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ccohanlon · 3 years

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sealand

The first foreign yachts turn up in the Pittwater, north of Sydney, Australia, around the end of September, just as the warm nor’easterly breezes set in and coastal dwellers are reassured that the winter has ended. Most have made the long passage non-stop south from Queensland harbours, standing well off the rock-strewn New South Wales coast to take advantage of the fast, south-flowing East Australian Current. Some have sailed further — from the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu or Fiji – and have had to beat a couple of thousand nautical miles to windward against brisk south-easterly trade winds to get out of tropical latitudes before the cyclone season begins.

It’s easy to recognise the long-distance cruisers. They have a rugged, purposeful aspect, with short, sturdy, over-rigged masts and wide decks to which are lashed anchors, boat hooks, small dinghies, surfboards, gas bottles and rows of plastic jerry cans. Their cockpits are shaded by wide sun-awnings, their hatches by weather-worn, folding canvas dodgers that look like old-fashioned pram hoods. Above their transoms, makeshift stainless steel structures support angled arrays of solar cells and propeller-driven wind generators, as well as radar reflectors, and radar, radio and GPS antennae. Faded ensigns flutter from backstays or short flagstaves to signal the vessels’, if not always the crews’, nationalities.

Foreign yachts tend to congregate, three or four at a time, on the western side of the wide, sheltered bay, where there are a few anchorages and fewer moorings designated by the state’s Maritime Services as suitable for ‘live-aboard’ visitors – as long as they don’t over-stay their welcome. Even if the authorities turn a blind eye, and they do, sometimes, the welcome is unlikely to last long. Crews are allowed to live aboard for just two weeks consecutively in the same anchorage. The half dozen suburbs that surround the Pittwater are some of Sydney’s wealthiest, and their ratepayers, especially those with high-value waterfront properties, are loathe to share their views (or anything else) for too long with scruffy interlopers who don’t pay utility bills, let alone local rates and taxes.

It’s a sentiment — and, increasingly, a set of by-laws — they share with shore-dwellers around Sydney Harbour, Port Hacking, Port Melbourne and along the Swan and Brisbane Rivers.

The petty squabble between urban shore dweller and visiting seafarer in Australia’s coastal suburbs is really just a recasting of the bitter, millennia-old conflict between settler and nomad, a social, economic and spiritual rift that in other parts of the world see-saws between bloody skirmish and nervous stand-off.

The nomad isn’t an indiscriminate traveller. Although the name is derived from the Greek word nomos (pasture) and the Latin nomas (those who wander in search of pasture), the nomad doesn’t wander, but rather follows a well-established, cyclical route to a series of temporary campsites next to pastures or water sources that can support a small tribe and its animals for all or part of a season. As the late Bruce Chatwin observed in his untidy essay, Nomad Invasions, in the collection What am I doing here? (Penguin, 1990), "Nomadism is born of wide expanses, ground too barren for the farmer to cultivate economically – savannah, steppe, desert and tundra, all of which will support an animal population providing it moves."

Later he notes, "a nomad’s territory is the path linking his seasonal pastures." But the very notion of territory is born of settlement. It is necessarily somewhere defined not just by boundaries but by claims of ownership. When nomads’ traditional routes intersect anywhere claimed (by settlers) as territory – whether it’s the fenced perimeters of private property or an invisible state or national border – it is interpreted as trespass or, worse, invasion. The nomad’s innate disregard for territory is almost incomprehensible to the settler, whose first instinct is to restrict or refuse access. The nomad is characterised by a stubborn insistence on wide-ranging movement with few encumbrances and little desire for prolonged occupation, let alone possession, of any one place. Such lack of containment is almost spiritually troubling to the settler for whom the acquisition, development and protection of land and goods are intrinsic to his sense of self, security and belonging.

Long-distance seafarers are, and always were, a type of nomad too. The safety of their voyages, especially under sail, is dependent on seasonal shifts in monsoonal wind directions or the strength of trade winds, the intensity of temperate latitude depressions, the locations of permanent anti-cyclones with their persistent calms and fog, and the risk of cyclones, typhoons or hurricanes. Except for large, engine-powered, commercial ships — their movements determined only by trade and the efficient, economic transport of heavy cargoes regardless of season — the ideal timing and routes for ocean passages have been the same for more than two thousand years.

Hundreds of generations of seafarers have recorded their observations of the sea surface, wind and sky, as well as the arc of stars and planets along these routes. They’ve passed them on in narratives — Polynesian mele, Icelandic sagas, Arabic instructional rahmanis — or as notations in log books and on charts, even as diagrams constructed from intricately bound sticks and shells. For example, in a passage from a rahmani known as Fa’ida of the Kitab al-Fawa’id, near the end of a section titled 'Seasons for leaving the Arabian coast', the renowned fifteenth century Arab mu’allim (navigator) and poet Ahmad Bin Majid warned of the intensity of the South-West Monsoon during summer in the Arabian Gulf: "Intelligent men never make this journey during the three months when the Dahur is at full strength for then it is a gamble … For these ninety days the sea is closed and he who would cross it deserves to be unhappy. From the agony of loneliness and remorse, so much anxiety and suffering."

Today, the routing charts, tidal atlases and sailing directions published by various governments’ hydrographic offices are simply the ongoing refinement of knowledge gathered and shared over several centuries by navigators around the world. This sharing is probably the oldest, maybe the only, ongoing tradition upheld by every nation with maritime interests. Part of the reason it endures is that the seafarer’s ‘territory’, the vast, refuge-less oceans beyond national territorial waters (and other, more arbitrary demarcations), doesn’t really belong to anyone.

Men first took to the sea in prehistoric times, but they learned to navigate – and so became seafarers – between four and five thousand years ago. Since then, man has headed out into deep waters to fish, trade, explore, migrate, invade, plunder, colonise, compete, conduct research and look for adventure. However, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that living on the sea was explored as an alternative to land-based urban or rural settlement. A word for it, ‘seasteading’, was coined in the 1970s to evoke the spirit of nineteenth-century pioneers who first settled the wide, open plains of the central and mid-western United States under the land grants of the Homestead Act.

Water-borne communities, both fixed and mobile, aren’t a new idea. They have existed on inlets, estuaries, canals and other sheltered waterways around the world for longer than men have sailed offshore. However, those which survive today – the river people of the Mekong, the Hoklo and Tanka junk communities in Hong Kong, the Uros who weave the floating tortora reed islands of Lake Titicaca, even the bargees who ply the canals and rivers of northern Europe – rely on proximity and inextricable social and economic connections to shore-bound communities.

Seasteading is about living alone or in small groups or communities with little dependence on shore-bound resources, mainly on the open sea but also off isolated reefs, islands or coastlines. How this is actually accomplished lies at the heart of an ongoing argument between two fundamentally divergent traditions: seafaring and sea-settling.

"The model of seastead I suggest is based upon a sailboat that has been built or modified to provide an individual or family a home on the sea,’ writes the American author and former ‘live-aboard’, Jerome FitzGerald, in his book, Seasteading: A Life of Hope and Freedom on the Last Viable Frontier (Universe, 2006). As he points out, "The oceans are truly vast. Hundreds of thousands of miles of coastline remain uninhabited because the skills have not been acquired to live within this sometimes harsh environment. Thousands of islands as well remain empty due to lack of infrastructure and modern conveniences … Properly and thoughtfully equipped, a modest sailboat can be a very nearly self-sufficient entity suitable as a life-support platform for exploring these areas.”

James Wharram, a renowned English designer of sailing catamarans inspired by traditional Polynesian designs and techniques, and the first man to sail a multi-hull across the Atlantic, agrees with Fitzgerald. Thirty years ago, in an essay entitled The Sailing Community, he proposed a nomadic, 20th century tribe of ‘sea people’: handfuls of individuals and families living on their own catamarans to avoid, as he put it, "proximity difficulties which can lead to social stress", with a much larger ‘mother ship’ owned by all the families as its hub. The mother ship would be regarded as shared space or ‘territory’, not as an extension of each family’s ‘home’. Manned by a crew made up of members of each family, he suggested it would carry additional victuals, fuel, tools and spares, as well as accommodate communal spaces, an office and workshop for use at anchor.

The sea-settler’s preoccupation with ‘freedom’ is less easily understood by the seafarer.

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean," Patri Friedman, one of the participants in the San Francisco-based Seasteading Project, argues. The project aims "to build sovereign, self-sufficient floating platforms, thus creating new territory on the oceans" – in other words, to colonise what is still referred to in inter-governmental legal terminology as ‘the high seas’, the wide tracts of ocean over which no nation has sovereignty. To seafarers, the Seasteading Project and others like it that propose purpose-built permanent or fixed structures on the sea’s surface or beneath it – civilian and military researchers have been living and working for extended periods in underwater ‘habitats’ since the 1960s, mainly inshore, at depths above fifty metres – are simply an expression of an archetypal shore-bound ‘settler’ mentality. Comparatively spacious, stable emulations of an island, they’re designed for a few to live on at first and then, following a pattern of scalability apparent in nineteenth-century North American home-steading communities, to expand with additional components, platforms and population to become a fully fledged sea-borne colony supported by what Friedman dubs (a little too cutely) a ‘seaconomy’. Inherent in the creation of such a colony is the ambition to proclaim it an independent ocean state, or what James H. Lee refers to in his paper Castles in the Sea: A Survey of Artificial Islands and Floating Utopias, as a ‘microtopia’ – in some ways, a virtual concept: a self-governing micro-nation founded atop a man-made, geographically non-specific fixed or floating space.

None of this is of much interest to seafarers. They have long known how to work around governmental strictures and retain a large measure of freedom. For example, the seafarer’s ‘floating space’ is required by international law to be ‘flagged’ – registered in the country in which its majority owner is either a citizen or resident. In practice, this is subverted by ‘flags of convenience’: the legal owners of many vessels, including yachts, are corporations set up in countries where taxes are lower or government maritime regulations less strict. As a result, a vessel can sail under the sovereignty of Panama, the Channel Islands, Mauritius or Thailand, for example, without ever having visited the home port inscribed on its transom. Moreover, its captain and crew will probably be a mix of nationalities, none the same as the vessel’s. Their certificates of competency, the seafarer’s equivalent of operating licences, might be issued by yet other nations.

Even a seafarer’s tax status can be moot. Although a tax domicile (the country to which one reports and pays taxes) is not normally something workers get to negotiate, seafarers who rarely set foot in their own countries – and have no property or other holdings there – and whose income is derived entirely from foreign or ‘offshore’ sources (especially those in opaque tax havens), are deemed by many nations to be ‘residents of the high seas’ and legally untaxable.

The sea-settler’s apparent preoccupation with ‘freedom’ is less easily understood by the seafarer. The rural nomad’s migration is, as Chatwin describes it, "a ritual performance, a 'religious' catharsis, revolutionary in the strictest sense in that each pitching and breaking of camp represents a new beginning". The pelagic nomad’s succession of voyages – during which, according to tradition, a course is never set ‘to’ a particular port but rather, less precisely, ‘towards’ it – are an actual and spiritual disconnection from the enervating sameness of settled life. The disciplined, ceaseless routine of working a vessel at sea can be hard and dull, but there is always a jittery awareness of possibility, of change, just beyond the horizon. At sea, nothing remains the same for very long – and every landfall is another opportunity.

The current British Admiralty chart, Singapore to Song Sai Gon and the Gulf of Thailand, is one of the few still published that uses fathoms and feet rather than metres, although it is modern enough to have surrendered soundings inside the ten-fathom line to an insipid pale blue – preferred by a generation of mariners who find older, more detailed and beautiful, monochromatic engravings hard to read. The chart is commonly used by vessels en route between the world’s two busiest ports, Hong Kong and Singapore, and two of its most congested sea passages, the Singapore Straits and the pirate-infested Malaccan Straits. A large-scale survey of 1:500,000, it covers nearly three thousand square nautical miles of sea.

A cursory look at this chart underscores the stark difference between seafarer and sea-settler. Sea-settlers are looking to the sea for room to establish new physical, social and political structures. Seafarers are just looking for sea-room, uncrowded, easily navigable open water with only the vagaries of the weather and sea-state to worry them. For the seafarer, sea-room – not a fixed structure, not the shore – is where safety, rest and freedom are found. And yet within this one relatively small, enclosed area of sea, which is similar to many others, such as the Mediterranean or North Seas, the Persian Gulf, or the Gulf coasts of Texas or Louisiana, real sea-room is hard to find, even without the hundreds of islands, drying reefs, sandbanks, isolated rocks and shallows that are natural hazards to navigation. More than seventy nautical miles offshore, on a line extending north-west for nearly five hundred nautical miles along the east coasts of Malaysia and Thailand, there are more than a dozen gas and oil fields. Associated with each of them are scores of production and pipeline platforms, tanker moorings and storage tankers, as well as uncharted exploration rigs. Inshore are marine farms and fishing stakes, few of them charted and none of them lit, all frequented by motor-driven, undecked canoes and outriggers – as well as a score of military exercise areas and firing ranges. Even the relatively shallow sea bottom is encumbered with wrecks, pipelines, telecommunication cables, submarine exercise areas and explosive dumping grounds.

At night, in these tropical waters, there are so many tankers, cargo-carriers, warships, trawlers and long-liners, pilot boats, tugs (many with barges under tow), ferries and pleasure boats that the diffused glow of their navigation lights resembles a city sprawling across the seaward horizon.

The last thing any seafarer wants is another structure, permanent or mobile, impeding a safe passage offshore. Yet the sea-settler, whose understanding of the sea is less practical and probably more romantic, dreams of man-made islands. These would more closely resemble an oil rig – if only because the complex engineering required to anchor a large, liveable structure in deep water and protect and its occupants – rather than the Disney-like artificial atoll developed as retreats for the rich off the coast of Dubai. Such structures, however they look, will be regarded by seafarers as an unwelcome hazard, interfering with safe navigation to and from adjacent coasts, fouling fishing grounds and probably requiring vessels – as vulnerable offshore oil and gas platforms do – to stand at least half a kilometre clear of them.

The piratical tradition appears to be what inspires the most passion in modern sea-settlers.

If the plethora of seasteading documents to be found online is any indication, sea-settlers are a lot less taken with the stolid quotidian routine of living and working on the sea than they are with the idea of reconfiguring the autonomous island state as an anarchic, or at least extra-national, social, political and economic experiment, akin to the ‘pirate utopias’ described by the cultish American political writer Peter Lamborn Wilson in his 1995 book, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes (Autonomedia, 1996). Wilson, who is also known as Hakim Bey, envisaged, "Remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned … some of these islands supported 'intentional communities', whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life." One seventeenth-century enclave, the tiny, self-proclaimed Pirate Republic of Salé in Morrocco, was so successful as a safe haven for Muslim corsairs – the so-called ‘Barbary pirates’ – it became a sea power in its own right and negotiated treaties and mercenary alliances with various Mediterranean powers. This piratical tradition appears to be what inspires the most passion in modern sea-settlers. In Seasteading: The Second to Last Frontier, an article published three years ago in The Yale Free Press, Ben Darrington wrote: "Seasteading would provide an easier way for people who do not like their governments to set up new countries at sea where they could make new rules. Mobile ocean settlements would allow these new states to locate in more useful or less contested waters. This means more experimentation and innovation with different social, political, and economic systems and more competition to create efficient government. Certain businesses are perfectly suited to platforms: material industries such as oil and aquaculture can be self-governed and tax-free, and service industries such as casinos, offshore banking, and data havens avoid some of the existing domestic problems with vice laws, copyright restrictions, and government intrusion or revenue-seeking. Just as pariah individuals and groups seek the freedom of the frontier, pariah industries can ply their trade there, taking the benefits as well as the consequences upon themselves." Unfortunately, Darrington ignores the almost insurmountable legal intricacies of establishing a legitimate micro-nation offshore today. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LoST) rejects claims of territory or special economic standing by private owners of extra-national human-made islands or structures. Even before the ratification of LoST in 1982, the few ill-advised and makeshift attempts to create offshore micro-nations all ended in failure. REM Island was a floating platform built in Northern Ireland and towed to the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands, in 1964 – the same year that the infamous ‘pirate’ Radio Caroline began broadcasting from a ship anchored in international waters off the English east coast port of Felixstowe. REM housed a ‘pirate’ broadcaster, Radio and TV Noordzee, for four months until the Royal Dutch Navy shut it down. The Republic of Rose, established in 1967 by an Italian engineer, Giorgio Rosa, on a four hundred square metre platform he erected in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Rimini, was destroyed within a year by Italian Navy sappers after Rosa was arrested for tax evasion. In 1972, a wealthy Las Vegas-based real estate developer, Michael Oliver, tried to raise foreign investment to turn Minerva Reefs, a group of semi-submerged coral reefs 260 miles south-west of the Pacific kingdom of Tonga, into a two and half thousand hectare atoll and micro-nation, the Republic of Minerva. A luckless Australian contractor had managed to dredge enough coral, shell and sand to create a couple of hectares of barren cay above the high-water mark when a Tongan prison labour gang, dispatched by King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, landed on it and claimed it as Tongan sovereign territory. In the aftermath of these episodes, the Administrative Court of Cologne in West Germany held that "a man-made artificial platform … cannot be called either 'a part of the earth’s surface' or 'land territory' and only structures which make use of a specific piece of the earth’s surface can be recognised as 'State territory' within the meaning of international law." The court referred to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States which outlined four very broad criteria for statehood: a permanent population; defined territory; government; and capacity to enter into relations with other states.

They emerged from a russet haze at twilight, just five nautical miles from the coast of Suffolk — a pair of grimy cement towers spanned by a rust-flecked steel tabletop. A fast, flooding tide churned the cold, mud-brown North Sea around them, and low waves edged with wind-blown spume spilled away like the wake of a ship. In the dying light, the persistent impression was that the whole structure was moving.

We were aboard a thirty-eight-foot, schooner-rigged catamaran on a passage ‘down Channel’ from Lowestoft, running fast before an easy nor’easterly that we prayed we might carry as far as the Scilly Isles and out into the Atlantic.

All afternoon, the low coastline to leeward of us had been a thin, grey-brown smudge, pierced here and there by a sliver of church spire or chimney. As much to relieve our boredom as to satisfy a mild curiosity, we plotted a course inshore towards a tiny symbol on the chart marked ‘fort’. This was all that indicated the existence of Sealand, the only surviving, man-made microtopia, a pioneering seastead that had somehow clung to independence and crypto-sovereignty for over forty years.

We caught a whiff of something dank and fishy on the wind.

Paddy Bates, an entrepreneurial pirate radio broadcaster, took over what was then a decommissioned World War II gun emplacement and fortified barracks in 1967. HM Fort Roughs had been built above the Rough Sands bank off Harwich to deter the Germans from mining the approaches to this strategically important port. Renamed Sealand by Bates, who renamed himself ‘Prince Roy’, its history since then has been colourful – armed stand-offs with the British Navy, court challenges to its self-proclaimed sovereignty, armed invasion by German and Dutch civilians and the kidnap of Prince Roy’s son, indirect links to passport scams and other crimes, failed business ventures and even fires. A decade or so ago, Sealand finally established a modest ‘national’ economy when a data-hosting company, HavenCo, set up its servers within the fort and turned it into a discreet, secure, offshore data haven. Tourists are rarely welcome. There was plenty of water beneath our shallow keels so we circled the fort at a distance of a cable or so before rounding up down-tide of it. We let the boat fore-reach slowly into the flood for a few minutes as we took a closer look. A squat, flat-roofed bungalow straddled the tabletop. The shadowy lip of a helicopter pad hung out over the sea. Tendrils of green-black marine vegetation and crusty barnacles clung to the mottled cement and we caught a whiff of something dank and fishy on the wind. It was drear and foreboding, with scant evidence of any human presence. I tried to imagine how grim an urban dystopia would have to be to compel me to take refuge in this outpost, even for a day. It was more like a prison than a version of paradise. We put the helm a-lee and let the catamaran drift astern before turning away from the wind. Slack sheets rattled in their blocks as the sails filled again. The hulls lifted and the wide decks flexed a little as the catamaran began to make way. Sealand fell away astern. For a moment, it felt as if we were fleeing for our lives.

First published in Griffith Review, Australia, 2006.

#seasteading #sealand #seanomads #piracy #micronations #lawofthesea

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harmonyandco · 4 years

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Death eaters were dying. They weren’t being spent on his goals, they were having very suspicious “accidents.” “Catastrophes.” Apparently being “randomly” targeted in “violent acts.”

In short, the self styled dark lord was losing his minions to activities that his minions should be performing. Not falling victim to. Worse, he had no idea who or what was getting them. Possible leads vaporized like smoke in the dark of a new moon. On the surface, the war was going extremely well for his side. He outright controlled the ministry, Severus had controlled Hogwarts, now the Carrows did...but they suspected McGonagall held the wards. When Severus died she also disappeared. One of their spies had tailed her to the seventh floor where she vanished and hadn’t been seen since. But the school itself wasn’t cooperating. The daily prophet and WWN were mere mouthpieces for he and his minions...and yet a full 50% of his marked forces were either dead or had vanished. Not ran, he would know thorough their marks. They were gone. He fully suspected they were dead, but had no evidence beyond suspicions. When he first noticed his agents were going quiet he thought that the Order and/or Potter had gotten lucky a few times. But as his losses mounted at an alarming rate he knew there was a new player on the field. One he didn’t even have a name of. Death eaters were afraid to walk down Knockturn Alley! They owned that alley for longer than their movement had existed, and somehow, now, if they were in the open their heads may explode without an apparent curse having been fired. Fenrir went that way when he thought to make an example of a child that had ventured too near the Diagon Alley entrance. Others were found dead in the shadows without a mark upon them beyond a look on their face of surprise or shock. Initially the killing curse was suspected but St Mungos said they, to a man, had had their necks expertly broken. They weren’t all even in their Death Eater garb. The Parkinson matriarch was last seen in an evening gown for a ministry gala. Poof. Gone. Severus was killed in an apparent dragon attack through the window of the headmasters office. But nobody saw or even heard a dragon. But what else could burn that hot? He had to find out what was going on. And soon. The true scope of the losses only he knew but it was getting hard to conceal. Only their fear of his wrath has kept them from asking too many questions.

It reminded him of events from September of ‘79 to his unfortunate sabbatical in October of ‘81. By all appearances the war was going well then too. The light thought that they were on the ropes. But his forces were being worn far too thin by eerily similar occurrences. He had to track this menace down.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

From her “nest” in a bell tower 2000 yards from Knockturn Alley, Emma Granger quietly cleaned her rifle and contemplated the last year. Her husband Dan was quietly making his way back after dispatching his last two “appointments” for the day. Their having “awoken” from an unscheduled vacation in Melbourne has thrown both of them for a loop. For all their Spec-ops training they were both blindsided by their own daughter erasing their memory. They hadn’t seen it coming at all. Apparently they’d been living the life of a pair of mild-mannered dentists for a couple of months already when a routine medical exam to her brought it all rushing back when the couple was asked about her internal scarring and if she had lost the baby. The 17 year old girl that they’d forgotten they had. Now, they had no idea where she was, but within 24 hours of recovering their memories they were back in country and were put in touch with the M division of the Organization and soon were looking at case files that both thought they’d put to rest 18 years ago. Three times this Riddle guy had nearly killed them both. Three times they’d defied the odds. The first they both believed to be random chance. After that they were on his radar and he didn’t like to miss. The last time had nearly caused Emma to miscarry, giving birth to Hermione nearly a week and a half early instead of the end of September. They started this campaign of eradicating him and his followers then until Halloween of ‘81 when Emma managed to put a bullet through his head as he stood in a nursery in Wales. She couldn’t get a shot before he’d killed two more victims that night. The only strange thing was the green flash she’d seen in her scope as her bullet made the journey. Seconds later his heat signature was just gone. Not on the floor and cooling as the adults were. Gone. She and Dan had been read in on the magical world that night. But since it wasn’t their area, they didn’t work it. Until now. Their daughter and future son-in-law Harry were right in the middle of this mess and both had disappeared. And Dan and Emma were going to find them. And soon.

A Thermite RPG into the headmasters office of the school killed Snape.

After the parents find the kids-The Horcrux in Bellatrix’s vault the goblins refuse to “help” with...they won’t let anyone not authorized into another customers vault. But they can certainly give a tour to potential customers. And if potential customers happen to be informed where Bella’s vault is for targeting information and it gets hit with a bunker-buster dropped through Borgin and Burke’s thereby incinerating the contents and melting them into a pile of slag that the goblins have really no problem recasting into coin... well so be it.

Yes. This long winded thing is a prompt. Sorry it’s so long. Use none of it. Use part of it. Use all of it. I don’t care, it just struck me today and I had to share it. Basically, Hermione (as in Canon) wants to protect her parents and Bolivia tea them and sends them away. She it basically the daughter in the movie “True Lies” and has no idea who her parents really are or what they’re capable of. September is the 7th month of the Roman calendar and I think I also came up with enough to throw the prophecy into ambiguity that it could even be Hermione that is the chosen one. And NOBODY knows it.

Have fun with it.

submitted by @harmonyeveryday

#harmony prompt #submission #harmony #harry x hermione #Harry Potter #Hermione Granger #harmoinyeveryday

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theweatherlab · 5 years

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Dorian’s eye is currently obscured by some upper level clouds - you’ll notice from my previous post of radar that it’s still there. Currently a strong catagory 2.

The hurricane is moving nearly parallel to, but offshore of, the east coast of Florida. A sustained wind of 42 mph (69 km/h) and a wind gust of 60 mph (96 km/h) were recently reported at a weather station in Melbourne Beach, Florida

SUMMARY OF 400 PM EDT...2000 UTC...INFORMATION ---------------------------------------------- LOCATION...27.6N 78.6W ABOUT 70 MI...110 KM N OF FREEPORT GRAND BAHAMA ISLAND ABOUT 105 MI...165 KM E OF FORT PIERCE FLORIDA MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...110 MPH...175 KM/H PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 325 DEGREES AT 5 MPH...7 KM/H MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...959 MB...28.32 INCHES

#dorian #science #nature #meteorology #gif #florida #weather

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roswellroamer · 5 years

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Day 4. Mt. Cook Village to Nasebey. 355km.

Today we awoke to a steady rain. Oh well. Can't realistically expect to avoid rain even in the drier summer season as we push south and west into the rainy zones of the South Island. The bonus was an end to end rainbow which followed us for over 20 miles as we retreated down the glacier valley to Lake Pukaki. The winds were fierce and as we turned toward Tekapo we struggled to maintain our line on the road. I would guess 45 mph +. Patagonia level stuff. A bit scary at times. With my jacket slightly unzipped due to unexpected warmth (didn't drop below the 50s even up by the glaciers) I felt like the Michelin man who was about to be launched like a kite. We cruised by the stunningly blue lakes and took a bunch of pictures with the full rainbow and then the azure water. Wish the pics were as impressive as in person but they still don't suck. Within 5 miles we were out of the heavy rain and skirted drizzle for much of the day. A slight concern for the pannier's ability to stay dry after it seemed there was some water upon loading this AM. However we have dry duds after the day so all appears fine for now. Western rain in feet may yield a different result but fingers crossed. We were told to get gas every 250kms to avoid an issue. We ended the day about 240 kms on our tanks from Geraldine. We cut it a bit too close as we were on reserve counting up to 26kms on reserve. I believe the 800 holds 16 liters and the bikes took 15.5l. 😅 With fuel fears allayed we found a bakery in Tekapo and also lots of REI type campers, trekkers, vacationers. I had a banana cake and a steak/mushroom pie (I could get accustomed to these pies!) and a chocolate milk. Not a classic Kiwi breakfast but good for me!

Now, we endeavored to find our first unpaved route today. We had been told that a couple of passes were fun and so we routed ourselves from Tekapo to the road that aimed us up a valley and toward Hakataramea pass. A guy on a KLR pulled up alongside as we took a photo and he said he was going to ride through the same two mountain unpaved passes we had selected. He would show us the way. Off we went but in short order he was well ahead of us. He had a provisional license (beginner, provisional with a max of 650cc, then full) but was a dirt rider and we only saw him once more. As the road became windier and a series of 6-7 stream crossings occurred we then wound to the top of a low altitude peak and there is a gate there. You need to open and close it behind you. He was waiting for us there. Nice guy. However we never saw him again! We descended while taking in some dramatic scenery and taking quite a few picture stops. It wound out into some fine farmland and then into the biker town of Kurow. There were dozens of dirt bikes there. Apparently we were in the midst of the Vincent rally. Around 180 dirt bikes cruising through this fun part of NZ. We sat with a few guys from Australia on KTM, Yamaha & Suzuki who were enjoying more technical stuff than we were attempting! I had another pie there. Butter chicken, yum. Now we took a few turns in figuring out the way towards Duntroon and we stopped at some Maori rock paintings while getting our bearing to find the turnoff to Danseys pass. We were told there was a bar there so off we went! There was a mini-pass then a descent prior to heading to the top of Danseys. Bridges were largely paved over the water crossings on this leg and then right back to gravel. The views were beautiful and the ride was a good fun. Enough slipping and sliding but not too much! Very windy following the hills. Two thirds of the way down we discovered the Danseys Inn and pulled in for a beer. This is after I walked into the owner's house thinking it was the bar. I mean they did have a covered outside bar complete with a row of bar stools and a large wooden vat that appeared to be at one time used for brewing. And the crowning touch was the wooden bucket on the porch full of empty Speight bottles 🍺. As soon as I opened the door the large dog of the house wanted to get out and I saw the living room. Oops. He was very friendly but didn't want to be put back in the house. Fortunately he resisted only with his considerable weight and not his teeth. I had a good story to tell the very nice owner who was seated at the bar. Turns out the owner of the Royal Hotel was also there as we made his acquaintance again later in the day as he runs the only establishment in Naseby that is open for food and drink on a Sunday afternoon after 4PM. Nice guy. Two minor tennis frustrations so far... One that I completely forgot about the Australian Open when booking. Had I thought about it I would've been able to route here through Melbourne and enjoyed a day or two of AO tennis. Wasn't on my radar when making plans six months ago. Two, now I am also unable to watch the open. So much closer here but after CHC, the rural TV lineup hasn't allowed viewing of the last rounds. Missed Kenin's win and set the alarm to watch the men's final this evening but again to no avail. Looks like I missed an instant classic 5 setter and Djokovic prevailed. Oh well!

No noise here but the birds and the breeze. There are some groups of cyclists here who are riding the 93 mile Otago Central Rail Trail. The walk to and from the Royal Hotel brought us by a motorcycle enthusiast's shop with a few interesting vintage bikes including a Ducati Mach 1 and a cherry Benelli. The park we passed also boasted some huge trees which may be redwoods and are from California. Naseby is so quiet because after the gold mining period here (1863-1940) the Otago rail line bypassed the town and now there are lots of historic buildings but not very many people. During the height of the gold rush there were nearly 4,000 people here, now the number of permanent residents is less than 100.

#newzealand #motoadventure #advrider

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mossvale-blog-blog · 5 years

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The Conquest of S.A.

today is Sunday 23-6 - 2019

Hell All !!! we had a nice week end..... went out two consecutive days .... on Saturday walking along the Torren river that goes through the city of Adelaide .. along the two banks they have landscaped the grounds and created a small lake.....it is really very nice...... you will see people walking, relaxing, reading, walking the dog .. etc etc ..... since we moved to Sa I always had intentions to get to see this area and enjoy the experience...... it is equivalent to walk along the Yarra river in Melbourne or the Circular Quay in Sydney... and today we went to Stirling that is located in the Adelaide Hills..... it is a bit like Leura in the blue Mountains in NSW...... very quaint ..... there is a market there once a month.... a bit similar to the one in Bowral..... but better ( and we know about street markets !!!) .... we bought some more plants ( 9 ) and had a very enjoyable time as the weather was perfect.

I might have mentioned this before but it is good to repeat it .... the Population of South Australia is 1.77 millions and Adelaide has 1.33 Millions.... that means that the rest of the state has “ very few people “..... which is a good thing.... now this is a good place to invest moneys .... the property is very cheap and in due course it will catch up with the rest of the country...... now look at this sample ..... a block of land in James Taunton Drive ( Moss Vale ) ... the street where we were living until Nov 2017..... sold a few months ago for $ 425 000... here were we are living now will cost $ 180 000 with water views and golf course views...... so now that the interest rate for fixed term deposits is so low. it is a good time to invest in this State....... in 5 years time you will be a very happy person...... it happened with Western Australia and it will happen here.

the competition to guess the future use of the steel frame as per picture published a few weeks ago.... is still open..... none had produced the correct answer .... we had a few suggestions ..... a radar dish ( Felix ).. a wind detector ( John ). a tennis racket ( Franco ) a portable sign ( Allen ) a solar panel ( Peter ) a Paddle Pop ( Russell ) a street sign to indicate cut de sac ( Graham ) ... all of them lacking sufficient imagination...... hurry up the wining price is excellent and I have made good progress towards completing the project ..... and now some photos

Wow..... along the strip of land running from front to back on one side of the house

now this may not look as very impressive...... it was hard to build.... it give us a walking path between the two sector of the backyard and in front of the Balcony..... you can see the basket that is waiting for us to line it..... put some soil and plant some type of cascading plants ..... this project rivals the Snowing Scheme project in NSW .... we have name it the Parkway Boulevard to make justice to its importance !!!!

the planting of the backyard is continuing ...... more to come .....

now..... this week we tackled the front yard...... as from now the front of the house looks more presentable...... but nothing is finished yet...... everything is work in progress

Wow ....... getting there...........

Well.... this is all for today.....wishing all of you a nice week ..... winter will finish soon.

Cheers

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chrysaliseuro2018 · 6 years

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BOSS OF THE BUS

As we were making our way down the west coast on our 5 day trip, Genevieve was investigating trips from Side to Capadocia in the centre of Turkey. Correspondence went back and forth about a €40-50 (about $75-80) 3 day trip. Comparing what we were paying for our 5 days this was so cheap I feared we would be camping. But no this was the price. Of course the sting came a bit later.

So we were up for it and the 4 of us booked to start the tour on 12th June with pick up time 6.45am. Antique Side is closed to cars other than those of residents so the tour bus couldn’t come down the hill to collect all our luggage. Booking ‘agents’ advised the town electric cart would collect us but alas no. Meanwhile Chris was in negotiations with the police manning the gate but it was a firm No. With minutes ticking by Doug quickly got Penny’s car, luggage was loaded into that and driven to the bus.

Now about 30 minutes had elapsed so understandably got some stink-eye from the passengers who’d been kept waiting.

The bus was designed for 12 passengers but fitted out for 17 so it was a close and intimate affair. In the front 2 seats were Doug and Gene who it has to be said got lucky with some extra leg room. Behind them 2 elderly Danes who grabbed a bottle of wine and or beers at every possible opportunity. Behind the Danes were 10 year old Russian lad with his mousy mute mother. Then Chris and me wedged in (Russian lad had his seat reclined the entire 2 days), and behind us the very friendly and chatty Aunty Margaret and Tina from Essex. Along the back were sweet young newly weds Soyah & Maurice from Holland, a spare seat, then Holly, Tina’s stepsister who judging by her size would have been grateful for the spare seat. Could have knocked us over with a feather when she told us she had been to the 7 continents by age 24, had emigrated to Melbourne several years ago (lives in Chelsea)and works as a sound engineer. You just wouldn’t have picked it!

Then heading back along the bus in single seats was a surly young lad who turned out to be part of the tour operation, a woman of unknown origins who disappeared after day 1, then Mr Russia who seemed to have supplanted both his wife’s and his son’s ego into his own.

Bus driver slipped under the radar but the same can’t be said for the guide Nahjo. In fact it was a battle of egos between Nahjo and Mr Russia. He didn’t just like the sound of his own voice. He was addicted to it! Along the way amongst other chit chat and information we got his life story, some group marriage guidance, how small lies can be forgiven and how this works in a religious context too. Every monologue went for a minimum of 10 minutes and woe betide you should you chat amongst yourselves during one of his diatribes. In the gaps the gregarious, party-loving-club-going-40-something Tina would try to share with me her life history. Nahjo seemed to get wind of it and standing facing the back of the bus would either clear his throat or announce it was his turn. Chris and I were left thinking our polite and humble Gallipoli guide must have been absent for the Tour Guide Arrogance 101 unit of the qualification.

So we were off and despite the late get away we stopped not 20 minutes down the road for a tea/ coffee break, followed by a breakfast stop 40 minutes later at a petrol station/ roadside stop. (It has to be noted that Cappadocia is some 470 kilometres from Side so it was going to be long day if the stops came so frequently). Breakfast option 1 was a vast modern complex selling everything you don’t want to eat. Gene who has an eye for local food spotted hidden in a corner behind some trees an outfit selling gözleme so we headed there. Great decision. Shoes off and into the tent where the local lady sat crossed leg with her dough, tubs of filling and the black dome for cooking the gözleme. Spinach and cheese one was a bit dry but the potato one was outstanding.

All wedged ourselves back in the bus which climbed up the mountains through some magical scenery. Unfortunately Nahjo kept reassuring us on the wrong side of the bus that we would see it ‘on the back journey’. However our arrangements meant we weren’t doing ‘the back journey’ so at one particular stop he was a little annoyed when we headed off 200 metres down the road to photograph the nomads herding their goats. I suggested it would be better for all if the bus pulled over so we could all see anything of interest on the way to Cappadocia. Suggestion was not welcomed.

Another stop for coffee and the sting of the extra €’s. It had to happen of course. You can’t run a tour for €50 per person providing transport, 2 nights accommodation no matter how basic, 2 dinners and two breakfasts. So lunch which we though was fend for oneself turned out to be a set payment (we only paid for one and opted to take our chances on day 2), and extra for Whirling dervishes, museums (charge €25/ $39.20 versus ticket face value less than $9) etc totalling an extra €120 between us. Even taking that into consideration €220/$350 for both of us was pretty cheap and the overcharging on extras balanced the undercharging on initial outlay.

Next stop, lost count if it was 4 or 5, was at the Mevlâna museum Konya, the birth place of the Sufi religion and Dervishes. The site is a holy place for Muslims with over 1.5 million visiting it yearly. The Mosque contains the tomb of Rumi (unfortunately hidden due to renovations) later known as Mevlâna who devised the idea of whirling and the tombs of other eminent dervishes. Also on display were Mervlana’s coat, a box apparently containing his beard and any number of exquisitely decorated Qurans, one so tiny that the author went blind writing it.

Alongside the Mosque was a complex giving information about the dervish culture. Included was a lodge displaying mannequins dressed as they would have been in Mevlâna’s day and the dervish cells displaying various items. I for one would have enjoyed more than our tightly scheduled allotted time there. But we were rounded up like errant school children and headed back for the bus. Chris managed to ruffle Nahjo’s feathers by needing a toilet stop when we were warned the next section of the drive would be 2.5 hours. By this stage as it was 1pm we were wondering about the elusive lunch if the drive was for 2.5 hours. There was some grumbling from Tina and Aunty Margaret and it wasn’t from their stomachs.

Eventually we rolled into another vile modern roadside stop - our lunch venue. Behind the counter were some aggrieved (probably because of the lateness of the hour) gorillas of men slopping out an assortment of runny casseroles, reluctant to identify any ingredients. It tasted as bad as it looked. We were immediately pleased with the earlier decision not to commit to day two lunch.

A short drive and then time for another stop. This time it was to visit a preserved home dug under ground, a primitive more simple Coober Pedy affair. Apparently tunnel complexes formed entire cities but this was a small example taking only 10 minutes for everyone to get through. I opted out and instead waited near the entrance/ exit where a dozen or so middle aged women had set up a market. Trouble was they were all selling the same little local cloth dolls so competition to get any one walking by was frenetic. Females in particular were the target for the spruiking with a good natured but frantic cacophony of calls of “Mother, Mother”. The closer anyone ventured to the stall the louder the screeching got. I hope everyone managed to sell something but with another 5 weeks on the road, it wasn’t something I could buy.

Everyone back on the bus and off to Dervish show scheduled to start at 6pm. Clearly we were up against it as the previously cautious bus drive planted his foot. Arrived shortly after 6pm with another bus arriving after us. Having been so enchanted with the beautiful ceremony we saw at Hodjapasha in Istanbul Chris and I we were looking forward to a similar experience. Dougal and Gene had never seen them and had their expectations built up by us.

Oh dear!!! The pipe/flute player struggled to find a note, the dervishes all looked like novices (part time uni job perhaps), they wore slippers that made a noise that was distracting, one was losing his pants, also very distracting. There was a non dancing head honcho roaming around amongst them dressed in black once again distracting, they didn’t vary their speed and were for the best part out of sync. Yes they could spin but it lacked all the beauty, rhythm and charm of our previous experience. We left feeling glad to have seen a more authentic experience and Doug and Gene left feeling they were yet to see one.

Short drive to our delightfully self rated ‘Special Class’ hotel in Göreme, rooms allocated and orders that we had 15 minutes to get to dinner. Dinner a simple affair with lentil soup, the not-so-traditional-Turkish chicken schnitzel and melon. Danish couple of course knocked off another bottle of wine.

Gene, Chris and I headed for a stroll to town wandering through the streets. Highlight was at a hotel where I poked my head in and elderly Mehmet the owner insisted we come and look at his accommodation. Beautiful rooms that were huge with the bathrooms built into the rock giving a sense of a modern and upmarket Flinstone bathroom. With Mehmet’s limited English we spent a special half hour in the hotel’s courtyard trying and making a reasonable hash of having a meaningful conversation.

A long day and time for to return to our ‘Special Class’ Hotel Karl for bed, especially for Gene with a 4.30 am start for her hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia.

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melbournereaders · 4 years

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Melbourne Weather Forecast

Melbourne weather can be found through various channels and you have all the sources that will help you in weather forecasting. There are a number of websites, which give you a complete Melbourne weather forecast. You can choose any of the websites that will give you all the details. Melbourne weather is also given through local weather channels that provide you with accurate weather information in your area. You can get the weather forecast on weather radar, weather forecasts online and you can get weather forecasts on the television.

The weather forecasts give you all the information you need for today and tomorrow. The weather forecasts provide you with the current weather conditions including cloud, wind speed, and rainfall, and these are collected from hundreds of weather stations around Australia. By visiting one of the local weather stations, you will be able to collect detailed weather data and you will also be able to see the average weather over the past week. This will help you understand the weather pattern better. You should try to collect as much information about local weather as you can, including the humidity and dew-point temperature.

Melbourne weather will be very different on Friday than it is on any other day of the week. If you are looking for good weather, Melbourne weather is certainly the place for you. The weather radar located at weather radar sites can provide you with the weather forecast details for all the cities surrounding Melbourne. Melbourne weather will be cool and vary depending upon the time of day. It is advisable to collect information on weather radar early in the morning when the temperature starts to increase.

The weather conditions can change very fast and you need to follow weather forecasts daily, especially for the southern area of the city. If you do not pay attention to weather forecasts, you may end up in serious weather situations. If you pay a little attention to weather conditions, you may be able to avert serious weather conditions, like heavy rain. Melbourne weather will not be pleasant in the evenings, as it becomes very cold. It is advisable to dress warmly for these nights.

It is possible to get a weather forecast for Melbourne daily if you visit some of the public weather websites. These websites provide detailed weather forecasts for all the cities surrounding Melbourne. The Melbourne weather website provides the latest weather data for the entire state. You can collect this data using a computer and it is possible to view Melbourne weather daily. You may also collect weather data from your local weather station.

The Victorian weather site also provides information on local weather conditions. If you visit the Melbourne weather forecast site before deciding on what clothes to wear on a particular day, you will be in for a great deal. You can use this information to select suitable clothes. Melbourne weather forecasts provide you with the best chance of enjoying pleasant weather. Melbourne weather conditions are also available on the Internet. The weather daily website also has a number of interesting articles concerning weather, climate, and other topics.

Read more https://melbournemix.weebly.com/blog/tips-to-help-you-get-better-at-airport-parking

#melbourne weather

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tauers-go-dutch · 7 years

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Why Bristol?

I can’t really describe why I wanted to go to Bristol. Being a beer geek, I quickly realized that the UK has really good craft beer- most everyone’s probably heard of BrewDog, but there is also Siren, Burning Sky, Magic Rock, Buxton, and Wild Beer, to just name a few. As I kept trying new beers, I started paying attention to where they were brewed. I noticed that Wild Beer, Arbor, Moor, Tiny Rebel, and others were from Bristol, or at least nearby. Doing a bit of research, I saw there was also a Bristol Beer Week in October, where several of the neighboring breweries and bars team up to bring rare beers to the public. That, plus I had actually found that Bristol is a bit of a foodie town, I was sold- even if literally everyone asked me why I’d want to go to Bristol.

So we got into Bristol Friday evening after a bit a flight delay. We had an easy bus ride from the airport to our hotel, which was right by the main Temple Meads Station. After checking in, we had enough time for one drink. We were only a fifteen minute walk from downtown, so we wandered down to Kongs of King Street. This student bar brought me back to my college days- with a ping pong table, arcade video games, blaring rock music, and a killer beer list. Yes, even the killer beer list reminded me of college (I did go to school in Fort Collins). Despite the throwback, we definitely aren’t college kids anymore, so we called it early and got some sleep.

On Saturday, we had a food tour scheduled with the Bristol Food Tour, but it didn’t start until noon. So we strolled around and found some coffee at the Full Court Press. This small café really knew their coffee. There were several beans with different origins- Guatemala, Indonesia, Ethiopia. I went with a flat white with the Guatemalan origin bean that gave a raspberry chocolate flavor with earthy undertones- one of the best coffees I’ve ever had! Mariah had the cold brew, which was also delicious. Even though we were going a food tour, I also had a cinnamon scone and stopped at another café for a quick mushroom and halloumi brekkie sandwich (again delicious). I underestimated the amount of food that would be on this food tour- skip breakfast if you go, the quality and quantity of food is truly epic. You will not leave famished.

It was a bit of a hike to get to the starting point in Stokes Croft, the hipster neighborhood of Bristol, but we met our guide, Anika, who was a Canadian who relocated to Bristol to work in the restaurant industry. Like I said, Bristol is a bit of a foodie city- I was excited. Also, remember how literally everyone asked why we were going to Bristol? That included the people who were also on the tour- they were all local Bristolians who wanted to see what the next best thing is to eat in their town. After the initial jabs at my American accent, they all were very welcoming and very pleasant to converse with over the next three hours.

Our tour started at The Parlour, a local ice cream shop that used to be a hair parlor (yes, I am American and will leave out the ‘u’ when it isn’t in the name) in the 70s. Three generations later, the same family that owned it in the 70s runs the show today. We got to sample as much as we want, but I truly recommend the cappuccino- it was divine. Next was Flour & Ash, a pizza parlor (see what I did there J) that was started by an ex-corporate banker who wanted to do something different- don’t we all. The pizza cannot be understated; we tried three of the ever-changing selection. I loved the mushroom, but the chorizo was top notch as was the vegan featuring smoked eggplant (no aubergines here). Our guide stopped to show us a Polish Church (read Catholic Church- not common in Protestant England) and shared with us baklava from Bristanbul (I love a good pun). It was good, if almost forgettable, among the other treats on the tour. Next was a café in a laundromat (really a good idea), that featured a drink that could not be named (it was butter beer- come at me JK). Honestly, it wasn’t for me- kinda tasted like eggnog without the alcohol. Meh. Mariah was even less thrilled.

You should always start the tour with ice cream

Mariah was disappointed to find that the Butterbeer from her beloved Harry Potter books tasted more like melted butter than the cream soda she’d imagined.

Always time for some baklava

We crossed the street to a local pub called The Pipe and Slippers. We received a selection of four burgers, including the fried halloumi veggie burger. Sidenote- I’d never heard of halloumi before moving to Europe, but the English love it. It is a stiff Turkish cheese that is delicious when grilled, but it can be excessive (such as when using it to replace meat in a burger). The fried chicken and chorizo (the English love chorizo, too) burgers were good, but I actually loved the seasonal Blood and Guts burger, which featured a slab of blood sausage. If you Google blood sausage, it’s easy to get turned off, but I promise it is good. The fries (not chips) are solid too. Oh, and don’t forget to grab a local brew from the bar.

At this point I’m getting full, but we walked a little further while admiring the street art. Bristol has a vibrant street art community, probably most famously known as the home of Banksy. Stokes Croft has ton on display, and I was loving it. Our next place was a brunch spot called Ceres that was started by a Melbourne chef, and it was amazing. Serious, each time I think I’ve found the best brunch, someone just raises the bar. The food in England gets a bad rap, but the brunch game is on point. We had a dish with maize pancakes with a perfectly poached egg, but the black rice porridge with coconut milk, mango, and lemon balm sealed the deal. That dish was epic, and worth the price of admission.

The amazing black rice pudding

Afterwards, our guide brought us to the Bear pit, which is an outdoor art venue where aspiring street artists and practice and display their work. We had a bit of chocolate from Zara’s Chocolates- I really enjoyed the mint chili crisp. Then we walked back to the downtown area, saw more stunning street art, and eventually made our way to St. Nicolas Market. There we found a gyoza restaurant called eatchu (not capitalized). It was started by some locals after living in Australia and studying under a Japanese chef, and the handcraft love and care that goes into the more than 500 gyozas sold each day really shows. Meanwhile, our guide went and brought us some delicious cakes from Ahh Toots- the Orange Chai was my favorite.

In the Bear pit

Selfies are hard

So ended our tour, but we had plenty of other sites to see… but they’d have to wait until tomorrow because the sky opened up and the rain came down. Well, we just holed up in local brewery- Zerodegrees. These guys specialize in lagers, and they make some good ones. I enjoyed the slightly meltier Vienna lager, while Mariah enjoyed a black currant Berliner Weiss. Once the rain died down, we made our way to Wild Beer Co. I definitely recommend these guys if you’re looking for something different. They specialize in beer fermented with wild yeast, creating unique flavors, which can range from bone dry funk to juicy sour fruit. Maybe not always great, but definitely unique. We closed the night going to two fantastic beer bars, Small Bar and The Beer Emporium. Small Bar might have had a better tap list, but The Beer Emporium had a unique ambiance in an old underground cellar.

The next day we finally saw more of the city, but not after heading to another great brunch spot, Brew (not going to lie, I seriously debated going back to Ceres). Brew held its own with solid poached eggs, bacon, and toast. So we made our way to the Clifton Bridge (the park to the right has a great view), and back to Cabot Tower. It is free to climb Cabot Tower, and there is a great view of the city. Afterwards, we had a ‘treat yourself’ moment at the Bluebird Tea Co. The people there were extremely friendly, and explained how the quaint little tea shop is rapidly expanding all over England- including just opening a store in London. Their teas are still house blended by the founder, who also creates cute puns to name the blends (serious, I think puns are a source of English pride). We bought the founder’s book, an Advent calendar, several bags of loose leaf tea, and a gift set or two for the holidays (can’t spoil who they’re for). We then saw a vintage Banksy (unfortunately splattered with blue paint). We fought the wind walking the Wapping Wharf, and got a burger at the local joint, Squeezed. The burger was good, but the fries were really tasty since they had a light dusting of both salt and sugar. We went back to the Wild Beer Co. (also at Wapping Wharf), and enjoyed a beer before getting on our afternoon flight home.

The famous Clifton Bridge

Mariah was in heaven

Cabot Tower and the view from the top

A Banksy original, ‘Well Hung Lover”

Overall, Bristol was the least touristy place we’ve been so far, which was refreshing. Admittedly, it is a little sleepy, but there is enough culture, from the street art, to the food, to the beer, to justify a weekend trip. While we didn’t have enough time to do this, you can spend more time in the area by taking a quick train to Cardiff, the capital of Wales, Bath, home of the famous Roman ruins, and Stonehenge. Definitely keep this small city on your radar if touring through England!

Tot ziens for now.

#Bristol #Bristol Beer Week #Tauersgodutch #tauers go dutch

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shayanyaan · 5 years

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OnAir

The year is 1999. I am at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and struggling to pick up my jaw that has dropped to the floor. Gate after gate of KLM 747s, all readying themselves to pick up passengers and whisk them off to some exotic corner of the globe. I can’t quite work out whether my jaw dropped at the sheer arresting beauty of the 747 or at the sheer sense of possibility that a large international airport brings. The possibility of new destinations, of new experiences, of new people, of new food. There is something special about walking into an airport, ticket in hand - ticket to another country. That day, I too boarded one of those 747s. To Mumbai.

Back then, the beautiful and majestic 747 could fly you halfway around the world, but even she was powerless to help you deal with the unparalleled boredom that plagued the long haul flight. Sure, you’d have a book to read. Maybe you talked with the person next to you. Perhaps a board game or two. Afterwards, you’d nod off - or at least try to. You’d wake up to find you still have 5 hours to go. 5 hours of staring into space, in a metal tube. The metal tube itself would be hurtling through the atmosphere at close to the speed of sound. Yet inside, you feel that time has stopped.

---

The year is 2002. I am at Paris Charles De Gaulle. Again I am flying to Mumbai. The aircraft itself escapes my memory, probably because it wasn’t as wondrous as a 747. But no matter. This time, it is what I found inside the aircraft that is crucial. The age of the inflight entertainment was all but upon us. A screen on the back of every seat - only a small one, but a screen nonetheless. Movies to watch, games to play, duty free to be bought - all at the touch of a button and without leaving your seat or craning your neck to catch a glimpse of those ghastly drop down screens from the roof. Happy days. Paris to Mumbai in 10 hours but it felt more like 5.

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The year is 2017. I am at Dubai, settling into a 777ER to Hyderabad. This flight is a mere 3.5 hours long - even less than 3 if the winds are kind. Inflight entertainment has come a long way since 2002. Emirates claims to provide me with literally thousands of channels to watch. But I think we can do better than that, certainly in 2017.

The 777 I am on is a decade old, but it is equipped with WiFi that will be available from 10000 feet. It seems so trivial now but from being asked to religiously switch off all electronics not too long ago, to being provided with WiFi on board, I am amazed at how far air travel has come.

While we are still on the ground, I hit off a message to S, who is sitting 10000 miles away in downtown San Francisco. I decide to liven up his morning with a picture of the mighty GE90 engine that is right next to me. I struggle to get over how big this thing is.

We are just pushing back. “This aircraft still has CRT screens, I am guessing it is from 2006?” I try to recall how old Emirates’ oldest aircraft is. Happily, S is not having a busy morning and immediately fires up flightradar - another great wonder of the internet. “A6-EBH from 2006.” My suspicions are confirmed.

“Man, that engine,” he says out of the blue. “I can’t stop looking at it and marvelling at the size of it”

“It’s like flying with half a 737 fuselage next to us!”

Meanwhile, we gingerly make our way to the runway, and hold just short. I can imagine the ATC calls. “Emirates five two four heavy, hold short, runway three zero left”. The cabin lights have been dimmed. Only the odd reading lamp is visible. A hush descends upon the cabin. No babies on board tonight! I peer out of the window. The landing lights have been switched on. I can see the Emirates logo on the engine, the gold font, shining in the light. The engines are purring away impatiently. A hundred thousand pounds of thrust on each wing, waiting to be unleashed on the runway. This is my favorite part of the take off - the anticipation.

I turn my gaze skyward. The darkness is dotted with a line of approaching aircraft with their landing lights twinkling in the sky. I count 4 of them, then 3 more behind, all glistening like pearls on a necklace. The pinprick lights become bigger and bigger as one by one, Emirates 777s touch down, with an air of nonchalance about them. The landings are flawless. The passengers inside wouldn’t have felt a thing.

“Cabin crew, prepare for take off, ” the British accent from the flight deck is true and crisp. Less than a minute later we are aloft, the twin GE90s booming away. We continue our climbout over the Persian gulf, only impeded by a gentle buffet from a patch of rough air. The mighty 777 negotiates it with ease and then, the wing next to me drops, as we perform a swooping right hand turn to point towards the Arabian Sea. “Emirates five two four heavy, right turn heading one one zero,” The little map on the screen in front of me indicates a flight time of less than 3 hours. I am glad to be heading homeward.

The glittering Dubai skyline now behind us and the landing lights switched off, the ten thousand feet chime sounds, allowing the cabin crew to move around. It is also a sign for me to connect to OnAir, the inflight wifi. On the other side of the world, S, has been monitoring the departure on flightradar24. I can imagine him pretending to be an air traffic controller, with his screen set to the dark radar mode.

He sends me a screenshot, showing the other India bound Emirates departures at this time of night. Mumbai, Delhi, Trivandrum. In another picture he shows me some of the A380s - Titanics in the sky, tracing imaginary highways to London, Singapore, Melbourne. Thousands of people from all parts, thousands of people who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, converging that night, every night, ten kilometers above the Arabian Sea. I cannot help but feel a deep kinship to everyone. There is something utterly magical about this - we are merely green dots on a radar screen, yet up here close to the heavens, I know we are more than that. We are all brethren of the same aerial kingdom, distinguished only by a flight number.

Dinner is served but for once, I am not interested. S is at work, but in spirit he is right next to me in conversation. “Imagine surveying a starry night sky from over the dimmed lights of the 777 autopilot panel, ” he says. We spend the next few minutes thinking about how the flightdeck has got to be one of the world’s most beautiful workplaces. Together we piece together the the 777 cockpit - screens showing the aircraft’s attitude, heading, fuel and engine thrusts. The captain and first officer, studiously monitoring the instruments, as the plane approaches the Indian subcontinent, autopilot in command. Soon they will be talking to Mumbai air traffic control.

From the window, I can see the lights of Mumbai fade away into the darkness of the Bhor ghats. Minutes later we are over Pune. I take a moment to reflect on countless ghat crossings I’ve done on the train. “The bhor ghat crossing, a leisurely hour on the Deccan Queen, blink and you miss it on the 777, ” I tell S, who channels his inner railfan and asks if we would like bankers for the crossing. “Not with two massive GE90s powering us, we don’t” I hit back.

As we begin our descent, I bid goodbye to S, thanking him for accompanying me on this flight. I gaze out of the window, looking for the first signs of my hometown. The landing gear drops, instantly causing the wind to whoosh around it, slowing us down. Almost on cue, the wing flaps extend, providing us with more lift. Hyderabad tower would have cleared us to land by now. But I still have some more thoughts to process.

Over the years I have flown home dozens of times. But every single time, in the moments before touchdown, more than the home I am about to walk into, it is always the plane that brought me there, that is in my thoughts. I owe a lot of wonderful memories with my family, to the miracle of flight. And on this occasion, to the miracle of wifi. Not only am I able to experience the joy of flying across oceans and continents, I can now share that joy with another person while I’m at it.

The plane is now lined up exactly with the runway center line. 500 feet beyond the threshold, the wheels meet the surface. Less than 24 hours earlier, I was in Texas. Now I am 10 time zones away, in India. On the way home in the cab, it hits me, not for the first time. Air travel has shrunk the world. And so has the internet.

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sa7abnews · 1 month

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I never wanted to get married. But when I got pregnant, everything changed.

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/i-never-wanted-to-get-married-but-when-i-got-pregnant-everything-changed/

I never wanted to get married. But when I got pregnant, everything changed.

Melissa Noble never saw herself getting married. Then, she got pregnant.Courtesy of Melissa NobleI never saw myself getting married.However, when I got pregnant, my feelings about marriage changed.Now, my husband Sam and I have been married for almost 10 years.I've always been a commitment phobe and was never interested in getting married. In fact, whenever someone would ask my partner Sam and me when we were planning to tie the knot, I'd turn bright red and change the subject. Both of us come from families where our parents are still happily married after 50-plus years, but it just wasn't something that was on my radar or important to me.Then, in 2014, I unexpectedly got pregnant. When I saw the two lines come up on the pregnancy test, I felt absolutely terrified about what was to come. Having a baby was a lifelong commitment — something I'd always shied away from.Getting pregnant changed how I felt about commitmentBy that point, Sam and I had been together for eight years. One evening, we were sitting on the couch in our 1950s two-bedroom flat when Sam casually asked me whether marriage was something I'd now consider. To my surprise, I said I would. I loved Sam, and I knew he was the person for me. I also wanted to have the same last name as our baby.A few weeks later, Sam told me to be ready by 5.30 p.m. He was taking me out for dinner. He seemed a little flustered when he arrived home from work, but I didn't put two and two together.We were driving along the coast in Black Rock, Melbourne, where we were living at the time, when Sam cleared his throat. "Hey, we're a little early for dinner, and there's something I've been wanting to show you," he said. "Someone told me about this place called Poet's Corner, where locals leave poetry. Let's go check it out."Sam's not really a poetry-reading kind of guy, so at that point, I did begin to feel a bit suspicious. We parked and started walking along the beach trail toward Half Moon Bay lookout, my high heels digging into the sand, the salty wind whipping at my hair.I could tell Sam was feeling nervous, and suddenly, my heart started to pound faster in my chest. "Here it is," he said. Next to a picnic table overlooking a stormy Port Phillip Bay was a black leather satchel with the word "Poetry" written on it. "Why don't you have a look inside?" he said.I smiled and opened the satchel, and on the top of the pile was a pink-rimmed envelope with a card inside. I recognized Sam's shaky handwriting straight away. He'd written a poem telling me how much he loved me and had somehow slipped it into the satchel so that it was there waiting for me.Melissa Noble's husband proposed to her at Poet's Corner.Courtesy of Melissa NobleWe've now been married almost 10 yearsAt the very end, it said, "You're the girl of my dreams. Will you be my wife?" When I turned around, Sam was down on one knee, holding a sparkling diamond ring. His eyes shone with tears."Yes, I will," I said, bursting into tears and wrapping my arms around him. At that moment, my fears about commitment vanished for good, and all I felt was happiness to have found my special person in this world, the one I would spend the rest of my life with.Later that evening, we went out for an amazing dinner and called our family and friends to share the happy news. They all joked that it had been a long time coming.Three months later, we were married at a vineyard on the Gold Coast. I'll never forget waking up the first morning after the wedding and saying, "Good morning, husband." It felt surreal and strange, in a good way.Getting pregnant changed my headspace about marriage and helped me think of the future differently. I'd worried that marriage might change how Sam and I felt about each other or make the relationship prematurely stale, but the reality was the opposite. Taking those vows solidified our feelings and made us stronger as a couple. The formality of being married did make a difference, and almost 10 years on, we're still going strong.

#Parenting

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a380flightdeck · 8 years

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Emirates A380 over Arabian Sea on Jan 7th 2017, wake turbulence sends business jet in uncontrolled descent.

An Emirates Airbus A380-800, registration A6-EUL performing flight EK-412 from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Sydney,NS (Australia), was enroute at FL350 about 630nm southeast of Muscat (Oman) and about 820nm northwest of Male (Maldives) at about 08:40Z when a business jet passed underneath in opposite direction. The A380 continued the flight to Sydney without any apparent incident and landed safely.

The business jet, a MHS Aviation (Munich) Canadair Challenger 604 registration D-AMSC performing flight MHV-604 from Male (Maldives) to Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) with 9 people on board, was enroute at FL340 over the Arabian Sea about 630nm southeast of Muscat when an Airbus A380-800 was observed by the crew passing 1000 feet above. After passing underneath the A380 at about 08:40Z the crew lost control of the aircraft as result of wake turbulence from the A380 and was able to regain control of the aircraft only after losing about 10,000 feet. The airframe experienced very high G-Loads during the upset, a number of occupants received injuries during the upset. After the crew managed to stabilize the aircraft the crew decided to divert to Muscat (Oman), entered Omani Airspace at 14:10L (10:10Z) declaring emergency and reporting injuries on board and continued for a landing in Muscat at 15:14L (11:14Z) without further incident. A number of occupants were taken to a hospital, one occupant was reported with serious injuries. The aircraft received damage beyond repair and was written off.

Oman's Civil Aviation Authority had told Omani media on Jan 8th 2017, that a private German registered aircraft had performed an emergency landing in Muscat on Jan 7th 2017 declaring emergency at 14:10L (10:10Z) and landing in Muscat at 15:14L (11:14Z). The crew had declared emergency due to injuries on board and problems with an engine (a number of media subsequently reported the right hand engine had failed, another number of media reported the left hand engine had failed).

According to information on March 4th 2017 the CL-604 passed 1000 feet below an Airbus A380-800 while enroute over the Arabian Sea, when a short time later (1-2 minutes) the aircraft encountered wake turbulence sending the aircraft in uncontrolled roll turning the aircraft around at least 3 times (possibly even 5 times), both engines flamed out, the Ram Air Turbine could not deploy possibly as result of G-forces and structural stress, the aircraft lost about 10,000 feet until the crew was able to recover the aircraft exercising raw muscle force, restart the engines and divert to Muscat.

No radar data are available for the business jet, it is therefore unclear when the business jet departed from Male and where the actual "rendezvous" with the A380 took place. Based on the known time of the occurrence at 08:40Z as well as the time when the CL-604 reached Omani Airspace declaring emergency and landed in Muscat, as well as which A380s were enroute over the Arabian Sea around that time the most likely A380 was EK-412 and the "rendezvous" took place 630nm southeast of Muscat, which provides the best match of remaining flying time (2.5 hours) and distance for the CL-604 also considering rather strong northwesterly winds (headwind for the CL-604, tailwind for the A380s) - this analysis was confirmed on Mar 23rd 2017 by BFU information.

On Jan 7th 2017 there were also other A380-800s crossing the Arabian Sea from northwest to southeast: a Qantas A380-800, registration VH-OQJ performing flight QF-2 from Dubai to Sydney, was enrooted at FL330 about 1000nm southeast of Muscat and about 400nm northwest of Male at 08:40Z. An Emirates A380-800 registration A6-EDO performing flight EK-406 from Dubai to Melbourne, VI (Australia) was enrooted at FL350 about 470nm southeast of Muscat at 08:40Z. Another Emirates A380-800 registration A6-EUH performing flight EK-424 from Dubai to Perth, WA (Australia), was enrooted at FL350 about 350nm southeast of Muscat at 08:40z.

Air Traffic Control all around the globe have recently been instructed to exercise particular care with A380s crossing above other aircraft.

A number of Wake Turbulence Encounters involving A380s already reported:

Incident: Virgin Australia B738 near Bali on Sep 14th 2012, wake turbulence from A380 Incident: Air France A320 and Emirates A388 near Frankfurt on Oct 14th 2011, wake turbulence Accident: British Airways A320 and Qantas A388 near Braunschweig on Oct 16th 2011, wake turbulence injures 4 Report: Antonov A124, Singapore A388 and Air France B744 near Frankfurt on Feb 10th 2011, wake turbulence by A388 causes TCAS RA Report: REX SF34 at Sydney on Nov 3rd 2008, wake turbulence injures one Incident: Armavia A320 near Tiblisi on Jan 11th 2009, turbulence at cruise level thought to be A380 wake

On Mar 18th 2017 an EASA safety information bulletin released stating:

With the increase of the overall volume of air traffic and enhanced navigation precision, wake turbulence encounters in the en-route phase of flight above 10 000 feet (ft) mean sea level (MSL) have progressively become more frequent in the last few years.

The aim of this SIB is to enhance the awareness of pilots and air traffic controllers of the risks associated with wake turbulence encounters in the en-route phase of flight and provide recommendations with the purpose of mitigating the associated risks.

The draft reasons:

The basic effects of wake turbulence encounter on a following aeroplane are induced roll, vertical acceleration (can be negative) and loss or gain of altitude. The greatest danger is an induced roll that can lead to a loss of control and possible injuries to cabin crew and passengers. The vortices are also most hazardous to following aircraft during the take-off, initial climb, final approach and landing.

However, en-route, the vortices evolves in altitudes at which the rate of decay leads to a typical persistence of 2-3 minutes, with a sink rate of 2-3 metres per second. Wakes will also be transported by wind.

Considering the high operating air speeds in cruise, wake can be encountered up to 25 nautical miles (NM) behind the generating aeroplane, with the most significant encounters reported within a distance of 15 NM. This is larger than in approach or departure phases of flight.

The encounters are mostly reported by pilots as sudden and unexpected events. The awareness of hazardous traffic configuration and risk factors is therefore of particular importance to anticipate, avoid and manage possible wake encounters. The draft issues following recommendations.

As precautionary measures, operators and pilots should be aware that:

- As foreseen in Reg. 965/2012 AMC1 to CAT.OP.MPA.170, the announcement to passengers should include an invitation to keep their seat belts fastened, even when the seat belt sign is off, unless moving around the cabin. This minimises the risk of passenger injury in case of a turbulence encounter en-route (wake or atmospheric).

- As indicated in ICAO PANS-ATM, for aeroplanes in the heavy wake turbulence category or for Airbus A380-800, the word “HEAVY” or “SUPER”, respectively, shall be included immediately after the aeroplane call sign in the initial radiotelephony contact between such aeroplanes and ATS units.

- When possible, contrails should be used to visualise wakes and estimate if their flight path brings them across or in close proximity.

- When flying below the tropopause altitude, the likelihood of wake encounter increases. The tropopause altitude varies (between days, between locations).

- Upwind lateral offset should be used if the risk of a wake encounter is suspected.

- Timely selecting seat belt signs to ‘ON’ and instruct cabin crew to secure themselves constitute precautionary measures in case of likely wake encounters.

In case of a wake encounter, pilots should:

- Be aware that it has been demonstrated during flight tests that if the pilot reacts at the first roll motion, when in the core of the vortex, the roll motion could be amplified by this initial piloting action. The result can be a final bank angle greater than if the pilot would not have moved the controls.

- Be aware that in-flight incidents have demonstrated that pilot inputs may exacerbate the unusual attitude condition with rapid roll control reversals carried out in an “out of phase” manner.

- Be aware that if the autopilot is engaged, intentional disconnection can complicate the scenario, and the autopilot will facilitate the recovery.

- Avoid large rudder deflections that can create important lateral accelerations, which could then generate very large forces on the vertical stabiliser that may exceed the structural resistance. Although some recent aircraft types are protected by fly-by-wire systems, use of the rudder does not reduce the severity of the encounter nor does it improve the ease of recovery.

- Make use of specific guidance available through AOM for their specific type(s)/fleet.

ATS providers and air traffic controllers should:

Enhance their awareness about en-route wake turbulence risk, key factors and possible mitigations, based on the information provided in this document and other relevant material. This could be achieved through flyers, e-learning, and refresher training module.

Possible risk mitigations may consist of:

- Make use of the wake turbulence category (WTC) indication in the surveillance label and/or the flight progress strip (whether electronic or paper), and observe closely separated aeroplanes that are at the opposite extremes of the WTC spectrum;

- As the best practice, provide traffic information, advising “CAUTION WAKE TURBULENCE”, when you identify that a ‘HEAVY’ or ‘SUPER HEAVY’ wake category traffic is climbing or descending within 15 NM of another following traffic;

- Manage en-route traffic crossings such as , when possible while preserving safe tactical management of overall traffic in the sector, avoiding to instruct climb or descend to ‘HEAVY’ or ‘SUPER HEAVY’ traffic within 15 NM distance from another following traffic;

- If at all possible, avoid vectoring an aeroplane (particularly if it is LIGHT or MEDIUM category) through the wake of a HEAVY or SUPER HEAVY aeroplane where wake turbulence may exist.

#Airbus A380 #a380flightdeck

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kathleenseiber · 4 years

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Ruby Payne-Scott stood out in the crowd

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) maintains a rich and lively online presence, and one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from its archives is Ruby Payne-Scott.

The CSIRO describes her “remarkable career” as a radio astronomer, noting a 1941 “kind of memorandom” on her as a probationary employee from her boss, the respected administrator Edward George (Taffy) Bowen: “Well, she’s a bit loud and we don’t think she’s quite what we want and she may be a bit unstable, but we’ll let her continue and see how she works out.”

Some of Bowen’s comments might have come from Payne-Scott’s left-wing political views, and her reputation as an outspoken advocate for women’s rights in the workplace, but one would have to say, she worked out quite well.

The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers says she was “the first woman radio astronomer and a pioneer in solar radio astronomy in Australia. She played a key role in the early development of radio astronomy in the 1940s and the introduction of new techniques in the study of the universe.”

The CSIRO also notes that “in a remarkably short period, Payne-Scott played a key role in the rapid growth of radio astronomy in the immediate postwar environment”.

“She provided scientific leadership in this period as well as technical insights,” it continues. “In the seven years as a radio astronomer (1944-51), she made monumental contributions to this new science in which Australia excelled and helped lay the foundations for many future decades of world leadership in radio astronomy.”

That part about “in a remarkably short period” is also important in telling Payne-Scott’s story.

Credit: Peter Gavin Hall

This “remarkable career” was curtailed in 1950 when it was discovered that she had been secretly married since 1944, to William Hall. Married women were forbidden from holding permanent positions in the public service.

A New York Times article (actually a delayed obituary as part of its “Overlooked No More” series) she was forced to resign from her position and to give up her pension, but her expertise was so highly valued, she was talked into continuing to work, although on a temporary basis.

A year later she became pregnant and stopped work in order to care for her child. “With no maternity leave, there was no choice,” says the CSIRO.

She hadn’t yet turned 40.

Born in Grafton, in northern NSW, on 28 May 1912, Payne-Scott graduated at 16 from Sydney Girls High School and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of Sydney – only the third woman to do so.

From 1936-38 she worked as a physicist at the University, where, says the Australian Dictionary of Biography, “her research concentrated on a recently discovered cancer treatment, radiation”.

In 1939 she was hired as a librarian with Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd in Sydney, but in 1941, with the vortex of World War II pulling in people from around the globe, her academic background paid off when the division of radio physics of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (the precursor to CSIRO) hired her to find ways in which radar systems could be improved in the tracking of Japanese warplanes.

As the conflict was winding down, Payne-Scott and her colleagues began looking for postwar applications for their research. What they came up with was a new field of study called radio astronomy.

Beginning in 1944, she took part in groundbreaking radio astronomy research, making “major contributions to the techniques of radio astronomy”, including some of the key early solar radio astronomy observations.

In 1948, the CSIRO says, she “led the research on the design, construction and use of the ‘swept lobe’ interferometer, which in 1948-49 enabled her team to image the Sun 25 times a second; thus a movie was constructed that allowed the observer to follow the time evolution of the solar outbursts of Type IV.”

This work “predicted the whole future of radio astronomy”, says her biographer, Miller Goss, astronomer emeritus at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and author of the book Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy.

And then things were put on hold. Having retired from scientific research, Payne-Scott and Hall settled in Sydney, where she stayed home with their two children: Peter, who became a mathematician and professor at the University of Melbourne, and Fiona, a well-known artist.

In 1963 Payne-Scott went back to work teaching maths and sciences, until she retired in 1974. She died on 25 May 1981, in Sydney.

Ruby Payne-Scott stood out in the crowd published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

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clarion-call-of-football · 5 years

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New Stock Ideas: A Guide to Some of the Best Industries for Beginners to Invest In

Is it accurate to say that you are new to contributing? in general, has been quite great to investors. The best stocks to purchase are solid organizations with a strong establishment, expected to flourish regardless of what's in store. Despite the fact that the exchange wars are working up a great deal of worry, there are still some moderately sheltered stocks, some of which are under the radar. To give you a beginning stage, here are some new stock plans to consider.

Cloud/document facilitating innovation

Dropbox (DBX) specifically has a 112% upside. The organization is by all accounts balancing out gratitude to new item contributions and evaluating so as to all the more likely serve the necessities of its 500 million+ enrolled clients. The virtual stockpiling needs of numerous individuals are developing so a lot of that free records aren't adequate enough any longer, which implies that the quantity of paid memberships is developing.

Wind vitality

Wind vitality ventures are getting increasingly inescapable in various nations. This spotless, manageable wellspring of vitality is viewed as a decent long haul prospect. There is potential that the working expenses are declining, and the estimating is by all accounts settling.

Australian Housing

In case you're searching for new stock thoughts in land, think about the metropolitan territories of Melbourne and Sydney. They are shy of rental inventory and the populace is becoming because of movement. There has been a ton of cash put into Australian from outside nations like China. On the off chance that you are keen on the Australian land showcase, keep investment properties at the highest point of your need list.

Squander the executives

This isn't the most spectacular industry to put resources into, yet with an expansion in natural administrations, contamination control, and reusing focuses, it is sensible to see the incentive in putting resources into this side of the mechanical segment. It is a vital piece of everybody's lives. Two or three associations to investigate incorporate US Ecology (ECOL) and Waste Management (WM).

Aviation sub-division

There has been a lift in US military spending this previous year, so it may be advantageous to place cash into organizations that are a piece of the inventory network, for example, originators and engineers. The aeronautic trade commonly performs well in late financial cycles. As the cycle develops, there is an expansion in plane requests, and a decent method to avoid any and all risks is by putting resources into the providers.

Where to Get More New Stock Ideas

These are only a couple of suggestions. The most ideal approach to find out about new stock thoughts and speculation openings is to turn out to be a piece of Capitalist Exploits. There are right now 30,000+ speculators getting unfiltered examination of the money related occasions forming the world.

#stock market #investing #investment

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Hurricane Dorian poised to slam the Carolinas after scraping the coasts of Florida and Georgia

By Jason Samenow and Andrew Freeman | Published September 04, 2019 11:17 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted September 4, 2019 11:54 AM ET

Hurricane Dorian gradually leaves Florida behind Wednesday, setting its sights on the coasts of Georgia and then the Carolinas. These areas face a triple threat of “destructive winds, flooding rains, and life-threatening storm surges,” according to the National Hurricane Center.

While Dorian has stayed far enough off the coast to largely spare Florida from the worst of its wrath, it is forecast to make a much closer approach to the coastline of the Carolinas between late Wednesday and Thursday and could even make landfall. Impacts are thus expected to be more severe.

Around Charleston, S.C., for example, wind gusts could hit 80 mph, and water levels could rank among the top five levels ever recorded due to the combination of ocean surge and up to 15 inches of rain. Higher wind gusts could lash North Carolina’s Outer Banks, leading to power outages and damage.

Even the Virginia Tidewater and southern Delmarva Peninsula could endure tropical storm conditions by Friday, after which the storm is expected to finally zoom away to the northeast.

The Category 2 storm, while no longer the powerhouse that devastated the northwestern Bahamas, has expanded in size. That means its strong winds cover a larger area, capable of generating giant waves and pushing large amounts of water toward the shore. There were signs that Dorian is attempting to intensify over the waters northeast of Florida on Wednesday morning, with a ring of thunderstorms building up around its center. If this trend continues, it could mean even worse impacts for the Carolinas.

Coastal flooding is also a risk from northeastern Florida to the North Carolina Outer Banks, where water levels may rise up to seven feet above normally dry land, prompting storm-surge warnings.

THE LATEST

As of 11 a.m. on Wednesday, the storm was 90 miles east-northeast of Daytona Beach, Fla., and moving north-northwest at 9 mph. The storm’s peak sustained winds were 105 mph, making it a high-end Category 2 storm. Dorian is expected to maintain its current intensity through Thursday.

The storm has grown larger since the weekend; hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.

Radar showed Dorian’s outer rain bands grazing the coast from Titusville, Fla. north to near Savannah, Ga. During the predawn hours Wednesday, peak wind gusts reached 50 to 70 mph in Volusia and Brevard counties in Florida and the Hurricane Center said tropical storm conditions were continuing to affect portions of the coast of northeast Florida Wednesday morning.

“Remain cautious of strong wind gusts and brief bursts of heavy rain in passing squalls today,” the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Fla., tweeted. “Conditions at beaches are hazardous from #Dorian. The surf remains high and rough, along with a threat of coastal flooding & beach erosion.”

The National Weather Service in Jacksonville also warned of dangerous conditions at the coast due to elevated water levels anticipated at the 1 p.m. high tide. Scenes from social media showed water running up to homes in Vilano Beach, just north of St. Augustine:

FORECAST FOR GEORGIA, THE CAROLINAS AND VIRGINIA

Conditions are expected to deteriorate by Wednesday morning in coastal Georgia and late Wednesday in South Carolina. In North Carolina, it may take until the second half of Thursday for tropical storm conditions to commence. Most of the storm effects in southeastern Virginia should hold off until Friday morning.

The severity of Dorian’s effects will be closely related to how closely Dorian tracks to the coast and whether it makes landfall. Most computer models now forecast the center of Dorian to come very close to the coast of South Carolina and to come ashore in North Carolina, with the highest chance over the Outer Banks.

Computer models generally project that the storm center should remain far enough off the coast of Georgia to limit winds to tropical-storm force (39 to 73 mph) and rainfall totals to 3 to 6 inches. Tropical storm warnings are in effect here.

In the Carolinas, under a hurricane warning, sustained winds could reach 60 to 80 mph with higher gusts, especially along the North Carolina Outer Banks. Rainfall amounts of 5 to 10 inches are predicted, and localized totals up to 15 inches, meaning a high risk of flash flooding.

The Georgia and South Carolina coastlines are particularly vulnerable to storm surge flooding, even from a storm that does not make landfall, due to the shape of the land on and just offshore, as well as the effects of sea-level rise and land subsidence over time. The surge could reach 3 to 5 feet in Georgia and 5 to 8 feet from the Isle of Palms to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. From Cape Lookout to Duck, North Carolina, including Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers. a surge of 4 to 6 ft is anticipated.

Farther north, the possibility of a 2-to-4-foot surge exists in Hampton Roads, Va.

The Weather Service forecast office in Charleston, S.C., is forecasting that storm-surge flooding may begin to occur there on Wednesday, well ahead of the storm’s center of circulation. Heavy rains of 6 to 10 inches or more could worsen the surge-related flooding by impeding drainage back out to sea.

“The combination of significant storm surge inundation and heavy rainfall will enhance the risk for flash flooding, especially along coast, including Downtown Charleston, portions of the Savannah Metro Area, and the nearby coastal communities,” the Weather Service office in Charleston wrote. “This is a dangerous situation and preparations should be rushed to completion today.”

Depending on the timing of the maximum storm surge, Charleston could see this storm bring one of its top five water levels on record.

Fort Pulaski, Georgia, near Savannah, is forecast to have coastal flooding at midday Wednesday that would be exceeded only by Hurricanes Matthew and Irma, while Charleston may see a 2nd-worst flood event, behind 1989′s Hurricane Hugo, on Wednesday night.

According to the Weather Service office in Charleston, based on the present forecast track, the result could be particularly severe. Among the possible effects, it listed: “Large areas of deep inundation with storm surge flooding accentuated by battering waves. Structural damage to buildings, with several washing away. Damage compounded by floating debris. Locations may be uninhabitable for an extended period.”

Locations farther north from Virginia Beach to the Delmarva could get clipped by the storm Friday and Saturday, with heavy rains, tropical storm force winds and coastal flooding.

A tropical storm watch is in effect from the North Carolina/Virginia border to Chincoteague, including the Virginia Beach area, as well as the Chesapeake Bay from Smith Point southward. Up to 3 to 6 inches of rain could fall.

“The risk of wind and rain impacts along portions of the Virginia coast and the southern Chesapeake Bay are increasing,” the Hurricane Center wrote. “Residents in these areas should continue to monitor the progress of Dorian.”

FORECAST FOR FLORIDA

The forecast track continues to keep Dorian’s most dangerous winds and highest levels of storm-surge flooding from coming ashore in the Sunshine State, but brings the storm close enough to produce heavy rain, damaging winds and 3 to 5 feet of surge from Volusia County north to the Georgia border on Wednesday.

Tropical-storm conditions, with sustained winds of greater than 39 mph, are likely through late Wednesday from the Space Coast northward.

Areas that are especially vulnerable to storm-surge flooding, such as Jacksonville, Fla., could see significant flooding depending on the exact track and timing of the storm.

Rainfall totals are predicted to range from 3 to 6 inches in northeast Florida near the coast, with decreasing amounts inland and to the south.

Northwest Bahamas took a nightmarish, 40 hour direct hit

Between late Sunday and Tuesday, Dorian slammed into the northwestern Bahamas with wind gusts up to 220 mph and a 23-foot storm surge. Video and images emerging from the Bahamas show a toll of absolute devastation on Great Abaco and Grand Bahama Islands, two locations where the eye of the storm made landfall.

Grand Bahama Island suffered an onslaught from this storm that few places on Earth have experienced, remaining in the eyewall of a major hurricane (between Category 3 and 5) for 40 hours. The eyewall is the most severe part of a hurricane that contains its strongest winds and generates the most destructive storm-surge flooding.

Dorian came to a virtual standstill as it encountered the northwest Bahamas. Between 3 a.m. on Labor Day and 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the storm moved just 30 miles in 28 hours. In addition to wind gusts up to 220 mph and a 23-foot storm surge, up to 40 inches of rain were estimated in some areas.

DORIAN’S PLACE IN HISTORY

Dorian is tied for the second-strongest storm (as judged by its maximum sustained winds) ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, behind Hurricane Allen of 1980, and, after striking the northern Bahamas, tied with the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane for the title of the strongest Atlantic hurricane at landfall.

It is only the second Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the Bahamas since 1983, according to Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University. The only other is Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The international hurricane database goes back continuously only to 1983.

The storm’s peak sustained winds rank as the strongest so far north in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida on record. Its pressure, which bottomed out at 910 millibars, is significantly lower than Hurricane Andrew’s when it made landfall in South Florida in 1992 (the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm).

With Dorian attaining Category 5 strength, this is the first time since the start of the satellite era (in the 1960s) that Category 5 storms have developed in the tropical Atlantic for four straight years, according to Capital Weather Gang tropical weather expert Brian McNoldy.

The unusual strength of Dorian and the rate at which it developed is consistent with the expectation of more intense hurricanes in a warming world. Some studies have shown increases in hurricane rapid intensification, and modeling studies project an uptick in the frequency of Category 4 and 5 storms.

Dorian may have also set a record for the longest period of Category 4 and 5 conditions to strike one location in the North Atlantic Basin since the dawn of the satellite era, but historical data is relatively sparse.

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