November 9, 2007

Automatic Road Repair
Days like yesterday make us question why we're out here. Nights like tonight go some way toward answering the question. The thing about the sea as a highway is that although the surface is easily rendered almost impassable, it's self repairing as soon as the wind eases up. A day of 15 to 20 knot easterly trade winds has let it smooth out to fairly long rolling swells. Once the breaking crests and abrupt holes had smoothed out, we stopped getting splashed on deck, and could comfortably put some more sail on. Progress is good, and we're not getting chucked around the boat so much.
I woke up a bit after sundown, and went out to see, on the northern horizon, the constellation Cassiopea. Some years have passed since last I saw the Queen upon her starry throne. We've finally sailed back into her realm. The old girl looks good for her age! We're watching for Polaris to creep above the horizon soon.
I put off typing this because I got rare good reception on the BBC, and was listening to World Business Review. The interview was with one Hunter Lewis and a couple of other experts on the phenomenon of "social entrepreneurship". These social entrepreneurs recognize that the present business models, with the tax structure now in place, are producing an unsustainable gap between rich and poor in developed and developing countries. They are propounding investment in areas that give a lower than optimum cash return, but NOT nonprofit, and which promote greater opportunity for potential workers and business people who have no chance to get started in the "dog eat dog" model now in vogue. Listen to the discussion on the internet, BBC website. Good ideas, well presented. A refreshing change from hearing Rush Limbaugh this morning saying flatly "Democrats HATE business". It would be an absurd statement, except that Rush makes money by saying it, at the expense of opportunity to improve the govt and business environments. He chooses to neglect the fact that there is the same statistical distribution of rich Democrat entrepreneurs as there are Republicans. People rarely succeed at what they hate. Rush is disingenuous. That is to say, he is demonstrably a bald faced liar. It's a shame the Armed Forces Radio thinks that level of falsehood qualifies as free speech, and needs to be heard by the troops overseas. Something a bit more thought provoking and unifying would be nice. And a requirement not to lie on the air.
Anyway, time to go commune with the rush of water past the stern of the boat, and watch the constellations rotate slowly across the cloud flecked sky. More later. Ted