Common Sense and Whiskey

Bagosora Behind Bars for Life: Rwanda

Theoneste Bagosora, in charge of the Hutu-dominated army and police when a missile brought down the airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in 1994, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes yesterday, for instigating the melee. As many as 800,000 mostly Tutsis died in the ensuing mayhem, said to have been long planned by Habyarimana.

News stories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

See Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general who commanded the UN mission in Rwanda, and who testified against Bagosora. See also the more compelling We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch.

(Photo of Kigali Memorial Center from EarthPhotos.com's Rwanda Gallery.)

Trends in Vewing Photography on the Web

Try out the free, downloadable plug-in called CoolIris. It works with your browser to provide a more 3-D viewing experience, or as they put it, "a lightning fast, cinematic way to discover the web."

EarthPhotos.com is compatible with CoolIris. In fact, it works right away, soon as you download the plug-in from the CoolIris site, and it works great. Compare these screen shots. The original, traditional version first, and then the EarthPhotos.com Landscapes Gallery via CoolIris:

There's a discussion of  the state of 3-D on the web in 2009 here.

Technical Problems This Afternoon at EarthPhotos.com

Our apologies. Our host at EarthPhotos.com reported DNS server problems earlier this afternoon, but things appear to be getting back to normal.

Welcome to the Middle East

In Cairo, a father offers daughter to shoe-thrower - and his daughter tells Reuters, "This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero." Or maybe she's just ready to get out of daddy's house. Will the shoe-thrower's apology screw things up?

And in a land where alcohol is prohibited except behind affluent closed doors, Homemade Liquor Kills 12 Iranians, Sickens Dozens in southern Iran - from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty.

Taj Mahal in Bangladesh? Comment? No Comment.

Left: View from your room at the Oberoi Amarvilas, Agra, India. There's a view of the Taj Mahal from every room. A reservation inquiry for next month turned up rates starting at $534.01 per night. But wait: There may be an alternative.

Right: An exact replica of the Taj Mahal under construction in Sonargaon, about an hour outside Dhaka,  Bangladesh, under the auspices of Ahsanullah Moni, a Bangladeshi film maker. Moni says this on the web site AzmiJahan.com Personal Development for Idiots: “I am doing this only for the poor. They cannot travel. They cannot see this historical wonder. I also hope the landmark construction can attract more tourists from home and abroad.”

(Left photo from the Oberoi web site, right photo from AzmiJahan.com.)

Photos from Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

There's not a lot to do in Bandar Seri Begawan, the steamy hot tropical capital of the Sultanate of Brunei. A couple of young women told us they take the ferry to Kota Kinabalu, in neighboring Sabah province, Malaysian Borneo, to find something to do on weekends. Sleepy place, but entirely cordial - a land of big smiles - and a really slow-moving pace of life.

We're just put up a new Brunei Gallery on EarthPhotos.com, consisting of ten photos of the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, which dominates - in a good way - central Bandar. It's lovely.

Moldova's First, and Perhaps the World's Cheapest Five Star Hotel

"The masterpieces of national, European, Moldavian and Japanese cuisine of our cookers won’t leave indifferent even the most sophisticated tastes." - Club Royal Park Hotel website.

Moldova is known primarily for wine and smuggling, tucked as it is on the periphery of Eastern Europe, east of Romania, with its own rough exclave called Transdnestria (Smugglers Run Rife, from The Guardian) on the left bank of the Dnestr River separating it from Ukraine. Here's a travelogue from the region.

And now, you can stay in purported five star style at the Club Royal Park Hotel. Rooms start at 160 Euro, "breakfast (Swiss table with 20 dishes), room-service, swimming-pool, sauna, gym, Wi-Fi Internet in-room safe" included - surely the most affordable five star rates around.

Ready to book your flight? Austrian flies to Chisinau from Vienna and Turkish from Istanbul. Belated Geography has an extensive collection of things Moldovan. And here's the official Tourism Ministry site.

(Photo from Club Royal Park website.)

Hurtling Through the Mekong Delta

Sleeping is the preferred activity because we're an hour into a 5 or 6 hour speedboat ride and the rains have come, forcing the windows closed and our attention more inside. We mean to make 240 K today from Chau Doc up near the Cambodian border.

Just now we’re flying, fairly gliding above a 100K, straight-as-the-captain-of-the-debate-club manmade canal. Commerce drops away between villages but there are stilt houses almost everywhere, fish traps and giant bamboo I guess even 18 – 20 meters out of the water and, they say, catfish underneath.

Before the rains, when we were running with the windows open, grey nimbus rolling over us pregnant with wet, the air felt exhilarating. The northeast monsoon has returned and river water has flooded fields for hundreds of meters outside the canals. It should heal the brownish tinge on some of the trees, and in particular the banana leaves. When one of the big transports passes, the ones with the big red eyes painted on the bow, their wake slaps the bottom of our boat hard. The crew sleeps through it – they only wake if we slow, fearing there may be something wrong.

Out in the cold: Mongolia

The Digital Journalist has a story by Sean Gallagher about a "self-assigned" project "to find and photograph people who were being affected first-hand by the economic crisis in Asia."

Specifically, he travels to Ulan Bataar, capital of Mongolia, where being homeless presents special challenges. As I post this, weather.com says the temperature in Ulan Bataar is 1 F/ - 17 C.

(Photo of rural Mongolia from the EarthPhotos.com Mongolia Gallery.)

The Chinese language is inscrutable.

Chinese pictograms suggest such a completely different way of looking at the world that it's easy to believe the twain shall not meet. But it shall.

Tom Grimmer writes about how we willfully continue to misunderstand China.

Up The Yangtze, a DVD, closes a little of the gap, and it's just the thing for people who would visit China but want to know what to avoid. Aging Americans don't put on their best performance on this DVD.

See photos from all over China in the China Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.

Russia... Really.

Coverage in the U.S. and Europe despairs of Russia's resurgent nationalism. And there is that, though you won't likely see it if you go there.

But there's nothing warmer than a welcome into a Russian family's home, and the  intense, open discussion, argument, toasting and fellowship that inevitably follows, maybe with pickles or sausages and vodka, across the kitchen table.

Unfortunately, there's also this:

"Russia's demography befits a country at war. The population of 142m is shrinking by 700,00 people a year."

- from a report in the Economist that crystallizes the real Russia, 2009.

Photos in the Russia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Friday Photo Quiz #6

This place of worship was built in the 1920's and has remained essentially as originally built ever since. It was declared a national monument in 1975.

You'll find this iconic mosque on Muscat Street in what steamy, tropical city?

The answer is after the jump.

And a good weekend to you, from Common Sense and Whiskey and EarthPhotos.com.

You, Too, May Have Hurt the Feelings of the Chinese People

Japan has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people 47 times. The United States has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people 23 times. Even Guatemala has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people - twice. Cute post on Danwei called Mapping the Hurt Feelings of the Chinese People.

Countries that have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people are in black on this map, which is from the post on Danwei.

See photos from all over China in the China Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.

Cook Without a Clue: Ethiopia

If you live in a big city, perhaps you've visited an Ethiopian restaurant. And if you have, you'll have tried injera, the spongy, slightly sour bread on which your food was served. I once bought injera to go - in a convenience store, of all places - in suburban Atlanta.

Essentially a big round pancake, injera is served on a traditional masab, a woven basket table, with stews, greens, meats, main and side dishes placed on top. More injera is served on the side. You tear off a bit and use it to pick up each bite of food.

It's brilliant for a poor land - a filling staple food served with each bite.

Injera is made from the smallest grain in the world, called teff. About 150 grains are the size of a kernel of wheat. You can buy injera ready made, but now that we've found where you can buy teff, the Cook Without a Clue's assignment is: make your own injera. Here's a recipe. We'll report back on how we do.

See photos from Ethiopia in the Ethiopia Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EthiopianSpices.com.)

The Hotel of Doom

Might want to mark your calendar for 15 April, 2012. Koryo Group says in its newest newsletter that that's the date of the grand opening of Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel. Construction began in 1987. After five years the project ran out of money, but construction resumed this past April. At 105 stories, The Ryugyong Hotel rises 1083 feet (330 meters).

Ryugyonghotel.com calls it "The first building with over 100 floors outside the United States." Esquire magazine calls it "The Worst Building in the History of Mankind."

(Photo from Koryo Group's newsletter.)

"I Hear He Only Shoots JPG"

Cleverly done. The Fuhrer rants about the new Nikon D3X.

 

You, Too Can Be an Ace Travel Photographer. Yep. Even You.

If you take photos during your travels, take a look at this book: The Creative Digital Darkroom by Katrin Eismann & Sean Duggan, from O'Reilly. It's the most useful all around guide to post processing your photos I've ever read. Absorbing, well-written, with lots of before-and-after examples, it explains why you're getting the results you're getting in a way you can really understand.

Elegant, super useful. Well done. Enjoyable. Here it is at Amazon.

(Photo from the book's web site.)

A Giraffe Will Set You Back $1400: The Real Cost of Running a Safari Lodge

"It's 06h30 on a crisp winter morning at an upmarket safari lodge in the African bush. With a cough and a splutter, the diesel-powered game vehicle roars to life and, having downed fresh coffee and muffins, four well-heeled guests grab their binoculars and head off for a few hours of game viewing bliss. The dust from their departure has barely settled when the camp's generator kicks in and the real business of cleaning up, housekeeping, laundry, catering, stock control, fence mending and game management begins."

This month's Africa Geographic magazine reveals the surprising true costs of running a luxury safari lodge in Africa. With the kind permission of Africa Geographic, we excerpt portions of the article below.

Prices are quoted in South African rand. Xe.com says at today's exchange rate, one rand = 0.0989129 dollars. A rand is ten cents, so just take off the last zero to get a dollar amount in the figures that follow.

The article was written by Sharon van Wyk and is excerpted with permission from Africa Geographic. Watch Common Sense and Whiskey for a Q&A with Africa Geographic editor Sarah Borchert in the coming weeks.

*****

Building a five-star lodge is not cheap, even if you keep it exclusively small. The average luxury lodge offers 16 beds in eight units. Expect to pay upwards of R1-million per unit, if you want to sell to the big international operators. This will get you huge suites with beautiful finishes, Out of Africa luxury, air conditioning and private plunge pools, together with ‘wow’ furnishings and super plush décor.

Customer awareness, and hopefully your own conscience, will dictate that you take your environmental responsibilities seriously. Reverse osmosis (RO) systems to handle waste water, solar energy to power your geysers and basic lighting and state-of-the-art inverters or even perhaps biofuel-powered generators may find their way on to your shopping list. Although basic RO water purifiers cost around R1 500 per unit, a complete commercial system suitable for an entire lodge will set you back in the region of R100 000, excluding running costs.

When it comes to solar lighting and water heating, units to power LED lights cost from a few hundred rands to around R12 000 for a 200-watt panel. A 200-litre high-pressure solar water heating system sells for R15 000 per unit – you’ll need one per guestroom (you can get non-pressurised units for around R5 000, with a capacity of 180 litres).

A 12KVA bio-directional inverter for power will set you back R75 000 or so. For 18KVA you’ll need just over R100 000!

Grey-water recycling for the treatment of bath, shower and washing machine water comes in a lot cheaper, at R6 000 for a 260-litre reservoir. This serves the average household of four people. Do the maths for the number of guests your lodge will be catering for, plus staff.

Factor in R5-million or so for your main lodge building, housing a common lounge and dining area, kitchen, offices, viewing deck and swimming pool, plus all the accoutrements – furniture, fittings, fixtures
and the all-important décor. Add another R5-million for staff accommodation, vehicles and little extras like fire-fighting equipment, and safety and security.

Then, of course, you’ve got to give your guests something to look at – you need game.

Emirates Flight Crews Find A380's Too Quiet to Sleep

Here's one you don't read every day. From FlightGlobal.com: Airbus to help Emirates pilots sleep after crews find A380 'too quiet'. It seems that Emirates put the crew rest area at the back of the main deck instead of behind the cockpit, in order not to compromise the upper deck's first class cabin. As a result, "they are constantly disturbed by sounds created by passengers, such as crying babies, flushing vacuum toilets and call bells."

New "Most Popular" Photo

There's a newly voted Most Popular photo on EarthPhotos.com. It's cave dwellings in Cappadoccia, near the Turkish town of Goreme.

EarthPhotos.com has nearly ten thousand photos from all over the planet, arranged by country and in categories, like Cities, People and Transportation. You can give any photo on the site a thumbs up or thumbs down by selecting it as the main photo on the page. Then move your mouse over it and clickable voting icons appear. Photos are ranked by popularity in the Most Popular Gallery.