msb-0024 Isn't work wonderful? I could watch it all day...

msb-0024 Isn't work wonderful? I could watch it all day...

Feedback goes first but there isn't any.

Phew!

I'm too friggin' busy with this "making a friend from scratch" project.

I'm finally getting to try out some ideas that have been percolating in my mind for years.

I see Objects, instances; Relationships and connections.

Its not just metaphorical. Its hallucinatory. I actually percieve systems that way.

I blame it on my MS.

I used the down time while I was in hospital having an exacerbation, twice, to really think about objects and once again to come up with a descriptive scheme for expressing them visually.

That required thinking about relationships and coming up with some VRML code to present the lot in a browser.

Now I'm thinking about how to automagically generate classes from partially filled object descriptions and instances from partially filled rows of data. But the relationships between the objects are being a bear to come to grips with.

AI is fun! Specially when I'm getting some people to believe in me and my ideas. That makes for a real change.

Oh! Here's a kind of feedback.

You are in for a special treat. Kaye Brewster just got in touch with me. If you liked her music back in episode msb-0004 The Princess of Twee and Rachel Knight, you'll appreciate the upcoming interview. (Then again, like I said, I'm a fan boy.)

Kaye finally got back to me after dealing with college. Having just graduated myself, (I did get an Associates degree,) I can relate to how busy she must have been.

She is recording her portion of the interview we'd agreed upon all those episodes ago.

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The theme of the last show, msb-0023, was "Waiting".

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Did you read the review of Teri Garr's Speedbumps in the June/July issue of "inside MS." As glad I am she got the glowing review (it deserves much more. ;-)

However I am the son of a librarian and as such, I am miffed that the editors still don't seem to know about the ISBN code.

There's one on every book that clearly and unambigously identifies the revision/edition, the book, the publisher, the city and country of origin of the book. It looks like a bar code but it clearly identifies the book, Believe it or not.

If you go to Google, Amazon, Borders or even you local public library, all you need is the ISBN to get the book you're looking for. Like ISBN: 1-59463-007-0 will get you Teri Garr's Speedbumps.

There is also something known as an ISSN which would do the same for every issue of "inside MS." But they aren't using it. Heck, I'm applying for the audio equivalent for MSBPodcast.

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Now on with the show...

Work is hard to come by when you've got a disease which induces chronic disability.

Its even worse when its episodic, relapsing/remitting.

Worst of all, when it has no outward, visible sign; as long as you don't have to move or talk.

Prejudice is a "knee-jerk" reaction which save a lot of time and which is based on the detection of "otherness".

Its bad to encounter prejudice in our relationship with others.

Living in the 'States now, I am astonished as to how deeply the issue of slavery, and of the prejudice associated with it, runs and how much it has cost everybody because individuals are fundamentally different.

I suffered from, or is it with, the Canadian Franco versus Anglo equivalent. Unlike the black/white situation in the 'States, we didn't even have skin complexion to guide us. We had to "learn" to be ass-holes, it wasn't immediately obvious.

MSers are afflicted enough with having metaphorical wire strippers taken to our nervous systems. We don't need to be further afflicted with the stupidity of people who won't look at you when you're ordering food in a restaurant but instead will ask the person you came with what you'd like to have to eat.

That's just downright rude.

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Notice that I don't expect you to understand object-oriented programming, or even what I'm on about half the time, but that doesn't mean that I'm taking my audience for a bunch of idiots.

For all I know, maybe one of you knows object-oriented programming and could even teach me a thing or two. (I can hope.)

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You're bound to know something about something and MS is a part of what we all know.

Like Sting sang: "We share the same biology, regardless of ideology." Of course he was concerned with Russia and America and Reagan vs Gorbachov.

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There are somethings I'm glad for. The last class of the week was Economic Philosophy. Sitting in that class room fighting to say awake and not run screaming from the entire building as it exploded behind me, (of course not being able to run sort of made that entire scenario impossible.)

I was introduced to the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) who published "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (ISBN: 0061330086, that's ALL you need, really,) in which he coined the phrase: "creative destruction".

Schumpeter thought that capitalism could not survive, not because it would be overthrown by a Marxist proletariat, but because it would be destroyed by its successes.

Hey, that sounds like podcasting versus broadcasting. The new media versus the old media. (But that's a simplistic view. Its not an A versus B position but one of A+B with A and B having to learn to live with each other.)

He believed that capitalism would give rise to a large intellectual class that subsisted by attacking the bourgeois system of private property and freedom which were necessary for the class's existence.

Hey! That sounds like me and my podcast.

But I don't attack anyone. I'm just providing a new medium that we can use instead of being ignored by the economics of broadcasting.

Capitalism is accretive. There may be something new out there but the old doesn't truely disappear.

Its the inevitable shift in economic importance of things that gets people all upset.

There are still buggy whip makers out there, despite the coming of the automobile.

Likewise there will always be broadcasters despite the coming of the internet.