Ocean cruising & cruise ships 2003 by Ward lists Carnival Conquest as “not yet rated.”
The CDC’s cruise ship inspection program awarded the ship an 89 out of 100. A detailed report is available, listing the problem areas.
They had an outbreak of the Norwalk virus in 2002.
There are a few reviews on epinions.
Cruise Critic also has a review.
Cruise Reviews also has some cruiser comments.
Cruisedirectonline, also.
Expedia has a very professionally written review.
How much a nerd am I? Here’s this cool and strange author, Harry Stephen Keeler, who I heard about in a commentary track for a Futurama episode on DVD.
Island Hot Tubs will help you turn a stock tank into a lovely hot tub!
Today’s Genius of the day is Tim Minear. The nominating committee wanted to point out some of the reasons he won:
1. The Firefly episode “Out of Gas”
2. His very clear influence in the second season of Angel, for the better
3. The phrase “Sky-Bully”
Tim, Forced Perspective salutes you! We owe you a beer for your excellent writing.
Philip Pullman and C.S. Lewis in the literary cagematch of the century!!! Not really, just a fairly confrontational interview with Pullman that goes into issues literary and spiritual.
A highlight:
Throughout His Dark Materials there’s a strong sense of ‘ought’. All the most attractive characters—Lyra and Will, Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison, Mary Malone—are driven in the end by a sense of duty, at least to their loved ones if not to the world. Where in a world without God does that sense of ‘ought’ come from?
I’m amazed by the gall of Christians. You think that nobody can possibly be decent unless they’ve got the idea from God or something. Absolute bloody rubbish! Isn’t it your experience that there are plenty of people in the world who don’t believe who are very good, decent people?
Yes. I’m just curious to know where it comes from.
For goodness’ sake! It comes from ordinary human decency. It comes from accumulated human wisdom—which includes the wisdom of such figures as Jesus Christ. Jesus, like many of the founders of great religions, was a moral genius, and he set out a number of things very clearly in the Gospels which if we all lived by them we’d all do much better. What a pity the Church doesn’t listen to him!
crank.net is a potentially useful index of cranks on the web, by topic!
Another publisher’s description, this time of The Prostate: Everything You Need to Know:
“Taguchi, a urologist (Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal), explains the most common prostate problems in plain language, with a bit of humor, for general readers.”
Because there’s nothing people like more than a bit of prostate humor. Craig? Any prostate jokes?
From a publisher’s description of Betty Crocker’s Cookie Book, 2nd edition:
“Betty Crocker’s celebration of the cookie includes more than 240 recipes for everything from Deluxe Chocolate Chip Cookies to Walnut Biscotti. Rpclu Rpad Bars, No-Roll Sugar Cookies, and more.”
Rpclu Rpad Bars?
Three nuns in their sixties are awaiting heavy sentencing for breaking into a nuclear missile site and painting crosses on the silo cover in their own blood, plus some fairly symbolic (given that the nun in the picture is fairly petite– your fun size nun, if you will) hammer damage. Their lawyer says the serious crackdown by the Man is due to intolerance of dissent since you-know-what, but I’m betting that it may have something to do with how far several fairly small non-muscular older ladies got in their quest, and how very much further anyone with any active malice or appropriate tools would get.