If you are super rich forget it. Yachts are now passe. The luxury submarine has overtaken the yacht in the stable of must have toys of the really rich. There are now over one hundred luxury submarines around the world. The ocean floor is the last frontier of the rich. Compared to the $150 million one could easliy spend on a yacht, $20 million for a submarine is a bargain!
Most subs can carry ten plus passengers. They’re usually over 25 meters in length, three stories tall with five staterooms, five bathrooms, 2 kitchens and a wine cellar. The range is around 3,000 nautical miles and you can stay down for week. Mind you cruising the ocean floors of the seven seas is not without hazard. If you are near the coastline of a country you are supposed to notify the authorities. If you don’t you could be blown to pieces by a depth charge.
The other day while patrolling in the eastern Pacific, a US Coast Guard drug-surveillance aircraft spotted a submarine on the surface of the ocean. The U.S. Customs, the Border Patrol and the U.S. Navy were called in. They managed to intercept the vessel before it could dive and on boarding found 6 tons of cocaine. Apparently there are several drug carrying submarines operated by the Columbian drug cartels. Could the really rich also be involved in the drug smuggling business?
In other seafaring news, there’s an armada of rubber duckies that have been floating in the seven seas since 1992 when 30,000 of the little critters were washed off the deck of a mechant ship in the Pacific Ocean. Many washed up on the shores of South America, Australia and Indonesia. Many drifted north to Alaska and Japan and even into the Artic Ocean where they covered thousands of miles while frozen into the shifting ice, poor little things, and eventually melted back out again to disperse into the Atlantic Ocean. Those little rubber duckies, made in China of course, are of interest to scientists studying the Ocean’s currents and there is a reward if you find one on a sea shore near you. There’s no word of any reaching the Mediterranian, but you never know, so keep your eyes open!
Scum Report
On the anniversary of 9/11 another bin Laden video appeared. It has become a tradition to issue a video of the last testament of one of the hijackers. This year it was the turn of Waleed al-Sheri, addressing the camera and warning the U.S. "We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left". The Archbishop of Canterbury used the anniversary of 9/11 to defend religion against claims that it promotes violence. Dr Rowan Williams said “Jihad, or holy war, could be interpreted as a ‘struggle of the heart’ rather than the defense of the Muslim community against its enemies”. He compared 9/11 with Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent protest movement.
At the end of his message bin Laden said: "It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan of martyrs and march to aid the High and Omnipotent." Sounds like Onward Christian Soldiers marching as to war… However the Jihadis are NOT God’s warriors. They are cowardly swine who would plan to destroy the lives of innocent people and impose their twisted beliefs on others who they regard as infidels. The worst thing you can say about the Christians is that they may be hypocrites but they don’t fly planes into buildings!
Connected
Don’t you find life is really speeding up. We seem to be constantly finding ways to make things move even faster. In the process are we perhaps losing our ability to think and relate to other people. Are we not becoming more and more isolated from each other. We seem to be caught up in our own personal networks whereby we can transport ourselves somewhere else at the touch of a button.
Have you noticed when sitting on the beach or lounging by the swimming pool, every couple around you has some kind of portable electronic device. They’re always talking to someone else, seldom to each other. They are wired or connected to something, but what? And it’s the same with the kids, yaking to their friends. You know what’s really annoying, is cell phones ringing in restaurants and everybody within earshot has to listen to the moronic conversations. Mind you in some restaurants in San Francisco where they used to ask you if you wanted smoking or non-smoking they now ask if you want to be seated in a phone or non-phone area.
We are now joined at the hip to our electronic devices. My son called me the other day from his laptop, he was in a Starbucks coffee shop where you can connect to the internet for free via WiFi. We never switch off or escape from the presence of others because we are constantly connected to other people. This connectedness means we have developed a culture of rapid response in which speed is sometimes considered more important than substance. We shoot off emails that are half thought out.
This connectedness is constant but our attention is only partial. We feel some kind of a need to constantly scan these digital environments in case we miss something and so leave our devices switched on. And we are always responding based on our preconceived notion of urgency rather than importance. I often wonder what this connectedness is doing to the quality of our thinking. We are now so connected, available, and never alone to reflect about what we’re doing and where we are going. Well I guess I’m really talking about myself and that’s fine!
After Words
Universities turn out people who know a great deal about very little and eff all about a great deal. Ian Hamilton QC
