doorstepping

I had my Member of Parliament around this morning. He was in a casual blue shirt that looked as if he added a tie it could soon be made suity again.

And why was this?

Elections of course.

On Thursday we have the local elections and I think he was trying to encourage me to vote for his party. I explained that I would be visiting the polling station. He looked a little crestfallen that I didn't tell him who I would vote for.

nuts from a hippy in camper van

I thought I'd feature the improbable prize won from the recent photo competition.

Actually we did win more than one book, but the others are similarly cutting edge. I've chosen to feature the one about camper vans, which comprises a celebration of the various forms of home on wheels from a tiny Fiat albago to the Winnebagos of North America.

And thank you the Fratellis.

nutty camper van

Thursday Thirteen (V43)

Its ages since I did a Thursday Thirteen, so I'll have a go tonight, Actually, its nearly Friday although I've only just got back home. I shall have to think of something simple this evening.

I know; a few things about my week.

1) I started slightly late this morning. I'd been out late yesterday evening and awarded myself an extra half hour snooze.
2) The previous evening I'd also been out late, spending part of the evening in a debate about Afganistan.
3) Because of my prior commitment, I couldn't attend the Shoot Portobello private viewing in Notting Hill where one of my pictures had won a prize.
4) Luckily, Team Rashbre were represented, however, and we claimed our prizes which included an intriguing coffee table book about camper vans. I saw it late in the evening, when I stopped off for a cup of expresso.
5) I've spent a long time in traffic jams on the M3 this week too. There seem to have been some unfortunate circumstances which have created very long delays.
6) That means I've heard more of the news commentary than I normally do. I heard about the further extension of the "no cover up" Princess Diana inquest, which has now been in process for around ten years and is on its third judge. It still all seems rather clandestine when even figures at the very top of the British Establishment can't get facts established after such a long period.
7) And the related news that Prince Hal is probably off to Iraq now. Let's put the heir to the throne in harm's way, where there are already at least a couple of groups considering him a high profile target.
8) But the other high profile target today seems to be the photographer that the highly press harrassed Hugh Grant allegedly threw a tin of baked beans at...Beanz Meanz Hughz? If true, I wonder if he will be asked to do fashionable community service like Naomi?
9) Tomorrow, I suspect I will work from home. I have been on the road a fair amount recently, and it will be good it I can have a travel free day.
10) Luckily I bought some milk this evening, so I could probably stay in doors all day withour being distracted by the need to shop for groceries.
11) Unfortunately, I chose to buy the milk in a nearby supermarket gas station, but because it was after nine o clock, they would not let me into the shop part. I therefore had to visit the main store, and then to queue for ages to buy the milk.
12) I noticed a regional newspaper in the store refered to upcoming local elections with an online voting option. When I got home, the television news was explaining that they have inadvertantly given a Conservative candidate a Labour logo and in another place allocated the Conservation Party instead of the Conservatives. Almost as much fun as the Florida chads.
13) Well I seem to have reached 13, even if they are somewhat random this evening. Next stop, the kettle for a cup of tea.

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

Gliese 581 C

For some reason I remember that light travels about one foot (30cm) in a nanosecond. So people building integrated circuits eventually have to start taking account of physical path lengths when they build fast circuits. I can remember when the speed of light seemed pretty fast (approximately 186,000 miles per hour to we Brits or precisely 299,792,458 metres per second to we Europeans). So how come it seems slow now?

Because now we've found a planet like earth only bigger and it would be interesting to pay it a visit. The thing is, its 20.5 light years away. So at that high speed it would still take 20.5 years to reach this nearest source of quasi human life. Maybe thats a voyage worth experiencing at the speed of light, but thats around 5,873,012,352,000 miles away, or in jumbo jet terms it would take 195,767,078,400 years to fly there to check it out. In a fast space ship travelling at the speed of the space shuttle in orbit, it would take 334,073,513 years to get there. So we need to drive past Einstein's limits to some sort of hyper warp if we wish to say 'hi' to our neighbours.

I think its great to know that this new world supports life like us. Because its bigger, it will have a stronger gravity and than means that the human-like forms are shorter and squatter than us. There's also a race of fish like creatures which are quite squishy and they work well in the oceanic parts of the environment, with additional capabilities to move around on land. Thats a kind of walking octopus. The equivalent of cows and so forth are quite thick skinned more like rhinos and armadillos as a consequence of the density and closeness of their nuclear flaring sun.

The planet has water and dusty bits like us too, and there are still large uninhabited areas because of the harsh wind and weather conditions in parts. Its parent star is Gliese 581 and this planet C is in what is referred to as the Goldilocks zone. Just like the proverbial porridge, its not too hot and not too cold, but just right for the surface water to exist as a liquid. The planet has lakes, rivers, seas and even tides created from the even smaller and so far undiscovered moons which orbit the planet.

The lifeform there is more intelligent than we are and this is partly a function of being there much longer than we have been on earth. They have more advanced technologies and still use the type of communications we have, but can use wave frequencies that we can see as part of their communication spectrum. Thats why it has been difficult communicating with Earth, because we keep thinking the communication are sun spots and flares. And they are only just getting 20 year old repeat editions of the Lucy Show and trying to make sense of our humour.

snookered?

There's an old urban myth about policemen booking cars for speeding in a particular sequence like in snooker. A red car between every other coloured car and then in a particular sequence finishing with black.

So yesterday when I was in central London I smiled when I saw four unmarked police cars in different colours blue lights a'flashing speeding in procession through the traffic near to the City of London. They were all in different colours, but I don't think there were any reds.

half a sovereign, or the dragon gets it

Happy Saint George's Day, today. The dragon-slaying patron saint of the English doesn't get any where near as much press or attention as Saint Patrick, but still has an official and largely uncelebrated day.

At least Saint George is on the reverse of a coin of the realm, that well known 'half sovereign', which has fallen in to complete disuse. The official value was ten shillings (fifty pence), but as the coin is made of 22 carat gold, I suspect its probably got a street value closer to $100.

London Marathon 2007

This morning I travelled to Canary Wharf to watch the London Marathon, which is a spectacular event crossing London with a 26.2 mile race. I’d looked at the varied maps of the race to try to find somewhere that I could get a good view, with some atmosphere and some recognizable symbols of London. I’d also worked out that there would be other parts of the runners’ route that would be much busier, such as the Embankment, the Mall and the area around Tower Bridge and where the Cutty Sark is supposed to be moored. With the major traffic restrictions in London because of the road closures for the race, it also needed to be somewhere that I could reach fairly easily by public transport and walking.

Consequently, I took a tube train to Canary Wharf, listening on the way that the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) has some kind of train failure and was not running. No surprises there. As luck would have it, there were people around, but not too many. It was pretty easy to walk around and pick a vantage point. I initially selected one on a corner, but then I noticed the lack of sunlight because of the tall building shadows, so instead I found another location by one of the water pickups, around Mile 19.

Cup of coffee in hand, the area I’d selected also had a convenient wall (a) for sitting on and (b) to get a better vantage point later, if I needed it. Choosing a point at two thirds of the way around also had the advantage that by this point the runners had separated out sufficiently. It gave several distinct races- the wheelchair race, the elite womens’ race, the elite mens’ race and the mass race. Altogether around 35,000 people enter this marathon, ranging from the super fit, to people who dress up as bakewell tarts.

And what a fantastic atmosphere. The races, the participants, many running for charity, the supporters – who cheer everyone. Watch it on television by all means, but if you are from London it is one to also experience, whether from the run itself or from the sidelines.

I took quite a few snapshots, mainly from Docklands, but also a few from around Buckingham Palace near to the finish line. I’ve put a bunch of them onto flickr or you can watch the slide show

tags technorati : rashbre london marathon urban athletics sport

blur

Sometimes when I'm out and about with other people who know about my blog they will comment about what they see as a 'bloggable moment'. The last week has been a case in point and I've noticed that I've been somewhat busy working and that quite a few of the moments that I'd have considered worth an entry have been skipped over.

Let's see: I could have commented about the trip through the New Forest to catch the ferry to the Isle of Wight. Maybe a snapshot or two of the harbour or the crossing of the busy waters of the Solent. I could have reflected about the Isle of Wight Pop Festival exhibition or even on the life-sized statue of Jimi Hendrix in a garden, along with his lyrics, including the original version of Purple Haze.

Then there was the Photography Exhibition of the evocative works of Julia Margaret Cameron. The dramatic picture of Hershel the Astronomer, the sleek picture of Ellen Terry and the portraits of Alice Liddell, who became the inspiration for the Alice in Wonderland books of Lewis Carroll.

But of course the real reason for being on the sun drenched Island was the Jazz festival, so we met others and then wandered between venues. I had an excursion to The Crab in Shanklin one evening to bring back more of our number, who'd travelled down by train from London, used the catamaran from Ryde and then the ex London tube trains to reach the nearby quaint Shanklin.

Of course, there were the bands, between the free jazz of Sax Appeal, the world groove party sounds of Konkoma Maximum Love Garden Orchestra, the sultry evening clubbiness of Laura Zakian, the modern improvisations of the Dave O'Higgins and Simon Purcell Quartet and then the ultra modern musos Porpoise Corpus at the Spyglass Inn. And thats just a few of the 120 acts playing in Ventnor during the weekend. With the competition of the fine weather and the seaside as well.

Added to that we met friends who live on the island and enjoyed a great Sunday lunch together in a tranquil venue in Totland. I had to catch an early ferry back to the mainland because my week had to start with the four o clock alarm call to catch the plane to Amsterdam. Like spies, I was meeting someone outside the airport by the big plasma screen television and he came in on another plane about ten minutes after me. Then we drove to the meeting spot for some busy sessions.

Later in the week, we returned to Heathrow, to a waiting car to bundle us to a hotel in London for other meetings. A reminder that I was supposed to host an early supper somewhere that evening and a last minute reschedule to take advantage of a nice spot on the River Thames.

The next evening I'd semi forgotton that I'd agreed to go out for a drink in the evening, although this became a friendly evening to catch up on news. So now we're back to Thursday and I feel I've completed a few gaps in the week -even if I've somehow omitted sitting on the floor eating Sushi in a Yurt one evening when the soy sauce made a bit of a mess.

nikki sarko

There's plenty of causerie de note about the elections this weekend in France. There's been an asssertion that as Tony Blair gets ready to leave the British premiership, a gallic equivalent arrives in the form of Nicolas Sarkozy.

The thought of anything 'Anglo-Saxon' amongst the Parisiennes may not be quite the done thing, but the other amusing discussion has been around London as the seventh French city (after Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice, Nantes, and before Strasbourg, I presume).

I suppose the fast train links make it quicker to get from Paris to London than to Cannes, say. And the French investment bankers certainly inhabit the City of London in large numbers. But I suspect there is some French humour in the statements about the seventh city. Actually the population of London is probably larger than the rolled-up population of the top seven French cities.

So with the upcoming election, the main coverage from Britain seems to be going to Sarkozy. Front page pictures, and much discussion of his approach. The problem is that France has been broken for a long time. Low working hours (35 per week), many jobs are state related, theres high unemployment, with maybe 20% of the youth unemployed. There's a high level of state debt and a low growth rate. Generally in need of attention, and if France sneezes, much of Europe risks catching a cold.

So who else to choose between? Ségolène Royal may dish more of the Chirac same, centrist François Bayrou is reputed to favour a Germanic approach, which is probably not a strong election tactic in France. Le Pen is still hanging in there as a National Front candidate. So Sarko, Sego, Bayrou and le Pen, and I'm guessing thats the order they will finish.

And Sarkozy could win as a consequence of additive support from party followers and those anxious for reforms to put France back on the rails. And not just those leading to London.

pulped

I was confused on tonight's television news and apparently the Daily Mail which have run a story about the removal of a banksy picture from Shoreditch.

The thing is, the picture disappeared ages ago and was replaced by some crude writing and then by someone else's attempt to recreate the original picture, albeit with the bananas as a costume worn by the two characters.

Bananas, or what?

dawn

After a busy day, the three of us sat together in the bar at the hotel chatting before an early supper. I had been up since around 04:00 and was somewhat tired, but my colleague from Cape Cod hadn't slept in a bed since the previous day because of the flight from Boston to Holland.

We asked the waiter about visiting the nearby restaurant and he said he'd check whether there were any tables. We all smiled because the end of the restaurant nearest to us looked pretty deserted. How wrong we were as we were escorted inside. The middle of the restaurant had a starry dome and the majority of the tables were packed with people engrossed in earnest conversations.

We then enjoyed a buffet supper as the hours slipped away. It was around 23:30 by the time we finished, and we drifted back to the elevators and our rooms. Mine faced the Atrium where even the bluish light simulation of dawn was unable to keep me awake.

never hold a gun?

I've never held a real gun. Toy guns - yes. Even paint-ball guns. A real gun, never.

In England, unless I joined a military related group, a gun club or was a person of the land, it would be quite difficult to gain access to a gun. I'd still have to be background checked, could have medical records sought, would need two people to vouch for me and would need a certificate/licence. The gun would need to be locked away and the ammunition would need to be in a separate location.

The USA appear to let anyone over 18 years old buy a gun, after some rudimentary background checks. If the person wants to buy from a private collector, even the background checks are bypassed. When I'm in the USA, I noticed Wal-Mart has a whole counter similar in size to a mobile phone counter, dedicated to the sale of guns and ammunition. Actually, without a credit record, some mobile phone subscriptions may be harder to purchase than a cash sale for a gun.

In some States there seems to be a limit imposed on this. You can't buy more than one gun a month, so building a collection would take a little while. For the more adventurous, some States permit the purchase of semi automatic weapons and even of AK-47s and Uzi Sub-machine guns. The American Constitution says people are allowed to "keep and bear arms." The National Rifle Association in the USA doesn't talk for long on its home page without using words like "patriot" as a way to reassure that this is all okay.

Maybe the Second Amendment was right about citizens needing to have the right to protect themselves (including from an unjust Government), though interpreting this - comma by comma - as everyman can keep and bear arms seems to deliberately cloud the point. I'll stay unarmed.