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No particular reason to draw attention to this, other than it gives an excuse for the obvious post heading:

Yahoo News:

Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," is serving six months' unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.

It should be amusing to see how many bloggers use some variation of the same headline in the next day or so.

And yeah, when I was growing up, I thought Mary Ann was the hot one.  Never had much use for Ginger.

Our Round The World Trip home page is here.
Part One is here.

October 4 (Thursday, Day 3, Tokyo)

Woke up at 5 a.m. due to jet lag.  We had talked about going to Tsukiji Fish Market to see the $10,000 tunas being sold during the early morning daily auction, but decided to take it easy so instead we finished unpacking.  Snookums washed our travel clothes in the bathtub.  We went to breakfast in the Regency Club at 7 when it opened (which is very late for a US hotel).  After breakfast we walked to Snookums' old apartment at Azabu Terrace.

Snookums' old apartment

Vending machine

Green tea—now in aluminum bottles!

On the way Filbert needed to try out a vending machine for a beverage.  He selected a cute aluminum bottled drink and was pleasantly surprised to find it was iced coffee.  We both thought it would be tea.  He did the polite Japanese thing and drank it while standing next to the vending machine.  (Japanese don’t eat in public so the most they do is to eat or drink while next to the vending machine.)  We took the subway to Tokyo’s city hall to see Tokyo from the 45th floor observatory.

Tokyo from the city hall

Snookums and Arisa

Snookums called her executive assistant that she worked with while in Tokyo, Arisa-san.  We agreed to meet her at the City Hall observatory--which she had never been to before!  We had a great time seeing her again.  She brought us a very nice “welcome to Tokyo” bag of gifts that she put together.  They included a table runner, two small textiles (her words) for chopsticks, a miniature teapot and rice cooker set (for decoration) and two boxes of green tea.  They were wrapped beautifully and although we wasn’t expecting anything, we really wasn’t surprised knowing the Japanese culture.  We were just thankful that we had brought for Arisa a “gourmet” box of Kansas City manufactured Russell Stover candy as a gift in return!

Autumn sakura

Flowers in the garden

After spending a few minutes catching up, the three of us headed to Shinjuku National Garden to see the annual two-week chrysanthemum display.  But, we were dismayed to find out that it is scheduled from Nov. 1 – 15. But, we did get to see autumn sakura (cherry blossoms) which are rare in October.  Arisa-san had never been to Shinjuku National Garden and after Snookums scolded her, she told Arisa that she had to come back in November for the chrysanthemum show and she promised that she would.  Janet had seen it when she had lived in Tokyo, and was fascinated by the shapes in which they grew the chrysanthemums. 

Crow in the garden

We took a cab to Arisa’s favorite ramen restaurant for lunch.  It was a typical Japanese casual restaurant since it was just counter seating of about 15 seats.  It was packed but somehow when we got to the front of the line to order (you pay in advance), 3 seats next to each other emptied and we sat down.  Filbert HAD to have a beer with his ramen, which was way too spicy for Snookums and almost too spicy for Filbert.  It was good, though.

The trip continues in Part Three, here.
Part One is here.
Our Round The World Trip home page is here.

The home page of our Round The World trip is here.

This is a tale of our journey around the world.  It was inspired by the fact that the family talked Snookums' sister Judy into taking a 3-year deployment to India to help her company run an outsourcing operation doing American tax returns over there.  Plus, we don't really need much of an excuse to drop everything and head out for parts unknown.

Snookums did her usual research, and came up with a deal where we could stop at eight cities around the world for a cheaper air fare than a Kansas City-Hyderabad, India round trip ticket would have cost.  But, of course, you have to go to those other cities to get the cheaper fare.  Oh, darn!  (he said, with feigned concern).   So, after a bit of negotiation, our round-the-world trip was set.  We would visit, in order, Tokyo, Bangkok, Delhi, Hyderabad, Dubai, Cairo, Prague, and Dublin, over 37 days.  As it turns out, the month October is the best month to visit, well, everywhere.

So, let's get started!

October 2, 2007 (Tuesday, Day 1, Leaving Kansas City for Tokyo via Chicago)

We left our house at 8 AM and arrived 45 minutes later at the KC airport to find out that the flight to Chicago was delayed due to fog.  We boarded the flight only about 15 minutes late, but then sat on the runway due to a ground-stop of flights O’Hare.

American Airlines MD-80 at KCI

American Airlines 777 at the gate at Chicago

The ground-stop lasted about 50 minutes after which we took off for an otherwise uneventful flight to Chicago.  We landed at 12:30 p.m. and saw that our flight to Narita was still listed with an on-time departure of 12:50, so we hustled to the gate.  Filbert boarded the plane and Snookums went off to buy bottled water.  She was starving and also bought two club salads for us to eat on the flight.  She had a  bad experience a few years ago on a flight to Tokyo where she didn’t get enough to eat and so was hungry the entire way.  That would not be a problem this time, as we will soon see.

We settled in our seats on the American Airlines Boeing 777, and the flight departed right on time at 12:50 p.m.  We opened up our salads soon after takeoff.  They were big, good club-type salads with a slightly sweet dressing.  Just as we were finishing the salads we saw the cabin crew beginning to serve a hot meal.  We shrugged and ate that, too—a choice of pork and rice (which Filbert had) or chicken and rice (which Snookums had).  So, we finished our own personal extended meal service about two hours into our 12.5-hour flight.  

Alaska Glaciers

More Alaska Glaciers

Along the way, Snookums ended up watching 4 movies and Filbert mostly sat and stared out the window the entire time while listening to an audiobook of “Lord of the Rings”.  Neither of us slept since that is Snookums' trick to combating jet lag.  Over Alaska, Filbert spotted some glaciers and snapped a few pictures.

We weren’t done eating.  About the same time we passed Anchorage, Alaska—about half way through the flight—we were served snack boxes with a sandwich, small candy bar and raisins.  How could we turn that down?  Somewhere over the Bering Sea a few hours later Snookums was a bit peckish so she picked up another snack box and got one for Filbert, too.  The small Twix candy bars had somehow  vanished from these boxes but we ate the sandwich and raisins.  Once again, as soon as we were done, we saw that another hot meal was being served.  Needless to say, when we landed on time at 4 PM, finding a restaurant was not an immediate concern.

October 3 (Wednesday, Day 2, Tokyo)

Welcome to Japan, Snookums!

We zipped through baggage claim, Customs, and Japanese Immigration, and went to the bus counter.  We knew the Limosine Bus to our hotel left at half past every hour and we were hoping to make it to the 4:30 p.m. bus. We didn’t even go to an ATM or the bathroom in the airport since we were really trying to make the 4:30 bus. We obtained the tickets and went outside, just as the bus was pulling up.  The ride from Narita to Roppongi Hills in Tokyo went smoothly.

Grand Hyatt Tokyo

We arrived at the Grand Hyatt around 6:15 p.m. and were upgraded to a deluxe corner room (which we could have reserved for these same dates at $620/night plus tax!).  Our room was pretty large at 645 sq. feet.  The normal room that we should have received is 452 sq. feet ($439).  Compared to our corner room type, the next biggest room is a suite that is 914 sq. feet so we were quite satisfied with our accommodations.  We also have full access to the Regency Club which means free breakfast and evening snacks.

Toilet instrument panel (Note the very illustrative Butt-tons)

Japanese Techno-toilet

We dumped our luggage in our room and discovered the wonders of state-of-the-art Japanese toilet technology.  Features like bidet, light wash, regular wash, and deodorizer, and heated seat grace these units, to the surprise of the unsophisticated American toilet-user.  We decided to check out the lounge and were pleasantly surprised at the cute individual servings of appetizers.  Every item was in its own little dish.  We ate “shot glasses” of pumpkin soup, pork medallions with tuna sauce, smoked scallops, tomato caprese salad, various nuts and sesame sticks, baby carrots, baby radishes, various little desserts, champagne, beer (Filbert decided he likes Kirin better than Asahi) and other beverages.

We decided we needed to find an ATM so we went to the connected Roppongi Hills shopping mall and got some yen.  We got back to our room and showered, did a little bit of unpacking, and turned the lights off at 9 p.m.  (We also lowered the motorized blinds and had fun playing with all the light switches on our nightstands.)

The journey continues in Part Two.  The home page of our Round The World trip is here.

This is the tale of Snookums' and Filbert's voyage around the world.

Judy, Indian groom and bride, Snookums and Filbert – Hyderabad, India (October 18, 2007)

I must note that it was largely written by Snookums.  I basically did some editing, and took the pictures, but the story is largely from her point of view, except where it got too much and I had to re-write it to make myself look a bit better.  (Insert smiley here).

The stories are all completed and on Medary.com, but the system will publish them approximately one per day, until they are all posted here.  I'm doing that because they're a bit picture-intensive (as many as 10 pictures per post) and I don't want the site to take too long to load, as it might if I just dumped them out onto the public web site all at once.  But, if you just can't wait, you can get a jump on the process and read the entire tale of our journey by using the links below:

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.
Part Five is here.
Part Six is here.
Part Seven is here.
Part Eight is here.
Part Nine is here.
Part Ten is here.
Part Eleven is here.
Part Twelve is here.
Part Thirteen is here.
Part Fourteen is here.
Part Fifteen is here.
Part Sixteen is here.
Part Seventeen is here.
Part Eighteen is here.

Via Gizmodo:

The War Hammer

Don't get any ideas, Snookums . . .

Canadian scientists are still in doubt as to the cause of global warming:

EDMONTON - Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.

The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.

(Yeah, I said "global warming," not "climate change."  Anybody who grew up and spent 40 years living in South Dakota, as I did, is intimately aware that the climate changes all the time.  Twenty years of dry, then ten years of wet, then another ten years of not-so-wet.  Such is life on the Middle Border. 

It's much, much, much, much, much, much, much (yes, six degrees of much) easier to determine "the climate is changing" than it is to determine the root causes.  The ecosystem is a marvelously complex system.  The models which predict the most dire effects . . . aren't.  The scientists are divided, and there is no clear picture of what is really happening, and why.

More science, less politics, please.
Via the Heartland Institute.

Hungarian researcher resigns from NASA after his supervisors try to suppress his research into climate change.

Work of the Deniers?  Not quite . . .

DailyTech:

Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution -- originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today -- ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

NASA refused to release the results.  Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple.  "Money", he tells DailyTech.  Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research.  Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate.  My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

Some wacko Hungarian kook, you say?  Well, how about this, from the same article:

The conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth's response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated.  It also helps to explain why current global climate models continually predict more warming than actually measured.

The equations also answer thorny problems raised by current theory, which doesn't explain why "runaway" greenhouse warming hasn't happened in the Earth's past.  The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes, followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling -- exactly what the paleoclimatic record demonstrates.

More science, less politics, please.

Is anybody but me suspicious that oil prices are spiking just when it seems that the American economy is slowing down?

Nope.  Others are suspicious as well--Environmental Republican:

Most economists have been saying that it's been speculation, not demand that is driving higher prices. Americans have been using less fuel of late and that alone should have reduced prices by several dollars a barrel.

I keep thinking about how George Soros broke the Bank of England.  I'm trying hard not to be a tin-foil-wearing conspiracy theorist, but dang it, sometimes it's hard.

Reason magazine:

Instead of an increase in violence, adoption of Florida-style concealed carry policies has been followed by a decline in violence. The extent to which that decline can be attributed to more guns in the hands of law-abiding people in public places remains a matter of much controversy. But one thing seems pretty clear: The fears stoked by opponents of concealed carry liberalization were unjustified. Are there good reasons to think their dark predictions about guns on campus will be any more accurate?

The easy, knee-jerk reaction is to say "well, of course there shouldn't be guns on college campuses."  But what we know know, much to our sorrow, is that easy reaction leaves an entire community virtually defenseless against those among us who get pushed over the edge.

The solution here isn't to perpetuate the defenselessness of good people when the crazy ones attack.  But that's what gun bans essentially promote.  Law enforcement can't be everywhere, and can't respond fast enough to deal with imminent, deadly threats to the community.

This country was built on the concept that political power comes from the people, and portions of that power are delegated to the government.  Gun bans are an instance where, at a fundamental level, that delegation can not, will not ever keep us as safe as we would be if we allowed responsible members of our society to fill the gaps that law enforcement in a free society will inevitably have.

Gun bans are, in short, a good idea that simply doesn't work in the real world--unless you're willing to tolerate a level of police intrusion into our daily lives that, God willing, Americans will always reject.

South American frog secretions stimulate insulin release (Science Daily):

The paradoxical frog, Pseudis paradoxa, secretes a substance from its skin which protects it from infection. But the molecule, pseudin-2, may have another use for humans. Researchers found that it stimulates the release of insulin, the vital hormone which is deficient in diabetes sufferers.

Which brings to mind the vision of millions of diabetics and pre-diabetics getting into the whole toad-licking thing.  And yeah, I know that toads and frogs are different, and that diabetes is nothing to laugh at.

Still . . .