Common Sense and Whiskey

"We do not approve of the use of pictures to pass judgment on air quality ..."

So says Du Shaozhong of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, in a USA Today article titled Hong Kong sets new pollution record as horses arrive (Hong Kong is the Olympic Equestrian venue). Here's a web cam view of the Hong Kong waterfront today, from the Hong Kong Tourism Authority:

And here's sunset across Victoria Harbor last time we were there, last  December/January:

Find more from Hong Kong and all over China in EarthPhotos.com's China gallery.

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From View From the Wing: Apparently you can use Delta Miles for Free Hair Loss Consultation.

The World's Most Expensive City

is Moscow.

Photography in Northern Latitudes

Vivid northern light presents opportunities for the photographer that you just don't find around the farm in Georgia, USA. We're looking forward to photo ops in Finland, where we'll be all next week. These photos, clockwise from top left, were taken at our cabin in Finland, in a general store in Siberia, in the harbor at Bergen, Norway  and on a midsummer midnight cruise in Greenland.

Click the links to their country galleries at EarthPhotos.com.

Scandinavian Retro

Image from Finnair.com.

Venerable Scandinavian airline Finnair is 85 years old this week, making it the sixth oldest airline in the air. Marking the occasion, an "Airbus A319 has been painted in the livery of Finnair’s 1950s Convair in honour of the airline’s 85th anniversary. The aircraft’s crew will also be dressed in 1950s uniforms" says Boarding.no.

We have a Finnair flight on Sunday, from Paris up to Helsinki, but alas, it's not on the aircraft they're calling "Silver Bird." Silver bird's maiden flight is this Thursday on the Helsinki - Copenhagen route.

Total Solar Eclipse Coming This Friday Morning

Photo credit: Fred Espenak's MrEclipse.com

Friday morning's total solar eclipse tracks across Greenland, Russia, Mongolia and China, with the largest city probably Novosibirsk, along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. As we've written here  and elsewhere, the experience of a total solar eclipse is hard to beat. A great photo resource for eclipses is NASA's Fred Espenak, whose web site is MrEclipse.com. In case you can't make it to this Friday's eclipse live in person, NASA plans a live web cast. Hey, it ain't Siberia, but it's free. Get there early. Totality is at 7:09 a.m. EDT.

There are a few photos from the total solar eclipse of 11 August, 1999 as seen from Lake Balaton, Hungary, on EarthPhotos.com.

Destination: Papua New Guinea

Thin clouds hung between the shore and mountains. A single tarmac road plodded east, and a smoky fire burned halfway up the hills. Inland, it would rain.

Port Moresby must be the only capital city in the world not connected to anywhere else by road. Port Moresby swelters alone.

Metal roofs, no apparent center, the parliament building was built in haus tambarin, or spirit house, style, just beside the runway.

A fair gale blew off the sea. Palms rattled along the utterly un-commercial waterfront. Brown shore water settled into azure after fifty meters, and a wooded hillock rose from the harbor half a mile out.

If you could face only this direction you’d be in paradise. Unfortunately, we had to turn back through town. Port Moresby is a hole you have to step through to get wherever you’re going in PNG.

Panoramas - A Photo Stitching Lesson

Screen grab from Panoramas.dk.

It's the Obama Berlin speech in 360. Panoramas.dk is a fabulous site run by Danish photographer Hans Nyberg. See tons more 360 degree panoramas there.

There's a very nice tutorial on Photo Stitching Digital Panoramas on the site Cambridge in Color.

Eleven Days Out - Olympic Air

Tourists, athletes and staff are arriving in Beijing now, eleven days before the start of the games. One of our friends who works on the Olympic broadcasts arrived Saturday and has sent two emails, both noting how gray the air is.

Beijing's pollution is in the press. The BBC has this story. The Engish language China Daily leads with Emergency Green Plan for Games. And James Fallows continues his occasional blog posts with this view from his window:

Much more positively, there are some great photos of Olympic preparations on This is Life.

Our friend for thirty years, John Kelly, is also working the Beijing games, and will blog about his Olympic experience here.

Weekend Favorites

A little weekend fun: Visit EarthPhotos.com's Favorites gallery and enjoy the 100 top photos as voted everyday by visitors to the site. While you're there, nominate your favorite from the 7500-odd photos from all around the planet.

This former #1 is from Cappadoccia, Turkey, and can be found in EarthPhotos.com's Turkey and Architecture galleries.

Friday Flying Complaints

From a blog called Economist's View, Why is Airline Service so Bad? (via Online Travel Review)

And from Tripso.com, Memo from an Angry Flight Attendant.

When in Sweden....

In a couple of weeks we'll be in Sweden, for all of two days. Transparent.com, purveyors of language software, has a nice, friendly blog about practical Swedish here. It's most current post is a helpful blueberry forecast for the rest of the summer.

Scandinavia not on your immediate itinerary? There's also blogs about practical Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish and Chinese.

Let Me Outta Here!

A week to go until we head out to take pictures. It's time this weekend to make sure all the paperwork is in order and pack and repack the Case Logic SLR and camera backpack:

Photo from the Case Logic site.

After a week at our cabin in Finland we'll travel to Sweden, Ethiopia briefly, then a week in Uganda & Rwanda, including two days of gorilla treks, then a few days on the beach in Oman and, briefly, Dubai, to catch our ride home.

Having invested in substantial new mobile storage, we'll be shooting almost entirely in RAW for the first time, with a Nikon D200 and Photoshop CS3 in the laptop.

Watch this space for photos.

15 Days to the Olympics

Photo credit: AP Photo/Xinhua/Fan Changguo

You've seen this photo, of anti-terrorist training in China? Sort of looks like all of these guys need a men's room, doesn't it? That's funny, but this photo is just fabulous:

These Things Just Keep Getting Bigger

For $800+, SmartParts has a really big 32 inch digital photo frame. Used to be you had to wait for your photos to be developed, then manually load them into a slide carousel - not backwards or upside down. Now you can inflict your trip to the beach on your friends instantly. Via Gizmag.com.

360 Degree Photography - World Heritage Sites

There are a ton (299 to be exact) of 360 degree photos from UNESCO World Heritage sites around the world on their great WHTour.org web site. Great fun. Visit this site when you can spend some time. Fabulous.

Here's a screen grab from one of their Nepal shots:

Puzzling Article from an Admired Author

We have two friends about to leave for China to work on the Olympic TV broadcasts. Both are quite excited as neither has been there before. We've all been reading around the web and referring one another to pertinent posts. In poking around, I came across an article titled Beijing's Olympic Makeover written by William Langewiesche for Vanity Fair back in April.

Langewiesche is talented and graceful. Amazon suggests he's written six books and I have read and enjoyed three. But his Vanity Fair article is petty, sarcastic and, well, mean.

From the very start he means not to like China.

First he levels on the Chinese civil airline industry, with side shots at passengers and Chinese drivers.

The last few times we've flown in China have been on sparkling new airplanes. Compare and contrast with the U.S.

Langewische doesn't like Air China or the new Beijing airport terminal, which gets a slam bang review in Vanity Fair's current issue (in the article From Mao to Wow!)

Langewiesche points out that Air China carried the Olympic torch, then tattles that the torch relay "was first cooked up by Nazi propagandists." As if every other Olympics hasn't had its own torch relay.

CS&W Milestone

This marks Common Sense and Whiskey's 100th post. The first came nearly two months ago, on the 24th of May. Thank you for spending some time here. We hope you've found - and will continue to find - something useful, informative or pleasing here once in a while. Suggestions are welcome. And please come back.

Flying is Everybody's Favorite Thing to Hate. Including Airline Employees.

A pep talk for people in the airline industry from flight attendant and author James Wysong helps you realize that airline travel could be worse. It could be your job. Via Tripso.

Stand Proud, America, with Liberty and Justice for All

Paper shampoo, to appease the TSA gods, via Jaunted.