Most of the other Disney guides seemed to be crypto-valentines. The market was missing a guide to Walt Disney World written for the way most of us react to the resort.
A Walt Disney World guidebook for the rest of us
journalism
The Internet is a directory, but a good guidebook guides
Guidebooks as we know them have declined not simply because reading habits are shifting. The product shifted first. Guidebooks became dispensable because guidebooks, as we now know them, do not retain many of the characteristics—concision, opinion, direction—that once made them an important tool for sorting through the chaff. It’s been so long since guidebooks guided that we forgot what it means to do so.
Cool USB flash drive press kit designs
I receive a lot of press kits on USB flash drives. I saved a few of my favorites.
Are Disney’s Magic Kingdom Google Maps images fake?
What’s the deal with these bird’s-eye photos of Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando? They appear on Google Maps when you click “Satellite.” They look fabricated. Why?
Why ‘travel writing’ can cease to exist
The concept of “travel writing” is so limiting. Who wants to read about travel? That’s a personal process, and it often involves non–illuminating details such as taxicabs, tickets, and uncomfortable beds. If you drop the “travel” and are just a “writer,” you haven’t lost a yard of territory. You are still covering the whole planet.
How Ann B. Davis changed my life
The Ann B. Davis incident fertilized the soil of my skepticism. A new world had opened in me. I became a travel writer, a skeptic, and a storyteller. Thank you, Ann B. Davis.
The night I jilted Gloria Steinem
David Bale gave me many things that I never properly thanked him for. His support helped change and redefined my life. But his biggest lesson was not to hide when I am invited to live.
Welcome to the Low Self-Esteem Economy
More of us are being told by businesses that because the economy remains in a muddle, we’re all the equivalent of rank beginners. Welcome to the new Low Self-Esteem Economy.
Signs that your favorite website is a post mill
Post mills can undermine the Fourth Estate, allow marketing and PR departments to manipulate our media as their mouthpiece, and leave the watchdogs sleeping. An entire generation of people is growing up without an understanding that the people who bring them their news have hastily recycled it, without checking how it got to them.
Seven things Facebook and Google get wrong about you
Most of the major sites we use now purport to be able to “customize” what they show you based on what you’ve looked at before. But this worrying fascination is built on some logical lapses about who we are and what our behavior really exposes about ourselves.