McKenna’s third observation hits the mark:

Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to. It’s a lot of work to look for good posts elsewhere, and most bloggers have become burnt out. Drezner and Farrell had a theory that even small potato bloggers would have their day in the sun, if they wrote something so great that it garnered the attention of the big guys. But the big guys are too burnt out to find the hidden gems. So, good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn’t bubbling to the top.

Many have stopped using blogrolls, which means less love spread around the blogosphere. The politics of who should be on a blogroll was too much of a pain, so bloggers just deleted the whole thing.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone given the impracticality of including hat tips with my morning links. On the other hand, the links do allow me to spread some traffic to people who write interesting posts.

I’ve noticed over the past year or so that it’s become more difficult for posts to draw attention to themselves. It used to be that I could count on a particularly good entry getting linked elsewhere without much further effort on my part. Now if I don’t also promote it through Facebook, Twitter, or other means it’s not likely to get much of a boost. This is perhaps a good thing: No longer must we bloggers skim through each other’s long-winded posts. Now we can just skim through each other’s 140-character tweets and only click on the best stuff.

Another consequence of this is that’s it much harder to track how much influence a post has. Site traffic and comments used to be a reliable measure. Now much of a post’s reach extends far off the blog itself: into RSS readers, Facebook, and tweets. My blog is probably reaching more people now than it ever has, but it’s much harder to know this.

So why blog? That’s a question I’ve been coming back to lately. It’s less obviously worthwhile than it used to be. Keeping up a blog takes time, time that might be better spent writing longer pieces for established publications. Still, there are benefits:

Self-promotion — Writing this blog is how I got my last job in DC and it helped immensely with my job search in Portland. My bar resume was rather thin when I got here, but my cocktail writing put me on the radar of several people in the local bar community and helped establish myself in the industry. The blog has also helped with my writing, giving me a product to send to editors and sometimes prompting editors to contact me for articles. It’s also led to a few media requests from other writers stumbling across my site.

Social networking — Facebook is great for keeping up with existing friends, but blogging and microblogging seem far better for meeting new people, especially in niche communities. A successful blog can also cross-promote one’s other online activities.

Extended discussion — For most bloggers, publishing an article elsewhere is the best way to reach a larger audience. But for continuing a discussion far into the future, responding to feedback from readers, and approaching a topic from multiple angles, nothing beats a blog.

Hits from search engines — Though a blog may not be generally popular, it can become a leading source on search engines for selected niche topics. Or in my case, become an impromptu support group for people scared of camel crickets.

It’s fun! — Since I’m not making money at this and don’t expect to do so anytime soon, there must be other compensating benefits.

These are all good reasons to keep blogging. That said, they’re not necessarily great reasons for someone to start a new blog, or to continue blogging with the goal of building a larger readership. A combination of devoting more time to published pieces coupled with attentive social networking might be a more productive way to reach people. So might joining a group blog rather than trying to go it alone.

If you do blog, why do you do so?

[Hat tip - remember those? -- to Megan McArdle.]

I choose risk

Homo economicus at the restaurant

Global state of gay rights

Berlin bans fixies

The sacred right to trial… for just $25!

How to tell stories in print

Rise of the bartender exchange

Aside from her giant left hand, Mariah Carey’s still pretty hot

There, I fixed it

The ant megacolony among us

Time to ban labradors?

Ohio says no handshakes for strippers

Next for the FDA: Making painkillers ineffective

More on Wal-Mart and health insurance

Politicians are primates too

What is liquid smoke, anyway?

Wonky fruit and veggie gallery

Betty McGuire, who said she was buying a bag of fast food at Jack’s to give to a homeless person — she doesn’t touch the stuff — didn’t see a problem with the exemption for high-toned restaurants. “I would think the clientele is very different,” McGuire said, “much higher-end. They probably know what they’re eating.” She was not similarly confident about teenagers, whom she hoped “might think twice” now that they’ll have access to elaborate calorie charts.

Mechanic Victor Grijalva seemed relieved to learn that Jack in the Box will keep this information on its counter in a brochure, until he asks for it — which he has no plans to do. [JG: That part of the law goes into effect in 2011.] “I thought it was going to be posted,” he said. “If it was posted on the wall, it would definitely make a difference.” During breaks from working in the Midas garage, he often wolfs down the heart-stopping Bacon Ultimate burger, and would prefer not to be reminded that it accounts for nearly half his daily calorie needs.

The unstated prejudice underlying mandated calorie counts is that only the rich and educated can eat calorie-dense food responsibly; it’s the kind of people who eat at Jack in the Box who need to be nagged and shamed for their indulgence.

If the Senate has its way we’ll soon be nagged at every chain restaurant throughout the country. I wrote against these mandates here and here.

Previously:
Counting calories at Per Se

Why Paul Krugman is a hack

The end of retirement

Autism and economic rationality

The Cosmic Timekeeper

A Palin postmortem

Why Wal-Mart supports an insurance mandate

Greedy states seize gift cards

Now is a great time to buy live lobster

Free pocket Constitution from Cato

The costs of Waxman-Markey

The end of selling out?

SCOTUS to decide free speech cases

Jimmy Wales keeps kidnapping off Wikipedia

This is no Depression

Men know what other men find attractive

Carnivores are awesome

Undercover to stop cash tips

Nannies ban coffee gathering

Farigoule is a delicious liqueur from Provence that I recently came across here in Portland. Its primary flavor comes from the region’s abundant thyme, with a few other herbs added for good measure. It’s a unique, wonderful product: Not too sweet, intriguing flavors, great aroma, and well-balanced at 80 proof. I enjoy it neat, but since that’s a tough sell at the bar I also wanted to highlight it in a mixed drink.

At the same time I was working on a cocktail to enter into Bombay Sapphire’s Inspired Barender contest. Luckily gin is a natural pairing with Farigoule. And Farigoule, with its floral and herbal qualities, fills in well for better known French liqueurs like Chartreuse and St. Germain. Here’s the recipe I’ve submitted for the contest and placed on the Carlyle menu as Thyme in a Bottle, getting great reviews from customers so far:

1 oz Bombay Sapphire
.75 oz Farigoule
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz maraschino liqueur

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme. A really nice touch is to lightly toast the thyme to release its aroma before serving. My bar at Carlyle has tea lights on it so it’s easy for me to rest a sprig above a candle while I mix the drink. This fills the area with the scent of thyme and gives the cocktail an extra sensory dimension as the customer sips from it.

A tip of the hat for this drink also goes to Charles Munat, who suggested using Farigoule in a Last Word variation. Though the proportions are different here, that’s essentially what this drink is, with Farigoule standing in for Chartreuse and lemon for lime.

How Captain Morgan profits from TARP bailouts

Corruption of the three-tier system

Still not easy to by a six-pack in PA

Victory against Oregon’s mover cartel

Victory against pole dance repression

Bar code turns 35

The self-service city

The graffiti ads deserve

But that aside, his take on the bill is better than most, but still too optimistic. If all we wanted was safer tobacco products we would allow the FDA to approve them based on a straightforward comparison to existing products. Instead the law requires the agency to take the much more paternalist approach of trying to predict whether the gains from safer products would be offset by more people taking up tobacco or fewer people quitting. It’s too early to tell just how this will play out, but it’s a potentially huge hurdle to the creation and marketing of safer cigarettes and alternatives.

I’m also skeptical that the FDA can optimally regulate nicotine yields. Mandating lower yields, as the FDA is now empowered to do, would cause current smokers to light up more frequently or inhale more intensely. They’d be taking in more tar and carcinogens to get the same hit of nicotine, a substance that in itself is basically harmless. The hope would be that lower yields cause fewer new smokers to become dependent and ween some smokers off the drug; I’m not comfortable with the idea of sacrificing smokers’ lives to potentially prevent others from taking up the habit.

Saletan thinks that FDA tobacco regulation will be “rational.” I disagree, and the recent uproar over e-cigarettes is an example of how regulations are more likely to play out. Michael Siegel highlighted the absurdity a couple weeks ago:

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association have supported the legislation, about to be enacted, which asks the FDA to make cigarettes safer by removing certain of the more than 4,000 known constituents in the tobacco smoke.

At the same time, these groups have asked the FDA to ban a product (electronic cigarettes) which has already been developed and which already has eliminated all of the 4,000 known constituents in tobacco smoke, other than the nicotine.

I can’t help it, but this is the ultimate in insanity.

Why would you put your heart and soul into a a piece of legislation that, at very best, will allow the FDA to remove a few of the constituents from cigarette smoke but at the same time, demand that a product which has succeeded in removing all (but nicotine) of these constituents be immediately taken off the market?

E-cigarettes resemble smoking in appearance, threaten the market for patches and gums produced by major drug companies, and give health activist groups a new evil to rail against, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that they are harmful — certainly not more harmful than real cigarettes. In a rational regulatory environment they would not be threatened. What we have instead is a highly politicized regulatory environment, one in which the lobbying arms of drug companies, Big Tobacco, and public health groups will wield the greatest influence. Expecting good regulations to emerge from this process is, well, irrational.

Welcome to the Anthropocene

Case of the missing frog legs

Overweight in Uganda

Sober in the restaurant industry

How bars rescue high-end restaurants

Interview with Seattle bartender Keith Waldbauer

Eating the Mangalica to save it