Category: Australasia

City peddlers etc.

A few hours after I took this photo (and not before all the latest terrorist dramas that were happening on the other side of the river (which I later crossed)), I took this photo, outside the Bank of England:

This combines four things that interest me.

First, most obviously, it is a photo of an unusual means of transport. Rather confusingly, this contraption had “PedalBus.com” written on it. But when you type that into the www, you get redirected to pedibus.co.uk. Where you also discover photos of contraptions with “PedalBus.com” on them. Very confusing.

Second, the persons on the pedibus/PedalBus are making a spectacle of themselves. People who make a spectacle of themselves are not entitled to anonymity, or not at this blog. Photoers going about their photoing business do, mostly, get anonymity here. But people yelling drunkenly, albeit goodnaturedly, and striking dramatic attitudes when I photo them, not.

Third, I like these downward counting numbers on the pedestrian light bits of traffic lights, which London apparently got from New Zealand. (Blog and learn.) Very useful. I like to photo them, preferably in combination with other interesting things. Score. Score again, because there is not just one 7 in this photo, there are two 7s. This particular time of the day, just when it is starting to become dark, is the best time to photo these numbers.

And fourth, I am becoming increasingly interested by London’s many statues, as often as not commemorating the heroes of earlier conflicts. I think one of the things I like about them is the sense of a very particular place that they radiate, just as the more showoffy Big Things do, but even more precisely. They thus facilitate meeting up with people. “In front of the Bank of England” might prove too vague. “Next to Wellington” pins it down far more exactly.

The Wellington statue makes a splendid contrast with the pedi/PedalBussers. Wellington is Wellington, seated on his horse (Copenhagen presumably), very dignified and patrician. And the peddlers are the kind of people he commanded in his battles.

I don’t get why this statue is in front of the Bank of England. Why isn’t there a Wellington statue at Waterloo?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Aerobots

This is cool, says Instapundit, and he’s not wrong:

For all his joie de vivre, Jardine is a master drone builder and pilot whose skills have produced remarkable footage for shows like Australian Top Gear, the BBC’s Into the Volcano, and a range of music videos. His company Aerobot sells camera-outfitted drones, including custom jobs that require unique specifications like, say, the capacity to lift an IMAX camera. From a sprawling patch of coastline real estate in Queensland, Australia, Jardine builds, tests, and tweaks his creations; the rural tranquility is conducive to a process that may occasionally lead to unidentified falling objects.

Simply put, if you’ve got a drone flying challenge, Jardine is your first call.

So, Mr Jardine is now flying his flying robots over volcanoes. There are going to be lots of calls to have these things entirely banned, but they are just too useful for that to happen.

When I was a kid and making airplanes out of balsa wood and paper, powered with rubber band propellers, I remember thinking that such toys were potentially a lot more than mere toys. I’m actually surprised at how long it has taken for this to be proved right.

What were the recent developments that made useful drones like Jardine’s possible? It is down to the power-to-weight ratio of the latest mini-engines? I tried googling “why drones work”, but all I got was arguments saying that it’s good to use drones to kill America’s enemies, not why they are now usable for such missions.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Views from Kings College

For reasons that I may or may not explain some other time (it involved this), I found myself, exactly one week ago today, at the toppish layer of Kings College, London.

There was some hanging about waiting for events to start and for lifts to arrive, and at such times I took (grabbed) photos, mostly through windows, out at London in its various manifestations, near and far:

Just as there is much aesthetically anarchic clutter at the tops of buildings, so too is there similar clutter around the backs of buildings, the bits where you are looking at the stage scenery, so to speak, from the other side.

As for the more orthodox view, of various Big London Things (bottom right), you may think, not much of a photo, technically speaking, and you would be right, but I like it nevertheless, in the sense that it is a technically rather average realisation of a very good shot, like so many of my photos. Also, I had only a few seconds to take/grab it, and only one go at it, because a lift was even then opening up and demanding my presence. I was with someone else, which always complicates the taking of photos, I find.

Note in particular the exact alignment of The Wheel with the New Tower (most recently featured here in one of these snaps (3.2)) that they are now finishing off, at Vauxhall, the one where there was all that crane drama. See also Big Ben and that other Parliament Tower (St Stephen’s), Battersea Power Station, Westminster Abbey, and even the tower with the crazy hairdo in the previous posting. What the green dome with the Union Jack flying on it is, I do not know.

Plus, who knew that there was a Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at Kings U? Well, probably Menzies, and the people who study Australia in it. But who else?

Shame it’s not Austrian, and economics.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Boxing Day morning at the MCG

By lunch on the first day of the fourth test at the MCG, Australia had already lost vital wickets, and also those of Hughes and Ponting.

I slept through the beginning and only awoke and searched out R5LiveSportX (my subconscious wanted to know what the score was) as they were discussing the wicket of Hughes, and right after that Ponting got out. Big news: Watson was already out. And then, just before lunch and just before a shower began, Hussey was out caught behind off Jimmy A.

After England went one up at Adelaide and before the previous test at Perth that Australia won by an innings, I was a lone voice of sanity telling England fans to calm down and stop assuming that Australia was now a failed state. Now everyone will be wallowing hysterically in sanity, pointing out that Australia were four down by lunch on the first day at Perth and still won that one by several thousand runs. Now, everyone will be saying that England should not be counting their chickens and that four swallows do not make a test match morning.

Yes they do. Let me go out on a limb here and say that England have made a very good start.

LATER:

. . . W . . | . . . . W . | . W

Australia 77-8. I told you it was a good start by England.

LATER: Australia 98 all out.

LATER: I just want to have this here as a souvenir:

It’s a slice from one of the set of photos at the bottom of this page.

The point being that good moments for your team in this series have a habit of being extreme, but fleeting. I don’t believe this has stopped. Ponting double century in the second innings anyone?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Ashes: chickens and now a swallow

During the recently concluded second test match between Australia and England at Adelaide, I wrote a Samizdata piece saying, basically: England supporters! Do not count your chickens before they are hatched! Now I say, switching to a different variety of bird: One swallow does not make a summer! Then as now, the fact that the leaders of the England team understand all of this perfectly is cause for England optimism, but only optimism.

Yes, England won that second game and won it well. But ever since then, the cricket commentariat has been ablaze with explanations of why England are now so unstoppably good and why Australia are now so incurably bad. Yet the very first day of this series saw England bowled out for 260 odd and, by the third day, way behind on first innings. Who is to say that something similar might not happen again, in a later test match? Yes, England recovered in that game. That doesn’t mean that a similar reverse in a later game will be so easily corrected.

I agree that England are now the favourites, as they were as soon as they had got ahead of the game in Adelaide. But all that this means is that England-to-win is a good bet. It doesn’t mean that England-to-win is now an inevitability.

I refuse to wallow in analysing why England are now better than Australia until the clear evidence is in that they really are. Australia without Warne and McGrath are clearly not the force they were. But have they declined enough, or have England improved enough, for England (thrashed 5-0 last time they visited) now to be definitely superior? Not yet settled.

Imagine the eating of words there would be if Australia won the next game. And imagine the disappointment in the England camp if that happened, and imagine what would then happen to the odds. Yet all it might take for such an outcome to come out is for Mitchell Johnson to find his length and direction.

I expect Tremlett to replace Broad in the England side. As one who closely followed Tremlett’s bowling for his new county (and my county always), Surrey, last summer, I believe that he might do quite well, and maybe very well indeed.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog