The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: The Rocketeer

Margaret Atwood must be proud - the disgusting meat products appearing in Oryx and Crake are just around the corner, if PETA has anything to do with it. Following the current trend of offering large bounties, as Google currently does with the X-Prize, PETA is offering a $1 million prize for what NPR summarizes as the “development of commercially-viable ‘test-tube meat’ - meat grown through a lab process, not from a live animal.” PETA’s website outlines the contest in further detail:

PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

• Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.
• Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.

Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using a fried “chicken” recipe from VegCooking.com. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.

In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.

And I thought everything tasted like chicken… As long as the FDA mandates labeling test-tube SPAM, I don’t personally mind PETA and others throwing money at fake meat. Seriously though, can’t they spend the money on making tofu more appealing? And don’t members of the target audience, non-meat-eating people, already have non-meat alternatives? Does PETA really think they’re going to convert meat-eaters into vegetarians with fake SPAM?

At any rate, it’s all very interesting. It’s good to see PETA doing something that doesn’t involve bloody babies on a stick in front of McDonalds.

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It began with WebMD and similar sites - patients started trusting and turning to Internet resources for medical information. Once patients began coming to the doctor’s office prepared with Internet-based diagnoses and medicine requests, doctors started paying attention to the Internet as well. Fast-forward to the present - not only do patients frequently turn first to the Internet for medical information before calling their doctor, they are now organizing into social networks like Wellsphere, DailyStrength and iMedix. We recently learned from sources like Mashable and TechCrunch that Internet heavies like Google, Microsoft and AOL are setting up systems for storing health records. And now, doctors are apparently getting into the scene with social networks and blogs of their own.

Digg recently directed me to this story at NPR about doctors who publish blogs. Apparently, according to the article, blogs published by doctors are on the rise and many people have concerns with this development. Physicians have been discussing patient information for years in journal articles, papers and books, so what is it that makes this story sensational and important to report? Is it the larger population and wider access Internet readership enjoys over published content? The fact that self-published blog articles are published faster than print material and not subject to any oversight (beyond that the law provides, of course)? Or is it just the Internet makes any story sexy and timely? Personally, I feel the issue is about the answer to this question - is it a doctor who blogs, or a blogger who happens to practice medicine? In other words, do we hold doctors (and perhaps other professionals, such as attorneys, who deal with confidential patient information) to a higher standard than anyone else who blogs?

Patient privacy seems to top the list of concerns, and the NPR article presents both sides of the debate. One the one hand, Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist and founder of the group Patient Privacy Rights, thinks these blogs may skirt close to invading patients’ privacy rights:

“The problem with physicians blogging about patients is the danger that that person will be able to identify themselves, or that others that know them will be able to identify them,” she says.

Peel’s group worries that information about a patient’s case could be traced back to the individual and adversely affect his or her employment, health insurance or other aspects of his or her life.

“If you [are a doctor and] are unhappy with the people that you’re supposed to be serving and taking care of, you probably need therapy,” she says. “You don’t need to be venting your frustrations in a public manner like that. That’s very inappropriate and unprofessional.”

On the other hand, Dr. Robert Wachter, author of a blog called “Wachter’s World,” disagrees:

“You might say we as doctors should never be talking about experiences with our patients online or in books or in articles.”

Wachter says taken for what they are — unedited opinions, and in some cases entertainment — blogs can give readers some useful insight into the good, the bad and the ugly of the medical profession.

This seems to be a movement that is growing, despite how you feel about possibly being the semi-anonymous subject of your doctor’s blog. The NPR article points to several particular blogs published by doctors, including KevinMD, which in turn links to many more. And privacy concerns will only get worse as “gated communities” like iMedExchange, who claim to verify all community members are themselves doctors, become more popular - the assumption will be, if all the readers are doctors, why even bother sanitizing the identifying information?

How about you - do you care if your doctor is blogging about you? Let us know how you feel in the comments and poll.

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A while back I mentioned listening to podcasts as one way I make exercising more fun and more consistent. I personally find podcasts much more interesting than music for exercising for three main reasons:

• Listening to people talk is much more engaging than listening to music
• Podcasts are topical, so I can listen to people talk about something I’m interested in (or you can listen to music centered around a particular theme, if that’s your bag)
• Podcasts are serial, so I look forward to the next installment as a part of my exercise routine

Since mentioning podcasts as part of my exercise routine, I’ve been asked what podcasts I listen to while exercising, what mp3 player I use and what podcatching software I use. I chose the SanDisk Sansa e280 media player because it’s flash-based (I’m not interested in a harddrive-based player), has a nice interface and an expandable memory slot. After using a couple of other podcatchers (including Juice, HappyFish and a few others), I settled on Ziepod due to the interface and slew of advanced features, like dynamically renaming files and tags as it downloads episodes. Here’s a Ziepod screenshot:

Here’s an incomplete list of some of my favorites podcasts to listen to while exercising:

• This American Life
  My absolute favorite podcast - Ira Glass has a way of picking the absolute most fascinating topics and stories that seem boring at first, but end up engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. Make sure you set your podcatching software to download this one - only the current week’s episode is available for free.


Tech-related

• This Week in Tech (TWiT)
  Leo Laporte’s a strong personality behind the podcasting movement, and TWiT is the foremost show in his podcast netcast network. I have to admit I haven’t liked Leo much in the past - I liked Patrick Norton better on The Screen Savers (Patrick, by the way, is currently serving up shows at dl.tv), and liked Chris Pirillo’s version of Call for Help more than Leo’s. All that aside, I really enjoy listening to Leo’s netcasts - I think he really shines in this medium. TWiT in particular gathers together several personalities that enjoy talking about tech and BS about tech news, making for some great moments (my favorite so far is Steve Gibson and John Dvorak going rounds about spam). If you like tech, this is an entertaining fluff podcast.

• Security Now (Another member of Leo’s netcast network)
  Steve Gibson is pretty entertaining to listen to and does a good job breaking down complex security issues into understandable concepts. I like the interplay between Leo and Steve, and the topics they cover are interesting and advanced enough to keep my attention.
• This Week in Media
  This is a great podcast for someone who appreciates four people who love to talk about their passion - all things media. Fortunately, when these guys geek out, it’s still entertaining (particularly since they stopped talking about the Red camera).
• Other tech-related podcasts I enjoy include Chris Pirillo Show, Engadget, TalkCrunch, FLOSS, Windows Weekly.


Disney-related

• WDWToday
  My wife and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon, and I have been hooked since - I love going to WDW, I love reading news about Disney (check out Jim Hill’s articles for some fascinating reads), and I love listening to podcasts about Disney. WDWToday runs about 20 minutes per show, has great hosts and fun topics. This is one worth downloading and listening to previous shows - if nothing else, the antics of Len Testa (co-author of the my Disney bible, Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and owner of the world’s biggest coffee drip) never fail to make me laugh.
• WDW Radio Show
  Lou Mongello has written a couple of Disney trivia books and hosts a fun, informative podcast. While Lou doesn’t make me laugh as much as Len Testa, I do enjoy WDW Radio Show for all the fascinating tips, trivia, Disney backstory and ride-throughs. Lou’s previous podcast, MouseTunes, is also worth listening to - although some of the information is dated, there are some fun, timeless segments to be found.
• Some other Disney-related podcasts I enjoy listening to include Magical Definition and Imagineering My Way.


Other topics

• The Wordpress Podcast
  Who’d have thought listening to people talk about blogging engines could be interesting? I just started listening to this show - as this blog runs on Wordpress, I enjoy listening to the latest news, plugins etc. For Drupal users, Lullabot hosts an interesting podcast.

For audio books, I’ve used two interesting resources: PodioBooks and LibriVox.

There’s a slew of other podcasts I’ve subscribed to or tagged, but just haven’t had the time to listen to. Have I missed your favorites? Share them in the comments!

Part of my daily routine revolves around National Public Radio - This American Life gets me through many days of exercise, and I frequently rely on Morning Edition for news and information I wouldn’t otherwise hear. Both programs use the mixed media radio provides, mixing music, audio tracks from video, recorded sounds etc with the story to provide an almost immersive experience - something that attracts me so much my wife and I try to donate every fund drive. So you can see why, after reading in the Consumerist the RIAA has hiked the Internet radio royalty, I’m pissed. Without reading the actual royalty and what it applies to, I figure probably most podcasts are safe - most seem to feature or use either royalty-free or non-RIAA music. This hike, however, strikes the two things I like best about shows like This American Life - how it uses audio to weave a story, and it’s availability in the form of a podcast.

I have to admit, I’ve been pretty apathetic so far towards the RIAA and it’s practices. No more. I have been practicing researching what I consume - reading food labels, researching ingredients, learning proper portion sizes, controlling my spending. Now, I’ll add another item to that list - stop consuming music distributed by the RIAA.

First, I have to remember the RIAA isn’t an independent organization, it’s a trade group made of recording labels and other members of the recording industry. Most notably, RIAA’s members include EMI, Sony-BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Here’s a breakdown of just those four members’ shares of world music sales according to Nielsen SoundScan statistics as reported at wikipedia:

• Universal Music Group: 31.71%
• Sony-BMG: 25.61%
• Warner Music Group: 15%
• EMI: 9.55%

Between just those four members, the RIAA represents 82% of the world music market. Smells like collusion to me. Especially when they raise royalty rates charged to radio stations like NPR at the same time they petition judges to reduce the royalty rates given to artists.

How am I going to cut my consumption of RIAA-represented music? Each member of the Big Four labels is actually made of many smaller labels - for instance, Sony-BMG’s labels include Columbia and Epic, and Universal Music Group’s labels include Universal and Geffen. It would be pretty time-consuming to put together a comprehensive list of all the artists represented by the Big Four’s labels. Fortunately, it looks like someone else has done all the grunt work - the RIAA Radar looks like a great tool to research music before buying.

I’m realistic - I realize that in a world where music purchases are still driven by Top-40 type music, my own purchase choices aren’t going to put the Big Four out of business. However, this isn’t about sticking it to the man - it’s about controlling my own consumption based on my own values. Just like I chose to end my consumption of fast food and my consumption of Magic cards (a money drain), I am now choosing to end my own personal consumption of RIAA-backed music - contributing to such a corrupt organization goes against my own personal values.