Still at sea on the Seabourn Odyssey.  Also too, tomorrow.  But on Friday we arrive in Lahaina.   Today, I stumbled across a ranking by  Forbes,  then subsequently found another that was different.  Not sure which is the latest, but I suspect this is a more recent  Forbes  ranking of the top 150 American Universities.   This was for 2022. #1      MIT #2      Stanford and Cal Berkeley #4      Princeton #5      Columbia #6      UCLA #7      Williams College #8      Yale #9      Duke #10    Pennsylvania #15    Harvard #20    Chicago #50    Wake Forest #100  Loyala Marymount #150  Oregon Yikes, Harvard at #15??? Not sure how up to date that was, but I also stumbled across what appears to be another  Forbes'  2022  ranking of American universities .  According ...

  We have docked at Uturoa, Raiatea, French Polynesia.  Woke up to take this photo from my veranda. We will be in this general area for nearly a week, so later this week I'll provide details about this region, which has an Exclusive Economic Zone Area of 1.7 million square miles.  The  Hawaii EEZ , including all those northern islands, is only 0.6 million square miles. So what's the big deal about the Exclusive Economic Zone?  Some day, perhaps seabed mining and other ocean development rights, like the Blue Revolution, will be affected. On this sci-tech Wednesday, I will continue my monthly tally of latest energy news, mostly from  Energy Matters , soundbite summaries of the American Energy Society, ending with an article describing Hawaii's attempt to become a national hydrogen hub. Conventional wisdom: US crude oil production will continue to   increase  for the foreseeable future, surpassing the record high of 12.44 million bpd by the end of 20...

Ah, it's Saturday, and a lot of good NCAA football games, plus 4 Major League Baseball playoff games.  I don't cover the NHL, soccer matches, etc., but here is a  site that provides details on how to watch sports this weekend on your television .  The Nevada at Hawaii football game must have been so inconsequential that it was not even mentioned.  But it's playing at 6PM in the 15 Craigside theater, and for free.  I remember paying $500/year when I was not living here. There was a time when I went to movie theaters.  Have not since the pandemic began, and am still not ready.  But if you do,  here are all the films opening this weekend .  And I count 29 of them.  Four of them seem most prominent ( with Rotten Tomatoes rating for reviewers/audiences ). Clerks III  ( 64/93) :  when you see this kind of discrepancy, I almost always side with the audience. Halloween Ends  ( 39/56 ):  with Jamie Lee Curtis, said a reviewer,...