"Links from the Gregg Zone!"

Hi everyone:

It seems I’m the new kid on the block around here, so I thought I should introduce myself. My name is Gregg a long time friend of Joe’s who you all know as AlaskaJoe; we go back close to forty years now. We met in southern California, driving taxi cabs back in the early seventies, he has been as close as my brother ever since We, along with a couple of other long time friends get together every morning for coffee, thanks to this marvelous age we live in, and the graces of skype. Anyway he ask me to do a spot for his show, web, and blog pages about web surfing. Since it is a favorite pass time of mine, and I seem to a have an ability to find some different and interesting material out there, it sounded like it might be fun, so I’m going to give it a shot, and see what happens.

Here’s a short bio, to let you know a little more about me, I’m single, I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, just turned a new decade last year (now officially old). While my computer expertise is limited (some would say severely), I am getting better. I have a wide variety of interests; and a fondness for the unusual; my interests include science, new technology, anything related to human consciousness, where we came from as well as where we might be going to, metaphysic’s, world events past and present, those edgy web site’s that border on political extremes, those site’s that are almost unbelievable (but could be), and the totally absurd ones. I very much like web based movies, video clips, and audio. In the mainstream I like reading, radio (mostly talk), I have lost interest in almost all television, with the exception of, Nova, 60 Min., History, Food, Discovery, Animal Planet, and a few of the Pundit type political shows, however usually the commercials drive me away before I completely watch anything. I also seem to have a new and developing interest in Netflix movies, mostly non-mainstream stuff, documentaries, foreign, lectures, film noir, sci-fi, and the missed classics, I have been finding allot of movie leads on the net, looking and searching genre such as cult classics, film noir, and particular subject matters that interest me.

I’m not at all sure how this will develop, and would welcome any suggestions you may have. In the beginning I have decided that I will try and highlight about three to five sites a week, these I will attempt to spread over subjects as varied as I can, from totally believable to the almost over the top. I am sure there will be a very small group interested in them all, however if you find one or two to spark your interest I will feel satisfied. I would also like very much to hear from you, about subjects that I might be interested in.

So here we go:

1) Where is my flying car? This is something that was promised to me ever since I was a little kid, you know the Jetsons, those futuristic prediction guru’s, year after year said I would have one, the science shows and magazines, showed me blueprints, and artist depictions, Disneyland had models, or how about Mel Gibson’s taxi cab in the movie “The Fifth Element” was that cool or what. Well it may be closer than you think, at least there is hope. Take a look at this http://www.moller.com/ well worth clicking around the site, they are very serious, unfortunately it looks like it will be made in China.


2) When I see a story in the news I always wonder just how it may be changed due to the interpretation of the news room here in the states. It is kind of interesting to read the story as presented to the local people where it originated. This is the best site I have found to do that http://www.world-newspapers.com/ . Here you can just click on any country (there are over two hundred of them), then find a newspaper from the city you are looking for, and read the story from the perspective of that culture. There are also links to tons of magazines some free and some subscriber type, they are broken down into various interest categories. So if you happen to hear a story about several people injured by armed dacoits at Phulbariya-8 in Katmandu yesterday you can check it out, just go to site, look under Asia, click on Nepal, click on Himalayan Times, and there you go.


3) Here are a couple of links related to something I believe we all need to be following very closely, I wrote a blog on the radio’s blog page about it you can read that here http://oncomputerstips.blogspot.com/2006/12/death-of-internet.html , I also wrote a follow up with more links as a prelude to this weeks show during which Joe said he was going to devote some time to this issue. We all need to get involved in protecting our rights in this regard. If we do not speak up money, and power will very much change the landscape of the internet we all love so much. http://www.freepress.net/news/18562 , http://www.savetheinternet.com/


4) This is one of my current favorite sites it is taking up way to much of my time at the moment. The site has lots, probably hundreds of lectures, lots of video and audio, dealing with science; any subject you can think of, interviews with Nobel Prize Winners, the latest new research going on, advances that are expected in the near and distant future.

I was watching a documentary “Genghis Blues” excellent movie, but Richard Feynman the physicist was in the movie so being curious I wanted to know more about him, and started looking around found this site that has many videos from his lectures on light that he did in New Zealand in the 1970’s. Any way that’s how I got hooked http://www.vega.org.uk/


5) To wrap it up for this week I’m going to say a few words about Netflix, I have to begin by saying, that I was never a fan of the usual movies. But Netflix was always sending these offers for a two week free trial, and there were two or three movies I was curious about so I thought I would just watch those and cancel the whole thing out, “just here for the free stuff”, that kind of deal.

Well I was very pleasantly surprised by what was available. I like documentaries, non-fiction, and the edgy stuff. While looking around at the site I found a series on human consciousness, 5 DVD’s covering interviews with twenty different scientists all from different fields, talking about how they viewed the subject, and what part of the brain, body, or neither they considered our consciousness to come from. It was from a 2003 symposium, and allot of it was way over my head, but it was on a subject that has always interested me. That got me started; I branched into foreign films, and a few other areas. Then I started searching for the obscure movies that did not make the award shows, those that some how never made it into the main stream. I started looking on the internet for lists on film noir, cult film, foreign films, stuff that other people liked enough to list on the net. Now I’m hooked it is so much better than driving to the video store, always worrying about paying for something I won’t like, the money, the gas, the time, the hassle. With Netflix I have been getting fifteen to twenty movies a month, I have been watching movies I never would have considered at the store and found some real treasures. And I go to the mail box every day anyway, so there is no hassle at all. http://www.netflix.com


Well that’s it for the first week anyway looking forward to hearing any thing and everything, from anybody. Suggestions on sites, movies, rants, raves, good or bad, ideas, complaints, you name it. Gregg