In his Daily Source Code edition #560, for March 9,  Curry gushed about a “fantastic” program he saw on channel 4 in the UK, “The Global Warming Swindle.” (Listen to the DSC at about 24:37 from the beginning to hear this segment.)

As Curry presented it, this TV program is about the “other side” of the global warming “debate,” in which the notion of man-made global warming is challenged. According to the basic counter-argument presented here, global warming is a “natural” phenomenon, and human activity has nothing to do with it.

I actually do not claim sufficient knowledge to refute either Al Gore’s arguments nor the arguments presented here. I find the preponderance of evidence in “An Inconvenient Truth” more convincing than the evidence presented by a small group of people in the Channel 4 piece. I don’t think there is any question that we are a greedy people, and that at the very least our greed and laziness befoul the earth every day. It doesn’t seem to require a dramatic leap of logic to conclude that increasing  human CO2 emissions would contribute dramatically to global warming.

But Adam Curry represents a peculiar constituency in the “anti-Gore” camp: a super-wealthy, rather poorly informed consumer of massive amounts of energy.

Curry’s display of ignorance reached mind-blowing proportions at about 30:56 into his DSC episode:

By the way, we’re all made of carbon dioxide. You know, like, I’m like 98 percent carbon dioxide. Which includes water. [laughter] You know, it’s not like a bad thing. It’s not like a poison, you know? Carbon dioxide is what makes things grow.

Adam Curry has been accused more than once of being full of hot air, but this is, I think, the first time he has admitted it so openly and earnestly. As I say, I’m not a scientist, but I really, truly don’t think I’m mostly made of the gas I expel when I exhale. And I’m almost certain there is no water (H2O) in carbon dioxide (CO2).

As long as the anti-Gore bunch has such public advocates, the “debate” will probably remain one-sided in favor of the green-cautious camp. Good.

I have to admit they got better pics than I did. But then, they were allowed to crawl all over the upper deck, while I had to peer in from outside.

The reaction of Tom Shales of the WaPo was to put down the whole event as a “bore and a horror” (a proper response for the TV maven of a major East-Coast paper, I guess). Tom didn’t particularly like Ellen DeGeneres as the host. The Boston Globe was even more curmudgeonly, suggesting that Ellen put everybody to sleep. I don’t know what Matthew Gilbert at the Globe is thinking. It wasn’t Ellen who put us to sleep. It was the whole pompous affair.Ellen was a fantastic host, in my opinion. The reason she was so good is because she playfully yet ruthlessly punctured the gassy, self-important Hollywood elite and their quasi-royal airs. When she brought out the vacuum cleaner sometime after 11:00 PM, I thought it was a stroke of genius.

Shales says Ellen lacked the “stature” of previous Oscar hosts. So presumably Tom wanted an even more royal air to the whole proceeding. I preferred having a showbiz insider who is really also a bemused fan. I don’t think overly inflated stars need more inflating.

Ellen was the best host since Johnny Carson. Hope she does it again next year.

Who stands to benefit? Well, Podshow, certainly, to the extent there’s any publicity wash from this campaign. Black Lab, no doubt: lots of people who really don’t know or like them buying their track. But “amateur media”? Come on, give me a break!

Black Lab is a band whose music I don’t really love; it’s just not my style. Even Podshow’s number one satellite repairman P.W. Fenton said the same thing on his most recent Digital Flotsam podcast. I’d never listen to them on my own.

So my participating in this campaign is like putting 99¢ into some Salvation Army kettle somewhere, except the kettle really belongs to this suburban kid who’s trying to raise money for a new drum kit, not feed the poor. And I’d be doing it to make a point to…somebody?

On the other hand, I can think of a zillion bands I’d rather “bum rush” up the charts. How about my son’s band, Wetbrain? Why shouldn’t a bunch of 20-somethings in Richmond who do original art-rock get bum rushed?

Incidentally, I did some research on this verb “to bum rush” yesterday, because I didn’t get that either. But it is a verb in somewhat limited slang usage. According to the Random House Unabridged (via dictionary.com), it started in the late 1980s, and means “to force one’s way into; crash.” I have to say, I’ve never heard it, but then, I’m a geezer.

And to anybody who listens to or looks at media on the Internet, it’s obvious that there is no more media hegemony. When I was 10 years old, 73 million people saw the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. That was possible because there were only three television networks in 1964. No choice. Getting on Sullivan meant a major show-business career boost–even for performers who weren’t that great.

The Beatles simply could not happen right now. There’s not a single place everybody looks. For every person who is plugged into American Idol, there are three or four (or more) who have no clue what’s happening on it, nor could they care less.

Two years ago, when we “second-wave” podcasters got started, we truly thought we were going to change the media world: “Bring the big media to their knees!” was our cry. About a year ago, that idea began to seem a bit quaint to me.

But now, Clear Channel/Walt Disney/NYT truly are crumbling. And it’s because people listen to “MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, satellite radio, XBox, iPods, et al.”, to quote Frank Ahrens. So it’s not podcasting, per se, that has caused the crumble. But we’re surely part of it.

This is true even as we bash each other about “who’s most important.”

Bill’s cousin Gilbert, when he informs Bill that they are the lone survivors of the family line. (This episode aired February 18, 2007.)

Mike Judge is a clever guy, in my humble opinion.

This morning, Tuesday, there is not a drop on the ground. No snow, no sleet, no wintry mix. Nothing. There may be some during the day today. This means, of course, that we will go to school today and either drive home in a nasty, dangerous mess, or not at all.

I have to remember, when these kinds of warnings are on the horizon, how absolutely, dramatically wrong the mass-media weather prognosticators can be.

Steve Jobs may be a genius presenter, but even so, it looks like a really neat product. Yes, I know it’s not open to the installation of other applications, but I don’t run any downloaded applications on the Sony-Ericcson W600i I use right now. The apps on the iPhone (Safari, in particular) are all I’m ever going to use on a phone/PDA.

I won’t buy one as soon as it comes out. I’ll give myself some months to cool off about it, and to let Apple get the bugs get worked out. But I probably will get one. I’m already a Cingular customer, so I wouldn’t have to switch. And I don’t have a video iPod, so that might be a marginal justification for that aspect of it.

Okay, y’all tell me now how stupid and starstruck I am. I don’t care. If it does the things Jobs showed off in the demo, and if it’ll connect up to my Prius’s Bluetooth connection, then I’m sold.

But now it seems as though they’re just one of the big boys.

They’ve sent PodcastReady a cease and desist letter instructing them to stop using the word “podcast” in their business name.

Wha?

The word podcast entered the New Oxford American Dictionary last year. It was named the “word of the year” by Oxford University Press. It’s been around for two years. It is now accepted as the word designating an independently-produced audio made available for downloading on the internet.

Now Apple says it’s their word. I guess maybe they have their reasons, but this really looks like hubris to me.

The Apple iTunes Music Store, of course, has a whole division devoted to “podcasts,” but now, apparently, it’s only okay to call them that if you are using the iTunes Music Store to find them.

Ridiculous. I may mention something about this in the podcast–uh oh, I mean independent audio production–I do later on today.

I think Apple may be surprised at the breadth of negative response about this. My own podc…independent internet audio show has several thousand listeners who are NOT podcasting geeks. However, they all use the word “podcast” to refer to these things. I heard the word used at a high school back-to-school night earlier this week, by a non-geek French teacher who plans to use them in class. “Podcast” is what they’re called. We’ve had this discussion for the past two years, and we’ve all agreed that the train pulled out of the station in the fall of 2004.

So if we don’t call them podcasts, what do we call them?

(If you’re a blogger, please blog about this. Apple pays attention to the blogosphere.)

I had signed up to subscribe to this through Dan Klass’s website, and expected to get a print copy in the mail this month sometime. I also received a login ID and password to get access to the online features of the magazine.

When I tried to log in today, my information didn’t work. The magazine’s website didn’t recognize the information they had given me. Frustrating!

But I also found out, just by prowling around the site, that the print edition of this magazine will never come out. This is instead going to be solely an online publication, and paid subscribers will receive their money back.

This is no surprise to me, really. I always wondered whether the podcast world really had need of a paper magazine that arrived in the snail-mail every month, just like Atlantic Monthly or National Geographic. This is Web 2.0, after all! We can create radio shows that go out to the whole world and each other. We’re all subscribed to 20 or 30 bulletin boards or RSS feeds or blogs or whatever. I read the New York Times online. I link to the Washington Post whenever I can in my blog.

In contast to all this new online media, I received my subscription renewal notice in the mail yesterday for Genii, the Conjuror’s Magazine. I will renew my subscription to Genii, because it makes sense. The secrets of magic are ancient and arcane, and they resist being disseminated wholesale on the internet. (Which is not to say they cannot be found on the internet; but serious magicians deplore the internet publication of the arcana of magic and illusion.) Magicians do love their books and paper magazines. 

There’s a place for old media, and there’s a place for new media. But the fate of ID3 Podcast Magazine makes me wonder further what the future of “paid” media will be.

As consumers of mediated information (“mediated” being, of course, related to “media”), we have long been used to, and willing to, pay for media content, including the print media. Now, with the explosion of blogs and podcasts, absolutely everyone with a computer and decent internet hookup can and may publish.

Will there remain a place for “professional reporters” or “journalists” in the future? Even in this blogpost, I can link to a related article in the Washington Post and cause the Post to point back to my blog–thus undermining the privileged position of the “professional” journalists who are paid to write for that great newspaper. (See? I just forced the Post to link back to me by linking to a blog entry by Howard Kurtz, their media writer.)

When everybody can create content, will there remain a demand for “professional” content that people will be willing to pay for? Will there be a way to earn a living in the future as a journalist? (This question was posed by Annik Rubens to Steffen of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in edition #315 of Schlaflos in München. If you understand German, it’s a great discussion.)

Lately I have become a fan of a charming husband-and-wife podcast called Me and the Bean, produced by Chad and Amanda (“me” and “the Bean”) in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. I don’t think I am showing any disrespect to them when I say that their podcast is a modest project. They don’t line up celebrity interviews or discover new musical artists (although one of Chad’s projects, Locals Only, features independent music from around northwestern North Carolina). All they do is talk about their friends and their lives as parents of young kids.

Me and the Bean is like a semi-weekly newsletter to friends. We all listen, from all corners of the globe, and respond to them via email, voicemail, and MP3 audio files. It is nothing like “regular radio,” nor does it aspire to be.

When I wrote down the notes from which I’m writing this entry, I was listening to the show. Chad had just read an email from somebody who was listening while doing one of those mind-numbing survival jobs, like cleaning offices or something.

It occurred to me that podcasting beguiles the time in an empowering way. Not only is there a customizable content stream to listen to, but it’s a kind of content anybody can create. So you listen to your own special list of podcasts, and then you create your own audio files and respond back.

An audio podcast is essentially much different from a blog. With a podcast I can take the content with me; for a blog, I generally need to be online and hooked up to the Internet to truly get the essence of it (links and trackbacks and comments). To read a blog on a web-enabled cellphone, for example, would be just too tedious. I cannot participate in a blog, even in receptor mode, while riding on a subway train.

But while writing the notes for this blogpost, I was hearing (i.e., consuming) Me and the Bean (and Schlaflos in München and all the other shows to which I subscribe) on the Orange Line of the Washington Metro while riding home from an afternoon in DC.

Categories: blogging, podcast, media, annikrubens, meandthebean