Hostage - Netflix Series

Suranne Jones as UK Prime Minister Abigail Dalton (left)
Julie Delpy as French President Vivienne Toussaint (right)

We watched two episodes before we bailed. It was just awful. Seems like the shows creators wanted to show how people react to a horrific situation, but the situation they constructed to enable this was put together by a two year old. With a little more intelligence they might have been able to make something of it, but, I dunno, were they stupid? Or lazy? Or just didn't care. I don't care.

Did cause me to realize that there are two French colonies with near identical names. French Guiana is in South America and French Guinea is, or was, in Africa. French Guinea is now just Guinea. Problem, for me anyway, is that they sound almost alike. Guiana is pronounced gee-ana, and the African one is pronounced ginny.

Jakarta is Sinking

Jakarta's land subsidence

I knew a large portion of the Netherlands was below sea level, which is crazy, but the Dutch, at least in most other respects, seem to be fairly level headed. And you don't hear them crying about it, so if they want to indulge in a bit of crazy and live in a place that ought to be underwater, well, go ahead on. I'll let you.

Jakarta & southeast Asia

But I kind of thought it was only place in the world like that. Well, there is Death Valley (280 feet below sea level) and the Dead Sea (1400 feet below sea level), but they are not right up against an ocean that could flood them in a moments notice. In any case Holland isn't the only place. Jakarta Indonesia is slowing sinking and large parts of it are now below sea level. They noticed this a while back and started building a sea wall in 2014.

This video from the Drop A Pin YouTube channel got me started. He uses a curious format. He asks a question of like two dozen people who all get the answer wrong before he finally finds someone who gets it right. He sucked me in the first few dozen videos I saw, but now I skip to the end to find the answer.

Ten Big Rivers

10 Big Rivers

I don't know about the plastic, this poster might be true, but I thought the way it showed these ten rivers is pretty cool, especially the Niger. I had no idea it curved around until it almost touches the coast. Must be some mountains there.

The sources of the Niger River, the Gambia River, and the Senegal River are all found in the Guinea Highlands. - Wikipedia

Guinea Highlands

Previous posts about the Nile River.

Previous post about the Ganges River.

The Pearl River gets mentioned here.

Previous post about the Amur River.

Previous mention of the Niger River.

Lindybeige Goes To Sheffield

Ancient power-hammers and the city that put steel in the world
Lindybeige

Lindybeige is a character. I like the way he ties multiple subjects together: history, geography, economics, technology and even working conditions. From 6:55 to 11:20 he talks about his sponser. It's a little long, but entertaining. At 11:55 we have this line:

"gravity is kept switched on at all times"

Map of the Don Catchment showing the River Don, the city of Sheffield, and the distribution of weirs.

Giant Snake Geography

When You Think Tectonic Plates are Giant Snakes
SciManDan

I don't care what Science Man Dan says, it looks like a giant dead snake to me. All you perverts who think it looks like something else, just be quiet.

Gap between South America and Antarctica made by Giant Snake

The gap between South America and Antarctica is like 500 miles. Since snakes usually have a circular cross section, and since the ocean is only a couple of miles deep, if this was a snake then we are only seeing the very top of it and the bulk of it would be thoroughly embedded in the crust of the Earth. Actually, I think it looks like a giant mud flow, but that would imply an uphill source for the mud and there just isn't any. So maybe Science Man Dan is right after all.

Border Marker

Border Marker between Asia and Europe in the Polar Ural Mountains

Just a cool picture. Had a hard time finding a good map of the Ural Mountains.

Ural Mountains

The Ural mountains span about 1500 kilometers from 54 degrees north to 66 degrees north.

Arctic Regions

I thought this map was interesting, especially the zigzag in Norway.

Port of Lewiston Idaho

Why There’s a Pacific Ocean Port in Idaho
Half as Interesting

Marine traffic, trains and pipelines are relatively invisible and mostly ignored, yet our civilization is totally dependent on them. Lewiston is like in the center of the proposed expanded state of Idaho.

So we have a serious method for getting the grain down the river to the ocean from Lewiston, but how do we get all that grain to Lewiston? So I started thinking about combines and how many you would need and I figured we need some videos. There are bunch of modern ones. Many of them are very long. Here's a short modern one and a couple about the old days. I thought the 20 mule team was a big operation. That's nothing compared to these guys.

Wheat Harvest on the Palouse
BJ Swanson

24 million bushels are exported out of Lewiston each year. An acre of ground can produce about 50 bushels of wheat, so you would need 480 thousand acres, which translates into 750 square miles of land. If you are driving a combine with a cutter head width of 15 feet and you are traveling at 4 miles per hour, if will take 66,000 hours to harvest all that wheat. Figure you got a month to get it all cut, and you're working 24 hour days, you're going to need 100 combines to get it all cut. And you probably are not going to have a month, you might have two weeks, and 24 hours a day is wishful thinking, so more likely you are going to need 500 combines. Make allowances for problems as the necessity to get the wheat harvested come hell of high water, you are probably going to want double that number.

To Till a Field: Man and Machine in the Palouse
Washington State University Libraries' Films

Harvesting Wheat with a 33-Mule Team
Fort Walla Walla Museum

Palouse Prairie in the Pacific Northwest

The Palouse:

The Palouse is a distinct geographic region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and, by some definitions, parts of northeast Oregon. It is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat and legumes. Situated about 160 miles (260 km) north of the Oregon Trail, the region experienced rapid growth in the late 19th century.

The Palouse is home to two land-grant universities: the University of Idaho in Moscow and Washington State University in Pullman. Just eight miles (13 km) apart, both schools opened in the early 1890s.

 

Surat Diamond Bourse

Surat Diamond Bourse

World's largest office building opened today. It is located just south of Surat, India, which is 150 miles north of Bombay on the west coast of India.

Asia is kind of like a bigger version of the United States. There is Russia, China and India, corresponding to the West Coast, the East Coast and the South, which includes Texas. There is a big desert separating Russia and China, much like the West Coast is separated from Texas. We have the Rocky Mountains that separate the West Coast from the rest of the country, much like the Himalayas separate India from the rest of Asia.

Combined they also have a much larger population, three billion people which is nine times larger than the USA.

Via RT

Prince William Sound & Barry Arm

Prince William Sound & Barry Arm

Nick and Lola have been working on commercial fishing boats the last two summers, or would have but Nick broke his foot and he's been on the sidelines this season. Lola worked though, and this was a very good year for the fishermen, so she made pile of money, enough to buy a used car anyway. Nick, the poor schmuck, is stuck at home taking care of his ailing father. That's what you get ya big dummy, trying to save that stupid jet-ski from that vicious, foot-eating dock.

The boats they work on operate in Prince William Sound which is this weird area southeast of Anchorage. Notably, Anchorage isn't on Prince William Sound, it's on Cook Inlet. To get from one to other you have to sail south to the Gulf of Alaska, which basically puts you out in the open ocean, as if you weren't already. Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound are both large bodies of water, Prince William Sound is roughly 75 miles across and maybe 50 miles north to south. What makes it weird is all these islands and the jagged coastline. It's not like Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay, the boundaries are not so well defined. It's more like Norway. You see that nice outline of Norway on your world map, but when you start examining it closely you see that it is just a jumble of giant rocks. The coast doesn't look like it has any proper land at all. Much the same can be said of Prince William Sound.

All around the sound are all these little inlets, and coming down from out of the mountains are all these little streams that empty into the inlet. When spawning season comes along, the adult salmon head back to the stream where they originated. Each one of these streams has their own tribe of fish. Evidently the fish self identify, I don't know that anyone else, man or fish, can tell. When all the salmon are heading home, they break the first rule of security: they have become predictable. Their nemesis, the commercial fisherman, knows this, and sets up his nets just offshore from where the stream empties into the inlet. All the fish swimming home run into his net and are caught. Well, not all of them. Some get by and that's enough to keep the salmon population going. At least I hope it is.

Then there's the issue of the number of streams and the number of boats. Too many boats might catch more salmon than the market wants, the price would collapse, and some fishermen would go broke. That would thin their ranks. So it's a very capricious way to make a living. The fish may or may not be plentiful, the market demand may be high or low, and there might be more than enough fishermen, or there might not be enough. If things go your way you could living high on the hog, if they don't you may find yourself on the beach, casting a line into the surf.

And that's just the business side of it. The reality of it is zillion dollar boats, crews hard at it all day long, out on the boat for weeks at a time, well, as long as the season lasts, or until the refrigeration system breaks and you have to come into Cordova which is only town to speak of.There is Valdez, but that's an oil town, Cordova is a fishing town. They have their own jetport so they can fly Ukrainians in to work in the fish processing plant. Liza has been working in Cordova as a general factotum, doing, among other things, delivering parts to repair the broken refrigeration systems on the commercial fishing boats.Anyway, fishing season is over and they are all here in Portland.

Nick informs me that Prince William Sound is under a kind of tsunami watch (pdf). They (the guys who watch these things) have latched onto Barry Arm as a potential disaster in the making. I am not quite sure what Barry Arm is, whether it is an arm of a glacier or a piece of land, but there is a glacier involved. The prediction is that sometime in the next 20 years, Barry Arm is going to collapse into Prince William Sound and that is going to trigger a tsunami 1600 feet high which will be like the biggest wave ever! It would cool to surf it, hey? 1600 feet. I can't even imagine. Of course it will dissipate very quickly, it's not like a major underwater fault shift. Still, it will probably be felt all over Prince William Sound, and since all the fishermen up there know about it, it is liable to influence the choice of fishing grounds. 

Iron Ski

Missile interception caught on snowboarder's camera in Golan Heights
Guardian News
The U.S. Army is buying Iron Dome Anti-rocket defense systems from Israel. YouTube has a bunch of videos that show the Iron Dome system in action. This one caught my eye. Skiing in Israel? 

Golan Heights

Just how tall are the Golan Heights? 9,200 feet. Yeah, that's high enough to get some snow no matter where you are.

Update July 2022 replaced blocked video with the same thing from another source.

Smokin'

2019 Raikoke volcano - NASA / ISS

There is a string of islands that heads northeast from Japan until it reaches the Kamchatka Penninsula that hangs off the east coast of Russia. Raikoke is one of those islands. Blew up last month and NASA snapped this photo.What I noticed is the cloud of smoke and dust from the eruption has a relatively flat top. Why would that be? Could it be there is a limit to how high a cloud can go, even if it's an explosive cloud? I suppose it could be that smoke particles need a certain density of air to support them, and eventually you get so high and the air gets so thin that it won't support even microscopic smoke particles.

Thinking about microscopic smoke particles reminded me of a weird thing that happened a couple of years ago. Every summer, the forest fires spring up all over the western USA. One summer it had been particularly bad (this year maybe?). The air had been hazy and you could smell the smoke, even though the nearest fire was hundreds of miles away. But then the next day the sky was blue and the smell of smoke was gone, but the sky sure was bright. On normal, sun shiny day, I don't need my sunglasses. It's only when it's overcast that I wear them. But on that day the sky was so bright I needed my sunglasses, even though it was clear and not overcast. The sky seemed to sparkle. It wasn't something you could put your finger on, no bright spots appeared in my vision, but there was definitely something going on. Very weird.

Via Starts with a Bang!

Let's Go Surfin'

Sebastian Steudtner at Nazaré - 2018 Ride of the Year Award Entry - WSL Big Wave Awards
YouTube has a zillion similar videos.

Nazare Canyon

The underwater Nazare Canyon is the reason the waves get so big here.

Via Posthip Scott.

Blockheads

Stonehenge:    51.2° North,     -1.8° West

Easter Island: -27.1° South, -109.4° West
Difference:       78,3°              107.6°       which is not exactly opposite, but good enough for this.

Via Jack.

Land

North Atlantic Lands
Newfoundland is the marked with the red spot on the left,
Scotland & England are marked with the red spots on the right.

Trying to explain Ireland to someone who had never heard of it this morning and I realized that the North Atlantic is populated with a string of islands with land in their name:

•  England
•  Scotland
•  Ireland
•  Iceland
•  Greenland
•  Newfoundland

There are a bunch of other places with land in their name scattered over other parts of the world, but they don't have this close historical / geographic proximity:

•  Finland
•  Poland
•  The Netherlands
•   Switzerland
•  Swaziland
•  Thailand
•  New Zealand

Update November 2016 moved Scotland.

Say What

Came across this photo today:

 

DILI, Timor Leste (Feb. 25, 2014) Timor Leste Defense Force soldiers during a training exercise with sailors from the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd. U.S Navy photo by Jay C. Pugh

Timor Leste? Where is that? I think I've run across it before, but I'm not sure, so I Google it and I get this:

East Timor or Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Australasia.

What!?! Timor Leste is in Australia!?! That can't be right, so I follow the link and discover that not only did I miss a couple of letters, but other people have gotten these terms, and several others, confused as well.

• Australasia is a region of Oceania, comprises Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. Charles de Brosses coined the term (as French Australasie) in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes^[1] (1756). 
• Australia is the smallest continent on our planet.
• Austrasia was a country in Western Europe from 511 to about 751 AD.
• Austria is a country in Central Europe.
  
• Austroasian refers to a family of languages from continental Southeast Asia.

So how did we get this mess? Wikipedia explains:

The origin of the name Austrasia is Germanic, meaning "eastern land". The latinisation is confusing as German "Ost" is "east", but Latin "auster"/ "australis" is "south". The same can be seen with the name Austria.

Trivia

Steve sent me this list. It's all useless, but it is good for maintaining your perspective.

Geography & Natural Resources

• More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness 28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness 38%.
• Siberia contains more than 25 percent of the world's forests.
• The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20 percent of the world's oxygen supply.
• The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that more than one hundred miles at sea, off the mouth of the river one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. 90% of the world's ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents 70% of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4 percent of it), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
• In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years.
• Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
• There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio, everyone is man-made.
• Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.

Names

• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
• The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time: The Big Apple.
• St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man named Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant who set up the first business there (bootlegging).

Inhabitants

• Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.
• The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
• Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.
• There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland,
• more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy, and
• more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• The smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001 has a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, as is the Vatican.

Roads

• Woodward Ave. in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M - 1, because it was the first paved road anywhere.
• Chances that a road is unpaved in the USA ~ 1 percent Chances that a road is unpaved in Canada ~ 75 percent.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are meant to be usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.