Whither National Geographic

The USA's National Geographic Society (Wikipedia entry here) has been abound since 1888, and its well-known magazine for almost that long.

I can remember as a child looking at my grandparents' copies.  My parents didn't get around to subscribing until I was perhaps college age.  By then, I found myself almost never reading through an entire article.  The one thing I always did enjoy in those days was their maps: I still have a number of them in my map collection, a few dating back to around 1920.

In the first 50 or so years of its existence the Society sponsored discovery expeditions along with commissioning reports about places known, but unlikely to be visited by most readers.  In the 1920s and 1930s such places would include Brittany and other parts of France.  To get there, a reader would have to take a long train ride to an East Coast port (if he didn't live near one) and then sail across the Atlantic on a steamship -- all this before getting to the target area (and having to retrace his steps getting home).  Most folks back then did not have the time and money for such travel, so the Geographic served as a handy proxy.

One of the few useful concepts I can recall from my sociology training was that organizations would usually try their damndest to continue existing after their original reason for existence had vanished.  So it seems to be for the Society.  By around 1960 there were no longer significant unexplored places on earth and comparatively fast, inexpensive jet air travel made overseas tourism practical for a much larger portion of the American population.  Ever since, the Society has pushed into new fields and seems to have thrived.

Alas, for me what the Society does and what its now-many publications show are not unique to it.  There are other sources of information covering the same topics.  Even worse, in my opinion, the Society has allowed itself to drift into supporting political positions that are corruptive of best scientific practice.  An example is "Climate Change," where research practices have tended to fall short of scientific method as exemplified by Karl Popper and Richard Feynman.

Irrational Brand Dislikes

Sometimes we are rational, sometimes not.

One of my irrationalities has to do with product brands.   For some reason there are brands that turn me off no matter if their products are measurably superior to those of other brands.

Let me give you some examples. Some of these might be brands that you are extremely fond of -- for whatever reasons you have.

I can't explain why, but one brand I don't care for is Nike.  I do own a Nike baseball cap with University of Washington colors and symbolism.  I bought it because I needed a show-my-loyalty garment for when I (rarely) attend Husky football games, and the Nike cap happened to be better looking than the alternatives.  (To show my dual-loyalty, I also usually wear a Penn sweatshirt to the game.)

Another brand I don't care for is The North Face.  That's because I don't like their logotype, rationally designed though it might be.  I suppose I might be missing out on some fine products.  But there are plenty of equally fine competing products, so I'm probably not losing if I never consider North Face.

Yet another garment brand is Under Armour.  I think there's something about the name that seems icky, though I can't explain to myself just why it seems icky.

As for automobiles, perhaps my most irrational avoidance target is Subaru.  But at least I do know why I have this "thing" about Subarus.  It's because of the 360 cc Subarus than Malcolm Bricklin first imported to the USA in the late 1960s.  Those cars were tiny, looking like motorized Dutch wooden shoes.  I thought they were ridiculous, and never got over the feeling even though full-size Subarus have interesting engineering features.

In contrast, there are some brands for which I have irrational positive preferences.  But that might be a topic for another post.

Ocean Cruise Strategies

I didn't go on cruise ships until eight or so years ago.  That's if you don't count crossing the Pacific Ocean twice when I was in the army deployed to Korea.  Since then, I've been on five and will take my sixth soon.

My take is that there are three main types of cruise ship passenger motivations.  Some people are there mostly for the onboard experience.  That might include dining, pass-time activities, entertainment, and visiting with fellow passengers.  A sub-group might be folks with mobility issues, where those are minimized by being onboard while taking a break from being at home.  The purest way to do this is to book passage on repositioning cruise (to or from Europe or Asia, depending on the time of year): very few stops en route.

Then there are those who cruise with the goal of visiting specific destinations, and are indifferent to shipboard activities.

Finally, there are those who like the whole package: shipboard things and ports-of-call.

I fall into the destination-oriented category, selecting cruises on the basis of how many ports-of-call are both interesting and new to me.  Given that my main interest is Europe, it doesn't take many cruises to exhaust its potential.

However, my upcoming cruise is in the Far East.  That's because Hong Kong and Shanghai have always interested me.  It also stops in northern China and southern Japan, so at least those areas will be new to me.

But once that's done, I'll probably mostly do bus tours.  That's because they pack much more viewing items per day than any cruise ship offers.

Your results probably vary.