Er, Iceland. Click the image for a larger version. The original image is from this story in the Independent.
Here’s an original image from Lost to compare with. Can’t believe there hasn’t been more Eyjafjallajökull/Island/Smokey snark like this one from The Borowitz Report.
Here’s a couple of excellent before/after pictures of the volcano (via Wikipedia and orvaratli on Flickr):
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And now I know why:
That’s an amazing picture, almost like something from The Day After Tomorrow, and all the more awe-inspiring because it’s real. As one of the commenters at BadAstronomy also noted, all the talk about England’s green and pleasant land makes one forget just how far North it is (above the US in latitude), and how dependent it is on a very complex web — things like the Gulf Stream — for its climate.
The BBC has more news and pictures about the Big Freeze of 2010.
(via BadAstronomy)
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Michael Lewis has an excellent, long (16 pages) article about Iceland in Vanity Fair — Wall Street on the Tundra (via Paul Kedrosky). Read it all:
…you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. … At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it. Enter investment banking.
And don’t miss the little gem about Iceland’s huldufolk (hidden people) tucked away in there:
[Iceland's President] Olafur Ragnar Grimsson theorizes that the surfeit of spirit-beings stems from Icelanders’ abiding sense of loneliness and isolation … Public opinion polls and academic studies show more than half of all inhabitants think it possible or probable — 10 percent call it “certain” — they share their island with otherly beings, ranging from grumpy glacier-dwelling trolls to occasionally gregarious hidden people. … Earlier this year, Iceland’s highway agency had to change the course of a new road leading out of Reykjavik after citizens protested that the original route would disturb an elf’s lair under a big rock. “There are people who believe in elves, and we try to show respect for people’s beliefs,” said Viktor Ingolfsson, an official of the department. “If that means building around an elf stone, we try to accommodate.”
As superstitions go, huldufolk are pretty innocuous. But you have to wonder if the commonplace acceptance of illusory beings made it slightly easier for them to believe in illusory wealth.
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“Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. … She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We Shall Overcome.’
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.”
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The Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature today features London from above, a bunch of stunning photos by aerial photographer Jason Hawkes. Go see them all.
Also, if you like great photos, add the Big Picture’s RSS Feed to your feed reader. You’ll get some real gems from time to time, like the Olympic opening ceremonies and events, California wildfires and even astonishing photos of the Large Hadron Collider (a couple more photos below).
Using -ise for words like ‘maximise’ and ‘organise’ is a relatively new phenomenon in Britain, probably because maximize with a z looks too American to British eyes. In fact, the -ize form originated in Britain and is the preferred international form.
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According to CNN-IBN “Google has done its bit to save energy by launching Blackle — a Google search page that saves energy”, based on the theory that black pixels take less energy to display than white pixels. (Here’s a screen-grab of the story.) There are at least two problems with this.
First, this is not applicable to LCDs — the backlighting on LCD displays uses energy no matter what colors you use on the screen. The good news is that LCD displays use far less energy than CRTs do, completely eliminating the need for display hacks. LCD monitors are still not ubiquitous in India, so if you wish to save energy you should probably buy one.
Second, Blackle wasn’t launched by Google. A quick look at its About Page would have told IBN that. Or a whois check. Apparently a “Google Custom Search” logo is enough to confuse IBN’s tech reporters. Good to see that India’s mainstream media continues to remain cheerfully clueless about technology reporting.
(Update: IBN has now corrected the story. See the screen-grab if you want to see the original.)
That the new 20 pound note would feature Adam Smith is old news. What I hadn’t known is that his pin-manufacturing ‘case study’ would be immortalized on banknotes as well:
This story about IIT Bombay (IITB) disabling internet access in its hostels between 11pm and 12:30pm is not at first glance as hair-raising as the one about Chinese Internet de-addiction clinics, but it improves upon acquaintance.
Consider the consequences: one of the finest research tools invented by man is effectively off-limits to students for half a day (Is that really right? Or did the Economic Times flip an AM into a PM?) Of course, in the name of compulsory ’socialization,’ students will crowd into university clusters, which never quite have enough machines to accommodate the crowd.
Involvement in Open Source and Web 2.0 projects will drop because budding programmers at IITB will lose access just when many of them are most productive — given extremely hot Indian summers and the lack of air-conditioning in most (practically all?) dorm rooms, night-time is often the most comfortable time to start a long hack session.
Of course, the most enterprising students (especially in departments like Electronics and Computer Science) will probably use their ability to access department networks to get around this interruption in service, but a more interesting question is: in 2007, should students really have to wrangle for network time?
The point about regulations like these is that they demonstrate the knee-jerk short-term thinking that passes for leadership in many Indian institutions. Apparently the drivers for this decision included the death of IITB’s “hostel culture” (by which they mean late night vodka parties, night shows at cinemas and card games — oh wait, that was my misspent youth) and, rather more seriously, a string of on-campus suicides by some loners. Of course, while it is regrettable, it has to be asked: are the vast majority of well-adjusted (and not-so-well adjusted, trying-to-cope) students well-served by over-paternalistic regulations? Pre-Internet hostels weren’t exactly idylls.
And if IITB is scared of internet in the hostels, wait until they hear about this newfangled thing called wifi in classrooms:
“At any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 to 90% of the students were online,” Professor Herzog says. “And what were they doing online? They were reading The New York Times; they were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer; they were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco when their new job started…. And I was just stunned.”
There’s the paternalist, knee-jerk reaction of banning the undesirable, so typical of India (Here’s another great example). Then there’s the embracing of the new, and treating students like responsible human beings:
I also tend to wander around the room a lot (I’m one of those don’t-stay-behind-the-lectern professors), which may discourage some of that behavior. And I tend to call on the students who don’t seem engaged. But I don’t make any particular effort to ensure that students aren’t surfing or IM-ing or whatever. They’re grownups. If they’re willing to risk their grades, and to look dumb when they’re called on, well, I’m willing for them to do that too.
