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Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde

Pix

Somebody hopped out of their car and snapped the dust rising from nearby mountains during Sunday's earthquake in Mexico.

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If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln

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Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
David T. Wolf

Fun Facts to Know and Share

"The difference between the 787 and its predecessors can be illustrated by a simple observation: There are only 10,000 drilled holes in the entire aircraft, compared with one million in a Boeing 747."

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I'm a big woman. I need big hair.
Aretha Franklin

Happy Birthday

Photo by Don Hunstein - New York City, 1961

Happy 68th birthday Aretha Franklin.  Yes, that means she's only 18 in the photo above.

WW2

Counter-attack, Russia 1941.  Unless he lost a limb, its unlikely that this non-com could have possibly survived the war.

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"That's impossible. You can't go faster than the speed of light."
"Of course not. That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208."
Futurama

Pix

Cathedral of St. Nicholas, Mozhaisk, 1911
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

This is the eternal Russia. 

My Pix

Street and door, Sifnos, Greece, 1986
Kodak High-Speed Infrared

Some nice textures on this one.

All my photos are on flickr

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On two occasions I have been asked [by members of British Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Charles Babbage

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It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Jacob Bronowski

BTW, you can see all of the Ascent of Man on Youtube.

Pix

Wow. The last night launch of the Shuttle made the best photo of the whole program.  Looks like a Turner painting.  He would have loved space shots.

Pix

Pix

    There isn't much to say about this photo.

Burj Dubai

      Charles Crowell/Bloomberg via NYT 

The Burj Dubai opens today.  It is by some distance the tallest building on earth.  Half as high again as the CN Tower.

Many commentators are calling the tower a symbol of arrogance, greed and an unsustainable  free-for-all era.  Some associate the building with vulgar oil money and uppity Arabs.  And we all know Dubai was built with what amounts to slave labour.

But I disagree with those that say its ugly.  IMHO, it is one of the most beautiful skyscrapers ever built.  Its really hard to make something so big look graceful, but it is graceful.

The comments about its opening also remind me of very similar statements made about the Empire State Building.  It was started at the end of the roaring 20s, but not completed until well into the depression.  Some said the building would never fill, that it would be a white elephant, a lesson on hubris.  Eventually, it did ok.  I’m hoping the Burj will also eventually do ok.

Best Headline of the Week

AT&T Drops Tiger Woods Like an Important Call
Gizmodo

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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken

Iran Again

 
Just as Catholics need saints, the Shia need martyrs. Martyrs brought down the Shah.  Demonstrations produced martyrs, their funerals became demonstrations.  Once sucked into this escalating cycle, the Shah never got out.  Everyone in Iran is acutely aware of this.

Iran appears to be in turmoil. The government's harsh methods had seemed to put the opposition genie, if not back in the bottle, then at least into hiding.  The tectonic splits that were revealed after the election have been band-aided.  We never did know what was going on behind the scenes, but whatever it was didn't amount to anything as far as outsiders could tell.

Its tiresome, but lets re-cap for those not following obsessively.  The incumbent president, Ahmadinejad, was re-elected in June.  The election was obviously stolen, a fact that was subsequently proved in various ways through statistical analysis of the results.  Iranians took to the streets in their millions and used the Internet to get their message out to the world.  In an effort to illegitimize the protesters, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kahmenei personally endorsed the election results.  As a result, the demonstrations shifted from protesting the election to protesting the regime.  The government used brutal methods to suppress the street demonstrations.  They managed to strike the right balance of violence.  Enough to create fear, but not enough to create outrage. 

At the same time, it became evident that there were splits in the regieme.  Two key issues were revealed.  First, that a powerful minority of Ayatollahs were against the concept of an Islamic Republic on religious grounds.  Meaning they thought governments should have political accountability, and the clergy should not.  So the clergy shouldn't be running governments.

The second, possibly critical, issue was the role of the Republican Guards, known as the Pasdaran.  The Pasdaran are a bit like the SS, a military/political organization outside normal state beuracracy.  They have military, intellegence, and commercial assets. Amahdinejad is their man.  There was speculation in Iran, and in the West, that the stolen election was, in fact, a coup by the Pasdaran.  Some of the available facts are consistent with this hypothesis.  If so, it means the end of democracy and a military government cloaked in an Ayatollah's robe.  Any serious attempt to change who is in charge would mean upheaval and perhaps civil war.  None of this was clear, however.  What was clear was that the government had mostly succeeded in keeping the lid on the opposition without a fatal over-reaction. 

Yet the recent demonstrations, and the governments unprecedented violence to suppress them, suggest several possible developments.  The first is that the opposition has not been cowed, just forced to switch tactics.  In the Economist article linked below, they mention that the central bank is now refusing bank notes with writing on them.  The oppostion has apparently been writing anti-regime slogans on the money.  Those holding such notes, mostly ordinary people and businesses, now have worthless money.  This is not a friendly thing to do and calls the credibility of the central bank into question. International trading partners have very little patience for this kind of thing.

That point leads to the possibility that one of two things are going on.  Either the Pasdaran has decided their control is to total they can do as they pleases with no consequences, or they are scared and desperate.  The Economist article suggests, for the first time I've seen it, that China and Russia perceive the Pasdaran  may not prevail in the long-run.  Being too close to the losing side the last time has cost the Americans dearly.  Iran's new friends don't want to make the same mistake.  The Economist is frequently optimistic with such assessments, but its plausible.  And if that's plausible, then so is another Iranian revolution.

A pretty good article on the current situation is in the Economist here.

WW2

Great photo from the invasion of France.  It was taken in May 1940 and shows a bomb(s?) exploding along a French road from the viewpoint of another German plane.  At first, I thought this photo showed a bomb exploding in the middle of a French convoy.  But after looking at it, I think it shows the result of a bomb run directed at military positions just to the right of the road.  The picture was taken (still guessing) from the next plane, just lining up their own run on the target.  In addition, even though you can see vehicles on the road, they are not of uniform size and color, as you would expect with a military convoy.

The photo also illustrates something else.  The impact of the Luftwaffe was huge during May 1940.  It was one of the key reasons the Germans were able to achieve in six weeks what they had not during the 4 years of WW1.  However, the Luftwaffe's superiority turned out to be relative.  They weren't that much better than either the French air force or the RAF.  But they were far better used, as the photo shows.  This is not a couple of planes flying around looking for targets of opportunity, like a convoy.  If they are attacking something beside the highway, it's probably because someone told them there was a target there.  The Luftwaffe's tactical integration was excellent.  That means they were in contact with ground units and responded to their requests.  This became routine later, but in 1940, the Germans were the only ones able to do it effectively.

However, the Luftwaffe failed to grow beyond an almost purely tactical organization.  Resource constraints and poor management resulted in an air force with no strategic bombing capability and no ability to gain more than local air superiority.  These limitations were not always a handicap to the Luftwaffe in Russia, for a variety of reasons.  And they did well on the Eastern Front.  But having failed to gain air superiority during the Battle of Britain, they were never able to get it again in the West.  In addition, the lack of a strategic capability prevented the Germans from projecting their air power deep into enemy territory.  They simply could not put a large amount of bombs on a target far away.  For example, the Germans killed about 51,000 people in Britain with aerial bombing during the entire war.  The RAF and USAAF killed about 50,000 in one night when they firebombed Hamburg in July 1943.  Body counts do not mean victory, but the numbers illustrate the difference in capacity.

My Pix

    Door and window, Sifnos, 1986
    Kodak High-Speed Infrared

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Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley

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"I think the question I get asked the most is, well I dunno know, it happens a lot, enough that I would remark on it - a lot of people come up to me and they say "Tom, is it possible for a woman to get pregnant without intercourse?"

My answer's always the same, I say: "Listen. We're gonna have to go all the way back to the civil war. Apparently a stray bullet actually pierced the testicle of a Union soldier and then lodged itself in the ovaries of an 18 year old girl who was actually 100 feet from him at the time. Well, the baby was fine. She was very happy. Guilt-free. Of course, the soldier was a little pissed off."

When ya think about it, it's actually a form of intercourse, just not for everyone. Those who love action, maybe. "
Tom Waits

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Whether they find a life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy planet.
Jack Handey

2010 Outlook

There are many things to fear in the coming year.  Here are a few:

In a fit of anger after the Copenhagen deal unravels, the Atlantic ocean rises 3 feet.
damn gubment
dogs wearing camo
mummar quadaffi confirms the rumours.  Yep, he's a zombie.
Harper finally gets his majority in Canada's last federal election.
Lots of bumping and grinding at the Yellowstone caldera.
Fake Steve Jobs turns out to be real Steve Jobs.  Real Tiger Woods turns out to be fake Tiger Woods.
North Korea unhappy.
ACTA
2012 makes a pre-emptive strike
Donnybrooks on many street corners.
Talks aimed at blocking Lindsay Lohan's next movie fall apart.
There's something outside.  I can hear it.
Elvis sightings wane.
China gets tired of our trash talkin ways.
Global warming means no more Bourbon.
Coyotes win the Stanley Cup.
Another Tom Cruise comeback.
Switzerland is found to be giant ponzi scheme.
everyone gets in a snit about something (ok, not scary, but really irritating)
another re-org
The fanboys unite, stage rebellion
4chan IPO

WW2

     Erich von Manstein between sessions at Nuremberg.  He eventually spent 4 years in prison. 

According to the widely accepted truism, history is written by the victors.  The funny thing about WW2 is that the most important history, what happened in Russia, was written by the losers.  Between the events and the telling, the cold war started.  So instead of the Russians crowing their victories, we had German generals explaining why it wasn't really their fault they lost.  It was Hitler.  It was the  human wave tactics of the Red Army.  It was Goering's fault.  It was the savage brutality of the Soviet regime.  It was logistic incompetence.  It was Himmler's fault.  It was the interference of Nazi bureaucracy.  It was the weather.  It was bad luck.

The reason we accepted this story is 1) its partly true, 2) it suited our predjudices, 3) it was politically expedient.  What the Russians said was all propaganda (and at that time it was mostly was).  The German generals were gentlemen, aristocrats, admirable military minds.  Why would they lie?  But lie they did to save their reputations and their necks.  Had the cold war not started until 1947, lots of well known German generals would have hung in 1945 and 1946.  Instead, they were useful to the victors and let off with wrist slaps.   Naturally, their memoirs followed thereafter.  And our view of the war was set in stone until the mid-90's.

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Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce

Pix

Some perspective.

Pix

The last man on the moon.  Eugene Cernan, December 13, 1972.  Incidentally, Cernan was one of three people that went to the moon twice.  He orbited on his first visit and walked on his second.   Nobody has walked on the moon twice.

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Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. Mencken

My Pix

    Wall, Paros, Greece, 1986
    Kodak High Speed Infrared

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If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid looking in a mirror, because I bet that will really throw you into a panic.
Jack Handey

My Pix

    Ferry to Paros, 1986.  A small part of the Aegean Sea.  Most of the rest was identical, except the
    white foamy bits are just around the edges.  Like wrapping.

    Kodak High-Speed Infrared

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Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce

My Pix

    Stairs and door, Sifnos, Greece, 1986
    Kodak High-Speed Infrared