msb-0211 A question of faith

msb-0211 A question of faith

intro

Feedback comes first, so...

I am still unemployed and looking for anything that will pay the rent...

My mother's still hanging in there.

My sister and I are still a bit bummed out.

I'm going to go to Canada for one last visit.

What the heck?

I've got plenty of time now..

I'm writing the week's worth of shows in one day and releasing it in dribs and drabs over three episodes.

I hope you don't mind.

Last week was all about the RIAA. This week is less structured but I still manage to make it about the things I really believe in.

And what I really believe in in is that we have been getting the short shrift of the attention span of media.

Its like we didn't matter to the wider world. Well, we DO. We are people, perhaps not THE people in the wider sense of the word, but we matter...

These podcasts are my reaction to the tyranny of democracy.

The tyranny that would ignore us (and by us I mean the wider 15% of people who are disabled [the 15% of the population who aren't physically "perfect,"]) and who would be shunted off to die in wretched oblivion.

---- "Crooked Line" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

Drop me an email: charles at MSBPodcast.com

And I would apreciate if someone could write a review of this podcast on iTunes [ http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120932170 ] You can just select the link and, eventually, scroll down the iTunes page to "Customer Reviews"

---- "Leave Me Standing" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

Feed Me comes 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

---- "This Time" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

"Thesis:"

Speaking of faith, I've just watched "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" [ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/index_flash.html ] and "Bill Moyers Jounal" [ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html ] and, you know, I'm sick and tired of hearing about Israel. (Specially from neo-cons who are preaching the rapturous apocalypse to their flocks.)

Ok, if everything in the bible is supposed to be true, how come there is "no" mention of America in the bible?

Not a word.

Not a peep.

Not a whisper.

The most powerful country on the planet in the second millennium, as one creepy calendar has it, and there isn't one mention of that "in any biblical or koranic text."

I think that its because the bible and the koran are made up tales for the gullible.

(If the world is going to end anyway, real soon now, any day almost, why should they bother with any of these disabled people or cripples, or anybody else. [Hey! Over here! I just happen to still be alive. Sorry to put a kink in your plans but I haven't given up on anybody, not even you. Just get your heads in the light, instead of sticking it where the sun don't shine.])

But that's just my private beef with these, uh, people.

The question of faith I have concerns the apparent effectiveness of placebos.

---- "Better" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

"Synthesis:"

By definition [ http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4917 ] a placebo is "a 'sugar pill' or any dummy medication or treatment."

It is inert. Not even latent. It is inert.

Why does it fool the patient into perceiving benefits where none exist?

Of course that is the sixty four thousand question, but the facts are that they can have unintended results (meaning that they worked in spite of being bogus.)

And part of those unintended results is that they can spur the recipient of the placebo into altering some internal state by sheer force of will. (Now I'm not claiming that bones will magically unbreak, or severed limbs suddenly reattach, but for some ailments, ones with some somatic effect, placebos can affect the overall sense of perception.)

Of course this is easily tested by trying a see if placebos work on any other life form. (I think that they "only" work on creatures who are sufficiently self-aware and are sufficiently aware of your intentions. Meaning that if you have a cat that's is currently afflicted with feline leukemia, injecting it with water won't make "Fluffy" 'feel' in the least bit better.)

Placebo effects are therefore squarely in the human province. They depend on the interpolation of some subconscious layer between the physical self and the somatic sense of self.

The human mind is truly a wondrous thing.

Almost as ponderable as the human body.

---- "On The Way Down" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

"Conclusion:"

Placebos work despite all scientific facts because something within us believes that it can, so we persevere and overcome, or we think we can (and perhaps, in many circumstances, that's enough.)

---- "Toute Petite Etoile" by: "Pascale Goodrich-Black" http://www.myspace.com/pascalegoodrichblack

Outro