Month: November 2011

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #76

Vfyw_11-12

A dearth of diversity in this week’s entries. A reader writes:

Obviously taken out the window of a yacht; my guess is that it’s on the Intracoastal Waterway somewhere in South Florida. Presumably moored on the mainland side, looking west across to the barrier island that separates the waterway from the ocean all along the Florida coast. The only problem is that there are on scattered high-rises on the horizon, so it can’t be Ft. Lauderdale, Boca or Palm Beach. Also, the waterway is quite wide, which suggests somewhere south of Lauderdale but north of Miami. Therefore, looking toward Dania or Hollywood?  That’s hard to say; I haven’t been down that way in years. Don’t know the geography of those areas, and I’m not enough of a Google maven to be able to narrow it down better.

Another writes:

First time guessing, though I follow it almost every week.  Probably way off, but looking it made me think of the traveling south down the Saigon river out of Ho Chi Minh City.  Would feel bad if I was close and didn’t give it a try.

Another:

Of all the anonymous ferry terminals in the world, I figured I ought to pick one in a place where I’ve actually been. I went to Kurihama on a business trip around 1990. JVC has a facility there. Why Japan, when this terminal looks like it could be anywhere in the civilized world? Well, the dock has no bumpers. All the American ferry terminals I can see have big bumpers. Maybe the Japanese build them differently, because their terminals don’t seem to have them. And that white building could be vaguely Japanese. Beyond that, I got nuthin. I know Kurihama is wrong.

Another is correct:

I know this!

I drove by this spot several times a week when I lived in Stockholm.  This picture was taken from the Silja Line looking across at the island of Lidingö, specifically at Lilla Vfyw2Värtan.  The building to the right of the ship is the Scandic Ariadne hotel. I have included a few pictures of the area.  The first is a similar view, only taken from the water.  The second is a reverse angle of the picture for the contest [seen right] – it looks back at a similarly positioned cruise-liner from the dock with the hotel on the left.  The third picture gives a different angle of the hotel, including the small red building at the edge of the dock, which is visible from the contest picture.

I just love being out on the Stockholm archipelago (skärgård) and can’t wait to return to Sweden soon.  While I only lived there for two years, it sunk deep into my soul.

Another:

Some of my relatives in Sweden objected to the construction of such large residential buildings in Stockholm, feeling that it changed the character of the town which is built on a complex archipelago. (They lived about two miles farther out from the center of town, in the Täby area.)

Another:

This brought back lovely memories!  When my husband and I lived in Stockholm, we would take the Silja line ferry to Finland, mostly to visit family or stay at the summer house.  To this day, I love taking the overnight ferry ride between Finland and Sweden, enjoying the spectacular views of the archipelagos.  The company has changed hands, but the ferries still sail daily.

Another:

This contest was too easy and no fair.

This is from the bow of a Silja (now called Tallink) ship headed from Stockholm to Finland via the Åland islands. I think this is from a cabin window, one of the high price bow cabins, on level 6 or so. In the Google Maps pic, attached, the ship is reversed and in the opposite pier:

SiljaTerminal

Which boat is it? The sun is hitting the building from the West, so it is evening. Whether it is the Serenade or the Symphony depends on which day the pic was taken. This time of year the Turku boats get in too late for the sun, so it is a boat leaving for Stockholm at 5 PM. But the time of the pic is problematic. Sunset is before 4 PM this week and the sun is still up when this picture was taken. Is it possible that the picture is a week old, from before daylight savings time?

Although I usually take the competing Viking Line ship, this white paint pattern was easy to recognize. This is altogether not fair. A couple weeks ago I took a pic I intended to send you of one of the Silja ships, along with the two viking ships, all dancing around each other in Mariehamn’s harbor, pic attached. Some of the Silja ships go to Stockholm, and those were not in the picture I took. The ones in my picture go to Turku/Abo. In the pic there are four boats. The one I am in and two others. Why four huge boats in one teeny harbor at one time?

IMG_0188_2

First the simple facts. There are two competing Ferry companies, The Silja line (white boats, now called Tallink) and the Viking line (red boats). The have the same schedules (plus or minus 15 minutes). They each have a boat from Finland and a boat from Sweden meet in the middle of the Baltic at the harbor shown. For each of the four boats, most passengers switch boats at Mariehamn and go back to their home countries. So really the boats are boats to nowhere.

The back story. These ships represent a huge source of pollution that is caused by/subsidized by a strange EU policy. The semi-autonomous Åland islands of Finland have a special “tax-free” status in the EU. If a boat lands there, it gets credit for an international trip. So the boats can sell cigarettes and alcohol (and little trinkets of various kinds) tax-free. Most of the people riding on the boat from, say Sweden to Finland get off in Mariehamn (the Åland islands) and get right back on the ship coming from Finland and going to Sweden. The same the other way around. That is, people ride the ship for the tax-free experience, not to get anywhere.

Thus the economy of the Åland islands is held up by a tax-free law that makes for thousands of tons of carbon pollution. Without the special EU tax-free exemption for the Åland Islands, ferry traffic would go way down. Many of the passengers are induced to ride by the tax-free status that the stop gives. The Åland islands have a population of 35,000 people yet are served by 23 ferries per day. These huge ships, with thousands of passengers will stop for, literally, about a minute. Sometimes only one or two people will get on or off. Tons and tons of fuel for a tax exemption.

Another gets close to guessing the exact ferry:

It was pretty clear right away that the photo was taken from a ship in Northern Europe, but I spent a lot of time searching ports. I refused to accept that it wasn’t Turku, Finland, but, well, you can’t make it Turku when it’s not. Finally, however, I realized that the “road” on the bottom right is for car loading, and started focusing on ferry lines, instead of cruise ports. Which led me to Stockholm. The photo is taken from Tallink’s MS Victoria I, which connects Stockholm and Talinn. Below is my guess of the window, as well as an aerial of the port with two other possible ships in it (the Silja Serenade and the Baltic Queen). The blue around the windows in the photo, the fact that the Victoria docks facing outward (as opposed to the Serenade) and the radar in front makes me think it’s the Victoria, rather than those ships (or the MS Galaxy, which also docks there). But I could be wrong.

Nearly had it. From the most precise reader this week:

This is an interesting one because you’ve presented us with (for the first time, I think) a moving target. So let’s start with non-movable parts. We’re docked at Viewerthe Tallink-Silja Line’s terminal in Värtahamnen, just east of central Stockholm, looking across to Lilla Vartan. I’ve marked the red roofed building in the foreground. The high-rise to the right in the window is the Scandi Ariadne Hotel, Positionen 117, Södra Kajen 37, 115 74 Stockholm. The unusual circular shaft on the side of the building is marked on the aerial view, as is the shadow of the radio tower beside the small building.

Across the water is Lilla Vartan, with two residential high-rise apartment projects visible. The ones on the left are on Bodelsvägen. These Google Steet Views [not pictured] are taken from a point half way between the two complexes. Looking the Screen shot 2011-11-15 at 10.57.53 AMother direction, the red buildings and smokestack are visible. The red apartment buildings are on Larsbergsvägen.

Now, let’s deal with the moving target itself, the Tallink Silja Line’s Galaxy, which ferries passengers and vehicles from Stockholm to Turku, Finland. Here’s a picture of the ship at the dock. The Scandia Ariadne is just visible over the superstructure of the ship. Now, here’s a hard part, which is that the line’s Baltic Queen also uses this dock. But there’s a detail on the window of the suite in the photo which is telling: the strip of wood on the side of the window frame. These appear on in photos of Galaxy’s suites, but not in photos of the Baltic Queens.

Viewer2Here’s the interior of a suite on the Galaxy. As you can see, the windows identify it. But which suite? I was unable to find a deck plan showing suite numbers, so if someone else has that, I’m toast. But here’s a shot of the ship with the window from which I believe the shot was taken marked in red. The radar on the bow looks quite modest from the window shot, but as you can see, it’s pretty big.

My first thought in looking at the photo was that it could be anywhere. But a look at the trees in particular made me think it wasn’t tropical, much more likely to be a higher latitude. And when I looked at the towers across the water, they looked European to me. Didn’t take long to find the dock, but identifying the ship and cabin took more work.

This is the third one I’ve identified. Hope I win!

Congrats! We will send you a VFYW book shortly. From the submitter of the photo:

This was taken from an aft cabin on the Galaxy ferry just as we were departing Stockholm on the Stockholm-Turku route through the Swedish-Finnish archipelago.

One more interesting story from a reader:

My adopted hometown, Stockholm, Sweden! My birthday is Monday, so this photo was like an early birthday present, making me homesick for one of my favorite places on earth. When I saw the picture, it took me less than a second to say “Stockholm.” The light on the buildings, the coastline and the water are deeply ingrained in my memory.

I’m from the Midwest, but I lived in Stockholm in 1977-78 when I was seven years old. My father was a professor on sabbatical, so our family moved to Stockholm. In those days, it was very uncommon for kids like me to have the opportunity to travel – let alone live – in Europe, and as a result that experience had a deep impact on my formative years and later life. My memories of that experience are some of my most treasured ones. In fact, we actually took a Silja Line ferry to Helsinki on our way to vacation in what was then Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In those years of Brezhnev and the Soviets, I vividly recall that trip because from the moment we arrived, we were constantly followed by the secret police (my father, along with hundreds of other academics at that time, had signed a petition supporting Sakharov and other Refuseniks and thus apparently landed on some sort of persona non grata list in the USSR).

The Silja Line (and Viking Line) ferries are overnight trips, sailing through the famously beautiful archipelago of Stockholm (not that the Swedes or Finns take in the view – the trips are also notoriously famous booze cruises … we were kept up all night by merry bands of drunken Scandinavians).

(Archive)

“He Would Have To Have A Split Personality”

Michelle Cottle thinks Gloria Cain's first interview changed very little:

[S]he never offered any real reassurances of why she believes (and, by extension, why the rest of us should consider) Herman guiltless other than, “I know him.” While delivered with infectious spirit by Gloria, this is, in fact, the oldest spousal defense in the book—one that grows more meaningless with each passing scandal.

The WaPo’s Israel Problem, Ctd

A reader writes:

Thanks for your posting on the Rubin/Abrams/retweet controversy.  I agree fully – but what has surprised me in the discussion that has surrounded this is an earlier incident involving Abrams – wife of former NSC middle east director Elliott Abrams, one of three board members with William Kristol of the Emergency Committee for Israel, and sister of John Podhoretz – has gone completely unremarked. 

Specifically, Abrams described a visit by herself and husband Eliot to some friends living in a West Bank settlement:

"But my husband and I get to have a brush with it. We sail through the checkpoint on the way back across the Green Line to Jerusalem, and almost immediately take a wrong turn. Though we have a GPS in the car, he hasn’t turned it on, because he knows where he’s going—and he’s making really good time getting there, too!! Eventually, he realizes he doesn’t actually know where he’s going, and he activates the guidance. Yet even with Robot Girl telling us what to do, we are lost on an unfamiliar road in a part of Jerusalem neither one of us recognizes. Uphill to our left is what looks like a techy office area; downhill to our right is the Zionist Racist Apartheid Wall.

As we pass along at warp speed I say out loud to Mr. Leadfoot, the only person within earshot, “Fuck you, Arabs!” Then rant on in my head so as not to further irritate an already irritated driver who hates getting lost and almost never does so:  “This partition was their choice. They could have had their state sixty-three years ago, if only they’d accepted the original partition instead of going to war against the Jews. Blah, blah, blah.” I’d be pacing back and forth if not for being trapped in a car."

Now – imagine that the wife of a former NSC official with responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict writes a diary of driving with him through Israel, and states that she shouted out "F— you, Jews."  She continues to sit as a board member of an advocacy organization with other prominent individuals, and her husband is never asked about the incident.
 
It is, of course, utterly inconceivable.

And the closed nepotistic circle of the neocons truly is a sight to behold. To think that these hateful nutcases are taken seriously in Washington reveals just how skewed our foreign policy is. Obama is trying to move past it – for the sake of America and Israel – but he was checkmated in his first term. One powerful reason to re-elect him is that he can try again.

Subsidizing The Rich

Dan Stone and Laura Colarusso digest Tom Coburn's analysis, which indicates that American millionaires receive more than $30 billion in government subsidies each year: 

The $30 billion in handouts, to put it in perspective, amounts to twice as much as the government spends on NASA, and three times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. … The biggest money comes—or goes, rather—through unpaid taxes. More than 1,500 millionaires paid no income tax last year, according to federal records, mainly due to tax loopholes and savvy accountants. Tax breaks taken by millionaires on things like mortgage interest ($27.7 billion), rental expenses ($64.2 billion) and electric vehicles ($12.5 million) keep cash from entering the federal coffers.

Veronique de Rugy welcomes the report:

We can debate whether or not it is fair to eliminate payments such as retirement benefits ($9 billion according to the report) and unemployment benefits ($74 million) for millionaires. Even though millionaires’ dependency on these programs is questionable, they do pay into a system that is sold to taxpayers as a form of insurance or investment in one’s future. My preferred option would be to reform the system altogether, but the elimination of these subsidies is definitely a second-best alternative. 

Amen. And how great to see the right finally getting serious about this.

Why An Atheist Converts, Ctd

A reader responds to one woman's conversion to Catholicism:

It does not follow that because there is no God, that life has no meaning. Let's, for a second, exclude the question of God which is taken as so momentous and examine what we know about the Universe. It is massive in scale, in what we see and what we can't. There are galaxies cropping up constantly. There are infinite numbers of stars and in certain places, forests of true nothing. On our own planet, there are countless species of life from Zebras down to bacteria. The life of our planet itself, the rumble of its earthquakes, the sweeps and horrors of its tornadoes and hurricanes. Hold onto all that for a second and then think about the human experience. There are seven billion of us, and each has their own internal universe, their own understanding of history. We have the vastness of love and loneliness and especially friendship. Some of us get lucky enough to spend our lives actually exploring another person's universe which generally seems to us to range on the scale from bigger to the cosmos to as fundamentally tiny as a flea. And each of us has this.

We have a constant explosion of love and sadness through the enormous sweep of the cosmos and it makes us feel without meaning? If the Universe is anything, it is proof that meaning can be found in the smallest of existence, from atoms to neutrinos and down beneath it. It can be found in a virus if one has to look. The lesson of the Universe is not insignificance, the lesson of it is our mutual enormity. The Universe is loud with it.

But this is God. It is certainly what I understand as God. Nonbelievers need to let go of anthropocentric, grey-bearded beings in the sky for God itself, the highest consciousness of all, and the force that gives this staggering beauty, available to us all, love. Another reader:

I'm always frustrated by the common theistic argument that a life without a god is one without meaning. That our shared experiences are "reduced to some neurons firing in the human brain, then it's all destined to be extinguished at death," completely misses the point. What magic, what joy that those "neurons firing" give us! That people can't see the epic, glorious beauty of the miniscule odds of our brief existence and instead must assign an imaginary father figure to give it meaning has always baffled me. Yes, I believe when we die we're gone, and that on a universal scale, we are indeed insignificant. Yes, I believe the universe is vast and uncaring, but that, to me at least, makes our lives even more special, even more meaningful and even more precious.

Will Wilkinson makes related points.

(Video: Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König, recut from footage shot by expeditions 28 and 29 onboard the International Space Station from
August to October, 2011.)

Quote For The Day

"Waterboarding is torture. It’s contrary to America’s traditions. It’s contrary to our ideals. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we operate. We don’t need it in order to prosecute the war on terrorism. And we did the right thing by ending that practice. If we want to lead around the world, part of our leadership is setting a good example. And anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do — period,"- Barack Obama, yesterday. Conor Friedersdorf gives Obama some credit on the issue.

A Lull At Zuccotti Park

NYC_Park

Police arrested 70 protesters in Zuccotti Park early this morning as they cleared the park for cleaning. The occupiers have since been granted a temporary court order to return. Amy Davidson visited the empty park:

Zuccotti Park, despite its utopian aspirations, wasn’t the promised land, a particular piece of ground that had to be won. It wasn’t even technically on Wall Street. It could, in some sense, have been anywhere, or everywhere; perhaps that will be the backward effect of this eviction. In that way, and in others one can only glimpse, the quiet in Zuccotti this morning felt like a lull, not an ending.

Yglesias thinks Bloomberg did OWS a favor:

OWS was either going to end with the cops clearing the park, or else it was going to end with the protestors losing interest. It would be totally human and understandable for the protestors to end up fading away as the weather gets colder, but that would be demoralizing to everyone who’s come to look at the various Occupations as a key signal of popular discontent with rampant inequality. Instead, by ordering the protestors to be removed the Bloomberg administration has ensured continued relevance for the issue. 

Ezra Klein looks ahead:

If [the protestors] are to go further, however, they are going to have to figure out a way to wield power in a more direct and directed form. The movement has always been uncertain on whether it wants to do that, and if it does, how to do it. It requires a willingness to work with the system that is, in certain ways, inimical to the founding of Occupy Wall Street. The good news, if they choose to make that transition, is that they don’t need a park to do it. The bad news is that, in most cases, it requires more hierarchy, clearer leaders, a more obvious agenda.

Photo by @jimbradysp. Live updates here and here. Footage from last night after the jump:

No Viable Candidate For The Tea Party

Ed Kilgore is unsurprised:

[N]o elaborate conspiracy theories are needed to explain the collapse of all the movement’s various champions. They wanted hard-core ideologues who scorned experience, conventional political skills, and any hint of sweet reasonableness, and that’s what they got: candidates likely to crumble under the glare of a national spotlight or be torn down for insufficient orthodoxy by the movement’s very supporters—or, in the case of most figures who have already risen and fallen during this election cycle, both.

The World’s Most Expensive Photograph

Is Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II, which sold for $4.3 million last week:

Gursky

Jakob Schiller tries to understand:

A gallery professional, who asked not to be named for concern over adverse professional repercussions, thinks the price is a bit of a farce. He says he’s noticed a growing trend where photographers are working hard to re-brand themselves as “artists” so they can sell their pieces in the higher-priced fine art markets that don’t traditionally trade in photography. This sale, he said, smacks of that change.

While he tries to take a balanced approach and realize that any sale of this kind has the potential to reflect positively on the medium of photography, he also said it’s important to call a spade a spade and avoid turning photography into something it’s not.