Bob:

After breakfast I attended the lecture on Global Warming by the naturalist, but was somewhat disappointed. The lecturer took isolated passages from Al Gore's book to impugn his credibility on the issue of global warming and then questioned the integrity of all scientists working on the global warming issue by essentially implying they were biased by their source of funding. Even the lecturer had to admit global warming was occurring as the evidence in incontrovertible, but he mealy-mouthed around the contribution of huge additions of CO2 to the biosphere by saying that it was a complicated system, and leaving it at that.

This was, of course, the same guy who gave serious credence to that godawful piece of unsubstantiated claptrap about the Chinese discovering America in the 1400s before Columbus. From where I sit, he was 180-degrees wrong in giving credence to scanty and very controversial evidence for the Chinese sending huge fleets of junks around the world, just as he was wrong in ignoring the uniform convergence of carefully-instrumented measurements of the tremendous increases in CO2 levels and their predicted effects on climate change. I mean, the guy was even throwing doubt on the measurements of the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere by NOAA in recent decades at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Does he really think that wild-eyed ecofreaks are jiggering the results of the gas spectrometers or other physical instruments on the mountaintop that measure the CO2 levels? I've seen the graphs of CO2 data overlaid from different measurement techniques employed by different scientists in different countries, and they all congruently indicated huge spikes in CO2 levels from the late 1800s to the current time. He also made no mention of positive vs. negative feedback loops in the warming process, and notably failed to mention that the majority of the global warming feedback loops seem to be positive in nature, strongly suggesting an cumulative shift to a new climate regime in the near, rather than far, future.

When I was a kid we had the saying that, "With friends like that, you don't need enemies!", and in this particular case with scientific advocates like that naturalist, global warming scientists certainly don't need any detractors! I had to resist the urge to jump up and start picking his presentation to pieces. That kind of behavior is allowed in the rough-and-tumble of scientific conferences, but not, I’m afraid, in the serene confines of a cruise ship. Still, I was very disappointed at having such distorted information being disseminated to the audience.

Monika:

Bob:

Monika and I later attended a "backstage at the Princess Theater" session where we could walk around the theater area and talk with the stage manager, producer, sound person, and lighting director. I found it amazing what they could do with the limited space they had available in the backstage area. The costumes were stored, for example, on a huge motorized rack of hangers like that used in dry-cleaning establishments, but this one snaked upward through three decks of the ship to save floor space!

I also asked about the quick costume changes and was told that indeed, as I had suspected, all the fasteners were snaps or Velcro to speed up both getting out of the old costume and getting into the next one. Still, having the 12 dancers and 4 singers all changing costumes in the two small areas on either side of the backstage sounded like a recipe for pandemonium to me.

The director mentioned that the lifetime of the shows was quite variable and depended on the audience response. Apparently one well-received show had been running on Princess ships for around 15 years, whereas a poorly-received show could be cycled out and replaced in as little as 4-6 months. The average length of time a show was in production, he estimated, was about 4 years, which explained why we had very seldom seen repeats of any of the productions on our cruises over the last several years.

Monika:

Bob:

I spent much of the rest of the morning packing, which was quite frustrating as we had naturally accumulated more things on the journey than we had room in our luggage for. But with much shoving and hauling and compressing, it finally did all fit into our wheelies and carry-ons. Still low on energy from the bug I had, I was tired enough after packing that after lunch I once again succumbed to a nap. But I did rouse myself for the finale of Marlene and Chet's series of performances from musical theater. Their last performance centered on Jerome Kern, as I recall, and particularly emphasized how "Showboat" transformed the musical review format into a coherent story line advanced by integral musical numbers. Marlene once again sang well and Chet played well, so we had a good time listening to material from the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

After dinner we put our bags outside our stateroom and turned in early to try to get a good night's sleep in preparation for the day of traveling. Taking a decongestant helped me get a better night's sleep.

Monika: