Athenae posts a comment to her query about what people want out of the newspaper. It’s about as good a mission statement for the newspaper business as you’ll want to read. It ought to be nailed to the front door of every Times, Trib, and Observer in the land.

First Draft – What We Need In Newspapers:

I want the local news. I want to know what’s going on in my town today, and what’s on the agenda for tomorrow. I don’t give a frell about Ann Coulter’s opinion or George Will’s opinion and I could give a frack about the recycled WSJ bloviations as well. Spare me those odious filler trivia blocks.


I want to know what’s on the school lunch menu. I want to know what’s on the school board agenda. I want to know what the budget for the county’s road and bridges fund is buying. I want to know what the hours are at my local public library. I want to know what movies are showing in town and what time they start. I want to know what the phone numbers are for the food bank and what the city bus route map looks like, and if you could give me a decent weather forecast that would be a bonus. Put in the phone numbers for the school, and include the names and contact information for the paper’s editorial staff (not just circulation, advertising and the obit desk, thankyouverymuch). While you’re at it, run the names and district numbers, AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK, of my city councilmen, state legislators, and federal Congresscritters.

There’s more, and it’s all good. Go read.

Ego alert: Dave Taylor was kind enough to include my comments as part of a blog post on del.icio.us, the hella cool social bookmarking service. I think the article turned out to be a good intro to the service. There are also some insightful comments about the difficulties with del.icio.us, so be sure to read down a ways.

“Interview With Experts: What’s so cool about del.icio.us?” from The Intuitive Life Business Blog:

UPDATE: Del.icio.us has been bought by Yahoo! This is great news for site creator Joshua Schachter, and even better news for me, because the article I mentioned above has now been linked on both the Yahoo! Search Blog and Slashdot. I even got a name mention on Slashdot. How cool is that?

We watched Control Room this weekend, the documentary about the Arab news network Al Jazeera, set against the beginnings of the Iraq war. it started to bring home to me how horrible this endeavor really is, not because of any graphic depictions of the conflict (there were very few gruesome shots) but because of the way the film wove the American and Arab points of view together. The movie left me with a profound sadness and hopelessness. I do not think we understood what we were getting into, and I do not think we have given ourselves much hope of a positive outcome. We will wear this conflict as a millstone around our national neck for generations.

I came across this story today, and it reinforced the feeling I got from the movie. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the whole thing:

Once Upon a Time…: When Honor Is No Longer Possible: A Nation Beyond Forgiveness:

Some stories are almost impossible to contemplate. This is one of them.

In June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead near the Baghdad airport. His death was most likely a suicide, a single gunshot wound to the head. His wife, who probably understood her husband better than anyone else, had no trouble identifying the cause…

So I’m 5 weeks behind on my blogging. This little morsel from The Editors is still fresh and tasty.

The Poor Man » That’s what I’m talking about (Quoting this post at Bottle of Blog):

When are these people going to get it? You can’t consistently defend the…um…principles of the modern Republican party because they don’t have any. They don’t believe in anything–not anything they can tell you, anyway, and still get re-elected. They have no convinctions.

They have propaganda.

And if you stupidly adopt one of their “talking points” today as a principle, as a conviction, as a value today, you’re going to look like a fucking idiot tomorrow.

Your Life Under Secret Microscope | Bayosphere:

Dan Gillmor reads the WaPo’s article on the FBI’s use of national security letters and doesn’t like what he sees:

This is how tyranny gets its legs: A secrecy-manic administration that is absolutely contemptuous of individual rights—except the right to buy guns and pollute the environment, among other things—and assisted by a Congress that doesn’t even want to know what is happening.

I’m afraid for the future of liberty. We live in a nation that is tossing it overboard, one horrible law at a time.

This blog is dying. This is as apparent to me as it is to anyone who may be reading it. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if anyone reads this. In fact, why are you still looking here? Don’t you have better blogs to be paying your valuable attention to?

Frankly, I haven’t been able to figure out what to do with Stumax.com. Del.icio.us has taken over the burden of keeping all the random links I come across, so I don’t feel the need to track them here so much. I’m spending energy on Seattle Real Estate Talk, The Louverture Project, and a new venture with Lloyd. On top of a full-time job and the recently completed efforts for Seattle Mind Camp (which was a lot of fun, and, I think, something of a success), I’m just not finding a lot of spare time to write.

Nor am I really sure what to write about here. This blog has been an interesting learning experience, but it became something that didn’t quite look like me. I vented a lot about politics and society and stuff—which is certainly part of what I think about—but I never really felt that I matched in this blog the voice I feel I really have—the sardonic, silly, irreverent sense of humor that I prefer to display in my best hours. Plus, my attention and interests wax and wane often enough that this place never really looked cohesive to me.

So, huh. What to do?

Well, I think the blog will stay around for a while, but it needs a re-invention, and that’s something I just don’t have time or energy to contemplate right now. In the meantime, I’ve discovered this cool new site called SuprGlu. SuprGlu attempts to combine a user’s efforts from a variety of sources on a single page. So, my del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, 43 Things things, and my various blogs’ posts all show up in a single feed. So until and unless I get motivated to reconstruct Stumax.com in my image and likeness, the best way to keep up with me is on this page at SuprGlu. (And here’s the RSS feed, if you’re so inclined.)

(By the by, this SuprGlu thing manages to take a step towards an idea I’ve been thinking a lot about recently: the idea of “inventory.” There are lots of places on the web and elsewhere where one can put one’s data (if one wishes), but it can be hard to remember where it all is, or to keep others apprised of its whereabouts. Not all of my friends are very technically inclined, so telling them to check out my Flickr feed or Del.icio.us bookmarks—on top of all the other URLs I’ve given them—is kind of pointless. They simply won’t track them.

(Much in the way the Attention Trust is trying to raise awareness about the notion of gestures of attention, I think we need a better way to inventory all the data we have online. In fact, if we solved the three essential issues of the modern web—identity, attention, and inventory—we’d be some happy campers.)

Well, okay, so that’s it from here for now. I’ll probably add a post here on occasion. Or more often. Or less. Who knows? But I’m still active online, and I wanted you to know where to find me.