A quick final post before TBB gets out of Dodge to Mauiiiiiiiiii!
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Please welcome “The Free-quent Flyer” in the world famous “Blogs I Like” list. It should have been there a long time ago but just got lazy and careless. I think the sites listed in the “Blogs I Love” and “Blogs I Like” lists are doing it right and deserve your support. To me, they clearly stand out and the world is better having them around.
This is a must read blog post. At Mileage Update: “Marathon Man to Speak at DO“. There are many of us who do some Manufactured Spending and then there is a whole another level occupied by the one and only…Marathon Man! Looking forward to the talk in Charlotte on May 10th. The Marathon in his name applies to his “short” posts on Flyer Talk 🙂
Please let’s all have a moment of silence for the end of the Vanilla Reload cards at CVS. One thing for sure, my gas bill will be lower! Sometimes I feel like they are on to us from all directions #mustfightback!
LOVED this picture!
Walmart Limits and Thresholds. By The Free-quent Flyer. I see more visits to Walmart unfortunately…so this post is a good reminder!
I will be posting some trip reports next week while we are enjoying ourselves in Maui. I may have some open posts too so you can keep the conversation going. I will not have time to answer each email and comment but will certainly read them all.
Please remember that I have lost about 18 lbs since 1/1/2014 and I don’t look as fat now lol.
I have not gardened my reservations but I did manage to snag low Bs Southwest boarding passes.
This has been such a tough winter we are all so happy we are getting out of Dodge. I think I may listen to them to take it easy and just relax…I am always so excited when I travel to a new place, it makes me feel so…alive! Not that I don’t feel alive in Michigan by the way but, you know, just getting on a plane, flying through clouds and landing in a place I have never been before and exploring it is just…priceless. So, burn your miles and get out there!
See you around!
Mahalo
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George
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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First?
Second is the new First!
Buzz, enjoy your trip to Maui! And get your (lean) ass to Kauai soon!
Mid air high five. I’m flying LAX-LHR tomorrow. Have a good trip George!
Short rant:
In your life, try not to be purposefully obtuse. I’m tired of conversations in which people make appeals to authority or use anecdotes to flippantly respond to an established scientific consensus.
Look, people, peer review is the process by which we learn about the world in our modern age. It’s the best we have. (If you have a better idea, get thee to the AAAS.) Your skepticism/doubt about the safety of vaccinations, climate change, evolution, and the value of comprehensive sex education isn’t actually fact-based, it’s just dumb.
I bring this up because I was reminded of it when I mistakenly went to this post,, in which a commenter notes, following MilesAbound, that there are numerous studies documenting that people pay more if they use credit card than if they use cash. This is true; there are randomized trials and observational studies with a sufficiently large number of observations that have found this result. The author replies with an upbeat, “Well, my husband and I are very careful and so for us ….” personal anecdote. Look, that doesn’t actually contradict the commenter’s point, which is a social scientific result. Your anecdote is just another observation, and we don’t know where it lies with regard to the average subject. (And that blog’s founder doesn’t understand the statistical concept of censoring, but that’s for another time.)
Please, for the love of Maury Povich, stop being willfully obtuse.
[I’m probably off-base and I know I should ignore blogs on the ignore list, but I am fodido beyond belief and exhausted and it’s late. Also, there were those articles on Tol recently.]
In my experience, logic and reason are tools not for getting at the truth, but for persuading others to come around to one’s point of view regardless of whether it’s right or wrong.
“peer review is the process by which we learn about the world in our modern age. It’s the best we have.”
So, you’ve missed all the absolutely CLEAR corruption and mis-use of “peer” review?! Have you ever read John Ionnides?! “Peer review” is way, way too often the medieval guild system — “play the game OUR way, or get out!” Catch up, catch up:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/
There are hundreds of medical studies proven over and over to NOT be true — and still the medical field carries on ignorantly! (A recent study showed that it takes a whopping SEVENTEEN YEARS for knowledge resulting from studies (including esp. actual clinical trials (the gold standard of medical science), as against observational “studies”) contradicting “what we know” to actually ‘reach’ your local doctor and be put into practice!
How about the whole doggoned ({sarcasm} peer-reviewed {/sarc}) “Climate-gate scandal?! Where “true believers” refused to release data, lied about the data, DESTROYED data, discarded the Little Ice Age in Europe as if it didn’t even occur (‘hockey-stick chart,” anyone?), actually forced the firing of a journal editor because he would NOT play ball their way — they wanted him to block papers that disagreed with “accepted canon.” The mere FACT that there is “accepted canon” should be massively troubling!! Science is not about “what me and mah frien’s BELIEVE is true; the ‘canon’ of OUR church is truth!” — it’s about what the data shows! (And I cannot — 100% CANNOT — get over the fact that Mars is warming up (and now, NOT warming up) the same way(s) as the Earth. Think humans are causing that?!? Maybe Mars is suffering “sympathy-pains” … er, sympathy-heating-up?)
I’d suggest there is more than a mere hint of “willfully obtuse” in relying so heavily on “peer-review” — as if a group of people with an axe to grind (“we’re right, everyone else is wrong! We know the One True Way! And heretics must be blocked and disallowed from publishing!”)
How about all your peer-reviewed studies on statins?
Sorry, the link didn’t show up — that quote is from here, one of just a gazillion of very carefully explained demonstrations of why the “peer-reviewed” bull-droppings ARE bull-droppings (and sleight of hand, and malicious misdirection and and and…)
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/statins/statins-everyone-maybe-anyone/
Hi Elenor. Quick question: would you like a reply?
I ask because I’m not convinced that it’ll do either of us any good, and I don’t want to monopolize this space with non-travel issues. I already addressed the “Mars warming” point when you brought it up last time here. The fact that you’re bringing it up again (and the East Anglia red herrings, which I also partially addressed and which are factually unsound) suggests that you didn’t read my reply and update in the Bayesian sense, so we’re not really having a conversation.
If it’s just stress release, then all good.
Eleanor – Amex, er, Amen! Could not agree more. Especially the cult of the Global Warming Believers (composed of the same group of scoundrels, er, “scientists” who told us ever-so-hysterically in the 70s and 80s that we were about to enter another Ice Age – now, same data, but 180 degree different spin. Yet predictably, same hysterical claims of war, famine, disease, yada yada).
And the Earth is how old?
What you’re saying has no basis in the facts about climate science in the 1970s and 1980s.
The journal editor was not fired, the data was not destroyed. I’ll leave finding links about those events to the reader. I’m done. I can’t spend time arguing with people who get basic facts wrong.
And what about those Pentagon scoundrels who keep identifying climate change as a major threat to world peace in the future.
Man, it’s just funny to watch the skeptics/deniers grasp at the same 2-3 straws over and over again, even after they’re proven wrong.
What would these people do without talking points and fancy language?
Aloha George, have a fantastic trip to Maui! Seriously, this luau is awesome! https://www.oldlahainaluau.com/ We were there for my birthday, the food, drinks and show were all fantastic. I’m married to a Cook Islander, I know good hula when I see it. If you go, try that blue cocktail (I forgot the name) but it was delicious!
What? No love for the Lava Flow? Do they still even serve that there? Got hooked on those in the late 1990’s at the OLL…
My wife & I were thoroughly impressed with the Old Lahaina last fall – great show, excellent staff, fantastic location, and the food was solid given the number of people.
Enjoy Maui. It really is a lovely island. And +1 to harvson3. Not sure what set him off, but I get it.
Why are mile and points bloggers so obsessed with Uber?
Same as Chase. Good product with an even better unlimited referral system.
+1
The appearance of the faux 1% lifestyle. The same applies to only flying first class on only staying suites at hotels. Thought I don’t think this elitism is limited to the bloggers it extends well into the Flyertalk world as well.
Sad but true.
Have a great trip! Forget about your work, your blog and us. Just have a great time with your family! …………… a few reminders, don’t dangle your legs off the kayak (shark food), Happy Hour is affordable and family friendly at the Greek owned Nick’s Fisherman Fairmont restaurant, honk horn when you pass Buzz’s Warf restaurant (picture opportunity) on the drive to Lahaina, Costco is at the airport, and say hi for my to the guy in the orange shave ice truck selling weed for me.
Be careful about Nicks and certs/gift cards though, it’s not owned by the resort.
Have a super time. We’ll miss you!
Also, best snorkeling on the island is at Ahihi-Kinau Reserve.
Hi from the Hampton Inn Alameda at Oakland airport.
Getting up at 5.30 am had an effect, we all crashed after we checked in. I started reading the “Maui Revealed” book on the planes and your feedback on trip suggestions and have realized just 5 nights in Maui won’t do it! So many things to do, so little time. So I may come back again here before Kaui 🙂
We have no car as we are leaving tomorrow morning early again to Maui. So, we did what we do at least once in every trip: we ate ramen noodles in our room for lunch 🙂
Time for a walk and we’ll hit something locally for dinner tonight
I have a quick question that I don’t think I’ve seen answered before: what links do you recommend for credit card sign ups? I hate to use one of the pimp’s (TPG) links. If you had links, I’d be happy to use those. Maybe the answer is links on the “Blogs I like list”?
NEVER use ANY affiliate links from anyone, for any reason. Using affiliate links only encourages the pimps (and the wannabe pimps). Go directly to the issuer’s website or look on FT.
I sometimes wonder if the FT links are affiliate links for someone. Some of the good deals aren’t avail on the card website – like the 100k executive AA card.
+1. I agree, do not use affiliate links. That is what is contributing to this whole mess. You can find non affiliate link versions of almost every sign up. For me the exception to the rule is if the best offer is only via an affiliate link. It happens very occasionally. When it does and it is a card you want (think critically about that because the bloggers will make it sound like best thing ever) then get it through the blog you have benefited a lot from and has good blogging practices. FM is the gold standard in my opinion.
So now GL’s is doing an advanced FTU same weekend at the A2DO. Maybe he thinks he’ll convince some of the folks on the waiting list to do a DO in Chicago!