Day 2 on the Diamond Princess cruise #2:  arrival in Port Klang, Malaysia. The usual noodles lunch, with beer. I take long naps after lunch because we have an active nightlife that extends beyond midnight.  Walked a short bit in the hallway, showered, and off to Good Times at Sea for a Johnny Walker Gold Label on rocks. Then on to dinner at Sabbatini's.  Bread, with a glass of Seghesio Zinfandel and the Johnny Walker Gold Label from Good Times. First, an appetizer called arancini, a Sicilian dish of deep-fried rice ball with mozzarella cheese in the middle.  Always comes, and this is our third time here, Next, a Salumi Misti and Truffle Risotto,  I'm getting to love the al dente risotto.  I specifically asked to limit the quantity by a factor of two, One meatball over spaghetti. Then an Osso Buco, which comes with a different kind of risotto.  Excellent. Piece of grilled codfish. Then off to line dancing and karaoke in Club Fusion, followed by d...

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...