Thursday, November 26, 2020

Edinburgh

For our visit this week let's go to Scotland, to the city of Edinburgh.

The logical place to begin a visit to Edinburgh is at Edinburgh Castle. It is build on a geological formation known as a crag and tail. The castle is above the city, atop the crag, and the famed street, known as the Royal Mile, extends along the tail. Edinburgh Castle, at the high end of the Royal Mile, was the royal residence of Scotland before the Holyroodhouse Palace, at the opposite end of the Royal Mile, was built. The Royal Mile is so-called because it's length is just about exactly a mile.

Here is the photos of Edinburgh Castle, from the travel photo blog of Europe. Photos can be enlarged simply by clicking on them:

http://markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/2006/09/edinburgh-castle-scotland.html

I am going to approach Edinburgh by way of the contrast between the Old Town and the New Town. The Old Town, including the castle, is centered along the Royal Mile, while the New Town is aligned along Princes Street, which is roughly parallel to the Royal Mile.

In the first of the following scenes, we are in Edinburgh Castle looking northward. The closest buildings that are seen in the distance are along Princes Street, from which there is a spectacular view looking up at the castle. The trees between Princes Street and the castle is the Princes Street Gardens. The water in the far distance is the Firth of Forth, which separates the southern part of Scotland, where Edinburgh is located, from the rest of the country, to the north. The beginning of northern Scotland can be seen in the far distance.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9487831,-3.2000375,3a,75y,337.03h,90.39t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s-SjYvdFlKB0V3usIWBm44Q!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D-SjYvdFlKB0V3usIWBm44Q%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D71.930229%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

Here are the general photos of Edinburgh, from the travel photo blog of Europe, around the Old Town area:

http://markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/2006/09/edinburgh-scotland.html

The Building with the pillars is the Scottish National Gallery. This is in the green space between the New and the Old Towns. The buildings to the left are the Old Town. This park was formerly an artificial defensive lake that was later filled in.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250919.jpg

I went to a show of the Camera Obscura, next to Edinburgh Castle. The rotating dome on the top of the building has a large lens and images of the city outside are projected on a wall. It is really fascinating for anyone with an interest in optics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Obscura_(Edinburgh)#/media/File:Outlook_Tower,_Castlehill,_Edinburgh.JPG

The main train station of this part of Edinburgh, Waverley Station, is located right between the Old and New Towns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Waverley_railway_station#/media/File:WaverleyTrain3.jpg

The route from Edinburgh Castle to Holyroodhouse Palace is the famed Royal Mile. Here are the photos of the Royal Mile from the travel photos of Europe blog. Notice the crowned church steeple, in the first and third photos from the top. That is St. Giles Cathedral, the national cathedral of Scotland.

John Knox was one of the great leaders of the Reformation, and he did a lot of preaching here. His supposed home is on the Royal Mile. His preaching turned Scotland from a stronghold of Catholicism into one of the most Protestant of nations. St. Giles Cathedral is actually the central cathedral of Presbyterianism. When we think of the Presbyterian denomination today, the first country that comes to mind is South Korea, but St. Giles was originally it's center.

The building with the two turrets, straight ahead in the bottom photo, is Holyroodhouse Palace. It was the residence of Scotland's royal family, until Scotland joined Britain in 1707. The British queen spends one week a year at Holyroodhouse. In the second photo from the top, I think I made a mistake, that is in Glasgow and not Edinburgh:

http://markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/2006/09/along-royal-mile-to-holyroodhouse.html

The following scenes on the Royal Mile begin inside St. Giles Cathedral.  It is named for the patron saint of Edinburgh during the time of Catholicism. Next to the cathedral is the old parliament building from before Scotland joined Britain in 1707, after both ended up on the same side of the Reformation. The original Crown Jewels of Scotland are on display in Edinburgh Castle. Remember that the church with the crowned steeple is St. Giles:

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.949494,-3.190985,3a,75y,180h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-JCHJvPh1YR4%2FUgV8B6m1qVI%2FAAAAAAAAT4k%2FzhSC_jiN74A5Zyb4dZM5HxFrWKGXJ6T7g!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-JCHJvPh1YR4%2FUgV8B6m1qVI%2FAAAAAAAAT4k%2FzhSC_jiN74A5Zyb4dZM5HxFrWKGXJ6T7g%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i4000!8i2000

Scotland is part of Britain, but has it's own parliament. This is Scotland's Parliament Building, on the Royal Mile near Holyroodhouse Palace:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament#/media/File:ScottishParliamentFront.JPG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament#/media/File:Debating_chamber,_Scottish_Parliament_(31-05-2006).jpg

This is what Princes Street, in the New Town with it's many shops, looks like. It is from Princes Street that there is the spectacular view upward to Edinburgh Castle. The clock in the clock tower of the Balmoral Hotel is purposely set three minutes fast, so that no one will miss their train at nearby Waverley Station. Balmoral Hotel is on the south side of Princes Street, but that side is ordinarily kept vacant to preserve the view up at the Old Town, which is centered along the Royal Mile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_Street#/media/File:Princes_Street,_Edinburgh.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_Street#/media/File:New_Town,_Edinburgh,_Panorama.jpg

Near Holyroodhouse Palace, and at the end of Princes Street, is Calton Hill. This is where monuments of Scotland are located. The pillars are Scotland's National Monument. It was supposedly intended to be a temple, but was never finished. Across the water is the beginning of the northern part of Scotland, on the other side of the Firth of Forth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calton_Hill#/media/File:Edinburgh_Calton_Hill.jpg

The monuments on Calton Hill can be seen in the upper left background of this photograph:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250913.jpg

And also in the upper right background of this photograph:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250918.jpg 

Holyroodhouse Palace and Abbey are at the bottom of the Royal Mile. The palace was the home of Scottish kings before the union with England in 1707. Edinburgh Castle, at the top of the Royal Mile was the royal residence before Holyroodhouse was built. The abbey is in ruins. An abbey was the church of a Catholic monastery, some of which were on the scale of cathedrals. After the Reformation, most abbeys became Protestant churches but some were simply abandoned and are now in ruins. That is why so many churches in Britain are called abbeys but we do not see that in North America.

Posted by at No comments:

The Role Of Art, Music And, Sports

The role of those human endeavors that are not the "real world", particularly art, music and, sports, is they transmit patterns while allowing us the chance to work out the complexity that is then applied to the "real world". It is much like how children's games work out how the "real world" actually works.

Meanwhile, art and music is pleasing to us because we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings and is a reflection to us of our own higher level of complexity. Art and music can be defined as a form of mathematical expression using graphics or sound, in that the position of every element is defined relative to every other element. Again, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our inanimate surroundings.

Before we had the complex modern technology, science and, society that came with the Renaissance, we had to work out and learn to use that complexity through art. Realist painting and sculpture had to come before modern design. As for the operation of modern society, we had to produce complex paintings, with all of the many parts "working together" to convey the meaning of the painting, before we could produce the "real world" constitutions that govern how society operates.

We certainly could not have the complex circuit boards in modern electronic devices without first working out the complexity in painting. Every part of the circuit must support all of the other parts, just as in the painting.

Surrealistic, or non-realistic, artwork gets us thinking outside of our vision, or "outside the box", and this gets us in the frame of mind to invent, to come up with new ideas, and to discover things that we cannot see with our vision.

Many early paintings and sculptures involved great anatomical detail. We had to become intimately familiar with anatomy through art before we could effectively apply it to medicine. In the same way we had to master rendering buildings, and their spatial relationship to each other, before we could have modern architecture.

Likewise the rhythm of poetry, and of music, is reflected in the rhythm of machines. Have you ever noticed the similarity between a song and the operation of an internal combustion engine? 

The musical instruments, percussion, string, wind and, singing, work together in exactly the same way as the several systems of the engine. A song is usually led by a singer just as the thrust-generating system is the primary system of the engine. This is supported by the cooling, lubrication and, charging systems in exactly the same way that the musical instruments support the singer.

The engine's valves have to open, and spark plugs have to fire, according to a rhythm that is identical to that of a song. We definitely could not have had cars without music. We had to work out the complexity of the engine in songs first.

Any machine with moving parts, the gears in a clock for example, must work together like "clockwork", but this precise rhythm is just like that of a song and it was through music that we worked out the complexity that made machines with many moving parts possible.

Sports is where we work out the complexity and strategy involved when there is opposition to what we are trying to do. Ball games against a similar team in a different uniform have always been used as preparation for, and to work out the patterns of, warfare. On another level, games like chess have been used to work out the strategies that might be involved in war, just as card games allow the working out of strategies that might be applicable to either war or business in peacetime.

As always, as the old saying goes, "Art imitates life imitates art". We are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings and it is where we can master and work out that complexity before applying it to the "real world". That is the purpose of art, music and, sports.

Would you like to read my story about imaginary space aliens who came to earth several times but never saw a human being However they found examples of human technology and, knowing that humans must replicate their own patterns in their technology, pieced together what humans must look like.

http://markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/2009/07/reverse-archeology.html?m=0


Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Bristol

For our visit this week, Bristol is the nearest major city to the place where I was born. This is near the area that we saw in the visit on this blog, "Gloucestershire And Herefordshire".

The city of Bristol is over a thousand years old. In the days of sailing ships, it was England's most important port. The explorer John Cabot sailed from here in 1497, and reached Newfoundland. The Cabot Tower was built to commemorate the 400th anniversary of that journey.

Bristol somewhat missed out on the Industrial Revolution, and it declined as a port when the development of the steam engine brought larger ships that could no longer navigate Bristol's Avon River. But when aircraft came along, it made itself into Britain's aeronautical and aerospace center.

The following scenes of the central city begin in Bristol Cathedral. Just before we moved to North America by ship, we went for a drive. My father pointed out a structure in memory of an explorer and the ship that had sailed across the ocean, and explained that I would soon be sailing across the ocean too. The Cabot Tower is not far from the cathedral.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.451724,-2.600381,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-IjGMvPB0P_4%2FU1j0xBSntrI%2FAAAAAAABXko%2FVO7H8S857E4T6_RufKWUn9JdjYurivxSACJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-IjGMvPB0P_4%2FU1j0xBSntrI%2FAAAAAAABXko%2FVO7H8S857E4T6_RufKWUn9JdjYurivxSACJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya65.14425-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i8200!8i4100

Here is more of the central city of Bristol, around Castle Park.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.455605,-2.5887783,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-JO1NMaB2LFE%2FV3vTD195azI%2FAAAAAAAACyM%2Fm32Tjy-9yokceo3n3pOYl06O0O96kaHiwCLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-JO1NMaB2LFE%2FV3vTD195azI%2FAAAAAAAACyM%2Fm32Tjy-9yokceo3n3pOYl06O0O96kaHiwCLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.015526-ya55.402412-ro1.1609286-fo100%2F!7i5376!8i2688

This is in and around the Temple Meads, Bristol's old train station that looks like a cathedral. If you see an old-style wooden ship, it is a replica of the ship that John Cabot sailed.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4496715,-2.580437,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-Uer6q24QqUc%2FWHoc0i2iAOI%2FAAAAAAAApf4%2FNdP-l5KGPNovgN7KmwiWL7dDjLqc4itzgCLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-Uer6q24QqUc%2FWHoc0i2iAOI%2FAAAAAAAApf4%2FNdP-l5KGPNovgN7KmwiWL7dDjLqc4itzgCLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi6.6691585-ya54.316223-ro0.4721037-fo100%2F!7i5376!8i2688

Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? The gorge just downstream from the falls resembled the gorge of the Avon River in Clifton, which was once a separate town but now is a suburb of Bristol. The town that grew on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls was thus named Clifton. The town has since been incorporated into the city of Niagara Falls, but the named lives on in the well-known tourist district of Clifton Hill.

Clifton is known for it's old suspension bridge, over the gorge, which opened in 1864.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Suspension_Bridge#/media/File:Clifton_Suspension_Bridge-9350.jpg

The following scenes of Clifton begin outside Clifton Cathedral. This is not an old cathedral like Bristol Cathedral, it was completed in 1973.


When back in Britain, I was once at the old Eastville Stadium in Bristol, for a motorcycle race.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastville_Stadium#/media/File:Eastville_Stadium_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2102658.jpg

The stadium has since been demolished, and the site is now a shopping area. Here is a look around the Eastville area, starting where the stadium used to be. Bristol is famous for it's street art, and also known for it's graffiti.


Here is a newer residential area, known as Hengrove.


To the southeast of Bristol is the city of Bath. This is a very old city that goes back to ancient times. Here is a look at it, beginning inside Bath Abbey.


Here is a look around the house of Longleat. This is not a palace, which is associated with royalty. Longleat was built during the time of Elizabeth I, and is a home of nobility rather than royalty.

Posted by at No comments:

The Keypad System Of Navigation

Has anyone wondered when it will be time to move beyond our current system of navigation, using GPS coordinates? Might there be a better system out there?

So much of the way we convey information involves the use of keypads. I think that keypads actually represent an ideal system that we could use for navigation.

Consider a rectangle that is subdivided into nine smaller rectangles, like a phone keypad but without the zero. Now suppose that we number the smaller rectangles from 1-9, just like on a phone.

Next, we superimpose a map of the world on the rectangle so that the map of the world is subdivided into nine sectors by the smaller rectangles. So each sector of the world map would have a number from 1-9.

One issue that we soon run into, of course, is that of projection. The earth is a sphere and it is impossible to render the surface of a sphere onto a flat map without any distortion. Various projections have been developed for mapping, such as the Mercator Projection, but none can ever render a sphere on a flat map without any distortion.

Most wall maps of the world use the simple Cylindrical Projection. This is the one without any "gaps" in the map. The distortion of Cylindrical Projection is that east-west distances near the equator will appear shorter than they really are, and east-west distances at higher latitudes will appear longer than they really are.

One advantage of Cylindrical Projection, other than it's simplicity, is that a straight-line route on the earth will also show as a straight line on the map.

Now suppose we get our Cylindrical Projection map of the world and superimpose our nine-section keyboard on it. What we could do to compensate for the inevitable distortion in east-west distances is to have the equatorial regions of the world consisting of three narrower sections while the higher latitudes, both north and south of the equator, consist of three wider sections.

What this could accomplish is to make it so that each of the nine sectors represented an equal area of the earth's surface. 

We see that each of the nine sectors represents an area of the earth's surface. What we can do next is to subdivide the indicated section into a further nine sections. And then those into a further nine.

Suppose that we indicated an area of the earth's by the numbers 379. The first number indicates section 3, out of 9. Then section 3 is itself divided into into nine and section 7 is chosen. Then section 7 is divided into nine and section 9 is chosen.

By using this method we can pinpoint any place on the earth's surface with as much accuracy as we wish. More numbers mean greater accuracy. 379 would give less accuracy than 37941264. This gives it an advantage over GPS because sometimes we want to specify a wide area.

The zero is not used in the keyboard of nine. This means that we can use zeros to join two points together. 3790412 would mean points 379 and 412. This would mean a route or line between those points. More points could be added to indicate an area or the corners of a map.

The nine sectors of the earth's surface would be predefined. But that doesn't mean that maps of limited areas could not be adapted from this system. All that would be necessary is to define the four corners of the map, and then it could be subdivided into the nine sectors in the same way as the whole world.

GPS could be "running in the background" of a map that used this keypad method. Any keypad map could be initiated at anytime, all that would be necessary is to define the corners of the map. The keypad method is not actually a new way of determining locations and distances, just a much easier way of expressing it.

I have written about this method before and suggested a new method of map projection. We could set the equator as a diagonal across the map.  Here is the original posting.

http://markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-keypad-system-of-global-navigation.html?m=0

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Montreal

For our visit this week, let's go to a very special city. Montreal is a special place to me because the dock there is where I first landed in North America. The other thing that makes Montreal special is that, being the largest city in the Canadian province of Quebec, it's primary language is French while the rest of North America speaks English.

But even if not for this, it would be a special city anyway.

Montreal is a natural place for a city. Ships sailing into North America by way of the St. Lawrence River sail as far as they can go, until they come to the Lachine Rapids in the river. That is also where the river splits, before coming back together, to form two large islands.

On one of the islands, now known as Montreal Island, French explorer Jacques Cartier found an Iroquois Indian village, known as Hochelaga. There was a large hill on the island that is now known as Mount Royal. The name of Montreal means "Mount Royal", in French. Quebec is an Indian, and not a French, name. Cartier named the river for a Catholic saint, St. Lawrence.

Not only was the island in the St. Lawrence river with the hill as far as a ship could sail up the river, it was also an easily defensible location. A French settlement was later formed on the island, known as Ville Marie. 

The settlers were Catholics, and the name means "City of Mary". The name of Ville Marie is often seen in Montreal, just as the name of York is often seen in Toronto. You may notice that Montreal began on an island in the St. Lawrence river just as Paris had begun on an island in the Seine River.

One thing that becomes obvious about the names of Mount Royal and Ville Marie, is that the settlement took place before the French Revolution of 1789. In the French Revolution, the royal family was deposed and executed, and the power of the church was greatly curtailed. Had the settlement been founded after the French Revolution, it is highly unlikely that we would see these names today.

The provincial flag of Quebec features the fleur-de-lis, the symbol of the old French royalty that was overthrown in the revolution, as well as a cross on the French royal blue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Quebec#/media/File:Flag_of_Quebec.svg

One of the most photographed views in the world is that of downtown Montreal from the viewing platform on Mount Royal. In the first scene, the rotating light beacon is on top of the tall building named Place Ville Marie. The cylindrical building is part of McGill University.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.503435,-73.5867978,3a,75y,112.14h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipN4E_mZAs38w7YncbbyHnjapN0oSof1ZFFFL_-L!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipN4E_mZAs38w7YncbbyHnjapN0oSof1ZFFFL_-L%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya343.13712-ro-0-fo100!7i9728!8i4864

Also atop Mount Royal is the famous cross, that is lighted at night and can be seen far away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Royal_Cross#/media/File:Montreal_-_QC_-_Gipfelkreuz_Mont_Real.jpg

Here are the photos from the travel photo blog of North America, from the same viewing platform. A photo can be enlarged by clicking on it:

http://markmeektravel.blogspot.com/2006/09/montreal-as-seen-from-mount-royal.html

Being located as it is, as far as ships can sail into the St. Lawrence River due to the Lachine Rapids, at least until the Lachine Canal was built, as part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, it became a natural place to offload crude oil to be refined in the refineries to the east of the city. These oil refineries became a major business of Montreal.

A major occupation of Montreal today is aeronautics and aerospace. It is the headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency, and one of the best-known companies is Bombardier which might be considered as the Canadian version of Boeing or Airbus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Inc.#/media/File:Bd700.jpg

In one of those now-it-can-be-told stories, early in the Second World War Britain's gold reserves were secretly shipped to Canada, and stored in the Sun Life Building:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Life_Building#/media/File:17-08-08-Montreal-RalfR-DSC_3562.jpg

Montreal can get cold in the winter, but there is a vast "Underground City" of stores and restaurants below the downtown. One thing that I liked about Montreal is the Autoroute Ville Marie, the highway that goes right under the downtown:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Autoroute_720#/media/File:Through-tunnel-1-east.jpg

The following scenes are of McGill University, and the surrounding area. McGill is probably the best-known university in Canada, and certainly one of the world's great universities. The accomplishments at the university are far too numerous to go into, in detail, here. Several Canadian Prime Ministers have been educated at McGill. The element radon was discovered here. As for sports, the first rule book of modern hockey was written by students at McGill and the inventor of basketball, James Naismith, was educated here:

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5042659,-73.5768169,3a,75y,180h,105.57t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-LR8_rif-VkM%2FVKnT-q09aGI%2FAAAAAAAAAYQ%2FOemh7YdSq40I4iI9fjDZUoANC8ZUIGk-w!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-LR8_rif-VkM%2FVKnT-q09aGI%2FAAAAAAAAAYQ%2FOemh7YdSq40I4iI9fjDZUoANC8ZUIGk-w%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i8704!8i4352

Downtown, in the Old Montreal area, the inside of Basilica Notre Dame has to be seen to be believed. You can see how the outside of the basilica resembles Notre Dame in Paris, with the twin spires and arched doorways. But unlike Paris, which tries to keep old and new buildings separated, Montreal puts them right next to one another. The nearby docks are where I first landed in North America :

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5043325,-73.5556072,3a,75y,91.38h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOiBDUBy0ZWATmQFFZ0YwfHihmPiXWORxy4rxeX!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOiBDUBy0ZWATmQFFZ0YwfHihmPiXWORxy4rxeX%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya338.685-ro-0-fo100!7i5376!8i2688 

Montreal's copy of St. Peter's Basilica is Mary, Queen of the World. It is across the street from the Sun Life Building.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4992693,-73.5684101,3a,75y,101.06h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMAdBpqQZjTCk96Kqs13jk4WXMGUpBjL6Rwrhdf!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMAdBpqQZjTCk96Kqs13jk4WXMGUpBjL6Rwrhdf%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya345.58398-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Here are some photos from the travel photo blog of North America of Old Montreal:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250945.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250944.jpg

This is a view of the downtown, the tall building to the left of the photo is Place Ville Marie. In a link to Montreal's history, in a way similar to that done in Paris, Place Ville Marie is in the form of a cross because the original settlement of Ville Marie was primarily for missionary purposes:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250942.jpg

On the opposite side of Mount Royal from McGill University is the University Of Montreal. Unlike McGill, this is a French language university, where everything is done in French. This is a vast university, and very highly rated, and is especially known for it's nuclear research. It is also unfortunately remembered for the shooting of female students, in 1989:

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5047839,-73.6134261,3a,75y,77.96h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sE92ccMmkVwVa4ZxmLeyipA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DE92ccMmkVwVa4ZxmLeyipA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D73.072708%26pitch%3D0!7i3328!8i1664

Moving eastward in Montreal, we come to the Olympic Stadium. This is where the 1976 Olympics were held. I went in the Biodome, which is housed in one of the stadiums where the Olympics were held, and you can go up the tower which supports the roof of the Olympic Stadium. The triangular apartment buildings were where the athletes stayed during the Olympics.

Montreal is a stylish and artistic city, known for it's murals painted on the sides of buildings and for it's ice sculptures in the winter. Notice how the cables from the tower supporting the roof of the Olympic Stadium is a reflection of the structure of the nearby bridge, Pont Jacques Cartier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cartier_Bridge#/media/File:Jacques-Cartier_Canada.jpg


https://www.google.com/maps/@45.558351,-73.550935,3a,75y,73.2h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-uEPyjrDrca0%2FVfhhVlhU59I%2FAAAAAAAAipY%2FxWpaEMuewbIqgpgJ3Jlss8IGhf76xvv8w!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-uEPyjrDrca0%2FVfhhVlhU59I%2FAAAAAAAAipY%2FxWpaEMuewbIqgpgJ3Jlss8IGhf76xvv8w%2Fw203-h101-n-k-no%2F!7i8704!8i4352

Here is a photo of the Olympic Stadium, and the tower that supports it's roof by cables, from the travel photo blog of North America:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250943.jpg

What Montreal really excels at is putting on an event or celebration. Nine years before the 1976 Olympics was the celebration of Canada's 100th birthday, known as Expo 67. I was a child, living on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls at the time, and I remember when it was held. There were advertisements for it everywhere. It might have been the most successful international exhibition or world's fair ever held. Just as with the Olympic Stadium, there is a well-known and artistic building that remains from Expo 67 today. It is known simply as Habitat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67#/media/File:Habitat_panorama.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67#/media/File:Montreal_-_QC_-_Habitat67.jpg 
Posted by at No comments:

Facts About The Bible

 THE BIG BANG WAS A CHRISTIAN IDEA

Here is one of those facts that just gets too forgotten. 

The Big Bang is the central idea around which cosmology, how the universe operates, revolves. The theory is accepted by just about everyone concerned with cosmology.

But what gets forgotten about it is that the idea did not begin as a scientific idea. Scientists did not arrive at the idea of the universe beginning with the great explosion that we refer to as the Big Bang.

It was a Christian idea. The scientific community almost universally accepted the so-called "Steady State Theory", that the universe had no beginning.

But a Belgian priest named Georges LeMaitre, who was a professor of physics at a Catholic university, knew that the universe must have had a definite beginning because the Bible describes God creating it.

It was indeed observed that other galaxies are apparently moving away from us. The more distant the galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from us. This could only mean that the universe did have a beginning, it wasn't always there.

Edwin Hubble often gets the credit for discovering that the universe is expanding, meaning that it must have had a beginning, the beginning that we refer to as the Big Bang. But the truth is that he was only confirming the idea that Georges LeMaitre had already put forward.

The idea of the "Big Bang" did not catch on quickly or easily. The term "Big Bang" was actually coined by a British scientist who was making fun of the idea. But today it is almost universally accepted.

The Bible was right after all, that the universe had a definite beginning. The once-widely accepted "Steady State Theory" has long since fallen by the wayside. 

The whole world should know that this theory, which is so central to modern science, was actually a Christian idea that was based on what was in the Bible, and which proved to be correct.

THE 153 FISH

All four Gospels tell of Jesus having a meal of fish in the final chapter of the Gospel. The Gospel of St. John actually gives the number of fish that the Apostles, who had been mostly fishermen, had just caught. There were 153 fish.

The Gospel states that even with that great weight of fish, the net didn't break. This implies that both the volume of fish and the net not breaking was miraculous.

What do you notice about that number, 153? There were 12 Apostles, and also had been 12 tribes of Israel. If we multiply 153 x 12, we get 1,836.

It was the Bar Kochba Rebellion, which began in 132 A.D., that led to the Jews actually being banished from Jerusalem and erasure of the very nation. An earlier revolt against Roman rule, in 70 A.D., is better-known, and led to the destruction of the Temple, but it is the Bar Kochba Rebellion that really began the Jewish Diaspora, or scattering.

The Jews, in the recently reborn state of Israel, recaptured the original city of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. After the old city had been incorporated into the new country, it's first full year of being part of Israel, since 132 A.D., was 1968.

What do you notice here? 1968 -132 = 1836.

1,836 is, once again, the number of fish multiplied by the number of Apostles. Was those 153 fish chosen especially to reveal when control of Jerusalem would be regained?

For those with an interest in science, if 1836 sounds familiar it is because it is the ratio of the mass of a proton to that of an electron. The two have an equal but opposite electric charge, but a proton has 1836 times the mass of an electron.

Posted by at No comments:

America's Political Division

America is certainly not the only nation to have political divisions but it is notable in how sharp it's division is, how far apart it's right and left are. The reason is that the old establishment of America had to accommodate it's independent-minded west.

We saw this in "The Would-Have-Been Nation Of Westland",

http://markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-would-have-been-nation-of-westland.html?m=0

Posted by at No comments:

America's Resolute Desk

I am going to make the claim that the wood from which the main desk used by U.S. presidents almost certainly came from my native Forest of Dean.

This is a drawing of the desk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk#/media/File:Secretaire_made_from_the_timbers_of_the_British_Arctic_ship_%22Resolute,%22_and_presented_by_Queen_Victoria_to_the_President_of_the_United_States_LCCN99471788.jpg 

Most U.S. presidents in the last sixty years have used what is known as the Resolute Desk as their main working desk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk#/media/File:Barack_Obama_sitting_at_the_Resolute_desk_2009.jpg 

The desk has long been representative of the ties between the U.S. and Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk#/media/File:Thatcher_at_Oval_Office_desk_with_Carter.jpg 

In the late Nineteenth Century a wooden British ship, HMS Resolute, was decommissioned and dismantled. Some items were constructed from the wood of the ship, since such ships were built of high-quality hardwoods.

Among those items was a desk that was gifted to the United States by Queen Victoria. It is the desk used by most presidents today as their main desk.

Britain is a densely-populated land, without a lot of forest. But, in the days of wooden ships, a naval power was absolutely dependent on having a supply of trees that were suitable for building ocean-going ships.

My native Forest of Dean was recognized as having the best-quality ship timber. The wood that built the Mayflower was cut from within walking distance of where I was born. The Forest of Dean was long Britain's strategic timber reserve, which is no doubt why it ended up being as well-preserved as it has.

Britain's two most prominent naval figures from the days of wooden ships, Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Nelson, were both very protective of the Forest of Dean.

Admiral Nelson wrote a long letter to the king explaining how essential it is to protect this forest. Admiral Nelson gave his view that more oaks must be planted because acorns often get eaten by animals before they have the chance to grow into trees. He even requested that the navy be given supervision over this essential forest.

My conclusion is that it can be stated with near-certainty that the wood which comprises America's Resolute Desk, where some of the world's most important decisions are made and paperwork signed, originally came from the Forest of Dean.

We saw the northern part of the Forest of Dean in the posting on this blog, "Placid Britain".

https://markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2017/06/placid-britain.html

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Mumbai

Mumbai, once known as Bombay, is India's financial center and most important city on it's west coast.

Mumbai is built around a good natural harbor. The peninsula on which the city is built was once seven islands that were joined together, into a peninsula, by land reclamation.

The opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, opened a much more direct route to India from the west, and made Mumbai (then Bombay) into a very important port.

Such a vast city being located on a peninsula means that there will inevitably be a shortage of land which will raise all costs, making housing especially expensive. We saw in the compound posting, "Economics", November 2019, section 1) POLITICS AND PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, that New York City is an ideal example of this. 

In my geology theory, described in the compound posting "The Story Of Planet Earth" on the geology blog www.markmeek.blogspot.com , we saw that there is a long undersea ridge on the floor of the Indian Ocean. The ridge runs nearly directly north-south and is caused by magma emerging from below. It is what is described in the theory as a longitudinal line of emergence.

Mumbai is located right where the line of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge meets the coast of India. It is the magma emergence from below that parts the continental land mass of India and produces the good natural harbor around which Mumbai is built.

Let's begin our visit to Mumbai with the magnificent sight of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, with it's new tower in the background, and the Gateway to India.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@18.9226221,72.8344506,2a,75y,147.04h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s-JZOp08XFmtTTSvmBikw3Q!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D-JZOp08XFmtTTSvmBikw3Q%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D148.47997%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Nearby are some of the best-known buildings of Mumbai. In the following scenes, we will see the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. This seems to be as far south as the trains go on the peninsula on which Mumbai is built. This is one of the most famous train stations in the world, and is sometimes referred to by English-speakers as Victoria Terminus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatrapati_Shivaji_Terminus_railway_station#/media/File:CHATRAPATI_SHIVAJI_MAHARAJ_TERMINUS.jpg

Here is another photo of the train station:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatrapati_Shivaji_Terminus_railway_station#/media/File:Victoria_Terminus_-_CST.JPG

Across the street from the train station is the building of the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai. It is actually called Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. This could be thought of as the city hall of Mumbai:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihanmumbai_Municipal_Corporation#/media/File:Bombay_Municipal_Corporation.JPG

There is a famous market nearby, the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, sometimes referred to be English-speakers as the Crawford Market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Jyotiba_Phule_Mandai#/media/File:Crawford_Market.png

There is a college near the train station, with an adjoining high school, that is known for it's architecture, St. Xavier's College:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Xavier%27s_College,_Mumbai#/media/File:St._Xavier%27s_College,_Mumbai.jpg

Not far away is the area around Chowpatty Beach. The beach faces the ocean to the west so that one can watch the sun set in the evening.

The following area is in central Mumbai.

https://www.google.com/maps/@19.0639926,72.8654525,2a,75y,277h,84t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sRXT0IqaTuXC3hlGg38cjjA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DRXT0IqaTuXC3hlGg38cjjA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D277.5%26pitch%3D-6.941883%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 

This is a business district in central Mumbai.


Here is the Malabar Hill area, to the west of Back Bay.


This is further north in Mumbai, away from the central city area. It seems like ever city in India designates a dual color scheme for taxis, Mumbai's is black and yellow.


Here is more of Mumbai, further from the central part of the city.


This is a look at the far northern area of Mumbai.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)