Bill Murray's Blog, page 118
January 22, 2015
Book Review on Goodreads
The Old Man and His Sons by He��in Br��
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a specialty read, preparatory to my��trip to the Faroe Islands in two months.
Set vaguely in the first third of the 20th century, The Old Man and His Son is a snapshot of island life among the common, rural folk of the day.
The narrative returns again and again to a comparison of the way things have always been done with the newfangled, high-falutin’ ways of kids-these-days through the eyes of Ketil, the main character. In Ketil’s world the sea provides, roofs leak and conveniences are few.
The book cover says the Faroese chose this book as their ‘Book of the Twentieth Century.’ At 162 pages it’s short enough to read in a single dedicated day.
January 21, 2015
Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Nice two and a half minute, well done introduction to Longyearbyen, a small city of about 2200 and the capital of Svalbard, which at 78.22 degrees north latitude has the northernmost just about everything. It’s our base for the 20 March total solar eclipse.
Also try this nice 360 degree camera view of Longyearbyen (although keep in mind that this time of year it’s mostly dark).
January 20, 2015
Arctic Eclipse, March 2015
The countdown is on. Less than sixty days until we’re headed up to Svalbard for the 20 March total solar eclipse. At the North Pole itself, the sun returns after a polar night that has lasted 6 months and is eclipsed the same day. That’s just incredible, romantic, coincidental��and, I’m guessing, utterly rare.
800 miles south of the pole, way down at 78.22 degrees north latitude, totality for those of us at Longyearbyen will last two minutes and twenty seven seconds, similar to the length of totality at Lake Balaton, Hungary, for the 11 August, 1999 eclipse, which is where the photo above comes from.
This is a real adventure trip with the possibility of seeing polar bears, the aurora borealis and later, a day trip to try to get close to the currently erupting volcano in Iceland, weather permitting. Much more to come.
January 16, 2015
Friday Photo #11, Georgia, USA
And not just Georgia, USA, but actually the driveway of our very own farm, in October��2010. Click it to enlarge. There’s a little collection��of photos from where we live, called Rural Life,��on EarthPhotos.com.
Here are the other Friday Photos.��Happy weekend, everybody.
January 10, 2015
A One Sentence History of Russia
As concise as any you’ll hear, from The Scramble for the Arctic by Richard Sale and Eugene Potapov:
“It has suffered slavery under Mongols, developed a sovereign monarchy, and been infected with Communist ideas from which it emerged to find itself in the hands of oligarchs and secret factions.”
January 9, 2015
Friday Photo #10, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia
Another textured HDR like last week, this one from the little community of Peggy’s Cove not far from Halifax, Nova Scotia. And to go with it, a story about a completely frightening bit of Halifax history I knew nothing about until planning a visit. For 562 more HDRs there’s the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com and there are 87��more photos in the Canada Gallery.
Here are the other Friday Photos. Happy weekend.
January 8, 2015
Ukraine and Russia. How We Got Here. What’s Next?
Before the invasion of Crimea, the European Union followed a policy of benign neglect toward its former Soviet neighbors Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and the states in the south Caucasus. It did so through modest funding of its so-called Eastern Partnership. Happy to help, but don’t expect us to go out of our way.
The idea seemed to be that spending some obscure foreign policy money wouldn���t cost much relatively, while at the same time EU states could claim they were engaged. EU leadership��knew their modest investment wouldn���t bring its former Soviet neighbor��countries up to EU standards, but they reckoned they might discourage Russia in the Bloodlands.��With their hands full during the Euro crisis, EU states essentially did the least they could do, in effect ceding to Russia just the thing Russia loudly��demands, a tacit sphere of influence.
But after the invasion of Crimea, ten months on from the fall of the Yanukovich government it looks as if President Putin���s impetuous pique at the Maidan uprising may squander just what Russia has long sought.
If the EU can be criticized for half-measures when it comes to winning hearts and minds, so can the Russians. In part because of Russian influence, every day in the more than twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell, citizens of the largest of the former Soviet states, Ukraine, have continued to endure petty, low grade, daily Soviet-style corruption.
Let me give you an example. Our car was once pulled over for speeding on a highway outside Kyiv. Igor, the driver, climbed out into the snow to engage with the traffic cop and when he returned, gave us a lesson in Ukrainian daily life.
He explained that while the fine wasn���t astronomical, about $30, he would have to go to the bank to pay the fee then to the police station to show them he had paid, so slipping the cop some cash would save him a whole day���s pay at work. It was a system, he said, built for bribes.
He knew it and the cop knew it and he didn���t even begrudge the cop, miserably paid and standing outside all day in the snow, because he had a family to feed, too. Endemic, daily petty corruption wears you down.
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Americans hardly��noticed when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich cast his lot with Moscow by declining to sign the Ukraine���EU Association Agreement at the Vilnius summit in November, 2013, but Ukrainians were having none of it. They demanded better. Enough was finally enough��and��Kyiv���s Independence Square, the Maidan, erupted to life.
Twice in ten years events have galvanized the common folk to make a stand on that bitterly cold promenade in central Kyiv. This time they sustained their agitation (even employing a medieval catapult!) right through the long, bitter winter until ultimately Yanukovich fled Kyiv��one Saturday in late February, 2014.
On that particular day President Putin kept his host���s grin fixed tightly in place at the Winter Games in Sochi, much as it must have galled him, as the medals were awarded for cross-country skiing, biathlon and Alpine skiing.
But scarcely a week after the closing ceremonies, little green men started appearing on the Crimean peninsula. Using a new, unique brand of organized unpredictability and a complete mastery of media to feed the fog of war, Russia quickly had its way with Crimea.
Months later, official Russia remains angry enough about the Maidan uprising and the expulsion of Yanokovich to foment and maintain the frozen conflict in the region of eastern Ukraine known as Donbas.
Russia has induced three other frozen conflicts, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are in Georgia, and in a part of Moldova called Transdnistria. In each it rules by mafia-style corruption and extracts tribute.
It is a mystery whether the Russian leadership believes that giving Russia���s criminal networks another place to do business by creating a further mafia statelet in the Donbas is a strategic win. Or is the rot so pervasive in the Kremlin that nothing else comes to mind?
That is an important question since the lawlessness itself has had consequences for Russia. Once its hardware caused the crash of MH17, Russia felt unable to admit its obvious culpability or to offer to make amends. Which is appalling, uncivilized and has done more than anything else to galvanize the Europeans behind sanctions.
As for the future, Dmitri Trenin thinks that the German position on Russia has materially changed and that ���(T)he course for Russia���s gradual Europeanization has come to an impasse.�����Mark Galeotti believes President Obama should demand more from the Russians than he fears the U.S. may settle for. And there is a new dynamic for the new year, dramatically lower oil prices and their effects on both the Russian and European economies.
We’re off to a new year. Let���s watch and see what happens next.
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See my photos from Kyiv, Chernobyl and Odessa here.
January 6, 2015
No Lancome, No Bulgari, No Perfume at All, Thanks
You know the “Duty Free” moment on international flights, when you have to make eye contact with the flight attendants and shake your head as they come down the aisle with that cart full of stuff nobody much (other than the Bhutanese Royal family) seems to buy? You’d rather not be bothered��and��they’d rather hang out in the galley and read a magazine.
So, is pushing those clanky carts around the airplane worth it?��Delta Air Lines thought not. It��pulled its duty free service last summer.
But this video explains how Korean Air guarantees revenue from its A380 Sky Shop duty free service on every flight by, among other things, selling video and still advertising to advertisers:
January 2, 2015
Friday Photo #9, The Golden Horn, Istanbul
Here’s a��textured��HDR photo taken just inside the Galata Bridge on the Golden Horn, with the Galata Tower up the hill in the back, in the part of town known as Beyoglu, along which runs the pedestrian Istiklal Caddesi and beyond which lies Taksim Square at the center of the European side of town. Off to the right is the Bosphorus Strait and the Asian side of Istanbul��beyond. If you have the time, please enjoy 387 other photos from Istanbul and elsewhere in Turkey in the Turkey Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Click this photo to enlarge it.
