Sunday, February 04, 2007

msb-0110 "A Miracle of Rare Device"

msb-0110 "A Miracle of Rare Device" (from the poem "Kubla Khan" by "Samuel Taylor Coleridge".)

Intro

Feedback comes first, so...

I had barely started to use the location hit-counter (the one I got from http://www.neoworx.net/ ) that somebody from Greece came to my web site.

As it turns out, we have a Greek MSer in MDMHvonPA's Haupertonian MS Cabal (at http://mdmhvonpa.blogspot.com/ ) and he left a comment on my blog. (at http://multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/ )

I have since written to MDMHvonPA and told him to check out the geographic hit counter. Maybe it will provide him with some new insights too.

I seem to have started something (after Michelle [ http://icensnow.blogspot.com/ ] anyway :-) because Homer ( http://mysclerosismultiple.blogspot.com/ ) now is looking at possibly getting it. Everybody thinks they're neat.

It really "is" a small world(-wide web) after all.

Actually, I have listeners from all over the world.

Looking at that map has brought about another epiphany.

I'm starting to see how distributed we all are. I have a visitor from every continent except Africa and Antartica. (Both of which make sense. Nobody lives in Antartica and Africa has other more pressing medical problems, [like dengue fever, ebola, sleeping sickness, {the list is too depressing to get into.}])

Perhaps the management of all disease should be handled by an international organization, since its obviously an international problem.

Diseases don't care about our petty nations and borders don't mean a thing to a bacterium or to a virus.

But more in this "blue sky" thinking on my next 'cast.

----

I wish I knew who all the people were are coming to my sites; from Europe, From South America, from Asia, from North America, from Australia.

Who are you?

What brought me to my site?

Drop me an email: charles at MSBPodcast.com

I'm curious is all.

I will not use the address for "anything" other than to reply to whatever email you send me.

---- "I lived a life for you (Greek)" by: "Mainz Urbanaut" http://www.sixminutes.eu/

Feed forward comes next, so...

My wife, in her eternal quest to smother me in magazine, catalogs, books, music, movies and other ephemera, brought home from a church sale a bunch of books, (as well as some shrimps and fish from the fish monger. [By the way, the shrimps were simply "del-fantabul-icious"!])

One of this week's haul of books was "The Way of the Traveler" by "Joseph Dispenza" ISBN: 1-56691-449-3.

It is a little book, less than 180 pages, but it was a fun read.

The book is divided into parts and each part into chapters.

Each chapter beging with a quote which makes for a pleasant moment of reflection.

I specially had to give pause at is the quote for part five, "Recounting the Tale":

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail"
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.


There is something descriptive in that line, descriptive of how I have lived my entire life, with MS and without; forever looking "beyond" the road well traveled.

That's why I have this podcast.

Speaking of podcasts, I've just heard one put out by the British Journal "The Lancet."

In all those episodes, they have only managed to put out "one" thing concerning MS. (Not the whole 'cast mind you, just part of one show which covered some report about potential infectious agents as causing MS, somehow.)

Its media demagoguery and the tyranny of the mass market all over again.

---- "Miracle" by: "Victor Dimarko" http://www.myspace.com/victordimarko

Feed Me!" comes after that, so...

Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?

Consider advertising on this podcast.

Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)

It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.

That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)

But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.

No play, no pay.

Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...

Send me an email at: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com

---- "Miracle Product" by: "Elephants Gerald" http://www.insightgalactic.com/

Main topic: "A Miracle of Rare Device"

The internet, which was born of a desire for a system of communication that could survive a nuclear war, (like the fishnets stockings on "Bonnie Parker") has morphed thoroughly from its military roots, into something that nobody could have predicted.

It suffers certain problems because, while adequate for a military's needs (and they surely have set up their own separate and secure web where the crackers, malicious hackers and other nasties face prison terms if they wander in,) it is showing some signs of strain under the truly staggering traffic that we generate.

But we MSers (and the rest of the 10% of the world that's disabled,) are only too happy to put up with the occasional creaks and groans (at least until IPv6 gets rolled out and network traffic gets routed much more efficiently,) for the gift of community that the internet has brought us.

Because of the asynchronous nature between the podcasting servers and the podcatchers; the hundreds of millions of PCs and/or Macs, equipped with browsers, and the millions of iPods and other other MP3 players; podcasting is immune from most of the ills that afflict broadcasting.

Podcasts are persistent by design therefore you can 'catch what is 'cast, whenever you get around to it.

This allows the use of another model of advertising, the one exploited by Google with ad-sense and click-through. Unlike click-through, the exploitation of the advertising model is not prone (or make that "not as prone",) to automated "spoofing."

This is why I have the rates I do on click through to a multi media ad which has to be downloaded to a podcatcher.

This is the only for MSers to get together, even though we're miles apart (unless we tak a ride on the "Miracle Train."

---- "Miracle Train" by: "Jim Butler" http://web.mac.com/jimbutlermusic/iWeb/Site/Home.html

Main topic, part "deux":

I'm waxing poetic today.

"Kubla Khan by: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:

Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

Quoted from: http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/Poetry/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/samuel_taylor_coleridge_kubla_khan.htm

---- "Miracles" by: "chasing red" http://www.indiestore.co.uk/chasingred

Outro

7 comments:

mouse said...

Charles, the map is indeed cool! I am not even going to try for that as I don't even seem to be able to manage to place a comment on your blog. It started when I converted to the new beta version. This is just another one of many attempts. My last was a comment about marmite and vegemite and also my inability to get to the podcast. Of course, I am technoignorant:) At least I can read!

mouse said...

I made it! Third times the charm it seems.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

Made it? Are you getting my podcasts?

I would love to give you help but I have to know what to help you with.

I'm going to cross post this on your blog.

mdmhvonpa said...

You know, I've considered the visitor maps but in the end, I've decided against because I can get locations from my SiteMeter tracking. I've been so busy of late that providing content has sucked up most of my blog time and 'home improvements' have fallen by the road-side. Some day ... some day.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

Hello MDMH,

The idea is not to get into a pissing contest (I get more visitors that you do and they're from farther apart! Nya nyah, ne nya nyan!) but for everybody to see at at a glance just how widespread we MSers are.

Miss Chris said...

Wow! I had to memorize Kubla Khan in high school. I had a truly crazy English teacher.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

Ah, he may have been crazy, but he could appreciate great poetry.

"Kubla Khan is one of the most evocative gushings in the English language.

Until Coleridge was interrupted by some mundane idiot from Poorlock anyway. :-)

By the time the man from Poorlock left, he had managed to distract Coleridge enough that he forgot what he'd been trying to write and it never came back to him.