If you haven't stopped by yet, this week's PJM Political features:
Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt discuss CNN's Virtual Reality during last Wednesday's GOP YouTube Debate. Also on the show:Tune in here to listen!Host Bill Bradley discusses the surprising surges of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. Mary Katharine Ham explains how she made the leap from the newspaper to new media. James Lileks uncovers the Huckabee/Hanna-Barbera connection. Joe Mathieu tells Pajamas' Austin Bay what makes the POTUS '08 Channel tick. Produced by Ed Driscoll.
In case you missed it, yesterday's show on XM satellite radio's POTUS '08 channel is available for downloading here. Pretty nifty line-up, too:
Join host Bill Bradley for thoughts on yesterday's GOP YouTube/CNN debate, plus:For podcasting techies wondering what I used to record the segments with Liz and Scott, and the previous segments from the last two weeks' shows all recorded earlier this month from Blog World in Las Vegas, I simply used my trusty Samson Zoom H4 Handy Recorder (which has a pair of pro-style XLR jacks, visible in the photo that accompanies the Videomaker review), a pair of Shure SM58 mics, and a pair of tabletop mic stands. The Zoom recorder uses an SD card, and an 2-gig sized card provides about two hours of audio, which can quickly be ported over to a PC's hard drive and then into your DAW program of choice for editing and mixdown.Pajamas CEO Roger L. Simon and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee interview Sen. Fred Thompson regarding the future of America's War On Terror. Should Thompson not get the nomination, Ed Morrissey and Duane Patterson (producer of The Hugh Hewitt Show) discuss his chances as a GOP vice presidential nominee. Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case involving the Second Amendment with Robert Levy of the CATO Institute. Liz Stephans and Scott Baker of Breitbart.TV on the role of YouTube and viral online video in the 2008 presidential election. Produced by Ed Driscoll. For extended versions of each of today's segments, and the video of the Thompson interview don't miss this week's PJM Political "Director's Cut Interviews."
I threw them all into a suitcase before heading to Vegas just as a lark, but I was astounded at how clean the audio was, even with the roar of Vegas Convention Center crowd all around, which is why I ended up doing so many interviews there. The trick, I think, is the Shure SM58s. There's a reason why so many rock groups use them on-stage and on live recordings--their cardioid input pattern makes them great at focusing the loudest sounds (which normally should be the person talking/singing/playing into them) and de-emphasizing the background noise.
Bill Bradley, the host of Pajamas' PJM Political on XM's POTUS '08 channel, has some thoughts on the GOP debate on CNN, in a podcast we recorded immediately after the debate aired on Wednesday night.
You watched their show, seen their clips from the candidates--now hear how they do it, their thoughts on the YouTube phenomenon and the role DIY video will play in the 2008 presidential channel, as Scott Baker and Liz Stephans of Breitbart.TV sit down with me for a 15-minute audio interview recorded live at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas.
Well, it's not that new a podcast--I actually recorded this last December, just as Tech Central Station was transitioning away from podcasting back towards emphasizing traditional print articles. But I didn't want this interview with author Paul Kengor and his book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism to be abandoned entirely, so I'm sharing it here, as a sort of late summer rerun. While there are a few questions near the end of my interview with the author tied to the then-recent mid-term elections, most of the material discussed is pretty timeless stuff: how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War--and spent much of his adult life preparing for the job.
27 minutes, 33 seconds in length, 25.2 MB file size, and no iPod required--virtually any PC with a broadband connection can download and play a podcast. So click here to listen!
As I've written before, the past 25 years have seen a quiet revolution in home music recording, that's right in line with the growth of other "Army of Davids" technologies that dramatically empower individuals. In 1982, the breakthrough product that made home recording possible was the cassette four-track recorder. These weren't one half of the eight-track deck that you had in your '77 Chevy Vega; they used an ordinary stereo audio cassette, but played that cassette in only one direction, so that there were now four individual, synchronized tracks to record on. You could put a drum machine (another newly designed product) on one track, a bass guitar on another, an electric guitar on the third and a vocal on the fourth, and voila! Instant DIY song. (Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album was home-brewed using a cassette four-track machine.)
But most musicians wanted to do more than that--and these days, companies such as Boston-based Cakewalk offer products that give the average home musician as many tracks as his PC's memory and hard drive will hold. Not to mention PC-based software synthesizers that are also infinitely more flexible than their 1980s counterparts. George Martin and Quincy Jones cost a lot more to hire, but the same basic technology they use in their recording studios is increasingly accessible to those recording home.
Having launched in 1987, Cakewalk are currently celebrating their 20th year of business, and my interview with Greg Hendershott, Cakewalk's CEO, is an attempt to bridge the gap between those early days and now. Ideally, it will make a good overview to those new to PC-based recording, but dying to dip their toes into the water. It's 20 minutes long, 18.7 MB in size, and can be downloaded here, or via our Apple i-Tunes page. (No iPod required; virtually any PC can download and play an MP3.)
It's not quite Tarkenton meets Staubach, Dylan meets Lennon, Prince meets Morris Day, or an even better Minneapolis-themed metaphor that's eluding me, but James Lileks is interviewed by Pajamas' own Austin Bay on this week's Blog Week In Review podcast to discuss the current state of the New, New Journalism.
Tune in here--no iPod required; virtually any computer with broadband can stream an MP3 file.
Related: Maybe Brian Williams should take a listen!
In this week's Blog Week In Review podcast, Austin Bay gets Jeff Goldstein and Neo-Neocon's thoughts on Live Earth: "Rockstars For Whatever".
And speaking of Live Earth, Tim Blair writes that the party to fight global cooling continues!
After getting some background on Breitbart.tv for an upcoming article, I realized that its proprietor (who’s also been Matt Drudge’s Sancho Panza for over a decade) would be a perfect guest for Pajamas’ Blog Week In Review. Fortunately, Austin Bay agreed, and the result is a great, fast-moving show. If you're curious about where online journalism is headed, and why it's been eating old media's lunch for the last decade, this is the podcast for you!
(No iPod--or even iPhone--needed; virtually any computer with a broadband connection can tune in and listen.)
And for some music to further set the mood, here's the Ed Driscoll Orchestra (aka Sonar and Reason) perfoming the "Washington Post March".
(On Monday, a friend sent me this link and asked me to make a loop of the WaPo March for the NRA's float in the Morgan Hill Fourth of July Parade; after routing all of the MIDI tracks through the synthesizers in Reason, and some reverb, I'd like to think it at least sounds a bit better than the version on the site.)
Austin Bay interviews Thom Shanker, Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times in this week's Blog Week In Review podcast, over at the Pajamas Media mothership.
Austin Bay interviews Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in the latest Blog Week In Review, online now at Pajamas HQ.
If you haven't heard it yet, Austin Bay's lengthy and informative interview of Dr. David Kilcullen, the senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calling into Pajamas HQ from Baghdad, is a must-listen. And don't miss Austin's latest syndicated column, which expands on Dr. Kilcullen's thoughts.
Austin Bay was particularly keen to interview Daniel Drezner on his new book All Politics is Global for the latest Blog Week In Review podcast. You can hear the results here--as Pajamas HQ notes, "Get out your notebooks and pay close attention to this one. There’s a lot to learn".
Blog Week In Review is celebrating its first anniversary with three quarters of its original line-up: Austin Bay, Glenn Reynolds, and Tammy Bruce. (Sadly, Eric Umansky had a scheduling conflict, but promises to return sometime this summer.)
From my point of view in the producer's chair, I think the sound quality on this one is the best yet; I've been very fortunate to have the time to experiment and fine-tune things. So please have a listen, here.
On Hugh Hewitt's radio show recently, James Lileks mentioned that when he wants commentary regarding the Middle East, he doesn't bother with the wire services, he checks out The Three Michaels: Michael Yon, Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen...and Michael Totten, who's this week's guest on Pajamas' Blog Week In Review podcast, featuring Austin Bay, and produced by yours truly.
Michael Yon was the special guest of the Blog Week In Review podcast yesterday, as he and Austin Bay discussed the Surge and the--hopefully stillborn--ban by the Pentagon on milblogging.
Over at the Pajamas mothership, of course:
This week’s podcast features Jeff Goldstein and Neo-neocon on the inexorable attraction of defeat in Iraq, America’s penchant for self-flagellation, and finding meaning in a chocolate Jesus. Why does doom sell, and why are we so susceptible to the pitch?Maybe Harry Reid should tune in.Hosted by Austin Bay, and produced by Ed Driscoll. Brought to you by Volvo USA.
Update: Found via Gateway Pundit, Ace explains to Reid the proper spin.
Austin Bay asked me to guest host the Pajamas Media "Blog Week In Review" podcast this week, so I interviewed Robin Aitken, the former BBC journalist and on-air personality who left the network and has written a new book, very much in the vein of Bernard Goldberg's books on American media bias, titled Can We Trust The BBC. I tried to aim the questions towards an American perspective on the topic, but then, how could I not? Aitken also discussed in depth the BBC's biases regarding Iraq, Israel, and the Palestinians. Regular readers of this blog won't exactly be shocked where the BBC comes down on these issues, but for those who still hold out a belief that the BBC is entirely objective, its an eye-opener.
I also asked Robin if this was still flying on the walls of his former workplace.
It's a 20 minute long podcast (no iPod required--any computer with broadband and a soundcard can play an MP3 file), so please tune in and listen.
Pajamas reports:
Bill Roggio talks about the surge, security in Iraq, and holding our ground in Afghanistan with host Austin Bay in this week’s podcast. Roggio says that even though “we lost a lot of ground” in 2006, “There’s a very good chance of success for this plan.” Bill is currently filing several reports a week on Iraq that can be found at the Weekly Standard. Produced by Ed Driscoll. Brought to you by Volvo USA.Tune in here; no iPod (or flak jacket) required!
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, they left behind a treasure-trove of archives in the vaults of EMI records, many of which have yet to see the light of day. There are also countless hours of live recordings and movie footage from Let It Be, which is still locked away, despite a few false rumors to the contrary from time to time.
Late last year, rock journalist Richie Unterberger returned from an Indiana Jones-like exploration of those archives, and described their contents in book titled, The Unreleased Beatles. It was originally published by Backbeat Books, and is currently distributed by Hal Leonard, and available from Amazon.com.
Richie spoke with us recently in a 21-minute long, 19.3 MB podcast, which you can download here, or via our Apple iTunes page. Note that in both cases, no iPod is required; virtually any computer with a broadband connection and a soundcard can play an MP3 file.
And speaking of playing, since I somehow lost Paul and Ringo's phone numbers, that's me playing the guitars, bass and keys, along with some Acid Loops for the drums and synths, on the intro and outro music. I think I knocked out some fairly bitchin' (for me at least) lead licks on my Telecaster on the fade out, if I do say so myself.
Update: Also at Blogcritics, and Pajamas Media.
The latest Blog In Review is online:
The anti-liberal message of The anti-liberal message of identitarianism and collective thought are on the table for this week’s podcast. Are the two sides of the political spectrum existing in parallel realities with their own facts and narratives? Protein Wisdom’s Jeff Goldstein, Neo-neocon, and host Austin Bay find the whole mess doubleplusungood. Ed Driscoll produces.Click here to listen!
Eying the vacationing Glenn Reynolds' slick Insta-studio, Neo-Neocon writes that she's got "podcast studio envy", and posts a photo of her more minimalist rig.
My setup? Somewhere between the two, I'd say. Here is a triptych to give you an idea of how it looks.
(That last shot shows my Sweetwater Creation Station PC resting atop my Roland VG-88 pedalboard, via a simple wooden stand I built last fall.)
The latest Blog In Review podcast is online at Pajamas HQ:
The world’s longest horse race is underway for the American Presidency. On Blog Week to discuss it are Glenn Reynolds, and author and screenwriter Katy Wright of American Thinker. Glenn and Katy disagree on whether the unusual length of the campaign season represents an important political fight or an exhuasting and wasteful marathon for voters and candidatesDon't miss it!The panel also tackles the plight of imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soleman and what his case means for the future of free speach and the internet in the Middle East. Austin Bay hosts and asks the questions. Ed Driscoll produces. Brought to you by Volvo USA.
Hanson sits in on this week's Blog Week In Review. That Hanson? No! This Hanson.
(And yes, that's an old, stale riff, dating back to the Peloponnesian era. Or at least back to when ""MMMBop" was a hit. Profuse apologies.)
In addition to Your Humble Narrator's interviews with Austin Bay and Adam Bellow, this week's Blog Week In Review podcast has hidden within it breaking news--The Manolo's first publication is due in March from Pamphleteer Press.
It's Radio Free Ed! I'm turning the tables and hosting Blog Week In Review this week, interviewing Austin Bay and Adam Bellow. Tune in here.
In the latest edition of Blog Week In Review, Michael Ledeen proposes that President Bush employ many of the same techniques against Iran that President Reagan successfully used to encourage dissent in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Don't miss it.
And for lots of other thoughts on the topic, stop by the great Regime Change Iran blog.
Dude, it's back! The return of Pajamas Media's Blog Week In Review podcast:
Eric Umansky and Glenn Reynolds exchange views on the “shake out” in Web 2.0 start-ups and President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. Are Google and Yahoo gobbling up the Web? Find out. Austin Bay hosts and asks the questions. Ed Driscoll produces. Eric and Austin also discuss the benefits of civilian universal national service.Tune in here.Brought to you by Volvo USA.
This week, Austin Bay has an extended, one-on-one interview with Claudia Rosett on Kofi Anan, the Oil For Food Scandal, and the UN in general. It's great stuff, and very much worth a listen, particularly if you're not up to speed with incredible spadework that Claudia has performed to bring sunlight to the trainwreck that is the United Nations.
This week's Blog Week In Review podcast is now online:
This week’s program is a Blog Week special, with John Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson of Power Line. They talk about how and why they created their successful blog; the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report and its historical perspective as compared with Pearl Harbor, whose 65th anniversary was commemorated last week, and they predict next week’s events. As usual, Austin Bay hosts and moderates; Ed Driscoll produces.Click here to listen!
The latest Blog Week In Review podcast is now online:
Panelists Tammy Bruce and Glenn Reynolds discuss—what else—the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Neither finds the report encouraging.Click here to listen.Also discussed is whether America remains the most optimal place to do business.
Finally, the panelists, along with regular host and moderator Austin Bay, predict the upcoming week’s top stories.
Ed Driscoll produces.
He's the mystery man of the hour (well, half-hour, actually) on this week's Blog Week In Review, with Richard Fernandez, Glenn Reynolds, and host Austin Bay.
At the beginning of last August, Ace of Spades brilliantly predicted the scandals involving Jamil Hussein, and his immediate predecessor, Adnan Hajj, Reuters' bumbling would-be fauxtographer:
The American media is setting itself up for a massive scandal. One day, it will in fact come out that they are guilty of willful blindness and a deliberate avoidance of asking their stringers tough questions to maintain their own plausible deniability.Click on this week's podcast to explore the latest development in the MSM's faux journalism from the Middle East.And they'll have to answer some hard questions, such as, "If you're so vigilant against being 'used' by the American government for its 'propaganda,' why are you so blithely nonchalant about being worse-used by America's enemies?"
Many of Steven Glass' colleagues looked back and wondered how they'd been fooled by his fabrications for so long. Apart from the outlandishness of some of his stories, he also had an uncanny knack for getting the Killer Quote that tied together a piece or summed it up in one pithy, bullet-point sentence. We should have known no one gets that lucky so consistently, they said later.
The American media seems to be an employing a possible Army of Steven Glasses, and yet they're more than willing to pretend they don't know what's going on so long as those suspiciously-dramatic front-page pictures keep coming back from the foreign stringers.
Glenn Reynolds recommends a couple of hardware compressors for pumping up the volume of podcasts, and while those are both admirable products, I'd suggest a more software-based solution for PC-based recording: a mastering plug-in with a loudness maximizer, and first class noise reduction software.
The latter is, arguably, even more important than a compressor or the mastering software: I've heard a number of noisy podcasts, and in the months I've been doing the Pajamas Blog Week In Review podcast, I've done everything I can to tame that noise, which is inherent in telephone recordings. The Soundsoap Pro software samples the background noise of a recording, then filters it, and adds a noise gate to further reduce ambient sounds (such as hiss, hum, and ground loops) between audio. It's not going to make a telephone sound like a $3,000 condenser microphone, but it will go far towards enhancing the quality of any recording.
For the latest Blog Week In Review podcast, Austin Bay was going to quote from a segment from my night-of-the-election post near the start of the show, and then called to ask me shortly before taping the show if I wanted to read it myself. Why not? So in addition to the usual production duties, I also have a cameo apperance, before some exceptional, immediately-after-the-election thoughts from Glenn Reynolds, Eric Umansky, and Austin himself.
I have no idea what that headline means, but here it is, the latest Blog Week In Review:
Prelude to a Power Change? Perhaps. Panelists Tammy Bruce and Glenn Reynolds analyze the 2006 midterm election, dissect Senator John Kerry’s “botched joke” and focus on the Internet Governance Forum which was held in Athens, Greece this week.As Glenn writes, if you buy a Volvo, tell 'em we sent ya!Austin Bay moderates; Ed Driscoll produces. Brought to you by Volvo USA.
I have an election preview with Jonah Goldberg, the editor-at-large of National Review Online, and Steve Hayward, the author of The Age of Reagan, over at TCS Daily.
(Only a handful of Klingons and Cylons were harmed in the making of this podcast.)
Well, now that I have your attention, the latest Pajamas "Blog Week In Review" podcast discusses Kinky Friedman, and other third party Texas gubernatorial candidates, along with Joe Lieberman's third party run in Connecticut.
Really fascinating interview with Lawrence Wright in this week's Blog Week In Review. Wright is the author of The Looming Tower, a detailed look at Al Qaeda's rise to power in the 1990s.
Woody Allen's first editor once wrote a book about his craft titled, When The Shooting Stops...The Cutting Begins. In the recording world, mastering is what begins when the mixing ends. The goal is to provide to the final gloss, sparkle, and punch to a recording, and when making a CD, ensure that all of the tracks are of uniform consistency, so that the listener doesn't encounter one track that's very thin, brittle and trebly, followed by another with loads of bottom, but no mids or high-end.
In the professional recording world, mastering is typically done in studios dedicated to the task, and because it's as much an art as a science, mastering engineers who've, err, mastered their craft are highly sought after professionals, which is why if you check the liner notes of your CDs, names like Bob Ludwig and George Marino pop up so often.
A few years ago, the Cambridge, Mass-based Izotope company created a high-end mastering plug-in for the computer recording world called Ozone, which I reviewed for Blogcritics back in April of 2004. Recently, I stopped by their booth at the Audio Engineering Society convention in San Francisco this weekend, and spoke with Izotope's Mark Ethier via telephone. While part of the conversation is dedicated specifically to Ozone, there should be enough of an introduction to audio mastering in general for someone new to the subject.
And speaking of which, Mark mentioned some publications that are well worth reading to anyone interested in PC-based recording: Izotope's own 64-page introduction to mastering, an excellent primer on the topic, which is available in PDF format by clicking here. Once you've thoroughly digested it, pick up a copy of Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science by Bob Katz, and/or Mixing And Mastering Audio Recordings By Bill Gibson. They're the master class in mastering. So to speak.
Click here to listen to my interview with Mark; or stop by our Apple iTunes page. In either case, no iPod is required, virtually any computer with a broadband connection can stream an MP3.
(And for more DIY-madness, that's me on guitar, bass, synth, and a bunch of Acid loops on the intro and outro bumper music--which was mastered in Ozone, along with the rest of the podcast.)
Here's the teaser:
Sex, courtesy of the Foley scandal, is more interesting than nuclear threats issued by North Korea’s perennially threatening dictator Kim Jong-il, if both the Big Media and the New Media are any indication; Pajamas Media’s Gerard Van der Leun and Richard Fernandez discuss the reasons thereto. Additionally, the panelists take a look at Australia’s new initiatives to integrate Muslim immigrants into the country’s larger society, with the most notable program involving a new community board composed of 100 Australian imams. An example of moderate Islam in action?Click here to listen.Austin Bay moderates and Ed Driscoll [Who?--Ed] produces.
Over at Tech Central Station, my latest podcast interview is with Bruce Frohnen, the co-editor of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, a huge volume charting the history and major players involved with just that, especially in its post-World War II, William F. Buckley-inspired form.
All sorts of doings on this week's Blog Week In Review show; we apparently were Mark Steyn's first-ever podcast; he discussed his new book America Alone as special guest this week.
The book itself is exceptional, and I've been devouring my review copy. As Hugh Hewitt suggests, it's one of a handful of essential books for understanding the War On Terror, why we're fighting it in such a polite, reserved-style when compared with previous wars, and, as the title suggests, why America--along with, currently, a handful of staunch allies--is increasingly on its own in an ever-more appeasement-crazed world.
The other big news is that Blog Week In Review is now sponsored by Volvo. But does this mean we risk being named in Bill Lockyer's lawsuit against seemingly every automobile manufacturer on the planet...?
Update: Bumped to top of the page.
Purely coincidentally, I interviewed Jim Geraghty of National Review Online's TKS blog about his new book, Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership last Monday, which was the fifth anniversary of September 11th. In a new podcast online today at TCS Daily, we discussed the thesis of Jim's book.
Jim believes (and we'll see how accurate he is this November, and the November two years hence) that the terrorism of September 11th 2001 has created a wide new swatch of one issue voters. They'll vote for those, as Dick Cheney said last year, who witnessed the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and prepared for war, and punish those officials who merely want to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers.
Update (9/18/06): It's Geraghty A-Go-Go! He has a new podcast up this week with Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen. And just about every other destination in the Vast More-Or-Less Right Wing New Media Conspiracy.
A few years ago, Jami Bernard, who until very recently, was a film critic at The New York Daily News, decided to use her very public platform as a means of helping herself lose weight. She shared her weight loss--ultimately 75 pounds worth--with her readers, writing regular updates, and posting photographs of her progress.
The result of all of this is her new book, The Incredible Shrinking Critic: 75 Pounds and Counting: My Excellent Adventure in Weight-Loss, which is as much of a witty autobiography of her days growing up in Queens, as it is a serious look at diet, fitness and weight loss. With all of the recent podcasts and blogs about fitness and nutrition, I thought Jami's story would make for a great podcast, which you can hear by clicking here, or via Apple's iTunes site. (No iPod required, of course; virtually any PC can download and play an MP3 file.)
And after you're done listening, stop by Jami's own blog, by clicking here.
(Also on Blogcritics.)
Gateway Pundit and Austin Bay asked me to produce and upload this podcast to Pajamas' Politics Central site with Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) on port security, something which was very much in the news not too long ago.
The new Blog Week In Review is online. Like Ali and Frazier, special guest David Corn and Glenn Reynolds slug it out over PlameGate!
Along with Gerard Van der Leun, Roger Simon sits in, and explains the reason he went into blogging.
But then, it's the reason we all went into blogging, isn't it...?
Here's something to look forward to from the evening news--Glenn Reynolds writes that he can foresee "faked video of professional quality becoming a commonplace political item in the pretty near future":
the evidence of recent weeks is that journalism is rife with fakery, and that we're seeing more of it now mostly because it's easier to spot now that lots of people can examine the evidence and compare notes.Hey, if I could have afforded his royalties, I would have loved to have photoshopped in James Earl Jones' voice for mine.* * * Context is key. And one of the lessons of these various affairs is that neither the photo, nor the purveyor of the photo, should be given unquestioned authority. Instead, we have to think for ourselves, and make up our own minds. Because it turns out that we can't trust, well, much of anyone.
You can hear me discuss these issues further with bloggers Charles Johnson and Dean Barnett on this TCS Daily podcast. And yes, that's really us -- not faked voices. Trust me.
Update: In a related post, Betsy Newmark and Jeff Jacoby explore Photoshopped diversity in school textbooks: "when reality conflicts with political correctness, reality gets the boot", Jacoby writes.
Ward Churchill--airbrushed or otherwise--could not be reached for comment.
Elsewhere, Q and O looks at the most pliable medium of all--text--as AP truncates the quotes from Donald Rumsfeld's latest speech virtually to the point of Dowdification.
I have a podcast interview with Stephen D. Cooper, the author of a new book on the short, but rather potent history of the Blogosphere, titled, Watching The Watchdog: Bloggers As The Fifth Estate, online at TCS Daily.com.
It's the first of a two-part series. The second part features an interview with three rather prominent members of "The Fifth Estate", which you won't want to miss.
Update: Power Line's Scott Johnson also has some thoughts on Professor Cooper's new book.