  4. I don’t know why people are protesting in Iran or whether the CIA is behind it all, but the idea that it’s all over pipelines supplying oil and she to Europe is nonsense. Wars over pipeline routes don’t make sense economically, technically, or politically and the theory falls apart at the slightest inspection. But I admit, it’s a resilient theory, which is why I write about it here:

    Whenever the US gets involved in a conflict somewhere in the world there is always, always somebody on the American Right who will come out with some bizarre conspiracy theory involving a pipeline.

    I admire your work Zman, but I think you’re way off on this one. FWIW I work in the oil and gas industry, inc. Middle East and Russia, and been involved in pipeline and LNG projects.

    • I think you misunderstood. What’s happening inside Iran is about Iran’s internal issues. Our involvement, on the other hand, is about oil and gas. Two different things. As far as the competing pipelines, this is common knowledge. Russia has backed the Persian Pipeline project, while the US has backed the Nabucco pipeline. I’ll note that before Obama struck a deal with Iran, US energy companies were in Dubai meeting with Iranian government officials, ahead of Europeans companies.

      • As far as the competing pipelines, this is common knowledge. Russia has backed the Persian Pipeline project, while the US has backed the Nabucco pipeline.

        I’m not saying pipeline consortia don’t compete, nor am I saying countries don’t back one pipeline consortia over another. What I am saying is nonsense is the idea pipeline routes and consortia are in any way related to geopolitical developments in the Middle East: pipelines simply aren’t that important, and especially not ones that haven’t even been built. If you’ve ever been involved in oil and gas engineering projects and kept your ear to the ground, you soon learn to dismiss grand projects spoken of only by politicians and ministers. Gazprom went through a period of announcing a grand project every few months, including piping all of Nigeria’s gas across the Sahara to Europe. Anyone remember South Stream? Unless the project is at the FEED stage and proper routing surveys have been carried out, it’s…well, a pipe dream.

        Plus, whatever supposed strategic value pipelines may have had has been almost eradicated by LNG. Why would any country want to put all its geopolitical eggs in one basket with a highly vulnerable pipeline going through several squabbling countries when they could just build a few LNG export terminals as Qatar has done? It’s not like Russia doesn’t have enough trouble transiting gas through Ukraine: not for nothing did they build Yamal LNG and acquire Sakhalin II. And that’s before we get into the problems of long-term pricing of piped gas in an era of sustained low gas prices, European shale gas, and a growing LNG spot market.

        I don’t disagree that we meddle in the Middle East for oil and gas reasons, but pipelines have absolutely nothing to do with it.

        I’ll note that before Obama struck a deal with Iran, US energy companies were in Dubai meeting with Iranian government officials, ahead of Europeans companies.

        It is quite possible that representatives of American energy companies were meeting with the Iranians before the Obama deal. What I know for sure is there were engineers from European energy companies inside Iran in the lead-up and afterwards. I know their names, I eat lunch with them. From what I can gather there is only one western energy company working in Iran, and it’s not American.

        • Pepe Escobar’s Pipelinistan is a myth?
          Every corrupt toady will ignore the most important commodity stream in the world?
          The Great Game never happened?
          How will LNG reach the ports?

          Though I’ve heard the Beku-Ceyha is just a rusty pipe that hillbillys hang their clothes on, your scenario seems a bit premature. LNG has quite a ways to go before it replaces oil/gas, if ever.

          Doesn’t add up. Please consider me a clueless simp who’s seen a few too many maps. It’s like hearing that mineral rights don’t mean much.

  5. It’s like the experts say ” We’ve upped our game. So up yours.” Seriously tho. I love the podcasts. Keep them coming.

  7. Z-man I’ve been using Reaper for audio mixing and editing and it is excellent. Free eval download you can extend indefinitely. I use a Mackie 400f mixer but a lot of others will do.

  8. You’re a funny guy, Zman. Not “What am I, a clown?” funny, but yes, you amuse me. The show is getting better. Your casual dismissal of the mentally insane progressives is genuinely funny.

    I was introduced to the “Bro Science” you tube channel about 3 years ago, and the guy is hilarious, although that schtick has run its course and become tiresome. Mike (the guy who plays The Brofessor) and his partner Gian have been putting out youtube videos for about 10 years under multiple channels. Their previous channel, “Dom vs” or some such, is a collection of clever shorts satirizing a typical Jersey Shore dego loser.

    Speaking of clever, I thought I was so for coming up with the term “Resolutionist” a few years ago to describe the herd of gym goers waiting in line to do barbell curls at the squat rack on January 2nd. But I realize now that I probably heard the term “resolutioner” at some point and it unconsciously influenced my version of the subspecies.

    Keep up the good work.

    • I turn it up as high as I can and still have trouble. Too many shotgun blasts without earplugs.

  13. Well I was thinking about getting my teeth whitened but may now expand this to other areas thanks to you Zman.

    Didn’t get a Hitler phone for Christmas. Come to find out that is for our betters or as you put it , Cloud people.

  14. That bit about being seen by the guy in the ER fresh off the boat is real, and not new. But it is the result of having too much government and bad ideas in medicine. Affirmative action is a white woman’s jobs program. Take a look at the participants in you college biology department. Daddy’s little princess is going to go to med school, take up time doing a residency in a competitive field, and then drop out of the job or work part time in order to have it all (beta hubby and kids via IVF). The ones who make up the deficit are immigrant H1-B’s and the minorities who were let in over your cousin who couldn’t understand why no med school accepted him.

    The high achieving white men, many of whom are related to people with academic connections, are perfectly OK with this situation. The vague acceptance criteria created by the affirmative action bullshit enable them to do favors for friends that they make at various academic and professional meetings, and these favors are traded around informally. “Oh, I heard Jack’s son got the best poster presentation ate the last BDXQ. That’s great! I’m writing a recommendation for him to be included in Fred’s next pool of residents.”

    When my Dad went to med school it was common knowledge that there were about four spots reserved for the school president to make personal choices as to whom to accept. There was one prominent rich girl who was graduated through and who was made to swear on a Bible that she would never touch a live patient. She ended up writing a medical column in a magazine owned by her husband.

    Affirmative action provides cover for these kinds of things today. That’s why the former section president talks about how important diversity is at the conferences. It isn’t because he gives a Damn about blacks, its because he wants to be able to get his buddy’s kids into his program in exchange for someone else giving his boy a spot.

    This is why elite self perpetuation is seeming to accelerate despite all the egalitarian rhetoric. Because it is!

    The other side of the coin is the complacency of the public regarding the localized monopolization of health care by huge oligoplolistic systems. Your small player isn’t being driven into the big system by economics, but by regulations and compliance costs. There is always talk of economies of scale, but somehow the benefits of such always disappear when the next step into the abyss of bigness is taken. And if there is any economic benefit it always goes to the managerial class and the temples they build to themselves.

    And as we know from watching the decline of civilizations the building always reaches a fever pitch just before the collapse. (And subsequent takover by the next big player)

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