It appears the obviously Ayn Rand inspired Building Cincinnati is going to a pay site. They will charge $8/mo and are currently looking for crowdfunding.
Building Cincinnati covers business development in the Cincinnati region. They dont' cover shootings, car wrecks, vice arrests, scandals & gas station robberies. There's no messy Mallotgates & no biased scattershot Fishwarp style reporting - just in depth analysis with facts straight from the horses mouth.
Fortunately, Blogging isn't Cool can continue to provide hard hitting content (see below) at no cost (financial) to the reader since our costs are pretty much covered the old way - betting on cribbage games at Bohemian Grove.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Rating the Blogs
A story on NPR about Congressmen Talking like 10th graders got me interested so I went to Readability Score dot Com & plugged in some posts from some Cincinnati area blogs. Well, we're averaging about 10th grade, too.
The dense UrbanCincy came in last place on readability with a 44.8, altho they came in at the top grade level at 12.8.
While this list has amateur writers, literature buffs & published authors, I included the Cincinnati Enquirer Politics Extra Blog to see where the pros came in. Kinda in the middle on readability with a 62 & at the bottom on grade level with an 8.2 - lower than a prepress tech, database admin, a DJ & a boy band singer…..
FWIW, none of the Dean's posts were sampled at the Cincinnati Beacon, I just grabbed some of the latest posts.
Well, not a new blog but for Cincinnati it's kinda new. ok it's been here a few months..... ~I'm not paid to be timely~ Social Gumbo is dedicated to internet social media stuff. The author, a god from Asgard, Loki, is into connecting the corporeal through the electronic. He has lots of ideas for blogging and he doesn't limit himself to just text. Coming from a radio background he has an interest in audio. I just recorded myself recently. I will stick to typing (and retyping). Anyway, here's musings on his new digs in Porkopolis.
Monday, May 04, 2009
New Blog in Town
Cincinnati Councilwoman and ex-Mayor, Roxanne Qualls, has taken to blogging - maybe. The people who make one blog post and call it a day are legion and, to date, she still has only one post. It's very important for politicians to explain their views, philosophies and plans with the public while in office and not just go around making campaign promises. County Commisioner David Pepper's blog is a great example of a governer getting the word out and soliciting input from the citizenry in a conversational manner. Unfortunately Councilwoman Qualls, in her one post, has disabled comments ala Hamilton County GOP chair Alex M. Triantafilou's blog. This kinda kills the dialogue aspect and throws a lot of the great communication aspects of social software out the window. While a lot of the responses a blogger gets are "You go, man!" or "You're a fucking idiot !", community issues can be complex and plans to deal with them frequently raise questions. While I praise Commissioner Pepper for giving dialogue a chance, the guy has answered almost none of my questions. I guess that's the price I pay for being an idiot. Quall's issues on zoning, homelessness and transportation are complex and nerdy. Explaining the transportation issues in particular begs for graphics. Mr Crowley's Water District plans, Urban Farming Initiative and Environmental Justice plans are all worthy of detailed explanation and analysis. Mr Bortz's take on the ins and outs of real estate development and the role that government should play would be a wonderful topic for him to take to the people through a blog. I urge all city and county leaders to follow Mr Pepper's example and get the word out !
Sunday, May 03, 2009
The Joker of Cincinnati "I do not spend a lot of time reviewing the material I post here." -J. H aap 2009
Watching the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight, I kept thinking how much the pathological Joker reminded me of local blogger -er- media activist and soon to be failed mayoral candidate Jason H aap. For some time, Blogging Isn't Cool has referred to his blog as The Arkham Beacon in a nod to the Arkham Asylum, home of any number of cartoon sociopaths. The Beacon tends to publish hysterical urban myth, muckraking, obfuscation, character assassination and Sillyman press releases. Heath Ledger's Academy Award winning performance of the mad criminal with Christopher Nolan's screenplay could have easily been inspired from merely reading The Beacon for a few weeks. H aap's single minded desires to tear down institutions and men could be mighty fearsome if not for their general ineffectiveness. His mad obsessions to destroy Jeff Berding, Phil Heimlich and Chris Bortz, his slavish devotion to Chris Smitherman all seem like the deranged pursuits of the melodramatic comic book clown prince. Within hours of the media frenzy surrounding a Real Life Super Hero, The Shadow Hare in Cincinnati, the Dean of Cincinnati, in true Joker fashion, issued the masked crime-fighter a challenge to a duel ! Oh, woe be to him who challenges the world view of the Erisite. In keeping with The Joker of Gotham, The Joker of Cincinnati sees his villainy as heroism, his madness as reason and his defeats as victories. I can only imagine The Beacon's triumvirate meetings at their top secret lair resemble the meetings of The Joker, The Riddler and The Penguin (Romero, Gorshin & Meredith). While one can easily find himself emotionally and intellectually charged by a comic book, one must always remind ones self that it is only a comic book. The real world is full of real people with real needs that require an array of often complex solutions. A Joker with a self centered world view and a penchant for tossing out golden apples is not likely going to offer any real help. But it can make for a wild read !
A funny bit from the Conan O'Brien Show. I saw it over at the HCGOP blog & I was going to post a comment there but I couldn't. Why ? dunno I guess the HamCoGOP doesn't want to hear from me. Guess they don't give a shit what the public has to say. Seems like every time I hear Republicans speak nowadays they seem to be talking to aliens from outer space. They seem completely out of touh with what's going on here on Earth. Maybe because they don't listen to people who don't vomit their script back at them. During the last primary season, the GOP presidential hopefuls all wore their religion on their sleeves and boasted about their religiousness. They all claimed the economy was AOK. The only dissenter was Ron Paul who discussed the essence of Christian morality in our foreign policy and warned of the impending economic meltdown. The other Republicans laughed at him and dismissed his ideas. I was just reading about the 1940 political conventions. The ones that gave us Roosevelt and Willkie. The conventions were full of back stabbing double crossing hard core political dealing. But nowadays we have completely staged, boring, flaccid dog & pony shows where anybody who doesn't toe the party line is persona non grata. Like Ron Paul. I guess that is what Alex Triantafilou wants his blog to be. It just seems to go against the spirit of what the founding fathers were after. The cover article over at The American Conservative this month is How Radio Wrecks the Right. It talks about how conservative talk radio lures in some dumb rednecks but does nothing to promote and actually hurts serious critical intellectual conservative conversation. Apparently Rush Limbaugh sees himself as the heir to William Buckley's mantle?!??!?!? Locally, of course the standard bearer for conservatism on the radio is a rhetoric spewing controversialist with the delivery of a carny barker outside the freakshow. And the party wants to field a local candidate who, as a preacher, told people they could get rich if they came to his church..... Certainly not the Christianity of my parents. I guess that's just how they want it.
BTW, Firing Line episodes are available at Amazon for about $9 - $10 a pop.
Cincinnati Iconography
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Hyde Park, Queensgate, Over the Rhine, Northside, Newport, Union Terminal, Music Hall, The Jockey Club and more.
