Dumpster Bust: Online Media Cultist

Goodbye Dumpster Bust, Hello Online Media Cultist!

2007-03-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

Dumpster Bust has been around since 2003, when it existed as an e-zine distributed via e-mail to family and friends. Since coming to blog-land in late 2004 it's been a blast to rap about whatever happened to be on my mind. But all good things must come to an end, particularly when I feel as though I'm not so much leaving as moving onto bigger and better things.

And that would be a brand new site, a brand new name, and a continued focus on all things online media.

Online Media Cultist is where I'm hanging the e-hat from now on. Please stop on by anytime!

I just finished writing the About section for OMC. Here it is:

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About Online Media Cultist

Online Media Cultist lurks and percolates and sizzles and snaps on the new web frontier. From social networking to social news to social media to social studies (one of those might not be covered as much as the others) OMC serves at the alter of what's new and hot and fresh and webtastical. Whether its blogospheric machinations, golden start-up discoveries, or the maddeningly glorious convergence of what's old and new, what's expected and what's about to become the fleeting norm, Online Media Cultist is there to bear (can I get a) witness.

If you think you might be a card carrying online media cultist, you already are. And by golly, you've just found your new home.

Some recent greatest hits (these stories originally appeared in Dumpster Bust and were imported to OMC at launch in late March 2007):

The Power of Twitter Compels You

The Grind and Crunch of Blog Production

Top 10 Favorite Online Media Blogs: From Mathew Ingram to Deep Jive

Netscape Represents the Future of News

The Economist Tinkers With Blogs to Expand Free Online Offerings

About Cultist-in-Chief Eric Berlin
Online Media Cultist has its roots in Dumpster Bust, a wide-ranging e-zine and later blog that delivered miracles from mind trash to the masses. While covering politics and television and music was super fun, it became clear to me over time that I wanted to focus my attention on the Interwebs, a universe I fixate upon and examine and revel in all day as a web producer in downtown Los Angeles.

I'm also the exec producer of Blogcritics, an online magazine of more than 1,700 superior writer/bloggers. It's my pleasure and honor that Online Media Cultist is the latest addition to the growing BC Network of sites, which includes GlossLip, Desicritics, BC Goodie Bag, and Confessions of a Fanboy.

For more mini-thoughts and observations, catch me on Twitter here.

On the Internet, Everything is Marketing

2007-03-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

When I graduated from college and entered the business world for the first time (I had studied history – ha!) I found the word "marketing" to be an odious term. I cringed at it and felt much the same way as Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything when he makes his convoluted speech about not wanting to sell, buy, or process anything in the hideous machinery of the corporate life.

But the reality is that life is a long series of sales presentations. The best way to sell yourself, of course, is to just be yourself. But on the Internet, if no one knows who you are you won't have the opportunity to make the pitch.

So how can you be yourself on the Internet while getting the word out to others about how great you are? Ah, that's where even stranger terms apply, "viral marketing" and "social media marketing" and such.

A piece that came out today called Social Media Marketing for Small Business has some great tips for anyone who simply wants to be heard and enter the great Internet conversation via blog or small business website or what have you.

I'll run through a few of them. Most of it is common sense, but it's also good sense.

Comment on other blogs
If you're going to become a great crime fiction novelist, you absolutely must become an expert on the legends of the genre, know who made the rules and then broke them, and who are simply pulp-writing hacks. On the Internet, you have to know who is in your "space," who are the best at it, and who are the most popular. That learning process will help you to hone your own knowledge and help you to figure out how to create the best possible content or experience for your visitors.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you have the opportunity to meet and interact with people while you get your learn on.

Another great tip for aspiring writers is that if you want to be a great writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot. On the Internet, that can be modified to: you need to read a lot and write a lot and comment a lot. Commenting says a lot about who you are, how professionally you present yourself, how easily you mix with and play with others in a visual medium, and most importantly allows you to show off that you have something interesting and pertinent to add to a conversation.

Like real life conversation, commenting and interacting with other commenters is an art form. Do it in the right places and do it well and people will take notice. Do it well enough and the "legends of the genre" will take notice, and then you're on your way to being a player.

Try StumbleUpon
I'm not a huge fan of StumbleUpon, but plenty of people rave about how much traffic it can bring you. Nonetheless, social bookmarking and social news sites can be invaluable ways of getting the word out. Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and del.icio.us are all great places to submit stories. Of course, it helps to have friends around to vote/submit for you as a single person does not have great power to drive attention on those sites.

Mailing lists and RSS are also extremely important. The more you can do to make sure people that have somehow found you and are interested in what you have to say/sell can easily find you again, the better. If you're ambitious enough, collect contact names and send out newsletter announcements or press releases.

Join groups & mailing lists
Again, this is a vital way to stay informed and join conversations. Getting hooked up with a good RSS reader and piping in both those "legends of the genre" and a bunch of other smaller but interesting fish let's you stay up-to-the-second.

Joining groups can be helpful but it should be something you're genuinely interested in investing some time in. People can smell spam from a mile away so it's not advisable to pop in and say, "Hey, check out my site, it's like super awesome!" Likewise, when you leave comments anywhere, it should be in service of the conversation and not merely a thinly veiled ploy to drive attention to your site and yourself. But if you get and stay involved with the right group, you will be able to develop a loyal group of online supporters.

Finally
The Internet is not like television. No one will know when a new "Internet channel" comes on the air unless you get on peoples' radars and give them a compelling reason to spend their limited time on you.

That's why marketing is not such a terrible thing, actually. It's simply spreading the word.

So, There Is Money In Social Networking

2007-03-28T08:24:00.001-07:00

No wonder that hundreds of social networking start-ups – eyeing niche markets from dog enthusiasts to high level executives to moms – are sweating and grinding to peel away some of MySpace's market share. With the announcement that MySpace is now earning "in excess of $30 million" a month in revenue, the days of speculation over whether there was any real money to be found in social networking are long gone indeed.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable asks: "Should we be surprised that one of the world’s biggest websites actually has the ability to generate some revenue?" If anything, it was surprising to me that it took them this long to ramp up earnings on an audience roughly the size of Jupiter.

CenterNetworks' Allen Stern uses this news as an opportunity to speculate that the transition from print to online news and magazine publications will quicken. He then asks: "Will the Internet become clogged with these new online-only magazines?" I would think that the Internet is already "clogged" with just about everything. Quality content and hardnosed marketing and audience acquisition and community building are the keys to the online content kingdom.

MySpace is without doubt king of the hill in the social networking space. They're now making money through advertising and cutting deals to allow some exclusive third-party widgets to reside on user profiles. But if they don't innovate and give their massive (and fickle) audience a reason to stick around, social networking-seekers will find innumerable other places to decorate their personal space.

Twitter as Communications Platform

2007-03-27T08:51:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons why Twitter's audience has grown so quickly is because its open API has allowed a multitude of applications to be developed to support and enhance the Twitter-universe.

The basis of Twitter's popularity is very simple, elegant, and potentially addictive: send super short messages (maximum 140 characters) to groups of "followers" via web, SMS, or IM and receive the same messages from all of your "friends." Now, TechCrunch reports this morning that "a subtle upcoming change to Twitter's API" will allow for more advanced functionality.

Dave Winer writes that there is "no user-level functionality yet to report," but that he will keep us posted.

The idea will be that you can send a simple "command" message such as "weather" or "score" to a specific "follower" and that profile will generate information in response, i.e. "It's hailing, take cover" or "Your boys are getting smacked by 'Bama," or whatever.

Again, this simple premise may have yet another profound impact on Twitter's penetration. Particularly for the mobile set, Twitter has the potential to become a dominant communications tool, not only for receiving and transmitting idle chatter, but for collecting quick and relevant information as well.

Businesses will build atop this platform. Sports updates, stock quotes, specific news and information queries, restaurant and club reviews, album and record reviews (send the ISBN or UPC code and instantly receive a 1-10 score as voted on by users, let's say): the sky's really the limit, all focused upon short, simple, and fast. That's the killer app.

Is MyBlogLog Losing Its Buzz?

2007-03-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I really dig MyBlogLog, the simple and stripped down social networking tool for bloggers with the killer app widget that lets you see and interact with the readers who visit your site.

But I'm wondering if the buzz is wearing off. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the activity level on the site has subsided considerably since the admittedly recent days when blogger-fueled hype was high and the announcement of MBL's acquisition by Yahoo! was making the rounds.

Certainly for several months it seemed as though there was a lot of activity on the site itself. I received friend requests frequently for example (see my profile here without doing much to earn the honor, and it was easy to tell just by clicking around that many people were discovering and making use of the site's features. I'm not getting that sense of late. My activity level on the site is about the same, but the number of friend requests and messages has dropped considerably.

Perhaps even more telling is that I haven't read anything about MyBlogLog in a while (this Technorati chart is a bit inconclusive, I must admit). Could it be that the early adopter crowd has incorporated MBL into ho hum everyday online life and moved on? I'm guilty myself, having caught the Twitter wave and am very much fixating on that particular e-vortex as the latest-greatest thing.

While Alexa rankings must be taken with a grain of salt, it shows that MBL traffic has leveled off. It's still ahead of Twitter, though it's close now!

I still appreciate and love MyBlogLog's best feature: I get to see the faces (or avatars, or artistic representations) of some of the people who stop by my site.

I'd love to see what other people think: what's the deal with MyBlogLog these days?

Politics and MySpace, "the leading social networking blogosphere"?

2007-03-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

I love Howard Fineman. He's one of the best political writers in the business. He's great on Hardball, and his coverage and analysis of elections and the pure sport of politics is second-to-none.

But still, it's hilarious when non-tech savvy journalists wade into those electronic weeds.

The Internet is now a part of politics as it never has before. As Fineman rightly notes, it was Howard Dean's (and Joe Trippi's) success in raising money and building grassroots community online in 2003 that ushered political campaigns into a new era. Politics and politicians have always followed the money, and therefore 2008 presidential hopefuls are online and actively seeking advantage, dollars, and voters. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama broke away from the long tradition of officially announcing a presidential campaign in a hometown dripping from its very pores in Americana, for example, and instead announced via online video.

Politicians are now seeking ways to integrate technology into their relationship with constituents as well. Obama has made at least one appearance on popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos during the run-up to the pivotal 2006 midterm elections, and '08 presidential aspirant John Edwards delivers regular posts on Twitter, the newest rage of the tech-bloggy set. (Edwards staff has thanked his "followers" on Twitter for all of their words of support over the recent announcement that Elizabeth Edward's breast cancer has returned.)

Journalists are trying to keep up. It's chuckle-worthy every time that Hardball's Chris Matthews (another favorite of mine) announces that features and video clips can be found online. He has a look of smirking wonder that seems to say, "There's this thing called the Internet and people actually do stuff there, can you believe it?"

This week, in the midst of an interesting-as-usual piece called "Out of Control," which looks at how technology and the media now leave political candidates with less control over the message of campaigns than ever before, Fineman let this beauty slip: "Last time I checked, MySpace, by far the leading social networking blogosphere, had more than 60 million registered members."

The leading social networking blogosphere. If only he had just scaled it back half a notch and left it at "leading social networking website." Or platform, tool, place, locale, or e-shack of misbegotten ill designed schlock. But blogosphere has a pretty clear if broad connotation, representing that vast array of millions of blogs, most of which are separate online entities from one another.

MySpace certainly has millions of profiles, all of which have a blog feature. So I suppose it would be okay to call MySpace a blogosphere unto itself, though I would wager that's going a bit too far. And it would be definitely be inaccurate to compare that "blogosphere" with the blogosphere.

So MySpace is not a social networking blogosphere. It's a huge and monstrous social networking site. The blogosphere is its own universe (thus the 'sphere!) and many who occupy it are more than happy to not be associated with MySpace.

Howard, we love you, but you gaffed a little on this one!

Twitters of the Day: Starbucks, Han Solo, and Netscape

2007-03-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Lots of great stuff coming out of Twitter (the wunderkind short, simple, and snappy tool that lets you post 140-character maximum rants, pontifications, links, and random musings about personal peccadilloes to groups of "followers"), I may have to make Twitters of the Day a regular feature.

Jason Calacanis: correcting WSJ errors at my blog. uhhhh.... dont even work there anymore and i'm fighting the good fight. i guess i need to let it go huh?

Jason is referring to his spirited defense against a Wall Street Journal piece that claims that Netscape traffic is way down since the switch over to the "new" social news-driven platform (which I have declared, with its problems and all, is the future of news). Like many arguments, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle on this one. That said, Netscape is a perfect choice to continue to lead out a broad-based general audience social news experiment. I just wish that their editors were a little less trigger happy on editing/yanking submissions and would more closely cooperate with submitters and publishers, without whom the site would have no content.

Bloggers Blog: Will newspapers/magazines make all the journalists Twitter like they made them blog?

There are a bunch of great and interesting and probing questions that sweep Twitter everyday. I think this one is a little bit tongue-and-cheek but I do think it likely that some journalists will get on board with Twitter before too long. We may see reporters in battle zones giving live on-the-ground snippets, anchors at the desk musing about life on the news set during commercial breaks, and solicitations for questions prior to interviews. Pretty cool stuff in other words, and it all lies ahead.

Bloggers Blog: Poor Han Solo. Darth Vader is crushing him in followers 1250 to 56

Bloggers Blog delivered the goods today! There are a bunch of fake Twitter profiles, which I see as a sign of the site's health and popularity. I haven't friended any of them yet, so if any of them are particularly funny, please let me know.

Robert Scoble: I told Dave to pop up some Starbucks ads on TwitterVision just to freak everyone out. http://twittermap.com/twittervision -- I'm addicted.

Ah, that rascally Scobleizer. TwitterVision is a site to behold, a really easy and mesmerizing way to see how this simple little product is providing yet another short cut to instant and immersive (and even substantive, sometimes!) conversation between friends and followers and lurkers around the globe.

Drop me a line at my Twitter page. You'll be hooked before long!

New Mashtracker Tracks Social News Stories, Techmeme-Style

2007-03-21T09:00:00.001-07:00

Mashable and news tracker site Megite have partnered to launch Mashtracker, a "memetracker" that focuses on blog conversations stemming from stories published by Mashable.

This is an interesting development on a few fronts. Gabe Rivera's suite of memetracker sites – anchored by politics-centric Memeorandum and tech-centric Techmeme – does an excellent job of selecting hot stories (based on an algorithm that uses factors such as links and "influence") and then surrounds them with related stories and blog articles in story clusters. These clusters change and evolve and move up and down the page fluidly, so it's easy to see which stories are hot and being talked and buzzed about across the Internet.

Included stories cover a wide range of subject areas and are selected from both mainstream media publications as well as the blogosphere. The new Mashtracker narrows the focus by just tracking social news stories published by Mashable, and the related conversations that spring up around them within the blogosphere. Mashable has a unique opportunity here to be successful, I'll wager, because it already is a trusted source for social news. (No one does a better job of keeping up with the current blizzard of social networking start-ups, for example.)

And the particular focus on blogs is another step forward in terms of the blogosphere's credibility. In essence, this is another way in which the blogosphere is declaring that it is in many ways a better source of Internet news, reviews, and opinions than traditional media.

While Mashable's layout is similar to Techmeme's, the design is a bit more clunky. That said, I do like that company logos are used to anchor the lead stories. I imagine they'll clean things up and streamline as the new site matures.

Twitter of the Day: Take Over the World Style

2007-03-21T00:12:00.001-07:00

Best Twitter "twit" of the day that I ran across comes from Ben Yoskovitz: I'm up. It's early. Ready to take over the world. You with me?

Now that I am down with. Get the coffee fired up and the Firefox tabs a flying.

My Twitter page, by the way, can be found here.

There's No Way That Tom From MySpace "Personally Contacted" Tila Tequila

2007-03-20T08:21:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows Tom, right? He's your friend, he's everyone's friend. He's the first guy you see smiling back at you from an odd-trendy camera angle when you and 80 million other people sign up for a MySpace profile.

Now, like the beginning of a rich and wonderfully Byzantine novel, let me layer in the next part of the story. It's amazing how wrong traditional media and professional journalists can be in reporting on the technology and media industries. I had some level of personal involvement in a story that got some major play last year. It had to do with potential gaming at a major social news site, and while there were wild allegations and a few bits and pieces of the truth thrown in, the actual story – while pretty much in the public eye for a careful journalist to uncover – went virtually uncovered.

Back to MySpace. It's well known that MySpace is trying to figure out ways to block some third-party widgets and music/video players so that they can lock in exclusive deals for themselves or flat out force people to use their own products and tools. The trick of course is that one of the key reasons why MySpace became the superstar of the social networking space – and why they leapfrogged Friendster at a crucial juncture – is because they are largely hands off about what people do with their profile pages.

Developments in that storyline make for a good story, and The New York Times does a good job overall with today's "MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users." It runs down MySpace's new restrictions on a music e-commerce widget called the Hoooka, and how it personally affected musician Tila Tequila's profile.

But it rankled me to read that "the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute."

I have no personal knowledge of this story and I don't know Tom (although he's my friend!), but I'd be amazed if Tom took the time to contact Ms. Tequila personally about her use of the Hoooka widget. MySpace has a boatload of customer service employees, and Tom's busy being Tom. My assumption is that someone told NYT reporter Brad Stone that Tom was involved, and it sounded good, so it made the story. MySpace's official reaction, which the piece also covers, makes much more sense: MySpace sent Tequila an e-mail demanding the removal of the widget for violating terms of service.

In any event, Mashable rightly points out that MySpace's move against Hoooka is likely because it's trying to better position the Snocap widget, which has a deal in place with MySpace. Snipperoo holds no punches, declaring that MySpace has turned into a Corporate Evil Monster.

Overall, I think trying to sell music directly through social networking sites is a short-sighted business. Like Internet content in general, there's just too much free stuff out there. The old music industry in particular is dying, and selling mp3s for indie bands won't save them. Advertising-supported free music is the future.

The Power of Twitter Compels You

2007-03-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

After a brief and fleeting spell of ambivalence, I was sucked straight into the depths of the Twitter vortex, the finger-snapping, trigger-happy, easy-to-use "mini-blogging" application that lets you send short messages to your group of "followers" via web, IM, or SMS. At its essence – I've spent some time thinking about this – I think that Twitter is yet another shortcut to meeting the compelling need for people to express themselves and partake in the ever quickening Internet conversation.

It's really simple and really easy too, which always helps and usually is at the heart of great and powerful tools and products. Sign up, add a friend or two, compel one or two people to "follow" your words of infinite wisdom (say whatever you want in answer to the question "What are you doing now?" just making sure it's under the 140 character limit) and you are on your way.

The more I play with Twitter, I think it's a keeper.

Another theory: Twitter may be a tool that particularly attracts those who already blog and are therefore already used to publishing online and interested in both attracting and audience and entering the Internet conversation. While I spend a lot of time looking at social networks such as MySpace, I never find a great and compelling reason to stick around. I particularly like MyBlogLog because it's a great networking tool for bloggers (and an experience that lives outside the site through the use of its great blog log widget), but it's simply not fun in the way that Twitter can be.

Other Twitter thoughts, culled over the weekend:

* Twitter has the potential to replace your RSS reader. It's fun to get Mashable and Wired and Techmeme updates via Twitter, and lots of people simply send links around, which becomes a hyperkinetic and viral method of information sharing.

* I'm apt to add twitter friends that I wouldn't add to my rss reader. Twitter's an outstanding way to get the shorthand thoughts and tid bits from blogging luminaries (or whomever, it's up to you!) that you don't have time to read on a regular basis. For example, I don't read Dave Winer's or Robert Scoble's respective blogs, but I've enjoyed following their Twitter conversations thus far.

* Twitter has fake profiles. These include Borat, Darth Vader, Bill Clinton, and fake Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton profiles. I take this is yet another sign that the Twitter aquiver with buzz. Take note that the John Edwards page is real!

* Lots of Twitter supporting sites/tools popping up. I'll just mention one here, because it deserves some attention. Twittervision is a mesmerizing Google Maps mashup that lets you watch Twitter messages emerge all across the globe in real time. If you like Digg Spy, you'll like Twittervision.

* Bold proclamations. Jason Calacanis declares that 90% of his blogging will now be delivered via Twitter. Personally, I love Twitter for its capacity for "casual" blogging, which gives you the ability to loosen up and say whatever you want without worrying overly much about spelling, grammar, or coherence. Blogging is a place to be a bit more structured and meaningful. Of course Twitter and blogs are merely platforms and the great thing is that everybody can help define them.

* Great quotes. I've seen some great quotes just over the last few days.

From Steve Rubel:
* JCal [Jason Calacanis] will become the first blogger to turn a full-time Twitterer
* Great businesses and greater ideas will begin as conversations on Twitter.

From Jason Calacanis:
* Who's building a twitter/google adsense widget? I need to monetize this medium before [Nick] Denton.
* Twitter is like cb radio without the static

* Are people talking about Twitter? That would be a 10-4, as this chart displaying the "twitterfication of the blogosphere" shows.

Welcome to the Twitter Vortex

2007-03-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, it happened this weekend: I've totally been drawn into the Twitter vortex. I should have a piece up in the morning about my various findings, but for now check out Twitter Vision, which I think is one of the coolest mashups I've seen in a long time. It basically allows you to see Twitter conversations emerge in real time, popping up all over a Google Maps map of the world.

Twitter supporting applications and satellite websites (like Twitterholic) are already emerging. This thing is real, and getting bigger each day.

The premise is very simple and very catchy – jabber on about anything or simply link to things, and all your "followers" get the message. Addictive to those who already get some kind of buzz from online publishing, and perhaps one of the most killer of its apps is that it's a way to publish without worrying about proofreading, professionalism, and all the other issues that most online writers take seriously when churning out blog posts. There's a downside to all of this to be sure, but the upside is driving a new kind of online community and forum.

MyBlogLog Is Rad

2007-03-17T20:59:00.001-07:00

How cool is it that right now I can look at Dumpster Bust's MyBlogLog widget and see Mathew Ingram and Tony Hung – two esteemed members of my top ten favorite online media bloggers club – smiling back at me?

MyBlogLog is an outstanding and blessedly simple social networking tool to network with other bloggers, but most of all it's super cool to be able to see who has been checking out your site from the MBL community.

If You're Trying to Make $50 Million, Online Media is a Rough Biz

2007-03-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

Making lots of money – particularly $50 million – is a difficult thing to do with an advertising-supported online business, The New York Times tells us today. Apparently, you need to get lots and lots of people to come visit your site all the time.

This is (very) old news for anyone who has made a serious go at monetizing online visitors through some sort of website, whether it be a blog or online magazine or fancy-fandangled web 2.0 media operation.

Just as thousands people start a novel and never finish it each year, thousands of people (probably) start blogs every day without reaching that final goal of filthy riches and e-caviar dreams. And just as a tiny percent of aspiring novelists ever complete a polished final draft, an even tinier percent actually go onto have it published by a sizeable press and make significant return on all the time and sweat that was poured in.

The same is true of bloggers and website publishers. Quite simply and brutally, it's just that hard. There's a bit of a heated discussion today between Tony Hung and Jason Calacanis, two of my favorite online folk, over on Tony's Deep Jive Interests. Part of the argument is over the notion of "A List bloggers" versus "blue collar bloggers": whether the two groups actually exist, and what the latter group can and should do if they want to make the esteemed ranks of the former.

Trying to find some common ground between the two sides (I know, to be a well known blogger you're supposed to be provocative, but I usually trend toward a consensus and Big Picture take on things) in saying that one thing that everyone can agree upon, if you want to be a successful blogger, is that "hard work, hustling, great ideas, consistency, original reporting etc." is key, "AND there are some natural advantages that some current A Listers used and use to their advantage, and there’s nothing wrong with that."

Obviously, most people and even most website publishers aren't seriously trying to grab $50 million in yearly revenue. People are online for many different reasons, with different goals and aspirations. Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 is disturbed by the fact that the current online advertising marketplace is such that only the top online media properties, such as CNN and Yahoo, are able to charge premium prices (akin to other forms of media) for premium ad space.

Probably a big factor will come when advertising reaches a tipping point and budgets are increased online as competition increases for valuable and targeted space. Even then, it's likely that only the best and brightest and the most cunning will make big money online, with the rest content to pick up a few bits from Adsense every now and again.

And Speaking of Convergences: Live TV Channels on Google

2007-03-17T11:15:00.001-07:00

Last post I talked about how the blogosphere and social networks have been colliding and that 2007 will be a year when the gaming world and MMOs will incorporate social networking in a big way. Another huge convergence that's been happening all the while is that of the television and the Internet, to the point where the meaning of "TV" is rapidly changing.

Case in point: now you can add a widget to your Google home page that pipes in live TV updates from networks like CNN.

It's no wonder that the music industry is crumbling and that Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion for alleged copyright infringement on YouTube. The old establishment of entertainment and content distribution is dying, fueled by technology and innovation and a public that increasingly demands that it should consume the content it wants anywhere, anyplace, any time.

Picked up on the Google widget story on Micro Persuasion.

A Post-Convergence (Virtual) World: Gaming and Social Networks

2007-03-17T01:44:00.001-07:00

In 2006, I think one of the most interesting developments in the online world was the convergence of blogger culture with social networking culture. Sites like Vox proved that social networks could successfully cater to grownups and bloggy-types, while blogs and social news platforms made efforts to beef up user profiles and social networking features such as friending, in-site mail, and media (pics, videos, audio, and text) sharing. One of my favorite social networking sites, MyBlogLog, is a stripped down social network that serves as a powerful networking and profiling tool for bloggers.

This year, I think there's going to be a lot of action in combining the immersive virtual world of MMOs (massive multiplayer online games) with advanced social networking features. Or, 2D-meets-3D if you like. TechCrunch's review of Kaneva showcases a good example, "a new social network that extends the concept of MySpace into a virtual world."

While Second Life has received quite a lot of buzz, a fair criticism is that people don't have a lot to do there. New MMOs will have a focus, even if it is to extend the hang out/check out bands/check out each other culture that thrives at massively popular social networking hubs such as MySpace. But I think that the online gaming world, more than anything, will incorporate web-based social networking features that support and extend existing game communities.

This Is The End Of The Twitter As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

2007-03-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

Lifecycles and trendcycles keep getting faster and faster. Just as I was getting up to speed and offering some limited pontifications about the mini-phenomenon known as Twitter, its demise is already being predicted.

Twitter is a simple to use and potentially addictive service that allows you to post very short messages to groups of friends via web, phone, or SMS based upon the premise of what are you doing right now? So for example, I'm hopping over there at this very second and writing "I'm doing the bloggings" (check this at my personal Twitter page), which automatically sends that riveting message to all of my Twitter friends.

web1979, who claims to have "vintage 1979 eyes," boils down the argument to three points: there's no value (or no there there), it takes too much effort, and that key users or early adopters will bail.

While that's certainly possible, I think Twitter will be one of those things that stick around for the long haul, even when the buzz wears off. When I first wrote about Twitter, I was a little bit negative about it, so here's why I think it will be around far past 2007 (maybe even into 2008!):

* It has useful applications for events and conferences (the buzz it garnered at SXSW this week will carry over to tech-centric and then business-centric conferences for years to come).
* It's a very easy way for celebrities and politicians and industry leaders and bloggerati to stay in touch with fans and followers. It's pretty cool and says a lot about the candidate that John Edwards has been Twitter-ing during his presidential campaign, for example.
* The kids will use it, or The MySpace phenomenon if you like. As much as kids are attracted to social networking websites so that they can connect with one another while defining and expressing themselves, Twitter can act as a short cut to doing all of those things. Imagine high school home run circa 2007. What are you doing right now? I want to stick a fork in my eye. And so on.
* The web goes mobile. The web-mobile connection can't be discounted here. The ability to post and receive posts via mobile device is really the key functionality that will give Twitter staying power.

A Quick Visual History of Web 2.0

2007-03-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

No one can agree on what "web 2.0" means, or if it even exists (and to be fair, most folk have never even heard the term). But if you want a quick and breezy and fun visual overview on how we got to the now of now, this video is for you.

Picked this up via RSS Blog.

Here Comes Mark Cuban!

2007-03-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

You knew that Mark Cuban would come out swinging on this one.

In a piece entitled You Go Viacom! the Blog Maverick ripped into "Gootube" (one of his favorite current targets) for being complacent and basically setting itself up for the massive $1 billion lawsuit that it's now looking at from heavy hitter media company Viacom.

Cuban uses the example of HBO programs to explain the case from the standpoint of television content providers, noting that the reported $2.2 million fee per episode that A&E paid to syndicate The Sopranos would be far devalued in a world where the hit show was easily available via YouTube.

Cuban ends on an ominous note, writing, "Google may not know it, but they have already lost," on the notion that entertainment companies are if nothing else superior in bending copyright laws to their needs.

While my opinion is just one more blogospheric whim in a sea of speculation, my hunch is that Viacom is looking to cut an advantageous deal here, and the $1 billion number is simply bluster and a means to gain leverage. This is not the age of Napster, the music industry in particular is in mortal danger, and entertainment companies will not be able to use the legal route forever as a last stand against the Internet wave.

Topix to Google: "You Could've Given Us Help, But You've Given Us So Much More"

2007-03-13T08:49:00.001-07:00

That quote - you could've given us help, but you've given us so much more - actually comes from the mouth of Bill Murray's character in Quick Change (one of the all-time underrated comedies) to a magnificently and contentedly unhelpful New York City taxi driver.

It could easily however have come from Topix CEO Rich Skrenta to the monolith that is Google. A Wall Street Journal piece details Skrenta's and Topix' frustration with Google over the company's change from a .net domain to the more popular .com. That change, on top of costing Topix $1 million in acquisition fees, may end up costing a lot more due to lost search engine traffic, the lion's share of which stems from Google.

It's painfully hilarious that the CEO of Topix, a pretty large and well known web company that reportedly receives 10 million visitors a month, received the following advice at a time when it could potentially lose millions of search-based visits: "…an email recommending that, if the switchover were to go badly, the company should post a message on an online user-support forum; a Google engineer might come along to help out."

Skrenta very rightly responded with, "'This can't be the process…You're cast into this amusing, Kafkaesque world to run your business.'"

A host of web publishers shares Skrenta's pain. Breaking through the layer of automated responses when attempting to contact Google is a Tolkien-esque quest that many have attempted and few have succeeded at. Because Google so tightly guards the nature of its search algorithm and system of "page ranking" web pages, it very rarely will dole out specific information about why a particular website moves up or down its search rankings.

Small variations in page rank can have an enormous effect on placement in Google's search rankings and effectively cause thousands or even millions of visitors to show up at a website. Or, in the case of the new Topix.com, potentially not.

The Big Guns Come Out: Viacom Sues Google, YouTube For $1 Billion

2007-03-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

Some of the smartest people I know are on opposite sides of the YouTube debate. One camp thinks that YouTube that was worth the gargantuan sum that Google paid for it, while the other foresees major troubles ahead, whether it be loss of market share because of the relatively easy replication of the platform (a danger most online media websites face: in the end, the value lies in community and the ability to hold onto it) or because of some kind of major lawsuit over copyright issues.

The announcement today that Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion over "unauthorized use of its copyrighted entertainment" is a pretty big test case. I would write "major test" except for the fact that Google is amongst that select group of companies on the planet for which $1 billion is but a pittance.

The suit centers around an alleged 160,000 uploaded "unauthorized" video clips. It will be very interesting to see if YouTube/Google will be able to cut a deal with Viacom to let these clips slide. It's entirely possible that Viacom is using the suit as a gambit to put it in a position to insert its content offerings online in a more "legal" (read: profitable to the company) manner.

There will undoubtedly be a flood of reaction across the web about this today and throughout the week. I'll try to add an update or two as this story plays out.

Where Some See "Hyper-Localism," Others See More Choices

2007-03-12T07:43:00.001-07:00

Gone are the days when the vast majority of the public was collectively comforted by Walter Cronkite and other legendary news anchors. Technology alone did not drive this new age of splintered interest, where many people – and many more each day – draw their news from a number of sources, many of which are likely online.

A new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism warns that these trends and the resulting loss of audience and revenue for traditional media companies are driving a phenomenon that it calls hyper-localism, "…'hyper-local' coverage in newspapers; encouraging citizen journalism on the Internet; and giving rise to opinion-driven television personalities like CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly."

There is a danger if most people truly choose to get their news from a narrow channel of "hyper-local" sources. Jon Stewart likes to joke that members of his influential audience only get their news from The Daily Show, for instance. Likewise, if someone chose to believe the gospel of Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh without visiting a single other news source, that would likely not be a good thing.

However, the reality is that now that the choices are many, people are finding a full and rich palette of news sources and are able to cobble together their own version of the truth of the whole on their own. This undoubtedly frightens traditional media companies, but in the end the trend is a good one in that people have the freedom to utilize print, television, radio, and online sources in any way they wish. And while traditional newsroom staffs in the United States are sadly shrinking due to budgetary concerns, it is still possible for people to find an enormous amount of high quality news reporting (in aggregate more than ever before, most likely).

Excellence in journalism will never go out of style. The way in which people find and access and integrate that journalism into their understanding of the world will likely forever be on the move, and that's a good thing in most ways.

People Are Freaking Tweaking on Twitter

2007-03-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

Maybe that's going a little far, but a lot of people are certainly talking about Twitter, the so called "micro blogging" service that fires super short and super simple messages to groups of contacts based around the premise of: "what are you doing right now?"

That's the spirit of the Internet, really, capturing the essence of what's new and what's hot and what's going on this very second, and Twitter has found a way to capture some buzz, at the least, by harnessing that wave. I've just returned to the country after a month of mostly being offline (on a quest to find hobbits, as legend has it), and Twitter Fever has emerged as the big story during my absence.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable pulls out the "cat blogging" card in a snort-worthy piece entitled "The Evolution of Blogging, Cat Version." (Cat blogging is a derogatory term for navel-gazing bloggers who write about what they had for breakfast, how they felt after cleaning the dishes, and yes, what Fluffy McWhiskers has been up to of late.) Pete breaks down the issue perfectly by depicting two camps: those who see a "new blogging paradigm - short, to-the-point messages that let your friends, family and the world know exactly where you are and what you’re doing, every second of the day" and those who scratch their heads (or navels) and ask, "what's the point?" It's pretty easy to see where Pete stands on this one.

Mathew Ingram is by measures kinder in writing that the name Twitter "…is perfect, since it conveys precisely the kind of instantaneous, frivolous, and maybe even scatter-brained nature of the app itself, like a bird twittering." He admits, however, that it is "… a pretty cool way of sending out short thoughts."

While admitting that it's "antithetical to life-hacking," Chris Brogan of lifehack.org is a big fan and opines on five ways to use Twitter for good, including quick surveys of friends, news briefings (you can sign up for RSS-like updates from sources such as CNN and BBC), "friendsourcing" (using contact lists to seek out resources or information), and sharing information.

Marshall Kirkpatrick runs down Top 10 Twitter Things, which includes searchability of Twitter entries on blog and other search engines, the applicability of the product to save lives during a natural disaster, and BART updates for Bay Area commuters.

I spent some time messing with Twitter today and don't think I'll be utilizing it in my daily online activities, but I can see how people will find unique and personalized ways to use the service. Webomatica defines Twitter's realm as "a small space between IM, MyBlogLog, email, and blogs." Steve Rubel, for instance, enjoys the fact that Twitter allowed him to find out that Scooter Libby had been convicted – thanks to a Twitter message sent out by Jason Calacanis – through the service's IM applicability (it can also be used via SMS).

Another pretty cool use of Twitter: Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards has joined in, so you can keep up with his undoubtedly hectic schedule as he attempts to capture the White House.

My guess is that over the long term, regular Twitter users will fall into three broad categories: manic warriors of the web 2.0 edge (Rubel, Calacanis), obsessive social networkers (a selection of MySpacers), and niche users (San Francisco commuters).

Digg and Netscape Struggle to Prevent Gaming and Other Shenanigans

2007-03-11T01:07:00.000-08:00

I'm still sifting through the avalanche of e-mail that piles up during a month away from the laptop, but I must make mention of the most interesting article I read today, sent to me around a week ago from my partner and buddy over at Blogcritics, Phillip Winn.

It's a little experiment that Annalee Newitz of Wired pulled off: create crappy content and then buy your way onto Digg's front page with it. That Annalee was able to do this when purposefully creating low-grade content (a blog that's mission is to take pictures of crowds but offer no psychology of such or any commentary at all to explain it) tells us that Digg and all popular social news sites have a ways to go to lock out gamers and spammers.

It's a good problem for Digg in that it proves that companies (such as User/Submitter) see value in offering a service that gets submissions onto the treasured real estate of Digg's front page and that publishers are willing to pay to cheat to get that front page exposure. However, Digg will need to continue to become more sophisticated in sniffing out and squashing gaming and collusion.

From the publisher perspective, the negative ramification is that quality submissions can get squashed for appearing to be suspicious when in fact they may not be. Human interaction from site editors should be useful here, but that is also not always the case. Netscape editors, for instance, will at their discretion switch out story links on submissions to those that they feel are more original. In essence, they're trying to prevent "re-blogging," where a blogger will blatantly republish someone else's content or excerpt a story and add no real value to it. That's all fine and well, but I've witnessed numerous cases where unique takes on breaking news stories were dumped for a more "original" one. That practice is dangerous in that it will turn off eager news submitters and, for hardworking publishers, is generally non-cool.

Update: Jason Calacanis makes a great point in asking Digg to make bury/sink votes more transparent. Adding to that, I'd like for Netscape to be more communicative with publishers that are accused of re-blogging!

Gladly Back to the Interwebs Salt Mines (of Moria)

2007-03-09T18:51:00.000-08:00

Anyone want to catch us up on what's been going on with the Interwebs the last month or so (he wrote, grinning)?

I'll be catching up over the weekend and getting prepped to hit the ground running next week. There are great plans in the works for this site, great changes in the works as well. Very exciting time. New Zealand is sweet as, as they say, but I'm glad to be back to the Interwebs.

Off to New Zealand: See You In March!

2007-02-12T20:25:00.001-08:00

Sadly, after really revving up and fine tuning Dumpster Bust in '07, I'm forced to take an extended absence as I'm off for several weeks of touring and outdoor adventuring in New Zealand (which is really entirely not sad in every other conceivable way!).

I've really enjoyed honing in on blogging, social news, and Internet-y 2.0 stories and opinions over the last few months, and look forward very much to picking up when I get back. In fact, there are some grander plans in the works including a re-branding of sorts and tighter integration with Blogcritics' BC Network of sites (speaking of: if you're into gossip and celebrity-related stuff, please check out the newly launched and super rad GlossLip, run by the great Dawn Olsen).

The slow and incremental rise in RSS readers is encouraging as are the great notes and encouragement I've heard from many of y'all, so I'm excited and anxious to get back in March to proceed upon cracking with the online media cult-ery!

Blogger Tags and the Mysteries of Search Engine Traffic

2007-02-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

I just realized that Blogger allows you to add tags to blog posts.

Actually, I must give credit where it's due and that belongs to my online pal and fellow member of Blogcritics Magazine and The Mondo Project, Mat Brewster. I've seen tags appear on blogspot blogs countless times, I'm sure, but absolutely assumed that they were part of some fancy plug-in that was not for the likes of me.

Part of my reintroduction to blogging from my own site on Blogger (as opposed to writing exclusively for BC, which I did for about a year) is that I've been able to better tune in to how bloggers are organizing themselves and their information, promoting themselves, and building audience.

This post is a bit of an experiment. Since I started posting here regularly since the first of the year, I've noticed that the majority of my traffic comes from the following sources:

* MyBlogLog: A great networking site for bloggers, it also helps to bring in some traffic.

* Techmeme: Great great source for following current tech and online media stories and the conversations springing up around them. I've been able to hit this page a nice number of times, and have brought back some visitors because of it.

* Blogcritics Magazine: Cross-publishing at the old battleship BC absolutely has a positive effect on one's "home site" bottom line.

* Search traffic: mostly Google.com, but drips and drabs from Yahoo!, Ice Rocket (I think mentioning Mark Cuban's name helps, which is indeed worthy of another experiment!), and Google Blog Search.

Search traffic is that great randomizer. If you can pull lots of it, you can sail off to Tahiti for six months and still have rip roaring traffic stats when you get back. If you don't, it's a grind-it-out battle to itch and scratch each reader home for supper.

This is somewhat the topic of a raging debate of the online moment, with entrepreneur and provocateur Jason Calacanis setting off fireworks with talk of SEO (search engine optimization, or rigging one's code to harness more search engine traffic) being "bullshit" and a swift and immediate blowback from the likes of Neil Patel following, who challenges Jason to allow him to increase his own traffic "by a minimum of 10 to 20% after 30 days of putting my changes into effect" with promises of no shady dealings on route. And it seems Jason has accepted – the great SEO throwdown is on!

In any event, without being shady (I know so little about code that this would be very difficult anyway!) and as openly as I can, I've placed a nice number of wide ranging links and references here that hopefully add up to nearly a coherent whole.

I've listed the following blog tags as part of this post: blogger, blog, blogs, google, search, SEO, ice rocket, mark cuban, google blog search, techmeme, mybloglog, blogcritics, jason calacanis, neil patel, page rank

So the questions are: did I "optimize" this post by writing a decent piece and linking out to fellow bloggers and engagers in the online conversation? Or will dropping a deluge of tags at the bottom help auto-magically bring home some visitors? Or, perhaps, did none of this pile up to a hill of e-beans in the vast vacuum of the blogospheric realm?

I'll report back the results, and look forward to your thoughts.

New York Considers Pedestrian Ban On iPods In Crosswalks

2007-02-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

New York, my homeland, is considering legislation that would levy a $100 fine for pedestrians who listen to a mobile audio device while crossing the street.

This, in my view, is cruel and unusual punishment for the iPod set. Sure, it's possible that listening to Slayer at 900 decibels might prevent you from seeing that Mack truck just before it splits your dome, but isn't that your decision to make as a pedestrian? Doesn't the pedestrian "always have the right of way," even if they're lost in la la land?

I'm more liberal than not in my political leanings, and I like to think that means respecting the rights of individuals. For the most part, the vast majority of people listen to iPods responsibly: while walking about town, on the subway, crossing the street, and so on.

At some level, people must govern their own actions and act responsibly outside of a set of legal strictures. While I'm not a lawyer, I'd love to see a legal mind argue against this bill with counter-legislation that makes it illegal to listen to the radio above a certain volume level (anyone remember the "red line" on the stereo from one of the opening scenes in Say Anything?).

Engadget has a hilarious picture of a chalk outline of a presumably murdered ipod here.

In sum, to quote Gizmodo: "This has got to be the dumbest ban I've ever heard of."

How Does StumbleUpon Help Bloggers?

2007-02-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I feel a little bit silly and sheepish about it, but I must admit that I don't really get StumbleUpon.

The idea behind the site is pretty simple: a downloadable tool bar add-on allows you wander around the Internet (via pressing the Stumble button) with the presumption that the more you interact with the tool (rating sites along route with a thumbs up or down) the more it knows what you like and helps you to discover cool sites that you would likely never find on your own.

I get that part. It's not something that I would personally get into, but it's a nice little service. Where I start to lose grasp is in understanding how StumbleUpon has become "a substantial driver of traffic," as Mathew Ingram and many others have noted, and how publishers are supposed to take advantage of the site to harness the stumblers.

Getting the toolbar installed and logging into StumbleUpon was a somewhat clunky experience for me, but perhaps that was an aberration. Figuring out what to do next as a publisher was, however, where I really got lost. I was eventually able to figure out how to submit a site URL, but I was left confused as I've seen other writers note how they've used StumbleUpon to drive traffic to individual stories.

After spending a fair amount of time investigating, I realized that there's a tagging feature in which you can add tag words to individual "pages." I'm not sure if adding tags to an individual "drilldown" story page in effect submits that story into the StumbleUpon system with those tag words attached, or if you're simply associating tag words with an entire website or blog.

I like to think that I'm a relatively savvy Internet user, so if I'm confused, I'm guessing others are as well. For non-publishers, for those people just looking to stumble around and find cool sites, the service is likely less of a headache to figure out. But I'm genuinely curious to hear from bloggers who utilize StumbleUpon as part of ongoing promotion efforts. Is it necessary to tag your own pages every time you publish a story, for instance? Or is some other action involved?

There's also a social networking side to StumbleUpon where you can find and socialize with other stumblers who have interests similar to your own. Again, I'm guessing that there are those that find this to be an engaging feature, but I've never really believed that social news or social bookmarking sites have an overwhelming amount to offer in terms of social networking. In other words, when I visit Reddit I'm interested in finding stories that I'm into and don't really care connecting with others who may be as well. Maybe I'm just a curmudgeonly electronic loner though, who knows?

A standout exception to this is MyBlogLog, which does a great job of building community around the blogging experience, playing into the inherent need for bloggers to self-promote and connect with fellow online scribes.

In any event, I'd love to hear from those who have had some experience with StumbleUpon, particularly from the publisher/promotional perspective.

In essence: is there more to get than I've gotten?

Is PayPerPost Trying to Outflank the Blogosphere's Defenses?

2007-02-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

Crunchnotes notes that high profile blogger "Robert Scoble got sucked into the PayPerPost machine" because he accepted a fee from PayPerPost – a company that pays bloggers to write reviews about products and services – to speak at a conference.

It's a clever strategy on the part of PayPerPost: throw out enough money in enough different ways and all of the sudden everyone is complicit in its activities. Not that its activities are implicitly or necessarily ill-intentioned. As I just commented over at a Deep Jive Interests piece that defends the right of "blue collar" bloggers from making a living:

I take sort of a middle position here. While I don’t begrudge the blue collars from trying to squeak out a living in the online blog-mines, I’m fearful that services like PayPerPost will help to lower the whole of the blogosphere’s credibility. Like it or not, “blogs” as a whole have a reputation (good, bad, and ugly in the mind of the general public) and if web surfers and searchers sense that paid services have sullied the bloggy waters (via paying writers to write paid editorial without clear disclosure), that can have adverse reaction in terms of traffic, page rank, and the overall health of the blogosphere.

Scoble has since backtracked and says that he will now reject PayPerPost's honorarium but oddly still seems to imply that he will take travel expenses. Talk about ambiguity!

TechCrunch has announced that they have refused to take on PayPerPost as an advertiser with the intention of keeping a "fence" between the likes of PayPerPost and themselves. Just as a point of note, Blogcritics decided against running PayPerPost ads that were offered to us through a third-party service. Not only would it be a strange conflict of interest, but it goes against the grain in terms of our philosophy that money is neither efficient nor valuable compensation that a company can offer to an open pool of bloggers. And that's not taking into account the ethical thicket that PayPerPost writers can get into if they're not super right-sharp in declaring loud and proud about how and why a review came to be.

I'll be curious to see how many blogger luminaries and high profile conferences PayPerPost can lay some money on, and how many well known online media sources will end up running paid ads.

Can PayPerPost buy its way around and through the blogosphere's defenses? I hope not. I'd like to see the hub bub die down and generally go away, but I fear that won't be the case. For now, I'll continue to follow the money.

The Grind and Crunch of Blog Production

2007-02-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

A short piece by Fred of A VC fame about the time of day (early morning) that he finds to write prompted me to think of what I can only describe as the grind and crunch of blog production.

This is a topic that I don't see bloggers talk about very often. You see a great many generalities of course about finding time and making room in your life to write but there's really something more fundamental at stake than that: bloggers and writers in general must have a neurotic, incessant, nearly haunting drive to get in front of a keyboard hour-after-hour, day-after day in order to find popular success (which we can roughly define as a large-ish regular readership).

This is something – a condition – that you're born with, I'd wager. You either have it or you don't, and I'd be curious to hear someone describe a case where a writer developed this of sheer will.

Writing a blog is akin to generating a daily or nearly daily newspaper. Most blogs are one-person operations, so keeping the hum of the e-press going day in and day out – kids screaming, boss bawling, spouse lamenting – takes an enormous amount of staying power that is driven by the nightmare question lurking in the back of the blogger's brain: what will I write about next, and when will I write it?

And perhaps most important of all: will anyone care?

That mania forces the serious blogger to shove other responsibilities aside to get at that computer, to attack with a ferocity that will compel others in the digital void to take notice. That passion shines through and wins because it must.

So it's a mania driven of ego and fears and dreams, a blessed/cursed realm that all seriously drawn to the craft inhabit.

Stephen King describes writing a novel in On Writing as something close to trying to cross the Atlantic in a bathtub. I would agree as I've sunk (plunk to the depths) every time I've attempted this time-slurping and perilous voyage.

Blogging may be like trying to circle the globe on foot… and never stopping.

The grind and the crunch of blog production, I salute thee. I submit.

PayPerPost Adds New Features, But Does PayPerPost Add Up?

2007-02-01T08:43:00.001-08:00

PayPerPost, the controversial company that pays bloggers to review products and services, has launched a new set of features, which Darren Rowse at ProBlogger breaks down as including new video ad products, targeted channels, and payment based upon traffic rankings from Alexa, Google, and Technorati.

My position on what essentially is paid editorial falls somewhere near Darren's take that "I’m not really into writing paid reviews on a blog - however I’m not completely opposed to the idea IF there is disclosure." However, my feeling is that the vast majority of PayPerPost bloggers will not fully disclose and that lack of transparency could have the ripple effect of hurting the full of the blogosphere's credibility.

There's no one better at sussing out the philosophical nuances of online media than Scott Karp, who writes over at the The Blog Herald: "There’s a direct connection between bloggers and their communities — so who better than the blogger to create marketing messages that are relevant and interesting for their communities?" However, he then goes on to examine his own potential bias or the perception of potential bias because of paid advertising from PayPerPost that runs on The Blog Herald. He ends with this: "The truth is, standards in media have never been simple — blogs are just the latest medium to slog through the commercial mud."

Here's the thing about PayPerPost, though, something that I have not spent a lot of time looking into. Jeff Jarvis flat out states that PayPerPost pays bloggers to write "positive posts about products." According to PayPerPost's requirements, they only mention that bloggers should state their opinion about products. However, they also state that Step Three of the "The Simple Process" is that "Blogger posts based on opportunity requirements."

That's kind of a strangely phrased step, isn't it? If I sign up for PayPerPost and follow each requirement to the letter, but trash each product in a ruthless and reasoned and intelligent way, will I continue to meet the "opportunity requirements"?

I'm thinking not.

I Really Really Like(d) Joe Biden

2007-02-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

Short break for politics here. Senator Joseph Biden's strangely worded and offensive (vaguely to some, likely sharply to others) backhanded compliment of Senator Barack Obama's candidacy will likely stifle any small chance that he had of obtaining the Democratic nomination to run for president in 2008.

I've been a big admirer of Biden for a long, long time. His critique of the administration's war policy and approach on what to do next has long been proactive, centrist, sober, and intelligent. He's a serious guy for a serious time, and I've always found it refreshing to hear his views.

He's also been relatively outspoken and off-the-cuff, normally fantastic qualities for a candidate. Which makes it all the more disappointing that he would make this bad a slip so early in his presidential campaign.

The Democratic field has been clearing out relatively quickly and early this cycle. Very big deal and potentially formidable candidates such as Mark Warner and John Kerry are already of the sidelines. Those who are left will need to try to find a way to line up as an alternative to Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. Bill Richardson may fit the bill as he is bright and personable, has a long resume, and is a successful governor of a western state. And Al Gore still waits in the wings.

For several years now, I thought Biden would make an ideal Secretary of State. He still might. I hope this one comment doesn't doom his future prospects to serve our country.

Top 10 Favorite Online Media Blogs: From Mathew Ingram to Deep Jive

2007-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

Growing up on Long Island, it was my daily ritual to grab whatever part of Newsday I could get my hands on to read during breakfast. These days, I have my laptop and while I do a cursory scan of the news headlines (and typically get a shot of politics via ABC.com's The Note), it's the online media blogs that have emerged as the places I spend most of my reading time.

Compiling a Top 10 list was both easier and more difficult than I thought it was going to be. My favorite of favorites were quick plucks, but near the bottom of the list it got rough going as to who would make the final few slots.

This list of course reflects my own interests and passions, which include: online media and the web 2.0 world in general, blogging-as-profession, the blogosphere, social news, social networking, the MSM-blogospheric convergence, start-up culture, and online entrepreneurship.

I'll try to update this list over time to see what additions and changes may be warranted.

#1 - mathewingram.com/work - Mathew Ingram
Ingram, a technology writer with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, combines the best elements of journalism with the best of the blogosphere, making for a smart, interesting, and opinionated take on news related to a wide range of online media- and tech-related issues. I find I most often agree with Mathew's takes, which occasionally are controversial, so more than anything this is the case of an online publication that perfectly suits me, the reader. That more than anything is a wonderful endorsement of the blogosphere and online media as Long Island (and, now, Pasadena) is a long way away from Toronto!

#2 - The Jason Calacanis Weblog
Jason Calacanis is fun to follow. Former CEO of Weblogs Inc. and "relauncher" of Netscape as new styled social news engine, Jason is for the moment an "Entrepreneur in Action" for Sequoia Capital. He also can't help but write brief, passionate, and decidedly outside-the-norm opinions on a wide array of subjects. From following his blog babies from Weblogs to strategizing the LA housing market (no easy feat!) to making an impassioned blogospheric plea regarding the Genarlow Wilson case, this is a must read blog for ambitious bloggers and online media cultists.

#3 - TechCrunch - Michael Arrington
TechCrunch has become something of the daily online newspaper for all things web 2.0. This is the preeminent place to find out what start ups are up to and what moves the big guys are making in the online space. Arrington is opinionated and occasionally self-inflated, but the information that he pumps out day-after-day makes TechCrunch an absolute must to stay afloat in the 2.0-ish rapid currents.

#4 - Mashable! - Steve Cashmore
Mashable! has evolved into a TechCrunch for those interested in social networking and the massive changes going on in that space. No one else keeps up with the dizzying myriad of social networking, widgeting, and third party add-ons like Cashmore and Mashable!

#5 - ProBlogger Blog Tips - Darren Rowse
Yet another must read for bloggers, this is Blogging 101 for bloggers who are serious about increasing readership and making money from self-publishing online content (extremely difficult feats, both). It helps greatly that Darren is relentlessly positive and upbeat and provides a steady stream of tips, updates, and strategies for the blogging life. He's also deeply enmeshed in the community side of things, which is certainly leading by example!

#6 - BC Magazine – Sci/Tech - Phillip Winn, Daniel Woolstencroft, Steve Wild, Raoul Pop, Diane Kristine, Bruce Kratofil, John Vaccaro, and many others!
I can't leave out my brethren and sistren over at BC Magazine's Sci/Tech section. Each day you can find a great variety and diversity of news and opinions on the tech and online media worlds.

#7 - How to Change the World - Guy Kawasaki
On his about page, Guy boils down his entire mission statement to two words: empower entrepreneurs. And that's what each post gives you: tightly focused advice on how to reach the next level, whatever that might be. Again, I must gravitate toward positive and forward-thinking personalities, and Guy is nothing else if this. Inspirational and practical stuff both.

#8 - Publishing 2.0 - Scott Karp
Scott is unmatched in shedding "web 2.0" and the current state of online media in a philosophical and intellectual light.

#9 - Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban
Self-made millionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is delightfully blunt and compelling on a myriad of subjects, from the massive repercussions of the shift from TV to the Internet, to why men shouldn't wear ties, to how NBA referees should do a better job, and that's just for starters!

#10 - Deep Jive Interests - Tony Hung
I discovered Tony through a recent guest blogging stint on ProBlogger, and he's quickly become one of my favorites. The good doctor goes deep on all aspects of blog-world, from the blogger v. journalism debate, to the use of widgets, to linkbaiting, and onward.

Honorable Mention
There are many, but I'll hold to just two:

* Micro Persuasion – Steve Rubel
* Mapping the Web - Aidan Henry

Update: None other than Mathew Ingram was kind enough to point out to me that I mistakenly labeled the great Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 as Steve, not Scott. Sorry Scott!

How Niche Can You Get? Or: How Niche Is Too Niche?

2007-01-31T00:41:00.000-08:00

Interesting report from an AlwaysOn panel over on Between the Lines with regard to "Power Blogging" (I guess not even blogging is immune from becoming hyperbolically super or powerful!).

I particularly fixated, as I am wont to do, on Peter Rojas' (of Engadet fame) comment that bloggers should choose "a niche or area you want to focus on. Find the smallest area you can find and own that niche."

This discussion always makes me wonder if bloggers who want to be successful – which we can define as gathering a reasonably sized audience around some type of content – are "allowed" to post outside of whatever niche they happen to choose. For instance, in 2007 I've focused (nearly) exclusively on discussing "web 2.0" topics, blogging, social news, and how the mainstream media is adapting to the online environment. Does that mean that I can't or shouldn't post about my favorite campus comedies of all time, or the 2008 presidential election? Would that alienate whatever small audience I had just won over by focusing on some notion of a niche?

Or should bloggers drill down further than that. I could in theory write exclusively about strange MySpace blogs (an absolutely killer idea for a standalone site, by the way, in my view) to the exclusion of everything else. Unfortunately my restless nature prevents me from doing that, but that's a free one for all of you niche-seekers out there.

Lots of questions on a late Tuesday's eve. For a final shot of good times, Elizabeth Spiers of Dead Horse Media recommends that power bloggers post somewhere between eight and twelve times per day.

So much for sleep, and power on, bloggers!

The Economist Tinkers With Blogs to Expand Free Online Offerings

2007-01-30T08:22:00.000-08:00

A subject area that I've paid increased attention to of late is how traditional media companies – large media companies who predate the Internet era and are now online – are looking at ways to adapt and stay relevant in the ever evolving and revolving online world. Recently, I've looked at how Reuters is utilizing blogs and presented my theory for how Netscape has spearheaded the drive toward the future of news online, what I call hybrid social news. Finally, news came out last week that media jobs overall in the U.S. have shrunk by a whopping 88% in 2006 while, at the same time, it seems that blog traffic at top U.S. newspapers is exploding.

In the midst of all this change, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at The Economist, a venerable print magazine that is well known for publishing serious and intelligent economic and political news and analysis with a global focus. Like Reuters, The Economist has only relatively recently branched out to incorporate blogs with its online offerings. It is also trying to find the right balance in holding some of its content behind a paid subscription wall, putting it in league with the likes of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

I spoke with Daniel Franklin, The Economist's Executive Editor and head of online content, late last week by phone. Economist.com has recently made more of its content available to unpaid members, Daniel said, in an attempt to draw in new online readers while still maintaining a benefit for having a subscription to the print magazine.

At present, The Economist maintains two blogs, Free Exchange and Democracy in America.

Free Exchange espouses to be a forum where Economist journalists can interact with readers about economics. Interestingly, whereas most blogs today are personality driven, The Economist's blogs maintain the same anonymity as their other offerings (the print magazine has no bylines). So while Free Exchange has a bloggy look (time stamped pieces published from newest to oldest, with comments area on each post) the content reads more like traditional magazine copy.

So instead of a conversation between individual journalists and readers, Franklin and The Economist think of reader comments as more as "letters to the editor," a new realm for reader feedback. Indeed, looking at the few posts I could find with more than one or two comments, it seems that the anonymous poster "Economist.com" does not respond to reader comments. It should be noted that Free Exchange's commenters are highly literate and well mannered, a rare treasure to be cultivated within the blogosphere. It will be interesting to see if The Economist's blog authors will at some point be unleashed or prompted to interact directly with readers.

Democracy in America was launched during the run up to the 2006 midterm elections, but Franklin deems it such a success that they're keeping it around for the long run. Overall, Franklin is happy with Economist.com's blogs in terms of readers and numbers, and is thinking about expansion, with a European-focused column next on the horizon.

While Franklin was engaged and enthused about the importance of blogs in helping to fill out The Economist's online offerings, their implementation is somewhat cloaked at present. For example, I was made aware that a blog or column called "Democracy in America" existed as part of Economist.com, but it took me quite some time to figure out that I had to click a link underneath "Today's Views" on the home page to find it. If blogs are to find their full-throated potential in The Economist's online future, they will need to be given better promotion within Economist.com (a search for "Democracy in America" does not bring up any relevant results!) and the blogs themselves will need to provide fuller interaction between writers (anonymous or not, and hopefully not) and readers.

Overall, Franklin's online strategy for The Economist is sound. "We're trying to reach a global audience who are curious and interested in the world," he said. Online, The Economist is attempting to expand upon its traditional readership by providing content that appeals to specific interests. Blogs are a natural tool to help achieve this strategy, and it will be interesting to see how The Economist evolves its blogging strategy over time.

Where Do You Store Your Online Valuables?

2007-01-28T11:24:00.001-08:00

I'm not talking about diamonds and greenbacks and mink stoles (e-mink stoles?) or even corporately valuable documents and business silos of data and such, but about the ever burgeoning amount of web addresses, login/usernames, passwords, PINs, codes, and on and on that are necessary to support our modern online life.

I'd bargain that an increasingly annoying eater of wasted time (there should be some kind of metric for this) involves sitting in front of a typical login screen (take your pick, from online banking to shopping to social networking to blogging to gaming and back around again) while one's face becomes redder and angrier and steamier as a message is returned again and again that says something to the effect of: Sorry, your username and/or password is forgotten and/or lost to the e-winds.

One of my geekier obsessions is content and information aggregation. There should (and likely is) a great solution out there, a simple web-based interface that simply and elegantly gathers all the maelstrom of usernames, passwords, and, well… crap that's needed to get things accomplished online nowadays.

I'll walk through my own personal journey and current (so so) solution with the hope that some cutting edge folk out there know about something better. A perfect comment to this piece, therefore, would be: Haven't you been using flibberjibber.info (or some such), it saved my life back in the day (read = Christmas, 2006), n00b!

Phase One: I tried to remember stuff
This didn't work out so well, as you might imagine.

Phase Two: I tried to write stuff down
This yielded marginally better results, though I ran into the age old problem of having to remember where I wrote stuff down. Since I'm typically online in one of several locations throughout the day, the problem became having to remember where my stuff was written down at any given time.

Phase Three: I got (sort of) organized
Finding 37 Signals was a great help. I used Backpack for a spell as a way to organize lists and information. It worked fairly well, but at the time the interface was a little bit clunky and glitchy (this was back in the spring of '05, so I imagine it's much improved by now), so I abandoned it and slipped back to Phase Two befuddlement for a spell.

In early 2006, I moved onto Basecamp, another 37 Signals product. It's basically very simple project management software, in the best possible sense (anyone familiar with the term chronogram will know what I mean!). The great thing about 37 Signals is that they try to KISS (keep-it-simple-smarty).

So I now use Basecamp's writeboard feature as a general dump for all the URLs (including multiple social networking profiles, work-related login information, blogging software tools, etc.) I need in my day-to-day online experience. No matter what computer I'm in front of, I can easily login to one website (allowing me to simply remember one web address and password instead of dozens!) and gather all of the information I need at any time.

Some things that used to drive me batty are now much easier to deal with. A great example is Wine Country Gift Baskets, an absolutely stellar place to find gifts and quickly ship them to anywhere in the country. However, they force you to provide a unique customer ID of their own choosing that is an eight- or nine-digit number. Basecamp has provided me with a way to continue to utilize this service without losing the last remnants of my sanity.

However, I'm convinced that something better is out there or in the process of being developed. I'd like to be able quickly search the first few letters of "My URLs" (or whatever) to instantly bring up the web address, login information, and password that can aid me in plugging into and out of the wild array of websites and interfaces that make up a typical day online.

Are You Following The Genarlow Wilson Story?

2007-01-27T15:43:00.001-08:00

I was in the dark about it myself until I read Mark Cuban's brief coverage of it over on Blog Maverick.

I then quickly swung over to Blogcritics and picked up on the great Sal Marinello's coverage:

…the horrific story of how Genarlow Wilson, a then 17-year-old high school football player, was sentenced to 10 years in prison without parole for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl who admittedly initiated the act.

Wilson was an outstanding student who was his school's homecoming king; he was a hard-working kid and a football and track star who was on the path to attend an Ivy League school. Everybody liked him. He never got into any trouble.

Now, as his future has been robbed from him, he rots in jail. Doing hard time with hardened criminals.

Everyone messes up from time to time, particularly when you're young. A 17-year-old having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old at a party may not be something to tell the grandkids about later in life, but it's certainly not something to command hard prison time for.

The people of the state of Georgia should demand that Genarlow Wilson be freed straight away.

You can find an online petition here.

RSS subscription notes and Feedburner diagnoses

2007-01-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

I've spruced up the side nav ever so slightly, adding various ways to subscribe to Dumpster Bust via RSS, including e-mail subscription. It also took me a bit of time to diagnose the fact that two RSS feeds appear to exist for this URL. Perhaps Blogger switched over from RSS 2.0 to Atom at some point?

In any event, I burned the Atom feed (which is available way far down at the bottom of DB's front page and for some inexplicable reason cannot be deleted using Blogger's interface!) using Feedburner, so I now have two Feedburner feeds for Dumpster Bust:

* http://feeds.feedburner.com/DumpsterBust
* http://feeds.feedburner.com/dumpsterbust2

It will be interesting to see what the difference will be between the two. Of course, neither will be very much hopping as I spent most of 2006 concentrating solely on Blogcritics, but perhaps that will change in time!

As U.S. Media Jobs Slashed, Online Media Takes Another Step Into the Spotlight

2007-01-26T09:14:00.000-08:00

Cuts in U.S. media jobs rose by 88 percent in 2006, 17,809 positions slashed versus 9,453 in 2005, according to a new Challenger Gray & Christmas survey. Large traditional media organizations such as The New York Times Company and Time Inc. were cited as having to reduce staff in order to compensate for reduced revenue from print publications.

This year will likely be little different, with large, traditional media companies scrambling to beef up and modernize online media offerings in order to stay relevant and solvent. The idea of a newspaper publication going to online-only production is no longer a joke (though some old school ink-stained newspaper cats may laugh bitterly at the notion) and it's not outside the realm of possibility that 2007 will see a major U.S. newspaper do just that.

As eyeballs continue to drift away from paid print offerings to free online publications, as advertisers slowly but surely realize that the online medium is a much more efficient way to reach target markets, and as content publishers optimize the ways in which they can monetize their offerings, the "new media" or online media takes another step toward being the dominant force in how information and entertainment is transmitted in people's daily lives.

This process will play out over a number of years. Print publications will forever hold some role (nothing can ever replace the tangible feeling of reading a book in your favorite comfortable chair or ruffling through a newspaper on the subway) but that role will become a niche one, meeting the needs that can't be met by online media.

Online media will always have its bumps and roller coaster rides, of course. There will be layoffs and screaming of bubbles bursting and "the end of web 2.0" and market shifts and rumors of imminent collapse and advertising market crashes and other such talk. But we can safely say now that the dark years of 2001 – 2003 are over. They one day may be seen as akin to those early years of the automobile industry when cars were derided as the latest fad.

Online media ain't no fad.

MyBlogLog Integrates Flickr Features: Is A Social Networking Powerhouse For Bloggers On the Rise?

2007-01-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of MyBlogLog, a simple and barebones social networking community that wields considerable power through its use of widgets and its appeal to the innate desire of bloggers to promote themselves.

A quick signup process gives bloggers a simple MyBlogLog profile where they can add sites that they author or co-author. Site members can then add other people as contacts or associate themselves as fans of site communities. Every member profile and site community profile has a widget that shows the thumbnail profile picture of site members who have recently visited.

That's where things get interesting, and viral. Widget code allows bloggers to place widgets on their "outside" blogs, allowing site authors and visitors to see the profile pictures of recent visitors. From there, it's an easy step to click on profile pictures, add new contacts, leave new messages (messages can be left privately or publicly on MyBlogLog). This is a simple, elegant, and powerful way to get bloggers talking to and connecting with one another, and will soon be a must-have keeper widget on blogger real estate.

Yahoo! appears to agree with this assessment as it recently acquired MyBlogLog for the reported sum of $10 million. The speculation surrounding this acquisition included questions about how Yahoo! would utilize and integrate its growing list of "web 2.0" properties.

We're now starting to see the beginning of what Yahoo! may be planning for MyBlogLog's future. The MyBlogLog Blog announced yesterday that Flickr features are now integrated with MyBlogLog profiles. The coolest part about the new tool is that all MyBlogLoggers are required to do is to click a button called "Click Here to Automatically Show Your Recent Flickr Photos" and the newest additions are constantly updated to the profile page.

I think Yahoo! senses that they have a real winner on their hands here, and will subtly nudge MyBlogLog into a position where it will be the defacto "MySpace for Bloggers." And that could just be the beginning.

Could a del.icio.us integration be next?

Update: Check out Mashable's coverage here.

Does Google Search Dominate Your Blog?

2007-01-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

We all know that the power of Google is omnipresent, right? That's a given. Zillions of people search Google.com googillions of times a day, creating search engine-driven traffic to sites and blogs the world over. That many millions of dollars exchange hands due to these actions, via Google Adwords and Adsense and advertising on referral websites, is a mysterious thing and a fountain of wealth for those who get it right.

People find websites in many other ways, of course. The best ways for publishers include being popular and well thought of enough that large numbers of regular visitors know a URL by heart, have a site bookmarked and visit it often, or are subscribed to one or more site RSS feeds.

TechCrunch, through its CrunchNotes site, has provided an unusual level of detail as to how people wound up at the popular site during December, 20006.

Traffic from the Google universe dominates, which is normally something of a given but striking in that we see that even for a well known site with thousands of devoted regular readers looking for news, reviews, and analysis of the tech and Internet industries, Google search and related products still sit in the number one and four positions. (There is an interesting discussion in the comments area about what the difference is between "Google – Organic" and "Google.com – Referral," with ideas floated about Google.com search traffic, Google Reader, and paid AdWords placement.)

In a way it's a little disheartening to know that even a broadly popular site like TechCrunch receives a significant percentage of its traffic through search engine referrals. It's enough to make you think that it's possible to hang up your blogging hat to craft perfect search engine friendly titles (Google's Sex Scandal Causes Paris Hilton to Leave Iraq), write some gobblygook, and reap the search engine-derived rewards. In fact, this is pretty much what sploggers attempt to do, causing Google and other search engines to crush the page rank (or relative position within its search rankings, some call this Google Juice) of any site that smells of non-legitimacy.

For real websites trying to get real traffic – and not tempted to join the dark forces of cyber crime as I am – getting hammered by Google is a very real and frightening concern. In essence it's like being a supplier of goods that is wholly dependent on Wal Mart for business survival. No matter how good or bad the quality of goods being produced, Wal Mart can always move onto another supplier, and then you're shut out of the largest marketplace with no recourse.

Of course, many will argue that if you create great and consistent content, if you network and market your site effectively, then readers will come and stay. And this may be true to a certain extent. But the truth is that the true and truly consistent traffic numbers flow from Google (and other search engines but a far lesser extent). High quality links and regular readers can help to increase your visibility and page rank within Google's search algorithm, but in the end the equation is the same.

So what are ambitious bloggers to do, those who want to write about things they're passionate about and attract lots of repeat visitors at the same time? The simple answer is stick to the basics: find an area of expertise, write about it consistently, market and network the best you can, and then hope that the Google Love in the end outweighs the Google Evil.

One growing area for consistent traffic may come in the form of social news referrals. Digg and Reddit sit at number three and number nine on TechCrunch's list, respectively. Social news referrals are essentially a result of an algorithm driven – in theory – by site visitors themselves. Get enough votes or diggs and you hit the jackpot of getting your story placed on the front page, where a story will reap the benefits of potential thousands of site visits.

Social news sites have their own issues, but it will be interesting to see if, as they continue to grow, they may begin to rival search engines in driving traffic to particular kinds of sites.

Social Networking Blog Mashable Seeks to Pay Its Readers to Write Good Stuff

2007-01-20T11:15:00.000-08:00

Mashable, a blog that tags itself with the line "social networking 2.0," has emerged as a leading source for news and analysis of the hyperactively growing nebula of web products and services that fall loosely under the handle of "social media" or "web 2.0" (think everything from social networks to widgets to new fangled web communities to analysis of web start-ups and everything in between).

Mashable is now issuing an intriguing offer to its readers, which it calls Mash 10: write a well written story that reviews start-up companies in a given space (Mashable honcho Pete Cashmore uses the examples of "19 Ways to Make Social Sites Pay" and "MySpace Layouts Top 10") and get paid around $.07 per word for doing so.

When done right, this kind of story has the chance to become very popular. Blog readers love Top Whatever lists, and followers of online media deeply appreciate sources that can break down the explosive growth of the industry and help to define and parse what is going on in various sub-spaces. For example, there are hundreds and perhaps even thousands of start-ups hoping to achieve some glimmer of MySpace's popularity. Who is going after the Austrailian market, though? Are college football fans being tended to? What about Star Trek convention peoples?

These are all areas that are potentially worthy of exploration (along with several trillion others) and it's intriguing that Mashable is seeking research and writing from its own readers for help in doing this. The money part is also a rather fascinating experiment. Let's say that Mashable pays a reader $70 for a 1,000 word piece. Will the site make that money back and more in advertising revenue generated around the popularity of one story? It's certainly possible. More likely though is that if 100 stories are bought and paid for, three or five or ten of them may help to bring the site increased long term readership and help to bring it closer to the TechCrunch range in terms of popularity.

The most challenging part about this experiment, I imagine, will be fielding responses from writers, discarding the junk, helping the good stuff to shine, managing the relationship with writers, and handling the money exchange. In other words, organizing and running any kind of editorial operation – particularly where money is involved – is labor intensive.

I hope that Mashable reports back on how Mash 10 plays out. If it manages to harness the skills, intelligence, and research powers of its own readership, look for other ambitious and growing sites to try something similar.

Blog Traffic At Top U.S. Newspapers Explodes As Mainstream Media-Blogosphere Convergence Continues Breakneck-Like

2007-01-18T08:59:00.001-08:00

People are reading them blogs. More than ever before, many probably don't even realize it.

Unique visitors to the blogs published by the top 10 U.S. newspapers has more than tripled year-over-year (1.2 million in December '05, 3.8 in December '06), according to Nielsen/NetRatings, accounting for 13% of traffic to these sites.

Five years ago, very few people knew had heard the word blog. Today, it's a household term but many misconceptions still surround it (it's all dreary ramblings about lovelorn teens, or political hack rants, etc.). The flexibility and morph-ability of blogs is proven out by their steady integration into online mainstream media properties. "Professional-level" blogging means high quality writing, interesting stories, personal observations, unique coverage, and a friendly, engaging, and interactive style that was until recently sorely lacking in the mainstream media.

Taken historically, audiences have been bleeding away from the staid and stodgy network television broadcasts to the more colorful cable news stations for many years. For some time, print publications simply republishing online was good enough. But no more: there's simply too many ways to access a teeming galaxy of observations, opinions, spins, alleys, crannies, and nooks for traditional media companies to stand pat.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion notes that Dave Winer predicted some time back that The New York Times would one day become "one big blog." This somewhat echoes my own observation that the future of mainstream media websites lies in embracing what I call hybrid social media platforms, a mixture of user submitted content, editor-selected content from all over the Internet, and "original coverage" that encompasses straight news and news plus alike (more on this below).

This transformation is already happening, and that's a good thing for traditional media and the blogosphere both. "Straight news" reporting is essential and always will be, but the hunger is out there for what I call "news plus," which equates to all the vibrant, funky, diverse, and kaleidoscopic offerings that the blogosphere brings to the online table.

The biggest winners of all are news readers and consumers, who more than ever before are dictating the kinds of media they want and are getting it.

Netscape Represents the Future of News

2007-01-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

The jury is certainly still out on whether or not the "new" Netscape.com – revamped into what some would herald as an innovative experiment in social news and others would deride as yet another Digg-clone wannabe – is a success or not.

But it doesn't matter in the long run. I like to think of the Netscape model as a hybrid approach to social news, as it builds upon the "Digg model" of user submitted stories + everyone votes for their favorite stories = a user controlled front page of your "online newspaper." Netscape has a strong social news base (in terms of how they feature and emphasize this form of people power) and also employs Netscape Navigators, human editors who submit their own stories, make some stories "sticky" by featuring them in an admin-controlled area on the front page, and commenting, friending, and generally taking an active social networking-style role on the site that is diametrically opposed to Digg's human-hands-off-way-off style.

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 asks if news is a fundamentally shared, social experience. I would argue that it is… to a certain extent. Scott is right in saying that people enjoy sites like Digg and Techmeme because they offer the prospect of interesting stories that you didn't even know you would be interested in (Reddit is my favorite site that falls into this category, by the way). This activity is akin to the traditional experience of browsing through part or the full of the newspaper over breakfast, isn't it? In both cases the consumer is browsing a trusted news source. Of course, one is selected by professional journalists while the other is selected by the audience, or some combination of editors and users.

I believe that there is a great potential audience for a hybrid social news approach that Netscape spearheaded, and much sooner rather than later many sites – mainstream media and "web 2.0" social news sites both – will adopt a model roughly along the following lines.

The future of news sites will comprise three kinds of content, which will be mixed and matched and meshed together in all kinds of dizzying ways:

* User submitted content – This is the backbone of any social news site, and I expect that its popularity will only increase. User-controlled sites are, in the end, all about the community that springs up around the news/voting platform so I suspect that niche social news sites – based upon specific subject areas, interests, geography, or beliefs – will thrive over the next few years.

* Admin submitted content – This is the area that Netscape has innovated in. Netscape Anchors take on a variety of roles on the site: they post stories they find interesting or compelling (stories not yet submitted to the Netscape system or stories they themselves find elsewhere on the Internet), they have the ability to feature stories in the above-the-fold "Netscape Anchors Recommend" area, and they can conspicuously insert themselves on story pages to add pertinent information, provide relevant links, or explain why they feel a given story may not be right for Netscape at all.

* "Original" content – This is the new frontier to create a true hybrid social news experience. Imagine what The New York Times online edition may look like a few years down the road: original NYT content merged with a user generated submission/voting system (which may include NYT content and anything else from around the Internet) and editor selections. So The New York Times would still be The New York Times (by featuring its own content prominently in a similar fashion to how it does this now online), but it would incorporate both user submitted and admin submitted content into its model.

It also should be taken as a given that the future of news online is a full-on multimedia experience, with photo imagery, audio clips, and particularly video all grappling to take away the spotlight from the written word.

Netscape's hybrid model takes on two of these three areas. And just recently it has delved into the third with Netscape Reports, an area of the site devoted to "original reporting by the Netscape Anchor Team."

Look for a major, mainstream media news site to experiment with a hybrid social news approach within the next year or two. And then we'll know that the future of news has truly arrived.

SponsoredReviews: A New Assault on the Blogosphere's Credibility

2007-01-15T08:31:00.000-08:00

In the blogosphere, credibility and transparency is everything. Why should you believe me? Because hopefully what I've written in the past is fundamentally reasonable and, even when you the reader disagrees with me, it's because there's an honest difference of opinion and no cause to delve into potential ulterior motives exists. Sure, I tend to like and enthusiastically yak about social news sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc.) more than pure social networking sites (MySpace, Friendster, etc.), but it's hoped that that bias is born of my eccentricities and interests and not because I'm getting paid by Kevin Rose, Conde Nast, or the departing C.K. Sample.

SponsoredReviews represents a new assault on the blogosphere's credibility, on the heels of the commotion and controversy caused by PayPerPost's arrival on the scene. The scenario is basically the same: sign up and get paid to write about advertiser's products on your blog. Now, it's possible, maybe, for this sort of service to be a relatively innocuous scheme where writers are encouraged to experience new products and services and write about them in exchange for some kind of compensation. However, Michael Arrington gets right to the heart of the matter in diagnosing SponsoredReviews as nothing more than a linking scam: "While none of the other sites will admit that search engine rankings is a big part of these scams, SponsoredReviews lists it right on their home page as a benefit to advertisers. At the end of the day, these advertisers won’t care all that much what exactly these blogs say, as long as they are linking back to their product."

Tony Hung brings up the somewhat bizarre but nonetheless plausible notion that companies may even directly bribe bloggers, politician- or star-athletic prospect style, writing, "More recently, there was a bit of a stir in the blogosphere when Microsoft sent 'gifts' of Ferrari-branded laptops to bloggers to review Vista, as it was thought that Microsoft was bribing bloggers with gifts."

If readers will not be able to know which results in search rankings are from unbiased writers, that represents a huge credibility problem for the blogosphere. That could lead to a massive retreat of readers to those sources they feel they can trust, namely large and traditional media companies. These of course are the very same sources that millions spread out from in the first place, looking for new and fresh and vibrant information sources and communities in the form of the blogosphere.

Whether we like it or not, it seems that SponsoredReviews and PayPerPost or their ill bred offspring are not going away. The question is: how will the blogosphere defend its credibility in the coming days? Perhaps a third-party eBay-like service will emerge that will allow readers to assess "credibility points" in some form. Or maybe blog networks that proudly assert their independence will increase in fashion.

Strunk and White, in The Elements of Style, assert that it is incumbent upon the writer to throw a lifeline to readers to save them from the swamp of uncertainty. SponsoredReviews and the like are new creatures in the blogosphere's murky depths that must be actively confronted.

The Apple iPhone Hubbub Impacts the Non-Gadget Cultist Set

2007-01-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

I'm a web cultist, as I proudly declare on the side nav, but I'm not really much of a gadgets person. If someone plops the latest whiz-gizmo in my hand, I'll usually check it out and declare genuine enthusiasm, but I'm not of that core tech-geek cares-how-the-mechanics-work demeanor that is essential to flip out over the latest hardware and mechanical design achievements.

That said, the hubbub over Apple's new iPhone cannot be ignored.

So for all of us non-gadget cultists out there, I would love to see someone write an easily digestible piece about:

* what the best mobile communications devices are (and iPhone certainly seems to be up there!)
* what that means in terms of setting up phone and mobile access plans
* what it costs
* and how to get out of current contracts to get on board with the cool kids!

Further, a "nonpartisan" web-based service that for a small fee helped you figure out exactly the best mobile phone to meet your needs and then aided you in the process of switching over would really perk up my e-ears.

WoW: Blizzard Heralds World of Warcraft Hitting Eight Million Worldwide Subscribers

2007-01-13T23:11:00.001-08:00

If you know what MMOPRG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) means, then you almost certainly bow down to the WoW. World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game set in an immersive world replete with guilds, alliances, beasties, and hordes, is built on the engaging concept of completing quests to gain experience and rewards within the game.

So engaging, in fact, that Blizzard Entertainment has announced that World of Warcraft has surpassed eight million subscribers worldwide.

The gaming world is enormous and online and growing and will influence all of the next wave of Internet development, from blogs to social networking to what is referred to in shorthand as MMOs (or massively multiplayer online). The convergence of "gaming" with what we tend to think of as socializing or networking is already happening, and will become much more commonplace in 2007.

All of this really struck home for me around a year ago when I heard an NPR report about gold farming, which just about blew my mind.

Reuters Blogs: Where New Media Touches the Wire

2007-01-10T22:58:00.001-08:00

I usually like to call out wire stories as nearly something of a hazard for news seekers online. Sure, it's hard news in the purest form, "just the facts, ma'am," and so on, but it's sometimes arduous to weed your way through the very sameness of the coverage (for a current example, search for "Bush to send more troops to Iraq" in Google News) to find something interesting, compelling, or unique. The desire for new, fresh, and diverse angles and perspectives on the news is a large factor in the blogosphere's elevation beyond its roots in naval gazing-style journaling (somewhat ironically, the naval gaze lives on long and strong in the teen-centric social networks these days, MySpace chief among them!).

Because of the wild success of blogs – the most popular of which employ an accessible, friendly, and engaging style, with a comments area where the author converses with readers – mainstream media sites have scrambled over the last few years to add blogs to supplement their more traditional news coverage. This convergence between traditional and new media is a good thing for everyone, I'd argue, and will help to continue to raise the bar for transparency, quality, and value for blogs and traditional news sites both. Everyone is continuously encouraged and compelled to compete for eyeballs, and that's a good thing.

It's intriguing then that Reuters, as major a wire news service as they come, has a pretty sizeable section devoted to Reuters Blogs. It's pretty clear at first glance that blogging is taken seriously by the leaders of the organization as the most recent post (a week old, already ancient by blogging standards!) under the Reuters Editors blog is written by Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger. Mr. Schlesinger doesn't go so far as to respond to those who took the time to comment, but he must be given credit nonetheless for putting in the effort.

Clearly, some areas of Reuters Blogs are more active than others. MediaFile, where reporters Eric Auchard and Ken Li hang "hang out at the corner of Media and Technology," appears to be the most vibrant, with frequent updates and nice tidbits of geeky coolness like the Spark stationary bike, which enables you to race against your friends on an LCD screen while you get your workout on.

Other blogs are looking a smidge less than active. It's a Wrap, a blog that covers entertainment news, looks to be relatively wrapped as the most recent post is dated December 12th. I'm as big a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen as they come, but Borat movie news seems kind of 2006 already, doesn't it?

There are also blogs that provide links and some pictures associated with Reuters audio interviews and one called From Reuters.com, which is supposed to be a place where "we invite readers to post comments on major events and send questions to newsmakers and our correspondents on the frontline" but is pretty difficult to tell what it actually is in practice. There are several diaries from a "video embed" scattered in the midst of a reporter embedded with the British army in Afghanistan, which may well be a wonderful and much needed bit of personal reporting from the warfront, but it's unfortunately buried among other stories that don't seem all that related to one another.

It will be interesting to see how Reuters plays out its experiment with blogs. One reason why Reuters Blogs seems to be less frequented and updated than it might be is because its blogs are not integrated with the rest of the site and its torrent of up-to-the-minute wire story reports. The New York Times, on the other hand, does a really nice job of mixing its article pages with links to its blogs.

What's Your Favorite Go-To Downtime Site?

2007-01-10T00:50:00.000-08:00

One of the dirty little secrets of the Internet is that a great deal of the browsing and clicking and reading and interacting are done at the office, on the boss' dime. And when you've hit that post-lunch lull and you'd like nothing better than for your desk to auto-magically transform into a luxuriant cot, scanning around your favorite sites can usually tide you over to when the mid-afternoon caffeine buzz kicks in with attitude.

Of course, there's no end to diversions online. But interestingly, there are relatively few sites that constantly update. As in, hit refresh and see something different appear. That's likely why social news sites such as Digg and Reddit have become popular, as you can watch a diverse array of stories getting voted onto the front page and take part in the community-powered action.

One of the indications that my personal viewing habits had entered the "2.0" era was when I started browsing around Reddit instead of refreshing Drudge Report during idle moments. While I disagree with Drudge's political slant, it was and remains a great place to find a strange and often striking block of up-to-the-minute news links. However, Reddit's clean design, interesting selection of stories, and social news features (I maintain that there's very few things online more satisfying than voting down someone you disagree with) make it a compelling downtime attraction.

For breaking news junkies, Google News is an easy choice, and one of the best places to search for information about a story or issue that may have been covered over the last few days. Getting confirmation on breaking news is usually best served by looking out for what's usually a red bar running across mainstream media news sites like CNN.com and ABCNews.com. And for those with a taste for the truly tasteless and sophomoric, Fark is a standby, with specially crafted news headers like "New Jersey is all 'whoever smelt it, dealt it.' New York is all 'whoever denied it, supplied it.'"

Checking RSS feeds is a great and efficient way to quickly check up on what's going on in the subjects areas you're interested in. I've recently made a significant shift away from RSSFwd.com - a nifty little service that sends RSS feeds directly to your e-mail account - to Bloglines, a more traditional RSS reader. Bloglines is great because the functionality is simple and the interface very clean.

Finally, one of the biggest time spenders/wasters of them all should not be overlooked. One of the keys for social networking juggernaut MySpace is that people have an innate desire to express themselves and connect with one another. As social networking tools and companies grow more sophisticated and savvy, niche and themed social networks are developing that are geared toward older (read = above 21) audiences.

MyBlogLog Gets Acquired By Yahoo! And It Was Good

2007-01-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

The best ideas are almost always the simple ones, and usually the hardest to come up with and execute effectively! MyBlogLog, a barebones social network with huge appeal and upside for bloggers, clearly did both and was rewarded with a $10 million acquisition by Yahoo!

In relation to the inflated valuations we’ve seen recently, I think this is a pretty smart if not risk-free acquisition. I’m a big fan of MyBlogLog because it’s a simple and clean tool that appeals to bloggers’ self interest (getting read, making connections, yakking about areas of expertise) in much the same way the most popular social networks appeal to teens’ desire to express themselves and connect.

The killer app is a MyBlogLog widget that bloggers install on their side nav. When MyBlogLog members visit a blog, their profile picture shows up in the widget. This is a powerful and visual way to let bloggers know they're being read by actual humans (something Matt McAlister calls distributed identity). Clicking a profile picture takes you to a MyBlogLog profile, where you can add contacts, join communities, and send private or publicly viewable messages. Quite simply, there’s nothing cooler for publishers than spending time crafting a piece and then seeing the thumbnail profile picture of those who are checking out your story.

And that's basically it. The features that the MyBlogLog site offers will undoubtedly get buffed out by team Yahoo!, but I hope they don't go too crazy with the bells and whistles. MyBlogLog could become the "MySpace for bloggers" in all the best ways that can be meant, namely huge potential users and traffic figures.

Until recently, bloggers came to the Internet able to easily publish, engage and interact with readers in the comments area of each post, and distribute wares easily via RSS. Now a new front in stimulating communication and networking comes in the form of MyBlogLog-style widgets (and the simple social network that backs it) and may represent a new key element for online communities.

Finding Blogging Focus

2007-01-08T01:37:00.001-08:00

Just as writers write for many different kinds of reasons, bloggers create blogs with all kinds of purposes and goals in mind: from taking the blogosphere by storm by reporting on the latest in Quantum Leap memorabilia shows to keeping Aunt Tilly and the kids up to date about barbeque shindigs up by the lake, from musing about personal crises and day-to-day events to raging against the political machine.

Guest blogger Tony Hung over at ProBlogger takes a look at five prerequisites to blogging success. Among them is the need to write and publish consistently and well, the need to publicize the blog far and wide, and to be interesting. The points that I found to be the most interesting had to do with knowing your audience and then creating a blog aimed at this group that is "focused like a laser." Particularly striking is this line: "Blogs that are wishy-washy, who don’t know who they are, who change their kind of writing 'voice' repeatedly, who vascillate [sic] on their opinions, who introduce nonsensical and unrelated topics are blogs that will find it difficult to succeed."

I suppose this hit home for me because focusing on one topic or even subject area is something that I've never had great success in doing. For some time I relegated myself to writing (mostly) about politics, television, and the doings of the Internet world. However, over time I realized that my time was too limited to hope to keep up with even these three subject areas in such a way that I could write about all of them consistently and with a level of expertise that allowed me to write something unique and compelling and valuable to readers.

I've probably also been influenced by reading some number of marketing-related blogs of late, many of which advise bloggers to come up with your "elevator pitch," the quick answer to the question, "So what's your blog-thing all about then?" Guy Kawasaki has a wonderful elevator (and life) pitch, by the way: empower entrepreneurs.

So there's always an interesting convergence between artistic expression and commerce, creativity and marketing. The Internet is a wonderful place for many things, one of which being that it's a space to ramble on into the electronic night if that's what does you. When you start to try to figure out how to write about something you're passionate about and that an audience will find interesting and follow is when the scenario gets far more interesting.

And intriguing. It's a fascinating game, one that boils down to how to do something you love (writing and the online medium) while finding people that will come along for the ride. I've long thought that writing (and all forms of creative expression, really) is an ego-driven form: you must possess the firm belief that the words that you create and get (somehow) in front of another's eyes will be something of value to that other person.

Whether I end up focusing mostly on Internet and "web 2.0" doings or encounter some mini-revelation down the road (I simply must tell the world about the latest in circus sideshow technologies!)… which, whether I like it or not, seems to happen every so often, I'll endeavor to keep some focus and do whatever it is I do consistently and well.

Free WiFi Coming to San Francisco While Pasadena Waits Nobly, Impatiently

2007-01-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

Google, in partnership with EarthLink, will provide free WiFi service for the city of San Francisco. This may well be a landmark development in lowering the digital divide and allowing that much more access – rich and poor, majorities and minorities – to the Internet. I think it's great for those lucky San Franciscans who can happily tell their overpriced ISP to shove it, and it's good for the Internet in general (and of course Google knows this: more people online equals more Google searches, etc.).

It's also good for the continued development and maturation of what Richard Florida dubbed The Creative Class. Cities that offer free WiFi service will do much to attract the young, the hip, the creative, the geeky, the artists and entrepreneurs and aspirers who breathe life and business and spending into the urban. Because the cost of founding a start-up is so much lower than ever before, it's no longer necessary to park yourselves near the venture capital stronghold of Silicon Valley. Therefore, San Francisco is very smart to offer free WiFi to all of its inhabitants. Start ups will mimic Forrest Gump and say, "Free WiFi? Great, one less thing!"

San Francisco's offering of free WiFi to its citizens will likely compel other cities who consider themselves cutting-edge and tech savvy to do the same. Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, San Jose, New York, and Washington DC are now certainly on notice to step up. Free access to the Internet by more people will inevitably foster more innovation. The acceleration of Thomas Friedman's flat world within the United States will ignite more competition, which will cause some to fail but will create winners who will provide better services, create better products, write better software, and enable the best forms of collaboration, communication, creation, and interaction in the world.

Now, on a much more self-serving note, it's time for the Powers That Be (I have Season Five of Angel on in the background just now, as luck would have it) in Pasadena to beg and worship and plead with Google/EarthLink to bring some of the free WiFi love to Pasadena. One day I'll write the long and sorrowful tale, but suffice to say that I haven't had a reliable Internet connection in four long months now. Months 1-3 were spent wrangling with Charter Communications over my increasingly intermittent cable broadband connection. I finally dumped them for DSL, only to encounter problems stemming from some other hell dimension. Hopefully yet another visit from the phone company will straighten out whatever needs to be straightened. I'm kicking off 2007 with optimism, at any rate.

Can Feedburner's StandardStats Lead the Way to Better Internet Traffic Ranking?

2007-01-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

Feedburner has launched a new service that tracks both site traffic and RSS subscribers in one place. While many publishers use one service (such as Site Meter) to track on-site page views and another to track RSS subscribers, this is the first time a comprehensive service has been offered that allows publishers to get a bird's eye view of all site visitors in one place.

Publishing 2.0 is forward-looking enough to posit a future where we can finally drop the vocabulary that often confuses conversations about how "popular" a site is and move to "a new metric called 'content views,' which is agnostic to where or how content is viewed."

Achieving a standard definition of measuring how many people view a website would have profound repercussions for online media companies. Conversations between publishers and advertisers would be vastly simplified, for one. A new wave of services that rank sites according to content views could also then potentially emerge to compete with and perhaps surpass the likes of Alexa's traffic rankings.

While most people seem to respect Alexa's rankings, no one really likes them or agrees that they're anywhere near accurate. This uncertainty can affect things such as site valuation, funding, business development deals, advertising, and so on. A quick Google News search brought up this anguished plea: "Alexa.com's indexing of website popularity is fatally flawed. All you need to do to verify this is compare your own internal website analytics with the tracking provided by Alexa."

A common definition of site traffic coupled with a standard way to measure all of the ways that people view Internet content – and Feedburner is in the best position to do this for the time being – may open the door to a better way to rank Internet traffic.

Mochila, AP Stories, and Avoiding the Company of Sameness

2007-01-04T22:26:00.001-08:00

Do a search for a current news story at a popular news aggregator/search engine, and you're likely to get a large number of results. But the catch is that most of the results are likely to be the same or very close to the same, because all the news sources that have picked up the original Reuters or Associated Press wire story (and basically republished it for your convenience) are usually listed near the top.

And that's great for when you want to get a quick sense of a story or the very latest on a breaking news event. My take on the blogosphere is that it has the potential to take the reporting of major news sources and wire stories and add on-the-scene "citizen journalism," personal opinions, much needed analysis, and a glorious and occasionally stinky concoction of conversation, arguing, pontificating, punditizing, and storytelling along route.

Now a company called Mochila offers a service that allows bloggers to republish AP stories, with a three-way split of any ad revenue that results.

I think this idea is a loser in several respects. As I mentioned, there are already countless ways to get your eyeballs on AP stories. In fact, it's hard to avoid them sometimes! As a consumer of news, I want there to be fewer and better organized places to read AP stories (Newsvine is a pretty great solution if you're a wire story hound and you're looking for a community to hang out with at the same time), not more.

Further, legitimate bloggers will seldom feel compelled to republish entire articles. What's the point, aside from grabbing 30% of potential extra revenue? As Techdirt rightly points out, a prime source of business for Mochila may well be nefearious sploggers who are looking to flood the Internet with oceans of AP stories in an effort to snag search engine traffic.

I think that smart traditional media companies who will survive and thrive in the web 2.0 and post-web 2.0 era will actually eschew wire stories (because they're pervasive and therefore don't add a great deal of unique value) in favor of niche coverage, unique coverage, and value-added coverage. In other words, the traditional media world – both print and online – will co-opt the best aspects of the blogosphere. And that competition will in turn be good for the blogoshere, and so on it will go.

Therefore, my advice for bloggers is: don't get hoodwinked by the promise of a few extra cents on top of your adsense revenue. It's not worth it, and it really isn't what you got into the blogging game for in the first place. Avoid the company of sameness. Stick to writing about what you're passionate about and add something good and glorious and bold to the Internet conversation.

I'm digging the MyBlogLog

2007-01-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve been an active user of MyBlogLog for some time now, and find myself increasingly impressed with what it can offer to a growing blog or blog community. The key is its simplicity and adaptability to existing platforms: it gives you the ability for readers/active users of your site to do a couple of key things: add contacts, send in-site e-mail (thus tying your users that much more tightly to the community you’ve created) but most importantly it’s a great way for your users to become more “visible” by having their profile pic show up on your site. Some might find this slightly intimidating or annoying (i.e. I don’t want people to know that I keep refreshing a post to see if anyone responded to my spectacular comment!) but overall I find it to be a great and fun feature, the best way to add web 2.0 functionality to an existing community.

Anyway, I know that Dumpster Bust was abandoned for about six months and only resurrected recently, but I added MyBlogLog on the sidebar here for shits and giggles, as my old pal Dan in Queens likes to say.

Digg Front Pagers

2007-01-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time studying social news sites over the last year or so, particularly digg, netscape, newsvine, shoutwire, and reddit. Trying to figure out how to get "your" story on the front page of one of these sites is a tantalizing art, a frustrating science for any publisher. And short of flat out paying top social news users to promote your stuff (which is a significant problem right now apparently for digg) it's nearly impossible to say if a particularly story will be successful or not.

Diane Kristine's Blogcritics piece is on digg's front page right now, which is what brings all of this to mind. The digg community is fascinating, right down to the commenters. There's a debate going on about whether or not Diane is justified in declaring herself a "non-techie." Hilarious!

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington Announces Web 2.0 Companies "I Couldn't Live Without"

2007-01-02T09:57:00.001-08:00

Influential tech blogger Michael Arrington announced the "Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn't Live Without" for 2007 today. The list of 15 web services – including Digg, Flickr, Gmail, Skype, Techmeme, Wordpress, and YouTube – is interesting as a collection in several ways.

My first thought is that while most of these services didn't exist two or three years ago, they really are indispensable to the daily life of many web users as 2007 dawns. And that's striking because it shows you what a flattening force technology (and "web 2.0" as its modern Internet equivalent) really is. I can look at the list and know that I use many of the same information-gathering and communications tools as "influential tech blogger Michael Arrington," for instance.

If e-mail was one of the Internet's earliest (and some might still argue only) "killer apps," I agree with Mr. Arrington that Gmail is just about its perfect web-based incarnation. The ability to tag messages (you can put label a message however you like and have it saved to multiple folders), instant refreshing (messages pop up without you having to do anything), and threaded messaging make it an essential everyday tool.

Two of the selections – Amie Street and Pandora – are music related. I've intrigued by a service called eTunes of late, which has kind of an "early beta" look to it but is a really easy way to gather music online and then stream it at will.

While I think that Digg is probably the best current incarnation of the new breed of "social news" sites (though I think the future lies with hybrid models spearheaded by the Netscape, a meshing of an editor- and user-controlled experience), I'm partial to Reddit because of its simplicity and the mere fact that it casts its net to a range of stories that I happen to find interesting. Reddit's innovation to allow users to vote stories "down" may actually be its worst feature as it encourages active news submitters to vote stories down. However, voting comments down, which Reddit employed before Digg added the feature, is great. Nothing's more satisfying then clicking a down arrow on someone you disagree with!

While Mr. Arrington uses NetNewsGator and NetVibes to read and organize RSS feeds, I'm partial to a combination of Bloglines and RSSFwd. NetVibes, part of the new breed of "web 2.0 start pages," is a great product but the prospect of staring at a bunch of boxes crammed with news headlines doesn't quite work for me in general. That said, I'm nearly awed by what a super-cool product yourminis is.

The other things that I use everyday include Basecamp, project management software put out by the 37 Signals folk, and AIM for instant messaging.

What's finally intriguing is that there is not one social networking product on Tech Crunch's (or my!) list. I wouldn't be surprised if this will change in the next year or two, as companies fall all over themselves developing more sophisticated social networks that cater to an older/more mature demographic and an ever wider array of specific interests and lifestyles.

Comedy Break: Airplane! and Black Coffee

2007-01-02T07:25:00.001-08:00

What makes something funny? To even ask the question begins down an academic road that inevitably pours sour egghead-laced water over the roaring flames of hilarity. Maybe a better question is: why do I (and in this case feel free to direct "I" to yourself or to yours truly, your humble comedic tour guide) find something to be funny?

I've always been a fan of the absurd, the ridiculous, the strange. This condition was probably was fueled by a childhood filled up with reruns of Monty Python's Flying Circus, '80s era Saturday Night Live, and perhaps above all, The Kids In the Hall.

The '80s and early '90s was also a ripe era for screwball comedy at the movies, with films like The Naked Gun, Back to School, Bachelor Party, Real Genius, and Revenge of the Nerds bringing comic delight and joy to adolescent lads across the comedy nation. (Anyone remember Moving Violations, by the way? That's a good one to see if someone is in sync with my particularly bizarre-tastical ancient comedic groove.)

In any event, I give you a classic moment from a truly screwball and classic film, Airplane!. In this scene, a most proper young lad offers a fine young lady coffee, and… well, explaining it kind of ruins it, doesn't it? Check it out for yourself:

Comedy Break: Lazy Sunday, or how did I miss this one?

2006-12-30T20:15:00.000-08:00

Somehow, it took me a full year to catch up with the rest of the world to check out the absolutely hilarious and viral phenomenon entitled "Lazy Sunday." I had no idea that Saturday Night Live was funny again!

From DSL Blues to WoW

2006-12-30T20:09:00.000-08:00

Sometime when I have the proper angst and energy, I'll have to get into how much trouble I've had with my Internet connectivity at home over the last few months. Suffice to say for now that our cable broadband era ended a few weeks ago (after a Herculean struggle against the lords of the interwebs tubes) when we switched over to DSL. Was on the phone again today with the DSL folk trying to get ever evolving modem issues worked out.

I'm back online, for the moment at least. Which means I can do something I've been planning for a while now: check out a trial edition of World of Warcraft (or WoW) over the new year's break. Many of the people I work with are gaming uberphreaks, so being beyond n00b in terms of the WoW is something that's been irking me for some time.

Plus, I've been too much with the blogs and not funning enough of late. I'm also obsessed with getting a Nintendo Wii, but that's a whole other affair.

For those stalwart few...

2006-12-29T10:46:00.000-08:00

For those stalwart few who still stop by every now and then…

I abandoned this space around six months ago or so to concentrate all of my energies on Blogcritics – mostly helping to run the joint but managed to write around two or three full-length pieces a week, on average. I love it, it's fun, it's great, as is my fantastical job producing web products in downtown LA these days.

However, I've had a growing desire to get back to a more casual style of writing, a place to jot my thoughts about what's going on in online media, TV, and politics mostly (the three general areas that I tend to keep up with, more or less) without the time and skull pressures necessary to produce formal, full length pieces.

That's all to say I haven't forgotten my dear old DB, the dear old Bust.

Oh, and I'll try to throw in some laughs every now and again. Let's kick things off with some classic comedy… and you can't get more classic than The Kids in the Hall's Eradicator!

Check it… "you can unmask me… it's your right."

I’m Still Around… Just Not Around Here

2006-06-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hey y’all,

For any of you still dropping by every now and again, you can find me at Blogcritics.org, an online media source I stumbled across just a month after starting DB. I got more and more involved and became Exec Producer late last summer or so.

So… I’m still writing, publishing over there, doing my thing. Here’s my profile page:
http://blogcritics.org/writer.php?name=Eric%20Berlin

And here’s the .xml address for all you RSS folk:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/authors/Eric_Berlin.xml

And here’s some stuff I’ve written of late:

YouTube Does Deal With NBC, e-Street Cred Increased All Around
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/28/124041.php

Netscape, AOL Look to Crush the Web 2.0 Out of Digg, Reddit
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/16/122642.php

TV Review: Last Comic Standing Opts For Characters Over Comedy
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/07/055714.php

U.S. Accused of "Habitually" Attacking Iraqi Civilians
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/02/152244.php

Al Gore and MySpace: Ahead of the Curve Once Again
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/26/121228.php

So, hope to see all of you over at Blogcritics.org (http://blogcritics.org). I'm a little bit sad to give up Dumpster Bust, but the reality is that there's just too much to do, all of it super exciting and mostly uber-fun. I don't have a great place to write "bloggy" things (scattered thoughts, links, snippets as compared to full length and fully realized pieces) -- maybe I'll use DB.com for that at some point, who knows?

All in all, life is treating me very well: Blogcritics, producing web content for a great company in LA by day, getting to be a part of the hyperkinetic world informational revolutionary teardown, and so on.

TV Review: The Apprentice Kicks Off With Trump 101 Right Back In Session

2006-02-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

School's back in session, kids.

That's right, Boardroom School, taught by the Don himself.

The Don seemed mellower, more wistful during the first episode of the fifth iteration of The Apprentice. He made vague allusions to people getting killed "viciously" in Africa over a gaudy lunch and tried to put the rat race that never ends into perspective. He appeared downright placid and pleasant, in fact. That is, however, until someone had the Audacity to break up his trademarked boardroom rhythm and metaphysical bio-algorithms.

And that's why it's time to open up class.

Trump 101 Rule #1
Shut Your Crap Siren When The Don Speaketh

Who are you, puny Mensa member, thou Harvard MBA, wretched Wharton Wharf Rat? Who are you to shine your greasy sheen and throw spittle-inflected words of mortal disgrace before The Brand Called Trump himself, he who cometh down from the very breath of clouds as though Ra made flesh?

That one chick who didn't make the phone calls to the restaurants might have gotten away with murder and not had her ass streamlined during Week One - if not for her "trying" to speak the truth. Truth? What's up with that? This is Reality TV, kids. Showtime!

And who did Ra strike down for getting uppity? That's right, Summer. Summer, who wouldn't make phone calls to a restaurant during "dinner rush." Summer, who refused to do what she was asked to do on the first task and then went ahead and predicted that her team would lose. Summer, who… oh hell, might as well make it:

Trump 101 Rule #2
Never Refuse to Call Restaurants on the First Task and Then Predict Your Team Will Lose

I'm not naming names here, I'm just saying, you know?

Trump 101 Rule #3
Know Your Enemy… Or, Don't Be Stupid

Tarek, otherwise known as Mr. Mensa, "warned" the young and idealistic Lee not to stand up to him in the boardroom and bring up the fact that the task yielded a phat zero on the creativity-ometer. (Giving away "gift bags" with no gift inside them as a sales device? I mean, what genius thought that one up? All non-Mensa folk may now cheer).

Trump 101 Rule #4
Don't Get Pegged As "The Russian" in Episode #1

Lenny, otherwise known as "The Russian" according to The Don (and who are we to argue), used his knowledge of "the area" to guide the Goodyear Blimp around the sunny skies of East Brunswick, New Jersey. For his troubles, he was dragged into the boardroom and continually pelted, Nerf crotch-gun like, by Mr. Mensa for not "stepping up" enough.

Not stepping up enough? Oh hell, I'm not even going to get to make the Ivan Drago-reference I was so looking forward to…

Trump 101 Rule #5
Enough With the Stupid Corporatese Bromides

Before we know it, someone's going to end up with a bad Case of the Mondays.

Haven't we seen enough of stepping up or not stepping up? How about some stepping down for a change? Or stepping out with your lady. Some tap dancing at least, Fred Astaire-flights of fancy for a Bottom Line-driven world. You know, something.

Trump 101 Rule #6
Never Ever Get Pegged As the Creepy Sweaty Crackpot Dude

They love to cast one of these every season. First there was the guy with the leisure suits and the guitar. Then there was the guy who ran his mouth but had almost nothing to say.

And now it's the creepy chubby guy who claimed to create a diet in which he lost 110 pounds and then proceeded to spend most of the episode waving his arms around and crying to the Heavens about what a "true team player" he is (see: Trump 101 Rule #5).

Honestly, this guy might be the smartest one out there, but he'll never get a shot because the other kids are gonna band together to Pelt the Freak. So…

Trump 101 Rule #7
Be An Insider's Insider

That one sounds kind of real, don't it? Like it should mean something?

That was a test, fools! If you passed the exam, you already know it.

Wiretapping Leak Inquiry Epitomizes American Political Divide

2006-02-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

As the Bush presidency heads deeper into its sixth year, it appears that one controversy has emerged from a bevy to both highlight and deepen the political divisions that began with the Supreme Court decision that sent George W. Bush to the White House in late 2000, sharpened in the wake of the Iraqi invasion, and became entrenched over the past year with scandals, Katrina, and the debate over the (ever?) expanding powers of the presidency dominating the headlines.

The Bush administration's deliberate decision to avoid established legal channels and wiretap Americans without a court order brings together and then collides all of these political divisions while fermenting the discontent of those who have been worried about preserving civil liberties and personal freedoms since the time of the original passing of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The latest development in this story centers upon an investigation into the leak that broke the wiretapping story, as The New York Times reports:

Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials.

The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the interviews said the investigation seemed to lay the groundwork for a grand jury inquiry that could lead to criminal charges.

While the "sides" of this issue easily take on traditional partisan leanings in many ways, each camp – left and right – has posed uneasy questions to mull over as both political parties face an election year and complex issues that hold no easy answers. The Democrats as a whole are concerned with national security while maintaining civil liberties in a post 9/11 world. For Republicans, and particularly those with libertarian and small government ideologies, the notion of governmental overreach into the private lives of citizens is troubling.

On the issue of "whistle blowing" and the right of the press to break stories and hold government responsible, Decision '08, in a piece entitled "Son Of PlameGate," does an excellent job of framing the issue from the conservative side:

There’s a real chance that the biggest casualty of the various Bush administration scandals circulating through his second term will be the press, and for those of us on the right, that prospect manages the difficult trick of being welcome and troubling at once.

A welcome prospect because, next to Hollywood’s elite and senators, journalists can be the most pompous of all professionals, hiding behind their principles when it suits them, and discarding them quickly when it does not. Troubling, because a vigorous free press is not only a good thing, it is absolutely essential to a well-functioning democracy.

The investigation into the leak is viewed by many in the liberal blogosphere in the (harsh) light of perceived or potentially illegal actions – misleading the nation into war with Iraq, mistreatment of prisoners, Scooter Libby and the Valerie Plame investigation, Jack Abramoff and corruption via undue influence of lobbyists, etc. – by the Bush White House and leaders of the Republican Party.

Jonathan Singer, on MyDD, sums up a statement in which the Bush administration is accused of being the "Party of Ineffective Big Government," by saying:

The Bush administration spies on the American people and then seems to expend more effort in finding out who blew the whistle on the program than it does going after crooks inside the White House. The list can go on and on.

This feeling of irony and hypocrisy is echoed by Glenn Greenwald on The Huffington Post:

The significance of this article from today's New York Times cannot be overstated. In essence, while the President sits in the White House undisturbed after proudly announcing that he has been breaking the law and will continue to do so, his slavish political appointees at the Justice Department are using the mammoth law enforcement powers of the federal government to find and criminally prosecute those who brought this illegal conduct to light…

Washington Monthly goes so far as to name names of those it believes have the real possibility of seeing jail time at the conclusion of the leak investigation, including Dan Eggan, James Risen, and Eric Lichtblau. An argument not often heard since the Libby indictment was then unfurled: "Too bad we don't have a federal shield law to protect them."

The New York Times itself, of course, does not escape the criticism of those who regularly assert that the Gray Lady doth lean to the left:

The New York Times is reporting that the investigation of the NSA leaks is progressing rapidly, even as it implies it is only the right wing which is concerned about it and quotes a lawyer (Mr. Boutrous) to the effect that the paper itself may be protected by a common law reporters’ privilege.

As 2006 winds its way toward what could be an Election Day that changes the balance of power in one or both houses of Congress, the evolving controversy over wiretapping will likely play a front-and-center role. And as the news headlines now reflect a Justice Department investigation into the leak that broke the story, many on the left are chomping at the bit to regain the legislative power to subpoena and officially conduct investigations of their own.

Will Bloggers Save or Destroy the Democratic Party?

2006-01-29T14:58:00.000-08:00

The recent decision of Sen. John Kerry to choose the popular Daily Kos blog as the platform from which to announce his decision to support a Senate filibuster in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel Alito has the blogosphere and media world at large zooming with buzz.

Crystallizing and in some ways fueling the debate is a Saturday Washington Post piece entitled "Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center". While looking at a variety of ways in which blogs are affecting the political process, Staff Writer Jim VandeHei chose to portray the liberal and center-left focused blogosphere as a unified group enraged by the "gutless sellouts" that hold leadership positions in the Democratic Party.

There was an immediate pushback and response from blog land, as could be expected, led from the left by MyDD:

To be fair, there is some tension between the Democratic Party and the
progressive blogosphere. Unlike the rightist blogosphere, we tend to be a bit more independent and suspicious of power. But to pretend that we're in an all-out war is silly. If that were the case, I doubt the majority of us would still consider ourselves Democrats. Some of our favorite Democrats are people like Jack Murtha, the pro-life Harry Reid, and Russ Feingold, who voted to confirm Chief Justice Roberts. As Markos has pointed out time and again, the tension doesn't stem from ideology. It's all about entrenched power and reform.

Some blogs, MyDD included, felt it important to look at VandeHai's own purported bias as well as that of The Washington Post itself. The Left Coaster had this to say:

You can always tell when the traditional corporate conservative media and the Beltway Democrats start feeling a little heat from an energized and well-informed pushback by the center-left blogosphere. In the case of the media, and especially the GOP water-carrying Washington Post of late, their clueless ombudsperson Deborah Howell whined that the center-left bloggers were mean to her for pointing out her careless dismissal of easily-verifiable facts about the Abramoff/GOP connection.

Others, such as The News Blog, felt it important to apportion blame for Democratic failures in the appropriate place, namely with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, stating "… It is the DLC and friends who sandbag Democratic candidates and follow Republican talking points. Not the bloggers. We support Dems who fight, simple as that. Jack Murtha, Russ Feingold, doesn't matter. The only litmus test is a willingness to defend principles."

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the man behind the influential Daily Kos, also defended his right to call it like he sees it, saying, "There's nothing 'extreme left' with demanding Democrats act like Democrats, no matter how much these out-of-touch and self-important beltway insiders think it is." This comment, of course, touches on one of then presidential candidate Howard Dean's popular refrains during the heady early days of the 2004 primary season: I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Conservatives, who are likely as concerned with encouraging a center-left split amongst Democrats as the Dems themselves are in unifying, brought a host of their own opinions to the digital table.

Captain's Quarters looked at the strategy behind Kerry's appearance on Daily Kos and what it means for his and the Democratic Party's political future:

Democrats should take careful note of this development, which shows exactly how desperate Kerry has become in his desire to win the Presidency. He knows that the party establishment will have nothing to do with another Kerry candidacy, having failed miserably against a vulnerable George Bush. This week, in his decision to post at Daily Kos (which he disavowed during his campaign after Kos' "Screw them" statement) and his sudden passion for a filibuster, he has now separated himself from the current party leadership to make himself the chief representative of the activist base. He wants to convince the bloggers and the special-interest groups that run the Democratic Party that he speaks for them, not for some namby-pamby centrist urge promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council.

JustOneMinute took the angle of relating the changes the blogosphere has brought in how politicians and candidates have to approach base and special interest constituencies, where the energy and money to drive a successful campaign always lies:

I would guess that blogs and the internet have made the unelectable left even better organized and harder to work around; the days when a candidate could tell Barbra Streisand what she wanted to hear, pocket her check, then tell the public something that made sense are long over.

The Volokh Conspiracy shed light on the difference between how conservatives and progressives/liberals utilize media in saying, "Think of it this way – if John Kerry were a conservative, he would have probably phoned-in a filibuster to Rush Limbaugh rather than blogging on Daily Kos."

At the end of Sunday morning's installment of Meet the Press, host Tim Russert, in response to NBC Correspondent Kelly O'Donnel's speculation that President Bush would like to see Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice run for president, said, "Whoa, that's going to get the blogs a-running!"

No matter how blogs influence the political process –- and this will surely change and morph over time to the chaotic pace of the Internet itself –- there can be no doubt now that the influence is significant, and growing.

Althouse summed up the significance of Kerry's decision by saying, "Kerry could have found a forum in any number of places. And the fact is, the NYT was calling for a filibuster too."

Concert Review: Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger Burn Up Hollywood's Avalon

2006-01-23T22:19:00.000-08:00

On the last show of the American leg of the Deep Freeze Tour, featuring co-headliners Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger, I got my ass fully and wholly kicked by what I like to think of as the ska vibe.

After lively and fun sets by opening acts Zebrahead and Goldfinger, the crowd was clearly mega-amped for the Fish. And Reel Big Fish was equally ready to get the ass kickery jacked way up. Lead singer and guitarist Aaron Barrett strutted onto the stage decked out in a red suit jacket, black shirt, white tie, and bright white pants with little black strips running through them. Like Barrett's and the band's over-the-top and exuberantly snarky personality, you have to own an outfit like that to make it work.

And own it and the night the Reel Big Fish did. Between opening ("Trendy") and closing ("Sell Out") the show on signature numbers from Turn the Radio Off, the band's first full-length release, Barrett led his band mates and the crowd with master showmanship, rock solid guitar work, and importantly, high hilarity.

"Thank you for giving us the opportunity to kick your asses tonight," Barrett deadpanned near the end of the show. It was all in the delivery, as sublime and spiked with sun splashed So Cal snark as most Reel Big Fish songs.

More commentary of note between numbers:

"This shit is bananas"
"Holy shit, we just kicked your ass with that song!"
"Holy shit, that was intense!"
"This is Matt Wong on bass, kicking your ass."
"Did that tickle your fancy? I think we just tickled your fancy."

It was the music, of course, that really owned the night and truly did kick the asses of a house full of eager fans. Rolling through an impressive number of songs in 90 minutes – many from Why Do They Rock So Hard – Reel Big Fish put on a clinic of magnetically tight horn-play, skanked up guitar, and harmonized vocals, mostly revolving around the two signature RBF themes: being in a band ("Don't Start A Band," "Sell Out," "Trendy," "Alternative Girl," "Why Do We Rock So Hard?" etc.) and having troubles of the romantic sort ("She Has A Girlfriend Now," "I Want Your Girlfriend To Be My Girlfriend Too," "She's Famous Now," etc.).

Hell, if you can own those themes and kick ass with them for more than 10 years, why change up?

Best of all, throughout the night the crowd was treated to well-honed acts that truly knew how to entertain a good natured Gen X rock crowd. "Suburban Rhythm" turned into a Whose Line Is It Anyway-improv routine, with the band switching up styles to find one that, you guessed it, "kicked ass enough." The regular version morphed into double-time speed, then blues, then disco, then country, then – because they "needed to be taken seriously" – old school hip hop (not their most comfortable modality), garage rock in the tradition of The Strokes (much better), thrash metal, and then, finally, in a cacophonous crescendo of musical glory: "emotional romantic" stylings from Barrett with screaming thrash vocals backing. In other words: that's strong.

There was also a diverse selection of cover songs: Aha's "Take on Me," (the obligatory '80s ska cover), Metallica's "Enter Sandman," and, in a lovely ironic bent, Lita Ford's '80s-centric "Kiss Me Deadly." Another nice moment: Goldfinger's John Feldmann ran out on stage to take over the female role on "She Has A Girlfriend Now."

With little pause, Barrett and crew danced and skanked with coordinated moves (wielding the guitar like a mighty sword) and agility, hopping and shaking and exhorting the crowd to join in on the ska vibe group think for all it was worth.

The Avalon, with its Aztec-themed décor and old Hollywood grandeur mixed with just enough grunge to make it street worthy, provided a great setting to catch a heavy on the ska, light on the punk rock show. For all its faults, Hollywood itself has a certain vibe that you don't find anywhere else.

It was the kind of night where people were chatting on line at the balcony bar – a balcony that gave an exceptional vantage point to watch the show and see the raucous but exceptionally behaved crowd "in the pit" (the very location in which – according to the Fish's "In the Pit," where tough guy moshers are scorned to shreds – "…I like to punch and hit, I like to fuck up shit"). It was the kind of night where the balcony barkeep was laid back and friendly enough to have a quick round of banter with:

"What do they call that one," I asked, referring to the drink the customer in front of me had just ordered. "That Red Bull and vodka combo?"

"I don't know," he said. "I think it's just Red Bull and vodka."

"Maybe you should coin the name for the drink," said I.

"How about a Red Bullet?"

"Sounds right on to me."

Los Angeles-natives Goldfinger, who preceded the Fish with about an hour-long set, started out a bit uneven, but eventually won me over with their energetic ska-punk-pop combo. Thankfully, lead singer John Feldmann's voice eventually smoothed out, allowing the band to blast out its best sounding numbers, which incorporate elements of ska and punk and don't dive too deeply into the depths of thrash-dom. "Answers," an old school number with a nice jangly ska groove, was their most effective song of the night.

Feldmann should be wholly commended for going on stage at all as he had torn his left ACL only a few days before the show. The rail thin Feldmann, decked out in a jet black suit and skinny black ska tie, owned the stage nonetheless in a way that even Aaron Barrett would have to admire.

Things got political briefly as Goldfinger rolled through a very competent version of Nena's "99 Red Balloons," an "anti-war song," sung in both English and German. Later, we were treated to "Fuck Ted Nugent" (Feldmann ascribes to the vegan lifestyle). Overall, the political tenor of the evening was decidedly anti-Bush, but what do you expect, it's Hollywood, baby!

Goldfinger is not a band that lets things get serious for very long, however. At what seemed like an accustomed juncture in the show, drummer Darrin Pfeiffer emerged from his kit and announced that it was time to jam a Snickers bar into his ass. Without going into too many lurid details, there was ass, there was candy, there was audience participation and…

Zebrahead was tasked with opening up the night, not an easy gig at six p.m. on a Friday night. However, even with a lackluster crowd that was just finding its sea and, later, ska vibe legs, they pulled off a razor-sharp 30 minutes, with just the right mix of crunching guitars and funk metal rhythm, the great singing voice of Justin Mauriello and hip hop counterpoint of Ali Tabatabaee.

iPod Powering The Office?

2006-01-23T22:18:00.000-08:00

NBC claims that the American version of The Office, starring Steve Carell and a stellar supporting cast, is being fueled to its highest ever ratings on the strength of iPod-version video downloads of the show, according to TVWeek.com.

I understand that The Office is the most popular NBC video product on iTunes. And I viscerally feel all the requisite buzz of a hot techie buzz toy syncing up synaptic-like with an ancient school entertainment product like a television show. I get all of that.

But can't a television sitcom be given credit for achieving what is truly the rarest of feats? That is:

The Office is an often brilliant blend of slapstick humor and sublime romantic comedy, a mockumentary cocktail that is nearly compulsive watching. That it manages to consistently maintain these heights week after week (now mid-way through its second season) on a broadcast network and as a spin-off of one of the most unique and hideously awkwardly side-splittingly funny yet short-lived series of all-time is even more stunning.

So yes, it's nice that people like to first purchase and then download The Office to their video iPods. And yes, I'm jealous of all of y'all who own a video iPod, because I want one.

One would have to assume that NBC Universal executives are salivating over not just an increasingly popular and critically acclaimed sitcom, but an increasingly popular and critically acclaimed sitcom that iPod owners are willing to shell out cash to watch.

Here's a list of things that I hope the NBC Universal execs remember, when they're done salivating and dancing around the stone circle and beating the animal skin tom toms and chanting in exquisitely alien voices (huffing and grating and chortling and howling) into the darkest reaches of the television skied night and all of that:

* I hope they won't ignore the fact that they did something right in moving The Office from Tuesday nights, a good night to watch television, to Thursday nights, the best night to watch TV.

* I also hope they reflect upon the notion that keeping the one-two punch of My Name Is Earl, nearly equal to The Office in comedic strength, together with The Office in the move to Thursdays creates an hour-long reason to get in front of that box that glows once a week. That is, if you don't have one of those fiddly-diddly handheld contraptions that one can presumably enjoy whilst riding on the heated passenger seat of a top-of-the-line sport utility vehicle. Some of us will be watching TV the old fashioned way, in front of the tube with a warm can of Diet Shasta, thanks. Or taping it via DVR and watching later. But you know, either way.

* Finally, NBC Universal execs need to tattoo the following message upon their blackest stone cold hearts:

Never become Fox, who, by signaling the end to Arrested Development (after heart-knifing such golden glorious offerings from the TV Lords as Firefly, Wonderfalls, and The Inside) can only be relegated to a hell dimension conjured by a troubled firth-grader during a class session titled "Why is the Constitution meaningful to me?"

So, to sum up:

We hate people who own video iPods. The Office is glorious no matter what medium you choose to enjoy it in (and in whose sordid company). Television executives, while not really possessing stone cold death-hearts, are maddeningly forgetful. But we are mad persistent (and Noble) so we endeavor to remind with patience.

And drive less SUVs and hug trees more.

Charbucks Coffee: Great Moments In Corporate Brand Rip-Offs

2006-01-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

In a move sure to set the hopes of corporate name-coveters the world over aflutter, a New York federal court ruled that a New Hampshire-based coffee company may keep selling "Charbucks" coffee after a decade-long legal fight with Starbucks Corp. There was no evidence, apparently, that there was an intention to "mislead consumers about a connection between the two" coffee brands.

Let's enter the dream of an unnamed Starbucks executive the night following the ruling, shall we?

"Gee, Sally, I could sure go for a good, piping hot, bold-yet-smooth coffee down at the corner Charbucks!"

"Charbucks, Tommy? Don't you mean Starbucks, the ubiquitous planetary coffee megapower?"

"Yes, of course! I mean… wait, I'm confused!"

Okay, that was scary.

Of course, this wasn't the first time the good name of Starbucks was mercilessly riffed upon. Everyone remembers the South Park episode in which coffee mega-chain Harbucks moved into town to bump aside small town institution Tweek's Coffee. Ironically, the infamous underpants gnomes – surreptitious raiders of little boys' underpants in the night – remind us that "profit" is the third key step after stealing this material.

We can only wonder if Black Bear Micro Roastery – the Dream Team behind the name Charbucks – took the underpants gnomes' lesson to heart.

[ADBLOCKHERE]Going back further, there was the setting of McDowell's fast food eatery in the film Coming to America, starring Eddie Murphy. McDowell's, of course, was an open bid to borrow the good name of another brand tattooed upon the brains of billions (and billions): McDonald's. While the character portrayed by John Amos and his family clearly didn't live the lifestyle of African royalty, they were obviously comfortable. And though, in a key filmic moment, we see Amos chasing off a photographer who undoubtedly worked for attorneys in the employ of McDonald's, the cultural tone vis-à-vis Hollywood was broadcasted loud and clear: Use Your Illusion. Or the name of a really really big company but just change it a little bit.

Across the small towns of America, a plague of brand ripoffmanship can be seen if you dare seek it out. In the college town of Binghamton, New York, for instance, there is Kennedy Fried Chicken, a popular late night stop for all things cheap and greasy. Do the kids and town folk mind that there's potentially sinister semantical wordplay involved in getting a three-piece and a biscuit?

Probably not, but somewhere in the heartland a tear runs down the Colonel's face on a KFC billboard.

Blogcritics Editors' Picks of the Week (Jan. 4 – Jan. 10): The Best Shiny Digital Big Tent Freedom Can Buy

2006-01-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

The more I do this, the more I read through the weekly choices and selections and get a feel for the diversity of voices that are assembled within this digital Big Tent, I get reminded again and again what a remarkable place this is.

With that briefest of brief preambles out of the way I give you this week's best as brought to you by the editors of Blogcritics.org.

Music
Music Editor: Connie Phillips

CD Review: Carlos Jimenez, Arriving, by John Owen (Jan. 4)
John Owen offered up three reviews this week, but this one stood out. He takes an in-depth look at this artist, the album, and the jazz flute in general. He gives a full and complex review and offers up a bit of history to the instrument and the genre.

The Friday Morning Listen: Devendra Banhart by Mark Saleski (Jan. 6)
Mark always delivers great tidbits in his weekly column, but this weeks edition was especially enjoyable as he examines an artist who had to grow on him.

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

Mr. Kelly did not make a selection this week, so I'm going to slide in a pick here by a true class act, Blogcritics.org Editor Natalie Bennett:

Book Review: Duel: A True Story of Death and Honour by James Landale by Natalie Bennett (Jan. 4)
A tale of Scottish dueling and family history reviewed and laid out in a rich and uniquely British voice? Yes please, and I'll take milk with my tea as well, ta:

The reader can imagine a Prussian aristocrat shuddering with horror at the scene and the class of the opponents. But now it was that the two men had to meet on that muddy field the next morning.

TV/Film
TV/Film Co-Editors: Alisha Karabinus and Joan Hunt

The American Family Association Questions The Book Of Daniel by swingingpuss (Jan. 4)
A new year, a new controversial show on TV - that's the name of the game. Except that The Book of Daniel is likely to be less objectionable that watchdog groups would like to have us believe. However, the good news is that their outrage draws attention to the show and provides greater publicity than NBC could have ever planned. Or did NBC plan it that way? Swingingpuss looks at the show and the reasons the America Family Association is up in arms.

Do Comedians Have A Point of View? by Tony Fiqueroa (Jan. 6)
Tony jumps into the Bill O'Reilly vs. David Letterman pool with both feet. I don't think he bothered to test the waters first, but that did hurt him one iota. Included in this article are portions of the transcript of the encounter, including some of the best lines heard on TV in a long time.

Nipplegate II: WWE's "Live Sex Act" Shows Nudity by Matt Paprocki (Jan. 10)
An exposed nipple during a live sex act is news? Well, it is if it happens on TV. I'm not sure how the wrestling part figures in, but Matt has the full scoop and I'll leave you to work it out for yourself. Way to jump on a story, Matt!

Movie Review: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by Mike Cullinan (Jan. 10)
When a movie review makes me salivate, it simply must be included in the Ed. Picks section. Mike managed to convey the excitement and humor inherent in the movie, and he did it flawlessly. Great writing, great reviewing, and best of all: convincing. This is one movie that goes on the "must see" list.

Culture
Culture Editor: Lisa Hoover

Ms. Hoover did not make a selection this week, so I went to the far Blogcritics shore to find a recently-inebriated Shark:

Shark's Post-Holiday Booze Report by Shark (Jan. 9)
It's a report from the front lines and boozed-out alleys of the United States, reported in a way only Shark can relate, as in his own words:

Anyone can get drunk, but not everybody can afford to do it from an inverted chandelier designed by a dead Bauhaus architect.

Politics
Politics Editor: Natalie Davis

Ms. Davis did not make a selection this week, so I went to the political salt mines and came away with Blogcritics gold:

Seymour Hersh, the Reporter's Reporter, Speaks on Iraq by Steven Hart (Jan. 8)
Great coverage of a great coverer and uncoverer:

Hersh's Nov. 30 speech got some cursory coverage at the time, but nobody captured every detail and nuance of this gem-studded lecture and the followup questions, which are refreshingly articulate and pertinent.

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

Hype Machine Breaks Down in Rose Bowl" by Zach Baker (Jan. 5)
After a very exciting championship game, Zach broke down exactly what broke down. No, not the USC defense. It was the media-inflicted llusion that USC was unbeatable, proved by citing that three years ago the same mistake happened when nobody could beat the Miami Hurricanes until Ohio State did just that. Not satisfied with blasting just the media's premature love for a human team, Baker also parallels USC quarterback Matt Leinart's comment of "we're still better than them" to that of another loser 10 years ago — the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Few have compared Leinart to Carlos Baerga, and few ever will.

Gaming
Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

Cross System Comparison Review: Peter Jackson's King Kong by Matt Paprocki (Jan. 4)
A direct comparison between eight different versions of this strong movie-based video game. That is a lot of game playing! Read Matt's in-depth review of everything from the mobile phone to the Xbox 360 Kong.

PC Game Review: Shot Online by Warren Kelly (Jan. 7)
Online Gaming doesn't have to be expensive, and you don't have to sacrifice quality. Sometimes, it's even free. Editor's Warning: This game may well ruin your livelihood. Yes, it is that good. So go download it now.

Nintendo DS Review: Animal Crossing - Wild World by Aaron Auzins (Jan. 9)
Every once in a while a game is released that doesn't really fall within the boundaries of any particular genre. But that does not mean you shouldn't take notice. Wild World took everything that was great with the GameCube release and made it even better.

SciTech
SciTech Editor: Lisa McKay

Digital Cookery: Take Three Foods, Google Them, et Voila! by Alpha (Jan. 7)
The next time you're wondering what to fix for dinner, take Alpha's advice and give "Google cooking" a try! This fun look at a gastronomical use for everyone's favorite search engine provides a brief history of this culinary phenomenon and comes with a couple of recipes for good measure.

The Hot Topic: FM Is Stereo. Does That Really Mean Anything? by Bennett Dawson and the rest of the Hot Topic Team: Duke de Mondo, Eric Berlin, and Mark Saleski (Jan. 9)
Do you remember the old days when you could tune up your car in your driveway? Do you know what stereo actually means? Do you understand the inner workings of any of the tech toys you play with? The gentlemen who bring us The Hot Topic discuss whether or not technology is turning us into a generation of end users who can't fix anything and don't understand how stuff works.

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

Blogcritics.org Executive Producer Eric Berlin chose:

Book Review: Duel: A True Story of Death and Honour by James Landale by Natalie Bennett (Jan. 4)
A tale of Scottish dueling and family history reviewed and laid out in a rich and uniquely British voice? Yes please, and I'll take milk with my tea as well, ta:

The reader can imagine a Prussian aristocrat shuddering with horror at the scene and the class of the opponents. But now it was that the two men had to meet on that muddy field the next morning.

More Best of Blogcritics.org Articles of the Week
As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week

El Bicho chose:

Do Comedians Have A Point of View? by Tony Fiqueroa (Jan. 6)
An interesting piece about comedians and the Letterman/O'Reilly incident. It's ripe for a whole series about different comedians. It made me want to write, which is the best kind of writing.

Aaman Lamba chose:

Paris Visa: Falling in Love by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti (Jan. 9)

Bennett chose:

NFL Picks of a Thoughtful Fool, Season Wrap-Up by David Mazzotta (Jan. 6)
David started doing a weekly NFL column during Week Eight of the season and immediately became one of my "must read" favorites. His scientific tomfoolery and solidly logical predictions were one thing, his deadpan humor was another thing altogether.

He delivered more laughs from day one than almost anyone else on BC, in a football column no less.

I'm not kidding when I say that I looked forward to the "Thoughtful Fool" each week as much as I used to look forward to Joe Bob Briggs' Drive-In Movie Column in the Sunday paper, back when I was a younger pup.

David's clever writing should be rewarded with enough hard cash to allow him to bet big in Vegas. Every single week of the football season.

Mr. Mazzotta is a huge asset to Blogcritics.

Sal Marinello chose:

Mark Steyn Predicts the Collapse of "The West" – Sadly I Agree by Bird of Paradise (Jan. 8)
Mr. Hewitt (Bird of Paradise) has crafted a well-thought out addendum to a great piece by Mr. Steyn, which deals with a very difficult and complex subject. This kind of well-thought out and well-written article is a great example of what blogging is all about.

Nik Durga chose:

Buy the World An iPod by J. Michaels (Jan. 10)
"Buy the World An iPod" is a nice paean to that must-have consumer good; bought my first one myself last fall and it's my favorite material possession. J. did a nice job just summing up the simple pleasures of the pod, without lapsing into critical overhype or aimless wandering. A fun, short piece!

Production Notes
Blogcritics selected this week: please feel free to make a selection for next week's edition. You can leave them in the comments or send them to Eric Berlin: dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

All are more than free to leave general impressions and personal selections for this or any week below!

How'd we choose these things? Find out here.

Please send you input, ideas, and suggestions to Eric Berlin: dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

Catchin' Up

2006-01-09T22:21:00.000-08:00

I've been writing, just not publishing here as much as is good and necessary.

Feast away below if ye dare... okay, it's not that risky really, but you may enjoy.

Blogcritics Editors' Picks of the Week (Dec. 27 to Jan. 3): Celery Sticks and the Post-New Year Story Cornucopia

2006-01-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Kicking back into 2006 gear and already there is an undulating post-new year cornucopia of stories written by Blogcritics.org writers and editors to feast your eyes on.

You need something to feast on in between celery sticks and resolution-mandated runs to the gym, right?

Because we took a week off for the holidays up in these virtual parts, we relaxed the rules ('cause we like to break them too, actually, if truth be told) and let in a few bits of brilliance scribbled during the final week of '05.

We'd also like to officially welcome SciTech to the percolating picks party as well as SciTech Editor Lisa McKay.

Enjoy!

Music
Music Editor: Connie Phillips

CD Review: John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band Some Time in New York City by Al Barger (Dec. 24)
Al delivers a provocative review of a well-known album. Honest and articulated, he gives his detailed song-by-song take looking at all aspects of the production as well as the construction.

Does Your CD Lose Its Value By The Bedpost Overnight? by uao (Dec. 28)
This is an interesting look at how CDs hold their value by comparison of genre. A very fun, and yet still well-written piece.

Music with "Universal Appeal" Does Not Exist by Michael J. West (Dec. 29)
A well-articulated essay on the universal appeal of music or lack thereof, Michael examines many of the ways people react to music and how they associate music with events in their life.

CD Review: Nirvana - Sliver: The Best of the Box by El Bicho (Dec. 29)
Thank you, El Bicho, for this incredibly detailed look at Cobain, Nirvana, and this box set. The review is comprehensive and well balanced, giving the reader and informed look.

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

Graphic Novel Review: Epileptic by Nik Dirga (Jan. 02)
Nik doesn't treat this book as just another comic book — he treats it as a work of art. What could have been just another graphic novel review turns into an art review.

Book Review: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture by Roger Scruton by Tony Dalmyn (Jan. 2)
Tony takes a scholarly topic and makes it accesible to everyone, providing links to more information on many of the people and ideas in the review. Wikipedia gets a workout with this review, but that's not a bad thing, given the subject matter of the book.

TV/Film
TV/Film Co-Editors: Alisha Karabinus and Joan Hunt

TV's Tough Timeslots by Diane Kristine (Jan. 3)
Diane probes the programming mess that prevents us from viewing all the great shows available on TV. Counter-programming is problematic, at best. Quality shows are pitted against each other, forcing viewers to choose between them. Regardless of how many televisions, VCRs, and TiVOs you have, you simply can't watch everything! Yet, we try.

Culture
Culture Editor: Lisa Hoover

The Good, the Bad, and the Truly Ugly: A Very Subjective Look at 2005 by Victor Lana (Dec. 31)
Victor takes us on a walk backwards through 2005. It's a great read and anyone who can use "pastiche" correctly in a sentence gets extra brownie points from me.

Poking Fun at Depression - Not a Sane Thing by Mark Edward Manning (Dec. 30)
Can you imagine if the commercial Mark referred to ran on US television? Instant anarchy. Mark, speaking as one who's been there, urges readers to take depression seriously.

Jerusalem Should Get What it Wants by diana hartman (Dec. 26)
Only Diana could use a brother, a light bulb and a jelly jar to make a point such an eloquent point about conflict resolution.

The Year in Pop Culture by Chip Ross (Dec. 23)
Chip takes his own look back at 2005, Hollywood-style. Confidential to Chip: South Africa last I heard and because chicks dig him.

Politics
Politics Editor: Natalie Davis

Bush's Most Frightening Policy To Date: Domestic Surveillance by Jackson Smith (Dec. 23)
In this finely written article, the author insists that the president's controversial
warrantless-eavesdropping operation - which many believe is illegal - is dangerous for the nation. Smith warns, "Using the precedent of this justification, Bush can now conceivably take any imaginable action against terrorism, no matter the inherent sacrifice of civil liberties. His power is virtually unlimited and unchecked. If the administration gets its way, the United States' presidency will go from being vaguely imperial to clearly tyrannical." (Suggested by Assistant Politics Editor Scott C. Smith)

The New York Times and US News & World Report - Aiding and Abetting? by Z.Z.
Bachman (Dec. 28)
I love Z.Z. Bachman's enthusiasm. In each of his writings, that passion for conservative ideals comes through, and even if one can't agree with the opinions presented, one must walk away impressed by the author's commitment to his point of view and amused by his targeting of the political left. In this piece, Bachman takes on two mainstream news outlets and charges them with aiding and abetting his nation's professed enemy via their reporting. Just when one might assume that the writer is all about dishing up rousing red meat for the right wing, Bachman turns the tables and offers a concluding call for real
balance. Very cool.

Energy Wars - Russian Gas Cut Off To Ukraine by Aaman Lamba (Jan. 2)
You think gas prices here are out of control? Aaman Lamba's informative report shows that those of us on these shores have nothing on those in the former Soviet Union, where Russia has cut off Ukraine's gas supply because of disputes over petrol pricing there. And things aren't much better in many eastern and western European countries either; many are suffering under high prices and low supply. Mr. Lamba earns readers' thanks by reminding us that sometimes, the grass isn't always greener.

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

UMass 66, St. Peter's 49 ... And A New Tradition Begins? by David
R. Mark (Dec. 28)
David took a respite from his political conquest to reflect on his alma mater (University of Massachusetts) and their once dominant reign over college basketball in the '90s. Not only does he discover a good luck charm to take to games (his 4-year-old son), but he reminisces on the time he schooled UMass hoops legend Lorenzo Sutton, if only for a brief moment, in a pick-up game.

NFL Picks of a Thoughtful Fool, Week 17 by David Mazzotta (Dec. 29)
David's weekly column was claimed by Blogcritics on the waiver wire in midseason, but it's an addition that payed off huge dividends. It began as a weekly breakdown of an attempt to beat the spread and evolved into a witty and insightful look into each week in the NFL. Here's just one of his nuggets of wisdom found in his Week 17 piece:

From Rex Grossman's performance on Saturday, it's pretty clear that one can have a solid throwing arm or a full neck beard, but one cannot have both.

A job well done, David, on keeping up with the pace week-to-week!

Gaming
Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

The Worst in Video Games 2005 by Matt Paprocki (Dec. 21)
Jack Thompson, Grand Theft Auto sex, Spike TV, and Chinese MMO players. What a combo! Instead of those typical, boring, and cheaply planned out best of lists, let's hand out some awards for the "less fortunate" people, places, and things from the industry we love... some times.

Product Review: Mental Floss Trivia Game by Bill Wallo (Dec. 21)
From the creators of the magazine Mental Floss and a line of "irreverent" trivia books (such as Condensed Knowledge and Forbidden Knowledge) comes the Mental Floss trivia game. Promising to pick up "where every other party game stops," it adds a number of twists to the traditional trivial pursuits.

Not just one, but seven N-Gage Reviews by Matt Paprocki (Dec. 27 to Jan. 2)
Can you tell that Matt got an N-Gage? These are his first seven reviews, but keep a look out for even more. You know he is gonna' review every single one.

NEW! SciTech
SciTech Editor: Lisa McKay

Stay Away From Heightmax! by Sal Marinello (Dec. 30)
Professional strength and conditioning coach Sal Marinello warns parents of the dangers of untested dietary supplements in this piece. He explains why a lack of testing by the FDA and the absence of any verifiable, peer-reviewed studies on the clinical efficacy and safety of these products should serve as a red flag to parents who might be contemplating their use.

Titan's Halo and the Christmas Tree Cluster by Bennett Dawson (Jan. 2)
Bennett's space posts never fail to fascinate, and this one is no exception. Enhanced by two breath-taking (and seasonally appropriate) images from NASA, Bennett gives us a small taste of what to look forward to in the field of space exploration this year, and explains the Christmas Tree Cluster in terms that don't require a degree in rocket science to understand.

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

Blogcritics.org Executive Producer Eric Berlin chose:

Intel Re-brands, Leaps to New Logo by Phillip Winn (Jan. 3)
Blogcritics' all-around Secret Weapon delivers here, as always, by making it look easy. Bringing together elements of technology, the business world, and the uber-sphere of marketing and branding we now live in, Winn sails through Intel's re-branding, tells us what the significance might be, and all the while makes life easy on the reader. Strunk and White would be proud.

Sports Editor Matthew T. Sussman chose:

RJ's NFL Picks - Week 17 by RJ Elliott (Dec. 29)
Like David's "Thoughtful Fool" series, this pick more recognizes the season-long body of work. Not only did RJ provide his own insight into every NFL game played this year, but he created a forum for everyone to compete against him. He also selflessly compiled the right-wrong records of everyone who participated. Or maybe he just has nothing better to do. Regardless, free time well spent at Blogcritics should always be rewarded, even if he picked the Lions to win too many times.

TV/Film Co-editor Joan Hunt chose:

There's Just Too Much TV by Eric Berlin (Jan. 2)
Having experienced the phenomenon of "too much TV" myself, I felt Eric's pain as I read his article about all the choices available on television today. This hit home most recently as I ended up ill during the holidays. The cure for my boredom? TV. And, I discovered some great shows that I missed while watching my pre-programmed favorites. I finally understood the buzz behind certain shows (I'll refrain from naming them here) and realized that I needed to invest in TiVO. Eric has given into the temptation, too, and explored the depths of "you gotta see this!" programming.

Can't Stop Serenity by Alisha Karabinus (Jan. 2)
When a movie spawns such deep devotion, how is it possible to continue to find compelling material for new articles? Alisha does a bang up job here. Summarizing the premise of the show Firefly and segueing into the film Serenity, she takes us to a brand new world that is intriguing, but somehow familiar. She also offers us a peek at past coverage from Blogcritics.org. Had it not been for this article, I might have missed some of the finer points of the Serenity charm as well as our site's influence in an interview with Joss Whedon. This is how it's done, folks!

More Best of Blogcritics.org Articles of the Week
As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week

No picks this time, which is likely due to the holidays and post-holiday ramping up to full-speed rather than a lack of fine selections to choose from!

Production Notes
Blogcritics selected this week: please feel free to make a selection for next week's edition. You can leave them in the comments or send them to Eric Berlin: dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

All are more than free to leave general impressions and personal selections for this or any week below!

How'd we choose these things? Find out here.

Please send you input, ideas, and suggestions to Eric Berlin: dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

Patrick Cranshaw, Old School's Blue, Dies at 86

2006-01-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

If you have to go out, it's best to go out fighting with a couple of naked and oiled up coeds in your face, right?

There was Blue, the oldest and scrappiest codger of a frat pledge you could ever meet, heading out into the KY jelly wrestling ring, an Animal House (in this case, Old School) worthy audience of cacophonous drunken fools screaming him on in earnest.

Frank the Tank, played by Will Ferrell, asked Blue if he was ready and the old Navy man said, "Just ring the f***in' bell, you pansy."

Now Patrick Cranshaw, who played Blue, as well as a kaleidoscope of roles, in an acting career that spanned six decades, is dead of natural causes at the age of 86.

A remarkable career it was, too, with roles in a myriad of films and television shows that are cultural landmarks on the pop culture scene. Indeed, a festival featuring Patrick Cranshaw offerings would be great fun and great entertainment both.

For example, the following could be easily whipped up:

Day One
Iconic Moments: Popular Culture Rears Its Counter-Culture Head
* Bonnie and Clyde
* Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band

Day Two
Cutting Edge Mid-'90s Cinema
* Ed Wood
* The Hudsucker Proxy

You could have a Really Bad Comedies Night too (Air Bud: Spikes Back anyone?) but that would tarnish the man's legacy. The final night, the Big Night, would feature Old School, a film that you have to love even if you detest lowbrow comedy (just ask my wife!).

And when Will Ferrell utters the now famous line, "You're my boy, Blue!" we will all heartily agree.

There's Just Too Much TV

2006-01-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

There's just too much TV.

No, not in the it's a crap wastoid lost culture soulless crunch of inevitable biosphere husked out cortex shutdown kind of way. Or even the I really need to have a really real life and not spend time picking corn chips out of the nethers while couch sores ripple across long neglected and now seriously afflicted castoff flesh kind of way.

I mean there's too many good shows, too many shows I've heard I have to see that I haven't seen, and too many shows that I've caught bits and pieces of and would love to see more of but things like having to "talk to other humans" and "putting food down my throat" and the weekend work-release furlough "ending" keep getting in the way.

For you see, there's just too much TV.

Take, for example, Herc's Top 10 Scripted Hourlongs of 2005, from Ain't It Cool News. These list-things help to eat away at the soul linings, like acid dripped from vials held by squash-headed aliens with hazy-shaped auras made of fire and reeking of barbeque sauce.

If for no other reason than to let it burn, let's run down the list and have a little dance:

#10 – The O.C.
I've not seen very much of The O.C. (while in real life, ironically, I see quite a bit of it), but I can live with that. What I've seen was melodramatic and teenybopper friendly. Hoorah for them and theirs and their non-corroded soul masses. However, something deep within says: maybe you should be watching this. The terror!

#9 – Everwood
Now, this is truly perplexing. Surely such a program gets safely filed away under the same file as 7th Heaven and Hope & Faith and Leave It to Jim (my favorite example of Must Not See TV) and such guff, correct? Do I need to live with monks on a windswept hill for 14 years of vowed silence and intensive study and irrevocably shift my life-paradigm?

#8 – The Inside
Ah ha! This one I can truly get down with. Saw every episode and sulked and wept messily when it was put on hiatus. And then I cried and rejoiced and self-flogged even more gratuitously after bearing witness recently to Tim Minear's even more brilliant yet equally short-lived Wonderfalls.

#7 – Six Feet Under
I stopped watching after the Season Four episode where Michael got car jacked. That hour of television scarred me. I'm serious – I couldn't go back for more real-hurt after that one. Well, maybe one day… but you know what I'm saying.

#6 – 24
I cut out of this one early in Season Three even though everyone said Season Three ended up getting really really good. I don't know. How many nearly-apocalyptic days can one dude have?

#5 – Rome
Ah, here's another one that's very easy to sing along with. Great and epic historical drama with enough drama and intrigue and comedy and blood-splattering action to keep you off the couch, corn chips at your feet.

#4 – Lost
Again, no complaints at all. It's been a bit more uneven this year at times, but I still can't but love every bizarre and ripe moment of it.

#3 – Gilmore Girls
Yes, this is a choice that makes me want to throw myself off a bridge in angst and protest. Surely, I couldn't have let this one slip by me for so many years? Herc says:

Another series that started out great and grows richer and more accomplished with each succeeding season. Makes me laugh every week, makes me cry at least three times a year.

That's it, I'm putting off the backgammon and croquet lessons for another year so that I can catch up with all the Girls action.

#2 – Veronica Mars
Sanity returns, a more glorious and gloriously under-the-radar show you will not find. I feel as though Weevil and Logan and Keith and old Veronica herself are part of my little virtual world of friends and confidantes by this wonderful Season Two. Which is really really sad in a way. But, you know. Still.

#1 – Battlestar Galactica
I recently spent a week revamping my cable/DVR/lifestyle, and this show was partially why. I've not yet seen a drop of it, but I'm told that my life won't be worth living until I do. What's a fella to do?

And that's just the scripted dramas! Enter Breaking Bonaduce and Justice League Unlimited and Iconoclasts and on and on and it's enough to tap into one's spirit in the same manner in which that evil high priest dude in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom went for your heart.

All pulsing and gooey and the draining of the life force.

Okay, I'm back in front of the Cathode Ray now. This is all the time I have to report, clearly.

Ringing in the New Year: A Modern History

2006-01-01T02:05:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve and I have had some interesting showdowns over the past 11 years or so. Perhaps that's why I can now very gladly kick back with a DVD and a glass of wine (or even a good hackable keyboard and a mug of Tension Tamer tea!) while the rest of the planet rocks and rolls and rings in the new year whilst banging out the old.

That is to say: here's my modern history in brief with Old Man Time and Baby New Year.

Ringing in 1995
About a girl
The Wetlands, New York City

The music was loud and funk-inflected and hipster-crunchy, the beer was good and cheap (and all the sweeter as it was somehow illegally procured, as I was three months shy of my 21st birthday at the time), the electric pulse of New York's night beat strong. I met a girl. We danced and later we kissed amongst the neon-spared shadows of the downtown cityscape. She happened to attend my university, and we wound up dating for most of the spring semester. It was a strange and awkward relationship that ended badly, but it doesn't erase the memory of a perfect New Year's Eve.

Ringing In 1996
Crash: taxi accident
Somewhere in the vicinity of 84th St. and 2nd Avenue, New York City

It was an ill-prepared and ill-arranged evening all around, perhaps symbolic of a sloshy year spent playing rugby and parties that drifted into one another as I waited for school to end and real world horrors to begin. A few friends and I bumped into several more pals and acquaintances and hangers on in New York City's chaotic Penn Station. We had a few drinks amidst the mad bustle before making hasty arrangements to divide into two cabs with the goal of meeting up at a friend of a friend of an uncle's goat's all night fiesta.

About a quarter to midnight, I sat in the passenger seat of a taxicab next to a driver of undetermined ethnicity. He had a habit of jumping off the mark five seconds or so before red lights changed to green, but I ignored it. Bad cab drivers are a New York institution, and besides, I had the notion of getting my party on draping my thoughts along with the several beers I had already imbibed.

Around 84th Street, luck ran out as we broadsided a white boat of a Cadillac that chose the wrong time to sail east across Manhattan's mass. I had time to brace myself (no seat belt for me, of course, in those days) and ended up with nothing worse than sore knees and a New Year's tale. A girl in the back left seat – who had no way of knowing what was going to happen – was not so lucky. Her mouth was fairly well bloodied, but she refused to have an ambulance called (we learned through muffled sobs) because "her dad was going to kill her."

We decided to take a subway back to Penn and call it a night. As fireworks exploded over the night, my friend looked at me and said, with a perfection of ironic timing and tone, "Happy New Year."

Ringing In 1997
Too sick to party, let alone care
Chatham, England, about an hour east of London

My American housemate and old time compatriot and I had been amped for New Year's for weeks. The miserably damp and dreary English winter would surely be brightened by the prospect of Trafalgar Square on New Year's Eve. Legend had it that young lasses of a mind would even be so kind as to kiss mysterious and anonymous young men to help ring in the new year!

But alas, I became very ill and had in the neighborhood of a 103 degree fever on what was a cold and wet winter's eve. My mate sulked as I sniveled, too sick to really get worked up about anything at that point. I do remember reading The End of the World News, by Anthony Burgess, which is really a masterwork of inventive and even experimental storytelling.

Ringing In 1998
The girl who got away
Phoenix, Arizona

Ah, New Year's Eve '98 arrived during the heart of my road days. So much so, in fact, that December 31st, 1997 culminated a three or four day blast across the American South, from New Orleans all the way to Phoenix, Arizona. Another old and dear friend from my university days and I were in the midst of a five-week trek across the nation in search of, well, kicks I suppose would be the appropriate term. Phoenix was an important destination as another old friend of mine was there and that meant party-hook-uppage for New Year's.

We made it in good time and found ourselves at a rather fun and freewheeling bar frequented by the alterno-set of the southwestern scene. I ended the night chatting up a lovely young lady who I immediately and inevitably fell very much in love with. The night ended with nothing more than a fare thee well, a long pause, and a soul piercing look that haunts me to this very day. (The royal Queen of girls who got away is a lovely young Catalonian woman from Barcelona, but that's a tale for a difference piece!)

Ringing in 1999
Straight minority status pays dividends
Oakland, California

I had just recently moved from New York to the West Coast and was already tired of the endless raves and trance-fests that seemed to plague San Francisco, California (at least in my ultra-limited view). A new roommate of mine, a lesbian lass, invited me to come down to ring in the new year at a famous East Bay gay bar and club. Grudgingly I agreed to come along as I figured it would be a good experience, if nothing else.

I wound up having a surprisingly great time. The drinks were cheap, the mood upbeat and jubilant, and them folks can dance. I somehow found myself with someone who was possibly the only other straight addition to the party, a French girl and friend of my roommate's girlfriend.

I recall thinking, "Who knew?"

Ringing in 2000
Millennium jitters, dot com dreams
Berkeley, California

I had just started dating the woman I would later marry. Like every other year since, it seems, she had to work at the hospital on New Year's Eve or Day (Day this year to ring in '06). Therefore, a fellow co-worker at the start-up dot com of the moment and I laid low and had a few drinks in front of the television. Y2K turned out to be mostly hype, so the only really interesting upshot of the evening was that my friend seemed very intent and neurotic about collecting the nearly empty bottles of liquor he had brought over to celebrate with.

Ringing in 2001
Speedy on cold medicine and Sex in the City
Richmond, California

My girlfriend and I drove from her parent's place in Southern California back up north to the East Bay on New Year's Eve day. We both were feeling a bit under the weather, so we popped some cold medicine that somehow had the effect of keeping us both wide awake and speedy throughout the night. We caught a Sex in the City marathon on television which ended around five in the morning (Mr. Big ended up being out of the picture, as I recall). As luck would have it, I had free cable in those days in my studio apartment in the Oakland Hills.

Ringing in 2002-2005
Not very much to report
Richmond, California and Pasadena, California

New Year's Eve became more of a quiet night than anything else for me. I wrote, watched television, went to the 24 Hour Fitness gym once or twice. You know, boring!

Ringing in 2006
A little older, theoretically wiser, looking forward to the year ahead
Pasadena, California

I'm writing these words on New Year's Eve, several hours before 2006 kicks in and a new adventure and swirl around the calendar begins.

It's been a wild ride, and each year seems to bring as many questions as answers to life's endlessly quixotic riddles. But I have a hell of a lot to be thankful for, and a hell of a lot to look forward to in the new year.

Happy new year to all… and let the next round of games begin.

In The Middle: The Death Penalty

2005-12-14T14:36:00.000-08:00

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
Subject: The Death Penalty

This week, the state of California executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams. He was convicted in 1981 of murdering Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang, and Yee-Chen Lin. It is also widely reported that he was the founder of the Crips gang, although that fact is apparently not related to the two robberies during which the four murders took place.

I mention this only to introduce this week's topic: the death penalty.

Since I'm telling stories, I'll tell mine, too. As a young conservative, I was ardently pro-death penalty. I believed that it served as a deterrent, and that the punishment ought to fit the crime. It fit with my sense of "justice." But over time, I became less convinced. As a deterrent, the death penalty seemed to be poor. Perhaps, as some of my friends claimed, that was because there was generally too long between the initial conviction and the actual execution — 24 years in the case of Stanley Williams. Or perhaps it happened so rarely that it didn't even enter the mind of someone about to commit murder. I wasn't sure, but I softened in my support of the death penalty. Fast-forward a number of years to 1995 and I found that I was moved by a Papal document, which surprised me. I'm not a Roman Catholic, and was raised in a church environment that taught horrible things about Roman Catholics, but the Pope's Evangelium Vitae, which called for a pro-life emphasis, shook me.

Since then I've also read reports demonstrating that the death penalty is unevenly applied, with the wealthy able to avoid execution, while the poor cannot. Black people are sent to death row far more often than white people for similar crimes, and men more often than women. Statistically, I don't think that these disparities can be explained by any other combination of factors. For crimes of equal severity and horror and premeditation, a poor black man is far more likely to be sentenced to die than even a poor white man, let alone a rich white man. Shouldn't justice be blind?

And then there are the mistakes. The state of Illinois reinstated the death penalty in 1977, and between 1977 and 2000, 25 cases were investigated. 12 of those people were executed, while 13 were found, using modern investigative techniques, to be innocent of the crimes. Worse, other stories indicate that innocent people were put to death for crimes they didn't commit. How many innocent people have been killed in the name of justice? We will likely never know. No system that condemns innocent people to death deserves my support.

I supported, in theory, a system based on what I read in the Bible. According to that standard, nobody could be sentenced to death without at least two eye-witnesses. Updated to modern standards, I would say that includes video evidence only when it is essentially undisputed, and even then should be joined by one more "witness," for which DNA evidence could certainly substitute. But that wasn't the standard being used in courtrooms around America, and I eventually announced to my friends and family that I could not support the death penalty in America.

I could still theoretically support a death penalty under extremely limited circumstances, but I don't expect those circumstances to ever come about in the United States. And even then, I wouldn't demand it; I could only accept it reluctantly.

What about you, Eric?

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

Interestingly, I had a similar evolution on the death penalty, Phillip, but from a different perspective and for a few differing reasons.

Like you, I believed that the death penalty was "just" for those who had commit heinous and unredeemable crimes, first-degree murder obviously being the most frequent example. This was somewhat incompatible, however, with my relatively liberal position on most other issues (more liberal than I am currently, probably!). This caused a degree of tension within my overall political framework, but I took comfort at times with the thought that I couldn't be "pigeon holed" on one of the major issues.

Somewhere along the way, I shifted into a lengthy era of uneasy ambivalence on the topic. State-sanctioned executions somehow felt wrong to me, but the idea of an eye-for-an-eye was still strong within my heart. Arguments for one side of the other would sway me for a time.

Strangely, I recall that the film In the Name of the Father, a 1993 film starring Daniel Day Lewis as an imprisoned man desperate to prove he wasn't involved in an IRA bombing, had an influence on me. I think it was the dawn of a realization that most other "civilized" nations had long ago outlawed the death penalty. Here we live, I thought, in the United States, a place that purports to be the moral leader of the world, and we execute criminals? Would the Galactic Federation or whatever they call it on Star Trek ever execute a prisoner? So maybe "liberal" influence from the media (with plenty of other filmic fare thrown in, from Dead Man Walking to Stephen King-centric prison films like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile thrown in for good measure).

I suppose I started to realize that justice need not come at the end of a needle, that civilized peoples could and perhaps should strive for something better than that. Not for necessarily for the prisoner's sake of course – though you make a fine argument about wrongful convictions, Phillip – but for the sake of the rest of us.

Other factors later helped to confirm and solidify this newfound conviction, such as a well circulated sentiment that executing prisoners actually ends up costing far more than feeding and housing over the course of a lifetime imprisonment, thus defusing an economic argument.

But it's the notion of what we strive to be as a society that stuck. I'm realizing just now that that very philosophy now informs my feelings on torturing prisoners as well as a host of human rights issues.

Since we're in rough agreement on the yes-or-no of the death penalty issue, Phillip, I'll ask:

Why do you think that the death penalty is legal in the United States when so many other countries have outlawed the practice? What does that say about us?

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

That is a fascinating question, Eric. I'm not sure I have any answer for which there isn't a counter-example somewhere, but I think there are a few things that combine in some way to keep the death penalty laws on the books.

One factor is the popular notion of the United States as a sort of barely-settled Wild West. Although Australia might serve as a counter-example here, given their relatively similar history and national identity, it is also worth noting that Australia is not as firmly against the death penalty as most of Europe! Still, I think the U.S. is uniquely tied up with the idea of John Wayne as a cowboy, and the shootout at the OK Corral, and so on. We grow up, or many of us do, with the idea that there are some criminals — cattle rustlers, say — about whom we can say, "hangin's too good for 'em!"

In fact, I would suggest that many Americans see Europe and deliberately seek to avoid settling into the "stagnation" found there. We relish our image as the brash young leaders of the world, breaking or bending the rules and refusing to settle into cultural torpor as so many other nations have. We're the inventors of the world, the source of the best music, the most popular fashion, all the good movies, and so on. We won't be like Wells's Eloi, stagnant to the point of death!

Of course, I doubt anyone would expressly state that the existence of the death penalty is part of what has made the United States a great nation, but I think it is considered to be part and parcel with our rugged past.

So another factor for our continued support is a certain amount of anti-Europeanism. We're not (yet) those who refuse to recognize evil when it confronts us, we think, or make excuses for even the worst behavior. As I write this, riots are engulfing Sydney nightly in a pattern reminiscent of the riots around Paris last month. The rioting is complicated, with no easy answers, but most Americans would, I think, not rush to say that the rioters should be excused because of an inequity in the social structure. We've too many Horatio Alger stories in our history, stories of people who started with less than nothing and the whole world set against them and managed to overcome it all. That's one of the things I love about the United States, but at the same time it may make us less quick to recognize that there really are inequities in our system that tend to hold people back.

All of this said, I believe that we will see the end of the practice of the death penalty in the United States within 10-15 years, though I suspect a law will remain on the books for unusual events and unusual crimes, such as the crimes that led Australian Prime Minister John Howard to entertain the idea of execution despite his country's opposition to capital punishment.

Here's another thought: The death penalty would be a much more effective deterrent if it were carried out far more quickly (within weeks or months, not years and years) and perhaps even not quite as painlessly. But I wouldn't want to live in the type of country we would be if we went in that direction.

As an alternative to the death penalty, I wonder how many people would seriously entertain the idea of re-introducing "hard time" for those sentenced to life in prison, by which I mean long hours of manual labor, like digging a natural gas pipeline from Alaska. Many people have an idea (not accurate in most cases) that prison is not so hard, and is in fact a step up for many people in the most desperate situations on the lowest rung of America's socio-economic ladder.

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

What's very interesting and what occurred to me while reading through our conversation is that we're treading on territory — at least in part — covered by Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. That documentary focused on guns, gun control, and violence in America but it did dare (and some of course condemn the controversial filmmaker for daring whereas I give it a standing ovation even while I withhold the right to disagree with some of his conclusions) to raise some fundamental questions, as we have here, about the nature of America and why our society is imbued with certain particular and peculiar characteristics.

While I agree that acceptance and support for the death penalty likely stems in part from America's association with the notion of rugged individualism, I see it as more cause and less effect than you do, if I'm reading you correctly, Mr. Winn. In other words, I think the rugged individualism (or the whole shoot first, ask questions never 'cause there ain't no cavalry in these here parts type thing) in our national backbone causes many to accept the death penalty in 2005, but I don't think we accept it as a reaction to European stagnation or cultural torpor. In fact, I would contend that cultural and even informational provincialism (did I coin a new phrase just there? Quick, to the Lexis-Nexis, Robin!) prevents most Americans from having any real notion of what's going on in Europe or elsewhere one way or the other (above and beyond bumper sticker slogans such as "Eat Freedom Fries," of course). In fact, Americans tend to assume that American culture, as predominant culture, is the only culture.

I'll take a similar position with regard to your Horatio Alger story (and if you're getting bored with the somewhat intellectual tone of the discussion this week, kids, I'll give you a topic to toss about: Blogcritics.org is the Horatio Alger of the blogosphere… discuss!). Again, I think you're right on in saying that another root cause for support of the death penalty is the American exuberance for nearly pure capitalism and the great risk and great reward that comes with it. You shot someone while robbing a bank and managed to get yourself collared? Off to Old Sparky with you! But again, I can't associate this in any way with the contention of anti-Europeanism. I once again fail to see the connection there.

I agree that the death penalty will likely become increasingly rare in the United States over the course of the next generation or so. In fact, despite the fact that social conservatives currently have a firm grip on the levers of power in the U.S., there has been a general trend toward liberalism, tolerance, and social acceptance over the past 50 years. Indeed, I grew up during the 1980s, an era when a term like "gay marriage" would never even be uttered in polite company, let alone be discussed in any kind of serious way! It's this liberal trend, in fact, that has helped to whip a reaction on the right into such a frenzy. It will be interesting when and if this reaction crests and begins to falter.

The last of your remarks on this go round points us toward public policy with regard to prisons and potential reforms. The idea of reintroducing "hard labor" into prison life is an interesting one. It segues quite snugly to my next Big Question (I'm going Big Question instead of Big Picture this week):

Is the overall purpose of incarceration to punish or to educate and rehabilitate?

I suppose that the very fact that the death penalty is still around forces the answer toward the punishment side of the scale for the U.S.

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

Growing up in a conservative family and surrounded by mostly conservative friends, I can assure you that — at least among "my crowd" — there was definitely awareness of European views on issues like capital punishment, and the general opinion was not positive. You might underestimate the power of someone like Rush Limbaugh to put these issues in front of a large number of people. His radio audience has never been equaled, and is still quite large, while other die-hard conservatives have risen through the ranks to spread similar messages far and wide. Me, I'll still with NPR!

I do think, and this is based entirely on anecdotal evidence, that even hard-core conservatives do not see capital punishment as a core conservative value to be defended. Just as you once supported it while holding liberal views on many other subjects, and I generally rejected it while still holding conservative views on many other subjects, so too do many conservatives with whom I've spoken allow for variation on this issue above many others. Nobody, I think, wants to be seen as a bloodthirsty hangman!

You've got the last word this week, so I'll content myself with trying to answer your question. I think that the overall purpose of the justice system varies. The execution of Williams this week has ensured the topic comes up quite a bit, and I spoke to a moderate (he voted for Clinton and Bush) this week who said that anytime someone goes to prison, he wants to feel safer. So Martha Stewart should have been fined but not imprisoned, while premeditated murder ought to result in an automatic life sentence.

Certainly victims, or the families of victims, tend to expect a certain amount of punishment. The idea that a killer could quickly rehabilitate and end up on the street, while my loved one lies dead at that killer's hand, is repugnant on its face to most people, but most of all to the family of the murdered person. And yet there is a fine line between the punishment aspect of justice, and revenge. Even the state-orchestrated death of Stanley Williams didn't bring back Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang, or Yee-Chen Lin. Those who were lost can never be restored in this life. Did the execution of Williams bring comfort to the survivors of those four people? I don't know, but statements I've read from past victims' families indicate that the hoped-for closure is usually bittersweet at best.

In the Big Picture sense, I'll tell you: I think that certain crimes intrinsically involve giving up the right to live in American society. Premeditated murder, rape, and child molestation make that short list for me. Some people say that child molesters, for example, cannot be rehabilitated. I'm uncomfortable with a system that make such broad statements, and would prefer to see a bit more human involvement in such decisions. Even if most child molesters cannot be rehabilitated, there are probably exceptions. Will someone who has raped once necessarily rape again? I don't know the rate of recidivism among convicted rapists, but again, I suspect that there are varying degrees. A college student who rapes someone he knows after a party at which he has had too much to drink should spend a stretch of "hard time" in prison, but is he really likely to rape again after his release? Probably not as likely as an older man who prowls a college campus.

I'm trying to avoid introducing Christian theology into a discussion of politics, and it is turning out to be very difficult for me on this topic, because so much of my softening on this issue is tied up in my growing understanding of the place of mercy in Christianity. I can summarize a complex explanation in this way, I think: When someone commits one of those certain crimes, I believe that they give up the right to live in society, and should expect to spend the rest of their days breaking rocks and having a generally unpleasant life. But those of us on the outside should strive to exercise mercy, looking for opportunities to integrate people back into society if we can determine with reasonable confidence that they are not a continuing threat to society.

That would involve inequity, I think; perhaps more than the American public is willing to bear. One person goes free after only a few years, while another dies on the chain gang? Why?

And yet that's what I would like to see, in my American utopia.

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

I certainly see your point with regard to Rush Limbaugh and other pervasive media sources in advancing all manner of ideas and opinions. Of course, that doesn't make them accurate, but I can appreciate how a strand of thinking (European-style incarceration = bad; fryin' 'em = good!) can make its way into a subset or even across a wide swath of the American public. This brings up a related point that we could certainly do several columns on in the future: the importance of obtaining news and information from the widest possible spectrum of sources! Couple that with Mainstream Media Bias: Yea or Nay and I think we're talking a few months worth of ideas to play around with.

I also agree that there is some vacillation on this issue within party ranks. It's certainly not a "fatal flaw" for a Republican to be against the death penalty, for instance, whereas being pro-choice on abortion would not fly in many areas of the country (Rudy Giuliani's probable quest for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 will give this thesis a good test).

Reading through the comments from your moderately-minded friend, it struck me that the keyword with regard to public sentiment toward the prison system is security. If people generally feel safe, I don't think most really care what goes on behind prison walls: education, prisoner-on-prisoner shiv fests, country club-style HBO marathons, etc. When people don't feel safe, that's when politicians ratchet up the law-and-order stuff and up minimum sentencing standards and so on. It's often ignored that the best law-and-order program any society can ever have is a strong economy and opportunity and education for the masses!

It also struck me that the idea of revenge is most often sweeter than the actual feeling of carrying it out. Therefore, I would agree with you with regard to victim's families and the witnessing of state-sponsored executions. I also like your ideas concerning a philosophy underlying the point at which adults "give up the right" to be free to move and circulate within society. Certain crimes extinguish that right forevermore by their very nature, while others require subjective reasoning and may call on a certain amount of self-motivated education and redemption on the part of the criminal in order to literally earn his or her way back into free society. And I would argue that the very notion of having a free and "just" society allows for that second scenario to be upheld by our legal and justice system. Finally, I'll be the first to admit it's all in the details, for which thousands of people get paid millions of dollars everyday to wrestle with these things in an attempt to sort it all out!

Let me wrap up this week's topic before we let our esteemed commenting masses have at it. The death penalty is an expensive, time-consuming, and unethical response to heinous crimes. It's also very unlikely to deter anyone from plotting a murder, for example, and in any event lifetime imprisonment surely must be an equal or nearly equal deterrent.

Most of all, I believe that legally sanctioned executions send a poor message to ourselves and to the world about what we strive to be as a civilized people. This ties in quite snugly with other hot issues currently in the news, such as treatment of "enemy combatants" and torture of suspected terrorist conspirators.

Phillip Winn is a registered Republican, but considers himself independent. He lives in Dallas, Texas, and didn't vote for President Bush in 2000, but did in 2004. He is a co-owner, designer, and technical administrator for Blogcritics.org.

Eric Berlin is a registered Democrat who currently lives in Pasadena, California. Pretty predictable voting record: Gore '00, Kerry '04. He is a co-owner and Executive Producer of Blogcritics.org.

In The Middle is an attempt to focus more on what unites us than what divides us. Can two reasonable people from opposite ends of the political spectrum put aside partisanship and meet in the middle? We think so. A topic is picked, e-mails are exchanged, and the results are published here.

In The Middle is a Blogcritics experiment. We're trying to talk about things civilly, and we strongly request that all commenters do the same. We seek polite comments and questions, not ideological rhetoric or personal attacks.

Be passionate, think before you write, respect others, and have fun!

Previous articles from the In The Middle crew have addressed Bill Bennett, Harriet Miers, Iraq as a "Media War," the CIA Leak Case, Samuel Alito, Jr, Vice President Cheney, John Murtha, and Joe Conason's Iraq War Plan.

Blogcritics Editors' Picks of the Week: Retooled Construction in Progress (So Watch Your Step)

2005-12-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a low budget, no frills, retooling, yet no less quality in total edition of the finest articles of the week, as brought to you by the editorial staff of Blogcritics.org. Look for fancy-schmancy remodeling and flying buttresses and so forth next week, and please pardon all of the construction!

For what awaits can only delight you to your soul's very core.

Enjoy.

Music
Music Editor: Connie Phillips

CD Review: The Beastie Boys - Solid Gold Hits by Robert Burke (Dec. 7)
In this offering Robert not only gives a thorough and detailed review of the CD in question, but a comprehensive and interesting look at the history of the band. It is well-spoken and complete, giving the reader comprehensive and enjoyable look at everything Beastie Boys.

Concert Review: Ill Nino w/ Opiate for the Masses, Unbalanced, Junket on 12/7/05 by Chris Beaumont (Dec. 8)
Chris gives us yet another great article in this concert review, complete with pictures. With enthusiasm and details he tells us of his history with the band and their music as well as giving the reader a front row seat to this show. Leaving no detail untold, he writes beyond the show itself but gives us a feel of the room and the crowd, giving the reader the whole experience.

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

America's Right Turn by Richard A. Viguerie & David Franke by Marty Dodge (Dec. 3)
Marty's review shows that, no matter what you think of their policies, conservatives have done something right, and anyone who wants to succeed in politics should emulate their methods, if not their policies.

Book Review: How I Grew - A Memoir of the Early Years by Mary McCarthy by Alpha (Dec. 9)
Some great personal touches in this review. I get the feeling that Alpha could write a fascinating memoir of his own.

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres by Tim Gebhart (Dec. 9)
Tim gives a valuable summary to this book, which I'd like to make required reading for every family that calls itself Christian. I appreciate the fact that he notes that the book is not definitive, but my own experience leads me to believe that many Christian families fall short of the ideal, and there are those that fall far short.

Narnia and Christian Propaganda by Chromatius (Dec. 10)
This opinion piece (actually, it could be considered a review of the PR driving the movie) should be a warning to Christians out to make this movie the second coming of The Passion. Lewis would be thrilled that so many people get the message of his work; he wouldn't be happy at all with the way we're promoting the movie.

TV/Film
TV/Film Co-Editor Alisha Karabinus

Movie Review: Brokeback Mountain by Silas Kain (Dec. 9)
Sometimes, a film leaves us unable to speak or move, or do anything but sit in silence with tears pouring down our faces. Silas Kain says Brokeback Mountain left him in such a state, but he still managed to churn out an amazing review that brings the reader into his emotional experience. It's nearly as good as the film -- and there's a deeper message, as well.

Culture
Culture Editor Lisa Hoover

It's Time For Government To Give The Artistic World Its Due by Kay Bell (Dec. 3)
Kay opens her article by saying, "Government and the arts. Sounds like an
oxymoron, doesn't it? But the two are inextricably intertwined..." After reading this, you might think so too.

Fair Use - Is It Fair? by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti (Dec. 9)
Sadi has put together some basic guidelines to keep in mind when you're referencing another person's work. A great primer to get some general understanding of the issue.

How Long Is Too Long To Stay At A Job? by Mark Sahm (Dec. 6)
Mark makes such great points about overstaying your welcome at a job that after reading this article, I quit mine on the spot. When I told myself I was resigning, I threatened to give myself a bad reference and then I told myself to get the hell out of my office.

Also selected by Blogcritics.org editorial staff:

Blogcritics.org on SUBJECT2DISCUSSION: Phillip Winn's Turn - (Dec. 13)
SUJECT2DISCUSSION is a weekly two-hour web radio show that airs every Tuesday night at 7 PM PT and 10 PM ET. Each week, a Blogcritic holds down the 8:00 – 8:30 slot with a rollicking discussion of all things pop culture. This week, Tech Maestro and Blogcritics co-owner Phillip Winn sallies forth on filmic releases such as King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia, and also gets into the passing of comedic legend Richard Pryor.

Politics
Politics Editor Natalie Davis

A New Iron Lady for Chile by Taylor Kirk (Dec. 6)
Fascinating piece. Taylor Kirk offers a well-written and informative bird's-eye view of what is happening in Chilean politics, with a focus on the possible first female president. The article shares information concisely - a blessing, given most of us are unfamiliar with workings in Chile.

Israeli Politics: All the Trash is Jumping into the Same Bin by Ruvy in Jerusalem (Dec. 2)
A massive shakeup is under way in Israel's Knesset. In this fascinating piece, Blogcritics' Israel correspondent explains the nation's political process and analyzes the players involved in and possible ramifications of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's dumping of one political party for another. This is an important, thoughtful essay that should be relevant to Israelis and to people around the globe.

Bring in the Euro-Marshals by Grozdan Popov (Dec. 2)
Sex slavery in the Balkans is a cancer poisoning the European continent. Grozdan Popov says it is time for the European Union to take action - and he has a bold plan for dealing with the Albanian criminal gangs that use and abuse women.

Also selected by Blogcritics.org editorial staff:

Freedom Now by John Conlin (Dec. 13)
A penetrating and enlightening manifesto on the true meaning of freedom that ends with a simple yet powerful plea: If you support freedom, raise your voice.

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

Frank Thomas is a Hall of Famer by Dan McGowan (Dec. 6)
The title leaves little to the imagination, but in Dan's maiden voyage on Blogcritics he lays out a solid case for, as he puts it, the best first baseman to play in the 1990s. He writes the two-time MVP's career was a victim of circumstance and in an era of suspected steroid use, Thomas was more than likely clean. Prior to the post I hadn't considered Thomas as a Haller but it's difficult to argue against Dan's points.

Bud Carson: Thoughts and Memories of a Coach by Zach Baker (Dec. 9)
It's not easy being a Browns fan, but the Cleveland faithful always take time out to remember those who touched the organization before they passed away. Bud Carson will be remembered as the architect of Pittsburgh's famous "Steel Curtain" defense, but Zach remembers him best as a one-time Browns head coach.

Gaming
Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

Roger Ebert and Video Games: A Sign of the Times by Matt Paprocki (Dec. 6)
Video games are art, no less than film. Roger Ebert disagrees though. Why? Paprocki shares a rebuttal to Ebert's latest take on video games.

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

Blogcritics.org Executive Producer Eric Berlin chose:

TV Preview: A Charlie Brown Christmas — Glad Tidings of Great Joy by Eric Olsen (Dec. 6)
EO won me over on the strength of this wonderful paragraph:

Schultz dared to directly search for the meaning of Christmas amidst commercialized children (some gleefully, some reluctantly so) and innocence lost, most pointedly symbolized by a garish Christmas tree lot filled with neon-colored aluminum trees, stiffly reflecting both the searchlight glare and soulless artificiality of Christmas in mid-20th century America.

Music Editor Connie Phillips (and Blogcritics writer Mike West!) chose:

Remembering Lennon and Dancing on Dec. 8 By Natalie Davis (Dec. 8)
In a week when many were remembering a legend, Natalie articulates her memories and emotions of a painful day in music history with eloquence and grace. She also reflects on lessons learned that she holds dear.

Editor and all-around all-star Justene Adamec chose:

Internet Ad Share to Double by 2010 by Eric Olsen (Dec. 9)
The fearless leader of Blogcritics, Eric Olsen, has been one of the players on the internet since the dark ages of 3 1/2 years ago. In this, his best article of the week, he puts Internet advertising in perspective — why it was only 5% of the total market in '04 and where it's going. Of course, there's also his personal opinion of pop-ups.

More Best of Blogcritics.org Articles of the Week
As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week

Pete Blackwell chose:

The Fifteen Dollar Future by Chancelucky (Dec. 12)
It's not often that a post can make you feel simultaneously great and crappy about being an American. Idealism is alive and well and it's nice to remember that sometimes the "invisible hand" is there to smack some sense into us.

Zach Hoskins from Modern Pea Pod chose:

CD Review: Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye by Michael J. West (Dec. 8)
These days, it's a rare thing to come across music criticism that doesn't just rehash the same old tired albums or artists. But Mr. West, hot on the heels of his well-researched essay on the ambiguities of modern folk music, has done it. His revelatory look back at Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear is neither mediocre choir-preaching nor a self-indulgent attempt at slaughtering sacred cows; instead, he brings to light an album which has been overlooked and underrated by many (including myself), and by god, the results made me want to get off the computer, run to the record store and buy myself a copy. That's what music writing is about, folks.

GoHah chose:

Single Review: 'Til Tuesday "Voices Carry" by Pam Avoledo (Dec. 9)
I was immediately drawn to the article because I'm a big Aimee Mann fan, but the writing more than lived up to the promising enticement, and, moreover, represents a larger purpose. Pam insightfully and sensitively explores the song, lyrically and musically, and
expressively renders her analysis in well-considered detail and comprehensiveness. In a more general sense, Pam's choice of subject matter — an appreciative glance back at a fondly remembered work — also shows the free-rein adventurousness and flexibility of Blogcritics' writers and editors, willing and eager to spotlight both the past as well as the shiny and new.

Duke de Mondo chose:

Movie Review - Scorpius Gigantus by Aaron Fleming (Dec. 7)
Aaron Fleming's masterful appraisal of the latest Jeff Fahey opus made me wanna claw my teeth out wi delight. Truffaut, Darwin, Sartre, Miles Davis and Jeff Fahey all in the one article. If I wasn't in love with a review of Bright Eyes I read one time, I'd demand nothing less than sweet filth from this slab of hilarious Faheyist discourse.

Production Notes
Due to some production delays caused by winter's snow and intermittent solar flare brain static, this week's choices cover the period from 12/3 – 12/13.

How'd we choose these things? Find out here.

Please send you input, ideas, and suggestions to Eric Berlin: dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

And thanks for stopping by!

The Apprentice Endgames Near: It's Martha Stewart Three, Donald Trump a Dynamite Two

2005-12-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm nuts, and maybe I'm the only person left in America still watching, but I'm going to come right out and say that this has been a great season to be an Apprentice fan.

It's been double the action for starters, with Martha Stewart's lighter-touched and homier designed spin-off on Wednesday nights (NBC) and Donald Trump's "You're Not Tough Enough For This Town, You're Fired" tough-as-nails variety holding down its usual Thursday night slot.

Allow me, if you will, to prove why Martha's edition was surprisingly effective and entertaining and then I'll get down to the nitty grit on the approaching finales of both Mark Burnett-produced editions.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart serves as an unabashed effort to rehabilitate Stewart's post-lock up image and cram down our throats at all opportunities that Martha Stewart: The Brand is as kick ass and take names as they come. And it's a yummy brand too, we're assured! All of this, of course, is fine and to be expected. After four seasons of Donald Trump: The Water and Donald Trump: The Breast Pump (okay, one of those might be made up) we weary viewers are well attuned to the heavy handed mauling of cross-promotional product branding blitzkrieg. In fact, the incessant commercial-in-segment followed by actual-commercial-segment featuring the same exact product seemed to be somewhat toned down this season. Or maybe that's just the Digital Video Recorder talking, who knows?

While the opening credits of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart are syrupy cheese ("Sweet dreams are made of these," we get it!) and Martha herself occasionally a little over-scripted, the overall vibe of the show is lighter, airier, and often more fun than The Don's original. It's the little things, as a glossy Martha Stewart Living media product might advise, and I must say that Martha hits them all just right. The show's format has a looser feel to it, which allows Martha and her executive "helpers" (including Stewart's daughter, Alexis) to banter entertainingly about the Apprentice wannabes. Post-firing – which is a much more civil "you're just not a good fit" affair as compared to Donald's tense and tensely lit boardroom – the gang again has a good little chat about the state of affairs before Martha writes a note to the week's unfortunate send-off. I know I'm not the only one who became able at reading between the hand-written lines to discern the polite screw-offs from the genuine well wishes!

A spin-off Apprentice also allowed the audience to be treated to a slightly different brand (can't get away from that word, sorry) of tasks that teams were judged upon each week. A serious effort was made, it seems, to inject creativity into the process, which made most episodes a generally engaging affair. An early test had both teams writing and producing a children's book, for example.

I want to be on a writer's version of The Apprentice, I wanted to shout out at several points! Who would run that show, though? Maybe combine it with The Contender and have Sly Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard coach me through late night, instant coffee fueled writing action!

But I digress.

Reality shows, in the end, always boil down to casting. Fortunately, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart had the requisite lunatic on board to demand a return to the set each week. Jim, an ad executive from Pennsylvania, is the peculiar variety of maniac that allows him to be smart and hyper enough to win it all, but he walks obscenely close to the self destruct button at all moments. A reality television superstar, in other words! His antics include quoting Sun Tzu, prancing on conference tables like a monkey, hawking gourmet dip during a sales task by telling women that it's good for bunions and that they should rub it on their feet, and generally screaming himself hoarse each week. He's also an effective manipulator, if uber-obvious to the audience, and a self-described super-champion of The Apprentice gaming arts.

Jim's also managed to squeeze through to the final three, which we'll get to in a moment.

The now veteran Trump-led edition of The Apprentice started slow-ish but picked up steam as the season wore on. What was immediately obvious was a new emphasis on talented job applicants after a glaringly lackluster group suffered the audience through the destined-not-to-return Book Smarts versus Street Smarts season. In the end, the change of direction has really paid off as we're left with two of the best candidates ambition and toil can buy: Randal, a consulting firm owner from New Jersey and Rebecca, a youthful (she's 23!) but effective financial journalist from Chicago. Along the way there was the usual disaster-waiting-to-happen countdown (Markus… oh, Markus) and a few cliques and broken alliances that you come to expect on this sort of program.

One new development that popped up on both editions of The Apprentice this season was the multiple firing. Who will ever forget, for instance, what can only be referred to as the Dick's Sporting Goods Day Massacre? The Don sent four players packing in one fell swoop after Team Excel's fixation on a batting cage caused the average sales in their store to drop instead of improve! Trump seems to be gaining a taste for the multi-fire as he later knocked off Felisha and the hardnosed Alla to bring the competition down to the final two.

Another notable trend on the Donald side was the frequent replacement of old time executive helper George with Bill Rancic, the original Apprentice. Perhaps this is a prelude to a permanent switch? While George has a feisty, old school of hard knocks flavor, Rancic clearly brings a different kind of charisma, so don't be surprised to see him more on the new edition of The Apprentice, which will reportedly take place in Los Angeles.

Enough of all that, though. Let's get into predictions and analysis and snarky-yet-precious asides.

On the Martha Stewart side, it's initially very easy to pick Dawna as the clear frontrunner as she's the only clear adult left. She's organized, level-headed, bright, and is the serious sort of worker bee you see rising in the ranks of companies every day. We've already mentioned Jim, so I'll just add here that he enjoys annoying Dawna as he feels it "takes her off her game." Meanwhile, Bethany – again on first appearance – seems like Jim's co-dependent, wild-eyed sister. They nag each other, they bitch each other out (in front of clients!), and they whisper conspiratorially together… which mostly involves Jim pumping her full of the Sun Tzu-fueled pop military theory of the week.

The picture clouds up from there, however. Bethany has been remarkably strong of late, Jim is highly creative and bright for all his insanity, and Dawna strikes as more middle manager than Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia megastar.

Who do I pick? Oh hell, let's say Bethany. I just can't see it being Jim and Dawna is too safe.

We're already into the final round on the original Apprentice, with the live finale to air next Thursday. Once again, the final two must manage a large-scale event replete with big name corporate sponsors, VIPs, and a slew of logistical challenges. A surprising and positive tweak was made, however, in that the final Project Managers were allowed to choose for themselves the three already-fired candidates that would serve as the employees of each team. In past years, a motley crew of misfits and camera hungry screw-ups were emphasized in the hope that good television would ensue. Again, the direction of quality-over-mess here is a winner.

It seems as though nature and humankind will conspire nonetheless to throw major screws into the machinery. Rebecca's charity event emcee, Joe Piscipo (remember Jerry from Jersey on SNL?), may have to back out due to union snafus while the usually precise Randal may end up in over his head, literally, when his charity softball event gets rained out. Never trust the weatherman, the wise man said. And he got struck by lightning!

Rebecca v. Randal is a tough, tough choice, as The Don himself might say. Pure demographics might be unconsciously relied upon here, even though they shouldn't. Rebecca's frightfully young, though she displays leadership skills and savvy well beyond her years. The first female Apprentice was chosen just last season, while a minority candidate has never yet been made, which may in some small way favor the African American Randal. As for Randal, he's obviously scary smart (he's a Rhodes Scholar) and was universally respected and admired by all who worked with him. Which is highly unusual for Apprentice-land, to say the least!

I don't think the racial/demo factors would come into play if there were any other obvious reasons to cling to. While a disastrous final event might factor in (they usually don't become a huge factor), it looks to be a neck-and-neck call.

Which means I choose Randal.

I'll also be choosing to catch the final episodes of both shows. That I can guarantee you.

In the Middle: Joe Conason's Iraq War Plan

2005-12-09T00:41:00.000-08:00

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
Subject: Joe Conason's Iraq War Plan

Has Joe Conason, writer for Salon.com and the New York Observer, come up with a legitimate and legitimately new idea to win the war in Iraq?

And now for a brief primer on conventional wisdom and the war in Iraq:

A brief primer on conventional wisdom and the war in Iraq

Chapter One
For nearly two years, it was thought to be somewhere near the neighborhood of traitor to even suggest that US troops should leave Iraq before there was some kind of generally agreed upon Total Victory.

Chapter Two
After President Bush was re-elected and reality slowly overtook the maelstrom of politics in the United States, public opinion shifted firmly against the war and the persistent reports of American casualties that came with it.

Chapter Three
In late 2005, there are three main camps:

* The Bushies: Led by Bush 43 himself, these are the hardcore stay-the-coursers. I'd include the neocons in this group, Phillip, but I know that would reopen an earlier debate!

* The 'Tweeners: This group includes hawkish Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and, interestingly, a rising number of Republicans who are trying to respond to public unease to the war. The general message here is: we need to make progress now and start bringing troops home… or we might just have to start bringing troops home.

* The End-It-Nowers: No longer the bastion of Howard Dean and other dovish liberals, this camp rakes in more "names" everyday, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and new "name" Rep. John Murtha (D – PA).

Interestingly, all three camps don't differ very much on how to make progress in Iraq: train the troops, decrease American casualties, defuse insurgent capabilities, and so on. The entire concept of bringing in a broader international presence or United Nations support seems to have breathed its last breath with the defeat of presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

It's pretty amazing to think that there haven't been any big new ideas in terms of how to deal with Iraq for a long long time. Perhaps most assumed (and I'll include myself in this meta-camp) that the die had been cast with the lead-up to invasion and its aftermath and there were no longer any new ideas to put in play.

Enter Joe Conason and this intriguing solitary paragraph at the end of a Salon piece entitled "No Way Out" (emphasis is mine):

There is a decent and honorable way out that has been addressed by the Iraqis themselves but that no American politician, not even the brave Murtha, is willing to mention: negotiations with the Sunni insurgents. The elected Iraqi government, representing a population eager for us to leave, should begin talks with rebels who are willing to discuss laying down their arms, in exchange for an orderly and scheduled American departure. That is the only way to transform the US occupation from a stick into a carrot — and to extract some kind of victory from what is becoming a strategic disaster.

Is this heresy or the Big Idea needed to bring the US war effort out of its current stasis?

My take: this might very well be the answer that frustrated US leaders come to after years of guerilla fighting and further casualties, so they should think long and hard about it pronto-like.

What say you from across the In the Middle divide, dear Phillip?

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

Interesting framing, but I think that the actual different views on Iraq are a little different than you've painted them to be. For example, Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman has recently reiterated his support for continuing in Iraq, reporting that real progress is being made and that Iraqis are far more optimistic about progress in Iraq than we are. I think that the average Iraqi would probably have a better idea about conditions in Iraq than most other people, don't you?

Don't forget also that people in America (the "general public"), along with members of the military and state and local government, believe that "efforts to establish a stable democracy" in Iraq "will succeed," according to a recent Pew poll.

So I don't think that the "conventional wisdom" as you've laid it out is accurate, which might make for difficulty in coming to a conclusion based on all of that!

Is a Big Idea needed? Would a Big Idea help? Or does progress come through a series of small ideas, constant refinements to a plan to deal with new circumstances? Sen. Lieberman and many others seem to think that many ideas now in play are working quite well.

In any case, Joe Conason's Big Idea can be summarized as this: negotiate with the insurgents. That idea doesn't bother me, but it isn't new. My surprise is that Joe Conason believes that we have anything to do with it.

The Bush Administration has stated repeatedly that Iraqis are in control of Iraq, and that United States troops are there at the request and with the support of the Iraqi government. If the Iraqi government asks us to leave, we will. If they are able to negotiate a cease-fire or treaty of some kind, then we will have effectively "stayed the course" and be ready to leave. The US is not in a position to negotiate with anybody, as that is the duty of the Iraqi government, not US commanders!

So we're sitting happily in the United States asking ourselves whether the Iraqi government should negotiate with those who are trying to kill them. I'd say that's up to them, and from what I've heard, they've already been doing so, off and on, for quite some time.

The assumption is that one can effectively negotiate with those who consider exploding civilians a viable tactic, and I'm not sure that's a good assumption. It has been made clear many times that US troops will withdraw as soon as attacks on troops and civilians stop, but that broadly-telegraphed opening position hasn't resulted in any response other than more bombs. Will more detailed negotiations with the elected Iraqi government fare better? I hope so, but I wouldn't count on it.

After all, we're told over and over that we're not facing an organized response, but an upswell of grassroots insurgency. So how would negotiating with a small set of leaders of an organization achieve anything of value?

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

I agree that we're going to have trouble finding common ground on Iraq if we can't come to at least a broad consensus on what the general read on conventional wisdom is at present. Every poll I've looked at over the last few months has been grim-as-grim for the president and for the war effort in Iraq. The media outlets I regularly visit – both conservative and liberal and in between – seem to reflect "my side" of the story as well.

I just did a quick Google search and got the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll numbers:

As President Bush launched a new effort Wednesday to gain public support for the Iraq war, a new poll found most Americans do not believe he has a plan that will achieve victory.

But the CNN/USA TodayGallup poll released Wednesday night also found nearly six in 10 Americans said US troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq until certain goals are achieved.

Very interesting, however, is that the story goes on to site that only 35 percent of Americans want to set a specific time table for withdrawal. That said, what might be the most interesting number is that 55 percent think that President Bush doesn't have a plan to win the war. After 2-1/2 years of war, more than half of all Americans don't believe there's a plan to win the thing!

Perhaps Joe Conason drew on this perception of quagmire (i.e. things aren't going that well but we can't really do much about it any which way) in drawing up his assertion to talk to the Sunni insurgents.

And while some in the more peaceful areas of Iraq might be optimistic about the future, the Sunni triangle continues to be a mess. Headlines like "Sunni group to abstain from Iraq poll" can not be cheering to anyone interested in seeing representative democracy flourish in Iraq.

After a few months of writing this column with you, Phillip, I understand that you're one of the more optimistic observers of the Iraqi equation. But I'm surprised that you believe that the United States would refuse to negotiate with the insurgents if we thought it was in our national interest to do so. Look at the trouble-spots around with world: we get up in everyone's business all the time, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Ireland to North Korea and on and on! We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and no one invited us to do so. If the Iraqi government asked us to leave today, it would put us in an awkward position but that doesn't mean we'd be gone in six weeks or even six months.

Now, I can definitely get behind many of your counter-arguments against the feasibility of negotiating with violent and loosely slung together factions. That said, if we pacify a few key groups within the Sunni triangle by, for example, making a few political concessions (and we can argue about what "we" means but let's just assume "we" is the Iraqi government backed very closely by a "persuasive" United States) that could, in theory, tip the balance to the good in the region. At least on the short-term.

A rock solid plan? Certainly not. But with the optimism of Lieberman and Bush and some others aside, I personally believe the time is right for new ideas on Iraq, both big and small.

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

This could quickly turn into a discussion about polls at this rate? Ask yourself this: How would Americans know what President Bush's plan for Iraq is? He can hardly broadcast the details to those who wage war against us, right? Though the details of the plan surely change in response to tactical shifts on the ground, it would be foolishness to immediately send out a press release announcing the way in which we're deploying troops to respond to the new strategy. So what we know about his plan is that he intends to not abandon the Iraqi people, as his father did, and that the Iraqi military is being pushed to take an increasingly active role in operations, which they are doing.

So consider that more than half of the general public believes that we will succeed in bringing a stable democracy to Iraq, while roughly the same percentage say that they don't think President Bush has a plan to do so. In my view, that apparent conflict means that we don't understand the questions or answers as well as we might think we do! In any case, with only 35 percent of those polled stating that we need to set a specific timetable, it sounds like far more people agree with President Bush's plan (whether they realize it or not) than with the alternatives being offered by various Democratic members of Congress.

That's poll data, though, and as interesting as it is, I hate to think that we're waging war with poll data as a primary factor in decision-making. It's a factor, sure, and should definitely push the Bush Administration in the direction of better communication, as we've agreed in the past, but that's about it.

You mention headlines that identify a "Sunni group," and I've previously mentioned National Public Radio stories which described how several other Sunni groups are deciding that they will participate in elections for the first time. No, the headline isn't cheering, but the question is whether that's because there's no cheering news at all, or because people aren't reporting it well (remember the Pew poll!), or because you and I just notice things that tend to support our outlook, and there's plenty of news both good and bad coming out of Iraq.

My point isn't that the United States would or should refuse to negotiate with insurgents in Iraq, but that such negotiation isn't something we can reasonably do. You mention our involvement in North Korea, which is an interesting example. North Korea demanded to negotiate with the United States, and President Bush refused. While accused of "unilateral" action in Iraq, he was criticized for not negotiating "unilaterally" with North Korea, but he insisted (correctly, it now seems) that only six-party talks would be effective in the long-term. Similarly, President Bush has insisted — and I believe that he will continue to insist — that Iraqis should determine the future of Iraq. It is the elected Iraqi government that should be making decisions about with whom they will negotiate, and I for one think that they will continue to do so and have already been doing so.

I'm sure we'd be happy to broker talks, as we've done between Israel and Palestine. Note that the Palestinian Authority now controls a border crossing without any Israeli or US troops involved, and that the negotiation took place between Israel and Palestine. That's a good model for future negotiations in Iraq as well.

In any case, I don't think that this idea is "new," since negotiations have been ongoing for quite a while, nor do I think the effort in Iraq lacks new ideas, big or small. More ideas are always welcome, of course, but I would hope that many would come from people more well-informed than the average NPR listener.

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

I don't think anyone is asking the president to reveal strategic military plans, Phillip, and certainly I'm not. But when you hear very little more than "stay the course" after 2-1/2 years of bloodshed, it's very understandable that the American people are unhappy. Inevitably, inexorably, we have to circle back to the lead-up to war and the history of the war up to the present. Public polls now consistently reveal that most people think the Bush Administration misled the nation into war. So I think the trust issue is now paramount. If a trusted leader tells us to hang on, that's one thing. But we have a situation in which we were virtually guaranteed all kinds of things: that we would be greeted as liberators (which we were in some ways but not others), that the war would be very short (true… if you believed "Mission Accomplished"; otherwise not so much), and that Iraqi oil would pay for the operation (definitely not true).

So I think many people now say, "Why should we believe you now?" And I really can't fault anyone for asking that question.

Let me finish up on polls before moving on: Where's the link to the Pew poll you've mentioned a few times? I'd like to see the numbers you mention before I concede any In the Middle ground.

I agree that it's very easy to latch onto news reports that support or support in part a preconceived notion or set of values. This is inevitably complicated by a situation in which we have 24/7 media coverage but very little factual on-the-ground reporting from the Iraqi streets and talking heads spinning spin from political parties that are inherently self-interested.

That said, I think we're finally seeing the president and Congress acting (if slowly and unsurely) because they rightly sense that the public is unhappy with the war effort as it stands. The truth is that the end is not in sight. And while you may be okay with having American soldiers in Iraq for decades, that's a political scenario that no politician on the left or right is willing to go near.

There are those who even believe that the longer we stay in Iraq, the more destructive it will be for US national security. What's interesting, and perhaps even unsettling, is that some of these voices come from conservatives. For example, Lt. Gen. William Odom (Ret.), former National Security Agency Director under President Reagan, believes the only feasible course of action is to withdraw all American forces immediately. Far from taking a dovish point of view, he believes that all of our machinations in Iraq have made the world a safer place for al Qaeda.

I agree that the Democrats do not yet have a coherent strategy for what to do next, and neither does the White House. Joe Conason's thoughts on the potential for talking to insurgents, in my view, is a novel angle on what has become, for the most part, a stagnant debate in terms of strategy.

Finally, I'm not sure what you mean by "negotiations have been ongoing." Are you implying that we're already talking to the insurgents? If that's so, that counters your view that we should leave this sort of thing to the Iraqis. I'm also not sure what you mean in your reference to "average NPR listeners." Do you mean that Joe Conason is an average NPR listener? Or that I am?

I do listen to NPR, though I couldn't tell in what way I am or am not average.

But I'll leave the last word to you, sir.

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

I linked to the Pew Research poll last week, complete with an inline graphic! Here it is again.

With "average NPR listener," I was referring to myself, since I've heard on NPR several times now that Iraqi officials have been in negotiations with Al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups. There was heated debate even among Iraqi government officials about whether negotiating with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was something that ought to be done, but the reports were that it was proceeding. That was several weeks ago, and it's why I've been so surprised to hear you describe Conason's proposal as "novel."

It's both funny and sad that I hear you say things and I wonder how on earth you could have missed major events X, Y, and Z, while I'm sure you hear me say things and wonder the same thing about A, B, and C. For example, I distinctly remember President Bush addressing the nation in 2001 and stating that the "war on terror" would be long and hard, and I definitely got a "many years" vibe from that. Secretary of State Rice has also stated several times that we're in this for the long haul. And yet you say that "no politician on the left or right" is willing to state such things! Or another example, I'm pretty sure I've linked to that Pew Poll at least twice, and yet you apparently never read it, or even my summary of it (with a chart!). Of course, I'm sure that the reverse is true as well. I've clearly not seen (or remembered) the polls you have that reveal how dreadfully the American people view the war effort, or how badly things are going in Iraq. I wonder how much of the Great Divide in American politics is due primarily to information filtering?

Nevertheless, Blogcritics.org is a rare place in which left and right come together and hear each other out — hopefully listening rather than waiting for a chance to argue!

Let me see if I can restate some of the views that have come up today: I think that we agree that the Bush Administration has not done a very good job of communicating about the war in Iraq to date, though they are showing some small signs of progress very recently. From early mistakes like the "Mission Accomplished" banner — which may have been technically true, but now seems fairly ridiculous in light of more than 2000 dead soldiers — and apparently inflated estimates of Iraqi troop strength, people don't trust what they hear from the White House, and I don't blame them. I think that mistrust is reflected in the apparently conflicting polls, in which people don't think Bush has a good plan, but think it's all going to work out anyway. It isn't really the plan they don't trust, it's Bush himself!

I think one point of disagreement between us actually could turn to agreement if we made a distinction between long-term over-arching plans and more immediate tactical or strategic shifts. There really can't be very many long-term over-arching plans at this point. Either we leave before things are stable, or we remain until things are stable. The rest is primarily details and definitions. We haven't heard a new long-term over-arching plan in a long time, because many people believe that the current plan (stay until things are stable) is working. Tactics and strategic choices on the ground is a different matter entirely, and where I think most of the problem lies.

The current strategy on the ground is "Clear, Hold, and Build," and all of the reports I've seen so far on this approach have been positive. Even within that, there are many different lower-level tactical decisions to be made based on the resistance encountered, and I'm confident that military commanders on the ground are learning as they go. Could things be better? Of course. War is hell, and no amount of technology is ever going to change that. But people like Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who claims that this war is unwinnable, are in a distinct minority.

We should be open to new ideas and new strategies, and what I know of the military tells me that we're probably not quite as open to suggestions as we could be. We could probably also be applying a little more pressure to the Iraqi government to accelerate their timetable, though neither you nor I are likely to ever know what sort of things are happening behind the scenes in terms of diplomatic pressure.

The biggest question of all is whether we will win this war. Some experts believe it is unwinnable, while others believe we are well on the way to winning it. A very select few are calling for immediate withdrawal, while others run the gamut of opinion from a phased but scheduled withdrawal to troop increases. When the people who've dedicated their lives to understanding situations like this can't agree, I don't expect armchair generals like you and I to land exactly on the same page, either.

As time goes on and the war continues, we will need to begin demonstrating more serious progress, or the will of the American people will fail and we will abandon Iraqis to the jihadists who wish them to fail in building a stable democracy.

One last thing, since I have the last word this week! In trying to wrap my brain around difficult subjects, I often find it useful to reverse the questions. So I ask, how is this war going from the perspective of those who fight against us? Do the insurgents have the support of the Iraqi people? It appears to me that their support is dwindling as quickly or more quickly than our own. Have they ever succeeded in disrupting elections? No, they haven't. Their enemies (the Iraqi security forces) are growing in number and effectiveness while they themselves are killed by advancing coalition troops, so the ratio is contantly changing against them. Iraqi people stand in lines for hours to join Iraqi police forces, despite those lines being a frequent target for boms. Jordan is holding rallies calling for the death of Zarqawi, and Al Jazeera is sometimes running material that does not portray the "resistance" in a positive light. Recent bombings have taken place in Arab countries, presumably because it is much easier to carry out bombings there, and each time those bombings have resulted in a turning tide of opinion in that area against the bombers. Things are really not going well for those who are fighting against us in Iraq, and it seems that the only hope from their perspective is that we withdraw!

Which might tell us something.

In The Middle is an attempt to focus more on what unites us than what divides us. Can two reasonable people from opposite ends of the political spectrum put aside partisanship and meet in the middle? We think so. A topic is picked, e-mails are exchanged, and the results are published here.

In The Middle is a Blogcritics experiment. We're trying to talk about things civilly, and we strongly request that all commenters do the same. We seek polite comments and questions, not ideological rhetoric or personal attacks.

Be passionate, think before you write, respect others, and have fun!

Previous articles from the In The Middle crew have addressed Bill Bennett, Harriet Miers, Iraq as a "Media War," the CIA Leak Case, Samuel Alito, Jr, Vice President Cheney, and, most recently, John Murtha.

Recent Blogcritics articles on sidebar!

2005-12-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

I got a hold of some snazzy code that allows the most recent Blogcritics articles to show on the right-hand sidebar.

Word up!

In The Middle: John Murtha

2005-12-05T10:27:00.000-08:00

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
Subject: Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito, Jr

Polls showed President Bush's approval rating to be plummeting, and it seems that his political foes were eager to push their advantage. Even some Democrats who had voted in favor of invading Iraq publicly apologized for their votes and began to call for withdrawal plans. Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha went even farther, calling for the United States military to "immediately redeploy" troops, withdrawing from Iraq. Representative Murtha is certainly passionate, but I wonder how much credibility he can claim to have, given his record on the war in Iraq.

Prior to the Iraq authorization vote in 2002, Murtha questioned the resolution on primarily strategic reasons (it might alienate allies to go ahead without United Nations approval), but ended up voting for it anyway.

In 2004, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandals, he called for more troops to be sent to Iraq, arguing that, "We cannot prevail in this war as it is going today," and "We either have to mobilize or we have to get out."

So far this seems reasonable. I, too, was worried a bit about the lack of UN support, though I decided eventually, as did many others, that UN support would never come, no matter what Hussein did. The Abu Ghraib revelations were disheartening, and I would certainly have supported more troops had the military leadership called for them. Still, that was a tactical decision, one that should be made free from political influence. Whether political issues are unduly influencing those decisions, I don't know, but certainly Rep. Murtha's statements don't represent politics-free decision-making, either.

Where things start to seem a little odd is later in 2004, with a bill introduced by Democrat Charles Rangel. Introduced in 2003, the bill would have reinstated a military draft, a political ploy designed to publicize the claim (which began in 2002) that a mandatory draft was unavoidable, and that President Bush was trying to avoid the issue until after the 2004 election. The bill was forced to a vote in 2004 in order to clear it off the docket, and even the bill's sponsor voted against it. Only two people voted in favor of reinstating the draft, and one was John Murtha. Of course, once the 2004 election cycle was over, nobody mentioned a draft again.

Just before Thanksgiving, Rep. Murtha seems to have decided that troop increases were no longer enough, and began to call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. On November 17 on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, in an interview with Margaret Warner, Murtha said, "I say that the fight against Americans began with Abu Ghraib. It began with the invasion of Iraq. That's when terrorism started." That comes as a bit of a surprise to anyone who remembers September 11, 2001, I'm sure! Still, Rep. Murtha is no critic of the military, and his intentions are clearly found at least in part on a concern for troops who are fighting what seems to him to be an unwinnable war.

But still we have an odd contrast between Rep. Murtha's statement and his votes, because after calling for an immediate withdrawal on the 17th, he voted against a bill suggesting just that the next day! The bill was defeated by a vote of 403 to 3 with six abstentions.

Let us make no mistake: What John Murtha actually said on Thursday, November 17, was this (emphasis added): "I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice: The United States will immediately redeploy—immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target... My plan calls for immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces to create a quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq."

This may actually not be a bad idea, and I would support this plan if the military commanders were to call for it as the best way to proceed.

Republican Duncan Hunter took those words and turned them into a resolution, which said, "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately. Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately." It is against that resolution that John Murtha voted.

I have to wonder, what's going on with John Murtha?

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

I think that Rep. John Murtha is a very interesting figure to emerge at the center of the ongoing debate about what to do about Iraq, Phillip. Murtha, a fairly conservative Democrat, has strong ties to the military and defense issues throughout his career as a military man and politician both.

I see Murtha's statement on redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq as a passionate stand by a man who deeply believes a change in policy is needed to make things better — both in Iraq and for American forces and long-term security for the United States. Indeed, his character, values, and beliefs now stand at stark odds with the President, who again today (Wednesday) rattled off standard and (verrrry…) long-standing slogans about staying the course and fighting until victory is at hand.

You seem to imply, Phillip, that Murtha's call for redeployment might be a political ploy designed to increase support for the growing anti-war sentiment in Congress (driven by relentlessly gloomy and across-the-board poll numbers). I can understand why some might feel this way, but I think a closer look at the actual proposal is warranted. The idea is that Iraq won't stand up for itself until it is basically forced to. Therefore, American forces would, under this plan, redeploy to neighboring or nearby areas so that they could easily go back in should it be necessary. This is actually a very interesting way to pull American soldiers away from the specter of Sunni-Shiite civil war yet put them in position to stamp out terror cells and training camps quickly and efficiently. I'm not military expert enough to comment upon the viability of such a plan, but I believe we've reached a time where many options should be closely examined under the umbrella of free and open debate.

The reason why Murtha voted against the forced vote by the GOP a few weeks ago (and talk about ploys, that was about as big of one as you can get!), as far as I understand it, is because that bill called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, and not the redeployment as sketched out above.

As far as military commanders asking to redeployed, the sad but certain truth is that this will never happen. It can't happen — at least in public — because soldiers are trained to attempt to complete the mission, whatever the odds. In any event, we've seen already what happens to high-ranking officials and soldiers who question Bush administration policy. It's up to our civilian leadership to change course based upon recommendations and facts on the ground. A significant problem here may lead back to the "Bush Bubble," or the tight circle in which President Bush surrounds himself, unpunctured by contrarian voices and, as has been famously stated, any form or news or media reporting.

So I think what we have is two clear positions emerging, with Bush on one side and Murtha as a new and leading figure on the other. Most others are in the middle, the confused and muddled variety and not the sharp as tacks, witty, and vivacious varietals found at In the Middle.

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

The Hunter resolution was definitely a stunt, intended to do exactly what it seems to have done: force Murtha to take a stand rather than rely solely on rhetoric. They're all stunts, and it's all politics. The interesting point is the stand Murtha took when it came to a vote.

Placing a lot of emphasis on the word "redeployment" overlooks the fact that Murtha spelled out the details of what he was talking about. Details that can be summed up succinctly as "withdraw from Iraq, but stay close by just in case." In other words, a plan entirely consistent with the Hunter resolution, which was also consistent with Murtha previous statments about needing to "get out."

As I mentioned, originally, I'm not against the general idea, I just want it to be driven by the military commanders on the ground, not politicians thousands of miles away. A recent Pew poll reveals that military personnel and the general American public are the two groups which have the most positive opinion of the progress in Iraq, and I think that's telling. While it is certainly the case that public disputes from military commanders are unwelcome for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the message that sends to those against whom we're fighting, privately the opinions of the officers on the ground ought to be given the highest level of consideration, and I believe that they are.

Tactics have changed many times since the original invasion of Iraq, and continue to change in response to changing conditions. I heard a report on NPR recently in which two congressmen, one from each party and both recently returned from Iraq, expressed how impressed they were by the progress that is being made there, as Iraqi troops are more involved over time with military operations, and as those against whom we're fighting control less and less ground. We are making progress, though the progress is slow and expectations are high due to both unrealistic ideas in the age of Media War and also false hopes trumpeted as realities in the early days of the war.

I don't actually think that Murtha and Bush are very far apart in their views. Both want to see the troops come home, and both want to see Iraq succeed. I believe that Bush feels that he has to send a message of unwavering committment, to demonstrate to those who would otherwise press against what they perceive as weakness on our part that we will not bow under the pressue of more or bigger explosions. I think Murtha is more concerned with how people here in the the United States perceive things, and also, because he isn't the President, has more freedom to suggest things than Bush does. Both of them also, of course, care quite a bit for the safety of the troops.

The primary difference between their positions as I see it, aside from their relative abilities to speak freely, is that Bush believes that the Iraqi troops are making substantial progress right now, while Murtha believes that they will only make substantial progress with the pressure of stark necessity.

Still, I can't help but think that some of what we're seeing is political grandstanding, an attempt by critics of President Bush to use the time of the year — when people are thinking about family and missing their loved ones — and Bush's falling poll numbers in ways that aren't even necessarily the most effective at actually accomplishing their goals.

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

While I agree that politicians act like "politicians" nearly all the time, I still have to wonder why you seem to imply that Murtha's actions are purely Machievellian in nature. In my view, he immediately has credibility as a lifelong military man and foreign policy hawk who stood up from the back benches of Congress to demand change to a policy he in some ways helped to craft. To me, that shows backbone and courage and the fortitude to demand progress and accountability and transparency from our government.

I can't tell you exactly why Murtha voted against the Hunter resolution. Members of Congress get into "trouble" all the time for these kinds of in-house machinations (see: John Kerry, '04), which was exactly why the House GOP rolled out what could only be described as a designed mousetrap. But personally I'll take him at his word in stating that his preference is that changes in military policy should be driven by the commanders on the ground. Last night on Hardball, Murtha echoed what many others are saying in expressing that military commanders are privately horrified at the war effort but refuse to say so in public. This presents a conundrum, which circles me back to what might be a general unwillingness by the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush inner circle to change policy in the face of bad information, intelligence, and voices of dissent. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell would likely be the first to tell you that breaking
into that inner circle is a nearly impossible task.

I agree that Bush's and Murtha's goals are very closely related, as are the views of the vast majority of both parties and the American people: leave Iraq safe and secure and preserve American security and the lives of as many of our citizens and soldiers as possible. I disagree that the politics are being driven by the "time of year" as much as the normal souring of the American public toward foreign military adventures that drag on and don't show visible signs of progress. This is exactly where Bush's "stalwartness" gets him into trouble, as it should. Expressing unbound optimism and bumper sticker slogans can demonstrably yield political victory but it can't turn the tide on a murky-to-ugly military picture.

Many of our In the Middle columns seem to circle back to a few Big Picture questions (and as we all know, I'm a Big Picture guy). One that most are asking and will continue to ask is: How is the war really going? As Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, recently said, perhaps the government and namely the president needs to do a better job of explaining how the war is going in unadorned and unspun terms. This leads back to my call for transparency.

If 2005 has shown us anything, it's that the American public is desperate for honest leadership. That may well be one of the largest factors in why John Murtha is now a household name.

From: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right
To: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left

I agree completely that we need more information about how the war is really going. I think Bush's speech this week might signal the beginning of just such a change in strategy. I hope so! I understand that they've been reluctant to spell things out for fear that our very media-savvy opponents in this struggle will learn important things from satellite television, but I think the time has come when the concerns of the voting public need to outweigh that fear in most cases, allowing for a certain amount of short-term secrecy for tactical reasons.

One other concern they've probably had involves the short-term mentality of many people, who really seem to expect any military operation to be wrapped in about as long as it took to film Saving Private Ryan. If we have a bad week, or bad month, in the ongoing war effort, will short-sighted people call for withdrawal too soon? Will such fears cause military commanders to avoid taking necessary risks, in order to manage the images and numbers we see here at home?

Still, I'd like to see maps, and charts, and lists. I suspect those would reveal a somewhat different picture of the situation in Iraq than the mental image many people have, but there's only one way to know for sure!

I don't think I'd say that Murtha moves are "purely" manipulative, but I think that there is a strong element of politican showmanship in the timing and nature of his statements. As a congressman, he has avenues which he could pursue which would be more likely to result in action, but chooses instead to spend his time on television talk shows and at press conferences. I have to believe that this is in large part an effort to create an image like the one you described, in which Murtha is seen as the anti-Bush, despite their views being far more similar in reality than those of many other members of Congress.

Murtha's somewhat inconsistent back-and-forth speechifying suggests to me that there is a little more going on there than a natural progression of ideas.

In any case, I think we agree that the time has come for more transparency about what's going on in Iraq, and the poll numbers to which I linked a little while ago suggests to me that CNN and Fox News are not necessarily the best sources, given a strong tendency to pessimism.

From: Eric Berlin @ Center-Left
To: Phillip Winn @ Center-Right

CNN and Fox News have something in common?

Okay, but seriously… I'll counter and say that Murtha's Stand (how's that for grandiose?), coupled with diving poll numbers and general unease about the war throughout Washington, are the very factors that brought out Bush's speech this week. So while you might see it as grandstanding and speechifying, I actually see it as actions that have brought about results (i.e. spelling out the beginnings of a strategy, to be kind) not seen in two-and-half-years of war!

I think Bush has proved that he's immensely capable of not listening to detractors, the media, or anyone else (perhaps not even his father or Bush 41's able foreign policy team) once he's made up his mind about something. When Bush says "stay the course," I for one believe that that means until the end of time, if not sooner. One of Bush 43's problems has always been his inability to change course (while staying on it, of course) in the face of changing data and changing times and public demands, from tax cuts to stem cell research
to Iraq.

Fred Kaplan's Slate piece covering Bush's speech does a really good job of summing up the somewhat little, hopefully not too late substance of the National Security Council's newly printed "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." That said, it's better than nothing, and perhaps it's a start to a coherent Iraq strategy.

I can't fault patriots, whether it be John Murtha or John McCain, for demanding that from the president.

Focusing on the future, Kaplan did an excellent job in pointing out four crucial factors that Bush continues to ignore. They are:

The potential for the U.S. occupation to fuel the very insurgency its fighting

The huge X factor of the ability of the Iraqi military and police forces to effectively handle security on their own

The enormous strain on the U.S. military in terms of personnel, recruiting, and morale

The fact that the vaunted war on terrorism does not come close to the level of threat posed by Nazism, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union

Those factors could well point the way to the next installment of In the Middle, I should think.

In The Middle is an attempt to focus more on what unites us than what divides us. Can two reasonable people from opposite ends of the political spectrum put aside partisanship and meet in the middle? We think so. A topic is picked, e-mails are exchanged, and the results are published here.

In The Middle is a Blogcritics experiment. We're trying to talk about things civilly, and we strongly request that all commenters do the same. We seek polite comments and questions, not ideological rhetoric or personal attacks.

Be passionate, think before you write, respect others, and have fun!

Previous articles from the In The Middle crew have addressed Bill Bennett, Harriet Miers, Iraq as a "Media War," the CIA Leak Case, Samuel Alito, Jr, and Vice President Cheney.

House Rules: GOP Forces Vote On Iraq Troop Pullout

2005-11-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

In a maneuver likely timed to swing political momentum away from Democrats and those who are now calling for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, House Republicans will hold a quick vote tonight on just that (see San Francisco Chronicle story here).

Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha, a longtime military "hawk" and supporter of the war effort, just this week called for the immediate pullout of troops from Iraq. In a classic bit of political theater, all members of the House will now be forced to publicly declare whether or not they agree.

The Republicans and the White House are attempting to call Murtha's bluff, if it can be called such. While the outcome of the vote won't be in question, the politics surrounding the decision to hold it in the first place will be.

Because the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans – many still loyal to the White House and President Bush, even in the face of nosediving poll numbers across the board – it is almost certain that the vote itself is a formality and will essentially change nothing in terms of the United States' Iraq policy.

This ploy may also be seen as a reaction to a surprise Senate vote this week that passed with bipartisan support. While it was non-binding, it did send the first major signal to the White House that Congress is not willing to blindly tow the line on the longstanding policy that may be boiled down to phrases such as "Stay the Course" and "Not a Day Longer." This bumper-sticker approach may have served Karl Rove and the GOP very well in several successive elections, but in terms of substantive policy it looks to be a decisive loser in 2005. The Senate resolution was in effect a call for a plan to bring about some kind of resolution in Iraq. It was, in a sense, a plea for change to a policy that has altered very little since the invasion of two and a half years ago.

Will tonight's House vote be seen as a decisive step to turn the tide of public opinion back to the post-9/11 days of American flag waving and patriotic bravado, or will it be seen as an overreaction and misstep by a ruling party that seriously has lost its way over the last year?

The question may boil down to this: Are people looking for political machinations, or are they looking for real change?

As goes Iraq may go the election chances for many candidates in the 2006 elections, now less than a year away. Congress is feeling the proximity of next November, which certainly can account for the recent developments in both chambers.

Whether or not this urgency produces better results for the people in Iraq and our soldiers in harm's way remains to be seen.

Tectonic Vibrations: The Candidate Scramble for 2006, 2008 Begins

2005-11-17T05:14:00.000-08:00

You know it's dark days for Republicans when you have Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press, questioning Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean about the three (out of a total of 19) categories in a recent poll in which Republicans were rated higher than Democrats.

George W. Bush's poll numbers are down to the lowest levels of his presidency. What began as a trickle early this year has picked up steam due to an unremitting series of miscalculations, negative headlines, and events turning against long-standing administration policies. Could Republicans have guessed, after their triumph in the 2004 elections, that they would be reading news such as this one year later?

Fewer than one in 10 adults say they would prefer a congressional candidate who is a Republican and who agrees with Bush on most major issues, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Even among Republicans, seven of 10 are most likely to back a candidate who has had at least some disagreements with the president.

Bush's job-approval rating sank to a record 37%, down from a previous low of 39% a month ago. The poll finds growing criticism of the president, unease about the nation's direction and opposition to the war in Iraq.

It may be that 2005's off-off year elections (resulting in victories for the Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races) will bare little reflection the future, but nonetheless Republicans are choosing this moment on the electoral calendar to defect from a White House that until recently held together a remarkable and longstanding majority coalition. While the future is ever unfolding and history rewritten nearly daily, it could well be that President Bush's height of power will be marked from the moment al Qaeda struck on September 11, 2001 to the stumbling and incompetent response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Of course, the ongoing war in Iraq appears to be an underlying factor to slackening public support for the government in a number of areas, from displeasure over continuing casualties and a lack of a cohesive plan to stabilize the nation to concerns over the use and possible misuse of pre-war intelligence that led to the 2003 invasion.

Republicans in Congress, many of whom must run for reelection in 2006, have finally been prompted to craft their own plan for Iraq in reaction to increased calls for a planned withdrawal or drawdown of an American military presence from the Democrats:

In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war. …

The proposal on the Iraq war, from Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require the administration to provide extensive new quarterly reports to Congress on subjects like progress in bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. The other appeals related to Iraq are nonbinding and express the position of the Senate.

The plan stops short of a competing Democratic proposal that moves toward establishing dates for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But it is built upon the Democratic approach and makes it clear that senators of both parties are increasingly eager for Iraqis to take control of their country in coming months and open the door to removing American troops.

If the president's poll numbers don't improve very much during the next six months, look for congressional leaders to further distance themselves from the Bush administration. In any event, it looks inevitable that congressional races will pit Republicans who will emphasize local issues, as opposed to Democratic candidates who will try to nationalize the race and tie opponents to the White House. Senator and now Governor-elect John Corzine's successful campaign in New Jersey, which featured television ads that pointed to his opponent as "Bush's choice," may well be a harbinger of the future.

One of the significant repercussions for the still far off 2008 presidential elections could be that there will be no true "Bush heir." Vice President Cheney, beset himself with close ties to his indicted former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and poll numbers in the low twenties to high teens, has long maintained that he will not run for president. Condoleezza Rice, wildly popular in some circles but closely tied to the Iraq war, has herself declared that she will return to Stanford University. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has also ruled out an '08 run. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, has his own ethical liabilities and is at this point anchored to the Bush administration's policies.

Short of a rightwing social conservative, such as Senator Sam Brownback, blowing away competition via ruthless force of the evangelical Christian base, the two leading nominees for president within the Republican party are Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Both share the honor of being popular nationally while not being embraced by some factions of the Republican party. McCain's independence from party orthodoxy, once considered a liability, may well turn out to be the central tenet of a potential presidential campaign. Likewise, Giuliani's moderate to liberal stance on social issues will also be closely examined.

Meanwhile, a recent Wall Street Journal poll has New York Senator Hillary Clinton out to a whopping 41% to 14% lead against her closest competition (former Senator and 2004 Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards) in a full field of choices. Al Gore, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, and Joe Biden trailed Edwards. Because of Clinton's continued support for the war in Iraq, some feel that she will be vulnerable on that issue, much as John Kerry was "boxed in" during the 2004 presidential campaign.

John Edward's recent admission that his vote to authorize President Bush to use force in Iraq was wrong will likely have significant ripples throughout the Democratic party:

"I was wrong," Edwards wrote.

"I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake - the men and women of our armed forces and their families - have performed heroically and paid a dear price."

Edwards said the intelligence used to support the invasion was flawed.

"The urgent question isn't how we got here but what we do now," Edwards wrote. "We have to give our troops a way to end their mission honorably. That means leaving behind a success, not a failure."

John Edwards may well have put himself in place – philosophically and in terms of policy – to make a serious run at the '08 nomination with such an admission. Outgoing and popular Virginia Governor Mark Warner, another energetic moderate from the South, will be another player in the presidential horserace.

The Hot Topic - Secret Pop Cult Shames!

2005-11-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Duke's at "the helm" for this week's Hot Topic...

<<<<<>>>>>

From out the head-holes of a buncha self-appointed "cultural commentators" comes a weekly side-swipe at the issues of the day, the issues of the night, the issues of the late-afternoon when the telly's crap and it's too early to eat.

This is The Hot Topic.

This week - "Um, I Haven't Seen It / Heard It / Read It" - Our Secret Pop Cult Shames!

From: The Duke De Mondo

To: The Hot Topic Team

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

Couple days past, myself and Sir Fleming sat debating the in's and out's of pi to a couple hundred decimal points, sat discussin the elusive wonders of Scorpius Gigantus starring Jeff Fahey, sat discussing the whys and wherefores of Land Of The Dead (Is it shit, is it amazing, who the hell knows? Neither of us two, that's for sure, since ain't a single syllable of agreement to be found).

In the course of it all, plenty banter about Jimmy Stewart, crops up least nine or twenty-four times in any given conversation, half a hundred jokes referencing the spin a the wheelchair this way or that in Rear Window.

Rear Window, least 48% of all punchlines uttered by yours truly in the course of a day involve Hitchcock's flick about the nosey ol' bastard an the diabolical goings on.

Who knows why, or for what reason, or what ungodly voodoo mania led to it all, but all a sudden I get slapped upside the knackers with the kinda guilt most often results in grown-men fryin neath the desert sun chewin locusts an hollerin bout the prophet Isaiah.

All a sudden I feel the need to fess up.

What it is, I say, what's got me sweatin out my teeth, what it all relates to, see, is that, well…

I never actually seen Rear Window.

For shame! And you, The Duke, joking about it every day in existence, and you ain't even laid an eye on the monochrome splendor of it all ever even once!

And worse.

The other day, chat heads in the direction of Quentin Tarantino, how unless Robert Rodriguez is involved, then anything Q.T related that isn't actually directed by the uber-chinned whelp, best avoid the fucker altogether.

"Like what", asks Sir Fleming?

Like, I dunno, like Four Rooms, for example.

"Four Rooms? It was alright!"

Forced into a corner, forced to make my point about no, it's not alright, when really, when the truth of it all comes staggering into the bar-room buggered raw at five in the morning, what it coughs out the throat is, to be honest, I haven't actually seen Four Rooms.

Because this is what we do. We have all the knowledge in the world regarding a certain flick, a certain book, a certain piece a music, we could talk about the fucker all week, we could draw diagrams and pie-charts that illustrate in no uncertain terms just what effect it has had on The Society and The Consciousness and So On. And yet when we get right down to it, when the guts are torn out the poultry and inspected by moonlight, what they reveal is that we ain't got a right in the world to make these proclamations, we ain't ever even seen / read / heard the bastard!

No-one's gonna get upset about a fella never seen The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, it ain't the easiest slab a celluloid to get hold of. But what about the fella sat in the corner of the bar scared to pipe in with his thoughts on Coppola because he ain't ever seen Apocalypse Now?

We all have them. These hidden shames. Maybe we never actually seen Goodfellas, or Terminator 2, or we never read On The Road even though we quote it endlessly, or we never heard any of Neil Young's 1980's recordings, yet we still insist they suck.

So what I wanna know, what'll get me through life even though I still haven't seen Rear Window, is the facts of the case re the following;

What's your secret Pop Cult shame?

From: Aaron Fleming

To: The Hot Topic Team

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

Popular culture discrepancies then, a topic that can only wield a plethora of embarrassing confessions, no priest or religiose could even begin to take in the admissions of gaps, holes and chasms of knowledge hitherto unseen by the masses. Luckily the Hot Topic Team far surpasses any supposed virtue possessed by the propagating and hypocritical harbingers of organized religion (although that's for another hot topic debate perhaps), and it is here to grant amnesty to those with guilty concealments.

So let the flood begin.

Movies, then. As I write this a university screening of Toy Story 2 is occurring that I would have been at, had I chosen to depart my warm abode today. The truth is I've never seen that one, although from all I hear it seems to be even more praised than the prequel, which I have seen and is great. This leads onto a number of other CGI movies
which I haven't bothered to see; Monsters Inc, A Bugs Life, Antz, Ice Age etc. I'm not too bothered about these, really. Hey, The Incredibles was great, but the interest just ain't there.

Another topical one is the Harry Potter flicks. Never seen em, never read the books, never bought the action figures, never swam the waters of synergistic marketing. I'm sure it's an interesting mythos, but I just don't care.

I've never seen The Godfather Part 2 (or 3, although I think this is less heathenish). Saw the first one, it's fine, bit overrated, but I couldn't be bothered watching the sequel. I know I probably should, I'm sure it's fantastic, but who has the time these days?

Titanic! Never saw the whole film, I doubt that'll ever be rectified, I'm not prepared to give over 3 hours of my life to that, especially when I know what happens (love story, historical ship sinking yadda yadda). I certainly won't be purchasing that mammoth new 4-disc DVD box.

Haven't seen Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Das Boot, Singin In The Rain, Metropolis, Stand By Me, Blood Simple, to name a few big ones I should have seen (some I'd like to see, some less so).

Oh, and Top Gun and Days Of Thunder. Fuck them.

But something to remember here; everyone has gaps, no one has the perfect record. And for every big film missed there's a Porcile, or a Guinea Pig 3: He Never Dies, or a Punishment Park that has been seen.

From: Mark Saleski

To: The Hot Topic Team

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

Oh my....do I really have to divulge this information? OK. Here goes...

Every so often, folks will be yammering on about all things political. The conversation will slide around to particularly brutish social situations. Then somebody will say, "Yes, just like in Lord Of The Flies." And then I will nod my head in agreement. But of course, I've never read that book so I don't know what the hell they're talking about. The closest I've come is to listen to Aerosmith's "Lord Of The Thighs" from Live Bootleg. Right. So we all know that a vinyl record is not a book and Thighs are certainly not Flies (and we will not go down the road of disgusting jokes here) so there's the truth, I've never read Lord Of The Flies. There are probably other books I haven't scanned my eyes over, though none as 'important' as this (and I'm not about to count Ulysses here as that seems more like an Olympic intellectual event than just plain old reading).

Then there's films. Let me just get it right out in the open: E.T. There, I've said it. But hey, I've seen Citizen Kane about thirty times. Does that make up for it? Probably not, since there are others: Schindler's List, Lawrence of Arabia (I did try there, but I nodded off and the back of my head whacked into the wall behind the couch), Taxi Driver, The Manchurian Candidate (I own a copy, surely that means something), Titanic. OK, I put that last one there because the snotty side of myself thinks its proximity to The Manchurian Candidate is kinda funny.

Music? Forget it. Everybody knows I own every recording ever made.

From: DJ Radiohead

To: The Hot Topic Team

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

OK... there is no way really I can come up with a truly exhaustive list. I will have to settle for naming just a few of my sins in this regard.

Most of them would come in the reading department. I am not as well read as I should like to be. I have only read Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I never read a lot of the 'great' literature (even if it was assigned in high school or college... I just faked it).

Movies... I am missing a lot of the so-called classics here. I have never seen Taxi Driver or Citizen Kane or High Noon. I must also admit... I claim to be a Tarantino fan (and I am) but I have never seen either of the Kill Bill films or Jackie Brown.

Musically... hmmm... I don't feel like I have really missed anything or at least don't feel bad about that which I have missed. Well... let me change that. I have only heard one or two songs by the Ramones or The Clash. I am not real well schooled at all in the 70s punk movement. I am not sure how much I would like that music or not but some of that
material is considered classic so I feel out of the loop there.

From: Mat Brewster

To: The Hot Topic Group

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

The Duke has never seen Rear Window! Well, pluck my eyes out with a pogo stick! Look over the horizon boys, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse should be trotting by any moment.

A fella I know that's the entertainment editor of one of the newspapers in Dallas sends out an annual list of recommended movies from the first talkies to present day. It's a big, grand list and also creates plenty of discussion. It is also daunting to look at and see just how many flicks I haven't seen, nor even heard of. I added it up one time and it would take over 200 back to back to back hours of movie watching to see them all.

Truth of the matter is that unless you are independently wealthy, or it is your job to sit and watch the flickery, there ain't no way you can watch all the films out there. In college I went to the movies nearly every weekend, and usually, I got to see every film that I wanted to see. But even then I didn't see every piece of cinema released. Now I'm
lucky if I get to the theater once a month.

So we all make choices as to what we're actually going to be able to see. A couple of days ago I had to decide between the more critically acclaimed Jarhead, and the completely panned, yet somehow appealing Doom. We take in what we can, lie through our teeth about what we've missed, and chastise those who haven't consumed all the things on our list.

Do I have a secret shame list? Sure. I've only made it through half of Gone With the Wind. Though I own copies, I've never seen reel one of either Rashomon or Ran, or even Laurence of Arabia. I can't recall a single John Wayne picture that I've seen from top to bottom, including Rio Bravo.

Ah, man there is just too many to list. The sense of shame barrels a man over. I can't even get into all the literature I've never read (including not a novel one of William Faulkner) or the music I've never heard (anything by the Sex Pistols, and *cough* the Clash).

From: Eric Berlin

To: The Hot Topic Group

Re: Secret Pop Cult Shames

I'm reminded of the scene in High Fidelity, where the record store troika is forced to admit they're music snobs. Once they admit it, though, they're proud of it.

And let's face it: we all want to be cultural snobs. We all want to know everything there is to know about our "area," whatever that can be defined as: books, alt rock bands, Charles Bronson films, television programs featuring children and robots, and so on.

And as I wrote the above words I wanted to stop at each mini-moment and write, I own Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk! Does that make me a cultural snob? Not at all, it just makes me crazy on many a level, Zig Zag Wanderer that I am.

Since I'm a generalist and tend to soak up tidbits of various pop cultural arcana without ever delving into the dank cauldrons of true alchemic geekery (think There Are Some Who Call Me... Tim circa Monty Python and the Holy Grail for argument's sake), I'm constantly on the outside looking in upon cultural snobbery in fear and abject awe and, more and more of late, relief!

It's a relief when you let go of the pretensions, isn't it? If it's not in the blood, move on, my brotha, right? So I'll never read Balzac and I couldn't get through the first bloody page of any James Joyce novel I tried my mental motors at. Jethro Tull and Rush and The Mr. T Experience and The Alan Parsons Project will never be names I can summon at will in the midst of a snap-cracklin' music conversation. That's so early Jerthro Tull, bro! I'll never get to utter those glorious words. What's a fella to do?

I tried to soak myself in television for several months this year, which may have been my personal cultural Waterloo (and I can summon Waterloo but Ropespierre or James II? Not so much), but it's all too much, really.

It turns out that I don't care if Joan is from Arcadia or Pasadena or Burbank or wherever. I don't care about William Shatner's late career run on Boston Legal.

I just want to watch The Real World and Arrested Development and Rome.

And so at long last, I hope, I can rest easy in my own cultural digs.

So there you have it, The Hot Topic Team have coughed their confessions left and right cross cyberspace.

Now, it's over to you. Don't be scared, we won't tell nobody. What's your Secret Pop Cult Shame?

Thanks folks.

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Music Editor: Connie Phillips

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

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TV/Film Co-Editors: Alisha Karabinus and Joan Hunt

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Culture Editor: Lisa Hoover

Politics
Politics Editor: Natalie Davis

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

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Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

SciTech
SciTech Editor: Lisa McKay

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

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As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week

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Music Editor: Connie Phillips

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

TV/Film
TV/Film Co-Editors: Alisha Karabinus and Joan Hunt

Culture
Culture Editor: Lisa Hoover

Politics
Politics Editor: Natalie Davis

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

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Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

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SciTech Editor: Lisa McKay

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

More Best of Blogcritics.org Articles of the Week
As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week

Music
Music Editor: Connie Phillips

Books
Books Editor: Warren Kelly

TV/Film
TV/Film Co-Editor Alisha Karabinus

Culture
Culture Editor Lisa Hoover

Politics
Politics Editor Natalie Davis

Sports
Sports Editor: Matthew T. Sussman

Gaming
Gaming Editor: Ken Edwards

Best Articles Written By Blogcritics.org Editorial Team
As chosen by the very same, the self-referential and spotlight seeking thugs that we are!

More Best of Blogcritics.org Articles of the Week
As chosen by Blogcritics who have had their work highlighted by editors last week