Tuesday, November 27, 2001

The Daily Huh

Eric Norlin points us to this interview with Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360, co-founder of Spy magazine, former editor-in-cheif of both Spy and New York magazines, former columnist for the New Yorker, etc. The interview is in iwantmedia.com, and goes along in an agreeably yada direction until Kurt says this about the decline of print media:

The digital revolution -- Internet mania, if you will -- is another cause: the excitement and promise of online media sucked lots of creative energy and resources away from magazines. Nothing has really replaced magazines in this sense -- there is no white-hot intellectual/creative center of the Net, media-wise, and there wasn't even during the late '90s.

Well, maybe it's because they're not "media," dude. They have no "center." Around here it's all edge, all the time.

Old tech rocks

I guess KPFK's new transmitter is running, because the signal (on 90.7fm) sounds huge, which befits what is technically the biggest FM signal in the country (112,000 watts from the top of Mt. Wilson above Los Angeles).

Though for me nothing will ever top WABC/770, which still radiates from this facility here in New Jersey, a few blocks away from where I grew up. You could hear the station's jingles in the toaster, the rain gutters and behind every TV station's audio. You could drive to Washington, D.C. or Boston and still get it on a car radio, by day or night. And at night it blasted all over half the country. I remember when I was fifteen in 1963, arriving late one night before Easter at my aunt & uncle's house in North Carolina after a long drive down from New Jersey, being sent up to the unfinished attic space where my five cousins bunked in one big room, like farm animals. On one of the beds a late '50s vintage Hitachi 8-transistor portable radio was playing "Blue on Blue," by Bobby Vinton. The song ended and on came Charlie Greer and the WABC jingle, followed by one of his surreal pitches for "Dennison's, a men's clothier, Route 22, Union, New Jersey, open 10am to 5 the next morning. We've got shirts with fronts and backs and buttons to match. You've got the time, we've got the threads. Just come on down. Money talks, nobody walks..."

Spinstant messaging

I've got a piece on Jabber, and the questions it asks with Andre's help, over at the new Linux Journal site.

Does George know?

Thomas Friedman, who is establishing himself as the best newspaper columnist of our New Times, has a column today titled The Real War. He says —

We're not fighting to eradicate "terrorism." Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. World War II and the cold war were fought to defeat secular totalitarianism — Nazism and Communism — and World War III is a battle against religious totalitarianism, a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated. That's bin Ladenism. But unlike Nazism, religious totalitarianism can't be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.

Good point. And good luck with it.

Supremo

Glenn points out that Juan Valdez is real after all. Even though his name is Sánchez.

Whatever!

I'm trying to imagine what Tom Peters! would say if he couldn't use an exclamation mark.