Common Sense and Whiskey

Friday Photo Quiz #12

Lovely landscape for painting, to be sure. But can you guess where it is?

Hint: This week's photo is from an island nation with more than a million citizens. The rest is up to you.

Take a guess, and the answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all, from CS&W and EarthPhotos.com.

Another Round of Debate over Burma

I wouldn't bet the mortgage, or really much more than a round of beers, but if there's news on this next week, you heard it here (here really) first: Looks like an offer of U.N. development assistance is coming, in exchange for political reforms, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in Burma.

In the entirely unlikely event that should happen it would reopen the perennial debate (more here and here) on whether it's responsible to travel to Burma while it's ruled by the Than Shwe junta. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi says no. We visited Burma in the 90's, so we're obviously in the "yes" camp.

Photo of the Rangoon ad man from the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

What Conde Nast Wants from a Travel Photographer

The British Journal of Photography's cover story is a lesson in snaring those choice luxury travel photo assignments.

Circuit City Owes Nikon $14,926,445

according to Bloomberg.

But it Looks so Prim and Proper and Well-Behaved

With respect, somehow it just doesn't summon up the full-throated revolutionary lust of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia or the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, but The Iceland Weather Report blog does have tales of the collapse of the government, people banging drums, pots and pans in the streets and even Reykjavik burning.

Photo of Reykvavik from the Iceland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Fifty Photos: #2

The Indian Ocean island of Mauritius changed its colonial affiliation four times. First inhabited in 1598 when the Dutch Vice Admiral Wybrandt van Warwick dropped anchor and named it for his ruler Maurice, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau. They used Maurice mostly as a supply stop on the way around to Java until abandoning the island in 1710, after having hunted the dodo to extinction. Incidentally, it was from here in 1642 that Abel Tasman left to discover Tasmania.

The Portugese, British and French also had their go at Mauritius until independence was granted on 12 March 1968 with Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (later knighted) elected Prime Minister and serving 13 years. When he died in 1986 his name was added to a host of things around the island. The botanical garden is in the town of Pamplemousses, which is French for grapefruit, but in this case refers to a particular kind of Mauritian grapefruit.

Sir Ramgoolam lent his name to the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanic Gardens, which is where we found these "Victoria Amazonica" water lillies - today's contribution from the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com.

There's more from the Ramgoolam Gardens in the Mauritius Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

New Russian Orthodox Patriarch

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says it's Metropolitan Kirill, 62, of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chosen tonight in the first succession since the end of the Soviet Union. Kirill has been the church's external relations director, essentially its Foreign Minister.

In that capacity he met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican last year, and, RFE/RL says, is seen as an advocate of better ties with Rome. He's to be installed as the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia to lead his flock of some 165 million faithful, in Moscow on Sunday.

Has it slipped your mind what the Great Schism of 1054 was all about? Here you go.

Photo from the Russia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

A Victory for Exotic Headgear, Too

Evo Morales has won his referendum in Bolivia with some 60 per cent of the vote. Under this, it's 17th constitution, Bolivia's 36 native tongues are now all official languages, along with Spanish.

Bolivia's first indigenous president campaigned hard among Aymara, Quechua, Guarani and other indigenous groups for the new constitution, which the Financial Times says "approves a new Congress with guaranteed representation for indigenous minorities and removes Catholicism as the state religion."

So predictably, Catholic Churches Oppose President in Bolivia Referendum, but the U.N. likes it. Cuba likes it. And the Telegraph sadly shakes its august, worried editorial head.

Just last Friday President Morales nationalized the Chaco Petroleum Company, a BP subsidiary, and the new constitution further tightens state control over natural resources. And here's a pesky fact: Half the world's lithium, used to make batteries for the electric cars Detroit is banking on, is in Bolivia, which Time Magazine calls the Saudi Arabia of lithium.

Here are the new constitution's key provisions.

Photo from the Bolivia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.


Stumble It!

Fifty Photos: #1

Teapots for sale at the base of the Maiden's Tower, a landmark near the Caspian waterfront in Baku, Azerbaijan. From the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com.

From the eventual book, Common Sense and Whiskey:

The ride in from Georgia foreshadowed what Azerbaijan was all about. In the morning, the train window filled with oil derricks and post-Soviet housing.

The night before, over dinner while rolling out of Tbilisi, young Georgian businessmen were certain that in any Middle East, or, for that matter, any other war, Georgia would be victim to summary Russian bombing for its petulant courtship of NATO. We thought it fanciful at the time, but now I take that back.

China's New Year in Pictures

Boston.com's Big Picture has nice photo coverage of the start of the Year of the Ox.

Iraqi Tourism, Continued

“I don’t personally know of any incidents that have happened,” he said. “But I never see foreigners like you walking around without a local person.”

We've written about the first, tentative commercial flights into Iraqi Kurdistan (here & here). Michael J. Totten has visited Erbil and tells the story: Iraq Without a Gun.

More Trouble in Paradise

The entire three part series about troubles in paradise, called Bhutan's radicalized refugees, is now posted. Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three on World Politics Review.

We've written about the coronation of the young king Jigme Wangchuck V, and a little about our visit to Bhutan here.

The series prompted me to move Bhutan to the head of the line, and I've posted eighty-odd photos in the Bhutan Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. My apologies that they're not yet captioned and key-worded.

(Photo of the Phuntsho Meat Shop, Thimpu, Bhutan, from EarthPhotos.com.)

Challenging New Year for China

"the Hong Kong Western community has been buzzing about rumored eyewitness accounts of troop and riot police deployments in Guangdong province. And, it is widely anticipated that as plants close this week in anticipation of the Chinese New Year which starts on Monday a lot of them won’t reopen and there will be worker unrest among the newly unemployed." - from China's Economic Miracle: Unraveling

The Year of the Ox Starts Monday. Happy Niu Year! (pun explanation)

London, Paris or Tuscany, It Ain't. Can You Place It on the Map?

For some reason, I remember back during Gulf War One, Charlton Heston (whose rifle was, presumably, in due course pried away from his cold dead hands) got to railing about the border between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Let's just say he wouldn't have gotten a hundred on this map quiz.

But you'll show 'em. Roll up your sleeves and click this link to locate these 33 countries, Palestine and Western Sahara, which is on the U.N.'s list of Non-Self Governing Territories, on the map. And please come back and tell us how you did.

Bonne chance!


Stumble It!

Probably Want to Postpone that Trip to the Russian Caucasus, Too

Just another day in the Russian Caucasus:

"Kazbek Pagiyev's car came under a hail of bullets, killing him and his driver, in Vladikavkaz, the capital of Russia's republic of North Ossetia."

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com)

Weekend Reading

For your leisurely weekend perusal:

- A graphic look at Barack Obama's 337,729 kilometers of travel in 2008, and
- A nice look at international post-Inauguration Day front pages.
- China unrest watch: Downturn likely to hit Chinese workers hardest, In China, out of work migrants destabilizing, A tidal wave of discontent threatens China, and As China's jobless numbers mount, protests grow bolder.
- A heartbreaking (and riveting) narrative of a life far, far worse than yours. And coverage and reaction: 1, 2, 3, 4.
- Bhutan's Radicalized Refugees, parts 1, 2, & 3.
- Insight on Turkish/Israeli relations.
- And while in the region, Armenia feels boxed in, and the Armenian question is still a briar patch for Turkey.
- A long look at Saving Easter Island.

Random Collection of Letters - or President of Turkmenistan?

gurbangulyberdymukhammedov

Friday Photo Quiz #11

Some clues are visible in today's photo quiz. In case you don't recognize where you are, here are a couple more clues:

This island country made news this week with the announcement that its economy will likely shrink 5% in 2009, far more than its previous forecast.

One political party has held power in this state since it attained self rule. Its first Prime Minister ruled from 1959 to 1990, and his son is currently its third Prime Minister.

And its rich ethnic mix assures the food is fabulous.

Can you name this country? See the answer after the jump, and have a good weekend, from Common Sense and Whiskey and EarthPhotos.com.

Improvising While Shanghai Sinks

Shanghai is sinking, Caijing, a Chinese business magazine, reports. The 420-meter (1378 feet) Jin Mao Tower and the 492-meter (1614 feet) Shanghai World Financial Center will be joined by China's tallest building, the 632-meter (2073 feet) Shanghai Center, when it's completed in 2014.

The Caijing article says Shanghai's ground level has fallen over 2 meters over the past 40 years, due mostly to extraction of ground water.

That "The Jin Mao Tower weighs 300,000 tons, and up to 600,000 tons of steel were used to build the Shanghai World Financial Center" can't help, can it?

See more photos in the China Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo of the Old Jazz Band at the Peace Hotel on Shanghai's Bund courtesy of EarthPhotos.com.)

Ditch the Family Vacation to Algeria!

In fact, it might be a good bet to avoid Orly airport in Paris, from which Algeria flights come and go, for a few weeks, too. Just to be safe.

No way to tell whether there's more here than meets the eye, but there are several media reports of the Black Death, the same disease that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, claiming lives in Algeria - and most of those lives, it's reported, are those of terrorists.