I just came home from a wonderful 17k run. Today is a brillant late summer day, round about 18°C, windy, the light so smooth, birches and beeches gleaming softly, the horizon appearing behind a decent veil of haze.
It's a very hilly area here around Wiesbaden, Germany. Most people are reluctant to climb up hills, but I love it. I was born and raised in the Austrian Alps. In case of doubt I shall always choose the path up. I rarely meet somebody on this profiled course which is ideal to let the thoughts drift. Of course, my thoughts centred blogging, they tossed and turned the term »modulation«, Harry's remark to present more analytical data etc....

When I grew up, I learned at school that if you want to define whatsoever thing, be it concrete or abstract, you are never allowed to use the term you would like to define within your definition. Circular closure was forbidden by logic. Later, at the University, I came across the term infinite regress which is a philosophical technical term that refers to the dilemma of circularity. I grew older and I got more and more irritated and uncomfortable with the paradigm of linearity that dominates our Western world. All of us have internalized it in a way that we confound it with the only possible view on reality. I read the well-known book »Goedel, Escher, Bach« by Douglas Hofstadter. The whole book deals with the omnipresent traps of forbidden circularities and the question of how to dissolve this pivotal issue that characterizes occidental philosophy, science and everyday life.
Bertrand Russell the very famous mathematician became desperate by trying to solve this problem in his »principia mathematica«. He failed. Linearity forces you into metaphysics, it forces you to introduce meta-levels if you want to avoid circularity.

The vicious circle, yeah, definitely, it has to drive you crazy. If you cannot accept circular causalities, if you try to dissolve closed loops and feedack situations, one has to despair, go nuts and eventually end up in a nuts house. We live in a cirucular world. Biology is all about circularity and interdependency, and it is biology and medicine who deny the strongest, almost fanatically. Are they afraid to loose solid grounds, as we are afraid to loose our base we securely live on since centuries?

From the day on, when I started to accept circularity and circular interdependency as basic principle of the world's organization I live in, life became much easier for me. »Vicious circles« became an integral part of reality, and thus, I decided for myself to call them creative circles instead of vicious, for me the better way to find my way around in this world.
I owe this comprehension to three wonderful minds and personalities: Irun Cohen http://www.iruncohen.ws/, Henri Atlan, philosopher and biologist who did great research work on complexity and autopoietic systems, and Heinz von Förster http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/HvF.htm, one of the founders of cybernetics in 30ies of the last century. I have to consider myself lucky to have met them personally.

Our biestmilch universe, how it exists and how it is structured today is partly due to these encounters that tought me so much. If you pay a visit to our site http://www.biestmilch.de/matrix-leben.html then you find yourself in a world that is mostly located beyond linearity and the classical analytical approach of natural science.
This is why biestmilch is so bizarre to many of you. But how else to explain a complex substance in complex world?

can't you give me more details about it than only telling me briefly while looking at me like I am asking a very superfluous and stupid question: »It is just first milk or colostrum«, and then leaving me to my own devices, me who does not really know what to do with this very basic information, this, actually, not saying a lot to me?« I am quoting Harry. Harry www.analogmultimedia.de is one of the heart beats behind biestmilch's new internet appearance. We currently spend hours on the phone almost every day to optimize shop and website www.biestmilch.com. We have a lot of work, a lot of fun and a lot of discussions.

Yesterday, he opened a discussion around biestmilch with his sister and his mother. Slowly, the biestmilch virus starts spreading in this surroundings. When the two asked him what it is, he of course quoted me, saying »It is first milk.« And this is how it all started. The explanation didn't mean anything to all of them, it didn't say anything to them about what biestmilch does. They did not find the information they expected on the biestmilch site Harry is programming himself. They went to wikipedia. They found not a litle bit more on the content, but regardless it didn't give them more indications on the HOW of biestmilch's functioning.
How could this happen? This morning he immediately confronted me with the fact that I should give more analytical details on our site.

My reply was the same as it is now since quite some time, since I feel very secure about our positioning of the product. I said to him: »I made a decision somt time ago to refuse to give these details to people because biestmilch unfolds its potential as a whole, it is its composition as whole that works. Would it help you to know that there are a lot of immunoglobulins, cytokines, neuropeptides, hormones, mucopolysaccharides in this enigmatic substance? It would probably satisfy your mind trained in the western way of analytical thinking, but it won't give you any more clarification about the processes of action embodied by biestmilch within our body!«

Harry answered, »yes, your are right. It would merely satisfy a certain kind of impulse, something we consider as necessary to know.«

Harry stands for a very basic problem we face with biestmilch. People want to know what's inside, but it does not help them to understand biestmilch. We have to tell an other story, reiterate it again and again till the conept of modulation is understood and internalized. A long way to go. It is like I think it happens to all new stuff. In the advent of food supplements, people considered it as strange and weird to eat vitamins, oxygen free radicals or trace minerals. Today, nobody doubts their importance. They became a sort of life style. Biestmilch just started out to conquer the place it definitely  deserves.

18%: Proportion of TV advertising campaigns generating positive ROI - Deutsche Bank study reported in the Economist, ‘Future of advertising’

54 cents: Average return in sales for every $1 spent on advertising - Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’

256%: The increase in TV advertising costs (CPM) in the past decade - figures reported in Garfield, R (2005) ‘Chaos scenario’, Ad Age, 13 April

84%: Proportion of B2B marketing campaigns resulting in falling sales - Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’

100%: The increase needed in advertising spend to add 1-2% in sales - UCLA study findings reported in Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’

14% Proportion of people who trust advertising information - Annual Gallup poll on professional honesty and trustworthiness, figure cited in Ries, A. and Ries, L. (2002) The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. New York: HarperCollins

90%: Proportion of people who can skip TV ads who do skip TV ads - MPG Study 2004 reported in Carton, S. (2004) ‘Advertising is more than just TV commercials’ ClickZ, 18 October

80% Market share of video recorders with ad skipping technology in 2008 - Jupiter Research (2004) forecasts reported in Carton, ‘More than just TV commercials

95%: The failure rate for new product introductions - ACNeilsen BASES and Ernst & Young study reported in Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’

When I read these figures on http://brainsonfire.com/blog/ I remembered that I bumped into these figures already in the beginning of 2006. Connected Marketing http://www.connectedmarketing.org/book/index.html was one of the first books I read on my way of changing our whole marketing approach. The process is still ongoing. It hit me just like a thunder and encouraged me to do what I had already in mind for quite some time.

The book is edited by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden, and it includes a foreword by Emanuel Rosen. Through a wide range of solutions and case studies from the coalface, presented by 17 opinion-leading academics, consultants and practitioners from around the world, Connected Marketing demystifies viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing. It also demonstrates that managing successful connected marketing activity is possible through an organized series of decisions and approaches - it's not a hit-or-miss quest for that one groundbreaking idea.

Especially small businesses like www.biestmilch.com is one, should seriously consider the, let's say, intimate way to connect with people beyond their reach. The years passed proved that biestmilch needs sensitive and authentic communication. If one does a decent reliable job in this respect, I think one can connect with a lot of people, still a niche but a solid base to start out from. Whether one day a virus is going to spread into the mass market, I think, nobody can predict it. Probabilities do, of course, apply, but remain vague at the end for the indiviual business.

Concerning our business with biestmilch, I know only one thing: Up to now nobody world-wide really succeeded to build a market for this extremely wonderful and efficacious substance. Many went bankrupt, after having been carried away by a hype of unrealistic visions and timelines. Why?

Have they all been too impatient, didn't they understand the narrative of their own product or didn't they know how to tell it? Or didn't they tell it long enough? Or was it simply a question of money? Perhaps a little bit of everything?

Regardless, I think biestmilch is the product/substance for a word of mouth approach, a story-telling approach with scientific and an emotional leads, sensitive things need a sensitive a approach, and a lot of patience...to build up confidence. Biestmilch is definitely such a weird thing.

The story around fats is often one that throws out the baby with the bath water, depending on the viewpoint of the »storyteller«. There are the promoters and there is the fanatic opposite condemning fat. But with fat it seems, the middle way is really the best one.

I just popped into a quite good publication published on the runner's web http://www.runnersweb.com/running/news/rw_news_20060904_ERB_Fats.html.
Numerous diets are looked at to evaluate their effects on endurance performance. There are definitely no conclusive answers to the question whether a high fat diet is performance enhancing. The indications given do not support high fat diets. But they support the fact that fats should play an important part in each diet, especially omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids and  omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids should be considered. Although the exact desirable ratio between the two is still unknown, it has been suggested that the ratio should be in the range of 5-10:1 or even 2:1*.

Fatty acids are an essential functional part of all cellular membranes, lipid deficits do not only weaken the function of the major regulatory systems of the body as there are the nervous system and the immune system, but also affect muscle tissue, skin and bone structure. Fat is an important component of the body's composition. Even the fat cells as such are not only lazy bags filled with fat. They are small factories producing various kinds of molecules that influence immunity, phenomena like appetite or body temperature, and hormones like steroids, to only name a few examples.

I don't agree at all with a quotation from a famous German fitness guru who said: »always eat your toast cold, because then it won't absorbe that much butter. Every time I spread butter on my hot toast, this quotation haunts me! ;-)«. I met athletes close to anorexia, with miserable blood parameters significant for the nutritional status of an undernourished body complaining about weak performances and lack of training effects. Is that amazing, if you avoid fat almost completely?

I myself love extremes, I have to admit this, but concerning diets, this is a realy bad attitude. To achieve an optimal performance a diet should  be balanced. Fat should not scare the hell out of you, and you should not become a sugar junkie. Monomaniac carbohydrate diets are as unhealthy as the gigantic amount of saturated hidden fats in junk food.

The victims of these extremes we find them everywhere: fat people are taking over the lead in our societies and severely sick anorectic people increasingly become a serious medical problem.

Sport is the best remedy if one does not exaggerate.

*Lowery, 2004, Watkins et al., 2001 & Simopoulos, 2003. The latter assessment is based on research that focuses on the changing American diet over thousands of years.

Anstatt heute beim Half Ironman in Monte Carlo zu sein - die Geburt von Chris McCormacks http://chrismccormack.com/ alias Maccas zweitem Mädchen hat sich ja bekannterweise dazwischen geschwindelt - habe ich mich mit unserem sympathischen und hervorragenden Biestmilch-Team beim Datterich in Darmstadt getroffen. Das Wetter war grau. Entsprechend sehen auch die Fotos aus. Es blieb jedoch trocken und mild.

Die Initiative hatte Moritz Martin www.olympic-windsurfing.de ergriffen. Es war ihm in kürzester Zeit gelungen, mit Hilfe meines lieben Freundes Jan Regenfuß vom TSV Griesheim ein Super-Team zusammenstellen. Sascha kam nach 50 Minuten ins Ziel. Der Rest der Meute blieb mit einer Ausnahme ebenfalls unter 60 Minuten.

Zum Zeitpunkt, als ich den Ort des Geschehens verließ, sah es so aus, als hätte das Biestmilch-Team den Wettkampf gewonnen. Allerdings waren da noch längst nicht alle Teams im Ziel, und man soll ja den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben.

Dozent Dieter Bremer, der Organisator des Datterich und Moritz Martin, der Organisator unseres Teams.

Verschwommen sind die Eindrücke. Die Digicam mag die graue Stimmung ebenso wenig wie wir.

Jan Regenfuß, Sascha, der Erste im Ziel, und Moritz.

Heute habe ich in der Wochenendausgabe der Neuen Züricher Zeitung folgenden winzigen Beitrag entdeckt: »Dante und Goethe digital« Google ermöglicht das Herunterladen von urheberrechtlich freien Werken http://books.google.com/. Das Imperium Google wächst, es ist überall.
Seitdem wir an unserer neuen Website www.biestmilch.com arbeiten, dreht sich alles um Google. Seitdem nehme ich persönlich Google erst richtig wahr. Zuvor war Google für mich der beinahe völlig automatisierte Weg, eigentlich schon ein Reflex, wenn es um die Suche von »was auch immer« ging. Jetzt führt für Biestmilch kein Weg mehr an Google vorbei, wenn man das Ziel verfolgt, seine Internetseite zum Erfolg führen. Und wer möchte das nicht?

Jeden Tag müssen wir uns jetzt folgende Fragen stellen:

Sieht Google unsere Seite, wie viele Seiten sieht Google, hat Google sie schon »eingespidert«? Werden unsere Keywords von Google gemocht? Warum sieht Google den Biest-Blog nicht so richtig, wo doch regelmäßig neue Beiträge entstehen? Gaggle, gaggle, gaggle....

Ich habe jetzt eine Google email-Adresse mit einem Postfach von 2 gigabyte, kostet nichts. Ein Tipp:  eignet sich super, um Daten zu sichern, denn Google sichert täglich seine Daten. Ich musste dieses Postfach einrichten, um einen Google Analytics Account einrichten zu können. Das war der Deal.

Bei Google Analytics können wir genau sehen, wer wann unsere Seite besucht hat, welche Seiten wie oft geklickt wurden. Ich konnte sehen, dass wir in der letzten Woche einen Gast aus North Carolina, USA hatten und einen aus London hatten, dass über 10% von der Seite von Lothar Leder www.lothar-leder.de kamen. Man ist fasziniert und befremdet zugleich. Man weiss, dass man, wenn man ein kleines Unternehmen ist wie Biestmilch, ohne Google schwer überleben kann, und man weiss auch um die Macht, die sich hier mehr und mehr konzentriert, und man lässt es dabei bewenden.

Biestmilch ist jetzt auch unter den Google adwords vertreten. Jeden Tag versuche ich zu verstehen, welche Kosten ich per click ausgeben muss, soll, kann? Welche Keywords unsere »Vielleicht-Einmal-Kunden« mit größter Wahrscheinlichkeit anwenden werden. Eine mysteriöse Welt, in der wir uns hier aufhalten, mysteriös vielleicht deshalb, weil wir in einen Raum von Namenlosen eindringen und dennoch auf lauter Individuen stoßen, von denen wir hoffen, dass sie sich uns verbunden fühlen, uns und dem, was wir sagen, irgenwann vertrauen.

Vielleicht werde ich mir auch bald ein Buch bei google books herunterladen, Kosten sparen, aber vielleicht doch »den Geschmack, den Geruch und das Schöne« an einem Buch vermissen, oder vielleicht doch nicht?

Würden Sie es versuchen wollen, das Lesen eines Google-Buchs?

Browsing the content of the British Journal of Sportsmedicine http://bjsm.bmjjournals.com/ I found the following article headline: Musculoskeletal injuries: "Underuse" as a cause for musculoskeletal injuries: is it time that we started reframing our message? by S D Stovitz and R J Johnson from the University of Minnesota, USA

Beforehand, I have to admit that I didn't buy the whole article which is only an editorial. 12 USD seem fairly expensive to me for one page or even less. I draw my conclusions from the abstract only, okay? Yarning a little bit should be allowed, okay too?

The editorial is obviously discussing the issue that terms like overuse or overtraining scare lazy couch potatoes away from moving. Therefore these expressions should be abolished and replaced by underuse. I think that is an overall good idea. Laziness should definitely not get any support from science and especially not from sportsmedicine.
Promoting physical activity is a noble goal that needs support. Because physical activity is preventing from chronic diseases. This seems an undeniable fact reinforced by scientific data.

All of you out there who suffer from a real weight problem! Moving, moderate sports, it is worthwile the effort. It makes life more enjoyable and on top of this it helps to save costs to the health system, and, perhaps for your more important, to you personally. Moreover, there is an intensive discussion around the topic that moderate physical training has an anti-aging effect. Who does not want to achieve that?

And keep in mind, biestmilch http://www.biestmilch.de/bibliothek/focus-sport.html supports these efforts. It helps to keep you fit and motivated. Many athletes can confirm this by now.

The authors of this article clearly state that most of the skeletalmuscle injuries are not due to overuse but underuse. So, don't be afraid of moderate exercise.

Some quite interesting figures concerning the OVERUSE OF THE TERM OVERUSE

A May 2006 Medline search for articles with the keyword "overuse injuries" registered 7649 "hits" over the past 40 years, and 3970 in just the past 10 years. The vast majority clearly suggest that overuse is the reason for the injury.