Welcome to BeeLine

A new year.  A new beginning.  A new blog.  It certainly is debatable whether the world needs another blog.  By one count (Pingdom), there were 126 million blogs on the internet in 2009.  That compares to 234 million websites serving 1.73 billion internet users worldwide.

90 trillion emails were also sent in 2009 (the final 2010 totals should be available in the next 30 days). However, 81% of all emails are spam according to Pingdom!!

Keeping all this in mind, I want BeeLine to be useful and relevant.  A"beeline" is defined in most dictionaries as a straight or direct route. The shortest line from one place to the other is probably the way I like to think of it.  That is what I want this blog to be.  There is so much information out there, but how do you get yourself above the clutter, chaos and calumny that we live with everyday?  My hope is to provide some small modicum of coherence and context about the world and share it with you in a concise manner.  That is my goal for BeeLine.

I intend to write primarily about what interests me and what I also think you will find interesting. That will probably mean there will be a heavy dose of politics, public policy, economics, taxation, investing, employee benefits, neuroeconomics, sports and interesting trivia.  However, anything and everything is fair game if it meets the BeeLine test of giving you a direct path to what I find interesting and what I think is worth sharing.

How will I do this?  Will there be enough worth sharing?  I have no idea as I begin the New Year.  However, experience tells me I will come across something that will meet the test.  The only serious question is whether anyone will care.  I start off knowing that of those 1.73 billion internet users, 738 million are in Asia.  By contrast, only 250 million are in North America-only 15% of total worldwide internet users.

When you add in the internet users in Latin America (179 million), Africa (67 million), the Middle East (57 million) and Europe (418 million of which a large majority do not speak English) I have to come to terms that none of us is as relevant as we think we are (or used to be).  It is a new world. I will do my best to embrace it even if I am competing in a small market much like my local Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

Happy New Year!