What Happens When Two Geeks Marry?

And more importantly, what do they serve in their Geek (wedding) Buffet?

Congratulations Dana and Mark!

Best wishes for a long and happy marriage from your fellow geeks!

(Please add your greetings in the comments below.)

Blogroll Addition: Jeff in Burundi

We seem to be having some sparse posting of late, but the summer travel season (including such things as vacations, business trips, weddings, moving, and preparing for new schools or jobs) is well underway, which is terribly distracting for our writers, alas. Hence, a blogroll addition to keep you distracted.

Jefferson Mok is a classmate from Grinnell who has just moved to Burundi to “establish a residential shelter for female child soldiers who need assistance to reintegrate into their communities.” Simple, yes? Especially as the sole representative of his organization. You can follow his adventures so far at his blog. He spent the last two years working with asylum seekers in Chicago, and is now going to try to help at the source. We wish him the very best of luck! I, for one, am somewhat in awe at the task he’s taking on.

Blogroll Additions: Many, Many Grinnell Blogs

The first blogroll addition was our friend Mike S.’s grad school blog, Ad Nauseam, on which he ponders issues of grad school life and being part of the academy in general. Though he himself is a literature person, and does indeed post on literature-specific issues, he also explores things like how an almost-done PhD TA is supposed to address professors, the role of academic blogging vs. peer-reviewed article publishing, and the point of theoretical work within the context of various field, just to point to a few of his recent post topics. Academics, go forth and read!

The second blogroll addition is where the “many, many Grinnell blogs” comes in, as Geek Buffet’s intrepid poetloverrebelspy/Hilary has started a blog to compile all the other blogs by past and present Grinnellians of all sorts, Grinnell Bloggers. One of our previous blogroll updates got a comment requesting such a thing, so here ya go! It’s quite an impressive list. Thanks, Hilary!

Geek Buffet Not One of World’s 50 Most Powerful Blogs

Sadly, we didn’t make the cut. Nor did any of the blogs our array of authors contribute to or edit. We didn’t get a Bloggie either — heck, we weren’t even nominated! Are we doing something wrong, internet? Apparently our “master plan” to build one of the world’s most powerful blogs is going nowhere, fast.

Actually, we don’t have a “master plan.” (Breathe your sigh of relief here.) Not having said plan makes it that much easier to accept the rejection — or charitably, ignorance — of the real movers and shakers, I suppose. Schadenfreude at the collective weakness of the majority of blogs I read doesn’t hurt either.

I was put in the position last week of having to explain what separated a blog from a website, and further, why a freshly minted travel community should consider having its own regular blog entries rather than relying solely on user-produced content. I gave the example of a blog I frequent — a company which makes money by facilitating budget-friendly hotel bookings for places they’ve culled and authentically recommend. While I’m generally not in the market for their services, I continue to read their daily updates. The benefit to them: regular traffic to their site, their address at the forefront of my brain should I need a cheap hotel, potential commission; the benefit to me: interesting, fresh content, a useful service (booking ease, reliability of product) when I’m in the market. Were there no blog, I would have visited their page once and forgotten the address long ago. Besides providing me with interesting news, insights and ideas, the blog produces a positive returns for the business straightforwardly and inexpensively. Seems like a no-brainer.

They followed up with a more difficult question I’m still deconstructing: would you still be reading that blog if you didn’t blog on that topic?

Blogroll Addition: GreenCouple

Geek Buffet’s own terrorfirma has started a new blog, GreenCouple.com, where he writes as his alterego, Will, along with co-blogger and fiancée Maggie. You can get a taste by reading Will’s cross-post below, Globalization is Green, and then check out the rest of their posts to date. They started posting in January, so the archives aren’t too daunting. Read them all!

They cover an interesting range of topics, from global economics to personal decisions about where to live, all with a focus on living green. Maggie’s personal and professional interest in eating both green and local promises to inspire any number of interesting posts related to food from them both. Will has already produced several good posts on some of the more personal economics of living green as well, such as alternative gift-giving and the pros and cons of purchasing “green energy” from the power company. I look forward to more!

-Dana

Blogroll Additions: Language Geeks and Truckers

I found a couple new blogs to add to the blogroll, and thought you fine people should be alerted to these fabulous new options for entertainment and procrastination.

First, the Cognition and Language Lab blog, which is highly interesting to me, and will presumably be so to all my fellow linguistics geeks as well.

Second, another blog by a Grinnell alumnus, On the Road (again), in which Mark Bourne chronicles his experiences as a trucker. We Grinnellians know how to put our liberal arts education to work, yes we do! He is also keeping a blog about the progress on building his bread oven, which is what the trucking money is going towards with the end goal of having a bread baking business. Mmmm, bread.

Enjoy!
-Dana

Blogroll Addition Extravaganza!

Okay, it’s been a while since I pointed out additions to the blogroll, and it appears that the advent of allergy/asthma/holiday/exam/video game season is cutting into our collective writing, so, if you find youself without fresh geekings to read here, try these other fine blogs.

Blogs by Grinnellians

Bittersweet, the personal blog of our friend Molly, a (currently) former middle school teacher and aspiring YA novel author. She blogs about life, books, dogs, and often posts very realistic criticisms of our public education system.

Brood, the always amusing blog of Sarah Aswell, MFA, former writer for Grinnell’s campus paper, current minion for the publishing industry, and part-time (working toward full-time) journalistic writer for a variety of publications. She has several ongoing features on her blog, including “Sarah vs. Britney Spears,” “Ripley: Cat on a Diet,” “Lifetime Movie Reviews,” and, of course, book reviews. You can peruse a list of her published articles here.

Puffery is yet another blog featuring our own kidsilkhaze/Jennie. It’s amazing she has time to keep up with all this blogging! Puffery is actually a group blog, too, again with mostly Grinnellians, about beauty and bath products. If you’re a girl who wants to acknowledge your girly side and get some practical advice about what and what not to buy, go read! If you’re a boy who wonders what all the fuss is about all this girly stuff, go read! Moisturizer, makeup, bubble bath, shampoo, soap… they’ve got it all.

Sports Guy Talkin’ Crazy Again, a blog by a Grinnell English professor. It is, as he describes it, “Erik Simpson’s commentary on the way people talk about sports.” Only updated as often as Simpson notices people saying something interesting about sports, but when it’s updated, it’s always good. (His non-sports blog is Underlying Logic.)

Blogs by Other Worthy People

The following are blogs by recognizable famous journalist authors that you may already be reading, but if you aren’t, you should check out.

gladwell.com is Malcolm Gladwell’s blog. Gladwell is the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, and writes regularly for the New Yorker magazine. He blogs, as he writes, on a wide variety of interesting subjects.

The Loom is Carl Zimmer’s science blog. Zimmer is a science writer who focuses on evolutionary biology. He is the author of Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Parasite Rex, Soul Made Flesh, At the Water’s Edge, and The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins. He also writes for the New York Times, National Geographic, Wired, and numerous other magazines.

Relatedly, From A to Zimmer is written by Carl’s brother, Ben Zimmer, a linguist who also writes for Language Log. From A to Zimmer is his column on the Oxford University Press blog. Mmmmm, linguistics and etymology.

Lost comments found

We’ve been having a spirited debate in the comment thread of Jennie’s last post on library censorship, Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?! As a result, our spam blocker has gotten a little overzealous. I’ve found and rescued three lost comments, but if you comment in the future and find your comment hasn’t shown up, email us or leave a(nother) comment on this post here.

New Blogroll Additions: Geek Buffet Writers and Other Post-Grinnellians

Some new additions to the blogroll for you:

Our own poetloverrebelspy (aka Hilary) has started another blog, Less Than a Shoestring, “Budget Travel Tips for People with No Budget.” As she says in her introductory post:

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of budget travel advice from newspaper writers with $100/day accommodation budgets.

Hear, hear! We will read on with interest.

Also, even though it’s been in the blogroll since the blog started, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight another blog by a Geek Buffet writer. kidsilkhaze (aka Jennie) reviews books extensively over at Biblio File. Given that she is a children’s librarian, she focuses mostly on children’s and young adult literature, but occasionally throws in other stuff she’s been reading as well. Whether or not you intend to read the books she’s talking about, the reviews are always interesting, so read it even if you don’t have kids in your life to buy books for.

And finally, Body In Motion is a blog being written by another graduate of Grinnell, our dear alma mater (for most of us here, anyway). The author is an international public health worker, currently between posts, but soon on her way back to Africa. She was most recently posted in Congo. Interesting reports from places not many of us go, about important issues most of us don’t experience first hand. Plus, interesting travel.

Not that we have a travel or book bias here or anything…

New Blogroll Addition: Intelligent Travel

Sometimes, I do bad things to myself. For example, recieving National Geographic Traveler email updates has often seemed like needless self-torture, since I can never actually go on any of the fabulous vacation deals they advertise. But they recently changed their format to pointing out more information and articles, with less emphasis on deals, which is both more distracting and more tolerable. This week, they pointed out that they have started a blog, Intelligent Travel.

This seemed like an ideal candidate for addition to the blogroll. Yes, fine, they’re arguably a commercial blog, but you know, there’s something to be said for reading the blog of people who think about traveling, in-depth, for a living. The blog’s tagline is, “The blog about authentic & sustainable travel,” which seems to fit the proclivities of this blog’s writers pretty darn well.

So far, they have supported the use of trains (which I have also felt the need to do on several occasions), written about the pros and cons of polar vacationing (which I have also thought about, because the news all seems to indicate that we’ve got to see those glaciers while we can!), and the inequity and ridiculousness of flying first class vs. coach. They’ve got some other posts up, too, with tips on traveling responsibly. I’m looking forward to more of their thoughts on travel.