But it's worth a listen. Heck, I even turned Greta down for it.

Yes, Mickey, that is damning it with faint praise, but it's what happened to be on at the time that I linked to it from Glenn's site. I would have turned down Hannity and Colmes, too, and probably O'Reilly, unless he had some really interesting guest on (a rare event). But not Brit Hume.

Here's the problem. Political commentary doesn't make for compelling video, even if it offers the entertainment of watching human robots (a combination of natural ability, and many frozen frames as the video buffer fills up). Even on high-bandwidth media (i.e., my satellite dish), talking heads are talking heads, and most of the time I rarely watch, but listen to it as I'm doing things elsewhere in the house. Well, unless Lauri Dhue, or Megyn Kendall, or various other newsbabes come on. Then, for some strange reason, I feel compelled to actually come into the room to view the screen. I've no idea why, but perhaps Robert Wright does.

But I thought the conversation was interesting, and much easier on the ears than the shout shows, and more intelligent than most of them as well. So one suggestion might be to bag the video, because it really is very little value added, and do bloggingmouths.radio instead. Bandwidth doesn't yet grow on trees, and sticking with audio would open up the audience to the dialup crowd, and allow easier storage of shows, both for users and the server, with reduced bandwidth charges for all.

But even then, the question is, what is the value of listening to guys (and gals) talk, as opposed to reading what they write, which for me has a much higher baud rate for lower bandwidth. I had the same problem in college. I rarely attended the lectures, unless I explicitly had to in order to get the grade, because I don't take information in that well through my ears, at least if I want to retain it. I always preferred to read the book, which offered me much more data in a given amount of time than having to listen to someone slowly mouth the words.

But given that I do keep a news channel on in background when I'm working, and I could download the audio and listen to it while exercising or out for a walk, one could certainly do worse than checking them out. As I mentioned up at the top, I know I was. Doing worse, that is.

Everyone could check out Edward Tufte. He's a Yale professor who's managed to quantify your impressions.

I went to one of Tufte's seminars some years ago. He held up a newspaper and noted that the information above the fold on page 1 was as much or more information as is contained in the typical half hour TV newscast.

This morning while I was preparing and eating breakfast I read the Washington Post because it's my local paper. I read articles about Alito's conservative activist past, a legal case about special-ed students in schools and the status of legislation on detainees. In addition I skimmed opinion pieces by Richard Cohen on elitist control of the courts, E. J. Dionne's take on what Bush is saying (Dionne is a liberal Democrat) about the Iraq war, editorials on detainees and Washington baseball. Other articles briefly examined included one on the ongoing sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic church and the situation in France. In the Style section there was a very interesting article on the tests used to enforce the drunk driving laws. Too many of the tests appear quite worthless. On the comics pages Sally Forth is still struggling with getting the new refrigerator hooked up and in For Better or Worse the teen daughter April is coping with acne. That's in less time than the typical newscast.

Some liberals call Fox News Faux News. Hell, from my viewpoint, they're all Faux News. Unless it's something is currently happening, I ignore TV news. The last time I can actually remember watching TV news was 9/11/2001.

I enjoyed the webcast of Mr. Kaus and Mr. Wright. I actually watched some of it twice, because I didn't realize who they were the first time.

Bloggingheads.tv may be a niche concept, but I am definitely part of their niche audience. It is smart, funny, clever, and worthwhile, and I expect others will agree with me.

Two suggestions for them, though: pick up the pace of conversation a little bit, and chop the length from twenty minutes to ten minutes.

I agree; I'd reather read about it. The printed word is capable of passing more information more quickly (and with less disturbance to others in the room) than the spoken word. Reasonably fast, but understandable, speech is of the order of 120 words/minute. Poor reading is about 200 w/m. A good reader will do something like 500-1000 w/m.

Baud is a rate; therefore, baud rate is a superfluous redundancy.