Travel Blogging, Part X

Our great southern odyssey is coming to a close, I write this sitting in the Sydney airport awaiting the flight back to the States. I have found no reason to change my opinion that Australia is a place most Americans would find comfortable to live. It has nearly as wide a diversity of climates and geographies as North America, except most places never get very cold.

This has been quite a trip: Seattle, San Francisco, Hilo, Lahaina, Bora Bora, Tahiti, Rarotonga, American Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia - whew! We've been traveling for weeks and weeks, now it is time to go home and rest up for the next trip which begins in six weeks. Travel blogging will be "in hiatus" until mid-December.

Travel Blogging, Part IX

G'day from Cairns, pronounced locally as "cans." This is the pretty part of Australia - beautiful beaches, mountains right at the shore, bays, and the Great Barrier Reef between you and the Coral Sea. It looks a lot like Hawaii, with more room and less dirt. There is a local building/development boom that resembles Florida in its heyday, new projects popping up everywhere. The climate is hot and muggy, like Hawaii and Florida too.

It is the end of the tourist season in Cairns. Like Florida, people come here during the local winter (July, August) and find it both warm and relatively dry. Winter is over and now is the local spring. We are here for four nights, then back to "the world." Tomorrow we do "the reef" and the the day after we do the canopy cable car/mountain railroad. More later of course....

Travel Blogging, Part VIII

Greetings from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. This is the tropical north, looking across the Timor Sea toward Indonesia and New Guinea. This is the only place in Australia that was bombed by Japanese planes in World War II. The feeling is Hawaii-like, although the "tropicality" isn't quite so lush. They are just wrapping up the dry season and heading into "the wet," which begins in a month.

The Ghan cross-country passenger train was great. We recommend it to you. Exotic food (e.g., kangaroo, emu, camel) and an amazing amount of empty land covered in considerable style. The scenery isn't spectacular, but we didn't expect it to be. We did take a helicopter ride in Alice Springs and that was fantastic.

Our next stop is Cairns, which in Oz you pronounce like "cans." The Great Barrier Reef is what you see there. We'll be home in CA in 5 days, jet-lagged out of our minds.

Travel Blogging, Part VII

Greetings from Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. This is probably as close to remote as I'm likely to get anytime since Antarctica. The town is 25k people and one heck of a long way from anywhere. The surroundings are desert, with some mountains. It is roughly half way from Adelaid on the south coast to Darwin on the north coast. We took a helicopter tour this afternoon, a very cool way to see an area. In an hour we reboard The Ghan passenger train and head north to Katherine and then Darwin. We will pass through 3 climate zones on this 2.5 day rail trip, ending up in tropical.

Global Warming is Happening

This article on MSNBC says global warming is really happening and happening faster than expected. Score one for the Al Gore crowd.

Global Warming or Global Hype?

See this article by a respected scientist, in the Wall Street Journal, which takes the view that there may be no global warming or if there is, it may not be much of a problem for the world. Chalk up one for Al Gore's foes. The climate discussion goes on....

Rowling: Dumbledore Is Gay

This Associated Press article on the ABC News website reports that J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-bestselling Harry Potter series of children's books, has claimed that Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is gay.

Did we need this gratuitous water-muddying? I prefer to think of his boyhood friendship with Grindelwald as the normal-for-British-public-school-boys crush with no lasting adult consequences. In fact, the entire Hogwarts faculty appears to be entirely asexual, with the exceptions of Rubeus Hagrid and Severus Snape. Perhaps it is something in the water? What do you think?

Steyn on the Cold Civil War

Check out Mark Steyn's latest on the concept of a cold civil war going on in the U.S. "Cold" in the sense that we aren't shooting at each other, "civil" in the sense that it is domestic, and "war" in the sense that no quarter is given. As is typical, once again Steyn is worth reading.

Travel Blogging, Part VI

Greetings from Christchurch, New Zealand. Since our last post we visited American Samoa and Fiji. Both are interesting. American Samoa reminded us of Guam, which isn't all that surprising since both places are U.S. territories in the far Pacific. Samoa is a relatively typical volcanic island, whereas Fiji has lots of entirely arable land as well as dramatic mountains. I guess what surprised me most about Fiji is how big the main island is. Imagine, on Fiji it is a 3-4 hour drive from the international airport to the capital/port of Suva. This is NOT because the roads are poor, we made a good rate of speed. It is simply a big island.

More recently we visited Auckland, on the north island of New Zealand, or EnZed as locals sometimes call it. I didn't get ashore as I was fighting a cold that has been making its way around the ship. Eileen went ashore and took some neat pix. As we get further south, it keeps getting colder and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we've sailed into early spring here.-

This has been a remarkable cruise, great group of passengers, fantastic itinerary, nice ship - the whole enchilada.

Travel Blogging, Part V

Greetings from beautiful Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. It is spring here and the climate is exactly what you would ask for if you had a choice: shirtsleeves temperature and a light breeze. Somewhat humid but not too bad. I suppose this isn't exactly paradise, but it will do till something better comes along. It is Polynesia without the French accent and 'culture.' Instead the locals have a lovely clipped crypto-Brit accent. AND, it really hasn't been discovered like Bora Bora and Tahiti so there are miles of empty beaches you can walk on without paying hotel rent.

Their secret is that by law no family is allowed to sell land, EVER. They can rent it to you for up to 50 years at a crack but cannot sell it. The absolute only way to ever own land here is to inherit it or marry it. "Raro," as locals call it, is much less down-at-the-heels than other Pacific islands of our acquaintance. The place was a New Zealand dependency for many years and has been more-or-less independent for four years. They still use the NZ $ and rely on EnZed for defense and foreign representation. The Cook Islands remain a part of the Commonwealth and probably have Queen Elizabeth II on their stamps, I haven't had occasion to mail anything.

Our onboard lectures have been going well, and are very well attended in the big theater. Apparently my mix of geography, politics, and travelogue works for this audience - I am glad. Our next stop is in American Samoa, Pago Pago I believe. We are wondering if our Verizon cell phones and aircard will work there since it is a part of the U.S. I'm not holding my breath, but will let you know later.

Crossing the Equator was fun but not traumatic, they got four volunteers to be the "polywogs" and they got 'shampooed' with stuff like raw eggs and spaghetti and flour. The rest of us watched and laughed but now all of us are "shellbacks," that is, people who have sailed across the Equator on a ship.

As old cruising hands say, I wish you all fair winds and following seas.

Travel Blogging, Part IV

Greetings from Papeete, Tahiti. Weather warm and humid, surroundings beautiful as always. We had a smooth sail from Bora Bora last night, I watched Bogart and Bergman act noble in Casablanca while Eileen slept. Folks can choose different paths on a ship, more easily than at home. Lectures going well, making me a minor celebrity onboard, it is fun. French keyboard is difficult; letters a,m,w in the wrong places.

Travel Blogging, Part III

We're about to pull up the hook in Lahaina Roads and head south for the Equator and the South Pacific. Next stop: Bora Bora. I wonder if King Neptune forces elderly cruise ship passengers to perform indignities in order to become "shellbacks," that is, people who've sailed across the Equator? I will report the answer to this question on a later date.

We have had company here in Lahaina Roadstead, Norwegian's Pride of Aloha and a cadet training tall ship from Chile. More later....

Coulter Calls Liberals Traitors

Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter writes a mocking "oh, poor me" column which makes fun of liberals' attacks on her. She concludes with the following pithy comment:

We are in a tooth-and-claw battle for our nation. This is no time to parse, nuance, or clarify words. Liberals don’t rely on words. They judge us on a jurisprudence of epithets. Fight fire with fire. Just call them traitors and let them sort it out.

That lady doesn't beat around the bush, or the Bush for that matter.

Travel Blogging, Part II

Hilo is overcast and sometimes rainy, what else is new? We are in port as is Norwegian-American's Spirit of America. Lots of tourists in town today, at least 3000 between the two ships. We will go ashore later, have spent the morning grading papers. After we leave Lahaina tomorrow, our online connection becomes much more expensive and much less reliable. Oh, well....

Steyn on Acting vs. Doing

Go look at Mark Steyn's article comparing the 'doing' ethic of dictators versus the 'talking' ethic of modern democracies. As usual for Steyn, he does a nice job. He concludes:

The pen is not mightier than the sword if your enemy is confident you will never use anything other than your pen. Sometimes it's not about "freedom of speech," but about freedom.

Travel Blogging

Today I travel blog from San Francisco, where we got one of the rare fine days - blue sky and shirtsleeve warm. Fall is always the best time for weather here, much safer than summer which, as Mark Twain noted, is often cold and overcast.

I am cruising from Seattle to Sydney, Australia, or "Oz" as it is fondly called by the natives. This is happening on the Sun Princess, in the company of some 1900 other passengers and who knows how many crew? Tonight we sail for Hilo, Hawaii, and then on to Lahaina, Maui. There will be a new entry when we arrive there.

I will be lecturing on this cruise, my topic is "World Affairs" which in my case means a mix of geography, politics, current events, culture, religion, medicine, and neat things to see, do, eat, visit, or experience. I may share a few of those thoughts here, as time permits.

Tomorrow I talk about Oceania. That includes Oz and EnZed, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Hawaii. You could quibble that Hawaii is part of Polynesia and I wouldn't argue. My tag line for the region is that it is Lovely and Lonely; the islands are normally lovely, and because of the vast Pacific distances, lonely in their separation. We will visit a number of these on this cruise. More later....

Why Bipartisanship No Longer Works

Check out this article by Jonathan Chait in the Los Angeles Times. He does an excellent, balanced job of describing exactly why bipartisanship no longer works, but used to. For us politics junkies, this is red meat. He concludes:

Why, then, did the culture of bipartisanship disappear? Well, first, the two parties sorted themselves out ideologically, with white Southern conservatives joining the GOP and Northern liberals joining the Democratic Party. And second, the conservative movement took over the Republican Party. The old, moderate GOP establishment is long dead, having breathed its last gasps in George H.W. Bush's administration.And so the two parties don't work together now because there's no reason for them to do so.

This looks about right to me.

A Good Idea from an Unusual Source

This ABC News article reports that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson has come up with a marvelous idea. He wants to include the obese in federal protections against discrimination.

Alas, I am one of America's too-well-upholstered citizens. This looks like a good idea to me, even if I'm not directly affected. In fact it might even get me to vote Democratic, something I haven't done with any regularity since I was a graduate student some decades ago.

Quote of the Day

Writing in Townhall.com, Walter E. Williams repeats a quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's close advisor and New Deal architect Harry Hopkins, on the appropriate way to run a government:

Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference.

I fear that philosophy hasn't died out, in the intervening 70 years. BTW, the rest of Williams' article is worthwhile too.

Dick Morris says Fred's a Loser

Dick Morris is a political "gunslinger" who has worked for a number of candidates over the years. He takes a look at the embryonic Fred Thompson campaign and deems it pathetic, maybe because Fred hasn't yet hired him. Still, his analysis for The Hill website isn't too far off the mark, see if you don't agree.