Friday, January 30, 2009

P34k O1l 0008

wspc_P34kO1l_0008

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/wspc_P34kO1l_0008.m4a

YouTube ->

Official website -> http://thefuelfilm.com/

---- "Siss Boom Bah!" by: "Mocean Worker featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk" http://www.moceanworker.com/

Thesis:

Peak Oil isn't just a concept or an idea, though it is that, but peak oil is the harbinger of a change that is coming that is going to sweep everything into a great big pile.

As reality changes to accommodate this new elephant in the room, we're going to have to be creative in the options choices we're all going to make.

Peak oil spells gloom and doom for our way of life, but it does not spell gloom and doom for mankind.

Our dependence on oil is a historic aberration which saw enormous changes coming in, and it will see even more enormous changes going out.

We're not going back to an agrarian society since we have seen the population rise beyond what could be supported by the unaided soil. Either we succeed in this endeavor or we're going to have to play at being "Pol Pot" with world-wide "killing fields". (Pol Pot I'll remind you killed merely in person in five in Cambodia with his agrarian reforms. We'd have to kill four persons in five the world over to achieve a sustainable and supportable population using only the techniques which existed pre-oil, or about a mere century-and-a-half ago.

---- "Shamma Lamma Ding Dong" by: "Mocean Worker featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk" http://www.moceanworker.com/

Synthesis:

So lets deconstruct peak oil as a series of phenomena which correspond to a modification of Mazlow's pyramid.

Man can live

* Without air: four minutes.
* Without water: four days.
* Without food: four weeks.
* Without sex: Forget it!

Okay, on a less facetious form, lets examine the "real" "Mazlo's" pyramid [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ].

Basic human needs are:

* physiological,
* safety and security,
* love and belonging,
* esteem and
* self-actualization.


Given the fact that we're knocking every blessed thing into a cocked-hat, lets examine the most basic needs, the physiological:

* Food
* Water
* Breathing
* Excretion
* Sleep
* Homeostasis
* Sex

Back to my facetious pyramid.

"Air" will be pretty much in the same supply it is now.

It might even be cleaner for the same reason that foxes have moved back into Detroit. The base state for a post-industrial society is pretty much the same as for a pre-industrial one. Clean air, plenty of sunshine and lots of "critter space".

You will be relieved to hear that "water" will still flow down hill. Hydroelectric dams will still work. (The lubricants for the turbines "will" require some work.)

You will be relieved to hear that water will still evaporate too. (Of course, clouds "will" form where and when they want to, mostly away from the catch basins of the hydroelectric dams.)

The rest is a bit more problematic.

"Food" production currently demands large areas of land. Unfortunately, that also demands large quantities of oil to accomplish some things:

* farming (for fertilizers, pesticides, moving dirt around harrowing, and harvesting.)
* transportation of produce to market,
* transportation of seed to the farm to begin with,
* maintaining markets (though that is the province of anybody from your local green grocer to a huge box store,)
* moving the produce back to your home.

The problems come primarily from three very disturbing facts:

* First we have to, uh, think different.
* Then we have to overcome the distance between the farm and home.
* Lastly we we have problems of un-cooperative weather, un-cooperative soil, and un-cooperative labor conditions on the farms.

The solutions to these require some attitude adjustment on our part and on the part of the nice folks who build our cities.

---- "Little Bird" by: "Annie Lennox" http://www.annielennox.com/

We got PSAs:

----

Campus Safety urges students, faculty and staff to sign up for text alerts, online @ spc.edu/alerts

This will be used to inform students, faculty and staff in an emergency.

This was useful last year in the bomb scare.

To sign up, students must know their Spirit ID # (Bring their Saint Peter's College ID.)

----

Here's a proper, honest to goodness, real promo. :-)

Promo_WSPC_PeacockNation2008/12/05

----

We've also got some cross promotion going with the web version of St. Peter College's own "Pauw Wow".

The perpetually available and comment capturing web version is "growing on" as opposed to the occasional "Dead Tree" edition which can only capture "a moment in time" for a minority of the news competing for a scarce resource, space with anything else on a fixed number of pages.

As Liebnitz famously once said: "The 'Power of the Press' belongs to those who own one."

But as anyone who can read will attest, the limitations of "that" business model are slowly bleeding to death all of the owners of the "dead tree" press.

The future of the press lies on-line with the internet mixing media according to their appropriateness to whatever is being reported.

From "Twitter" to IM, to e-mail, to FaceBook to Podcasts, to web-radio, to streaming content, to PDFs, to vodcasts, to YouTube, to MP3s, to app mash-ups, to whatever's next, the internet is emerging as the clear winner of the media wars.

So log on to http://pauwwow.com/ and grow with the media.

---- "100% Pure Love" by: "Crystal Waters" http://www.theoneandonlycrystalwaters.com/

Okay back to urban planning.

We've got to refit and insure that all new construction is mixed industrial, agricultural, residential and retail.

Preferably in the same building!

I gave the order because we need that the construction of our "archologies" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology ] be pretty much be in that order.

We have to stop thinking so "cheap and cheesy", slapdash and jury-rigged, and instead start thinking of habitation as things fitting together and complementing each other.

Now that cheap oil and therefore cheap energy are disappearing from the landscape, the things that depend on cheap oil and therefore cheap energy must disappear also.

I am advocating the creation of arcologies not out of some Utopian visions but because its preferable to the distopian visions that come to the mind's when trying to keep the outside out and the inside hermetically sealed against it.

R. Buckminster Fuller, because he was born and lived some of his life before the era of widespread cheap oil, had designed the principles of a dymaxion arcology out of necessity back when the twentieth century was new.

He was trying to solve the problems of sustainability for his time and now, after the oil enabled diversions of two world wars, countless skirmishes, failed regimes, failed implementations of failed political ideas, countless deaths to serve no purpose, failed religions and false prophets, its time we put down the "Kool-Aid" and started back on the path he'd glimpsed "through a glass darkly" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_a_Glass_Darkly ] but still more clearly than most of us ever see.

One of the prime principles of his dymaxion philosophy is to extract the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people from the smallest amount of material.

I am not advocating blind acceptance of everything he wrote. The man could have clearly benefitted from some linguistics courses which would have helped him with his need to coin new words.

But the concepts for reforming refitting and creating the new urban arcologies are clearly there.

Imagine living contained in buildings of currently unimaginable size where all of our physical, emotional and spiritual needs can be met, all of our transportation requirements are local.

Imagine living in Dubai ... everywhere.

We'll return to this theme of arcology at several point during upcoming episodes.

---- "Children (Dream Version)" by: "Robert Miles" http://www.robert-miles.com/

Conclusion:

Peak Oil is going to change everything in a wave of innovation or leave us high and dry gasping for breath and grasping at straws stuck in an empty oil barrel.

Its actually going to do both. Some people won't be able to loosen their grasp and will end up holding nothing and burying their children, dead from a millions causes all related to their acceptance of scarcity.

Some people will be able to see that you can only accept things with open hands and will end up owning everything of any value and leave a legacy to a future they can't even imagine.

Some of the innovation that is coming will affect how and where we live and that requires the most open mind of all.

---- "Everybody Loves A Loser" by: "Morcheeba" http://www.morcheeba.co.uk/

Outro

Oh and by the way:

I just want to thank the people who left the nice comments on this blog, sent me email feedback on the podcast of "The Disability Show".

And to my wife who's been chiding me for having thought small all these years, when the need was for exactly this kind of show, "Yes Dear. You were right..."

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0029

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0029

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0029.m4a

Video Links
This is episode 29

With apologies to "Bored of the Rings" (1) this week its all about the pastoral squalor one finds outside of the urban area, away from the nascent, semi-arcologies of Jersey City and the other cities huddled in the shadow of New York City, (itself a nascent arcology).

(A ha! Some fore shadowing of this Friday's "Peak Oil" show. [Arcology... Arcology... What the heck is is an arcology? Tune in Friday and find out why it may save your children's and their children's butts.])

In keeping with my habit of stating episodes of this show with, uh, future classics, in sort of the theme of pastoral squalor in here is

"The Drop System" by "Pastora" http://myspace.com/pastoramusic

(1)"Bored of the Rings"is a National Lampoon take on J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and probably came out, like the original, way before any of you attending this school were born.

[ http://www.teenink.com/Books/article/1507/Bored-of-the-Rings/ ]

To quote:
"Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have increased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garotte, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the 'big folk' or 'biggers' as they call us. As a rule they avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. . . . Their beginnings lie far back in the Good Ole Days when the planet was populated with the kind of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of Old Overcoat to see nowadays."

----

We got PSAs:

----

Campus Safety urges students, faculty and staff to sign up for text alerts, online @ spc.edu/alerts

This will be used to inform students, faculty and staff in an emergency.

This was useful last year in the bomb scare.

To sign up, students must know their Spirit ID # (Bring their Saint Peter's College ID.)

----

Here's a proper, honest to goodness, real promo. :-)

Promo_WSPC_PeacockNation2008/12/05

----

We've also got some cross promotion going with the web version of St. Peter College's own "Pauw Wow".

The perpetually available and comment capturing web version is "growing on" as opposed to the occasional "Dead Tree" edition which can only capture "a moment in time" for a minority of the news competing for a scarce resource, space with anything else on a fixed number of pages.

As Liebnitz famously once said: "The 'Power of the Press' belongs to those who own one."

But as anyone who can read will attest, the limitations of "that" business model are slowly bleeding to death all of the owners of the "dead tree" press.

The future of the press lies on-line with the internet mixing media according to their appropriateness to whatever is being reported.

From "Twitter" to IM, to e-mail, to FaceBook to Podcasts, to web-radio, to streaming content, to PDFs, to vodcasts, to YouTube, to MP3s, to app mash-ups, to whatever's next, the internet is emerging as the clear winner of the media wars.

So log on to http://pauwwow.com/ and grow with the media.

----

The theme this evening is Pastoral scenes.(Pastoral Squalor as I like to refer to it, like scenes of rusted farm equipment in the fields and rusted heaps if the front yards of tumble down barn yard shacks, in desperate need of a coat of paint [or cleansing arson.]

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"The Drop System" by "Pastora" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"The Lark Ascending" by: "Ralph Vaughan Williams" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Suite Pastorale: Idylle" by: "Emmanuel Chabrier" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Brigg Fair" by: "Percy Grainger" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Opus 68, "Pastoral": First Movement" by: "Ludwig Van Beethoven" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"English Dances, Set II, Opus 33, No. 1" by: "Malcolm Arnold" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Rosamunde: Entr'acte No. 2" by: "Franz Schubert" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"St. Paul's Suite: Fourth Movement (The Dargason)" by: "Gustav Holst" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Divertimento in D Major K136: Third Movement" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

----

The show notes, incuding the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

And this show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter or to accompany the music.

You can send me feed back. suggestions, or just some sign that there's anybody actually outside the studio.

Address email to charles at msbpodcast.com

Monday, January 26, 2009

TheDisabilityShow 0001

TheDisabilityShow 0001

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

This show is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for the disabled, and if we can help reach across the chasm of questions and indifference to the other side of the rainbow of ability ... well and good.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disabilities.

The path to disability is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

---- "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by: "Green Day" http://www.greenday.com/splash_black.php?accesscheck=%2Flogin_check.php

Intro

This show is a chance for students at St. Peter's College to both learn about disability, the concepts and the realities of disability, as well as to teach about disability, by exposing the audiences, both on the campuses of St. Peter's College and on the world wide web, to the problems faces by 5% of the population (That's "325,000,000" [three hundred and twenty five million] people, one in twenty people on the planet alive today, right now, that the W.H.O. [the World Health Organization] estimates fits their definition of disability.)

---- "Wake me up when this Math Class Ends" by: "The FuMP" http://www.thefump.com/

Thesis:

As the title of the show might give a hint, we're here to expose people to the, uh, wonderful world of the disabled. (Though the wonder might be limited on one side by "Hunh? What? Why?" and the other side "Oh, give up man. They'll never get it." [I'm just being polite. The epithets that are sometimes applied by both peoples to the ones standing on the other shore are not fit for dissemination.])

Seeing as how this is an institution of higher learning and people have to meet certain eligibility requirements to get here, its a self-selecting kind of elite who get to be students here at St. Peter's.

We represent the plus side of the bell curve as far as IQ goes.

Yet we struggle with the same question of "otherness" that any disabled person faces; that blank stare, that uncomprehending look that says "What do you people want anyway?" not recognizing that what we want is "not to be thought of in that way."

---- "When The World Ends"{ by: "Dave Matthews Band" http://www.davematthewsband.com/

Synthesis:

Actually the introduction to this show touched on one point, (the statistical,) while my thesis touched on one other point, (the existential,) that are two sides of the same coin.

Being one person in twenty yields a formidable number, three hundred and twenty five million people on the aggregate are disabled to some degree spanning the range to having a mild "kink in the armor", to having a "thoroughly bent frame".

The problem is that disease and disability manifest themselves in myriad ways and we, all to human beings, immediately begin to subdivide the concept of disability into the prevalence of each.

Its one thing to know that the prevalence of MS affects in in twelve hundred people, or 0.0833% of the population, or a mere 2.9 million people (see how putting an actual number, as long as its a cognitively grokable one*, puts a volume of people behind a mere statistics,) its another thing to be prepared to deal with the varying degree of disability that MS can bring.

(* Grokable numbers are those related to things we can understand. Otherwise, our imagination fails us and we can't really grok, or holistically comprehend the entirety of the concept. Like drops in an ocean [or even in a bucket,] things get confused into a blur)

---- "Boys & Girls" by "Blur" http://www.blur.co.uk/

We're "all" different and we "all" suffer from and labor under differing degrees of disability.

Some people are not visibly affected by it, as I wasn't for the thirty years from sixteen when my hand writing went to hell and my manual dexterity was shot through with tremors, to my last attack in 1997 when my mobility was affected and I was left using a cane.

My first guest suffers from "Coeliac disease" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celiac_disease ] which while incurable can be controlled by dietary means.

Some people are handicapped as the result of some traumatic injury, some insult to the system which leaves them unable to fully function.

Some, like me, are handicapped as the result of some disease which leves them unable to fully function.

The truth of it is that none of us wanted whatever happened to us to happen, but shit did indeed happen, to us.

But that doesn't mean that we've given up or that we're fit to give up on.

There are some things which can be done which make our lives easier, and incidentally can make everybdy else's lives easier as well. (And I definitely want to adress the PATH system's policies of sticking handicapped ramps and the station's elevator out of the way and in difering places in every accessible station as particularly deserving of my oprobrium, invective and venom.)

---- "Old Friends/Bookends" by: "Simon & Garfunkel" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_and_Garfunkel#External_links

Conclusion:

I hope that this show inspires us through our own example.

Disability is existential and experiential.

We "all" suffer from some delusions of perfection and we sometimes feel shame at not reaching the ideal of physical beauty or functionning.

Its what keep the plastic surgeons employed after all.

For the most part the entire cosmetic industry is entirely fueled by the hopes that whatever deception we weave before the eyes that behold us can last ... long enough. (Ha! As Shakespeare wrote "What fools these mortals be".) [ http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/lord-what-fools-these-mortals ]

The worst part is when the disabled are not accommodated as part of making the traffic flow better for everybody, but are instead shunted aside and forced to be an inconvenienced inconvenient.

---- "Family And Friends" by: "Rob Szabo" http://www.robszabo.com/

Part deux (brings me back, doesn't it.)

I am going to try to bring somebody into the studio with some form of disability every week.

I have some one lined up to speak on Celiac disease.

Just like I have my "bona-fides" with MS, my guest has the same qualification to speak on and about Celiac disease.

We're "not" medical experts, we're the afflicted/affected.

Take it away and ... "educate me" ...

[ I'll get his transcript later ]

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0028

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0028

Direct link to the episode:

MP3 -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0028.mp3

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0028.m4a

Video Links

This is episode 28. This week its all about the Russians.

So I'm starting off with some Russian's of my own. And "nyet, I am not attempting to pronounce it"

Okay "Goryacho" by "Ozonoviy Sloy"

----

We got PSAs:

----

Campus Safety urges students, faculty and staff to sign up for text alerts, online @ spc.edu/alerts

This will be used to inform students, faculty and staff in an emergency.

This was useful last year in the bomb scare.

To sign up, students must know their Spirit ID # (Bring their Saint Peter's College ID.)

----

Here's a proper, honest to goodness, real promo. :-)

Promo_WSPC_PeacockNation2008/12/05

----

I'm very busy so lets get on with it.

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Goryacho" by: "Ozonoviy Sloy" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Symphony No.5 in D Minor, Opus 47: 2nd Movement" by: "Dmitri Shostakovich" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"String Quartet No.2 in D Major 3rd Movement (Nocturne)" by: "Alexander Borodin" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Ruslan and Lyudmila: Overture" by: "Mikhail Glinka" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Marche Slave, Op. 31" by: "Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Russian Easter Festival Overture, Opus 36" by: "Nikolaj Rimskij-Korsakov" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Alexander Nevsky: Alexander Nevsky's Entry into Pskov" by: "Sergei Prokofiev" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Pictures at an Exhibition: The Great Gate of Kiev" by: "Modest Mussorgsky" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.


----

The show notes, incuding the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

And this show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter or to accompany the music.

You can send me feed back. suggestions, or just some sign that there's anybody actually outside the studio.

Address email to charles at msbpodcast.com

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0027

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0027

Direct link to the episode:

MP3 -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0027.mp3

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0027.m4a

Video Links

This is episode 27

The first ThymeWarp of 2009.

But its not the first show I have done for the year.

I started on Monday with an episode appearing on MSBPodcast.com in which I hope to raise everybody's consciousness about disability.

I am going to be writing a word of three about education and the disabled to the PauWow. (Wether they choose to publish it is something else. -)

I hope to have some other disabled students for the last half of the show.

----

ThymeWarp is an easy show for me to put together. Wednesday are going to be a snap.

I'll just scrape my iPod for something I figure you'd like for an hour of classical music and put it out on a podcast.

There is no live component to the show. After all, I'm hardly going to feature an interview with one of the many decomposing composers who's music I feature.

----

The friday shows are going to be a lot tougher.

I'm dropping the 'book review' portion of "P34k O1l" (those episodes are still available on MSP's Podcast and on iTunes if you want to go back and listen to them, or listen to them again.)

We'll be instead seeing what other people are saying about the phenomenon of peak oil and the changes that running out of oil is bringing about to our economy and to our way of life.

That one is going to require a lot of research and writing. Good thing I'm so freakin' obsessive.

I don't know what's up with my life but I'm feeling pretty jazzy these days so I'm starting off with "Addicted to Oil" by "Mr Tunes"

----

We got PSAs:

----

Campus Safety urges students, faculty and staff to sign up for text alerts, online @ spc.edu/alerts

This will be used to inform students, faculty and staff in an emergency.

This was useful last year in the bomb scare.

To sign up, students must know their Spirit ID # (Bring their Saint Peter's College ID.)

----

Here's a proper, honest to goodness, real promo. :-)

Promo_WSPC_PeacockNation2008/12/05

----

I'll be picking up the new promos and PSA when I show up in school , uh, earlier today. (You do realize that these shows are pre-recorded. Its actually Tuesday and school starts tomorrow, when I'm due in the studio to play this at 17:00 )

This episode is all about morning mists.

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Addicted to Oil" by: "Mr Tunes" ( http://www.projectopus.com/mrtunes ) here on WSPCs ThymeWarp.

"Quiet City" by: "Aaron Copland" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Serenade for Strings in E minor, Opus 22: First Movement" by: "Antonín Dvořák" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Holberg Suite, Opus 40: Sarabande" by: "Edvard Grieg" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Chanson de matin, Opus 15" by: "Edward Elgar" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Opus 11: Second Movement" by: "Frédéric Chopin" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Carmen, Suite No. 1: Intermezzo" by: "Georges Bizet" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Oh' What A Beautiful Morning" by: "Glenn Miller" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Suite No. 1 in G major: Sarabande" by: "Johann Sebastian Bach" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 73: Second Movement" by: "Johannes Brahms" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.


----

The show notes, incuding the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

And this show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter or to accompany the music.

You can send me feed back. suggestions, or just some sign that there's anybody actually outside the studio.

Address email to charles at msbpodcast.com

Monday, January 12, 2009

msb-0350 A New Beginning.

msb-0350 A New Beginning.

Mocean Worker - Shake Ya Boogie
..

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen
..

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

I have a quick and easy, painless and not too figgin' nosy customer survey that I really, really, really need you to go and fill out.

You can go to my podcast "page" [ http://msbpodcast.com/ ], click on the button on the left hand side of the page and anonymously answer a few simple questions.

I really need this.

----

Feedback comes first, so...

Okay I've been away for a month and people are still downloading the show's episodes. I "must" be filling some form of need out there... What's weird is that people were downloading the ThymeWarp episodes almost as much as the indie music episodes. (Okay maybe half of you were picking up the episodes but there genuinely seems to be some interest, [ though the audiences were different and coming from different URLs. {Neat huh?!?}])

I've been gone for a month and today, I feel good.

I'm using new software to put together the 'casts, "Übercaster" from "Pleasant Software of Offenburg/Germany" [ http://www.pleasantsoftware.com ] as well as doing a version on GarageBand, plus "Transmit" [ http://www.panic.com/transmit/ ] and "OmniOutliner Pro" [ http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/ ] to compare the two and see if there is any benefit to using "Übercaster" apart from using it more 'cast specific interface.

I'm still putting
  • the text of the casts on "Blogger" [ http://multiplesclerosisblog.blogspot.com/ ],
  • the text and the audio of the casts on "LibSyn" [ http://msb.libsyn.com/ ]
  • the whole mess on my "wiki", [actually at http://msbpodcast.pbwiki.com/TheShows ]
  • and is referred to from "MSBPodcast.com" [ http://www.msbpodcast.com/ ].
I'l try this out for a while and let everybody know which is easier to work with.

You should never know which is which by listening, though you will know because some episodes will be repeated and labeled with msb-xxxx-Ü

This week, I will be making changes to the scheduling of this show by getting it on the school roster.

MSBpodcasts will be on Mondays for an hour, along with ThymeWarp which will be on Wednesdays for an hour and P34k O1l which will be on Fridays for an hour.

This also means that I have access to the music schools licence and licencing agreements, (yay I can use "any" music I want,) and access to their equipment when putting together the shows.

I'll also be able to host 'call-ins' and/or 'call-outs' over the phone and/or over skype. "You" can now become an active part of the show.

Being web cast/streamed means immediacy while being podcast means permanence.

Today I'm in a jazzy mood. Since I am covered by the school radio's copyright license, I no longer have to put up with my 'indie only' rules.

---- "Lighten Up Francis" and "Hey Baby" by: "Mocean Worker" http://www.moceanworker.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

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

Drop us an email: "charles at MSBPodcast.com"

---- "Siss Boom Bah!" by: "Mocean Worker featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk" http://www.moceanworker.com/

Feed Me comes third, so...

Everything I've been reading, (like "Secrets of Social Media Marketing" by: "Paul Gillin" ISBN: 978-1884956-85-0), is still, and always, geared towards the widget makers of the world; not for the generation of web-o-nauts like Leo Laporte's, Adam Curry's, and me who are starting to get our message out there that podcasts, webcasts and other web 2.x ways of connecting people together.

There are books out there that tell you how to sell your widgets to your first-time or existing customers on-line (that was and is the promise of web 1.0) and that tell you how keep in touch with them (that was and is the promise of web 2.0), though you sometimes have to do "damage control" when you over promise and under deliver.

Books on bloggers and blogging, on podcasts and podcasting, on vidcasts and vidcasting, on wikis, on twitter style IM, on IM, on email, are fine at giving people the "how to's" of the nuts and bolts of point to point communications but they don't help much with something essential.

They don't ever answer the questions related to "How do you get the word out about you and your products out there in the first place?"

How do you find some audience out there who might be interested in whatever you're selling because they're interested in the content of the show.

A well informed public is a joy to behold but for the most part,the educational system does not inform their students about anything but the origins, the early history, of whatever they teach.

Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, St.Thomas of Aquinas et alia may be fine but they don't help in the least with whatever problem you're coping with in this, the modern world.

In this, the modern world, we don't necessarily have the luxury of sitting down and figuring out the best approach to the solution. (There's lots of problems that are way over my head to even define, so never mind finding a solution. Jeesh...)

---- "Tres Tres Chic" by" Mocean Worker" http://www.moceanworker.com/

"Thesis:"

Over the past three years, I have operated this podcast because it was an opportunity for me to work through my deep and soul-smothering anger at having MS (okay its wasn't the only thing I took very personally, I'm still a bit pissed at some sociopath thinking that it was okay to stage a bit of "Arab Street Theater" in Manhattan and kill about three thousand people, some of which I worked with, and to tear a hole in my sky.)

It has morphed into a wider purpose.

As the broadcast media have imploded fiscally while their content has exploded all over the internet, I have become one of the "early adopters" of the new focused-casting.

---- "Chick a Boom Boom Boom" by: "Mocean Worker" http://www.moceanworker.com/

"Synthesis:"

Since February 2006, episodes of the MSB Podcast have been downloaded, as of this 'cast, over 110,00 times.

That's "downloaded", not just "one my web pages was discovered by accident by somebody looking for Microsoft's B class stocks" (I use separate counters for tracking webpage hits,), but the entire episode was fetched through iTunes, or, far more interestingly, downloaded by somebody actually clicking on it after reading the show notes.

This was an active choice that was made by someone, an MSer or someone who interested in the program.

Okay, its a small community. What else could it be? We MSers only represent 1 in 1,200 or 0.0833% of the general population. Add caregivers plus the occasional visitor and you could get some spikes to occasionally double the figure over time.

There are lots of 'casts which get download numbers which dwarf this.

But there are some communities which this would dwarf.

There are some communities which are so small they only exist as footnotes in some encyclopedia.

From tribal languages with only a few hundred speakers to diseases with only a few hundred sufferers, there are minorities which make us, we MSers, look like a multitude.

I just saw a Barbara Walters special with "Patrick Swayze" on his struggle pancreatic cancer.

Each year, this disease affects about 38,000 people in the United States, usually fatally.

Each year, MS affects many time more people per year, but thankfully not fatally.

But it does point out that Patric Sayze, those afflicted with pancreatic cancer, and the other people afflicted with other rare diseases, are in the same boat as us.

In a world "without" an internet to weave us all together with a fiber-optic glass thread, we are all marooned on separate desert islands, isolated, scared, lonely and, to be blunt about it, dying (, like a Saturday Night Live skit about post-phenomenological philosophy in the Nixon era, [funny "not!"]).

But in a world "with" an internet, the economics of scarcity become replaced by the economics of wealth, of information richness.

"All" share in the discoveries of any.

In the battles with our separate battles with our respective diseases, we can all benefit.

Just like the battles with AIDS, primarily begun after Rock Hudson was struck down with that disease, have yielded, if not a cure, then at least treatments for MS, who knows what "we" might discover that could be of help to Ms. Swayze and other people afflicted with other diseases.

---- "Float" by: "Mocean Worker" http://www.moceanworker.com/

"Conclusion:"

Over the past three years, over the past 100+ thousand downloads, I have operated this podcast because it suited my needs.

It has morphed into something with a wider purpose.

I'm staying out here because, I am needed by people who don't know me, or even of me, yet.

---- "Que Bom" by: "Mocean Worker" http://www.moceanworker.com/

Outro

This where it will get interesting.

I hope to feature a guest, a disabled person who's attending this school, St. Peter's College.

Apart from the usual gripe fest and showing off our sacred and respective scars, like a bunch of Yorkshiremen:
"I was hospitalized for three days before a nurse came into our room."

"Room? Luxury. I had to sleep in a corridor."

"Sleep. Oh we never slept. We used to get woke up at three in the morning by the nurses who would ask us if we needed sleeping pills."

"Well, of course we had it tough. The nurses used to come around with wooden mallets and if you uttered a word, they used to play "Whack-A-Mole" on you."
Apart from that hilarity, I hope to provide some insight into health care policy, disabled mobility issues, disabled access issues, disabled employment issues and whatever else my guests want to talk about.

----