The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (10): Managed Disequilibrium

    Every night, the crew of the Regal Princess find some live entertainment to put on in the grandiosely-named International Show Lounge. Sometimes it’s in-house, like a crew sing-along. Usually, it’s more like a Vegas revue: Sometimes piano, sometimes comedy, sometimes live performance, sometimes old Broadway standards. For the most part, I’ve avoided this like a leper colony. It’s wildly not my usual type of entertainment and is in fact quite explicitly pitched for passengers who have the advantage over me of multiple decades of life experience. Before reaching Hawai’i, I did venture in once to see a so-called comedian, and had my impression utterly confirmed: It was cheap and lazy comedy, based on ancient stereotypes that went well past the border of offensive. It was un-funny.

    But tonight I was a little bored after walking around Maui all day and I was having trouble getting the wireless to work smoothly. So I decided to take a chance on tonight’s act, a guy named Greg Kennedy who is, of all things, a juggler. I was not in a receptive mood. I’d more or less written off the hour it was going to occupy. Truth be told, I was ready to be significantly unimpressed. A juggler? In today’s world?

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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (7): Maui

    Today was the final port of call in Hawai’i, at the port of Lahaina. It was another transfer-by-tender affair. The seas proved a bit rougher this time compared to Kona; I got bumped around a bit. Nothing serious but a little unnerving.

    Lahaina is a cute little tourist trap. I went on the Atlantis 4 submarine tour. We had to take another launch out to the sub. Despite fears of being cramped in a sardine can for hours at a time, the sub itself was very roomy and comfortable. We dove to 80 feet and then 140 feet, hovering off the coral systems that grow just offshore in Hawai’i. Although the scenes were ethereally beautiful, I was a little disappointed how washed out everything was. Of course I knew that Rayleight scattering meant that most of the long-wavelength stuff would be overwhelmed by the background blue “hiss” (a phenomenon the guide got 90% correct, to my surprise) I hadn’t appreciated how strong the attenuation would be, though. I guess Jacques Cousteau faked it a bit in all those documentaries. He probably brought his own light source.

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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (6): Security Silliness

    I was going to write today about my visit to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials and how moving it was. I suppose I’ll get to that, though maybe not today. Right now I’m going to blog about one of the deepening madnesses of the 21st century, the traveler security checkpoint.

    Let me say at the outset that I understand why we have these checkpoints and, in their basic incarnation, I agree they’re a good thing. Although I don’t believe for an instant they necessarily stop anyone, they at least make the terrorists have to work harder and be smarter, and that at least reduces the number of incidents, not to mention mindless me-tooistic attacks. Although one wonders if it’s a net positive to breed a harder-working, smarter terrorist.

    But since 9/11, this process has spiraled wildly out of control with little check on it. The list of banned items grows daily, follows no discernible pattern, and irritates travelers without adding an iota of actual safety. As with the super-tight security in the months following the WTC attacks, it’s more about appearing to do something to improve security rather than actually doing anything.

    Today’s example that set me off: I’m in Honolulu, near the end of my Hawaiian adventure, and I’m trying to wrap up my souvenir gift list. I come across a nice set of hand-crafted wooden candle holders – three concentric rings that each hold a little tea candle. This strikes me as appropriate for one of the names on my list, so I buy the handle, check the name off the list, and take my purchase over to the port security checkpoint, a mere 100 yards away.

    You might guess what happens next.

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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (5): Footloose on Kauai

    We made our third landfall today, on the island of Kauai. For various reasons I had not signed up for any of the escorted excursions, so the day was pretty much my own. I stayed on ship until a little after noon. For the first time this trip I was unimpressed with the Princess Cruise customer service. I stayed onboard in part to take care of lunch before rooting around Kauai, because I didn’t know what I’d find to eat. But for reasons unexplained, the dining schedule was off at almost all of the eateries on the ship. The main dining room had a “closed” sign, the buffet was unstaffed, and even the old reliable burger bar was not open. Sigh. Luckily, there are multiple backups for eating on a cruise, and Plan D worked. 🙂

    I went online to find things to do in Kauai for a day. Unfortunately – but, in retrospect, predictably – most of them were the same sort of thing as the tours I’d already passed on. So instead I walked around the beach for a bit and then spent some time just riding the various shuttles that ran from the pier to sundry locations on the island. It was not an earth-shattering day. On the other hand, both of my “tour days” have wiped me out so it was actually nice to have a little bit of a breather. Tomorrow, it’s the Arizona memorial and the Mighty Mo.

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (4): Review: Next

    Insta Rating: 4 out of 5

    OK, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a movie when I’m supposed to be off on a wonderful cruise. But as mentioned before I was pretty wiped out, so I decided to take advantage of the onboard movie theater and catch Next starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. I remember when this came out but I never got to see it, despite being a sucker for a Philip K. Dick movie

    Nicholas plays Chris something, who was born with the very Dickesque talent of being to see the future but only his own future and only two minutes ahead. He’s making a living as a second-rate Vegas magic act and just trying to have a normal life. The only exception to the rules of his talent is that he saw Liz (Biel) at a diner some indeterminate time in the future. He’s been visiting that diner for a week trying to meet her, which he does, acting in a manner which he hopes isn’t too creepy (but which kind of is).
    Unfortunately for Chris, there’s an FBI agent who’s somehow become aware of his talent and wants to use it to track down a missing Russian nuclear warhead which has been smuggled into the US. The movie is about bringing Chris around to the greater good and stopping the bad guys.

    More below the fold.
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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (3): Kona

    Today we stopped at Kona, which is also on the Big Island. Although I got just as little impression of this town as I did of Hilo, I think I prefer it. It seemed smaller and more relaxed. Although, the hilly terrain would probably spell the death of me.

    The Kona Highlights tour lived up to its name, in that we were shuffled from site to site with very little time (about 15 minutes) at each. Actually, I liked it that way. I am not a tourist, as could be attested to by anyone who’s traveled with me. I don’t like to dawdle and I don’t sightsee all that gracefully. So hitting the high points briefly is probably the best way for me to do it. In principle, were I to return to Kona, I now know I’d be happier spending time at, say, the City of Refuge instead of the Royal Coffee plantation. I wouldn’t have been sure without sampling both.

    I’ll admit, my positive impressions of this tour compared to yesterday probably owes a bit to the much more comfortable motorcoach as opposed to squirrelly converted van. Although, on the other side of the scale, this bus had more than its fair share of annoying children. I know I’m turning into a grinch on the matter but I really wish more of these activities had been explicitly labeled “kid friendly” or, more to the point, “kid-unfriendly”.

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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (2): Island Burning

    Today I stood on the roof of Hawai’i. Tonight I watched an island burn.

    The first was my scheduled tour of Mauna Kea and the observatories perched at 13,500 feet above sea level and, more importantly, above the cloud layer. According to our guide, a “Pacific inversion” ensures that clouds all form below 11,000 feet in Hawai’i, and this seemed borne out by what I saw today. Of course it’s risky to extrapolate from one data point, but it was undeniably cool to be standing above the cloud deck.

    Six or seven observatories dot the top of Mauna Kea. Much like gas stations crowding busy intersections, the observatories are all drawn to Mauna Kea by that combination of height and clarity: You’re already above a lot of the atmosphere by 13,000 feet, and what is there, is not often occluded by clouds or rain. Also, of course, it’s attractive to be based in Hawai’i. Maybe the high-energy physicists get all the cool conferences (Aspen, St. Croix, etc.) but at least the astronomers get to work in Hawai’i. 🙂

    The observatories all looked remarkably alike, coming in two flavors: Radio-disk farms and domes. I wondered aloud what some future archeologists would think, should our civilization vanish and these domes be discovered forlornly occupying the desolate lava-sculpted mountaintops. Veronika, the about-to-graduate psych major sharing my row in the touring van, answered immediately, “Temples”. She’s probably right – “religious purposes” is anthropologist shorthand for “We have no idea”. And yet it’s probably not as far off as it seems at first blush. The ancient Hawaiians climbed Mauna Kea to bury their elite, to commune with their goddess, and to figure out where they were in the Universe. The tech is different but we still do the third.

    More on that burning island below the fold.
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  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea: Constitutional Cowardice

    Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Were he still living, he might well amend that to be the definition of “Democrat”. Although, truthfully, there seems to be less and less difference between being a Democrat and being insane. And I say that as a lifelong member of the party!

    Jumping at the President’s command, the Democrats passed modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA). In this latest craven capitulation, the Democrats agreed to give the executive the power to spy without warrants, subject only to “guidelines” issued by – believe it or not! – the US Attorney General. This, after eight months of hearings have uncovered crippling incompetencies and indeed outright political corrosion within the Department of Justice. My God, even his own party believes the Attorney General should resign! Yet somehow this creature of the President, who cannot seem to muster a single truthful answer to the most innocuous question – this lapdog now will be the guarantor of our civil liberties.

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  • Adrift

    Well, not really. But for all of you out there breathlessly awaiting every post from The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach (yeah, right), a word of explanation. I’m in the middle of a two-week cruise to Hawai’i, and Net access is extremely limited. So I’ve not been posting. Now that I figure out how to hook up my flaky wireless card to the ship’s network, I might be able to do a better job. Or not. We’ll see.

  • Speculation on why Gonzales lied

    It’s pretty clear that there’s only one reason why Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales didn’t commit perjury: Because GOP senators arranged for his March testimony to not be under oath, and an oath is required for perjury. It’s equally as clear that he lied to Congress, and he should suffer for it. But it demands we consider: Why are the AG and POTUS so concerned about the fact of dissension within DoJ about their program? It can’t be to avoid the appearance of illegality, because the President has admitted to committing repeated felonies since 9/11, in his flagrant disregard of FISA; and apparently that wasn’t enough to trigger DoJ concerns.

    What had they been doing, that is so beyond the pale that the acting AG, the actual AG, the director of the FBI, and virtually the entire upper staff at DoJ were willing to resign en masse rather than stomach? This can’t be anything as prosaic as violating FISA or even just simple data mining. What was this Administration doing, that even four years later, they are so terrified of becoming public that the Attorney General is willing to debase, embarrass, and all but perjure himself?

    I don’t know (sorry) but I have a pretty strong suspicion. Other than a good juicy sex scandal (and I don’t believe that’s at the heart of this, though you can never rule it out), there is only one thing that is so terrible, so unthinkable, that the merest hint it had happened could in fact rouse the notoriously soporific American public. I think that if the fact ever do come out — and, if the next Administration is a Democratic one, the facts will come out — I will be proved right by history.

    Here’s my speculation:
    These thugs were using the NSA to spy on Americans for the express purpose of steering the Presidential election to George W. Bush.

    It’s possible that this man has stolen not one election, but two. And I still have faith in America: The truth will out, and the wicked will suffer. It’s just a matter of time.