Blog of the Day: John T. Reed

Technically not a blog but a sensible, honest and logical writer’s official site.

I’ve been reading content from John Reed’s official site ever since the time I searched for reviews of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He puts on more than enough, (the stuff there’s too much of an overkill against the book’s author,) to dislodge a lot of financial advice and other things from the book itself.

Anyway though the site’s very much dedicated to selling his books online, I still go there once in a while to read some stuff. Just recently I found a couple of things worth sharing here fortunately.

1. Dumb things people should stop saying and writing – For instance, I can’t understand why people keep on saying irregardless when regardless alone not only suffices but more importantly is correct.
2. The real estate B.S. artist detection checklist – True to his reputation as a serious critic of bad apples in the real estate business, he compiled a list of warning signals to look out for when faced with people from that direction. A lot of the items mentioned there even applies to a lot of sales people for other products and services.
3. The silliness of looking for symbolism in literature – While I might not entirely argue on his tone on this topic, I just can’t help but wonder how much criticisms he got for this. Sure sounds like a time bomb to set off tons of hate-mail from the ever-symbolism-loving world of literature.

Blogs of the Day: Biosingularity and The Leaky Brain

It’s been a while since I’ve featured Blog of the Day so I guess it’s about time I featured some spots elsewhere from the blogsphere.

The first would be Biosingularity as it featured a health tidbit regarding the benefits of green tea in the fight against the Big C. Sure it might sound like one of those overused marketing lines by health drinks apart from forwarded email fodder involving the relative rarity of the condition among cultures with green tea traditionally included in their diets, (i.e. Japanese and Chinese,) and a lot of other such medical research and studies:

Concentrated chemicals derived from green tea dramatically boosted production of a group of key detoxification enzymes in people with low levels of these beneficial proteins, according to researchers at Arizona Cancer Center.

These findings, published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggest that a green tea concentrate might help some people strengthen their metabolic defense against toxins capable of causing cancer.

Another plus for the consumption of green tea.

The next would be abarclay12’s The Leaky Brain as it features a whole range of hilarious blog posts such as those compiled in her Team of The Week entries. In the Aug 10 Team of The Week for instance she features someone from Santa Fe at number 3:

Oh you’re gonna love this guy. His name is Bryan Connelly, and he was convicted of forgery charges in Texas. But we don’t care about that. We love Bryan because he wrote the judge at his trial a letter asking him TO KILL the prosecutor. Then, when the judge wouldn’t agree to kill the prosecutor, our friend Bryan wrote his defense attorney a letter asking him TO KILL the judge. How great is that??! In a very eloquent letter to his lawyer, Bryan wrote, “If you decide not to kill [the judge] for me, I will kill him myself, after I kill you.” This guy is for real, and I am in love with him.

In the July 27 serving, she features someone from Virginia at number 4:

This is the greatest story ever. The guy in the picture is Russell Tavares. Some dude called him a “nerd” over the internet, and Russ got in his car and drove 1300 miles from Virgina to Texas to confront John Anderson, his name-caller. The greatest part of the story is that every time he crossed a state border, he took a picture of the “Welcome to [State’s Name]” to prove he was on his way. When he got to Texas, he burnt Anderson’s trailer down. Some nerds are hardcore.

As with all other blogs I’ve featured, these ones should keep me reading through their vast archives for a while.

Blog of the Day: 6 Things to Consider

I first mentioned Steve Atkinson’s 6 Things to Consider here when I referred to his 6 Common Energy Saving Myths. And just an entry before I used his iPhone pros and cons entry to wrap up an entry on the hyped gadget.

The blog in itself presents 6 different lists for different stuff 6 times a week. While I have encountered pretty worthwhile reads there, I just wish Steve would include external links which would aid the interested reader for further reading.

Anyway an interesting blog entry from there gives 6 details on a little Ice Age from 1400 to 1850. Included in the list is an account of the activity of Mayon volcano along with La Soufriere in the Caribbean and Tambora in Indonesia during 1916, known as the year without summer. Incidentally the most destructive eruption of Mayon in recorded history was on February 1, 1814. At that time lava flows buried the town of Cagsawa and 1,200 people perished.

Blog of the Day: Codestore

I’ve been mentioning Jake’s site, Codestore, in at least two previous posts so I thought I would just as well feature him for the third Blog of the Day. This and the fact that I’ve ripped off taken two cool Lotus Notes icons from his previous blog posts actually, (including the one shown here.)

In the world of Lotus Notes/Domino development Jake Howlett has oftentimes been lumped among those big names in the foray such as Stan Rogers. Here’s Codestore in his own words:

CodeStore started in the late ’90s as a place to store bits of code (hence the name) on my hard drive. Access was soon requested by colleagues, both in and out of the office. That is when I decided to make it accessible via the web. The initial plan was not to make it public but then I thought “Why not?!”. After all if it wasn’t for people sharing with me when I was a novice I would have been lost. So, in a way, it’s payback for all those generous members of the Notes community and to those in a similar position as I was all those years ago.

CodeStore has had many looks over its lifetime and in certain ways reflects my ideals of what a site should be like – simple and functional..

The site’s popularity has never ceased to amaze me. There’s an average of about 5,000 visitors a day. What really makes it worth it though is when I receive mail that takes time to thank me.

I owe a lot of what I know in terms of Domino development to the site. It was a great relief given a technology that’s scarcely documented unlike those from MS. As an added bonus, Jake makes it a point to answer all emails to him, (well my stat’s 2 of 2 and I’m taking it, since I can’t imagine the volume of emails the guy gets daily.)

Blog of the Day: Money Smarts

5 years of fatherhood required me to take a look at the future from a whole lot of different perspectives. Apart from major decisions such as taking a look at the feasibility of acquiring assets for my family, (i.e. house and lot, family car, etc.,) the future pressures me with one thing I’ll have to eventually wrestle with: college education.

Right now I can say I’m pretty good at minimizing expenses. But what about actually coming up with that amount of money? That’s one room for improvement I’ve been starting to look at in the recent months.

Here’s Money Smarts by Salve Duplito. The blog dedicated to personal finance not only features finance articles by the author but other financial perspectives from other people knowledgeable in it. What oftentimes ensues in the comments trail is a healthy exchange, (or clash) of ideas.

Blog of the Day: Thirty Something

One who’s anything like me, (always on the lookout for sensible information on the web,) would “appreciate” new information every now and then. What more can you ask for from takyo’s blog, ThirtySomething, which features posts pertaining to political, economic and social topics among others.

Check out the latest post, Income, Labor, And The Free Market, as of this writing as it puts the income differences among workers under the microscope.