Quote of the Day

The always amusing, and often substantive Mark Steyn, writing for Mcleans magazine about serious problems with the science underlying claims of anthropogenic global warming:

The scientific “consensus” is melting way faster than the glaciers.

The article is worth your time.

Travel Blogging XX

Dateline: Bangkok, Thailand. Further thoughts on the journey just ending. One of the things that makes an ocean cruise fun is if you have nice tablemates for supper. We had two excellent sets of folks with whom to share supper. Our first set on the cruise to Shanghai included folks who were out in this part of the world visiting their son who does IT work for the State Department, based out of Bangkok, and a retired sales manager and his wife from Minnesota. This set for the return cruise included a farm couple from Alberta and an executive couple from Mississippi. Have supper with other folks for a couple of weeks and you start to feel like family.

Of the stops we made on this trip, the two in Vietnam looked and felt the most like we expect Asia to feel. Hong Kong and Singapore are just big modern cities, and to some extent Bangkok and Taipei are the same. Naha in Okinawa is a lower-rise version of a modern city too. Vietnam has that "other" feeling about it. Not bad, mind you, just really different.

If you are going cruising, you need to know about a non-prescription product called Bonine, the chemical name is meclizine hydrochloride. The other DrC and I take it before and during the cruise, one tablet each per day in the evening, and we experience no sea sickness. In simple terms, it works. And if you experience really rough seas, take more than one per day. It makes you a little drowsier than otherwise, but that isn't bad when you are trying to sleep in a strange bed. And no, I don't get paid to plug the product.

Our captain on the cruise just ended was interesting, an Italian who often described the Ocean Princess as "your home away from home, our beautiful white lady." I don't know if he loves his ship but it certainly seems that way. Captains move from ship to ship, they go home on leave and return to another ship as another captain has taken over their former command. He announced with pride that he had received his assignment for the next year and would spend it all aboard the Ocean Princess. She has an amazing itinerary over the next year, essentially around the world.

This class of ship, carrying 600+ passengers, was designed and built for Renaissance, a firm no longer in business. Princess bought 3 of the ships, Oceana has 3 more and Azamara has two. Much smaller than most modern ships, they nevertheless have some of the biggest and best libraries at sea. This is particularly useful for ships that cruise long legs with multiple sea days, reading is a major thing passengers do on sea days. I read several books in the last 30 days, perhaps as many as 10. I really like to find a well-equipped library on a cruise ship, and the Ocean Princess and her sister the Pacific Princess do very well in that regard. I fear I have just told you more than you want to know about the former Renaissance R-ships.

Barone on Climate Change

Michael Barone of The Washington Examiner writes a great take-down of the whole climate change foofaraw. He compares global warmism to religion:

The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a religious faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

Read the whole article.

Quotes of the Day

Douglas Elmendorf, Congressional Budget Office director, testifying before the House Budget Committee:

The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services that people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are prepared to send to the government to finance those services. That fundamental disconnect will have to be addressed in some way if the nation is to avoid serious long-term damage to the economy and to the well-being of the population.

John Hinderaker, author of the Power Line piece which is the source of the quote, opines:

For the foreseeable future, there will be no political will to make such changes. So we're going to see a race between political will and economic collapse. It's hard to be optimistic about the outcome unless a drastic change in our political culture takes place, soon.

Not optimistic, but accurate. I don't see that will in evidence in either major party; perhaps in the tea party movement?

Travel Blogging XIX

Dateline: Bangkok, Thailand. We landed in Laem Chebang this morning and traveled by van to an airport hotel. This was a drive of about 1.5 hours on what is locally called a motorway, in the states we'd call it a freeway or tollway. It turns out the Chao Phraya River is too silted up for large ships to navigate up to Bangkok, small river vessels manage okay.

As we drove we saw mile after mile of rice paddy, and they were large and healthy looking too, not the tiny ones you see elsewhere. Mind you, "large" is relative. These were not as large as the ones we see in California, but still of decent size. This part of Thailand looks more prosperous than Vietnam, I'd guess the export of rice generates decent amounts of foreign exchange.

We see an odd thing here that we've not seen elsewhere. Many, but not all, trucks have a cluster of strips of rubber or leather hanging down in front of the outside edge of the front wheel. Some look new and healthy, some look old and worn-out. I've even seen one or two by rear wheels but the front wheel is the norm. I have to admit I only looked at the driver's side of the vehicle, which here is the right. Thailand drives on the left side of the road as do the U.K., Oz, EnZed, and Japan. Most probably Malaysia, India and Burma could be added to the list as former British colonies. If any reader knows the purpose of this cluster of straps, could you please let me know?

MMR Vaccine Safe

I rarely cite an MSMNC article, given their lefty political bias. This article from MSNBC is apolitical, and it rings down the curtain on the craziness that kept people from vaccinating their children against measles, mumps, and rubella. It turns out the original article in The Lancet that triggered the boycott reported "research" instead of research. Lancet has withdrawn the original Wakefield article. MSNBC says:

The Wakefield paper killed children and left others deaf and disabled from preventable diseases as their parents, in an effort to avoid autism, left them unvaccinated.

Travel Blogging XVIII

Dateline: Ko Samui, Thailand. We just raised the hook, and left this beach resort on an island along the southern peninsula of Thailand, on the Gulf of Thailand side. It is relatively far south but doesn’t have the large Islamic population that some of southern Thailand has. As we commented earlier, it has the same feel that any third world beach resort has, plus elephants and rubber plantations which are somewhat unique to this region.

It is early February, we are north of the equator so it is winter, and the temperature is very nearly 90°F. Why? Because the equator isn’t far south of here. We will dock at Laem Chabang, a port for Bangkok, early tomorrow morning and disembark. This will have been our longest cruise ever, totaling 32 days, and a nice one too. Now we face the long trip home: an hour+ drive, two long, dreary flights, and another multi-hour drive. The only plus is crossing the dateline and getting back the day we lost on the trip here.

Gov't. Healthcare a Loser

Go see this article in Canada's #1 newspaper, The Globe and Mail, which reports that the Premier of Newfoundland (equivalent of a state governor) is coming to the U.S. for heart surgery. Talk about your damning indictments of single payer (governments) health care, this is it.

Where would Premier Danny Williams go for care if we in the U.S. do what President Obama wants and adopt the same second-class health care system Canada has?

Travel Blogging XVII

Dateline: Singapore. It is a city as well as a country, it’s a city-state. Today we took the subway, which is very modern and clean, to Chinatown. Yes, the neighborhood is called “Chinatown” in a city where most of the people are Chinese – go figure. There they were celebrating Chinese New Year by tying silk flowers onto bare trees to create the look of cherry blossoms – actually very pretty.

Then we took a cab to One Fullerton, a plaza alongside the Singapore River where there is the statue of a large Merlion, the symbol of Singapore. The “merlion,” for those who don’t know, is the mythical lion of the seas, with the head of a male lion and the tail of a large fish, like a tuna. At this location there is much construction happening, a giant casino for example with a very interesting shape. If you know the shape of the Greek letter pi [π] now imagine it with three vertical legs instead of two and you’ve got the shape of that new casino’s tower. I’m guessing if you go to the blog http://cruztalking.blogspot.com next week you’ll find the other DrC has posted pictures of both the merlion and the unusual casino.

A member of my onship lecture audience asked about corruption in the government of Singapore and another audience member directed us to the website of an organization called Transparency International which attempts to determine the honesty or lack thereof of governments around the world. I checked, this organization rates Singapore as one of the five least corrupt governments in the world. The other four are Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and New Zealand, not necessarily in that order. That is darn good, particularly in this part of the world.

Cabs are reasonably priced in Singapore, so is the subway. Prices in the shops are not bargains. This afternoon we are moored alongside a passenger catamaran, the Asia Star, with a home port of Nassau. These are exceedingly rare. The Bahamas are becoming one of the world’s leading flag-of-convenience nations for passenger ships [I don’t see many non-passenger cargo ships home ported there.]. When you see this you can be sure the reason is regulations in The Bahamas favor the cruise line in important ways.

Travel Blogging XVI

Dateline: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. We did the HCMC tour today, with three other couples. It was a long day as the drive from where we were moored to city center took 2 hours in each direction. However, we had good weather as the predicted showers and thunderstorms did not materialize. It was sunny, almost hot, and humid, of course.

Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon if you prefer the old usage, is big and growing rapidly. The traffic rivals Cairo for insanity. I wisecracked that our van driver would have to replace the horn every couple of years as he would have worn it out. Very little attention is paid to lines on the pavement, where they even exist. Cutting in front of other vehicles is routine, as is passing on the right, and many busy intersections have no traffic lights. Drivers cope with this chaos and we saw no accidents today or a couple of days ago in Da Nang.

We saw the former presidential palace (when South Vietnam was a country) which is now called the Reunification Monument or some such. Since it is maintained to look as it did when it was a presidential palace that is what I prefer to call it. It is a beautiful piece of tropical architecture, with large, vertically louvered windows that pivot to let in maximum fresh air. It is set in a park with lots of green trees. This combination of greenery to cool the air and natural ventilation made the building quite comfortable without air conditioning on a warmish, humid day. It is quite the best example of tropical architecture I’ve seen.

I know I’ve commented on this before, but we were struck anew by the rampant capitalism and entrepreneurship everywhere on display in this supposedly socialist country. To be sure, you do see an occasional socialist realism propaganda billboard but they are rare. The jarring reminder is that the main roads are lined with blood-red banners each featuring a yellow star or hammer-and-sickle. The best I can figure out, in the minds of most Vietnamese, these symbols merely stand for a reunified Vietnam ruled by Vietnamese. Of course they mean something quite different to most westerners. I believe capitalism is an even greater part of the culture here than in China.

Social distance is different in Vietnam than in the west. Vietnamese, I believe, are much more likely to touch you than are Europeans or North Americans. I suspect it “communicated” unintended things to GIs during the Vietnam War.

Our guide had a university degree in tourism and is studying for a second degree in law. So I asked her about how the country was doing with developing a civil code which would enable the enforcement of contracts. I believe she had no idea what I was talking about. Criminal code she understood perfectly, civil code drew a blank. Communist countries tend not to have much in the way of civil codes and, in this respect, I believe Vietnam may still be Communist.

Vietnam has developed a specialized tourist police force whose uniforms are labeled “tourist security” in English. This reminds me of Egypt which has done the same thing. I suspect they are more needed in Egypt which has more tourists from more countries and more potential terrorists. They tend to be stationed in places where tourists are prevalent.

Quote of the Day

Michael Barone, writing in the Washington Examiner, about recent events:

Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts' special Senate election was for Democratic leaders a moment that can be described in two words, of which I will only print the first here, which is "oh."

I don't think he means "oh, my." Read the whole article which is worth your time.

Travel Blogging XV

Dateline: DaNang, Vietnam. We did a tour to famous Da Nang today, driving south on Highway 1, the national highway, paralleling the one and only railroad in the country which runs from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). This is the second time we’ve driven along this RR and I’ve yet to see an engine, moving cars or even sitting still. Today we did see some freight cars sitting on a siding near the tunnel north of Da Nang. Our guide, Minh, said there were two passenger trains a day but added we should take a short trip before committing to a long trip as these trains are noisy and dirty. I’ve yet to see one but I guess he was accurate about their existence. He claims it was built by the French, and appears to be narrow-gauge.

I think I got an answer about the tall, narrow houses you see all over this part of ‘Nam. Minh says that everybody wants a house that fronts on the main street because they want to be able to operate a small business out of the ground floor and need street frontage to do so. Therefore main street frontage is what is expensive, more than acreage. So you get these narrow, deep, tall dwellings/shops. Not every homeowner wants to operate a shop but every owner wants to be able to do so, if only to increase the resale value or to have a shop to rent out.

The whole Da Nang area has great beaches and is ripe for development, it will be the next Phuket. We spent time today in Hoi An, a town near Da Nang that has been named a World Heritage Site, as an unspoiled old town. As a result there are a bunch of tourists there, not just off our ship. If you want to visit a town in Vietnam where your white skin and round eyes won’t make you an oddity, Hoi An is that town. In Hoi An we saw non-Vietnamese who included everything from backpacking teens to families to geriatric dodderers.

Vietnam is having the same problem other agricultural societies have had; farm kids want to go to the city and do something that doesn’t require wading knee deep in a mixture of mud and human waste in the broiling sun. We saw people doing that today in the rice paddies; it is picturesque but none of us volunteered to try it. This is a poor country which intentionally uses labor-intensive methods in lieu of capital-intensive ones. We saw six people manning three highway toll booths, what is the point of that?

Vietnam’s hawkers of tourist trinkets are as persistent as those in Egypt, although are less likely to mistaken for terrorists. This persistence can be ugly when you cannot get rid of them. We only hit that a couple of times today, mostly it wasn’t bad. One such time was at the top of a pass just north of Da Nang.

This pass, in the minds of Vietnamese, divides the country into northerners and southerners. It is where the weather often switches from colder, cloudier north to sunnier, warmer south. It is NOT where the old DMZ was, not the dividing point between the pre-1975 North Vietnam and South Vietnam. That was some 100 km north on the 17^th parallel. The pass is defended with both ancient and modern fortifications, the most recent built by the U.S. pre-1973. All are merely curiosities in a unified Vietnam.

Interestingly, northerners and southerners in Vietnam have stereotypes of each other in the same way that they do in the U.S. One overall impression: Vietnam looks more "Asian" than do the major cities of China or Taiwan, or Thailand for that matter.

Travel Blogging XIV

Dateline: South China Sea. We sailed out of Hong Kong harbor, taking the ‘backdoor’ route less traveled. This took us around the less-commercial side of HK Island that is mostly high rise residential apartment towers. There have got to be hundreds of them. Hong Kong is pretty much a human anthill, 7+ million people jammed into a small space. A typical apartment is on the order of 4-500 square feet and a family of 4 or more will live there. Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated entity on the planet, right after Macau, Monaco, and Singapore. It is no place for a claustrophobe to live.

Many of these apartment blocks have a hole right through the middle that cost the developer something like 12 apartments. The hole is there because a feng shui master said it should be there for ‘balance.’ We didn’t see this interest in feng shui in Shanghai. Our friend Alan the architect says feng shui is mostly a concern in the southern, Canton region of which Hong Kong is part. He didn’t find much interest in feng shui when building in Shanghai.

Star Ferries runs a Harbor Tour ship that loops around the harbor between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The narration is well done and the views are great. We took this tour, it cost us maybe $20 U.S. This is one of the true bargains in an otherwise expensive city. We also spent some time in the onshore mall collecting email and surfing the web. We can do this on shipboard but it isn’t free; our crew is very knowledgeable about where the free wi fi can be found ashore. They are staying in touch with relatives back home in 40+ countries and internet isn’t free for them on the ship, although they do pay less than we passengers pay.

Musings

If Scott Brown, a Republican, can win in Democrat Massachusetts, can any Democrat congressional seat truly be considered safe? I suspect not, although many Dems will be reelected.

This November could be a real GOP landslide, wouldn't that be fun? Fun if the Republicans we elect will act like Republicans and not spend all our money.

Travel Blogging XIII

Dateline: Hong Kong. Yep, we're back in Hong Kong, but tied up at a different dock with much less glorious view, alas. The day is overcast and could rain. It is cool but not cold, and this is "high winter" as we're north of the equator. The locals all have parkas on as they're acclimatized to tropical weather.

Barone on Brown

Michael Barone, one of the nation's most sage political analysts, weighs in on the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. His column for Rasmussen Reports sets the stage by describing Mass. thus:

The state that in the last four presidential elections has voted on average 61 percent Democratic and 33 percent Republican. That's a bigger margin than in any other state.

He says of Massachusetts voters in this most recent election:

Those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the Democrats' health care and "spreading the wealth around" either trended Republican or stayed home.

I particularly like Barone's conclusion:

Obama and "the educated class" think they know what is best for the little guy. The voters of Massachusetts (Massachusetts!) beg to differ. Is anyone in the White House listening?

Rasmussen: PAI Down to -19

Scott Rasmussen reports that the Presidential Approval Index has dropped to -19, because only 24% of likely voters say they Strongly Approve of President Obama while 43% Strongly Disapprove. As the Rasmussen Report notes:

Today’s update is the first based entirely upon interviews following Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts and the Approval Index has fallen eight points since Tuesday morning.

Dropped eight points? Wow. I wouldn't have guessed learning The Man had no coattails would cause that much dismay.

A bunch of Dems in Congress have got to be reassessing their chances in November.

Travel Blogging XII

Dateline: The South China Sea. We are enroute to Hong Kong, on a somewhat rocky sea. The Purser’s desk is giving away a lot of meclizine hydrochloride tablets. They go by the trade name Bonine, are nonprescription, and really do work. The DrsC take them whenever we are on the ocean.

A further thought about Shanghai, and Hong Kong too. New architecture in China has few or none of the architectural details we westerners associate with Chinese architecture. We asked our guide Alan, who BTW is trained as an architect, about this and his response was very interesting. Alan says people in today’s China do not want to see those classical Chinese elements on new buildings. They prefer architecture in the modern-to-post-modern range. The other DrC suggests this shows that the Red Guard/Cultural Revolution purge of the “four olds” was more successful than you might think. That is an intriguing idea.

Travel Blogging XI

Dateline: Keelung, Taiwan. This is a port in northern Taiwan, not far from Taipei. Our ship is tied up here on a rainy day, the view out the windows is strictly watercolor. Since we toured here about a week ago, we are staying aboard. Oddly, days when the passengers are ashore are very pleasant as the ship is not crowded and peaceful. It is also a good time to do laundry, if your ship has a Laundromat (this one does). We had thought to take a brief stroll into Keelung and use the free wifi at Burger King, but the rain nixed that.

I have been pondering the fall of Barack Obama over the past year. He started so strong and burned out so quickly. Is the speed of this rise and fall an artifact of the 24 hour news cycle, a reflection of Obama’s lame strategy and tactics, or perhaps a bit of both? Probably the latter.

Another factor is the gerrymandered polarization of congressional districts, meaning there are very few moderates in either party. When your constituents expect you to vote either hard right or left, legislative compromise can equal career suicide.

If I were Scott Brown right now I’d be wondering what the normally liberal voters of Massachusetts expect of me. Scott had better vote the way he campaigned and let the voters decide whether they’ve changed their minds long-term or were just sending a one-time message of extreme frustration to Obama-Reid-Pelosi. Again, it is probably the latter.

Quote of the Day

Thomas Jefferson, quoted in the Wall Street Journal editorial about the Scott Brown senatorial win in Massachusetts:

It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

The WSJ editor adds: Two hundred and twenty-one years later, the sage of Monticello has been proven right again.