Really short show this week and virtually no show notes.

This weekend was my birthday. I had a blast. :-)

I just went to the Regents' Business Symposium for Saint Peter's College.

Speaker's were:


I've cut out most of the crowd noise, splices in some interviews carried on with all of the speakers by Professor Joseph Lamachia and put some Scarlatti (Sonata in E Major, K. 380) over the discontinuities.

Enjoy almost being there.

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0048

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0048.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> ""
..

----

This is episode 48

I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, and you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

This summer, I discovered I could write and assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

Its also live at MSBPodcast.com.

----

Last week I suffered from a major brain fart which wiped out this episode as I was saving the final product.

Yup a major oops. And its "mea culpa."  Something broke in my workflow.

They happen.

Like I spent the week-end frantically preparing for, doing research on and eventually applied for a job on the SPC website with almost two megabyte  of supporting evidence gathered while examining every damn page doing due diligence for the job of "Assistant Director of Web Strategies and Communications."

(Did you know the site consists of 1,890 page, 128 of which are there redirecting people to another page because of a structural problem in the page naming scheme [SPC uses numbers,] there is no versioning system, no galleries for pictures, [they're embedded right on the pages,] and some of the pages are there because test and development are being done in the production environment.

The SPC web site is really amateurish. And that is my professional opinion as someone who did it for banks. You would never entrust building an ATM to these people. )

Turns out that the job had been filled previously some time back, but nobody had thought to take the friggin' posting down.

Grrr. This is the kind of ineptitude that I keep encountering. "Its not my job..." or "I didn't know I had to take that down."

God how do these people keep food on the table, I'm sure I don't know.

The lack of coordination in this college is proof that the staff is almost dysfunctional.

Here comes the last side of record 5  and both sides of record 6 of "The Jazz Singers."

----

This episode featured the following music:

"How High the Moon" by: "The Metronome All Stars feat. Billy Eckstine" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I'm Just a Lucky So And So" by: "Al Hibbler with Duke Ellington & His Orchestra" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"There's a Small Hotel" by: "Joe Williams with Harry Edison & his band" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Dedicated to You" by: "Johnny Hartman and the John Coltrane Quartet" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"It Had To Be You" by: "Ray Charles" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"When Did You Leave Heaven?" by: "Henry "Red" Allen & his Orchestra" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Think Of Me, LIttle Daddy" by: "Trummy Young with Jimmy Lunceford & his orchestra" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Mumbles" by: "Clark Terry with the Oscar Peterson Trio" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Tea For Two" by: "Joe Mooney Quartet" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Dear Bix" by: "Dave Frishberg" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Chinatown, My Chinatown" by: "Slim And Slam (Bulee "Slim" Gaillard & Leroy Elliott "Slam" Stewart)" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Professor Bop" by: "Babs Gonzales" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Cloudburst" by: "Lambert, Hendricks & Ross" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"In The Mood For Love" by: "KIng Pleasure" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Yardbird Suite" by: "Bob Dorough" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Oh What A Night For Love" by: "Mel Torme" 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.

 wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0014

YouTube video(s):

"Swine Flu Song" by: "PutnamPig"

..

----

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.

----

Intro

I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

----

I just ran across something (a couple of weeks ago as you hear it but this morning as I write this,) about our friend the swine flu.

Its [ http://www.disabilityresourceexchange.com/group/coping/forum/topic/show?id=1535194%3ATopic%3A16493 ] on the Disability Resource Exchange run by one of the sponsors of the MSB series of my shows: Rudy Sims.

I'll get back to Rudy later because he's a great guy and an inspiration. He's sparking of lots of ideas in my febrile little brain. :-)

---- "Wicked Eyed Mule" By: "Maria Daines http://www.maria-daines.com/

Before you get the idea that I don't take swine flu seriously, I do, and I don't.

"All,"  not some but "all," flu viruses begin their existence, mutating in the guts of Chinese ducks.

Swine flu, Spanish flu of 1918, Ethiopian large intestine flue of 1714 (I just made that one up, :-) it doesn't matter. They "ALL" begin life pullulating in the gut of Chinese ducks.

Get rid of Chinese ducks and the flu would be eliminated and we'd have to become prey to something else, like Bolivian hemorrhagic fever (BHF), also known as black typhus, Ordog Fever, or Machupo virus, or the Marburg virus or maybe to the Ebola virus. (They're in Wikipedia, look 'em all up if you wanna gross yourselves out.)

It doesn't matter.

Something going to have our number.

We just happen to be susceptible to something in Chinese duck poop.

And despite the thousands of little tragedies it causes every year, things could be a lot worse.

---- "Too Late"  By: "Maria Daines http://www.maria-daines.com/

The article goes on about hygiene (very important) and contagion (how to avoid catching all of the nasties out there.)

---- "Business Ain't Music" By: "Maria Daines http://www.maria-daines.com/

We should heed the advice to avoid people. Good luck in a school. Its like swimming in a cess pit of germs, disease and infection.  

---- "Pay For This" By: "Maria Daines http://www.maria-daines.com/
 
Frankly, there are so many ways to "cease to be", to ring down the curtain and join the choir invisible, to [expletive deleted] snuff it that its a wonder that we're alive in the first place.

---- "So Many Ways I could Kill You" by: "Madsumo" http://www.madsumo.com/

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.

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.

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0047

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0047.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> ""
..

----

This is episode 47

I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, and you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

This summer, I discovered I could write and assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

Its also live at MSBPodcast.com.

----

I have been busy, busy, busy.

This week I finish off Roy Elderidge before starting with a 4 album series called "The Jazz Singers"

I'm going to pause between the songs to tell you something about who they've actually featuring.

Adelante la musica.

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Dale's Wall" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I Still Love Him So" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Wailing" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"How Long Has This Been Going On" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Hanid" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Undecided" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"My Honey's Lovin' Arms" by: "Bing Crosby & The Mills Brothers" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I Ain't got Nobody" by: "Cab Callowy & His Orchestra" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Love Me" by: "Jack Teagarden" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Baby Won't You Please Come Home" by: "George Thomas with McKiney's Cotton Pickers" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"As Long as I Live" by: "Red McKenzie & The Spirit of Rythm" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I want a Little Girl" by: "Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie & his orchestra" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"You Set Me On Fire" by: "Pha Terrell with Andy Kirk & his Twelve Clouds of Joy" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

'How High The Moon: by: "The MetronomeAll Stars feat. Bily Eckstine" 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.

wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0013.5

YouTube video(s):

"" by: ""

..

----

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.

----

Intro

I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

----

Sorry but this time I was following the lure of a job and the time I would have spent preparing a show was eaten writing up a new version of an old résumé, emailing and snail mailing it.

For the next 49 minutes of so, you're going to hear one of my favorite musicians Aaron English.

----

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.

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.

----

YouTube video(s):

"" by: ""

The music this time was:


 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/


 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/


 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/


 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/


 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0046

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0046.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> "Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge 1942"
..

----

This is episode 46

I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, and you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

This summer, I discovered I could write and assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

Its also live at MSBPodcast.com.

----

I discovered that even if:
• you keep complete backups (and I do,) and
• have spare equipment as backup (and I do,)
 it still takes a lo-ong time to get a 319GB drive image off of the backup and restore it to the active drive.

And the studio is looking at using a terabyte drive.

Nah … I don't think so.

Using a pair of 500GB drives, mirroring each other, and ordering a new pair of drives when, not if but when, a 'live' drive fails is a good strategy to keep the studio running.

You can still be operating on the redundant drive while waiting for the new drives to arrive. (I'd order them then for two reasons:
1) the drives will both be fresh from the manufacturer and
2) the price is likely to drop between my original order and the replacement order.)

Then you're going to have to pull the data off the 'live' drive, make an incremental snapshot backup, roll the all of data onto the new drives, at least, a day or so after you've started the process, be able to swap the new pair in.

320GB of data is not like copying a floppy.  Its more like copying 3,200 floppies. It takes more time than you'd think. A lot more.

500GB of data is just that much more, 180GB more.

And if you're wondering why I'm not just keeping the old drive.

It's matched twin has already failed.

How long do you think the survivor has?

Get ready to use it in some less critical use than keeping a studio up and running.

----

Now, here comes some Roy Elderidge

Adelante la musica.

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Here Comes Cookie" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Jangled Nerves" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Swing Is Here" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"After You're Gone" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Wabash Stomp" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Heckler's Hop" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"What Shall I Say" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Rockin' Chair" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"The Gasser" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Minor Jive" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Fiesta in Brass" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"St Louis Blues" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Little Jazz" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Twilight Time" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Fireworks" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I Remember Harlem" by: "Roy Elderidge" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Easter Parade" by: "Roy Elderidge" 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.

Oopsie...

One of my hard drives died (won't mount,) and that's the one that holds all of my audio, show scripts, fragments, etc .

Sorry but I have to try to get it to work before I scrap it...

Okay, drama is done.

Drive is replaced but recovery takes time.

I know what I have to do to reduce that time.

spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0045

Direct link to the episode:

m4a -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/spc_wspc_ThymeWarp_0045.m4a

Video Links

YouTube -> "Money" by: "Pink Floyd"
..

----

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
Im all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, its a hit.
Dont give me that do goody good bullshit.
Im in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.

Money, its a crime.
Share it fairly but dont take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise its no surprise that theyre
Giving none away.

Huhuh! I was in the right!
Yes, absolutely in the right!
I certainly was in the right!
You was definitely in the right. that geezer was cruising for a
Bruising!
Yeah!
Why does anyone do anything?
I dont know, I was really drunk at the time!
I was just telling him, he couldnt get into number 2. he was asking
Why he wasnt coming up on freely, after I was yelling and
Screaming and telling him why he wasnt coming up on freely.
It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out

----

This is episode 45

I've been converting my 400 or so albums from vinyl to CDs, to MP3s, and you're going to reap the benefits of my vastly expanded iTunes catalog.

Here comes some more Louis Armstrong aka Satch'mo.

But first I'm going to reveal why I am about to  leave you for, uh, snowier pastures, for my health … care, abandoning you to your own fates.

---- vvvv The Media Squat vvvv ----

As a Canadian, a member of a civilized and industrialized country, I would like to give some explanation as to why I am choosing to head back to Canada for my health care instead of staying here in the 'States.

Basically, I'm choosing to go the Snowbird route because Americans don't understand probability. (Which sort of explains all of "Las Vegas," doesn't it? A town whose entire "raison d'ètre" owes to the fact that Meir Lansky understood all too well the innumeracy of his fellow citizens.)

On the one hand this lack of understanding gives them endless optimism, even in the face of statistical certainty.

On the other hand, it puts them entirely at the mercy of their own ruthlessly efficient rapaciousness.

And smack in the middle is the unpleasant truth that there is a word for people who keep on repeating the same stupid mistake, hoping that this one time they'll get a different outcome, and that word is [bleep].

Lets look at the statistics gathered by the misnamed World Health Organization (I say misnamed because, for the purposes of this little "exposé," its really the view of the world as seen from the vantage point of the very 1960s, "looking for all the world like a enormous, humongous Fram air filter sitting in front a wall of dirty glass wall," building of the Pan American Health Organizations on the corner of East 23rd Street and E Street in Washington DC,) and those statistics, as revealed in actuarial tables, are that 15% of the population at some point, for some reason, for some duration of time is disabled.

"But the US is not the entire world," I hear you cry.

No, it most certainly is not.

That is reflected in the fact that the US is on par with really third rate, third-world countries, at the very bottom of a list of health care providers, 39th out of a list of 39 industrialized countries, surpassed even by Cuba. [ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Cuba-Has-Bypassed-the-US-i-by-John-Little-090512-856.html ]

(Who would have thought that. even after a forty year long embargo, a tiny little country, a single island in the Caribbean, deprived of access to the rest of the world by the mighty United States, would still be better able to take care of a poor mother and her new born infant, than the short shrift she would get in Washington DC.)

The individuals might change, that is shown as some fuzziness on a graph, by a wider bar delineating the arbitrary separations thereon, but the numbers are remarkably stable.

----

The citizens of the USofA must face that they have a corporate monster in their midst, one that is entirely within their power to vanquish.

That monster dictates that it be fed first, last and, since it does not care about anything or anyone, that it be fed even if that means that you starve.

Like all parasites, it does not consider its host until it is dead. The "it" can refer to either the parasite or to the host and the parasite.

Lets consider the costs of not excising this fiscal cancer which is metastasizing in plain sight, right in your midsts.

Consider that the costs of health care are far more than just the formidable tab of illness in this country, (already by far the highest in the world.
[As an aside, did you know that your stay in a hospital is called hotel services?
Do you think any hotel or even "We'd leave a light on fur ya" motel X in the world would not be a smoldering pile of embers if it tried to pull the [bleep] that you're put through in a night in the hospital?
{And I spent five weeks in the Ottawa General Hospital, and no time at all in a Brooklyn hospital
(and guess which one has left me using a cane since, maybe I should have, uh,
[hint, it wasn't Ottawa,]) so I know that whereof I speak.}])

Consider that it constricts your movements. (Your "God Given" right to "head on the highway of your choice, tossing out Big Mac and artery clogging Freedom Fries wrappers onto the road, smoking big ol' fat Dominican cigars, looking for whatever opportunities lie over the next blighted ridge," is being curtailed and your horizons are being shrunk much closer, much tighter than those of the poor South American migrant workers you have to hire now 'cause there's nobody left to mow your lawn or to haul away your toxic wastes for the skin-flint wages you're willing to pay. [Except when you aren't even willing to part with that much and screw 'em out of the money. {Why not? What are they gonna do? Call the cops? (Bwahaha ha. I slay me…)}])

Consider that you don't dare go anywhere to look for a better job either, because you might lose your coverage, so you are stuck in dead-end jobs, working for peanuts and feeling your life ebb joylessly away.

Consider that you better not dare get sick either because that might be considered cause for denying you coverage. (Think about that for a minute. "You don't dare get sick because that might be considered cause for denying you coverage." Then why are you paying for a policy?)

Consider that you'll probably get sick anyway, everybody does, sometimes severely (the actuarial tables say you're fighting one in eight odds to be the one in eight who does,) and then you'll discover that the insurance company may decline to cover you anyway.

(I'm sorry you got cancer but you didn't tell your doctor you had acne as a teen-ager so we're declining you your chemotherapy. And you owe us for the clinic visit because we decided to challenge it retroactively. [I wish I was kidding but the case, the HMO policy it exposed and congressional testimony where it was recorded has been well covered in the media and documented.])

Consider that the The #1 reason for personal bankruptcy in America, responsible for more than half of bankruptcies filed nation-wide, happens to be failing health. [ http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/10/3-top-reasons-why-people-go-bankrupt/ ]

Bush made it rougher to declare personal bankruptcy, and still about 2 million personal bankruptcies per year can be traced to medical expenses [ http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/briefs/other/hb050202c.htm ]

If the HMOs thought could get away with it, death would just transfer the debt to a person's inheritors so the survivors could just keep on paying for systemic failure.

----

Consider that personal bankruptcy is rarely limited to one person.

People are rarely alone, so their wives or husbands or life-partners, children and pets are bankrupted right along with them.

If a parent fall sick, it usually means an abrupt end to the children's education, regardless of how well the children were doing.

That costs everybody every cent of what that child could have been earning (and of what taxes could have been collected on those higher earnings.)

----

Consider that of those people, broken on the wheel of medical bills, have had to sell everything at fire-sale prices; house first, furniture as part of that, then car (which everywhere but the major metropolitan centers means you have just developed a bad case social leprosy,) clothing … everything.

Consider what your chances are of recovering from a severe illness when you're made homeless because of that very illness. Are they slim, or none?

----

Incidentally, that cheapens the value of everything that anybody else owns.

The cost in dollar amount, an arbitrary figure at best, but nonetheless a reflection of the price of a product and/or or its production, and the value of things are shrunk before your very eyes.

Treasured pictures and "objets d'art" are immediately reduced to the cost of their constituent parts; thus a van Gogh is reduced to an assemblage of used old canvas and a few scrapings of pigment, an Annie Leibowitz photograph is reduced to the cost of a roll of used film; a Rodin sculpture is reduced to its weight its weight in metal, clay or stone.

That's part the true cost of not having health care in this country.

Lost opportunities squandered like so much chaff because of the greed and rapaciousness of some companies, some corporations, some eternal infernal problems that are holding you by the throat tighter and tighter and squeezing the life, the fun and the free will out of this country.

----

Insurance companies are at a tipping point in their battle with the citizens of this country.

Are they really bigger than the 15% of the economy, of the population they are alleged to serve?

Then something is dreadfully wrong. [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1213783/UKs-doctors-write-letter-U-S-politicians-battle-lies-NHS.html ]

The UK health-care runs at about 8% of GDP and provide universal coverage.

In the US it runs at around 16% of GDP and there are 45 million uninsured, 25 million under-insured.

The insurance only applies for the first time because after that its a pre-existing condition, and we have congressional testimony as to what that means.

The 'States is beginning an accelerating  decline into irrelevance because it has frittered away the so called "Peace Dividend" that it got with the end of the "cold war", at the collapse of the Soviet Union, by countless fruitless pursuits.

The stock market started the Bush regime at 9,605 and eight years later, it stood at precisely 9,605. For business, the experiment with uber-capitalism has been a wash.

For the citizens stuck in a couple of trillion dollars of extra long-term debt, they've watched their future get mortgaged away.

Bush also took sympathy at the loss of the World Trade Center and turned it into universal opprobrium and hostility.

Bush managed to take The United States from a position of pre-eminence in all endeavors and reduced them into an economically and militarily deflated also-ran.
(Why do you think Kim Jong Un is laughing at you? He's leader of isolated, rinky dink North Korea and he's got more pull than the USofA. What he says goes. What Obama says is open to ridicule, endless debate and downright hostility.)

Oh and insurance company executives, don't think you can wave the flag like a magic wand.

Returning veterans have an entirely different view of combat  and armed conflict that you do.

Don't think that the people who are thrown out of their homes are magicked away into a never-never land.

They may end up filling the trailer parks, but the memory of having owned a ranch house is gnawing at the insides of the people you have so disposed.

Don't think that you aren't at risk of joining them either

There are millions more of them than before Bush took office. The edifice of commerce is getting shakier by the day.

As the HMOs toss people and corporations aside to avoid doing their duty by them, you may get a surprise and suddenly discover that you have tossed out the wrong person or corporation, one who can hurt you, big time.

Those darn survivors are an inconvenience aren't they?

----

Consider that the never mindful, ultra capitalist "Wall Street" firms who are in bed with the HMOs, locked as they are in a mutual-fund embrace, and looking to squeeze the populace of the United States for the profit they should have had over the past eight years.

Consider that the stock market debacle, has erased all their gains and stands once again at 9,605.

Consider that the mortgage meltdown has left them holding their noses and holding their breath as they hold worthless paper.

Consider that the credit crunch has left them painfully exposed and forced to risk their own money instead of just screwing around with your money.

Consider that that means charging you, not mythical people, but you, ever increasing amounts for health-don't-care coverage while constantly and consistently denying any and all charges against that coverage, with ever increasing ferocity.

If you think it won't happen, look around you… It already has.

The testimony is in your congressional record.

Health care for profit is not only an impossibility, but it is an obscenity; something only a parasite can regard as a right.

No one has a right to make a profit from the  death and misery of the sick and the dying.

By the end of this decade, I'm heading to Canada, because I can… Its my home...

Come to your senses.

If you lined up all of the high priced doctors end to end, they have not done as much for the common weal as the equivalent length of sewer pipe.

If you piled up all of the expensive drugs, recreational and otherwise, they haven't done as much for the common weal as the equivalent weight in mosquito netting.

A cost benefit analysis of the health-don't-care system you've got should clue you into the fact that you're getting screwed.

And don't tout the achievements of the drug companies too loudly.

If it hadn't been for the government finally walking the [beep] up because Rock Hudson looked like [beep] when he died of AIDS, most of the developments in pharmacology, therapies and genomics wouldn't have happened; not without the National Institutes of Health ponying up the money for some real research.

Health for profit is only good for preventive medicines, therapies and regimens, and those aren't covered by any of your damned health-don't-care policies.

I'm opting out because Americans don't understand probability.

What were the odds, unh?

That may be good for running a casino, but it sucks if you're the one betting your health on life's little lottery.

I've already lost that bet once and I'm not going to risk going through this twice.

I'm going to Canada for my health … because I can.

Home is where they have to take you in when you show up at the door.

I refuse to get sick in the United States.

Consider that Nicole Hollander once remarked in her cartoon strip "Sylvia" [ http://www.gocomics.com/sylvia/ ] about growing old in the United States: "You're best to do it elsewhere."

That's a sad commentary on what the children of the self-proclaimed "greatest generation" have become.

---- ^^^^ The Media Squat ^^^^ ----

Now, adelante la musica.

----

This episode featured the following music:

"Dusky Stevedore" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Solitude" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Swing that Music" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Darling Nellie Gray" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Red Cap" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"I Wonder" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Some Day" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"You Rascal You" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Song of the Islands" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Avalon" by: "Louis Armstrong" here on WSPC's ThymeWarp with your host Charles Rovira

"Someday Sweetheart" by: "Louis Armstrong" 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.

wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0013

YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by: "Placebo"

..

----

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.

----

Intro

I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

There is a phenomenon that I have always been fascinated by.

Its called "The Placebo Effect." [ http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect ]

Our minds are incredible things which have effects far beyond those we would expect.

Now, that does not extend to the mechanics of antibiotics and antivirals drugs discovered and refined since the middle of the last century, originally developed during another enterprise in killing, but placebos have effects which extend far beyond those of their components: "sugar, water, starch, and hope."

---- "Inertia" by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)" http://www.catjahnke.com/

Because my father worked for Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, which became Merck/Frosst during his decades there, as a salesman, director of marketing and later as manager of their print shop, on and off of the Island of Montréal, I got exposed to all kinds of things that went on inside of that company.

Being a curious and interested kid, I listened intently, (and being a smart one, I shut up about it, so as not to remind the adults that I was indeed there. [You can learn the most amazing things that way. {Far more than people think they've revealed.}])

One of the most interesting was the measurement of the efficacy of drugs by the use of blind and double blind trials.

The technique was already old, having been conceived by "Claude Bernard" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bernard ] back in the middle and latter parts of the 19th century (He was a fascinating man from whom we have derived a lot of the scientific method, scepticism. I could do a show just about him.)

This was just after the second world war, when the power of the scientific method came to medicine, and there were any number of discoveries being made every day.

Journals were exploding in readership, and in content for all those new readers and writers. (Actually I would argue that those peer-reviewed scientific journals were the earliest manifestations of moderated blogging, being read by a motivated and specialized audience, any one of which could write in and contribute.)

Like all human endeavors, there were all kind of claims made and these were rife with B.S. from people selling "snake oil", which the scientific technique originated by Claude Bernard was quick to put to the test.

Any claim found wanting was usually found to be actionable instead and the Snake Oil salesman was, at best, "run out of town on a rail" [ http://www.takeourword.com/TOW204/page2.html ] (I'm quoting from a Take Our Word webpage here because it says it best: "The phrase in question here, of course, is riding the rail or to be run out of town on a rail.  You may be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with the railroad and everything to do with with a fence rail.  How does one ride a rail?  This is a form of punishment in which a person is tied or held to a rail that is then paraded through town, and often out of town, on the shoulders of two or more men, presumably strong men.  The object is for all to see the transgressor and immediately recognize that he has done something wrong by virtue of the fact that he is tied to and riding on a rail, and thus to humiliate him. " )

At worst, these individuals were jailed for murder. (Making claims on medicines is serious business, because either people paid with their lives, leaving the inheritors to bury your mistakes, or people paid for the rest of their lives.)

---- "Inertia" by: "Josh Woodward" http://www.joshwoodward.com/

Placebos are bits inert "stuff" which should be having no effect, but "are," through the mechanisms of the mind and its ability to control the body.

Incidentally, I would recommend all interested people to download "All in the Mind" from the ABC Radio National [ http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330911 ] as  Natasha Mitchell [ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/about/default.htm#presenter ] is a great host for an also great show.

---- "Inner Focus" by: "absentmachine" http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417

Controls occur at arbitrarily determined levels, but in general the mechanisms are perceptive and reactive.

The first occurs on the perceptions of how well we perceive ourselves to be.

This is just operating at the level of our own abilities to put differing values on the same sensory inputs.

Thus, what is an incredibly painful experience in one series of circumstances involving the literal death of tissue or the tearing of lignin which hold our muscles in fibre bundles, under other circumstances becomes "one Hell of a great hot-barbecue sauce," or "a workout that'll put some inches on your biceps and some hair on your chest."

It depends on what your expectations are (like the anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain itself.)

The ability of fakirs or sufis [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir ] or if you'd rather use the Indian words sadhu, guru swami or yogi, to put themselves in trance like states is one very easily explained, explored and useful way beyond the ability to lie on a bed of nails, to slap one's forehead bloody, to walk barefoot on a bed of coals, to achieve an altered state of consciousness.

This is the goal of users of recreational drugs and other substances. (I'll stick to beer, thank you,)

---- "INNER QUEST" by: "v.f.d. " http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords

The second occurs at a more mysterious, nah strike that word, at a "less well understood," level of effecting remissions and outright cures when there are no commonly accepted causal relationships.

This is something I am familiar with at a superficial level because MS exhibits this, depending on what part of the brain is being used to carry the signals from the volition to the outcome. ("I have to move this leg" usually gets me a "Yeah, yeah, yeah … hold your water…" and a slow response from my body, while "Youch, that's HOT!" usually gets me a spastic hyper-reflexive jerk which certainly gets my hand off the handle of the pot and makes it become airborne, spilling its contents all over the damn stove.)

The mechanisms involved with semi-volitional healing, what used to be called "hysteria" by Freud or "faith healing" by revival tent preachers, neither term explaining a damn thing, involve the marshaling of the body's own forces, somehow.

We don't understand exactly what is involved at what level and in what order, we know that something is happening, caused by our own minds acting upon our own bodies to initiate a chain of events which leads us along a path from illness to wellness, but beyond the facts, we know very little and understand even less.

Well, two hundred years ago, we were burning people at the stake, one hundred years ago we were locking them up in asylums, fifty years ago we'd just discovered penicillin and that a lot of people still aren't too clear on the difference between causality and coincidence (and we won't mention the idiots who believe in demonic possession, vampires or space aliens,) so, no nothing surprises me anymore.

---- "The Awful Green Things From Outer Space" by: "Clouseaux" http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux

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.

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.

----

YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by "Placebo"
The music this time was:

"Inertia"
 by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)"
 http://www.catjahnke.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inertia"
 by: "Josh Woodward"
 http://www.joshwoodward.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inner Focus"
 by: "absentmachine"
 http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"INNER QUEST"
 by: "v.f.d. "
 http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"The Awful Green Things From Outer Space"
 by: "Clouseaux"
 http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/