msb-0114 Its All Greek To Me.

msb-0114 Its All Greek To Me.

Intro.

Feedback comes first, so...

My appeals for your emails have "not" fallen on deaf ears.

I'm now corresponding with Homer [ http://mysclerosismultiple.blogspot.com/ ].

We'll see, or make that hear, if maybe we can get an interview done.

I've been reading some facts and figures about MS in Greece.

I got this from: MS In Europe

http://www.ms-in-europe.org/ourmembers/index.php?kategorie=ourmembers&cnr=27&anr=39

- total number of people with MS in Greece: 8.000-10.000
- how many of them are members of the Society: 4000
- total number of members in MS Society: 5000

That means that there are at least 8000 people that I bet can't find anything to give them any information about MS in the Greek mass media.

Well, according to the CIA World Fact Book, ( https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/gr.html ), Greece has a population of 10,688,058 (according to a July 2006 estimate).

Given the conservative 0.0833% estimate of the general population by the US National MS society, they're about 900 people short. That's a pretty good estimate.

Given the climate and the general make up of the population, I'd say they're under diagnosing by about 450 people and the rest can just get lost in the statistical noise of trying to apply North American figures to the eastern side of the Mediterranean.

Maybe I can get him to start a podcast in Greek for all those of thousands of MSers.

I can host it on MSBPodcast, for free. (I'm paying for more storage and bandwidth than I use so its no skin off my teeth. [Besides, if I can do it, sounding like I do, and still pull in an audience, I'm sure he could too, Once you know the techniques and the processes behind it, its easy. {And, "no" I'm not worried about losing control of the show. (It was "never" about control. I'd love to have this podcast take off and fly.)}] :-)

And I like the idea of funding and executive-producing a 'cast that I'd need some help to listen to. (As an ex-"Quebecois", as a Francophone who became Anglophone, I'm tickled pink at the very thought of doing this.)

---- "Illusions" by: "Tracey Helen Gonzalez" http://cdbaby.com/cd/thg

On another tack...

MSers are now represented, sort of, in the people running for president of the United States.

Anne Romney, wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has MS.

Win or lose, this will inevitably raise the profile of MSers. For a little while anyway...

Of course, should he win, it would definitely raise the profile of MSers for a term or two and further into the future, just like Roosevelt's presidency did for polio.

I don't like all of his politics, he's a tad too right-wing for me, but, for the most part, I think he's a contender; someone with a real chance; a businessman with some political depth to his background.

He is a Massachusetts governor. (For bio info look at the link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/12/biographic_information_on_gop_presidential_candidate_mitt_romney/ )

I'm living in the 'States and, by keeping my Canadian citizenship, I find myself in the ridiculous position of not being able to vote in the upcoming election.

But having developed MS, and seeing how widespread we MSers are; (the epiphany that came when I finally saw, really saw, the world-wide spread of MSers,) well, I find my left-wing, world-wide view does not jibe with ANY national politics.

To put in terms that would make sense to a politician, my constituency, or to put it in terms that the businessman side of Senator Romney would understand, a circle drawn around my stakeholders, is too broad to fit into any national borders.

When it comes to national elections, I'm just too left-wing for my own good, I guess.

---- "Beate Uhse Blues" by: "Konservenfabrikant Koeberle" http://www.projekt6.de/

Feed forward comes next, so...

I'm still working on stuff. More on that later but the ad in InsideMS will be going through.

Like an idiot, had let my passport lapse. I can't even go back to Ottawa to see my mom. With the paranoia rampant in the 'States, now I need a passport to get back in to the USA from Canada even if I travel by car.

My passport application is winding its way slowly through the guts of the Gummint and will issue forth from the cloaca, to plop into my eagerly waiting hands.

In addition, there may be other travel in my near future.

More on that later when things gel.

----

In addition, they're finally having a Podcamp "un-conference" somewhere I can access, right here in New York. ( http://www.podcampnyc.org/ )

I've registered, I will be attending and I'll be bringing my little mobile studio.

Maybe I can record a couple of interviews. I would dearly like to interview "Jason van Orden." (As will everybody else who attends, I'm sure. :-)

I'm also looking for feedback from the other attendees about my 'no play, no pay" show-hosted advertising model.

I think that this the future of advertising in a web-enabled, niche-focused media that is podcasting.

---- "Drowsy Maggie" by: "Celtic Stone" http://cdbaby.com/cd/celticstone/from/celtic/

Feed Me! come third, 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

---- "Raggle Taggle Gypsies" by: "Celtic Stone" http://cdbaby.com/cd/celticstone/from/celtic/

Main Topic: Its All Greek To Me.

Apart from the obvious nod to Homer [ http://mysclerosismultiple.blogspot.com/ ] with whom I have started a correspondence, I'm particularly, uh, disturbed, by the fact that I've got to learn a couple of new languages (or is that a couple of defunct languages?,) in order to describe my own body.

Its all part of the psychology behind "jargon."

Part of the problem is that we started with the Romans using Latin to describe the various organs, jiggly bits and on course they were using Latin. It was the "Lingua Franca" of the day.

(The expression "Lingua Franca" is so wrong on so many levels that it gives me the giggles every time I use it. "Lingua Franca" is "Italian" for "Langue Franche" which its of course "French", but a later day, fourteenth-century French (That's when they all began speaking it, sometimes by pleading for their lives from the pointy end of a sword, ["Langue d'Oc" anyone? "Langue d'Ol" speakers from the north of France won that little battle, the hard way. As for those who spoke "Breton", well the less said about that the better. ) The Romans spoke "Latin" when they invaded Gaul and conquered the land from the tribes led by a "Gaulish" speaking "Vercingetorix".)

Back to the jiggly bits.

The Romans were of course using Latin. It was what they spoke everyday as they hacked their bloody way through Iberia, Gaul, and sundry points east, north, west and south and through the centuries.

They got to describe and name lots of bloody, jiggly bits.

But the malaria mosquitoes in the swamps surrounding Rome and all those pesky invading Goths, Huns, Magyars and whatnots got the better of them.

The Romans turned out the lights behind themselves (after the "Twelve Caesars") and Europe descended into the polyglot babble of the dark ages.

It became "chique" to speak Latin.

It became the language of the powerful, not the learned but the powerful.

And in order to keep the riff-raff at bay, they have kept on speaking it right into the twenty-first century; some trying to make themselves powerful, even though that flies in the face of reality.

The problems we've inherited are those of history, (those events that happened to people since long dead and who's relevance is since long past.)

But, until we evolve a new form of speaking, we're friggin' well stuck with mouthfuls of strange syllables to describe what would otherwise be commonly called "jiggly bits."

Rather than calling people stupid, when all they are is ignorant, or changing the calendar to something else that doesn't make any sense either, I'd rather people just learn to cope with the myriad "exceptions to the rules" that make up the human experience.

That means learning all those weird names for all those damn "jiggly bits."

---- "The Raft Of the Medusa" by: "Dean Madonia" http://www.deanmadonia.com/

Main Topic: Part "Deux",

That said I'm all for not obscuring things unnecessarily.

If there is some modern local dialectic expression that successfully expresses things, "why not use it".

I'm tired of people speaking without communicating. That's just making noise.

I have enough noise in my stripped-wired nervous system without having to deal with a doctor, nurse, health-care worker or drug manufacturer trying to baffle me with bull-shit.

If its the only word or expression that there is, then fine, but back it up with some diagram, or illustration, or better yet with my own [expletive deleted] MRI and "show" me.

I am convinced that most of the preventable medically-related deaths in this country happen because of poor communication.

Language, the obscure Latinate "tours de phrase" which serve to shroud meaning in a fog and keep the unwashed and unlearned im-patients from poking their noses in the business of the pros, is behind most of it.

The very same professional language which serves to make that distinction between the vulgar and the pro, is what's killing us.

---- "Hirourim" by: "Sara Alexander" http://sara.alexander.free.fr/

Outro.