Quote of the Day

Georges Asfar in Damascus, c. August 1954. Shangri La Historical Archives, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Balanche thinks the war will continue, grinding out the shape of a divided Syria, because the determination of Iran, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the U.S. to secure their interests remains stronger than any desire to end the fighting. - Marc Champion writing for Bloomberg.

Note that the only connection between the picture and the quote is Syria. I have no idea who Georges Asfar is. I just thought the picture was cool.

Map Versus Map

How do you get from Russia (just north of Georgia) to Syria without flying over Turkey?

Russia is sending all kinds of stuff to Syria, humanitarian aid and military weapons. Bulgaria got itself in the news by saying that Russian aircraft that want to fly over Bulgaria will have to land and be inspected to make sure they aren't carrying anything inappropriate. I'm thinking, Bulgaria? Who cares? But then I look at the map and if you want to fly from Russia to Syria you are going to have to cross over some other country, like Turkey, or Bulgaria and Greece, or Iran and Iraq. Since Iran is opposed to ISIS, and the purpose of all this aid is support the Syrian government against ISIS, I wouldn't expect them to object. Since Iraq is a US puppet state, I wouldn't look for any cooperation there. And Turkey, well, Turkey forced a passenger plane to land for inspection back in 2012. That kind of thing kind of sticks in the craw. Mucking about with airliners is good way to get people up in arms.

Google's Rejection Notice

    Al-Monitor tells us that Russia has been working on the Latakia Airport in Syria, so I pull up Google Maps to see what I can see, and Google can't find it and wants to know whether I want to add it, so I say sure. Wikipedia gives me the coordinates and I fill out the form and Google rejects it. Since it's not a burger joint or a swinging hot spot in the lower 48 I guess they don't care.

Bassel Al-Assad International Airport

Wikimapia doesn't have any trouble finding it.

Space TV

Kelvin Jones : Call You Home from Joe Connor on Vimeo.
Joe expounds:

Yup, that really is a TV in space, for real. I created this video by sending a vintage Sony TV into orbit on a weather balloon provided by Sent Into Space, surrounded by cameras so as to capture this spectacular footage hovering above the Big Blue Marble itself.
More precisely, it took two launches - both from Snowdonia in Wales, with two identical TVs, with each launch providing the opportunity to rig the GoPros in different positions.
I'm pleased to say that all TVs in this music video were harmed as they crash-landed back to earth. We sent the TV off from Snowdonia and it landed in Bury, Manchester - taking in my hometown of Warrington on the way which can be seen in the promo. I'm proud to say that the TV got 99.997% above the atmosphere, just 0.003% below the Armstrong line - surely the highest TV in history.

Update 9/13/15: This video got me thinking about how glass-tube-type TV's are rapidly disappearing and how much grief people will put up with to get something they want, like their favorite sitcom.

Watching Westerns while on the job. Very bad.

Which reminded me of a scene from the movie Brazil, where we have a bunch of young guys in suits in an office with some kind of displays on their desk and they are all watching an old Western, until the boss sticks his head out of his office door, where upon they all simultaneously switch back to their work screen until he goes back inside, and then poof! Back to the shoot-em-up!

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy

September 5, 2015. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy arrives at the North Pole.

First U.S. ship to reach the pole unaccompanied, which implies that other U.S. ships have been there before. Since you would need an ice-breaker to reach the North Pole on the surface, that kind of implies that we went in the company of some other country's ice breaker. That wouldn't have been Russia, would it?

Healy? Where'd they get that name? Wikipedia, as usual, provides the story:

Healy was . . .named in honor of United States Revenue Cutter Service Captain Michael A. Healy (1839 – 1904) . Healy patrolled the 20,000 miles (32,000 km) of Alaskan coastline for more than 20 years, . . After commercial fishing had depleted the whale and seal populations, his assistance with introduction of Siberian reindeer helped prevent starvation among the native Alaskans.

I am beginning to suspect that we (as in we - the human race) won't be happy until we have killed and eaten every critter on the planet. And then we'll be sad.

Healy has a web cam. They put up a new pic every hour. Update May 2024 web cam is dead.

Inspired by Lloyd.

Age of the Unicorn

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II In Milan

The Nation has a story about the surge of hugely valued venture capital funded start-ups. The huge value is totally pie-in-the-sky. Anything's value is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it, and while some people might claim to be willing to pony up a huge amount of cash to purchase this thing, if the thing is not for sale, does their offer even count? No, it doesn't.

What I see is a group of people with a great deal of money who are willing to bet on some long shots. No surprise there, that is what venture capital is all about.

The other thing I see is that they are doing some really trivial things (like order a taxi with a smart phone) that are taking advantage of the huge pool of underemployed young adults. Would you rather make $200 a day driving a cab for 12 hours, or spend 8 hours over a hot grill and make $100? This is stuff that could have been done 50 years ago, except everyone was busy making real money back then. These guys are finding niches in the existing market and exploiting them. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not going to cause a fundamental change in our society, which is what we really need.

What would make a huge, positive difference would be the negative income tax. If everybody was getting a subsistence allowance, we could eliminate:

• welfare
• minimum wage laws
• unemployment compensation

and all the bureaucracies that go with them.

The Republicans would love to see the minimum wage laws go away. The pay for a lot of jobs would drop to $1 an hour, but if you add that to your weekly dole you'd at least be able to buy beer on the weekend.

Then again, it might be the end of civilization as we know it. But I kind of think we are on the road to hell now, so trying something radical might be a good idea.

Alfa Romeo 4C

2015 Alfa Romeo 4C Hot Lap! - 2014 Best Driver's Car Contender
Laguna Seca
A little spendy, very light, very spartan, very quick. A supercar on a budget. It's so light that that extra 100 pounds you are carrying around will affect your track times. Via Posthip Scott.

A Perfect Tempest in a Teapot

The ocean has gone plaid!!!

Older son got a ticket from the Transit Police last night. His job provides him with a free Tri-Met pass, and since everything is an App these days, he's got it in his Smart Phone. Since it's now so-much-more-convenient, the cops need a scanner to tell whether his pass is valid, and the scanner said "no, not a valid pass", so the copper wrote him a ticket and now he has a date with the court. Count up another win for the petty fascists. Just one more reason why I'm glad I don't carry a smart-phone.