Can’t Peddle 55
Megan McArdle argues that drivers who exceed the speed limit in their cars have no right to get angry at bikers who run stop signs and red lights, weave in and out of traffic, and otherwise ignore traffic laws. Plus, because bikes are smaller and slower, they're not going to cause any harm: The reason cops don't ticket bikers when they ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 14, 2008 13:53
Google Walking Directions
Google Maps is beta testing a new "walking directions" feature, Alex Chitu reports. Apparently, it's just being tested out on a small number of randomly selected users. Since I wasn't among those selected, I was a bit dubious since I was unable to personally verify, let alone test, said service. A quick search of another of Google's products, its ubiquitous ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 8, 2008 16:31
Blog Linking Less Important?
Louis Gray believes the importance of blog linkage is declining, noting that, "I've seen traffic from other blogs to be driving an ever-declining percentage of visits to my site, swamped by social media tools, aggregation sites, and of course, Google search." He offers three likely explanations: 1. People are relying on aggregators to find them new sources of information, including ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 8, 2008 08:17
Homosexual Sets World Sprint Record
Tyson Homosexual ran 100 meters in a wind-aided 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials today, in what would have been world record time. I mean, Tyson Gay. Leftie People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch blog reports that, In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 30, 2008 19:32
Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Blogs
Some Obama supporters are apparently taking advantage of Google's terms of service to silence anti-Obama blogs, Simon Owens of Bloggasm reports. The company automatically shuts down sites upon receipt of TOS violation claims until they're able to do a human audit, a rather slow process with given little priority on the free BlogSpot service. After some digging it became apparent ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 30, 2008 12:30
Network News Ignoring Iraq, Afghanistan
Reporters covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having an increasingly difficult time of getting stories onto the network news, Brian Stelter reports for the NYT. According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 23, 2008 08:06
Wire Service Theft
Bernhard Warner brings an interesting perspective to the fight between the AP and the blogosphere over copyright law. In attempting to bolster the AP's case, he actually weakens it considerably. To understand where the AP is coming from with this caveman approach to copyright enforcement, you have to understand what it’s like to work for a news wire. When I joined ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 22, 2008 09:03
5 Reasons to Love $4 Gas
The gang at Foreign Policy wants you to know that, "Sure, it’s ruining the global economy and making everyone miserable, but there’s an underappreciated upside to the high price of oil." They'd have to be awfully good to offset ruining the economy and making everyone miserable, no? Well, here they are: Slightly more people may be taking mass transit. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 20, 2008 07:24
Decline of Political Blogs?
Aaron Brazell, who used to blog politics but now mostly does tech and social media, notes something interesting: While political blogs are blogging in terms of media coverage of the phenomenon, they're actually a relatively small part of the story. It's not just that, as we all know, personal diary blogs far outnumber others in sheer volume but ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 10, 2008 11:32
Senate Privatizes Restaurants
Tired of lousy food, inept management, and massive cost overruns, the Senate is going to privatize its restaurants. Like the House did during the Reagan administration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Rules and Administrations Committee, which oversees the operation of the Senate, said she had no choice. "It's cratering," she said of the restaurant system. "Candidly, I don't ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 10, 2008 07:55
