Bill Murray's Blog, page 87
May 5, 2017
May 2, 2017
Extra Double Stranded!
Ascension Island, South Atlantic Ocean
Honest. This is huge. I first posted about cracks in Ascension Island’s airstrip under the headline Stranded last week. Now, check this out:
Eight hundred residents on the British-run Ascension Island will not be able to get a regular flight off the island until at least 2019 because of potholes on the only runway, a travel agency has said.
Ascension is governed as part of the St. Helena British overseas territory. Under the headlines Airport Tale Turns Embarrassing for British Government and St Helena Airport Opening Postponed – Again I told you last year about problems with the possibility of wind shear at the newly built but never used £285 million – and counting – St. Helena airport. That potential for wind shear was apparently never anticipated until the airport was built, but only discovered in pre-opening testing. See the test landing – which came only on the third try, in this video.
When we traveled the Namibia – St. Helena – Ascension circuit we did so aboard the Royal Mail Ship St. Helena, which sailed that circuit most of the year. There had been plans to retire the RMS St. Helena after the opening of the airport. No prospect of that now. And now, with the closure of the Ascension airport making shutting down travel to either Ascension or St. Helena by air, there’s one other problem. This month,
the ship (the RMS St. Helena) was declared out of order, twice ending up in dry dock in Cape Town, most recently due to the left propeller becoming locked in a forward position.
The British Royal Air Force had operated its “South Atlantic Airbridge” between Brize Norton Air Base near Oxford, England, Ascension Island, where there are US Air Force, UK government and BBC installations, and Stanley in the Falkland Islands. It seems that the A330s for those flights are too heavy to use the Ascension airfield, pending repairs, and so they have been rerouted via Dakar, Senegal.
For now, and by “now” I mean the foreseeable future, if you happen to be a tourist stranded on St. Helena or Ascension, it might be a good time to bear down on finishing up that novel. Ascension is the more austere, but I believe if I had to choose, I’d choose to be stuck there. The military there have planes. They can fly in more beer.
Have a look at the Ascension Island Gallery and the St. Helena Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
Birds with Personality
The post a couple weeks back called Animals with Personality was kind of fun, so now, equal time: Who’s up for a world tour of birds? Click to view them larger, from the Birds Gallery at Earthphotos.com.
This guy lives in one of the floating villages around Tonle Sap, Cambodia.
If I remember this guy right, he’s from a falconry in Scotland.
Kingfisher in Amboseli Park, Kenya.
This ostrich just dropped by our chalet in Sossusvlei, Namibia.
Good-looking guy from Antigua, Guatemala.
It’s a long way down for this cockatoo in New South Wales, Australia.
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Crowned cranes from the Tierpark Hellabrunn, Munich, Germany.
Pretty sure this guy is from the same Scottish falconry.
Swan also from the Tierpark Hellabrunn, Munich, Germany.
And, of course, the amazing levitating penguin from Simon’s Town, South Africa.
May 1, 2017
Quotes:
2016 was the first year in which natural gas generated more electricity than coal in the US.
Alan McIntyre in Scottish Review.
April 30, 2017
Train Ride Across Turkey
Who doesn’t love a train ride? Here’s 3-1/2 minutes across Turkey.
ANATOLIA EXPRESS — Chronicles of Turkey from Stanislas Giroux on Vimeo.
April 28, 2017
Weekend Reading
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Six intelligent articles for your day off:
Special Experience by Kea Krause in Lapham’s Quarterly
Guilty Men by Claire Berlinski in The American Interest
Surface Noise by Damon Krukowski in Paris Review
The Counter-Enlightenment and the Great Powers – Out of Order by Andrew Small at medium.com
The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World by Emily Tamkin in Foreign Policy
Triumph of the Thought Leader and the Eclipse of the Public Intellectual by Daniel W. Drezner in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This is way more interesting than it sounds.
Friday Photo Quiz #3
The answer to last week’s quiz was Ecuador. We saw the capital, Quito, and Mt. Cotopaxi. Now for this week’s quiz. Where on earth can this be?
Leave your best guess as a comment. I won’t publish the comments so no one can give away the answer. I’ll put all the correct answers into a hat, draw one, and the winner of the drawing will win a copy of the audiobook version of my book Common Sense and Whiskey.
Win free stuff every Friday this summer. New photo every Friday, drawing the next Thursday, winner notified by email Friday. Good luck. Now, what’s your guess in this week’s quiz?
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April 27, 2017
Alarming High Latitude Encounter
Via the newspaper Icepeople we learn of a too-close encounter with a polar bear earlier this month on an expedition to the North Pole by the group Polar Experience. Here’s Icepeople’s story and here, from the expedition’s blog, is a play-by-play of the encounter.
