Medary.com

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Twenty-five

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

November 26 (Thursday, Day 29, Cruising the South Atlantic Ocean) -

Port lecture

The Voyager had its 2nd annual mini Thanksgiving Day parade that was quite cute. It consisted of 4 band members playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” followed by two waiters carrying a large banner. Then there was a steady stream of around 20 crew members wearing costumes that matched the helium balloons they were carrying. Winnie the Pooh was carrying a Pooh balloon and a turkey was carrying a turkey balloon. They were trying to mimic the Macy’s Day parade with its huge balloons. Santa was the final parade entry and he was escorting two “Radio City Rockettes”. The parade started in the 4th floor atrium and went up all of the atrium steps until it finished on deck 11 by the pool. We had a great view of this 3- minute parade from deck 7 by the elevator. It was really pretty clever and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

More after the jump . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

It is the price of democracy that the possibilities of conscious control are restricted to the fields where true agreement exists and that in some fields things must be left to chance.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Twenty-four

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

November 25 (Wednesday, Day 28, Walvis Bay, Namibia) -

This has been a problem recently--for both of us

We woke up and got ready for our birding tour. While doing that, Snookums logged in and checked email and read one from our financial adviser that said it was interesting that we had been hitting our Schwab account many, many times which is NOT like us at all. We checked and realized that our Schwab ATM/Visa card that we use on our international trips had been scammed ever since we used it at the mall ATM in Richard’s Bay, South Africa on November 17! We used some of our 3 hours of free phone time to call Schwab at 1 AM EST and canceled the card. Upon further review, 5 transactions were ours and 45 were not. The crook not only used the card at various ATMs around South Africa but had also used it as a Visa card. We’ll have paperwork to fill out when we get back home, but we’ll be fully reimbursed and we have our normal ATM card that we can use for our Brazilian Reals.

More after the jump . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Twenty-three

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

November 23 (Monday, Day 26, Cruising the West Coast of South Africa) -

Filbert woke up not feeling 100%. He was gassy and “full” most of the day. We blamed it on the fish and chips we had off the ship. Snookums’s Caffeine Free Diet Coke finally arrived and our stewardess left a 12-pack in our cabin. Later in the day the Food and Beverage Manager phoned to apologize many, many times for the Prime 7 problems as well as the warm champagne mess. He offered us another dinner at Prime 7 (you are guaranteed one meal per cruise segment) but we said “no thanks” since we already have one scheduled for the next cruise segment. It’s an okay steakhouse, but we actually like Compass Rose, the normal restaurant, better. But, Prime 7 is a nice change of pace every 15 days or so.

It was formal night and we stayed casual and went to La Veranda for dinner. It was a different South African menu. Phil still wasn’t feeling too well and had a few bites of spicy lobster and Janet really enjoyed the side dishes (pumpkin stew, sweet potatoes, African spinach with peanuts, and rice with raisins and spices). It was an early night for both of us.

More after the jump . . .

Sunfish

Apropos of our encounter with sunfish off Africa, this story via Jungle Trader from Germany's Der Spiegel:

A total of four ocean sunfish have been spotted along Germany's Baltic coast over the last week, far away from their habitat in tropical and temperate waters. Biologists say the awkward, slow-moving and friendly giants are likely to have been swept in by storms.

Maritime experts and beachcombers have been puzzled by the appearance of several sunfish -- strange, disk-shaped creatures that can reach a length of up to 3.30 meters and a weight of over two tonnes -- along Germany's Baltic Sea coast in recent days, thousands of miles away from their normal habitat in tropical and temperate waters around the world.

A fisherman said on Saturday he had caught a 10-kilo, 60-centimeter-long sunfish out of the water near the island of Rügen. Last Wednesday, walkers found two sunfish, one 80 centimetres long and the other a full meter, lying dead on a beach east of the city of Kiel. A day before, passersby had spotted a smaller sunfish that still showed signs of life, and had pushed it back in the water.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The objectionable feature (of the delegation of law-making power by a legislature) is that delegation is so often resorted to because the matter at hand cannot be regulated by general rules but only by the exercise of discretion in the decision of particular cases. In these instances delegation means that some authority is given power to make with the force of law what to all intents and purposes are arbitrary decisions (usually described as "judging the case on its merits").

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Twenty-two

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

November 22 (Sunday, Day 25, Cape Town, South Africa) -

The Voyager, from Table Mountain

Our shore excursion this morning was to Table Mountain which gets its name from the flat-topped central massif of the mountain. We’ve been very fortunate from a weather standpoint since it has been clear and sunny since we docked. Sometimes Table Mountain is surrounded by clouds. We took the bus to the cable car station and then rode 3,477 feet up the rest of the way. We walked around the entire top of the mountain and saw Cape Town, the Cape Peninsula and really a 360° view of everything below.

More after the jump . . .

Yes, I'm still more or less boycotting the NFL, but I see today that Tim McKernan, famous as the Barrel Man, the Denver Broncos fan who wore a orange and blue barrel (and little else) for decades, is dead at 69.

Truly, the end of an era . . .

As you may have noticed, I've been featuring as my Thoughts for the Day snippets from F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, one of the seminal works of political philosophy of the Twentieth Century--a true cautionary tale written by someone who lived through the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and then through the bitter global conflict which was necessary to defeat--for a very short time--the philosophy of socialism.

The "Austrian School" of economics--Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and others--were and are principled proponents of individual liberty and choice. One of the central tenets of Austrian economics--and one of the most devastating (and hence by Old Media and academia most ignored) critiques of government intervention in economic matters, is the "knowledge problem."

A lot of words have been written to explain the knowledge problem, but this from Virginia Postrel sums it up much more efficiently than any other description I've ever seen--very apropos of this Christmas season:

The problem of buying good presents for other people, even people you supposedly know well, illustrates that old familiar Hayekian concept, the knowledge problem.

If you can't even give your loved ones the right presents, how likely is it that a central authority could make the right decisions for everyone?

Emphasis mine. Via Instapundit.