What Gets My Goat What Gets My Goat

Not too long ago I decided to give Porkie’s® Pork Rinds a try. Did I like them? Am I now hooked on Porkies and “lite” beer? Will I finally be able to #MAGA? Watch my review and find out!

I wanted to start this series with a tongue-in-cheek observation of pop culture, but recent events have changed those plans. Pundits, newspeople, politicians, religious groups, and millions of people across social media are all offering their sympathies and prayers for the people who lost their lives, as well as the survivors, of the massacre in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. That’s great, but prayers are no longer enough. The mass shooting in Las Vegas is the worst one in modern American history since the last one, or the last one before that, or the last one before that…

So fuck the prayers if they don’t lead to action. I’m not Catholic, but I love this quote from Pope Francis:

Prayer that doesn’t lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer.

And why isn’t there action being taken? Three simple letters: N.R.A.

The N.R.A., an organization ostensibly representing hunters and gun owners, but in reality the gun manufacturer’s lobby of choice. They never met a horrible idea in support of the 2nd Amendment they didn’t like. But please, go ahead and watch my rant and see what Gets My Goat!

There is a change coming to Ever The Optimist. It is being transformed into a new, much shorter video podcast rant series called What Gets My Goat. Sometimes on point, most of the time pointless. The new show will be a fast, spirited, and ad-libbed take-down of whatever Gets My Goat in the world of politics, culture, religion, and barnyard animals.

 

Originally published 07-07-2013

Hello and welcome back to the ‘Ever the Optimist’ podcast. We’re back and working on some audio hang-ups, but let’s get going anyway! Remember, you can Like “Ever the Optimist” on Facebook and as always you can find links and discussions of show topics in our show notes at www.wyethdigital.com/optimist







Question of the Week


Nature.com reports that:

“electrical engineers have used lasers to create a cloak that can hide communications in a ‘time hole’, so that it seems as if they were never sent. The method, published today in Nature1, is the first that can cloak data streams sent at the rapid rates typically seen in telecommunications systems. It opens the door to ultra-secure transmission schemes, and may also provide a way to better shield information from noise corruption.”

So the obvious Question of the Week: Given that the NSA and other intelligence agencies have been data-mining and  tapping our communications, would you like to be able to hide your communications?

Future Tech


UPI.com takes us where no one has gone before with news that:

“the command ‘shields up’ to protect humans traveling in spacecraft from radiation may soon graduate from the realm of science fiction, British researchers say.

“Scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory say they’ve been testing a lightweight system to protect astronauts from harmful radiation on long voyages, such as a round trip to Mars, who would be exposed to cosmic rays and high-energy particles from the sun contained in solar storms.” 

Make it so!

Future Fail


Web Urbanist fills my Amazon wish list with 10 fantastic inventions that failed. Flying tanks,  poison-gas spewing riot cars and telephone answering robots are but a few of the colossal failures that made the list!



Glass Half-Empty

Discovery News  cautions that warming oceans are putting puffins in peril. According to their article, which relies heavily on reporting from the AP:

“The AP’s Clarke Canfield reports that instead of feeding their chicks herring, the puffin parents were attempting to feed them butterfish, which were too big for the chicks to swallow. Butterfish is a more southerly species of fish that has become more abundant in the Gulf of Maine as waters have warmed, or perhaps more accessible to seabirds because it has moved higher up in the water column; according to Steve Kress of the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program, exceptionally warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine last year may have prompted an earlier-than-usual phytoplankton bloom,

This is the 3rd and final installment of our classic How-To series, the World Chocolate Masters.

One of the more unique experiences that my former partner Madeline and I had as pioneering How-To video podcasters was our invitation to cover the United States finals of the prestigious, global chocolatiers’ competition, The World Chocolate Masters (WCM).

This episode goes behind the scenes to learn how a competition like this is judged, how contestants deal with tragedy in the kitchen, and, of course, who won!

Original Date of Publication 05-02-2014

Hey, Optimists! I’m sharing another classic How-To!

One of the more unique experiences that my former partner Madeline and I had as pioneering How-To video podcasters was our invitation to cover the United States finals of the prestigious, global chocolatiers’ competition, The World Chocolate Masters (WCM).

In this episode we meet two of the contestants in the WCM; a seasoned competitor and master at chocolate sculpting and a first time competitor trying to make a mark in what has been a man’s world. A tense battle between Experience and Youth ensues and culminates in tragedy in the kitchen!