Building on the positive comments I received regarding my first podcast today’s word is interstitial. Interstitial is one of those, possibly pretentious, specialized jargon words.

The straight literal definition is the space between two states.

In the context of the web it refers to the page between pages. Two great sites that frequently use them are Yahoo! Games and
Salon. They use them to show you an ad before you get to the stuff you want.

In the case of Yahoo! Games you get to see an ad before you get to play a free game of backgammon. Salon uses them the same way- “You want to read this article? Watch this ad.” The Salon interstitials, because of their high-concept multimedia content, are usually entertaining. The articles are great too.

There are many other contexts where the term interstitial is used. Like TV for example. TV usage is pretty similar to the web- a little content before the stuff you want to see like segues between stories on Entertainment Tonight and the brief network plugs after the ads but before the show.

The medical community uses interstitial to describe unimportant parts of the body that are in between the important parts.

Thanks to Gordon Smith for commenting on my Soliloquy podcast. Gordon, I think you are right. A lot of podcasters are using Soliloquy tongue-in-cheek.

Gordon has a cool bog. “A pictorial journal of life in rural Australia.” Some stunning, beautiful pictures of nature and the mundane, also beautiful. He also has an audioBlog that accompanies and comments on the photos. His site is provides all the content you need for one of those new photo iPods.

According to David Brooks’ editorial in yesterday’s New York Times we need to understand exurbia to understand Bush’s victory.

Now this word exurbia, I hadn’t heard or seen it before so I thought what a great word for todays podcast.

Exurbia – a residential area outside of a city and beyond suburbia

Beyond suburbia, that is far away, so far people living there have no ties to an urban center. The people who live in exurbs like Henderson, NV or Mesa, AZ work and live in their world or maybe they commute to a suburb but they don’t partake of the city life.

I haven’t read Brooks’ book, On Paradise Drive, but I think he is right these exurbanites were key in the election and their power is very underestimated. As Brooks points our there are more people living in Mesa Arizona than live in St. Louis or Minneapolis.

I wonder if the elections in 2008 will coin terms like “exurban evangelicals” or
or if suburban mega malls will lament the “exurban flight.” Remember you heard them here first.

UPDATE (8/15/05): NY Times Article:

The term “exurb” was coined in the 1950’s in “The Exurbanites” by A. C. Spectorsky, a social historian, to describe semirural areas far outside cities where wealthy people had country estates.

To help us describe our court and media battles, todays word is polemic.

Polemic- A controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine. Polemic can also be used to describe a person engaged in or inclined to controversy, argument, or refutation.
Paul Wolfowitz is a neo con polemic. But on the other hand Amy Goodman’s show Democracy Now! is also polemical.

I was asked today if I feel sad that I don’t get to vote here. And I replied I take solace if the fact that as a Canadian I am not hated around the world and unlike Americans I am allowed to visit Cuba. America land of the free- mostly. I guess that is a little polemical.