Common Sense and Whiskey

Thousands of Sea Captains?

Pretty strange:

No to This.

CNN's Cairo correspondent Ben Wedeman wrote on Twitter, "Army in control of Egyptian Museum. No repeat of Baghdad, please"

Ditto that.

So this is terrible.

Dominoes Never Had It So Good

The domino theory that meant to justify America's Vietnam adventures was just wrong. Everybody says that now. Anybody notice that right now, dominoes are everywhere you look?

In the Eurozone, first were Greece and Ireland, then it's Portugal, then Spain, then maybe Italy, then maybe Belgium. In the Middle East it's Tunisia, then Egypt, then Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, you name it.

From a balcony at the then Nile Hilton, now the Nile Hotel, these are photos from around Tahrir (Liberation) square, the focus of today's revolution. These photos are from a very polluted, otherwise clear day several years ago.

Here's hoping that whatever happens, happens with minimal loss of life.

See the Egypt Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Thought About Belarus This Week?

 

I don't know, it's just a drug store or something ordinary like that under that ghastly monument to the progress of the worker, or whatever it is. But it shows what the poor people of Belarus have to live with. Same with the massive, dehumanizing architecture in Minsk. Minsk was leveled in World War Two and rebuilt at the heyday of Stalinist architecture, and too bad for Minsk.

It's a bit of a narrow interest, this video clip, but it shouldn't be, really. It's a cliché, but Belarus really is a dictatorship, right there in Europe, and this video shows there really were thousands out to protest the sham elections held there on 19 December. As the person who produced this video writes,

"The lack of media attention and general public knowledge about Belarus truly saddens me. It’s heartbreaking because this is an issue that affects millions of peoples lives daily. I hope that by watching this video you’re going to be inspired to do more, and help pass the word along to a friend, family member, teacher, or co-worker about the injustices that occur everyday in the middle of 21st century Europe."

The person who produced this video is a Canadian teenager named Kamilla Kovaleva, who made this as a drama project for school. Spend a few minutes with it, if you can:

See the Belarus Gallery at EarthPhotos.com for more recent photos.

Wednesday HDR: A Little Color on a Drab Winter's Day

Looking out at snowfall and just general wetness from the studio window here on the farm. Seems like a little color is called for. This flamingo and friends live in the Munich, Germany zoo. This week's Wednesday HDR is a single shot from a Nikon D700, reexposed and then combined and tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, and finished by extracting the star of our show and blurring the rest of the photo in CS5.

There are 320 more HDR photos in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

With more than 10 million flights and 700 million passengers in 2010...

... This is remarkable.

One Guy's Photo Stream

Addendum to Two Guys, Bitching: Patrick Smith is known for his Salon column Ask the Pilot. As a pilot he's had the opportunity to take a bunch of pictures. Turn green with envy.

Two Guys, Bitching

It's not all idyllic beaches. And it shouldn't be. All those glossy magazines aimed at people who collect beautiful beach destinations and pretentious lists of the world's best this and that (and you know who you are Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler and Islands) aren't for people who are out to see the world as it is.

It's refreshing to have run across two seperate blog posts this past week that run counter to the cliché. In Heaven and Hell in the Phi Phi Islands, Patrick Smith takes to task a lovely spot on the Andaman Sea that he writes has been ruined by backpackers.

I'm sure he's right. We passed through Phi Phi in 1995 and completely loved it. But even in 1995 the little isthmus of land adjacent to the arrival docks was showing signs of coming ruin. Smith suggests that in the intervening fifteen years, Thai tourism officials have used the light touch that has made Pattaya all that it is today. In 1995, at least, Phi Phi was beautiful:

The other refreshingly honest article is called The Tragedy of Nepal 2011, in which Andrew Hyde finds "a developing nation with deep problems becoming worse by the month with tourism hastening the poisoning of the well." We writes that "A deep depression hit me about an hour into my visit to Nepal and lasted for the first two weeks."

We've been in Nepal twice. The first time we were charmed by the country but alarmed by the pollution that hung over the Kathmandu valley. The second time we stayed at Nagarkot (described this way, "At an elevation of 2,195 meters, it is considered one of the most scenic spots ... renowned for its sunrise view of the Himalaya including Mount Everest as well as other snow-capped peaks of... eastern Nepal.") and never saw a single mountain through the haze.

Everyone knows the developing world has its problems. Seeing them shouldn't ruin your travel experience. To the contrary, when you're back home it's most rewarding to have gone and seen and to be able to understand. I salute Patrick Smith and Andrew Hyde for their honesty.

(On the other hand, if I picked one of those expensive, delicious Aman Resorts (1, 2) out of one of those glossy magazines, I wouldn't want it to rain while I was there, either.)

See the Thailand Gallery and the Nepal Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

 

 

Fine New Eclipse Web Site

What a great new site for eclipse fans: Eclipse-Maps.com. It's curated by a gentleman by the name of Michael Zeiler out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it just began at the first of the year. Nicely done, full of historical maps, multimedia and stuff to keep you poking around for an hour. Michael Zeiler says on his welcome page that he collaborates with Bill Kramer, who runs the very nice Eclipse Chasers site, which is also included on our list of eclipse sites.

Here's a sample of one of the great maps on Eclipse-Maps.com. It's the August 2017 total solar eclipse that's set to cross directly over our farm. Make your plans now:

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #11

The Million Dollar Valentine's Date at the InterContinental Hong Kong is a bargain at only US$130,000 or so. It's a million HONG KONG dollars, see. It's a night in Hong Kong's largest Presidential Suite, 7,000 square feet, available between the 11th & 14th of February.

For just a million Hong Kong dollars you'll get airport transfers by Rolls Royce, "a custom-designed Valentine's message displayed by banner via a private boat at a designated time as seen from your rooftop terrace" and several other amenities.

The InterContinental Hong Kong is in Kowloon. We stayed there on our most recent visit to China, three years ago. No Presidential Suite for us, a mere Executive Harbour View or something like that. It does have a really nice view back across to Hong Kong island:

See the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com for more photos from Hong Kong and all of China.

Travel Snobs

Thanks to Andrew Hyde, who sold all his stuff and is travelling the world right now.

Friday Photo Quiz #100

An overhead view here, of the world's 28th largest city by population (worldatlas.com). It shares it's location at 13-1/2 degrees north latitude with Dakar and Tegucigalpa.

Can you guess the city? The country? The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Kabul's Safi Airways In-Flight Magazine

It's not everyday you see an ad for armouring cars ... in an in-flight magazine. But then, this one comes from the Safi Airways in-flight magazine, and Safi Airways flies out of Afghanistan. The magazine features breezy articles about Herat ("People Smile") and Kabul, and lists eleven Kabul hotels from which to choose. It's interesting reading. Check it out. The whole thing is online here.

Common Sense and Whiskey: The Book

Common Sense and Whiskey, the blog, was born less than two years ago to compliment the photo site EarthPhotos.com. From time to time since, we've published stories from the eventual book, also to be titled Common Sense and Whiskey. It's a compilation of short stories about the photos that found their way to EarthPhotos.com.

We're happy to say that finally, we think, Common Sense and Whiskey is only a couple of months away. Here's a mock-up of the cover, which will immortalize a gaucho and his sheep on the very desolate road to the Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia. Below is a short bit of the Patagonia story from the book. Watch this blog for the publication date.

 

 

The Alps are massive and majestic. The Torres del Paine only reach three thousand something meters versus Mont Blanc’s 4260. But the Alps have been domesticated, everywhere you go, all the way up onto the slopes. Cowbells tinkle so farmers can keep track of their livestock in every prim village.

It’s the vastness around the Torres, the silence. There are no houses, no farms. Land isn’t delineated by perpendiculars. No fences to keep anything in or out. Nothing, except for the snow and the big rocks, and the water and the animals and the silence.  That’s just what you’re after when you come to a place like this, but too often you find yourself in the common room with strangers, hearing about Kurt’s blister.

“It’s out to here,” Kurt said several times, showing a distance between his finger and thumb. Each time the wife of Kurt would chirp something like “He’s not very athletic,” the more galling because she clearly never auditioned for Buns of Steel.

There’s always people like that, though, and Kurt was a good enough old guy, running a party of five, some of them sullen kids.

Maps was what Kurt liked and he’d sink his head farther into his maps to ignore his wife. The wife of Kurt liked showing people things. She’d go back to the room (“Wait right here,” she’d command) to get some page that she’d printed off the internet. Or she’d inflict her sack of trail mix on a very dubious little boy.

Each time Kurt would move his face closer to his map and trace lines on it with his finger.

The wife of Kurt had a running disagreement with Kurt over the price of gas, or benzine as they called it here. Kurt had heard they were getting six dollars a litre out of jerrycans back at Posada Serrano and the wife of Kurt wouldn’t hear of it.

She worked herself up to high dudgeon (although high is pretty much the only way dudgeon comes) as she asked the dubious little boy’s father if he knew the price of benzine, and he allowed that he’d got some and it was close to the normal price.

“See Kurt! Six dollars a litre is impossible! I thought six dollars a litre was impossible. Did you hear that Kurt? I told you six dollars a litre was impossible. Kurt, this man says it’s not any six dollars a litre. Kurt thought gas cost six dollars a litre!”

And Kurt pulled the edge of the map nearest his wife nearly to his ear and the little boy’s father, who had a naturally puzzled, disheveled look, tried to find somebody else to talk to.

•••••

From Common Sense and Whiskey: Modest Adventures Far from Home, available soon.

Weekend Fun

Enjoy a few photos for the weekend from the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

It's Not Everyday There's News from Ilulissat...

... where the sun rose two days earlier than expected last Tuesday. Via The First Post:

"The polar night usually ends on January 13, but this year residents of Ilulissat, the third largest settlement in Greenland, were surprised to see dawn arrive just before 1pm on January 11 after six weeks of perpetual darkness." Possible reasons:

• "ice crystals in the air ... refracted the sun's light creating a mirage."
• Or maybe it was "a build-up of methane in the atmosphere."
• "Astronomers have ruled out the possibility of ... a shift of the earth's axis."
• Most likely explanation: "melting glaciers have lowered the horizon."

(Photo of Ilulissat from EarthPhotos.com. See more photos from Ilulissat and elsewhere in Greenland in the Greenland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. And read a story about our trip to Greenland here.)

Countries Rearranged by Population

Interesting map. In this scenario Uganda becomes Turkey and Italy becomes Angola. Explanation here, and a large version here.

Pyongyang Spring

The DPRK opens up a little bit each August for the Mass Games, but there's no need to wait for your chance to visit this year. Spend €999, $1333 according to the currency converter on this page, and you can participate in the first annual North Korean Open golf tournament on a golf course near Pyongyand in April.

Trip includes visa, the tournament, return train travel from China, meals and four nights hotel. Handled by Lupine Travel. 

Incidentally, the Sun newspaper tells us that

"It is claimed North Korean leader Kim Jong Il opened the course in 1991 by shooting a world record 38 under par on his first ever round of golf. Jong-Il's round is famously said to have included eleven holes in one."

Friday Photo Quiz #99

An HDR cityscape here, with the church of St. Michaels in the near foreground. This is the second city in a country much in the news this week.

Can you guess the city? The country? The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

 

Wednesday HDR from Istanbul

This week's Wednesday HDR is The Ortakoy Mosque and the Bosphorus Bridge, Europe (near side) and Asia - Istanbul, Turkey. The background is tinted and then the mosque and the boats are painted back in and a texture is added in Photoshop CS5. Click it to make it bigger.

There are more than 300 HDRs in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com, and more photos from Istanbul in the Turkey Gallery.