Category Archives: blogging
Retirement Blogs
In addition to our own Retirement blog at Retire USA, here’s a list of some other retirement oriented blogs you can find online:
My Retirement Blog
http://www.myretirementblog.com/
Boomers Retirement
http://boomersretirement.blogspot.com/
Early Retirement Extreme
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/
Early Retirement Blog
http://earlyretirementblog.com/
GRACEful Retirement
http://gracefulretirement.blogspot.com/
Adventures in Retirement
http://myretirementadventures.blogspot.com/
Retirement: A Full Time Job
http://retiredsyd.typepad.com/
Mature Not Senile
http://jude8753.com/
JR’s Retirement
http://jrsretirement.blogspot.com/
Early Retirement the Middle Way
http://earlyretirementmiddleway.blogspot.com/
A Satisfying Retirement Lifestyle
http://satisfyingretirement.blogspot.com/
Retired texas teacher blog
http://www.myretiredteacherblog.blogspot.com/
Retired In Thailand and Loving It
http://malcolmandciejay.blogspot.com/
Joyfully Retired
http://joyfullyretired.com/
Retired and Crazy
http://www.retiredandcrazy.com/
The Retirement Chronicles
http://myretirementchronicles.blogspot.com/
COOL IT: The Movie
Climatic clear thinker Bjorn Lomborg strikes again with a new film, “COOL IT”, based on his book of the same name. Blog post: coolit-themovie.com
Lomborg’s points, which suggest we need to address problems like global warming and global poverty more rationally, are so obvious as to defy intelligent objection, yet he remains one of the most controversial activists on earth, especially after offending the sensibilities of many with his remarkable book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”.
Lomborg’s views are slowly gaining the respect they deserve as alarmism about environmental issues falls prey to the facts and to common sense observations. Clearly there’s global warming, and clearly it’s not likely to be catastrophic. Dealing with massive current problems like global poverty, health, and economic issues will have a much greater return on our time and money investments than expensive and politicized mitigation programs, many of which will at best delay the effects of carbon emissions for only a few years at a staggering cost.
COOL IT serves as a counterpoint to the alarmism and denial that have characterized the climate debate for too long.
Feeling Good vs Doing Good
It seems these days I’m often pissing off friends and family for suggesting something that, frankly, is pretty obvious. Most of what passes as “doing good” these days are activities that make the feel-gooders feel good about themselves, their community, and life in general (that’s fine of course), but don’t do much to make the world a better place. It’s fine to engage in things that you enjoy that do not contribute to the greater good, but it is very important to recognize the difference, and not to conflate feel-good stuff with actual do-good stuff.
Real good comes in many forms, and thank goodness their are a LOT of people doing real good all around us. Friends and neighbors working and volunteering in health care, teaching, law enforcement, and hundreds of other public service jobs, NGOs building schools all over, Church groups teaching, etc, etc. Many of the folks doing that stuff are heroic, braving all kinds of bad conditions to bring health care, education, food, and good will to those who need it most.
But without even pointing out those obvious ‘feel good’ activities I’m going to hope we make better progress than we seem to be *re-defining* what it means to “do good”.
Those of us in the middle and up classes here in the USA enjoy historically unprecedented standards of living, and even those on welfare here in the USA live well by any reasonable global standards. Bringing this higher *standard of living* to the small numbers in the US and the huge numbers in other countries who do not benefit from our system is the greatest moral challenge of our time, yet I can’t help but think that the many “feel gooders” (and even worse – the political spenders on both sides of the political aisle) are distracting us and redirecting resources very inefficiently to projects that will have little significant positive impact.
As always, hoping folks chime in with their views about this, and for what it’s worse I’d agree that blogging is probably NOT an example of doing much if any good! Maybe I’m my own best example of the problem?
Got Travel? Travel Blogs and Travel Bloggers, Unite!
For some time (100,000 years in internet dog years), I’ve wanted to collect *all* the travel blogs in one spot and organize them by destination. That’s not happening … yet … but I’m very happy to see so many great folks online blogging travel now as well as many lists of bloggers popping up.
An interesting issue in finding the holy grail of travel information is whether people would rather hear from *travelers* or from *locals*. I used to lean to the former – ie I wanted to hear from other folks who had visited a place to get the best information, but it’s become clear to me now that the best source for travel information are well informed local folks – ideally those who are in the travel industry and therefore familiar with a lot of attractions, hotels, restaurants, history, customs, etc. An example for Oregon is … me.
I worked in the travel industry for many years and I know a *lot* about Oregon, especially Southern Oregon. Unfortunately there are not very many people blogging “local travel” from a local perspective. Ironically pretty much all the travel writing blog folks (including me) are so busy talking about their own trips out and about, they are not writing much about their local places – the kind of information that would be simply wonderful if you were to visit a place.
So … my challenge to travel bloggers is to write a few posts about things to see and do in your own neck of the woods. Let me know if you do and I’ll be happy to feature it prominently at our heavy traffic site “Travel and History”. Please include a bit of history in the travelogue if you can.
Here are some from some cool traveling folks:
Blogs/ Travelers list from Traveling Teri:
- 1step2theleft
- 20sTravel
- 501 Places
- Abigail King
- Adventure Girl
- Adventure Living
- Agent Cikay
- Alex Berger
- Almost Fearless
- Andi Perullo
- Andrew G. Hayes
- Andy Murdock
- Around the World “L”
- As We Travel
- Aussie Nomad
- Bairds Travel
- Beth Arnold
- Bike Raft
- Boots n All
- Border Jumpers
- Brendan von Son
- Brian Swan
- Brooke Schoenman
- Budget Travel Sacramento
- Cailin O’Neil
- Cal Bosch
- Candice Walsh
- Cara Lopez Lee
- CC Burns
- CG Travels
- Christine Amorose
- Couch Surfing Ori
- Dave’s Travel Corner
- David Lytle (davitydave)
- Diana Ellefson
- Docudramaqueen
- Don Nadeau
- Donna L. Hull
- Drifting Focus
- Dustin Main
- Earth Explorer
- Eat Live Travel Write
- Elite Travel Gal
- ELoren
- Erica Kuschel
- Everywhere Trip
- Fodor’s Travel Guides
- Fox Nomad
- Gadling
- Gerard Ward
- Girls Getaway
- GloboTreks
- Got Passport
- Got Saga Latino
- Got Saga
- Grumpy Traveller
- Happy Go Lucky
- Harriett Baskas
- Holiday Greece
- I Live to Travel
- Isabelle’s Travel Guide
- Janelle Norman
- Jason’sTravels
- Jeff Titelius
- JoAnna Haugen
- Jason’sTravels
- Joe Hunkins
- Johnny Vagabond
- Journeywoman
- Kevin May
- Kim Mance
- LandLopers
- Larry Blanken
- Legal Nomads
- LJ Rose Expeditions
- Lonely Planet
- Malaysia-Asia
- Margaret Kinney
- Monica Wong
- My Journey of a Lifetime
- My Melange
- National Geographic
- Neverending Voyage
- New York Times Travel
- Nomadic Chick
- Nomadic Matt
- Ottsworld
- ParisBuff
- PatriciaVance, GotSaga
- Pauline Frommer’s Travel
- Perrin Post
- Peter Greenberg
- Richard Escobar
- Rick Steves
- RTWDave
- Runaway Juno
- Sam Daams
- SaraKateTravel
- Secured Traveler
- Serendipity Traveler
- Shawnosaurus
- Smart Women Travelers
- Solo Friendly
- Solo Traveler
- Sosauce
- Soultravelers3
- Spencer Spellman
- Spunky Girl Monologues
- Stay Adventurous
- Stay Bank
- Sumit Gupta
- Susan Farlow
- Suzy Guese
- Technomadia
- Thank God I Surf
- The Jungle Princess
- The Longest Way Home
- The Mad Traveler Online
- The Planetd
- The Roaming Boomers
- The Tashinga Initiative
- The Travel Tart
- The Travel Tweeter
- The Trip Chicks
- Tiffany Travels
- Timesonline Travel
- Travel Answerman
- Travel Blogger
- Travel Bully
- Trailer Campers
- Travel Cuts
- Travel Designed
- Travel Dudes
- Travel Girl (smultronställen)
- Travel Happy
- Traveling Anna
- Traveling Perly
- Traveling Savage
- Traveling Ted
- Traveling Teri
- Travels of Adam
- Travelocity
- Travel Off the Cuff
- Travel Optimist
- Travel Maus
- Travel Muse
- Travel Savvy Mom
- Travel Squire
- Travel Susan
- Travelwriticus
- Trey Ratcliff
- Tuscan Blog
- Unbrave Girl
- Uncornered Market
- Vagabond3Italian Notes
- Vagabondish
- Velvetescape
- Wandering-off
- Wanderings of a Travelbug
- Wandering Trader
- Want to Go Travel
- Welcome Tuscany
- Wend Magazine
- Where I’ve Been
- Wild Junket
- World Nomads
Blogroll from Travel Answer Man John Van Kirk:
- Academic Earth
- Almost Fearless
- Around the World
- Art of Non-Conformity
- Blog Catalog
- BootsnAll
- Briefcase to Backpack
- Budget Travel
- Common Sense and Whiskey
- Cool Business Ideas
- Cool Tools
- Cool Travel Guide
- Cruise Reviews
- Curious Expeditions
- Development Blog
- Documentation
- Earthquake News
- Eating the Motherland
- Enduring Wanderlust
- Engadget
- Escape From New York
- Ethical Traveler
- Euro Cheapo
- Ever the Nomad
- Everything Everywhere
- Family Travellogue
- Gadling
- Geotraveler’s Niche
- Gizmodo
- Global Scavenger Hunt
- Global Security News & Reports
- Global Voices Online
- Go Nomad
- Green Blogs
- Gridskipper
- Happy Hotelier
- Health Ranger
- Hobo Traveler
- Hoosta Magazine
- Hostel Buenos Aires
- Hotel Blogs
- i Kangaroo
- Indie Travel Podcast
- Intelligent Travel
- Intrade
- Japan Visitor
- Jaunted
- John McCabe
- Kyle Keeton
- Las Vegas
- Legal Nomads
- Life Clever
- Life Hack
- Luxury Latin America
- Luxury Travel Blog
- Metro Blogging
- Miss Expatria
- MJ Perry
- Moroccan Mary
- Mr and Mrs Smith
- My Itchy Travel Feet
- National Parks Traveler
- New York City
- Newyorkology
- No Debt World Travel
- Nomadic Matt
- Notes from the Road
- One World Travel and Tourism
- Perrinpost
- Peter Greenberg
- Plugins
- Rick Seaney
- Roaming Tales
- Rolling Rains Report
- Routes International
- Saving Advice
- Science Daily
- Seat 61
- Seth Godin
- Slow Travel
- Small Time Traveller
- Smithsonian Journeys
- Southern Cone Guide Books
- Suggest Ideas
- Support Forum
- Synthesis
- The Dollar Stretcher
- The Travelers Zone
- The World By Sea
- Themes
- Travel Answer Man
- Travel Beautiful
- Travel Blog
- Travel Blogs
- Travel Booklocker
- Travelers Lunch Box
- Traveling Mamas
- Traveling Teri
- Travelizmo
- Tree Hugger
- Ubertramp
- Unearthing Asia
- Vagablogging
- Vagabondish
- Virtual Tourist
- Walking and Drinking Beer
- WalletPop
- Wandering Educators
- Wandering Justin
- Watching America
- What a Trip
- Whole Travel
- Wild Junket
- WordPress Planet
- World Hum
- World News
- World Reviewer
- World Weather
- Writing Horseback
From Elliot.org
Alaska TravelGram
Almost Fearless
Anders Meanders
Arthur Frommer
Brave New Traveler
Consumerist
Evan Sparks
Everett Potter
ExpertCruiser
Flight Wisdom
Gadling
Hidden Travel Gems
Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot
HotelChatter
Intelligent Travel
Jaunted
Jeanne Leblanc
LLWorldTour
Marriott on the Move
MaxaBlog
Online Travel Review
Peter Greenberg
PlaneBuzz
Rick Seaney
Roads Less Traveled
Safe Cruise
Ship Critic blog
Southwest Airlines
T2Impact
The BOOT
The Cruise Log
The Daily Traveler
The Practical Nomad
This Just In…..
Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations
Towers and Tarmacs
Travel Babel
Travel Gear Blog
Travel Log
Travel Maven blog
Travel Post
Travel Rants
Traveler 2.0
Traveler’s Check
Tripinator – Travel 2.0
Tripso
Upgrade: travel better
USA Today’s Hotel Hotsheet
World Hum
WSJ.com: The Middle Seat Terminal
WordPress Publishing Problems with Flickr or other programs?
Another reminder (because I’ve needed this many times) that you must enable WordPresses “Remote Publishing” protocols if you want to blog photos directly from Flickr (a fantastic feature – I wish more people could do this but it remains a little tricky to set up both at Flickr and at WP unless you know this is needed (defaults have these boxes UNchecked). I think you only need the XML-RPC after correct configuration at Flickr, but do both so you have more ways to publish to your WP blog:
Remote Publishing
To post to WordPress from a desktop blogging client or remote website that uses the Atom Publishing Protocol or one of the XML-RPC publishing interfaces you must enable them below.
Atom Publishing Protocol | |
---|---|
XML-RPC |
Business Power of Social Media cannot be overstated
I was watching a brief “internet marketing” bit suggesting how small businesses were spending too much money (! ?) on social media efforts when they should be focusing on their websites and using social media primarily to drive people to their sites. I winced at this, feeling that the opposite advice is probably better advice. I tell folks to focus on social media and use websites to drive potential customers to …. YOU…. or to Twitter or Facebook or email exchanges where they can interact with the business in the kinds of ways that don’t just make a customer – they make a LOYAL customer. Social media allows people to engage in the most virtuous business cycle – where customers and businesses develop a relationship based on mutual trust, respect, value, and quality.
The internet has always been more about PEOPLE than about TECHNOLOGY, but only recently has it allowed so much vibrant interactivity between many people in simple, fun venues.
Of course as with many pieces of bad advice, there’s is some truth to what the marketing consultant was saying about fretting over your website more than most small businesses do . Small Businesses should work hard to make sure their websites do a good job of serving their customers, converting to sales, and presenting their business in a very positive light.
However, social media is – at long last – the pure intersection of customers with the people at the business and for that reason you can’t overstate how important social media can be to a small business, especially because it’s an incredibly *efficient* way to do what most great and smart small businesses do a lot of – talking to customers.
Don’t agree? Cool, just Twitter me about it, leave a comment here, or email me. It’s an online social cornucopia and no business or idea needs to be left behind anymore.
Climate Science Scandal – will Paleo Dendrochronology survive?
For new readers please NOTE that I am NOT a climate skeptic, I am just wondering why groupthink seems so pervasive in the climate science community, especially over at the key climate blog RealClimate .
Update: Two very thoughtful and balanced pieces written – by climate scientist Judy Curry – and by Peter Kelemen at Popular Mechanics .
Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on this.
Here are the infamous hacked emails.
There’s a remarkable development today on the climate front [thanks to Glenn for the link in the earlier post]. A huge amount of climate data, including some remarkable emails between scientists, have been hacked from the University of Anglia in England. These mails and data may shed some light on some of the more contentious points in climate science.
The odd methods and math seem especially conspicuous in tree ring studies of climate trends. Called Paleo Dendrochronology, these studies are VERY often used either alone or with other data in climate studies and often are used alone or with other data to make the case that global climate change is potentially catastrophic.
The best scientific work critical of global warming science seems to focus mostly on attacking this weakest link – or should I say the weakest rings – over at ClimateAudit.org.
Here is a great balanced view at UK Guardian of the story so far: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
A critical view of the implications of this data is here at ClimateAudit
A sympathetic view is here at RealClimate where I tried to post I posted this comment and I appreciate the good sportsmanship of them letting it through moderation. When they do allow me to post this type of comment I wonder if I’ve been too hard on them for what seems like censorship, but possibly could be the crappy posting system they have over there where moderation, timestamps, and other factors seem to confuse everybody.
Somebody naively wondered why there are so few comments on this post. IMO the answer is that RealClimate is effectively content-censored to a large degree for conformance with the prevailing ideas here.
Uninformed dissenters are sometimes let in so the comment crew can bash them around, but reasoned dissenters are usually banned outright. Many don’t bother trying to post here for that very reason.
Gavin in the interest of transparency would you at least roughly estimate how many of the comments have been moderated out for this post? I would guess 95% have been zapped.
<i>[RealClimate wrote] Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem” </i>
Could you give a few examples? I searched right here at Realclimate for uses of that term they tend to relate to “trickery”, not good science.
More climate updates: Here’s the Copenhagen Diagnosis, an excellent summary of the latest climate science since the last big IPCC report. For the record I do think this does suffer from the prevailing “somewhat alarmist” tone in some of the interpretations of the research. For example a key observation is the current pause in warming noted by satellite measures, and this is given short shrift here.
Bud Light Hardbat Classic at The Venetian in Las Vegas
The Hardbat Classic Table Tennis Ping Pong rumors are not only true, they are truly Table Tennis and it’s going to be Vegas, baby!
I’ll be competing in the Bud Light Hardbat Classic which starts this Friday at the spectacular Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Top prize is … wait for it … $100,000.00 That’s enough money to pay the interest on our blossoming national debt for … well…. a couple of seconds. But never mind that….
I’ll try to keep up with some real time reporting via Twitter or here at the blog, though this may depend on data access at the venue and my own good or bad luck in the tournament.
There will be about a thousand players of all skill levels competing – many after winning their regional bar tournaments held around the USA over the past several months. Even though I won our local tournament it wasn’t a qualifier for the big one, so I’m making my own way there after they opened it up to everybody.
There are also brackets for a special group of “stars” chosen by the Hardbat Tournament, another for walk in players, and one for “pros” who have a rating or have played in USTTA tournaments over the years. Although I haven’t played in tournaments recently I was actually the USTTA National Table Tennis Champ in the “1300” rating category in 1992 (ratings in Table Tennis are kind of like handicapping in golf).
The Bud Tournament is “over handicapped” , meaning that the very best players will have to spot a lot of points to lower ranked players – as many as 17 out of 21. My take on this tournament is that it will tend to favor unrated players who are very experienced with the “pips out” type of rubber required at the Hardbat Classic.
Hardbat Classic Official Website
Follow the Tournament on Twitter
Follow the Killerspin Team on Twitter
Blogs are talking about the HardBat Classic in Las Vegas at the Venetian:
China shuts access to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live, Hotmail, Blogger via the “Great Firewall” filters
China is closing down access to various internet services as they approach they anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989. The early report from TechCrunch says that Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live, Hotmail, Blogger have all been made hard to access via the “Great Firewall” filters. I did notice when in China last year that there are various programs like ‘Great Ladder” that allow people to bypass these filters, but obviously not many are going to have the combination of nerve and savvy to do this.
I believe that China’s censorship policies are probably counterproductive *even to the Chinese Government’s goals* in the long term, and I’d sure like to find a way for the internet community to make this clear to China’s leaders. Ironically China’s leadership has done a remarkable job transitioning away from the bulky, centralized, bureaucratic economy that had been stifling progress for decades. China’s citizens now enjoy a higher level of prosperity and *economic* freedom than they arguably have ever had in history. Much of this prosperity is the result of producing goods for the US market. What exactly does the government think will happen if they allow more open dialog in China? I’d suggest they’ll find this would tend to reduce the tensions created by unhappy citizens rather than increase them. Suppression of dissent in Tibet routinely brings international scorn to China, where a more open dialog will bring praise, respect, and support.
China needs to realize that the world’s fascination and respect for China’s culture and international influence will be enhanced by free speech, not reduced.
TechCrunch UK is reporting on this and I’m looking for more direct information now.
More from China’s CN Reviews