Monday, September 13, 2004

A brief audio blog post in response to Adam's Daily Source Code. 

Who do I talk with at the Seattle Times and/or Post-Intelligencer about getting some RSS feeds going? In Boston, I didn't feel like I was part of the community until the Boston Globe had feeds.  

Ooops, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has feeds.  

P-I: "Fallujah offers a stark example of what's gone wrong in Iraq." 

Josh Marshall: "The president's campaign has managed to take Iraq out of the election debate." 

Scott Rosenberg: "Bush has managed to distract the nation from the essential rudderlessness of his leadership." 

The Election Protection coalition "needs you to stand up and defend voting rights on November 2." 

Today at breakfast I shared a table with a Republican from Alaska named Dave. We agreed that we have to work together after the election, no matter who wins. I'd like to hear from other Americans who feel that way.  

David Appell: "Should the storm reach landfall in New Orleans, that city could be in for a world of hurt unlike anything it’s seen in modern times." 

Finally, the Democrats are insisting that the Republicans explain how the war in Iraq is related to the "War On Terrorism." This is a much bigger deal than whether Bush served in Vietnam. It's also far more serious than the lie Clinton got impeached for. This is like shooting ducks in a barrel. 

Hacking Netflix on the new-releases-at-Netflix feed. 

Adam Curry looks at doing a VOIP-based radio show.  

Yesterday I heard a really interesting segment of the NPR show American Routes on the founding of Atlantic Records. 

Scott Koon offers a Seattle survival guide. "God hates the eastside." 

Bloggers rake CBS 

I've gotten a fair number of questions of what I think about the bloggers digging into CBS with evidence and conjecture about the authenticity of the memos about George Bush's national guard service. I wanted to figure out what I had to say first, before saying it. So here goes.

1. That bloggers are great and powerful news breakers and fact-checkers is no news to me, or to readers of this blog. Reminds me of the time, four years ago, when it was discovered that AOL Time-Warner was running an MP3 search engine that was even easier to use than Napster, at the same time as suing Napster along with the other RIAA companies. I had to virtually beat Ryan Tate at Upside over the head to get him to pick up the story and run with it. The day after he did, the Wall Street Journal picked it up, with full credit to Ryan, and none to us. I took several deep breaths and muttered "it doesn't matter" about 18 dozen times.

1a. And then there was Trent Lott. Remember him?

2. It also reminds me of the time Chris Lydon said at a Berkman Thursday meeting, that because Dick Morris, a sleazebag Democrat operator, had recognized the power of blogs, that we had won, game over, throw a party, etc. I said to Chris, I'm not doing what I do to get approval from scum like Dick Morris. In fact, if anything, I'm doing it to get rid of scum like Dick Morris, or at least develop a political process that empowers everyone but scum like Dick Morris.

3. Even blogs aren't as important as choosing the best president in 2004. If that's the only thing we accomplish with all our work over all these years, it would have been worth it. If blogs correctly tell the story of the end of the world, we didn't win.

4. The latest we-fact-check-your-ass story was about an irrelevant detail of an irrelevant issue. Come on guys and gals, there's a real story out there. Which one of these losers should we bet our future on? Hint: It's even worse than it appears.

Switch back to Pacific time? 

In the upper right corner of this page there's a pretty important piece of text that says what time the blog was last updated.

Right now it says: "Monday, September 13, 2004 at 4:22 AM Eastern," which is accurate, but it doesn't give you much of an idea of the temporal environment at the point of entry.

In fact, in Seattle, where I am now as I write this, and as I will be for much of the remainder of 2004, it's now 1:29 AM Pacific."

So the question is: Should I switch the message?

We deal in the weighty issues of the day, and the minute issues of the day too. Service with a smile.