Japan is more like a battered vessel, which has rotten timbers and many leaks, and the right question to ask is whether the rate at which the government repairs the ship and bails it out can outpace the spread of rot and entry of water.

ECONOMIST: Goodbye, Hashimoto

In a statement, Carnival chief executive Gerry Cahill said the ship should arrive in Mobile on Thursday and that the change would allow for less complicated re-entry for passengers without passports.

BBC: Carnival Triumph: Conditions 'worsen' on stranded ship

"I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, during a dreadful storm, in the offing, came on shore on this dismal, unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair, all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead, " Crusoe writes in his first entry.

WSJ: Fiction as Authentic as Fact | Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | Masterpiece by Danny Heitman