Cycho Librarian

The mayor recently delivered his State of the City address , and while the biggest attention was on enforcing curfew laws and installing streetcars, a lot of folks in the media seem to be downplaying what was actually a fairly significant part of the speech. Hizzoner committed to spending $20 million dollars in the next 4 years (pending a bond issue in November) on bikeways! A grand total of 86.3 miles of bike routes and trails, 54 of which are on-street routes and lanes . Needless to say, I was very happy about this. It's about time that people in power started listening to us and doing something about the fact that you take your life in your hands every time you get on a bike in this city. But as nice as it will be to have dedicated bike lanes, this is only the first step in making Columbus bike-friendly. First of all, I couldn't help but notice that bike lanes certainly didn't make headlines in the reports on the speech, and in many cases didn't even make it into...

That's right folks, we actually have snow in central Ohio. And not the little piddly crap that usually passes for snow around here. Real, honest to goodness snow that you can sink a shovel into and that makes the people around here who have snow blowers not look like idiots. For once they actually closed the library for good reason! And it's still falling! This has got to be the most snow I've seen in one snowfall in the 12 years we've been living here. I had forgotten having to clear the steps just so you could get out of the house. I had forgotten the snow being so deep you couldn't tell where the path was. I had forgotten how it clings to your pants leg when you step in up to your knee. I had forgotten what it was like to have to clear your car off not just when you left the house, but also when you got out of the store you were at. While 12 inches is a respectable snowfall anywhere, it is kinda amusing to watch the city shut down the way it would if ther...

After hearing an interview with the author on this past week's "On the Media," I am now anxiously awaiting my copy of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody . The book discusses how the ease of access to information is lowering the bar for who contributes, and as a result there is more power in numbers online than any other force. In media like television and radio, the producers and advertisers call the shots. But online, no matter how much "official" outlets and advertisers may try to shape the direction things progress, ultimately it's people who make things happen. The interview has some interesting examples, but you can already see it in things like iTunes, YouTube, and even Wikipedia. Their prevalence is entirely due to the number of people who have hopped on board, thinking they're good ideas. I think the biggest proof is in Google. Page rank counts for everything in Google, and that's directly related to how many people are clicking t...