On the Road at Lot, Plus an Air Travel Note

Posting here has been sparse of late (yet again).

One reason is that my other two blogs take up most of my blogging time and energy.  Another is that I've been doing a lot of traveling the past few months: A cruise involving China and Japan in March, and a bus trip in Italy in May.  And I'll be taking a road trip to California in a few days.  Then things will calm down for the summer.

Speaking of travel, I booked a Mediterranean cruise for October from Rome and wanted to add a day or two on the French Riviera.  So I hopped on the Internet and checked out some one-way fares from Seattle to Nice.  At least two leading airlines quoted around $3,000 (!!!) to get me there coach class.  Then I tried Iceland Air, going as far as Paris.  A lot cheaper, but then I'd have to get from Paris to Nice by plane or rail, another expense.  Things were not looking good for my Riviera plan.

It suddenly dawned on me to see what might happen if I flew to Rome first and then round-trip to Nice from there.  Bingo!  I could do it for only a few hundred dollars on Alitalia.  Problem solved.

Now I wonder if a travel agent would have come to the same solution?  (I tend to use them if my proposed journey is something pretty new to me.  After that, I tend to do my own bookings totally or directly with a cruise line of bus tour company.)

On-Line Dating and Politics

My wife died a couple years ago.  Since I'm in need of a social life, I signed up with some on-line dating services for seniors.

They are useful in that you are sent a fairly large number of legitimate prospects, which means that you can play the sort of numbers game one does when screening job applicants.  That is, a certain percentage of cases clearly aren't likely to work well.

Evaluation factors can include age, appearance, hobbies, pets, preference for cites vs. nature, degree of interest in sporting activities, ditto regarding cultural activities, race, religion, health status, and several others.

Some dating sites include political leanings.  One selects an item from a range "Very Liberal" to "Very Conservative" with a "No Preference" option.  Or one can bypass this item.

The sites also allow members to write about themselves.

I've found that some women explicitly state that they do not want to meet with Trump supporters or conservatives.  So far I've seen none stating that they would refuse to meet up with a left-winger.  Perhaps that's because here in Puget Sound area politics are skewed Left.  Or maybe ladies on the right are more tolerant.

Granted, wide differences in political beliefs can be a barrier to forming good relationships.  But categorizing Trump supporters as strictly off-limits strikes me as being pretty intolerant for a political side that claims to favor tolerance.

Going to War Due to Time Constraints

World Wars 1 and 2 had many causes, some more salient than others.

One kind of cause had to do with a country opting for war because to delay would make fighting enemies in the future more risky.  This was a factor for Germany in 1914 and for Japan in 1941.

In Germany's case, a major potential enemy was the Russian Empire.  Russia was beaten by Japan in their 1904-05 war, but its military was recovering by 1914 and the country was rapidly industrializing.  German army staff planners feared that the Russians, who outnumbered Germans, would probably be considerably more formidable in just a few years.  This consideration helped push an already aggressive German Empire into war.

Japan's case is more complicated to explain.  In brief, the Japanese Empire had been at war with China for a few years.  The year before that conflict began, Japan renounced warship limitation treaties and began increasing the size of its navy.  America began building battleships again around that time, and orders for ships increased as the war in Europe wore on.

Senior Imperial Japanese Navy officers were well aware that the USA could massively out-build Japan in all weapons categories, so renouncing limitation treaties was probably unwise while emotionally satisfying.  As 1941 wore on, the US imposed resource restrictions on Japan, oil and steel in particular, in an effort to persuade Japan to end its war with China.  Expansion-minded Japanese officers who dominated government policy at that time then had the choices of (1) acceding to American wishes, (2) waiting matters out while their petroleum reserves gradually depleted and America launched far more warships than Japan could, or (3) starting war soon while resources were at hand and America's ships were yet to be commissioned.  The third option was selected in the hope that Japan could quickly attain its conquest aims and that then America and Britain would agree to a peace treaty at that point rather than fight a bloody war to the finish.  But the war proved to be long and Japan was crushed by mid-1945.

When You Feel You're Really There

Sorry, but I forget the Web site that inspired this post.  What it did was present the idea of being someplace and thinking "Wow, I'm really here!"

I got that feeling many years ago during my Army days when I'd get a weekend pass and go into New York City.  Just seeing the skyline would trigger that reaction.

What does the triggering is strongly related to characteristics of the place and, usually, their fame.  Moreover, different aspects of the place will trigger different people.  And of course the person normally is primed for the reaction to the degree that the place is of passionate interest.  For example, for some folks viewing the Eiffel Tower yields the "Wow, I'm really in Paris!" reaction.  For me it's being along the Seine in the vicinity of the Ile de la Cité which happens to strike me as being even more Parisian than the tower.  Results vary.

Citing the Eiffel Tower suggests that being near a particularly famous structure or place is probably the most common source of the "Wow, I'm here!" reaction.  The "I'm really in Rome!" reaction is probably usually set off by viewing the Forum, Colosseum or St. Peter's.

On the other hand, I think that for places such as San Francisco or Seattle it's their overall settings that do the trick.  Which does not totally rule out being triggered by being at Fisherman's Wharf or seeing the Space Needle.  I suspect the general settings of Paris and Rome are far less likely to evoke strong, positive emotional reactions than the more focused sites noted above.

Regardless, the strong, positive emotional reaction is one of life's pleasures.

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.