As we've discussed numerous times around here, when states go from red, or even purple, to hard core blue--residents and businesses vote with their feet. (Even in the big blue states overseas.)

Ed Morrissey's latest post explores similar ground--and it focuses on a state (New Jersey) whose fiscal and gubernatorial woes were the subject of one of our very first podcasts.

Update: This comment underneath Ed's post crystallizes the opinions I've heard from several of my friends and family still in New Jersey.

"Since I had the misfortune to become ensnared in the Canadian 'human rights' racket, I've come to appreciate more and more the comment one fellow left on an Internet post somewhere or other, remarking that he was in favour of free speech, because the alternatives 'were just too weird.'"

That's a brief excerpt from Mark Steyn's article-length introduction to Pete Vere and Kathy Shaidle's new book, The Tyranny of Nice, on Canada's "Human Rights Commissions", and their patented show trials to purge all doubleplusungood thoughtcrime from Airstrip Canada.

How weird do those trials get? And could similar such weirdness be coming to the US? Tune in to my 40-minute long interview with Kathy and Pete over at Pajamas Media.

For a sneak preview of today's PJM Political on XM Satellite Radio, check out the podcast of the blogger round-table recorded immediately after Tuesday night's debate, featuring:

• PJM Political host Steve Green--fresh off his usual soiree into debate drunkblogging, plus:

• James Lileks.

• Glenn Reynolds.

• Jennifer Rubin.

• Produced by your humble narrator and multimedia maven.
  

Austin Bay interviews Steve Green, Glenn Reynolds, Jennifer Rubin, and--live from Denver International Airport--James Lileks. In a half-hour interview recorded by yours truly earlier today, they look back at the then just recently announced Sarah Palin pick by John McCain, Barack Obama's speech last night, and the gestalt of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Tune in here to listen!

Ten minutes of video, 55-minutes of satellite radio, 30-minutes of podcasting, and all for the price of your broadband connection; just another week here at Ed Driscoll.com.

Seriously--be sure to check out the latter two items: Steve Green energetically ties together the disparate elements of this week's PJM Political, and Austin Bay interviews General David Petraeus, who phoned in from Baghdad.

(For any podcasting boffins in the audience, here's some gear talk: because of the poor phone connection, Gen. Petraeus initially sounded more like a call from here until I applied a massive amount of Izotope's RX audio restoration plug-in, followed by compressing the daylights out of the recording with their Ozone mastering plug-in.)

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:

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.

Tune in here to listen!

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:

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."

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.

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.)

Happy Fourth of July!

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?

Hosted by Austin Bay, and produced by Ed Driscoll. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

Maybe Harry Reid should tune in.

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 candidates

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.

Don't miss it!

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.

Brought to you by Volvo USA.

Tune in here.

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.

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.

Click here to listen.

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.

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.

Click on this week's podcast to explore the latest development in the MSM's faux journalism from the Middle East.

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.

Austin Bay moderates; Ed Driscoll produces. Brought to you by Volvo USA.

As Glenn writes, if you buy a Volvo, tell 'em we sent ya!

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?

Austin Bay moderates and Ed Driscoll [Who?--Ed] produces.

Click here to listen.

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.

* * *

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.

Hey, if I could have afforded his royalties, I would have loved to have photoshopped in James Earl Jones' voice for mine.

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 ra^ther 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.

When the average person thinks of SWAT, chances are, this is what comes to mind. But last month, Radley Balko of the CATO institute issued a blockbuster 100 page report titled "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" and an accompanying interactive map showing the dramatic rise of SWAT teams being deployed for routine police work. He has no beef with SWAT's original purpose: breaking up hostage situations, and the like. But using SWAT to serve warrants and breaking up illegal poker games? That's a different matter.

Don't miss my podcast interview with Radley, online today at TCS Daily.

I have a podcast interview with historian John Lukacs on his new book, June 1941: Hitler and Stalin, and its predecessor, The Hitler of History, over at TCS Daily.

I have doubleheader podcast now online: first up is an interview with James Maguire, the author of Impresario: The Life And Times Of Ed Sullivan. It's followed by a second interview, with James Gavin, the author of Intimate Nights: The Golden Age Of New York Cabaret, whose cover features the great Bobby Short in his heyday. The theme that ties both interviews together is New York's heyday in the 1950s through the 1960s when Manhattan dominated show business and pop culture. Its a fun look at a period, which for better or worse, no longer exists, discussed by two authors who thoroughly know their subjects.

Click here to listen, or subscribe via our iTunes page; in either case, no iPod required--virtually any PC can play an MP3 file.

I interviewed Chris Anderson of Wired magazine on his new book, The Long Tail : Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, for a podcast on TCS Daily that debuted last week. Glenn and Helen Reynolds have their own podcasted interview with Anderson on Instapundit today. It's the Long Tail discussing The Long Tail!

Update: Here's one impact of the Long Tail on TV: Last week was "the least-watched week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks".

Another Update: Today is the launch day for Anderson's book; click here for media reaction and additional interviews.

I've written pretty extensively (particularly at Blogcritics) about my interest in home recording over the years. (It was also a door into other DIY activities, such as blogging, and it's no coincidence that Glenn Reynolds of An Army of Davids fame, Blogcritics' Eric Olsen, and several other bloggers also have a background in this area.) But home recording means generating material to record: songs take a fair amount of work to develop properly and nurture to their conclusion; it's easy to get stuck, and wind up staring at recording deck or computer monitor and doing nothing.

Karl Coryat, a consulting editor at Bass Player magazine, and the author of The Guerrilla Recording Handbook, and his co-author, Nicholas Dobson, have co-written a really fun book on breaking that logjam. Called The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook, it catalogs a whole host of methods of overcoming musical writer's block, whether you're writing your first song, or your 50th.

I interviewed them recently, and it made for an equally enjoyable 20-minute podcast. Click here to listen directly, and click here to subscribe via iTunes. Note that in both cases, no iPod is required; virtually any PC can play an MP3 file.

(Also posted at Blogcritics.)

I have a pretty nifty podcast interview with Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine, on his new book, The Long Tail : Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, over at TCS Daily. It's a follow-up, or sorts, to a piece I wrote for TCS back in early 2005, which discusses (with Hugh Hewitt) how the Long Tail impacts the Blogosphere. My discussion with Chris expands the Tail's impact to several aspects of pop culture, and the business world.

But it's no substitute for reading Chris's book itself though, which Amazon says is due out on Tuesday. Chris is having a launch party the following day in New York, and he's having a drawing on his site for tickets, if you're in the area and would like to attend.

For your listening pleasure, the latest Pajamas Blog Week In Review is up and ready to go.

The must be my day for podcasting: earlier today, an article I wrote on podcasting for the July issue of CE Pro, the home theater professionals' trade publication went live (subscription may be required). And while I'm in the middle of mixing and editing Pajamas' Blog Week In Review podcast (which should go live tomorrow, once I finish it and upload it to Pajamas HQ), over at TCS Daily, the first part of my two-part podcast interview with Michael Yon and Chris Muir went live. Click on over!

I interviewed Hugh Hewitt on Friday concerning his new book, Painting The Map Red; it's the subject of my latest podcast. You can click here to listen to it; or tune in via our iTunes page. (No iPod required--virtually any computer can download and play an MP3 file.)

With primaries this past week in California and several other states, as well as the death of Zarqawi, it seemed like a particularly opportune time for an autumnal preview: the midterm elections, the role the Blogosphere will play in them, and the state of the Cleveland Browns, the NFL's perrienial powerhouse...

"PJM Sydney editor Richard Fernandez joins regulars Tammy Bruce and Eric Umansky in a spirited discussion of Haditha, the Canadian terror arrests and Internet click-through fraud. Moderator Austin Bay comments on Zarqawi’s death." Click here to listen.

Richard Fernandez, Pajamas' Man In Sydney, interviews blogger Bill Roggio, who is reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan on that city's recent riots. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Who says bloggers don't do original reporting?" (Somebody tell Gene Weingarten.)

And the latest Blog Week In Review is up, featuring Glenn, Eric Umansky of Slate, guest blogger and Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, and hosted by Austin Bay.

You can hear both podcasts, by clicking here.

This could very well be a historic first: I can't think of another podcast that combines the words "scone" and "nipple ring"--and certainly not within the same sentence, courtesy of special guest (sitting in for Tammy Bruce this week), Jeff Goldstein.

In other words, don't miss this week's Pajamas Blog Week In Review!

Update: Once a closely-guarded secret of anchormen everywhere, Jeff reveals the method of obtaining great-sounding Professional Pundit-Style vocals.

Roger L. Simon writes:

Today's editorial on the NSA in the LATimes is an example of why I no longer waste any time on the newspaper (Food Section excepted, of course). The drones at the LAT wrote the following:

The secretive NSA (an abbreviation, Washington wags say, for "No Such Agency") has overseen a domestic surveillance program whose existence is known only because of media reports and whose exact contours remain a mystery even to most members of Congress.

Apparently the fellas at the LAT have never read the best-selling The Puzzle Palace (copyright 1983! and all about the NSA) or heard of the Echelon program, which has been running through several adminstrations. All this "Ohmygod, whatistheNSAdoing?" nonsense is so much propagandistic crap. Anyone paying the slightest attention has known for years what the NSA's brief was. What are all those satellites supposed to be for,anyway? The level of hypocrisy in all this is staggering. If you don't want an NSA, say so. But the obvious question is - where have you been for the last several decades?

The NSA and Echelon, along with Harper's and Borders Books, will be among the topics discussed in the latest Pajamas Media Blog Week In Review podcast, which should be online later today. Don't miss it!

Update: It's online, here.

My latest podcast is online; it's an interview with Nacho Baños, author of the superb book, The Blackguard: A Detailed History of the early Fender Telecaster, Years 1950-1954. As I wrote earlier this week:

In 1950, Leo Fender released his first Broadcaster electric guitar. Eventually renamed the Telecaster after a threatened lawsuit by Gretsch, which had a drum kit with that name, the Telecaster became one of the great electric guitars, played by all three of the Yardbirds' holy trinity of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, as well as Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen, and Keith Richards.

What made the Telecaster so successful was its enduring simplicity: still made in all sorts of variations by Fender (here are the two I own--a mid-1980s reissue of the original early '50s model, and a 1997 B-Bender-equipped Tele), it's also an enormously popular kit guitar, because just about anybody with a screwdriver can knock together its basic shapes: the maple neck, ash body, single-ply black pickguard, and two single coil pickups. Played cleanly, The Tele's twangy tones define country music; plugged into a cranked amp, the Tele becomes the snarl heard on the first Led Zeppelin album and Exile On Main Street.

Nacho Banos is a Telecaster aficionado who lives in Spain. He's recently released The Blackguard, a magnificent hard cover coffee table book (complete with black slipcase) that covers the Tele's formative years from 1950 to 1954, when Leo Fender's first Broadcasters, "No-casters" and, finally, Telecasters rolled off his Fullerton, California assembly line.

These early Fenders now fetch tens of thousands of dollars from collectors, many of whom were at the Dallas Guitar Show a couple of weeks ago, which is where I first saw the Blackguard book, on display at its publisher's table, JK Lutherie. They recently sent me a review copy, and while this is a rather specialized subject and comes with a hefty price tag ($85), Tele fans will be knocked out by this book, which like Yasuhiko Iwanade's classic Beauty of the Burst, combines oodles of professional photography of classic vintage instruments, and an extensive technical appendage, explaining just what made these guitars tick from an engineering standpoint, and why they're so desirable 50 years after Leo's first babies were born.

This description of the book on Fender's Website sounds pretty accurate to me:

The book comes in an individual hard case, and features a beautiful color presentation, with more than 2,000 images of early Telecasters. About 50 guitars are disassembled and pictured in detail. Included are a few non-truss Esquires from early 1950, a large group of Broadcasters and Nocasters, and a good selection of ’51, ’52, ’53 and ’54 Esquires and Telecasters.

At 419 pages, The Blackguard is divided into five chapters, one for each year from 1950 to 1954, plus a final “nitty gritty” technical section in which every component of the Telecaster is pictured and explained in detail. Most secrets pertaining to the manufacturing techniques used for these parts are revealed here, supported by factory documentation, Leo Fender’s personal cost notes, patent prints, Radio-Tel inventory sheets, invoices and other historical documents.

Great pictures of legendary Blackguard players in action abound in the book—players including Redd Volkaert, Waylon Jennings, John Beland, Jim Weider, Bill Hullet, G.E. Smith, Keith Richards, Danny Gatton, Roy Buchanan, Jimmy Bryant, Bruce Springsteen, Arlen Roth, Vince Gill, Mike Stern, Marty Stuart and others. There are forewords by Volkaert, Weider, Beland and Ole Fuzzy, plus special contributions by Hullet and luthier David Eichelbaum.

Baños, a native of Spain, has been passionate about electric guitars since childhood. His father bought him his first real electric, a brand-new 1983 top-loader blonde Telecaster, an event that marked the starting point of an intense love affair with one of the first and best guitar designs. He discovered the magic feel, beautiful looks and unique sound of the early Blackguard Telecasters and started to develop a real passion for them.

Baños conceived of the book in 2001, and finished it after three painstaking years of work. He self-edited and self-published it, and all proceeds from its sale are being donated to Intermon Oxfam (www.oxfam.org/eng) to fund Aquaria, a water-supply development program for Ethiopia.

Rock and Roll as we know it wouldn't be possible without the electric guitar, and so much guitar history begins with the Fender Telecaster. If you're a fan of rock (or country for that matter), you'll certainly enjoy this one.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I'm just editing, mixing down, and uploading the latest Pajamas Blog Week In Review podcast. In terms of audio quality, this will be the best one yet--and the panelists definitely came to play as well.

I'll let you know when it's up--or just keep checking the Pajamas motherblog.

Update: Click here--it's now online.

The Pajamas Blog Week In Review is up early this week, because I'm travelling today. Fortunately, I was able to get it edited, mixed and uploaded last night. Austin, Eric, Glenn And Tammy really bent over backwards to accomodate my schedule, and I certainly appreciate it.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with Alvin Toffler, the author of 1970's mega-seller, Future Shock, on his new book, Revolutionary Wealth, and his enduring 1980 classic, The Third Wave. My podcast interview is now up, over at TCS Daily.

(Note that no iPod is required; virtually any computer can download and play this MP3 file.)

Update: Blogcritics has a review of Revolutionary Wealth.

Sorry for the lack of posting today--I spent the morning putting the latest "Blog Week In Review" together--Austin Bay, Tammy Bruce, Eric Umansky and special guest Michael Ledeen had a great discussion of topics ranging from gas prices to Tony Snow to Iran to United 93. Click on over to Pajamas HQ to listen in!

For those musicians in the audience--or those laypersons interested in home recording in general, I thought I’d explain how I put the Pajamas Podcast theme song together.

The first step was booting up Cakewalk Sonar, my primary recording program. I then began to fire up various software synth applets and started experimenting.

A couple of months ago, Cakewalk introduced their Rapture software synthesizer, which contained a variety of sequencer patterns. These are pre-programmed riffs designed to unfold as the musician holds the key or keys down. Play one note and get ten--or a hundred. That certainly appeals to me!

Apparently, one of the programmers at Cakewalk is a big Blade Runner fan, as both Rapture and Project 5 Rev 2 have contained patches strongly reminiscent of the sound Vangelis invented for that seminal movie. In the case of Rapture, there was a sequence patch inspired by the Vangelis’ sequencer on the film’s end titles. I knew I wanted to start with that as the “music concrete” to build the theme around, so the first step was experimenting to find a tempo that the patch sounded best at (about 110 beats per minute).

The next was to find a drum pattern that sounded nice against the sequencer. I have a collection of various drum loops, mostly from Sony’s Acid Loops series. One of their more offbeat (heh) drum collections is called “Zero Gravity Beats”, and a pattern from that disc matched up nicely with the Blade Runner sequencer.

I knew the theme wasn’t going to be much longer than 30 second at most, so I laid down 30 seconds of the Blade Runner sequencer in A--which meant programming one long A note, and the sequencer would automatically chug up and down in its pattern, always returning to that note.

I then decided to craft a simple chord sequence in that key, and found another sequencer pattern in Rapture that sounds great as a sustained chord. It would hold the chord for almost a bar, and then play a sequence of notes as it trailed it off. So I played a series of simple acending chords in the key of A: A major, B major, C#minor, D major, E major, returning to A.

With two layers of synths burbling away, I figured some electric guitar would sound great for contrast, so I dusted off my Gibson 1959 Les Paul reissue, and fired up Line6’s aging but still very functional GuitarPort, which allows me to plug in an electric guitar’s standard quarter-inch guitar cable via its floor pedal into the computer’s USB port.

I chose GuitarPort’s “Brit Hi-Gain” patch, which convincingly models a late 1960s Marshall stack--the perfect amp for a fluid, lightly distorted Les Paul lead sound.

I then improvised a few melody ideas on the Les Paul and eventually, started recording them. The final lead line is the best of two takes spliced seamlessly together.

I then edited the drum loops, pasting in various drum rolls and cymbal crashes to the give the aural impression of a drummer reacting in sympathy with the lead guitarist.

Sometimes ideas that are clichés are useful because they just can’t be beat, so I launched Zero-G’s Nostalgia software synthesizer and found its recreation of the infamous Fairlight “Orchestra 5” patch. I say “infamous” because it seemed that every recording MTV ran in the mid-1980s had one or twenty orchestra hits from this patch. Frankie Goes To Hollywood seemed to have based their career on it.

But that was twenty years ago, and orchestra hits seemed like a useful way to kick off and end the song, so I dropped in a few hits: one at the start, and a couple at the end.

Then I added a simple Fender bass part using another software synthesizer. I chose a very conventional bass sound to contrast with all of the non-conventional synth sounds in the frequencies above it.

Since it was the lead instrument and would feature prominently in the mix, I wanted to give the Les Paul a slightly more fluid, modern sound, so I fired up Izotope’s Spectron processing applet, and ran the guitar their “Sweet & Sour” patch, which processed the guitar with a light combination of delay, filtering and smearing, that’s a tad more exotic than the typical chorus or flanger patch.

Izotope’s effects typically sound great, but are very processor-intensive. So a track with one of their treatments on it usually won’t play in time with the rest of instruments. To offset this, I first cloned the original Les Paul track and then muted its original version. Next I processed the cloned track with Spectron. I used the original track as a guide to visually slide the new version backwards in time so that it lined up with the old track.

The song was beginning to take shape, but it didn’t seem quite done yet.

the chord sequencer part served as a nice counterpoint to the start of the lead guitar part. But as the piece progressed, I decided to introduce a second guitar part to add a little additional excitement. So I took off the Les Paul and plugged my Fender 1952 Telecaster reissue into the same GuitarPort patch and played some simple licks, in a higher register than the Les Paul’s lines. It was also on the Tele that I played the bent, heavily vibrato-ed A note that i mixed in under the first orchestra hit.

After listening to the track as it stood, I wanted some interesting noise or effect to subtly begin the tune before the first orchestra hit went “boom!”. I rifled through my collection of Acid Loops from Bill Laswell’s collections, and found a nifty tape rewinding effect--it was part of a collection of DJs scratching records and creating other hip-hop/techno licks. The symbolism of the podcast starting with a tape rewinding seemed irresistible, and even if nobody “got” the effect, it at least added some subliminal ambient weirdness to create some subtle initial tension, resolved when the actual instruments enter.

Finally, I mixed everything down to a stereo .Wav file adding some subtle reverb on most of the instruments to bind them together, and processed the entire track with Izotope’s Ozone mastering applet, to give it all a nice professional sheen.

If that sounds like a lot of work, well, a lot of it is based on tried and true techniques I’ve either learned or developed over several years. The whole thing from start to finish took an evening--a very pleasant evening indeed, as I find music recording to be an extremely rewarding hobby.

Hope you liked the finished result--please tune in each week to the podcast it was created for!

It's the Pajamas Podcast, dude! Don't miss it.

With the first Blog Week In Review safely ensconced on the server buried deep within Pajamas HQ, I'm off to Dallas for about a week, starting here. Watch for regular posting to resume tonight or tomorrow.

John Lennon once called the blues "a chair", since all popular music sits upon it: jazz, rock and roll, funk, all the way to rap. And much of the lingo that the early blues musicians created to describe their music--as well as their instruments--derive from words dating back to the 19th century and even earlier.

Knowing a little bit about this language and its history, it seemed obvious that really uncovering these terms and their derivations requires a fair amount of musicology and research. Which is why I was intrigued when a book titled The Language of the Blues was sent to me in galley form late last year. Released in January, with a forward by New Orleans’ legendary Dr. John, Debra DeSalvo's new book is a glossary of blues terms and their background, ranging from "alcorub" to "zuzu". She discusses how she came to write it, and the role that Dr. John played in shaping the book, in our podcast today. You can click here to listen to it, or visit our Apple iTunes site. (In either case, no iPod necessary to listen to it; virtually any PC's media player will play this MP3 file.)

Debra is a journalist who’s written for publications ranging from the Village Voice to Yoga Journal to a variety of music magazines. She's also a musician herself, and it’s her music you hear at beginning and end of today's podcast. You can hear MP3s of several of her songs—as well as find out more details about her new book, by visiting her Website.

As I mentioned last week, I thought that Steven Malanga's article, "The Mob That Whacked Jersey", on the Garden State's run-away tax and spend fever was a surprisingly universal cautionary tale. It does a terrific job describing what can happen when a state loses its bearings and fiscal discipline, and it's remarkably timely, as April 17 looms ever closer. And it builds on the material in his recent book, The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today.

I had a great interview with Steve on Tuesday, and after a little editing, it's become our latest podcast.

(No iPod required of course; virtually any PC media player will play an MP3 file. And yes, it's entirely coincidental that our first two podcasts are with guys named Steve. We'll do everything we can to break this cycle with the next one...)

Since all the cool kids seem to be doing their own Podcasts these days, I figured it's time to join in on the fun. And speaking of cool, our first interview is with the King of Cool himself, Stephen Green, the proprietor of VodkaPundit.com, "The Best Free Booze On the 'Net", as Roger Simon would say. So without further ado...

Click here for the first EdDriscoll.com Podcast! (No iPod required for listening--virtually any PC audio player will play an MP3 file.)

Future Podcasts will go live about once a week or so (probably with an emphasis on "or so").

For the technical wonks out there, this was recorded with Cakewalk's Sonar 4.0, via the JK Audio Inline Patch that Glenn Reynolds mentioned in his first Podcast for the telephone recording, and an ancient Shure SM58 microphone, both of which ran into an M-Audio Delta 66 audio card and breakout box.

I played all of the instruments on the intro and outro music, with the exception of the drums, which Mick Fleetwood sat in on (more or less). And the final Podcast mix was processed with Izotope's Ozone mastering software to give it a nice professional sheen.

...Or so we hope. Let us know what you think!