Whatever Floats Your Boat
Actually, I hate that phrase, but today it fits. I looked out the window and laughed – there is a tanker, floating above the horizon. At first, I almost thought it was a balloon. Look! See for yourself:
The day is so clear, I can see the tin roofs on Failaika Island with my bare eye. It isn’t much, but it is the clearest day in a long time:
In today’s Kuwait Times, Dr. Saleh al-Ajeeri tells us that the chances of rainfall are going away because the winds are changing, and that the temperatures are going to fall again. It’s hard for me to believe, on a day like today, warm and sunny and not a cloud in the sky, it’s hard to believe it is going to be cold. Dr. Al-Ajeeri says “The winter season is still going on and the cold will return during a season locally known as the ‘Scorpion’s Cold'” and that we can’t count on higher temperatures until the end of February.
SCORPION’S COLD?? OK, my Kuwaiti friends, I have never heard of that before. Can anyone explain to me what this is? And what it it called in Arabic?
Wooo HOOO, ShoSho! The Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
Watch out! Ya’ll have some serious competition! ShoSho sent these in, and she blew me out of the water. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wait till you see:
How does she do it? Look at those colors, look how saturated they are!
My friends, I remind you, the deadline in January 31st. You still have this one week to get your entries in.
I am heartened by the number of cameras I see down in the market – whether you enter or not, you are down there, taking photos and enjoying the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of a Kuwait national treasure.
Even the way the vegetables and fish are arranged shows artistry and an eye for beauty and composition. Look how ShoSho captures the colors and textures of the Sadu woven goods and carpets. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Send your photos to Intlxpatr@aol.com. If you send them, I will print them. 🙂
(ShoSho, you set a very high standard to beat!)
Bu Yousef: Fancy a Date? Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
Woo HOO, Bu Yousef! This is one great photo! I can almost taste the date, but even better – I love the gleam on the vendor’s face! More, please, Bu Yousef!
Wise Men Still Seek Him
“Oh! You’re putting your Christmas things away!” I noticed, as I was picking up my friend.
“No, no, not until after Epiphany!” she said. “Our tradition is to take down the tree when Epiphany is over.”
Tomorrow, January 6, is The Feast of Holy Epiphany and in celebration, I will post two more works of art I found to celebrate the wise men seeking the child by following a mysterious star. Many people are still looking for a scientific foundation for the Star of Wonder and if you click on the blue Star of Wonder it will take you to a very good discussion of some of the possibilities from BBC News.
I like this one because the Wise Men have on clothing that really looks Persian:
Here, in a painting by Murillo, they look, not surprisingly, Spanish/European, except for the African!
I wonder if in their travels, these wise men came through Kuwait?
Qurain Fest – Information Where?
Here is what bugs me. There is this perfectly wonderful festival going on. I only know because the newspapers print photos and stories – after each event. I cannot figure out WHERE the event is taking place, WHAT TIME an event will take place . . . these are perfect opportunities to go and learn something, to experience the culture, and we have no idea – in advance – where to go, how to find these things.
I would love to see this dancing!
So, if it is cultural, music and dancing are allowed? 🙂 Is it always just men dancing, or do women dance, too?
Isn’t this camel racing season? When are the camels raced? Where?
From Al Watan
Kuwaiti folk dancing troupe entertains audience
KUWAIT: As part of the Qurain Cultural Festival”s festivities, the Red Palace group, a folk dancing troupe, performed in Jahra on Sunday.
The performance, which was attended by Deputy Director of the festival Mohammed AlÙ€Asousi, lasted for two hours. The dancers presented a wide spectrum of national and patriotic themes much to the enjoyment of the audience.
Head of the folklore group, Nasser Suleiman AlÙ€Faraj explained that their participation in the event came as a result of the group”s strong belief in reviving an old heritage and folklore. He stressed that the past would always be relevant in the present.
Last updated on Tuesday 30/12/2008
Stonehenge a Center for Healing
This is from BBC News: Nature, and you can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type, but I wanted you to know about the upcoming BBC Special on Stonehenge, September 27th.
Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300BC – a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious edifice was built.
The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring’s original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.
The dating is the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by Profs Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright.
The duo found evidence suggesting Stonehenge was a centre of healing.
Others have argued that the monument was a shrine to worship ancestors, or a calendar to mark the solstices.
A documentary following the progress of the recent dig has been recorded by the BBC Timewatch series. It will be broadcast on Saturday 27 September.
The mystery of Stonehenge, it’s origins, is purpose, has fascinated people for centuries. How amazing that one twelve day dig has discovered so much information – new pieces for a hugely complicated puzzle with lots of work left to be done.
As I write this post, I am also reminded of one of the all time funniest movies I have ever seen – This is Spinal Tap, one of those mocumentaries, this one about a rock group. Not a very bright rock group. It is a very funny movie.
They ask a set designer to create a magnificent recreation of Stonehenge, and give her a napkin with how they want it to look. The result is . . . hysterical:
Peter Bowen and Nails
Three men trundle a naked woman through the desert to a remote place, where she was placed in a container, 6 x 6 x 6 with only a candle, a cot, water and a holy book, until she could come to her senses and behave.
Four girls were strangled, one each day, for refusing the sexual advances of their father and his brother. The two youngest girls, their older sisters dead, complied.
Women with inconvenient views, women who start having thoughts of their own disappear. Many in this tribe are home-birthed and home-schooled, so there aren’t records of their existence, and when they disappear, no-one is the wiser.
Saudi Arabia, you ask? Pakistan? Afghanistan? Where on earth are women treated this vilely?
Peter Bowen, in Nails, gives vent to his frustration of minor fundamentalist Christian cults roaming the American West, many of them ending up in Montana where they believe they will have the privacy to practice their beliefs without interference, and where those who are well-funded can influence poverty-stricken school districts to toss out Science classes and incorporate Intelligent Design. Bowen has utter contempt for their studied ignorance, their need to be the sole authority on what the scriptures say, and their insistence on the utter submission of women.
His worst scorn is for their treatment of women – he attributes it to their fears about their own sexuality. Women are often the victims, Bowen states, when men worry about their size, worry about how to keep women faithful, tractable, and docile. (And let’s face it, who can successfully control a woman? 😉 )
This is the latest Gabriel du Pre novel, or at least the latest I have read. Gabriel du Pre is a retired brand inspector (he goes back every now and then when needed, when the brand inspector is overstretched, insuring that the cows sold are from the herds they are being sold from), Metis (French and Indian mix), a renowned fiddler, and a deputy sheriff when the sheriff – or the FBI – needs help solving a particularly tricky murder. It takes a while to get your ear used to his dialect, and he spends a lot of time in bars, but the man has a real knack for figuring things out.
Gabriel du Pre is everything a straight-living woman like myself shouldn’t like. He drinks, morning to night, keeps his flask of whisky under the driver’s seat in his car. He drives way over the speed limit. He doesn’t go to church, he goes to an ancient Indian spiritualist / medicine man when he needs guidance. He isn’t married to the wry, very smart woman with whom he lives. He breaks the rules, he goes outside the boundaries.
For all his flaws, du Pre has a deep down, rock solid core of decency, and a way of looking at life and situations that is practical and . . . forgiving. He is charitable toward his brothers and sisters. He detests cruelty, especially when the strong take advantage of the weak or the arrogant walk all over the humble. There is something about this flawed hero that keeps the reader coming back for more.
His Gabriel du Pre novels are not heavy reading. You can toss one off in about half a day, but they are not so simple as they appear. You find yourself thinking about the issues he raises, and you find yourself looking to see when the next Gabriel du Pre mystery will appear.
You can find this on Amazon.com for $16. new or from $3.07 used, plus shipping of course. (Yes, I own stock in Amazon.com.) 🙂
Building 7 Collapse Solved, No Mystery
Feds Say They’ve Solved 9/11 Mystery
By DEVLIN BARRETT, AP
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (Aug. 21) – Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.
The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics have long argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.
Federal investigators said Thursday they have resolved a lingering question from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: What caused World Trade Center 7 to collapse? They determined the building, which sat north of the World Trade Center towers, was brought down by fire started by debris from the twin towers.
Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a skyscraper.
“The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team.
Investigators also concluded that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.
The building has been the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories for the last seven years, partly because the collapse occurred about seven hours after the twin towers came down. That fueled suspicion that someone intentionally blew up the building in a controlled demolition.
Critics like Mike Berger of the group 9/11 Truth said he wasn’t buying the government’s explanation.
“Their explanation simply isn’t sufficient. We’re being lied to,” he said, arguing that there is other evidence suggesting explosives were used on the building.
Sunder said his team investigated the possibility that an explosion inside the building brought it down, but found there was no large boom or other noise that would have occurred with such a detonation. Investigators also created a giant computer model of the collapse, based partly on news footage from CBS News, that they say shows internal column failure brought down the building.
Investigators also ruled out the possibility that the collapse was caused by fires from a substantial amount of diesel fuel that was stored in the building, most of it for generators for the city’s emergency operations command center.
The 77-page report concluded that the fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure.
“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” said Sunder.
The NIST investigators issued more than a dozen building recommendations as a result of their inquiry, most of which repeat earlier recommendations from their investigation into the collapse of the two large towers.
In both instances, investigators concluded that extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed.
The recommendations include building skyscrapers with stronger connections and framing systems to resist the effects of thermal expansion, and structural systems designed to prevent damage to one part of a building from spreading to other parts.
A spokeswoman for the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein, praised the government’s work.
“Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day,” said Silverstein spokeswoman Dara McQuillen.
In discussing the findings, the investigator Sunder acknowledged that some may still not be convinced, but insisted the science behind their findings is “incredibly conclusive.”
“The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said,” he said, adding: “The obvious stares you in the face.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
Maitland and The Company of Liars: A novel of the plague
I had just finished The Swallows of Kabul and still had a long flight to go. Fortunately, I was in the Johannisburg airport, with it’s truly wonderful bookstore, and came across The Company of Liars: a novel of the plague. Well, it isn’t exactly a novel of the plague. The story opens in 1348, a year in which le morte bleu hit the British Isles, only later to be called the plague. The author captures the times, the filth, the lack of bathing, the superstitions, the ways of life.
The plot centers around a group who wanders through the island, just trying to stay alive. The spreading plague impacts on their wandering, but to call this a novel of the plague is just not accurate. The plague is the reason for the journey, but the journey is the center of the novel, not the plague.
Before I started reading the book, I read the Historical Notes in the back, and that is where I came across the most interesting information in the entire book:
The 1348 plague was only the latest in a series of disasters to hit Britain. The period between 1290 and 1348 had seen a rapid and drastic climate change which was so noticeable that the Pope ordered special prayers to be said daily in every church. Eyewitness accounts claimed that 1348 was a particularly bad year, for it rained every day from Midsummer’s Day to Christmas Day. Climate change brought about crop failure, liver fluke in sheep and murrain in cattle, as well as causing widespread flooding which virtually wiped out the salt industry on the east coast. This, combined with a population explosion, meant that as many people died from starvation as from the plague itself.
Interestingly, the book will not be released in the US until September 2008. The cover shown is nothing like the cover of the book I bought.
American issue cover:
Cover on book bought in Johannisburg:
Â
I like the cover of mine better.
Some reviewers call this book “enthralling” or “gripping.” I wans’t all that enthralled or gripped, but it did make good airplane reading. I learned a lot about the grim brutality of life in 1348, but as I told AdventureMan, this is more a book about a slice of time than a book with a great plot. The plot isn’t that great, it is the historical detail that is interesting, and fiction just makes it more easily absorbed. (my opinion)
Expats Run More Red Lights
This is from today’s Kuwait Times.
KUWAIT: The Interior Ministry defended a new policy of deporting expatriates who run red lights by arguing that “the highest percentage of traffic violations are committed by expats, adding that this constitutes a hazard on the lives of motorists,” reported Al-Jarida.
The ministry in a statement said it had the legal right according to the Foreigners Residency law to deport expats for such offenses. And added that the ministry used this right as it is its administrative right according to the law. (sic)
I am blown away that they can say this with a straight face.
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