Author Archives: alistair

The Russians appear to be masters of the Arctic

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The Economist has an article on how the Russians are doing a bit of a symbolic ‘land/ocean grab’ in the Arctic. In a symbolic act, a Russian flag was planted on the seabed at the North Pole.

There are plenty of resources in the Arctic and:

Global warming is making them look more accessible. They may include 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas deposits, tin, manganese, gold, nickel, lead, platinum and diamonds, plus fish and perhaps even lucrative freight routes.

More from the article:

The latest Russian expedition is not just collecting geological samples; on Thursday August 2nd it placed the Russian flag (in titanium) on the yellow gravel 4,200 metres below the surface at the site of the North Pole.

Even more startling, though, was Russia’s rhetoric. “The Arctic is ours and we should manifest our presence,” said Mr Chilingarov, a charismatic figure whom President Vladimir Putin has named as “presidential envoy” to the Arctic.

This was the first manned mission there [the seabed of the North Pole], mounted by a polar flotilla that no other country could match. For outsiders used to stories of Russian bungling and backwardness, that was a salutary reminder of the world-class technical clout and human genius the Kremlin can still command.

Hiking up Table Mountain – the round route

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The weather was great on Sunday so I decided to try out a new hike. See the map below for the route I took (click for a more interactive map).

It was a cool hike although pretty steep at times and quite long – I would say count on about 3.5 to 4 hours. There was a noticeable difference between the mainstream and lesser known routes up the mountain.

On the route up the back side of the mountain I saw:

  • Two other hikers having a quiet lunch

On the route down Platteklip gorge I saw:

  • About 100 exchange students
  • A whole British rugby team
  • Some Americans struggling along in their jeans and slops
  • An American girl who was hiking in her bra and shorts
  • An Italian girl hiking in bikini bottoms and a t-shirt

Check out some of the pics I took below.

Interesting world clock

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This site calculates running counts of different things happening around the world. For instance while I have been writing this post there have been (and counting):

  • 290 births
  • 99 abortions
  • 9 new HIV infections
  • 182 computers produced
  • 3 deaths in traffic accidents
  • etc, etc

I have seen plenty of these things in the past but this is the most thorough so far.

Robbie Hunter – you are the man

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Our boy Robbie Hunter became the first African to win a stage of the Tour de France yesterday. It was a very entertaining stage and I was pretty excited when I saw that Robbie finally got his win. He has been very close in the some other stages so I was really hoping for it.

Robbie took advantage of the chaos in the stage, avoided a crash on the last corner, and jumped too early but held of the attackers.

As happy as I was, Robbie was clearly much happier than me.

Costs of cocaine around the world

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The Economist has an interesting graph and brief article about the cost of cocaine around the world.

  • The farther away a country from the main producers in South and Central America, and the more isolated it is, the higher the cost to traffick there.
  • Cheapest in Colombia, the world’s biggest producer of coca: at $2, a gram costs less than a Big Mac
  • In far-flung New Zealand, a gram costs a wallet-busting $714.30

Galaxy classification by the crowd

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Galaxy Zoo is a cool site that gets people to classify thousands of telescope photos of distant galaxies. You get some quick training, pass a test and then start classifying galaxies for them.

From the site:

The project harnesses the power of the internet – and your brain – to classify a million galaxies.
You’ll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before (the photos are taken by a robot and analysed by a computer).

The idea is that if real people are doing the classifications then:

  • They will get a pretty accurate classification
  • Anything really interesting will be brought to their attention

Also, all this raises awareness which is pretty cool.

I classified a few – this is the most interesting one that I saw. See explanation below if you really want to.

No – that’s not a UFO it’s the path of a satellite.  It is a streak because the telescope has a long exposure to get as much light as possible.  It’s blue because the telescope actually takes 3 pictures – one for red, one for green, and one for blue and then combines them.  The satellite passed while the telescope was taking the blue frame.