Austin’s syndicated newspaper column appears nationwide, and he is a regular on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, commenting frequently on foreign affairs. He has authored four non-fiction books, including A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, and has reported from Europe, Asia, Africa, Central America and the Middle East. A retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, he spent four years as a special consultant on wargames to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and has written two commercially published wargames and three novels, including The Wrong Side of Brightness. Austin is a member of Mystery Writers of America and The Authors Guild.

Austin Bay – The virtue of not knowing everything

My mother was a civil rights activist and my father was an oil company geologist. In some ways, I have my mother’s domestic views and my father’s international views. I grew up in a household where ideas were prevalent. My wife and I have been married for 30 years. She’s for Harriet Miers, and I was underwhelmed. So we had a little on-air tete-a-tete recently where Hugh Hewitt interviewed us. We have two daughters. One is in high school, the other in college. My eldest is interested in a number of things including Asian studies. She’s taking Mandarin.

I was going to be a literature professor, but I got sidetracked. I still teach — it’s good work if you can get it. I played piano in a jazz band in college for three years. If I had to pick a favorite album, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue would be it. I’ve got a number of old Cannonball Adderly albums. The 50’s bop experience — I find it fascinating, compelling and extremely energizing. The rock group I admired the most — and it’s interesting they came back for a curtain call — is Cream.

One of the dangers writers face — and I think all of us to some degree — is that you begin to live in a world of words. I think we need to do, and act, as well as speak. I tell my students all the time, one thing to beware of is believing that people are stupid. The sin of ‘We know; we have special knowledge and everyone else is ignorant’ — that comes of a lack of experience, or from living in a self-reinforcing system. ‘Gee everyone I know agrees with me!’ Every group can get that way if there’s not successful cross-fertilization and the challenging of assumptions. To some extent, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes operated in a world of shared assumptions. The internet is a world of challenged assumptions. Are there drawbacks? Sure, but there are dilettantes and hucksters everywhere.

On his blog – Pure speed and feedback

It was suggested in January of 2002 that I ought to start a blog. But there was a chance I’d be called to active duty in 2003, and I didn’t think that a colonel had any business blogging. I knew I’d be in a position where silence wouldn’t simply be the best choice, it would be the right choice. I wouldn’t be working as an opinion-maker, but a planner. So I put it off. But then of course I didn’t get called up. In fall of 2003 I was again thinking about starting a blog, and then I got an email calling me to active duty.

A couple of people at the National Convention of Editorial Writers asked me why I use a blog. I said, ‘Why not? All it is, is new space.’ What’s fascinating to me about it is the speed and the feedback. I’m somebody who enjoys other people’s ideas and responses. It intrigues me, excites me and informs me — not necessarily in that order. Print is morphing into the internet, and the comments section is a faster version of letters to the editor. That was one of the things that attracted me to blogs.

On our direction

I think it’s a logical outgrowth of the technology, that there would be collectives forming. I think Pajamas Media is organic … Pajamas is a garage band. It’s a garage band that grew up and is to some degree self- selecting, as opposed to the Huffington Post, which is like the Monkees, which was a rock group put together for television. There’s something artificial about it. I think that’s a fair description. Except that I sort of enjoyed the Monkees.