I admire this Obama response

From tonight's news conference:

It took us a couple of days [to respond to the outrage du jour] because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.

I'm surprised Obama didn't follow up with "He can go about his business. Move along."

The Story of O ('Reilly)

Bill O'Reilly, you old devil!.

Speaking of Mr. Welles...

You have to check out this clip from the pilot of Orson Welles's 1978 interview show, never aired or released:

"How do you do, Mr. Welles."

Beware the itemized lists of March

A beautiful weekend in Chicago! The ♥G♥ and I took Gilbert on two walks. Items:

• Grown up Calvin & Hobbes. Make sure to check out the essay on Fight Club.
• Visual and Interactive Guides to the Economic Crisis, from 10,000 Words.
• Check out the Perfect Magic Cube.
• Spring coming - Want to sit on back deck with Gilbert and a cigar and read: Orson Welles at Work, What Would Google Do?, and The Wikipedia Revolution. (Here's a bunch of podcasts featuring TWR author Andrew Lih.)
  
• Snag Films - Lots of documentaries. Excerpt: SnagFilms is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve. SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web.
• If you have never seen Grey Gardens, you need to. If you have seen it, check out this interview:
  
  
  
• Mark Ford: Cartoon Genius
  

Been working on Wikipedia page on Booknotes interviews

For almost 20 years, I have admired C-Span founder Brian Lamb tremendously, and I anticipate that he will remain one of my heroes for the rest of my life. He is such an excellent interviewer, and his whole philosophy is about making ideas and information available to any who are interested. He is very much a demythologizer of political and media processes, and treats Joe Schmoe American with the same respect as he treats heads of state and Nobel laureates.

Lamb hosted the unique author interview show Booknotes for 15 years. The questions and discussion were and are head and shoulders above those of practically any other show -- One full hour (sometimes two), no commercials, serious non-fiction books, no repeats of guests. A good number of the books and authors that I delved into during those years (and in the years since) I was introduced to by C-Span and Booknotes. It occurred to me a while ago (last June, actually) that it would be great to incorporate a list of these authors, books, and topics into Wikipedia, where much has been written about most of them, but never assembled in this context. Soooo... the article List of Booknotes interviews was born. It has taken a bunch of doing (fitting in edits and organization when I had time) but it's actually in pretty decent shape now. You also can see the to-do list at the article's discussion page if you want to pitch in on anything.

Happy Pi Day! (tomorrow)