ALEX DEELEY

WITH ALL of the news about cruise ships being stranded in the middle of the ocean, I've found the topic to be somewhat interesting, but this story takes the cake. The MV Lyubov Orlovaw is a boat, built in 1976, in Yugoslavia.  It was built to conduct expeditions through the ice-laden waters of the North Atlantic.  It has an interesting history. Here's its Wikipedia page. In 1999, it was refurbished and outfitted with amenities to become an Arctic expedition cruise ship.  In 2002, she was chartered by another company to continue her exploring cruise ship job. The funny part starts in 2010, when docked in Newfoundland, the boat was seized, due to the owner's owing $251,000 and kind of not having paid the crew for five months.  Here's an article detailing some of the transaction. So, an American company was hired to two the old boat down to the Dominican Republic, where it was going to be scrapped.  It must have been essentially worthless, or at least th...

This article I plucked from HowStuffWorks examines five major cities, which are now ghost towns.  These kind of abandoned dwellings are very interesting to me.  I'm not sure what their charm is; perhaps it's the solitude of it all, or the simplicity of knowing that nobody is there, but seeing man-made structures left to the ages just gives me a weird, good feeling.