My a cappella group, Hookslide, was the group trying to put out the flame (I'm the guy on solo in the intro clip). Only our bass/beatbox was able to do it (even amplified), and there were some interesting things we observed.

His "buzz" (or "raspberry", as they call it in the episode) is accomplished by singing one note and "buzzing" another lower note by vibrating his lips. Usually, he tunes these to be one or two octaves apart, or on occasion a fifth apart. However, he was only able to put out the flame when he detuned these two notes from one another, creating "beats" in the upper harmonics. We discussed this on-site with the guys, and we theorized that it was not just the amplitude of the sound wave but actually the irregularity of it, which likely caused more air turbulence. This stuff didn't make it into the episode as-aired, in favor of blowing some more stuff up (who can blame them?)

A trimmed edit of the episode (with just our voice-related stuff) is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPCME5lSiXE

I have very little patience for this kind of thing. Saying that because the universe follows rules that we associate with information processing it may *be* nothing but information is exactly like Christopher Hitchens' Sunday School teacher telling him that God made grass green because green is so pleasing to the eye -- it is completely backwards.

The universe "resembles" information processing because information processing itself arises out of our attempts to understand the universe. Of course the same rules govern both!

Now, what I *would* be interested in - rather than trying to squeeze the enormity of the universe into our weensy brains by picturing it as a dusty Dell Latitude with a busted fan limping away in a corner of God's office - is how we can apply advanced quantum theory and relativity to information processing. Now *there* is a book I would read.