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Travel Slumping, Airlines Dealing on Holiday Fares?

Tom Parsons at Bestfares.com, the discount travel booking site, says that airlines are so concerned about the drop-off in Thanksgiving travel demand this year that advance-purchase requirements are being relaxed. He reports: “The major airlines have now reduced their 14-day advance purchase holiday discount airfares to three days or no advance purchase… “Travel on these little or no advance purchase airfares are valid from November 20 through December 3, 2008. We do suggest that travelers av

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The Trouble with Gougeres

I know I promised to tell you about the Sake Bloggers' Summit in Shizuoka, and I still intend to, but I've got to get something off my chest first. Although I'm usually pretty competent in the kitchen, I'm no chef de cuisine, and nothing has made this plainer than my failure to produce an edible gougere. Recipes for these recalcitrant little bastards abound, and the only thing they all seem to have in common is the ability to confound me. JP came home the other night to find the kitchen filled

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Contemplating Disagreement

I had the great pleasure of hearing Rick Steves speak about travel as a political act at BookPeople on Sunday. I’ve enjoyed his European low-budget and close-to-the-ground travel series on PBS since high school, but I couldn’t have guessed how passionate a speaker he would be. His talk centered around his recent trip to Iran and travel’s potential as a political act. As the possibility of the U.S. going to war with Iran became louder and more insistent in our country, he realized that he knew

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The New York Times blows the bark beetle story

The so-called paper of record ran a major story Tuesday on the country’s most infamous climate-driven pest, “Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West.” Great story, other than neglecting to mention climate change. It’d be like an article on an outbreak of avian flu that left out any discussion of birds So we have the national “liberal” media, like the NYT and NBC, blowing this story, while the local, conservative media get it right, see “conservative San Diego Union knows climate

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Fashion designer accessories: Lamborghini Christmas gifts

Christmas is getting closer and closer, so Lamborghini has released their Christmas gifts collection, that includes a range of 2008 holiday-themed home decorations, box-set 3 baubles(56 Euro ($70)), polar bears (26 Euro ($32) & 44 Euro ($55)), candles (44 Euro ($55)) and cushions (32 Euro ($40)) available in the special matt black and white colors launched this year on the Gallardo LP 560-4. Lamborghini also offers its own line of Christmas cards with translucent yellow envelopes. Included

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Back to Reality! But still finding glitter everywhere...

  I have now been home from Silver Bella for 3 days and I still find glitter on my face every time I look in the mirror. It seems to find me everywhere I go. When I unpacked my dirty clothes from my luggage it was all so filled with glitter and mica that it looked like eveningwear! So I'm back, and actually glad to be home...The trip was lots of fun but really exhausting! I spent Monday trying to get back to normal before going back to work Tuesday, but I'm still a bit drained, but ceratinly

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20 November 2008 The Great Deception As Gold Hit All Time Highs

Amazingly, while gold and other commodity related stocks continued to be sold off to levels that are at deep discounts to their intrinsic value in October, gold continued to break to new all time highs in most major currencies. On October 9th and 10th gold recorded new all time highs in many currencies including the Euro, the Australian Dollar, British Sterling, the Indian Rupee, the Russian Ruble, the South African Rand and many others. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Stock also recorded a mul

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How To Be Successful And Truly Wealthy - Believe In Yourself And Always Stay Positive

Throughout the years, there were too many times to count where I was so negative and down in the dumps, I didn’t allow myself to work at improving my situation. I would just sit there and feel sorry for myself instead of taking action to correct what was wrong. For a very long time if anything bad would happen to me, whether it was missing a few stoplights in a row to getting an unexpected home repair bill, I thought I was cursed and being punished for something. I simply thought that I had bad

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I'M ADDICTED TO PERSONALIZED GIFTS! VistaPrint has my attention. :o)

I'm addicted to VistaPrint this year! Yes, I admit it. I'm addicted...big time! It all started out innocently enough. I made our family caricatures on their website for our ecards and sent those out. Then I started thinking about how very cute those cartoon pictures were. So, I decided that they were so cute that I would order some Christmas cards with them proudly displayed. I hopped back over to VistaPrint to order those. While I was there, I saw some very nice ink pens. I was amazed to

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Let Them Eat Shrubbery

Science is often at its most newsworthy when it proves the blatantly obvious: getting drunk makes you more likely to fall over; sunbathing is a risk factor for sunburn, etc. But science that ‘proves’ something that journalists, commentators and policy bods like to think was blatantly obvious can also command more than its fair of column inches. Last year, for example, we reported on how a paper published by the Royal Society had proved once and for all that The Great Global Warming Swindle real

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Why’s it upside-down?

You may remember Brak, the character from Space Ghost. He got his own spin-off show called “The Brak Show” which wasn’t on very long, but remains one of my all time favorite Adult Swim shows. He even made a CD called “The Brak Album Starring Brak.” Well, there is this one song called “I Like Hubcaps,” that just cracks me up. whenever someone says “I like…” I begin singing it in my head. I’m not even sure why I think it’s so hilarious, because he’s just naming things that he likes. Since I

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Stealing from God’s house

Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations. The theme about forgiveness is a bit presumptive, but it nevertheless provides the story with a voice that emphasizes the fact that robbing churches impacts a community a bit differently than your average heist: Many of the devout in Metro

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Childcare Relationships and Bickering Parents Affect Kids' Stress Hormones

It seems self-evident that kids with poor childcare relationships or parents who frequently fight are more stressed than other kids. But now two new studies have established this common sense theory from a biological standpoint, by monitoring the levels of cortisol (the human stress hormone) in preschoolers and 6-year-olds. As parents across the country struggle to afford high quality childcare and to maintain a stable home environment, these studies are unfortunately quite applicable to these

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Do You Like Maps?

Are you like me? Do you like maps and atlases? Ever since I was a kid I've loved looking at maps and globes, and dreaming of far off places. That really hasn't changed much now that I'm older honestly, and since it's Geography Awareness Week, what better way to spend it then playing with a giant National Geographic atlas online over at the NG MapMachine. The MapMachine puts the entire National Geographic Atlas of the World at your fingertips, and at a fraction of the cost! Using the web inter

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Coco Crisp traded to Royals

The Red Sox have traded center fielder Coco Crisp to the Royals for righthanded relief pitcher Ramon Ramirez, a major league baseball source confirmed to the Globe’s Nick Cafardo this morning. The Red Sox formally announced the deal at noon, and general manager Theo Epstein has a conference call scheduled for 1 p.m. Ramirez (pictured) is an interesting acquisition for the Red Sox — his arrival would suggest that the ball club is at least considering using Justin Masterson as a starter. Report

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Blog Changes and Updates

I have been finding inspiration all over the internet recently. Everywhere. Everywhere. From Grace at Design*Sponge’s project Design by the Book (so awesome! a trip to the library is mandatory) to this list of 100 Everyday Habits for Your Health and Wealth. I’ve actually relooked at my own list and I’m getting closer and closer to making one of those items a reality. I’m so excited about this project that it’s all I think about during the night and all I research during the day. I’ve also been

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TUTORIAL #10: Running a PowerPoint Slideshow From Your Windows Mobile Phone

During the recent .NET University, I had my first iPhone envy. Leon Gersing was giving a presentation on the basics of OOP (which was excellent), and I noticed that he was carrying around his iPhone while he talked. On closer inspection, he was actually using his iPhone as his presentation clicker. He was able to move forward and backward in his presentation, and his phone was actually displaying his speaker notes in his hand! How cool is that? Frustrated, I was convinced that there must be a

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Cuban Guilty Of Being An Enterprising American

It was only a few years ago through conversation that I even heard about Mavericks owner Mark Cuban by a die hard NBA fan and being an MBA with an obvious interest in the business world, it was hard to believe that this was the first time this flamboyant young owner appeared on my business radar.  Lot has changed since but, the SECs insatiable hunger for going after rich and successful people has not. The SEC like the rest of the Bush House, works with a definitive goal in mind. Like a hard

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Day 3: 7 Days Without Spending A Dime

Day 3 of my experiment is already here. So far, it has been fairly easy to not spend any money. However, I have had to make a few changes in my daily routines. Here is what has been different so far: Going Out On Tuesdays I normally go out on Tuesdays for some wings and beer and a local bar. However, I passed it up last night for the experiment. What I realized is that I didn’t even miss it that much and saved like 25 dollars. That’s 100 dollars a month in savings by not going out one day a we

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Randi Zuckerberg Is Ready For Her Close-up

Denton era Blogs like to take shots and this one is most intriguing as I can't decide if she is pretty or not but she has a hold on me and I will follow her as she follows what ever track she is on: Facebook CEO's sister turns on her Valley friends By Owen Thomas,  ripped from ValleyWag  Randi Zuckerberg, the limelight-seeking sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a key lesson of media success: As you scale the ladder, make sure to jab your stiletto heels into the faces of

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