September 1st, 2008Comments Off on Cape Town to Cairo in an Airstream | # link to | posted by david
On its 50th anniversary, a group of Airstream enthusiasts plan to recreate Airstream founder, Wally Byam’s 1959 Cape Town to Cairo caravan, which travelled the full length of Africa.
I love the story of this trip, because it is like someone’s grandfather climbing Everest in a plaid shirt. Byam and his followers looked like the apotheosis of 50 suburban Americans, the type that cosmopolitan types may sniff at. But they did some genuinely ground breaking traveling. And they did it in style – because they had Airstreams.
I am an avid cycling enthusiast who hates the cult of cycling. It is an efficient, pleasant form of transport not a fucking religion.
I often cross the Brooklyn Bridge either on foot or on a bike. There are two lanes, one for pedestrians and one for cyclists, with no barrier in between. The number of pedestrians largely outnumbers the number of cyclists, and there are a large number of tourists. This creates two situations where people naturally end up temporarily in the cycling lane: where tourists don’t realize and where pedestrians wish to bypass tourists who, quite reasonably, stop to take pictures.
When I ride a bike, I admit that I quite often ride on sidewalks (its impossible not to at the entrance to the Brooklyn bridge), and I rarely cycle in bike lanes (they actually seem dangerous in urban areas, having been thrown over a car door that someone opened into a bike lane once). I think rules can be broken, but I try and ride carefully and considerately, not breaking rules for the sake of it but because sometimes they don’t make sense.
For some reason, many cyclists on the Brooklyn Bridge ride like some car owners who hate cyclists drive, suddenly insisting on ridiculously strict adherence to rules like which lane you have to be in at all times, and cycling at speeds which are dangerous to others. I suspect that these people include those that complain about SUV drivers and like to do practical things like break rules and cycle on sidewalks. In which case they are not only selfish pricks, but hypocritical selfish pricks.
I don’t think I am exaggerating to suggest that one day a pedestrian is going to get killed. To illustrate, here is a video of a cyclist crossing the bridge who careers along hurling abuse and actually throws a punch at a pedestrian in his way.
Urban cycling is not a race requiring thousand dollar plus bikes and Manga inspired spandex, nor is it an alternative sub-culture for hipster liberals with latent Neo-Conservative rage. It is a normal form of transportation.
“Intercut scenes, from Hollywood films shot in New York’s Pennsylvania Station before it was demolished in 1963, or on stage sets representing it, form a composited narrative set in Manhattan’s great lost architectural masterpiece”.
And now the good news: the reason why we still have New York’s Grand Central, or London’s St Pancras in all their glory is because with hindsight the demolition of Euston and Penn Stations were evidently a mistake.
Ironic that the titles and production value of this documentary are actually terrible, considering that Saul Bass is the most famous title sequence designer. Nonetheless it is a mesmerizing look at some of the best movie title sequences of all time, narrated by Bass himself.
The fact that the US space program was kicked off by a Nazi who was let off because he was useful was made famous by Tom Lehrer. However the comparison between these two films rams the point home.
At top is color film from 1944 showing Von Braun as a Nazi, testing the V2.
And a Walt Disney space series from 1955, where Von Braun himself talks about space rockets.
August 26th, 2008Comments Off on An Airship Flying Over a Skyscraper | # link to | posted by david
The iconic (and fabricated) image of an airship docking the Empire State Building, sums up for me the notion of New York as an antique modern city. This is as good as I could find, a Zeppelin flying past the roof of what looks like the Woolworth building. Link
Comments Off on An Airship Flying Over a Skyscraperarchitecture
There are long tracts of glass in the Sahara, caused by meteorites skidding across the sand and melting it. Glass looks pretty and feels precious, but sand does not, and this is perhaps part of the reason why people perceive glass recycling to be a valuable exercise – something that is debatable at best.
I am actively against recycling non-metals, because I think it does nothing to aid consuming less, and may actually exacerbate the problem. In other words, I think it creates a net damage to the environment. It would be better that people had to pay directly for the removal trash which scrap merchants wouldn’t pay them for and for these people to be non-subsidized.
Showing up in a car to the bottle bank with Perrier bottles reminds me of Roman schoolboys who had slaves who would take a proxy beating for them when they did something wrong. Both are dubious ways of avoiding blame.
Recycling is about preventing people digging something out of the ground and burning fuel to make something from it. If it were truly viable, then people would be ransacking landfills to recycle them.
Reuse yes, recycle no. Penn and Teller make the point better than I ever could.