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

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Five

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November 5 (Thursday, Day 8, Malé, Maldives) -

Malé. It's flat.

We woke up around 6:30 AM and decided to walk around deck 11 for 30 minutes at 7 AM to enjoy the beautiful day. Snookums did laundry for the third time. Working out frequently causes us to get clothes dirty. We were supposed to drop anchor around noon but got in later. In any event, it started raining hard around 11 AM. We were scheduled to go on a shore excursion that would take us to a beach for 2.5 hours. We were hoping to go snorkeling since the Maldives are known for diving and snorkeling but a snorkel excursion wasn’t offered. So, we thought we would go to the beach and hope that there were some reefs nearby. The rain made us rethink those plans.

More after the jump . . .

On November 17, 2005, I posted:

I think the CIA should be abolished.

If you look at the CIA's astonishingly bad intelligence to the President and the U.S. government on the Iraq matter, throw in the whole Valerie Plame thing which looks more and more like a CIA operation against the duly elected President of the U.S., and lay on top of that story after story of general CIA incompetence and you realize that Jack Ryan is very, very much a fictional character.

Shut the CIA down, and round up all of those former "Able Danger" military intelligence types and tell them that it's their show now.

Michael Barone agrees with me.

Via Instapundit.

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

. . . it came to pass that toward the turn of the century the belief in the basic tenets of (classical) liberalism was more and more relinquished. What had been achieved came to be regarded as a secure and imperishable possession, acquired once and for all. The eyes of the people became fixed on new demands, the rapid satisfaction of which seemed to be barred by the adherence to the old principles.

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 Four

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November 4 (Wednesday, Day 7, Cochin, India) -

It was a very festive atmosphere and we were served coconut water in the coconut along with other beverages. The Nehru Pavilion was decorated with fresh palm fronds and every railing was covered in fresh flowers. We found out that the workers worked the entire night getting it cleaned up since it hadn’t been used since August. The two women’s bathroom stalls were made “nicer”, too, although Snookums didn’t notice any upgrade! We also were given box lunches that contained cashews, plantain chips, taro chips, tangerine and a little bag of pulverized rice mixed with jaggery (sugar cane syrup), cloves, cardamom and other spices. It was all tasty although the little bag of the rice mixture was “different”. After the races the men were very thirsty (and hungry) and motioned to the Regent crowd of 250 to throw them their water bottles. At some point some of the men got out of the boats and they were walking through the pavilion and picking up half drunk water bottles and taking them. They were also taking “used” leftovers from the boxes.

On the boat to the Nehru Pavilion

More after the jump . . .

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

Probably nothing has done so much harm to the (classical) liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire.

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

If the "science is settled," then how come populartechnology.net can find 450 (or more) articles which cast some degree of doubt on the "consensus" view of human-caused global warming?

How many of these studies have you heard about on the TV, radio, or newspaper news?

Is there an editorial bias against reporting these studies?

Don't you deserve to know that there are peer-reviewed scientific studies which do not support the unproven assertion that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the Earth so much that we must drastically cut back on--well--everything?

Don't you deserve to know that the assertion of "anthropogenic climate change" is an unproven assertion in the first place?

Is a lie of omission a lie?

If so, would it be reasonable to conclude that you are being lied to by the new media--the very people that you are supposed to trust to tell you what's going on in the world?

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

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Three

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November 4 (Wednesday, Day 7, Cochin, India) -

Port call: Cochin

Regent hosted a special event for everyone today in Cochin involving snake boats. The Indian state of Kerala is known for its snake boat races. These are long, skinny boats that hold 100 men.. The annual race occurs in August but Regent organized (i.e paid for it) 9 different boats to race for us. We were bused 1.5 hours away and then took boats to a permanent pavilion in the middle of the backwaters.

More after the jump . . .

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

There is nothing in the basic principles of (classical) liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all. The fundamental principle that in the ordering of our affairs we should make as much use as possible of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible to coercion, is capable of an infinite variety of applications.

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

Courtesy John Stossel, writing in Reason Magazine:

First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered—much of it never articulated—throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.
Second, this "data" is dynamic: It changes without notice.

This is why it is utter madness to try to run the entire medical sector of the economy from Washington D.C., which is what the Democrat leadership is hell-bent on doing.

They don't understand freedom. Freedom isn't just about choice. It's about choice in a world of imperfect knowledge and imperfect communication, a world where it's impossible for any one person or entity to know with precision all of the details necessary to "appropriately" allocate resources.

The only mechanism that humanity has discovered that is effective in doing that resource allocation is the price mechanism, which only works in a free economy, with the least possible intervention by non-economic factors (such as Congress.)

The Democrats want to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages, and rule as divinely inspired technocrats--modern-day lords and ladies who simply think that they know better than everyone else how you and I should live.

They are wrong, but they are also completely blind to their error--so, they are not only wrong, they are tragically wrong, and will wind up harming the very people they purport to help.

As command economies always do.

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

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Two

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November 2 (Monday, Day 5, Boarding Voyager, Mumbai, India) -

Our cruise itinerary

More after the "read more."