All reflection

PB220034

Originally uploaded by Sunforever

Many images show reflection off water for at least half of the frame. This image is 95% reflection.

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Birds Nest 5 weeks before Olympics 2008

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Birds Nest

Originally uploaded by Justin Brown.

Gee the usual air thickener in Beijing looks middling, not so good but not so bad! What will it be in 40 days from today?

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Thira & Ia, Santorini, Greece

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Ia, Santorini, GreeceOriginally uploaded by P. Matanski

I visited Thira, Santorini in 2001 as part of an NCL Agean Sea cruise. In fact, the cruise boat floated into the caldera twice. In the first instance the wave action in the bay was considered too much of a peril during barge boarding so the visit was aborted.

At the time I was participating in a Sunday morning mass with Msgr. Askew attending. The colors of mineralization of the caldera sides were striking viewed from the disco bar area just below the bridge.

THIRA

When the cruise ship returned a few days later the skies were overcast and the pleasure of my visit was dulled. The constant chill fall wind didn’t help much either. But I did enjoy the company of a female angel on a walk down the winding footpath from top to bottom.

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Juan Cole & his Napoleon connection

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Juan Cole has been and is recognized for the quality of his blogging about Iraq and the Middle East. Today I discovered that unsurprisingly he has a Napoleon connection. This is not surprising to me because Napoleon led an exceptional expedition to Egypt in the late 1790s.

A post of mine about a year ago still gets most daily views of any of my posts. So for all those Napoleon viewers here is another Internet connection which is clearly high quality for its content and suggested links to other Napoleon sites.

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M/S Batory carried me and my family from Greenock Scotland to Halifax

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on July 7 1940.A picture of it is posted below.

According to Royal Navy archives on the July 5th, battleship REVENGE met anti-aircraft cruiser BONAVENTURE (Captain H. J. Egerton) and troopships MONARCH OF BERMUDA (22,424grt), SOBIESKI (11,030grt), and BATORY (14,287grt). These five ships, which carried $1,750,000,000 in gold and securities from the Bank of England for safekeeping in Canada, departed Greenock at 0545 on the 5th escorted by destroyer GARTH.

The British ships arrived safely at Halifax on the 12th. Troopship BATORY with engine room defects was detached to St Johns escorted by anti-aircraft cruiser BONAVENTURE which then continued on to Halifax. Troopship BATORY arrived at Halifax on the 13th.

We disembarked in Halifax on July 13, 1940.

Images of street fighting and air raid in Barcelona 1936-39

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Image above by Robert Capa. And street fighting in July 1936 below

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New York City docks in 1923

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I have often used my blog to record factoids and images about me and my family. I happened on this collection of images of NYC from the late 1800’s and 1900’s. I found this view of the NYC docks in 1923 where  my father and mother boarded a passenger ship bound for Barcelona, Spain.

The ship in this view is SS Leviathan which I have read was built in Hamburg as the SS Vaterland. In 1917 it was seized by US authorities when the US declared war on Germany. After serving as a troopship during the latter part of WW I and after it became the flagship of US Lines. So much for the SS Vaterland.

But it is highly unlikely that my parents sailed on the Leviathan in April 1923. Nonetheless I find this image from 1923 very interesting.

I often think about the story of my parents life and my own as a child in Spain and France between 1935 and June 1940 when we began our final trip to leave France and return to Canada by ship going through Portsmouth, London and Greenoch, Scotland. Images like this one provide some more concrete sense to these thoughts.

On this day in 1940

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my father finally ended his attempt to reopen the Paris branch of the RBC in Cognac. This brief episode began when he got there on or about June 16 after getting out of Paris just ahead of the German Wehrmacht by car on June 12/13.

This attempt ended on or about June 18. By that time, tank units of the German Wehrmact couldn’t have been hours or at most a day or so away. In fact, the ministries of the French Government had moved to Bordeaux from Tours on June 14. By the 18th they felt the angry presence of German troops and with Petain as Prime Minister they proposed and accepted armistice under terms dictated by the Germans under direct instructions from Adolf Hitler. The Armistice was signed on June 22.

It is a fact that by June 22 German control extended on a line from Angoulème to Bordeaux, putting Cognac under German control for the duration of the French Vichy government. If we hadn’t gotten out of Cognac on time or no later than June 20, it is likely that we could have ended up either in a German concentration camp or in some kind of French safe house on the French side of the Armistice line.

From Cognac, he must then have made his way by car to the southwest coast of France with my mother, two sisters, one a babe in arms, my brother and myself in tow. Sometime between the 18th and the 30th of June we managed to get aboard a ship, probably a Royal Navy ship off the beach in Biarritz, to end up in England, likely Portsmouth.

By the 7 of July we were all on board the M/S Batory in Greenoch, Scotland to leave with a convoy to return to Canada, arriving in Halifax on July 11.

In 1986 I visited Cognac on a short road trip from Bordeaux. It was quite easy to detect the aroma of cognac distillation on arrival in Cognac.

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The force of Nature

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This was supposed to be a year of national celebration in China with the official opening of the Olympics scheduled for the 8th of the 8th month of 2008. Eight is by legend and myth the luckiest number in China and Chinese culture.

So it is strange indeed that political leaders in China have had to repeatedly and publicly state that no effort would be stinted in fighting the damaging force of nature by snow, earthquake and now catastrophic flooding. The NY Times reporter Barboza wrote this today:

The natural disasters have fed superstitions that this year is somehow cursed with misfortune, even though many Chinese had hoped 2008 would be a year of Olympic glory, since the number eight is considered lucky.

I guess it’s ok for some spokespeople to talk about a general curse on this year 2008 but not so ok if Sharon Stone mentions the notion of karma having something to do with natural calamities in China.

In the old biblical days it was the wrath of God visited on sinful people. There is much less mention of that notion today, especially since strident talk from religious leaders has lost its place in main stream media.

Strange times you may think, but has much really changed? I guess we must spend more time considering the Black Swan theories of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

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World’s prison population per 100,000

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Guess who number 1 is? If you said US of A you win the booby prize. Russia is not far behind.

Check out this link and this one also.

In the light of this morbid list, you may want to think a bit more about the happiest countries!