Author Topic: Around the Globe in Real Time  (Read 3043 times)

Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #90 on: April 16, 2010, 11:13:39 PM »
No wonder they don't want to fly into the likes of that!
Not to mention ... for all the folks who have respiratory problems: bad news.
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
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Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #91 on: April 17, 2010, 07:51:13 PM »
Quote
Iceland volcano activity increases

LONDON – A geologist says activity has increased at an erupting Icelandic volcano, causing an ash plume to rise some 8.5 kilometers (5.3 miles) into the air.

Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson of the University of Iceland says winds have cleared visibility for scientists and Saturday will be the first day they can fly above the volcano to assess the activity.

Once scientists determine how much ice has melted, it will be easier to say how long the eruption could last.

An ash plume that has disrupted travel across Europe has been caused by hot magma being cooled quickly by the melting ice cap.

Gudmundsson says as long as there is enough ice, more plumes could form — causing even more travel disruption.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) — Officials further extended no-fly restrictions over Europe Saturday as a vast, invisible plume of grit continued to billow out of an Icelandic volcano and drift across the continent.

The flight ban seemed likely to disrupt world leaders' plans to attend Sunday's state funeral for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria in the southern city of Krakow.

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Un-chan was the first to announce he was canceling his trip to Poland. An 11-member delegation led by Chung had planned to leave on Saturday, said Shin Bu-seop, an official of the prime minister's office.

So far, President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are still on the list of attendees. Kaczynski's family insisted Friday they wanted the funeral to go forward as planned but there was no denying the ash cloud was moving south and east.

On Saturday, British officials extended their closure of airspace until at least 7 p.m. (1800 GMT; 2 p.m. EDT), and reintroduced the ban over Scotland and northern England. The Belgian, French and Swiss governments extended their ban until the same time.

Italian aviation authorities were closing airspace in northern Italy on Saturday until midday (1000 GMT; 6 a.m. EDT), with airports in Milan and Venice to close.

Germany shut down all of its international airports, including Munich and Frankfurt, Europe's third-busiest terminal, until at least 2 p.m. (1200 GMT; 8 a.m. EDT). National carrier Lufthansa said it was canceling all flights through 8 p.m. (1800GMT; 2 p.m. EDT) Saturday.

Serbia also closed a small strip of its airspace in the north of the country and said it could close more later.

Australia's Qantas canceled all flights to Europe on Saturday, and passengers were being offered refunds or seats on the next available flight. The airline said it was not known when flights would resume. Cathay Pacific was already canceling some Europe-bound flights leaving Hong Kong on Sunday.

Fears that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail have shut down air space at one time or another over much of Europe in recent days.

"I've been flying for 40 years but I've never seen anything like this in Europe," said Swedish pilot Axel Alegren, after landing his flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, at Munich Airport; he had been due to land at Frankfurt but was diverted.

"What we're experiencing is very, very unique. Basically Europe is turning into a no-fly zone right now, like the U.S. after 9/11," Alegren said. "It's going to be chaos in the next few days but it will also be something that nobody will ever forget in aviation."

The air traffic agency Eurocontrol said about 16,000 of Europe's usual 28,000 daily flights were canceled — twice as many as were canceled a day earlier.

U.S. airlines canceled 280 of the more than 330 trans-Atlantic flights of a normal day, and about 60 flights between Asia and Europe were canceled.

The International Air Transport Association says the volcano is costing the industry at least $200 million a day.

Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) volcano began erupting for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending ash several miles (kilometers) into the air. Winds pushed the plume south and east across Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and into the heart of Europe.

Gray ash settled in drifts near the glacier, swirling in the air and turning day into night. Authorities told people in the area with respiratory problems to stay indoors, and advised everyone to wear masks and protective goggles outside.

In major European cities, travel chaos reigned. Extra trains were put on in Amsterdam and lines to buy train tickets were so long that the rail company handed out free coffee.

Train operator Eurostar said it was carrying almost 50,000 passengers between London, Paris and Brussels. Thalys, a high-speed venture of the French, Belgian and German rail companies, was allowing passengers to buy tickets even if trains were fully booked.

Ferry operators in Britain received a flurry of bookings from people desperate to cross the English Channel to France, while London taxi company Addison Lee said it had received requests for journeys to cities as far away as Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich.

The disruptions hit tourists, business travelers and dignitaries alike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go to Portugal rather than Berlin as she flew home from a U.S. visit. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg managed to get a flight to Madrid from New York but was still not sure when or how he would get back home.

The military also had to adjust. Five German soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were diverted to Turkey instead of Germany, while U.S. medical evacuations for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are being flown directly from the warfronts to Washington rather than to a care facility in Germany. The U.S. military has also stopped using temporarily closed air bases in the U.K. and Germany.

Aviation experts said it was among the worst disruptions Europe has ever seen.

In Iceland, torrents of water carried away chunks of ice the size of small houses on Thursday as hot gases melted the glacier over the volcano. Sections of the country's main ring road were wiped out by the flash floods.

More floods from melting waters are expected as long as the volcano keeps erupting — and in 1821, the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year.

Small amounts of ash settled in northern Scotland and Norway, but officials said it posed little threat to health.

Iceland, a nation of 320,000 people, sits on a large volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and has a history of devastating eruptions. One of the worst was the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano, which spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100417/ap_on_re_eu/eu_iceland_volcano
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming

Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #92 on: April 18, 2010, 04:26:04 AM »
Quote
After Quake, Ethnic Tibetans Distrust China’s Help
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: April 17, 2010, NYTimes

JIEGU, China — The Buddhist monks stood atop the jagged remains of a vocational school, struggling to move concrete slabs with pickax shovels and bare hands. Suddenly a cry went out: An arm, clearly lifeless, was poking through the debris.

But before the monks could finish their task, a group of Chinese soldiers who had been relaxing on the school grounds sprang to action. They put on their army caps, waved the monks away, and with a video camera for their unit rolling, quickly extricated the body of a young girl.

The monks stifled their rage and stood below, mumbling a Tibetan prayer for the dead.

“You won’t see the cameras while we are working,” said one of the monks, Ga Tsai, who with 200 others, had driven from their lamasery in Sichuan Province as soon as they heard about the quake.

“We want to save lives. They see this tragedy as an opportunity to make propaganda.”

Since a deadly earthquake nearly flattened this predominantly Tibetan city early Wednesday, killing at least 1,400 people, China’s leadership has treated the quake as a dual emergency — a humanitarian crisis almost three miles above sea level in remote Qinghai Province, and a fresh test of the Communist Party’s ability to keep a lid on dissent among restive Tibetans.

President Hu Jintao cut short a state visit to Brazil to fly home and supervise relief efforts, while Prime Minister Wen Jiabao postponed his own planned visit to Indonesia and came to the quake site promising that China’s Han majority would do whatever it could to aid the Tibetans.

The official state media prominently featured stories of grateful Tibetans receiving food and tents, and search and rescue specialists toiling to reach survivors even as they cope with altitude sickness.

The relief effort has indeed been impressive. With thousands of soldiers and truckloads of food clogging Jiegu’s streets on Saturday, earth-moving equipment started clearing away toppled buildings from the downtown. More than 600 of the seriously injured have been taken to hospitals in the provincial capital 500 miles away. In recent days, blue tents bearing the Civil Affairs Ministry logo have popped up across the city.

But despite outward signs of government largess and ethnic unity, the earthquake has exposed stubborn tensions between Beijing and Tibetans, many of whom have long struggled to maintain their autonomy and cultural identity amid a Han-dominated country. Widespread Tibetan rioting against Han rule severely disrupted Beijing’s planning to host the Summer Olympics in 2008, and China has kept Tibet and predominantly ethnically Tibetan regions of China under tight police and military control since then.

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader who has not set foot in China since 1959, has issued a formal request to visit the disaster zone. It will most surely be denied.

Since the quake hit early Wednesday morning, thousands of monks have come to the city, some making a two-day drive from distant corners of a largely Tibetan region that spreads across three adjoining provinces.

It was the burgundy-robed monks who were among the first to pull people from collapsed buildings. On Saturday at dusk, long after the rescue experts had called it quits, they could be still be seen working the rubble.

“They are everything to us,” said Oh Zhu Tsai Jia, 57, opening the truck of his car so a group of young monks could pray over the body of his wife.

On Saturday morning, the monks ferried 1,400 bodies from the city’s main monastery to a dusty rise overlooking the city.

There, in two long trenches filled with salvaged wood, they dumped the dead and set cremation pyres ablaze.

As the fires burned for much of the day, hundreds of mourners sat mutely on a hillside next to the monks, who chanted aloud or quietly counted prayer beads of red coral and turquoise.

The police and Han officials were conspicuously absent.

The monastery’s leaders said no one from the local government had included their dead in the official tally although they were careful not to voice any criticism. Many of the younger monks, however, were not as reticent.

At the No. 3 Primary School, the monks said they had pulled 50 students from collapsed classrooms but when an official came by to ask how many had died, the police offered half that number. “I think they’re afraid to let the world know how bad this earthquake is,” said Gen Ga Ja Ba, a 23-year-old monk.

One of the most persistent complaints, however, was that many of the official rescue efforts have focused on the city’s larger structures and ignored the mud-brick homes that, with few exceptions, collapsed by the hundreds. Others spoke of skirmishes with the police over bodies, although such accounts could not be verified.

The other more incendiary criticism heard wherever monks gathered was that soldiers had prevented them from helping in rescue efforts during the first few days after the earthquake.

Tsairen, a monk from a monastery in Nangqian County in Sichuan, spoke about how he and scores of other monks tussled with soldiers at a collapsed hotel that first night. “We asked why they wouldn’t let us help, and they just ignored us,” said Tsairen, who like some Tibetans, uses only one name.

Later, he and more than 100 others headed to the vocational school, where the voices of trapped girls could still be heard in the rubble of a collapsed dormitory.

They said the soldiers blocked them from the pile and later, the chief of their monastery, Ga Tsai, scuffled with a man they described as the county chief.

“He grabbed me by my robe and dragged me out to the street,” Ga Tsai said.

In the evening after the soldiers had left the scene, they went to work, eventually pulling out more than a dozen bodies.

Even if exaggerated, such stories can only work against the government’s efforts to win over Tibetans.

In recent days, the government has vowed to rebuild Jiegu, which is also known by its Chinese name Yushu, promising to spare no expense. But while many Tibetans expressed gratitude for the relief efforts and the official outpouring of concern, others were less appreciative.

As an excavator and a bulldozer sifted through the remains of the vocational school dormitory on Saturday, Gong Jin Ba Ji, a 16-year-old student, stood watching.

A day earlier, she said, the machinery inadvertently tore apart the body of a classmate. She was still waiting for them to recover the body of her older sister.

“I wish they would work more carefully,” she said numbly. “Maybe they don’t care so much because we are only Tibetans.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/world/asia/18quake.html?pagewanted=1
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming

Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #93 on: April 20, 2010, 02:33:54 PM »

Volcano Eruption in Iceland Strengthens

Just hours after European Union transportation ministers agreed on a plan to ease restrictions on airliner traffic, the British National Air Traffic Service reported that the eruption of the volcano in Iceland has strengthened.

A statement released late Monday said a new ash cloud is heading toward Britain.  It described the situation as unpredictable and changing.

Earlier Monday, the EU ministers held a video conference and created three flight zones over Europe in an attempt to break the huge travel deadlock that has stranded millions of passengers for days.

One area will be open to all flights, another to limited flights and a third would be a no-fly zone.

The EU's Transport Commissioner, Siim Kallas said there would be no compromise on safety.  But he said the plan should allow progressively more planes to fly.

He called it good news for the airline industry, for stranded passengers and for the European economy that has been hard hit by the crisis.

Europe's aviation industry has criticized the way the crisis has been handled, accusing governments of over-reacting and waiting too long to come up with a coordinated plan.   

The head of the International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani said the scale of the economic impact on aviation, reaching $1 billion, is greater than the September 11, 2001, terror attacks when U.S. airspace was closed for three days.

He called the situation "embarrassing" and a "European mess."

Germany's aviation authority on Monday announced the resumption of long-haul flights by the country's flag carrier, Lufthansa,  bringing some 15,000 passengers home from East Asia, Africa and North America. And Britain has dispatched three navy ships to bring stranded passengers back home across the English Channel. 
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Volcano-Eruption-in-Iceland-Strengthens-91560844.html
« Last Edit: April 20, 2010, 02:40:10 PM by Nichi »
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
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Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #94 on: April 20, 2010, 02:50:27 PM »
Current Death Count 2,039

(CNN) -- China will suspend all public entertainment and lower flags to half staff on Wednesday as the nation mourns the 2,039 people killed in last week's 6.9-magnitude earthquake, the State Council said, according to Chinese media.

Another 195 people were still missing following the quake that shook northwestern China's Qinghai province last Wednesday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, citing rescue headquarters.

Rescue officials said 12,135 people were injured in the disaster, with 1,434 of them in serious condition.

Since the quake struck the country's Tibetan region, rescuers have been working round the clock to find survivors and pull them from the rubble.

The earthquake toppled about 15,000 homes in and around the impoverished county of Yushu, and caused more than 100,000 people to flee the area.


Map: Earthquake in China Qinghai province is home to about 5 million people and is considered a gateway to Himalayan Tibet.

About half its people are Han Chinese, but the area is home to more than 40 ethnic groups, including Tibetans, Hui and Mongols.

Since the quake struck the country's Tibetan region, rescuers have been working around the clock to pull survivors from the rubble.

The earthquake toppled about 15,000 homes in and around the impoverished county of Yushu, and caused more than 100,000 people to flee the area.

Earlier, Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to the earthquake-devastated zone to inspect the damage and assure victims that the search would continue.

"Your suffering is our suffering," Wen said. "We are going through the same pain as you are. The family members you lost are also our family members, and we grieve for them as you do."

Wen surveyed the rubble of buildings and spoke with residents in the predominantly ethnic Tibetan region -- where anti-government sentiment is simmering -- to drive home Beijing's concern.

Are you there? Send your photos, video, stories

Ethnic Tibetans have accused Chinese soldiers of not doing enough to help in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday's 6.9-magnitude earthquake. That's an allegation the Chinese government denies, but Wen's visit could help boost morale -- at least among rescuers, some of whom are battling high altitude sickness.

"As long as there is a slight hope, we will never give up," he said. "We need to unite as one, to do a good job in our rescue work. At the same time, I assure everyone, that we will definitely make life good here again."

Wen and Chinese President Hu Jintao postponed planned foreign trips because of the disaster.

Qinghai province
Population: 5 million
People: 44 ethnic groups, including Tibetans and Mongols
Average elevation: Over 3,000 meters above sea level
Geography: Qilian Mountains, the Qingnan Plateau and the source of the Yangtze, Mekong and Yellow Rivers
GDP: US$3.2 billion; average GDP per capita US$639
Industries: Agriculture, hydropower, oil and natural gas

Source: China Internet Information Center
RELATED TOPICS
China
Earthquakes
Accidents and Disasters
The premier postponed a scheduled visit to Brunei, Indonesia and Myanmar. Hu called the presidents of Chile and Venezuela to postpone his mid-April visits to those countries.

How to help: Impact Your World

"During this difficult time, I need to be home as soon as possible together with our people providing relief," he said.

In Jiegu, the town closest to the epicenter, people were taken to a sporting field serving as a makeshift hospital -- there are no hospitals in the town.

More than 85 percent of Jiegu's poorly constructed mud and brick houses collapsed. They were homes for ethnic Tibetans, among China's poorest people making a living as farmers and herdsmen.

Along the town's main street, all that was left of two hotels was a pile of rubble. Residents and monks used hand shovels and ropes to clear debris in hopes of reaching survivors.

Thursday's rescue effort was hampered by unstable bridges and collapsed roadways, making it difficult for heavy equipment to get to hard-hit areas, including Jiegu.

But after five hours of digging, rescuers were able to pull four survivors from a guest house in the area Thursday afternoon, state television reported.

Authorities have said more than 1,000 people were saved in similar rescues.

Officials have sent 20,000 cotton tents, 50,000 items of winter clothing and 50,000 quilts to victims.

Can buildings be made earthquake-proof?

The quake shook the region shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday (Tuesday 8 p.m. ET), when many residents were still at home and schools were just getting started for the day.

Qinghai province in northwestern China, home to about 5 million people, is considered a gateway to Himalayan Tibet. About half its people are Han Chinese, but the area is home to more than 40 ethnic groupings, including Tibetans, Hui and Mongols.

The region, rich in natural gas and marked by copper, tin and coal mines, has a long history of earthquakes. Since 2001, 53 quakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater have occurred, according to China's Earthquake Administration.

World's biggest earthquakes since 1900

The Chinese government has allocated 200 million yuan (US$29 million) to aid the relief effort, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. presented two checks worth a total of $100,000 to the Red Cross Society of China and the Qinghai Provincial Red Cross.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/04/19/china.quake.toll/
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming

Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #95 on: April 20, 2010, 09:51:29 PM »
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming

Offline Nichi

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Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming

Offline Michael

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #97 on: April 21, 2010, 10:50:10 PM »
Incredible!!!

Jahn

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #98 on: April 22, 2010, 03:24:43 AM »
Iceland Photos:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html


Great pictures! Thanks a lot.

Here is the "face" of that volcano.



It is said that jet fuel consumption in the world has decreased with 1/5 because of the inhibited flight the last week. About 80 000 take offs were cancelled and 7 million passengers affected by the flight restrictions related to the volcano clouds.

Sweden opened up their southern airports including Stockholm/Arlanda today.

Jahn

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #99 on: April 24, 2010, 05:05:56 AM »
I am afraid that the link to Boston failed quite soon, so here are some of them pictures and some other from other links.

Please observe the lightening, that is common in this type of eruptions.

http://patrickmylund.com/blog/pictures-of-eyjafjallajokull/

Picture presentation

http://womc.radio.com/2010/04/19/eyjafjallajokull-volcano-photos/#photo-1

 

Flickr collection of member pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eugeneb/galleries/72157623877939152/

 

 


Offline Nichi

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #100 on: April 24, 2010, 11:24:33 AM »
Thanks for those, Jamir! I hadn't tried to return to the first site, so I wasn't aware.   :-*
Not here, not there, but everywhere - always right before your eyes.
~Hsin Hsin Ming


Offline Michael

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #102 on: April 24, 2010, 01:18:37 PM »
" Eruption disruption shows we're not all well-grounded
April 23, 2010

OK, we get it. People in Iceland are perpetually cold. But does that mean they have to take it out on the rest of us? For the past couple of decades, they've been doing their best to bring the world to its knees.

First it was the export of Bjork, a woman whose singing pitch causes grand mal seizures among laboratory mice. Then it was the global financial crisis, with Iceland queueing to be the first country to go broke, after a collapse in the futures market for herring.

The Icelandic economy still had its AAA credit rating but the three A's were henceforth followed by the letters RRRGGGHHH. Suddenly, everyone realised Iceland mainly consisted of ice — a fact, you may think, the Icelanders had disclosed when they named it Iceland.

Still, no one was more surprised than the world's financial experts — a group of people who were already shocked to discover that unemployed people in the US's south sometimes found it hard to repay their home loans.

In the aftermath of these revelations, the world demanded that Iceland start paying its way. In response, Icelanders have developed a new export industry: ash.

They are distributing it by air, all over Europe, sourcing it from a volcano, the pronunciation of which is impossible unless the speaker is simultaneously regurgitating fish.

We are reminded that, like Danish, Icelandic is not so much a language as a disease of the throat.

Traditionally, when a volcano went up, the response was to throw in a few virgins to propitiate the gods. Presumably, the world's airlines tried gathering cabin staff for sacrifice but were stymied when Qantas couldn't find any virgins.

Ralph Fiennes had been too frequent a flyer.

Given the mounting losses, Richard Branson should now offer himself as the nearest equivalent, a sort of virgin-in-chief.

“We've all got to make sacrifices,” he'll say as he hurls himself into the gaping maw, a final picture opportunity from the king of the genre. Yet, for all the misery it's caused, there is something faintly educational about this single overenthusiastic volcano and the way it has stopped the world.

The Icelandic volcano is the global equivalent of Friday night acne. It reminds us that, however hard you try, you just can't control everything. As with the pimple, springing forth minutes before a big night on the town, the only reasonable response is to endure it; to submit to its red, throbbing power. No amount of squeezing or concealing, whingeing or whining, is going to change anything.

And yet, ever since the volcano went up, the whingeing has hardly stopped. It's difficult to know the planes have stopped, so constant has been the sound of low-level droning.

We have built an economic system on the basis of flying green beans and flowers daily from Kenya to Britain, oysters from Sydney to Berlin and butter from Denmark to Brisbane. Rather than rethink the wisdom of this system, we are instead horrified when it is occasionally interrupted.

We transport millions of holidaymakers from here to there, and there to here, so we all get the experience of ordering identical, global goods from identical, global businesses but with the thrill of paying in a different currency.

We also all get to read the same book — Twilight or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — on identical beach loungers in front of identical hotels. The idea that we are momentarily prevented from holidaying in, say, the Czech Republic rather than Terrigal, is enough to reduce us to cries of rage.

One woman from Birmingham told the Herald midweek that she was staggered when informed she might have to wait a fortnight before she could travel home: “I passed out, just fainted, from the sheer shock,” she said.

Really? The news was so unexpected she was rendered unconscious? Is Sydney Airport now like the scene of a Jim Jones massacre — scores of people flat on their back mumbling, “the horror, the horror”?

Personally, I feel like fainting when told that flying is possible: me and 400 people inserted into a metal tube and then hurled into the sky in the expectation we will be served very small packets of peanuts and then land, some hours later, in a different country.

We are perched on the side of this spinning planet; maybe we become delusional due to the constant motion. We end up thinking we can do anything; that nature will always be our uncomplaining partner.

I find myself spluttering with hubristic questions. Can't we just pour concrete into the volcano? Or blow it up? Or have Bjork sing to it?

Apparently not. We are like ants running around this thing. It's a power beyond us: a super-sized lava lamp with a missing "off" switch.

As such, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano might have a few things to reveal about the world. First up, the illusion that the world is always under our control."

richard@richardglover.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/eruption-disruption-shows-were-not-all-wellgrounded-20100423-tiqt.html

Offline Tony

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #103 on: April 25, 2010, 08:09:37 AM »
And one of the saddest things-as a preceptive organism we miss the opportunity to be absolutely amazed and awed by the incredible beauty before us. No wonder early cultures had gods.

Jahn

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Re: Around the Globe in Real Time
« Reply #104 on: April 26, 2010, 04:40:09 AM »
The Icelandic economy still had its AAA credit rating but the three A's were henceforth followed by the letters RRRGGGHHH. Suddenly, everyone realised Iceland mainly consisted of ice — a fact, you may think, the Icelanders had disclosed when they named it Iceland.


Well, to be honest
the Icelanders were bad in banking business BUT the financial crisis that we now see and live  ....
.... had it's start with  ... yes you could not imagine ... David Bowie!

I knew that he was broke after the Ziggy Stardust US tour but what the heck.

"David Bowie started the current global financial crisis when he offered fans the chance to buy bonds in his music in the mid-90s, an economics expert has claimed."

With songs like:
The Man Who Sold the World
Ashes to Ashes
Panic in Detroit
and many more suspect contributions David Bowie appear as the first person to blame for all this mess.  ;D  ;D

http://www.gigwise.com/news/48679/David-Bowie-Started-The-Credit-Crunch

« Last Edit: April 26, 2010, 04:45:00 AM by Jamir »

 

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