This week’s Creative Loafing cover story is a list of (allegedly) the best bloggers in Atlanta. Naturally, one corner of the local blogosphere is unhappy with the story. You can read about it in the comments. GriftDrift’s post sparked a whole thread between several bloggers and Andisheh.

A few comments there are worth highlighting. Amber:

Don’t get too excited about the CL story. Andisheh took great pains to point out that most of the Atlanta blogosphere sucks. Not sure why that was necessary. It’s all very high school esque.

Andisheh:

What’s “bullshit” about pointing out that most local blogs are lousy?

How many local blogs tell you anything of significance that you couldn’t read somewhere else sooner and better? Most of them? Or just some of them?

How many “personal” blogs transcend Dear Diary-ness to offer thoughtful introspection? Most, or just some?

How many news-themed blogs offer information (news or commentary) that didn’t appear somewhere else first? Most or some?

I’m not anti-blogging. I’ve been blogging since 1999 (hence my silly domain name, andy2000.org). I had an Atlanta-themed podcast (My’Lanta) in 2005. I understand, appreciate, and am enthusiastic about the possibilities of Internet media.

Nevertheless, there’s good blogs and there’s bad blogs. There are blogs I like and there are blogs I don’t like. Is it “high school” of me to write that? Perhaps. But not quite as “high school” as pretending that new media is great simply because it’s new.

Grayson:

Making lists is not journalism Andy. It’s just pretty bullshit, and it has nothing to do with the state of social media community in Atlanta.

(The rest of Grayson’s comments are not worth repeating. But if you really want to know why not, I’ll just say there’s a difference between “That’s a stupid idea,” and “You’re a stupid idiot.”)

There’s much more meat in the conversation there, and if you’re interested in all this old media/new media stuff, it’s worth reading all the way through. Amber’s also been compiling a list of relevant posts on other blogs.

I remember when I was young, there was an occasional news story about the impending “information superhighway,” where you might have a whopping 100 channels or more available on your television set. Back then, that seemed exciting. Quickly, the standard joke became, “100 channels, and still there’s nothing good on television.” If I look around, I might still have an old copy of Time, with the cover story about hundreds of television channels streaming straight into your eye. I think I was about 14 years-old at the time.

Anyway. I’m overwhelmed sometimes by all of what’s out there. Right now, there are 82 items sitting in my RSS feed reader (and that’s a low count). I’ve also realized once again that I’ve subscribed to more podcasts than I can keep up with (even if I delete episodes I don’t have a particular interest in). But I don’t really want to unsubscribe from any of it. There’s a lot of really high-quality writing, podcasting and vidcasting out there. But there isn’t really. So I’ve crossed it out.

Quality is too subjective a word. And it’s not really a matter of whether quality can be determined by some borderline old media/new media writer. It’s a quation of whether quality is real. I mean, authenticity isn’t really real when you think about it. Quality is subjective because it’s context-driven. The point of that is that there’s an overwhelming amount of blogs, podcasts and vidcasts that are relevant to me and my interests — and what I pay attention to is actually really great stuff as far as I’m concerned.

Here’s where Andisheh’s mistake lies. It’s not in creating the list. It’s in an inadequate setting of context, which is not a terrible crime — it’s certainly not worth Grayson’s outburst of name calling. In his comment on GriftDrift, Andisheh said, “There are blogs I like and there are blogs I don’t like. Is it ‘high school’ of me to write that?” But in the CL story, every blog listed is introduced with a passage, “Why we love it…”

“I” vs. “We”

There’s an obvious question here of whether Andisheh meant “I” or “we.” Had Andisheh’s story clearly indicated that the blogs listed were his personal favorites, the story probably would have still been skewered by the local bloggers. After all, what makes Andisheh’s opinion worth what he’s getting paid? What makes his opinion worth printing in the local AAN paper, especially on a subject like “bright lights in the blogosphere”? It’s not worth anything, really.

What matters to me, not just as a blogger, or a blog reader, or even as a CL reader, is what I think is relevant to me. I hadn’t heard of most of the blogs listed in the story. And after checking out the other blogs listed in the story, I still don’t really care to add any of their feeds to my reader — they’re not relevant to me.

Being a crazy guy like I am, I’m not afraid to throw in a quick “here’s why this is a good idea in concept.” It’s my simple — well, maybe simple — suggestion. There are blogs out there in the local blogosphere that are meant to reach an audience wide enough to (maybe) appeal to your average CL reader. (CL readers will probably disagree that there is such a thing as the average CL reader — they are, after all, different just like everybody else) Among those select few blogs, there are still only a few beyond that worth putting in print in CL. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong about that.

(And yes, the point is taken that my suggestion is not how the CL story was presented. But I can’t do anything about that. Sorry.)

• LA.Streetsblog: The Joy of Poor Circulation
  “The best parts of Los Angeles are the neighborhoods where ‘traffic circulation’ is lousiest. The market understands this perfectly.”
  (tags: LosAngeles UrbanEconomics transportation TrafficCongestion traffic Cities)
• In Vancouver, civic leaders see a livable city
  The greater the density, the better it is for transit. But density must be sensitively designed so it welcomes people at street level. “Once you get the street right — the first 30 feet of a building — how high you go is not important,”
  (tags: transportation transit TrafficCongestion traffic urbanism urban planning Cities Vancouver)

• American Experience: Alexander Hamilton
  The story of Alexander Hamilton’s life as the most visionary of the nation’s founders, the one who “laid the groundwork for the nation’s modern economy - including the banking system, Wall Street, and an ‘opportunity society’ in which talent and hard work
  (tags: AlexanderHamilton history AmericanHistory NewYork NYC WallStreet pbs)
• A List Apart: Who Needs Headlines?
  “A lot of web copy is written by copywriters who aren’t trained in writing for the web—and much of the rest is written by people who aren’t trained writers at all. If you’re a designer who can consult intelligently on basic copy improvements, you
  (tags: advertising blogging writing webdesign)

Yesterday evening, after spending the day cleaning the condo and catching up on some work, I decided I needed to get out. And I knew I had some grocery shopping I needed to get done. So I took my bike — grocery bag panniers and all — to the local Trader Joe’s.

Celery. Check.
Butter. Check.
Bread. Everything expires tomorrow or the day after. Skip.
Sugar. Check.
Flour. Check.
Ok. They have flour. Where’s the yeast? Not next to the flour.

But they do have gelato! Yum! The package says I should wait ten minutes after taking it out of the freezer before eating. Once I grab it from the freezer section, it will take me ten minutes to get through the register and take my tasty treat home.

But back to the yeast. I searched high and low all over the store.

There is no yeast.

I grabbed the gelato and headed for the register. The cashier asks me if I found everything I was looking for. I hesitated a little, “Eh… Just about.” He asks me if there was anything he could help me find. I told him that I couldn’t find any yeast. Clearly, there was flour, but there was no yeast.

The guy wasn’t sure if Trader Joe’s sells yeast. He asks the guy at the next register. The guy at the next register says, “Yes, but only seasonally.”

I’m dumbfounded. There’s just nothing to say to that but to chuckle laugh out loud. My cashier says, “Ha! I didn’t know there was a yeast season!”

The two of us are laughing together at this concept. Maybe yeast grows best at certain times of the year? Maybe it just sells better at certain times of the year. Like there’s some particular Christian holiday associated with making bread, and that’s the only time Trader Joe’s sells yeast?

Ah, well. There’s no use in pondering. At that point, I paid for the groceries, went home, and noshed on some delicious gelato.

The end.

• Oil: Past the Peak
  “What we need, then, is for people with money to do what money buys you the power to do: improve their lives. And the first improvement is to get out of those miserable island neighborhoods where you own a lot of land but have no time to enjoy it…”
  (tags: carfree culture driving Economics Energy future oil Politics sprawl urban urbanism UrbanEconomics transportation traffic planning cars society)

It’s true. Perhaps.

According to the Energy Information Administration, Carbon Dioxide emissions decreased by 1.3 percent in 2006, even as GDP grew by 3.3 percent.

But there is another press release. Imagine the implications: world energy use is expected to grow by 57 percent between 2004 and 2030. Check out the line graph marked as “Figure 2″ in that release. Apparently, humans have made more use of renewable energy than nuclear energy for quite some time.

Even so, break out your global warming blankets. Coal’s share of the world energy market is expected to grow faster than any other source of energy between now and 2030.

h/t: ScienceDaily.

The AJC is reporting that State Rep. Ben Harbin is facing a charge of DUI:

Rep. Ben Harbin, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, was charged with driving under the influence Sunday after police said his car sheared a utility pole near downtown Atlanta.

Atlanta police said Harbin (R-Evans) was driving on Memorial Drive when he struck the pole shortly after 1 a.m. near Oakland Cemetery. The car traveled another 40 to 50 feet before coming to rest.

This is the same legislator who, in last year’s session, became the infamous train robber. You have to wonder how he now feels about cars and trains.

Somebody’s gotta say it!

h/t Rusty, as reported in the Marietta Daily Journal:

Despite metro-Atlanta’s population now more than 5 million and growing, Cagle dismissed ideas for a light rail system in the metro area.

“The jury is still out on light rail,” he said. “We don’t have the density that can substantiate light rail.”

Meanwhile, in Boston, the costs of the Big Dig continue to skyrocket:

Two top state officials on Monday expressed concerns about the Big Dig’s rising price tag, with Lt. Gov. Tim Murray worrying that the megaproject could take more funds away from other projects and Treasurer Tim Cahill saying state taxpayers shouldn’t be asked for another project bailout.

The Patrick administration plans to tackle the Big Dig’s costs - potentially $333 million higher than the latest estimate - as part of a broader effort to rehaul state transportation financing policies, Murray said.

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, the Reason Foundation, and Georgians for Better Transportation have done a remarkable job of feeding at the trough. With only a few hundreds-of-thousands of dollars worth of investment, the roadbuilding interests they represent earn back billions of dollars in unneeded highway infrastructure investment.

And now they want to bring the Big Dig to Georgia, calling it the fiscally responsible thing to do? Who are they kidding? And who is Casey kidding, to think that tunnels under Atlanta, or a 23-lane-wide highway through Cobb County will solve anything? They will solve nothing. The tax base will never be able to sustain this obscene level of funding to maintain the highways, mostly because the consumers making up that tax base would be paying so much to maintain their own cars.

New roads are fine, as far as I’m concerned — small, connecting roads that strengthen the grid. Even as America’s governments continue to do nothing about the ongoing infrastructure crisis, a cabal of highway lobbyists continue to steer our elected officials astray in asking them to overinvest in precisely the wrong types of transportation infrastructure. It’s a shame because it’s my generation that’s going to pay for a bulk of that infrastructure in an age of declining oil supplies.

Meanwhile, in the next couple of weeks, I’m likely going to sell my car. Thankfully, I can find ways to contribute a little less to all this madness.

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be out of commission. I don’t want to post much (not that I normally post much anyway) while I begin a possible transition to a new host.

So in the meantime, watch this video from StreetFilms. Sam Schwartz discusses some solutions for curbing traffic in New York. As long as developers are going ga-ga over Public-Private Initiatives, could someone in the Atlanta area hire this guy? Certainly his firm could come up with better solutions than a brainless think tank.

Certainly it’s better than doing nothing, and pretending that’s a solution. (h/t Doug)

flickr/diddlbiker

Imagine a commute that looked like this.

h/t: Streetsblog

(Note: You’ve probably noticed the technical difficulties of the site recently. If not fixed soon, I may look at switching hosts.)