Friday, February 27, 2009

wspc_P34kO1l_0012

wspc_P34kO1l_0012

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/wspc_P34kO1l_0012.m4a

YouTube ->. .

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

Gas Prices, Gas Gouging, Peak Oil, Elasticity, Supply Demand
..

Never let on that you know what's coming.

---- "Magic GB Jazz" by: "AjT" http://beemp3.com/index.php?q=Album+de+Alain&st=album

Thesis:

This is a speech meant to persuade.

Although that implies that there would be some mode of thought that might imply some debate which would imply that I might wrong about the stance I took.

I seriously doubt that there can be any such error because I am reacting to any discoveries and adapting in kind, but not in direction, to any new facts which arise.

I am not going to try to persuade of the correctness of my approach since I took the only approach that I saw as solving the most problems, including some that weren't anticipated in the least by the people who originally informed my own opinions about peak oil.

I have also drawn from my own experience. as well as the fractional ones evinced by the same people I have been studying.

Unlike most debaters and most debates, I am the first to admit that things are not black or white.

Heck, that aren't even gray. I'm overseeing over the construction of a rainbow.

Inductive reasoning, wherein I acquire facts and opinions in order to generate something more generic from the specifics, is tightly coupled with deductive reasoning, wherein I am attempting to test the rules as revealed to me in the first place.

I do these kinds of reasoning in order to come up with a suitable yet sufficiently open-ended kind of syllogism, or logical appeal, to solve the conundrums raised by peak oil. ([Greek: συλλογισμός — "conclusion," "inference"], [usually the categorical syllogism)] which can form a kind of logical argument in which one proposition [the conclusion] is inferred from two others [the premises] of a certain form. Thank Wikipedia for the actual definition: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism ])

I am now well aware of the 256 rules for crafting syllogisms. (Many of which don't apply here.)

Of course, I am "not" constructing any syllogisms because they are too fractional and would require a level of problem decomposition too fine to be useful at this stage.

In that respect I am actively guilty of treading on the logic of my argument in the same way that I always accused database analyst of always mashing together separate and distinct objects together instead of respecting the articulations presented by the inter-object relationships. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa..."

---- "Frogmouth" by: Bift http://amiestreet.com/music/bift/bift/frogmouth

Synthesis:

I achieved my understanding of peak oil by thinking of it not as a thing, or even as a series of things, of "if then" rules, but by thinking of it as a process, more specifically as a mathematical function of two intersecting curves.

The arguments for and against peak oil are illusory. They refer to specific instances none of which argue for or against peak oil but instead refer to degrees of the event of peak oil.

Peak oil consists of two intersecting curves, one of demand and the other one of supply.

The game of peak oil consists of reacting properly to the motion of the curves along the horizontal axis of oil and the vertical axis of price, and to the motion of their point of intersection which is the price point and its also where demand creation and demand destruction meet.

There's nothing to argue with. Its just two horizontally moving curves, one high-x sloping down to low-x and the other one low-x climbing up to high-x.

Like "Foghorn Leghorn"[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foghorn_Leghorn ] once famously said, "I say, I say ... you can argue with me son, but you cain't argue with mathematics."

Now the implications of the motion of the two curves are the rapidly rising and falling price of oil, and the steady trend upwards as supplies fall over the next century, world-wide.

Guys, remember taking your date out in your jalopy telling the gas jockey to "fill her up" while holding your arm over the roof line, out of eye shot of your date, and holding up one finger per dollar you actually wanted him to pour into the tank.

Of course not. You're probably all too young.

Since the seventies, its been a pose with both hands held up in supplication, tendering your wallet to the one armed bandit at the pump.

Some horizontal slides of the demand curve have never slid back to the position they originally held.

What's fun is that as supply destruction takes hold, just by OPEC withholding their oil, before the demand can react to the new equilibrium, the price at the pump jumps up vertiginously.

(Remember the summer of 2008, with $4.00+ price at the pump. Its got to do with the lag time between supply pricing and demand adjustments. Its even out of the hands of OPEC. The price went up immediately because the oil companies weren't going to do "you" any favors. OPEC upped the supply and even dropped their price but it takes even longer for the greed to dissipate. They weren't going to benefit by charging you less, now were they?)

So what do we have left to disagree about?

What direction we want the avalanche to fall? (Yeah ... You stand there... You wait... You get buried... I'm running, Jack. With my cane I need to take a good long time 'cause I'm not interested in playing "Frosty The Snowman.")

---- "Gunslinger" by: "Danny Weis" http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Spot-Danny-Weis/dp/B000CA91D0

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.

---- "If I Had One Wish" by: "DJ Suicide" http://www.crossphade.com/press.html

Synthesis Part Deux

As I asked before: "What have got left to disagree about?"

The shape of the world that will emerge from this lubricious debacle is up to us, entirely up to us.

If we do nothing things are going to change anyway and I can bet you that we won't like the change, because, like the Red Queen said, "It takes all the running I can do to stay in the same place."

So we're going to face a challenge.

How can we face it with the minimum amount of effort for the maximum benefit. Or we can be bull headed and suddenly discover that there's only three hundred and sixty million of us and there are nineteen times as many people competing for oil.

Oh and by the way we can forget about buying oil from Venezuela. The Chinese already have dibs on it. While we weren't looking, they've been turning all the foreign assets and debt that we've been forcing on them into hard currency and buying everything all over the planet with our own fiscal instruments.

Was Wal*Mart good for America?

Not only did we decimate our own production capacity by off-shoring everything, not only did we wreck our commercial infrastructure by building these huge soulless identical box stores where we all bought the same identical crap no matter what, but we sent all of that money to Asia to do it.

Now they hold so much of our debt that we've basically screwed the pooch.

If we're stupid enough not to get off the barrel, we can look forward to paying much, much more for our oil.

I figure we've got fifty years before we're hoisting a glass of "Penzoil" [ http://www.pennzoil.com/ ] like it was a $160,000, in 1985 dollars, bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux. [ http://www.forbes.com/2003/11/19/cx_np_1119feat.html ]

Ok. We are idiots. We have not been paying attention and ignored that silky sound of sharpened tempered metal slicing into our own throats.

The choice is do we smarten up and pull back from oil now or does our collective head fall into the bloody basket.

Personally, it will happen on such a time scale that I don't have to care.

I have no issue and I have nothing riding on tomorrow.

The question is not mine, but its "yours."

Are you going to get off of oil nicely, with sure, measured steps, or will get your daughters' tubes tied and make your sons' into castrati.

---- "Last Tango In NYC" by: "The Four Bags" http://amiestreet.com/music/the-four-bags/offshore/last-tango-in-nyc

Conclusion:

The world is not nice, not fair, not gentle.

It makes mince meat out of the complacent.

Don't be complacent.

Now, how can we get ourselves out of this situation?

That is the thesis of the next speech.

---- "The Rosochacha" by: "Greg Federico" http://cdbaby.com/cd/gregfederico2

Outro

The show notes, including 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.

I've stopped asking for your feedback, because I really don't want it.

Like the show? Listen.

Don't like the show, then what are you wasting your time here for?

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0033

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0033

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0033.m4a

Video Links

YouTube ->

This is episode 33

I'm adopting this first song as my own marching song for better mental health.

Sometimes I feel that "A Change Would Do You Good" (by "Sheryl Crow",) http://www.sherylcrow.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.

----

I just love the line "Hello its me, I'm not at home. If you'd like to reach me, just leave me alone."

Goes well with this evening's theme: "Tender Moments".

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"A Change Would Do You Good" by: "Sheryl Crow" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"A Village Romeo and Juliet: The Walk to the Paradise Garden" by: "Frederick Delius" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"The Gadfly, Opus 97: Romance" by: "Dmitri Shostakovich" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Romance for Flute in D-flat Major, Opus 37" by: "Camille Saint-Saëns" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Romeo and Juliet,Suite No.1, Opus 64 A: Balcony Scene" by: "Sergei Prokofiev" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Sospiri, Opus 70 by: "Edward Elgar" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Fourteen Songs, Opus 34, No.14: Vocalise" by: "Sergei Rachmaninov" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Fantaisie-impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Opus 66" by: "Frédéric Chopin" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Don Quixote, Opus 35: Dialogue Between the Knight and Servant" by: "Richard Strauss" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Don Giovanni K527: Là ci darem la mano" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPv C'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.

Monday, February 23, 2009

msb-0351 Damn I'm out of control ANGRY!

msb-0351 Damn I'm out of control ANGRY!

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...

There is not much.

I'm afraid I have been neglecting to post on your blogs, but my wife came upon an entry on "BlindBeard's MS blog" [ http://blindbeardsmsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20%25%5E%23%24*%20SSA ] that moved me to write a response to her old post.

I really feel her pain.

I am becoming possessed by a generalized feeling of anger. (When it gets to rage, get the fuck away for me as far and fast as your legs will carry you or your wheel chair can roll you.)

Part of me knows that it does no good to rail against the situation, but another part of me wants to shake the fucking life out of the idiot lawyers and judges who sit on the SSI's bench, sticking their legs out to trip up the unwary cripple.

What the fuck kind of people are these?

No wonder Shakespeare wrote in Henry VI "The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."

I have never met a bunch of people, and I use the term people very loosely, more deserving of death by strangulation, after I have had the very great pleasure of flailing the skin from their bones.

"
You blocks!
You stones!
You worse than senseless things!
"

The worst part is that I "know" that its not the hiring managers' fault.

I never get past HR because I "might", not "do" mind, just "might", need medical care and that would send everybody's premiums up.

So they go the next candidate on the list after making some non-discrimitory noises...

This country needs a good dose of smelling salts and to get their heads out of Richard M. Nixon's dead ass.

This country needs single payer universal health care "not" on any employers tab.

Oh my "gods!"

I need some "Hariprasad Chaurasia" [ http://www.hariprasadchaurasia.com/ ] to calm down.

I'll be back in half an hour after some meditation and some breathing exercises.

I am boiling in a maelstrom of anger and I'm the heat that's causing it to boil.

---- "My Baby Done Hurt Me" by: "Aux and Big Mike" http://tonewheelorchestra.tripod.com/hub/

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"

---- "I Know You Are Hurting" byL: "Panda Kopanda" http://www.pandakopanda.com/

Feed Me comes third, so...

I am not even bothering anymore.

These shows are my gift to you.

Enjoy my demented rantings.

---- "Love Hurts from the Musical Saint Peters Umbrella" by:"Wright and Hudson" http://www.mevio.com/music/?artist_id=5195

"Thesis:"

I'll be going to the IBS (Intercollegiate Broadcasting System) conference on March 6th, 7th and 8th.

It should be interesting.

Apart from the fact that every other conference conference I have ever attended posted their schedule on a grid with the rooms on one axis and time on the other axis, which made much easier to see what was going to be where when.

Whine whine, bitch, bitch, complain, complain.

---- "It Still Hurts" by: "Jeff McMullen" http://www.myspace.com/jeffmcmullen

"Synthesis:"

Attending conferences used to be one of my favoritest ways of passing some time away from home and office, pretending that I was working while pressing the flesh, schmoozing and boozing.

I have attended many conferences related to my old obsession of programming, object-oriented programming and other techie things.

I used to enjoy the feeling of being a room full of other tech gurus (well the first day, the following morning it was always a bit rougher getting up any enthusiasm until after a "Bloody" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(cocktail) ] and the third cup of coffee...)

Still it was a lot of fun going away to conferences and trying to come home with as much swag as we could carry.

Linux conferences were always good for a year's supply of T-Shirts.

Smalltalk conferences weren't as good for the wardrobe but I used to make all sorts of contacts and meet old friends from prior conferences.

Sometimes the conferences were paid for by my publishers. That was sweet.

If I could get my ass there, they'd pay for my attendance.

That was specially true if I was on any panels. (But I rarely was. [I'd never been one for the politicking and maintaining the relationships required to appear as a regular on the conference circuit. {Its too much work and I would rather have been doing something else. (I always got along better with the equipment than with the people using the equipment. [What do you think? Clinical Aspergers' { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergers_syndrome } or what?])}])

---- "Truth Hurts" by: "Lisa Redford" http://www.lisaredford.com/

"Conclusion:"

Its never easy to shake an obsession.

I know because I am an obsessive S.O.B.

At least I have learned how to let go and ... move on.

---- "Hurting is to Blame demo" by: "boy novice" http://bnss.podshow.com/

Outro

spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0004

spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0004

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow_0004.m4a

CSN&Y - Ohio

YouTube -> ..

----

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

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

---- "We Share Our Mothers' Health (Radio Edit) (Single)" by: "The Knife" http://www.last.fm/music/The+Knife

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.

----

Intro

Well, I guess my prospective guest didn't want to be interviewed.

That's okay. Some people want to stay quiet. Some people are intimidated by the the thought of speaking into a microphone.

That's another kind of handicap, one as visible as high blood pressure and just as debilitating.

Its a form of self censorship when its not warranted.

We'll just go on, as we always do, leaning on our crutches, our canes or wheeling on by.

---- "I am Canadian" by "Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie" http://www.deadtroll.com/

Thesis:

Coming from Canada as I do gives me a different perspective on the issue of health care.

Why on earth is the United States asking employers to shoulder the burden of health care?

This is a specially glaring hypocrisy in the face of how the United States is treating its military personel.

Apart from particularly glaring aberrations at Walter Reed medical center, during the reign of "Bush the Younger", when out of sight was out of mind and not out of pocket, the people of the United States treat their military very well.

---- "Zhong Guo Ren Min Jie Fang Jun Jin Xing Qu (Marching Song Of China Military)" by: "China Military Philharmonic Society"

Synthesis:

Health care is particularly poorly served the moment you really need it.

When you really need it, you are likely to be at least temporarily unemployable (and, quite likely, unemployed.)

Most likely, through some accident or infection, you are taken out of the work force and are put at the mercy of people without any mercy.

I refer to the accountants who can look at their balance sheets, look at you, and not see any difference.

While I acknowledge the need for accountancy, I don't believe that they should ever be put in charge of anything.

The current multi-trillion dollar banking debacle and fiscal melt down was the result of people who knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

And "we're" left holding the nothing.

---- "Holding Nothing" by: "noel" http://bitmunk.com/media/6425677

Imagine you're working for somebody and you come up with a way to stop having to pay for a growing problem.

You can rightly figure that getting that off the books will get you a bonus.

Health care is a growing problem and by getting rid of the source of the problem, all these sick people, you can save your company huge sums every year.

I mean, you're a company, not a charitable institution, so why should you as a company be expected to pay for all these sick people.

So you look for loop-holes, hire them under different rules, anything so you're not stuck with their health care tab.

Never mind that the current health policy system was started as a kind of Ponzi scheme [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme ] started by Nixon to save his political butt, (I mean, people were dying in the street after having had to burn through their life savings, [The more life savings, the longer people were able to delay the inevitable impoverishment, until it became terminal, {"viz:" you died in the street because you were broke. (The seventies were an ugly and hazardous time in America, I would refer you to Kent State for an example of how dangerous it, and Nixon, really was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings].)}])

New policy adherents would subsidize the costs of taking care of the the current policy holders while the insurance salesmen pocketed the money. (Sort of like Bernard Madhoff paid his dividends. [Hey! It worked fine, until people needed the money and he didn't have it. Given the quality SEC's oversight, "quid custodiet ipso custodes", its the only reason he got caught, {but, in retrospect, it was inevitable, wasn't it?}])

---- "Four Dead In Ohio" by: Four Dead In Ohio" http://www.csny.com/

Conclusion:

The current health-don't-care system has features reminiscent of, and is administered like, a huge Ponzi scheme.

Money goes in, profits are pocketed and as little money as the insurer can get away with paying without causing an insurrection goes to actually pay for health care.

The money is being paid by employers, people who aren't really liable and aren't likely to suffer if they shirk their responsibility (In fact, they're likely to profit from doing so.)

So it goes back to the same area of social responsibility.

Is the United States grown up enough to take care of its sick?

Or is it going to become the only developed nation on the planet which trips over the dead and dying naked bodies of its citizens in the street?

The jury is still out.

---- "Jury's Out" by: '' Dave Nevling" http://www.davenevling.com/

Outro

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

Friday, February 20, 2009

wspc_P34kO1l_0011

wspc_P34kO1l_0011

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/wspc_P34kO1l_0011.m4a

YouTube ->. .

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

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

Gas Prices, Gas Gouging, Peak Oil, Elasticity, Supply Demand
..

The Smashing Pumkins "Zero"

..

Never let on that you know what's coming.

---- "Saved by Zero" by: "Fixx" http://www.thefixx.com/

Thesis:

While I intend to concentrate this audio column on "dealing" with society as it finds a new equilibrium in an energy impoverished landscape, I should point you to some resources for information about peak oil.

There are books, blogs, mailing lists, podcasts, movies which can serve to persuade you that the world as we know it "is" coming to an end. All of these information resources will do that and more.

Mind you, I took a longer perspective and since we'll take about 250 years to go through all the oil (and after 150 years we're about halfway through all the oil there is, [but there's going to be a whole lot more people after the shrinking puddle of oil that's left,]) I figured that we weren't going to disappear gently into that long goodnight quite so easily as that.

Some distopians would have you believe in a "Mad Max" scenario, [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max ] others would point to "Mullah Omar and his merry bunch of murderers" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Omar ] as the way that things were going to go down, but that's just such a stupid waste that I can just dispense with it.

We aren't going to suddenly forget how to read or write and we aren't going to all become microcephalic imbeciles overnight.

---- "Return To Zero" by: "TAPKAE" http://tapkae.com/blog/

Synthesis:

This must perforce be a recapitulation of my own journey to awareness.

It all started with some rumblings I'd heard about from an accountant regarding long term investing and why 30 years was the longest term they gave for depreciating assets.

From that thoroughly dull and bo-o-ring introduction to the subject came the realization that John D. Rockerfeller had made all of his fortune exploiting the oil in Pennsylvania and then Texas/Oklahoma. (Standard Oil lasted until 1920 before it got broken up because ol' John D. was a ruthess bastard and ran his business like it too...)

Unlike the causes of the First World War, which had to do European marketing rights for Silesian pigs, "I kid you not," the second world war happened mostly over oil.

And the United States had a lot of it and nobody else did. But that didn't last long. War burns through a few billion barrels of the stuff.

The British had always enjoyed screwing with the boundaries of countries within their possessions. If things were running left to right, they set the national borders up and down.

Like they did to the Turks remnants of the Ottaman Empire, the Kurds, the Sunni, the Shiaa in Mesopotmia (which covered Turkey, Iraq and Iran,), the factions in India (which took an extremely nasty, bloody civil war to partition themselves into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh,) Afghanistan, which is at best a loose amalgam or warring tribal areas, and the pattern is repeated all over Africa and in the Pacific.).

After the second world war, the United States and Great Britain had deposed the rightfully elected but intelligent, left-leaning "Mohammad Mosaddeq" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddeq ] in 1953, the year I was born, in order to put up the puppet potentate known as "Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi ] so Aramco could get at the oil reserves in the middle, I hadn't heard bugger all about anybody extracting any oil out of Pennsylvania ground.

That was because it was cheaper to suck it out of the sand in Iran , Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and ship it all those thousands of miles in the largest ships ever built that to try to suck any more oil out of Pensylvania.

Then "M. K. Hubbert" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._King_Hubbert ] working for Shell Oil in Texas made some predictions aqbout when he'd be able to retire. He did some "back of the envelope" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-of-the-envelope_calculation ] and came up with a peak oil for Texas in 1972.

So if you're wondering why we're supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia, fighting in Iraq, and paying pennies on the dollar to keep the Nigerians government as corrupt as it is, its because of access to oil.

That lack of oil is the reason we don't give a crap about Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Tsvangirai, a starving populace or an economy in absolute free fall with the Zimbabwean dollar being backed by Mugabe's fillings.

US citizens might make some righteous noises but, on the face of the actions the American government takes throughout the world, we aren't very nice, and therefore, we aren't very popular.

---- "Glass" by: "???" http://???.html

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.

---- "A Moment In The Glass" by: "Lo-Fez Beagle Chowder" http://eukt.mevio.com/music/?artist_id=1454

Synthesis Part Deux

So now that you understand who's what, what's what, where's what, when's what and why's what, how about some other sources so you can compare with the other nuts out there who are still at the "Chicken Little" stage of discovery.

Most of the sources are easily found online. (When you have something this spectacularly, sensationally scary you want to be heard.)

The problem is that peak oil is an economic fact. Its basically just a story of commodity depletion and the turn over of the economy as it adjusts to the new reality.

The economy has done this for thousands of years, through every supposed revolution in energy source, from canine, to bovine, to equine, to avian, to cetacian, to petroleum, to hydrolic, to hydro-electric, to electric, to nuclear, to termo-nuclear from afar a.k.a. solar.

We have gone through all sorts of "revolutions" and at a meta-level they have all led to that most dreaded thing in the human condition: change.

Google knows all so go and google "peak oil".

Don't worry about the debunkers.

They're just arguing about the actual timing,

Or worse, they're saying that the world is never going to run out of oil and denying the evidence and the lessons that came from Pennsylvania, Texas, Prudoe Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea oil fields, the Western US continental shelf, Venezuala, Nigeria, Iran and Iraq.

---- "Koyaanisqatsi" by: "Philip Glass Ensemble" http://www.last.fm/music/Philip+Glass/_/Koyaanisqatsi

Conclusion:

So you've just been exposed to some more information about peak oil from the soothsayers of suffering, the diviners of doom, the predictors of pain, the dismal augurers.

No wonder I don't want to go there.

Besides we have about a hundred years to affetuate the changes we need to enact to make the world a livable place without using any oil.

In order to do it right, we need to start now, but we can take baby stept, dudes and dudettes, baby steps.

We can make mistakes and correct them as we go, rather than hurtling full speed towards either a brick wall or a precipice.

---- "Organic" by: "Philip Glass Ensemble" http://www.last.fm/music/Philip+Glass/_/Koyaanisqatsi

Outro

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, February 18, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0032

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0032

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0032.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> Rush - Tom Sawyer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7DFsBcVMDA

This is episode 32

In yet another example of the perversity of the human spirit here is "Praise The Lord And Pass The Amunition" by "Guy Lombardo"

----

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.

----

This evening's theme is "In Praise".

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Praise The Lord And Pass The Amunition" by: "Guy Lombardo" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Op. 52/6, D 839, "Ave Maria" by: "Franz Schubert" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Stabat Matar: Cujus animam" by: "Gioachino Rossini" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Ave verum corpus K618" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Requiem, Opus 48: Pie Jesu" by: "Gabriel Fauré" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Cantata BWV80: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (Chorale)" by: "Johann Sebastian Bach" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Gloria V589: Laudamus te" by: "Antonio Vivaldi" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Miserere: Psalm 51" by: "Giuseppe Verdi" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Requiem: Libera me (Excerpt)" by: "Giuseppe Verdi" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Exsultate, jubilate K165/158A" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Suite 6 E Major, BWV 817" by: "Johann Sebastian Bach" 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

Friday, February 13, 2009

wspc_P34kO1l_0010

wspc_P34kO1l_0010

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/wspc_P34kO1l_0010.m4a

YouTube ->. .

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

Here it is, February 13th, almost St. Valentine's and I'm supposed to tell you that the way of life you know and cherish is kicking its own ass to the curb?

I don't think so...

Here's some music for your raging hormones...

---- "People are still having sex" by: "La Tour" http://www.discogs.com/LaTour-People-Are-Still-Having-Sex/release/177970

Thesis:

Peak Oil is a stretch, an arc, on a curve when we go from being an oil rich planet to being an oil poor planet. (More curves intersecting curves again, oil discovery, oil production, oil extraction prices going above oil sale falling below)

At the risk of seeming flip about it, "This is not a risk, its an opportunity".

Yes we're going to see a lot of changes and change always has its dogmatic enemies. (Sorry folks but as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, change will happen. Nothing lasts forever. Deal with it.)

The YouTube video which accompanies these posts is alarming and a bit of a bummer because it has to be. The word is not universally out there.

But you shouldn't be "that" alarmed about it.

We have plenty of time to start ducking the shovel that's swinging at our collective face.

---- "Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll" by: "Ugly" http://www.myspace.com/uglyamerica

Synthesis:

The best way to dodge a bullet is not to be in its path in the first place. That's simple physics.

However, this isn't about dodging bullets, avoiding shovels to the face, or even trying to juggle chain saws.

Its about seeing things and reacting intelligently.

My intended audience is all made up of college students. And at a Catholic private college, no less. You were all smart enough to get here.

You are probably going to be smart enough to see the writing on the wall (a scrawled oily smear saying "I'm dead and I was killed by... uh... uh.. [drops like a sack of potatoes.])

Coming from the eastern side of Canada and the United States, as I do I'm big on public transit. In Weisbaden, Germany I didn't need a car at all. I took their buses everywhere,

I'm even bigger on no transit at all.

----

Here's a question for you.

What form of transportation carries more passengers that all of the other form combined, planes, trains, buses and automobiles, in near perfect safety and with zero CO2 emissions?

The answer?

The elevator.

----

The biggest problem with trying to use an elevator comes from the fact that the holes are all in a straight line up and down.

Imagine if you could go sideways?

You not only punch in your floor (vertical destination) but your site (x & y horizontal destination.)

For most things, you'd never need to sit down so we just provided hand holds for lateral shifts.

Imagine being in a big building. A really big building. A friggin' humongous building.

Imagine you're on the "street level" of the Petronas Towers but instead of two huge cylinders for living spaces, there's like fifty of them, and instead of one sky bridge about half-way up, there's like twenty all shuttling elevator cages around up and down and across on mag-lev tracks with "film cog" carriers.

We already know how to build Petronas towers.

We already know how to build cog railway cars.

We already know how to program systems to handle elevator cars.

We already know how to build all of this zero emission stuff.

We've just never attempted it at the proper scale ... yet.

Okay, just so you know. I come from Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Its frigin' COLD in the winter time in Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Like for a week in February it hovers around forty degrees below zero. That's friggin' cold.

Did you know that you could live on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river, get to work down town, across the river, go see a friend for supper in the north end of the city and get back home in the worst weather, (when its a blizzard outside or when its too cold to snow,) without even needing a woolen sweater?

The streets are deserted because of "Le Metro" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro ] which whisks almost a million people between work and home underground.

If you live somewhere with direct access to the Metro, you look at ol' man winter through the windows of a "brasserie" and never get cold and never get your shoes wet with slush.

And it the same with the hottest days of summer. We could ignore the weather...

Montréal is a nascent archology.

So I'm just saying that the system has already been proven to work.

---- "Jungle Juice" by: "All Crazy" http://www.myspace.com/allcrazyphilly

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.

---- "Turn Me On" by: "Valentino Casanova" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=3cP&q=%22Turn+Me+On%22+by%3A+%22Valentino+Casanova%22&btnG=Search

Synthesis

I'm not one for whining and bitching.

I'm not one for moaning and groaning.

I'm already too old for peak oil to do more to me that screw up my retirement, if I had any left after the financial melt down killed off my potential clients , took care of my retirement money and screwed over me but good. [Like the old Chinese curse says, I'm living in interesting times.])

So what can I do right now? And what can I see in the future as a way of possibly helping myself? And you too?

Right now, I'm getting rid of my car. Hey I can actually do it. I live within hobblng distance of public transit. In New York City and environs, owning a car actually detracts from your mobility.

If you don't live the same way, you'll have to move wont you.

I'm not going to sugar-coat it.

Forget about owning your own cars unless they're electric. Forget about needing cars too when you can take an elevator/people mover anywhere you'll need to go.

Forget living in the suburbs unless you are independently wealthy.

But there are plenty of ways we can live together, but apart, in archologies.

The farming too can be done in climate controlled conditions. No more worrying about the rains being late or coming too often. No more worrying about how to get the produce picked, or to get it to to market.

---- "Sexy Noises Turn Me On" by: "Salt-N-Pepa" http://www.saltunrapped.com/

Conclusion:

Montréal is an example, a starting point, showing us what is possible already.

Its got lots of problems that it inherits from its older infrastructure, but its a mile post.

Now lets think big, really big, and really modern.

(That should get the architects really interested. Build an archology and name it after yourself.)

---- "I'm Too Sexy" by: "Right Said Fred" http://www.rightsaidfred.com/

Outro

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

----

And we're ending off with something originally composed by "Fats Waller" ( http://www.muziekweb.nl/shared/cat/ti/index.php?tnr=JDX1086 ) but I have no idea of where picked up this recording.

---- "Sextette from Lucia" by: "Royal Italian Marine Band (Musical group)"

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0031

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0031

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0031.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> Tsugaru Shamisen 'n Tuvan Throat Singing
..

This is episode 31

I've always had a slightly evil slant on the stories people tell each other.

Its called bullshit and it deserves to be shoveled into a pile and set afire.

I was specially struck by "Virginia Woolf" in "A Room of One's Own"making the point that if Shakespeare had had a sister, it wouldn't have mattered if she'd been better than he was, she'd never have got a word in edge-wise.

That's why I've always loved "Siobahn Fahey" who sings divinely on "You're History" by: "Shakespeare's Sister" http://www.shakespearssister.co.uk/

----

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.

----

This evening's theme is a "String Serenade".

And I have an idea on how to close out this evening's show. Heh heh.

(If you're getting the show via the web, your browser's letting you in one the joke and if you're catching the show via iTunes, look at the end of the chapters list. :-)

Now "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"You're History" by: "Shakespeare's Sister" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Serenade for Strings in C Major, Opus 48: Waltz" by: "Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Violin Sonata in A Major: Fourth Movement" by: "César Franck" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Violin Concerto No.1 in E-flat Major: Third Movement" by: "Niccolò Paganini" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Violin Concerto in G Major K216: Second Movement" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Serenade, Opus 6: First Movement" by: "Josef Suk" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Andante festivo" by: "Jean Sibelius" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Opus 28" by: "Camille Saint-Saëns" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Serenade for Strings in E Major, Opus 22: Fifth Movement" by: "Antonin Dvorák" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"A Demonstration Of Sygyt And Kargyraa"" by: "Shaktar Shulban" 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, February 09, 2009

The Disability Show 0003

spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0003

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow_0003.m4a

YouTube -> ..

----

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

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

---- "Walking On Broken Glass" by: "Annie Lennox"

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.

----

Intro

I have noticed, when I can look up from the ground when getting around this campus, that there are several other disabled students and that they are negotiating the campus with varying degrees of difficulty.

They aren't much helped by the architecture of the place, which is a mish-mash of donated buildings built in an age when the disabled were at best ignored and at shut out of public view.

---- "Walking The Dog" by "George and Ira Gershwin"

Thesis:

This show concerns one delightful young woman I met while we were both a bit winded from making our way up the stairs to the third floor in "McDermott Hall" (and we were a bit winded from the exertion, not because we're fat, though that is another kind of disability, [the young lady in question is "Runway Model Thin" and would be the envy of any of the geeks I have known over the years to drape over their arms {They would pass out at the thought of her actually being "in" their arms. ("In your dreams 'Pipe Stem' ... In your friggin' wet, little dreams.")}])

I can't help but wonder at how magnanimous she feels towards the architects of this place, the dudes who simply ignored the mobility needs of five percent of the population, not out of malevolence, (or at least, I "hope" not out of malevolence,) but out of sheer "never look up from their drawing board" ignorance.

(Can you smell the theme of next weeks' show by now?)

---- "Walking My Baby Back Home" by: "Nat King Cole"

Synthesis:

I find that the biggest problems in architecture can always be pointed to by ignorance.

Nobody knew about frequency of oscillation so the "Tacoma Narrows Bridge" swayed in the wind and went down like a "ribbon on a stick" held by a rhythmic dancer, who'd just taken a bullet for the team.

And this was in nineteen forty folks.

We're not talking about our stupid old ancestors building cathedrals in the Middle Ages here; back when the height of construction technology was the flying butress.

We're talking about unintended consequences of structural members in motion. The kind of stuff architects are paid to damn well know about. But they didn't and several million bucks of bridge ended up in the drink.

How about we try to focus the architects' attention way closer to home and get them to stop putting things like elevators in out of the way places, that's when they even realize that nobody, hale or disabled, wants to walk up five stories.

---- "Walking Down China Town" by: "Keenan Baxter" http://www.myspace.com/keenanclassicaljazz

I used to be a student of architecture way back when.

My heroes were people like Le Corbusier (who'se gigantic architecture was so unappealing a place to live that Brasilia was populated against the will of the people living there. They actually preferred living in the shanty towns of the workers who built Brasilia.)

They were people like Mies van Der Rohe, whose Teutonic twist to architecture led to sterile and unlivable places.

I was also quite fond of Robert Venturi and his post-modern style, I. M. Pei, Walter Gropius, Oscar Neimeyer, Eero Saarinen Frank Lloyd Wright, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gio Ponti, Paul Wedlinger, Paul Rudolph, and Mario Ciampi.

Now I'd like to take a sledge hammer to their knees and see how the experience of making their own way through their own monstrosities would affect their ideas of architecture and how it affects pedestrian traffic flow through it.

I bet it would result in a lot of changes.

No more sweeping grand staircases with elevators tacked on as an after though and tucked away like they were ashamed of how shoddy and ill conceived their construction really was.

We can only hope that the experience of crap refits as lip service to the ADA won't be repeated, that is when they're even attempted, like the ridiculous wheel chair lift in the McDermott hall up to the admissions desk and first floor and nowhere else; unlike Hannaberry Hall which is in violation of even the most liberal interpretion of the ADA.

---- "Walking Contradiction" By: "Green Day"

Conclusion:

Like Monty Python once said, "That's the kind of blinkered Philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."

Yes, architects have a lot to answer for. I have rarely met one that even looked up from the guidelines books to see it those guidelines are even applicable or if they are sufficient.

Most of these books deal with floor loads and structural stress limits and only rarely cover things like usability.

I'm going to try to talk her into making an appearance next week.

---- "Design for Living" by: "Flanders and Swann"

Outro

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

Friday, February 06, 2009

spc_wspc_PeakOil-0009

wspc_P34kO1l_0009

media files:

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

YouTube ->. .

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

---- "Another Day In Paradise" by: "Phil Collins"

Thesis:

This episode is going to be a little, uh, different.

I'm being a lazy so-and-so and combining some classwork with this show / podcast.

Part of this evening's show is going to be an explanatory speech on PeakOil.

I know, I know, that's what we had with the first seven weeks of shows, the last half of last term, fall 2008.

I am doing this to kill two birds with one boulder.

So let's all watch as "birdie go bye bye,"

---- "My Blue Heaven" by: "Bob Crosby"

Synthesis:

This is an expository speech, wherein I reveal something to"inform" the listeners, as opposed to a suppository speech, wherein I just pull fiction, masquerading as fact, right out of my ass.

So sit back and for the next five to seven minutes let my palaver lull you into complacency.

----

How many of you know where oil comes from?

We're not talking geographically, we're not talking geo-politically, we're talking physically.

It doesn't come from the gas station either.

Oil comes from the ground.

There is some nonsense about it all being from fossil plant matter that died millions of years ago and oil is the result of bio-mass putrefaction. Which works fine until you realize that some of the oil exists in large pockets under the ocean and there is no way that plants lived anywhere near there in billions of years.

There is also some nonsense about it being produced (and I really mean excreted,) by anaerobic bacteria which live everywhere inside the crust of the earth and which we have recently discovered. (See, there are new things under the sun, way under the sun. The major part of the planet's bio mass was unsuspected. [ http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/1027_Bacteria_Found_Thriving_Deep.html ])

It doesn't really matter.

The source is immaterial. Its a slow process (in fact if you believe in actual fossil fuels, it has stopped.)

What matters is that we've been using up to sixty million barrels of the stuff a day, and, barring the current, hopefully temporary, economic slowdown, we're going to use it up until its all gone.

We're right now at an inflection point: Peak Oil, which means that we're about half-way through all the oil we've found to date and all of the oil we're going to find.

We started using rock oil, a.k.a. petroleum, in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, when whale oil became extremely expensive and hard to come by.

Made a tycoon out of John D. Rockefeller; after the U.S. Civil War.

Standard Oil, which got so much wealth for ol' John D., got broken up because he was basically an emotionless, egoistical bastard and the company got to big to live.

But the "powers that were" needn't have worried.

There's no oil left in Pennsylvania, is there?

There no oil left in Texas, is there?

Actually, there's no oil left in the continental United States, is there?

There's almost no oil left in the North Sea, is there?

There isn't that much left in Prudhoe bay, is there?

The Catalina coast and the entire Gulf of Mexico is getting depleted enough that the oil companies are looking at the real-estate off the deeper coast of Florida.

The Canadian Tar Sands are still unrecoverable though they're hovering around the break even point.

Oh, there's some oil left out there all right, but its not economically viable; meaning that it costs too much to recover, to pump it out of the ground.

The story is the same in Russia, on the coast lines of Asia, in the ocean bottoms, even in the Middle East.

Its the same ... everywhere.

So we've got us a "situation" on our hands.

"Chicken Little" was right.

The sky "is" falling.

He had help in the voice of "M. King Hubbert" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._King_Hubbert ] a research scientist with the Shell Oil research laboratories in Houston Texas, who did some simple math and made a few predictions that have since been borne out.

He saw the oil reserves in Texas and predicted that they were going to peak in the seventies. He saw that every barrel drawn from that point on would be drawn at a bigger cost from a dwindling supply.

Sure enough he was right.

Oil is a finite commodity and suffers from the same problems that all commodities run into.

Their supply runs out.

That is to say that in the immediate term consumption demand curve outstrips production supply curve.

When dealing with natural sources, the species can even go extinct.

The biggest problem facing the dodo was that it was big, fat, flightless and tasty.

This last point is not the problem facing other species, like the "Komodo Dragon."

And tastiness is not the issue.

Utility can be enough to seal a specie's fate.

As surely as the islanders on "Rapa Nui" ran out of trees to use a rollers to move their "Aku Aku" from the quarry in the central peak out to the beaches round the island.

Rather than bitch and moan, whine and complain and run around yelling "The American Way Of Life is under threat," just face facts.

It was a great hundred and fifty years but the oil is becoming prohibitively expensive on the down-side of the peak oil.

It doesn't matter that the extraction technology is still improving. Its an incremental improvement.

It doesn't matter that that there are still pockets of oil being discovered, even though they are getting smaller, deeper, farther and "not" cheaper.

The hunger for energy, although in order not to mix metaphors, I should say "the thirst" for oil is growing as fast as the population did over the last century, going from less than 1 billion to over six and a half billion.

It still takes a woman nine months to give birth regardless of how many women are assigned the task, while it will take the aggregate of humanity only a little more than 16% as long to consume the same amount of oil that mankind consumed during the period of time from 1850 to 1914.

Basically we're all screwed if we try to keep on the same gravy train that the Western World has been on since the end of the First World War.

"Can't do it. No way José. Won't fly."

If that's all you see, you're sure that we're all going to Hell in a hand basket.

Now, I'm upbeat about this and I'll tell you "why" in the next segment.

Here's a foreshadowing of that episode:

"The world we know has been created, in its entirety, since the introduction of oil a hundred and fifty years ago.

Nothing that exists now could even have been imagined then.

The biggest game changer, the mother of all unintended consequences, the internet. born out of a project by the US Military to build a scalable communication system capable of surviving nuclear devastation, couldn't even be imagined back less than fifty years ago.

In another hundred and fifty years, its all going to have to change again... But remember, change is cumulative...

There are no more "buggy whip" makers, but then there is no more need for them. There isn't going to be any need for them in the coming age either."

This is not a problem folks, this is an opportunity.

---- "If I Ever Lose This Heaven" by: "Quincy Jones"

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.

---- "Stairway To Heaven" by: "Led Zeppelin"

Conclusion:

So that was my expository speech, wherein I expostulated, exaspiratedly about the execrable human condition that we tend to look at the glass, darkly, when it doesn't matter if its half-full or half-empty, we simply have "got" to stop drinking from it.

The bottom of the glass is visible and the pub is closing.

We're just going to have to find something else to drink, somewhere else.

But then, all of life is change isn't it...

The folks who rail against change are really railing about the fact that they've got to move their butts, possibly exposing their heads, to determine where the next bucks are going to come from.

Guess what?

I don't exactly know either, but its going to be a lot more fun finding that out than it is just sitting here, in the dark, along with all of the other Ethnic Mothers of those old jokes.

Have I succeeded in informing you of the facts (change is inevitable, unavoidable and even predictable,) and of my attitude to them (it can't happen fast enough for me...)

---- "Heaven Must Be Boring" by: "George Hrab"

Outro


The show notes, including 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

We're going to close off the week with

"HeavensaLie" by: "Lacuna Coil"

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0030

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0030

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0030.m4a

Video Links

This is episode 30

I'm getting more comfortable with introducing new music in with the old because there's a lot of music that fits into the mould of classical music without actually being music so old that it was all written and played long before we were born by people we couldn't possibly ever meet.

Take for instance "Myth of Beauty" by: "The Carnies" http://www.myspace.com/thecarnies


----

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.

----

This evening's theme is Myth & Magic, so cross your fingers and toes, wish on a star, kiss a frog, throw a horse shoe over your shoulder with a pinch of salt and pepper and let's "Adelante La Musica"

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Myth of Beauty" by: "The Carnies" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Peer Gynt, Op. 23 - 7. Arabian Dance" by: "Edvard Grieg" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Danse Macabre, Op. 40" by: "Camille Saint-Saëns" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"El Amor brujo (Ritual Fire Dance)" by: Manuel de Falla" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Violin Sonata in G Minor Third Movement (The Devil's Trill)" by: "Giuseppe Tartini" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"The Magic Flute (Overture)" by: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Swan Lake, Act II Introduction" by: "Peter Ilyich Tchajkovski" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV565" by: "Johann Sebastian Bach" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"The Planets: Uranus, The Magician" by: "Gustav Holst" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

"The Bogatyr Gates (in the Capital in Kiev))" by: "Modest Mussorgsky" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira.

'Alchemy" by: "Mythos" 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, February 02, 2009

wspc_TheDisabiltyShow_0002

spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0002

media files:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_TheDisabilityShow_0002.m4a

YouTube -> Dire Straits - Industrial Disease [Sydney -86]
..

----

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

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

---- "Pre-Existing Condition" by: "The Motion Sick" http://www.themotionsick.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.

----

Intro

The first and most important thing in this life is education, but it may not be what you think of as education.

I am casting my little net about, learning things about business models in an age that is internet enabled, (some would say internet disabled, [if not outright obliterated.])

While micro-payments offers a general solution for media, it still encounters difficulties and producer resistance (as opposed to consumer resistance) because of the high transaction charges from financial service providers. (Its a freakin' miracle that Apple was able to negotiate rates as low at they were to keep the cost per tune to merely 99 cents!)

----

Coming up this week, the Wednesday Thyme Warp is going to to be about "Myths and Magic".

Also coming up this week, I'm going to have a different take on Peak Oil, because I see it as a great opportunity for America to do what its done best: rise up to a challenge and spit in its eye.

Its not time to wax nostalgic back at some imaginary idyll; its time to look at it with a rising sense of purpose.

That's coming on Friday's show.... In the mean time...


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 faced 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 is the number the W.H.O. [the World Health Organization] estimates fits their definition of disability; points along the continuum from permanently to temporarily and from totally to mildly disabled.)

---- "Sick as a Dog" by: "Brad Sucks" http://www.bradsucks.net/

Thesis:

Celiac Disease is one of those diseases that can run the gamut from mild to total disability and its currently incurable.

Because of the number of people afflicted (1 in 133 people according to one website [ http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/index.htm ]) and the fact that its not deadly, research is being done on it, but not enough to change anything.

Because its not a "popular disease" (meaning its not one spread through sexual contact, ) afflicting less that 1% of the population and not gruesomely terminal, if you've got celiac disease, you're stuck with it.

---- "Sick And Tired" by: "Eric Clapton" http://www.ericclapton.com/

Synthesis:

The same website [ http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/index.htm ] has lots of basic information about

* What is celiac disease?
* What are the symptoms of celiac disease?
* Why are celiac disease symptoms so varied?
* What other health problems do people with celiac disease have?
* How common is celiac disease?
* How is celiac disease diagnosed?
* How is celiac disease treated?
* The Gluten-free Diet: Some Examples
* Points to Remember
* Hope through Research
* For More Information

Now my guest it going to try to tackle his own discovery of these points one by one, in four minutes... :-)

Take it way

[...]

---- "MSick" by: "Mark Speckman" http://cdbaby.com/cd/speckman

Conclusion:

Celiac Disease is no joke.

The immune system, (something I'm intimately acquainted with, what with my M.S. that used to try to kill me every 15 years or so, [the immune system]) gets its wires crossed and attacks part of the whole that it should instead be trying to protect,

---- "Sick" by: "Bad Acid" http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/4981/default.html

----

Outro

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