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The Globe calls it Highway Blogging. Operation Over calls it effective. Yesterday the collective calling themselves Operation Over, working to stop a new BU biolab from opening its doors in Roxbury tossed bed sheet banners to display their message on 128 and the Mass Pike. They're looking to get their message out to a larger community, including the suburbs. Threatening situations like the spread of Ebola in the Hub – or even smallpox – has been the battle cry of the group. The Globe took to calling the road-banner activists "Highway Bloggers" without mention of the Operation Over initiative (fair - they only blogged about it on the tubes after the Globe's press time). Instead, the overpass-as-podium piece focused mainly on a Rhode Islander, a California resident, and a bit on Bruce MacDonald, a Cambridge lawyer. But we're not faulting them for the focus, they found a few folks who were willing to talk. The term "Highway Blogger" (or Freeway Blogger, as it was originally coined in California – land o' freeways), is a poor term. We're pretty sure that blog is a shortened version of 'web log' and the abbreviation and origin of the term has a handful of people laying claim to it – but it has nothing to do with banners on highways. That said it'd be really great if Mac Daniel would start blogging Starts & Stops by displaying slogan adorned bed sheets off overpasses…now, what rhymes with Amorello?
Activist POV image courtesy of Operation Over
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Two things: First, the term 'blog' might be commonly considered as an abbreviation for 'web log', but as long as the current phenomenon has existed, it has never been explicitly reffered to as such. Rather, blog initially meant any means of instant mechanized publication and/or syndication, and in it's current form happens to utilize 'the web' and it's protocols but the concept is not bound to it. In this case, it might not constitute a proper 'blog' by most people's perceptions -- however the end result is basically the same. Think of it as 'ye old blog', as some people have described the chalk board as 'ye old wiki'.
Second, the more important aspect of this article is the bio lab itself; I feel as these people seem to that it is an insanely terrible idea beyond comprehension. It is in fact so asinine that I am not sure how it has even made it this far.. the money and clout of BU probably the most likely causes. In any case, it is extremely poor judgment to locate dangerous pathogens in a metropolitan area -- DUH, haven't thet seen The Andromeda Strain? What do they think the deserts are for?