Eva, all-around blogging goddess and contributor to WorldHum, introduced me to a new social network/travel magazine – Matador Travel. It’s facebook meets bootsnall meets WorldHum.
There’s a little bit of everything in the Matador community.
There’s a page on travel writing and a lot of opportunities for writers and travelers to share their tales and earn some cash (perhaps even more than $7/hour) to put toward that next meal or trip.
Eva contributes to Matador Pulse, which “scours the web for overlooked stories about travel, place, and culture, while also digging deep into our own Matador community to “discover” interesting people and the things they’re doing at home and on the road.” The most recent post touches on DIY aid to Burma.
You should become a member, visit my profile, and friend me. Currently, I only have two friends, which is pretty pathetic.
The story is a little dated, but I just saw it here.
I first read about Willie Tan in Nobodies by John Bowe. Tan owned the majority of garment factories on Saipan, which were almost entirely supported by importing workers from China, Bangladesh, etc. In 2006, he and his family donated $8,000 to the Clinton campaign. Some are calling for Hillary to give it back and refute his support….
After expenses, time, pain, suffering, and writing, I’ve made a whopping $7 per hour (so far) writing my book. To all those aspiring authors stocking the shelves at your local book store: it is possible to do what you love, work more, and earn less.
Myanmar, China, cyclones, earthquakes – all undemocratic.
I’m not saying that disasters struck Myanmar and China because of their lack of democracy. That would make me no different than off-the-wall preachers claiming Hurricane Katrina was the price New Orleans paid for its “celebrations of sin”, or 9/11 a result of fowl coming home to roost. But I would like to say, these uncontrollable disasters are an opportunity for nations, not to capitalize on, but to reach out to the people of Myanmar and China.
The scale of the disaster in China, although massive, is much smaller than that of Myanmar and the Chinese government is probably more capable of responding to a disaster than the U.S., so I think heaping…
I watched Roger Clemens testify before Congress. I laughed at him when he busted out “misremember” after “misremember”.
“That’s not even a word,” I said to the TV, talking around a bite of cold pizza.
Months later and I find “misremember” entering my everyday speech. I always say it with a wink and a nod and maybe a pair of air-quotes, as if everyone had spent hours on the Tuesday or Thursday – or whatever day the testimony was – watching it. Like it was our own inside joke.
Last night the guest on the daily show – some Washington crony whose book Stewart touted as “well foot-noted, making for a very slow read” – busted out “misremember”. I laughed, smug with the knowledge that I knew “misremember”…
Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what one was intended for.
I was lucky to start writing for pay from the beginning. However, I was not so lucky that for the first few years that pay was about half-a-penny per word. Twain’s advice hits especially close to home considering my day job is in the wood sawing field….
A “still boobless” Mrs. Butterworth has sunk to the level of Geico commercials. Sad. One has to wonder, if she had boobs would she be doing this? We’ll never know.
Does anyone remember the computer game Hot Dog stand in which you buy the hotdog, the buns, etc, and you see if you can make your little hot dog business work?
Well Sim-Sweatshop is kinda like that except instead of selling hot dogs for a profit you make shoes for a loss. Okay, other than they are both less than elementary introductions to economics, they’re nothing alike.
The goal of Sim-Sweatshop is to make three shoes in a day to earn your full day’s worth of pay – $6.05. You do this by dragging the parts of a shoe together. It’s frustrating, which I suppose is the point, because the game constantly interrupts you to eat or join a union or to buy your daughter…
Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will.
Mainly, he’s talking about the environment, but his message can be applied universally. As I read, I found myself substituting “clothes” for “food”, and “what we wear” for “what we eat”.
Here’s a longer excerpt:
Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter…
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