Tuesday, February 27, 2007

msb-0118 "Apophis"

msb-0118 "Apophis"

Intro.

Well, here I go again. offering the opportunity, the site and possibly the equipment if they need it, to anyone out there who wants to have their own podcast in German.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsches?

Wurden Sie mögen ein Programm für Sie auf den Erfahrungen von jemand haben, die mit der mehrfachen Sklerose, auf Deutsch?

Leider gibt es nichts für Sie.

Sie müssen sie verursachen.

Dieses ist Ihre Wahrscheinlichkeit dann.

Verbinden Sie MSBPodcast.com und Anfang eins."

(Translation courtesy of Babel Fish [http://babelfish.altavista.com/] speech courtesy of AT&T research [http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php ])
(Hopefully some native German speaker will take pity on his ears and spare me the indignity of this translation. :-)

"Et pour les francophones, je vous offre une collaboration, un site, et mème de l'equipment, si necessaire. Envoyez mois un courriel: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com ."

---- "Star Schema" by: "Tangential Cold" http://kurt.slithytoves.org/

Feedback comes first, so...

I had some from another MSer.

I am of course respecting her confidentiality.

But I would just love to interview her or, better yet, (in your dreams Charles-A.,) get her as a co-host. (And no my wife won't get upset. For Pete's sake, we'd be doing this through Skype and there would be several national and state/provincial borders between us.)

She sounded/read like a real live wire.

It would certainly improve the dynamics of this podcast. (And, no, my wife isn't interested and that's that.)

If I wasn't having so much fun doing this, I'd suspect that boredom might be an issue. (Nah... Never happen. :-)

---- "Dead Star" by: "Jeremy Rowe" http://myspace.com/jeremyrowe

Feed forward comes next, so...

I'm astonished at how many people are being reached by this podcast. (There is even one from Tehran, Iran. [Now there is a communication problem. I know the alphabet {28 letters in four cursive scripts, with several diacritical marks.}

But, apart from the fact that we share a biology {thank you Sting}, I know almost nothing else.]

Could they use a mike and unfettered access to the MSBPodcast umbrella. Who knows? How about dropping me a line at charles at MSBPodcast.com.)

---

Well anyway, this new business will place some demands on my time. I'm about to have to do a lot of traveling and some weeks will see me unable to do more post some music.

I have to pay the bills 'round here, (unless some people would be willing to advertise, :-) so I won't be able to put out as many shows or stay up as late, burning the midnight oil (okay the, uh, 01:56 AM oil right now).

This ties into the next segment: Feed Me! I have to keep earning money at a day job because this podcast can't pay any bills ... yet.

---- "Starpilot Title Theme " by: "AssertiveSound" http://download.com/tsw

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

---- "Imagine a Star 2007 " by: "Alienation" http://www.alienation.co.za/

Main topic: "Apophis" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apep )

I ran across this [ http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9748/1066/ ] article in "IT Wire."

Its about, well, quite literally, oblivion. Our own extinction?

To quote the article:
Still, it’s thanks to modern technology that the world’s scientists have been able to scan the sky and look for asteroids that could easily end the world as we know it. Let’s hope this genuine asteroid scare unifies humanity in accelerating spaceflight technologies, not only so we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic asteroids impacts, but colonize the moon, our solar system, our galaxy and beyond as it would seem we were meant to do.

After all, there are so many resources up there that are just waiting for us to use. While we’re in no danger of running out immediately of any of the resources we take for granted, despite the recent oil shocks and rises in commodity prices, our own solar system is a rich treasure trove of all the resources and even living space that we could possibly want for the foreseeable future.

If a possible asteroid impact dramatically speeds up the development of the required technology, turning science fiction into science reality, we’ll all be better off – and who doesn’t want that?
Yes, indeed-e-doo.

We now have something else to worry about: "Getting smacked by a giant piece of rock coming at us at several thousand miles an hour.'

But lets look on the bright side.

We won't get caught with out collective pants down.

We'll know it years in advance.

And the way things work in the gummint, they'll have argued over this until its half-past too late, tyeing it in budgetary red tape and secret committee meetings.

All the while the religious nuts claim its the will of [insert name of deity here], and that only the unbelievers will perish.

Meanwhile the chunk of rock and ices the size of Manhattan, that's got just about everybodys' name on it is just out there, but its getting a little less "out there" every freakin' day.

Let the whole world go to sleep with the same sense of uncertainty we MSerd do, and wake up often with the disappointment we do: "shit we still have it!"

---- "Stars From Outside Of Spaceship " by: "Alexye Nov" http://alexyenov.rpod.ru/

Main topic, part "Deux":

I am about to get busy again at work. (Its not simple being a good project manager.)

I am leaving from my home-base in Noo Joysey, and traveling between Hartford, Connecticut and Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in the upcoming weeks and months.

You want pressure, a.k.a. Jason Oblivion? I'll give you pressure.

Try doing all this traveling while having MS, when you're permanently and persistently sick, but you still have to be "on" 24/7 because hundreds of people are depending on you around the planet, and the only rest you're getting is in a noisy steel cylinder pretending either its a bus or a bird, and jet lag is an absolute bitch, or sleeping in cheap hotel rooms where they can still reach you on the phone.

I'm no sniveling, molly-coddled, ignorant, little white-boy pussy working at some McJob for damn-near minimum wage.

Your comment on my blog, (and I just cut and pasted. The misspellings, lack of punctuation and grammatical errors are all yours,) leaves me untouched:
"Look you little shit. I was doing a google tonight to see if anyone's talking about the show, and what they're saying, you know gotta get that feed back, and look what I find, you talking shit. Listen bitch for your fucking info I was sick as shit and in the fucking hospital, consider your spot gone. I don't want my world of chaos to inconvenience you anymore than it already has. I look at it like this you must be a way better podcaster than me since your like 90 years older than me and so much more wiser, so I'm gonna download your shit and we'll fucking see you little shit talking fuck. Do us both a favor just take my show off your Itunes, or what ever you use to listen to my shit cast. I'm sure your podcast will provide me with a shit load of content, old man thanks asshole."
Oh yeah, kid, you win the argument.

Nobody's going to take up the gauntlet now.

No way, Jose.

Can't ever debate against someone armed with such fervor.

But its like winning a race in the special Olympics, a.k.a. Jason Oblivion.

In the end, at the finish line, you're still retarded.

It's too bad you have embarked on this profession as you seem to have a very fragile ego, as you've shown in your emails and posts.

You'd never make it past your first "open mike" night as a stand-up comic.

Get over your glass jaw or make sure you youTube your first performance cause I'd love to see the audience rip you a second (or maybe its a third,) ass-hole.

(And I know you'll very probably read this because you're still ego-surfing for comments about "Jason Oblivion" on Google. [But don't try to start any further diatribes because you won't get any reply.])

The next song was selected just for you. Because you really deserve it.

---- "I'm an ass-hole" by: "Dennis Leary" http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=6WiV2fyvRbs



Outro

Monday, February 19, 2007

msb-0117 I'm not waiting on a lady.

msb-0117 I'm not waiting on a lady. I'm just waiting on a friend.

Intro

Well, today as I write this, I'm not "waiting on a lady, I'm just waiting on a friend."

In fact, she's back, and looking might-ee fine. :-)

I tried to keep the house clean for her return so she wouldn't be faced with too big a mess. (But there's laundry that's threatening to walk out on its own if it doesn't get done soon. [I shove the wash in the machines and then she folds.] :-)

Lets try this again:
"Parlez vous Français?

Voudriez vous avoir un programme sur les expériences de quelq'un qui à la sclérose en plaque, dit en Français?

Malheureusement, il n'y a rien pour vous.

Il va vous faloir le créer.

C'est votre chance alors.

Joignez vous a MSBPodcast.com et commencez en un
.

Envoyez moi un courriel á charles á MSBPodcast.com (Cette offre est bonne en France et/ou au Québec)"

(Speech courtesy of AT&T research [http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php ])
So come on Montreal.

I know at least one of you is coming to the blog, or to the podcast.

I do okay at writing French.

If you want to really laugh at me, wait until the next episode.

That's when I attempt this in German:
"Sprechen Sie Deutsches?

Wurden Sie mögen ein Programm für Sie auf den Erfahrungen von jemand haben, die mit der mehrfachen Sklerose, auf Deutsch?

Leider gibt es nichts für Sie.

Sie müssen sie verursachen.

Dieses ist Ihre Wahrscheinlichkeit dann.

Verbinden Sie MSBPodcast.com und Anfang eins."

(Translation courtesy of Babel Fish [http://babelfish.altavista.com/] speech courtesy of AT&T research [http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php ]
Oops, I've already put the promotion out there. *smacks head* :-)
(Hopefully some native German speaker will take pity on his ears and spare me the indignity. :-)

---- "Paradigm Pure" by: "Acquisotic" http://www.acquisotic.com/acquisotic.aspx

Feedback
comes first, so...

All of you people on my map; I see the cities scrolling by and its awesome, simply awesome. You're all over the map, all over the globe really.

Depressing really, but its awesome none the less.

Are you just curious or are you all MSers?

Like, who came to the site from Lansdowne, north of Sitka, way the heck up in western Canada.

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

PodcampNYC will be happening on April 6th and 7th, 2007. I will lead a session on podcasting as a means of reaching specialized markets. (Using my own MSBPodcast as an example for reaching MSers. [I never said it was a good example. :-])

---- "pure dance" "housemetal" http://www.myspace.com/housemetal1

Feed Forward comes next, so...

Homer should have received the equipment by now and is hopefully starting on putting together a show as we speak. (Then again, maybe not. It took for freakin' ever with my American Express card. They're supposed to be verifying against fraud, fine, but the way they chose to implement it, they're actually engaging in obstruction of international commerce, as near as I can tell.)

He's speaking Greek of course so I can't know what he's actually saying without translation.

But I doubt that he's out there starting a cult of personality and plotting to take over the world using MSBPodcast.com as his vehicle. (With MSBPodcast's audience, I don't think it could take over a small village. :-)

----

I just love the map attached to my blog and my 'cast.

I watch all my readers and listeners and wonder.

I feel blessed, and I have been blessed through the myriad events, hazards, happenstances, incidents and accidents to discover that I am not alone with this disease.

I have made it past middle age and have acquired enough sufficiency that I can share it with you, all of you reading and listening, (by the way, everybody listening in on iTunes or some other podcatcher, thanks :-) and with people like homer, who are making things for others to listen to, and who are in turn "paying it forward" and making the world a better place, one person at a time.

---- "Pure" by: "Jesushairdo" http://www.jesushairdo.orimen.com/

Feed Me! come third, so...

Check out the stats and the map on my blog and on my podcast for the distribution of MSers "around the globe".

Maybe you "need" to see, like I finally did, how wide-spread MSers really are.

Wide spread, but there's a lot of us.

And we're reachable by this blog (amongst many others) and by this so far unique podcast.

----

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.

---- "Pure Pleasure Seeker" by: "Moloko" http://worlds-fair.net/moloko/

Main Topic: I'm not waiting on a lady. I'm just waiting on a friend.

You know, I've been extremely fortunate in my life.

I have been married to two wonderful women (one after the other, I'm no polygamist.) Hey life happened, my life, my intense, crazy, driven, obsessive, deep (almost autistically monomaniacal) life.

And they like each other. (Which causes both of them to sometimes gang up on me to get things done that I'd rather not do, but that's, uh, my "cross to bear". :-)

I only wish my life was typical of what happens to other MSers, but I suspect that its not.

I know that a lot of husbands, wives, partners and significant others in a relationship with someone who is disabled or sick bail out at some point.

Its not that they don't know that, uh, shit happens, but they don't want to get any on them.

That doesn't make them bad people, just the wrong ones for that relationship.

Unfortunately for the sick or disabled person, that puts them back on the meat rack, looking more than a little the "worse for wear" and quite unlikely to attract anybody else.

Loneliness must be terrible for the MSers who can't hide their impairments any longer, not even from themselves. But you have got to keep your chin up, don't you?

---- "Keep Your Motor Running " by: "Dave Hole" http://www.alligatorrecords.com/

Main Topic, part "deux"

There was an interesting discussion about "sex and the disabled" on the BBC Ouch! podcast [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast/ ].

It's on podcast #12.

They discussed topics like:
  • Rob Crossan tries a spot of internet dating - but is honesty the best policy?
  • Sex workers - are they accessible to all? Mat and Liz chat to Kim, a sex worker who sees a number of disabled clients
  • Tuppy Owens, founder of the Outsiders club, gives us the lowdown on what it's all about.
All in all, it was an eye (or ear [or thigh]) opening discussion.


---- "pure sex" by: "liteform" http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords

Outro

Sunday, February 18, 2007

msb-0116 Spinning off into space.

msb-0116 Spinning off into space.

Intro

In order to get the word out about MS and about the products that can help alleviate living with MS, I am attempting to spin off as many versions of this podcast in as many linguistic or socio-cultural groupings as possible, while avoiding as many of the pitfalls brought about by the sheer demographic scarcity of the disease.

"Parlez vous Français?

Voudriez vous avoir un programme sur les expériences de quelq'un qui à la sclérose en plaque, dit en Français?

Malheureusement, il n'y a rien pour vous.

Il va vous faloir le créer.

C'est votre chance alors.

Joignez vous a MSBPodcast.com et commencez en un
.

Envoyez moi un courriel á charles á MSBPodcast.com (Cette offre est bonne en France et/ou au Québec) "

(speech courtesy of AT&T research [http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php ] Heck! Its better than mine. :-)

(See what you've started Homer? Now I'm trying spinning off with the French :-)
---- "Elevated Science" by: "Alex Brumel" http://www.alexbrumel.com/

Feedback comes first, so...

I got some and it was good!

You should be hearing from Homer [ http://mysclerosismultiple.blogspot.com/ ]
in the near future.

The episode will be numbered msb-gr-0001. (It should be named the same way as an episode on his blog as well so this way you have text and links to refer to, both on MSBPodcast.com and on his blog site...)

He'll be writing and speaking in Greek to and for the Greek MSers. (To be honest, giving him a mike and a channel to speak through is my way of "paying it forward" for the incredible fun and good fortune I've had since starting this podcast. Podcasting has been a great catharsis for me. :-)

It'll be "Scalpicin" time for the rest of us; you're going to be scratching your heads along with me. But you know what? That's okay... [Its not costing you anything to download the episodes.] :-)

---- "Rocket Science" by: "BRAIN BUCKIT" http://www.brain-buckit.com/

Feed Forward comes next , so...

Here is something that you can ONLY get on the podcast:

[Jersey Todd News Flash - Bum Rush the Charts]

Basically it said that if you're sick and tired of DRMed music, where some faceless, unknown record company executive can sick the RIAA lawyers on your ass, and you don't even have to do anything wrong to get caught in their stupid sweeps, you can do something about it.

On March 22nd, 2007, you can go to the iTunes Music Store, buy the song "Mine Again" by the group "Black Lab". (If you've got iTunes, you can just click here. [Not yet, silly; wait until March 22nd!] [ http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=210761472&s=143441&i=210761474 ])

Black Lab is a band that wasn't profitable for the music industry.

You see, they would have had to promote them and, the way they've set up their budgets, that would have cost plenty.

So the band got dropped like a hot potato.

SPLAT!

Merit didn't enter into it.

----

Actually, the AT&T demo was good enough to make me think that I might be able to replace my god awful speaking voice with it.

Its a long way from perfect; but then, so am I. ;-)

---- "Science Friction" by: "Jeff Rosiana" http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/www.myspace.com/masterplanaudio

Feed Me! come third, so...

Check out the stats and the map on my blog and on my podcast for the distribution of MSers "around the globe".

Maybe you "need" to see, like I finally did, how wide-spread MSers really are.

Wide spread, but there's a lot of us.

And we're reachable by this blog (amongst many others) and by this so far unique podcast.

----

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

---- "The Secrecy of Science" by: "Kalahari Surfers" http://music.podshow.com/sue_html/images/websiteIcon.jpg

Main topic: Spinning off into space.

Like I said earlier, I'm trying to get the word out about MS and about the products that can help alleviate living with MS.

Now, because I sound "scary", (lets face it, I do sound scary; my voice is definitely sucks, my delivery sucks [I'm no "Sade Bederinwa "on Channel 7 News, looking good while reading words off a tele-prompter,] and unless you're able to get past that and get into what I write about, you have to be pretty uh, special to enjoy the 'cast,) I am attempting to spin off as many versions of this podcast in as many linguistic-socio-cultural groupings as possible while avoiding as many of the pitfalls brought about by the sheer demographic scarcity of the disease.

The pitfalls are avoided by the world-wide medium of podcasting.

Its laser focused because it "can" be.

So what am I doing here anyway?

I'm giving MSers all over the globe, regardless of what language they speak, the ability to reach out to other MSers who speak their language.

Coming from a multicultural, multi-linguistic Québecois background as I do, I am intimately aware of the needs that others have.

Now, I am willing, but more importantly I am able, to offer the benefits of podcasting to the people who need it.

Blogs are not everybody's cup of tea.

You have to be visually un-impaired.

You have to be literate enough to write well. Not everybody is. (We can all read well-written prose but its something else to be able to generate this prose. Its been said that everybody has a book in them. For most people, that's where it'll stay.

[MDMHvonPA is someone who is a good, engaging, sometimes funny writer. He is rare. Words come painlessly to him and he doesn't just sit on the keyboard hoarding his own thoughts. That's why he is the nexus of the Hautpertonian MS Cabal.])

You have to still be healthy enough to do this, meaning that you're doing this because you can, not because you have to.

You need another source of income, because nobody gets rich off off of podcasting, specially with a very limited audience of other MSers. (Though if you can make another more general podcast using the same equipment, all the better for you. Pay it forward should become your byword.)

You need to speak with passion, not from desperation.

You have to be modern enough in thought to be able to let your ideas ride down a laser beam.

Not to mention, the advertisers of products goods and services that make living with MS better, need that laser beam's focus too.

Broadcasters, mass marketers and advertising firms would rather sell dog food than carry an ad for an MS specific good, service or therapy. Its such a small niche market.

Well we're not trying to get obscenely rich or to make something that nobody can possibly live without (or die from, like cigarettes or trans-fatty foods.)

We are focused on MSers and their needs.

---- "Science vs Romance" by: "Rilo Kiley" http://www.barsuk.com/bands/rilokiley

Main topic: part "Deux"

So how do "you" get in on the podcasting action?

Well, English has to be your "second" language. (You cant have English, [that me!] And you can't have Greek, [Homer's got that one locked already, dudes.])

I'll play the host and put up your stuff for free on MSBPodcast.com.

You should be blogging already and all you need to do is name the episodes of your blog msb-[international country code]-#### [episode title].

The podcasts will be called the same when you post them up them.

You have complete control over the content.

You also have complete responsibility.

So ...
  • no slander,
  • no libel, (better to condemn some people to silence than to waste breath damning them,)
  • no naming names, unless its for praise,
  • no attacks,
  • no music that is not podsafe.
Always give credits and references. (Its better to be considered well read than to be considered a plagiarist.)

Apart from that, go wild.

Its the internet.

If you get ads on your 'cast, (good freakin' luck. I've been trying for over a year and so far... Zip! Nada! Nothing! Bupkis! I've been doing this for love. [*cough* *chough*]) the revenue goes through MSBPodcast.com Inc. and it then goes back out to you.

Its easy to know what the distribution might be.

You'll get the advertisers to put up stuff in your own language.

----

So what do you need to do it?

A computer, natch.

What are you reading with or listening to? Right.

You obviously already have the basic equipment.

A quality microphone is good, but if you don't already have one, I can help with that, and with podcasting software.

What about you personally?

You have to be opinionated.

It helps if you're not alone and can occasionally talk with your significant other on the show.

I'll help you with some hints about podcasting, pay for books about podcasting, and how to avoid the dreaded podfading that comes to every show if you're not careful and if you don't know Rule 7.

(Rule 7 is "Never finish talking."

Always
leave yourself things to talk about next time.

This way you can start blogging immediately about whatever topic you didn't finish on the show. (I've already almost finished writing msb-0117 and started on msb-0118.)

The show never ends.

You just cut it up into episodes and into topics because of the show schedule.)

----

I'm giving all MSers podcatch access and some MSers podcast access.

I'll be occasionally be giving away podcatching devices like an iPod.

I'll also occasionally be giving away podcasting equipment, if you need it.

Am I fantastic? No I'm not.

Am I shrewd and conniving? No I'm not.

Am I someone who believes in what we can accomplish if we're given the opportunity and "carpe diem?" Guilty as charged.

---- "Science" by: "Stalling Dawn" http://www.myspace.com/stallingdawn

I've just looked at my map again.

Dang, you guys are really spread out.

So all to my visitors from, uh, elsewhere ... like Dirty Harry said:

"Do You Feel Lucky? Well Do You, Punk?"

Outro

Friday, February 16, 2007

msb-0115 In or Out?

msb-0115 In or Out?

Intro.

Welcome to a podcast about having MS, by somebody who's got it and is intimately aware of all the crap that this disease causes.

But this podcast is not about getting sick with MS.

Its about getting better in spite of MS.

Its about living with MS.

Its also about the music I pick. (And you could make some suggestions too... :-)

---- "THE LONGER NOW" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

Feedback come first, so...

There was definitely some from Homer [ http://mysclerosismultiple.blogspot.com/ ].

I think I've been able to talk him into doing a Greek equivalent of this show, with special focus on nutrition (Who better than a Greek? It was Hippocrates who said: "Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." [Well actually Hippocrates said "Αφήστε τα τρόφιμα να είναι η ιατρική δική σου και η ιατρική είναι τα τρόφιμά δικά σου" which is why I need Homer to communicate with his own people. {Isn't the internet wonderful? It can "find" anything. You just have to be able to understand it. (Sort of like talking to your doctor... [We'll get back to this subject in Main Topic, Part "Deux".])}])

---- "YOU CONTROL THE SUN" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

Feed Forward come next, so...

I have no new stuff for you.

My guesting on the "Roadtrip To Oblivion" was, uh, rescheduled.

Seems Jason Oblivion's life is a lot, uh, busier than mine. :-)

It also seems that Jason has a lot to learn about managing a project, project evaluation and review (PERT) and critical path mangement (CPM) so that things happen as best that can, when best then can instead of all coming together at the last moment in one humongous cluster-[expletive deleted].

I'm laughing because its not my show and its not my problem.

It cost me nothing and so far has provided me with a ring-side seat at a Roman amphitheater where a world of hurt is happening right before my eyes. All I have to do is avoid getting splashed with the blood and the jiggly bits (entrails) of the gladiators.

I always do a post-implementation review to analyze what went right, what went so-so and what went "poof". It saves me so much pain later on if I knew what happened this time and avoid everything that I know didn't work before on the next attempts.

I suspect that most 'casts that "podfade" do so because the producer/host/chief-cook-and-bottle-washer doesn't plan properly.

It becomes a lot of work to careen from one episode to the next, going from calamity to catastrophe to disaster until you tire and just podfade to black.

I always plan things out a few episodes ahead and I have back-ups, contingencies and alternatives just in case. If plan A gets waylayed, I've got plan B.

For example, this episode has a sentence in Greek and to read it properly I have bought some some Greek text to speech software as well as asking Homer to read it for me. For a third alternative, I could always use the pizza delivery man who just happens to be Greek.

Which did I use? Which am I going to use? That's for me to know. (Well, there all kinds of delays, so I used an on-line resource [http://esopos.ee.auth.gr/spsola/html/demo.asp] :-)

----

My wife's efforts to get my goa... uh, to get me to read something else than books on computing, software testing and podcasting was put on hiatus this weekend as she went away for a spiritual retreat and left me alone for a few days. (I love my wife very much, but, lets face it, we can use a rest from each other every now and then. :-)

---- "BE HERE TONIGHT" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

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

---- "WEATHERMAN" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

Main Topic: "In or Out?"

Or maybe both...

Because of its effects on the myelin, eventually exposing the nerves to damage, MS affect both sensing and effecting nerves. Something strips away the sheathing of the nerves, usually our own immune system. It may be caused by several mechanisms, and each mechanism deserves its own investigation, but it is the result of having some biotic agent

On the incoming side, we're subject to sensory distortion.

On the out going side, we experience the noise as spasticity, difficulty in properly controlling our motions.

But its all internal. Its all made up of the weird shit that we feel and the movements we make that weren't the ones that we intended.

That part of why its so hard to communicate with a doctor.

The sensations we experience are not real indications of some trauma. We feel pain but its sometimes just a phantom, a ghost, a phantasm.

This is not just an itch we cant scratch.

It can sometimes be partial or complete blindness or deafness or patches of skin which feel like they're on fire or on ice.

Doctors are focused on cause and effect. When the cause isn't some tauma that they can see and slather with some salve, they are just as lost as we are.

If you know anything about the ego that come along with being in medicine, you know that doctors hate uncertainty.

---- "SUNSHINE WITH THE SHADE" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

Main Topic, part "deux",

I wonder if other high-order life forms, like wales, dolphins, birds, uh, basically anything that chirps, barks, or uses other forms of sound as the medium for transmitting information, suffers from the problems we do.

As humans we are at a grievous disadvantage when it comes to communication.

Due to accidents of geography we have fractured from a single species, "homo sapiens sapiens" into all these polyglot groupings.

There are "thousands" of separate languages spoken by the same throats. We have myriad sounds to refer to the same thing.

In English, there is a particular problem because there is no fixed vowel sound.

It makes actually speaking English prone to 'linguistic drift'.

There is no right way or wrong way to sound out a written word.

We may all have the consonants down but the vowels and the emphasis or strength we place on a cadence of speech, are sounded differently from generation to generation, from region to region, and even from speaker to speaker.

English is hard to speak so its hard to learn, and its hard to learn because its hard to speak, and its hard to learn and/or speak because the alphabet is more of a suggestion than a speech capture mechanism.

"Merde alors!"

---- "MERCURY IN RETROGRADE" by: "Reverse Engineers" http://www.thereverseengineers.com/

Outro

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

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.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

msb-0113 Who knows?

msb-0113 Who knows?

Intro

I'm into a metal mood; the music on this show is all metal; all kinds o' metal. (And I ain't talking brass-ass, I'm talking "metal".)

---- BAM Metal Pierre Journel http://www.lepcc.net/

Feedback comes first so...

I can't believe the incredible coverage, world wide coverage, that my websites have, that's the blog and the podcast.

Check out the map on my site(s) and you'll see I have at least 1 listener/reader on each continent (except for Antarctica, [penguins might have problems with their myelin, but they have no internet connections,]) and even one on the Indian subcontinent. (I seem to even have picked a listener/reader from "Chigasaki, Japan." "Konnichi wa, irashaimasu". [bows deeply from the waist].)

Actually the count goes up and up.

De-friggin'-pressin'.

But where are "you" from?

Are "you" on the map?

Are you one of the poor souls who are lumped into a country location?

Or worse, is your city not listed at all in the recent visitors list?

Drop me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

My numbers are nothing to write home about yet but the coverage is incredible.

My friend Eugene is also a bit wow-ed.

He's a Unix/Linux SysAdmin and used to world wide collaboration and deployment of systems. (I won't tell you what he said, but I'm used to him so I knew where it was coming from and didn't take offense. There are indeed sickos like me everywhere. [Its a world wide cabal. Its the Haupertonian MS Cabal! {Thanks to MDMHvonPA ( http://www.mdmhvonpa.blogspot.com/ ) for coining that expression.}]:-)

I've got some comments on my latest post saying that MSers are interested in the "insula" too.

---- Metal Start Intelect http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=234976

Feed Forward comes next, so...

MSers are usually communicative as far as giving me things that you want me to tell other MSers, but not this episode, and I am waiting on other developments, so there's nothing to tell you.

This segment will therefore seem extremely short this episode.

In fact its "over". :-)

---- Other Metal Mood Dempsey Doodle http://www.dempsey-doodle.com/

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

---- Metal to the Soul Creepor http://www.arcmedia.info/

Man, I felt like was back in "Ville LaSalle", sitting around in my friend house drinkin' brewskis, listening to "Big Brother and the Holding Company" on that one. Too many years have passed. Too many years.

Main topic: Who Knows?

Where am I going with this?

Uncertainty is a part of MS. It is something we MSers are all too aware of.

From the researchers who are uncertain about the efficacies of the drugs and therapies that they're trying out, to the progression of the diseases we have lumped under the "rubrique" of MS, to the devices and tricks we use to make up for whatever deficiency we are coping with at the moment.

Who knows what crap, (or in my case, what additional crap, I/) we may have to put up with tomorrow? (That's in addition to the general uncertainty of being on this planet, where my being alive might conflict with someone else's agenda. [Its not just Usama ben Laden. There are plenty of short-sighted, wasteful people out there who would love to waste "me", on general principle. {Nothing personal, you understand. Just on general principle. (Mankind loves to delude itself about the efficaciousness of "eugenics" and "genocide". [We stumble through the graveyards of history, {led by the inevitable survivors.}])}])

Do I sound bitter, acerbic maybe? (I'm just doing some mental prep for "guesting" on "The Road Trip To Oblivion." [ http://oblivion.libsyn.com/ ] [This is the most gleefully foulmouthed podcast I know of. [Well it tries, but they have a lot to learn about the art of cussing up a storm and turning the air a "Quebecois" shade of "gun metal blue" { http://www.metallicfinishes.com/EasyBlue.html }.] Its also got some of the most original writing of any podcast. You never know where the twist is going to be on "The Road Trip To Oblivion."] :-)

---- Cold Metal Dream Mix Channel http://www.channel-music.com/

Main topic: part "deux",

What does the future hold?

Who knows?

But its bound to get better as more and more is known about the cabling we call the human nervous system.

Humans have special specific problems as our cognitive adaptations are pretty much unrivaled in nature. The "insula" is just one more piece of the puzzle.

What does the future hold for me specifically?

Who knows?

I mean ultimately, like in another forty years or so, I'll be dead of old age.

But as for the immediate future, I can only soldier on, like the plucky little human that I am. (Oh "ralph!")

Well, screw it.

I intend to go out not with a whimper but with the pop of some Champagne corks. :-)

---- metal meets bencast http://www.bencast.eu/

That was a "Gentle Giant" reminder moment for me.

Well, now that that's off of my chest, I wonder what I'm going to play next time?

Who knows? ;-)

Outro

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

msb-0112 Its a Small World(wide-web) After All.

msb-0112 Its a Small World(wide-web) After All.

Feedback comes first, so...

No, I "won't" watch the "Grabby Music Awards" on Sunday.

I'm for the indie musician. I'm less interested in supporting the records of companies who are trying to choke us with DRM. (Not to mention that they are just sitting on their back catalogs and nobody can play the music.)

First is news that I'm over 6000 downloads. Hoo-frigin'-ray!

Not bad for a show with no real promotion. Though that may be coming soon. It depends on how my finances look at the end of the month. I might be able to take out an ad in "InsideMS."

Next... Either this is a spurious data error, or its real and I am agog at the very thought, but, who is coming to my sites from "Churchill Falls" or maybe from "Moose Factory"?

Anyway somebody is coming my sites from way the heck out in northern "Manitoba, Canada", on the border with "Nunavut, Canada"? (Then again, it may be a spurious collection since there seem to be a few cities on the list of recent visitors that aren't showing up on the map and may instead be lumped into a nonexistent country location.)

Drop me an line at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

And who lives near "Yarker"? (Its near "Kingston, Ontario, Canada".)

Drop me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

And I seem so have a visitor or listener from "Tallinn in Estonia", just south of "Helsinki, Finland" and west of "Leningrad, Russia".

Drop me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

And who is listening to or reading my stuff in "Santiago, Chile"?

Drop me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

And who is listening to or reading my stuff in "Kalaheo, Hawaii"?

Drop me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.

(I seem to have listeners/readers all around the globe, so far. Its depressing to see how unlocalized MS really is.)

Either this map is total "bull-shit", or it really "is" a small world(-wide-web.)

My visitors come from 25 countries. The number of countries just keeps growing...

I'm trying to find some people in South Africa who have MS so I can have truly global reach, including Africa. :-)

----

Next topic:

MDMHvonPA's latest Roundup, as I write this, has been downloaded almost entirely through iTunes. That's weird. All of the other shows usually have more downloads through a browser than through iTunes or through iPodder. (Who'd using iPodder? Drop me an email charles (at) MSBPodcast.com)

That flies in the face of what usually happens.

I've seen a whole bunch of you struggling to do more than read my words and actually listen to the music that I pick.

Not to mention that, when I finally get some MS specific advertisers with my "no play, no pay" risk-less ad model, they won't be able to get to know what the rest of us will know, and that would be a tragedy, for you, like it was to me.

I went for years, years without hearing about MS, because there was nowhere to get that information, apart from medical journals (Like I neither need to, nor want to, nor am I really qualified to read those. And journals are "really" depressing.)

Anyway... You don't need an iPod, or another MP3 player, to catch a podcast, but it is handy when you want to listen to or watch your show "on the go."

If you have some objection to iTunes, or are not running on a Mac and not using some form of Windows, you can skip ahead to section 2.

Section 1a. Downloading iTunes

If you're using a Mac: you should already have iTunes installed and Software Update should have kept you current. (If not, you need to do click on this [ http://www.apple.com/itunes/ ] and follow the download instructions and let it install.)

Otherwise you can just skip ahead to the paragraph: section 1. downloading the show.

If you're using Windows: if you don't already have it, or you have an old version, like over a year old, you need to download iTunes (click on this link [ http://www.apple.com/itunes/ ] select "Download iTunes" follow the download instructions and let it install.

section 1b. downloading the show.

Just click on this link (
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=120932170 )

If it isn't already running,
wait until iTunes loads, wait for the iTunes Music Store to load, wait for MSBPodscast's page to load, and then subscribe by just clicking on, you guessed it, subscribe.

That it! I never claimed it was rocket science. :-)

You can now skip ahead to the tune or to Feed Forward.

Section 2.

If you don't trust iTunes, don't like Steve Jobs, or are running Linux or some other form of Unix, you need to have FireFox installed and set file .m4a to play through your audio player.

Then you just go to http://www.MSBPodcast.com scroll down to the episode you want and click on the little "Pod" tag to the left of the episode title.

Its not hard, just complicated because you Unix/Linux users have so many options.

---- "You Don't Need An iPod " by: "Uncle Seth" http://musicface.com/uncleseth/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

I think I'm going to start a contest with those cute, extremely wearable "iPod Shuffles". (Maybe I can work something out with Apple. If not, I'll just have to pay the full retail price.)

You'd just have to send me an email at charles (at) MSBPodcast.com with a subject line "Win an iPod Shuffle"

I'd pick at random from any new people who send me an email. (C'mon, you wouldn't want me to give two to the same person now, 'wood ja?')

Just not yet though, I gotta create a schedule, (I could conceivably do this every month or every couple of months,) and run it past "she who must be obeyed," specially on matters of finances. (The only thing I know about money is that there is never enough...[sigh])

----

I just came across (Wednesday, February 7, 2006 as I write this) across a fascinating little article in the New York Times concerning a structure deep in our brains called the "insula".

Given that this structure could conceivably be affected by MS, I want to read about it.

It turns out that it is important (to quote the article):

Of course, like every important brain structure, the insula — there are actually two, one on each side of the brain — does not act alone. It is part of multiple circuits.

The insula itself is a sort of receiving zone that reads the physiological state of the entire body and then generates subjective feelings that can bring about actions, like eating, that keep the body in a state of internal balance. Information from the insula is relayed to other brain structures that appear to be involved in decision making, especially the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices.

The insula was long ignored for two reasons, researchers said. First, because it is folded and tucked deep within the brain, scientists could not probe it with shallow electrodes. It took the invention of brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to watch it in action.

Second, the insula was “assigned to the brain’s netherworld,” said John Allman, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology. It was mistakenly defined as a primitive part of the brain involved only in functions like eating and sex. Ambitious scientists studied higher, more rational parts of the brain, he said.

The insula emerged from darkness a decade ago when Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist now at the University of Southern California, developed the so-called somatic marker hypothesis, the idea that rational thinking cannot be separated from feelings and emotions. The insula, he said, plays a starring role.

Another neuroscientist, Arthur D. Craig at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, went on to describe exactly the circuitry that connects the body to the insula.

According to Dr. Craig, the insula receives information from receptors in the skin and internal organs. Such receptors are nerve cells that specialize in different senses. Thus there are receptors that detect heat, cold, itch, pain, taste, hunger, thirst, muscle ache, visceral sensations and so-called air hunger, the need to breathe. The sense of touch and the sense of the body’s position in space are routed to different brain regions, he said.

[The insula] may also be involved in the human sense of the progress of time, since it can create an anticipatory signal of how people may feel as opposed to how they feel now. Intensely emotional moments can affect our sense of time. It may stand still, and that may be happening in the insula, a crossroads of time and desire.

Like wow!

Something to explain "deja-vu" and another source of worry for a whole host of symptoms that can afflict MSers.

This research definitely bears watching.

---- Peeping Tom Amy Abdou http://www.amyabdou.com/

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

---- Let Me In Anna Lee http://www.peopleinthemoon.com/

Main Topic: Its a Small World(wide-web) After All.

It is a small world.

Diseases know and respect no boundaries, no barriers, no limitations.

As we humans have shrunk distance to places we want to see and the goods we can acquire, we have also expanded the range that a disease can travel.

You can kiss goodbye to isolation keeping you safe from the plague raging in the next county, the next country or even the next continent. (Of course, there's all those birds that fly wherever they want.)

We're all just meat to a bacterium or a virus, a food source. That's all we are.

So why are we dividing our efforts to fight diseases amongst even smaller units like countries or nations.

If the twentieth-century taught us anything, it that nations are not good for much except keeping people apart, blowing each other up and killing their citizens, both their own and those of somewhere else.

Now as efficient as nations were, (two world wars and hundreds of regional conflicts, religious wars, Jihads, tribal conflicts and so on, must have put hundreds of millions of people into premature graves,) they weren't as good at it as the diseases that we were struggling with throughout the world at the same time.

The great flu pandemic actually killed more people in more places than the first world war which was raging on at the time.

AIDS has killed more people than the Jihadists ever could with I.E.D.s and other explosives.

We need to put nationalist, or even pan-nationalistic Jihads behind us.

Our diseases affect our entire species.

Like I said previously, you're just meat to a bacterium or a virus.

It couldn't care less about anything more advanced than that, like a tribe, or a region, or a nation, or a religion.

We must respond with the same symmetry.

---- Evansessence Anne Farnsworth http://www.jazzmediapress.com/

Main topic, part "deux"

"Okay, what do you propose?, I heard you cry!

Well, I still have to check out a lot of facts and figures but, there is nothing undoable here.

We need to internationalize the health care systems and take them global. (They already share a great deal of information across borders and across continents. This wouldn't require anything major. The WHO and the UN are already taking care of some of this.)

Bu what needs to happen is that we need to allocate our financial resource according to the international prevalence and scale of the diseases.

If 10% of the world is permanently disabled and 5% of the world is occasionally or partially disabled, we should be living in a world that recognizes that fact and allocates its health care and financial resources to deal with that fact.

That means that the poor third world don't have to try to operate in a world where they cant, uh, operate, because of a lack of hygenic facilities.

We need to create a standard series of M.A.S.H. style facilities, from surgeries to neurological clinics, which can be installed anywhere on the planet, that any physician anywhere in the world can go into and know what's what and what's where.

A surgery is a surgery and a neuro ward is a neuro ward. Whether you're sick in Nairobi or New Orleans, Golgotha or the Gobi, you're sick and should have access to the same level of care.

We should "all" be treated with the same drugs by doctors with the same qualifications and with access to the same equipment.

(It might sound like I'm doing this for the "foreign hell-holes" but, frankly, there are plenty of places in the 'States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England and throughout Europe that can use this, or any other places place where either distance, sparsity, scarcity, rarity or plain ol' pig ignorance rear their ugly head. [I'm looking at some presidential "shrubbery" right now, but at least he's not an AIDS denier.])

I'm just whistling in the wind here...

---- Manic Mission BeebleBrox http://www.acmerecords.com/beeblebrox.php

Outro

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