Here’s some more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• This short post at First Draft about our failure in Iraq is depressing as hell, and for my money, Juan Cole makes the real point: “When your helmsman won’t correct course, you as passenger are in big trouble. That is where the US now stands.”

• Speaking of which, Sy Hersh claims they’re at it again...

• Via Josh Marshall, we find this article in the New York Times Magazine on Social Security. It’s a long article, but a must-read for anyone who wants both a history of the program and a clear-eyed look at the current debate. Here are some questions that came to me as I was reading the article: For those who think that Social Security needs to be scrapped, what happens if private accounts fail? Does the government have any responsibility or role in securing the welfare of seniors? Widows? The disabled? You know, the “General Welfare” that our constitution went on about? What’s the backup plan? And what are you planning to do about your own retirement? What would you want to happen to your wife and children if, god forbid, something should happen to you before you had a chance to put a nest egg in place? What benefit accrues to our society if we don’t provide for the basic security of our citizens?

• I’d really like an accounting of where the money for Homeland Security is actually going. First the Bush administration tells the District of Columbia to take money to pay for the inauguration festivities out of its DHS budget. Now, Sid the Fish points us to an AP article about a couple of DHS agents purporting to get involved with a spurious trademark infringement issue.

• I love my Mac. So does this writer for the Orlando Sentinel.

• I’m always interested in articles about good management, having suffered under my share of the opposite. Here’s the transcript of a Podcast from XplanaRadio that talks about creating Great Learning Spaces.

• Ars Technica reviews the latest iteration of my beloved Amiga.

Digby took my breath away with this post, which I hope you’ll read. It contains the text of a speech Bill Clinton gave on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Aside from seconding Digby’s stirring comment about the values of the Democratic Party and why they’re worth fighting for, it’s damn good to remember a time when we had a president that had a heart and a brain. You wanna kick Clinton for his personal peccadilloes, well fair enough. But on the podium, m’boy could bring it.

Here’s more stuff you should be reading, instead of looking here for enlightenment…

• The idea of building a “visual Google”—a searchable visual database—is not only intriguing, it’s a vital next step in the growth of the internet. Via Boing Boing, here’s an interview with a guy who’s working on just such a thing.

• Professor Cline brings it on... rhetorically speaking, of course. What did President Bush mean when he issued his challenge to America’s enemies?

• Via The Poor Man, Frank Rich sniffs the air around the Armstrong Williams scandal. His verdict? It stinks!

• The party’s over (WaPo). Adam Felber brings the President’s 2003 State of the Union Address up to date.

• At The Poor Man: Rathergate vs. Saddam’s WMD – A Quantitative Comparison. Brilliant.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe had a successful trip yesterday to the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. At the ESA’s website, you can see the latest images and hear a recording of the descent recorded by the probe’s onboard microphone.

Unfortunately, the recording isn’t very exciting. Just a bunch of wind noise. I really wanted to hear some aliens screaming, “What the…!? Aieeeeee!”

Sigh.

Came across this interesting site for a Seattle-based arts & literature magazine. It has some cool Flash movies and stuff…

Born Magazine: Art and Literature Collaboration

Sure, snappy and incisive commentary would add value to your blog-reading experience, but you can get that anywhere, can’t you? The way we do it here is to deal in VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!

Here’s more stuff you should have been reading over the last week or so…

• The Medium Lobster reads from the Book of Alberto Gonzales. I say, verily, he scares the holy shit out of me. (Fafblog) (More breakdown of Gonzales’ testimony here. (Slate))

• Michael Bérubé was watching when Colin Powell said (of Abu Ghraib) “Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing.” Still watching.

• A while ago I noted the Seven Rules of Bad Science. The Crackpot Index is another fun way to catch the bastards at it.

• Thanks to the Seattle Times for giving us a bit of good news from the Tsunami. (Reason Hit & Run)

• Ah, those conservative moral values. (News Hounds)

• More conservative values. (Hullabaloo; America Blog)

• Wolfodamus. (Brad DeLong) (Nostrawitz?)

• Brad DeLong lays out the party line on Social Security.

• Via Atrios, via Ben Wikler, the inside scoop reportedly is that the President doesn’t want to hear bad news.

• Digby figures that Bush supporters follow the same dictate.

• Is America turning facist? (MaxSpeak)

• Torture: Holden’s Obsession. Bush shredding the Constitution. Let’s stand up for the Constitution. (Both from Hullabaloo)

The fourth episode of 5 Minutes Max is now podcasting. Download directly here, or subscribe to the Stumax.com RSS feed to have these podcasts delivered directly to your feed reader.

Here’s the transcript of today’s ‘cast, with inline links where appropriate:

Welcome to 5 Minutes Max, an occasional podcast from Stumax.com. Today’s podcast: Pod Fever.

Hi, everybody. I’m Stuart Maxwell and this is 5 Minutes Max for January 11, 2005. The following content may not be worksafe, it might raise your hackles, and it’s possible that it will sap your will to live. But remember our motto: Hey, at least it’s only 5 minutes. If even that isn’t enough for you, you can find links and show notes and leave me a message at Stumax.com… that’s s-t-u-m-a-x.com.

OK. Ready? Let’s go…

A few days ago, Scott Fletcher had what I thought was quite a good rant about the state of podcasting. If you haven’t listened to it yet, his podcast can be found at diagonaluniverse.com/mt/

Scott makes a lot of good points that I won’t take the time to enumerate here, but I did want to respond to one thing in particular. Scott argues that the current hype around podcasting is that everyone will eventually become a podcaster. But I think that what’s more important to focus on, is not that everybody will become a podcaster, but that anybody can become a podcaster. And when anyone can become a podcaster, then a whole new range of creative voices can be heard. Whether it’s throwbacks like The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd or fluffy time-fillers like the Sound of the Day, podcasting has lifted the lid on a chest full of shiny new toys for us to play with.

Of course, like any other new medium, the initial rush of unfettered experimentation will at some point give way to a wave of more considered productions. In his rant, Scott argues that there will be “genres” by which I think he means “ages or phases” of podcasting. He’s spot on about that. Right now we’re in the gold rush phase, where everyone races to the new space to stake a claim. Some of the early adopters will make fortunes and most will fade back into obscurity, but the interesting thing to watch will be when next wave hits, and the one after that. The podcasters who’ve learned from the mistakes and successes of the first adopters will be the real innovators; they’ll figure out how to use this medium. (By the way, the only people guaranteed to make money in any gold rush are the outfitters. If you can supply the prospectors with everything they need to survive in the wilderness, you’re bound to make a fortune.)

In the meantime, every new movement needs a figurehead, and that’s the role that Adam Curry is performing brilliantly. Adam’s tech and radio experience makes him a godsend for the new medium, but he’s only a midwife for this movement. I guarantee you he doesn’t know any more than anyone else about what podcasting will eventually become. I love the Daily Source Code and I dig what Adam and Dave Winer have done in terms of getting this phenomenon started. But Adam is trapped by his experience into making the flawed assumption that podcasting is going to be like radio, that it’s going to be like a super radio that everyone can take with them. And, yeah, sort of, it will be, but mostly no it’s going to be something completely different that nobody quite understands yet—especially not Adam and Dave. However, Adam and Dave are building the bridge to the new world, and that’s no small thing to be thankful for.

It’s exciting to see podcasting take off. TV and radio have long since bored me to tears, but podcasting is reminding me of the value of experiencing things with my ears. It’s reviving my sense of hearing. I loved the freshness and good-natured innocence of the guy who uploaded the podcast he recorded on his cassette tape player. The Sound of the Day is so pointless and yet it’s so over-the-top and goofy that I actually look forward to hearing it every day. IT Conversations, Reel Reviews, Whole Wheat Radio, Indie Feed, and others bring me fresh views and perspectives that I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.

Will these be around a year from now? I don’t think so, though who knows? I’m sure 5 Minutes Max won’t be around then, but I don’t think that’s the point. We’re all just trying to understand what this new thing can do. We’re staking our ground and digging our mines and trying to hit the mother lode… even as most of us will be content to return home with a few nuggets or a pouch of gold dust.

Podcasting’s advantage over traditional media is that podcasting doesn’t require an audience, it’s dirt cheap to produce, and, though higher production quality will be important for those shows that hope to find the widest audience, high quality audio just isn’t a prerequisite for sharing your thoughts or creativity. So, just as the web has enabled personal expression for folks with a wide range of tools and abilities, podcasting is likely to hang around for a long time, providing everything from the stupid to the sublime. Because, unlike a finite vein of gold, human creativity is a limitless spring, requiring only the right tools to unlock it.

That’s what I think, anyway. What do you think: Is podcasting the next television, or is it destined to go the way of the Pet Rock? Leave me a comment at Stumax—that’s s-t-u-m-a-x—dot com. You can also send an email to 5 … that’s the number 5… at stumax.com. This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. I’m Stuart Maxwell, join me some other time for 5 Minutes Max.

Via The Regular:

[George] Clooney’s excellent letter in response to O’Reilly’s tirade against Clooney for organizing a Tsunami relief fundraiser, of all things. Just another part of the bizarre Right-Wing war on celebrities.

Wanna see some smack down? Read it. Read it now.

I have a lot of friends working in the entertainment industry and sometimes they show up in the most surprising places. I got a charge out of seeing my friend Matt Young pop up in this picture on coolgov.com.

That’s Matt in the middle, waiting for the elevator door to open. CoolGov also has the link to the public service announcement that the still came from. If you’re in LA, check out Matt’s band, Captain Genius.

I wish I’d had something like this when I first moved to Seattle. Check out the Starbucks Drinks Simplified page. Think of it like an Starbucks/English dictionary. (via BoingBoing)