Category: Photos

Today I got to be a tourist in Beijing. I walked the two or three miles from the hotel to Tiananmen Square, toured the Forbidden City, and explored the backstreets and alleyways. I took a couple of hundred photos, but I don’t have the bandwidth to upload them all yet. This teaser will have to do.

Around 2 pm, I wound up at a Starbucks near Ritan Park, and found that they had free WiFi. I turned on my iPhone, and was amused to discover that although Google Maps refused to show me a street-level map of Beijing, the satellite image view worked perfectly, and pinpointed my location within 10 metres!
When I told friends about this, they teased me about going to Starbucks. This is unfair: I have been sampling plenty of local cuisine. Starbucks was a move of desperation: the first place I’d seen to sit down and have a cold drink in about 30 minutes of pounding the pavement.
Yesterday I went out to dinner with two Amazon colleagues, and we had Shark’s Fin Soup. Yes, I know it’s environmentally irresponsible – but on the other hand it was one of the few items on the English version of the menu (hand-written in a school exercise book!) that we could identify. That and the eel stir-fried with mushrooms. And various dishes including the word “testicles”… (It was a strange evening all around: we wound up as the only customers in a quaint bar called “The Buffalo”, drinking weak cocktails and listening to an atrocious singer mangling Carpenters’ songs.)
On Tuesday I went to a fast food place near the office for lunch; it was decorated with pictures of Jackie Chan,and looked innocuous. I picked what I thought looked safe, and emerged 20 minutes later certain only of the identity of two elements of the meal: rice, and mushrooms. All of the other 5 or 6 ingredients were completely unknown to me, by appearance or taste. The next day I went with a colleague to a huge underground food court, and I just said “I’ll have what you’re having.” There was fried rice, and a hard boiled egg, but after that I’m hazy…..
Hotel breakfast is either dim sum (individual items unidentified) or stuff that looks like ham and eggs but doesn’t taste like either.
I’m having a great time!
OK, here are a couple of buses, just for Susan:

As I was returning home this evening, I got off the bus and saw that everyone was gazing up into the sky. This is what they were looking at. (Click to see it in the Gallery.)

I don’t know how it got there, nor exactly how big it was… it looks to be a couple of seven or eight hundred feet up. It dissipated over a period of about a minute from when I took this.
Odd, innit?
UPDATE: I guess it was due to fireworks. (But who lets off fireworks in daylight hours on a cloudy day?) Check the comments for a link to video evidence.

Check out the Bad Astronomy Blog » Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007. I think my favourite is Mira…

Mark Lilla has written a fascinating essay entitled Coping with Political Theology, which is also the introduction to his book The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. Here’s the key thesis. Writing about the religious wars which tore Europe apart in the 16th and 17th century, he observes:

As we know, this crisis of Western Christendom prepared the way for modern political thought, and eventually for modern liberal democracy. And it seems to follow from this fact that modern liberal democracy, with its distinctive ideas and institutions, is a post-Christian phenomenon. I want to insist on this formulation as a way of stressing the uniqueness of Christian revelation and its theological-political difficulties – and therefore the uniqueness of the philosophical response to the civilizational crisis those problems triggered. Though the principles of modern liberal democracy are not conceptually dependent on the truth of Christianity, they are genetically dependent on the problems Christianity posed and failed to solve. Being mindful of this should help us to understand the strengths of our tradition of political thought, and perhaps also its limitations.

(My emphasis.)
Lilla argues that, deep down, Americans recognize this truth, which is why democracy and tolerance have trumped religiosity at every turn, and will (hopefully) continue to do so. Not all agree with him: see, for example, this troubled response by Damon Linker, and this from Philip Jenkins. In any case, it looks like a must-read book. ((Hat-tip to Sully, who also has an essay at Cato on the subject.))

Yesterday, everybody’s favourite atheist scientist blogger expressed regret that he couldn’t be in Seattle, because he’d learned that the Burke Museum at UW was going to be holding an opening day celebration for its new exhibit, In Search of Giant Squid. I’d been meaning to visit the Burke… what a perfect opportunity. So this morning I hopped on a #70 bus and headed across to UW. Professor Alan Kohn opened the exhibit, and answered questions, and then at noon a team from the Seattle Aquarium turned up to entertain us all with the dissection of a Humboldt squid. There’s a selection of photos in my gallery. ((Some are from my Casio EX-S600 and some from my iPhone – hence the variable quality.))

The organizers were, I think, quite startled by the size of the crowd: it was standing room only, with about 130 people there at one point. I wonder how much of that was due to PZ’s blogging. ((Can you say “squid flash mob”?!)) As you can see from the pictures, there were several kids who were completely mesmerized by the proceedings, and ignored parental injunctions to sit down or stay back. On balance I think I’d prefer obsession to indifference…
After the dissection, Professor of Oceanography John Delaney gave a talk about Project Neptune, a fascinating – and incredibly ambitious – plan to cover the Juan de Fuca Plate with a network of robotic laboratories connected by a power and fibre optic grid, supporting a huge range of stationary experiments and sensors as well as a fleet of AUVs – autonomous underwater vehicles. Oh yes, and all the data is to be accessible in real time via the Internet.
Delaney is a thought-provoking and wide-ranging speaker, though perhaps a little unfocussed. (A bit more attention to content and less to fancy presentation graphics might help.) Nevertheless, I liked the fact that he began with a haiku from Basho, cited Proust to explain the essence of science, and closed with T. S. Eliot. He made much of the fact that many of the capabilities needed to build Neptune exist today; maybe, but it’s not clear whether the economics work just yet. (And declaring something a “30 year project” doesn’t get rid of the question.) I’d have liked to ask him about what he sees as the greatest technical challenges to success – RoboCup notwithstanding, there’s a lot of work still needed to create real AUVs – but we were 20 minutes over time, and I needed some lunch.

I’ve just got home from my day trip to Mount Rainier. The weather cooperated, and it was a really great experience. I’m in the process of uploading 149 photographs (191.4MB) to my gallery. I used the Kodak P850 (5.1Mpx, 12x zoom) instead of my usual Casio EX-S600, and I was delighted with the results. However there were a couple of scenes that I couldn’t do justice to with a static photograph, so I’ve uploaded three QuickTime clips as well:

• Narada Falls (5MB)
• Panning up the Nisqually Glacier, from the river to the summit (8.5MB)
• Sulphurous spring at Muir Meadow (16MB)

Depending on your browser and QuickTime settings, you may have to wait for a few moments for these video clips to be downloaded.

The photos of the Dakota Forth Bridge hotel, Edinburgh, and the Firth of Forth are now up on my gallery. Actually, the last few pictures are still being uploaded: I’m only getting about 46kB/sec uplink speed, and since the JPEGs average 3.7MB it takes a while. I just hope that the transfer finishes before my latest £5 worth of WiFi runs out. (It reminds me of feeding shillings to the gas meter, over 50 years ago.)

The weather started to clear up this afternoon, so I decided to explore the area a bit. I drove down to Hawes Pier (right underneath the south end of the Forth Bridge), and checked to see if there were any cruises going out. It turned out that the Maid of the Forth was going to be making the run to Inchcolm and back at 3:45, so I paid my fare (£1 extra for Visa/MC – is that legal in the UK?) and boarded a few minutes later. The (recorded) guide noted that Inchcolm was one of the driest places in the British Isles, because the clouds tended to build up over the shores of the Firth, and that was certainly our experience. We cruised down a sunny slot in the middle of the Firth, getting slightly sunburned while all around us was looking stormy.
Inchcolm itself looked fascinating: the 12th century abbey is in remarkably good condition. However, ours was the last boat of the day, and so we were only able to stop long enough to pick up the people who had gone out earlier on the “Cruise’n’Explore” package. Next time (if there is a next time) I’m going to check out the island properly; there are reportedly puffins nesting there.
Then it was time for the 45 minute run back to the pier, past the magnificent engineering of the Forth Bridge, and the small islands covered with seabirds. We got back at 5:15, and I decided to explore the old town of South Queensferry. As I reached the west end of the twisting High Street, there was a loud rumble of thunder. It was nearly a mile back to my car, so I started walking until the rain began, then ducked into the nearest pub. I got a pint of an undistinguished local bitter, and sat down intending to wait out the rain. Oops. There were several TVs mounted on the wall, and all were tuned in (at full volume) to the Princess Di memorial concert. I tried to ignore one particularly bad singer, and contemplated the pros and cons of republicanism.
After a while I couldn’t take any more of it, so I gulped down the rest of my beer and dashed through the rain to the nearest restaurant: an Italian place called Bella Vista. The vista certainly was bella, particularly when the storm cleared; the food was fairly good, though a little over-priced; and the service was OK – certainly better than the reviews suggested. No zabaglione, though – sigh. Afterwards I returned to my car, decided to trust the signposts ((For some reason I neglected to bring a map.)) and got comprehensively lost in a twisty maze of leafy lanes and “traffic calmed” villages. But it all worked out OK in the end; the strategy of heading for the coast and then aiming at the foot of the bridge worked tolerably well.
Once again, the photographs will have to wait until I can get Gallery Remote configured…
UPDATED: The photos are here. A lot of repetition, I’m afraid: I got mesmerized by the cloud formations, and the way in which the maintenance platforms on the Forth Bridge made it look “fuzzy”.

Yesterday I took advantage of the weather to visit Edinburgh for the first time. I got the bus into the city, and headed up to the Royal Mile, intending to visit the Castle. As I approached it, I heard a pipe band, and saw red-uniformed soldiers escorting a car down the street from the Castle towards Holyrood Palace. I looked into the car, expecting to see some important personage, but all I saw was the Scottish Crown, resplendent on a purple cushion. Later on I realized that this was part of the ceremonial opening of the Scottish Parliament by the Queen.
Oblivious to this, I visited Edinburgh Castle, then headed down the Royal Mile towards Holyrood. By now the opening ceremonies were over, and a party had developed with crowds, music, and even dancing. The (controversial) Scottish Parliament building was open to visitors, but the line was long and I decided to get lunch. By now the rain was threatening, so I headed down towards Princes Street and ducked into the National Gallery of Scotland. While I enjoyed the collection, there was just one piece that took my breath away: the most moving Rembrandt self-portrait (of all the dozens) I’ve seen:

Now it gets a little weird… Before heading back to South Queensferry, I stopped at Waterstone’s to pick up a book I’ve wanted to read for some time: Nafeez Ahmed’s The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry. I ran across the street to the bus-stop through the rain that was now bucketing down, boarded a 43 bus, got back to the hotel 40 minutes later, turned on the television, and watched the unfolding coverage of the car bomb attack at Glasgow Airport.
Today I had planned to drive up to Stirling, but the rain and mist (practically fog) makes that an unattractive proposition. I think I’ll read my book, watch the French Grand Prix at noon (Massa on pole, Hamilton next to him – should be good!), and catch up with a couple of work items. And I’ll upload the photographs that I took as soon as I can; I’m wrestling with the configuration of Galley Remote. (The copy on my home computer is configured correctly, but of course I can’t remember how I did it! None of the obvious URLs are working for me.)
UPDATED: The photos are here.

It’s another warm day here in Seattle. Back in Boston, the official definition of a heatwave is “three successive days over 90°F”. Seattlites tell me that the local equivalent is “three successive days over 75°F”, in which case we’re enduring a scorcher. So this morning I decided to get out on the water: I walked down to Pier 52 and took the 8:45 ferry to Bremerton. This is a really good deal: it’s a one hour trip, and for pedestrians it costs $6.70 westbound. Eastbound, it’s free. So I got to cruise across Puget Sound for a couple of hours, including breakfast. On the way out, the boat was almost empty, but on the return trip it was full of baseball fans of all ages. (I guess the Mariners are in town.) I took a few photos, and finished the last couple of chapters of Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll’s introduction to “Evo-Devo“. (Verdict: I liked it a lot, but it left me looking around for the next book that I can read to get more detail on some of the mechanisms.)