adamconner7

Hatchet Departing Editors Section

I was browsing the twice weekly email I get from my alma matters school newspaper, The GW Hatchet, noting a few of the stories that particularly caught my eye (a former fraternity brother convicted, people drunkenly throwing trash out of the windows of thurston a problem on the rise) because as a former Hatchet columnist, still DC resident, and guy having trouble giving up college I still make it a habit to browse the paper when I can. I particularly make time to skim the op-ed section, where I resided during my senior year with an unusually talented crowd of writers many of whom I still trade barbs with. It's how I came upon this editorial about their interview with Speaker Pelosi, quickly passed to her staff and in-turn distributed by them.

Today, marked the beginning of the Hatchet feature I always enjoyed the most, the departing editors farwell columns. Mostly because Kyle Stoneman's was so fucking good that it made me wished he'd written more and designed less.

I wasn't a part of the hatchet that long, so I didn't get to write one, though I did manage to include snakes on a plane in my final column (as was my trademark). I submitted everything electornically, so 2140 G Street was as alien a place to me as anywhere, but being a part of the tradition I think meant something. In a world where I'd go forth with the mission to spin and criticize the news, it was a important lesson in the challenges of making the news. I've often thought back to those columns with a fondness that belies the place they had in my life

Lately, I've missed writing a lot, its part of my evolving consumer to producer ratio theory of the internet I'm working on right now, and I hope to return to this blog for some semblence of righting that balance.

</longest I've written in a while. Sad>

In Which I Grudgingly Admit Kato Is A Decent Blogger

My friend Kato started blogging to see if the thoughts in her head looks as crazy written down as they seem in her head (they do). But she's made her way as a pretty decent blogger and the other day she remembered her friend who died a year ago in the Virginia Tech shootings.

In Which I Grudgingly Admit Kato Is A Decent Blogger

My friend Kato started blogging to see if the thoughts in her head looks as crazy written down as they seem in her head (they do). But she's made her way as a pretty decent blogger and the other day she remembered her friend who died a year ago in the Virginia Tech shootings.

In Which I Grudgingly Admit Kato Is A Decent Blogger

My friend Kato started blogging to see if the thoughts in her head looks as crazy written down as they seem in her head (they do). But she's made her way as a pretty decent blogger and the other day she remembered her friend who died a year ago in the Virginia Tech shootings.

testing the blog it application

its been a while since i've updated my blog. that's going to change soon as i work on my new consumer to producer ratio theory of internet productivity.

Reason I Hate Dulles Airport #5467

And it's not because my luggage didn't make it back from New Hampshire (you win again New Hampshire, you always do).  It's because Dulles is in the middle of fucking nowhere.

I'm willing to cut BWI some slack because at least it has the excuse of being between two major cities (though far closer to Baltimore than DC) but Dulles is really far away from DC (26 miles) and when it was first built it was considered a "white elephant" (thanks wikipedia!).  How far away from DC is Dulles?  It's so far that when you catch a cab back to DC from Dulles they give you a magazine before you get in so you don't die of boredom on the hour long trip.

 

I Wish Yglesias and Mark Cuban Would Link to Me

I see Yglesias has gotten a link from Ted Leonsis yesterday.  Leonsis is the owner of the Washington Capitols (and a friend of my old boss Mark Warner).  While the link was in a response to an earlier Yglesias post it probably had a nice added benefit (from the Washington Post):

A key was using celebrity names that Web surfers would link to. According to Leonsis, there are three major factors in Google's algorithm: The more popular a Web page is, the higher it ranks. The more a Web page is linked to other Web sites, such as other blogs, the higher it ranks. More recent entries also boost rankings.

Leonsis started to post several times a day. Then he added links to
lots of other bloggers, including those talking about local sports and
that of another team owner and blogger, Mark Cuban. Those blogs, in
turn, link to his blog. He also linked his site to the Capitals'.

He
added lots of tags to his blog posts, dropping names of famous people
he dealt with. Nothing happened for a few weeks. But as months went by,
the rankings began to change. "Ted's Take" moved up the page of search
results, and now Leonsis says he has an audience of 800 or 900 on a bad
day, 12,000 to 15,000 on a good one.

Next year, when I relaunch this blog to prevent my writing skills from atrophying, Leonsis will be the model I emulate. 

If This Is Legal...

Than more things should be available so long as you're willing to sign a form/check a box/click a link like this to promise not to do bad things.

I'll Have the WSJ Op-Ed Grande Please, skim, no government intervention.

Chuckles.  Ezra's new morning op-ed round-up over at his new home at The American Prospect.  He reads the WSJ op-ed page so you don't have to!

In this edition we wake up to The Wall Street Journal. Which is sort of like waking up to a steaming mug of hot cocoa on a cold day,
but without the steaming, or the cocoa, or the mug, or any of the associated good feelings, and with a lot more talk of markets.

I Am McLovin links edition

• Long Live McLovin!
  

  Wal-Mart has agreed to stop selling DVDs of the movie "Superbad" in Hawaii whose packaging includes fake Hawaii drivers licenses. The plastic cards were included as a promotional gimmick to recall a key scene from the raunchy 2007 sex comedy, in which a teenager uses a fake Hawaii license while attempting to buy alcohol in another state.Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann and others had complained that the fakes sold at Wal-Mart in a special edition DVD could tempt teens to imitate the scene or otherwise use the cards inappropriately.

• The "Don't Taze Me Bro" guy sells out and you can now buy his soundclip as a ringback for your Verizon Wireless phone.
• Will Wheaton rails against DRM and the DMCA and cites Wellington Grey: "In it, Grey recounts how offended he was when he bought a TomTom GPS that came with a CD in a sealed envelope, the seal on which read, "By breaking this seal, you agree to our contract," but the contract itself was on the CD, behind the seal. In other words, the CD said, "By breaking this seal, you agree to a bunch of secret stuff.""
• The 2008 class of Young People For fellows is announced.  I'm looking forward to meeting them at the 2008 YP4 summit, which will be my third!
• I'm told from multiple sources that Tim Russert absolutely eviscerated Rudy Giuliani today on Meet The Press (it's on my tivo).  Giuliani saying the secret service would protect his mistresses seems to be a highlight.  h/t to HuffPo.
• I'm going to the Ron Paul Blimp DC rally on Tuesday, December 11th, anyone want to join?  If not it'll be overflying DC supposedly, me thinks that the FAA might have other thoughts (though no answer on if the ron paul folks believe in the FAA's authority over them).
• This is how politicans should used use their facebook profiles.  Speaker Pelosi's latest note, photo, and status is about her newly born 7th grandchild. 
  
• Congrats to Garance on her new gig at the Washington Post. 
  
• TUAW has some great gifts for the portable mac toting crowd.