Bangladesh garment workers want wages to rise with soaring costs of food

15,000 workers go on strike. When you earn $25/month and rice is 25 cents a pound, something has gotta give….

Daily Show correspondent John Oliver on Fair Trade, China, and Outsourcing

Worried that China is going to dominate the global economy? Stop. Oliver assures us that they won’t because Chinese people will never buy inflatable grills.

What about Free Trade? Oliver says we should demonize unfair trade.

Outsourcing? Yes. Oliver outsources his jokes to a 10-year old Indonesian boy.

Watch the video. It’s just another example of why we should be electing comedians to the land’s highest offices.

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Does blogging build a writing career?

Abha from Writtenroad.com asks several travel writers HERE, “How important is blogging in building your career as a travel-writer? Has blogging ever got you any work with print publications?” She included part of my answer, here’s the rest:

As far as advancing my career as a writer, blogging has been every bit as important as dumb luck.

It was dumb luck when Literary Agent A stumbled upon my blog, www.whereamiwearing.com and asked me if I had considered writing a book about the subject. This was before I had even left on the trip the blog was about.

When I returned from the trip I went to a writer’s conference in Muncie, Indiana, (not exactly a hotspot for meeting agents) and asked Agent B about pre-contract etiquette dealing with Agent A….

A thousand words…floating village

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Another tremor…

On the Carole King scale of measuring earthquakes it was about like this…

I hope the quakes stop because I’m not sure if I can find any more awful renditions of “I Feel the Earth Move” on YouTube….

The Earth moving under my feet

Annie and I, along with many others across the Midwest, experienced our first earthquake this morning. We were asleep when our bed started to shake.

“Was that an earthquake?” Annie turned to me and asked.

“Nah”

We both went back to sleep.

If you are wondering what an earthquake is like in Indiana. It’s kind of like this:

As opposed to one in California, which, I imagine, is more like this:

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Cheesy Press Release

For some reason I started getting travel-related press releases by email and mail.

Yesterday I received a packet with a map encouraging me to take a road trip to visit “116 tasty points of interest across America’s Dairyland” – Wisconsin. The following sentence says it all:

“The possibilities for fun are endless, including information about specialty cheese shops and cheesemaking facilities, where you can meet many of the nation’s most awarded cheesemakers, tour their “workshops” and sample some of Wisconsin’s best products.”

Among the things that I include on my endless possibilities of fun list are NOT “information about specialty cheese shops” or “cheesemaking facilities” or “cheesemakers.”

Even though I will never visit one of Wisconsin’s 116 tasty points of interest, I would like to encourage the Milk Marketing board to continue…

Chinese Student says CNN faked images

One of my favorite NPR shows is On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Monday On Point aired from Beijing where they talked with three students about the Olympics, Tibet, China’s place in the world, and the Chinese perception of the USA.

The students, like China, are driven. In fact, I would argue that they have at least three times the amount of drive as most of us Americans. While it was neat to hear about the exciting possibilities they see in their own and China’s future, some of what they had to say was less than exciting.

One of the girls said that CNN faked images from the riots in Tibet. She said that CNN dressed up Nepalese, who she could tell were Nepalese because of their…

Wal-Mart saving the world one funny light bulb at a time

Yep, that Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott:

Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. “Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces,” he plans to say….
In particular, he said, he’s troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. “The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid,” he said. “The part that’s unsatisfactory is for the bottom third — two billion of six billion.”

In the next three years, we would like to build a very different system. We believe that there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global…

In the hands of a higher power

I finished editing the book yesterday. Now it’s in the hands of a higher power – Richard, my editor.

I’m happy with how it all went and I enjoy reading it, which is really saying something because I wrote it and I’ve read each word a bazillion times. I should be sick of it.

Back in December when I signed the contract for the book, I was somewhat worried with how soon Wiley wanted it. I had never written anything over a few thousand words and wasn’t sure if three months would be enough time to pump out a book that I would be happy with. As it turns out I wrote at least 25% more book than I was contractually obligated to write. I’ve cut…