Found at the blog of Chuck Pergiel, who has occasionally commented here:
Read the whole posting here.
Boundary Dragon – Boundary Dragon shadow
I love the City of London Boundary Dragons, and I am pretty sure that the photo below is my favourite City of London Boundary Dragon photo that I have ever photoed:
That is one of the two Dragons on the south end of London Bridge. I photoed this photo on August 12th 2008.
When a strong shadow and weirdness are involved, the Thing itself is usually clear, but the shadow is weird. But in the above photo, the Thing is weird. And the shadow makes everything clear again. Which is an effect that I especially like. And I think we can tell from the framing that I noticed this at the time. This was not a fluke, except in the sense that this effect was there to be noticed and I had the luck to notice it. What I mean is: I did notice it at the time. It didn’t just happen to show up in a photo that I photoed for other reasons, or for no reason.
And what of that building reflected in the window? I rather think that may now have been obliterated, to make way for The Boomerang. Memo to self: go back and do the same photo again, preferably at the same time of day. On August 12th 2020 perhaps? But even without the shadow, a different (or maybe the same) reflection would be worth a go.
More Because-Now-We-Can! architecture
4-4-0
This evening I happened upon episode 1 of Trains That Changed The World on Yesterday TV, the show which has Steve Davies in it. This was the episode I missed the first time around, so I am very happy about this.
For the first half of the show, we were in Britain, covering the Stephensons and the transformation that trains wrought, as you’d expect, upon Britain. But then we crossed the Atlantic, and learned how trains put the U in USA. Which all the talking heads, including Davies, agreed that they did.
In particular I learned about this loco:
On the left, an Old Photo of what I take to be, more or less, the original. And on the right, painted in totally implausible paints of many colours, and also photoed in full colour, a Reproduction produced in the 1970s. And looking like it’s just got the part of its lifetime in Back to the Future 3.
This is the 4-4-0, the Model T of the railroad track. The big thing I learned about the 4-4-0 (which gets its name from its wheels) is that it burns wood rather than coal, on account of America being made of trees rather than coal; and that the big bulge on its chimney is to stop solid bits of burning wood pouring out and setting fire to America. I did not know this.
Bryan Caplan – Hayek Memorial Lecture – photos and an instant summary
Earlier this evening, I (and a great many other people) attended the 19th Hayek Memorial Lecture:
Photo 1: I got there very early, hence all the empty seats.
The Official Photographer was Jean-Luc Picard. Not really, but photo 3 makes him look a bit like the noted space voyager.
Photo 4: The (large) room fills up.
Photo 5: Celeb sighting. Dominic Frisby. And is that his dad Terence he’s talking with? I think it just might be.
Photo 6: Syed Kamall, a recent IEA appointment. He gave someone a prize.
Photo 7: IEA boss Mark Littlewood does the intro.
Photos 8 and 9: Professor Bryan Caplan gives the lecture.
Photo 10: The first questioner was Vera Kichanova, one of the very few people in the audience whom I recognised.
Photo 11: Someone else photoing from the audience.
So, what did Caplan say? Briefly: poor country governments are often to blame for their bad economic policies, rich countries are often to blame for their bad immigration policies, and poor people, especially poor people in rich countries, are often to blame because they make bad decisions, especially bad decisions which hurt their children. That last one is the one you aren’t allowed to say, but most people still think this. When questioned about this, Caplan pointed out that refusing ever to blame poor people for their poverty is often a cause of bad policies. Instead of doing nothing (because it should be up to many poor people to help themselves), governments often do bad things. To “help”.
Another interesting thing about this lecture was that big multi-national enterprises came out of the story very well, basically for doing very well in poor countries, thereby proving that lots of people in poor and otherwise badly governed and badly managed countries could be doing far better, if they got the chance. That being why restrictive immigration policies do so much harm. They are keeping people who could do far better out of well governed countries.
There was also a guy videoing everything, so you won’t have to rely for ever on me to learn what Caplan said.
Colourfully painted croissant
Today I met up with a friend, in even more central London. She had what looked like Soylent Green, in a glass. I had coffee in a similar glass, and a croissant. The croissant made me grateful, but not so much for how it tasted, more for how it looked. Which was why I photoed it before I ate it:
What I want to know is: Did they paint the pink raspberry-flavoured paint on the croissant pastry before it was rolled up into a croissant, or afterwards? I’m going with: before. But, when it comes to colourfully painted croissants, what do I know? This is the first time I ever met one.
The City – 5 years ago
Horrid weekend, having a cold that I’d postponed on Friday because I had a meeting to host. Sleep shot to hell. Tidying up to be done. So, quota photo time, or so I thought. Inevitably, it got out of hand:
All of that was exactly five years ago, to the day. Having assembled them all, I couldn’t then postpone shoving them up.
There was a Lego Gherkin next to the regular Gherkin. They still thought, or were pretending to think, that they were building the Helter Skelter, which they have now turned into something else, even bigger and a lot duller. Otherwise, it all looked much as it does now.
I really like this bus filled with architecture
As quite often noted here, I am fond of photoing tourist crap. So it was that, earlier this month, I photoed a whole clutch of photos like this:
Well, I like them. But in among them was a photo that I now think to have a bit more to it. This photo:
What I like about this is that cameras these days don’t just have better eyesight than I do; they have better eyesight than almost everyone. And by zooming in on this bus filled with Big Things, well, it’s a bit like looking through a rather weak microscope. But still one strong enough to show you something you don’t regularly see. You know what it is, but you don’t ever look closely at such a thing.
With things like flowers and insects, we all get to see lots of close-up zoom photos, because they are considered worthy of the close-up zoom treatment. There are competitions if you photo photos like that.
But tourist crap, close-up? You don’t see that very often, do you?
So, I don’t just like this photo, I really like it.
Also, note how Portcullis House made it into the bus, entirely because it is across the road from Big Ben.
Christmas is coming – the goose is getting illuminated (and pursued by Sherlock Holmes)
Indeed, in Marylebone Road:
The same night I photoed the car and the leaves and Sherlock Holmes smoking.
I photoed many photos of these geese, in their clutches of four on each street lamp, while waiting for the Curry Night Boys to assemble, my favourite photo being this one …:
… because it turns the four geese into something that looks more like one giant insect. If I had showed only that one, it might have taken you a few moments to work out what was going on.
Okay, so, apart from four geese on each street light, what is going on? Why these geese? And why those strange blue smudges?
It took me a while, but eventually I came across this guide to Christmas street lights, which comes complete with a street map of the Baker Street “quarter”. These Marylebone Road geese are lights clutch number one:
Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, the ornate lamppost columns marking the gateway to the Quarter feature illuminated geese sporting blue jewels (carbuncles).
So, Sherlock Holmes again. If you are in that particular bit of London, you can’t escape the guy.
Wikipedia summarises the plot of this story, which involves a goose getting the above-mentioned blue carbuncle stuffed in its crop, concerning which Wikipedia interpolates angrily …:
… (the fact that geese do not have a crop has been regarded as Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest blunder) …
… and being chased across London. By Sherlock Holmes.
The Hong Kong news is good (for now)
Hong Kong just had two big reasons to celebrate. First, there was the result of their recent elections, which Hong Kong won and the Chinese Communists lost. And second, the USA just passed a law supporting the HongKongers, with wide support across the political spectrum. American politicians can agree about very little just now, but they do agree about what the Chinese Communists are doing to Hong Kong. They’re against it. Pretty much all of them.
Here’s the photo at the top of a piece about how Hong Kong is now celebrating this law:
And, since this is my blog, let me mention also that I too have today expressed my displeasure at the behaviour in Hong Kong of the Chinese Communist government of China, by posting a posting at Samizdata entitled How to defeat the Chinese Communists.
That’ll show them.
I have a meeting about Hong Kong at my home, tomorrow night. Judging by the RSVPs so far, the room will be comfortably full, and maybe even uncomfortably full.