Where C-SPAN is the local TV news
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| The Washington Canard Where C-SPAN is the local TV news |
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Tuesday, July 08, 2008
NO MAO! NO MAO! Other blogs, such as (hat tip) Marginal Revolution, are asking readers to guess what's missing from China's new 10-Yuan note. I, on the other hand, have already mentioned the fact as a cheap pun in the headline:  Apparently taking John Lennon's advice about carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, this removal is one more encouraging step toward a society itself a couple times removed from "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Many of the economic reforms have been instituted, and now it is only the symbolic affectations that remain. Sometimes those are even more difficult to change. Thursday, July 03, 2008
THE BEUTLER FILES: 30 CENT EDITION Cross-posted from Blog P.I. The biggest news in the District's blogging circles yesterday had nothing to do with John McCain's campaign shakeup or Barack Obama's rhetorical shift centerward but the inexplicable shooting of one of liberal blogging's up-and-comers, Brian Beutler. Early in the day I'd seen Dave Weigel's IM message reading "Brian Beutler for Batman/Mayor" but did not understand the context. Hours later the news broke beyond his close friends, and thankfully along with it that he is hospitalized at Washington Hospital Center and should recover. The blog tributes flowed in, bringing with it a wave of complaints about the relative safety of Northwest Washington. Megan McArdle started with "I just found out a friend of mine got shot three times in the stomach last night in my neighborhood during a mugging," and though vowing to delete any opportunistic comments about District v. Heller, she couldn't avoid addressing public safety: When DC does try to "do something", it's something stupid and quasi-fascist like locking down neighborhoods instead of putting more cops on the beat and using the advanced police tactics that are now the norm in every other city. From what I know, Fenty seems like a better mayor than DC's previous disasters, but the city government remains corrupt and incompetent. No one should have to spend their lives feeling this afraid.The American Spectator's J.P. Freire concurred: I can only echo Megan's thoughts about the state of crime (and crime-fighting) in this city -- it reminds me of the needless and violent murder of the New York Times's David Rosenbaum, who was left unaided, ailing on the sidewalk, ignored in his death. There's an illusion of safety in this city, conveyed by the economic development and the swollen demographics familiar from college. But we're not on college campuses where things feel safe (and are sometimes very much not). We're in a city, a particularly criminal one.John Aravosis offered more details on the neighborhood in question: The neighborhood he was shot in, like a 5 minute walk from me, has an ongoing gang war on the very corner he was shot. It's been going on for years. And years. And years. But DC is such an inept city, that all we hear about is how fighting crime is hard work. Sound familiar? I've looked at condos right next to where he was shot. $400,000 for a one bedroom. I laugh when I see places like that, because I know there's a gang war going on about 100 feet away. And now this would be our second mugging-shooting we've had in the last month or so.And I'm pretty much in agreement with all of this. I was once the victim of random violence myself, albeit of a much less serious nature: more than a year ago I was struck in the head by an unseen assailant at about 3:00 a.m. on a side-street just above Florida Avenue. It wasn't a mugging; I just kept walking, hoping that no sudden movements would pay off, and there was no follow-up attack. I'm pretty sure it was done on a dare or for the thrill, likely both. And it shook me from my complacency, at least for awhile. Shortly after, I moved one neighborhood over -- to approximately three blocks north of where Beutler was shot on Wednesday morning. But it wasn't all (understandable) hand-wringing about the state of the city. Nicknaming Beutler "30 Cent" after the projectile-prone rapper, Dave Weigel reported: Collaboration began on a lengthy list of "Brian Beutler Facts," inspired by the (now surely played out) list of oddball stories of Chuck Norris. Sample entries: "Lance Armstrong wears a Brian Beutler bracelet." "The active ingredient in Levitra is Brian Beutler." "Meatloaf would do that for Brian Beutler."And Julian Sanchez followed up: Brian Beutler is awesome. If you read his phenomenal reporting, count yourself lucky. If you know him, count yourself even luckier. (2) You can add your wishes for a speedy recovery at the first link. I'm not the praying sort, but if you are, it couldn't do any harm.I echo those sentiments. When Beutler first moved to town a few years ago, we had a brief jocular exchange on a post at my personal blog, The Washington Canard, also titled "The Beutler Files". Since then I haven't met Beutler in person, but in this small world of Washington bloggers, we share more than a few acquaintances. And as you may have already noticed, we share a last name (if not the pronunciation thereof). There's room in this town for the both of us, and let's hope it stays that way for a long time to come. Saturday, May 31, 2008
BRIDGE TO THE 21ST CENTURY So this is kind of interesting: View Larger Map I am writing this post on the weekend that the new span of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge connecting Alexandria, Virginia with P.G. County in Maryland is scheduled to open. If you plan to be driving and if you are foolishly looking to the Washington Canard for traffic news, I can confidently report that NewsChannel 8 suggests that you stay away. But you've probably already noticed what I find intriguing: in this aerial shot, the newest of the two spans is months away from completion, yet Google Maps shows all the traffic running across the unbuilt section. The other span you see is not the old one -- that was demolished two years ago; the bridge that Google Maps does not recognize is the first of the two spans, completed two years ago (it stands to reason). I don't have a car in the District and I haven't been the navigator on any recent trips that crossed the bridge, so I can't say whether the conflict with reality is enough to cause trouble for the car-bound relying up on directions from Google Maps. If anyone has any insight, please share them in the comments. P.S. It's possible and perhaps inevitable that the embedded image will change next the Google Maps satellite passes by. So I've also saved a larger version to my Flickr accoumt. P.P.S. At the time of posting, the embeddable map is not working. I'm sure this is temporary, but if it's not, I guess I've got a topic for my next post. Labels: Alexandria, Google Maps, P.G. County, Potomac Monday, May 26, 2008
WATCHING "TOP GUN" FOR MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND I spent the part of Friday night I'll gladly tell co-workers about later at the Nationals game, but that was over before midnight, and I spent the sordid hours that followed drinking PBR and watching "Top Gun" with my roommate. He pointed out all the clichés mocked in "Team America" and I pointed out that those clich´s were born with this film -- at least we could agree that Parker & Stone's epic satire could not have existed without "Top Gun." It had been years since he had seen it, but "Top Gun" was a childhood favorite. Who could forget heroes Maverick and Goose, villains Iceman and Slider, or instructors Jester and Viper? Who could forget Goose's tragic death when an aerial accident led to eight seasons on "E.R.", or Slider's tragic relegation to the background when Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer stopped fighting? Well, not me. But as I studied the end credits, I realized I'd never given much thought to the actual Navy fighter pilots with actual nicknames who provided actual expertise about how to flip the bird to MiGs piloted by unidentified villainous Communist-aligned nations in the "Indian Ocean, Present Day." Thank you, IMDb, for helping me give them their due: technical advisorThere. Now, if that isn't a fitting blog post for Memorial Day, I don't know what is. Labels: IMDb, Memorial Day, Top Gun Friday, April 25, 2008
SAY UNCLE People have been telling me "congratulations!" this morning, but I assure you this is certainly none of my doing:  I don't even know what his name is yet, nor whether they've settled on one, but the newest addition to the Beutler family arrived sometime during the night, 1 a.m. PDT/4 a.m. EDT. I received a text message from MGB at 1:10 a.m. saying: We're go for launch with the baby.And another at 3:56 a.m. (on the East Coast, that is) saying: It's a boy!It's been a few months since the proud papa updated his blog, but I predict he gets back in the habit soon -- with less drunk-blogging more baby-blogging. UPDATE: The kid still doesn't have a name, but from the looks of it, my brother has already turned him into a Phish phan:  UPDATED AGAIN: For these pictures and more, I've created a whole Flickr set of the images MGB has sent my way. UPDATED, SUNDAY A.M.: James Morgan Beutler. Labels: Baby, Beutler, Eugene, MGB, Phish Monday, March 31, 2008
GREAT SPLOGS OF THE INTERNET  It was once considered vain to look up one's own name in a search engine, but these days keeping a Google Alert on yourself is considered prudent. At least, in my industry it is. I keep one on "Beutler" and most of the time the results are pretty dull: My latest blog post, articles by the lefty blogger here in town, news stories about the mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska. But every once in awhile, it's more like this: Rescue divers to practice at Sandusky County quarryDamn you, BLUES CLUES dvd! Damn you! Labels: Beutler, Google, Spam, Splog Sunday, March 23, 2008
MUTING THE IMMUTABLE  I've just finished reading a book I picked up at Powell's Books over the holiday break: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, written by father-daughter marketing team Al and Laura Ries. It's actually two books in one... or two concepts in one. The second half of the book is called The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding. I read most of the book in February, and the delay owes something to a discrepancy in my estimation of the two halves.The first half, which unsurprisingly focuses on the brick-and-mortar world and general concepts of establishing a strong brand, is excellent. Rule one, The Law of Expansion, states: The power of a breand is inversely proportional to its scope.The first example is Chevrolet, which they rightly identify as a brand without an identity. Why should the Malibu and the Silverado have the same hood ornament? What does either gain by being identified with the other? I've still never understood why GM stopped marketing the Metro as Geo, and made that another Chevy vehicle. The Corvette does not suffer from lack of identification with Chevy, just as Crest toothpaste does not suffer because I had to look up the fact that it's a Procter & Gamble product. And so on. Good stuff. The second half of the book... a little more hit and miss. Here's part of the problem: It was released in September 2002. Therefore, the book talks up AOL as a success and mentions Google not once. It's not a total disaster; they're right that Monster.com is a better name for a job-hunting website than Business.com is for anything. But other sections are downright comical. Here are two of my favorites: Apple Computer suffers from a lack of focus. It's the only major personal computer company that tries to market both hardware and software, including its own operating system. Hardware leader Dell Computer doesn't market its own software, and software leader Microsoft doesn't market its own computers.Ha. Dell has been sliding for some time now, and some are urging Microsoft to abandon Vista and start over on their next iteration of Windows. Meanwhile, according to Wired, the only way to explain Apple's staggering rise over the past decade is that Steve Jobs is some kind of evil genius. A related rule about modern business thinking is that the drive toward "convergence" is wrong. Therefore, they say: When asked by Fortune magazine what unique opportunities Compaq was looking at, the new CEO, Michael Capellas, said: "You'll start to see devices converge. Who in the world doesn't want to have their PalmPilot, their telephone, and their CD player all wrapped into one so they don't have to carry three things on their belt?"Um... right. Still, they were right to mock Yahoo!'s "all things to all people" approach -- that's a company which is still very successful by most measures, but is nonetheless considered to be in crisis. But that observation is very clearly carried over from the first half of the book and the problems of Chevrolet. At the risk of looking like a fool myself in a few years, I'll go out on a limb and predict the only immutable law of the Internet is that no prediction about the Internet and technology can survive five years or Apple, whichever comes first. Labels: Apple, Branding, Compaq, Dell, Marketing, Microsoft, Powell's, Yahoo |
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