Monday, April 04, 2005
The Internet Has Arrived
All of the literature about the m/s Paul Gauguin that we read before boarding described a very slow and expensive satellite-phone-based e-mail connection that charged $1 for each 2000 characters sent or received -- received messages would be printed and delivered to your stateroom.
They've just installed a new satellite-based system for full Internet access which is much less cumbersome. The bad news is that it is still expensive, much more so than Internet cafes on the land -- prices range from $24 to $60 per hour depending on how much time you're willing to sign up for in advance, compared to $3 to $12 per hour in an Internet cafe. The good news is that you can use your wireless laptop with the system, so that you can compose long messages like this at your leisure, and only use a few minutes when actually sending them. Of course, if you're sitting there and browsing news items, it can get quite expensive. As I write this, we haven't actually used it yet, but some people I've talked to said it's reasonably fast. Satellites can send data very quickly, but when there's a lot of back-and-forth involved, as is the case with loading Web pages, it can take awhile because it still takes the signal a long time to get to the satellite in the first place.
One is a captive on a cruise ship, so you have to put up with high prices for anything which is the least bit "extra". Besides the Internet, this includes shore excursions (the ship stops for 8 hours at each of 4 ports but you have to pay for tours at those locations), laundry ($1.50 to have your underwear washed and pressed, or $3.50 for your shirt), and any other than the evening's designated house wine. There's a store with $30 t-shirts and $90 silk shirts, and other indispensable items such as jewelry and perfume. And of course, there's a casino, which I haven't seen anyone in yet -- perhaps the astronomer crowd on this boat understand mathematics too well. And I don't think they are quite as excited by the dancing girls and schmaltzy cover band as the typical cruise customer. At least the cruise company can fall back on the Internet as this trip's cash cow.
There are "enrichment lectures" which have been interesting. We went to one yesterday about the settlement history of Polynesia. Apparently most of Polynesia and New Zealand wasn't really settled at all until around 800 or 1000 or so AD. It was interesting hearing the lecturer, an archaeologist named Mark Eddowes, explain the modern evidence, and also debunk several other popular stories, such as Polynesia having been settled by people from South America (they appear to have come from Southeast Asia, starting with New Guinea and the Solomon Islands), and Easter Islanders having died off because of deforestation (they did deforest their island, but they adapted to the new circumstances ingeniously; on the other hand they were mostly killed off by smallpox after having been forced to work in Peru). The Polynesians do appear to have traveled to South America, where they acquired one or more varieties of sweet potato known as kumara, today one of their staple starches.
Today there was a lecture by one Mike Reynold about meteors and meteorites, a science referred to as "meteoritics". (Ray pointed out that "meteorology" was already taken.) The lecturer gave evidence that buying meteorites can be very very expensive. A meteorite which is alleged to have splashed here from the moon will cost you $100,000 per gram.
We're steaming towards Pitcairn Island, a distance from Papeete of about 2000 km at 30 km per hour. We'll have all day Wednesday there -- I think the cruise ship "Discovery" gets to hang out there on Thursday (on its way to Easter Island and Peru). The eclipse centerline is less than 100 km away from it, which won't be an issue until Friday. Around 1:30 today we came within 30 km of Anti-Mecca, the point exactly opposite Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Mosques are carefully pointed towards Mecca anywhere in the world, and Muslims pray in that direction. Anti-Mecca is where their feet point. Presumably if a group of Muslims were on a boat exactly at the Anti-Mecca, they'd all pray facing outwards.
The cruise staff seems to be from all over the world, but a large part of it is from the Philippines, including the schmaltzy cover band. They are all very friendly and outgoing, which gets pretty tiresome after awhile. We haven't met very many of the other passengers yet, but Ray suggested to the leader of our group that they could have a contest for "most obscure eclipse t-shirt" -- we've seen a lot of them, and they've all been different from the ones we've collected. One commemorated an eclipse in Siberia.
Nobody has any weather prospects for the eclipse. The typhoon season has passed it seems; and what is left is South Pacific weather which is puffy clouds and blue sky and sometimes rain and the sea fairly calm at the moment, a few scattered whitecaps, Beaufort 2 or 3 they used to call it though I suppose there's some Metric measurement now. The archaeologist, who has spent his life out here, thinks that the weather will hold like this if a frontal system moving at the moment through the Society Islands doesn't decide to come check us out. Apparently the weather is afflicted with the same inertia and lassitude for which the South Pacific is famous for instilling in humans.
Anyway, it appears we will be posting and checking and sending e-mail on the cruise -- I'll sign up for the 100 minute plan, so let us know what's up. But don't send us big enclosures -- I forget who, but somebody was telling us a story about a girl who lived in Viet Nam at the time the government was the only ISP; and they charged a great deal, and some friend of hers overseas had decided that she was lonely and she would mail her a complete copy of the Sunday New York Times which the Viet Cong printed out on paper and charged her $800 for. I want you all to go look this up on http://www.snopes.com because it sounds like an urban legend to me, too, but I'm not willing to expend the bandwidth to find out.
They've just installed a new satellite-based system for full Internet access which is much less cumbersome. The bad news is that it is still expensive, much more so than Internet cafes on the land -- prices range from $24 to $60 per hour depending on how much time you're willing to sign up for in advance, compared to $3 to $12 per hour in an Internet cafe. The good news is that you can use your wireless laptop with the system, so that you can compose long messages like this at your leisure, and only use a few minutes when actually sending them. Of course, if you're sitting there and browsing news items, it can get quite expensive. As I write this, we haven't actually used it yet, but some people I've talked to said it's reasonably fast. Satellites can send data very quickly, but when there's a lot of back-and-forth involved, as is the case with loading Web pages, it can take awhile because it still takes the signal a long time to get to the satellite in the first place.
One is a captive on a cruise ship, so you have to put up with high prices for anything which is the least bit "extra". Besides the Internet, this includes shore excursions (the ship stops for 8 hours at each of 4 ports but you have to pay for tours at those locations), laundry ($1.50 to have your underwear washed and pressed, or $3.50 for your shirt), and any other than the evening's designated house wine. There's a store with $30 t-shirts and $90 silk shirts, and other indispensable items such as jewelry and perfume. And of course, there's a casino, which I haven't seen anyone in yet -- perhaps the astronomer crowd on this boat understand mathematics too well. And I don't think they are quite as excited by the dancing girls and schmaltzy cover band as the typical cruise customer. At least the cruise company can fall back on the Internet as this trip's cash cow.
There are "enrichment lectures" which have been interesting. We went to one yesterday about the settlement history of Polynesia. Apparently most of Polynesia and New Zealand wasn't really settled at all until around 800 or 1000 or so AD. It was interesting hearing the lecturer, an archaeologist named Mark Eddowes, explain the modern evidence, and also debunk several other popular stories, such as Polynesia having been settled by people from South America (they appear to have come from Southeast Asia, starting with New Guinea and the Solomon Islands), and Easter Islanders having died off because of deforestation (they did deforest their island, but they adapted to the new circumstances ingeniously; on the other hand they were mostly killed off by smallpox after having been forced to work in Peru). The Polynesians do appear to have traveled to South America, where they acquired one or more varieties of sweet potato known as kumara, today one of their staple starches.
Today there was a lecture by one Mike Reynold about meteors and meteorites, a science referred to as "meteoritics". (Ray pointed out that "meteorology" was already taken.) The lecturer gave evidence that buying meteorites can be very very expensive. A meteorite which is alleged to have splashed here from the moon will cost you $100,000 per gram.
We're steaming towards Pitcairn Island, a distance from Papeete of about 2000 km at 30 km per hour. We'll have all day Wednesday there -- I think the cruise ship "Discovery" gets to hang out there on Thursday (on its way to Easter Island and Peru). The eclipse centerline is less than 100 km away from it, which won't be an issue until Friday. Around 1:30 today we came within 30 km of Anti-Mecca, the point exactly opposite Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Mosques are carefully pointed towards Mecca anywhere in the world, and Muslims pray in that direction. Anti-Mecca is where their feet point. Presumably if a group of Muslims were on a boat exactly at the Anti-Mecca, they'd all pray facing outwards.
The cruise staff seems to be from all over the world, but a large part of it is from the Philippines, including the schmaltzy cover band. They are all very friendly and outgoing, which gets pretty tiresome after awhile. We haven't met very many of the other passengers yet, but Ray suggested to the leader of our group that they could have a contest for "most obscure eclipse t-shirt" -- we've seen a lot of them, and they've all been different from the ones we've collected. One commemorated an eclipse in Siberia.
Nobody has any weather prospects for the eclipse. The typhoon season has passed it seems; and what is left is South Pacific weather which is puffy clouds and blue sky and sometimes rain and the sea fairly calm at the moment, a few scattered whitecaps, Beaufort 2 or 3 they used to call it though I suppose there's some Metric measurement now. The archaeologist, who has spent his life out here, thinks that the weather will hold like this if a frontal system moving at the moment through the Society Islands doesn't decide to come check us out. Apparently the weather is afflicted with the same inertia and lassitude for which the South Pacific is famous for instilling in humans.
Anyway, it appears we will be posting and checking and sending e-mail on the cruise -- I'll sign up for the 100 minute plan, so let us know what's up. But don't send us big enclosures -- I forget who, but somebody was telling us a story about a girl who lived in Viet Nam at the time the government was the only ISP; and they charged a great deal, and some friend of hers overseas had decided that she was lonely and she would mail her a complete copy of the Sunday New York Times which the Viet Cong printed out on paper and charged her $800 for. I want you all to go look this up on http://www.snopes.com because it sounds like an urban legend to me, too, but I'm not willing to expend the bandwidth to find out.
