Monday, April 30, 2007

msb-0141 Fear and Loathing in New Jersey

msb-0141 Fear and Loathing in New Jersey

intro

[DJ Jeff intro]

---- "FEAR!" by: "Colie Brice" http://aeriaentertainment.com/

Feedback come first, so...

There was some from Dr Sharon Moalem, after my review of the book "Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4)

Seems that he's been thinking about MS.

I like it that someone whom I consider very intelligent, and a bit of an iconoclast, is looking at MS with eyes, and mind, wide open.

Perhaps it might lead to some, uh, interesting things.

Hmm... That would be a strange twist, wouldn't it? If MS had originated as a evolutionary response to some environmental pressure during the 16th century?

Well, enough daydreaming.

Lets go on to the next song.

---- "Fearful - live and unplugged " by: "Hungry Lucy" http://www.hungrylucy.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

'Fraid there ain't been none...

Remember. Its your segment.

Whatever you want to share, a poem (ribald or otherwise), a recipe, a rant, (we can change the names to cover our collective butts so we don't get sued,) whatever, you can write me: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com, (or even better, leave me a voice message using the widget down on the left hand side of the window at MSBPodcast.com [ http://www.MSBPodcast.com .])

---- "FEAR " by: "jeremy fowler" http://www.myspace.com/jeremyfowler

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

---- "Fear of Reason " by "Lumberjack Mafia" http://www.lumberjackmafia.com/

Main Topic: Fear and Loathing in New Jersey.

Most people aren't afraid of MS because the notion of their nervous system being attacked by their immune system is an utterly alien concept and rare enough for most people to ignore. After all, we have so many other things to be concerned with.

It seems that fear is the rational response to something violent, traumatic or potentially fatal. (Or is it? Fear is inexplicable. I've survived many things that would have scared the crap out of me if I hadn't been too busy trying to survive them. To me, fear seems to be a response that only survivors or people with wild imagination feel at the thought of whatever it was happening [or happening again!])

MS only affects .0833% of the population or one in twelve hundred, and the effects of this disease are extremely variable. Diagnosis is difficult because its a disease of idiosyncratic symptoms and what ever hurts (and why else do we see the doctors, something is wrong and/or we hurt,) is not what really hurts.

Its still strange to think that my immune system can respond inappropriately to some environmental trigger. (In my case, getting the flu can be a personal tragedy.)

---- "Fear" by: "Rabid Baboon" http://www.icompositions.com/artists/RabidBaboon

Main Topic, part deux:

Now we come to people who are no longer afraid because they already have received the diagnosis.

They, and I, have no more fear of getting MS. We're over that.

But the potential progression of the disease is still a worry (not a fear but a worry. Its only a choice of words but it makes an enormous difference.)

Then we, the survivors of this lousy, suck-ass diagnosis, pick ourselves up as best we can, with whatever facilities we still have at our faltering command, and we go on.

---- "No Fear" by: "Ron Vanderzwan" http://www.ronvanderzwan.com/

Outro

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

msb-0140 Proxies for nations

msb-0140 Proxies for nations

intro

[DJ Jeff intro 3]

---- "Its a Crime by The Corvairs" by: "The Dwarwes/The Plan Nine Rock Show" http://thedwarves.com/

Feedback come first, so...

Did you catch "Herrad"'s show on Friday?

How about "MDMHvonPA" Roundup on Friday too?

And I'm wondering how "Homer" doing in Athens... There is a lot of site and podcast episode downloading activity from that part of the world.

---- "Another Perfect Crime " by: "aegis" http://www.unsustained.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

[ ... wistling sound ... loon cries ... ]

Told you, its "your" segment.

Come and fill it.

It worked for "Herrad", "MDMHvonPA" and "Homer". It can work for you too.

---- "Life Of Crime" by: "Alun Parry" http://www.parrysongs.co.uk/

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

---- "crime" by: "ben parson" http://www.myspace.com/benparsons

Main Topic: Proxies for nation.

RadioOpenSource [ http://www.RadioOpenSource.org ] had a fascinating show about the double edged sword of the internet.

Moore's law
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law ] is being applied asymmetrically by an international criminal element (includings "The Base" a.k.a. "Al Queda") to gain advantage over the national barriers of law and order.

"Illicit" by: Moisés Naím (ISBN: 0-385-51392-5) is one book that explores the people and institutions who work outside of the national limitations of the law.

(The law is rarely absolute. The root of the term "legal" is "legare" which is Latin for "choose". Law is a "choice" we make in order to co-exist. [One man's crime is another man's legal right which explains why the state can murder its citizens but not the other way around. Its not an institution founded on "Moral Absolutism".])

---- "Sweet Crime" by: "Joe Faulder" http://www.joefaulder.com/

Main Topic, part deux:

How can the double edged sword be turned to work with us to help us secure a future?

Actually, it cant.

The "soit-disant" post-Soviet mafia, as one example of such an organization, is actually comprised of people in various locations who come together locally to work out issues of turf and distribution of nefarious goods and services without regard to any border or nation.

They ride roughshod over the rights and property of the citizens of where they operate as a matter of course.

But their actions can point to more international collaboration and other cost-free sharing and collaboration agreements. Like our patent medecine system which could/should/would evolve into a world patent agreement system where getting a patent in one country immediately confers protection in all countries.

At the moment, good ideas which occur in, say, Laos, only have protection within the confines of the Laotian borders. The meta-information about the idea, how the idea was conceived, isn't even addressed in the law which means that its at risk from the very second its conceived.

If this meta-information was to be covered by law and recognized as part of a common global sharing license, the value of information would be recognized and create a global pool as the basis for recognizing the wealth of nations based on what they share, not what they hoard.

Now I'm not saying that we should indebt ourselves into a "potlatch" society; quite the opposite; I'm saying that whoever contributes into the pool has that contribution quantified and recognized, and the monetization of any meta-information can occur according to the contribution of any state or any individual contributor.

---- "Crime " by: "Kenny Martin" http://www.kenmartinmusic.com/

Outro

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

msb-0138 Junk, just for fun

msb-0138 Junk, just for fun

intro

[DJ Jeff intro 2]

---- "This Is Junk" by: "Brainpool" http://brainpool.nu/

Feedback come first, so...

I had some from "Drew Vics", whom I played on the last episode.

"Charles,

Awesome man! Thanks for playing "Dead Industry." When I uploaded that I had no idea if anyone would bother with it, it's such an experimental piece. You had the guts to do it! Thanks. And best to you!

It is interesting. I had no idea at first that you had MS or that your's was an MS related podcast. One of my wife's best friends was diagnosed with MS about four years back. Since hearing that pregnancy can sometimes keep symptoms at bay she and her husband decided to have a baby. Well, initially they had no luck, then they went through the "in-vitro" and that sort of thing. Expensive, but the outcome is that they ended up having triplets.

So, mom with MS, and who would have guessed that the children would have been afflicted with something as well. Yes, not long after they were born they were diagnosed with PVL, basically cerebral palsey, which is what PVL eventually leads to. All three have some level of that, but two are a little more affected than the other.

So my wife and I help out as much as we can. They are great people, and such beautiful children. They just turned 3 today actually. She is one of the strongest women I've ever met. Here is a link to a website I put together for the triplets.

http://love3fold.myeyez.net

Maybe you can mention them on one of your podcasts or something, they need all the help they can get with medical expenses and stuff. They are located in North Jersey, Bloomingdale area.

Well, thanks again for playing my, uh, can I actually call that a song? More like a sound. Anyway, thanks for that, and keep it up man! There are people listening. I'll be adding a link to your podcast from my website blog at http://www.drewvics.com, maybe that will bring you some more listeners.

Best of luck!

Drew
--
Life is not a reaction"

Now that's feed back...

I hope you can find it in your hearts to go to the website and give them some support, even if its only some words of encouragement.

And I bought Drew Vick's album too.

---- "Junk" by: " Douglas Fir" http://www.douglasfir.com.au/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

A great silence wraps around this microphone like absorbent wool around a stubbed toe. (Okay, that's a tad overblown. :-)

How about if played recordings of loon cries made in Northern Canada and the occasional buzzing of insects. Is that "alone" enough for ya?

Your voices, your messages are required here.

Its "your" segment.

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

---- "Junk" by: "Munkey Juice" http://www.munkeyjuice.net/

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

---- "Psychobabble Junk" by: "sarah dashew" http://www.sarahdashew.com/

Main Topic: Junk, just for fun.

The past couple of shows have been about a book review or about some heavy shit and sometimes I just want to have fun.

I was fishing 'round the PMN (the Podsafe Music Network,) listening to some music and I thought it sounded like junk, (Who wants "bubblegum"? I don't... Not even well played "bubblegum"... So I went "looking" for "junk". :-)

---- "Astrojunk - Outside Christmas" by: "The Lee Harris Christmas Compilations" http://www.soundclick.com/oilvillechristmasdynasty

Main Topic, part deux:

The PMN has turned into a pretty good source of alternative music that the RIAA "doesn't" have any claim on.

They can't kill it off like they're doing to internet radio, those streaming services who put out a signal that's multicast to a whole bunch of IP addresses.

The multicasters are being forced to find a new business model as the RIAA, forever on the lookout for new revenue opportunities for their clients, the big oligarchy of less than twenty four recording companies, has tripled their rate.

Actually, that's a lie. The RIAA's lawyers don't look for new opportunities. They are scared to death by anything and everything that makes a sound an they have tried to squash most of the innovations of the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century.

They have opposed every, that's every, innovation in recording since the invention of the player-piano. (The only reason they haven't legally gone after the pantograph is that two thousand years is a little too much prior art to outright ban, specially since they would have had to ban the very instruments they were using to spread the word on the ban.)

You see, they know the true value of their product.

Its only modulated noise and that's all.

John Cage's short experimental piece for violin and type-writer, it was an old "Underwood" model, scared the crap out of some people.

If the RIAA could get the typewriter reclassified as an musical performance instrument, and then as a recording instrument, they would be able to squash the very tool that brought us the modern era, either by using out right bans such as the copyright, or by pulling what they're doing now and levying crippling fees.

If any existing radio type streaming audio channels survive on the internet in six months or a year, I'll be extremely surprised.

The net efffect will have been that the rate tripling will have been used, not to increase in a draconian manner the lumps in the pockets of a few, but to kill off a very small industry, just because they could.

You do not want to fuck with the tone deaf lawyers of the RIAA.

If a tree fall in the forest, it had better do so quietly ... otherwise there'll be all kinds of fees to pay.

---- "Junkyard girlfriend" by: "ROCKET CITY RIOT" http://www.rocketcityriot.com/

Outro

Sunday, April 22, 2007

msb-0137 Artisanal vs. Industrial Production

msb-0137 Artisanal vs. Industrial Production

intro

[DJ Jeff's intro]

See, I do so have friends. :-)

---- "The Industry " by: "DJRM" http://myspace.com/DJRaveMaster

Feedback come first, so...

I got some from an artist who's music I played. That's always nice.

"Herrad" has been in touch. So has "homer".

I'm still waiting on "MDMHvonPA" for his latest "Roundup" column.

But from you, my gentle MSers, episode downloaders and sites visitors, I got bupkiss, zip, nada, nothing.

You seem to be a shy bunch.

Or maybe you just figure that I'm playing things you like to hear so everything must be okay, right?

I'm just doing my job here, keeping some content in your ears, or in your eyes.

But its "your" show too.

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

---- "Dead Industry " by: "Drew Vics" http://drewvics.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

My wife went to Newark and got me a lovely bunch of books.

But from you, my gentle MSer audience, not a thing to share...

So we're just going to go into the next tune.

---- "Industrial Breakdown" by: "Dub Narcotic Sound System" http://www.krecs.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

---- "Industrial " by: "easyflow" http://www.easyflowmusic.com/

Main Topic: "Artisanal" vs, Industrial Production.

My wife is sewing some curtains and things for a little theater group here in Jersey City. That's the 'one off', extremely small-scale effort which doesn't need to be extremely repeatable stuff.

Artisanal production is the small scale, very individualistic and individualized, some might say idiosyncratic, manufacture of goods or the provision of services.

Quality control is left up to the individual producer.

Artisanal is of course reproducible, small run stuff, but the techniques employed are very much un-scalable to take advantage of the economies of mass production .

Drugs and therapies are at a disadvantage at both ends of the spectrum of production.

First we, quite sensible enough, demand that the drugs be as safe as possible, its our lives after all.

The only way to insure that is by employing the latest and the best methods, or best practices, of mass production.

We MSers represent only 0.0833% of the population. That's one in twelve hundred people.

Economies of scale don't happen with only 0.0833% of the population unless we ramp-up to take in a very large area, like continents large.

Out of 6.6 billion people on the planet, we represent then represent about 5.5 million individuals.

Problem is that there are things like national borders and other barriers and impedimenta to achieving that 5.5 million person market. Now, I'm not saying that nations don't have their uses. (Well okay... I am. What of it? The United Nations exists to maintain the fundamental existence and inviolability of borders. Everything they do is done to maintain the fundamental existence and inviolability of borders.)

Guess what folks?

Disease knows no race, no borders and no nations. We are in the unattractive position of being just a medium for some biotic or viral or prional parasitic form of existence.

Trying to fight disease within borders places us in a asymmetrical straight-jacket where we give disease the upper hand.

The bigger impediment is the presence of the hundreds, nay, the thousands of languages and dialects spoken by the 5.5 million individual MSers. (Recognizing this fact is this podcast which has an English speaking podcaster ["moi"], a Dutch speaking podcaster ["Herrad"] and a Greek speaking podcaster ["Homer, speak up buddy" :-] in its ranks (and the offers for a French speaking and/or German speaking podcaster is still open.)

This is where the Latin and Greek used by "all" medical practitioners comes to the rescue. There "is" a "lingua franca" spoken by all which makes up the thousands of "Rosetta Stones" necessary for communication to be effective, however haltingly.

---- "The Industry Penguin" by: "Option42" http://www.lordfly.com/music.html

Main Topic, part deux:

Now lets look at Industrial production.

The kinds of mass production techniques leading to the economies of scale are further hampered by the difficulty in finding a common cause of MS.

A series of discrete, reproducible steps which lead from health to disease. (A disruptable path where we can halt the progression by tripping up the disease in its steps.)

To add to the confusion, MS may be a syndrome instead of a single discrete disease.

Medical research is making admirable progress in spite of the difficulties posed by this challenge; this lack of a road map, a known path from heath to disease.

Beyond the injectables, (the ABCRs, beta-interferons, Copaxone, Tsybary, Daclizumab, Rituximab, Alemtuzumab, Zenapax, Rituxan, and Campath, [and the problems and sheer yuck factor involved in clinical or self-injection, {not to mention the liver damage.}]);

beyond the oral drugs (the FTY720 and BG12, and the problems of digestion [imagine trying to design a drug who's effectiveness has to survive being bathed in gastric acids and still be absorbable by the stomach lining, {without causing ulceration!}]);

there may be an aspirated, inhaled, drug regimen out there, germinating in some researcher's mind.

Given our demographic disadvantage, the one in twelve hundred factor, and the fact that, weather or not MS is a syndrome, it still affects individuals very, uh, individually.

This disease progresses at different paces and affects individuals differently at different stages.

The efforts of the providers of regimens, the drug manufacturers and other treatment options, are to be lauded.

Enough praise.

Put down the self-blowing horns and can we please get moving. :-)

---- "Industry" by: "Robert Farrell" http://www.robertfarrell.com/

Outro

Saturday, April 21, 2007

msb-0136 Scared by a stats check

msb-0136 Scared by a stats check

intro

I've been checking my stats for my old episodes and people have been picking them up on the way to the latest episode or maybe they have picked after listening to the latest episode (which means that the podsafe, and by definition the indie-, music that I picked is more popular than I originally thought [I seriously doubt that they are going back to pick up the old shows because of my voice.])

As of this writing, I now have 8,556 podcasts distributed:
  • 4,700 through a web browser and
  • 3,856 through one podcatcher or another, (by the way, how's Juice [ http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php ] working out for you? You've been catching the episodes since "msb-0133 What's happening". Drop me an email: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com. I want to know if you're able to get the band images and web links.)
---- "Sage Hill - Theme " by: "Intelect" http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=234976

Feedback come first, so...

Herrad should be podcasting every Thursday. She'll have something in English to introduce herself on the next show and then, its back to Dutch.

This isn't feed back as much as it was an observation by my SysAdmin friend that I am basically just being a coward.

After getting us another brewski each, and giving him a hearty "Fuck you... What's that supposed to mean?"

Between sips and gurgles, he read me the riot act in his unassuming, quiet way. (Its a much more devastating and effective delivery; "Once you have they attention, don't go off like a bomb, that's noisy, flashy and short lived, instead, plow into 'em like a glacier and anihilate 'em!" [which got us off track talking about global warming. {The best part is that, even though he does not believe that the statistics are following the right events in recent history, (and it then becomes a question of which came first: warming or pollution,) he agrees with me that it would be better for us all if we stopped belching megatons of shit into the atmosphere.}])

He's right. I am being a coward.

I am scared of success. Scared "shitless".

I've never minded failure.

That's how we learn.

Sometimes I've had to reach for what part of a program or project was a failure, but I always found something.

Its just that now I've got to decide something and I don't know what direction this podcast is going to take.

If the response to the ad is "crickets-chirping" silence, I will have wasted $1,300.

That's a tad too high a price.

---- "Grace of a Princess" by: "Jim Richmond" http://www.audiostreet.net/jimrichmond

Feed Forward comes next, so...

Hey... If you don't tell me anything you want to share, or ask the readership/listenership about, then I'm just sliding into the next song. :-)

But I just caught guitarist "Manuel Barrueco" in a Micheal Lawrence film [ http://www.mlfilms.com/productions/manuel_barrueco ] on PBS and he was great, really great; though it was tinged with melancholy for me.

... sigh ...

There but for the grace of happenstance went I.

---- "Ou va la vie" by: "StudioMig" http://studiomig.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

---- "Extravagante e Exibido-Norberto Macedo" by: "Ze Sao Paulo" http://zesaopaulo.cals.com.br/

Main Topic: Scared by a stats check

I am scared by a check of my stats.

Unlike my health, which I monitor constantly because I am very aware of my surroundings and my place in them, (we'll get back to that in "part deux",) I am in an uncontrollable situation as regards this podcast.

If its a "cricket-chirping" disaster, I'm out $1,300.

My wife is going to be pissed off at me for wasting what is after all a very finite resource: my money (not to mention my ability to replenish said resource is entirely dependent on my health, [which is a major factor with MSers. One bad episode of "flu" could turn into a bad episode of MS and I don't have enough myelin left to withstand too many of those.])

Worse than that, its based on the client's perception of my health, right or wrong.

Nobody wants a "crip" working for them if they can just tell the supplier to send a replacement. (Yes, people are treated the same way as parts, they are interchangeable as far as the client cares, and they all want to have the shiny new parts, even though this old part may be smarter and have better solutions for them. "sigh!")

Well, enough prevarication and delay.

The worst part of this is that if its "not" a "cricket-chirping" disaster, I have absolutely no guarantees as to the actual direction this will take me in.

----

Some things I'd actually like.

I would like to interject a note of media into the lives of people who are otherwise are ignored and forgotten. (IMDB found "one lousy, stinking 'made for TV' episode", out of all the millions and millions of hours of media references on their database.)

I would like to be able to bring the adverts for therapies, products, goods and services out into the open. No more hiding on the pages of some obscure journal or magazine, or when the availability of things are discussed "sotto voce" and knowledge is spread through the fragile telephone of "oral tradition."

I would like to remind the health delivery sector of our economy that we exist in all our multi-variate forms, as does our disease. I know the effects of this disease as much as than anyone, in a cold clinical, dispassionate sense, and yet I am still astonished at what it has to teach me.

I'd like to give us a voice out there, instead of the silence I endured for over thirty years from the time first my first attack, in high-school, when my handwriting went to hell, until my first listener discovered me.

There is no "magic bullet", no one "final solution", except the same one you're probably thinking of too. (While I am sure "Osama bin Laden" would be delighted with lining us all against a wall, proclaiming that 10% of the world's population is only fit to be shot, [never mind the 0.0833% fraction that we MSers represent,] I would hope that the non-socio-psycho-pathic world would be shrewder while being more compassionate.)

I also have to ask myself: "What would having a thousand and/or maybe more listeners do this podcast?"

I'm not a medical practitioner. If people are newly diagnosed they want to know who's who, what's what, where's where, when's when and why (and I feel bad telling them I don't think there is a "why." [Then again, maybe there "is" a why, a duplicatable series of circumstances which lead to MS. {Research "was" the point of my last show...}])

----

Some things, I'd be kicking and screaming about, and I'd probably not do because, its "not" worth the success, while I "am".

Then MSBPodcast stays a "violon d'Ingres," a hobby, and a means for me, and my multi-national, multi-linguistic collaborators, to rant and vent.

It just means that I wasted my dough and that's just too bad.

---- "Variation On Bolero theStark" http://thestark.com/

Main Topic, part deux:

We're back; talking about MS are the relationship with the physical environs.

Specifically, how my "driving" has changed over the years and why.

My first wife thought I drove like an ass-hole and my second wife thinks that too; so some things just never change. :-)

Because my MS has left me with a spotty, erratic and inconsistent "somatic sense", a sense of where everything about me and mine actually is, I tend to rely a lot on what my vision tells me about the actual position of both my self and my environs. (I had shiny racing pedals installed not because I drive that fast anymore, but because, every now and then, I need to look down at where my feet actually are in relation to the pedals to rejigger the sometic sense of where my legs actually are in relation to the pedals, [which you must admit could lead to a potentially deadly accident {I don't take lightly the act of guiding a ton of metal, plastic and glass, powered by the equivalent of 17 sticks of dynamite in the gas tank.}])

Now extend that to a car.

When driving, we tend to know instinctually where our boundaries are as if we "were" the vehicle.

Our somatic sense adapts to a new "body image" which includes the vehicle, its capabilities and its limitations.

I used to be great at backing up and parallel parking... "Not no mo' "

And I suck at just straight pulling in from the front.

If you want to spend some time watching a fool try to pull into a parking spot, just follow me to the mall and watch me try to park into a spot that's at ninety degrees from the traffic path.

I tell myself, out loud, that its because of the car's small size, but I know that's bull-shit.

I'll be happy, if not exactly relieved, when my wife learns to drive again.

---- "The Men Who Were Slaughtered By Henry Ford" by: "Hugh Flynn" http://www.hugh-flynn-composer.com/

Outro

Friday, April 20, 2007

msb-0135 Sick, Sicker, Sickest

msb-0135 Sick, Sicker, Sickest

intro

I feel like a Latin teacher: "Class, repeat after me: 'Amo, amas, amat' "

...

"Ave Caesar; morituri te salutant." (For those of you who don't get the Latin, I just said "Hail Ceasar. We who are about to die salute you." [For those of you who don't get my dark humor, just forget I said anything.])

----

This podcast is almost all about "Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4).

I've got two themes to the music this episode:
  • robots because of the mechanistic aspects of the subject of the book and
  • evolution because of the incredible interrelatedness of life and the trade offs made in transiting from one form to another, under one environment to another.
---- "Army of Robots" by: "Ben Base" http://www.myspace.com/benbase

Feedback come first, so...

Did you catch Herrad's second show? (I'm so pumped about that, like you wouldn't believe... MSBPodcast.com is multi-national and multi-linguistic. I hope that the Dutch speaking MSers are just as thrilled at having a voice as I am for having given Herrad the opportunity. :-)

Apart from that, there isn't any that was related or connected to the 'cast.

Its been a quiet couple of days.

---- "Replaced By Robots" by: "Lejeune" http://www.lejeunemusic.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

I finished "Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4).

It is an awesome book. Its totally worth the read. (In fact I've suggested to Radio Open Source [ http://www.radioopensource.org/ ] as a topic for their show because this book deserves as wide a dissemination as possible [and MSBPodcast ain't cutting it there.])

Since the book is covered in Main Topic, I'll just go into the next song.

---- "Ruler of the Rock Robots (A Love Story)" by: "The Black Math Experiment" http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/www.theblackmathexperiment.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

---- "RULER OF THE TRANCE ROBOTS" by: "The Black Math Experiment" http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/www.theblackmathexperiment.com

Main Topic: Sick, Sicker, Sickest

I'm so glad my wife picked up this book at the Jersey Public Library.

"Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4) is an eye and mind opening read.

Not only is it engagingly written (and I suspect that Jonathan Prince had a lot to do with that) but informative and filled with facts, the relationships between these facts and the connections between the facts. (Oh my heavens, I'm back to the original reason for my starting into podcasting.)

The book is short but meaty.

I'll list the chapters:

  • Chapter 1, Ironing it out.
  • Chapter 2, A Spoonful of sugar helps the temperature go down.
  • Chapter 3, The cholesterol also rises.
  • Chapter 4 Hey, bud, can you do me a fava?
  • Chapter 5, Of microbes and men.
  • Chapter 6, Jump into the gene pool.
  • Chapter 7, Methyl madness: Road to the final phenotype.
  • Chapter 8, That's life: Why you and your iPod must die.
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
The chapter titles are not very evocative, are they?

But the author, or make that, the authors, manage to make them into a coherent and illuminating seamless exploration of genetics and the role of the environment in genetic mutation.

They ask and possibly answer questions like:
  • Was diabetes evolution's response to the last ice age?
  • Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe?
  • Will a visit to a tanning salon help lower your cholesterol?
  • Why do we age?
  • Why are some people immune to HIV?
  • Can your genes be turned on or off?
There are quite a few side explorations into the history of disease and the role of disease in evolution.

The thesis of the book is that disease, some disease anyway, may have conferred some evolutionary advantage, and that the sickness was a means of conferring an adaption, a beneficial adaption, onto the species in their particular environment at the time.

Given that air conditioning is about a hundred years old and that its widespread adoption has only occurred since World War II, changes in the environment can, do and have happened in the twinkling of an eye in geologic terms.

Even the pace of such environmental change, such as the current climate change, is being revealed to occur to take only decades rather than milenia or centuries.

---- "Your own Messiah" by: "Rural Electric Project" http://www.myspace.com/ruralelectricproject1

Main Topic, part deux:

My only problem is trying to see if there might be someway to apply it to MS.

Probably not but I'm thinking...

What was going on in the sixteenth century, post plague era, that would have conferred some benefit, either to us or to some biological or viral parasitic agent?

Could we discover what benefits from us being turned into shambling cripples?

(Such parasites are discussed in the book, there are several examples across history and across species, and make perhaps the yuckiest, but must the most iluminating part of the thesis of the book.)

---- "New Messiah" by: "Dead Heart Bloom" http://www.deadheartbloom.com/

The book is "Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4) and I recommend it.

Who knows what ideas, what avenues of thought and research, may be sparked by reading this book.

Outro

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

msb-0134 Aging & MS as opposed to Aging vs. MS

msb-0134 Aging & MS as opposed to Aging vs. MS

intro

As far as I currently know, there was even less of an attempt at justification for marching onto the grounds of a college campus, twice, and causing the greatest loss of life by a single gunman in the short and extremely violent history of the United States, than we find in a middle eastern suicide bomber.

I am stunned speechless.

Call me a Moral Absolutist, but I will never condone what this piece of human trash has done.

Not even if it was being done to him out of vengeance.

I'd let him rot in jail forever.

But he escaped my justice by killing himself.

---- "Give it Up " by: "Griddle" http://griddlemusic.com/

Feedback come first, so...

Apart from one email from Miss Chris, one from Herrad and one from Homer there's not much to report.

Oh, wait, I have to tell you that MDMHvonPA's about to regale us with another round-up from the blog-o-sphere.

I received a letter from the (US) National MS Society about supporting the research of Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl.

It wasn't quite the usual begging letter, Dr. Voskuhl isn't quite the usual researcher and her research isn't quite the usual "micro managing research that focuses on the disease while treating the patient as if /he doesn't even exist". (Though, lets be fair, for the causative agents of MS, we don't exist either. Our myelin and its proper functioning is just incidental and collateral damage.)

This research focuses on developing oral therapies for the treatment of MS.

YESSSS! No more freaking needles...

I don't care why she's doing it. She's doing it.

Now, if only one of these research people can wake up and realize what the tobacco companies knew centuries ago, that permeable membrane of the lungs is an efficient drug transport mechanism.

Then we'll stop having to worry about what some thing taste like and how it survives the descent through the extremely inimical digestive tract.

----

As for going to PodcampNYC...

I had a spike of interest (the halo effect lasted a couple of days and a few listeners,) and then it seems to have faded out without permanence. (Well maybe. My stats are behaving, uh, weirdly.)

I doubt that there were any other MSers out there as the tech is still just getting a foothold.

Doesn't matter.

I'm doing these shows for me and for you, not for the wider world. (Well, maybe I'd like to report that some advertiser's looking at the stats package and is thinking of maybe trying us with the test marketing budget. [MSBPodcast wouldn't represent a big expense. {They could pay for a campaign out of petty cash.} ] Maybe, but that's would be BS. We're on our own out there.)

---- "Give It Up " by: "Tems" http://www.tems.org.uk/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

Unless you're desperately in need of toilet paper, I can't recommend the stuff I've had to read in the past little while... Technical specs are B-O-R-I-N-G!

Although I'm starting on a book now called "Survival Of The Sickest" by "Dr. Sharon Moalem" (ISBN: 978-0-06-088965-4) that looks like a promising read. (Update: This book is a great read. I like the author as well as the subject. [Update 2: This book is really great. Its a thought provoking entertaining, "Oh my god I can't put this sucker down", page turner. I'm going to be late with this podcast if I can't tear myself away. But its that good. It's full of facts, ideas, humor and wit about the inter-relationship between ourselves and the wider world and how it, and we, have evolved to coexist...])

----

The ad should be going to the MS Magazine soon and be appearing in the next issue. (Don't worry. You'll hear all about it.)

I can tell you that the Toyota Yaris is a cute little car and a fun drive. I might hate driving less in a couple of years.

(Nah... I hate the friggin' burbs and the drivers in Joyzee are corralled with divided streets and u-turn run-arounds because they aim themselves worse than a herd of crazed, wild-eyed, wildebeests.)

---- "GIVE IT UP " by: "Sahib Radio" http://www.mindawn.com/artists/SahibRadio

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

---- "Dont Give it Up" by: "Trap Door" http://www.realtrapdoor.com/

Main Topic: Aging & MS as opposed to Aging vs. MS

I'm definitely feeling older, as opposed to just looking, uh, distinguished.

Believe me, I used to look, and act, "dangerously sexy"; definitely not the kind of boy you brought home to meet your mother. She wouldn't have had to ask any question, but make comments about her daughter's sanity. And I reveled in it too.

I set up a "pied-a-terre" near Cherry Hill, NJ, and its proved to be an absolutely back-breaking, nerve-wracking, little feat of endurance. Almost as as nerve-wracking as taking it apart in record time and getting my butt out of Dodge and back to home base and back on "The Beach".

(To top it off, I'm not a driver so I'm still learning to drive all over again [[Yeah MDMH, laugh all you want, {but the little Yaris gets almost 40 miles to the gallon.}])

But I got to do it because I got to eat. So I have to endure. The alternative is to slowly slide down the razor blade of life and fall to both sides ... at once.

Its a case of "Aging & MS"

Yeah! I got old. Lots of people lost that bet.

I happen to have picked up MS along the way.

I wasn't even aware that I was entered in that little lottery but my number came up anyway.

Its all a matter of perspective. Mine happens to come mainly from a seated vantage point.

---- "Give It Away " by: "Rasa 9" http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/www.rasa9.com

Main Topic, part deux:

Most of my life just happened to me while I was waiting people to accept or reject my ideas, my music, my code, my designs ... whatever.

I've been blessed with good fortune in that, so far I've only gotten MS. (Only. I said "only gotten MS". Cheech!)

All things considered I could have died (of course being dead takes care of all problems going forward) or been crippled as a result of disease or of some bone-headed stunts pulled either by me or on me.

Now as I reach the time where its a race between the clock and the disease before I'm forced to retire (the MS might make it early if I get another attack/episode,) I am astonished at how unprepared I am to "go gently into that long goodnight." (Of course its not over as long as I have a breath to draw. But will I always want to? ...)

Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, will I reach a stage where "To be, or not to be" becomes an action item, rather than a philosophical musing which goes unvoiced except "in extremis".

MS has affected my effector nerves and not my sensor nerves. I am not in pain. Unlike some of you who are.

And its a deep, existential pain, isn't it?

Its unremitting because its the nerves themselves reporting damage where none exists; phantom pain like the itching in the foot or ankle of someone who's been amputated above the knee.

And on that cheery note, have a great day...

---- "Sudden Death - Give It To Everybody " by: "The FuMP" http://www.thefump.com/

Outro

Thursday, April 12, 2007

msb-0133 What's happening?

msb-0133 What's happening?

intro

---- "Moving Target" by: "Douglas Kay" http://www.douglaskay.com/

Feedback
comes first, so...

Sorry but you folks are not stepping up to the plate, (okay, in some cases its schlepping up to the plate, [the best I can manage leaning on my cane,] and in some cases its wheeling up to the plate,) with emails or voice mails so I'm afraid this episode is all about me and mine.

---- "keep on moving comfortable mix " by: "EEE" http://eee.yorozoo.com/

Feed forward comes next, so...

Same crap, different day.

This is "your" segment to do with as you wish so, if you choose to do nothing with it... I'm not going to argue.

---- "Keep on Moving" by: "Evolver
" http://evolver.co.za/

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

---- "
keep on moving" by: "Under" http://www.underthemusic.com/

Main Topic: What's been happening?

Quite a lot as it turns out.

I went to the PodcampNYC and gave my little presentation. It went over well and the feed-back sessions went well. I actually enjoyed myself in spite of myself.

While I was there, "Herrad" was posting her episode (it may be in Dutch, but it didn't cost you
anything, my gentle MSer audience, to take a listen [or to skip the show if Dutch isn't your cup of tea.])

She propelled MSBPodcast into a multinational, multi-linguistic podcast. (Heck, not even Adam Curry, the "PodFather" himself, can boast a podcast of such wide reaching scale yet. [I wish him all the best with starting up a German language version of Podshow. {Lord knows, its not easy! I've got no takers from there and I've gotten plenty of hits in Germany (look on the maps and the stats on MSBPodcast.com and check.) } ] :-)

By the way, that just goes to show the value of borders when dealing with disease: "none!"

While languages enrich us all with their diversity, national borders impoverish us all with their irrational, illogical and futile divisions along entirely arbitrary and constantly disputable geographical lines.

"Homer's been in touch as well and we should be getting something from him as well.

I have set up a little "pied a terre" west of Philadelphia for my day job. (Adden-dumb, the requirement went away, as did I, which leaves me with a whole mess of crap to undo. One week, I was hearing from our sales drone about how I could "count on being there a year or two." The next week, its "Sorry!" [Sigh! What unmitigated "mishigoss..."])

There are a million details to take care of and worry about when starting a home-away-from-home and I've been up to my butt in alligators coping. (Not wishing I could cope, but coping. Like what choice do I have? Its "do or die" everyday when you've got this disease. What's the difference with a little extra commuting?
[Sigh! Again, what unmitigated "mishigoss." Now I've got a brand new bed and nowhere to put it... I think I'm okay on the apartment lease. {I was only there less than a week and hadn't even moved in except for a bed. (Oh, and ComCast Internet [and a car, but I'm keeping that! ])}])

---- "Moving on" by: "KYAL" http://www.podshow.com/music/?artist_id=3895


Main topic, part "deux":

You know I am scared shit-less about what's been happening in my life, I mean apart from the MS.

I have had to leave my profession and my passion for programming for the tried (and greatly disliked) role of middle management.

I'm no longer down in the trenches doing the deed but now I'm in the rear guard motivating the troops, as it were, making sure they've got the skills, the info and the tools to follow through on the plan.

But this time, I understand my role better. (I still remember a line in
"Loser," the first hit song by "Beck": "I'm a driver. I'm a winner. Things are going to be different." [But of course "things" are never different. And you're a "loser" if you think that. "Things" don't change, so "you have to!" Adapt, or live out a poor, lonely, miserable decline and death.] )

---- "
Loser" by: "Beck" http://www.beck.com

Yeah...

I hope the hell the R.I.A.A. doesn't get on my ass, on Beck's record company's behalf, or just on G.P., for playing one old Beck song for my little MSer audience.

outro

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

msb-0132 Nerdcore

msb-0132 Nerdcore


intro

Sorry the posting schedule has been so irregular (and the podcast has stopped temporarily while I get all the services up and running again,) because of my day job's relocation, but I've been setting up a "pied-a-terre" in South Jersey.

While its easier than starting totally over, its still a time consuming P.I.T.A.

---- "Army of Nerdcore" by; "Zealous 1" http://zealous1.com

Feedback
comes first, so...

Here's what I'm talking about.

Herrad is here!

Herrad has joined MSBPodcast.com from the Netherlands.

I hope you like her as much as I do and enjoy her 'casts along with me. (You have to admit she sounds a lot better than I do. :-)

And if you can't, don't worry about it.

I hope she'll speak English from time to time so that my English-only audience can appreciate her dulcet tones. (I must admit its been years since I spoke any Germanic languages and my brain's not as, uh, plastic as it used to be [and no I'm not blaming my MS lesions. I'm blaming my having survived to past age fifty. {Lots of people have lost bets by my reaching this advanced age... } ] :-)

But she's here and I'm very proud to have her using my wire to speak and share with her Dutch speaking fellow MSers.

In one swell foop, uh, one fell swoop, she has propelled this podcast into an international, multi-linguistic phenomenon. (Man I feel like the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, [but without the funding of a large federal government backing me.])

We are exploring the depth and breadth of the internet and using it spread news about our living MS, instead of being good little Catholic girls and "offfering our suffering to Christ". (That was the actual verbatim advice that my mother got from the nuns at the hospital in Montréal 53 years ago when I was being born. [What a load of horse, uh, puke. Don't do anything. Don't know anything. Don't learn anything. Just suffer! Screw that crap! ])

I'm reminded of a George Carlin routine from his old "Hippy-Dippy Weatherman" days: "At [such and such a store] we're not just talking about inflation, we're doing something about it... We're raising our prices..."

---- "This Old Man" by: "MC Frontalot" http://frontalot.com/index.php/

Feed forward comes next, so...

The whole show is "Feed Forward" so I'm covering it in the "Main Topic"

---- "Livin' At The Corner Of Dude And Catastrophe" by: "MC Frontalot (feat. Brad Sucks)" http://frontalot.com/index.php/ and http://www.bradsucks.net

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

---- "Headshot" by: "Zealous 1" http://zealous1.com

Main Topic: Nerdcore.

Now we're going to explore Nerdcore.

You may have noticed that all of the music is songs about tech and stuffed full of "Nerdy" references.

Also you have may have noticed that the performers are all employed "uncouth youths".

I may seem a bit odd (read "old") to be listening to them but the language doesn't really affect me (and age doesn't mean dick-all to me either.)

I learned how to swear in French, so the vocabulary, tone and tenor of "des gros mots" is entirely different to me.

It adds to the "funny" because they are funny words. And if you can't take a joke, "fuck you". (Which is just noise to me by the way; so don't take offense where none is meant.)

I originally found out about it listening to "The Awful Show" [ http://www.thamike.com/awfulshow/ ] with ThaMike, Jo-El, Keyz and Ner-raux.

The Awful show is anything but.

I specially love their game show "Screw Your Neighbor."

---- "Charity Case" by: "MC Frontalot" http://frontalot.com/index.php/

Main topic, part "deux":

Here, in their own words, are the instructions for the great game.

"Screw Your Neighbor" is a great game of trivia where there are three players who are competing for your hearts and minds. (Sound like Jeopardy? Its "really" not.)

Player 1

Player 2

Player 3

Player 1 gets read a category. From the clue in that category, s/he should pick who they think would get it wrong. In this case lets say s/he picks Player 2.

Player 2 then gets read a question and he must answer, even if he doesn't know, to try and trick and screw player 3.

If player 2 gets it right he gets two points, if play three disagrees with him, he gets 3 points.

If player 2 gets it wrong, he gets 0 points and player 1 gets 2 points.

If player 3 agrees with player two, then player 1 gets 3 points.

However if player 3 disagrees then he gets 1 point as well.

Make sense?

Then, round robim syle, player 1 become player 3, player 3 becomes player 2 and player 2 becomes player 1.

It's easy once you play it.


---- "KFC" by: "The Awful Show" http://www.thamike.com/awfulshow/

Outro

Friday, April 06, 2007

msb-0131 Podcast unconference

msb-0131 Podcast unconference

MsbPodcast presentation.

April 7th, 2007

Who

Charles-A. Rovira

What

MSBPodcast is an evolving crack in an oliogopolistic and nationalistic wall.

Where

Or more precisely, where not.

Being a podcast means a whole lot more not than any particular location.

When

First podcast February 02, 2006.

I'm now up to show 130.

Some of the shows were written by another MSer, and I'm about to start branching out in parallel with foreign fellow MSers.

Why

The why has morphed with time.

This started out originally as a means reaching some people, software geeks, and get my views out on Objects,instances:Relationships,connections.

I learned about the existence of LibSyn, podcasting in the details, bought some books, read some web-zines, caught a lot of poscasts about, what else?, podcasting. And I started listening to the Daily Source Code.

I put together a pilot 'cast and got it out there.

Then I suddenly realied that I no longer cared about Objects,instances:Relationships,connections.

I sort of burned away my geekyness like flash paper because I had stumbled upon the multiple sclerosis podcast.

Epiphany #1

I listened and I liked it but it was not quite what I suddenly saw as a possibility. (An epiphany, I have quite a few of those. Don't knock it. It paid off the mortgage. :-)

In all my years since my original diagnosis in 1985, I had never seen anything about multiple sclerosis; absolutely no media coverage at all. (In fact searching IMDB finds is exactly one TV movie about MS. You'd think that, what with the millions and millions of hours of content out there there would be more than one, lousy, stinking show.)

The fact is that MS is not like a car crash where some part of your body might get snapped like a Q-Tip or chopped off. There's no great ouch! and there's no great aw...

Its a neurological disease wasting away the myelin (stay with me because we'll get right back into the language of MS) and MS comes in many, uh, flavors. MS is in my unqualified oppinion a syndrome, not a single disease.

I would make a 'cast which featured music, and my own jaundiced eye's view.

I'd leave the medecine, the grim diagnoses, the mumbo-jumbo, the heart-break stories to someone else. I'd stick to what I knew. (Strike that, I'd stick to music and MS.)

Back to the language.

How did you like myelin?

How about oligodendrosite?

How about a whole bunch of Greek or Latin fragments, all jammed together?

This fills the air with expensive, but very precise verbiage, giving you the feeling that the doctors might even know what they are talking about, maybe.

If only you, the patient, could figure it out without having to go through years of med school.

The language used in the detection and treatment of any damn disease is the enemy of understanding bugger all about the damn disease.

If you're a patient, you'll need plenty of patience, and a few dictionaries, and the Merk Manual to crack that knowledge niche.

Enter podcasting.

It could, has, does and will continue to provide a narrow focus.

This disease only hits one in twelve hundred. The entire population of MSers, .0833% of people currently alive, is six times less than the level of statistical noise for marketing to the general populace.

Forget about using the mass media.

The hysteria of the polio scare of the thirties onwards, leading to the founding and funding of the "March of Dimes", until polio is now almost entirely eradicated, will never happen again.

Polio affected fewer people than MS but they needed constant care after contracting the disease so they has a much higher profile in the mind of the general populace.

Once someone high and mighty, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, got afflicted, things started to happen. (MSers might get some 'halo effect' from the wife of senator and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney being afflicted ... but don't hold you breath.)

But the internet is everything that the mass media is not.

It doesn't respond to the same fiscal imperatives that our media oligarchy does. (Print, radio, television, is doesn't matter. They're all grabbing for the pile of cash generated by the next 'Playboy', or the next 'Howard Stern' or the next 'Friends' We've already seen just how much content IMDB dug up. Damn near fuck-all.)

But podcasting is one way to laser in on a demographic dog and turn the media out like the greedy, conniving, curs they are.

Podcasting is cheap (I can afford to do it.)

The production values may lead a lot to be desired, but I have MS.

And I'm a software project manager not a radio anybody or anything.

Give me a break.

I should not be hosting the show. But I am, because I have to, for now.

Its analogous to a radio show thqat you can pick up when you want and listen to when you choose to, featuring lots of music and the talk is about how one person, me, is coping with MS. (Some weeks I am lucky and actually have some feedback so you know that gets rolled into the show.)

Epiphany #2

I was taking a Bachelors in Business at MCNY.

I was listing to Adam Curry on the Daily Source Code.

He was trying to figure out a way to make money doing this podcasting thing.

Then Acura did a promo for their own podcast on podshow.com.

The more I mulled it over in my mind, the righter it seemed.

The delivery vehicle (the podcast,) for the delivery vehicle (the car) was perfectly suited to the task. It could be new content of repurposed ads for TV, Radio, Web pages, pamphlets, whatever.

When I was in the market for a car, I'd have loved to have a bunch of companies offering these kinds of 'casts so I could 'catch them whenever I wanted to.

Instead I ended up with a Toyota Yaris. Maybe I could have chosen something else... Comparison shopping over several square milesis tough when you schlep around with a cane.

When I wasn't in a market for a car, like when I'd already bought one, their ad was just noise, (And MS is the definition of noise. I could go into the effects of the disease but I don't want to bore myself.)

That was a really efficient way to keep the distraction to a minimum and yet deliver something substantial over the internet on consumer demand.

Epiphany #3

I had another epiphany concerning a web app which keeps stats and displays them on a map (Its from NeoWorks.com and I originally saw the map on the blog page of a fellow MSer from Alaska.)

I got a free version installed it and my eyes were opened and my jaw hung slack for a second afer the thing gathering page-hit stats for a couple of days.

I had hits coming from every continent. The country count now hovers at around 75.

Then I had yet another epiphany concerning the distribution of my audience.

They are all English. Well a-duh!? What did I expect?

But I speak two languages: French and English and I know a smattering of a few others.

How many people could be missing out on my message because they're not proficient enough in English?

So I have reached out and eventually found a couple of people of differing origins with MS, and got them a Samson C01 USB microphone, CastBlaster, given them the password to upload shows and show notes.

I am starting to host shows written by other people for other people and the only thing we have in common is ESL (English as a Second Language,) MS and things to play and thoughts to say which should take the mystery out of being an MSer.

Epiphany #4

It will eventually turn into a money maker (and maybe I'll start a Non Profit Organization to keep the podcast going after I'm no longer capable of doing it,) because even the most brain-dead producer/manufacturer/service provider will see that podcasting is self-selecting.

Every subscriber is 100% in your market.

Its totally efficient.

I have also evolved a method of delivering the ad content seperately from my show's content.

I just charge for "reminder mentions" in a segment in the middle of the show. (For a $30CPM. Since my audience is primarily other MSers, its really, really small.)

Since the ads are persistent and the shows are persistent, the advertiser doesn't need to have his ad blaring all the time, while the meter's running.

I only charge the advertiser for the actually delivered ads, (for $3.00 each) and since they were requested, we can assume that it was efficient and effective.

Furthermore, unlike spoofable 'click through' ads, I'm actually keeping track of where, and how often, any content was delivered to the same IP address.

Get inspired

Here, I'm going to go into how I do what I do.

I only play podsafe music on my podcasts because I don't want to have anything to do with the RIAA.

I really don't need to fsck with the enforcement arm, the visibility condom, of the dozen or so media companies, the huge pricks.

Ever notice that the RIAA never seem to put out a list of their clients?

Maybe its because the boycots would be immediate.

You can live off your old music for a couple of months and they'd be squirming in their seats. Two months of no money and they'd go nuts. (Oh, I might fantasize about it but I'm not really recommending it. They'd go nuts and force you to listen to elevator music. Myself, I stay the hell out of the malls, rarely watch TV, never listen to the radio. I drink my own Kool-Aid and actually listen to podcasts.)

But after a litle research I can tell you that its:

  • Arista
  • BMG
  • Capitol Records
  • Elektra
  • Fonovisa
  • Interscope
  • Lava
  • Loud
  • Maverick
  • MGM
  • Motown
  • Priority
  • Sony
  • UMG
  • Universal
  • Virgin
  • Warner

How many thousands and thousands of bands are there? There are 17 (that's seventeen) places for them to get their music played. Now THAT'S an oligopoly.

( I can't see working for the RIAA either. That's like saying you:

  • have fatal, unlawful carnal knowledge of puppies,
  • are tone-deaf,
  • have absolutely no sense of humor, and
  • that you are a complete and total Luddite.)

I haven't bought any new media from any the people who're hiding under the RIAA's kilt in years.

But I have played over a thousand songs from music.podshow.com for my audience.

Rather than just play "the latest" whatever,

  • I pick a theme for the 'cast,
  • select the music,
  • write the script (and post it up on multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com)
  • write the show notes (which I post on msb.libsyn.com (MSBPodcast.com is just a repeater) and include in the file as the lyrics tab in iTunes,
  • sit down in front or
    • a good mike, (I own several but my favorite is still a Samson C01 USB mike,)
    • a Mac, (I own several but my current favorite is my new MacBookPro,)
    • GarageBand
  • record, (which often requires several takes,)
  • mix,
  • export to iTunes with
    • chapters,
    • band pictures,
    • links to their web sites.

Later, that should/will also be pictures of, and links to, ads of products, treatments, therapies, goods and services hosted by MSBPodcast.com.

And this covers the boring technical bits.

Any questions?

Too bad.

I'm going to go home and rest up.

I have one hell of a commute to get through to earn enough dough to pay for this.

---- Update ----

If you want to you can read about the event in this article [ http://news.com.com/Unconference+PodCamp+is+what+participants+make+of+it/2100-1025_3-6174286.html?tag=nefd.top ].